by Jo Bannister
“His first thought was that I was lying. That I was working the chain loose before making a bid for freedom. Of course he thought that—he’d have been stupid not to. He started thinking maybe I could be trusted when I explained that being kidnapped was not the worst thing that could have happened to me just then.”
Ash’s mouth was almost too dry to get the question out. “You persuaded Graves to cut you in on the deal?”
“Persuaded.” She thought about the word. “Yes. Yes, in the end he was persuaded. He recognized that if he turfed me and the boys onto the street with enough money for a taxi, we still weren’t going back to you. A whole realm of other possibilities opened up.”
“Are you telling me you were lovers?” He didn’t want to hear her say it. But he knew he needed to.
Her voice ran up in a light rill of laughter, all cool unkindness. She seemed to have abandoned any hope of winning his sympathy, decided her best course lay in unmanning him. “Men are such romantics! Stephen’s the same. He will keep talking about love! I’d rather think of it as a happy convenience. But then, I married for love, and look what a letdown that was.”
The corners of her mouth turned up in an impish smile. “I don’t suppose this is what you wanted to hear. But you demanded the truth, and this is it. I left you because you were boring me rigid. Fate presented an alternative and I took it. I’m not low-maintenance, Gabriel, I never was, and I wasn’t prepared to spend the rest of my life learning to be. Stephen represented financial independence. I was never going to turn my nose up at that.”
“So what next?” asked Ash weakly. “You play house together? You know he’s on the run?”
That seemed to surprise her. “Really? I thought they’d bought his version of events. Someone figured it out? Ah…”
There hadn’t been much comfort for Ash in this conversation. Cathy’s expression, when she realized that her husband had in the end outflanked her lover, was about all there was going to be. “Hazel had her suspicions before I did,” he said. “Of course, she wasn’t hindered by supposing she knew the people involved. When she made me think the facts through dispassionately, it became obvious that Graves was working with the pirates. And that, probably, you were, too.”
“Well—thinking always was your forte.” She managed to make it sound like a vice. “It doesn’t matter. All we have to do is stay off the radar until interest in us dies down. Anyway, I couldn’t have stayed in Norbold, with your little friend and that no-neck policeman trying to question the boys every time I turned my back. I thought we’d be safe here. I thought the only one who’d remember this boat was already dead. But at least you haven’t told anyone else.”
He tried to keep his tone neutral. “No?”
She regarded him with a fine disdain. “If you’d told the police, they wouldn’t have let you come here. You had to choose. You could send in an armed response unit and see me in court. Or you could keep your suspicions to yourself until you’d talked to me. You’re on your own here, Gabriel. There is no Seventh Cavalry waiting in the gulch.”
She knew him so well. Ash cleared his throat. “Cathy, you said it yourself—you’re not low maintenance. Do you really think you can have the kind of life you want—the kind of life that was worth throwing me to the wolves for—with the police looking for you? You can’t go back to Somalia, even if you wanted to. You’d be arrested there. The pirates were being rounded up even as you were flying home. The local authorities weren’t really up to the job, but Philip Welbeck is a resourceful man. You’d be amazed what strings he can pull. Stephen Graves has no friends left in the Horn of Africa.”
“Stephen’s a resourceful man, too,” retorted Cathy. “He’ll take us somewhere no one will follow. I made it clear to him. If he wanted us to stay together he’d need to offer me something better than I could achieve on my own. He said he’d do whatever it took to keep me happy. Wasn’t that sweet?”
“You believed him?”
“Oh yes,” Cathy replied immediately. “I told you, he loves me. He thinks we’re going to be together for always.”
“But you don’t?”
“Always is an awfully long time.”
It wasn’t that any of this was coming at Ash out of a blue sky. At intervals, though, the enormity of what she was confessing broke through the defenses his mind had fashioned, and rage and grief erupted through the breach. “People died! Cathy—the men flying those shipments died! Twenty-nine pilots and engineers who disappeared along with their planes and cargoes died to keep you in comfort in Cambridge!”
“Yes, they did,” she agreed. “But I didn’t kill them.”
“And me.” His voice was thick with bitterness. “I thought I’d got you killed. You and our sons. It tore me apart. You must have known that. You must have known what you were doing to me.”
“Gabriel”—she sighed—“you’re not the first man to have a bored wife walk out on him, and you won’t be the last. Don’t be such a drama queen.”
“I thought you were dead!”
“Well, I thought you were dead. So we’re even. Can’t we leave it at that? Go home now, back to that dreary house in glum little Norbold, and get on with your life, and I’ll do the same.”
Even after everything that had passed between them, she had the power to amaze him. “You think we can carry on as if nothing much happened? As if we reached a fork in the road and went our separate ways? You think Graves can smuggle you and your money out to some Caribbean island with a history of turning blind eyes, and I’ll keep your secret? I won’t haul you back kicking and screaming if it takes another four years and some whole new extradition arrangements to do it?”
“Ah.” Cathy looked pensive, and a little annoyed. “That’s a pity. I’d rather hoped you’d be civilized about this.”
“Civilized!…”
“Because if I can’t trust you, perhaps I shouldn’t let you leave after all.”
The effrontery of it beggared belief. “You really think you can stop me?”
Cathy smiled again. “No.” She glanced back over her shoulder. That was when Ash first realized that Stephen Graves was standing behind her, in the open door of one of the sleeping cabins. It took him another three seconds to see the gun. “But I think he can.”
CHAPTER 35
SO MUCH HAD CHANGED since these two men last met. They regarded each other in speculative silence. Ash was trying to find room in his head for the reality that Stephen Graves had not only stolen his wife but had also corrupted whatever moral sense she’d once had. Graves was struggling with the fact that Ash was alive.
He’d thought it was the perfect crime. You don’t kill someone; you persuade them to kill themselves. No inconvenient fingerprints at the scene, no murder weapons turning up in the trash, no late-night dog walkers to see you hurrying out to your car. He’d seen—or believed he’d seen—Gabriel Ash blow his brains out, and it had been like a great weight lifting off his shoulders. He’d walked away from his home, his business, and his family without a backward glance, because he’d thought a better future beckoned. A future of luxury and self-indulgence, bought with the profits of his ingenuity and shared with a woman he believed was his soul mate. A woman who would turn heads in any gathering but was otherwise so like himself it was almost scary.
Now, in the course of a few minutes, the weight was back—not on his shoulders, but crashing down on his head. Gabriel Ash wasn’t dead. He was alive, and he was here, and whatever Cathy thought, the man was far too intelligent to have come alone.
The man used to be intelligent. Then his intellect had imploded and he’d spent several months sucking his thumb in a mental institution. Perhaps all was not yet lost. Stephen Graves moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue, his brain working overtime, certain—certain—there was still a way out. “We can make this work. For all of us.”
Ash waited until the silence groaned. Then he said, “No. We can’t.”
Graves’s voice took on an almost
supplicatory note. “There’s enough money in the pot for three.”
Ash found himself smiling. It wasn’t bravado, the last wave of a gallant flag as he faced the firing squad. He was smiling because a truly astonishing thing had happened. He’d found the answers he’d come looking for. After four years, he knew what had happened and why, and who was responsible, and—most miraculous of all—it wasn’t him. He felt the layers of guilt and anguish peeling away from his mind like an onion shedding skins. The relief was enough to leave him weak. But also, as near as he could categorize it, happy. Yes, he’d lost his wife—but it seemed he’d never had the marriage he’d thought he had, because she really wasn’t the person he’d thought she was. Finally recognizing that, he was able to let her go. There was nothing more to be done than put that whole phase of his life behind him and move on. The sense of release the knowledge brought was transcendent.
He said, “There isn’t that much money in the world.”
Cathy was looking between them, sharply, trying to work out which was the cat and which the mouse.
Graves gave a fractional nod. His whole body was tense, his eyes uncertain. The gun in his hand didn’t seem to be controlling the situation as it should. “All right. That was a mistake. I understand that. It was never money you wanted.”
“No,” agreed Ash.
“But I have something that you want.”
“Yes.”
Cathy Ash said through clenched teeth, “Don’t even think about it. Either of you.”
Ash looked at her half in surprise, half in amusement. “You? I’m sorry, Cathy, you aren’t worth anything to me anymore. Go with Graves. It doesn’t matter to me. You won’t make each other happy, but that’s hardly my concern. He’s clearly willing to spend money on you, and perhaps that’ll fend off the boredom for another year or two.
“Eventually, though, he’ll need things you won’t be able to give him. Honesty, commitment, some sense of loyalty. It’d be fun to be a fly on the wall when you have that discussion. Because when you’re facing murder charges, you can’t just agree to disagree. You hold each other’s futures in your hands. And I wouldn’t trust either of you with my car keys. I’m pretty sure that, sooner or later, one of you will end up killing the other. I’m just not sure which.”
Ash knew he’d struck a nerve from the way Graves reacted. As if someone had touched him with a cattle prod. Because, somewhere inside him, Stephen Graves already knew everything Ash was telling him. He didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, but he knew that betrayal is like sex: it’s easier the second time. A woman who would do what Cathy Ash had done to her husband would do the same to him as soon as someone richer or prettier came along. Graves had left his wife, his family, his home, and the business founded by his uncle, for Cathy. But he’d always known, at some level, what she was. He’d found her exciting. He’d thought they could bestride the earth together. But Ash was right. She would use him only as long as it suited her, and then she’d betray him, too.
“I know what you want,” he said, his voice hollow. “Take them.”
“No!” screamed Cathy, her slender body convulsing with rage.
“Take them,” repeated Graves sharply. “Take them, get in your car, and drive away. We won’t try to stop you. Only, don’t call the police for twenty-four hours.”
Suddenly Ash had something to lose again. It wiped the smile off his face. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because if you do, we’ll be caught,” said Graves rapidly. He’d always been good at this: thinking on his feet, when the stakes were so high that he couldn’t afford to lose. It was how he got involved in the piracy in the first place. “And everything will come out. Everything I’ve done, but also everything Cathy has done. Now, I’m sure you’d like to see justice catching up with me, and maybe you don’t care if it catches up with your wife. But what about your sons? They’ll never forgive you for opening that can of worms and dumping it over them. And for what? To see us in prison? You might find the satisfaction wears thin when you can’t take your sons for a kick-about in the park without some tabloid hack trying to photograph them. Imagine the headlines. Imagine the excuses when they want to bring their school friends around to play, and their friends’ parents would much sooner they play with someone whose mother isn’t a celebrated criminal.”
For much of the last four years, Ash’s life had meant nothing to him at all. It had been a burden he would have been happy to lay down. Now all that had changed. If Graves was serious about letting Ash walk away with both his life and his sons, handling this wrong could cost him everything. It made him afraid.
Then there was Cathy. As she listened in mounting disbelief, her face grew dark with fury. This wasn’t something she and Graves had discussed. And it wasn’t something she was going to agree to. “Shoot him,” she said, her voice hard.
Graves glanced at her. “There’s no need. He isn’t going to make things difficult for us. He’s going to make them easier. Aren’t you, Gabriel?”
“How do you figure that?” demanded Cathy.
“With just the two of us, we can disappear. I have money, I have connections. We’ll be fine. But with two little boys in tow? We’d be spotted. Or one of them would say something to draw attention to us. And what about their future? How long do you suppose they’d be content to trail around after us, upping sticks every time we think someone might be taking an interest in us? Gilbert’s eight now. What about when he’s fifteen? What about when he’s twenty?”
If Cathy had had the words printed on a T-shirt, she couldn’t have made it plainer that she’d never considered the possibility that she and Graves would still be together in seven years’ time. “At fifteen, and at twenty, and at forty, they will still be my sons. I’m not giving them up. Shoot him. If you want me, if you want us to be together, shoot him. Do it now!”
And that was when, with the monumentally bad timing of the very young, Gilbert Ash ducked his head inside and whined petulantly, “What are you all talking about? I’m hungry. What’s going on?”
Cathy froze. She knew what she’d just said; she wasn’t sure if her son had been close enough to hear her. She didn’t think, even if he had, he’d realize who it was she wanted shot; but, like smoking and drinking, inciting murder probably isn’t something you should do in front of children.
Stephen Graves froze. He’d known these boys for four years and never once had shown them a real gun. Now he was surprised with one in his hand, pointed—if the child but knew it—at his own father. He wasn’t sure if he should try to hide it, or if that would only draw attention to the thing.
Ash didn’t freeze. He rose slowly from his seat on the companionway steps and turned. Turned his back on the gun and his face to his son. “Gilbert, I need you to do something for me. Do you know why I feel I have the right to ask?”
There was a long pause while the boy considered. He had Ash’s eyes: deep, dark, intelligent, stubborn. Finally he said, in a small, stubborn voice, “Are you my father?”
Ash nodded. “Yes, I am.”
He wasn’t the sort of boy to throw his arms around anybody. He made no move of any kind. “Mummy told us you were dead.”
“She thought I was.”
“Why did you leave us?”
That went deeper into Ash than a knife. It took him a moment to catch his breath. “I didn’t leave you. You were taken away from me. I’ve spent the last four years looking for you. I was afraid you were dead.”
“Can we all be together now?”
Ash wasn’t going to lie. Whatever relationship he was going to have with his sons, it wasn’t going to begin with a lie. “No. Your mother’s got herself into some trouble, she needs to go and sort it out. You’re coming home with me.”
“I don’t know you!”
The sharpness twisted in his gut. “I know. But I know you. Your favorite color is green. You have—unless you’ve grown out of him now you’re eight—a gray plush elephant called Mungo. You got him
for Christmas when you were three. Even when you were three, you thought an elephant was cooler than a teddy bear.
“You learned to talk absurdly early, and never went through a baby-talk phase. Your first teacher was Mrs. Sellars. When I picked you up after your first day at school, she said she’d never met a four-year-old who knew what diplomacy meant. But you’re even better at numbers. Nobody remembers teaching you numbers; you seem to have been born knowing them. I imagine you’re doing trigonometry now, are you, and maybe calculus?”
He was rewarded by a hint of a grin from the pale, intense boy.
“Guy, now, he’s the opposite. He was a very placid baby. He’d lie in his pram for hours just admiring the view. He didn’t start talking until he was nearly two—but once he started, there was no stopping him. He’d chitter away like a budgerigar for as long as anyone was prepared to listen. He won’t do as well in tests as you will, but he’ll never be short of friends. He takes after his mother that way. You’re more like me; God help you.”
Gilbert Ash looked at his father; looked uncertainly at his mother; looked back up the jetty to where his brother was playing on the grass. Still admiring the view. He bit his lip. “You want us to go with you?”
Ash’s throat was tight. “To my house in Norbold. You stayed there when you came back to England.”
“It’s a bit … crappy.…”
“I know it is. I haven’t been very well. We’ll smarten it up now it’s going to be a family home. What color do you want your room? Let me guess.”
“Green,” said Gilbert with a shy grin.
“This is nonsense!” exclaimed Cathy, exasperated beyond bearing. “Of course you’re not going with him! You’re coming with me. Both of you are coming with me.”
“Tell you what, Gilbert,” said Ash quietly, “let me talk to your mother for a minute. We’ll sort it out. Will you take Guy and go up the hill and sit in my car? The big gray one. I’ll be along in a few minutes. Sit on the backseat, and don’t play with the controls.”