by Unknown
“I want . . . justice.”
“Then let him live. There can’t be any further doubts about his guilt. He’ll go back to prison and rot there. You’ve made sure of that. You have his confession on tape. And we know the truth. Once that’s out in the open, nobody’s going to lift a finger to help him.”
“Aren’t they?”
“You know they aren’t.”
I could sense him longing to hear us say his efforts hadn’t all been in vain. He’d risked his sanity, his liberty and his future to make amends to Rowena for not saving her. And they were still in the balance. But tilting even as we watched. Towards life. Towards hope. Towards some kind of dignity.
“You’ll have stopped the tongues wagging, Paul. You’ll have nailed the lies. Isn’t that enough?”
It should have been. Paul should have said “I suppose it’ll have to be” and handed me the gun, reluctantly but conclusively. Then it would have been over. Finished. With no permanent damage done. We could all have breathed again. And lived.
But it wasn’t over. And it was far from finished. Because Paul didn’t respond to reason and logic the way I’d expected. I’d made the oldest mistake in the book. I’d calculated what I would do in his shoes. I’d imagined how I could best be talked into surrender and assumed it would work with him. But we never really know what’s going on inside another person’s head. We never have the faintest clue. Which words will douse the flame? Which words will fan it into a blaze that can become in a second a raging conflagration? We have no idea. We can only guess. Right or wrong.
“Isn’t that enough?” No. It wasn’t. Not nearly.
Paul stood upright and swung round, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on me. He put his left hand into the hip pocket of his jeans, pulled out a small key and held it in front of him, cupped in his palm. “Take it,” he said quietly.
“What is it?”
“The key to the shackles. You want to let Naylor go, don’t you? Well, do it.”
“Hold on. I’m not sure we should just—”
“Do it!” He raised the gun and pointed it straight at me, his finger still curled around the trigger, just as it had been when he’d held the weapon to Naylor’s head.
“This isn’t necessary, Paul,” put in Sarah. “We can leave him where he is until the police arrive.”
“The police? Yes. I suppose they’ll have to be called. To clear up the mess. That’s about all they’ve ever done.”
“Why don’t we—”
“Take the key and release him, Robin!” Paul’s voice was unsteady and his hands were shaking enough to joggle the key in his palm.
“OK, OK. Whatever you say.” I reached out and took the key. Then Paul moved smartly aside and waved me past. I stepped over to the bath and glanced down into Naylor’s eyes. Fear and pleading were swirling there. He knew how much was hanging by a thread. But he’d also heard me assure Paul that, whatever happened, his guilt was now incontestable.
“Go on,” said Paul from behind me.
I stooped over the bath and saw the twin keyholes on the shackles. I smelt Naylor’s sweat, souring in the chill air. He was trembling too. And so was I. I looked back at Paul. “We don’t have to do this,” I pleaded. “We really don’t have to.”
“I say we do. Release him. Now.” He moved to the end of the bath and raised the gun again.
“All right.” I held up the key for him to see. “I’m not arguing.” I leant into the bath, steadying the wrist manacles with one hand while I slid the key into the slot with the other. One turn and they snapped open. Naylor shuddered and parted his arms, allowing me to reach the other set and release his ankles. The shackles clanged hollowly against the enamel as they swung free at the end of their chain. I stood up and watched Naylor fall against the side of the bath, then straighten slowly out along it, his limbs uncoiling stiffly, his face grimacing as blood surged back into constricted joints and stretched muscles.
“Satisfied?” Paul asked bitterly. He leant forward and ripped off the strip of tape sealing Naylor’s mouth in a single sweep of the arm. Naylor gave a cry of pain and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, rolling over as if to hide from his torturer. “I hope you are. I hope you all are.” Paul’s voice cracked as he spoke. He stood up, holding the gun oddly in front of him, as if he’d never seen it before, glancing quizzically at it and Naylor and us in turn.
“We should call the police,” said Sarah, fear writhing beneath the superficial logic of her words. “Without delay.” She must have sensed by now what I too had sensed. That madness was streaming in around us like wolves into an undefended camp. None of us was going to get out of this unscathed.
“You disconnected the phone,” said Paul with a strange mirthless chuckle.
“We can use a neighbour’s. It won’t take long.”
“No hurry, then, is there?” He took a deep breath. “Plenty of time, in fact.” Another breath, deeper still. “You left and I should have followed. But I didn’t have the courage.” Tears began to stream down his face. He wasn’t talking to us any more. He wasn’t talking to anyone we could see. But he could see her. Clearly and distinctly. “I’ve found it now, though. This is the only way, isn’t it?” He opened his mouth wide, pushed the barrel of the gun between his jaws, hesitated for a fraction of a second, then pulled the trigger.
The force of the shot blew Paul back against the loo door, which flew wide open. He fell onto his back in the doorway and the gun clattered to the floor at his feet. Blood trickled down the panelling of the door as it creaked back from its stop and came to rest against his shoulder. And more blood—much more—pumped out behind him in a spreading pool. Silence and immobility closed around us—a long frozen moment of jarred senses and delayed reactions.
Followed by the sound of Sarah sobbing. Then movement, rustling and gathering like reality breaking into a dream. I saw Naylor levering himself up and over the rim of the bath, head bowed, eyes trained on Paul’s body. Time stretched elastically in my mind. And Naylor’s intention burst into a realization. We’d told him his release from prison was an illusion we had the means to shatter. But Paul had been alive then. Now he was dead. If his conspirator were to die as well, along with the only other first-hand witness to what they’d done and why, then Naylor might—just might—walk free.
And even if he didn’t, what did two more murders matter to him? They were a risk well worth taking. We’d made him more dangerous than he’d ever been before. We’d turned him into a man with nothing to lose.
I launched myself across the room as he stepped out of the bath and shoulder-barged him with all my weight. Taken off balance with his limbs still rubbery, he fell towards the wall. I raised an arm to help him on his way, but he had the wit to grab my wrist and take me with him. Then his foot slipped on the enamel and I was free of him for as long as it took to drop to my knees and grab the gun from the floor.
I swung round, the gun in my right hand, my forefinger tracing the trigger-guard and sliding towards the trigger itself. Naylor was above me, one leg out of the bath and one in. He stopped when he saw what I was holding, freezing in mid-movement. His face, distorted by the gashes and bruises Paul had inflicted, knotted into a frown. To lunge at me. Or not. To go for broke. Or play for time. The calculations traced their pictograms across his features as I stared up into them.
“Don’t move,” I said hoarsely, rising slowly and carefully to my feet, with the gun pointing straight at him all the time. And he didn’t move. Not so much as a muscle. “Sarah!” I called without taking my eyes from his. I could just make her out at the edge of my sight, a crouched figure in the doorway, arms clasped defensively around her shoulders. But I knew better than to look directly at her. Naylor would seize any chance I gave him, however slight. “Sarah!”
“Y-Yes?”
“Go and call the police.”
“But—”
“Go!”
“All . . . All right. I’ll be . . . as quick as I can.”
; “Don’t come back here. Wait for them outside. They’ll need directions.”
“Outside? Surely—”
“Get out, Sarah. Get out now.”
She went without another word, perhaps guessing more of my meaning than I’d intended her to. I listened—and watched Naylor listening—to her footfalls as she ran down the passage. We heard the front door of the flat open and shut behind her. Then silence flooded through the empty rooms around us. It was just the two of us now. Just the confrontation—the decisive moment—we’d spent three and a half years feinting and circling and inching towards.
Naylor slowly lifted his other foot out of the bath and lowered it to the floor, his eyes daring me to tell him to stop. But if I told him and he didn’t stop, I had only one sanction. He was testing my resolve, judging what I did—or didn’t—have the nerve for. He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure. And neither was I.
“What happens now?” he asked, the challenge mounting as he spoke.
“We wait for the police.”
He shook his head. “Don’t think so.”
“I say we do. And I have the gun.”
“But you won’t use it. You haven’t got the bottle.”
“Can you be sure of that?”
His gaze narrowed. For a second or two, he weighed the question in his mind, seeking the certainty he needed. Then he said: “Tell you what. I’ll make a deal with you.”
“A deal?”
“Yeh. You let me climb through the window, with the tape in my pocket, before the Old Bill turn up . . . and we’ll call it quits.”
“Why should I?”
“’Cos if you don’t, when they do turn up, I’ll say you were in on it. I’ll say three people took me prisoner and tortured me and threatened to kill me—and you were one of ’em. Abduction. Assault. Conspiracy. Christ knows what. You could be looking at quite a few years inside.”
“They wouldn’t believe you.”
“Can you be sure of that?” He smirked. “Look at it this way. Why risk it? What’s it to you? The girl’s mother. This bloke’s wife. Some poxy old painter. What did they ever mean to you? Nothing, right?”
I almost wanted to smile. Naylor had just repeated my mistake. He’d fallen into the same fatal error. And taken my decision for me. “You’re right, of course,” I said. “They were nothing to me but strangers. Perfect strangers.”
“There you are, then.”
“Do you know why I told Sarah to wait outside? I didn’t. Until now.” I raised the gun and pressed the barrel against his forehead. His eyes widened. His mouth dropped open. He tried to step back, but, with the rim of the bath behind his knees, there was nowhere for him to go. “Can we really change anything, do you think?” Maybe we can, Louise. Maybe we can’t. I don’t know. I’m still not sure. But finishing things? That’s different. When the moment comes and you recognize it for what it is, that’s completely different. “There’s been a change of plan, Naylor. We aren’t going to wait for the police after all. Or, rather, you aren’t.”
“What?”
“You should be grateful. I’m actually doing you a favour. This way you don’t have to go back to prison. And you find out how Louise Paxton felt when she realized you weren’t going to spare her life.”
“Hold on, mate. You can’t be—”
“Serious? Oh yes. I’m serious.” The trees thinned before me as I ran. There was a clearing ahead, a sun-filled glade where Louise was waiting. And this time I knew she wouldn’t walk away. “Never more so.”
“Yeh, but—”
He didn’t finish his sentence. Although, in another sense, I suppose you could say he did. He paid the overdue penalty for what he’d done. There and then.
EPILOGUE
It began more than three years ago, on a golden evening of high summer. And it ended yesterday, as a winter’s night closed its shutters around me. Was it only yesterday? Sitting here, it seems so much longer ago and farther away. Time has stretched in the telling. But I’ve nearly finished now. Soon, you’ll have your statement. Then you’ll be free to type up your reports and draw your official conclusions. Then you really will know it all.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Just twenty-four hours ago, I stood with the gun in my hand and stared down at Naylor’s body in the bath, listening to his blood slowly trickle away. I wasn’t sorry I’d killed him. I’m not sorry now. I don’t think I ever will be. But there were more powerful emotions than sorrow to contend with in the aftermath of what I’d done. Shock made me drop the gun and recoil as it clanged against the enamel of the bath. Horror made me smear the bloodstains across my shirt and coat in a vain effort to wipe them away. Fear made me lean helplessly against the hand-basin, trembling and panting as a wave of nausea swept over me. Disbelief made me gape at the reflection of my face in the mirror above the basin.
And only then did I see Sarah, standing in the doorway behind me. She came forward and put her arms around me, resting her head against my shoulder. We stood like that for several minutes, neither of us speaking. Then we made our way to another room, faintly lit by the glow from a lamp in the communal garden beyond the window. We sat on the floor near the door, our backs to the wall. Still we said nothing. I supposed—when I became capable of supposing anything—that we were waiting to hear a police siren wail towards us through the distant hum of the traffic. But when Sarah broke the silence between us, I realized we weren’t.
“I haven’t called the police, Robin. I never left the flat. When it came to the point, I couldn’t bring myself to. There was something strange in your voice when you told me to get out. Something . . . ominous. I stood in the hallway, trying to work out what it was, waiting and listening, quite what for I didn’t know. Then I heard the gunshot.”
“Well, you’d better call the police now, hadn’t you?”
“Are you sure you want me to? There’ll be no going back if I do.”
“There’s no going back anyway.”
“But there is. For you. If you left before I called the police, there’d be no need for them ever to know you’d been here. I could tell them Paul had shot Naylor, then himself. And I could tell them why.”
“It wouldn’t work. My fingerprints are on the gun.”
“We could wipe them off. And off anything else you’ve touched. Besides, they wouldn’t be looking for your fingerprints.”
“It still wouldn’t work.”
“As a matter of fact, I think it would. I think you could leave here now and fly out to Rio tomorrow with no questions asked.” She slipped her hand into mine. “Why not go, Robin? This was my idea, not yours. Why should you have to answer for it?”
I stared into the darkness around us, tempted by the thought of being able to walk away, untouched and unsuspected. The chance was there for the taking, a chance very close to a certainty.
But, if I’d gone, who would have told you she didn’t want it to end as it did? You’d hardly have taken her word for it, would you? She knew that, of course. She knew it very well. So did I. That’s why I had to refuse. Because two people can only cease to be strangers to each other once. From then on, there really is no going back. The only mistake is to believe there may be. But we’re supposed to learn from our mistakes, aren’t we? I walked away once and lived to regret it. This time, I’ll stand my ground.
ALSO BY ROBERT GODDARD
Harry Barnett series:
1. INTO THE BLUE (1990)
2. OUT OF THE SUN (1996)
3. NEVER GO BACK (2006)
PAST CARING (1986)
IN PALE BATTALIONS (1988)
PAINTING THE DARKNESS (1989)
TAKE NO FAREWELL (1991)
HAND IN GLOVE (1992)
CLOSED CIRCLE (1993)
BORROWED TIME (1995)
BEYOND RECALL (1997)
CAUGHT IN THE LIGHT (1998)
SET IN STONE (1999)
SEA CHANGE (2000)
DYING TO TELL (2001)
DAYS WITHOUT NUMBER (2003)<
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PLAY TO THE END (2004)
SIGHT UNSEEN (2005)
NAME TO A FACE (2007)
FOUND WANTING (2008)
LONG TIME COMING (2009)
And read on for a tantalizing
early look at both
HAND IN GLOVE
and
PLAY TO THE END
coming in trade paperback
in Summer 2006
HAND IN GLOVE
Tristram Abberley was an English poet whose reputation was sealed when he died fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Nearly fifty years later, his sister, Beatrix, is murdered during what appears to be a robbery, but robbery is only part of the motive that underlies her death. . . .
C H A P T E R
ONE
There it was: the same sound again. And this time she knew she was not mistaken. Sharp metal on soft wood: the furtive, splintering sound of the intrusion she had long foreseen. This, then, was the end she had prepared for. And also the beginning.
She turned her head on the pillow, squinting to decipher the luminous dial of the clock. Eight minutes to two. Darker—and deader—than midnight.
A muffled thump from below. He was in. He was here. She could no longer delay. She must meet him head-on. And at the thought—at the blurred and beaming clock-face before her—she smiled. If she had chosen—as in a sense she had—this would, after all, have been the way. No mewling, flickering fade from life. Instead, whatever was about to follow.