Brake Failure
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BRAKE FAILURE
Alison Brodie
Other Books by Alison Brodie
Wild Life
The Double
Face to Face
Brake Failure
Copyright © 2016 Alison Brodie
Kindle Edition
All right reserved. No part of this book maybe reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
License Notice
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you wish to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover Design by Steve Eddicott at eye-d creative
Table of Contents
Copyright_page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Epilogue
About the author
Connect with Alison
Chapter One
Shady Acres Retirement Home, Kansas City
11.56 pm. New Year’s Eve, 1999
‘There’s a dead man at the door,’ Mrs Whitaker hissed, leaning over the desk.
Nurse Betty sighed, took a bite of donut, closed the magazine on “How to get Slim for the Millennium” and heaved herself to her feet. ‘Come on, Mrs Whitaker.’ She curved an arm around the old woman’s shoulders and began to guide her along the corridor. ‘Let’s get you back to the lounge. You’re missing all the fun.’
Mrs Whitaker twisted away. ‘Didn’t you hear me? There’s a dead man at the door!’
Nurse Betty stopped, mid-chew. The doors to the lounge were wide open. Garlands festooned the ceiling; coloured balloons drifted over the carpet, paper-cups lay scattered like there’d been a stampede. ‘Where is everyone?’ she demanded.
‘Where do you think?’
Nurse Betty pivoted, turned sharp right and marched into the entrance lobby. Beyond the glass doors, the residents stood in the snow, illuminated under the porch light. The doors slid open and she was outside, cold biting her cheeks, shoes slipping on ice as she descended the ramp. She paused when she saw the snail’s trail of blood in the snow. It came out of the blackness, from the direction of the railroad, and into the light - a red line disappearing into the huddle of residents who were shivering and whispering.
She pushed in to see what they were staring at. A big man in a sheriff’s uniform lay spread-eagled on the ground. The snow around him looked like Strawberry Slurpee. She couldn’t see his face because Mrs Peterson, who was eighty-two and wore leopard-print blouses, was giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. As Nurse Betty pulled her off, she gasped.
Hank! Blood stained his neck, his uniform, his hands. She dropped to her knees and opened his jacket. He’d been shot. Above their heads, the sky exploded in bangs, fizzing and popping. A high, keening whistle screamed low over the rooftop.
The new Millennium.
She struggled to her feet to go call an ambulance. Mrs Peterson was again bending over the body. Nurse Betty had to shout over the noise of the fireworks. ‘Don’t give him mouth-to-mouth!’
‘I’m not!’ Mrs Peterson shouted back. ‘He’s delirious. I’m trying to hear what he’s saying.’
‘And?’
A huge explosion shook the air. Silver starbursts lit up the sky.
In the sudden lull, Mrs Peterson again lowered her head to the sheriff’s mouth and when she looked up her mascaraed eyes were big.
‘He’s saying: “Don’t do it, Ruby. Don’t do it.”’
London. Sixteen weeks earlier …
Chapter Two
Swiss army knife (for an on-the-spot tracheotomy)
Eye-wash (flying grit)
Tweezers (splinters)
Card with Blood Group O (emergency transfusion)
Ruby knew she wasn’t a hypochondriac. If she were, she would not have had her blood group printed on a card she would have had it tattooed on her ankle like a Special Forces op. She continued rooting in her “organiser” handbag, finally found her mirror and held it up. No lipstick on her teeth. Mascara still intact. Her large hazel eyes were her best feature. Her worst feature was the electric shrubbery of used-tea-bag coloured hair that framed her face.
She smiled smugly at her reflection. Should she tell Claire immediately, or savour the news until the end of the evening?
A delicious choice.
She replaced her mirror and glanced about. The crystal-lit dining room was filled with the civilised sounds of tinkling glassware, subdued laughter and conversation. Women in diamonds. Men in dinner jackets. Refusing to be intimidated by all this opulence, Ruby gave a look of indifference, as if she not only belonged here, but was bored sick of the place.
Claire was late. Normally her stepsister was punctual, but not when she wanted to undermine the enemy - and Ruby was the enemy. They’d been at war since they became sisters at the age of eight. Then, it had been a blitzkrieg of hair-pulling and shin-kicking; but now they were adults it was more stealth and guerrilla tactics. That was why Claire had insisted on meeting at The Dorchester: to make Ruby feel inferior.
But this tactic wasn’t going to work. Because, tonight, Ruby was going to drop a bomb!
Claire appeared, framed between the looped-back curtains at the entrance to the dining room. She was a picture of European elegance, in a pink lambs-wool suit, her wrists alive with jewellery, her fine pale hair sculpted to her head like a helmet. ‘Jean-Luc!’ she cried, proffering her cheek to the maître d’ while squeezing his hands as if he’d just survived major surgery.
As Ruby watched, she assessed the vast gulf that had grown between her and her stepsister:
-Claire lives in an elegant seventeenth-century apartment in Grand Place, Brussels.
-I live in a basement in Crouch End.
-Claire hosts glittering functions for minor royalty and major artists.
-I feed Doris the bag lady every Friday with a Big Mac with extra, extra ketchup.
-Claire’s husband writes French sonnets, such as: “La Belle Rose.”
-My soon-to-be-husband writes: “Take a Jump on Fleas.”
-Claire sings soprano and was Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute.
-I’ve spent ten months organising the Particle Physics Department of Imperial College of Science and Technology. I’ve tracked down hundreds of irreplaceable files - from
lockers, from the men’s lavatory in Spectroscopy and even from Left Luggage at Paddington Station. Files graffitied in Greek, tea-stained and torn about; looking less like ground-breaking physics of world-shattering importance but more like the shredded bedding of a hibernating hamster. I know these documents should be shared with the global science community but I don’t care. I’ve locked the cabinet and hidden the key.
Claire was with someone. Who would it be this time? An Icelandic sculptress from the cover of Time magazine? Or a Catalonian artist with links to the Spanish Royal Family?
Ruby also had a “show-off” friend with her. She glanced at Sandra, who sat beside her on the banquette staring vacantly into space. Dr Sandra Brown was twenty-seven with beautiful blue eyes behind crooked wire-rimmed glasses and, although voluble on electron separation, was incapable of girly chit-chat. The only thing Ruby knew about her friend was that, for some reason, she was using the biggest thing in the universe to find the smallest thing in the universe.
Claire released the maître d’ and pivoted. ‘Ma petite!’ She waved as if Ruby were far out to sea. She always had to do something that stopped a room talking. Leading the maître d’ like a favoured slave, she sailed over, her head tilted to one side as she studied Ruby. ‘Why do you insist on having that hair?’ she said irritably.
‘Because I don’t want to be bald?’
Claire blinked, astonished at the sarcasm. ‘You know very well what I mean.’ She leant forward and gave Ruby two air kisses. ‘You need pruning.’ She laughed - after all she was paying the bill and could be as rude as she wanted. Ceremonially installed, she flashed a smile across the table at Ruby.
‘May I introduce Olga Milyutin,’ she announced, presenting her companion beside her. ‘She’s just won the Nobel prize for literature.’
Let the battle begin.
Ruby presented her companion. ‘This is Doctor Sandra Brown. She’s been giving lectures at the Albert Hall.’
‘The Albert Hall!’ Claire was visibly impressed. ‘What sort of doctor?’ The question was directed at Ruby - their show-off friends were not here to speak but to be paraded. They used to do the same sort of thing with their dolls.
‘She’s a physicist.’
‘Really?’ Physicists were way beyond Claire’s sphere and she was intrigued. ‘What field does she specialise in?’
Ruby, who wasn’t even going to try to pronounce it, turned to Sandra for the answer. With two pairs of eyes targeting her, Sandra suddenly looked as if she couldn’t pronounce it either. ‘Einspired isosinglet quark and detecting teraelectronvolts,’ she answered. Faced with a - seemingly - fascinated audience, she perked up. ‘We’re collaborating at CERN to build The Hadron Collider: a particle accelerator that will find the Higgs boson and reveal the origin of the universe. Basically, we aim to collide two beams of protons at ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine percent of the speed of-.’
‘How fascinating.’ Claire was waving at a waiter like a Titanic survivor waving at a lifeboat. But Sandra was just getting started.
‘Dr Eduardo Santos is heading the Imperial College team. He’s Brazilian. You’ve heard of the Big Bang?’
Claire’s eyes shot wide. ‘He sounds a veritable stud!’
Sandra looked bewildered - a NASA computer trying to process a Tesco loyalty card - prompting Ruby to protest. ‘This is serious, Claire.’
‘Absolutely!’
Claire would always mock what she couldn’t understand. As cultural doyenne of Brussels, her forté was The Arts. She adored Aïda but complained that Madame Butterfly was hackneyed from overuse - although, when her amateur group was asked to perform it, she stampeded her way into the lead role. Ruby had flown over for the opening night, weeping slow tears when Claire sang ‘Un bel di vedremo’. Her stepsister’s voice had been so pure, so heart-breaking that Ruby couldn’t believe the hard-boiled-Claire and the sweet and despairing Cio-Cio-San were one and the same person.
Aware that their Russian guest was being left out, Ruby leant forward with a friendly smile. ‘Congratulations on winning-’
‘She can’t speak English.’ Claire was re-arranging the table’s floral centrepiece with nimble authoritative fingers, picking out a baby fern and crushing it into a ball.
‘What sort of thing does she write?’
Claire grimaced. ‘It’s all naked trees, snow, and more snow.’ She eyed their two guests with disfavour. ‘Marvellous. One wants to bore the world, the other one wants to blow it up.’
Ruby smothered a laugh. Right from the start, Ruby had wanted to be friends with Claire. If only Claire had given her the chance, she would have followed her round like an adoring puppy. But it was too late now. There had been too many bruised shins, too many dolls strewn across the battlefield.
The waiter arrived and everyone gave their orders, all except Claire, who thrust the menu at him. ‘Jean-Luc knows what I want.’
Yes, Claire always knew what she wanted, and got it - with one exception. At the age of eighteen, she decided that Paris was where she truly belonged. She auditioned at the Conservatoire de Paris, fully expecting to be welcomed with open arms and a fanfare of trumpets. When she was rejected, the shock was so great she sat in a daze at a pavement café on the avenue Jean Jaurès, unaware of the impeccably dressed gentleman attempting to engage her in conversation. Slowly her antennae for all things intellectual started twitching.
The gentleman was Arnaud van de Ghellinck, the Belgian junior minister for culture. So, on the rebound from her only love (Paris), Claire married Arnaud and settled in Brussels. Madame van de Ghellinck - she would toss her name into conversation like a stun grenade.
She took a sip of Chablis. ‘Last week the Vienna Chamber Orchestra came to supper. The Ambassador said to me: “Madame van de Ghellinck, you are too kind.” Naturally, it was all very restrained - unlike the American Embassy with their bacchanalian blow-outs. I served Petits Chaussons au Roequefort and Cromesquis Crustaces. They’re so easy to eat.’
Easy to eat, not so easy to say.
Ruby studied her stepsister over the rim of her glass. Soon I will have your confidence, she thought. Soon, I will have your life.
Unaware that her Russian guest was knocking back the vodka, Claire continued working on the floral centrepiece. ‘One week to the wedding.’ She glanced up at Ruby, her eyebrows peaked into questions marks. ‘You must be a bag of nerves, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Oh, gosh, no!’
This was a lie. Ruby had a dread of attracting attention. In contrast, Claire would get up in front of an audience of thousands as if she were doing them a favour. Claire was supremely self-possessed, assured that life would give her what she wanted or, if not exactly what she wanted, then something better.
Ruby was distrustful of life. A chest rash and neck pain (meningitis) would have her hurrying to Doctor Strachan; a Scotsman who, quite frankly, had the tenderness of a Third World dictator. Yesterday, he’d spoken to her most severely, his finger-tip hitting his desk as if hammering each word into the wood, his hairy eyebrows converging like fighting rodents.
‘I repeat, Miss Thompson: You are no’ Afro-Caribbean. Therefur, ye cannae have Sickle Cell Anaemia, even if yur landlady’s window cleaner did work behind a bar in Jamaica fur three weeks.’ His expression had been so severe she had been too frightened to ask if he was absolutely sure.
‘And how is Edward?’ Claire snapped the stem of a pink tulip. ‘Is he still in cat litter?’
Ruby paused, feeling the glorious sensation of a warm balloon expanding in her chest. ‘He has a new account … Louis Treize.’
Claire’s head shot up. ‘Louis Treize?’ Realising she had shown awed astonishment, she pretended to lose interest. Sliding the tulip in among the flowers, she began to sing softly: “O zittre nicht …” She stopped as if on a sudden thought, ‘Did you know? I was Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute. The critics couldn’t believe I wasn’t a professional.’ Interrupted by the ringing of her cell phone, she scooped it
out of her bag.
‘Hello? … Did I? … I shall be utterly charming, je promets.’ She passed the phone to Ruby. ‘My mother wants to speak to you.’
She’s MY mother, too! Ruby took the phone. ‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Hello darling. Are you two behaving yourselves?’
Ruby laughed. ‘Just about.’
Ruby recalled the first time she’d called Vanessa “mummy”. She’d been sitting in the headmistress’s office, arms folded tight, kicking the desk. ‘Wait until your stepmother gets here!’ Mrs Fotherington threatened. Minutes later, Vanessa’s voice was heard out in the corridor. ‘Ruby needs time, Mrs Fotherington. I need time. Give her one more chance.’ Vanessa entered the office alone and closed the door; her eyes anxious, her mouth trembling into a smile. Ruby watched her for a moment then stood up and slipped her hand into hers. ‘I’m sorry … mummy,’ she’d whispered.
Vanessa chuckled. ‘I remember a time when you two girls fought like demons. Now look at you: having dinner together. I’m so thrilled.’
‘Me, too.’
‘Everything is organised for your Big Day. And your Grandfather promises to behave himself.’
In adopting Ruby, Vanessa had also adopted Ruby’s maternal grandfather – an anarchist and “man of the soil”, who could fix anything that leaked and who seemed to attract middle-aged, middle-class ladies like shoppers to a Harrods sale.
‘He’s very excited about this Millennium Bug.’ Vanessa chuckled. ‘He has Mrs Symmonds-Elliott stockpiling corned beef in her gazebo and-’
‘What actually is this bug?’ Ruby interrupted. ‘I heard-’
‘Don’t you dare start worrying. It’s nothing. Anyway, the reason I’m phoning is to say the Audrey/Brendas will be there any minute. Claire forgot her chequebook and since they’re in the area they volunteered to drop it off. Can you make sure she’s nice to them? I know how they twitter, but they’re just so overwhelmed to be in her presence.’ Vanessa’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I think they’re hoping some of Claire’s glamour will rub off on them.’