by Keane Jessie
Belle walked out into the yard and looked a question at him.
‘Mate of mine runs a racing stable over in Berkshire,’ he said. ‘Lady and Goldie and the chickens are going there for the time being.’
Belle frowned at him. ‘You really think there was someone out here last night? That they’d hurt the horses?’
‘Why take the chance? They were going to cut you up, and they did for poor bloody Trix, so who knows what else they’re capable of?’
Belle patted Lady’s glossy neck and went into the barn, returning with two apples from the store, one for Lady, one for Goldie. Then she went back into the kitchen so she didn’t have to watch the horses and the chickens being loaded up into the transporter. It was too sad. She’d actually been happy here, hidden away from the world, and seeing the livestock go was drawing a line under it all. Almost saying goodbye to it.
Rain set in within the hour and they passed the day indoors, watching TV and cooking a meal. Jack didn’t go swimming, and Belle couldn’t ride Lady out. In the afternoon they sat on the couch and dozed, both aware that this was somehow an ending.
That night, they made love in Jack’s bed and then slept for a while. Belle awoke in the small hours and crept to the window. She tugged back the curtains and looked out at the silent, moonlit countryside. The rain had stopped and the concrete yard glistened like a mirror, tossing back the moonlight. Water plinked from the leaking guttering over the window.
It might be just about ready to fall down, but I’ve loved this place, she thought.
Then there was movement behind her and Jack’s warm skin was against her back and buttocks, his hard-muscled arms snaking around her and holding her tight against the front of his body. He kissed her neck and looked out, just as she was looking.
‘What is it? Can’t sleep?’ he murmured against her throat.
Belle shook her head. Suddenly she felt choked.
When she did manage it, her voice was low but steady.
‘Jack?’ she said.
‘Hm?’
‘I’ve got to go back.’
‘Back . . . ?’
‘Harlan started this . . . and I’ve got to finish it.’
She’d been thinking about this ever since Ludo and Nipper had burst into their private world and pulled it apart. The way she saw it, there was no choice. She had to somehow stop this – or she would be looking over her shoulder forever, because Harlan wouldn’t let this go. You didn’t say ‘no’ to Harlan Stone, so it was inevitable: one day someone would show up and kill her, maybe quickly if she was lucky or slowly if she was not, and she was afraid of that. Terrified. So she had to strike first.
Jack was silent for a moment.
Then he said: ‘These people fight dirty.’
Belle turned her head and in the blue light of the moon Jack saw her scarred cheek pucker as she smiled.
‘So do I,’ she said.
137
Next day, she went out into the kitchen and there was Jack, sitting calmly at the breakfast table as if nothing was wrong, as if the whole damned world hadn’t gone crazy in the space of one day. They’d been happy here, had fallen into a routine. She had halfway fallen in love, she thought, but maybe he wasn’t capable of that, maybe all he saw in her was easy meat because she was scarred, desperate – and available.
She poured tea from the pot, slopped in milk, sat down opposite him. He watched her.
Then to her surprise he said: ‘I was fifteen when I left home, left here, for the first time.’
Belle frowned at him. ‘Why so early?’
‘My father died when I was twelve. After that, my mother had a string of boyfriends. Some of them were OK. The last one wasn’t. He didn’t want a hairy-arsed resentful teenager mooching about the place and he made that very clear. He beat the crap out of me one day right in front of her, and she didn’t say a word or lift a finger in my defence. Next day, I was gone.’
Belle said nothing. She was afraid that if she did speak, he’d stop. All too clearly she could picture him as a vulnerable boy, his dad dead, his mother mocking his father’s memory with a succession of lovers. One of them beating him, hurting him. It was awful.
‘Maybe she was scared of him?’ suggested Belle.
‘If someone was beating up a child of yours, what would you do?’
‘I’d kill them,’ said Belle without even having to think about it.
‘At sixteen I joined up. Served in Northern Ireland. I was a sniper and then a section commander in the paras. Then I moved into special forces in the Falklands. I left the military and came back here because my mother was ill. Dying.’
Belle thought about that. His fitness. His focus. It explained so much. She was shocked, incredulous.
‘Oh my Christ,’ she said. ‘Special forces? You’re SAS, is that what you’re telling me?’
‘SBS, actually. Special Boat Services. I was the point man. First man in.’
‘Good God.’ She was silent a minute, taking that in. ‘And the scars? The ones on your back?’
‘My mate stepped on an IUD. It blew both his legs off. Killed him. I caught a bit of the blast. Got lucky.’
‘So . . . your mother and you? You were reconciled before she died?’
‘Nah. She was an old whore who more or less ignored me right up to the end,’ said Jack with a rueful grin. ‘But we made some sort of peace, I suppose. What did you do?’
‘What?’
‘For a living. For work.’
Belle let out a breath. ‘Nothing. I told you. Nothing at all. Dad had plenty of cash and I was not encouraged to do anything except paint my nails, get my hair done, ride horses.’
‘So you were – what? – a spoiled little princess?’
‘Yep, that was me. Just waiting for a millionaire to stroll by and snap me up.’ Belle’s smile was ironic. That indulged and cosseted but somehow unsatisfied girl had been another life, another world. Now she was different, inside and out.
‘What did you do with them?’ she asked. ‘With Ludo and Nipper?’
‘Don’t go there. You don’t want to know.’
‘And Trix?’ Belle was really sad about Trix. The dog had been her companion, her friend, through the worst of her pain and misery. She was going to miss her. And it was her fault that Trix had met her end. If Harlan’s goons hadn’t been in pursuit of her, Trix would be alive right now.
‘Same. Don’t ask.’ He stood up. ‘You want some food?’
‘I couldn’t eat it.’
‘So what now?’
‘I don’t know.’ She still felt sick after the shocks she’d had, and disorientated. It was as if Harlan had reached out and touched her, and that made her shudder. Her mind was in turmoil. ‘I’ve brought trouble to your door. I’m sorry.’
Jack shrugged. ‘Today we just keep watch. Be careful. Give ourselves some time to think it all through.’
So they kept watch, and they were careful. The shotgun didn’t go back in the cabinet. But no one came. After a thrown-together meal in the evening, Jack sat and watched TV for a while, and Belle went off to her lonely room – his mother’s room – and tried to sleep.
138
All Harlan could think was, where the hell were they? They were supposed to keep in touch with him, tell him what was going on. Instead here he was, kicking his heels and getting lower on patience every day. When he was in one of the Stone nightclubs, he grabbed Sammy, who was loitering on the door, hauled him into the back office and said to him, had he heard anything?
‘About what, Boss?’ asked Sammy over the crashing volume of the sound system.
‘Ludo. Nipper. They said anything to you? Been in touch?’
‘No, Boss.’
There was taking the piss, and then there was this. Harlan was standing there in the middle of the floor tapping a baseball bat into his open palm. He was going to get some answers today, or else.
Sammy’s face was wary as he watched Harlan with the bat.
�
�Boss?’ he asked. ‘Why would they talk to me? They’d talk to you, wouldn’t they.’
‘So you’ve heard nothing at all.’ Slap, went the bat in Harlan’s palm.
‘No. Nothing.’
‘Get some more boys down there, find out what the fuck’s going on, OK?’
‘Boss, they’ve probably got it under control.’
‘Then they should be telling me that. Don’t you think?’ Slap went the bat again. Then Harlan pointed it at Sammy. ‘You know anything, you better spit it out right now.’
‘Nothing, Boss,’ said Sammy, feeling his mouth go dry. These days, when you looked into the eyes of Harlan Stone you saw a funhouse party going on in his brain. He was losing it. He had this obsession about Belle Barton, finding her, getting rid of her, and it was taking over his entire life.
‘I’m surrounded by fucking idiots,’ snarled Harlan. Whap. The bat slapped into his palm again.
If he comes at me with that, I’m going to leg it, thought Sammy, bracing himself.
‘Get some more people down there. Do it,’ said Harlan.
Sammy fled.
139
Next morning, Jack was up early again. Belle heard him talking on the phone for a long time. Then they ate breakfast. With no horses to muck out and no hens to collect eggs from, Belle occupied herself by cleaning up the inside of the house while Jack prepared that night’s dinner.
At just after one, a battered old Jeep rolled up at the front of the house and six men emerged from it. Through the kitchen window Belle saw them coming. There was something in the way they moved, the tense and watchful way they held themselves, that reminded her of Jack. He’d heard the Jeep pull up, and let them in to the house.
‘Christ, here you are, Jackie boy. Talk about the arse end of nowhere,’ one of them said.
Belle went to the door and looked out as the men greeted each other with hugs, back-slapping and a lot of swearing. The one who’d been driving flicked a look at her.
‘See you’ve been busy,’ he said to Jack with a grin.
He didn’t seem to notice her scars. In fact, as they turned toward her, all six of them, none of them seemed fazed by the state of her.
Jack took her hand in his. ‘This is Belle,’ he told the men.
They nodded. Belle looked them over, staggered by a wall of solid testosterone. One – the driver – was ginger-haired, one was portly and clean-shaven, one had big black muttonchop whiskers, another had heartbreaking dark eyes, one was built like a bear and the last was slight, blond and twitchy, very fast-moving. Six men, and they all looked like trouble; like they could handle themselves. They all had that same cool assessing stare; just like Jack’s.
‘Belle?’ Jack pulled her against him. ‘Meet the boys.’
‘Hi,’ she said. These were the people he must have been on the phone to this morning.
‘You said you needed an army,’ said Jack, giving her a squeeze. ‘You’ve got one. So what do you want to happen now?’
Belle looked at him. ‘First I’ve got to find someone.’
‘OK. We can do that.’
‘I’ll take first watch tonight, shall I?’ asked the big one Jack had called Tank.
‘Yeah. Good,’ said Jack.
140
Harlan had been waiting a long time for this moment; he was ready for it. The Air Accident Investigations people called on him at the Essex house. They watched him gravely as they sat and discussed the helicopter crash.
‘We are sorry to have to tell you, Mr Stone, that there was an explosive device on board your parents’ aircraft, which caused catastrophic damage. There was no hope of the occupants surviving the crash.’
Harlan nodded.
‘So tell me, Mr Stone, do you have knowledge of anyone with a grudge against either of your parents?’ the older of the two asked. He was bespectacled. Jowly. Sporting an office pallor. He wore a tired tweed jacket and shiny beige trousers and a sympathetic but somehow suspicious expression.
‘Well, no.’
‘You’re sure?’
Harlan could think of many, many people who would have wanted his adopted father dead. Rival drug lords; there were many of them and the market would only accommodate so many before the whole thing burst apart like a rotten carcass. That had been Charlie’s worry for years. When you were in one of the top slots, there was always some bastard looking to knock you off it. Now the problem would be Harlan’s, instead. Well, he could hack it. He had plenty of foot soldiers around him.
Then his thoughts turned to Nipper and Ludo. Where the hell were those tossers? Give them a job to do and they fucked off out of it and left you in the dark. They should have come back to base with news long since. But there had been nothing. He promised himself that when the two of them finally showed up here, he was going to rip each of them a brand-new arsehole.
‘My father was a respected businessman. Well liked. Popular,’ said Harlan.
‘We will be passing the matter over to the police now for further investigation,’ said the younger AAI man, eyeing Harlan steadily.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Harlan, catching his breath and swiping a hand over his eyes. ‘Sorry,’ he said, and coughed. ‘This has been so upsetting for us, as you can imagine.’
‘Indeed,’ said the older one.
‘For my sister and myself,’ elaborated Harlan.
‘Is she at home today? Could we speak to her?’ asked the older one.
Right now Harlan didn’t have a clue where Milly was. He’d heard word she was hanging around the clubs and – silly cow – getting into the drugs scene. You never touched the product. That was for mugs. Still – so long as she was out of his way, everything was fine.
‘No, I think she’s in town. She’s taken it very hard, all this. We have properties there, but I’ve no idea which one she’s staying at. My father was rich, you know.’
‘And now his wealth has passed to you and your sister.’
‘Yeah.’ Well – to him, anyway. Charlie had trusted him implicitly and had left the whole shebang to him. Milly had her thirty-grand allowance per annum, paid straight into her personal account. Small change, compared to what he’d got. ‘But we’d happily give it all back if only we could have our parents returned to us.’
‘Imports, wasn’t it?’ asked the younger one. ‘Furnishings and such?’
‘That’s right.’
The younger AAI man snapped closed his briefcase. ‘As we say, this is a police matter now.’
‘Let’s hope they catch whoever did it,’ said Harlan.
‘Yes,’ said the older man, eyeing him beadily. ‘Let’s hope.’
141
The pills had been OK, but crack was better. Milly loved nothing better than getting spaced out, properly spaced out, on crack. When she inhaled from the pipe she was blissed out, removed from the world.
She was sucking on the pipe like an infant on its mother’s tit, she was happy.
She was lying on her bed in one of Charlie’s – no, Harlan’s – London houses and feeling soooo mellow. And then, crashing noises. She didn’t know how it happened but suddenly there were people all around her, scary-looking people, maybe she was having a bad trip? She’d heard that could happen. These were all big men, hard-looking men, and then someone was shoving through them, coming to the bed, and . . .
‘Shit . . .’ she murmured, thinking that this was indeed a bad trip, a terrible one, because she imagined she saw Belle standing right there by the bed looking down at her, but not beautiful Belle, not her friend who she’d missed these past few weeks, and fretted over when she wasn’t off her face, wondering where the hell Belle could have got to. This Belle’s face was scarred all down the left side, like something out of a bloody nightmare, so she had to be imagining this, it wasn’t real.
Milly screwed her eyes tight shut. She didn’t like this. Not at all.
When she opened them again, the monster Belle would be gone.
She opened her eyes – but Belle was
still standing there. Still scarred.
‘No, no . . .’ Milly muttered, squirming on the bed, knocking the pipe and foil onto the floor. Knocking some of the precious rocks off, too. She lunged for it all, couldn’t lose it, but it was gone, hitting the floor, gone, oh shit, gone . . .
‘Milly?’ said Belle.
‘No, you’re not there, you’re not real.’
Now they’d found her, Belle couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Her old friend Milly had always been plump. This Milly had dropped a shedload of weight and the effect was awful. She looked somehow sunken. Her face was gaunt and pale, peppered with acne. She stank of sweat, like she hadn’t bathed in days.
Milly was muttering to herself, leaning off the side of the bed, scrabbling after what was left of that shit she’d been smoking. Belle was suddenly furious. Everything had gone tits-up in her life. Charlie and Nula dead. Her mum and dad, dead. Harlan after her. And now this.
‘Milly?’
Milly’s dirt-blackened fingernails were searching the floor like a beggar after crumbs. Belle saw that her fingers were burned from handling the pipe. Milly’s eyes were bloodshot, her pupils dilated. She grabbed Milly’s shoulder and hauled her back up. Then she slapped her hard, across the face.
‘Milly!’
Milly clutched at her cheek in shock. Her eyes filled with tears of pain as they stared up at this creature who couldn’t be Belle.
Belle slumped down on the filthy bed. The sheets were white fading to grey, and there was all sorts of stuff scattered about on it. Pencils and burned shards of foil. A make-up bag, the contents scattered, powder spilled, lipstick staining the sheets red. Ring-backed exercise books with dates on the front.
‘You’re not real,’ said Milly, gulping back tears.
Belle looked at the ruins of her friend. ‘Yeah. I am. Harlan did this to me, Milly. He did this.’ Her heart felt like a stone in her chest. She didn’t think she had a single tear left in her. Not one. Then her eyes fell to the notebooks. ‘What are these? Milly?’ Milly’s gaze had wandered off and now she was staring at the wall, gone into some trance-like state. Slowly, Milly’s focus returned to Belle. ‘Mills? You been keeping a diary? I didn’t know you did that.’