Someone Out There Read Free Page B

his love right back in his face.

    Now her solicitor was demanding a ludicrously large settlement. If she got it, she would close on wipe him out, though Ronnie kept telling him that some of his assets, salted away over the years in various overseas accounts, could be kept safe and undisclosed. But Ronnie’s assurances were proving less than reliable.
    ‘This Laura Maxwell your wife’s using,’ Ronnie said soon after the divorce began, ‘the judge isn’t going to like her tactics.’
    What garbage that had turned out to be, Harry thought savagely. The judges barely seemed to grasp the issues involved let alone the strategies of his wife’s malicious lawyer. Despite the five court hearings he had so far attended and the growing pile of paperwork associated with his case, he’d never seen the same judge twice.
    Harry knew the financial damage would be bad. Most of his assets were visible, and however hard he tried, he couldn’t hide the fact that he was a wealthy man. Equality was the yardstick in divorce settlements these days and didn’t Laura Maxwell just know it. Equality – what a joke that was. Harry lay on his back, his body rigid with fury, sweat on his forehead though the night was cold.
    He had made what he considered to be a generous offer to his wife, a very generous offer indeed, and a lot more than the greedy cow deserved, but Laura Maxwell had dismissed it out of hand. All she wanted was to confront him and crush him.
    Gone 5 a.m. and still no sign of sleep. He thrashed around in the bed. Harry Pelham was good at fighting. He’d needed to be to survive in the cut-throat world of the property developer. He was forceful and physically intimidating. Six-foot-two, brawny, with a thick black moustache, above it, dark, deep-set eyes that looked you over as if he couldn’t care less about you, but at the same time, he was sizing you up, calculating your strengths and weaknesses. At forty-five, he had learned to be as hard-nosed as they come.
    Harry wasn’t used to losing and he wasn’t going to get used to it now. He’d made other plans. With that comforting thought, he finally fell asleep.

    The first time they knocked they didn’t wake him. The second time they would have woken the dead.
    Damn postman, he thought.
    He dragged himself out of bed, downstairs and opened his front door. Four men stood before him. They didn’t look much like postmen.
    ‘May we come in?’ said one of them barging past into the hallway.
    Harry Pelham was under arrest.

CHAPTER THREE
    Laura made tea while Sarah Cole sat miserably in her office clutching the Hakimi file to her chest and picking nervously at a corner of it. Sarah’s dark hair was greasy and her eyes were tired and puffy. She put the file down on her lap, took a HobNob from the packet in front of her and nibbled at it.
    ‘Oh my God, it’s such a mess!’ she said.
    Laura set two mugs of tea down on the desk and pulled round a chair so she could sit next to Sarah.
    ‘Don’t worry; I’m sure it can be sorted out.’
    Sarah shook her head, ‘There’s no way. Have a look; you’ll see what I mean.’ She handed the file to Laura and took one of the mugs. Her lower lip trembled and she put it back on the desk.
    ‘The thing is, it’s not my fault. She should have told me,’ Sarah said defiantly, screwing her mouth into a scowl.
    Laura opened the file and began to read and Sarah hoped that with all her experience and all the successful cases she had under her belt, Laura just might be able to come up with a solution. She picked up the mug again, dunked the biscuit, and watched as a lump of it broke off and disappeared under the surface of the tea. That was just typical, she thought, of her luck and her life these days.
    Her eyes went to the photo on Laura’s desk. A summer’s day somewhere on the South Downs with Laura standing beside a horse, her husband Joe next to her, his arm around her waist. Joe looked outrageously gorgeous with his bright blue