by J G Alva
“You liked him?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you just liked the person you thought he was.”
“Yes,” the detective admitted philosophically. “But, at the same time, I did know him, I think. I mean, I was right about him not succumbing to the Cult.”
“What?”
He smiled grimly.
“The whole time, I was so sure that it couldn’t be Darren that was helping the Cult. All of my instincts told me it couldn’t possibly be him. And it turns out I was right. He was trying to destroy them, not help them.” Harris shrugged. “A small victory,” he added. “But I’ll take it.”
He turned slightly toward Sutton.
“But you,” he said, and paused briefly. “You already knew that.”
Sutton pulled a face.
“I had an idea it was something along those lines.”
“How? I mean, what made you think that?”
Sutton shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Just the way he talked about the Cult. And the way he was so…conflicted. Something didn’t add up.” He shrugged.
“Well,” Harris said. “It’s all done with now.”
“He’ll go to prison?”
“No. A psychiatric facility. After what he did to Bellafont, when he was already dead…I don’t understand it.”
Harris shook his head, mystified…but he also looked sad.
“I think he honestly believed Bellafont had powers,” Sutton said. “I mean, he wasn’t the only one. You’ve heard of Rasputin?”
Harris nodded.
Sutton continued, “his killers shot him three times and threw his body into an icy river. Because he’d come back once before from an assassination attempt. I’m assuming Darren thought Bellafont might be able to do the same.”
Harris shook his head again.
“Madness,” he said, astonished.
“Yes,” Sutton agreed.
Harris took a sip of tea.
“How is the boy?”
Sutton cleared his throat.
“Doing better, I think. He has some family left, on his mother’s side. I think he starts University in Switzerland next month.”
“And the woman? Miss Graham?”
“She’s fine,” Sutton said. “She’s got a huge company to run; she’s too busy to dwell on what happened. I’m seeing her tonight, funnily enough. She’s coming over.”
More silence. More idly observing the harbour. There was a very gentle breeze, and on it floated an assortment of smells: petrol, food, suntan cream, the river.
“What about your…other friends?” Harris asked.
Sutton knew who the detective meant.
“Other friends?”
“Yes,” he said, placing his cup on the saucer with a decisive clack. “The ones with the guns. And the rocket launcher. The ones who turned central Bristol into a mini-Beirut.”
Sutton said mildly, “I don’t know who you mean.”
Harris stared at him, and then gave up.
Stiffly, he rose to his feet.
“A ruddy wall,” he said, holding out his hand. Surprised, Sutton shook it. “I don’t know if I approve of your methods – in fact, part of me is righteously appalled by them – but as I said, it’s a strange world. Maybe…you have to be a little strange to best it. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Sutton said, “I’m boring. Probably the most prosaic person you’re likely to meet.”
Harris leaned in close.
“You are anything but, Mr Mills. Anything but.”
◆◆◆
Something was bothering Aimee.
She arrived just after seven, and she was dressed for a public night, not a private one: an off the shoulder black dress that clung to the shape of her with magnetic tightness. The gentle flowing curve of her hips was something to behold. With her hair styled, and diamond teardrop earrings, she looked stunning.
She came with a bottle of Le Cailleret, an expensive white wine. Sutton wasn’t much of a wine drinker, but he appreciated the effort.
“Are we celebrating something?” He asked.
“No, no,” she said quickly…too quickly. “I just thought I’d make it an occasion.”
She smiled then.
She exclaimed over the setting of the table; the weather was good enough that they could eat on the balcony, and Sutton had lit some candles.
“Ooh, that’s nice,” she remarked. She held up the bottle. “Where do you want this?”
“I’ll take it.”
She tottered toward him in her heels. Her feet and ankles were strung with a complex array of criss-crossing straps.
“Did you want to go out?” He asked.
“Not. Not especially.” She checked him. “Why? Did you?”
“No. I just thought-“
“We can go out, if you want. I don’t mind.”
“Do you want to go out?” He asked again, mildly exasperated.
“No. Honestly. Unless-“
“I’ve already cooked.”
“Ah.” She took a turn around the room, and then came back to the kitchen. “But you don’t cook,” she pointed out.
He smiled.
“I ordered the food then,” he said. “Go and sit down. I’ll bring it out.”
She exclaimed enthusiastically over the food, commenting favourably on every course; if you listened to her tell it, it was the best meal she had ever had. In the end, Sutton could stand it no longer.
“For fuck’s sake, what is it? What are you not telling me?”
She avoided his eyes.
“I forgot how you see people,” she said quietly.
“No, you didn’t,” he said. “That’s what this is: a prelude.” He indicated the dress, and the wine. “To soften me up.”
She hesitated, and then said, “I’ve got to go to America. For work.”
“Is that all?”
“For three months.”
Sutton kept his tone light when he said, “it’s not like we’re engaged. Is it?”
She stared at him. It was a hard stare.
“No.”
“So then why the reluctance to tell me?”
“Well.” She paused. “These last four weeks have been…different.”
They had. He couldn’t argue with her, so he remained silent.
She continued, “I’ve gotten…comfortable.” She looked at him. “Haven’t you?”
He nodded and said, “we just fell into a rhythm. After all that happened, and I had to stay with you, because I had nowhere to stay…”
“Oh, stop it,” she said angrily. “Stop trying to let me off the hook. This past month it’s been different. It’s been like a relationship. It has been a relationship. I never thought I could go out with you. I mean, you’re funny, incredibly intelligent, beautiful in your own way, but we’re so different…”
“The hippy and the corporate robot,” he said, amused.
“Exactly. Except…it happened. It is happening. I was content to let it develop and see where it went. And then this came up.”
“A test,” Sutton said.
“If you like.”
“Do you want to go?”
She let out an angry sigh.
“Not especially. But I probably should. If I want to remain CEO. But it’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t want to be in this position: that I feel like I have to explain why I need to go.”
“I’m not demanding anything-“
“I know that. I know. But you deserve it. Because of this…thing. This thing that’s happened.”
“Thing.”
“You know.” She waved her hand. “The comfortability.”
“Ah.”
“I like coming home to you. I can’t deny it. I get a little thrill to think you’ll be here when I get home. I mean, I’ve been basically living with you in this place…”
“So you’re gone for three months,” Sutton said. �
��What’s the problem? I’m not going anywhere.”
“Because I don’t think we’ll be able to pick up where we left off when I get back,” she said. “Before, it was fine: I’d call you up, you’d call me up, we’d go out, enjoy ourselves, and then maybe sleep together, or whatever. Now this thing has happened…”
“The thing,” Sutton said, mock-ominously.
Her eyes flashed at him: a warning.
“It could be six months,” she said then, still angry…but maybe not with him.
Ah. Now they were getting to it.
“Could be?”
“It’s actually very likely to be six months. Maybe longer.”
“Right.” He picked up his fork, looked at it, put it back down. They wouldn’t survive six months, and she knew that. And she wanted to ask him if they could, but she wouldn’t, because she knew how he’d respond.
“You can’t complain,” she said, trying for humour, but not quite managing it. “You wanted me to be like this. To fight for myself. To belong to myself.”
“I’m not complaining,” he said.
But he could have added that, like the vet who has nursed the tropical bird back to health and watched it return to the wild, he might end up being sadder than before he had encountered it…the goal was moral, but the reward was sacrifice, and a bitter pill. The vet could not expect the bird to return…or if it did choose to return, the bird would not be dependent on the vet again.
The price of a selfless deed.
“When do you have to go?” He asked.
“Saturday.”
“Two days.”
“Yes.”
He lifted his wine glass, examining its contents.
“Nice wine,” he said.
Aimee’s eyes looked mournful.
◆◆◆
“I forgot to ask how the funeral went,” Aimee said.
She was curled into his side, her arm across his chest. He was breathing a little fast, as was she, and they were both dappled with a light patina of sweat.
The funeral.
There had been over two hundred people in attendance. The plot was in what Sutton thought a crowded hollow: gravestones and markers packed tightly together, as if they had slipped down the hill to its lowest point. He hadn’t been invited, and had stood off to one side, at the edge of the graveyard, the low hanging leaves of an elm tree providing cover for him.
But he saw the casket being lowered, saw people weeping, saw pale miserable faces etched with pain. Freddie. He wouldn’t have wanted this, Sutton thought. He would have wanted laughter, and jokes; a party. No alcohol of course, but a party nonetheless. A celebration of who he had been.
But this…
It was the saddest funeral he had ever been to.
The irony of that thought wasn’t lost on him.
Eventually, the crowds dispersed, walking in disparate twos and threes back up the hill to the church, presumably to get in their cars to travel to the wake, wherever that was being held. He hadn’t been invited to that either. He could understand it, but he still felt cheated.
There were some stories he would like to have told. God, were there.
After the crowds were gone, he ventured out of the shadow of the elm and went to the grave. He stood in front of it, his hands in his pockets. He was going to say something, just between himself and Freddie, but the words died in his throat.
Maybe he only meant to apologise.
His vocal cords refused to provide any sound however.
He became aware of someone’s scrutiny of him then. He looked around wildly, alarm pounding in his chest: the lingering stains of his dealings with the Cult. A sudden rush of panic, coming out of a dream of people wearing severed animal heads and chasing him.
Who was he lying to? These responses were nothing new. He had always woken with a start. In fact, it was these reactions that he counted on, that had kept him alive…doing what it was that he did.
A figure stood on the hill beside the church.
He couldn’t make out the identity of this person – the figure was too far away – but he didn’t have to. He knew who it was.
Lisa Hopkins.
She stood looking down at him, and although she gave no outward sign, he knew she wished him ill.
They stared at each other for about a minute, and then she turned back toward the church.
Another one who wants me dead, he thought…but she would have to get in line behind so many others.
“It was okay,” he said, stroking Aimee’s arm. “The weather was nice. A lot of people turned up. You never met him, did you?”
“No.”
“He was a funny guy. One of a kind really.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He squeezed her hand.
“Detective Harris came to see me today,” he said.
She sat up.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I think he thought he was fooling me by telling me a lot of things about the case, confidential things, but really he was trying to get Danny’s name out of me.”
Her head settled back down on his shoulder.
“You didn’t tell him.”
“Nope.”
“I wonder if he doesn’t belong in prison anyway. From what you’ve told me about him.”
“He’ll end up there eventually, I expect.”
“And he honestly didn’t fire the shot that killed that guy pretending to be Bellafont?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Yeah. He has no reason to lie, but…it sort of makes sense. The members of the Cult were willing to fight, but they were going to be better fighters if they had a reason to fight.”
“Like the death of their leader,” Aimee said.
“Yes. Plus, Fin said he was pretty much talking to Danny when it happened, so…”
There was a thoughtful pause between them.
“So someone from the Cult shot one of their own. That’s…cold.”
“It might very well have been Bellafont. Or Clive. He’d have done anything for Bellafont, if he’d asked.”
She sat up again.
“Then why in God’s name did he betray him? I still can’t work it out.”
“I’ve told you all this-“
“I know, I know, but…” She shook her head, as if to clear it. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“He was trying to recreate what had happened in the novel,” Sutton patiently explained. “And in the novel, Belluch Luche-“
“You,” she said, prodding his chest.
“Me, killed the boy, Fahl, in front of a crowd. That’s why he called me and told me where you all were: so I’d do it the way it was in the book.”
“But it wasn’t in front of anyone,” she said. “Except us.”
“Well,” Sutton said, and hesitated.
“What?” She prodded his chest again, playfully.
“Clive was the most devout, but…I don’t think he trusted Bellafont to do it. To kill Toby, I mean. I think he knew Bellafont was infatuated with him. And…”
“What?”
“I don’t know…I think maybe Clive was jealous. Calling me to come to the church to kill Toby…it must have seemed like he was killing two birds with one stone. I think he saw it as the only way to save everyone, including himself: he threatens to kill you to get me to kill Toby, I kill Toby just as I did in the novel, Bellafont is no longer distracted – and corrupted – from the true calling of the Cult by Toby, and they can then bring about the revolution to save mankind.”
She rested her chin on her hand, thinking about it. Idly, her finger traced circles on his chest.
“And the police station?” She asked.
“What about it?”
“How did they know Toby would turn up there?”
“I don’t know, Aimee, I haven’t got all the answers-“
“It seems like you do,” she said, prodding him again. “It seems like you’ve
got it all worked out.”
Sutton sighed.
“I suppose…they just hoped,” he said eventually. “An educated guess. And like a lot of Bellafont’s guesses, he was right. I think…underneath all that craziness, he might have been a very smart man.”
“Okay,” she said, settling back down.
They were silent for a time.
“I’m going to miss this,” she said, later.
“Hm. Me too.”
“I’m going to miss you.”
“It’s been a good month,” he said. “All things considered.”
“I’ll call, you know,” she said. “If you want me to. If you want to catch up.” She raised her head then. “We can be friends, can’t we? If you want me as a friend. That can work, can’t it?”
He thought about it.
He didn’t have many friends, but the friends he did have were precious to him. If he had to join a cult – if he absolutely had to, at the point of a gun – then it would have to be something based on friend worship. Nothing else would do.
After all, there really wasn’t anything else worth fighting for.
“Yes,” he said, smiling. “That can work.”
◆◆◆
EPILOGUE
The Property Room was in the basement of the building.
Fin followed a policeman, who led him down some steps and then along a dimly lit corridor that seemed to stretch for an eternity. Like perdition, Fin wasn’t altogether sure about what he would find at the end.
“If I go, there’ll be too many questions,” Sutton had said. “I’ve been lucky to have avoided being dragged into the investigation as it is. But if Harris somehow gets wind that the safe is mine…”
“I’ll do it,” Fin replied. “Don’t worry about it.”
The corridor abruptly turned right, and terminated in a steel mesh door opened with a number. Fin’s police escort – a tall man in his early thirties with blonde hair – typed in the unknown number and then pushed the door open at the buzz. Another officer was inside the Tardis-like room. He had his own cubbyhole amongst a well of boxes, computers, and other miscellaneous junk.
“Can I see your paperwork please?”
Fin handed it over.
As with most things in the modern world, lost or stolen items recovered by the police were now all managed online. Reportmyloss.com. Forged paperwork validating Fin’s ownership of the safe was easy enough to fabricate. He had nothing to worry about.