by Nevill, Adam
‘About 2023, I think.’ The surplus would be consumed by the coming influx of refugees. It would have to be. And anyway, the more you grew the more people ate. Having more didn’t make it last longer, but he didn’t tell his wife that.
‘Would you like something to eat?’
‘No. No, thank you.’
‘You’ve lost so much weight.’
‘So have you.’ And she had since the last time they’d met, over two months ago. She’d always been thin for a tall woman, but had steadily diminished in the last two years. What had been slim was now haggard. She never used to wear her hair so long, but it now flowed unkempt, threaded with silver. Her knees and ankles seemed too big, her hips too wide and sharp. She’d stopped painting her nails, and not a trace of make-up had graced her face since the day they had made the last of their recorded pleas.
‘I brought her things back,’ the father said, to revive the conversation after a long and uncomfortable silence. ‘I’d like to take a few more items, if that’s OK?’ He would have done so anyway, from out of the boxes in the garage, where they had remained in storage like some forgotten exhibition at the Museum of Childhood, awaiting revival. His wife nodded.
‘Will you be going back?’
‘Eventually. Need to build my strength up first. I’m waiting on a few calls.’ He’d still heard nothing from the police detective.
His wife swallowed noisily and looked out at the flowers bordering the turned earth, the rubbery chard and reptile-skinned marrows. Her dad had even managed to grow grapes along one side of the garden. The two greenhouses were thick with tomatoes. ‘How was your trip?’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘If . . . if there is anything . . .’
Anything he said would consume her with anxiety and with dread. He’d been shocked by the ways his own mind and heart had so quickly turned after the abduction, but his wife had been born partially stricken by so many solvents of the heart, which would readily burst into flame and char those imagined future times when all could be normal, or manageable. It hadn’t taken an abduction to make her a pessimist.
‘All vague, I’m afraid. Anyone been in touch with you?’
She shook her head.
The father reached across the divide between their chairs and touched her wrist. She started at the contact before looking at his hand. She took it and squeezed his fingers. Her eyes were glazed with tears. ‘She would be so proud of you . . .’ Her voice disintegrated.
‘Shush. It’s all right.’
‘. . . her daddy. He never stopped . . .’ She couldn’t finish and her voice rose up through the octaves until her words wobbled and then collapsed.
‘And neither did her mummy.’
His wife swallowed. ‘Lots of people have been kind. In the forums. The groups. Mum and Dad have paid for a new photo-fit. I’ll give you one.’
The father remembered what the police officer had told him about how his daughter would have changed. ‘Any good?’
‘She looks like a stranger. I . . . I was very upset when I saw it. It made everything worse, to seem even more hopeless. I don’t know who that girl is, in the picture. In the others, I could still see her. I could see myself.’
The father smiled. ‘That’s because she looks like you.’
‘They used photos of me again, of how I looked at her age. But I still couldn’t see us, either of us.’
‘Please . . . please,’ he whispered. She was getting upset again, agitated, the first tremors of a franticness that were once followed by a bloodless shivering that the father found terrifying and unbearable to watch.
His wife’s reactions to his visits were invariably the same and he had learned not to come rushing in, twitching with unproven ideas, with untested possibilities, with wild leaps of the imagination. His demeanour was quieter these days and he’d felt himself settling, slowing down, unconcerned by anything but his purpose. He wondered again if this should worry him. He also wondered when, or even if, he would feel any remorse for killing six men within two weeks. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’
‘No. I wanted to see you. I missed you.’ She’d not said that in a while.
‘God, I miss us. All of us. It’s why I do this.’
His wife nodded, sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve not been very supportive since you left the last few times.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘I couldn’t agree. Not with their methods—’
‘The information is not coming from the nationalists,’ he said.
His wife sniffed, touched the side of her eyes. ‘You don’t know that. But it’s all right. I don’t think I can care about any of that any more.’
The father nodded. ‘If the information came from the devil himself, I wouldn’t give a damn.’
His wife turned to him, her eyes wet but suddenly smiling. ‘I want you to know that I am better . . . than I was.’
‘You take your time. We’re dealing with this in different ways, that’s all.’ And it was why they could not be together much; her despair and his rage had made a formidable blend. When they’d needed each other most, they had often been apart, even if they were in the same house.
‘I’ve started going through her things.’
The father nodded. Two years ago, her parents had sorted out all of the clothes and toys, and he knew it had not been easy for them. His wife’s mother had even collapsed the first time she went into their daughter’s bedroom; one of those days, so long ago, that he wouldn’t let himself revisit any more. One of many days of blame and madness, of fists through walls and shouting into phones, of walking in streets and tugging elbows. Time had healed nothing of their broken hearts, but at least it had allowed them to function.
The father looked out at the plots and remembered his daughter helping them as they sowed seeds and uprooted spuds in their own garden; her little patrols for snails, woodlice and ants, the endless hospitals for the poorly insects, crushed by her own little fingers as she transported them inside second-hand plastic beach toys. His throat thickened.
Miranda cleared her own throat. ‘Her pictures . . . her pictures, more than anything, have helped.’ Their daughter had been a fastidious artist, a painter in a homemade smock, busy about the table her grandfather had made for her out of a garden gate. The father smiled.
‘It’s how she saw the world,’ his wife said, her voice suddenly stronger. ‘How she depicted what mattered to her. It tells me more than her toys and clothes, and what I can remember of the games we played, those endless games. Naughty toys, poorly toys, good-girl toys. The films I still can’t watch, but her pictures. They’ve . . . helped me. We’re in every one. Her mummy, her daddy, our house . . .’
The sight of the garden dissolved in front of the father’s eyes. ‘Don’t,’ he whispered, but his throat felt so blocked, he didn’t know if his wife had heard him.
‘In every single picture, we’re there. And all of us are smiling.’ Her voice lightened and filled with a tone he’d not heard in years. He’d forgotten she had such a voice. ‘She was happy. I can see it in the pictures. Even with our big shoes and crazy hands, we’re all happy. We made her happy. If nothing else, she was a happy little girl. She always was. With us. We had that. At least we had that.’
The father was awake when the call came through. Beside him, his wife lay quietly, facing the curtains through which the hated sun bloomed a late summer dawn. Part of her back was uncovered, but he no longer looked in shock upon the pronounced vertebrae of this woman whose loss he doubted he could fully imagine. Miranda never stirred.
The father picked up the call, leaving the bed as silently as he could. ‘Hang on,’ he said to whoever was on the end of the line, and made his way to the bathroom and locked himself inside. The house stayed quiet as if trying to overhear his conversation.
‘OK.’
The voice of the police officer from Torquay filled his ear, and into his mind flooded a warm, fond sense of t
he man who had saved him a few weeks before, and then sat beside him at the border of the wheat field on the day he had shot and killed four strangers. ‘How’s the hand?’
Sat on the bath, the father clenched and then opened his hand and extended his fingers repeatedly, until his muscles became supple and the stiffness vanished. ‘I can make a fist.’
‘Good man. You in Birmingham?’
‘Yes. Three weeks and counting. I thought I might see out the summer.’
‘Good riddance to it. I wish I could say we’ll never see another one like that again, but . . . you know. Hold on to your hat though, because the rains are coming.’
‘It’s going to be wet for sure.’
‘So if you’re ever coming back, you’ll want to move sharpish before the roads get closed all over the southwest.’
The father’s spine straightened. ‘You have something for me?’
‘I’ve never been one for small talk, so I’ll get to it. You’re off your handler’s radar now, so forget about Scarlett Johansson. No hard feelings, eh? But I don’t need to remind you that this out-of-hours work isn’t about our career development or reputations. Our lives are at risk now, hers and mine, by having had anything to do with you, because of the King Death angle. You understand this?’
As he suspected, he had been cut loose by Scarlett, abandoned and judged a dangerous liability after his performance at The Commodore. He assumed the detective had taken pity on him, and as soon as he’d heard the man’s voice, he’d realized how much he needed to maintain his belief that there were some on the side of those who had lost their children; officers who had lost faith in the public departments they served.
‘Of course. If it wasn’t for her . . . I wouldn’t . . . I’d still be out there, wandering. And you saved my life. Thank you.’
‘There’ll be plenty thanking you if you do what will be necessary.’ The detective left that hanging in the air between them. ‘There’s a guy down here you need to speak with. But the stakes in this game, and the rules, are going to get adjusted if you move on him. Big time. The odds are bleak. The outcome almost certainly a cluster-fuck that you won’t walk away from. You still there?’
The father swallowed. ‘Rory, Bowles, where are you on that?’
‘That’s the only good news I have for you this morning. The death of Rory Forrester has not been fully investigated, or we’d have your identity on file through the blood you left all over Torquay. Ballistics and eye witnesses were canvassed around The Commodore and over at Murray Bowles’s house, and then thrown onto the when-we-get-a-moment pile. You cannot, nor will you, ever use that shooter again. Throw it in the bloody sea. I will supply an alternative. Now, as far as I can ascertain, you have been dealt a major break here, because Bowles and Forrester were minor, minor affiliates, and only on the outer periphery of the south-western Kings. Small fry. Cunts. Not the real deal. But all that is now changing. If you fancy another move down here, you’ll be paying a visit to King Death in person. You make a move against a full member of an organized criminal outfit like the Kings, you will not be able to leave anyone you interview alive. You will have to remain incognito, and you must never question anyone at all, in this legion of pricks, that you are not prepared to kill. Otherwise, there will be swift reprisals against you. And your wife, once they know who came a-calling on one of their own. If you want to terminate this call, do it now and you’ll never hear from me, or any other distant friends of the family, ever again.’
The father cleared his throat. ‘I’m going nowhere. Tell me.’
‘Then you’re bloody insane, but here goes. The only chap within your reach, and ours for that matter, is a real cocksucker. He’s no general, no captain, but a lieutenant in King Death Incorporated, who never gets his own hands dirty. He’s a playboy, a pussy hound, a pimp, and a trader in flesh who’s done very well for himself in our manor. Yonah Abergil, a sex trafficker of Chechen–Israeli descent, who fled to Britain from Marseille and his businesses have since flourished like bacteria in a Petri dish. I’m sending his address and a few details to the last ident that Scarlett gave you. Now, we believe Yonah was running Rory on probation, to increase his market share in the young flesh on offer in the bits of Somerset sheltered by the levees. Lucrative turf for old Yonah. We can only guess that Rory, in turn, reached out to a fiddler like Bowles to get the ball rolling round the refugee settlements. And you cut that tentacle off before it coiled around a few more Greek kids. But Yonah’s fat appendages are still poking around everywhere, so he won’t have sweated over the death of a few loss leaders like Rory and Murray Bowles.
‘But if the Kings played any part in the worst afternoon of your life, two years cold, then there is a very good chance that Yonah Abergil would know something. No guarantees, but he’s the only name I can give you that’s not sipping Hennessey in a compound, surrounded by special forces. You go any higher up their food chain and no one will even know your girl’s name anyway. I’m afraid the Kings deal with very significant numbers of the missing. But Yonah is ideal, and he’s all you’ve got. His security is light. Couple of arseholes in Gucci loafers hang around when he’s out and about, but they don’t sleep over at his villa. He’s a merchant, not muscle, but thinks he’s hard. Though he’s still of their blood, so his unfortunate demise will be followed up by his mates, and they’ll come for you mob-handed if they know who you are.
‘There will be cameras onsite at Yonah’s place, so wear your Halloween outfit, but not that bloody bush hat. And shave your hair and your pubes off. Don’t leave a trace. Glove up, do the works. The shooter will be new, and you will be the only thing that walks out of his villa alive, with one exception. He looks after his dad, who’s nine parts gone with dementia, so in the unlikely event that he remembers anything, it won’t be taken seriously. And go in at night when the nurse ain’t there. You do understand what I am saying? I cannot add any more emphasis to that most essential component of the biggest move of your career. But if anyone is in that villa, with the exception of the old boy, you have to clip them. If you’re fingered for this, you’re done, and so is your wife.’
The father could barely breathe, let alone speak.
‘Can’t hear you?’
He coughed. ‘I understand.’
‘I suggest you turn your conscience off, because you will be dealing with a man who put his own in the bin decades ago. Think of your girl and do what you need to, yeah? That guy with the crazy big stones who strolled into The Commodore, that guy, he’s the one you need to be. Then get the fuck out and lock yourself away until I can assess the fallout, as well as any intel you pick up on the job.’
‘OK.’
‘Oh, and before I go, I have one more request.’
‘Go on.’
‘As we are now working together, I’m going to need a name. And as you’re a fan of the movies, I always liked that guy Gene Hackman, you know, in the old flicks.’
His wife was awake when the father returned to the bedroom. By the way she looked at him, he knew she’d been awake when the call came in. Her expression was a mixture of fear and desperate hope.
‘I have to go back.’ The father began emptying the chest of drawers and dropping the clothes, which his wife had just washed, onto the bed.
Miranda reached out and held his wrist. He sat down and pulled her to his chest, whispered in her ear. ‘I can’t say much.’ He swallowed at the grim sensation of leaving his wife’s warmth again. ‘But it’s the best lead I’ve ever had.’ Miranda’s body tensed within his arms. ‘Only, there’s . . .’ His voice failed him. ‘There’s risk. So . . .’
She pulled back from his embrace and stared at him in a way that made him recoil. ‘I can’t lose you too,’ she said quickly.
He tried to smile, but felt his face stiffen, his mouth ache. ‘I’ll be careful. But I have to do this. I am going to do this.’
‘Are you saying goodbye?’
‘No.’ He spoke before his anxiety gave him pause to think
. ‘But, in what I am doing, there will always be a risk.’
His wife put her face in her hands. He reached out and touched her shoulder. ‘It’s going to be fine. But you, and your parents, you will have to go somewhere else.’
She looked at him, her eyes red. ‘Go? Where? Where can we go?’
‘Some place safer.’
‘This place is entirely safe.’
‘A place where no one knows you’re married to me.’
‘My God.’
‘Like that place where we took her for her first holiday. That place in Wales. When she was eighteen months old. And of all things, that place is still open. They still have the four cottages they rent out.’
‘Stop. We can’t just leave.’
‘You can, and you have to. I checked on the cottages a while back, in case I ever had to, you know, go somewhere for a while.’
His wife looked at his scarred hand. ‘After you’d done something terrible.’
The father nodded. ‘And you can’t tell anyone, anyone at all where you are going. No one.’
‘Do you think that I could even bear to see that place again, where we were, with her?’
‘Then choose somewhere else. But wherever you go, tell no one.’
‘My parents won’t leave here.’
‘Please.’
‘You’d put us all in so much danger? I’m not sure I even know who you are.’
The father felt himself shrivel, inside and outside. His skin cooled, prickled, and a little tremor made him shake. ‘I want to be who I used to be. Without her, I never will be.’
‘It’s too much. This, what you ask, is too much . . . for us, here, in this life. You’ve gone too far.’
‘Then think of this: there is no vaccine for that bug. Look at the hospitals. It’ll be the elderly who’ll be going out like—’
