I didn’t tell her about Luke’s healing, hurting hands. Not then, it wasn’t the time. I didn’t say anything, and she didn’t pursue it. She only nestled close into my lap, spilling water all over the floor; I held her tight, all bones and skin she seemed, all nerves and terror too late allayed. I nuzzled dripping black hair and ears and eyes and cheeks, still tasting of Suzie despite the perfumed cleansers, and wouldn’t let her go until she’d at least stopped crying and those bones lay still within that battered skin.
At last we moved, we climbed out of the bath and patted each other dry with soft towels. Then I searched the cabinets for medical supplies, plasters and antiseptic, though she wouldn’t let me use much of what I found. “I’m not going out there smelling of TCP like a kid,” she said, fending me off.
“Witch-hazel?”
“Not that, either. Stuff stinks. I smell nice,” sniffing at her wrist with the first, faintest touch of a smile.
“I just don’t want you dying of blood-poisoning, that’s all.”
“I won’t. Uncle Han wouldn’t let me.”
She let me plaster the worst of her cuts, but no more than that. We swathed ourselves then in a couple of heavy bathrobes; combed each other’s hair with delaying, dallying fingers; finally touched lips in something more sigh than kiss, only an exchange of air, and nodded an unspoken acceptance. She took my hand, I unbolted the door, and we went out to Deverill.
He was waiting in a sitting-room that had probably been furnished by Mrs Tuck before she left him: slightly faded, slightly chintzy, a motherly kind of room that looked oddly cheap for such an imposing house. Looked cheap to me, at least, until I’d walked barefoot across the carpet and sat down on one of the sofas, felt its fabric under my palm and its nurturing cushions engulf me. Quality like that, comfort like that comes expensive.
What wasn’t comfortable was Deverill’s gaze, where he sat in a chair by the fireplace. Bleak and grey he looked, grey through to the bone of him. Miracles take people like that, sometimes; but he must also have been busy while we bathed, arranging for his men to clear up the mess in his stable yard. His ex-wife, the mess. And not understanding anything that had happened here today, knowing neither of the stories, knowing only that Dean was dead and Mrs Tuck was dead and that neither death was the least bit natural. Small wonder if he looked zomboid and unbalanced.
He was at least ready to sit and listen. That was something. Actually, he looked like he never wanted to move again; drained, he looked, of more than human kindness. I picked a sofa and sat myself, was surprised by comfort and thought I understood him, thought I shared the feeling. Then I heard distant sounds of a heavy motor revving, chains clashing and men calling: noises in the stable yard, they were. And Suzie dropped down into my lap and nestled her still-damp head under my chin, curling up ridiculously small for a grown-up so that I could contain all of her within the circle of my arms; and I thought suddenly that no, I didn’t share Deverill’s feelings at all, probably couldn’t come close to understanding.
To be honest, though, I didn’t particularly feel like trying. A little sympathy I could manage, much tempered by my earlier knowledge of him, something at least of what he had done to other people. Empathy, not. Too much to ask.
Mostly, I wanted to be home. Didn’t at all want to move: me, sofa, Suzie, bathrobes, that much was fine. They were just in the wrong place, that was all. I wanted the flat around us, and no Deverill.
So. Soonest begun, soonest over.
“You paid me to find out who had set up Lindsey Nolan,” I said.
“I paid you a lot.”
“Yes. That was part of it, I’ll come to the money. Thing was, I already knew; only that I couldn’t tell you, because you’d have told it straight to Mrs Tuck, and then Nolan and I both were in the shit.”
“Why so?”
“We’d both be dead by now. Nolan’s lucky, actually, that he isn’t yet. She probably wasn’t sure of him, is all. Suspicious, but not sure. Maybe she was hoping that I really would turn up some third party with their screws into him, to prove all her suspicions false. I don’t know that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No. I’m sorry, I’m not telling this well. I’m tired, and I don’t want to be here. From the top, then: Lindsey Nolan wasn’t set up. Not by anyone else,” as he shifted irritatedly in his chair, ready to deny me. “He set himself up.”
“What?”
“He panicked, I think,” I said. “But he panicked in a smart way. What happened, he found out the truth about Scimitar Securities, or some of it at least—went sneaking into their computer files, most likely, snooped through their accounts and put the numbers together—and he got scared. If Mrs Tuck ever found out how much he knew, he was a dead man. Also I think he’s a moral man, at least by his own lights. He’ll have wanted to stop her, if he could find a way to do it safely. So he sets up a deliberately clumsy scam, tips the police off and does a runner to Spain. Where he makes sure the guardia pick him up, and what do you know? He’s nice and snug in a Spanish jail for a few months, fighting extradition. One thing about jails, they’re designed to be hard places to get into. It’s not ultimately safe, not for ever; but for the moment it makes a pretty good hole to hide in. And he gets visits from Scotland Yard, very public, very legit. I don’t think they’re only talking about a defrauded charity. I think he probably left plenty of evidence behind him, that he was running that scam in self-defence and deliberately turned himself in. I don’t suppose it’ll even come to trial, in the end. Likely they’re negotiating about that at the moment, and meanwhile he’s just been feeding them fragments of what he knows, holding the rest back till he’s sure of his own position, that’ll be why the police haven’t busted the whole operation yet—”
“Wait a minute.” Deverill held his hand up, physically to stop me. “Wait a minute. Why would they bust Dorothy’s operation, what are you talking about? What does Lindsey know about her, that I don’t?” Nothing, his voice was saying; and whatever she’s done, I’ve done worse, and Lindsey knows all about that and he’s never tried to bust me. He’s not a moral man, he’s as bent as a three-bob bit...
“I can’t say for certain, you’ll have to ask him; but what I know about for sure is kidnap, murder, trafficking in drugs and trafficking in flesh,” working them off on my fingers one by one, with just a faint grunt from Suzie at losing even that much contact with me. “Specifically, organising sex rings for the abuse of children and then killing the kids after. Anything with the word ‘traffic’ in it, I suppose, that was their speciality: moving things about, whether it was people or other goods. Well, you know about that, they supplied your work-crews, didn’t they?”
His eyebrows twitched an acknowledgement, though he was far too experienced a hand to admit it directly. Instead, “Drugs?” he said.
“Yes. I don’t know the details; ask Lindsey Nolan. That would have been the most profitable, I’d guess, so it’s most likely what he spotted on the account sheets. It’s hard to cover up that much laundry. Especially from a specialist.”
“I hate drugs,” he said, and his face shifted. Odd, to see that in a man so professionally hard, ordinarily so controlled. “My first wife died from an overdose, did you know?”
No. First time around, probably I had known; my research would have thrown that up. But I hadn’t bothered to make a note of it, discipline slipping by then, so no, I hadn’t known this time until he told me. Made sense, though. That was when Mrs Tuck had wanted to stop answering questions, as soon as I mentioned drugs. Those would be Vernon’s scruples, and a problem to her if he found out. “Well, your second wife dealt in the stuff,” I said, deliberately brutal. “She dealt in anything she could get her hands on, so long as it was illegal.”
“Why? Why would she need to do that? If it was money she wanted, I’d have given her more. I offered her more, but she wouldn’t take it...”
“It wasn’t money,” I told him wearily. “I think it was the competit
ion. Now she wasn’t partnering you any more she needed to challenge you instead, to take you on and beat you at your own game. She couldn’t hope to compete on money terms, you’d been at it twenty years longer and you had an empire already; all she could do about that was take half of it in settlement, and that would have been no victory at all. So she did some hard thinking, and found another way. She took just one company from you, and set out to be a better villain than you are, every which way she could. You’re a bad man, Mr Deverill, but your ex-wife was a hell of a lot worse.”
He grunted, was silent for a time, absorbing the news. Then, “You’re not so pure yourself. You took a lot of money from me, lad.”
“Camouflage,” I said. “Misdirection. All the information that came to you, went to her. I couldn’t let her think I was onto her, so I let her think I was ripping you off instead. Stopped you mounting your own investigation, stopped you going to Spain yourself to talk to Nolan...”
“You stopped me. Told me to keep away.”
“That’s what I mean. Very useful to her, that would have been. I don’t suppose he’d have talked to your emissaries”—and a shake of Deverill’s head confirmed that—“but he might just have talked to you. She’d have been concerned. Besides,” coming back to the money and being scrupulously honest with him now, as I couldn’t have been before, “I’d ruined my career for this. Whether I was doing it for your sake or not, it all came back to you in the end. I think it probably seemed only fair to me, that you should put a little capital into my future. I wanted it to cost you something, I think, and money was all I could invoice you for.”
Not all he’d paid, though, not now. His face reminded me of that; my turn to fall quiet.
Then, “So—tonight, then,” he said slowly. “That—that conjuring trick, that man,” though there was a suppressed shiver in his voice that said he knew neither of those labels fitted, “what was going down there?”
Mostly it was his ex-wife going down, I thought madly, in her Portakabin. But, “Different story,” I said. “Just a coincidence they both came together tonight. Luke’s a road protestor, he’s big into trees. Not big into people. That girl you were so vicious with, last time I was here? He killed her, for bulldozing trees at Leavenhall. Then he killed Dean, for making her do it. I guess someone told him it was all Mrs Tuck’s idea, so he killed her too.”
“Actually, it was my idea,” he said; and his face said don’t tell Luke, and I thought we had permanent protection there, against any retribution Deverill might decide to take from us.
There was a phone on a table by the sofa. I reached out an arm, picked up the receiver and dialled. When a known, husky voice answered at the third ring, I said, “Dulcie? Send someone to rescue us, there’s a pet.”
Which she didn’t, again she came to do it herself. By the time she arrived we were already outside the house, waiting barefoot on the gravel, still in those sumptuous bathrobes. “Keep them,” Deverill had said, and I was happy to do that. Our clothes were disgusting, unwearable, and I’d sooner pinch a bathrobe than borrow a suit from this man. Suzie looked less persuaded, more inclined to discard any mementoes, but I thought the sheer heavyweight elegance of the thing might win her over yet.
Sitting in the back of the cab en route for home, with Dulcie asking no questions, Suzie put in one of her own.
“Are you starting to remember things, Jonty? A couple of times back there, it seemed almost like you weren’t guessing any more.”
“I don’t know. I did some heavy thinking when they had me locked in that cabin, and everything seemed to fall into place. I guess I persuaded myself; but I’m not sure what was just logical reasoning, and what was maybe a bit of memory slipping back. Could be I’m starting to recover things. I know I’m very certain about some of what went on, those missing months...”
o0o
So certain I was, next morning I left Suzie still sleeping while I slipped sneaky out of bed, out of the flat, out of the city.
God knows what Mrs Tuck’s thugs—or Deverill’s—had done with the Mini; maybe I should buy Suzie a new car? Just walk into a showroom, flash the gold card and drive out with something equally flashy? But no, the Mini suited her style so well; if it was lost, she’d probably want another just the same. And she’d want to buy it herself. She might let me keep Deverill’s money, but I thought I’d not be allowed to spend much of it on her.
So I did the other thing instead, walked into a showroom and flashed the gold card and bought a car for me. A compromise car, the instinct for caution—look after the ones you love—fighting the anticipated pleasure of her approval.
“I’ll take that one,” I said, waving a cheerfully casual hand towards a low-slung sports model. Never mind Volvo’s propaganda, BMWs had just as good a record for safety. Actually I’d have taken a Jag, only that Deverill drove one.
“Test drive, sir?”
“No, no need for that. It’ll be fine.”
That fazed the salesman, but only slightly. He produced a form, started asking questions about any extra features I’d like fitted before they delivered it. I smiled, and really fazed him.
“No, I’ll take it as it is. And right now, please.”
He wasn’t happy, but gold cards are a wonderful persuader. One phone call to my bank, to check up on me—and I must, I really must go to see my manager—and he was suddenly all cooperation. The car had only been traded in the week before, so its tax disc was still valid; inside half an hour it had been insured and registered to me, and I was driving.
All the way across the country I drove, plenty far enough to test it: over to the Lakes and up the hill, up the track to Luke.
He was just where I knew he would be, crouched over his fire heating water.
“Jonty. I’ve been expecting you.”
“Yeah, I know.” I sat opposite him, waited quietly till he passed me a tin mug of steaming water, my breakfast for the day; and then I said, “It was you, wasn’t it? Who made me crash that night?”
“Yes,” he said, no thought of a lie.
I could see it, so clearly in my head. Returning memory or logical deduction, I couldn’t say: but it was so easy, so obvious now. I’d come to see him, told him I was working for the tree-killer Deverill; and that was betrayal pure and simple, and enough to doom me as it had doomed the girl after me. Luke had his own attitude towards treachery. Bred in his bones, I guess, inherent in what he was. I’d driven off later, he’d tried and convicted me in my absence, and sentence was inevitable and immediate.
So there I was, there I must have been, heading back to the city; and suddenly there was Luke in the road ahead of me. Of course I’d stopped, and of course I’d turned around when he said I should, to take him home, to talk some more, something he had to tell me. Something important, it must have been; what else could make him fly to find me, and then accept a ride in a hated car?
We’d passed a kid on the way, the witness who’d seen me with someone else in the car. And when there was no one else to see, Luke had just lifted the car off the road as I’d seen him lift the cabin last night. And stepped out then, no doubt, into the supportive air, and let me fall.
Only that I didn’t die, as I was meant to. Luck, or physics—a car comes straight down, maybe it takes less damage than a car that flies off a road and rolls—or else some power or principality beyond Luke looking out for me, sheltering me from his judgement. Who knew? Not I. There was only the fact, that I’d been meant to die but I’d lived regardless.
But my cowardly mind, so betrayed, had masked the truth of it in a convenient amnesia. And masked so much else with it, left me so confused I’d had to work the whole story out from first principles, Luke only sees what’s on the surface, he doesn’t understand about lies and hidden motives...
I’d come all this way to hear him say that one word, to hear him confirm—as I knew he would, as he had to—what I already knew that he’d done. And that word spoken, I might as well leave my mug of water undrun
k, get in my scorching new car and scorch back to the city. What more could I say, to a creature who’d tried to kill me for the sake of some threatened trees and a perceived disloyalty?
“Thanks,” I said. “For saving Suzie’s life, last night. You didn’t have to do that.”
And then, as he said nothing, I stood up and left my mug of water undrunk, got into my car and drove home. Wondering all the way whether, next time I visited the Lakes, I’d just go to see my mother like a dutiful son and not detour up that long-known track to visit my so-far-fallen angel.
o0o
Back in the city, back in the flat, I had a furious wife to face. She was in the mood to hit me again, and with reason: “Sneaking off, not saying, not even leaving a note, how could you do this to me? Again? You must have known how scared I’d be. I wanted you here, you bastard, and I didn’t know where the hell you were...”
I told her where I’d been, but that wasn’t enough; I told her what I’d said, what he’d said, and that still wasn’t enough. I offered to take her for a drive in the car, and then she did hit me.
A hard slap on the cheek, a harder fist in the ribs, and I wondered if all our married life I’d be carrying bruises. But I wasn’t prepared just to be a target; I grabbed her in a bear hug, too close for hitting, and whispered laughing love-stuff into her ear as she squirmed and kicked. I only had one of her arms trapped, though. Her other hand wriggled its way under my belt and inside my jeans, and suddenly she was the one who was laughing as it closed tight around my balls.
I yelped, and she grinned savagely up at me. “What now, then?”
“Bed?” I suggested, ever the peacemaker, ever looking for the easy way.
“If you think you’re up to it. Mini-dick. Micro-dick.”
I picked her up and carried her, and she was biting and scratching all the way until I dropped her onto the futon from a great height.
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