Perfect People

  It seemed heavier than he had remembered; the stock was warm, the barrels as cold as ice. He broke it open, admiring for an instant the finely engineered movement, and squinted down the shiny insides of the barrels. As he closed it again, he heard the reassuring click. Then, raising the gun, peering across the pinhead sight and down the top of the barrels, he pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  Safety catch! he remembered. He slid it off, pointed the gun at the window, gripped tightly and squeezed first the right trigger, then the left one, hearing the sharp click each time.

  Kneeling, he pushed the gun under the bed, far enough in so that it was out of sight. Next he took the box of ammunition from the cabinet, broke it open and put four cartridges in the drawer in his bedside table. Then he put the box back in the cabinet, locked it, and put the keys back in place beneath his handkerchiefs.

  He sat on the bed for some moments, thinking what else he could do, what other precautions he could take, and all the time hoping to hell he was just overreacting, that this American had been innocent. In all likelihood they were worrying about nothing. Hell, his mother-in-law had never been to the States, she didn’t like to fly, so she could have mistaken his accent.

  He went downstairs to the kitchen where Naomi was making a late snack lunch for them all and Luke and Phoebe were sitting at the kitchen table

  Leaning against the Aga for warmth, he said to his mother-in-law, ‘Anne, this man who came to the door – he was definitely American?’

  ‘Very definitely.’ She was emphatic.

  John thought for a moment. ‘You said he was looking for an address – he was lost or something?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘John, it is pretty confusing around here, first time you come. I got lost, too. You’re not very well signposted.’

  ‘I don’t think he was lost,’ Phoebe said sharply, without looking away from the television.

  There was a brief silence. ‘Did you see this man, Phoebe?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘You don’t have to see someone to know they’re not lost,’ Phoebe said scornfully.

  ‘So why do you think he wasn’t lost, Phoebe?’ John asked.

  Still without moving her eyes from the television, Phoebe flapped away his question with her hand. ‘We’re watching the show, please stop interrupting.’

  John and Naomi exchanged a glance. He saw his mother-in-law smiling at her impertinence.

  Insolence.

  He should have slapped Phoebe down for it, so should Naomi, but it was still a major achievement to get the children to speak at all, still a novelty to hear them.

  ‘It was a farm he was looking for?’ John said.

  ‘I think that’s what he said. And – oh yes – feed!’

  ‘Feed?’

  ‘Agricultural feed – he was selling agricultural feed!’ Then her brow furrowed. ‘Although I have to say he really didn’t look a terribly rural type.’

  John went to his study and phoned, in turn, each of the five local farming families around them whom he had met. Three of them answered and confirmed they’d not had any visitor fitting that description. They each promised to call him if the American did turn up. At the other two numbers, he got the voice mail, and left messages.

  John then tried to turn his attention to his book and make use of this sudden extra time away from work. But it was hopeless, he couldn’t concentrate; he was too worried about this American with his crucifix.

  Naomi called him back down for his lunch. After he had eaten he put on his Barbour, a rain hat and wellington boots, and went out for a walk across the fields, circumnavigating the house, keeping close enough to be able to beat any car coming up the drive back to it.

  A thought was going round and round in his mind:

  What if they had been in when the American had come?

  Later in the afternoon, there was a reply from his email to Kalle. It was an automated response, telling him that Kalle was away from the office for the next ten days. A short while later the two remaining farmers returned his calls. Neither of them had had any visitors today.

  92

  At half past five in the afternoon, John’s mother-in-law set off for her drive back home to Bath. It was already pitch dark outside, and the rain was still tipping down. John put on his Barbour and wellingtons and, carrying a golfing umbrella, escorted her out to her car. He kissed her goodbye, then stood in the porch with Naomi until the tail lights had disappeared down the drive.

  Although he got on fine with her, he normally felt a sense of relief when she had departed. It was good to have the house back to themselves.

  Normally.

  But this afternoon he felt a deep sense of anxiety, and wished she could have stayed longer. With a torch, he made a circuit of the house, checking that the sensors for all the outside lights were working properly, comforted a little by the sudden flood of brilliant light as each one came on.

  In the living room, Naomi flopped down on a sofa, grateful for the chance of a few minutes to look at the paper. She had a headache that was getting worse by the minute. Luke and Phoebe were lounging back on the other sofa, engrossed in watching an old pop video of the group The Corrs on MTV.

  ‘Thunder only happens when it’s raining,’ they were singing.

  Suddenly Phoebe grabbed the remote and turned the volume down.

  ‘That’s not true!’ Phoebe said. ‘Thunder does not only happen when it’s raining. Why are they saying that? Mummy? Why are they saying that?’

  Naomi lowered the paper, pleasantly surprised that Phoebe was addressing her. ‘Saying what, darling?’

  ‘That thunder only happens when it’s raining. Everybody knows that a thunderstorm is a storm with visible lightning and audible thunder. The arrangement of storms within any spectrum is determined by the updraught strength, relative frequency of the updraught strength, depending on category, and relative threats of the updraught categories. I mean, are they talking about single-cell storms, multicell storm lines or supercells? They’re the kinds that produce severe weather elements, right? But that’s only talking about a fraction of the bigger picture. There are forty thousand thunderstorms a day in the world, which is like a quarter of a million flashes every minute. So what the fuck do they know?’

  ‘Phoebe!’ She was staggered by the knowledge that came from her daughter’s mouth. And horrified by the swearing. ‘Don’t say that word, it’s horrible.’

  Phoebe shrugged like an antsy teenager.

  ‘Would one of you do something for me, please?’ Naomi asked. ‘I have a really bad headache. Would you run upstairs and bring me some paracetamol – there’s a box in my bathroom cabinet – the one with the mirror on it?’

  Luke turned to her. ‘What kind of a headache do you have, Mummy?’

  ‘A bad one, that’s what kind.’

  ‘Is it from trauma or from mental stress?’ Phoebe asked.

  ‘Or from intracranial disorder?’ Luke added.

  ‘Or migraine?’ said Phoebe. ‘That’s really quite important to know.’

  Naomi looked at her children for some moments, barely able to believe her ears. She gave them an answer she hoped Sheila Michaelides would have approved of. ‘It’s a two-paracetamol kind of a headache, OK?’

  There was a moment of silence, then Luke said, ‘Then I don’t understand.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Phoebe. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘You don’t understand what?’ Naomi responded.

  Luke puckered his mouth, clearly deep in thought. ‘Well, it’s like this, I suppose. You want one of us to go upstairs to get you two paracetamol because you have a headache, if we are understanding you correctly?’

  ‘You are understanding me correctly, Luke, yes.’

  Again his whole mouth puckered in thought. Then he turned again to his sister and whispered to her. Phoebe shot a glance at Naomi, frowned, then whispered back.

  Luke again addressed his mother. ‘We’re really quite confused about this, Mum
my.’

  Naomi swallowed her exasperation. ‘What are you confused about, darling? Exactly? It’s quite simple.’ She screwed up her eyes as the pain worsened, lowered her head and pressed her fingers into her temples. ‘Mummy has a really bad headache. She would really be grateful if one of you would run upstairs and get two paracetamols for her. That’s all.’

  ‘Let me explain what we don’t understand,’ Luke said. ‘You have a headache. Headaches don’t affect your legs, Mummy. So you are quite capable of going up to the bathroom yourself.’

  She saw a cheeky, teasing grin on his face for a fleeting instant, so fleeting she almost thought she had imagined it. Then he got up, shrugged, went upstairs and came down with two capsules.

  *

  Some while later, Naomi woke, with a start, on the sofa. A rock band she did not recognize was playing on the television, but the sound was muted. She could smell a tantalizing aroma of cooking meat. Was John cooking dinner?

  She hauled herself off the sofa and walked through into the kitchen. And stopped in her tracks, in amazement.

  Phoebe was perched on a stool, minding a large frying pan on the hob. Luke, on another stool, was dicing peeled potatoes, a cookbook open beside him.

  As if sensing her coming into the room, Phoebe turned, with a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth smile. ‘Hi, Mummy!’ she said cheerily.

  ‘What – what’s going on?’ Naomi said, smiling back.

  ‘Daddy’s busy working. Because you’re not feeling well, Luke and I decided to cook dinner for us tonight. We’re making Swedish meatballs and Janssen’s Temptation – potatoes with cream and anchovies, which you have every Christmas Eve, and we know you love!’

  For some moments, Naomi was speechless.

  93

  Lara was cold. Cold and wide awake in her bed in the dormitory building at the foot of the cliff, directly beneath the monastery. A storm was blowing. The Aegean Sea, crashing on the rocks less than a hundred metres away, sounded like it was about to swallow the building, maybe even the entire atoll. Massive explosions of water sounding like thunder.

  God loves me, and Jesus loves me, and the Virgin Mary loves me.

  And my Disciple loves me.

  And I belong.

  Those were the things that mattered to Lara. As a child, she had always felt herself belonging on a higher plane than others around her. She felt an outsider, disconnected from her family, unable to fit in at school and to relate to the others there. She was a loner, yet she hated being a loner. All she had wanted was to belong. To be a part of something, to be wanted, needed.

  She loved these people she was with now, and the vision they shared. She agreed with every view they held. She loved the fact that they understood you couldn’t just lock yourself away from the world, but sometimes you had to go out into it, tread along its sewers, carry out the Lord’s fight against Satan for Him.

  She could hear, suddenly, above the din of the waves, the faint drumming of the wooden gong that summoned the monks to matins, echoing around the monastery walls high above her. It was half past two in the morning.

  This was her third January here, and each of them had been equally harsh. Despite the window in her room being shut, she felt the blast of the icy squall outside on her face, and pulled the bedclothes tighter around her.

  Then she pulled her hands together.

  Praying.

  Praying for the man in the photograph on her wooden dresser. Praying with a warm heart and with cold hands that were red and coarse from manual work. That sweet, sweet Disciple, with his gentle voice and his soft touch, and all the dreamy promises they had made to each other.

  Timon.

  The memories of that week of praying side by side with him in the chapel, and that one night she had been permitted to spend alone with him, still sustained her over three years on. They were preserved in her heart by the love the Virgin Mary had for her, for all three of them, for herself, for beautiful Timon, and for beautiful Saul, asleep in his crib just beyond the end of his bed, who would be two and a half soon.

  He had not yet met his father.

  She smiled. Imagining Timon’s expression when he saw his child, his son, his boy, his baby, this beautiful baby whom God and the Virgin Mary had given them. The same Virgin Mary who had spared her from having to kill the Infidel Cardelli family in Como. God had sent her to a convent there, while she was pregnant with Saul, to wait for His command to strike against the family and their twin boy and girl spawned from Satan.

  But then the Virgin Mary had sent an avalanche of snow down on to the Cardellis’ car as they negotiated a pass in the Dolomites, sweeping them off the road and down into a deep ravine, burying the wreckage beneath a quilt of pure, white flakes.

  Come let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet they shall be as white as snow. Isaiah 1.

  Now, every day and night her prayers were the same. Please God, Sweet Lord Jesus and Blessed Mother Mary, bring Timon home to my arms.

  So I may feel his seed entering inside me and grow more babies who will become strong here, away from the sewers of the world. Babies that Timon and I can nurture, who will grow up alongside all the other babies here to be fine, strong people, to become, one day, soldiers in your army, who will go out into the world and destroy evil.

  Please bring him home to me soon.

  94

  The rain beat down relentlessly on the Disciple’s car. This was weather he had prayed for. On a night like this, no nosey villager would be out walking their dog, wondering what a strange vehicle was doing in the car park behind the schoolhouse.

  Inside the little rental Ford it sounded like a never-ending sack of pebbles was being emptied onto the roof. The car smelled of plastic and velour and damp clothes. His body itched all over; he had broken out in a rash.

  Nerves.

  He felt terribly alone, suddenly, as if God was putting him through this final test, here on this vile night, in this foreign land, with rain spiking the tar-black puddles all around him. But he would do it. For God and for his Master and for the love of Lara, he would do it.

  Under the miserly glow of the dome light he unfolded the plans for the Infidels’ house, which he had photocopied on Tuesday morning at the County Planning Office in Lewes, and looked at them carefully one final time. Ground Floor. First Floor. North Elevation. East Elevation. South Elevation. West Elevation.

  The layout was simple, there wasn’t anything to it: the master bedroom was evident, and the Spawn would be in one of the three smaller rooms. Speed was crucial. In his briefing, three years back – but as clear as if it had been only hours ago – his Master had impressed on him the need for speed. To remember the ticking clock. To never forget every mission has a ticking clock.

  Six minutes on this one tonight. That was all he could risk. He had found out the name of the alarm company from the box on the outside of the house on his visit to the property on Tuesday morning. Then it had been easy. He had phoned the company, given his name as the Infidel’s and explained a problem he was having with the system. From the reply the engineer gave him, he now knew everything about the system.

  From this he could work out that he would have six minutes to be finished and out, across the fields, heading back to his car.

  And then.

  The 3.30 a.m. reservation on the Eurotunnel Shuttle. He had practised the route on Sunday and Monday night. With the minimal traffic at that hour, and adhering strictly to every speed limit, the drive should take comfortably less than two hours from here.

  By 5.30 a.m. Continental time, he would be on the autoroute heading to Paris. There he would leave the Ford in the long-term car park at Charles de Gaulle Airport, and take the transfer bus to Orly Airport. Plenty of leeway to make the 11.05 a.m. flight to Athens. Then two hours later the connecting flight to Thessaloniki. From there, a taxi to the port of Ouranoupoli where, after dark, the Master’s launch would be waiting to ferry him the twenty kilometres across
the Aegean Sea to the monastic island.

  To Lara.

  He looked at his watch. It was half past ten. In a little over twenty-four hours he would be in Lara’s arms, at the start of his new life, in the Promised Land. And in the sight of God.

  He folded the plans and put them back into his pocket, then for the final time he went through his checklist. Air rifle and telescopic night-sight. Maglite torch. Swiss Army knife. Gloves. Toolkit. Canister of liquid propane gas. Canister of compressed ketamine (which he had purchased in Brighton), which would paralyse for thirty minutes. Lighter. Beretta .38 handgun, with full magazine and silencer.

  He felt nervous now. Far more nervous than on any of his previous American assignments. Slipping his hand into his anorak pocket he pulled out the stubby, heavy weapon and looked at it for some moments, stared at the dull black metal. Gripped it in his hand and slipped his finger over the trigger.

  His instructions from his Master were only to use the gun in a worst-case scenario. If you fired a gun, one day, someone would be able to connect you to that gun. To fire a gun was to cross the Rubicon. You could never go back; you could never be a Soldier in the army of the Lord again.

  He was tired of being a Soldier.

  He wanted to come home.

  He wanted to sleep tomorrow night in the arms of Lara.

  This was why, aided by the illumination of the dome light of the rented Ford Focus sedan, he attached the silencer, taking several goes to catch the threading correctly. Then with a badly trembling index finger he pressed the safety catch down, into the off position, and jammed the now much bulkier gun back into his anorak pocket.

  On the three occasions he had checked during the past month, the Infidels’ bedroom light went out around half past eleven. It was now half past ten. At midnight he would make his way across the fields and up to the house.