The Push (El Gardener Book 2)

by Natalie Edwards

  “You know,” Soames said, “you really should have brought Mrs Redfearn with you.”

  “She’s ill,” El repeated flatly.

  “Still. I can’t help but feel it might have been better for her to be here than at home. Safer.”

  “Safer?” El said. “What do you mean, safer?”

  Downstairs, barely six feet away from her, he paused. The mirror in the hallway, from where he stood, was positioned in such a way as to give him a clear view into the kitchen: he could see her inside, filling up the kettle at the sink, spooning sugar into a coffee cup.

  Her back was turned to him.

  If he was quick - if he ran inside and did it now - she might not see him. Might not know he was there at all until the knife went in.

  Soames didn’t answer immediately, but reached for his mask and inhaled - slowly and deeply, filling his lungs with the oxygen they couldn’t take themselves from the air.

  “I don’t mean to imply that I find you in any way stupid,” he said, when he was free again of the mask. “Certainly not you, Mrs Acharya - I’m more than aware of your accomplishments. But I do have to ask myself: did it really seem likely to you all that the money would be enough, after twenty three years? Twenty three years of odour and filth, of a dozen men screaming through the walls at the top of their voices from the moment you wake until the moment you sleep, if ever you can sleep?”

  “I was a young man when I was sentenced - not even forty. And now look at me. I’m barely alive at all. All because of your Mrs Redfearn.”

  “So how is that she believes - as all of you seem to believe - that I’d be satisfied with what you’ve just given me? She took my life. Did it not once occur to you, to any of you, that I might want hers in return?”

  El considered this. Looked to Rose, who said nothing, and then to Sita, who nodded - a gesture so slight it was almost undetectable.

  “As it happens,” El told him, her own smile surfacing, “it did.”

  She dropped a tea bag into the coffee cup - something herbal that reminded him of flowers, echinacea or hibiscus. Held it up to her nose and inhaled, then, satisfied with what she smelled, reached for the kettle and filled the cup to the brim with boiling water.

  He took a step forward, then another; pulled the knife backwards, behind his body, with all the strength of his triceps, preparing to drive it into her ribs, her neck.

  “You don’t want to do that, son,” she said, not turning around - her voice not the sickly tremor he might have been expecting, if he’d thought he’d hear her speak at all, but tough and determined and clear as a bell. “I promise you, and you best believe me when I tell you that I know what I’m talking about when I say this… What you’re gearing yourself up to do now - you don’t want to do it. So how’s about you put that knife of yours down, eh? There’s a good boy. Put it down, and me and you can have a talk.”

  Chapter 26

  West Hampstead, London

  July 1997

  “I been thinking,” Ruby had said to El, before they’d flown out to San Francisco. “About Soames. What I said to young Kat about him wanting to keep us dangling, keep tugging our strings.”

  “What about it?” El had replied, unclear on where Ruby was heading.

  “I ain’t so certain I was right, when I said that was what he wanted. Or all he wanted. I reckon there’s more to it - that it ain’t just Wainwright’s money or a little bit of power over us lot that he’s after. I reckon he wants me.”

  “Wants you how?”

  “Dead, girl. Wants me dead. And maybe not just me, neither. Could be he thinks the rest of you are guilty by association.”

  El had given this a moment’s thought: weighed up the violence Soames had rained down already on Michael and Sita through whatever proxy he’d been using against the delight she was sure, having met him, that he’d take in watching Ruby – watching all of them - suspended on the hook indefinitely.

  “What makes you say that?” she’d asked.

  “He’s petty, Soames is. Controlling, but petty with it. Not the sort of bloke you can imagine letting it go, if he thought someone had done him wrong.”

  “Didn’t we know that already?”

  “Alright, smart arse - yes, we did. I did. But don’t it strike you as a poor sort of revenge, having us run round the States doing his donkey work for him? A bit… I don’t know, insufficient, if it’s payback for twenty-odd years inside? Especially when he’s already had someone go after Sita and my Michael with that bleedin’ penknife of his?”

  “Maybe. When you put it like that.”

  “What I’m thinking is, he’s got something else lined up for me when we get done with Wainwright. I don’t know what, exactly. But something.”

  “Let’s say you’re right, then. What are you thinking we ought to do about it?”

  “I ain’t so certain of that one either - not yet. But leave it with me. I want to see what Kat drags up before I start working things out. Her and that Harriet both.”

  Jay froze, the butcher’s knife still clenched between his fingers.

  How had she known he was there? How the fuck had she known?

  And why, when he was standing half a foot behind her and about to stick her with a blade that could’ve sliced her into pieces before she’d even known what hit her, was she so calm?

  “I’m gonna turn around now,” she told him. “I’ll do it slow. And I’ll keep my hands out, so you know there’s nothing in ‘em that can do you no harm. I don’t hurt you, and you don’t hurt me. We got a deal?”

  A deal? he thought, completely disoriented by her reaction. She was about a hundred years old, on her own in the flat, with no weapon and her back turned to him. He was young, fit, strong; he was literally holding a knife to her. What sort of deal did she think she could make?

  And suddenly, while he was still trying to work out what the hell she thought she was playing at, she was spinning around, the unplugged kettle in her hand - and then the knife was on the floor, her slipper-covered foot pressing down on one edge of the blade to keep him from retrieving it, and his arm was a fireball of agony, the bones in his wrist throbbing in time to the pulse of his blood.

  “Sorry about that,” she said conversationally, returning the kettle to its place by the sink and picking up the knife by its handle. “I ain’t normally one for dirty tricks, but it’s easier to have a proper chat, I find, when you’re sat down with a cup of tea and a biscuit and neither one of you’s trying to gut the other with a machete.”

  “My wrist!” he howled, clutching at himself with his undamaged hand. “You fucking cow, you broke my wrist!”

  She took a sip of the herbal concoction in her coffee mug; swallowed.

  “Doubt it,” she said. “There’s hardly any water left in that kettle - it’s light as a feather, look. And keep a civil tongue in your head when you’re talking to me, if you don’t mind. I don’t take kindly to being sworn at in my own kitchen.”

  She took a step towards him; instinctively, he backed away.

  “You’re alright,” she told him - soothing now, as if she really was his gran and he’d fractured his scaphoid helping her lift a piece of furniture. “Like I said, I ain’t intending to hurt you - no more than I have already, anyway.”

  “What do you want?” he said, hating the way he sounded, the pathetic mewling tone to his voice - the tone, not of a man in charge of the situation, but of a sad little kitten, begging its owner for a bowl of milk.

  “I want you to know you don’t have to do it - whatever it is your old man’s told you to do. You got choices. And one of them choices is walking away from this, now. Before any more harm’s done.”

  He almost laughed, despite the pain in his arm and wrist.

  “You’re telling me that?” he said. “After what you did?”

  “I know what you must think of me. Christ knows, I know it. But the stories I’m betting your old man’s told you - they ain’t true.”

  “What, so yo
u didn’t do it, then?” he scoffed - sounding, he was pleased to hear, more confident now, more in control. “Didn’t set him up for that robbery?”

  “Oh, I done that. Stitched him up, right and proper. All them years he done inside - they’re on me, not that I’d do things different even if I could. But did he ever tell you why I done it? Why I had him put away?”

  She paused; took another swallow of her tea.

  “No, ‘course he didn’t. Telling you that - it wouldn’t fit the yarn he’s been spinning you. Wouldn’t align with his self-image, as a friend of mine might put it. Well, I say friend… I wouldn’t put money on her thinking of me that way, though that’s neither here nor there at the moment. What I’m getting at is: your old man, he’s been keeping things from you. Big, important things, things that might make you think different about whether or not I’m worth taking a swing at with that bloody great carver of yours. And what he has been telling you, the poison he’s been dripping in your ear since the day you were born - it’s got your head so twisted up I expect you ain’t ever learned how to think for yourself.”

  That stung - that she thought she knew him, knew anything at all about him or his Dad or the way the two of them were together. Against his will, his cheeks reddened as his anger rose.

  Stupid cow, he thought. Stupid fucking lying cow.

  And somewhere inside him, a half-formed voice spoke up - the same voice that used to whisper to him when they’d go to Hendon for a visit and Jay would spend the hour listening to his Dad tell his Mum she’d put weight on, or accusing her of flirting with the POs on duty even though, he said in the next breath, she was so ugly no-one but him would ever want her.

  You sure about that, Jay? it asked. You sure she’s lying?

  What if there is more to it? What if the old man did do something you don’t know about, to her or someone else? What if he has been dripping poison in your ear, like she says?

  “These things he ain’t told you,” the old cow said, “they’re things you ought to know. Things you deserve to know, really. But I got a feeling they ain’t likely to sound that plausible, coming from me. I reckon I got a… what would this friend of mine call it? A credibility problem, so far as you’re concerned. So it strikes me that it might be better for both of us for you to hear it from someone a bit closer to home. What do you reckon?”

  She waited - and, when he didn’t answer, ran a hand into the fluffy folds of her dressing gown and pulled out a small, folding mobile phone. She looked quizzically at it for a second, as if she wasn’t quite sure how it worked or what she should be doing with it - then opened it up, pushed one of the buttons on the handset and held it up to her face, at least three inches from her right ear.

  “He’s ready,” she said, when whoever she’d rung had answered. “Bring her through, would you? Door’s unlocked.”

  She flipped the handset down again - but before he could ask her what the fuck she was doing, who the fuck she was talking to, he heard it: a click and a scrape and a sudden rush of noise from the corridor, the up-down rhythm of footsteps coming his way.

  “We’re in here,” the old cow called out to whoever it was.

  And there, suddenly, was his Mum, her face red from crying and a terrified look in her eyes, flanked on one side by a younger, grim-faced woman in a Metallica t-shirt.

  “I’m sorry, Jay,” she told him, reaching out to him and wrapping her thin, white arms around his shoulders. “I’m so, so sorry, baby. I didn’t know. I just… I didn’t know.”

  Chapter 27

  West Hampstead, London

  October 1997

  Harriet was uncomfortable with casual touching: the hugs, cheek-kisses, back-pats and hand-squeezes that the rest of the world deemed so essential to functional social interaction. The few boyfriends she’d had over the years had found her cold and unaffectionate - had told her so, in several cases - while colleagues, acquaintances, even distant family members regularly took umbrage at the urge to flinch and recoil she could never quite hide when they darted towards her, lips and open arms at the ready.

  Rose, she’d been pleased to note, was neither a hugger nor a kisser, and Harriet had wondered as early as their first meeting - their first real meeting, at a Charlotte Street coffee shop, and not their strange initial encounter at El’s kitchen table in the arse-end of the Midlands - whether it was this, more than anything else, that had laid the foundations of the rapidly-accreting affection she felt for the older half-sister (and by extension, the niece) she hadn’t known she had until the year before.

  If ever she’d considered anyone in need of a hug, however - of the reassurance of a friendly hand on the shoulder or the comforting warmth of a light press of one body against another - it was Lois Soames, in this moment.

  “It’s time,” Harriet told her, as kindly as she could, when the call she’d been waiting for had ended. “Are you ready?”

  Lois shook her head, but reached for the door handle anyway and - without Harriet even needing to prompt her - stepped forward, into Ruby Redfearn’s flat.

  Harriet hadn’t been at all convinced, the second time she’d visited Lois at the house the thin, frightened woman shared with her still absent son, that she was up to the task Redfearn had given her. Not, Harriet was quick to remind herself, because of any lack of confidence in her own professional abilities, but rather because of the Herculean enormity of the task itself. Namely: winning the trust of someone who, as she understood it, had spent not years but decades - the majority of her life, effectively since childhood - utterly under her partner’s control. And thereafter, as if the first part of this task weren’t challenge enough, persuading her to break free of this control.

  The allusion she’d made in conversation with Rose and Redfearn and El-the-inside-woman with the puppy-dog eyes to deprogramming - a concept, with all its faintly fascistic, pseudo-scientific connotations, that Harriet absolutely loathed - hadn’t been entirely wide of the mark; nor, though she found the term so broad a description as to be almost meaningless, was the suggestion she’d made of Charles Soames having brainwashed his wife and offspring.

  The expectation that she’d somehow be equipped to undo so many years of damage in one fell swoop felt… unreasonable, to say the least. Even with the ammunition she apparently had at her disposal.

  Nevertheless, she’d tried. For Rose, and for Sophie.

  The initial part of that second visit had been, by any estimation, a failure: the strange, unlikely story Harriet had to tell - about Charlie and their son and the mission he’d given him, about the convoluted corkscrewing of history that had brought Harriet to Lois’ doorstep - falling on ears that were not so much deaf as actively resistant.

  No, Lois had told Harriet, when she’d finally spoken. No, that’s not true. I don’t know what you’ve got against my Charlie or why you’d want to say those things to me, but you’re talking rubbish.

  And I’d like you to leave now, if you don’t mind.

  Okay, Harriet had replied, staying calm - very calm, her voice as even and emotionless as a speaking clock. I’ll go. But before I do, there’s something I’d like you to do - not for me, but for yourself. It won’t take a moment, I promise. You do it, and I’ll leave, and I won’t bother you again.

  What? Lois had said, angry affront bleeding into confusion. What are you on about? What do you mean by that, do something?

  Come outside, Harriet had told her. Come outside, and you’ll see.

  “I didn’t know,” Lois was telling her son, her face half-buried in his chest in the middle of Redfearn’s kitchen. “I didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t know what?” the boy said, pulling away from her, horrified. “What didn’t you know? What are you even doing here, Mum? You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Nor should you, sweetheart,” she told him, stretching up to cup his jaw with her hand. “Neither one of us should be.”

  Harriet stayed silent: watching them from the kitchen doorway, watching Redfearn watch th
em.

  “What’s going on?” he asked - looking, Harriet thought, terribly young, and terribly bewildered, and terribly frightened by the many things he was beginning to realise he didn’t understand. A fairy-tale child, lost in the woods; nothing at all like a man who’d break into an old woman’s home with the express purpose of doing her harm.

  “You’re a good boy,” Lois said, still cradling his face. “You are, I know you are, and I won’t have no-one tell me different. But you’re here because of your Dad, because he said to come and do… what it was he said to do. And that ain’t right. He weren’t right to ask you. No father ought to do that, send his own son out to put a knife to the throat of an old lady. Even her.”

  She threw a poisonous look at Redfearn, who saw it but - at least as far as Harriet could tell - seemed not to react to it at all.

  “He didn’t need to ask me,” the boy argued, defiant now. “I wanted to do it. Not just for him, for all of us - you and me. She took him from us, Mum - you know she did. She might as well have killed him, for what she did to him.”

  “Yeah,” said Lois thoughtfully. “Well, maybe she should have done. Maybe she should have done, at that.”

  It was seeing him that swung it, Harriet thought later.

  On the surface, they couldn’t have been more different, physically: he large and hairy and ruddy from the sun, she as pale and skeletal as a corpse. But there was something: an obvious but somehow indefinable quality both shared - the shape of the mouth, perhaps, or the set and colour of the eyes - that marked them out as alike. As kin.