by Matt Drabble
‘What about the gallery?’ Charlotte gently probed.
‘It was my promise to her,’ Travis said when he was able to speak again. ‘I promised her I would look after the gallery. It was her dream to allow artists a space to exhibit their work – a place to showcase new talents that otherwise might go unnoticed. It was her legacy and I let it fail. I was too caught up in my own grief to keep my promise. But Vargas, whatever his intentions are, has given me the opportunity to keep that promise. And I won’t let her down again, Charlotte. If the Montague Portrait exists, then I will deliver it to Vargas and I will keep my promise.’
‘And what if I won’t let you?’ Charlotte asked in a tone to match his.
‘Then I guess we’ll just wait and see,’ he said as they locked gazes and the air crackled between them.
CHAPTER TWELVE
UNEASY ALLIES
Chris Taylor stared into space. His mind was racing, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep his compartmentalised life separate anymore. There were overlaps developing and he wasn’t even sure just whose side he was on.
He had begrudgingly sent Parker the information he requested. He felt as if he was walking a tightrope high above a deep and dark cavernous drop that was desperate for him to fall and swallow him whole. He was being pulled in so many directions and didn’t know which way to turn for the best. Janey would go berserk if she knew that he was still helping Travis, and he shuddered to think just what his paymaster would make of his self-employed sideline. All he could do now was try to find his long buried conscience somewhere deep within himself. Perhaps there was still some good left, and perhaps he wasn’t a lost cause after all.
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Dr Gabriel Lochay stared hard at the woman in a nurse’s uniform standing trembling before him. She was as much a nurse as he was a rocket scientist. He finally dismissed her with a contemptuous wave of his hand; her information was necessary but not completely what he was hoping to hear. He seldom handed out praise of any kind and she was sent on her way with fear in her eyes, which was exactly how he liked to run things.
The Shady Oaks Retirement Home was indeed a home with shady intentions and dark secrets – a place where people with knowledge were put out to pasture and hidden in plain sight. He would have happily built the home on a desert island with walls that stretched up to touch the sun, but he had to accept the reality of their situation. They would never be untouchable; their enemies would always find them eventually and a deserted location would not be to their advantage. The safest place to hide was always in front of plenty of witnesses. They would never stop trying to infiltrate the home, but they were always easy to spot. That was until Travis Parker; the man’s life was beginning to unravel before them now, and the more that Lochay discovered, the more he was surprisingly reassured. Parker was not one of them. If he was, their security would have been rendered null and void. No, Parker was an unwitting pawn of the enemy. He had been able to slip inside the inner sanctum because he was unaware of his own instructions. Their security had not been breached in any traditional way, but it had nevertheless been breached.
‘Oh, Vargas,’ Lochay murmured under his breath. ‘You sly old fox.’
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Travis looked over the large oak table that stood proudly in the B&B kitchen. The room was warm and welcoming and the table groaned under the weight of the breakfast spread: see-through containers holding every possible type of cereal, bowls of peeled fresh fruit, a steaming pot of porridge, and plates of pastries.
His stomach rumbled, as he had eaten little after the conversation with Charlotte at the pub the previous night. Their meals had remained largely untouched, much to the concern of the friendly landlady.
The taste in their mouths had been bitter with the tension between them. They laid their cards on the table in the hope of clearing the air, but it only served to muddy the waters. She believed wholeheartedly that the Montague Portrait was the cause of her childhood ills; she believed that the painting was haunted by the murderous soul of Hugo Montague and that his spirit had possessed her father and murdered her mother. Now, in the sunny warm kitchen, the notion seemed preposterous to Travis, but after Delaney’s story at the retirement home it was the second similar tale he’d been told in the space of twenty-four hours.
According to Charlotte, Vargas was attempting to reclaim the huge insurance payout for the painting. This was on the basis that the Montague Portrait had not been destroyed in the fire and was still in existence today. He also knew that Charlotte was hell bent on finding the painting and destroying it. Unfortunately he was equally hell bent on finding it and returning it to Vargas in order to finally fulfil his promise to Amy. Whether Charlotte was deeply disturbed or only mildly, he did not know, but he did know that she was dangerous to his own plans, and it would be best for now to keep her close by.
Just as she was leaving his thoughts she entered the kitchen. Their night together had been spent as far apart as they could get within the confines of the bedroom. At first he was unwilling to relinquish the bed; she seemed younger and a lot healthier than him. But in the end, in a childish rebellion, he refused to accept her offer for him to take the bed. After about twenty minutes of sleeping on the floor, he regretted his immaturity.
‘Ah, ’morning you two,’ Joffre said as he entered the kitchen from the garden door at the other end of the room. ‘Sleep well?’
‘Very well, thank you,’ Charlotte said with a smug smile directed at Travis.
Travis was hunched over the table. His back was killing him but he managed a smile for their host. ‘Great, thanks,’ he said, avoiding eye contact with his haughty room-mate.
‘Well, tuck in and help yourselves,’ Joffre said. ‘It’s just you two and another couple of gentlemen staying, so don’t be shy.’
Travis took a croissant and spread it with a liberal amount of butter. If he couldn’t sleep well, at least he would eat well.
‘You should try the reduced fat margarine, dear,’ Charlotte said, smiling sweetly. ‘You are getting a bit tubby, darling,’ she said, loudly enough for Joffre to hear.
Travis flushed with embarrassment and had to exercise great restraint not to throw something at her. ‘Did you find your moustache removal cream?’ he broadsided in an equally loud voice to match hers. Her angry stare rallied his enjoyment of his impending breakfast.
‘Now now, you two,’ Joffre said gently. ‘I’m guessing newlyweds by the grumpy morning bickering.’
‘Yes, how did you know?’ Travis replied amiably.
‘I can always tell. It’s the passion – all that childish squabbling. It’s always a giveaway.’
Travis had to fight a grin as Charlotte looked fit to burst with annoyance. Just then the kitchen door opened and two men entered the arena. Travis turned to welcome them. The men seemed casual enough; they were dressed in nondescript suits and wore the look of the average and the boring. But Travis’s senses flickered; the old muscle memories were returning stronger every day, like an athlete who had been sidelined through injury for a long time, but was getting closer to match fitness.
The two men smiled pleasantly enough and sat down side by side at the table facing Travis and Charlotte, who had resumed her seat.
‘Is there any toast?’ she asked Joffre.
‘White or brown, my dear?’
‘Brown, please,’ she said, smiling.
‘Tea or coffee, folks?’ Joffre asked the newcomers.
‘Tea,’ they both said.
As Charlotte busied herself with spooning fresh fruit and yogurt into a bowl she did not notice them, but Travis did. He knew the men were staring at him, and he knew that they knew full well that he did. It wasn’t anything they said or did; they were both perfectly average and inconspicuous. But there was just something a little too perfect about them.
Charlotte began to speak and Travis clamped his hand down hard on her leg under the table, never taking his eyes off the men opposite. They in t
urn sat motionless, their eyes hard and all-knowing.
Charlotte swung round as if to speak angrily to him, but sensing the tension in the air she turned slowly, and for the first time faced the two men. She reached quickly for a knife on the table, but with another under-the-table squeeze of her thigh Travis stopped her.
The space between the four of them crackled with electricity as Joffre clanked around on the stove, oblivious as he made the tea and placed slices of brown bread in the toaster.
Travis felt the anxiety rising rapidly in Charlotte as her leg began to twitch and tense. He willed her to be still, to not act foolishly. He had no idea who the men sitting silently across from them were. He didn’t know what he and Charlotte were facing or what the men’s intentions were. It was his custom never to rush into any potential danger without first being forearmed with knowledge, and at this moment he had none.
Neither of the two men had so much as blinked since their gazes had locked. The tension was palpable and crippling. The world outside had simply come to an abrupt stop: the birds fell silent, the distant traffic flow halted and the wind held its breath.
The stillness was shattered as the toaster popped up with a deafening clang and all hell broke loose.
Travis turned in time to see but not to prevent Charlotte snatching up a serrated knife laid out for slicing pastries and leaping over the oak table.
The man directly opposite her moved almost as fast as she did, but only almost. His hand slipped neatly into his inner jacket pocket and Travis saw the briefest flash of silver. His eyes bulged wide as Charlotte launched herself soundlessly; her right hand held the blade and her arm swung in a vicious arc. Plunging the knife into the man’s throat she ripped it, tearing the flesh and opening a gaping wound. The man’s blood poured out and he staggered backwards from the table as he clutched frantically at his fatal injury. His mouth opened and closed like a gaping fish out of water, struggling for breath.
As the second man struggled to free his own weapon Travis moved as quickly as he could. His saving grace was that the man was heavily splashed by his partner’s blood, making his movements slow. Travis swept up the porridge pot and flung the boiling sludge into the man’s face. His own revulsion was somewhat tempered as the man finally managed to draw a silver revolver from his inside pocket and point it at Charlotte, at the same time screaming in a high pitched voice as he clawed at the scalding porridge that was burning the soft pink flesh of his face.
Travis turned to Charlotte, but she had already scooped up the first man’s gun and was pointing it at the second man. He opened his mouth to tell her not to, but the gunfire was deafening as the back of the second man’s head exploded out of the back of his skull.
Charlotte spun around to Joffre who was standing shaking, holding a pot of tea in one hand, a look of terrified horror on his face.
Travis didn’t have time to speak. Searching blindly behind him on the breakfast table he hurled the first thing his hand grabbed. A flash of yellow spun through the air and more through luck than skilful aim the object struck her on the side of the head – just as she pulled the trigger. The bullet went wild and shattered a ceramic jug hanging over the worktop counter. She turned on him with murderous rage blazing in her eyes.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Travis demanded.
‘He’s in on it. He must have told them where we were,’ she shouted.
‘Are you going to shoot the postman next? How about the milkman? There’s a horse in the field behind that looks a bit shifty – why don’t you shoot him just to be on the safe side!’
She turned her gun arm towards him.
‘Oh,’ he said, laughing without the slightest vestige of humour, ‘so you’re going to shoot me next, are you?’
‘I told you that no-one is going to get in my way!’
‘Oh, great plan. Just shoot everyone and maybe at some point you’ll get lucky and hit the right man.’
She did not answer.
Joffre continued to tremble. ‘I won’t tell anyone,’ he whispered. ‘I promise.’
Shaking his head, Travis sat down heavily amidst the death and confusion.
‘All right, genius, what would you have suggested?’ she asked in a petulant voice.
‘Well, to start with I’d have liked to ask them a few questions. I mean – that might have been nice, don’t you think? Kind of useful?’
She smirked in return.
‘What a mess,’ Travis muttered to himself. ‘All right then, Joffre’ he said, standing up with a sigh and glaring at him. ‘What do you know about our fellow guests here?’
‘Nothing. They booked over the phone yesterday – about an hour after you got here,’ Joffre stammered. ‘I’ve never met them before. They said they were in town for some conference, outboard motors I think. That’s all I know, I promise.’
‘We can’t just leave him here,’ Charlotte said harshly. He saw us. He knows what we did.’
‘What we did? Oh thanks very much,’ Travis said.
‘Look, whatever we do, we’ve got to do it quickly. Someone could have heard the shots.’
Travis walked over to the still trembling Joffre and took the teapot from him. He guided their host towards the garden doors, holding out a hand to silence Charlotte’s protests. ‘If you promise to tell no-one, you can go.’ He pointed towards the garden door.
As Joffre turned to escape, Travis brought the full metallic teapot down heavily on the unsuspecting landlord’s head, and he slipped silently to the floor.
First pausing for a moment to make sure Joffre was unconscious Travis hurried to the two dead men. He carefully searched their pockets until he found their wallets and flicked them both open. Neither contained identification of any sort – no driving licences or credit cards, only cash. No ID, only nameless men with guns. It was not a good sign.
Travis turned back to Charlotte. ‘Go up to their room,’ he said, pointing at the two dead men. ‘Find their car keys and leave your keys for the rental car in their room.’
For once she listened to him and without question followed his instructions. He quickly grabbed a thick cushion from the lounge, returned to the kitchen and took the remaining revolver. He placed the gun into Joffre’s hand and fired into the cushion to mask the noise and place gunpowder residue onto the landlord’s hand. Leaving the revolver in Joffre’s hand, he made sure to press the fingers onto the handle and trigger.
Systematically wiping any surface that he or Charlotte had touched, he headed up to the bedroom and repeated the process. All he could hope for was that he could create enough confusion to at least give them a little time to get away. Two dead bodies in the kitchen – one stabbed with Joffre’s knife, and the other shot with what was now Joffre’s gun. He felt bad that the kind landlord would have his reputation tarnished, but hoped it would only be temporary.
He had used fake names and hopefully left no trace with which to be tracked, at least by the police. Whoever had sent the dead men was another matter.
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Less than five minutes later they were on the move again, only this time in a different car. A cursory search of the men’s car had yielded little more information than the men themselves, save for a mobile phone in the glove box. Travis turned the phone on, only to find it locked with a password.
He drove up the lane towards the main road, away from the B&B. There were no screaming sirens heralding the arrival of the authorities, so at least for the time being their luck was holding.
He shielded his eyes against the glare of the rising sun when suddenly the top of the lane was blocked by a large van. He slammed on the brakes and prepared to hand himself over to the police and hope that they bought his tale. Charlotte was whipping out the silver revolver taken from one of the men and was about to Butch and Sundance it, when at the very last possible moment he grabbed her arm.
‘No!’ he screamed. Beneath the blinding sun’s rays he had caught a flash of red on the van. It was just the postma
n.
‘Morning,’ he called as he exited the car. ‘Is that for Beech Cottage?’ He motioned to the postman’s clutched parcel as he leaned out of his van.
‘Uh, yeah,’ the postman replied ‘Someone called Travis Boulder staying at the cottage.’
‘Great, that’s me,’ Travis called back in his friendliest tone. As he was using a fake surname he hoped the postman wouldn’t ask for ID.
‘Saves me a walk,’ the postman said, grinning as he met Travis halfway down the lane and handed over the parcel.
Travis recognised Chris Taylor’s handwriting on the brown paper wrapping and blessed his unexpected good fortune at not missing the valuable information he knew it would contain. Clutching the parcel he returned to the car while the postman returned to his van, reversed up the lane and disappeared.
‘You drive,’ he told Charlotte. ‘I’ve got some reading to do.’
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Charlotte drove the car in stony silence. Her racing heart had slowed, and the adrenaline rush left her shaky with a churning stomach. She had never killed anyone before, despite her surprising apparent aptitude for the business. She was not a cold hearted killer, she was no professional assassin; she was just a woman who believed in being prepared.
Ever since the Montague Portrait stole her life from her, deep down she knew that one day it would return to try to finish the job.
Despite whatever Mr Travis Parker believed, she knew that Hugo Montague lived within the painted brushstrokes of the brilliant acrylic paint. His was an evil soul that lived on through the ages and would continue to do so until someone put an end to his terror.
Having grown up being passed from family to family, home to home, she had always instinctively known that one day she would have to be ready, ready for anything. Her heart burned with love for her father and black hatred for Hugo, and over the years the hatred had become far stronger than the love.