Blue Steel Chain (Trowchester Blues Book 3)

by Alex Beecroft

  At six he thought about raiding the house’s little store of booze. Drinking a couple of shots of Molly’s vodka and taking some sleeping pills . . . that might work. He made dinner for everyone instead, an ill-advised and elaborate platter of sushi and sashimi that needed more concentration than he had, and hence turned out loose and ugly and only made him sad again.

  Damn it.

  Just past seven, as he was trying to choke down a meal that tasted like algae and seaweed, his text alert went off. He had lost hope by this stage and was sure he’d read the sender’s name wrong.

  “Are you going to open that?” Zara managed to convey the impression of someone who hadn’t been deliberately leaning over his shoulder, but had just happened to notice the name on his phone as she was walking by.

  That was the first thing that pricked his numb lethargy and allowed the slightest sliver of eagerness to poke through. He looked again, and saw that the text was indeed from James.

  Sorry, it said. Crisis at home. Couldn’t call earlier. I’m on my way to see you now. Be there in ten.

  “Oh.” He covered his mouth with his hand to try to keep in the exclamation of incredulity and joy. Oh, how stupid of him to have spent the whole day in misery when he could have just trusted James. He could have realized, should have realized, that James would not just cut out on him with no explanation at all—that James was kinder and better than that.

  “Oh, it’s him,” he told the girls. “He’s okay. He’s on his way here. I didn’t scare him off after all.”

  He must have looked as radiant as he felt because Zara tilted her head and gave him the sort of look she normally reserved for baby bunnies. “Well, he wouldn’t have been worthy of you if you had.”

  About five minutes later the doorbell rang. He had dived to the bathroom to splash some water on his red face and drag a comb through the hair he hadn’t brushed today, exchanged his old housework T-shirt for the Bellowhead one they’d bought yesterday—was it really only yesterday?—and now ran downstairs to fling open the front door.

  A rental car idled in the gutter just outside the house, with the engine on but no one in the driver’s seat. Perhaps the crisis at home had been something to do with cars? Aidan came out from the door a few steps, looking ahead of him for James. He only realized his mistake when the cricket bat came down on the back of his neck. Some of the force of the blow bounced from his shoulder but the world still went grey on him. His knees buckled, his head swam, and a buzzing like an electrical charge sounded in both ears and twined like a crown around his head.

  As he fell forward, trying to catch at the car door to keep himself upright, what he felt was not horror or even surprise. It was relief. He knew then that he’d been waiting for this all along.

  The tall figure who came for him out of the shadow of the house porch was wearing a balaclava, army fatigues, and gloves, but Aidan would have known him anywhere from his gait and bulk and the smell of Louis Vuitton.

  It was hard to hold himself upright. He bowed forward and leant some of his weight against the car as his attacker grabbed one wrist and then the other behind him, snapped cable-ties around them, and zipped them tight.

  When Piers took him by the back of the collar and the belt and walked him to the boot of the car, it occurred to him that he should struggle, but it was an academic thought that had no hope of action attached. Whatever he did had never made a difference, so why bother?

  Piers opened the boot, folded Aidan over the lip, picked up his feet and rolled him into the cramped space. Grabbing Aidan’s hair, he tilted his head back and slapped duct tape over his mouth. Then he closed the lid on him firmly, and a moment later they were driving away.

  The numbness that had been Aidan’s constant companion for so many years fell back on him, comforting him as he lay in the dark. He felt no panic or fear—or if he did feel them, they were held apart from him by a quiet barrier of inevitability that he could not break through. Even though he thought he should fight, seemed to remember reading somewhere that the thing to do was to kick out the tail lights and try to signal someone in the car behind, the effort seemed pointless.

  What he felt was almost triumph, because although he was quiet and resigned, he no longer felt any need to please Piers. This was something Piers was doing to him, but it was not his fault, and he could honestly say that he didn’t really care what was going on in Piers’s mind at the moment. He had separated himself enough from the man that he felt no shred of love, no iota of responsibility for this, and although his body was in a cage, for the first time in his adult life, he felt genuinely free.

  This quietness stayed with him when the boot was opened and he was manhandled out, too dazzled to see, too cramped to stand upright into a space that was all moving green and grass underfoot. But it began to slough off when Piers—with one hand on his collar in lieu of the chain, one hand on his bound wrists—tore the tape off his lips, leaving them bloody, bent him almost double, and pushed him into a hole in the earth.

  Police crime-scene tape passed underfoot, bright and seemingly prescient, until he was allowed to straighten up, and he passed into darkness.

  A narrow stone tunnel. His shoulders brushed the sides of it and soil rained onto his feet. The dim light behind him died swiftly, and there was a smell of chemicals and ozone and sweat, with deeper, sweeter, more disturbing scents beneath it. As it hit his lungs, long overdue dread began to curl through his bloodstream and wake him up.

  “Where are we?”

  The darkness was overpowering—he fell into it as the walls disappeared from around him. His voice echoed as if he was in a vaulted space, a cathedral or a sewer.

  “This is your tomb.” Piers sounded fond, pleased. Aidan’s trained body relaxed a little at the sound, as though it was all going to be all right.

  The whine of a phone powering up, and then the dim square of light that was the passage was joined by a bright blue-white glare that made Piers’s fingers glow pink inside his transparent plastic gloves. His smile was lit from below, beatific and beautiful. Aidan looked away.

  They were standing in what he recognised from James’s books as a beehive tomb. In one alcove, an archaeological specimen box lay packed with bubble wrap and tissue paper and bones, where an ancient skeleton had been disassembled. In the other, just a stain on the floor with a number attached on a piece of laminated paper.

  “This is inside our hill,” Aidan realized. “Where you said you buried your mother.”

  Piers laughed. “I don’t believe you fell for that. Sit, there where the number is. Sit down.”

  Sluggishly, Aidan’s brain began to work again. James had said he was on his way. Was there a chance he had seen the abduction? Even if he hadn’t, the moment he came to the door and asked the girls where Aidan was, they would know something untoward had happened. And this was the first place, surely, anyone would think to look.

  Perhaps if he stalled, disobeyed, help might be on its way. And even if it wasn’t, why should he spend his last moments doing what Piers told him to do?

  “Who was he?” he asked, edging back towards the passage. “Was he the ‘beloved companion’? You told me . . . You told me I was the only one.”

  “Oh God, don’t be pathetic.” Piers washed his plastic-wrapped hands as though the sentiment made him feel dirty. “You know what my problem was? I kept you alive, both of you, far too long. You were such sweet little things, so dazzled, so grateful, and I let you both become overripe. In Angola, I am surrounded by choices. I won’t make the same mistake again.”

  “You went to Angola?” Aidan flexed his wrists against the cable ties behind him. He had got out of worse chains than this. There must be a way to break or cut—

  And was that the sound of stone shifting at the end of the passageway? Was someone coming?

  Piers grabbed him by the elbow, hauled him away from the entrance, staring into his face with incomprehension and dawning annoyance. “Yes, of course I went to Angola. I have f
riends with planes; I have friends with contacts. I wouldn’t have come back if I hadn’t left some share certificates in the safe. And if I hadn’t wanted to close matters with you, of course. I hate leaving things unfinished. You know how it grates at me.”

  He pointed again at the alcove as he took off his long coat and revealed a suit of such cheapness that Aidan understood immediately it was destined to be burned. “Sit.”

  Aidan swallowed through the phantom hand that was choking his throat. “No.”

  “What did you say?” Piers lunged forward and got him by the upper arms, shook him until his neck felt it would snap and his brain pounded in his skull. Pushing, unbalancing him, Piers walked him backwards towards the stone chamber.

  Now, now would be a good time for a rescue, he thought. The backs of his calves touched the ledge, his knees wanting to fold, his thigh muscles already complaining at having to hold him upright against the relentless backwards pressure. Now would also be a good time for him to fight back. He closed his eyes, trying to picture it. He could bend a little and then straighten, driving the top of his head up under Piers’s chin, snapping his jaw closed, possibly making him bite through his own tongue. Piers would reel back and Aidan could kick him in the knee, make him fall, kick him in the head to put him down permanently, and get out, get away.

  He breathed in, his breath like sand in his throat, his legs beginning to shake, a mirroring shake working through his shoulders as the tears prickled under his closed eyes. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t hurt Piers. You didn’t hurt people. That was wrong. He couldn’t . . . He couldn’t.

  Piers’s grip shifted. No longer holding Aidan by the arms, but shoving him in the chest with one hand, while the other hand . . .

  He opened his eyes. The other hand had reached behind Piers’s waist. It pulled up, and when it became visible again it held a long curved knife with a serrated blade. Like a steak knife, Aidan thought, his intellect speaking in his ears as the rest of him dissolved into disbelieving terror. He almost closed his eyes again, but then he heard another sound, and the light from the passage dimmed, and James came edging out of the tomb doorway like Lazarus.

  James had a stone in his hand. He took a step and raised it. Aidan realized he was supposed to be keeping Piers focused on him, so that James could tiptoe up and smack the stone into the base of Piers’s skull and drop him with no more violence. But it was too late. Piers had seen the joy on his face, the shift of his eyes to track something behind him.

  Piers turned. “You!” And lunged out with the knife.

  James leaped back, gangly, uncoordinated. The knife sliced through his tweed jacket and his shirt underneath it. “Ow!” he shouted, managing to sound surprised and outraged as though this was not the sort of behaviour he expected from a civilized murderer.

  Aidan felt something teeter in him. Not sure if it was hysterical laughter or panic or something else that was light and furious and fiery. The world paused so he could see with the clarity of an eagle’s sight the way the knife had drawn a pink line on James’s skin, the way the line beaded up with crimson droplets that dripped and ran and soaked into his shirt.

  James threw the stone at Piers’s face, and in the moment of Piers’s recoil, he reached back and picked an ancient humerus out of the archaeological box behind him, sweeping it like a club between himself and Piers.

  Piers laughed, and the sound was white noise in Aidan’s head. He had enough experience of violence now to give him some sense of what was vulnerable and what was not, and he could see how Piers would run in, pushing James against the wall, pushing his arm out of the way, sheathing the knife in James’s belly and pulling upward until all the internal organs fell out.

  He couldn’t feel his own body, but it was moving. Crouching, he drove his shoulder into Piers’s kidneys. A jolt like the end of the world, his own flesh strange to him, and he turned, swept a foot out and pulled Piers’s right leg out from under him even as Piers leaned forward to charge at James.

  Piers flailed to catch his balance, the knife opening a rent in James’s sleeve as James again dove backwards, and Aidan followed his sweep with another shove, putting behind it all the strength of the muscles Piers had insisted on giving him.

  Piers fell like an empire, the knife skittering from his grasp, and James brought the dead king’s thigh bone down with a rending smack against his temple. Groggily, Piers tried again to get up, and Aidan—feeling clear and merciless as ice—kicked him in the head. His eyes rolled up, he fell limp, and he was down. Down and out.

  Aidan’s quick inhuman breathing turned to laughter. He shook with it, his eyes streaming, as James retrieved the knife and used it to cut his bonds. He thought he would shake apart as James took out his own phone and called 999 for the police, but then James tucked the thing back in his pocket and slipped his arms around Aidan’s waist and held tight, and they were hugging.

  Aidan scrabbled at James’s shirt in driving fear, pulling the bloody patch away from his skin, expecting to see bone. But the cut was shallow and had already stopped bleeding. He watched it a moment longer to be sure and then folded himself into James wordlessly. Face in the curve of his neck, nose in his hair breathing in the scent, mouth open to have James’s skin against his tongue and taste safety, legs pressed against his, belly to belly so he could feel James breathe, a hand on his upper back to feel the heartbeat, and the second gripping his shirt, pulling him tightly in to make sure he never left again. Not ever.

  James held him just as fiercely, and when James’s prick firmed against his hip, and James took him by the chin and angled his face up for a kiss, Aidan let him, gladly, because it felt like being wanted, and he wanted James to want him, if that meant James would stay.

  They rocked in each other’s arms until the police came. Then there were statements and questioning and reassurances that because Piers had absconded once already, he was going into custody today and would be held there without bail until the trial sent him to jail for good.

  It was dark when they were finally allowed to leave the police station, and found Molly on the steps waiting for them. “I have a car,” she said, motioning them to follow, and thank God because Aidan’s state of ice had long melted and now he was fluid and difficult to keep in shape. He wanted to flow down into the gutter and fall asleep.

  “Am I taking you to your house?” Molly asked James as he slid into the backseat with Aidan so they could resume their interrupted hug.

  “Ah.” James looked embarrassed. “I’ve actually been kicked out of my house. I . . . um . . . I was hoping I could stay with you.”

  “Kicked out?” The reflection of Molly’s red-brown eye in the driving mirror was sceptical and amused. “You two are an action movie, aren’t you? You want to tell us about it?”

  “Tomorrow,” James slurred, his body lax and heavy against Aidan’s side. Aidan leaned into it and drifted on drowsiness like charcoal velvet, something in the hollow of his chest set free.

  “Well, it’s up to Aidan who he wants to have to stay,” she said, her voice a very long way away. “But Aidan? You two need to have a talk. Have you forgotten there’s something you need to explain to him, if this is going to go on? Have you done that yet, because it’s not fair on him if you haven’t.”

  He hadn’t forgotten, damn her. Uncertainty stirred him back out of sleep. He gave her a reproachful look in the mirror as they drew up outside the front door from which he had been snatched earlier. “That can wait till the morning too.”

  “Revelation breakfast.” She smiled, unlocking the door and ushering them both into curry-scented safety. “Good times.”

  A knocking on the door stirred James awake in the morning. He came slowly out of a sleep that felt like floating, found himself warm and unravelled, all the knots of tension in his muscles unwound and his heart full of content. Aidan lay facedown by his side, with one arm flung across James’s chest and one knee tucked between James’s legs, pinning him to the bed. He, too, looked pe
aceful, with all the twitchy tics of fear smoothed from his face and his bruises sponged away.

  They had fallen asleep almost as soon as they hit the too-narrow bed, pausing only long enough to wrap themselves around each other. Though James would have liked to celebrate their victory by finally making love, he could understand why Aidan would be too shaken to want to. But he had been looking forward to at least managing it this morning.

  The knocking on the door came again. “Aidan! Confession-breakfast time, remember. Rise and shine. The shower’s yours if you get to it in the next five minutes.”

  “Unh.” Aidan stirred, pink-cheeked and bleary-eyed. When he saw James watching him, a shy smile came over his face. He dropped his eyes, while his mouth curled up in pleasure. “Hello.”

  “Confession breakfast?”

  Aidan’s smile fell, and James’s feeling of being lapped in an ocean of rightness ebbed with it. What could Aidan possibly have to confess that would make him so nervous?

  “Aidan? You in there?”

  Aidan gave James an apologetic look and brushed a light, dry kiss over James’s cheek that reassured him that whatever it was, it couldn’t be too bad. “I’m here. I’m getting up now.”

  “Okay. You want to do this on your own or do you want some help?”

  “I actually didn’t want the help you’ve already given me, thanks.”

  The voice outside the door—James thought it was probably Zara—chuckled without taking offence. “We know how you men are with talking about things. If we don’t encourage it, it will never happen.”

  Perhaps he was HIV positive? The thought occurred to James with a little rush of conviction and horror. There had obviously been a lot of blood in his relationship with Piers. And that would explain the reluctance to have sex, the way he kept almost initiating it and then turning it away. He wanted it, but he was trying to keep James safe.

  Would that matter to James? He had to admit his first reaction was an instinct to back off, but just because something was instinctual didn’t mean it was right. Aidan could live a long, healthy life if he looked after himself and got the right meds. It wasn’t the ugly death sentence it used to be . . . and even if it was, James couldn’t see himself lasting out a separation for more than a week. After all, yesterday morning he’d decided his own self-respect demanded that it was over forever—and yesterday evening he had changed his mind and come running home to Aidan.