by David Mark
‘But you’re setting him up as a killer!’ blurts Betsy. She stops, her face creasing in confusion. ‘The disk. Why did you ask her for that disk?’
‘Silly girl thought she was meeting Campion,’ smiles Candy. ‘I sent the message from his account. You see, Maeve had shown me rather embarrassing footage of poor Campion shooting that unfortunate youth, during something of a melee on the moor. She used it to exact certain favours not just from my silly husband but from me, too. Certain promises with regards to our future involvement in country pursuits. She wanted us to cancel the grouse shoots. To give areas of prime shooting land over to re-wilding and new forests.’ She says the word with a sneer. ‘What choice did I have?’
‘You killed her?’
‘I told her, as Campion, that I would do everything she said but I wanted a copy of the footage. Couldn’t send it to me – not with the broadband the way it is here! So I asked for a hard copy. She did as requested, though she didn’t bring the original. No, she tucked that safely away somewhere. And she didn’t bring the footage of the accident – no, she chose to show Campion what she had on him: the footage of her – as you would call it – “rape”. Set up a camera herself, the sly so-and-so. Who would do that, eh? You see what kind of woman she was, I’m sure.’
Betsy holds herself still as the dead. So many times in her life she has wanted to die. And she has spent so many of these past months looking for reasons to ruin her happiness. Here, now, she wants to live. She wants to get Anya out of this place and spare her young eyes from witnessing more ugliness. She has already seen her father’s corpse. Seen Campion’s too. And the things that happened at the dingle …
‘She was bloody surprised to see me,’ says Candy, reliving the memory. ‘Wouldn’t hand over the disk, and I don’t know why because it didn’t even contain what I wanted. I’m afraid I lost my temper. You don’t realize how easily a skull can crack, do you? Honestly, it’s like Blackpool rock. Just shatters as soon as it hits the stone. Of course, it came as a disappointment when I watched the video.’
‘You’re mad …’
‘It helped that Jude was so broken up and that Maeve had kept him in the dark. He confided in me, after the police had gone. Said that he’d watched the footage himself on the day she left – it was sitting there on the screen like she wanted him to see. And not content with that, she left the whole place to Jude, with instructions he never sell to us. Campion did what Campion does – sent the boys in. But the boys knew how the land lay. Campion might be the big man with the fat wallet, but it’s wifey who this valley belongs to and wifey who calls the shots. And it was wifey who told Rufus to push things as far as he could – to create a scenario in which it would be believable for Jude to kill Campion. When he’s locked up and festering he’ll need money for defence lawyers and I think he’ll be glad of whatever we offer him for that place. And when the bulldozers come in, I’ll enjoy knowing that every demolished brick is another rock on top of Maeve’s coffin.’
Betsy suddenly realizes she’s stopped listening. She’s looking at Anya, sprawled on the rug, bloodied and bone-white.
And she’s looking at her own hand, white-knuckled, still gripping the walkie-talkie.
Slowly, she raises her hand.
Nods at the button beneath her thumb.
She releases it.
Hears the crackle of static, and then a voice she doesn’t recognize.
‘… this is DCI Kelly Fisher. Mrs Lorton-Cave, I need you to tell me whether the hostages are safe. We have a team en route to your address but we require confirmation that neither Ms Zahavi or Anya has been harmed in any way …’
Candy’s face darkens. Her pupils swell, irises darkening, face becoming stone.
‘… no …’ she mumbles, and the threads holding her sanity begin to fray and snap. ‘No, that can’t … no!’
She raises the gun.
Betsy grabs the glass orb. Hurls it like a baseball pitcher.
Heat and spray and the sound of smashing glass.
Then Betsy is slithering down the map, smearing blood on to the rendering of the ancient valley, head spinning. It feels as if her arm is on fire.
And Candy Lorton-Cave, Lady of the Manor, is lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, blood leaking from the corner of her left eye, her ear, her nose.
In the centre of her forehead, a lump the size of a fist, and getting bigger.
Then there is just the sound of sirens, the whir of helicopters, and the soft sobbing of a child.
EPILOGUE
New Year’s Eve.
A serpent of fire and tar snakes its way through the streets of Allendale. A brass band marches at the head of the procession, leading the ‘guisers’: men and women born in the Allen Valleys and selected for the dubious honour of carrying a flaming barrel over their heads; yelling and bellowing and quaffing mead in the very traditions of their Pagan forebears. The blood of the valleys is here, and potent as gunpowder.
For Betsy, still taking strong painkillers and inclined to sup a couple of mulled wines before heading out, it’s all a hallucinogenic affair: painted faces and old-world costumes; swirling troubadours and ancient, Norse-sounding chants. She would be afraid, if she were not holding Anya’s hand in the crook of her good arm, and were it not for the reassuring presence of Jude’s arm around her waist.
The streets are heaving; locals and outsiders both. She sees faces she recognizes among the crowds. Sees heads bowing to allow lips to find ears, and feels endless eyes upon her. She’s known, now. She’s the one who put her Ladyship in a coma from which she’s unlikely to awake. She stayed strong, allowing the police to record Candy’s confession, even as she and the child were staring down the barrel of a gun. And even when it was all blue lights and interview rooms, she managed to do right by Jude. Told the coppers just enough. Took down two hired guns, tied them up, called the police and is willing to give evidence to ensure that whatever’s left of them after their hospital stays will be left to rot in prison for a very long time.
‘It’s going to fill up pretty soon,’ says Jude, in Betsy’s ear. ‘May get a bit much for Anya. Her mum’s already having kittens about letting her come back here after all that’s happened, much as she likes having cool Aunt Betsy to call upon when she wants a quiet night.’
Anya, somehow, hears above the din. ‘Relax! It’s fun. It’s like we’re visiting a different time, or something. Honestly, I love it, and it’s the safest place I can think of. Enjoy yourself. You could have been having a much worse New Year than this!’
Betsy can’t argue. She presses her head against Jude’s cheek. Enjoys the closeness, and the smell of him. They’ve talked a lot, these past few days. Both have been interviewed time and again by police trying to tie together half a dozen different investigations. Betsy needed a pen and paper to explain most of it to the rather bemused DCI Fisher, a pleasant-faced, somewhat wide-eyed woman with dark hair, who’d gone to the trouble of finding Betsy’s social services record, and who did most of the questioning through a rather unprofessional haze of tears.
It’s over, now. The police have a lot of answers to questions they weren’t even asking. Nobody believed that Maeve’s death had been anything other than an accident. Jay, too, was never likely to be treated as a murder enquiry. And Mick, his body stuffed down a mineshaft out at Oldman Bottom, had a musket ball in the back of his head, compatible with a flintlock rifle. He’d known too much. Keeping him on side was going to become more costly than securing his death.
‘The chess games,’ she says, as the unanswered question raises a hand. ‘You beat a load of American tourists.’
He allows himself a flash of smile at the memory. ‘Six of them, in a semi-circle. All better than me. I was the black pieces on the first board. I let the best player start. Mimicked his move on the next board over and did the same along the row. They were playing each other and didn’t notice. Just a trick, really.’
‘Wouldn’t that only work if they all made i
dentical follow-up moves? And the first player would beat you, wouldn’t he? You must still be good. Must be.’
‘No,’ he says, as if it’s important she accept his version of events. ‘It’s just a trick.’
A blue-faced woman in baggy white dungarees spirals past, her face illuminated by the flame. The beat is growing stronger; the rhythm starting to pulse like a heartbeat. On such nights, Betsy can believe herself healed. She knows it is fantasy; knows she is merely high on atmosphere, but in this moment, amid the maddening, pounding feast of saturnalia, she feels oddly peaceful, as if this were home.
‘You want to stay?’ asks Jude.
‘What, until the party? Yeah, course.’
‘No, I mean, long-term. Here. In the valley. We can go anywhere. None of the other stuff seems to matter, I thought I’d lost you, and it was as if somebody had hollowed me out and filled me with ash. I can’t be without you.’
‘I’ll never be properly well. I’ll always be a nightmare.’
‘They’re much more memorable than dreams.’
She squeezes him. Kisses him. Hears Anya say ‘yuk’ and urge them to get a room. She’s recording the procession as it goes by, sending footage to her mum, who’s never experienced a New Year without her but is revelling in the opportunities afforded by having ‘cool Aunt Betsy’ in her life.
A man with a flowing white beard stomps by, his flaming torch throwing ribbons of fire into the black sky.
Betsy watches the fire. Feels the pulse of the dance. Lets the street turn into a serpent beneath her feet and sways in time with its gyrations.
There will come a time when all of this matters, she thinks. A time when she will feel like the devil for her part in all this blood.
But not tonight.
Not when the demon is dancing with so much more gusto than God.
And soon, there is just a man, a woman, and a child, watching the procession, and ushering in the new.