by Karen Guyler
Terry had got all this from gambling? He’d never been so lucky when Charles and he had been speaking. Or had he branched out?
“Wow, my uncle lives here?”
“Terry, it’s Charles.” His call for Lily’s sake, she hadn’t realised he couldn’t have locked the door on the outside from the inside. They listened to the silence. “He’s not home.”
She pulled her hat off. “Can I paddle my feet? I’m so hot.”
“Tell you what, you help me find what we came for and we can both swim. How about that?” Lily nodded, watching the hypnotic water. “You need a swimming costume first, so the quicker we find it, the quicker we can get one, before the shops shut.” The way he’d get her out of there.
“Suppose so.” she sighed.
He left her searching on the ground floor while he climbed up to what he assumed must be the bedroom level. Terry was still a slob. The number of arguments it had caused when they’d shared a bedroom, the perennial trail of his dirty clothes, crumpled and screwed-up pieces of paper on which he sketched his world, bits of stubby pencils Charles was forever standing on, piles of pencil sharpenings that breezed all over Charles’ things. Terry had learnt nothing. His bedroom wouldn’t have been out of place in a look at my wonderful house magazine if he bothered to put things away. The reality was more like a crime scene photo after a vicious burglary.
It sped up Charles’ search, not having to be careful.
Lily’s scream reached for him, echoing up through the courtyard. He flew down the steep curving stairs two at a time, tripping on the mosaic tiles, lunging for the banister to stop himself falling.
“Lily, what is it?”
37
The Covent Garden entrance of the Royal Opera House was still how Luke hoped: no body scanners, and, now the evening’s performance had started, just the odd member of staff to check latecomer’s handbags. Sloppy, long may it last.
Who would he choose?
Now he was in his mid-thirties, the youngsters looked like they were still at school so approaching them to help was just creepy. He breezed past the young girl drifting near him, aiming for the older woman cleaning her glasses on a corner of her blouse. A tall guy with spiked hair walking up to her looked him up and down. Luke looked good in a tux, but it was nice to be reminded. He stopped, looked around him, I’m lost, help me. The guy was over to him in a nanosecond.
“Can I help you, Sir?”
“I’m a little late, any chance you could let me in before the intermission? I’d be very grateful.”
“Well, it’s policy—”
“I’d be this grateful.” Luke held his hand out and, surprised, the guy grasped it. His eyes widened as he felt the folded note in Luke’s palm. “Opera’s not my thing, but it’ll be the end of my promotion hopes if I don’t show. My puppy didn’t want me to leave her, so here I am, having left her and now I’m late.” Was the puppy thing too much? Not judging by the usher’s sympathetic face and nodding. Luke tipped the balance of his indecision. “If I can slip in behind my boss, I can pretend I was there all along. You know how it is, us little people against the big guys.”
He nodded. “What seat do you have?”
“It’s so embarrassing, her PA couldn’t find my ticket, but I don’t want to get her in trouble either. My boss has the box closest to the stage.”
The usher looked up and down the still corridor. Strains of the performance reached them as he dithered. “Oh, come on then. You have to live dangerously every once in a while.”
Luke laughed, if only he knew.
The usher paused outside the first door in a row of many. Unguarded, better than Luke had hoped. “Wait for one of the longer notes before you go in.”
Luke smiled again. “Thanks so much.”
He waited for the usher to drift away, two backward glances Luke pretended to not notice, then out of sight before he withdrew his Glock.
As the notes on stage soared, he opened the door the tiniest amount, waited long enough for anyone who’d caught the sound of the lock disengaging to look behind them and discount it. He slipped inside the box and stood in the shadows, appraising.
Only two people, that was surprising. Husband or bodyguard?
In one motion Luke was down on his knee on the left side of the Director General of MI5, furthest from the companion, hiding the gun pressed against her shoulder from everyone in the neighbouring box, stooping to whisper in Anna Bailey’s ear. “You and I are going to have a chat. You co-operate, I don’t pull this trigger. It’s that simple, understand?” She nodded, waved a hand at the companion’s interest, everything is okay, this is expected.
Luke handed her an earpiece, a twin of the one he was wearing, which she put in her left ear. He dragged a chair close to her. The chorus was winding up now, the noise level rising.
“What do you want?” Straight to business
“Why is MI5 killing people?”
She whipped round; he reminded her with pressure on the Glock that she needed to keep her place. Not them, as far as she knew. The problem with a many-headed beast was that the one holding them in check didn’t always see what each part was up to. Until it was too late.
“It’s an outfit called The Society.”
What he thought she might say, but she appeared to believe it. “Who told you that?”
“It’s on the news.”
“Who’s pulling their strings?” A slight shrug halted by the pressure of the barrel against her. “You think I have the inclination to play twenty questions?”
“We know nothing concrete.”
Luke pulled a photocopy out of his tux pocket. “Look at it.”
The row of faces, the matches to the names he’d found in Banks’ little black book, looked out of the page, a low-tech identity parade. Red crosses over Tony Banks, Duncan Leadbetter, Hunter Malone, Nancy Seymour. A young Charles Buchanan, Aleksandr Oblov, Jed Carson and two other men were unmarked, all alive as far as Luke was aware. All apart from Jed Carson, the photos Gordon Stamford had shown her while Luke watched.
“The kill list, yes?” It took longer for her to respond this time. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“Your guesswork leaves something to be desired.”
“Last man standing?” It was only a questioning whisper, but Bailey tensed. Christ. No matter how good they were, no one was going to get close enough to the US President to kill him—he would be the survivor. That would kill his re-election chances next month if it came out. Was it in retaliation to Tony Banks instructing The Society to kill him? How had Jed Carson found that out? Did The Society have a security breach?
“Are you actively assisting?” Luke had to prod her again to get her to answer.
“We’re actively not investigating.”
“Seems you need to decide just how special the relationship with our friends across the pond should be. This meeting stays between you and me. It serves to show you I can find you anywhere, you’d do well to remember that. One last question, Eva Janssen, Buchanan’s wife, is she a target?” He followed his hunch.
“I don’t know details but I believe we can count her as active collateral, a warning to Buchanan.”
Luke moved the Glock down beneath Bailey’s bare arm, its barrel level now with her heart. “Tell whoever’s listening, I don’t like to share. She’s off limits, she’s mine.”
38
“Lily, where are you?” Charles found her sobbing and screaming near the pool. “What’s the matter?”
She clung to him, hysterical, the only comprehensible sound she made was calling for her mum, over and over, until he had to tell her enough. A glance into the small square enclosed room she’d looked in explained for her.
He led her up the stairs to the second floor into another bedroom and wrapped her in the red blanket he retrieved from the floor. “I’ll be right back. I’m just going to get you a drink of water.”
In his search of the main bathroom cabinet and the drawers in his broth
er’s bedroom, Charles had to trust his schoolboy French. His hand paused over the tap in the kitchen. He’d read that the water was safe there, but it didn’t hurt to check. There were no plastic bottles in the fridge, none in the tall cupboard in which Terry kept his food, no empties in his bin. It must be.
“Here you go,” he lifted Lily’s hand and dropped two sleeping pills onto her palm, “these will help.” He didn’t know what else to do.
“I want Mum,” she wailed.
“I know. But I’m here with you.” He sat beside her, letting her cry herself out on his chest until she sagged against him, her breathing even, regular, no more hiccupping sobs.
Charles laid her down, felt her forehead. Not overheating, good. The plunge pool-cooled breeze from the courtyard wafted around the whole place. It was an ingenious design.
She looked so young. Lily, his unexpected bonus seven years ago when he reunited with Eva. Just growing into herself, Lily was losing the childish roundness from her face, as it became more heart-shaped. Her cheek bones would reveal themselves in a year or so if she was going to take more after Eva than him. Longer eyelashes than either of them, his brown hair, Lily’s potential tallness from further back in their family trees. All to play for still at eleven-years-old. So young, too young for this week’s traumas.
Lily, I’m sorry.
On what looked like a church pew, out of place in a room painted sandy yellow with terracotta stars decorating the ceiling, tumbling down the walls, lay his brother. Flopped sideways he stared at a point beyond where Charles could see, a bluish tinge to his open lips.
Lily should never have seen this.
Terry had clearly enjoyed the sweet pastries and fried street food more than the spiced vegetables. And probably the local spirits. Past his brother’s out of shape body, past even the ridiculous—was that a sarong?—he wore in place of trousers, his garish yellow shirt nailed Charles’ gaze. Or rather, what peeked out of its open collar. Charles undid the next two buttons, steeling himself more against Terry grabbing at him to stop him, than what he might find. Terry’s killer had gouged a message into his chest, the curving number Terry had lived for.
The jagged eight was raw, his skin puckered with what would be horizontal ribbons of blood streaming down it, if he were sitting upright. They’d carved it when he’d been alive.
Yes. Charles caught himself. It wasn’t a celebration that The Society hadn’t beaten him there, that Terry’s death was nothing to do with Charles’ problems. An unfortunate coincidence, that was all this was, a warning instead, as stark and clear as if they had written the actual words: honour your debt.
No smell of decay, no insects Charles could hear or see. The tiny fireplace would be their conduit, the molecules of the odour of rotting flesh already rising beyond the rooftops their invitation. Terry’s arm was cool, not cold. Maybe only so many hours since he died. Been killed.
Killed. The killer had replaced the padlock on the outside of the door, and Charles had smeared his fingerprints all over it. He might only have minutes before the authorities arrived and a Moroccan prison would never be a good place to be.
Bolting for the front door, checking the ornate spyhole, he swiped up the padlock from the standing sentry cabinet beside the door where he’d left it and wiped it on his shirt. He found a key in a drawer which locked the door, leaving it in place to make it more difficult for other key holders. Bolts at the top and bottom slid across smoothly, ramming into holes in the substantial doorframe. It might withstand a few attempts to batter it down. The warning it would give was all he could hope for. Because until Lily woke up, they were trapped there.
Charles stood for a moment in the master bedroom. Terry’s killer, killers, must be responsible for the mess, may have already found and taken what he was looking for. On its surface it was valuable enough to have been stolen as restitution but no common thief would understand its true worth. Terry was beyond Charles’ apology for rifling through the things his brother had chosen, things he’d found memorable enough to keep. The shift in how it felt, voyeuristic now, uncomfortable, wasn’t enough to make him stop either. His and Lily’s lives were too important.
Charles reached the top of the even steeper stairs leading to the roof terrace. The call to prayer was ramping up from a whisper of suggestion to an urgent instruction blared across the city as each mosque passed it on. Beside the open door to the outdoors, tucked into the tiny landing, stood the twin of the ornately carved wooden cabinet from the entrance, its doors open. Skewed beneath a battered Scrabble box, it was right there, Charles could hardly believe it. He opened the drawstring bag beside the chess board and shook the contents onto the floor, a waterfall of black and white chess pieces. Innocently tumbled with the others, the one he’d come for, the white knight. It was a work of art beyond its value to him, sleek, smoothly cast in a metal that mimicked the quicksilver of mercury. He snatched it up, gripped it in his fist.
Too huge for the moment, his emotions propelled him out on to the terrace.
He was back in control.
This ought to have been a moment of celebration, it should have heralded the rebirth of the life he wanted, the sharing of it with his one love. Charles stumbled onto a lounger. The vastness of the deepening twilight sky mirrored his loss: unfathomable, all-consuming, encompassing everything he could see and hear.
Harder to lie to himself beneath the coming night’s impassivity. Harder to pretend that he could reunite with Eva.
But he had Lily. And now he could keep her safe. On the table beside him was a plate holding several peach stones. He picked up the knife Terry had used, sticky with dried juice, and levered off the knight’s base. He peered inside but couldn’t tell.
In the bright light from an anglepoise lamp beside a clunky desktop in Terry’s study, Charles’ euphoria was surprisingly weak, heart-breakingly so. There it was, as he’d placed it all those years ago, the evidence that would buy his and Lily’s safety. Until his new payday happened, at least, and then that regular income would guarantee them wanting for nothing lives and the best security money could buy. But it should have been for three of them.
Now his knees wobbled, his stomach threatened to rebel. He squeezed the chess piece, imprinting his guarantee on his palm that he wouldn’t share the fate of Tony, Hunter and Nancy.
Blocking Terry’s number—let them believe he was still in London—Charles dialled the one he’d called yesterday. Had it only been yesterday?
“US President’s office, Chief of Staff, Dennis Wakeman.”
“Hello, Dennis.”
“Who is this?”
“The royal pain in your and his arses.”
“You’re gonna have to be more specific.”
“You don’t recognise me? How ‘bout now?” Charles tried to let go of the accent they’d taught him, but he’d had excellent instructors. His drawl just wouldn’t any longer. “It’s Charles Buchanan, Maxwell Peyton.” Here to sabre-rattle.
“Maxwell, calling to threaten some more? I heard you gave Allouette a hard time on the phone yesterday.”
“I’m not threatening anyone, I’m trying to help you. Put me through to Jed.”
“That’s Mr President to you.”
“It’s Mr President thanks to me.”
“He’s not here.”
Of course he wasn’t. “I’m not in a mood to play games.”
“Don’t you watch the news? He’s on Airforce One.”
“Patch me through.”
“No can do, you’re not high enough priority.”
Did Jed know Dennis was busy hammering nails in the coffin of his future?
“Ask him this, then. Where’s Duncan Leadbetter? Why was Nancy Seymour killed? Why are you going after my wife?”
“We’re not ‘going after’ anyone.”
“Call it off, I know what’s going on here and it stops now. My family and I are off-limits. If I sniff a hint of you coming after us, I’ll release the data from the fuel contami
nation,” Charles tightened his grip on the knight, let his insurance hang between them, swelling to fill the distance across the Atlantic. “I’m sure the senator Jed pushed under on his way up the pole to power will be real interested to learn about it.”
“You’re not holding any cards here.” Dennis growled down the phone.
“Senator Mack Hillard III might think otherwise. The Attorney General, Congress, the Senate, the American people, I think you’ll find I’m holding quite a few. Consider yourself warned. Oh, and Dennis? Having Nancy killed was a big mistake, you’ll regret that.”
Charles slammed the handset down. Now he just had to come up with a way to get out of the target The Society had on him.
39
Any of the three camp beds in the basement were comfortable enough, and the room was dark and quiet. Eva had a blanket and pillow and was secure a floor below the airlock at the entrance to 37 St George’s Grove, all the creature comforts needed for sleep. But there was no rest for her aching heart and arms, desperate to hold Lily. Not when her frenzied mind fed the battle between the ‘what if’ scenarios her brain kept running and her logical mind trying to convince herself Lily was okay.
It was too late to call the airfield again and no one was going to know more than they had the first three times she’d spoken to them. Addison’s Executive Assistant, if she was even still at work, would tell her that he was still unreachable, as he had been on the five times she’d already tried.
Eva dropped into and out of sleep, until her crash into dreamlessness was profound, disorienting, and made her late.
The office that sported Big Brother scrawled on a Post-It on its door refused to let her in, even when she swiped her temporary access pass. It opened when she tapped on it.
