The Remembrance

by Natalie Edwards

  “It’s not the best offer I’ve had this year,” she said. “She not much of a negotiator, our Ruby?”

  “She wants you to know it’s not true, whatever it is you’ve been told,” Kat continued. “She wants you to know, we haven’t been talking to anyone about you. Especially not to the police. That Hannah who came to see you, who told you that you needed to come over here after us… she doesn’t actually know anything. She was just pulling your strings - trying to use you to get rid of us.”

  Because she’s a lying fucking slag, she added to herself. And if you were half as smart as you reckon, you’d’ve seen through her as soon as she set foot on that Hollywood patio of yours, and she’d be floating face-down in the swimming pool now like something out of Sunset Boulevard.

  “That all you got for me?” Madera asked her. “Your word - my sister’s word - against hers?”

  Kat shrugged, nervous.

  “It’s what Ruby told me to tell you. She said you’d see it yourself, if you stopped to think about it for a second. Said… and I’m sorry about this, these are her words, not mine… you’d have to be a bloody idiot to think that Hannah was a reliable witness.”

  Madera kept on smiling, fixing Kat with that infra-red stare of hers.

  “Still wouldn’t call that a proposition,” she said. “More of an insult, I’d say.”

  Kat took two long breaths and another gulp of coffee to steady herself.

  Now, she thought. Do it now, while you’ve still got guts enough to speak.

  “The proposition I’m talking about,” she said. “It’s not Ruby’s. It’s mine.”

  A flicker of… something passed over Madera’s face, then was gone; a deep-sea fish, catching a flash of sunlight on its tail before disappearing under the water.

  “The thing is,” Kat went on, abject terror subsumed - just - by the absolute necessity of what she was about to do, “Hannah wasn’t lying to you. She thought she was - she’s a pathological fucking liar, it’s what she does. Odds are, she just told you the first thing that popped into her head that seemed like it’d get you riled up. But as it turns out, by sheer coincidence… she wasn’t totally wrong.”

  Madera’s smile faded.

  “No? I thought you just told me she was wrong - that you hadn’t been talking to anyone about me and mine.”

  This isn’t your fault, Kat told herself. If that fucking bitch Hannah hadn’t gone out of her way to try to put you in the ground - again - then you wouldn’t be here now. And the others - they know what she is, and they welcomed her back with opens arms anyway. Even after what she did to you.

  It’s like that kids’ fable, that - what’s it called? The Scorpion And The Frog. The frog knows it shouldn’t give the scorpion a ride on its back, because the scorpion’s a fucking scorpion - stinging people’s what it does, what it’s built to do. Yet somehow… the frog goes ahead and does it anyway.

  And then it gets stung and dies, like the fucking idiot it is.

  Even though, if it’d had even half a brain to begin with… it would’ve run like the wind, the second it saw the scorpion coming.

  So really, that frog - it’s got no-one but itself to blame, has it?

  “That’s what she told me to tell you - your sister,” Kat said, the simmering anger she’d been living with the last couple of months - hell, the last couple of years - rising to a boil. “It’s the message she gave me to pass on to you. But it’s not the truth of it.”

  “You been saying that a lot - truth. Almost like you’re trying to sell me on a story of your own.”

  Kat looked down into her coffee cup, willing her nerve to hold.

  “Maybe I am,” she replied. “Lucky for me, what I’m telling you is the truth. Look into it yourself, if you don’t believe me - I should think there’s enough threads out there tying Ruby and that Sita back to Scotland Yard. Karen too, most likely. She’s the one who put the police onto James Marchant in the first place, straight after Ruby did him in.”

  She took a final drink of the coffee, trying in vain to rehydrate the desert of her mouth.

  “You said you had a proposition,” said Madera. “Want to tell me what it is? I’m assuming you want more from this meeting than just the satisfaction of stabbing your friends in the back.”

  “Amnesty,” Kat answered - quickly, getting the words out while she still could. “I want amnesty. A reprieve, or whatever you call it. I want you and your lot to stop coming after me.”

  “I’m sure you do. But I’m not sure why you think we would? All you’ve done since you’ve been here is give me more reasons to want rid of you. All of you, that sister of mine included. And I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, but you’re meant to keep hold of your bargaining chips, not chuck ‘em all down on the table the second you sit down.”

  “Yeah, well - haven’t told you everything, have I? Just the… what’d you call it, ‘round your neck of the woods? The backstory. I might’ve said what they’ve done, Ruby and that, but you’ve not heard me make a peep about what they’re doing. What they’re gonna do.”

  Now she was interested; Kat could see it. Could read the tiny tells Madera had been keeping, so far successfully, under wraps: the subtle raising of the eyebrows; the barely discernible widening of the pupils; the soundless opening of the mouth as the jaw dropped open, just a little.

  “And what’s that, then?” Madera asked - her voice, at least, undemonstrative.

  “Not about to tell you that, am I? Not without us making a deal. No point me spilling my guts if one of your lot’s gearing up to stick a knife in them.”

  “What makes you think I’d honour any deal we made, if that’s what you think we’re doing?”

  “I don’t. I trust you about as far as I trust that bloody psycho Hannah. But I have got a couple of chips left to bargain with, see? ‘Cause the scheme Ruby and hers are cooking up… it’s changing all the time. Every day, it seems like. Me telling you what I know about what they’ve got planned for you, as of right now… that might not be worth much to you, a week from now. So it’s in your interests to keep me around, isn’t it? If you want to know what they’ve got planned for you. And believe me, you do want to know. Assuming you want to still be alive and kicking this time next month.”

  Madera’s smile returned, nastier than before.

  “Appreciate your concern, but I ain’t that worried.”

  “Well, you should be. She’s smart, your sister. Got a lot of tricks up her sleeve. They all do, every one of them. You shouldn’t underestimate her, if you know what’s good for you.”

  “But you’re smarter, is that it?”

  “No. Not so sure that I am, actually. But I don’t have to be smart, do I, to find out what they’re up to? Just need to keep my head down and my ears open.”

  “And feed it back to me, when you hear it. That’s your proposition?”

  “Maybe. If it gets you off my back and keeps me out of harm’s way.”

  Madera studied her across the table.

  “I’ve read about you,” she said, thoughtfully. “Your background. Why you joined up with them others, going after Marchant. I’d never have had you pegged as the disloyal type.”

  I expect you wouldn’t have, Kat thought. But that was before, wasn’t it? Back when I’d be necking tea in the morning, not co-codamol. Before that fucking scorpion came along and persuaded us to give it a ride across the river.

  “Yeah, well,” she answered quietly. “Things change, don’t they? Sometimes all you can do is look out for yourself.”

  Chapter 30

  Osterley Park, London, May 1998

  “Kat?” Ruby said - taking a step away from Madera and back towards the others, confusion deepening the wrinkles at her mouth and forehead. “What are you playing at, girl?”

  “She came to see me, a few weeks back,” Madera told her. “We had a nice little chat, the two of us.”

  “I know,” said Ruby. “Who’d you think bleedin’ sent her?”


  Kat uncurled herself, slowly, from her sitting position.

  “Yeah. About that.” She rose, equally slowly, to standing, weapon still pointing at El and Rose. “Small confession to make: the conversation me and her had might not have panned out exactly the way I told you…”

  She’s sold us out, El realised, panic sending her thoughts into a terrified spiral. She’s sold us out to a murderer, just like Hannah did to Marchant.

  What did I tell her? What did we tell her, that she could’ve used?

  “What have you done?” Ruby whispered. “Jesus Christ, girl - what the hell have you done?”

  “Saved herself,” Madera answered. “Sensible strategy, if you ask me.” She cocked her head to the side, studying her sister. “You haven’t changed, have you? Look at you, expecting loyalty. People don’t work like that - I should’ve thought you of all people would’ve learned that by now. Cut ‘em down the middle, and everyone’s out for themselves.”

  Ruby paused; her face glazing over in what El recognised as concentration.

  “She’s told you the same as that Hannah,” she said eventually. “That we been talking about you to the Old Bill.”

  “And very specific she was, too. I was a bit sceptical at first - you never can trust a defector, can you? But there’s only so many times you can hear the same story before you start to think, maybe there’s a grain of truth to this business, after all. She had it spot-on about you lot coming here tonight, an’ all. And about that Pasadena running off, after your computer girl there got hold of his passwords and came up here to see him. Bleedin’ little weasel he turned out to be. I’ll have to have words with him myself, once we wrap up here.”

  She doesn’t know about Lawton, El thought. Or Carruthers. She killed him because he wanted out. Because he was going to kill her so he could get out.

  She wouldn’t have done that, if she’d known the job Kate offered him was a setup. He wouldn’t have started that argument to begin with, if he’d known.

  So… there are parts she doesn’t know, about what’s been going on. Parts Kat hasn’t told her.

  Which means Kat hasn’t told her everything.

  “We don’t want no trouble,” Ruby repeated, raising her arms in surrender - her vest, El noticed, now half-unzipped. “We haven’t talked to no-one about you, and we ain’t going to. This don’t have to be a fight.”

  “You started this,” Madera said. “Not me. You remember that.”

  “I didn’t start nothing. And I swear to you, swear to you on Mum and Dad’s grave - I ain’t been talking to the Bill. None of us have.”

  If Ruby had been betting that the invocation of their long-dead parents would do something to soften Madera’s edges, then - from what El could see - she was in for a disappointment. Madera was unmoved; her blue eyes and the tanned, artificially smooth expanse of her face showing no expression at all.

  “I know it’s been a long time,” Ruby went on - still trying, or so El thought, to make a connection, to find some common ground between them. “But we don’t have to be at each other’s throats like this. You’re my sister. You’re family. That don’t just go away, no matter how many years might’ve gone by. No matter what either of us might’ve done, in all them years. Christ knows, I done a few things myself I ain’t proud ‘tween then and now.”

  The look Madera gave her was something close to pity.

  “Fifty-seven years,” she said levelly. “That’s how long it’s been. Too long, Ruby. Too damn long.” She turned her attention left, away from Ruby. “Shoot her,” she told Kat.

  Kat looked genuinely shocked at the instruction; horrified, even.

  She wasn’t expecting that, El thought. She must’ve known it was a possibility, one of us - all of us - getting shot down here. More than a possibility - a likelihood.

  But it never occurred to her she’d have to do the shooting.

  “Shoot her?” Kat said, as if she’d misheard. As if she must have misheard.

  Karen moved closer to Ruby - preparing, El thought, to bridge the gap between Kat and Ruby with her body. To shield Ruby, if need be.

  “Back,” barked Madera, cocking her gun at Karen.

  Karen hesitated, seeming to weigh up the likely consequences of obeying versus defying Madera’s command - then acquiesced, shuffling back to her original position at Ruby’s side.

  I could get between them, El thought - calculating the angles, the likely speed and trajectory of any bullet fired. If I moved fast enough, I could do it.

  If.

  “You didn’t say I’d have to shoot her,” Kat said, shaking her head at Madera. “That wasn’t the deal.”

  “That a problem, is it?” Madera asked.

  “Well, yeah - it is a bit of a problem, actually. It might be your cup of tea, but I don’t just go around shooting people whenever the urge takes me. I didn’t think I’d actually have to use this, you know what I mean?” She gestured down at the gun, shaking it very slightly for emphasis.

  “And there I was, thinking you wanted to leave them behind. Want back in with them, do you?”

  “Look, I told you - I don’t give a shit what you do, just so long as you leave me out of it. But asking me to do it… that's a bit much, isn’t it?”

  “Let me put it another way.” Madera raised her left arm, aiming her second gun - the gun she’d taken from Carruthers - at Kat, but keeping her original weapon on Karen and Ruby. Both hands held steady; Madera’s reflexes, El was absolutely certain, as deft at almost seventy as El’s had been at twenty. “Shoot her, or I’ll shoot you.”

  “Don’t do this, Doll.” Ruby was pleading now; begging. El didn’t think she’d ever seen her beg before; ever seen her have to. “Please. You can come back with us, back into town. We can thrash it out there, whatever it is you reckon we need to. There’s other ways this can go, you know there is.”

  “Five seconds, Miss Morgan,” Madera told Kat, counting down. “Four.”

  “Please, Doll,” Ruby begged again. El thought she might have been crying; thought she could hear it in the old woman’s voice. “Don’t.”

  “Three.”

  Kat didn’t move.

  “Two.”

  Madera’s finger pressed down on the trigger of Carruthers’ gun, in what seemed to El like slow motion.

  “One.”

  “I’m sorry, Ruby,” Kat said, her thumb on the hammer of her cowboy’s pistol. “I really am.”

  She fired, not once but three times in succession. The bullets struck Ruby in the shoulder, chest, head; the first one entering the centre of her forehead neatly, as Carruthers’ had Hannah’s, but exiting the back of her skull in a mess of blood and gore.

  She toppled backwards, landing on her side by Hannah’s stiffening body - more blood leaving from her mouth, her nose, her ears.

  Someone screamed: a low-pitched, guttural howl of pain that El identified as her own only when her vocal cords began to burn from the strain of it. Her vision blurred, her eyes clouding with tears or blood or both; nearby and on the peripheries of her seeing, more bodies stirred and darted. But they were shadows, vapour. They could have been anyone.

  And another shot rang out, somewhere close to her, so loud it stole a portion of her hearing, leaving her almost-deaf as well as almost-blind. Another something hit the ground with a deadened thud.

  Time passed, though she had no sense of how much. Then there were hands on her, at her waist; not shaking but gripping, digging urgently into what flesh they could find between the layers of vest and shirt.

  “El!” Rose was saying, her face an inch from El’s, her breath warm and familiar on El’s skin. “El, for Christ’s sake, snap out of it! We need to go, now!”

  El blinked; held down her eyelids until there was nothing but darkness there.

  Opened them.

  Saw.

  There were four bodies now, not three: Hannah, and Carruthers, and Ruby - Ruby, not moving but bleeding, still - and Kat a foot from her, a spreading
patch of red radiating from the place in her chest where her heart must have been, before the bullet that struck her obliterated it.

  “Sita,” Rose said, seeing El see Kat on the floor. “She…”

  She shot her, El thought - not needing Rose to finish the sentence. Kat shot Ruby, and Sita shot her.

  She would’ve taken a bullet for Ruby, Sita - El had known that almost as long as she’d known them both. Would’ve died for her, if she’d had to.

  Funny that it had never once occurred to El, in all that time, that she might kill for her, too.

  “Where?” she asked Rose. Then, following Rose’s gaze across the room, saw Sita on the carpet: eyes blank, back slumped against the staircase and legs stretched out in front of her, yet another handgun in her lap and Karen’s arms around her, holding her like a child.

  And no-one else left in the room.

  “Madera. Where’s Madera?”

  “Gone,” Rose told her. She pointed up, to the stairs, the ceiling above their heads; to the path Madera must have taken out of the basement, while El was in her daze.

  Rose looked pretty dazed herself, El could see now: shell-shocked, a soldier emerging unscathed from a battlefield strewn with the corpses of her friends. She was holding it together, just about - better than El was, anyway - but it was only a matter of time before whatever adrenaline was powering her depleted completely, and she crumbled.

  “We’ve gotta get out of here,” Karen said, meeting Rose’s eye. “If that mad bitch is on the move, I wouldn’t put it past her to do something to the house on her way out. Torch it, or... I don’t even know.”

  Sita’s lowered head whipped up and around.

  “No,” she said - hollowed-out but absolutely vehement. “We are not leaving her. Not like this.”

  She didn’t look to Ruby’s body as she spoke; she didn’t have to. They all knew who she’d meant; which she it was couldn’t bring herself to abandon.

  “Sita, babe,” Karen whispered, gently, as if the old woman really were a frightened child, “we can’t stay here. You know we can’t. Even if that bitch decides not to do something to the house, she could come back down here any second armed to the tits with God knows what. And we’d have no way of getting out, if she found a way to block the stairs. We’d be sitting ducks.”