The Heights

by Louise Candlish

  He expected to feel better in the morning, but the malaise was still there and he called in sick, spending the day on the sofa drinking and lamenting. Ulcerating. Looking through the few photos and drawings he had from Lucas’s childhood (Ellen kept most of them at Tanglewood Road), he came across a printout of the impact statement he’d read out at Kieran’s sentencing. He’d forgotten those statements were edited by the court, to remove biases – you couldn’t start ranting vitriol at the killer or speculating on alternative outcomes, you could only say how you had been impacted – and the sentiment that had always felt the most profound had never actually been read out:

  ‘Had the roles been reversed that night, Lucas would have rescued his friend. He would have dived back in, over and over, he would have stood in the road and flagged down cars, he would have done everything in his power to save that life.’

  Reading it again, it had never been clearer to Vic that the universe had taken the wrong boy that night. It had failed every one of them.

  Which was when, just at the right moment – or was it the wrong moment? – Ellen came at him with her plan.

  Vic

  Now

  The day after the scene at Danny’s client’s weird green house, Ellen phones Vic, asking to meet again.

  Well, at least the agony isn’t drawn out.

  It is Tuesday evening and he’s in the spare bedroom, finishing constructing the baby furniture that came flat-packed from John Lewis at the weekend (Li came through, after all). There is a painted white cot and a matching changing unit, a nursing chair with supportive cushions patterned with pineapples. All the things he and Ellen lacked when Lucas was born. He remembers only a Moses basket by their bed and towers of nappies stored in a cardboard box, feels a lurch of remorse. Did they fail Lucas with the start they gave him? They were unprepared, low-spirited and, within months, divided. Was there enough laughter in that tiny flat?

  India is having a snooze on the sofa. When he last checked on her, her bare feet were poking out from beneath a fur throw. She has neat feet, with smooth heels and pale unvarnished toenails.

  ‘Can you come here?’ Ellen says in his ear.

  But he no longer likes going to her house. The moment he sets foot inside he feels his breath shorten at the thought of that empty bedroom above his head. The urge to hare upstairs and fling open his son’s door is no less strong now that Ellen has finally redecorated. Not for her the creation of a shrine – her sacred place is internal, of the soul, as if she and Lucas were twins, not mother and son.

  ‘I can’t keep coming to Beckenham. You need to come here. Call me when you arrive and we’ll talk downstairs.’

  Because she won’t come up, of course.

  She arrives forty-five minutes later, dressed, as usual, in black. They sit together on the backless beam that passes for seating in the lobby. It’s tipping it down outside and rainwater from her umbrella puddles at their feet.

  ‘I went to see Danny yesterday,’ she begins. Her lipstick is flame red and clearly an excellent match for her mood.

  ‘I know, he called me.’ Vic sinks his front teeth into his lip. He honestly doesn’t know if he has the strength for another clash. His upper body aches from the DIY. ‘Did you get the information you wanted?’

  ‘No. The opposite. He acted like he didn’t know what the hell I was on about.’

  ‘Like we always said we would.’ But Vic is nervous beneath his affability and knows she will smell it.

  ‘But there’s really no need now, is there? Since we know Kieran’s alive?’ She eyes him with scorn. On her lap, her hands are balled tight, the knuckles sharp and white. ‘Of course, at the time I thought Danny was just playing dumb, in case I’d dreamed the whole thing up. But when I played it back, I could tell it wasn’t that at all.’

  ‘Played it back?’ He frowns. ‘You mean you recorded your conversation with Danny? You can’t go around doing that without people’s consent.’

  ‘Can’t you?’ She shrugs, as if to say, Whatever. It’s hardly the worst crime being discussed here. (This is true.) ‘Don’t worry, I’ve deleted it now. Not that he said anything that could possibly incriminate him or anyone else.’

  Playing for time, Vic scans her slim-fitting coat for phone-shaped lumps. ‘Are you recording us now?’

  ‘No. You can check if you like.’ She unzips her handbag, plucks out her two phones and lights the screens to show him. ‘My point is, when I listened again, I could tell he wasn’t faking. He genuinely didn’t know what I was talking about.’

  There is a silence. Vic knows from the way her eyes are moving that she is calculating what he might admit freely and what she is going to have to forcibly extract.

  ‘Because you didn’t ever arrange to have him killed, did you, Vic? You lied to me the other day about Danny saying it was too late to stop. You didn’t ask him in the first place.’

  Vic’s heart is a pitched bass drum pedalled by a maniac. Still, he does not speak. What is he so scared of? Not Ellen per se, but the power of her hatred of Kieran. The fact that it is escalating when it should be waning.

  ‘What did you say to him, Vic? If that mad bitch of an ex of mine ever says anything about professional criminals being hired to take out Kieran Watts, just deny it, yeah? Just laugh it off.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he says, feeling heat creep up his collarbone onto his neck.

  She gives a twisted little laugh. ‘He was worried we’d got ourselves mixed up with Albanians! Which is exactly what I thought myself, strangely enough. So what happened to the money? Did you keep it for yourself? Use it for this?’ She gestures to the space around them, the salvaged industrial chic that doesn’t come cheap.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, I can pay my own rent,’ Vic says.

  ‘What then? You used it for the business?’

  He swallows. This is the part she obviously hasn’t guessed. How he wishes he could just say yes – and there is a moment when he thinks he actually might. But there is a difference between lying to protect her and outright gaslighting her. She called him out on that last time, didn’t she?

  ‘I gave it to him,’ he says, quietly.

  ‘Who, Danny? You mean he just kept it?’ The criss-cross of frown lines on her forehead deepens above disbelieving eyes.

  ‘No, not Danny.’ He pauses. ‘Kieran.’

  She flushes the pink of a camellia. He can feel the heat of her anguish coming off her. ‘You gave it to him? You mean when you told him about the non-existent hit, you paid him off while you were at it?’

  Vic closes his eyes. ‘Basically, yes.’

  ‘Why the hell would you do that?’

  How many times has he rehearsed this? Whichever way he phrases it, it won’t convince her. So little ever has, even before they lost Lucas. ‘I did what I thought would suit all of us. You, first of all. You were happy thinking he was getting a bullet through his skull. You didn’t need to actually see bits of his brain on the roadside to believe it.’ Glancing, he sees she is unruffled by the violence of the image. ‘And he had a chance to make a start somewhere else, out of our sight, which by the way he wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t managed to convince him he was in serious danger. And he couldn’t possibly have done it without a pile of cash to help him on his way.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re twisting this to make it sound like you did the right thing,’ Ellen says, revulsion on her face. ‘You paid our son’s killer. You rewarded him.’

  ‘I fucking did not reward him!’ Vic is more explosive than he intended to be and, to his shame, she cringes from him. But he must defend himself, he must, finally, stand up to her. ‘I paid him to get out of our lives and that’s what he did. You might not think that was the right thing to do, but I did, and I’m sick of you behaving as if your opinion is the only one that counts.’

  He stops at the sight of her eyes leaking tears. He’s not so naïve as to believe she’s crying because he is challenging her; she’s crying because he betrayed
her. He was the one person she trusted to share her faith in avenging Lucas’s death and now it turns out those brave and dangerous decisions they made were never joint, after all, but hers alone. And, thanks to his cowardice, never set in motion.

  The register of her voice drops very low. ‘Why didn’t you just tell me at the time you didn’t want to do it?’

  ‘Because I wanted to stop you from doing it on your own. You were completely out of your depth, talking about hiring killers on the dark web. It wasn’t that long since your dad died, you were in a bad way. I wanted to help you. I still do.’

  She gives a derisive little jeer. ‘You haven’t helped me. You’ve deceived me. You stole from me and then you lied to me.’

  The accusations wound, of course they do, but he holds his nerve. ‘Again, that’s your perspective. I’m an unfeeling twat who did the wrong thing. But that is not my perspective. I thought I was doing the right thing by all of us.’

  Her fingers are playing with the chain of her handbag. As long as he can remember she’s used this bag; the links of its chain are her worry beads. ‘You paid him the whole lot, did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That was my inheritance from my dad. Kieran Watts was the last person on the planet he would have wanted that money to go to.’

  ‘I know. But he would have wanted his only daughter sent to jail even less. For life, Ellen. You’d have got far longer than Kieran did, did you ever think about that? It was premeditation.’ He exhales his next breath in an audible blast. Now that he has confessed, he longs to escape her, to get up, slam his palm against the button for the lift, shoot up to his new life with India and the baby furniture. But the questions keep coming, as he’s always known they would, once the genie was out of the bottle.

  ‘How did you do it? I don’t understand how you convinced the police that you didn’t see him that day when you obviously did. How did your alibi check out?’

  ‘I didn’t see him that day,’ Vic says. ‘I’m not stupid. I planned it all out.’

  She touches him then, for the first time since her arrival, using her hand to turn his face towards hers and bring him so close he can see the tiny broken veins in that camellia flush. He can smell the rain on her hair.

  ‘Tell me the whole thing, Vic. You owe me that much.’

  Vic

  Then

  I want to deal with Kieran once and for all. I want him gone for good. Those were her words: a proposal to murder a man. And she meant it.

  Retribution was the key motive, of course. Measure for measure. But there was also a secondary one, a catalyst. Kieran had made an overture to Freya and, in Ellen’s mind, her younger child was in as grave a danger as her elder one had been. She wanted to act immediately and had unearthed God knew what dodgy outfits on the dark web, but Vic proposed involving Danny, which won himself some breathing space to consider his options.

  Which were what?

  Okay, he could refuse point blank to be involved in her scheme, but that ran the risk of her going ahead solo, getting caught, and condemning herself and her family to a future of abject misery – not to mention implicating him in her activities regardless.

  He could appeal to Justin – by anyone’s standards the last person who deserved to be deceived – but that smacked of some Victorian plot in which men conspired to have women confined to asylums.

  Or he could use his tried and tested tactic of calling her bluff. Go along with her scheme and give her the time to talk herself out of it, to wake up one morning and see this wasn’t what middle-aged, middle-class mothers from Beckenham did when angered or threatened or grieving. (I’m going to get one of those burner phones… Like this was Breaking Bad, for Christ’s sake.)

  And if she didn’t, well, Vic was just going to have to keep on pretending while he thought of a solution.

  * * *

  It was easy enough to feed her information, cryptically, quasi-gangster-style. And he had time: there were two months between her first talk of a contract killing and Kieran’s supervision period elapsing. Not that it mattered to her whether he was bumped off before then, but it certainly did to Vic. Because the alternative plan taking shape in his mind involved Kieran bolting and this could only be done if he was completely free, otherwise he risked being pursued and sent back inside – and he wasn’t going to do that, no matter how badly Vic frightened him.

  The Tuesday after the three months had elapsed and the day before the date he’d supplied to Ellen for the killing, Vic ambushed Kieran on his morning run. He’d followed him several times by then and knew he always ran in South Norwood Country Park, setting off from Prisca’s house at 7am and entering the park from Albert Road. He’d scoped out a good spot, an overgrown clearing off the main path and opposite the visitor centre, with a half-hidden disused electric station just beyond.

  He intercepted Kieran on the path at 7.10am. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ Kieran backed away a few steps, breathing heavily. His fair skin was stained a rich pink.

  ‘Come in here. I don’t want anyone to see us,’ Vic said, and Kieran took a few wary paces after him into the clearing. ‘Listen to me. You need to get out of town.’

  ‘Piss off, I live here,’ Kieran protested.

  ‘No, I mean it. This isn’t a threat, it’s a warning.’

  ‘What warning?’ Then, as if interrupting his own train of thought: ‘Wait, is this about Jade?’

  ‘Jade? No.’ Vic didn’t have time for red herrings. ‘Someone’s after you. I’m serious, Kieran. They want you gone, as in six feet under.’

  Kieran was breathing normally already, must’ve been pretty fit to recover so quickly. He cast a glance at the sign on the door of the electric station: ‘Danger of Death’. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘We saw something in the Lock Up Longer forum – you know about that, I assume?’

  Kieran’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘There was a death threat against you that was flagged, and it looked pretty credible to me. After next week, he’ll have checked out for good, that was the wording and the thread led to some pretty unnerving places. They’ve been watching you, Kieran. They know your address, they know where you work. I seriously think you should get yourself into hiding.’

  Kieran digested this. His gaze was level, even brave, but fear showed in the chewing motion on the inside of his cheek. ‘Send me a screenshot. I’ll show the police.’

  ‘I can’t. By the time our tech people tried to trace it, it’d been deleted. Whoever it is seems to know how to cover their tracks.’ Vic kept this vague, knowing that to fake technological know-how would be to give himself away – Kieran had aced his Computer Science A-level, if he remembered, and been a champion gamer. Better to present himself as the obsolete middle-aged geezer he actually was. ‘Go, Kieran. I’m serious. I’ll make sure you’ve got the cash you need to make a new start.’

  Undeterred by the other man’s obvious doubt, Vic outlined the plan. Kieran would come back to the same place the next morning and he’d find a bag with cash, a dark anorak, a baseball cap. ‘Wear the cap. Keep your head down. Don’t bring anything, except maybe your passport. Prisca won’t notice that’s missing, will she?’

  ‘I haven’t got a passport,’ Kieran said.

  ‘Okay. You obviously know the quickest way from here to Elmers End station? Good. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t show your face to any cameras. It’ll be rush hour so you should be able to hide in the crowd. Go to Euston or King’s Cross and get yourself as far away as you can. Glasgow, Aberdeen, somewhere like that.’

  ‘Scotland?’ Kieran’s face clouded, as if suddenly seeing he’d been cornered by a fantasist. ‘Then what would I do?’

  ‘Change your name. Use the cash to sort out a flat. Think of it as witness protection.’

  ‘How much cash are we talking?’ Kieran asked.

  ‘Fifteen thousand.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ Amazed, Kieran began pulling a tuft of hair on his cr
own, as if teasing it straight, an old habit Vic had forgotten he had. ‘How do I know this isn’t a scam?’

  ‘You don’t.’ Vic had anticipated that he might suspect a bluff, that this was a ruse to guarantee his presence so a killer could get the job done in this place of perfect tranquillity. ‘You have to take my word for it.’

  ‘Yeah, but why would you want to help me?’

  As he sensed the beginnings of a conversion, Vic felt his pulse accelerate. ‘Because this isn’t right. Whoever these crazies are, killing someone is not the solution. It never is.’

  There was a moment of silent accord. ‘What am I meant to do today then?’ Kieran said.

  ‘Just carry on like you normally would. Go to work, go home, have dinner. Whatever you already have planned. But don’t say a word about this, not even to Prisca. You’ll need to be reported missing and she’s the obvious person to do that.’ Vic remembered that reference to Jade. ‘Don’t trust anyone from your old life, understand? If you want to stay safe long term, you have to cut off from everyone you know. Don’t be tempted to think the problem’s gone away. These people who hate you will know who you’ve been close to.’

  ‘I need to think about this,’ Kieran said.

  ‘Think about it, then do it. It’s the only way you’re going to survive. So, same time tomorrow, got it? The bag will be behind this building under a bit of tarpaulin.’ He showed Kieran the exact spot. They were close enough to touch. Either could attack the other in this unseen place, leave him for dead.

  As they drew apart again a look passed between them then that Vic couldn’t begin to process in the moment but would think of often afterwards with a feeling of revulsion. Some sort of mutual pleading. Understanding, if not quite apology. Trust. Because Vic had to trust Kieran, too. Trust that he wouldn’t decide to take the money and remain exactly where he was. Or, worse, take the money to the police.

  He gestured for him to go and watched him sprint off down the main path, gravel crunching underfoot, the man who had no passport. The man whose tethers to the judicial system had only in the last few days been loosened for the first time since the night in December 2014 when he’d driven his car into a freezing reservoir and left his friend there to die.