Lawless

by Jessie Keane

  Simon switched off the engine and all was suddenly blackness and silence but for the ticking of the engine as it started to cool. He got out, locked the car, stalked over to the open garage door, muttering in annoyance.

  ‘Hey,’ said a voice to his left.

  He literally jumped. The shock of hearing someone in this place, in this dense dark country silence, was immense. He whirled around, his heart in his mouth. Saw a shadowy shape moving.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Simon demanded.

  Then the strip light that hung from the beams inside the garage flickered on. He saw two men inside, big burly men in black coats. One of them, older and taller than the other, had a long puckered purple knife scar running the length of his left cheek. It was hideous. The scarred one was pushing an old chair into the centre of the concrete floor. The other one . . .

  Simon felt his bowels contract as he saw what the other one was doing.

  He turned to run.

  The man who had spoken on his left moved in, grabbed him; another one came from the right. He started to resist, but to his shock one of them drew a gun and held it to his head.

  ‘Shut up,’ he said, and Simon instantly stopped struggling.

  They nudged him towards the garage, towards the scarred one with the chair – and the other one with the rope that he had thrown over one of the beams after tying it into a noose.

  32

  Daisy woke to the sound of knocking. Her first thought was Matthew and Luke. With a mother’s instant alertness, she sprang up in bed and reached for the bedside light, turned it on. Blinking, she checked the alarm clock. Seven thirty in the morning. Outside, it was still dark and raining steadily. She couldn’t hear a sound from the nursery.

  An owl hooted in the woods. Nothing else could be heard.

  Had she dreamed it?

  Then it came again. Knocking. Someone was at the front door. Her heartbeat picking up, she grabbed her robe and put it on, shuffled her feet into slippers and went out onto the landing to find her mother at the top of the stairs, flicking on the light. Ruby’s face was anxious.

  ‘Should I call Reg?’ asked Daisy. Maybe Reg, who was staying in the flat over the garage that was usually occupied by Rob, hadn’t heard a car pull up. But Daisy peered down into the gloom of the hallway and could see flashing lights, blue lights. ‘I think it’s the police,’ she said, and hurried down there, switching on lights as she went, Ruby following close at her heels.

  Daisy was unlocking the door when Ruby stayed her hand. Ruby was thinking of Vittore, threatening Kit. You and yours, he’d hissed. She didn’t think Rob had relayed the full version to her, but she knew enough to be wary. What if these weren’t real policemen?

  ‘Who’s there?’ she called out.

  ‘Police, can you open the door please?’

  Ruby hesitated. Where the hell was Reg when you needed him? She wished Rob was here instead. Rob would have been on the spot the instant anyone showed up. Then she heard other voices outside: Reg was out there. Better late than never. There was another knock at the door.

  ‘Open up, Miss Darke, police are here,’ said Reg’s foghorn voice.

  Ruby glanced at Daisy, who looked as alarmed as she felt. Nothing good could ever come of a police visit at this early hour, they both knew that. She unlocked the door and opened it.

  Reg was standing there in pyjamas and dressing gown, his white hair standing on end, with two uniformed police, one male, one female. Their patrol car was on the drive, lights still flashing, a radio blasting out intermittent, undecipherable words.

  ‘You’re Miss Darke?’ asked the woman. Ruby didn’t think she looked big enough or old enough to be a girl guide, let alone a police officer.

  ‘Yes, I’m Miss Darke,’ she said, swallowing hard.

  ‘Is there a Mrs Collins here? A Mrs Daisy Collins?’

  ‘I’m Mrs Collins – or I was,’ said Daisy. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Can we come in, please?’

  Ruby led the way into the sitting room, followed by Daisy, Reg and the two officers. They all sat down.

  ‘There’s been an incident,’ said the male police officer.

  Kit, thought Ruby in sudden terror. She knew how low he’d been the past few months. ‘Oh God,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know a person who lives at . . .’ he got out his notebook and reeled off the address of the white house in Berkshire, where Daisy had spent her brief and unhappy marriage with Simon.

  Daisy stared open-mouthed at him. She felt the colour drain from her face. Felt her head start to hum. She looked at Ruby. ‘That’s Simon’s house. My husband’s,’ she said, forgetting about calling him her ex.

  The female officer cleared her throat. ‘Your name and this address were in a notebook we found on him. I’m sorry,’ she said gently. ‘I’m afraid your husband is dead.’

  33

  Kit checked into a hotel overlooking Brighton seafront, then unpacked the essentials, opened the minibar, looked inside, closed it. He phoned Rob and told him about the Bentley.

  ‘Shit,’ said Rob.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kit, looking out of his window and the rolling grey white-flecked breakers roaring in, driven by a fierce wind. Time off in sunny England, he thought. Should have taken himself off to the Costas.

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ said Rob. ‘You think it was Vittore?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Watch your back.’

  ‘You watch yours, Kit.’

  ‘I’ll phone again in a couple of days, OK?’

  ‘Yeah. Or you want me to phone you?’

  ‘No, I’ll be moving around.’

  Kit had another look at the contents of the minibar after he put the phone down. Then he picked up his jacket and went out into the rain to play tourist. He’d never been to Brighton before. Who knew? Maybe he’d enjoy it.

  He joined a bunch of people trailing a guide around the Pavilion, and heard all about George IV and his mistress. Then he got a bite to eat and wandered the Lanes, browsing the antique shops. Maybe he should take Daisy something, and Ruby . . . nah. Why should he bother with her? He thought that it might be nice to have a normal relationship with your mother, a real close mother-and-son bond, but they didn’t have it and he wasn’t about to fool himself that they ever would.

  Far too much water had flowed under that particular bridge.

  Because it had been Michael’s dying wish, he’d promised her this Christmas past that he’d make an effort to forgive and forget, but fuck it to hell, it was too hard. The truth was, he despised his mother. Wanted nothing to do with her. Could never forgive her for abandoning him as a baby.

  After he’d bought a present for Daisy – a silver necklace with a titanium butterfly pendant that flickered with rainbows like oil on water – he made his way back to his hotel room. Again he gravitated towards the minibar, taking a long look at the contents before closing the door on it and going out for the evening.

  He took in a club, listened to the music – Barry White, Queen and Sweet, all booming out in time to the flashing strobes – and he picked up a girl. He’d done this many times in London; he was good-looking and could turn on the charm when needed, it was easy. As always, he adhered to the bachelor’s code all his boys followed, and gave a false name. For tonight, he was Tony Mobley. Him and the girl ended up back in his hotel room having frantic, impersonal sex. Frantic or not, Kit was careful to use a Durex. Raised as an unwanted and fatherless child himself, there was no way on God’s earth he was going to inflict that fate on some other poor bastard.

  By the time he checked out two days later, he’d looked inside the minibar eight times – he’d counted – but so far he hadn’t touched a drop.

  From Brighton he caught the train into Chichester, and there he finally started to relax a bit, to lose that feeling of being under a cloud, being watched, being pursued.

  On top of that, his head was clearer. So was his tongue when he looke
d at it in the morning after long, peaceful nights of sleep lulled by the sound of waves on a shoreline. He ate well, drank tea or water, took walks along the beach, and began to feel almost human again.

  I needed this, he thought. I didn’t know it, but I did. Rob called it right.

  He stopped off in Portsmouth for a night, took in the Victory, Nelson’s flagship, then moved on to Southampton to stay in the Skyways hotel. This would be his last night of freedom: tomorrow he would return to the Smoke, stop behaving like an arsehole, take charge again.

  No more drinking himself into a stupor.

  No. What good did it do, after all? When you sobered up, the problems were still there. And you felt like shit into the bargain.

  No more of that.

  So what he was going to do on this, his last evening, was take in one of the clubs. The girl on reception at the hotel told him there was a new one that was pretty good, just around the corner. He’d have a half pint of shandy, that was his limit – and thank Christ none of the boys were here to see him doing that, sipping watered-down beer like a cunt – maybe chat up a bird or two, then back to bed and out of Southampton Central tomorrow morning, home to London.

  34

  The club Kit went to was all tricked out in black and blood-red, big gold signs screaming UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT! outside the entrance, doormen ushering people inside, the bass beat of the music so loud that it shook the strobe-lit dance floor where go-go dancers gyrated in devil horns in large gold cages suspended from a coal-black ceiling. Fake flame machines blew licking fronds of what looked like fire up the walls.

  The place was packed. Kit fought his way to the bar, ordered the pitiful half a shandy that was going to last him all night. He turned with people jostling him out of the way, and some joker jogged his arm. He decanted his drink over the front of a girl of almost birdlike delicacy, with striking white-blonde hair. She was wearing a white lace minidress that revealed perfect legs.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she burst out, swiping at the front of her dress.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Kit, and then he did a double-take. Looked again. And thought, Shit, it’s her.

  She was staring right back at him.

  They both said it at the same time: ‘Don’t I know you?’

  ‘I’m Bianca,’ she told him half an hour later, after she’d gone upstairs to change out of the soiled minidress and returned. They were sitting in one of the little alcoves, her with a gin and tonic in front of her on the low black-lacquered table, Kit with a fresh shandy.

  ‘Tony,’ said Kit, remembering the bachelor drill. If you’re going to shag her, you don’t give your own name. What if there are comebacks? You’d be a fool to give out your real name. And he fully intended to shag her if he could. He was desperate to do that. ‘I’m Tony Mobley.’

  ‘Hi, Tony,’ she said, and smiled and held out a hand.

  ‘Hi yourself, Bianca,’ he said, and clasped her slender white hand in his larger, darker one.

  Oh yes, he wanted to get her into bed as soon as he possibly could. He couldn’t stop staring at her. The minidress had been replaced by another, also white: this one was soft sheeny satin, briefly cut without sleeves and with a big scooped neck and a high hemline. It clung to every curve. There was a teardrop pearl on a silver chain nestling in the shadowy hollow between her breasts. He wanted to rip the dress open and see her. He wanted, right now, to take her somewhere quiet, push her dress up out of the way and fuck her brains out, he was consumed by lust like he had never known before.

  ‘I saw you,’ he said. ‘In a car, in London. In my head I called you the Bride. Because your hair’s almost white, and you’re so pale . . .’ Jesus, am I sounding like a cunt or what?

  ‘I saw you too,’ said Bianca, thinking: You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen in my life. But she couldn’t say that. She was embarrassed to. She felt like someone had snatched her breath away, hollowed out her stomach and left an echoing void there. She’d seen him just once, on that terrible day, the day of Tito’s funeral, and she’d thought she would never see him again. Now here he was, talking to her, and she felt she’d lost all her usual panache. She was cool: everyone said so. That frosty virgin queen image was something she was always careful to promote. But now, almost shivering with excitement, she was struggling to maintain even an iota of it.

  ‘What were you doing in London?’ she asked.

  Watch yourself, thought Kit. All right, he wanted her. Badly. More than he had ever wanted a woman before, including Gilda. This was no slow burn. This was immediate and powerful, something he had never experienced before, something entirely new to him – and fucking scary, actually. But he wasn’t about to blow his cover. ‘Business, that’s all. I go there sometimes.’

  ‘What line of business are you in?’

  ‘Oh, restaurants, security . . . all sorts, really.’

  ‘A bit of an entrepreneur,’ said Bianca.

  ‘That’s right.’ Kit looked around. ‘And you run this place. Is that what you were doing in London? You have other clubs there?’

  Bianca shook her head. ‘I only run this one. I was up there for family stuff.’ Her smile faded.

  Kit remembered she’d been wearing a black veil, travelling in a long black limo. Sad family stuff, he thought. Then the beat of the music slowed, the lights dipped: now Gladys Knight was crooning.

  ‘I love this song,’ said Bianca as ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night’ filled the club with smoky, soulful tones.

  ‘Want to dance?’ asked Kit. He wanted to hold her. Couldn’t understand it, marvelled at it, but that was a fact: he couldn’t wait to touch this woman, body to body.

  She looked into his eyes. ‘Yeah. Why not?’

  And then they were on the dance floor with all the other smooching couples, shuffling around, her arms around his neck, his hands on the back of her waist, pulling her in tight against his body. His nose was nuzzling in at the sweet, fragrant base of her throat, and he was thinking This is heaven.

  He pulled her in closer, closer.

  And then he realized he had an erection, and it was pressing against her. Shit, he thought. He eased himself back from her, and Bianca lifted her head from his shoulder and looked directly into his eyes.

  ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ she said.

  35

  By Wednesday morning Simon’s father, Sir Bradley Collins, had formally identified his son’s body. Simon’s mother had been so hysterical the doctor had prescribed a strong dose of tranquilisers, and Daisy couldn’t do it, she was too shocked, too distraught.

  Why she should be in floods of tears over Simon’s death was beyond her. She had never really loved him, any more than he loved her. Theirs had been a marriage of convenience; Simon had wanted to marry into the Bray line and reap all the rewards that ties to the late Lord Cornelius Bray would net him. For Daisy, marriage to Simon had been an escape from her own wild and turbulent youth, a safe harbour after stormy seas. But aside from producing two beautiful baby boys, the marriage had been a disaster. Daisy’s free spirit meant she could never be the dutiful wife that Simon desired, and he had punished her for it.

  Divorced and glad of it, Daisy was amazed at the anguish she was going through now. Whatever else he might have been, Simon was the twins’ father. Now her boys had been denied the chance to know their father, and her tears were as much for them as for her ex-husband. Never in her wildest dreams would she have believed that he was capable of suicide. But according to the police, he had gone home after his visit to Marlow, composed a brief note to his parents saying he was sorry to end it this way, and then he had hanged himself from a beam in the garage. The cleaner, passing the open garage door on her way up to the house the next morning, had seen him hanging there and called the police.

  Her initial reaction when the police broke the news had been, No, this must be a mistake, he can’t be dead. But then Sir Bradley called in at Ruby’s on his way home from the hospital morgue; one look at his grief-
stricken face, suddenly aged and riven with sorrow, told Daisy that there was no mistake. Simon was dead.

  ‘My poor boy,’ said Sir Bradley, his eyes bleak with pain. ‘If only he’d talked to me, if only he’d told me he was in such despair . . .’

  Ruby sat him down, gave him a brandy, while Daisy stood looking at him in stunned disbelief.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘He was here that evening, telling Ruby about the new contract and how well he was doing. He’d just spent a day with the babies. He was happy.’

  ‘He certainly seemed fine,’ sighed Ruby. ‘But obviously he wasn’t.’

  ‘For God’s sake, what does it matter?’ Sir Bradley burst out. ‘He’s dead!’

  ‘When will they release the . . . when can we arrange the funeral?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘Soon,’ he said, and started to cry, great gut-wrenching sobs of loss.

  Ruby took his hand in hers and squeezed it tight. Bleakly she looked up at Daisy.

  ‘I wish Kit was here,’ said Daisy helplessly, though even as she said it she was wondering what comfort Kit could provide in his present condition. He used to be so tough, almost invulnerable, but since Michael’s death he was a shadow of his former self, intent on drowning his sorrows in booze. Still, he was her brother, and she wanted him here, to help her get through this.

  ‘So do I,’ said Ruby, putting a comforting arm around Sir Bradley’s shoulders. He looked a broken man. ‘So do I.’

  To Ruby, it seemed as if everyone around her was coming apart: Kit taking to drink, Simon killing himself, and Daisy . . . Right now, Daisy was the most worrying of the lot.