by Mick Herron
Today, she’d chosen the cemetery because almost nobody went there.
On the phone, Arkle had said: ‘I can keep this up all day. ’Course, he’s likely to get tired of it sooner than me.’
What Zoë had just heard had been blunt and violent; had ended in a high-pitched yelp, as if a puppy had been chastised.
‘You bastard –’
‘Yeah yeah. How much of him do you think there’ll be left, by the time the cops get here?’
She could feel Katrina’s eyes burning into her; a lasered accusation of impending betrayal.
‘What do you want?’
‘She’s with you, isn’t she?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Her. And I want my money. Our money. She knows where it is.’
Zoë said, ‘How much are we talking, exactly?’
‘A hundred grand, two hundred. What’s it to you, bitch? It’s ours . . .’
He didn’t know. All those robberies; all those pay-offs. But Baxter had handled the money, and Arkle had no exact idea how much was involved.
‘Don’t hurt him any more,’ she said.
‘I wish I could promise. But the longer I don’t have my money, the crosser I get.’
He was enjoying this. He was top dog again, taking potshots with his crossbow.
Zoë raised a hand, palm flat, to keep Katrina quiet. ‘So what do we do?’
‘Where is she?’
‘Not far.’
‘We swap. Kay for your friend. While he’s still worth trading.’
‘Don’t hurt him any more,’ she said again.
‘Clock’s running . . .’
And then they’d been alone again, just Zoë and Katrina. Arkle’s voice, which had crawled round her walls like a spider, had been sucked back down the line, leaving the same vacuum that happens when a TV set switches off.
Katrina said: ‘He’ll kill me.’
‘All you have to do is tell them where the money is.’
‘You think?’
‘We’re past the stage where they can do anything to you and hope to get away with it. They’ll settle for the money at this point. After that, they’ll run. And let’s face it, it’s not like they’ll get far.’
‘You’re forgetting, Baxter was the brains. What’s worse, Arkle thinks he’s got brains too. He does whatever he does, and tells himself afterwards it was a plan. So he’s never had a plan that’s failed yet.’
‘He should run for office.’
‘I’m glad you’re finding this funny.’
‘He just hurt Tim. Tim’s the reason Arkle hasn’t got you already. So no, I’m not finding it funny. Where’d you hide the money?’
‘Somewhere nobody can get it.’
‘If you don’t trust me, who can you trust? I saved your life, remember? Tim and me both.’
‘Maybe that was part of your plan.’
Zoë laughed. ‘Right. Think about it, Katrina. You approached Tim in that hotel, not the other way round. How’d we work that?’
Katrina seemed to be holding her breath, and the bruise covering half her face flushed redder, like a sunset on the turn. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. ‘It’s in a storage facility. Just outside Totnes. One of those security depots, full of cargo containers.’
Zoë said, ‘And that’s safe?’
‘Safer than a bank. People rob banks. Those storage places, they’re where you stash Grandma’s furniture once she goes into a home.’
‘Arkle doesn’t seem clear exactly how much we’re talking about.’
‘Only Baxter knew that,’ said Katrina.
‘How about where it came from?’ Zoë asked.
Katrina looked away. ‘He started by telling me it was cash that came out of the business. Cash they weren’t declaring.’
‘Can’t have sounded too convincing once they’d closed the business down.’
‘I tell myself I wasn’t sure, couldn’t know for certain. I knew it was dodgy money, but . . . I told myself I didn’t know.’
And that, Zoë thought now, passing the lane to the graveyard, had the ring of truth. Confessing she’d lied to herself, Katrina had sounded honest . . . Not that Zoë would have believed her otherwise.
On the next corner, she turned left. A couple of hundred yards along the road, she found what she was looking for, which made her smile for the second time in fifteen minutes; this one a tight smile, without humour in it. Then she turned and went back the way she’d come, and headed into the cemetery.
‘I should have worn the suit,’ Arkle said to no one in particular.
No one in particular answered.
His tropical suit; the one designed for a cheap country with big landscapes. One he could wear marching home by torchlight, kill strung from a pole. The one he’d not worn because he’d not been hunting yet.
They were in Tim Whitby’s car: Arkle driving; Trent and Whitby in the back. The van was history. They’d left it in a lane ten minutes from the house they’d nearly taken Kay from; smashed, but drivable; keys in the ignition. Local kids were probably using it for handbrake practice now. Ten minutes after that, they’d boosted an illegally parked car they’d later dumped on the outskirts of Oxford. Tim Whitby’s house, they’d found using the phone book: no Internet nonsense this time. He reached a junction, and behind him Trent poked Whitby, making him yelp and release information.
‘Straight on,’ Trent said.
He drove straight on. A cemetery, the woman had said, when she called back; a cemetery was where they’d do the swap – Whitby for Kay. St Saltpetre’s? Something like that. Not a major landmark, which was cool. Last time they’d gathered, furniture had been damaged. However this went, an audience probably wasn’t a great idea.
Whitby, answering questions, had made these huffy little gasps, though Arkle didn’t reckon he’d kicked him that hard.
The sun was out, bouncing unexpected dazzles off shiny surfaces. The breeze was warm, lacked bite. Arkle was wearing his long dark overcoat: unnecessary, but it wouldn’t draw attention in an empty graveyard. And in the car he was anonymous; gliding sleekly through post-rush-hour streets. At a roundabout, guided by Whitby (prodded by Trent), Arkle swung almost full circle to avoid the town centre, and found himself driving past a row of primary-coloured restaurants. This was the city of dreaming spires. So far, spires were outnumbered by buses and off-licences.
. . . Last time they’d met, this Zoë had broken a chair over his head. Which had hurt, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, she’d broken a chair over his head, and that was just taking advantage.
Focus, though. He reached another junction; took another instruction. Focus. Revenge was important, but you had to pick your targets . . . Soon, in the next ten minutes or so, he’d have his hands on Kay, and she’d lead him to the money.
One way or the other, Arkle would get his hunt. He might not be bringing her home strung from a pole, but that had never been the main purpose of the exercise.
In the cemetery, on the bench by the flowerbeds, Zoë sat. The wind whispered in the trees, but she couldn’t catch what it was saying; the branches tore all meaning to shreds before the words reached ground level. She stood and looked about once more, in case the whispering was a cover for other, earthbound noises, but saw nobody. To all appearances, she was alone in the graveyard. Though of course, no one is ever really alone in a graveyard.
From the road came the sound of the occasional car. From the flats a few hundred yards distant life hummed, in its non-specific way.
At home, before she’d called Arkle Dunstan back to arrange a rendezvous, she’d asked Katrina: ‘Where’s the key?’ The key to the money; the key to the storage facility. ‘At your father’s?’
‘What makes you think that?’
Zoë said, ‘If it were at your flat, you’d already have it. And you don’t, do you?’
‘No,’ Katrina said. ‘I don’t.’
And she’d told Zoë where it was, producing Zoë’s first smil
e in a while.
She leaned back, conscious of being watched, and looked at the tree overhead as the wind rippled it, turning its leaves their other colour. One span free as she watched, and pirouetted madly earthward, then lifted suddenly to twirl off like a butterfly – death’s last and neatest trick: making something seem most alive in the moments immediately following its extinction. An irony worth bearing in mind, as adrenalin pumped through her system . . . That nerve tickling Zoë now was her nicotine centre. Starved for so long, it was taking the opportunity to fuss. She tamped it down, willed it back into submission, and saw Arkle Dunstan heading down the path towards her.
He was followed by Tim, who was followed by the one who’d driven the van into the bollard last night – Trent Dunstan, she supposed – whose face was a match for Katrina’s, if only in respect of the damage it bore. Stand them at opposite ends of a casualty ward, and they’d bookend all the injuries between. But that was a slow-growing thought, taking root to blossom later. What mattered at the time was Arkle: his long black coat which seemed unnecessary for the weather, and which might hide just about anything. The way the sun shone off his shaved head; flashed off his eyes too, and even his teeth, as his lips parted in a thin smile. Which wasn’t a smile but a snarl.
‘You’re the woman,’ he said.
‘That would be me, yes.’
‘Where’s Kay?’
She looked past him, which took an effort. ‘Are you okay, Tim?’
Tim said something, cleared his throat, tried again. ‘More or less.’
‘Have they hurt you?’
‘They –’
‘Fuck, am I invisible or what?’
‘There’s people buried here,’ she told him. ‘Watch your tongue, would you?’
Arkle Dunstan watched hers instead; his gaze fixed on her mouth as he undid two buttons on his overcoat. Then he laughed. ‘There’s a bump the size of an egg on the back of my head. Good job it was a chair you used, not a table.’
‘Trust me,’ Zoë said. ‘If I’d had a crane, I’d have hit you with that instead.’
‘Where’s Kay?’
‘Not here.’
‘Right.’ He looked round, as if expecting her to pop out from behind a gravestone. ‘This is some fucking joke, right?’
She would really, really have liked to be smoking right now. ‘It turns out she didn’t like the idea of being swapped, Arkle. She thinks you might hurt her.’
‘Me?’ he asked. ‘The bitch killed my brother and stole my money. Does she think I can’t take a joke?’
‘Well, your big brother slapped her around –’
‘My little brother.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m the oldest.’
‘Either way, he slapped her round. I suppose she’s worried it runs in the family.’ She couldn’t help looking at Trent when she said this. For some reason – where did notions like this come from? – for some reason his bruise looked more mechanical than Katrina’s, as if crude technology had been involved in its creation.
Arkle undid another button. ‘So now I know where she isn’t,’ he said. ‘Where is she?’
‘She’s staying out of your way,’ Zoë said. ‘I’m all you get.’
This was what they’d decided, or what Zoë had decided. Or maybe it was what Katrina had decided, while allowing Zoë to think she had. Here in the graveyard, Arkle Dunstan two feet away, it didn’t feel like a situation Zoë might have willed on herself.
‘He wants to kill me,’ Katrina had said.
‘He wants the money more.’
‘You don’t know him like I do.’
‘I don’t know him at all. But he’ll go for the money. Anyone would.’
She’d been sure of that. She’d thought of all the people she’d like to wreak havoc upon – starting and finishing with Bob Poland – and knew she’d take the money too, if only to crawl out of this hole she’d found herself in. A phantom figure, her tax debt, swam through her mind: £4,731.26. Phantom because it didn’t exist: she didn’t have it. Going by what Katrina had said, you could lose that much from the Dunstans’ stash just rounding down to the next whole number. The problem was, it was dirty money.
On the other hand, there was an awful lot of it.
‘I suppose,’ Zoë said, ‘it really belongs to whoever owned the jewellery that was fenced to the guys the Dunstans stole it from.’
‘Or their insurance companies . . .’
‘Well, we’ve got ten minutes,’ Zoë said. ‘We should be able to come up with something.’
So here she was, saying: ‘She’s staying out of your way. I’m all you get.’
‘That’s nice. But what if I don’t want you?’ Arkle undid the last button, and his overcoat dropped open heavily. He thrust his hands into its pockets.
‘Oh, you’ll want what I’ve got.’
‘What’s that?’
Zoë looked at Tim. ‘You sure you’re okay?’
He shrugged, swallowed. ‘I’ve felt better.’
‘Let him go,’ she said to Arkle. ‘And I’ll tell you.’
He didn’t laugh. Instead, he said, ‘Ho ho.’
Trent looked round. ‘She’s called the cops, Arkle.’
‘Uh-uh.’ Arkle’s eyes remained on Zoë. ‘She’s not a cop-caller. She’s a chair-breaker.’
Zoë didn’t like him looking; didn’t like his unbuttoned coat. Didn’t like the here-and-now. But no other reality presented itself, so she made do with what was.
She said, ‘I know where the money is.’
‘Our money,’ Arkle said.
‘If you like.’
‘The money Kay stole.’
‘Well, the money you stole, if you want to get technical. She knows where it is, that’s all. So do I.’
For a moment his gaze drifted, and he stared at a nearby copse – a copse, in a cemetery? Bunch of bushes, anyway. Behind her, but that’s what he was looking at: she’d made sure she knew what was there before she’d sat down.
He looked back. ‘Where is it?’
‘Let him go. Then I’ll tell you.’
‘Tell us. Then we’ll let him go.’
‘Ho ho,’ she said.
He glanced towards the copse again. ‘You picked here because it was quiet?’
‘I picked here because I know it and you don’t.’
‘Where’s Kay?’
‘You’re not going to find her, Arkle. I don’t even know where she is myself.’
‘Oh, I’ll find her.’
‘I don’t think so. Not if you want the money.’ God, she needed a cigarette. ‘I didn’t call the cops, Arkle, you’re right about that. But I wrote them a letter. You want the money, you’ve got twenty-four hours to collect it. And if you want to stay free, you’d better be on a plane the same day, because I also told them it was you put Helen Coe in hospital.’
Arkle said, ‘What if I don’t believe you?’
‘Then stick around. The post here’s not great, but it gets there.’ Three times out of five, she didn’t add.
Trent said, ‘I don’t think she’s bluffing, Arkle.’
His wound didn’t so much muffle his voice as scratch it, as if something sharp was lodged in his mouth; snagging his words as they left his lips.
Arkle tilted his head to one side. ‘What’s your angle?’
‘Let him go.’
‘She got to you, didn’t she? Same way she got to Bax.’
‘Clock’s ticking, Arkle.’
‘You keep using my name like you know me.’
Zoë felt as if she did. Felt as if her first glimpse of him, on a busy street in Totnes, had been lifetimes ago; that ever since, he’d been at her shoulder like a perverted guardian angel. For a long time, she’d thought he’d tried to kill her – had sealed her in a fridge and walked away. And knowing he hadn’t didn’t alter her opinion: that he was out on an edge; the edge you only noticed when somebody else fell off it. That his head probably glowed in the dark. That of all the
people whose attention she didn’t need, he was way up there. And yet here they were, talking.
She said, ‘Does Big Red Box mean anything to you?’
Arkle said, ‘Is that English? Start making sense.’
‘It’s a storage place,’ Trent said. ‘Off the Newton Abbot road.’
‘So you’re the Yellow Pages now?’
Zoë said, ‘I’m telling you where the money is, that’s all.’
A better way of halting conversation, she’d yet to find. That couple of hundred grand you were wondering about? Here’s where it is.
After a bit, Arkle said, ‘She told you that? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘No?’
‘It’s too public. Anyone can go in.’
Trent said, ‘Well –’
‘Shut up.’
Zoë said, ‘You need to be an authorized user. You need a key.’
‘. . . So where’s the key?’
‘This is where you let Tim go.’
Tim said, ‘I’m not leaving you here with this pair.’
‘Tim? You shut up too, okay?’
‘I hate being interrupted, don’t you?’ Arkle asked.
‘Time’s wasting,’ Zoë said. ‘Let Tim go. Then we discuss where the key is.’
Trent said, ‘Arkle –’
‘Shut up. I’m thinking.’
You could almost watch it happening, too. Almost see the cogs turning behind pale blue eyes, which seemed to look out on a different landscape to everybody else’s. The world according to Arkle. Whose coat hung lopsided, as if there were something heavy in a pocket.