The Manor

by Keane Jessie

‘You’re going to get better, Mills,’ said Belle. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

  ‘Is it? Who says?’ Now Milly was sagging against Stevie’s grip. She began to sob helplessly.

  ‘I do,’ said Belle firmly. ‘And it’s the truth. Hey!’ Belle reached out, grabbed Milly’s shoulders. She shook her, hard. ‘We’re the can-do girls, right? Right?’

  But Milly only cried.

  147

  Belle was quiet all the way back to the farm. When they were in the house, she said to Jack: ‘I never realized it got that bad.’

  Jack filled the kettle and switched it on. ‘I’ve heard of these hookers called chickenheads. They’re so desperate for crack that they don’t take cash for services, only a single rock. Most of them start out saying that’s stupid, they’ll never sink that low, but they do, because crack’s so addictive.’

  Belle was watching him. She shook her head. ‘Charlie and Nula Stone lived like royalty. So does Harlan. It destroys lives, what they do. And all the time, they live like princes.’

  ‘Yeah, but somebody stopped Charlie Stone and his wife dead in their tracks,’ said Jack.

  ‘Harlan. It had to be.’

  Jack squinted at her. ‘His parents? That’s harsh.’

  ‘Not his real parents.’

  ‘Still.’

  Belle shrugged. ‘Anyway. I’m going to stop him,’ she said.

  The kettle was starting to boil. Jack got out mugs, tea bags and milk. ‘So what’s next?’ he asked her.

  ‘Have you picked up anything on the phone taps in the Essex house or the Tower Bridge apartment?’

  The one with the black muttonchop whiskers, Jason, had bugged the landlines at both properties.

  ‘Yep. Stuff coming out of Santamaria and into Southampton this week. He spoke to a bloke called Javier on the house landline. He’s getting careless.’

  Belle thought of Nula’s notes, what she had already read there. So much. So bloody much, and there was still more to come. ‘That’s one of the Colombian cartel’s main men. Javier Matias. I’ll make a call to Customs and Excise.’

  ‘And then?’

  Belle nodded to the notebooks stacked on the table. ‘It’s all in here. Nula’s journals. Charlie would have gone apeshit if he’d known she was doing this. But it’s telling us so much. It’s a bloody gift.’

  She picked up one of the notebooks from the pile, flicked open a page, and read.

  148

  This couldn’t be happening. It was not possible. Harlan was stunned and Javier’s people were furious. The week’s shipment hadn’t even left Santamaria for Rotterdam and then on to Southampton, before Customs swooped.

  ‘We had them in our pocket, we had everything sewn up tight, and now this?’ Javier bellowed down the phone at Harlan. ‘Suddenly they come in – new people, not the ones in our pay – and they start breaking open the scrap metal ingots and there is the cocaine, and they take it, they seize it, our product.’

  ‘Something must be going wrong at your end, there must be a weak link in the chain,’ said Harlan.

  ‘There is a weak link, and it is you, my friend. It is your people, your operation. We are hearing there was a call made to your Customs and Excise, and they passed it on to ours.’

  A call? What the fuck?

  ‘Hold on, Javier. We’re tight at this end. Water-tight.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ said Javier. ‘Hijueputa!’

  Harlan’s back went up. ‘What you calling me, you wop bastard?’ But he knew. Lots of trips with Charlie to meet with the Colombian cartel had made it very clear that hijueputa was son of a bitch.

  Javier lapsed completely into his mother tongue then. Tossing more swear words down the phone at Harlan.

  Harlan counted to ten.

  Finally, Javier fell silent.

  ‘Look,’ said Harlan. He was choking with rage but he couldn’t afford to fall out with Javier. ‘Let’s meet, shall we? Discuss this. You in London?’

  ‘I don’t know, I . . .’

  ‘You are, yeah? Then come out to the house. Let’s sit down and talk. We can work this out.’

  Javier said nothing.

  ‘Come on, Javier. How long we been doing business? I can sort this, I promise you.’

  ‘No. We’ll meet somewhere neutral.’

  ‘OK. The Savoy for lunch? One on Wednesday? I’ll book it.’

  ‘You are not the man your father was,’ said Javier.

  Harlan gritted his teeth at that. ‘Next week, yeah? At the hotel. That’ll give me time to straighten this.’

  ‘All right! I will be there,’ said Javier, and slapped the phone down.

  149

  All the furniture cover business premises were torched next. Then two of the clubs. Then one of the snooker halls. By the weekend, Harlan’s manor was decimated and everyone around him was nervous, backing away because he was knocking heads together. He shrieked at anyone who came near. When the police turned up, asking questions about the helicopter crash – as the AAI men had said they would – and about the destruction of his businesses, he sat through it, answered convincingly, then the instant they were gone he roared around the place, throwing priceless vases into mirrors, swiping bone china off the dining table, trying somehow to work off the murderous rage that was building up in him at the sheer injustice of it all.

  His crew, one by one, faded away. With his loss of control of the manor came a loss of control of himself, making him dangerous. Fucker would as soon shoot you as look at you right now. His men weren’t stupid: after one of them answered back and found himself battered to a pulp, they made themselves scarce.

  Harlan left the Tower Bridge apartment and drove the Porsche out to the Essex place, passing the empty gatehouse where once she had lived, but like everyone else in his life she hadn’t seen fit to be nice to him. He thundered up the drive, screeching to a halt outside the main house. He’d half expected to find it all gone up in flames, just like everything else, but there it was – solid, enduring. His house. Not Charlie’s. His. Deep breaths, deep breaths. It was all going to iron out, he knew it. Javier would come to meet him, they would talk, it would all be OK.

  Yeah.

  It would.

  Harlan got out of the car and looked around at his kingdom. His. Not Charlie’s.

  You’re not the man your father was . . .

  Those words had tapped straight into all his insecurities. Because he wasn’t Charlie’s son, it was true; he was the son of some random idiot who had screwed his drugged-up mother for a couple of quid – and he had been the result.

  He stared around at the grounds. Empty now, the grass getting a bit long. Nobody about. No gardeners, nobody on the gate. Nobody on the door of the house. Everyone had scarpered. Bad news travelled fast, and the bad news was, Harlan was ready to kill the next bastard who said a word to him about anything. He wondered about Nipper, about Ludo. They’d been his closest, his best. Now where the fuck were they? Nobody knew. Others had searched for any sign of them; they hadn’t been found.

  They’d let him down. Just like everyone did.

  He went into the house and closed the door behind him.

  Inside, it was dead silent.

  No Charlie.

  No Nula.

  No Milly.

  Only him. He liked it like that. And when he met Javier at the hotel, he would put everything right. Start to rebuild. Yes. He could do it. He was confident that all would be well.

  150

  Jack was out on the farm with his ex-army mates, working on the barn roof. Tank was on the farmhouse door, keeping watch over Belle while she sat at the kitchen table, the Louis Vuitton bag on the floor beside her, steadily going through Nula’s journals.

  As she opened one of the seventies editions, she was surprised to see a picture of her and Milly as girls, tucked inside it. They were grinning up at the camera. Belle could see that the picture was taken behind the main house, beside the swimming pool. The can-do girls. They’d been happy once,
cocooned from the world. Now reality had bitten hard, and tragedy had worn them down.

  She started reading and suddenly she was sitting up, eyes widening as Nula’s writing told of something awful, something Belle could scarcely take in.

  Nula wrote: Innocent visits? My arse. Once she told me, it was obvious. You’d have to be a fucking fool not to see it, not when you knew what was really going on. Jill was shit-scared of him. He fucking raped her, the dirty bastard. Didn’t he ever get enough, with those bloody parties, with me? Of all the low tricks, to do that to his own best friend . . .

  Shaking suddenly, feeling a stony gut-deep rage take hold of her, Belle stared at the words for a long, long time. Then she snatched up the journal and went out the door, Tank dogging her heels.

  Jack was up the ladder hammering copper nails into the barn roof’s tiles, one of the others footing the ladder for him.

  ‘Jack?’ she called out.

  He finished hammering and came down, staring at her face. ‘You look like you seen a ghost,’ he said.

  She handed him the journal. Her hands were trembling.

  ‘What?’ Jack’s eyes were fixed on her face.

  ‘Charlie Stone raped my mum,’ said Belle, and started to cry.

  Jack pulled her into his arms and held her.

  151

  When Belle went to see how Milly was doing, she found that Milly wasn’t upstairs in the bedroom any more. She was sitting downstairs in the tiny lounge of the London house, and to Belle’s intense relief she looked better. Still skinny and listless, but her colour was improved and she wasn’t shaking or swearing or demanding a hit. She was sitting beside an electric fire, the bars glowing red, holding her hands out to its warmth. When she saw Belle come in with Stevie, she didn’t stand up. Belle went to the armchair opposite Milly’s own and sat down. Stevie stood at the door.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘I feel like shit,’ said Milly, with a thin smile.

  ‘You will do. For a while.’ For a long while, Belle thought; maybe always. Crack was vicious and wouldn’t loosen its grip once it had you.

  ‘Stevie said you wanted to talk.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Milly’s eyes went to Stevie. ‘If we can have a moment alone . . . ?’

  Stevie looked at Belle. She nodded. He stepped outside the door, closed it behind him.

  ‘So?’ said Belle.

  Milly was silent, staring at the glowing fake coal of the fire.

  ‘Mills?’ she prompted.

  Milly stared at Belle’s face. ‘You know what? I thought I was having a bad trip last time I saw you. God, Belle, what happened to your face?’

  Belle gave a thin smile, feeling the scar tissue on her left side pull as she did so. ‘Had a run-in with Harlan. And some caimans.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Milly’s eyes were wide and horrified. ‘Where is he? Do you know?’

  Belle knew all right. Jack’s mates were watching Harlan every second now, recording his phone messages, overseeing every move he made.

  ‘He’s at the house.’ She thought that Milly was too fragile to take too much in right now. Later, maybe she would share the horror of all that she’d discovered in Nula’s journals. But not yet.

  Milly’s eyes dropped to her hands, now clasped together in her lap. Belle saw a tear slip down her cheek.

  ‘Mills, it’s going to be OK. I promise you.’

  Milly was shaking her head. ‘No. It’s not.’ Her wet red-rimmed eyes met Belle’s. ‘It’s all such a fucking mess. You know, I always felt pushed aside. First when they adopted Harlan. And then little Jake.’

  ‘Mills . . .’

  ‘And then they left everything to Harlan. Nothing for me except a yearly allowance. He was included in the business, he inherited the manor. I was like you, kept out of everything, too fucking useless to be involved. I was just the girl.’

  Belle stared at the rage on Milly’s face, taken aback. Milly was such a quiet person, usually; inoffensive. But all this had been boiling away inside her, and now it was overflowing.

  ‘Mills,’ she said quietly. ‘You have to let this go. Forget Harlan. Forget the past. Make your own life now. Start again.’

  ‘I don’t know that I can,’ wailed Milly.

  ‘You? Damned sure. We’re the can-do girls, remember?’ Belle smiled.

  Milly’s smile was thin and trembling. But it was there.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You’re right.’

  152

  ‘What’s happening with Harlan?’ Belle asked Jack when she got back to Beechwood Farm.

  ‘Nothing much. He’s been talking to Javier Matias from the cartel. Matias will be at the Savoy at one o’clock on Wednesday for a meet.’

  Belle sat back, thinking. ‘I want to go to the gatehouse. Get some things. It’s safe now, I suppose?’

  Jack nodded. ‘I’ve been nosing around over there. He’s just gone. Probably back to town. Place is deserted. You OK to go back there, after what happened?’

  Belle shrugged. ‘I’m fine.’ Don’t think about it. Jack’s words to her. Wise words, too. She wouldn’t think about any of it.

  ‘Tomorrow morning then. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  He yawned and held out a hand. ‘Time for bed.’

  They had closed the bedroom door on the rest of his mates. Most nights the others were up late, chatting, laughing. Maybe they feared sleep. Belle wondered if maybe in dreams all their past battles came back to haunt them. She didn’t know. Now as she sat down on the edge of the bed, her hand slipped under his pillow and brushed unexpectedly against cold metal.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked, lifting the pillow, showing him what she’d found.

  ‘Insurance,’ said Jack, peeling off his shirt in the half-light.

  Belle nodded slowly. She picked up the gun, weighed it in her hand. Remembered emptying three rounds into Ludo’s dead body. Don’t think about it.

  Jack was watching her. ‘Careful. It’s loaded.’

  ‘I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.’

  ‘Gives me the horn, you holding that,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘Yeah?’ Belle stood up and came over to him, running the barrel of the pistol lightly over the skin of his chest.

  Jack kissed her and took the gun out of her hand. Then he kissed her again; deeper, harder. When he drew back, his eyes were dark with hunger.

  ‘Get on that bed,’ he murmured against her mouth.

  Belle was smiling. ‘Is that an order?’

  ‘You bet your arse it is,’ he said, and picked her up and tossed her, laughing, onto it.

  153

  Next day Belle went back. It was the weirdest of sensations when Jack parked the Jeep in one of the pulling-in points a long way along the lane. They walked the rest of the way, looking all around; then they passed through the unattended and unlocked gates to the house and up the gravel walkway to the gatehouse. It was the same and yet somehow completely different. She’d played in the hallway as a kid, with Milly. They’d been so young, so innocent. Now the gatehouse seemed full of shadows, weird empty echoes of the past.

  Oh Christ, poor Mum.

  ‘OK?’ Jack pushed the front door closed behind them.

  Belle nodded and he moved ahead of her, down the hall to the kitchen. There could be cameras set up, booby traps, anything. Jack had warned her about all this before they’d left the farm. Told her to follow where he stepped and to be watchful, careful.

  But as they moved through the gatehouse it became clear there was nothing. Just an empty, echoing building, a remnant of a past life that had stopped the day Harlan came marauding through it. Upstairs, the cupboard door Belle and Jill had hidden behind still hung ajar. There was a tiny dead bat on the windowsill – probably it had battered itself to death on the windowpane. There was no other sign of what had happened. Nothing at all.

  ‘OK, pack up what you need then and let’s get out,’ said Jack.

  Belle grabbed a holdall from the top
of her wardrobe and stuffed garments in. Underwear, dresses, jeans, T-shirts, her one formal black skirt suit. She scooped up brushes, her hairdryer, some jewellery, then paused at her dressing table to look at the silver-framed pictures there. Her and Dad. Mum and Dad smiling, together. Then all three of them. Blinking back tears, Belle picked those up, put them in the holdall and zipped it.

  ‘That the lot?’ Jack asked as she grabbed some heels.

  ‘Yeah.’ There was nothing else left here. Not any more.

  154

  Harlan was wondering what he could do next. Disaster upon disaster had piled in on him, but he could rise again. After his meet with Javier, he would start to regroup. Smooth things over there, reassure the cartel that he was still their man. Get some new boys together, people he could trust – not like that bastard Ludo and that waste of space Nipper, who’d both let him down so badly.

  He thought – briefly – that maybe something off had happened to them. But no. No way. Two hard cunts, searching the safe English countryside for one helpless girl? Nah. They’d given up, cleared off out of it; moved on to pastures new. Later, when all this was settled down, he’d find them. He’d track them down. And then they’d be sorry.

  Yeah, it would all be OK. He’d talk to his associates in Manchester and Liverpool, make sure everything was fine with them and that they hadn’t lost faith in his ability to pull this all back together. Of course they would have heard about all the misfortunes that had befallen him. They knew his manor just as surely as he knew theirs. There were people in place all around him, he knew that, reporting any dirt they found on him back to their masters. So they knew damned well – just as Javier knew – that he was in a hole.

  But he could dig himself out.

  He was certain of it.

  From the city he drove the Porsche back to the Essex house. The grass was even longer now, no security on the gate. He let himself into the house. Empty. No cleaners. Nothing. The whole place looked tired. Dead flowers drooped in a stinking vase in the hall. In Nula’s sitting room, on the mantelpiece, stood the two urns containing Charlie’s and Nula’s ashes. Turning away from them, he went back out into the hall, running his hand up the bannister as he went up to the master bedroom. His fingers came away coated with dust.