Bright Angel (21 page)

But the coffee doesn't reinvigorate me. Quite the opposite. Sitting there, the tiredness suddenly hits me. Hits me hard. Very soon it gets worse and worse. My limbs get heavier, my vision starts to blur, my eyes want to shut. I don't even notice that I've dropped the cup. I try to twist around in my seat to say something to Daniel, but the effort is too great. I turn my head slowly and see Mick looking at me. There's an odd expression on his face – or is that because my eyes are blinking so much as I fight to stay awake that his cheerful, ordinary face seems to be dissolving into something else – a mask – an unpleasant mask, leering at me? I try to say, ‘Mick, I feel really strange...' but the words are thick in my throat, my tongue feels made of lead. I've never felt as tired as this before. Never. Not even with the jet lag. I feel like I...

I pass out.

And woke I didn't know how long after, with a banging head and aching eyes and throbbing ankle, into daylight falling unevenly through dirty glass. I had no idea where I was. I didn't recognise this place. And I didn't know how I got here. But what's
here,
exactly? Not the car. Not that other place – my brain struggles with the memory – not the underground warren of Chateau Espinous. The walls are not stone, but thin metal.

I tried to sit up but couldn't. My hands and feet wouldn't move, they hurt – they are tied, I thought – no, I
knew,
with a great rush of bewilderment. But I could see more as my aching eyes focused better and now realised, with a jolt, that I was lying on the
floor of a caravan.
A small, boxy, shabby caravan, smelling of old fry-ups and smelly socks and damp. I could see a tracery of tree branches outside the grubby window, a kitchen clutter, a half-drawn curtain behind which I could glimpse an unmade bed. I was alone. There was no-one here. But someone's been living here, I thought. Who? And why have they brought me here?

I struggled to understand. But I also didn't want to. It didn't make sense, the knowledge that was trying to come up from the bottom of my brain. It scared me. It threw everything that had happened, everything I thought I knew, into confusion. I never suspected. Never once imagined. I trusted, completely. And now?

Now there was a rustle behind me. I heard the door open. Someone came up the steps and in, making the caravan shake a little. I was shaking a little too. I didn't want to look at him. I didn't want him to know I was afraid.

‘Well, you've been asleep for quite a while! Hours. You must have been tired, eh? Welcome to my humble home.' His voice sounded just the same as before. But why imagine it wouldn't? He looked down at me. ‘I'm afraid I can't untie you. But I'll help you sit up, if you like.'

I was about to refuse – I hated the thought of him touching me, hated to think of him helping me to do anything – when it came to me that lying there with him looming over me, I was as helpless as a trussed-up chicken and about as dignified. ‘Whatever,' I said, trying to sound uncaring.

He pulled me up against the kitchen bench, and stuck a cushion behind me. He looked no different from before. And yet how changed he was, to my eyes. How utterly changed.

I said, harshly, ‘Where are the others?'

He shrugged, saying, ‘We're keeping you separate.'

‘I want to know.'

He looked at me. His eyes were twinkling. ‘Sorry, mate. No can do. They're okay though. For the moment.'

He was enjoying himself, I thought, disbelievingly. No. I knew
nothing
about this man, so familiar, so much a stranger. Nothing. The thought brought a renewed pulse of fear but I said, forcing my voice to stay steady, ‘If you or your friend hurt them in any way, I'll–'

He laughed. ‘You'll what? Face it, Sylvie. There's nothing you can do, until we're done.'

‘For God's sake,' I said, ‘please?'

‘I don't believe in God,' he said, gently. He pulled up a chair and looked earnestly at me. ‘Haven't since I was a kid. But I do believe in the Devil. Oh yes, he's there, all right. I've seen him, smiling from the society pages.'

I looked into his steady, faintly smiling eyes, and I felt frightened. ‘What? I-I don't understand. Why – who – why are you working with Radic? Has he paid you?'

‘Paid me?' A strange expression crossed his face. ‘Why would he need to do that?'

‘Because otherwise why would–' I broke off as light flashes in on me, rather late. I whispered, ‘Oh my God.
You're one of them.'

The faint smile was back. ‘Took you a while, didn't it, Sylvie?'

‘You're his son. Thomas Radic was your cousin.'

‘Oh no,' he said. ‘Thomas was my brother. My little brother.'

The world crashed in around me. I faltered, ‘But Thomas didn't have a brother.'

‘I'm the child of Dad's first marriage,' he said. ‘Dad's disastrous first marriage. Not mentioned in polite company. And I'm not exactly the apple of his eye.' The smile had a bitter edge now. ‘Dad's a hard man. All the men in my family are. Except poor Tommy.'

I'd thought he was only a bit older than me. But looks were deceptive. He could be any age between twenty and thirty, really. I said, remembering, ‘You said your uncle was a policeman.'

‘You remember that? Well done. Yes. It just slipped out. I could've bitten off my tongue. But then I saw it meant nothing to you anyway, rang no bells.'

I stared at him. ‘Why should it?'

‘No reason, really. There was a thing in the papers, once, a few years back. But I guess you wouldn't have seen it. Stan, my uncle, was a cop. A good one. And to be a good one you gotta skate on thin ice sometimes. You gotta get the crims thinking you're like them.'

‘You mean he was a crooked cop.'

Anger flashed across his face. ‘You don't know what you're talking about. He was persecuted. Hounded. They forced him out. They made it clear that if he didn't go quietly he'd be disgraced publicly.' His mouth twisted. ‘As if they didn't have their hand in the cookie jar too! Stan's a real man. A man of honour. He knew all sorts of things about people. But he didn't want to drag the force he used to love through the mud. So he went quietly. There was no mud flung. Nothing except a few rumours. Innuendoes. He set up shop as a private detective. Good at that, he was, too. Is. But Dad – well, in his eyes Stan was as good as judged and condemned. Like me, when I got into trouble and he wouldn't help me. Unlike Stan, who reached out, who really cared. My father's good at kicking people when they're down. But give him a real crisis and he folds like a pack of cards.'

Whiner, I thought, savagely. Self-pitying bastard. I said, ‘So the pair of you joined forces, just to show him who was best.'

There was a nasty glitter in his eyes. ‘You have no idea what you're talking about.'

‘Yes, I do.' I was shaking with a wild mixture of fear and anger. ‘You and your uncle, you've set up as vigilantes just to show Thomas' father you supposedly care more than he did. You make me sick, Steve, Mick, whatever your bloody real name is. Not that I care, cos you're the same evil lying two-faced creep whatever handle you're calling yourself.'

For a moment I thought I'd gone too far. His hands bunched into fists, his face twisted, revealing the tigerish savagery under the mild geek appearance. Then he took a visible grip on himself. He said, quietly, ‘I'm sorry you think that, Sylvie. I like you. I liked you from the start. And those are both my real names. Steve. Mick. Stephen Michael Carter, that's me.'

I stared at him, remembering the name he'd given me when we'd first met.
Michael Stephan.
He'd just swapped his first two names around to make another identity. I said, ‘Carter? Not Radic?'

‘I took Mum's name,' he said. ‘My father took no interest in me after she left. Why should I have any interest in him?'

‘Was any of it true?' I said, sadly. ‘Coming to France with your mother – working in IT – working with GEIPAN – all that stuff you said.'

‘Well, some of it,' he shrugged. ‘I really have done some freelance work for GEIPAN in the past. I've always been interested in UFOs and aliens – we really aren't alone in the universe, you know: only this is so much more convincing than all that stupid religious stuff. Anyway, some day I'll tell you my whole story.'

Some day, I thought. As though there's a future in this, as though one day we'll have a good old chinwag about old times together! How deluded was this guy?!

He saw my expression and misinterpreted it. ‘Look, if I'd known you'd been in the place where Tommy died, I'd never have involved you. You must believe that. But you didn't say. You didn't tell me.'

I said, wearily, ‘Why
should
I tell you? I was trying to forget it. Not to think about it. That's why we were in St-Bertrand in the first place. To forget all about it. Your brother was sick. Very sick. I-I am so sorry for him, for your family, but he killed himself. He was not murdered.'

‘He was driven to it,' said the young man I'd known as cheerful, friendly Mick. ‘Driven to it by that smiling devil from the society pages, that blood-sucking hypocritical parasite Udo. That's murder in my book. Cruel, cowardly, long-distance murder.'

‘Look. Thomas never said anything about Udo, before he–' I gulped, faltered, then went on. ‘It was Helen he focused on. Helen he blew his brains out in front of. So why are you–'

His eyes flashed. ‘Yes, my brother was sick. He'd never been very strong mentally, and he blamed Helen because my poor brother was never able to think things through. That's why he got caught by that bastard, too. He trusted people. He thought you could get something for nothing. He believed in fairytales.' A darkness crossed his face. ‘Helen – she was a side issue, but he became obsessed by her. It's because he didn't want to think about the true heart of darkness, the rip-off that had destroyed him. He was ashamed, don't you see? Bitterly ashamed. We tried, Stan and I – when we got it out of him – we wanted to start an investigation – we tried to get Tommy to help us – but he wouldn't, he was scared and didn't want Dad to know about it. Wouldn't co-operate at all. Stan and I, we set about looking into it anyhow, and discovered a link with Udo. At that stage, we just wanted to expose him. Stan knew a crime journo but he wouldn't go near the story, said Udo was untouchable. Generous charity-giver. Protected by an army of lawyers and clever IT people. Would wriggle off the hook. But it didn't matter. We were still going to battle on ourselves. And then, then Tommy shot himself. And everything changed.'

There was a long silence. He was sitting there, looking at his hands, and all at once I felt an unwelcome twinge of pity. I said, ‘But surely – this madness – what you're doing now can't help. It can't bring him back.'

‘It's not about bringing him back,' he said. ‘It's about justice. About evildoers being punished.'

‘This isn't justice,' I said, gently. ‘It's revenge. Surely you know that? Daniel and Gabriel aren't evildoers. Yet you're punishing them. And me.'

‘I don't care about them. But I am sorry about you,' he said. ‘I really am. But there's nothing I can do about it now.'

‘Yes, you can. You can stand up to your uncle. You can tell him this is all wrong. I've seen what he's like, Mick. I've seen how scary, how violent, how obsessive he is. You're not like that. You're a good guy. You just got dragged into this, didn't you? You never really wanted to go along with his crazy plan and–'

Something flickered in his eyes. He said, ‘I hardly got a chance to know my brother, as a kid. Dad didn't like us hanging around his new family. And I was only beginning to get to know Tommy as an adult when Udo stole everything from him. That devil stole our chance to know each other properly as brothers. He stole our future. And so I determined to steal his, to destroy and break him. This isn't Stan's plan, Sylvie, it's mine.'

I stared at him in stunned astonishment.

‘Stan's a great guy – the best – but he can be reckless,' he went on. ‘He doesn't think things through. Like Tommy, in a way. He acts rashly, violently, impulsively. Like bursting in and kidnapping you last night, for instance. That was not my plan. If he'd thought for one moment he'd have realised I had it under control.'

Despite myself, I was fascinated, like a frog is fascinated by a snake. I croak, ‘But what were you going to do?'

‘Persuade you we had to take the computer and go at once to the police, of course,' he said promptly. ‘I'd even have got you to leave a note for your aunt. There would have been no fuss. No broken glass. The car would have been found abandoned, with our mobiles left in it – somehow mine would have been left on and there would've been a recording of a scream, of me saying,
No, leave her alone!
I'm good with stuff like that, you know.'

‘Yes,' I said bleakly, thinking it must have been him who had got into our house, stolen my mobile and used it to make that call to Daniel, so that he would arrive late. And that mattered, I thought, stunned, as light burst in on me. Not only because Daniel'd be out of the way when Radic turned up at the house – he would have been anyway – but because it would create a scene when Daniel came across us at the clearing. I remembered how Mick – I still couldn't think of him as Steve – had stumbled against me
just as Daniel had appeared.
He'd
wanted
Daniel to catch us apparently in each other's arms, I thought, chilled, so that poor Daniel would get angry – upset – the scene would be fixed in all our minds and Mick would have a rock-solid alibi, not only from me but from Daniel himself – no way of connecting him to anything. And even more importantly it would pit Daniel against me, stop the two of us from comparing notes about the phone calls and trying to work things out. I would be dependent on Mick, then. I'd have to see things through his eyes, trust in what he did and said. A finger of ice slid slowly down my spine. He'd baited his trap so well, so cleverly. What a devious, calculating creep he was. And what a gullible idiot I'd been!