by Peter James
Carly had known all along this was not going to be easy. But she had nurtured the hope that perhaps she could get a dialogue going with this woman and find some common ground.
‘May I come in? I’ll leave the moment you want me to. But please let’s talk for a few minutes.’
Fernanda Revere drew on her cigarette, snorted out smoke through her mouth and nose, then tossed the butt away with a contemptuous flick of her jewelled hand. It landed on the drive in a shower of sparks. With her drink slopping over the rim of her glass, she tottered back and gestured for Carly to enter, glowering hatred, only faintly diluted with curiosity, at her.
Carly hesitated. This woman looked dangerously unpredictable and she had no idea how her husband was going to react. Glad now that Detective Investigator Lanigan was sitting outside the gates in his car, she surreptitiously glanced at her watch. Thirteen minutes left before her first text.
She entered a grand hallway with a flagstone floor and a circular staircase, and followed the woman, who bumped against the wall several times, along a corridor furnished with antiques. Then they entered a palatial drawing room, with a minstrel’s gallery. It had oak beams and tapestries hanging from the walls, alongside fine-looking oil paintings. Almost all of the furniture was antique, except for one item.
Seated, with his legs up in an incongruously modern leather recliner armchair, was a man in his fifties, with slicked-back grey hair and dense black eyebrows, watching a ball game on television. He held a can of beer in one hand and a large cigar in the other.
The woman walked towards him, picked up the TV remote from the antique wooden table beside him, peered at it for some moments as if she had never seen one of these before in her life, then muted the sound and dropped the remote back down with a clatter.
‘Hey, what the—’ the man protested.
‘We have a visitor, Lou.’ Fernanda pointed at Carly. ‘She’s come all the way from England. How nice is that?’ she said icily.
Lou Revere gave Carly a weak smile and an abstracted wave of his hand. Then, keeping his eyes on the silent players on the screen, he turned to his wife and reached out for the remote.
‘This is kind of an important moment in the game.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Fernanda said. ‘Well, this is kind of an important moment, too.’ She reached down, picked up a pack of Marlboro Lights and shook out a cigarette. Then she gave Carly a crushing glare.
Carly stood awkwardly, eyes darting between the two of them, thinking, trying desperately to remember her script.
‘Know who this bitch is?’ Fernanda said to her husband.
Lou Revere grabbed the remote and unmuted the sound.
‘No. Listen, I need some quiet here.’ Then he added, ‘Get this lady a drink.’ He glanced disinterestedly at Carly. ‘You wanna drink?’
Carly felt in desperate need of a drink. And the sweet rich smell of the smoke was tantalizing. She craved a cigarette.
‘I’ll die before I give this fucking bitch anything,’ Fernanda Revere said, staggering over to an antique drinks cabinet, the doors of which were already open, and clumsily refilling her glass from a silver cocktail shaker, slopping the contents over the side. Then she drank some, put the glass down, tottered back over to her husband, grabbed the remote and switched the television completely off.
‘Hey!’ he said.
She dropped the remote on to the rug and stamped hard on it. There was the sound of splintering plastic.
Carly’s fear deepened. This woman was crazy and totally unpredictable. She looked at the man again, then back at the woman, before sneaking a glance at her watch. Three minutes had passed. What the hell was the woman going to do next? Somehow she had to bring her out of her anger.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Her husband put down his beer and ejected himself from his chair. Turning to his wife, he said, ‘Do you know how important this goddamn game is? Do you? Do you care?’
He strode towards the door. Grabbing him by the arm and dropping her glass, which broke on the floor, Fernanda screamed at him, ‘Do you fucking know or care who this bitch is?’
‘Right now, I care about the New York Yankees winning this game. You know how bad it would be if they even just tied?’
‘And you fucking think they care that you’re watching? You want to just focus a second? This is the bitch who killed our son. You hear what I’m saying?’
Carly watched him, her eyes swinging between them. She was trying to keep calm, but her nerves were in meltdown. The man stopped in his tracks and turned towards her. He glanced for a moment back at his wife and said, ‘What do you mean, hon?’ Then he turned back to Carly, his whole demeanour changing.
‘This is the bitch who was arrested at the scene for drunk driving. She killed our son, now she’s fucking standing here in front of us.’
Fernanda Revere made her way over to the bar, taking measured steps across the floor as if it were an obstacle course. There was sudden menace in Lou Revere’s voice as he spoke now. Gone was the mildly angry guy of a few seconds ago.
‘Just what the hell do you think you are doing? Turning up at our home like this? Not satisfied you’ve caused us enough pain, is that what it is?’
‘It’s not that at all, Mr Revere,’ Carly replied, her voice quavering. ‘I’d just appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and Mrs Revere and explain what happened.’
‘We know what happened,’ he said.
‘You were drunk and our son died,’ his wife added bitterly. Then she staggered back over towards them, slopping more of her drink over the rim of her fresh glass.
Carly drew on all her reserves. ‘I’m desperately sorry for you both. I’m desperately sorry for your loss. But there are things about this accident that you need to know, that I would want to know if it was my child. Could we please sit down, the three of us, and talk this through? I’ll leave when you want me to, but please let me tell you how it actually happened.’
‘We know how it happened,’ Fernanda Revere said. Then she turned to her husband. ‘Get rid of this bitch. She’s killed Tony and now she’s polluting our home.’
‘Hon, let’s just hear her out,’ he said, without taking his glare off Carly.
‘I can’t believe I married someone who fell out of a fucking tree!’ she shouted. ‘If you don’t tell her to go, I’m leaving. I’m not staying in this building with her. So tell her!’
‘Hon, let’s talk to her.’
‘GET HER THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!’
With that Fernanda stormed out of the room and some moments later a door slammed.
Carly found herself facing Lou Revere, feeling very awkward. ‘Mr Revere, maybe I should go . . . I’ll come back . . . I can come back in the morning if that’s—’
He jabbed a finger at her. ‘You came to talk, so talk.’
Carly stared at him in silence, trying to think of the best way to calm him down.
‘What’s the matter? You gone dumb or something?’ he said.
‘No, I . . . look, I – I can’t begin to understand how you must be feeling.’
‘Can’t you?’ he said, with a bitterness that startled her.
‘I have a young son,’ she replied.
‘Have?’ he replied. ‘Well you’re a lucky lady, then, aren’t you? My wife and I had a young son, too, before a drunk driver killed him.’
‘It didn’t happen like that.’
Outside, through the window, Carly heard a faint clunk, like a car door.
‘Oh, it didn’t happen like that?’ Lou Revere looked, at this moment, as if he was about to strangle her with his bare hands. He raised them in the air, clenching and then opening them.
And suddenly Carly realized what it was that the two detectives in Brighton had meant when they’d tried to explain the nature of these people to her. That they were different. Their whole culture was different. She wavered for an instant about hitting the Send button on her phone, but she had to stand her ground. Had to find a way through to this man.
He was, she realized, her only chance.
80
Pat Lanigan, standing by his car and smoking his cigar, heard an automobile engine fire up, then saw the gates opening. Was the crazy English woman coming out already? She’d only been there five minutes. He glanced at his watch again, double-checking.
It was a positive, he thought, that at least she was coming out. Although if she had only lasted in there for five minutes, then for sure it had not gone well. Maybe she’d had some sense knocked into her reckless little head.
Then, to his surprise, instead of seeing the limousine, he saw a Porsche Cayenne, with the silhouette of a woman at the wheel, come at a reckless speed through the gates, then accelerate past him like a bat out of hell.
He turned, clocked the licence plate and watched the tail lights disappear round a bend in the lane. This did not feel good. He glanced down at the display of his phone. There was no text, no missed call. He didn’t like this at all.
He flicked through his stored numbers and dialled the Suffolk County Police duty office, explained who he was and asked them to put an alert out for the Cayenne. He wanted to know where it was headed.
Fernanda Revere braked to a halt at the T-junction by the gas station, pulled a cigarette pack out of her purse, shook out a Marlboro Light and jammed it between her lips. Then she stabbed the cigar lighter, made a left and accelerated down the highway. Everything was a blur in her drunken fury. She overtook a slow-moving cab, her speed increasing: 70 . . . 80 . . . 90. She flashed past a whole line of tail lights, lit her cigarette and tried to replace the lighter, but it fell into the footwell.
She was shaking with rage. The road snaked away into the distance. Steering with one hand, smoke from the cigarette curling into her eyes, she rummaged in her purse and pulled out her diamanté-encrusted Vertu phone, then squinted through the smoke at the display. It was a blur. She brought it closer to her face, scrolled to her brother’s number and hit the dial button.
She overtook a tractor-trailer, still steering with one hand. Had to get away. Just had to get away from the bitch polluting her home. After six rings, it went to voicemail.
‘Where the fuck are you, Ricky?’ she shouted. ‘What the fuck’s going on? The English bitch came to the house. She’s there now. Do you hear me? The bitch who killed Tony is in my house. Why isn’t she dead? I paid you this money, so why isn’t she dead? What’s going on here? You gotta deal with this, Ricky. Call me. Goddamn call me!’
She ended the call and tossed the phone down beside her on the passenger seat. She did not know where she was heading. Just away from the house and into the rushing darkness. The further the better. Lou could get rid of the bitch. She’d go back when Lou phoned her, when he told her the bitch was gone, out of their home, out of their lives.
She overtook another car. The night was hurtling past. Oncoming lights were a brief, blurred flash, then gone.
Tony was gone. Dead. He’d nearly died as a baby. That first year of his life he’d been in hospital on a ventilator for most of the time. Much of it inside a perspex isolation dome. She’d sat there day and night, while Lou had been working or kissing her father’s ass or out on the golf course. Tony’d come through that, but he was always a sickly child, too, a chronic asthmatic. At the age of eight he’d spent the best part of a year bedridden with a lung virus. She’d spoonfed him. Mopped his brow. Got him through it. Nurtured him until slowly he’d grown stronger. By the time he reached his teens he was just like any other kid. Then, last year, he’d fallen for that stupid English girl.
She’d begged Lou to stop him going, but had he? Never. All he’d done was give her a whole bunch of crap about letting kids live their own lives. Maybe some kids would be fine in a foreign land. But Tony had been dependent on her. He needed her. And this proved it.
Three scumbags had taken his life away. Some asshole in a van. Some asshole in a truck. And this drunken bitch who had the nerve to come to their home with her whiny little voice. I’d just appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and Mrs Revere and explain what happened.
Yeah, well, I’ll tell you what happened, Mrs Whining Bitch. You got drunk and you killed my son, that’s what happened. Any part of that you don’t understand?
The speedometer needle was hovering on 110mph. Or maybe it was 120, she could barely see it. A light began flashing on the passenger seat. Her phone was ringing, she realized. She grabbed it and held it up in front of her. The name was blurry but she could just about read it. Her brother.
She answered it, hurtling past another car, still steering with one hand into a tight left curve. The cigarette between her lips was burned right down to the butt and tears were streaming from her eyes and on to her cheeks.
‘Ricky, I thought you were dealing with this?’ she said. ‘How do you let this stupid bitch come to the house? How?’
‘Listen, it’s all cool!’
‘Cool? She came to my house – that’s cool? You wanna tell me what’s cool about that?’
‘We have a plan!’
She steered the car through the curve, then there was another curve to the right, even sharper. She was going into it too fast, she realized. She stamped on the brake pedal and suddenly the car began snaking left, then right, then even more violently left again.
‘Shit.’
She dropped the phone. The cigarette butt fell between her legs. There were bright lights coming in the opposite direction, getting brighter and more dazzling by the second. She heard the blare of a horn. She jerked the wheel. The Cayenne began a lumbering pirouette. The steering wheel suddenly turned with such force it tore free of her hands, spinning like it had taken on a mind of its own.
The lights got brighter. The horn was blaring, deafening her. The lights were straight at her eye level. Blinding her. She was spinning too now, like the wheel. Backwards for a second. Then sideways again. Sucking those blinding lights towards her as if she were a magnet.
Closer.
The horn even louder, shaking her eardrums.
Lights burning into her retinas.
Then a jarring impact. A clanging metallic boom like two giant oil drums swinging into each other.
In the silence that followed, Ricky’s voice came through her phone. ‘Hey, babe? Fernanda? Sis? Babe? Listen, you OK? Babe? Babe? Listen, we’re cool. Listen, babe!’
But she could no longer hear him.
81
‘You’ve really upset my wife,’ Lou Revere said. ‘She’s pretty distressed already and so am I. I don’t know what you thought you’d achieve by coming, but we don’t want you here. You’re not welcome in our house.’ He stabbed his cigar at her. ‘I’m gonna show you out.’
‘Please just give me a chance,’ Carly said, her desperation making her sound on the verge of tears.
‘You had your chance, lady, when you were deciding whether to get into your automobile drunk or not. That’s more chance than my son had.’
‘It wasn’t like that, Mr Revere. Please believe me. It wasn’t like that.’
He stopped and for a moment Carly thought he was going to relent. Then he stabbed his cigar in even greater fury. ‘Sure it wasn’t like that, lady. We’ve had the toxicology report on our son from your police. He had nothing in him. Not one drop of alcohol, not one trace of any drug.’ He lowered his head like a bull about to charge. ‘How was your toxicology report? Huh? You wanna tell me how your toxicology report read? Tell me. I’m listening. You got my full attention.’
They faced each other in silence. Carly was trying desperately to find a way through to him. But he scared her. It was as if beneath his skin there was something venomous and feral. Outwardly he might be playing the role of a grieving father, but there was something truly chilling about him. She had met difficult people in her time, she’d had to deal with deep dislike, but she had never encountered anyone like Lou Revere. It felt as if she was in the presence of total, inhuman evil.
‘I’m listening,’ he repeated. ‘I’m
not hearing anything, but I’m listening.’
‘I think maybe I should come back tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘Can I do that?’
He took another step towards her, quivering. ‘You come back,’ he said. ‘You come back – if you dare come within one hundred miles of my home, I’ll tear you apart with these.’ He held up his trembling hands. ‘You understand what I’m saying?’
Carly nodded, her mouth dry.
He pointed. ‘That’s the way out.’
Moments after she stepped out into the night, the front door slammed behind her.
82
It seemed only moments after he had fallen asleep that Roy Grace was woken by the sound of his phone ringing and vibrating.
He rolled over, reaching out for the flashing display in the darkness. The clock beside it said 1.37 a.m.
‘It’s OK. I’m awake,’ said Cleo, a tad grumpily.
He switched on his bedside light, grabbed the phone and hit the green button. ‘Yurrr?’
It was Duncan Crocker. ‘You awake, boss?’
It was a dumb question, Grace thought. Did Detective Sergeant Crocker know many people who were capable of answering a phone in their sleep? He slid out of bed and tripped over Humphrey, who responded with a startled yelp. He dropped the phone and grabbed the side of the bed, just managing to stop himself falling flat on his face on the floor. He retrieved the phone.
‘Hang on, Duncan.’
Wearing only the T-shirt he’d been sleeping in, he padded out of the room, accompanied by the dog, which jumped up excitedly, its sharp claws digging painfully into his leg.
‘Down, boy!’ he hissed, closing the door behind him.
Humphrey raced down the staircase, barking, then ran back up and launched himself at Grace’s crotch.
Crocking the phone under his ear and protecting himself with his hands, he said, ‘Be with you in a sec, Duncan. Down! Humphrey, off, off!’
He went downstairs, followed by a madly barking Humphrey, switched the lights on, moved a copy of Sussex Life that was open at the property pages – Cleo had suddenly gone into house-hunting mode – and sat on a sofa. Humphrey jumped on to the cushion beside him. Stroking him, trying to keep the dog quiet, Grace said, ‘Sorry about that. What’s up?’
