by P. R. Black
Vonny scrambled to get out of his way. Before he reached the door he collapsed, abruptly.
Then Vonny’s face was buried in Seth’s chest. ‘Baby, it’s all right, it’s all right,’ he said, quietly.
‘It’s not all right!’ she shrieked. ‘They’re dead! They’re both dead!’
‘They’d have killed us, darlin’.’ Seth’s voice fluctuated, reaching a weird high pitch, like that of a teenage boy. ‘For sure. They were not going to leave us alive. They didn’t leave the last guys alive, either.’
‘What’s this stuff? Drugs? What is going on here?’ she wailed. Her head sagged, and she covered it with her hands. In her mind’s eye, Skull was still alive, starting forward, the sword held vertical, a model of precise menace.
There was a scraping sound at the door and Seth was back on his feet, gasping.
Skull was still alive. Clawing towards the door. He got to his knees, blood still pouring from the angled interface between his head and the machete. The sound Skull emitted was more of a snuffle or a snore than any kind of cry of pain or alarm Vonny had ever heard before – as if there might be a pig’s head under that mask.
She watched, stupefied, as he got to his feet, steadying himself at the door. Then he tugged at the machete in his face. It gave, just a little, a rill of blood running off the edge and pattering onto the floor.
‘Mate,’ was all Seth said, absurdly conciliatory. He had the shotgun in his hands; he cracked the stock, and the smoking shells flew out.
Skull tugged again, and the machete came out. He gurgled at this, and it was a recognisable quantifiable human sound, all right. He staggered for a moment. Threatened to fall; didn’t.
‘Get behind me,’ Seth said to Vonny. He crouched on the floor, digging for something in the loose floorboard he had prised open earlier. ‘Behind the table.’
Vonny didn’t wait for an invitation. She was elastic, leaping over the top, then crouching into a ball. She peered out to the side.
Seth was loading the shotgun. Or at least, that’s what he intended. One shell slithered through trembling fingers. But the second slid into the breech, snug. Seth snapped the gun closed and cocked it.
Skull grabbed the door handle and snatched it open. He took a faltering step forward, holding on to the doorjamb.
Seth braced the gun against his shoulder and fired. Vonny had prepared herself for it, her fingers in her ears, but the blast was still appallingly loud. She clashed her teeth together, no longer sure in the numbing repercussion if she was sobbing or screaming.
She peered through a haze of smoke. Seth was striding forward. The door to the shed was open. There was no sign of Skull.
Vonny got up and joined him. She babbled, without thinking, possessed: ‘I mean if we call the police we’ll have to call them and they can come over; that’s what I’ll do. I’ll get our phone.’
‘Quiet,’ Seth said, voice taut with tension. He turned out of the doorway, the milky light of the mist illuminating his sweat-slicked skin.
Then Seth’s shoulders sagged. He lowered the gun.
Vonny joined him, and they clutched each other as they peered at the figure lying before them on the ground, face down.
The Skull had been blown clean off the man’s head, lying a few feet away, still staring at them. The top half was torn away and dripping with blood.
The back of Skull’s head was an appalling mess, even in the gloom. It bore no resemblance to a human head. They never would know what his face had looked like.
29
Seth carried her out of the shed, and she allowed him to. It seemed to cost him no effort as he made his way up the garden path and back to the house. She clung to him like a little girl, falling into rhythm with each step, lulled by it. Only when he set her down on the floor – collapsed, really – inside the front door did she feel the pain in her feet. The world began to revolve, and her guts with it.
Vonny had heard of people feeling physically sick thanks to something revolting they had experienced as opposed to something they had eaten, but it had never happened to her before that night. Seth was there to pin back her hair while she heaved, miserably, into the en suite.
Even with Seth there, she still didn’t want her back to the toilet door, remembering that appalling shock of the light switch bursting into life, and the gleeful, diabolical faces inches away from hers.
‘We have to call the police,’ she said, breathing hard, after emptying her stomach. ‘It’s a case of self-defence, simple as that. They invaded our house. They threatened us.’
Seth said nothing. He laid his hand on her back, gently, then he fetched her a glass of water. She gulped it down, rinsed and spat. She took a deep breath, and then the pain hit her from a dozen places; mainly on her back, where she’d collided with various things, and in her shoulders, which were still seemingly cast in steel thanks to the tension.
‘They came for us, they hurt us, marched us out…’ Vonny wasn’t in the strictest sense having a conversation, more rifling through mental index cards, with what had happened on the headings. ‘They said it – they were going to kill us.’
‘They did say that. Or, one of them did.’ Seth’s face was swollen around the temple, but he was curiously unmarked about the face, despite the beating. He pulled up his pyjama top, and revealed a massive graze just above his hip, blood from it soaking through the dark material. Vonny cried out when she saw it.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Flesh wound. Ribs aren’t broken. I wouldn’t have been able to carry you, if it had been any worse than that.’
‘You killed them.’ Did she think it or say it? Again and again, she heard the thunderclap of the shotgun, the sharp crack of the machete cleaving Skull’s mask. She saw him take up a proper firing position, with the stock of the rifle against his shoulder. ‘Come to think of it… Where did you get the gun? Where did that come from?’
Seth winced as he sat down. ‘Clive Fulton gave it to me. Said it belonged to Dan Grainger.’
And now the shrieking, clanging alarms sounded in Vonny’s head. ‘And what about the stuff? What is the fucking stuff?’ Her voice cracked and her face sagged. He tried to hug her, but she backed away. ‘Have you got drugs? You swore. You swore you weren’t touching them. You told me half your fucking musicians don’t do them any more; they’re too professional! What’s the stuff?’
‘It’s nothing to do with me, I swear it. I found it two nights ago. Heroin. Lots of it. I… I wasn’t sure what to do.’
‘Found it? Found it? You don’t just find a stash of drugs as if it’s a dropped 50p piece in the street! Found them? Explain yourself, now.’
Seth’s voice was worryingly flat. He stared, unblinkingly, at a blank white wall, as he spoke. ‘I spoke to a mate in London. He told me that if the car didn’t have anything dodgy in it, then it might mark the spot where something dodgy was hidden. He was right. The other night, I took a walk over, just to look at the spot where we pulled out the car. Sure enough, there was a heavy stone underneath, and suitcases packed with gear.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought… I thought it was a chance to put things right. A windfall. Same as the house. I’ve got connections.’
‘No,’ Vonny said, clutching her hair. ‘No, no, no. No. This isn’t right. You’re lying. I can’t believe you’re lying! You think you can sell drugs? Seriously? There’s something more to this. I don’t believe you. If this is something you’ve kept from me, all this time, or something to do with Jake, I swear to God…’
He got up to comfort her, but she turned away, swiping her hands at him. ‘Vonny, it’s the truth. This is what happened. I am not lying. I don’t have anything to do with that world. But if you calm down a minute, and think about it, there’s a way through this for all of us – me, you, Jake, everyone.’
‘Calm down? In this situation?’ Her laughter edged towards a shriek. ‘We have to call the police… Jesus Christ, there are two corpses out there! You ki
lled them! You!’
‘You fired the gun at the second one,’ he said calmly. ‘Forensics will be able to tell who did what. They’ll do a simple test, and they’ll know you fired the gun, too. And that’s the problem with calling the police. There are two guys out there who we… I killed. One of them was shot in the back of the head. That isn’t self-defence, is it?’
‘We don’t have a choice. Let’s call them, right now.’
‘But we do have a choice. We just have to be calm and think. And we have to act, right now.’
‘No,’ was all she could say, before she burst into tears.
Still, Seth kept his distance. ‘First things first – I’d get showered if I were you.’
‘What? Oh. Ugh. Ugh.’ She could not have been more disgusted had she looked down to see huge, tangerine-jointed tarantulas darting over her pyjamas. The grey fleecy material was flecked with blood. The blood she’d smelled in the air after the Devil had his head blown off. His blood, decorating her.
She tore her clothes off as if they were alive with vermin, and got into the shower, scrubbing every inch of herself. Some of the blood must have been in her hair; it stained the flow of the shower like ichor when she dipped her head. Clotted, it fell away in flakes. Every cut and gash her feet had suffered stung, appallingly. She screamed in frustration and anger, slamming her hands off the tiling.
Seth was still there when she got out of the cubicle, drying herself with a mercifully new, kind towel. He had taken his clothes off, too, and gotten changed into trousers, a fleece and socks. She felt less deranged, but far from calm.
‘Did you call the police?’
Seth sighed. Again, his face bore no expression, his eyes dull and blank. She wondered if he was in shock, some sort of trauma-induced fugue state, until he said: ‘We’re not calling the police, darlin’.’
‘What?’ she shrieked. ‘You have to be joking. You just killed two people tonight. Do you understand? What are you going to do? Act the gangster? Start dealing drugs down at Brenwood Green square?’
He held up a hand and softened his tone. ‘Just listen. Please. I killed two people. All anyone is going to take from the crime scene is the truth of what happened. I shot one man in the back, as he was trying to run out. I shot the first guy without any warning. You fired the gun, too. Whether you missed or not is irrelevant. You’re part of it.’
‘They were going to kill us!’
‘Vonny, we don’t know that. They might have just taken what they wanted and left us. But I couldn’t chance it. I killed them in cold blood, and that’s the truth. And that will mean a long time in prison.’
‘You don’t have a choice – call the police, for God’s sake! The neighbours should have done it already!’
‘That’s reason number one for not calling,’ he went on, ignoring what she had said. ‘There is another reason.’ He sighed and leaned against a radiator, drumming his fingers. ‘I could make things disappear for Jake. I could pay what he owes, with a bit on top to make sure he’s protected. It’s dirty but it could be the difference between life and death.’
‘How much of it is there?’
‘I haven’t weighed it, and I am a long way away from being able to put a figure on a particular weight, but… we are talking kilos of heroin. More than anyone can carry. Packed into bars. I’m not sure of the purity but it’s surely worth millions. That’s what they were after.’ He looked like he actually wanted to laugh. ‘Imagine that, hidden here? A million-to-one shot. On top of a million-to-one shot.’
Rage, pure rage coursed through her. She stabbed a finger at his face. ‘And you only tell me now? What are you playing at? Are you insane?’ Then a deeper horror struck her. ‘You were keeping this from me. What was the plan? Sell it and get rich?’
Seth’s shoulders began to quiver – anger, now. He bared his teeth; he bit back. ‘I was planning on getting Jake out of his mess. Then I was going to make sure we had a nest egg to fall back on. Because let’s face it – you said so yourself. The only other choice for us was to sell this place. And there was no guarantee we’d make anything on it, after my investment.’
‘The land will be worth a fortune… What are you talking about?’ she spoke in a whisper.
‘It isn’t. I don’t know if you checked. I did, the past day or so. They couldn’t sell this place for a year. Bad vibes from what happened to Grainger and his sons. Plus, there’s a suggestion it’s a flood plain. That nice mini-lake? Think about that after a storm. That’s why the property barons won’t touch it. And then there’s planning restrictions around here – wouldn’t surprise me if there’s an MP lives up the road or something. That’s why it can’t be sold to developers for homes. We’ve got a pig in a poke, here, and you know it. And worse, you did everything you were told not to do, by just about anyone who ever watched a bloody property development programme. You built a dream house! You overspent. The features were spectacular enough. All you had to do was put up something basic, kit it out, slap on some magnolia, even. But no – you had to have Unicorn Towers!’
She felt oddly calm in the face of this hostility. ‘This is all very interesting, Seth, and I wonder how long you’ve been storing it up. But we have a bigger problem to sort out, right now. The bodies. What are we going to do?’
‘I’m going to handle it, is what’s going to happen. You’re going to stay right here.’
‘I’m calling the police, is what I’m doing…’ She made to go past him, but he blocked the doorway.
‘You’re not.’
‘Seth, move out of the way. You know there’s no other way to do this.’
‘I’m not going to jail,’ he said, in a glacial tone. ‘And neither are you. And I’m not blowing a chance to sort out my brother, and then set us up for life. I’m not talking about a couple of grand, here. I’ll be talking about a cut of very, very serious money. Neither of us would have to work again. Think about it.’
‘It’s insane! That’s what I think about it!’ She grabbed him then, digging her nails into his shoulders. ‘What are you going to do with the drugs? Take them down to the bank? Ask to make a deposit? Get a reasonable rate of interest?’
‘I know people,’ he said. ‘You talk about acting the gangster – but I know people. I have connections. They’ll do the hard stuff. And they’ll make a cut. As for money, moving that around is the simplest part. There are ways and means in every industry. Especially mine. All you need to do is know the right people. And I do. Big piles of cash come out clean as a whistle. I know people who’ve walked into some little banks here and there and deposited wads, no questions asked. You’ve got the money, you sometimes don’t need to answer the questions.’
‘This is absolute madness.’
‘We’re not going to jail. Bottom line. They’ll throw away the key, pet. Shoot one guy, yeah, you can make an argument. Self-defence, yeah, maybe. Shoot two… I’m going away for six years, minimum. And I’ll have to answer questions about having an unlicensed firearm. And whatever lie I tell, they’ll see through it. The truth sounds flimsy – a decent lawyer would tear it to shreds, and a jury will applaud him for it.’
‘Seth, please…’
‘Decision’s made,’ he said. His face crumpled, and Vonny felt a surge of hope, at rapprochement. But he grit his teeth, shook his head, and said, ‘I’m not going to jail. I am going to check every part of this house, then I’m going to deal with it. You lock yourself into the room and wait until I come back. I’ll give you this signal.’ He gave a combination of knocks on the bathroom door. ‘You remember that?’
‘I can’t go along with this. You can’t ask me to do it.’ But she no longer sounded sure, even to her own ears. A doubt had taken up residence. A doubt that diverted Vonny from obeying the law towards more pragmatic matters.
‘If it all blows up in our face, you’re clear. I take full responsibility. I’ll say you had no involvement. I did it all. They won’t convict you. Please, Vonny. Think about it. I’ll be back s
oon.’
He closed the door firmly behind him.
30
Bin bags. Not how he thought the night would go. Not how he thought a mild hangover after a couple of drinks with the neighbours would kick in. Seth swallowed a couple of painkillers, then wondered if he’d already done it, then forgotten. ‘Guess it won’t kill me,’ he muttered, staring at his reflection in the patio window.
He’d checked every door, every window. The security system was buggered – that would have to wait, whether there was a cut wire, a switch pulled or a fuse box bashed somewhere, he didn’t know. Surely something. The sensors that he was sure would irritate him every time a sparrow coughed or a badger farted hadn’t been activated. The security cameras were dead, as was the alarm system. They must have done it – somehow – right after Seth and Vonny had gone to bed. They were probably here for hours. Biding their time. Waiting until the right moment in the middle of the night.
‘And look where that got you.’ He laughed mirthlessly. With Vonny locked away, his own comments were his only way of sustaining courage. He hurt, now, just about everywhere. Every step he took was painful, from his ankles all the way up to his shins – how did his shins get hurt? Had he been kicked? He must have been – through his torso, all the way up his arms – those grudgingly executed twenty arm curls with the dumbbells every morning hadn’t really steeled him for this kind of exercise – and of course his head, which had been buffeted, slapped and punched, but somehow, somehow…
‘Still beautiful.’ He saw his own lips quiver as he said this; he covered his mouth, instinctively, and his eyes bulged in horror. Here was the image of a frightened child, his own image, too unbearable to look at. He drew in a long, wheezing breath, and wiped his mouth on his hand.
He stuffed the clothes they’d been wearing, including his prized slippers, into one of the bin bags, then shoved it into the backpack, along with the rest of the stuff. He winced as he fixed the straps on his shoulders, then he braved the front door.