by Jake Cross
He told her again to get the map.
‘I’ll see you later, Nathan Barke.’
She got out before he could say another word. Walked towards the shop, cash right there in her hand. She did not look back. The taxi driver came out of the shop and looked at her, and he saw her mouth moving. They passed each other. Nate let her get ten more feet, right to the doorway, then spun the wheels and tore away.
His phone rang just seconds after he’d left the garage. He had expected this. He had even wanted it. He remembered her face in the leisure park, when he had offered to go out alone to steal a car. She had been upset that he was leaving her side, in case he didn’t return and she was left all alone. It was a strange childish weakness in a woman who was otherwise as tough as God made them. Her Kryptonite. For that reason, despite his plan to never talk to her or see her again, he could not abandon her without an explanation.
He answered with, ‘I’m sorry to leave you alone. I just can’t do this with you, sorry. Use the money for the taxi and go home. Maybe we’ll hook up again when this is all over and we no longer have to run.’
Surprisingly, she said nothing. It worried him. The silence was deafening. He said, ‘This, I need to be on my own for,’ and then hung up. He pulled the battery from the phone. He drove for half a mile with the handset and the battery clutched in his fist, that fist hanging out the window. It took all his will to finally let go of them.
He stamped the accelerator, feeling like a parent who’d dumped his baby on the doorstep of an orphanage.
Port Werbergh in Kent, only about eight miles from Sunny Dream Leisure Park.
Maybe it was because of an over-abundance of cheery holiday resorts with the word ‘Sun’ in their names that the owners of the marina called their site ‘Frosty Breeze’. Maybe they were practical individuals who didn’t see the point of a blatant lie to people who knew British weather. But Nate was puzzled by the illustration on the gates leading to the road that sloped down the hill into the marina: a family of four on the deck of their houseboat, the woman at the rail, enjoying the sea, ignoring her ball-playing kids and the husband reclining on a deck chair, all of them in shorts, a bright blue sky above them, crystal clear green water below. Cold wind off the North Sea or not, it seemed the fun was endless here.
Not at two in the morning, though. Most of the houseboats were as dark and dead as the calm black sea. Those with lights on showed no signs of life, either, but maybe that was because their owners were at the disco.
The marina’s entertainment complex consisted of seven or eight commercial structures and a handful of outbuildings on a shelf of land poking into the sea. All were dark and dead also, except for a large white Victorian-looking house with a black timber exoskeleton. Music throbbed and light pulsed behind curtained bay windows. Out front people drank at long wooden tables, while behind, sea-side, they milled on a large patio, warmed and illuminated by tall heaters.
Nate watched the partiers only for a moment. Long enough to feel the first pangs of jealousy. No-one down there had nowhere to go tonight, and no-one down there had no friends to turn to. No-one down there faced a bleak future of hiding under a rock or rotting in a cell. Then he turned his attention to the houseboats again.
They were a mix of styles, some large, some small. Some appeared to be typical boats given a soft makeover to achieve a homely veneer, while others, monstrous mongrels with chimneys and gardens and bay windows, looked like actual houses that had been craned in and dumped on floating bases.
They were arranged either side of a large jetty curving around the tip of the shelf of land and along five twisty piers shooting out from it seaward, like gnarled fingers on an arthritic hand. The boats were tightly packed together, just a few metres between neighbours, and Nate didn’t get the attraction. For him a houseboat should mean peace, solitude. This place was a flat, floating tower block.
But he wasn’t here to buy one. He was here for a man who’d bought one.
At the entrance to the main jetty was a map of houseboat positions. There was a tiny guard hut, but no guard. Maybe when everything was closed for the night, the managers put a guy here to make sure dangerous fugitive killers didn’t get to the boats. But the party at the skeleton house meant residents were still coming and going even at this late hour. So Nate strode onto the jetty without worry. He passed a couple coming his way, and neither screamed about intruders into their world. He passed a drunk woman leaning over the rail, maybe trying to vomit. She waved him away as if determined to have no help with this one, even though he was already trying to ignore her.
He turned left at a junction, heading along a thin, wobbly pier. Here the houseboats reared up high either side of him, swaying and groaning like snoring giants. Only two of them had lights on. He passed the first. The second was near the end of the pier. That was the one he needed.
He stopped at the ramp leading up to the boat. And there was the name on a sign: ‘Atlantis’. Who decided to name a boat after something that had sank?
The house was on two levels, one smaller block atop a larger, all in white painted wood. The entrance was a patio door. A kitchen beyond, lit. No-one there. He tried the door and found it unlocked, which he expected. Dangerous fugitive killers didn’t lurk around here.
He pulled Buzzcut’s revolver, even though it was unloaded, and stepped inside.
The kitchen had all the amenities you’d expect. Nice, except that the windows looked out onto other houseboats. There was a glass door leading to a dining area, and at the back of that a patio door leading onto a terrace with a floor of artificial grass. Beyond was the sea.
The patio door shrieked as it slid open. He stepped into the kitchen. On a worktop he saw coffee, sugar and tea jars arranged in a line just like that, in that order, which some might assume was alphabetically, but which he knew was in word size, high to low. He knew for sure then that he had the right place.
Entry to the top deck was by ladder, which the brochure probably called stairs. Actual stairs nearby led down to a lounge. Three levels, then. That explained a price tag of just short of £190,000. Nate, pointing the way with his useless revolver, took the stairs without secrecy. If anyone was here, they had already been alerted to his intrusion by the noisy patio door.
Since the lounge was below decks, it obeyed the oval shape of the boat instead of the oblong form of the house. Here, again, everything you’d expect from a room in a typical house, except for three portholes giving a view of nothing but black water. There was a pillar right in the centre, which he thought was awkward. The décor was soft, hinting at relaxation, but Nate didn’t think he could ever unwind in a room that was underwater.
In the far wall was a door. He opened it to see a thin corridor with a bedroom either side, a bathroom and, at the end, a ladder leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling – probably access to and from the terrace at the bow.
The rooms off the corridor were empty, so Nate climbed the ladder and pushed opened the trapdoor. Night air was sucked in and all around him. He stepped out onto the terrace. He looked at the black sky, with its twinkling of stars, and the black sea, with its twinkling of reflected moonlight, and tried to see the line where they met. For a moment he understood the attraction. At night, here, you could fool yourself into thinking you lived aboard a luxury yacht moored at St Tropez. If you ignored the frosty breeze.
He could see the skeleton house off to one side. The party seemed to be winding down because people were leaving in droves, headed this way. Drunk, tired, needing their rocking beds. So, it shouldn’t be long now.
Nate went back to the lounge and sat on the sofa to wait.
Eighteen minutes later, he heard footsteps climb onto the boat. A voice he knew shouted a goodbye to a man who replied with a kissing sound. The back door opened, and above him he heard the fridge open, a beer bottle cracked, keys slamming onto a worktop. He didn’t stand or even sit up straight, simply turned his gun towards the stairs. The big man who came down froze h
alfway when he saw that gun and the person holding it.
Then his shock subsided and he gave one laugh, like a bark, and continued down. Nate waited. The man went to the stereo and pressed a single button, and it lit up and began to play rock music, low, fifties of course. Nate waited. The man sipped his drink and sat in an armchair that faced the sofa. Nate waited.
‘Clearly the false sighting of you in Gibraltar tonight was, well, false,’ the man said. ‘I followed the news. Some expats thought they’d seen you in a Sunglass Hut outlet. Then there were sightings in London, a couple in Wales. All sorts. The cops even went in guns first into a B&B in Nottingham. Of course some had to be false. Not ever Superman gets around that quickly.’
Nate said nothing.
‘How long have you known?’ the man said.
Nate said nothing.
‘Okay, how did you know?’
Nate pointed the gun at the coffee table, and the man leaned forward. On it was the photograph of Pete that Nate had taken from a similar table in Ryback’s country cottage. Pete on his back, throat bloodied, one arm raised over his head, one loosely curled on his waist. The man looked puzzled.
Pete Barke picked up the photograph and studied it. He dropped it after a few seconds and rubbed his face. Bare, smooth, like his head. Shiny, curly hair that got the ladies interested – gone. Thick greying beard that got drunken men wanting to fight him – gone. Nate recognised him easily despite the drastic change, but knew others wouldn’t associate this chemo-looking guy with the portraits of the dead man shown on the news.
‘The elbow bursitis? They got me to lie down before they applied the fake blood, that was the problem. It started killing my elbow, so I had to rest my hand on my belly. But that’s not what gave it away, Nate. A damn photo. What else?’
Actually, it had been. A simple theory based on how he had seen three people posed in uncomfortable, painful positions they would not have maintained had they been able to manoeuvre their bodies. But he said nothing. He wanted Pete to simply… explain.
‘I didn’t kill that guy, by the way. The body in the house. That was Ryback’s men. For a long time we feared the day Agar would tell his story, and we made contingency plans. Ryback found me a guy with sesamoiditis. Bone surgery, evidence of which would survive a fire. That was a good touch. We kept tabs on that guy for four years, never knowing when we’d need his body. If the body was sufficiently destroyed that identification would be very hard and lengthy, and if the police were under enormous pressure to get it done quickly because there was a killer out there, then they might take anything they could get and run with it. The teeth had to go, of course, and the guy had lost part of a finger in some industrial accident, so his hand had to go – that wasn’t mentioned in the news. We were ready to release the sesamoiditis information if the police somehow missed it and went straight for DNA testing, but then an anonymous caller did us a favour. You, of course. Did you see the ten o’clock news? Alongside your Gibraltar sighting, they confirmed it, Nate. Right there on the national news. Peter Barke, dead. They showed some of my old army photos. It was like some beloved celebrity had died. I almost cried. So, thank you for that.’
Nate said nothing. Pete looked at the gun. He sipped his beer.
‘Maybe you’re speechless with shock that your brother could get involved in such a thing. Don’t be. Ryback came to me with a plan. I’d had nothing to do with the man before, and I thought he was taking a risk suggesting it to someone he didn’t know, but he told me his plan, and it sounded foolproof, so I agreed.’
Pete gave him a rehash of Lazar’s tale: a staged break-in at HyperX, and car parts taken to hide the very existence of a serious amount of cocaine.
‘Of course, I lied to you about the windfall I got in my ex-fiancé’s will. There was no will. I made excellent money from the drugs. I bought the house, and in secret I bought this boat. You remember viewing this with me four years ago, of course, since you’re here – well done for your memory and guesswork. But look at the house, look at this place, and tell me it was madness to agree to join Ryback’s plan.’
Nate told him nothing.
Actually, Pete admitted, there was an element of madness, a serious risk of the police somehow finding out about the drugs once they got involved. Because of Agar.
‘You knew what Agar was like. The violent sort, liked to run his mouth. The original plan was for Agar to kill one of the robbers, to make the set-up look genuine, and then hide abroad. But we saw a problem. Kaushal and Webber we could keep close and under control, but we didn’t trust Agar not to resurface somewhere and shoot off his mouth, especially if he got arrested. Rightly guessed, as we now know. So, we decided Agar had to die as well. No more risk of his runaway mouth, and we get to add a little bit of excessive force just to make sure the police kept their attention outside, not in. And we had Lazar to obstruct the police at every turn. Foolproof.
‘So, new plan. One of the robbers is told to kill Agar. We told everyone that Agar was going to shoot a bullet into a wall to make it look like the guards fought back. And we told the robber to kill Agar after he shot that bullet. But Agar we told to shoot a robber instead, then run. I saw the video, too, and must give praise to the robber, because even though Agar killed one of them, that guy still tried to chop Agar’s slimy head off.’
Nate waited. He wanted more.
‘Ryback and Lazar thought Agar was trying to cut a deal by selling us out when he got arrested in America. But I believe differently. The night of the shooting, Agar didn’t run home to collect his bags. Nobody saw him again. I think he knew that the other robber had been ordered to kill him, which meant he knew we wanted him dead. So he didn’t risk going home. He just ran. And, credit to him, he kept his mouth shut. For four years. But when he got arrested, I think he feared that we’d learn of his location and go after him again. And he was right. He sold us out, not to cut a deal, but to see us locked up so we couldn’t get to him.’
Pete sipped his drink. He looked at the gun. He shrugged, as if to say, So there you have it. Nate just stared, wanting more. He had been trying to intimidate his older brother, but the silence and the scrutiny and the gun started to have the opposite effect. He could see Pete starting to get impatient, even annoyed.
‘Maybe I started this conversation the wrong way. Maybe you’re more interested in why I didn’t bring you in on the plan? You wouldn’t have agreed. It was safer to keep you in the dark. And I didn’t think you’d hold up under police questioning.’
Nate waited.
‘Or why I didn’t tell you the truth when we learned that Agar was about to sink us? That’s it, of course. I’m sorry, I’m drunk, not thinking straight. Your concern, understandably, is why your own brother faked his death and allowed you to take the blame for it.’
Pete’s own anger was beginning to rise now. ‘I had just days to organise things. How was I supposed to start that conversation? “Sorry, Nathan, I fucked up four years ago and I’m afraid we’re going to prison, but how about we fake our own deaths and flee the country?” Besides, it would have meant finding another body for you.’
Nate said nothing.
‘It was the only way, Nathan. I had no idea what Agar knew, or what evidence was out there. Maybe he even still has the gun I gave him. Ryback was quite happy to uproot and flee, but I wasn’t. I could have run and lived out my days as a rich man on a foreign beach. But I’d be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.’
Nate said nothing.
‘Besides, back home everyone would think I was a despicable criminal, wouldn’t they? And I’ve got some pride, haven’t I? So this way, rather than a despicable murdering thief, I’m the poor bastard who got killed–’
‘By his despicable, murdering, thieving brother,’ Nate snapped, unable to contain his silence.
Pete threw out his arms like a man basking in applause. ‘We needed a bad guy, Nate. Ryback had no-one else to blame, but there was one person who could get me out of trou
ble. You. You and me ran Acorn Security together. We lived together. We were inseparable brothers. I needed the police to believe that Agar’s orders came from you, despite what Agar told them. And how could the police deny the guilt of a man who killed his brother and burned down his house to cover the crime, and then fled the country?’
‘I didn’t flee the country, though, did I? I went six feet underground. At least, that was the plan.’
‘No it fucking wasn’t,’ he snapped. ‘You were never supposed to die. You think that was my plan? To kill my own brother? You arsehole. You were never going to go along with what I had planned, so I forced you into it. The plan was to give you a couple of weeks in that damn warehouse, fed and watered, and then be shown the world as it had become. One in which you were a fugitive hunted for the murder of his brother, nowhere to turn, no-one to help you. Alone and desperate. No memory of that night.’
Pete put his right foot on top of his left toes, digging the heel in. A habit Nate remembered: the dull throb from the ball of Pete’s big toe, because of the sesamoiditis, could be alleviated for a time by a blast of sudden, sharp pain. Pete said, ‘Then a man would step in and offer you a new life in some other country, and a small business to run, and new friends, maybe even a girl. And then, after maybe a year, I’d turn up and say hello. You’d punch me, of course, but then you’d remember all the money you had and you’d laugh at your brother’s deception and hug me. All’s well that ends well. And if you’re wondering about Mother? Well, imagine her joy a year down the line when she would have learned that both her sons are alive and well and living in luxury.’ He sipped his beer, using the time to calm himself. ‘That was the fucking plan.’
Nate said nothing.
‘Ryback changed that plan, Nathan. He told his two goons, including that girl you were running around with, to bury you, because he didn’t want loose ends. He wanted you dead, and when I found that out, I had him killed for it. See, brotherly love.’
