Lynch

by Merrigan, Peter J

  Scott smiled, tried to put aside the mixed feelings he had. ‘I do believe we are,’ he said, and he reached up, took Jesse’s shoulder, and brought him down for a kiss, right there on the beach, not caring who was watching, helping Jesse up onto his feet and running when an old man shouted an obscenity at them, laughing as they stomped over a discarded sandcastle, hand in hand as they sprinted across the beach.

  They stopped, on an empty stretch of sand, the tide slowly coming in, and they embraced and kissed again. Breaking for air, resting his forehead against Scott’s, Jesse said, ‘I left my shoes back there.’

  The thought of the old man prodding the gay boy’s shoes with a stick like they could be diseased sent Scott into gales of laughter that had him doubled in the sand and holding his sides as a breaking wave tickled his shins.

  Jesse opened his front door and stepped into the dark within. It wasn’t until he had closed the door behind him and locked it automatically that his thoughts turned to Prabha. Apart from mentioning her briefly on the beach, he hadn’t thought about her all day. Scott had an infectious way about him that took his mind off his demons. When they were together, Jesse could think of nothing other than kissing him.

  The time between their first kiss this afternoon, lying on a blanket in a field, horses chuffing beside them, and their second kiss on the beach, had felt like the longest time. When they ran off from the irate pensioner, holding hands as they ran, they had kissed and then sat down for ten minutes, saying nothing, content with each other’s company, before venturing back for his shoes. He carried them back to the car, walking barefoot along the street, and on the drive home they held hands, letting go only long enough for Jesse to change gear when necessary.

  The atmosphere between them was more subdued now, but comfortably so. The revelations they had briefly discussed, and each silently acknowledging that it wasn’t the right time to talk about them further, had cast a sense of shared displacement around them. In the car, Scott had said, ‘Thanks again, for not asking me any questions about what happened.’

  ‘Likewise,’ Jesse had said. ‘I’m a good listener, but I’m not going to push you into telling me everything. You can tell me when, or if, you want.’

  ‘I will,’ Scott said. ‘One day, I promise.’ He had squeezed Jesse’s hand and leaned over the centre console and kissed his cheek.

  When he pulled up the drive in front of Scott’s house, Jesse cut the engine and shuffled in his seat to face him. ‘I’ve had a fantastic day. Thank you.’

  Scott smiled. ‘Me too.’ They were still holding hands and Scott was the first to lean in for another kiss. His free hand sought Jesse’s leg and cupped his thigh as his tongue pushed forward.

  When the kiss ended, Scott sat back in the passenger seat and looked up at the house. ‘I’d invite you in, but…’

  ‘Your mum and Ann are there,’ Jesse said. ‘It’s fine. If I come in, I might not want to leave.’

  ‘I might not want you to, either.’

  ‘Maybe next time,’ Jesse said. He didn’t want to come across like the sort of person who hopped into bed with anyone, but their words were clear on intent.

  ‘That’d be nice,’ Scott said, and they kissed again.

  Jesse drove home with a smile on his face and another in his jeans.

  And now, sitting down on the sofa in his living room, spinning emotions over in his head, he tried desperately to remember the feel of Scott’s lips against his own, of his hand on his leg, but all he could see when he closed his eyes was an image of Prabha looming over him in the dark, in his bedroom, as he woke to the sound of her coming at him.

  He shuddered and shook his head as if the action would rid him of the feeling of being watched. He rose and checked the lock on the door, double-checked the windows, and pushed the coffee table in front of the door just for good measure.

  For extra security, he slid the barrel bolt on his bedroom door into place, and he got into bed. As sleep finally dragged him down into the recesses of his consciousness, from within the fathomless cavern of a nightmare he could hear the whisper of her voice, the last words she ever spoke to him.

  ‘I will find you,’ she had said. ‘I will find you, and you’ll regret it.’

  Chapter 9

  Miguel Fernandez jogged through Hyde Park and felt the cool touch of the steel blade under the hip of his boxers. He had no immediate intent in using it, but there was a pleasure in knowing it was there.

  He had had sex last night. It was good. It was verging on violent. Sex was a pleasure that derived from necessity, not the other way around. He was able to focus his thoughts during intercourse in a way that he couldn’t at any other time. The rhythmic action became a turning cog that allowed his brain to self-analyse and scrutinise the minutia of detail that would otherwise escape him.

  Last night, sex evoked one thought: killing Kane Rider and Margaret Bernhard. Neither the old woman nor the young faggot would be a match for him, and he had no issue with dispatching either of them.

  The woman last night was not a prostitute, though he had made her feel like one. He had picked her up in a bar and took her back to his hotel room, and he pushed his fingers into her mouth as he drove brutally inside her. He stared at her large areolas as her breasts jiggled and he felt her clamp down on him and try to match his rhythm with her bucking hips. He rolled her nipples between thumb and forefinger and admired his penis as it disappeared and reappeared and disappeared and reappeared. He licked the sweat from between her breasts and then he turned her over and held tight to her hips. Sensing what was coming, she struggled against him. He forced his way inside her anus, one foot on the floor, one knee on the bed for better leverage.

  Before he climaxed, he withdrew, removed the condom and fed her every inch until she choked and swallowed his lot. And when he was done, he slumped on top of her, allowed his full weight to burden her, and then he rolled onto the bed beside her and whispered the words every girl loves to hear. ‘You can go now.’

  ‘I haven’t finished,’ she whined, reaching to touch herself.

  ‘I have. Get out.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ she said.

  He wrapped his hand around her slender neck. ‘Get out before I fucking kill you.’

  She went to slap him and he twisted her hair in his hand and pulled her from the bed, spitting in her face as she said, ‘Okay, okay, let me go.’ She left in tears and Fernandez went naked to the balcony and lit a cigarette, feeling the cool night air drying the sweat on his hair-matted torso as the city of smog moved languidly below him.

  London was no less alien a city to him than the deep, unexplored corners of the oceans. There were so few places in the world where you could find a line of tramps in the doorways of expensive department stores. The problem with England was that it was not Spanish. The Spaniards would bring some backbone to the men and some class to the ladies. You don’t fuck Spanish girls. You make her your woman, if only for half an hour. You treat her with respect and she knows how to please you. English girls were a tool for release and nothing more. They were dirty and deserved only dirty things.

  When he had jogged twice around Hyde Park and sprinted his way back to the hotel, he showered, dressed, and checked in with Thomas Walter. All contact was by telephone and they would not meet unless necessity dictated it.

  ‘My boys,’ Walter said, as though he was the master of all, ‘are working around the clock. We’ll find them, don’t worry.’

  ‘I have no worry in finding the target,’ Fernandez told him, ‘only in your competence.’

  Fernandez had been drafted in by Ramirez and Herrera not just for his killer instinct and the professional manner in which he conducted his business, from planning, execution, and clean up, but also for his technical abilities in the art of espionage. His background had been comms interception and surveillance. In order not to tread on delicate toes, his role here would be to advise and assist, not to assume command, although the very idea was a thorn.

&
nbsp; Later today he would make a visit to the operations centre—a normal garage in a normal house in a normal suburban area of London, controlled by an acne-riddled teenager with a degree in game design and a list of sexual conquests that failed to extend outside of World of Warcraft. But first, he had another appointment to keep, one that he wasn’t particularly looking forward to attending.

  The prison walls felt like they were folding in around him. Miguel Fernandez hated prisons. They were the same the world over, a cesspit of life’s degenerates grouped together not by a common cause, but by the government’s inability to do anything useful with them. Some of the men he met in the Spanish prison could have been trained and utilised by the government or the military, men whose insatiable desire for wealth or greed or power could be harnessed for a greater cause.

  Fernandez himself had been one such lucky candidate. Ramirez had taken him on board some years ago and now he was not just killing, but he was making a killing in doing so.

  He walked into the visitors’ room and took a seat opposite Jim Dixon. Without preamble, he said, ‘I need information.’

  ‘What happened to the pretty lady?’ Dixon asked.

  ‘The last time she looked at you, you made her sick. You’ve got me now.’

  ‘She was going to get me transferred.’

  Fernandez grinned. ‘You actually believed this?’

  The weasel said, ‘She promised.’

  ‘The only transfer you’d get would be to the morgue.’

  ‘I only—’

  ‘Enough!’ Fernandez demanded. He glanced around the room; no one came to visit him when he was inside. His conversation was limited to drug addicts and rapists. ‘I need a way in to Interpol,’ he told Dixon.

  ‘I’m guessing you don’t want to walk in the front door.’

  ‘Don’t get clever, Mr Dixon. I don’t like faux-clever men. You were the insider, and now we need a new one.’

  He could almost hear the slamming of cell doors and the sobs of lesser men. Miguel Fernandez hated prisons.

  He had been incarcerated twice and the second time, whilst it had been a shorter stint, had been no less taxing. You either rule or be ruled. He learned that on his first day in prison five years ago. He had been brought in with two other greens—new inmates never before exposed to the system. Fernandez was already a hard and fast criminal, but the experience hardened him further. When three skinheads swaggered into his cell and started rooting through his few possessions, Fernandez assumed it wouldn’t be long before one of them asked him to bend over, a fate he would never accept.

  His first attempt at reasoning with the gang of petty thieves was met with tempered violence. He would not make a second attempt. He broke the nose of one, broke the arm of another, and almost tore the ear from the third. He stepped out of his cell and looked around at the pack of prisoners. He shouted, ‘Any of you pussies need your arses wiping, you come to me now.’ He still had the man’s skin under his fingernails when a guard pressed a Taser against the back of his neck and threw him in solitary.

  ‘There will be someone inside Interpol that we can speak with, yes?’ he asked Dixon. He kept his voice level, his brown eyes hard on Dixon’s face.

  ‘I was the best asset you guys had in there,’ Dixon said.

  ‘We’ll take the second best,’ Fernandez said and it seemed Dixon took this as a compliment when it was actually smeared in sarcasm. He needed to get a handle on this mocking language of the English.

  ‘No one is going to invite you in for a champagne breakfast willingly.’

  ‘You got into bed with Bernhard fairly easily.’

  ‘I’m a different kettle of fish.’

  ‘How many fish are in the Interpol kettle?’ Fernandez asked.

  ‘Have you found Bernhard’s bitch of a wife yet?’

  Fernandez folded the fingers of his left hand over the fist of his right. ‘If someone could access sealed Interpol files, we would have done. This is why we need your information.’

  ‘You mean you want a favour.’

  ‘I mean I want your information or you die. It is simple.’

  In the Spanish prison, Fernandez had survived at the top of the food chain, ruling the cons with fear. Fear was what modern country leaders were lacking. Without it, you do not have the complete support of your people. Without fear, you get uprisings and revolution. Pol Pot knew it; Hitler knew it. Their downfall—which would never happen to Fernandez—was their hotheadedness. When anger clouds your actions, you mess things up. And that was exactly what got Jim Dixon locked up.

  ‘How long did it take before they found out you were a bent cop?’ Fernandez asked him, knowing that you can’t keep secrets like that behind bars, that cops were every prisoner’s plaything.

  Dixon looked down at the table. ‘Half an hour. When they put you in High Risk, you’re either a nonce, a wife beater or a cop.’

  ‘Who can we trust inside Interpol?’

  ‘No one,’ Dixon said.

  Fernandez was getting impatient now. ‘That’s not very helpful, Mr Dixon. I need a name.’

  ‘There was a girl,’ Dixon said. ‘Lucy. She’s a bit stuck up, but she’s got clearance. If you treat her right, she might be the one.’

  Chapter 10

  Katherine came in from the kitchen as Clark was saying goodbye to someone on the phone. ‘Work?’ she asked when Clark put her phone away.

  ‘Hardly,’ Clark said. ‘It was Wilson. He’s as angry about the suspension as my own father would be.’ She sat down on the sofa and picked up her weeping glass of iced tea. Even with the windows open, the old farmhouse was a sweatbox in this summer heat. The light cotton shirt she wore was sticking to her back and she was conscious of the darker patches spreading under her arms. Her forehead and the backs of her knees were damp. Even her hair seemed to be sweating from the roots.

  Katherine sat down opposite her and twirled the ice around in her glass with her finger. ‘Jesse’s lovely,’ she said.

  Clark smiled. It wasn’t difficult to see where this conversation would go but she let Katherine get there in her own time. ‘He is. He’ll be good for Scott.’

  ‘He’s great with horses.’

  ‘He’s great with Scott, too.’

  Katherine closed her eyes. ‘Yes. He needs someone like that in his life. Ever since Ryan died, I’ve been worried about him. About how he was coping.’ She sat back and looked at Clark. ‘You didn’t see how he was when we moved here. He was…a wreck.’

  ‘He never said,’ Clark told her.

  ‘He doesn’t like to talk about it. Things got pretty dark for a time. I thought I was going to lose him, too.’

  ‘He means a lot to you,’ Clark said.

  Katherine nodded slowly. ‘It was tough, watching him go down that route—the alcohol, the darkness; I was terrified he’d do something silly.’

  She stared into her glass of tea and remembered a time when she woke to the sound of Scott crying in the kitchen. The hoarse, heart-wrenching sobs that bubbled up from the pit of his stomach sent shudders of sadness and panic through her.

  She didn’t even stop to put on her dressing gown and she hobbled, without her cane, down the stairs and crossed into the kitchen. She knelt beside him as he sat on the floor, repeatedly thumping the back of his head into the fridge, and she took his shoulders and pleaded with him to stop it, to stop hurting himself.

  He cried into her arms and rocked himself as he clung to the dregs of a bottle of vodka and she hushed him and kissed his hair and wiped away his tears as they continued to fall.

  He had been crying so hard he was struggling for breath, his mouth wide, tears and saliva and vodka on his lips, his temple veins throbbing.

  ‘It’s okay, honey,’ she told him. ‘I’m here, my love. It’s okay.’

  ‘Make it stop,’ he cried. ‘Please make it stop.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘I want it to be over, Margaret.’

  ‘It’ll get better, Kane,’ s
he said as she smoothed his hair.

  ‘I couldn’t do it,’ he said. ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘It’s okay, honey.’

  And he continued rocking himself in her arms and crying and hugging the bottle of vodka and pleading with her to make it be over. ‘I can’t do it,’ he kept saying. ‘I want it to be over but it won’t be.’

  She held him tight and hummed to him and they sat that way for over an hour, long after he had stopped crying, long after he had stopped mumbling wretched sorrow and she was sure he had fallen asleep. She prised the vodka bottle from his arms and she took a cushion from a chair and helped him lie down and she noticed, deliberately placed in the middle of the table, the block of knives that normally sat on the countertop by the oven, and beside the wooden block, the only framed photograph of Ryan that he had slipped under the radar from Clark and Wilson when they’d gone into protection. She had begged him to get rid of it but he hadn’t.

  She put the knife block into a cupboard out of sight and sat down beside Scott, running the backs of her fingers along his cheek and holding the image of Ryan to her chest until the sun broke in shards through the blinds onto the floor.

  She looked back at Clark.

  ‘He’s come a long way,’ Clark said.

  She nodded. ‘He’s all I have now. I’m just worried about him.’

  ‘But he’s happy,’ Clark told her. ‘Certainly happier than I’ve ever seen him.’

  ‘But at what cost?’ Katherine asked. ‘Now all he has is a lie.’

  ‘He has you. And Jesse, and me.’

  ‘You and I know his past. Can he ever really have Jesse? Truly? If this develops into something bigger, Jesse will never know Scott’s truth, he’ll never know the Kane we love. Everything will be a lie, and you can’t base a relationship on lies—look where that got David and me.’