He bends and, not knowing quite why, kisses her head. Then he pulls his keys out of his pocket and begins to trot back down the driveway. Bear, who is sitting patiently on the lawn, jumps up and canters after him. When they reach the car they are both out of breath. They get in and Caffery grabs the file that’s on the front seat, hastily shuffling through the paperwork Cheryl gave him, scanning the pages he read last night. His mouth is dry, but when he finds what he’s looking for he’s so elated his pulse doubles.
It’s a company in New York called Gauntlet. He whisked past it last night, but no matter how much his logical brain had told him to ignore it, something about it must have stuck subliminally in the illogical part – because now he is looking at the same name as is on the card in Mrs Frink’s memory box.
Oliver Anchor-Ferrers.
It isn’t the kind of name he’s been expecting. Some part of him must still be expecting it to be James, or Jimmy. It takes him a moment or two to accept ‘Oliver’.
He fumbles out his phone. Dials Johnny Patel who, for a change, answers sounding awake and ready to talk.
‘Yes, what? Are you calling to tell me the cheque’s in the post? Because that goes down on the list of world’s unlikeliest promises. Along with I promise I won’t come in your mouth.’
‘Oliver Anchor-Ferrers,’ Caffery says. ‘He married Matilda in 1982.’
Patel is momentarily dumbstruck. ‘What?’
‘Oliver Anchor-Ferrers. He’s on the list of directors of one of the companies I scanned to you.’
Patel whistles. ‘Does this mean I don’t get paid?’
Caffery digs his thumbnail into the groove between his teeth. He’s got a radio which he can use if he needs to call help. He should make this official. He really should. But no. He’s going to go that one step further. Just one step further.
‘Johnny, you need to get me some info on him. I’ve got no 3G out here so you’ll have to do it for me – I just want the bare details. If you have to pull in a favour from the firm, then do it. I just want the broadest outline. Phone numbers, etc.’ Caffery reaches into his glove compartment and pulls out the police radio, his quickcuffs and his CS gas. He puts them all in his pockets and starts the engine. ‘Johnny? He’s got a place down here. It’s called The Turrets. I’m going over there now. If I don’t call you and tell you I’m sitting in the pub with my first pint in say …’ he checks his watch ‘… half an hour, then you know what to do.’
‘Getting you loud and clear, mate. And, Jack?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t get yourself into trouble, OK?’
‘Are you trying to say you care about me?’
‘No. I’m trying to say you haven’t paid my bill yet.’
Lucia
BOTH HER PARENTS are dead. Her father stopped breathing a few minutes ago and hasn’t shown a sign of life yet. Nor will he. Her mother has been dead almost twenty minutes. They deserve it. They’ve had it coming for years. Her hatred for her parents is enormous and intricate. For years she has been the black sheep, never understood by either of them. Dad was even going to change his will in favour of Kiran. Her brother, who has always been in the limelight, always the golden-haired boy with praises heaped on him, while she’s languished in the dark corners of the family, the shadow soul, black rings under her eyes and sullen words in her mouth. Meanwhile Kiran has flown with white wings – travelled far and brought grandchildren into the family. The mere fact of reproducing makes you superior and godly, as everyone knows, and more deserving of attention and money.
She feels about her family the way she felt about Hugo. The day he left her and gave Sophie an engagement ring. Her bitterness is boundless.
‘Happy now?’
She looks up. ‘Molina’, or rather ‘Ian’, is sitting at her desk, watching her steadily. She’s almost forgotten he’s in the room. He’s taken off his nerd glasses. He looks quite good without them. She’s not sure how she feels about him at the moment. He’s done as he’s been told, mostly. He used her tip-off about Dad’s book and alerted Havilland to the book’s existence, Gauntlet’s security wing took up the baton and Ian just had to ride the wave in to shore.
It’s been elaborate, but it’s been worth it. Even the initial assault staged with Ian, when she got her bruised face, was delicious and worth the pain. It’s all played into her sense of the dramatic, a kind of gothic intricacy she loves, and every tiny twitch of anguish in Mum’s face, in Dad’s face, has been an ecstasy. Especially their distress when Lucia was ‘threatened’ by the men.
‘Are you, Lucia? After everything? Are you happy now?’
She sits down, crosses her legs. Puts her elbow on her knee and leans forward to hold his eyes. ‘Ian,’ she says sweetly. ‘I’m not sure.’
His smile drops away. The veins in his eyelids are dark blue. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You put the whole thing into jeopardy by bringing Hugo and Sophie into it.’
‘I’ve told you, I didn’t have a choice and I couldn’t warn you. It was a last-minute thing. Havilland’s orders.’
‘Well, it was stupid – so fucking stupid.’
‘Yes, so you keep telling me.’
‘And Bear? What went wrong there?’
Ian glowers at her. He reminds her of a sullen little boy.
‘Ian?’ she says sharply. ‘Answer me: what happened to Bear? We agreed you’d put Bear with me. And you let Honey – whatever his name is – say some screwed-up stupid things to me. So no – in answer to your question, I’m not really. Not really that happy at all.’
Ian and Lucia
THE PULSE HAMMERS away in Ian’s temples. He says nothing, but he is struggling – as he always seems to struggle in issues around Lucia – to keep his temper. She has no idea the power she exerts over him, nor the pain he’s been in the last three days at the way she’s treated him. Every opportunity she’s had, every time he has come alone into the rose room to give her food or take her to the toilet, she’s let him know in fierce whispers exactly what she thinks of his idiocy in bringing Hugo and Sophie’s murders into the scenario. She won’t listen to his excuses: he had to obey orders, that keeping Honig unsuspecting wasn’t easy. Instead she goes on and on. And the dog … the fucking dog. She’s done his head in over that.
‘You could have stood up to him,’ she insists. ‘Told him Bear was going to stay with me. You have no idea what it was like, knowing she could be hurt.’
He studies her. She never ceases to impress him with her enormous capacity for cruelty. Sitting in a room the way she has for three days, anything to increase the distress her parents went through. Ian isn’t keen on his own parents, but even he can’t imagine the depth of her hatred. It is so Lucia. So like her. She wouldn’t have missed this for the world. She was exactly the same at the Donkey Pitch all those years ago. She taught him more about sadism in that one night than either Honig or the Foreign Legion could have taught him in a lifetime.
Ian opens his hand to her. ‘We’re in trouble – I’m going to get us out of it. Give me the ring.’
She licks her lips. Looks down at his hand. ‘What ring?’
‘What ring,’ he says laughingly. ‘You know what fucking ring.’
Lucia has Sophie’s engagement ring and Ian intends putting it in Honig’s pocket, thus sealing the idea that Honig was the Wolf killer all those years ago. That he’s come back and done the same thing to Ginny, to Oliver and Matilda. Ian will need to put the Anchor-Ferrers’ DNA on him too – he will have to transfer the blood from what’s left of Matilda’s face on to Honig’s shoes, just in case Gauntlet can’t discreetly cover this mess up, and the police have to get involved too.
‘Give me the ring.’ He’s impatient now. ‘This is dicking me off.’
She stares at him, her face flushed, incredulous he’s being so bold. His heart is racing, but he holds her eyes, determined not to look away. She can make him walk to the ends of the earth – but he will always show her that he is a man.
There is a strange light in her eye as she slowly, slowly raises her hand. He expects her to slap him, or scratch at him. He is ready to stop her if she does. Instead she puts her hand inside her bra. Pulls the ring out and places it in his hand. He shoves it in his pocket.
‘Lucia. One thing.’
‘What?’
Ian clenches and unclenches his fists. He hates himself for even asking it. He should be stronger, but he can’t help that nagging sense that if it hadn’t been for the happy circumstances of his position in Gauntlet he might never have seen or heard from her again. After the Wolf killings years and years went by and he didn’t hear from her – she claims it was that she couldn’t track him down, but he suspects she didn’t try that hard. Not until she knew how he could help her.
‘Tell me you’re not using me. I couldn’t take it again.’
In reply she strokes his face. Gazes at him with a look of such adoration he feels ridiculous for his doubts. ‘Ian, I missed you all that time. We’re back together now. OK?’
The slight warm drag of her small fingers across his stubble is perfumed and soft. He closes his eyes momentarily.
‘That’s it,’ she whispers and when he opens his eyes again she has her head on one side and is smiling curiously into his face. ‘That’s it – that’s my darling. There.’ She catches up his hand and pushes it against her flat stomach. She eases it down into the front of her jeans, inside the elastic of her knickers.
His fingers are coarse and dry against the smoothness of her stomach. They catch at her skin. She keeps pushing his hand down until he can feel the hot, wet tangle between her legs. She pivots her hips slightly apart so her thighs open and he can get better access. He slides his fingers into her and instantly he’s lost. He takes his hands out of her jeans and pushes her clumsily towards the bed. She tumbles on to it, her hair falling around her eyes, her head going back on the pillow.
She jacks up her hips and unzips her jeans. They are covered in her mother’s blood, and they leave long dappled scars on the sheets as she rolls them down. She kicks them aside and pulls off her knickers, then lies back, her arms above her head, smiling at him secretively – her knees open just enough so that he can see what he wants to see.
Her eyes are very black. He knows her from all those years ago, has been to hell and back with her, has been inside her body scores of times – and yet he’s never known what’s happening in her head.
‘Yours too,’ she says.
He stands and unzips his trousers, kicks them aside. He pushes down his shorts and lies on top of her. It’s the end of all the longing and the fear and the hurt.
The Turrets
THE TURRETS STANDS high above a tree-filled valley, almost at the crest where the treeline gets blue and hazy. Caffery parks in a secluded lay-by at the bottom of the drive and stands for a moment assessing the place – the long lawns sweeping up to it, the giant cedars of Lebanon casting their austere shadows on the grass. The house is as sombre as the name suggests, made of dark stone with two turrets and a stone tiled roof that seems to absorb the light naturally.
He’s been past this place before. He recalls passing the curved stone walls on either side of the entrance on his way into Litton. Ironic.
On the back seat of the car Bear is on high alert. She is staring out of the window in the direction of the house. Caffery opens the door and fixes a lead on her. She jumps out and begins to pull in the direction of the house. He smiles. They’ve come to the right place.
‘Good girl.’ He lifts her and puts her back in the car. Cracks the window and closes the door. ‘You’re a good girl. You stay here, now, OK? Don’t bark, don’t move.’
She shuffles agitatedly on the seat, moving her hind legs as if she’s thinking of jumping up or barking. But he holds his finger to his lips and she subsides. Watches him forlornly. That’s one more thing he knows about this family – the Anchor-Ferrers – without ever having met them. They might not have chipped their dog, but he admires how well they’ve trained her.
The gates to The Turrets are electric and closed. When he climbs over them he wonders if he’s going to break some infrared security beam that will alert the owners. But nothing happens and he drops on to the gravel driveway. He stops for a moment and lets his eyes travel up the hill. Rhododendrons and hydrangea ramble out from the treeline – not in flower yet, but they make him think of coastal regions of the UK – bringing the faintest whiff of adventure and exoticism to this inland valley.
What does he look like to someone inside, he wonders, someone in one of those turrets? Small and insignificant.
Suddenly he is uncertain. He has found where Bear lives, but that’s not enough. Now it’s not the Walking Man driving him but his own curiosity and moral compass. He needs to know what has happened to Oliver Anchor-Ferrers and to find out who attached the note to Bear’s collar.
He puts his hand inside his jacket to reassure himself the radio is there, ready. In situations like this he’s trained to slide away and call for backup. So what is the right thing? Right? Who defines right and wrong and how far down the list of what ifs and what abouts do you go? He doesn’t know.
In the end the person who wins out is the crazy Jack. The Jack who occasionally gets into dumb street brawls when of course it’s the wrong thing and will do no one any good. Maybe that’s just the way he’s always going to be.
He begins to walk carefully and deliberately up the drive towards the house.
Eyes
THE MORNING RAYS come through the red skulls and lie across the bodies of Oliver and Matilda. On the bed Ian shifts. He drops an arm over Lucia’s waist. She doesn’t react, just continues breathing steadily, in and out. In and out, her eyes closed.
He studies her sleeping face. She’s so relaxed. He’s going to have to wake her – they have to get moving – to get out of here. The cops looking for Ginny will only hold off so long before they come back and start asking questions. Ian uses his index finger to lift the lid of Lucia’s right eye. She doesn’t react so he raises his head and takes the time to study the iris. He can see all the veins and the different layers of protein that go to make up the white of her eye – like albumen. It’s so typical of Lucia that she will lie here, not moving, and calmly let him inspect her eye. She’s got an innate sense of what is dangerous and what isn’t. It’s as if she can detect it in the hairs on her skin, like an animal can.
He’s her puppet. She orchestrated this entire scenario, carefully planning it so her parents were dealt the most hurt and anxiety. Pietr Havilland isn’t the only person who wanted videos of Oliver suffering, Ian made them for Lucia too. She is going to watch them over and over, she will eat them up, will absorb every second of pain. Gorge herself with it.
She’s been the orchestrator all along, just as she was the night Hugo died. She dealt the first blow with the ice pick and it was she who hounded the bleeding and weak Sophie through the woods all night – Lucia going calmly, combat gear on just like Patty Hearst in that poster. It was Lucia who decided how the bodies should be arranged at the end. After all, she said, that was what they’d come there for in the first place. He remembers her expression as she stamped Hugo and Sophie’s faces together. Almost crying in her victory and fury. The way she tightened her teeth, braced her hands against a tree trunk to get leverage – pushing the couples’ heads together so hard that nothing was left of them. Every pop of gristle, every snap of bone went through her like a shiver. Every burst vessel that released a new line of blood into the moss.
When she finally finished with the bodies it was nine a.m. The whole thing had taken over fourteen hours. And Lucia wasn’t even tired. It was as if she had just sprung from a good night’s sleep.
He is awed by her. Awed and scared and completely in love.
‘Hey.’ He drops the eyelid and kisses her. ‘Time to wake up, sleepy head.’
She smiles lazily. Yawns and rubs her eyes. She seems about to put her arms around his neck and pull
him down again when a noise from downstairs makes them both sit bolt upright in bed – staring wide-eyed at each other. The doorbell. Echoing up the staircase.
Ian tips his legs off the bed and pads to the window. Naked. He draws the curtain back a fraction and presses his face to the windowpane. Squints down.
‘Who is it?’ Lucia is pulling on her clothes.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, what do we do? Ignore it?’
He shakes his head. ‘The back door’s open. Whoever it is can just walk in there.’
‘Who do you think it is?’
‘The cops?’
‘The cops?’ she hisses. ‘What the fuck’re you telling me?’
He turns away from the window. Scrutinizes her. ‘You look a mess,’ he says bluntly. ‘Seriously, you might as well have been in a cat fight. You stay up here.’ He pulls on his trousers and shirt and shoves his feet into his shoes. ‘Be quiet, don’t make a noise – let me deal with it.’
The Turrets
THE SOUND OF the doorbell dies on the other side of the big front door and then there’s just silence. A long silence that reaches out into the garden and finds the flowerbeds and the lawns and the forests beyond. Caffery stands in the porch, arms crossed, staring at the fields, the huge trees. He takes a few steps down the lawn, then stops and turns a full circle. Slowly, slowly, assessing. An ugly white Chrysler is parked further down the drive, the family’s Land Rover next to it. He knows it’s theirs from Johnny Patel’s information package. There’s a tennis court – neglected, holes in the guard netting.
Then behind him, from inside the house, a noise. The sound of locks being pulled back. He turns just as the door opens.
‘Hello?’
The man who stands there, blinking at the light, is stocky with a big head. He wears a T-shirt and sweatpants and his gingery hair stands in disarray up off his forehead. There is no one in the hallway behind him. Caffery lets his eyes rove all over the scene, trying to tease out anything wrong or out of the ordinary. A stained-glass window presides over everything – there are a few pairs of muddy wellingtons on the stone-flagged floor and a basket piled with potatoes that have gone to seed. Dog leads hanging from a coat rack. But nothing weird. No panic or defensiveness in this man’s face either. Only vague bewilderment.