by Mark Hill
‘I can help you,’ said Drake, edging forward.
‘You could have helped me at the home,’ she spat. ‘But you never did. Ray was the only one to make any effort, the only one who ever took an interest in my welfare. But you killed him, and took his future for yourself.’
‘Whatever Turrell told you, it’s wrong.’
‘That poor, sweet boy burned to death, and you didn’t save him. You forget, Connor, I was there.’
‘Toby said he’d let April go if I killed him.’
Amelia gave him a sympathetic look. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t get that memo. But I tell you what …’ She took a knife from her belt and threw it at his feet. ‘I’ll consider letting your precious little girl live if you save me the trouble and kill yourself right now.’
‘How do I know you’ll let her go?’
‘Oh, you don’t! I could just kill her anyway, but you’re going to have to trust me. I’m a very trustworthy person, and trusting in return. Ask Toby, ask my beautiful, brutal husband, may he rot in hell.’ She nodded. ‘Don’t be coy, Connor. Pick up the knife and gut yourself. I’ve seen the things you can do when you put your mind to it.’
Flick moved closer behind Amelia as Drake crouched over the knife.
‘Don’t do this, Amelia.’
‘I’m waiting.’ She shuffled backwards, April whimpering in her grip.
He flipped the knife in his hand so that the tip of the blade was pressed to his stomach. ‘We’ll get you help,’ he said.
‘But I don’t want help.’ Amelia’s eyes bulged. ‘I’ve never felt better!’
When he stepped forward again, Amelia jammed the barrel of the gun up into the soft flesh beneath April’s jaw. ‘Just do it!’
Drake stood hunched over the knife as if to disembowel himself, and Amelia shivered with expectation.
He shouted: ‘Now!’
Flick lunged to grab Amelia’s gun hand, wrenching it away from April. Plaster exploded in the ceiling when Amelia squeezed off a shot, but Drake flew forward, sending them both to the floor.
‘Get out!’ he shouted, and April ran screaming out the door. Drake slammed Amelia’s gun hand against the floor and the weapon went off again, splintering the wooden stairs above Elliot’s head. Drake crunched her wrist again, and the gun leapt from her hand.
A furious wind blew in through the open door. Amelia and Drake rolled towards the fireplace, tumbling over each other, her nails clawing at his face, his eyes, as she scrabbled on top of him. Screaming, clawing, slapping and punching his temples and cheeks. A riot of colour swam in his vision.
Flick flew at her, but Amelia stretched to pump the knife into her left side in three quick stabs, in, in, in, and when Flick’s body stiffened in shock, she swung her against the fireplace. Flick’s head cracked against the mantelpiece and she slumped against the wall.
Amelia dropped back onto Drake, and he glimpsed the flash of the blade – a searing pain ripped through his shoulder. She pressed down on it with a banshee shriek, wrenching the knife around in his flesh, leaning on it with both hands, opening the wound. Arching so low that her lips brushed against his, and he thought he was going to black out. Then he felt the knife suck from the wound and Amelia sat bolt upright, holding the blade high, ready to bring it down into his face.
She stroked his cheek tenderly, said: ‘Goodbye, Connor.’
Then there was an explosion, and chips of stone flew from the fireplace. Amelia flinched at the gunshot, giving Drake the moment he needed. He twisted his fingers into her hair and smashed her head down into the stone surround with all the force he could muster. He heard a crack as her skull splintered, and Amelia went slack on top of him.
Trying to avoid the weight of her lifeless body pressing on his wound, he pushed her aside and lay against the warm edge of the fireplace. Elliot made a feeble smacking sound in his throat. Drake climbed to his feet.
‘Shit,’ Elliot mumbled. The gun dropped from his hand. ‘Missed.’
When Drake crouched beside him, Elliot said: ‘You get him?’
Drake nodded, gingerly pulling the jacket from the wound in his shoulder. The slick dome of Elliot’s scalp was sallow, and his breath rattled, as if his lungs were flapping loose inside.
‘Ain’t lost your touch, have you? Turrell, the girl … and Gordon. I remember your first one.’ Elliot winced at a shooting pain. His pupils were almost obliterated behind a sea of clotted red. ‘You ever think about it, Connor … what you did to Tallis?’
Drake said: ‘He deserved to die.’
‘You did him good. In cold blood. The look in your eyes, the way you torched him, it was ice cold. I ain’t ever forgotten it. But it’s got to stop now. All these lies, all these secrets.’ He attempted a slack smile. ‘They’ll be the death of me.’
Drake glanced at Flick, unconscious against the wall, blood seeping from the ragged wounds in her side.
Faintly in the distance, the sound of sirens.
‘She’s coming back to me, my Rhonda,’ said Elliot. ‘I know she is – and the boy. I’m getting a second chance … and I’m going to tell her everything. Get it all out where it can’t hurt me any more.’
Blood spurted from his mouth. Chances are, Elliot wasn’t going to last much longer, he had lost too much blood. But stranger things had happened. Drake reached into his pocket, took out a pair of disposable gloves.
‘They’re probably on the way back now, and I’m gonna tell ’em everything. About the home, and what happened there … and what became of us. It’s the only way. Me and you, we’ll tell the truth for the first time in our lives, and the lies won’t hurt us no more. And then … we’ll be free, at last.’ Drake crouched, snapping the gloves over his fingers. ‘What do you say, Connor? A new start for the both of us.’
‘I think it’s a fine idea, Elliot,’ said Drake, and he pinched Elliot’s nostrils together, cupping the hand over his mouth. Elliot tried to struggle, his hands scrabbled weakly at Drake’s wrist for a few moments as his mouth filled with blood. Eyes fastened on Drake, his arms swayed slowly like reeds in a gentle stream, then fell to his sides. A short time after that he stopped moving – and his dead eyes stared blankly.
Drake stood, pulling the gloves off his fingers, and when he turned, Flick was staring at him.
Right at him.
63
What did you see?
Drake was leaning over her when she came to, pressing a towel into the wounds in her side. Flick’s head swam; she was ice cold and shook uncontrollably: her muscles, her nerves, her whole body. ‘Am I …?’
‘Easy,’ he said, glancing towards the door. ‘They’re here.’
The sound of vehicles outside. Doors slamming and shouts. Lights, blue and yellow, refracted off the windows and whirled across the ceiling.
‘What did you see, Flick?’ he asked. Her mouth was dry, despite the icy sweat dripping into her lips. She tried to speak, but couldn’t. She felt pain, but didn’t know where it was coming from. He smeared her sopping fringe away from her eyes. Drake’s face was close to hers, and he spoke quickly. ‘What did you see?’
There was blood everywhere. His own suit jacket was sodden. Amelia Troy was face down beside the fire, Elliot Juniper’s body by the stairs.
‘We’re good, aren’t we, Flick? We’re going to get through this, me and you together.’ Drake smiled gently. ‘What did you see?’
Then the bodies were surrounded by uniformed men and women as paramedics and police poured inside. Drake called: ‘Over here!’
She heard shouts, urgent commands, and then Eddie Upson was standing over her. She heard him ask Drake if there was anything he could do. His voice echoed, as if from the far end of a long pipe.
‘Let us through, please!’
A pair of paramedics kneeled beside her and started barking questions. Talking in slow, loud voices as they unpacked equipment. One of them moved Drake aside to press hard on the sopping wound – Flick’s body couldn’t stop juddering – and fired
questions at her.
‘Are you cold?’
‘Can you breathe properly?’
‘Tell me your name.’
‘She’s in shock,’ said Drake.
One of them held up a hand, irritably. ‘Move away, please. Let us work.’
Drake stepped back, and Flick dimly registered some kind of dispute as more paramedics surrounded him. He didn’t want treatment, didn’t want to leave her.
And minutes later, when an oxygen mask had been placed over her face, and a clotting agent applied to her wounds and bandaged, she was lifted onto a trolley and brought out of the cottage. The breeze cooled her burning face. The furious winds of the night before had subsided and the wall of trees on the other side of the lane had emerged from the dark. She sensed Drake keeping pace with the trolley.
He had asked: What did you see?
And the question kept going round in her head, but she didn’t understand it. Her head was groggy with the throbbing pain and the cold that coated her bones. Images repeated in her mind, each one layered transparently on top of the other like a double exposure. She saw Amelia Troy’s twisted leer as she gleefully stabbed at her; Peter Holloway falling on the stairs, arms outstretched; and Ray Drake crouched over Elliot, doing something with his mouth, as Juniper’s hand plucked ineffectually at his sleeve.
‘We’re taking you to a trauma centre.’ She barely heard the paramedic as she was secured on the ambulance. ‘You’ll go straight into surgery.’
She tried to speak, wanted to say goodbye to Nina and Martin and the kids. Needed them close, now more than ever, but knew she had to let them go.
‘Do you want someone with you?’ asked the woman.
Eddie Upson and Millie Steiner and Vix Moore crowded at the back door of the vehicle. ‘Is she going to be okay?’ Steiner asked.
‘We’ll need one of you with her,’ the woman said.
And she heard Drake say: ‘Let me go.’
Flick said, No. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t want him near. Needed time to order the images in her head. No, please. But nobody heard her, because her voice was muffled and weak beneath the mask, and her head swam, and she had no idea if she’d even spoken.
Millie Steiner climbed on board and took Flick’s hand. The throb of the engine pulsed through her. Beyond the doors, she glimpsed the patrol cars and ambulances, the uniforms scattering across the drive, and saw the boy called Connor Laird staring at her, oblivious of all the commotion around him.
And she had no idea what he was thinking.
A last glimpse of racing cloud, a whirl of flashing blue light across the gravel, and the ambulance doors slammed shut.
Acknowledgements
But, wait – before you bung this book back on the shelf, there are people to thank. For no man is an island, not even Ray Drake, and without the help and encouragement of certain people The Two O’Clock Boy would never have gotten up to no good. I’ll keep it brief because I know you have things to do.
There’s my agent, Jamie Cowen. Jamie’s passion for The Two O’Clock Boy was a game-changer, and I’m hugely grateful for his belief in the novel and my writing. The same goes for Rosie and Jessica Buckman, and the other lovely people at The Ampersand and Buckman Agencies.
My editor at Sphere, Ed Wood, worked his astonishing magic on the story, and has gently challenged me to raise my game as a writer at every turn. And, gosh, there are so many others at Little, Brown to thank. It’s been a joy to work with Thalia Proctor and Alison Tulett, Tom Webster, Emma Williams, Ella Bowman, the wonderful Sales gang – and my thanks to Sean Garrehy for his eye-popping cover.
I’d like to thank everyone who has read part or all of the manuscript along the way and taken time to comment. Debi Alper – who made me cry with relief – Isabelle Grey, Claire McGowan, Laura Wilson, Rod Reynolds, Steph Broadribb, David Scullion, Charles Harris and Lisa Thompson.
There are patient and helpful people to whom I ran for professional expertise: Mick Gradwell, Jason Eddings, Bob Cummings, Bob Eastwood and Ian Sales. Anything I got wrong is down to my own pig-headedness.
And finally I’d like to thank Fiona Eastwood for her inexhaustible love and patience. Without Fiona I would never have been able to fulfil a lifelong dream. Ever since I started writing The Two O’Clock Boy one snowy winter’s afternoon in midtown Manhattan, she has supported and encouraged me.
My debt to her – for this book, and for just about anything else worth a damn in this life – is incalculable.