Kiss Heaven Goodbye (73 page)

He glanced at Marshall for a reaction, but the lawyer’s face was hidden in shadow. It was overcast now and Miles began to worry they might be caught in the storm.

‘After that, I went for a walk around the island. Maybe an hour later, I saw this boat boy again. He was drunk too, which I pointed out was reason enough to get him fired, the cocky little prick. So he starts having a go at me again. Called me a fag over and over. And then he tells me that he’s just fucked Sasha back in his quarters, because I wasn’t enough of a man to satisfy her.’

His mouth pressed into a sour line. He could still hear the boat boy’s whiny American voice now, taunting him.
You fucking faggot
. His words had been like acid and Miles had hated it, because deep down he had known it was true, and it was the one thing about himself that he could not accept.

‘So you were angry?’ asked Marshall.

‘It made me mad,’ he snapped. ‘Of course it did! Sasha was bugging the shit out of me, but how dare that boat boy have sex with
my
girlfriend?’

‘So you killed him?’

‘No! At least,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I didn’t think so. We fought, a bit of a tussle, but he had a beer bottle in his hand. Somehow I got hold of it and swung it . . .’

His voice tailed off. He screwed his eyes tightly and he could almost see the boat boy’s body crumple to the sand. In his rage, Miles had kicked him, and he remembered the feeling of sinking terror as he watched the body rolling down the dune on to the beach. He had been so scared.
So
scared. His first instinct was to go and tell his father, but Robert Ashford was such an unpredictable man, he couldn’t take the chance. It was the first time in his life he had felt absolutely alone, and even today, the thought of it made him shiver.

‘So I left him there. Hoped someone else would find the body. It was bad luck that it was my friends.’

‘But why didn’t they help him or report it?’

‘We all agreed it was best to let one of the staff find the body. But . . .’

‘But what?’

‘Alex and Grace went to see Nelson – the old caretaker – and when they came back, the body had gone. My father convinced me the boy had simply been drunk, feared getting the sack, so had stolen one of our Boston Whalers.’

‘And did you believe that?’

‘Why wouldn’t I? There was no body there.’

Michael moved out of the shadows, his face grave. ‘But you suspected Robert had made the body disappear?’

‘Yes – no! – I don’t know,’ said Miles, running his fingers through his hair. ‘I certainly wanted to believe he had got up and walked away. But if that was the case, whose body is DeShaun Riley inspecting?’

‘He isn’t inspecting anyone,’ said Michael in a low voice. ‘There is no body.’

Miles looked up at him sharply.‘What? What do you mean? Have you done a deal with them?’

Michael shrugged. ‘In a way, yes. But not in the way you mean.’

Miles found his mouth had gone dry. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying he didn’t die, Miles. The boat boy . . . it was me.’

Miles shook his head in astonishment. Was this a joke? But he knew from the hard look on Michael’s face that he was deadly serious.

‘You . . . you’re the . . . ? Don’t screw me around, Michael!’ he shouted in confusion and fear. Michael’s face was like stone; hard, unyielding. And there was something in the lawyer’s eyes he didn’t like, something he’d never seen before. Triumph, or fury? He began to back away, but Michael brought his hand up. He was holding a gun.

‘What is this, Michael?’ shouted Miles. ‘Who are you?’

Before he had finished forming the words, Michael stepped forward and whipped the pistol sideways, catching Miles on the temple and sending him crashing to the floor.

‘I am revenge, Miles,’ he said, his voice quiet and controlled. ‘I am your conscience finally catching up with you. I am the last thing you will ever see.’ He raised his hand again, levelling the gun.

‘No, please!’ said Miles quickly. His head was swimming from the blow, but he had to think. This couldn’t be the end, he had to find a way out.

‘Tell me,’ he pleaded, playing for time. ‘I have to know.’

Michael didn’t lower the pistol.

‘It wasn’t your father who got rid of the body. It was Nelson. Except I was alive. He saw you and your friends coming back to the house, scared and jittery, and went out to investigate. He found me just before daybreak, took me back to his house. Nelson knew your father well and knew he would have taken your mistake out on me, possibly had me arrested. “Mr Ashford’s a bad man,” was what he said to me. “A very bad man.” So when you’d left the island and your father’s guests had arrived, Nelson got me off the island to a doctor.’

Miles knew the only way out was to try and reason with him. ‘So you were OK,’ he said. ‘It all turned out OK.’

He could see Michael’s hand trembling with simmering fury.

‘OK?’ spat his lawyer. ‘
OK?
You tried to kill me, Ashford, you put me in hospital, my brains scrambled. You almost ruined my life.’

‘Clearly not,’ hissed Miles. ‘You have a good life now, because of me, not in spite of me.’

Michael’s voice was level and hard. ‘
Two months
. That’s how long I was in hospital. I had a broken nose, ribs, jaw. Thanks to my head injuries, I lost my short-term memory. I woke up screaming. It goes without saying, I lost my place at Harvard. Not that I could take it up anyway – far too dangerous.’

‘What?’ said Miles.

‘Even as an eighteen-year-old hick, I knew how powerful the Ashfords were. I knew how you might come looking for me. To check I was really dead, and if I wasn’t, to silence me.’

‘That’s just insane . . .’ said Miles, trailing off. He didn’t want to provoke a madman.

‘What were you going to say, Miles? That’s insane? Paranoid? You think I’m crazy? You’re talking to the wrong man. I’ve spent five years doing just that for you, haven’t I? Digging up dirt, smearing people, having people “dissuaded” from doing things. Do you really think your father was any less ruthless?’

‘If you were so keen on staying hidden, why did you come back to find me?’ asked Miles slowly. He had shifted his position to look back down the path behind him, wondering if he could make a run for it. He had to distract Michael, keep him talking.

‘Because you had to pay for what you did!’ said Michael, spittle flying from his mouth. ‘So I changed my name, went to state uni, law school, joined Weinstein Fink on Wall Street, a small outfit. Tough, alley-cat lawyers. The truth was, I’d almost forgotten about you, Miles, until one day I heard Ash Corp. was looking for a business affairs manager. Dick Donovan, your father’s right-hand man, had put a discreet word out around all the hard-nosed, streetwise firms like Weinstein Fink that Miles Ashford wanted a fixer, and suddenly I couldn’t
stop
thinking about you.’

‘So you came to meet me,’ said Miles, remembering their first meeting in an anonymous hotel room in midtown. What had Donovan, his father’s business adviser, told him? ‘Come and meet an impressive young lawyer I’ve found. He’s sharp, ruthless. Just what we’re looking for . . .’

‘I just wanted to see what you had become. It was a risk, of course,’ said Michael with a hard, brittle laugh.‘But I knew I looked different, my fixed nose, the long studenty hair had gone. My new glasses. I have to wear these because of you, Miles. You ruptured my right cornea in that “bit of a tussle”, as you put it. A man like you, I’m not surprised you’ve found a way of justifying it to yourself, but it was a vicious, cowardly attack. “Frenzied”, that’s what the doctors said.’

Miles took a second to study Michael. He had never been able to recall the exact contours and features of the boat boy’s face. Even examining Michael’s face now, he could barely remember it. But then, he’d only seen him twice, in the dark, twenty years ago. Why would he recognise him?

‘But if you hated me so much, why did you take the job?’

Michael snorted. ‘As soon as I saw you again, I knew what sort of man you had become. Weak, arrogant, in need of other people to cover up your mistakes, just like you did that night on the island. I wanted to stop you, Miles – and get my just reward for what you did. And because of the power and influence you gave me, I now have five million dollars sitting in a bank account in the Cayman Islands, all slowly siphoned off from Ash Corp.’

Miles creased his brow. ‘Take the money and just fuck off then. You’ve made your point.’

‘Oh, this isn’t over, Miles,’ said Michael.‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Michael’s eyes were like dark, angry hollows. Miles forced himself to remain calm.

‘Put the gun down, Michael. Do you really think you can just shoot me and get away with it?’

The lawyer smirked. ‘I know how to get away with anything, Miles, you know that. I’m the master of the disappearing act; I’ve done it over and over again for you. But this time it’s going to be messy. This time I’m going to leave a bloody trail leading right to your precious friends. Alex, Sasha and Grace will take the blame.’

‘They don’t deserve that, Michael.’

His brows arched in surprise. ‘Don’t they? They were happy enough to leave me to die on the beach. Happy enough to put it out of their minds as if it simply didn’t matter. Happy to go on with their lives hoping I had just been a bad dream.’

‘They thought you were dead,’ he said defensively.

Michael leapt forward, grabbing Miles’ hair and jamming the cold barrel of the gun into his eye.

‘Oh, I am dead, Miles,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve been dead for twenty years. And now you’re going to join me in hell.’

‘Can you go any faster?’ shouted Philip, desperately trying to hang on to the side of the boat. The weather was filthy and waves were splashing over the bows so that he was ankle deep in water. At first the captain had refused to bring him across to Angel Cay from the White Sands resort, but he had relented when Philip had given him a thousand dollars in cash.

‘Boat only does thirty knots,’ said the old sailor.

‘This is an emergency,’ Philip pleaded, fumbling another note out from his pocket. The captain reached over, took the money, then turned back to his wheel.

Twelve long minutes later, the boat finally thumped up against Angel Cay’s jetty and Philip vaulted up and hit the ground running towards the house. His rugby training was a long time behind him, and at forty-seven his legs felt like lead as they pounded through the sand. But adrenalin and fear pushed him on through the rain, the wind whipping his jacket away from his body. Sasha had said she had thought something was wrong on the island, but now Philip
knew
there was. As soon as he’d hung up from Sasha, he’d called Nassau’s Central Detective Unit and asked to be put through to Detective Inspector Carlton, only to be told that there was no officer of that name.

‘At the station?’ asked Philip.

‘In any of our divisions, sir,’ said the officer on the line. ‘The Bahamas is not a big place.’

Confused, Philip had said he understood Carlton was in charge of investigating the discovery of a body on Angel Cay. He was put through to the Great Exumas police station in George Town only to be asked, ‘Is this a hoax?’ Nobody had heard of a dead body on Angel Cay. There was no police investigation and as far as they knew, no foreign surveyors on the island.

Philip was panting when he reached the house. He pushed through the front door and almost ran into Grace Ashford and Alex Doyle.

‘Who the hell are you?’ said Alex.

For a moment Philip couldn’t speak, he was breathing so hard. He bent over, hands on his knees.

‘My name is Phil Bettany,’ he gasped. ‘I’m . . . Sasha’s friend.’

‘Is she with you?’ asked Grace.

Phil looked at her anxiously. ‘What, you mean you haven’t see her? She arrived here over an hour ago. I spoke to her – she was in this house.’

Alex shook his head.‘There’s no one else in the house. We assumed she hadn’t got here yet.’

‘Shit,’ whispered Phil, a sinking feeling in his stomach. ‘Who else is on the island?’

‘Just Miles. And that caretaker who met us off the plane,’ said Alex.‘But you haven’t told us what’s going on. Is something wrong?’

‘Listen, I know why you’re here,’ Philip said urgently. ‘Sasha told me all about that night on the beach twenty years ago. Finding the body. Leaving the body, all of it.’

He saw Alex and Grace exchange a troubled glance.

‘But what’s that got to do with us?’ said Alex.

Philip pulled a face. ‘Sasha was told the police got involved after finding a body dug up by the Fairmont Hotels site surveyors. Alex, I told you,
I know
.’

Grace’s cheeks flushed.‘We are going to speak to the police. We’re going to tell them everything we know. Two officers are coming here tomorrow.’

‘No, they’re not. The police don’t know about any body dug up on Angel Cay. I just spoke to them.’

Alex frowned. ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It wouldn’t surprise me if only one or two officers knew about this. Miles has his fixers on it, crisis-managing it. He wants to keep this as quiet as he can.’

‘Maybe, but there’s something else,’ said Phil. ‘Sasha said that Michael Marshall, the guy who brought you all here, is the boy you found on the beach.’

‘The
dead
boy?’ said Alex incredulously.

Phil nodded. ‘That night in 1990, Sasha had sex with him. Apparently this afternoon she found a photo of Marshall and she recognised him. Same face, same tattoo on his hip.’

‘A coincidence, surely?’ said Grace, looking from Philip to Alex. ‘I mean, it has to be, doesn’t it?’

It was clear from their faces that they all felt it wasn’t.

‘You know, I never actually saw that boy’s face,’ said Grace. ‘Just his head facing down into the sand when we found him. All those times I’ve thought of him, it’s just a projection, a guess what he might have looked like. And anyway, I’ve never even met this Michael Marshall.’

‘What about you?’ asked Phil, turning to Alex.

‘I met Michael a couple of times; he helped out when I was in the clinic that time, but he’s never looked familiar. That said, when I saw him in 1990, it was dark, I was drunk, high. It was a long time ago.’ He threw up his hands. ‘I guess it’s possible, but it’s so crazy, isn’t it?’