All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye

by Christopher Brookmyre

‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘You live to fight another day. Step over the three corpses, mind you don’t trip on the severed head and you walk out alive.’

  Jane flipped on the safety catches and put the guns down.

  ‘You’re revolting,’ she told him. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so callously brutal.’

  ‘It’s not me that’s revolting, Mrs Fleming, it’s the nature of the game. I didn’t make it callous and I didn’t make it brutal. I’m just teaching you how to play it.’

  ‘Bollocks. You made this game. Men made this game. Don’t tell me you’d rather it was different. It’s too bloody obvious you enjoy it.’

  ‘Watching you deploy your skills and maximise your abilities, yes, I do quite enjoy it. Knowing you’re equipped to handle yourself if it all turns to chaos next week, yes, that gives me satisfaction too. But beyond that, Mrs Fleming, don’t presume.’ Bett stood close to her, almost toe to toe, and as he was less than an inch taller than her, eye to eye too. ‘You’re shooting at stuffed sacks. You’ve no idea what I’ve witnessed when the targets bled more than straw, and I can assure you I enjoyed none of it.’

  With that, he turned on his heel and walked out towards the stairs, a spoor of high-minded huff in his wake.

  Jane and Rebekah looked at each other in silence for a moment. She wanted to say something like ‘touchy touchy’ but it would have sounded petty and shallow. She reckoned she’d find Rebekah on her side in sorority against the big bad boss, but was wary of making any assumptions.

  ‘He likes you, you know,’ Rebekah said after a while; quietly, almost as though she was concerned he might still be in earshot.

  ‘He likes me? I’d hate to be in his bad books, then.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t? But believe me, he’s been a ray of sunshine since you showed up. All things being relative,’ she added, with a smile.

  ‘You’re havering. I’ve given him nothing but grief.’

  ‘Yeah, but I think he digs that. It’s probably been a long time since anyone spoke to him like you do. We’re all sure enjoying it.’

  ‘Glad I’ve been of some benefit to you, then. I’ve nothing to lose; nor do I have anything to gain from pulling my punches.’

  ‘True,’ Rebekah agreed, though her coy smile preceded an equivocation. ‘But I think you kinda enjoy it too.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Jane protested. ‘I’m not playing games with this bloke. I’m a married woman and I’ve got enough on my mind right now without …’ she tailed off, reining in her growing indignation.

  ‘Okay,’ Rebekah said, making a backing-off gesture with her palms. ‘You ain’t playing games.’ She was still grinning; more so, perhaps, in response to Jane’s overreaching display of ire. ‘But when you’re ready to talk, I’m here,’ she added.

  Jane stared at her for a moment in sustained outrage at the implication, then couldn’t stop herself bursting into laughter. Rebekah responded in kind, and the two of them soon found themselves breathless with it like a pair of schoolgirls. Pity help them if Bett chose this moment to make his reappearance.

  ‘So, does Bett have … women?’ Jane enquired, once she had stemmed her giggles long enough to know this wouldn’t set them both off again.

  ‘He has women, yeah,’ Rebekah replied. ‘I’m not sure he has relationships, but he has women. I’m not really the one to ask, to be honest. All I know is through Alexis, and a lot of what she knows is through the housekeeping staff. They’re here more. They see more. I mean, we’re not hanging round this place all day normally.’

  ‘And these women, what are they like?’

  ‘Teenage-fantasy stuff, according to Lex.’

  ‘Teenagers?’ Jane asked, horrified.

  ‘No, though they do tend to be half his age. Male teenage-fantasy figures, I think Lex meant. You know: pretty, young, nubile. I think she was being polite. She meant his appetites were immature.’

  ‘Younger women are less … complicated,’ Jane said.

  ‘Easy come, easy go too. I’m sure they’re impressed when they see his crib, but they know they ain’t getting their feet under the table. In fact, here’s a thing. According to Lex, and that probably means according to the housekeeper, the women he brings home sleep … well, in the room you’re in.’

  ‘It’s certainly built to impress.’

  ‘I’m not saying he’s lining you up,’ Rebekah added hastily, with a giggle. ‘What I’m saying is, they don’t get taken to the west wing. Nobody gets into the west wing.’

  ‘Not even the housekeeper?’

  ‘Well, yeah, sure, she gets in. I don’t think he’s got his dead mom in there and her clothes to dress up in or anything. But it’s his domain, and his alone.’

  ‘Have you never been tempted to, you know, sneak a peek if you were sure he wasn’t around?’

  Rebekah looked at her as though the question was absurd.

  ‘Nu-uh,’ she said, ‘Two things. One, I’d never be sure Bett wasn’t around. And two, I don’t want to know what’s in his rooms like I don’t want to know what’s in his head. But I’m not so sure you can say the same.’

  Jane thought she might begin giggling again, but merely found herself blushing instead.

  Lex was sitting at the edge of the swimming pool with her jeans rolled up, dangling her feet in the water. It was chilly, but there was something irresistible about doing it when the spring sun was shining on her shoulders. It was one thing she knew she’d miss if she left this region. Back home there would be weeks and weeks of merciless winter to endure before the mercury got over its vertigo. Sure, it might turn rainy again in a couple of days, but for now she was seizing the moment. Armand was out there too, though with a more industrious purpose. He was checking air tanks and regulators, servicing the kit ahead of possible deployment. Feeling warmth on her skin, cold on her feet and watching the rays on the ripples, she felt absolutely no compunction about not helping.

  However, the moment was brought to an all-too-sudden end as Bett emerged from around the side of the house, walking with a briskness of pace that usually meant he was in a real hurry to kick someone’s ass. She got to her feet instantly, seriously hoping it wasn’t hers.

  He said nothing, though, just paced around next to the water. He had this look on his face that she’d never seen before. At first she thought it was anger, but, looking closer, it was clearly something else, something he could neither contain nor express. It was as though he did not know where to put himself, unaccustomedly lost.

  Armand looked up from where he was kneeling in the shade.

  ‘Is the trainee having difficulties?’ he asked solicitously.

  Bett shot him a glare that seemed more irritated at being roused from his uneasy brooding than at the question itself.

  ‘What? Oh, no, not at all.’

  ‘You sure? You were going to try her on the triple-target test, no? Did she handle it okay?’

  Bett snorted, a hint of scorn far more resembling his normal self.

  ‘She ripped the lot of them. Blew one of their bloody heads off. She has the makings of a very bad girl.’

  ‘So … all is well, then,’ Armand suggested, clearly indicating otherwise.

  ‘Not quite. It’s fine, really, it’s just … well, I think it would be easier if she didn’t give the impression she fucking hates me all the time. Christ, you’d think it was me who’d kidnapped her family.’

  Lex and Armand shared a look that they were doubtless both glad Bett never saw. It said: are you getting this?

  ‘Your happy-go-lucky demeanour not getting through to her, then?’ Lex said, instantly astonished and horrified that she had done so aloud. However, the anticipated thunderous reaction never came. Instead, he seemed to be mulling over what she’d said and looked … surely not hurt, not him.

  ‘I suppose she’s … under a lot of stress,’ Bett ventured uncertainly.

  Maybe he had eaten something that disagreed with him. He definitely needed to go lie down, and s
oon. This was freaking Lex out.

  ‘Dinner,’ said Armand.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You should invite her to dinner. You have this beautiful house, a magnificent dining room. You have the services of Marie-Patrice …’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lex agreed, figuring she might as well ride with this. ‘She’s only eaten in her room, or grabbed a slice of pizza with some of us down in the kitchen.’

  ‘She has had a very hard time recently,’ Armand added. ‘Perhaps it would benefit if she saw a more … sympathetic side to you.’

  Bett pondered this. It was like watching some philosopher wrestle with a concept he had never known existed before.

  ‘I think … you’re right. Yes,’ he decided. And then, weirder still: ‘Thank you. Thank you both. Excellent suggestion.’

  ‘De rien,’ Armand shrugged.

  Bett nodded to himself. ‘Alexis,’ he said. ‘You’ve spent the most time with her, I think she’s quite comfortable with you. Would you please ask her if she’d care to join me for …’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Lex interrupted. ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘I’m only asking you to …’

  She folded her arms, standing her ground.

  ‘Sir,’ she stated, ‘you can order me if you want, but this is not a matter for delegation. Trust me. I’ve hacked into systems for you, I’ve broken into buildings for you. I’ve even killed for you. This is something you have to do for yourself.’

  It was the first time she had seen Bett look truly daunted.

  ‘But what … what if she says no?’ he asked.

  Lex caught a glimpse of Armand out of the corner of her eye and immediately tried to banish the image of his shoulders convulsing with muzzled laughter.

  ‘She won’t,’ Lex assured him.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Between another plateful of cold cuts alone in her quarters and haute cuisine in your grand dining room, it’s a no-brainer, no matter who the company is. Ask and she’ll be delighted.’

  ‘If you’re wrong, I’ll be holding you responsible.’

  ‘It’ll be fine. Just as long as you make it sound like a request, not an order.’

  Lex saw the beginnings of indignation glimmer in his eyes, then he nodded his head as if to say: Yeah, good call.

  * * *

  He wandered off towards the house, his gait less pointlessly meandering than before, but still hardly his familiar confident strut. Lex looked across to Armand. He put a hand over his mouth: I’m saying nothing.

  Jane heard a knock at the door and prayed it wasn’t him. She checked the clock and confirmed that dinner wasn’t for another hour. Thank God. Stay of execution. Time to get herself together, get her head together. Time to pack a bag and plan an escape. What was she doing, agreeing to this? It had sounded very tempting at the time of asking, but that was mainly because she hadn’t had any lunch by that point and the prospect of food had obscured all other considerations. It was now five or six hours since then, in which time she’d only eaten half a baguette, but she was feeling less hungry by the minute. Why was she so apprehensive? Why was she in such a bloody tizz? All the insanity she’d phlegmatically dealt with in the past week and she was in this state over dinner.

  There had to be some kind of transference going on, or perhaps guilt. No, definitely not guilt. It was only a meal with her host, a mutual courtesy. It wasn’t any kind of betrayal of Tom, and in any case her loyalty towards him could better be measured by what she was undertaking to assist in his rescue. Well, yes, okay, there was an element of guilt then, in dining with another man in some fairy-tale mansion while he was held prisoner on some hulk, but it was mainly to do with their comparative circumstances and very little to do with fidelity.

  This wasn’t a date, for Christ’s sake. Fidelity was not, nor would be, an issue. Point one: he liked glam little nymphets half his age, not greying grannies. Point two: he was a monster. That pretty much covered it from both sides. Neither could possibly be interested in the other.

  So why was she starting to wish he’d never asked, and what had changed since he did?

  Owning up time, girl: she’d been flattered.

  He’d come back downstairs to the firing range and sent Rebekah off on some spurious errand, conspicuously engineering a moment’s privacy. He shuffled his feet rather listlessly, impatiently watching Rebekah’s departure and clearly waiting for her to be gone before he spoke. When he did, it was as direct as ever, though lacking his customary authority.

  ‘I’d like to add a little something to your itinerary today, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Sure, what?’

  ‘Dinner. Marie-Patrice’s finest. Shouldn’t be all work and no play, should it?’

  ‘No.’

  He’d started a little, and it was tempting to watch his consternation fully develop, but Jane opted to clarify her position.

  ‘No, it shouldn’t,’ she said. ‘That would be lovely.’

  She managed to keep the grin off her face until he turned his back and walked away. At that moment, her thoughts were not of mutual courtesy, and she had convinced herself that his couldn’t have been either. She still wasn’t sure why she wanted him to like her, but she knew it felt good when he indicated that he did. Perhaps it was because it provided further independent evidence that she wasn’t quite the frumpy old hag she recently feared she’d turned into.

  Alexis had provided the first of it when they’d squeezed in a hit-and-run clothes-shopping trip the previous evening at an enormous two-storey supermarket-cum-department store. While Jane wandered around, unsure where to find anything and trying to remember how European sizes corresponded with those back home, Alexis was swiftly picking up garments and slinging them over her arm. At first Jane assumed Alexis was buying them for herself, until she got Jane to hold a shirt against her chest for size.

  She was about to state her objections, but held her tongue. Out of her normal environment, out of her normal self, she was able to step away and hear how truly tedious her protests would sound. Insistent frumpery, she could suddenly see, was a self-indulgence. The girl wasn’t choosing anything inappropriate and nor was she making any statement: she was just grabbing a few things by way of suggestion because they didn’t have long before the place closed. What took Jane a revelatory moment to absorb was that Alexis was choosing clothes for the woman she was looking at, and that woman was a lot younger than the one Jane had got used to picturing.

  The following morning she had caught her reflection in the gym as she swung kicks at the hanging bag, barefoot in her loose khaki fatigues. What struck her most was not the sight of what she was doing – her agility, the power with which she was delivering her blows, the sweat running obliviously off her face on to fatigues already dark with it in places – but how natural she looked. This was her, and it didn’t look wrong.

  However, the closer it came to dinnertime, the more her old self threatened an ambush from behind the full-length antique mirror. She stood there in just her bathrobe, surveying her sartorial options for the evening, her old self insisting nothing she wore could disguise who she really was. That’s why she was having second thoughts. Monster, brute, killer, no matter, when Bett looked at her in that dining room, she wanted him to see someone who belonged there. She wanted him to see her as an equal, and if she couldn’t make that happen, then she didn’t want to be there at all.

  She walked to the door and slowly opened it an inch to see who was outside. It was Rebekah.

  ‘Brought you these,’ she announced, holding up a pair of hair straighteners. ‘I’m not exactly a beautician – too much of a tomboy all my life – but I thought I could lend you moral support.’

  ‘Could you ever,’ Jane said, welcoming her inside with a smile.

  Lex had called it a day and was heading for her car when curiosity got the better of her and she decided to head out via the kitchen. Whatever magic spell had turned Bett into a human being was unlikely to last, so she wante
d another glimpse of its effects before the enchantment wore off. She stuck her head around the door, ostensibly to say goodbye, though she knew this would have been utterly transparent given that neither of them had ever sought the other out for such a salutation before. In truth, she was still half-expecting to have that head bitten off, spell or no spell, but instead Bett beckoned her inside and began showing her the intended menu. Marie-Patrice was conspicuous by her absence, but this was because she had been dispatched on shopping duties with the kind of budget Bett normally only spent on ordnance.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘I think you should be careful not to overwhelm her,’ Lex replied, casting an eye over the list of extravagant dishes he had planned.

  ‘That’s what Marie-Patrice said, too.’

  ‘But you overruled her.’

  ‘Well, yes. Armand was right. The woman deserves a bit of the good life.’

  ‘Yeah, but if you overdo it, it could be intimidating, like you’re trying to show her you’re lord of the manor when you should be trying to make her feel at home, right?’

  ‘Er, right,’ he said, trying to disguise the fact that he had just been called on his true intention. The poor bastard. He really was a beginner at this normal-human-relations thing.

  ‘And is this the wine you’ve chosen?’ she asked, indicating the bottle sitting in pride of place in the centre of the kitchen table.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, smiling eagerly. ‘Margaux, 1982. It’s the last of three I got as a gift from the French minister for—’

  ‘Then don’t waste it,’ Rebekah told him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Save it for someone who’ll appreciate it. Put it back and open some Ruby Cabernet.’

  ‘It’s Shiraz Cabernet. Ruby Cabernet is marketing-speak nonsense, and anyway, I’m not going to serve Mrs Fleming some inferior plonk. What would that say about my hospitality?’

  ‘Mrs Fleming doesn’t drink wine very much. She’s only getting started, though she is getting to like it. She won’t like your Margaux. She will like some Ruby Cabernet. There’s some nice Australian—’

  ‘Australian?’ he asked, appalled.