The Pact: A dark and compulsive thriller about secrets, privilege and revenge

by S J Bolton

  And now Talitha was wondering what was likely to happen in a few months that would enable Megan to replace the banger with something better.

  ‘I love this place,’ Megan said. ‘Your parents brought us for your eighteenth, do you remember?’

  Of course. Her eighteenth birthday had been before that summer, before everything was stained. Talitha spent a great deal of time thinking back to when life had been pure and full of promise.

  ‘Dad’s a mate of Lord R,’ she said. ‘It was practically the family dining room when we were growing up.’

  ‘Nice table.’ Megan turned back to the huge picture window that filled the outside wall. ‘I thought they were taking us into the garden.’

  ‘How long is your lunch break?’ Talitha asked.

  ‘I’ve got the afternoon off. I’m flat hunting.’

  A new car, the promise of a better car soon, and now she was flat hunting.

  ‘Oh?’ Talitha said, as the menus arrived.

  ‘I can’t stay in the bedsit forever,’ Megan said when the waitress had left. ‘It’s grim. And I’m sure someone broke in the other day.’

  Talitha had had years of practice keeping her expression under control in public. Even so, eye contact at that moment was beyond her. She frowned into her menu. ‘Really?’ They’d left no sign behind, she was sure of it. ‘The smoked salmon is good here,’ she said. ‘My treat.’

  ‘Things seemed in different places. Hard to be sure, though.’

  ‘Anything missing?’ Talitha asked, keeping her eyes on the menu.

  ‘What do I have to steal?’

  If there was an answer to that, it didn’t spring to mind. ‘Are you looking in Oxford?’ she asked instead.

  ‘I think so. Want to come?’

  Talitha closed the menu; she knew it off by heart, anyway. ‘Full diary this afternoon. Invite me to the housewarming.’

  She would be busy, out of town, maybe even out of the country, by the time Megan got round to throwing a housewarming party.

  ‘Of course,’ Megan said. ‘I’ll invite all of you. Spouses too. Although Sarah doesn’t seem to like me.’

  ‘Sarah doesn’t like anyone. I’m not sure she likes Felix that much.’

  Megan’s eyes momentarily lost their cold glitter as she laughed and, for the first time since she’d returned, Talitha saw something of her old friend.

  The waitress was back already. There were disadvantages to being so well known, and at times the service verged on the intrusive. There were only so many times you wanted your wine glass to be filled, or your conversation to be interrupted to tell the waiting staff that everything was fine, thank you.

  ‘Dan said you’d been ill,’ Talitha said, when they’d ordered and were alone again.

  ‘Are you surprised?’ Megan replied. ‘Did you think prisons are healthy places?’

  ‘I know they’re not, of course.’

  ‘The food is appalling, processed stodge. Everyone gains weight apart from the drug addicts. A stone a year, we worked out.’

  Megan had not gained weight. If anything, she looked thinner than Talitha remembered her. Did that make her a drug addict?

  ‘There’s no fresh air, no exercise, healthcare is sub-standard and hygiene doesn’t exist. The mental health problems are every bit as bad as you’d imagine. Average life expectancy for a woman in the UK is eighty-one years. Guess what it is in prison?’

  ‘I can’t. Less, I guess. Ten years less?’

  ‘It’s forty-seven, Tal. Had I stayed in, I’d have less than ten years to live right now. As it is, who knows how long I’ve got. So not only did I lose the twenty years I served, I’ve lost up to thirty more on the outside.’

  ‘Meg, I don’t know what to say,’ Talitha began. ‘We can help with that, at least. I mean, I can. I’ll make an appointment for you at my private health clinic. I’ll pay for it. And for any treatment you need.’

  What the hell was she saying? Treatment for liver and kidney disease could run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. Mark would go apeshit.

  Megan picked up her water glass and drank. ‘That’s kind, but not what I need from you right now.’

  The trust fund would have to cover it. The others would agree, she’d make them. Hang on, what had Megan just said?

  ‘What do you need from me?’

  Megan settled back in her chair. ‘I need you to be my solicitor, Tal.’

  Talitha took her time. She refilled her glass, then Megan’s and wondered where the urgent client calls were when you needed them.

  ‘Why do you need a solicitor?’ she said at last. ‘You’re out. And criminal law isn’t really my thing.’

  Criminal law had been Talitha’s speciality, back in the day before she became managing partner. Megan didn’t need to know that though.

  ‘I’m not free, though, am I?’ Megan said. ‘A life sentence is exactly that. Life. I could be sent back if I so much as get a parking ticket.’

  That was a good point, one Talitha should have thought of herself. Megan’s sentence, technically, would never fully be served. ‘I doubt that,’ she said. ‘You’d have to do a lot worse than a parking violation.’

  An act of violence would do it. Being caught in the act of dangerous driving, almost certainly.

  ‘My point is, I’m vulnerable,’ Megan said. ‘Anyone can accuse me of anything, set me up for anything, and I’m guilty till proved innocent. The law is turned on its head for people like me.’

  Their starters arrived. Talitha had never felt less hungry in her life, but she was grateful for the few seconds reprieve.

  ‘Who would do that?’ she said, once the waitress had left them. ‘Who would accuse you of something you didn’t do?’

  Megan held her cutlery in two gripped fists, like a savage, like she might need to use them as weapons at any moment. ‘It’s been happening for years,’ she said.

  ‘What has?’

  Without replying, Megan began eating. Her starter, a smoked-salmon dish, was light, beautifully presented, but Megan shovelled it into her mouth in a few bites. ‘The judge gave me a twenty-year tariff, do you remember?’

  Of course she remembered. Talitha could write a transcript of that day in court and not get a word wrong.

  Megan had finished already. She’d eaten like this at the house at the weekend, Talitha had noticed, the only one of them apart from the children who’d shown any real appetite. She reminded Talitha of a dog that had known starvation, and who would grab at anything put in front of her. And yet she was still so thin. She must really be ill.

  Talitha put her knife and fork down and pushed her plate towards the other woman. ‘Try this,’ she said. ‘I think it’s the best thing on the menu here.’

  The plates were swapped.

  ‘After ten years, there was talk of appealing and applying for early release,’ Megan said. ‘On the grounds that I’d been very young when the offence occurred and been a model prisoner. And then a fight broke out in the canteen. Nothing to do with me at all, but I was charged with inciting violence and assault.’

  ‘How could that happen?’

  All too easily was the answer. Any number of people on the inside were prepared to kick off a fight for a small consideration; hell, most of them were so bored they’d do it for the laughs. Prison officers were even easier to bribe – after all, they could spend money on the outside.

  ‘The prisoner I’d supposedly assaulted had a broken nose,’ Megan went on. ‘A fairly minor injury, you’d think, but five different witnesses, including two officers, testified against me. Funnily enough, the CCTV cameras were malfunctioning that day. I was advised to drop my appeal.’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  Another lie. Talitha had been told by her father when it happened. He’d admitted no involvement, he wouldn’t incriminate himself, eve
n to his own daughter, but she’d looked into his eyes. Barnaby Slater knew what his daughter had done and was protecting her, even if he despised her for it.

  ‘And then I was accused of theft,’ Megan said, as she wiped her plate clean with her fingertip. ‘The cash was found in my cell, and no one believed me when I said I’d no idea how it got there.’

  ‘How was it for you?’ Unseen by either of them, the waitress had arrived to clear their plates.

  ‘Best food I’ve eaten in twenty years,’ Megan said.

  The waitress’s smile grew a little fixed. The plates went.

  ‘Next up, I was accused of drug smuggling,’ Megan said. ‘Found in my cell again. By this time, I was starting to get paranoid.’

  ‘Couldn’t your solicitor do something? Get you transferred maybe?’

  ‘My solicitor couldn’t care less. I barely saw him in twenty years.’ Megan leaned across the table towards Talitha. ‘Here’s the thing,’ she said. ‘I wrote to you, and your father, asking you to represent me. I wrote four times. I got one reply, from a junior clerk.’

  ‘I asked Dad,’ Talitha said. ‘He said it could be too damaging for the firm. There was very strong feeling locally when you were convicted, Meg. The school was vandalised several times, did anyone tell you that? Admissions dropped. Fundraising took a hit. The following year, a whole year later, Oxbridge admissions from the school fell by fifty per cent. No one wanted to be associated with you, and Dad knew his firm would suffer if he was seen to be on your side.’

  Megan’s face was like stone.

  ‘We’re an Oxford firm,’ Talitha said. ‘He said you needed to be represented by a firm out of the area.’

  ‘And then there was another fight that I got blamed for,’ Megan said. ‘And that’s how it went on until I thought I was never going to see the light of day again.’

  Talitha gave an uncomfortable look around. ‘Megan, please keep your voice down. I know how let down you must feel, but we were teenagers. There was nothing we could do at the time.’

  ‘You could have come to see me. Not once, Tal. Twenty years and not once.’

  The waitress was back. ‘Hi guys, got your mains for you.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Tal snapped. ‘No, I’m sorry. Please—’ She gestured that the plates be put down. ‘I do apologise. Thank you.’

  The waitress fled.

  Megan cut into her steak and blood bubbled out. ‘You know what it felt like, Tal? It felt like someone with a huge amount of influence in the legal world was doing his damnedest to keep me inside for as long as possible.’

  She shoved a huge piece of steak into her mouth, enough to keep her quiet for a couple of minutes at least. No such luck.

  ‘Or her damnedest,’ she said, through a mouth of semi-masticated meat.

  27

  The chemicals arrived on Monday, but Felix waited until Sarah had gone to bed before developing the film. He stapled Luke’s blackout curtains to the window of one of the brick outbuildings in the garden, ran several litres of water from the outdoor tap into a container and turned on the infra-red light he’d borrowed from work. The process of turning photographic film into negatives wasn’t hard; well, not for him.

  Using a camping stove, he heated the developing chemicals to the required temperature and, in darkness, unrolled the film and wrapped it around the drum in the bespoke tub. He used a timer, agitated when instructed to do so, before returning the liquids to the bottles they’d arrived in. He could dispose of them at work.

  The next part of the process involved halting the development, and these chemicals were the most foul-smelling and toxic. Several minutes in, his head was aching, and he was starting to feel dizzy. When the process was done, he switched on the overhead light – the film was no longer light sensitive – and opened the door for a few seconds.

  He couldn’t resist holding the film up to the light – was that the river? A scene in a park? He scanned the reel for the shot taken twenty years ago in the pool house, the one with the written confession. It was no use – the images were too small, and still in negative. Felix poured out the third blend that would fix the image in place. More time spent waiting, agitating the tub, rinsing. Finally, he used water to wash all the magical substances away. When the rinses were running clearly, he was done.

  Resisting temptation to hold it up to the light once more, he pegged the long, thin strip of brown film to a line of string. While he was waiting for it to dry, he stepped outside.

  The night was clear and cool, full of the scents of early summer. When he’d got home that evening, Luke had been in his bath with the window open – Sarah was paranoid about steam damaging the paintwork – and blossom was drifting into the room, falling like confetti onto his pink-skinned angel.

  The thought that he might lose Luke, either through Sarah’s leaving him, or – a thought he could barely allow to fully form – because of his own imprisonment, was crippling. Felix loved Luke with a passion he hadn’t known he’d possessed. The moment his son was born, he’d known that he would die for this tiny scrap of a human. Right now, on the brink of finding what he needed to make everything all right again, he was asking himself a different, altogether darker question. Would he . . . ?

  It was time, the film would be dry and that particular question could be asked another day. Back in the shed, Felix gathered up everything he’d used that night and left it in the boot of his car to go back to the factory. The film he carried carefully indoors.

  Creeping upstairs, he pushed open the door to Luke’s bedroom. The toddler was face down, his chubby legs and feet drawn beneath him so that his bottom – huge in the night-time nappy – was pointed towards the ceiling.

  Easing the door closed, Felix crept along the landing to his home office. His Mac was already switched on, so that the sound of it firing up wouldn’t disturb Sarah, and the Lightroom software installed. He scanned in the negative film. A few movements of the mouse inverted the images so that they became positive; a few more sorted out tone, contrast and brightness. They were still, though, too small to properly make out. He didn’t bother with cropping, simply pressed print and sat by the printer, grabbing each image as it fed out. There were fifteen images.

  The first made his heartbeat speed up. The bridge at Port Meadow. Kids were gathered at its apex, and the photographer – Tal, he guessed, it had been her camera – had captured a boy in mid-air, his feet breaking the surface of the water. Other kids sat around on the bank. The jumper could be Xav, Felix wasn’t sure, but this had to be the right film. He swallowed down a lump in his throat and told himself to stay calm. The next image was another taken in Port Meadow, as was the third. Still no one he recognised.

  The fourth sheet of paper showed a park; University Parks, he thought, a group of five people in the distance sitting in a circle. Tal must have taken it as she’d approached; she’d always been late. More shots of University Parks, of trees, of a cute kid at the playground. A couple of Oxford city centre, one taken from directly outside the window of the steampunk shop on Magdalen Bridge.

  The next image puzzled him. Taken at night, it showed a statue, a huge angel with great, soaring wings. He had no memory of hanging around in graveyards, even during their steampunk phase, but Tal would have taken some of these when she was alone.

  An apple tree – was it? – yes, the apple tree in Talitha’s garden. Another of the garden at the Five Arrows, Tal’s dad’s favourite restaurant because the pretentious git had loved bumping into Lord Rothschild and pretending the two of them knew each other.

  Shots of the school and Felix could feel the start of a nervous tick. Still no images of the gang, and something didn’t feel quite right. He started to flick back through the pictures. The last one was coming out. It drifted away from the paper tray and landed, face down, on the carpet.

  He didn’t want to pick it up, knew he ha
d to. He turned it over, put it on the desk in front of him and looked long and hard. Then he did something he hadn’t done in years, had forgotten he was capable of doing.

  Felix started to cry.

  28

  Felix didn’t go into work the next morning, but drove straight to Talitha’s offices in the city centre and announced himself at the reception desk. After fifteen minutes, he was shown into his old friend’s panelled office with its Queen Anne furniture. Talitha was not pleased to see him.

  ‘This won’t look good if the shit hits the fan,’ she said, when her office door was closed. ‘You’ve never been here before. Why would you come now?’

  ‘Clear your desk,’ he told her. ‘You need to see something.’

  Standing in front of the window, Talitha’s face was largely hidden, but he knew of old she didn’t react well to being told what to do. Outside, Felix could see the timber-framed building that, despite being across the lane, looked close enough to touch. Each storey had been built wider than the one below, so that the whole building mushroomed out as it rose into the air.

  Tal needed a reality check. ‘I’ve got all day,’ he said. ‘My life is unravelling and pretty soon yours will be too.’

  Without another word, Talitha moved the desk diary and laptop to a side table, enabling Felix to lay out the photographs he’d printed in the early hours. Tal didn’t touch them, but as she looked from one to the next, her face seemed to relax.

  ‘I remember that shop,’ she said at one point. ‘We stalked around the Sheldonian at one in the morning and that German couple nearly shat themselves.’

  ‘It’s still there,’ Felix told her. She hadn’t got it yet. Fair play, it had taken him most of the roll, but this was, supposedly, her film, taken with her camera.

  ‘What’s this?’ she bent closer to look at the picture of the angel. ‘I don’t remember taking that. Maybe someone borrowed the camera.’

  He carried on laying the images down for her.

  ‘Dear apple tree,’ she said. ‘I think I miss the tree more than the house.’