by J G Alva
“Yes.”
They stared at each other.
“I’ll call you,” Nick said.
Rebekah bowed her head, then shook it slowly from side to side.
“What?” He said.
Silently, she started to cry.
“Hey,” he said, tilting her face up. “Hey. Come on.”
Rebekah sniffed, struggling to collect herself.
“God, I hate crying. I’m not usually the sort. But since I’ve met you, it seems I’ve been crying pretty much every day.”
A waste of moisture, Nick thought again, a memory from a lifetime ago.
“They’ve not all been bad tears, have they?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “God, no. I think...I think I never cried before because I never felt truly alive. I felt sort of in a cocoon. I’ve got you to thank for that, for bringing me out of it. I’m alive now. But sometimes…it hurts. But it’s a good pain. You know? So much better than being dead.”
Nick thought about that, and thought about how all his emotions seemed to be frozen. Well, all of them that was except for Toad, and what was he? Hate, Nick supposed. Acid. If she felt alive now, then Nick was the one who felt dead.
She stared at him, took his hand, looked down at their linked hands, found the bracelet on his wrist, examined it. She smiled at him.
“You’re still wearing it.”
“Best Christmas present I ever had.”
She smiled.
“Silly.”
There was silence a moment.
“I don’t want you to call,” she said.
“Why not?” Nick asked, and did he feel relieved again? No, no, but she was a drain on him, one he couldn’t handle with this weight of revenge he had to carry. He couldn’t tote the whole fucking world on his back.
“Just...listen. This is hard enough as it is, so don’t interrupt. I don’t want you to call because...you were right. This can’t work. Us, I mean. But it’s not what you think it is. It’s not the age thing. It’s not even Jessica anymore.”
He frowned.
“What do you mean?” He asked.
She looked out of the car window, at the street, her eyes somewhere in the past.
“When I first met you, you were a good person. Even on the island, when things were so tough. That’s what I liked so much about you, the goodness in you. You looked after me. Every day you went hunting for food, and you gathered wood for the fire and you cooked for me...” She paused. “And you made me feel...not alone.”
“I wasn’t always that good to you,” he admitted miserably.
“Under the circumstances, you were an angel. Your face is good. Did I ever tell you that? It’s a good face. Or it was, anyway.” With her free hand, she touched his cheek. “I can’t see it anymore. You don’t know how many times I’ve wished I hadn’t told you about what I overheard Mike Ross saying to that pirate. I killed all the goodness in you in that one moment. Now all I see on your face is revenge, like a sneer. I don’t like it.”
Nick turned his face away from her hand.
“Rebekah – "
“I love you,” she said desperately, “but the man I fell in love with on that island wouldn’t do this...thing.”
It was Nick’s turn to look out of the window.
“If you loved me,” he said, afraid to meet her eye, “if you really loved me, you’d support me on this.”
Rebekah shook her head.
“Not this. I’d support you on anything else, but not this. This is wrong. Can’t you see that?”
“You don’t care that they tried to kill me? They tried to kill you too, you know.”
“I know,” she said, playing with his hands, “but I can’t get angry about it. I was angry at the time, for a while anyway, but I thought...so what. We got away. We’re free. Free of all of them. Free to do whatever we want with the life we have, with the life we shouldn’t really have had. Are you going to waste that, just for the chance to get even?”
“It’s not about getting even.”
“Isn’t it?”
Nick ground his jaw, angry.
“I can’t just leave it,” he said.
“No. You can’t.”
“I hate them,” he said, with such fury that she blinked in surprise at him.
“No,” she said. “Not really. You just hate. That’s what you’ve become, a hate machine. It’s not about them anymore, not really. Maybe it never was. They got one over on you. That’s what you hate. That you were betrayed. And don’t try and portray it as some sort of morality thing either, because it’s not that. You were betrayed. You think they made you into a fool. That’s it. That’s all it is.”
She let go of his hand, and they sat in silence with each other for a moment, with nothing left to say, and Nick thought, could she be right? Is that all it is? And was there a chance he could turn away from it? But looking inside himself he saw that he could not, it was too deeply rooted in him, like a tumorous growth that had spread too deeply in to all of his organs, and cutting it out would be cutting him, whomever he had now become.
Rebekah sighed, and put a hand on the door but stopped.
“When you think about it,” she said, and paused. “When you think about it, I mean really think about it, was the island really that bad?”
Nick shook his head, sighed.
“That’s not it at all. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s that I was betrayed. You’ve been betrayed by everyone all your life – your father, your mother, even your aunt.”
“Don’t,” she said softly. “Don’t be spiteful.”
“I’m not,” he said desperately. “I’m trying to make you understand. You’ve got to look at it. All of them have let you down. Maybe you’re used to it. Maybe that’s how you can walk away. But I’m not used to it. I can’t let them get away with it. I just...I can’t. Please understand.”
Rebekah nodded as if she already knew it. Her face was miserable, but Nick couldn’t reach across the gulf between them to take the misery from her, realised in that moment that he didn’t want to, you’re abandoning me, why should I want to help you? He was alone again, maybe he had always been alone, and he decided there and then that that was the way he liked it.
Rebekah had been watching his face and she seemed to sense some of this.
She nodded once, quickly, said, “goodbye, Nick,” opened the door, climbed out and, hefting her holdall, walked up the street away from him and out of his life.
And it was over. Just like that.
◆◆◆
“Hi. Uh...I’m looking for Mrs Mitchell. Mrs Frank Mitchell? She used to live here?”
The old woman who came to the door was like a walking, shrivelled prune, the lines in the skin of her face an intricate overlapping of wrinkles, like a scroll that had been folded and buried in an Egyptian tomb for a thousand years. She had grey hair, and wore glasses on a chain around her neck.
“Oh. Oh yes. Mrs Mitchell. Lovely woman.”
“Has she moved or...?”
“Sorry?” The old woman tilted one ear slightly toward him.
“Has she moved?” Nick repeated, loudly and clearly.
“Oh. Oh no. No, she died. Heart attack. About a year ago. Were you a friend of hers?”
“She died?” Nick couldn’t believe it.
But you can believe it, Toad said. Oh yes. That sinking feeling, that feeling you know so well, that’s the start of you beginning to believe it, because you do believe it, you do believe in the worst happening, because ever since Mike Ross had you stabbed and thrown off that boat nothing but the worst has happened to you, and until you stop him you won’t be able to get any of it back, to enjoy your life again. He even stole your last minutes with your mother from you. He took that, just like he took your company. Just like he took your woman.
“Poor Kathy. She was a lovely woman. Never quite got over the death of her son, I don’t think. If you ask me, that’s probably what put an end to her. You know. The hear
t ache. Oh, if my son ever came to any sort of harm...I know I couldn’t cope. Are you alright, young man? You look ever so pale. Can I get you something to drink? A cup of tea perhaps?”
◆◆◆
With no surviving relatives, Katherine Mitchell had been buried in the cemetery not far from where she had lived since his father had died, a small estate for similarly affected over sixties in the south of Wales, near Llantwit Major.
It was a small simple gravestone, with a name and some dates.
Nick stood staring at it for a long time, until light began to leak from the sky and the temperature began to drop.
So. It had come to this.
He felt his rage deepen, a thick, dark red boiling stew, churning in the depths of him, beyond even Toad’s reach.
He touched the gravestone, hoping for some sort of connection, but all he felt was cold, unfeeling concrete.
Goodbye, Mum.
◆◆◆
CHAPTER 17
There was paper strewn across the table in the lounge, and on the chairs, and some even on the floor.
Yilmaz sat on the leather sofa looking over all of it. Nick stood close by, looking down past the top of his head at it.
“So, we are buying the shares,” Yilmaz said, flicking through some of the paperwork from the files provided by Dunn. “But it is going to take time. Maybe many months. And then only are we to get 49.9% of the shares. So something must be done.”
“There was the bank,” Nick said.
“Yes. We must talk to the bank. Maybe we are able to stop them trading with Mitchell Cole, but I am not so sure. I will put some of my transactions with this bank, this may help them to listen to us, but we must have some reason why they should stop with Mitchell Cole. But what is the reason?”
“Maybe we go with what Harold said,” Nick suggested. “About spreading rumours about Mitchell Cole. Advise them maybe it would be best to disassociate themselves from Mitchell Cole. I mean, if there’s a scandal or something.”
“Yes,” Yilmaz said, staring at the papers. “Something like this might be good. I will have to think. I have a lawyer, Alex Lovett, he is a good man to talk about this. Not so, uh...straight a person as Harold.” He smiled up at Nick.
Nick frowned.
“Do we need to worry about Harold? He seemed a little nervous.”
Yilmaz flapped his hand.
“I do not think so. But in a month or two, it might be a good idea for him to visit one of my companies in Italy, I think. If he is far away, he cannot cause us problems, no?”
“Okay,” Nick said.
They both stared at the files, scattered amongst which were the photos. The one of Jessica caught his eye, and he made himself look away from it.
“What of this man?” Yilmaz said. “We found the transfer of the £70,000 so we know he is also involved. Tell me of him.”
He was holding up a picture of Arthur Keats.
The picture showed Arthur as he was about to get in to a car, looking over the bonnet at something beyond the lens of the camera. He was a small, tidy man with a hard face, lined with deep wrinkles like the scars of old knife wounds; he wore glasses and had white hair parted neatly at the side and swept over his head, and a white moustache perfectly clipped to frame his top lip.
Nick sighed, remembering.
“A clever man. I always remember Arthur as being a man who...who never did anything without a reason. He was always perfectly reserved, perfectly dressed, his nails clipped, his jacket buttoned, not one hair out of place on his head. A man who paid attention to detail. That’s probably what made him a good accountant. I never really got a good reading on his personality because he never really showed any. I had the feeling that his guard was always up. He wasn’t rude, don’t get me wrong, he was perfectly polite and he would talk with you if you encouraged him in conversation, but if you didn’t he was just as happy to sit there and say nothing. I would say a...disciplined man.” Nick paused. “And a family man. His family was very important to him, I remember that. He adored his daughter, was very protective of her. Maybe overly so. I think he spoilt her.”
“Yes,” Yilmaz said, and shuffled through the paper for a picture of Arthur’s daughter. Nick had only ever seen her once, at a party at his house many years ago, and she had been a lot younger then. Now she was an attractive blonde teenager at university. The photo showed her crossing the street. She looked harassed. There was a wind, and her hair was blowing across her face. One hand came up to attend to it, frozen about ten inches from completing the act. They studied it.
“Yes,” Yilmaz said again. “A protected girl. A spoilt girl. This would fit with the drugs. I am much worried of my own Kate, when she is older. When you are young and there is money in your family, and you have a father who is spending too much on you, you come to expect it, to expect things to come to you, too easy. You are maybe doing bad things, because they are also easy. Then you are doing crazy things.”
“Kate won’t turn out like that,” Nick said.
Yilmaz looked at him. He looked hopeful in that moment.
“No?”
Nick shook his head.
“No. She’s too good a person. And there’s too much love in your family for her to go off the rails. I agree with you that too much money at a young age is a problem, but Melissa’s problem isn’t money.” Nick sat down next to Yilmaz and tapped Melissa Keats’ picture. “Her problem is her father. He adored his daughter, but he isn’t an affectionate man. If he spoiled her, it was purely materialistic. I can’t imagine Arthur as being anything but as reserved at home as he was at work. A cold fish. Young girls need affection, and I would expect Arthur is sadly lacking in that. She probably grew up thinking he didn’t like her.”
Yilmaz grunted thoughtfully.
“So. She is angry girl.”
“Yep. Probably rebelling. She might even have done the drugs to get his attention. But with the drugs, once you start, you become addicted.”
“Yes.”
“And the prostitution charge would have come about due to the drugs. If she wanted them enough, she’s liable to do anything to get them.”
“Hm.”
They stared thoughtfully at the picture.
“If the daughter was in much trouble,” Yilmaz began slowly, thoughtfully, “with the drugs, with the police, might not this affect Mr Keats?”
“Enough to sell his shares? I don’t think so. But...I don’t just want my company back, Yilmaz. I want them to suffer, all of them. Michael, Arthur and Jessica. I want to take away all they’ve got. Like they took it away from me.”
“You have a plan,” Yilmaz said, watching him.
Nick smiled thinly.
“Arthur’s family is important to him, yes? So let’s tear his family apart.”
Yilmaz was thoughtful when he said, “and you know how this is to be done?”
◆◆◆
The next day, it was decidedly chilly.
“It’s just a prank,” Nick said, grinning.
The place was called The Classic Gallery, a shop in a converted Georgian house just off Whiteladies Road. It was the first professional photographers they had come to online. The receptionist had told them they could come straight over if they wished; and that was just what they had done.
“So explain again to me what it is you want,” Neil Bunté said.
He was about twenty seven. He looked like a former art student, with dark hair swept from his crown to his right temple and held there with gel, and was wearing a black tank top over a white t-shirt. His expression seemed to say that he had heard just about everything there was to hear. Twice.
“We want a couple of pictures of this guy” – Nick held the picture of Arthur Keats up, looking briefly at Yilmaz, who nodded – “well, somebody who looks pretty close to him anyway, with some woman. You know. Like they’re having an affair or something. A couple of grainy shots of him coming out of a hotel with his necktie askew, caught in a clinch, something like
that, something like what a private investigator might take.”
Neil stared at Nick.
“And how exactly is that meant to be funny?” He asked, sceptical.
Nick laughed. It sounded like a good laugh to his own ears, believable.
“Oh, if you knew the guy, you’d understand why it was so funny.”
Neil was unimpressed.
“Really,” he said.
“Really,” Nick said. “I work with him. He’s in purchasing. He’s so straight laced it’s unbelievable. Everybody takes the piss out of him about it. You know, perfect tie, polished shoes, never tells a dirty joke, never swears, never been married. I don’t think he’s been with a woman since nineteen eighty four. It’ll be a scream.”
Neil stared at Nick a moment longer, shrugged, and then took the picture from Nick.
“Can you do it?”
Neil stared at the picture, chewed his cheek.
“I think I know someone a bit like him. With a little make-up, and with a slightly out of focus picture, he could pass for this guy. Yeah, I can do it.” He looked up at Nick, calculating. “It’s going to cost you though.”
Nick put his hands up.
“Hey. Money’s no problem. I just can’t wait to see the look on his face. That’s going to be priceless.”
◆◆◆
They received a call from the receptionist at The Classic Gallery three days later, informing them that their photographs were ready. Yilmaz had hired a car for Nick, a black Audi TT, a beautiful thing that purred like a cat; Nick had suggested it might be wise to rent it in the Stephen Sommers name, and after some thought Yilmaz had agreed. Now he insisted on driving it, as long as Nick promised not to tell Agathe.
The receptionist, a pretty, efficient brunette, sent them in to the viewing gallery, where a selection of photographs blown up to plasma screen size were hanging on the walls. Nick looked at them, a woman and her baby in black and white, a teenage girl made up to look like a film star, a couple of wedding shots, the couple in each looking happy with the promise of a life fulfilled, and Nick felt a pinch.
