The Family

by P. R. Black

  ‘It all sounds good,’ Rosie said. ‘But I’m not quite buying what you’re saying with the police. Have you actually named him to the police? Raised your suspicions?’

  ‘No. There’s no point. He’ll come out clean. Arkanescu is just a name that pops up here and there – there’s nothing linking an individual named in paper files thirty-odd years ago to the individual we’re looking for now. We probably don’t even know the name he goes by now. I’ll look like a loon. Nicolas Arthur, the guy we met answering to that name, will only be able to say that he was hired for a job, with nothing connecting him to previous crimes – and you can bet that he’s going to resign very soon, or maybe even mysteriously disappear. And from there I’ll have to admit I hacked their system, into the bargain – which could put me in jail for a long time. We still can’t put the finger on exactly who he is. We don’t know his current name. We don’t know where he lives.’

  ‘But… why don’t you tell them anyway? What have you got to lose?’

  ‘Cos she wants to catch him.’ Bernard grinned. ‘And kill him. Don’t you?’

  ‘Can’t do that if he’s in jail,’ Rosie said. ‘Makes sense. But it doesn’t make sense putting ourselves in danger.’

  ‘We’ll set up the surveillance and get evidence. Then we nail him. I don’t want him dead. I want him in jail. But it’s up to us. Rosie – think of your book. Bernard – think of Rupert.’

  They pondered this a while as the train roared on.

  56

  Despite the date, and the green leaves, it was a soggy day. The path through the woodland left their boots clogged with muck. The route was old and overgrown in places. Since they’d parked up their hire car, they didn’t see another soul. It wasn’t that cold, but they wrapped up warmly.

  ‘Looks like someone’s been through here recently,’ Becky said, pointing out a part where the bracken had been chopped down, to allow passage.

  ‘With a machete,’ Bernard added. ‘Or a chainsaw.’

  It took an hour to walk through the woods towards the standing stones site. They stood in the shadow of these sullen blocks, frozen blobs of rock that stood eight feet high in some sections. ‘It’s a stone henge that was surrounded by a wooden henge,’ Becky said, ‘a place of ancient sacrifice. Lots of people used to gather here.’

  Rosie pointed out a long, flat slab of rock. ‘I’m guessing that’s where the sacrifices were done.’

  ‘That’s where they did it. And that’s where they’ll do it next Saturday.’

  ‘Where they think they’ll do it,’ Bernard said, resolutely. ‘There’s no way we’ll let that happen again.’

  Becky smiled wryly. ‘Thanks, big guy.’

  ‘I’m just surprised your dad didn’t stop it.’

  Becky’s face fell.

  ‘Bernard!’ Rosie spluttered, aghast.

  ‘Just saying. He should have fought. It annoys me.’

  ‘He did fight,’ Becky said, coolly.

  ‘Not hard enough, though. Did he fight when he watched that guy do that to you? His daughter? It would drive anyone mad.’ Bernard’s shoulders wriggled. ‘He should have been like a wild animal.’

  ‘My dad wasn’t a wild animal. He was a clever, thinking man. He did all he could for us.’ Becky felt her pulse throb in her temples.

  ‘Just saying what I’d do. Situation like that.’

  ‘Let’s hope you never find out what you’d do. Situation like that.’

  Rosie stepped between them. ‘We take your point, Bernard. Maybe set up the equipment, now?’

  Bernard mumbled, then shouldered canvas bags filled with equipment.

  Rosie said, ‘What’s the script with this stuff, then? Cameras? How will you keep them charged?’

  ‘Long-life batteries,’ Bernard called out from the trees. ‘And the cameras are set off by motion. Pretty standard stuff on nature documentaries. Bird watchers use them all the time. Or nosey neighbours. It’s all linked back to a central computer – mine. We can get a stream of any camera content when the motion sensors are tripped. I’ve got half a dozen trained on the stone circle. Anyone comes round here in the next fortnight that stands taller than a metre and a half, we’ll see them in glorious Technicolor, high definition. Or night vision. Or any setting we like. On Saturday night, we can livestream it to the police.’

  Bernard’s resistance of any offers of help spoke more of distrust of anyone handling his toys than any gentlemanly impulses to spare them an extra load. He had the bulk of the work to do, fastening tiny cameras to the trees and bushes round the perimeter of the circle, and a few along the path to the woods. He clambered up high in some cases, a surprisingly nimble creature once liberated from solid ground.

  ‘What a fucking gangler,’ Rosie muttered. She looked Becky in the eyes. ‘And what an insensitive prick. No wonder he spends his life in front of a computer in a basement. Are you all right?’

  Becky shrugged. ‘I’d be more annoyed if I thought he meant it maliciously. Some people mean to upset you. He clearly doesn’t. He’s awkward, not nasty. And he’s been key in finding our guy.’

  ‘If you’re right about this… my god. You’re going to be a hero.’

  ‘We’re a team now,’ Becky said, shortly. ‘Priority one – we take a prime twat off the streets. We all get to go home. And you get a book out of it.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to sign you a copy,’ Rosie said.

  Bernard dropped to his haunches from a tree, then straightened up. Rain beaded his ’fro and ran down his face, and he wiped his hands on the side of his trousers. ‘We’re nearly ready to get it all tested out.’ He made his way back to a holdall, then pulled out a laptop. Heading for the shade of a tree, he hunched down against it, frowning in the bluish glare of the screen.

  ‘One thing you didn’t explain,’ Rosie said to Becky. ‘The love letters; the mystery French guy.’

  Becky laughed. ‘Le herring rouge. Leif was writing to my sister. They’d set up a rendezvous – for the day after we all got killed. That was suspicious. Obviously the letters he was writing to my mother was even more suspicious. But there’s an answer to that. My mother knew all about the pen-pals’ business. She was writing to see what Leif was like, without steaming in and making inquiries. But my mother being my mother, she posed as a love rival. He wrote back to my mother. My mother replied. She knew what he was doing. It got a bit flirty. It must have tickled him, having two women chasing after him. He had no idea. The idea was to surprise the young man, on the day, with both of his pen-pals at once.’

  ‘So your mother was having an affair? With Leif?’

  Becky laughed harder. ‘Of course not. My father knew about it. He even wrote some of the letters – or he dictated them. I remember them doing it, one Friday night, while Clara was out. It was a joke, something they did for a laugh. Some documents I found at my aunt’s even showed that my father thought about going into business with Leif’s father, once he found out who he was. Or rather, what farmland he had for sale. Leif’s father wasn’t connected to the initial French deal, the one that got my father killed, for a few miles across the valley. My father saw the farmland was being sold off and he wanted to buy some off him. They even arranged to meet up. They knew Clara was writing to a French boy, so they checked him out. They checked out where he lived. They liked the place. My dad had been looking to build some gîtes and let them out as holiday homes.

  ‘The pen-pals’ thing led to the property deal – not the other way round. It wasn’t connected to the property package put together by Jack Tullington’s brother, the one which got my family killed. Entirely separate thing, though it looks too much of a coincidence to be true at first glance.’

  ‘Leif’s letter-writing habit has caused a lot of confusion.’

  ‘That’s right. In hindsight, though. It must have been a grand old joke for everyone concerned at the time. Maybe it turned my mother on; who knows? Maybe that added to it. She was like that, my mother. I wouldn’t call her a flirt, but
she was playful. She had a funny bone. So did my dad. He liked that side to her. That’s why they got married, I guess. I remember them roaring about things in French accents and referencing someone called Lucky Pierre. Someone to look out for, like a policeman. They made up crazy double entendres to put in the letters. I heard them do this, while Clara was out. I didn’t get the significance of “Lucky Pierre”, either, for years. It must have been a gift for the real killer, examining all the official evidence later. A nice smokescreen. Was the mystery killer Lucky Pierre? An excellent piece of luck. It skewed the investigation for years. There are still people out there who think Leif did it, or his father.’

  Rosie frowned. ‘What’s a Lucky Pierre?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later. How’s it looking, Bernard?’

  ‘All tickety boo,’ Bernard said. ‘All up and running.’ Shielding the screen from the rain, he turned the laptop round and showed them a rough map of the woods, with the paths and the stone circle mapped in rough white blobs. The cameras were marked in orange smudges, flashing at various intersecting points.

  ‘We’ll get the video when the cameras are tripped, and this map here is where we’ll see various people tracking through the sensors.’

  ‘We’re doing this remote control, yeah?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Bernard said. ‘We’ll be far away from here when the bad guys show up. Wouldn’t want to be stuck out here at night, would you?’

  ‘That’s my thinking too. It’s getting late, now. I reckon we should wrap this up for today.’

  ‘Just before we go, I need to do a couple of tests. Either of you fancy going back to the path? You should trip a few of the sensors, so I can double-check it’s all working.’

  ‘Sure,’ Becky said, and turned to go.

  ‘Wait – I’ll come with you,’ Rosie said.

  They started back down the broken, haphazard trail of stones; ferns and bracken snagging their trousers. ‘What are you going to do when you see him in handcuffs?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘Not sure. Mainly I’ll be happy it’s over.’

  ‘What if it isn’t over? I mean, what if it just ends up you and him?’

  ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’

  Rosie stopped. ‘Look me in the eye and say that.’

  Becky looked her in the eye, at least. ‘Hey – if he appears in front of us right now, he’s got a fight on his hands.’

  ‘Oh, I know it. I’ve first-hand experience of your karate skills, remember, Daniel-San.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m not looking for a fight. Believe it. I’m going to hand him to the police. I’m not going to gamble my life for the sake of some comic book showdown. Besides – what are you expecting? He’d be a fool to show up here, now.’

  One of Becky’s phones burred in her pocket. It was Bernard.

  ‘Hey, Bernard – I have to hand it to you, I can’t spot where you hid your cameras. I take it they’re working okay? How do we look, fatter or thinner? In fact, don’t answer that.’

  ‘Get back here,’ Bernard said, almost in a whisper.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Get back here, now. Get off that path.’

  ‘What for?’

  Rosie caught the alarm on Becky’s face, and reflected it back at her.

  All round them, sodden, sagging trees flailed in the wind.

  ‘There are people coming. They’ve already set off some of the perimeter cameras.’

  ‘What kind of people?’

  ‘They’re coming!’

  ‘Who?’

  But she knew who. She heard it whispered in the slow dripping in the trees, saw it in the branches’ indifferent shrug beneath the weight of the water; felt it in her galloping heart.

  ‘They’re moving fast,’ Bernard babbled. ‘They look like they know where they’re going. They’re heading right for you. Get back to the stone circle, quick!’

  57

  Bernard was nowhere to be seen when they reached the stone circle.

  ‘Where is he?’ Rosie clutched at her head. ‘Is he fucking in on it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It all seemed too good to be true. I should have known. This smelled like a trap, but I ignored it. I thought you knew what you were doing!’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ Becky hissed. She scanned the menhirs and the flat slab of rock. Perfectly set up, she thought grimly. For us. ‘Look out for Bernard.’

  Suddenly he appeared through a place where the treeline grew thick, his skin slick with rain. Panic was evident in his eyes, the set of his shoulders, the way his fingers squirmed into the corner of his mouth. ‘Over here,’ he hissed.

  He shielded the laptop from the rain, despite the tree cover. In the pitiless grey half-light, the falling rain glittered like spears.

  ‘The sensors were tripped off, all over. Look.’ He clicked open a window, and spooled back footage from a camera.

  A figure dressed in black rushed past.

  ‘What was that?’ Rosie whispered. ‘Was that a mask?’

  ‘There’s another two, look. One’s got some sort of animal head on.’

  Rosie clamped a hand to her mouth, eyes bulging. ‘We’ve got to get out of here – now. We’re going to be fucking slaughtered! This was a trap! We walked straight into it!’

  ‘Calm down,’ Becky said. ‘Let’s think it through. Where are they?’

  ‘Look at the map,’ Bernard croaked. He indicated the simple white and black graphic, with the stone circle in the middle. Orange dots which indicated cameras blinked – in every direction. Too many to count at a glance.

  The moving dots flashed and drew nearer.

  ‘They’re all round us,’ Rosie whimpered. ‘We’re cut off.’

  ‘There must be a way of keeping track of them,’ Becky said. ‘Don’t panic. We can surely get through the woods without running into them. Keep the computer on. Which way?’

  Bernard blinked rapidly. He seemed to have shrunk, head bowed. ‘I… I don’t…’

  ‘Bernard – think. Show us a path. Look at this row of dots – let’s head through the middle. It’ll take them a while to converge.’

  ‘That’s through the woods, Becky. It’s choked thick, there’s no path.’

  ‘Then it’ll give us a chance, for god’s sake. At the very least, we can hide. Which direction?’

  ‘Through there.’ He indicated the treeline he’d just emerged from.

  ‘We’re going to die out here,’ Rosie moaned. ‘What happened with your family, it’s going to happen again. It’s going to happen to us. Who are these freaks?’

  Becky turned to follow Rosie’s gaze; too quick for her to make out any detail, a dark figure ducked away into a thicket of bushes, leaving the branches twitching.

  Rosie simply fled into the woods. Bernard followed her, the computer cast aside.

  For one treacherous moment, it occurred to Becky to leave them, to head off on her own; the better to split up, to get away, to survive. Then she tore after them. ‘Wait! We’ve got to keep a straight line!’

  Rosie was already gone; Bernard was directly ahead, tearing away a branch that snagged in his hair.

  ‘Remember the map, for god’s sake,’ Becky cried. ‘Stick together. Don’t split up!’

  It was too late; Bernard accelerated into a clearing and was gone.

  Rosie screamed, somewhere in the forest, then stopped abruptly; a magpie took fright with a bubbly chough and fluttered away overhead. Then there was a sudden, terrible silence.

  Becky leapt over a fallen tree draped with moss like a stole over a queen’s shoulders, then crouched down low behind it.

  To the right, the branches were beginning to settle after Bernard’s passage. The rain continued to come down, drenching the trees in a gentler patter.

  ‘Piggee!’ someone cried, startling her. ‘Where are you, Piggee?’ The voice broke up into laughter, high, shrieking, gleeful.

  Several voices answered, as if in a pack howl.

  ‘
Piggee!’ someone yelled. A woman’s voice. ‘Here, Piggee! We’re coming for you!’

  ‘No no no no,’ Rosie moaned close by. ‘No no, please, oh god, please.’

  Then a long, loud, terrifying shriek sliced across the forest. It was cut short after a second or two. Then Becky heard loud, sustained laughter. Men’s voices.

  Rosie’s attack alarm. Dear god, please help her.

  Becky bit her lip and crouched lower. The fallen tree might have come down years ago, its trunk over-run by other vegetation. A crop of weird red and white polka-dotted fungi grew inches away from Becky’s hands.

  She breathed via her diaphragm, making herself as small as she dared, hoping to make as little noise as possible.

  They’ve been here before, she thought, with growing nausea. Been here and done it already, maybe. Either way, they know every inch of this place.

  She heard some thrashing to her left, close by. She cocked an ear, straining for sound.

  That was when she spotted something glinting in the foggy light, something in the crook of a branch – a camera lens. Not one that Bernard had planted.

  They were here before us. They had exactly the same idea. They’re watching me now!

  Then two gloved hands slammed down on the tree bark, six inches from Becky’s head. A face appeared above them. It was covered in a black leather fetish mask which stretched over the entire head, with a zipper for a mouth. Spikes jutted out of the top of the head in flexible leather fronds; two eyes seemed to bubble out of the eyeholes, glassy with mirth.

  ‘There you are, Piggee!’ the figure shrieked, the German accent horribly muffled.

  Becky sprang to her feet and planted two punches on either side of the head, quick as blinking, her knuckles smacking hard against the mask. The man – clad in a black top and trousers – pitched onto his side, braced against the fallen tree, hands upraised.