Promises of Blood

by David Thorne

  ‘I am cousin of Rafiq Jahani,’ the man read off the piece of paper with difficulty. His accent was strong.

  Gabe nodded, kept his gaze on the man’s face. ‘And?’

  But the man did not say anything else, put the paper away. He pulled a machete from the leg of his running bottoms.

  Gabe’s time in the army had taught him the importance of ambush, of retaining the initiative regardless of the situation at hand. He had been waiting for the men since he parked outside, had undressed in the middle of the changing room, worked out where he could look in mirrors. He threw the weight in his hand at the man in a lazy underarm which the man sidestepped easily. But it gave Gabe time to pick up a dumb-bell from the floor. He had loosened the weights before he started working out, knew he might need it. He stood and the weights slid off as he lifted it, falling to the ground so that he was left with a metre-and-a-half aluminium bar. The man in front was still watching the weights roll to a stop on the ground when Gabe swung the bar in an arc. The impact broke the man’s wrist, made him drop the machete. The man behind hesitated for a moment, shocked by the sudden explosion of violence. Before he could move Gabe had scythed him once in the knee. As he went down Gabe switched the bar in his hands, hit him in the temple, thought about hitting him a third time, thought better of it. The man with the broken wrist was sitting on the floor. As his partner fell, he bent to one side and vomited over the blue gym mat.

  ‘I had nothing to do with what happened to your cousin,’ Gabe said. But the man just looked up at him blankly, did not understand a word. Gabe shook his head, disgusted, picked up his towel and headed off to the changing rooms. He walked past the studio windows where the fifteen women had stopped their aerobics routine. They watched him leave in shock, their mouths open, eyes wide, as still as mannequins in a department store display.

  14

  THE MEN WHO attacked Gabe made no complaint. The management of the gym did not want any trouble. When Gabe calls to tell me what happened, I tell him to leave it, keep the police out of it. He does not want any more complications, does not want a jury being told that, as well as attempted murder, he also broke a man’s wrist, shattered another man’s knee.

  I do not tell Gabe to look after himself; I know he will. And anyway, it sounds as if he has plans of his own.

  ‘Anyway, Danny, fuck this. I’m getting out of town for a few days. You need me, call.’

  ‘Not leaving the country?’

  ‘Got no passport. Remember?’

  ‘You take care, Gabe.’

  ‘Always.’

  Rafiq Jahani’s father runs a hand car wash on the site of a former petrol station next to a busy roundabout, underneath a flyover which rumbles with the weight of overhead traffic. When I pull up, his men are polishing a large black Mercedes. The owner is leaning against a low brick wall and watching. He is wearing a business suit and tells the man nearest him to get his rag right in the spokes of the alloys, that’s what he’s paying him for. He nods at me as I walk past, looks down at the man squatting next to his wheels.

  ‘Seen more meat on a dirty fork,’ he says above the noise of traffic, as if the man cleaning his car cannot hear, or does not possess the intelligence to understand. I do not answer, walk to the office.

  I open the door, and at first I cannot see anything in the gloom; the blinds are down and it is bright outside and my eyes take time to adjust.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Rafiq Jahani’s father is sitting behind a desk, smoking a cigarette. He is a small man with thin black hair and a salt-and-pepper moustache. On the wall behind him is a framed piece of writing in letters I do not recognise. I push the door closed behind me and the traffic noise lessens.

  ‘Yes?’ he says. He has a strong accent, though not as strong as the man he sent to attack and possibly murder my best friend the previous evening. He has a kind face and gentle eyes. He picks up a cup of coffee, drinks.

  ‘You’re Rafiq Jahani’s father.’

  He stops still at this, his cup of coffee held close to his mouth. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘People connected to you tried to injure my client. Perhaps kill him.’

  ‘You are his lawyer?’

  I nod. ‘You want justice for your son, this isn’t the way to get it.’

  ‘Justice,’ he says. He takes a drink from his cup, places it carefully on his desk. Takes a last drag from his cigarette, mashes it out. ‘Perhaps our ideas of justice are not the same.’

  ‘Attacking an unarmed man with a machete?’

  ‘My son is in a coma. He may die. He is seventeen, only seventeen.’

  ‘My client has not been found guilty.’

  ‘We have spoken to the officers. The evidence, it is quite clear.’

  He looks at me, his gaze level. He is not angry and his voice is quiet, reasoned. If anything he seems saddened by our conversation, at what is happening.

  ‘He is a good boy, my son. He is successful in his studies. He is going to university. If God pleases.’

  I consider telling him about Vincent Halliday, asking him why, if his son is such a model student, he is in the pocket of a violent criminal. But his son is in a coma and may never wake up, and I cannot say the words.

  ‘This must stop,’ I say.

  He picks up a pen from his desk, holds it in two hands. ‘You do not understand. Once this has started …’ he lifts his shoulders in a shrug, ‘it cannot be stopped. My people need, what would you say? Blood.’

  I look at the man in exasperation. He is so small I could pick him up and throw him, yet at the same time he exudes an implacable strength of purpose I cannot penetrate or trouble.

  ‘You’ve already found blood,’ I say. ‘You keep going, you’ll only find more.’

  He nods. ‘That is usually the way. With these things.’ The way he says it, as if there is an inevitability to what is going on which is impossible to derail. He lifts his cup again, takes another drink. All the while he watches me, entirely without malice. I have heard of vendettas, of blood feuds, of entire families, generations, wiped out. Perhaps it is a tradition which is still alive in Kurdistan.

  ‘My client is innocent,’ I say. ‘You’re making a mistake.’

  ‘I do not think so.’

  Behind me the door to the office opens, letting in the noise of traffic. I turn. The thin man who had been washing the Mercedes’ wheels is in the doorway. He says something to Rafiq Jahani’s father in a language I do not understand. They exchange words and the thin man looks behind him, calls out. Two more men arrive. Time to leave.

  ‘You don’t need to do this,’ I say. Rafiq Jahani’s father spreads his hands, palms up. I walk out, past the three men in the doorway, nudge shoulders with one of them when he does not move out of the way. These people are going nowhere.

  I am now sure that William Gove had something to do with the disappearance of CJ’s sister and Rochelle Farrell’s daughter. I believe that he left them money in his will as some kind of atonement, blood money; that he hoped it would go some way to redressing past sins. Perhaps ease his passage into heaven.

  William Gove attended Our Lady Immaculate, a brick church with a bell tower, two bells visible in arches cut through the brickwork. It is surrounded by a graveyard and an old man is working in it, cutting back the grass around the stones with a petrol trimmer. It is hot and the sky is blue and the shade cast by the yew trees along the path seems almost black. I push open the heavy wooden studded doors of the church and inside it is dark, darker than Rafiq Jahani’s father’s office, and very cool. My footsteps make a guilty sound in the quiet. An old woman is sitting on a pew near the front and she turns to look at me fearfully, as if I am a bringer of bad news. As ever, walking into a church makes me feel as if I have stepped back in time, back to a world governed by superstition and mystery and intangible dread. Christ gazes down at me from a stained-glass window, a nail puncturing his hand, the bloodied pane shining a pale red light on to the stone floor of the aisle.
>
  ‘Hello?’ I turn. The priest is older than I am, perhaps sixty, with thick, straight grey hair. I did not hear him behind me.

  ‘Father Donald? We spoke on the phone.’

  ‘You are the lawyer?’ He looks at me doubtfully and I smile as reassuringly as I am able.

  ‘I’m Daniel Connell, yes,’ I say.

  ‘Please.’ He is dressed in black, white dog collar. I follow him through heavy velvet curtains into the back of the church, where there is a wooden table, two chairs. The table has books on, paper that has been written on.

  ‘Sit down,’ says Father Donald, easing himself into one of the chairs. I sit across from him. ‘You said you wished to discuss William Gove.’

  ‘He was my client.’

  ‘Yes. His funeral was held here. I spoke.’ He sighs, crosses his legs. ‘Said some words.’

  ‘I believe that he may have been involved in the disappearance of two young women,’ I say.

  ‘Oh?’ He does not appear surprised. ‘Why is that?’

  I tell him about William Gove’s will, about the coincidence of the two women’s disappearances, fourteen years ago; about how he left money to their next of kin. He listens in silence, his head bowed so that I cannot see his expression. When I have finished, he takes a deep breath, looks up, examines my face carefully.

  ‘Are you a Catholic?’ he says.

  ‘No.’

  ‘A Christian?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Father Donald smiles. ‘Never too late.’ But his smile does not remain for more than a second. ‘Most people think of evil as an abstraction. They say, “What he did was evil,” as if it is just a word, a means of describing something heinous. We Catholics, we believe evil is real and must be fought, conquered through faith.’

  I nod, although I do not know where Father Donald is going with this. I think of Kane, waterboarding my father on a chair in a bar while he laughed.

  ‘William Gove was married to a woman called Melissa, a kind woman, I believe she was good. He loved her, adored her. I knew them when they were together and there was nothing that he would not do for her, though she was a lady of simple tastes who did not ask for much.’ He smiles. ‘I knew her well, and feel qualified to say that much.’

  ‘She died.’ I remember William Gove talking about her, about how from the moment she entered hospital, there was nothing that could be done.

  ‘Must have been twenty years ago. Cancer. Took her so fast.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘Like that. Perhaps God was merciful to her. There was little suffering.’ Father Donald stands up and walks past me, looks through the curtains, checks for anyone listening. He comes back, sits back down. ‘Melissa’s death. That was when evil entered. No,’ he corrects himself. ‘No, I cannot say that. But that was when evil took hold.’

  Father Donald tells me that after Melissa Gove died her husband built a mausoleum in his grounds, a large stone structure, Greek-influenced, what Father Donald terms ‘a monument to grief and rage’. He says that the death of his wife changed him and that there were stories of drinking, of cruelty to his family, abuse of his workers. He tells me that there was a scandal, an accusation of rape made by a local girl who had been picking fruit in the summer. William Gove paid off the mortgage on the girl’s parents’ home and soon afterwards they moved away, he does not know where to.

  I think of his son, Luke Gove, buying a car for a girl at his country club. Of the disdain he showed for Sophie as he deliberately poured water over her top while she trembled with shame and anger.

  ‘Do you think he got to heaven?’ I ask Father Donald.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I could not answer that. It is a question between him and God. But if I was a betting man, I wouldn’t be putting my house on it.’

  I thank him and leave, back through the dark shadow of the yew trees. The old man has finished cutting back the grass and is now raking it up slowly, painfully, and it does not look as if it will be long before he joins the other bodies lying just beneath us.

  The day has been hot and it is still warm in the evening. When I get home, Maria and CJ have dressed up, and Maria tells me that it is too fine to stay in, that I had better take them out to dinner or there will be hell. She says it with a smile on her face but even so I notice CJ looking between us anxiously.

  We walk to an Italian restaurant and sit out on the pavement watching people pass by, fewer and fewer as the light fades. CJ studies them carefully as if any one of them could be a threat.

  ‘Hey,’ I say to her. ‘You’re safe. Enjoy yourself.’

  She nods but does not stop looking. Maria smiles at me, shakes her head. Nothing we can do. The waiter arrives to take our order and I gesture to CJ. She sits in silence for some moments, and even in the evening light I can see that she is blushing. I realise that she has probably never been to a restaurant before, does not know what to do or say, and I feel shame as sharp as her own at my lack of thought. But CJ’s shame soon turns to confrontation, the defence mechanism of those habituated to humiliation.

  ‘I’ll have a vodka,’ she says, carelessly.

  The waiter is a young man and he looks at me for help.

  ‘CJ,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ She gazes at me, challenge in her eyes, a half-smile on her lips, then turns back to the waiter. ‘Go on,’ she says, ‘give me a vodka.’

  ‘You’re underage,’ I say. ‘I can’t let you.’

  ‘Fucking think you are?’ she says, loudly. An older couple at the table next to ours look around.

  ‘CJ, don’t do this,’ I say.

  ‘Going to get me one or not?’ CJ asks the waiter. He doesn’t reply. ‘A fucking vodka?’ she says, as if to a slow child.

  The woman at the next table makes a disapproving noise and CJ turns to her, says, ‘’S your fucking problem?’

  Maria puts a hand on her shoulder but CJ slaps it off, stands up. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she says. ‘Don’t ever fucking touch me.’

  She walks away, into the street, says something I do not catch to the woman at the next table which causes her mouth to drop in shock. I go to follow her but Maria puts her hand on my arm, shakes her head. We watch CJ walk busily away and she doesn’t once look back. The waiter is still standing next to us and eventually I turn to him and say, ‘Give us a couple of minutes, could you?’

  We only stay for a drink and afterwards I drive around looking for CJ but I cannot find her. Maria tells me that there is nothing I can do and that she will come back if she wants, but I cannot forget the promise I made to Ms Armstrong, to look out for her.

  CJ lets herself in quietly just before one o’clock and I stay in my bedroom, listen to her climb the stairs stealthily, perhaps quietened by shame at her behaviour. I wait for half an hour but there is no sound and I fall asleep next to Maria, more relieved than I like to acknowledge that this difficult and damaged girl is safe from the world for at least one more night.

  CJ has night terrors; she cries out in her sleep, words that we cannot understand but often a simple yet desperate no no no. That night the house is hot and we all have difficulty sleeping. I am woken more than once by CJ’s voice in the darkness. I wake up the next morning early and alone and I get up, go looking for Maria. She is in bed next to CJ, on top of the covers. They are both asleep and Maria still has her hand in CJ’s hair where she must have stroked her, soothed the fears that visit her during the night. Asleep and as petite as she is, CJ looks like a child, nothing more. They are both still sleeping when I leave the house.

  15

  I HAVE NOW found nine of the ten beneficiaries of William Gove’s will. An alcoholic ex-mechanic and a debt-ridden nurse. CJ and Rochelle Farrell. Plus a plasterer, a teacher, a librarian, a pensioner whose daughter was still explaining the news to her when I left, and an HGV driver who was recently disqualified for driving under the influence. Some deserving, some not so. But of all of them, only CJ and Rochelle Farrell had missing people in their backgrounds. I told each recipient that I needed info
rmation on their families, asked about children, alive or dead. No secrets, no unexplained disappearances. Perhaps, I tell myself, there is nothing in my suspicions after all.

  According to William Gove’s will, the final beneficiary lives at number 49 Yew Tree Gardens. It is a short road lined with bungalows and, hard as I look, I can only find doors which go up to 36. There is no number 49. I drive up and down three times then park and knock on the door of number 36. A man in a shirt with one sleeve pinned up over a missing forearm answers. I ask him if there is another part of the road, a second section which I have missed with higher numbers. He looks up and down his street and tells me no, not as far as he knows, unless they built it last night in a hurry.

  The name I have is Sabina Antonescu. I have already called the number in William Gove’s papers and it is dead, does not exist. I ask the man if he has heard of anybody by that name and he shakes his head, says it sounds foreign, does he look like one of them?

  He closes the door and I walk back to the middle of the street, look up and down. Wonder why William Gove would leave an address which does not exist. This gives me a problem. Gove’s will stipulates that none of the money can be released until all parties are found. But all I have is a name. Sabina Antonescu. How am I going to find her?

  I drive back to my office and am barely through the door when Saskia Gove calls. I do not recognise her number, would not have picked up if I did. I have enough trouble in my life right now.

  ‘Daniel?’

  ‘I have nothing to say to you.’

  ‘Listen.’

  ‘How did you know where I live?’