To the Lions

by Holly Watt

  High up the wall, the gecko was back, scavenging the light-drunk insects.

  And Josh would know, by now, that he might be beaten by this unknown opponent.

  But any pawn can be a queen. ‘Do get on with it,’ Casey yawned, holding the book with both hands, as a rook sliced down a knight.

  Josh flicked her a glance, as his king twisted into check. Ed leaned back in his seat, triumphant.

  ‘I don’t get beaten often,’ said Josh.

  ‘It’s not my game,’ she answered.

  There was a long silence, as she fiddled with the pieces. Josh was staring across the table.

  ‘No,’ he smiled, so that Casey almost misheard. ‘You couldn’t do it.’

  And, just for a second, she saw Ed as he was: ruthless, kind. Good, killer. She pushed the thought away.

  ‘Of course he can do it,’ she insisted.

  ‘You can’t back out now,’ Selby chimed in. ‘No way, Josh. You made a bet.’

  ‘He couldn’t do it,’ Josh shrugged. ‘Not out there. Not him. He’d freeze in the moment.’

  And who was it, Casey wondered, who chose? Who was it, who knew? ‘He’ll be fine. He wants to do it.’

  ‘I want to do it,’ Ed insisted. ‘You bloody lost, Josh.’

  But Josh was spider-still, in his web.

  ‘You can always tell,’ he said. ‘And you’d never do it. Not up there. Not looking down through those sights.’

  The waiter, Isa, was clearing the table, half a courtyard away. Picking up glasses, with small, precise movements.

  ‘I can do it,’ Ed repeated. ‘And you’ll get your fucking money.’

  ‘Don’t be a prick, Josh.’ Selby was losing his temper. The desperation showed like blood through a bandage. ‘You made a deal, and I want them to fucking come.’

  The silence tautened between the men.

  ‘Fine,’ shrugged Josh. ‘Hit him.’

  He gestured to Isa, stacking plates in the candlelight.

  ‘What?’ Casey played for time.

  ‘You heard.’ Josh pointed again. ‘Your guy punches that boy across the yard. And then I’ll know.’

  ‘Why?’ And Casey could hear the uncertainty in Ed’s voice. ‘Why the fuck would I do that?’

  ‘Because,’ Josh snarled, ‘it shouldn’t matter to you. If you want to do this, why the fuck would smacking that guy mean anything to you at all?’

  Casey was watching Isa move the chairs back to their proper place, lifting them gently so they didn’t scrape along the marble floor.

  ‘I don’t want to be arrested in fucking Djanet for decking a waiter,’ Ed stumbled. ‘Fuck knows what the prison is like here.’

  ‘I know this hotel,’ said Josh. ‘No one will say a word.’

  ‘And then you fucking promise, right, Josh?’ said Selby. ‘No more messing around. Because then we’re all playing the same fucking game.’

  A nod.

  Isa was laying the next table now, placing heavy silver knives with butler precision.

  Ed’s eyes flickered to Casey. I can’t. Please. I will not do this.

  You must. Casey was suddenly sure, with a crystal certainty. You must.

  Ed was looking away.

  ‘No fucking way.’ But they were waiting.

  ‘If you can’t do this’ – Josh’s voice was almost a whisper – ‘there is no way you can come.’

  Casey imagined Isa’s face crunching under Ed’s fist, and the memory of blood on his hands. Isa, afterwards, with his bruised face, and irreparable sadness.

  ‘Of course he can fucking do it.’ Casey was out of her seat. She turned to Ed so that only he could see her eyes. ‘He’s going to do it.’

  Ed’s face was completely expressionless as he looked up at her. For a moment, Casey felt as if she might lift him with her eyes alone.

  Josh and Selby were watching them both, hyena and carrion.

  ‘Do it, Ed,’ and the smile was only in her voice. ‘Do it.’

  Ed stood then, ignoring Casey’s outstretched hand.

  In unison, Josh and Selby were on their feet, an instant gang. Across the courtyard, Isa had taken a step back from his table. One last, careful check, oblivious to the wolf pack on his right.

  Casey saw only a blur of movement. Ed took three running steps, and slammed into Isa. The punch caught Isa on the side of his jaw, an explosion of power that sent him falling in a crash of china and cutlery. Casey caught Isa’s face in a fragment of light. He was rolling, trying to get away from the next blow, terrified. Ed stood over him, fists clenched, unrecognisable.

  ‘Ed,’ she breathed.

  He was turning away, furious, stepping back from the crumpled boy on the ground. And there was a shout from the front desk, a man running, and skidding to a halt as he saw Josh in the shadows.

  ‘Sir.’

  In an instant, he was gesturing Isa away, leaving only a chaos of white tablecloth and broken glass. There were tear stains on Isa’s face, patches of blood on his shirt.

  Ed prowled back across to the table.

  ‘Now.’ He came right up to Josh’s face. ‘Now will you keep to your word?’

  26

  The birds were screaming in the Sahara dawn when Casey woke up the next morning. They were ready when Josh’s black pickup paused outside their small hotel. Miranda had hugged them goodbye, and ducked out of sight.

  ‘Be careful, Casey,’ she had whispered.

  ‘You know I can’t be,’ said Casey, almost laughing.

  ‘He could be taking you,’ Miranda said flatly, ‘just to kill you. Away from Djanet. So no one ever knows.’

  Bianca Angelo. Tell us, please. Please. What happened to our girl . . .

  ‘I know.’

  The black pickup waited patiently while Ed went into the bank, putting some cash into a deposit box to get a key. There were no questions asked by the cashier, who grumbled something under his breath.

  And then they were on the road out of Djanet, leaving the scruffy town behind, and turning east towards Libya.

  The road burned ahead of them, already shimmering in the heat. The Sahara rolled away. An ocean of sand, dangerous as any sea.

  Josh really shifted his black pickup, Casey noticed. Ed was having to floor it just to keep up.

  He wasn’t speaking to her. Had walked back to their hotel in silence, leaving the shattered table behind. Now, she felt his rage.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re not.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’ll tell this story,’ said Ed. ‘Maybe. And that won’t be in it. You’ll never say what I did, but I will know. I will always know. You don’t know what it felt like, hitting that poor little bastard. Seeing him look up at me like that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I didn’t know what you would do,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know how fucking stupid you might be. I thought you might get us killed. Josh isn’t fucking playing, Casey.’

  His anger knifed at her, and she didn’t know how to explain.

  ‘It worked though,’ she said. ‘Miranda will apologise to Isa for us. She’ll give him something. The Post will.’

  ‘She won’t tell him the truth though,’ he said. ‘He won’t understand.’

  ‘No.’

  The windscreen was speckling flies.

  ‘Don’t you want to do more?’ he said into the silence. ‘Than this?’

  Casey felt a shock of surprise.

  ‘What else is there? We are . . .’ She struggled for the word, ‘illuminating.’

  ‘It’s so destructive.’ His voice was harsh. ‘All the time. Don’t you want to make things better? Not just snipe from the sidelines?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘But this is the only thing I can do. This is my part.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  They drove on.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please don’t be angry with me. We can’t do this if you’re angry with me.’

  ‘I know,’ h
e said. ‘I know.’

  And in an oddly tender gesture, he reached out and stroked the back of her head, clumsily, so that she felt her heart swell for a second.

  A few miles out of city, the road forked to the left. Two pickups were parked there, four Tuareg men in each.

  One of the Tuareg, cheekbones like a burned-out house, was leaning unsmiling against the car.

  Josh stopped his car; Ed and Casey pulled up behind him.

  After a few words with the Tuareg, Josh walked over to their car.

  ‘Our bodyguards,’ he gestured. ‘They’ve come over the border to take us in. Our lot are the nastiest out here. We’ll be fine.’

  ‘I wondered’ – Casey forced herself to laugh – ‘how you moved in and out of here.’

  ‘This lot don’t want to know what we do,’ Josh said. ‘They don’t give a fuck. They work for the highest bidder. Like so many people out here.’

  Just for a second, Casey caught the eye of one of the men in the back of one of the pickups. His eyes burned black hatred, and she just concealed her shudder in time.

  They drove on, the Tuareg falling in behind.

  A few hours out of the desert town, Casey rang Hessa on the satellite phone. Hessa patched in Miranda.

  ‘All fine so far,’ said Casey. She was on speakerphone, so that if Josh looked back it would look like she was chatting to Ed. ‘We’re going to have to be careful with comms from now on, I think.’

  ‘Dash wanted to know if it had all gone smoothly,’ said Hessa.

  ‘As smoothly as it could,’ said Casey.

  Casey had decided not to tell Miranda about Josh’s knife, or the bodyguards. Dash would go into orbit.

  ‘I still don’t like it,’ said Miranda. ‘Anything could happen out there.’

  ‘We knew that.’ Casey sounded more confident than she felt. ‘We knew it would be like this from the start. By the way, thanks for the information on Ethan, Hessa.’

  Hessa had trawled for every detail on the mercenary, from birth certificate onwards.

  ‘No worries,’ said Hessa.

  Casey paused. ‘Hessa, tell us something funny about the office. We need something to make us laugh.’

  ‘I can’t think.’ There was something cheering about Hessa’s London accent. ‘Oh, yes, Ross is having a fight with the head of news at the Argus. You know, that new woman they have running things over there, who’s meant to be quite scary.’

  ‘How come?’ Miranda and Casey spoke at the same time.

  ‘Well, there was that big demo, out by Heathrow. Protesters in trees and so on. Usual stuff. Anyway, we used a big photo of one of the hippies for our front page. Turns out it was the undercover reporter from the Argus. Jessica Miller.’

  Hessa’s voice got more confident as she chatted on.

  ‘Jessie?’ Miranda giggled. ‘No way.’

  Undercover reporters are careful not to be photographed. In a world where reporters are pushed to build their brand, the investigations team kept a low profile.

  ‘She was all covered in mud, looking a bit bonkers,’ Hessa went on cheerfully. ‘They’re not happy at all. Ross didn’t help when he said that she was the only vaguely acceptable-looking person at the protest and that’s why they’d used her pic. He didn’t understand why their new editor went even more ballistic.’

  They all laughed, a release of tension.

  ‘You OK, Ed?’ Hessa asked.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you.’ He seemed pleased that she’d asked.

  Casey glanced sideways at him. ‘Ed did a brilliant job.’

  He smiled at her then, glancing sideways just for a second. Then his attention was back on the road.

  It was a long drive to the border. The two cars curled through the mountains, the thin ribbon of tarmac stretching out endlessly.

  They stopped occasionally, to stretch their legs. Ed looked out over the broken desert.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Casey. ‘Don’t you think?’

  Camels had been here, leaving hoof prints like upside-down broken hearts. A brutal wind was blowing, a wind that might take the red dust all the way to Paris and London, Frankfurt and Rome.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  The cars moved on, hundreds of miles from Djanet now. There were no other cars out here, in the wilds. Casey leaned her head against the window, and closed her eyes.

  *

  She was almost asleep, dozing against the window when the brakes slammed on.

  ‘Shit.’ Ed’s voice.

  Casey looked up, and felt the ice in her spine.

  Josh had pulled up, and was waving at them to stop. Deep drainage ditches ran along both sides of the road here, with no way past. In the mirror she could see the Tuareg, tight up to their bumper.

  ‘Oh God.’

  Dust settled around them. There was no way to outrun these people, not here. Josh stepped out of his car, and all Casey could see was his gun. She felt the world haze.

  ‘Get out.’ There was no smile on Josh’s face now.

  ‘What?’ Selby was craning round, curious. ‘Josh, no . . .’

  ‘This is nothing to fucking do with you, Oliver.’

  And Selby was looking away, as an animal will sidle away from a carcass.

  I am Malak.

  ‘What?’ Casey’s voice was higher than usual. ‘What the hell is this all about?’

  Josh, the soldier, who moved like a panther. You fool, she thought, to die like this.

  ‘Get out of the fucking car.’

  The Tuareg were in a scrappy circle, guns hanging by their sides. One of them was chewing gum, contempt in every line.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Casey tried again. ‘What is this all about?’

  Josh came closer. His face was dirty, she noticed, dust had settled in the creases by his eyes. He lifted the gun. Man to executioner, in one move.

  ‘Yes,’ said Casey. ‘I’ll get out.’

  They climbed out of the car, Ed’s movements clumsy.

  ‘Over there.’

  Josh pointed them to the edge of the drainage ditch, six feet deep, where the earth was like blood.

  It never looks like an ambush.

  Crumpled bodies flickered through Casey’s mind. This is how it ends: stumbling in the ruts of some forgotten road. The horror, the fear and the sudden agonising silence. Eyes unseeing, and silver flies flickering. A trickle of blood from the mouth.

  A ditch, my grave. Just another death in Africa.

  My world, she thought, you were so very beautiful.

  ‘Who told you?’ Josh was standing behind them. There was nothing before them, except baking red desert.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Casey blustered. A clod crumbled under her foot, and she lurched sideways, scrambling to steady herself.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You do. I know it.’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘Why?’ His voice was a blade. ‘Why are you here? With all your stories.’

  The sky quivered.

  ‘Milo,’ she said abruptly. ‘Milo Newbury told me.’

  ‘Milo?’ He was disbelieving. ‘Why the fuck would he tell you?’

  ‘We grew up together.’ The words were a rush. ‘Near Chagford, in Devon.’

  Near, not in, because that was harder to check.

  ‘I’ve known him since we were kids,’ she babbled. ‘His mother knows my mother. Old friends. Way back. She’s lovely, Lady N.’

  Because Lady Newbury’s manners meant she would smile, yes, of course, even if she had never heard the name.

  ‘And why would he tell you?’

  ‘He was down in the village, last Christmas.’ Take the facts, twist them. ‘I bumped into him coming out of the graveyard one night, and we got chatting, catching up. We went back to his house, just for a drink. It’s beautiful, their place. With the paintings and all that.’

  A ghost conversation. Professional liar. And she was back in that grim, splendid house, in front of the painting of a beautiful boy. The los
t boy, and his old house.

  ‘And he told you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she was turning around very slowly. ‘And then I told Ed. After Christmas, when I was back in London. He wanted to know all about it. And then he got so fascinated.’

  ‘And then Milo killed himself.’ Ed was turning too. ‘So we didn’t know how to get out here.’

  ‘He’d said Djanet.’ Casey faced Josh now. ‘I’d never heard of it. He had to show me on a globe. There’s a lovely old one at their house. Under a stag’s head, in the library.’

  ‘And did he say how he got out here?’

  She felt the nausea flooding, the quickening of the terror.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve no idea. We thought if we came out here, we would find it somehow. And we were planning a trip round Africa anyway.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say all that at first?’

  ‘You know’ – she spread her hands – ‘Milo got fucked up towards the end. I didn’t know how he had left it with you.’

  A gust of wind blew across the desert floor.

  ‘I know her.’ It was Selby.

  Josh’s eyes flicked to him.

  ‘I’ve known her for years, just knocking about London.’ Selby was nodding, her dance partner for these few steps. ‘I don’t know her well, but I recognise her. One of those girls.’

  From the blur of London nights, Casey thought. It sounded true, because it was, so nearly.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Used to go out with one of my mates. Jonathan. Does a bit of consultancy work, now and again. She’s cool, I promise you.’

  The gun was sliding down. Josh stared at them.

  ‘I promise you,’ Selby said again. ‘She’s fine.’

  Selby, the gambler, who never glanced back. Who saw a way through, and ripped at the throat. Selby, the gambler, who needed her alive.

  ‘Have you told anyone,’ said Josh, ‘that you’re here?’

  Flick of the coin, toss of the dice.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You can trust us.’

  Words are easy, like the wind.

  ‘And how about everything else you’ve said?’

  Faithful friends are hard to find.

  ‘I promise you,’ she said, and the words seemed to hang in the air like moths for a moment. ‘Ed was just curious. He wanted it.’

  And rest in peace, Milo, she thought. If you can.