Never Tell (20 page)

‘I didn’t think you were in.’

‘No, well, I wasn’t. God, I’ve had enough shocks to last me a lifetime this weekend.’

‘What do you mean, shocks?’ Liam put the file down and shut it. He was sweating, but it was cold in here, the radiators turned off whilst James was away.

‘Nothing. Forget it.’ I shook my head. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘James called me,’ he muttered. ‘He needs the details of the Barclays account.’

‘Why didn’t you just ring me?’ I looked at him, puzzled. ‘I could have found them for you.’

‘I didn’t want to bother you.’ His big ruddy face was a picture of sweaty confusion. ‘I, er, I thought you were away. I still had the spare key from Christmas. And we were passing.’

‘Passing?’

Liam lived in East London.

‘I’m taking Star away for the night. Swanky hotel with a spa up near Cheltenham. James recomm—’ He stopped mid-sentence. ‘Well, apparently it’s meant to be very nice.’

‘Did you get my message?’ I asked. Outside I could hear a car pulling up in the drive and I felt a sudden leap inside, like a slippery fish in my chest. It was hope, I realised later.

‘No,’ Liam said, but I knew he was lying. ‘What message?’

‘I haven’t heard from James since I dropped him at Heathrow. But
you
obviously have.’

‘Yes,’ he admitted carefully, ‘yes, I have. He’s fine.’

‘But he’s not at the Rex,’ I said. ‘You always stay there, don’t you?’

The doorbell rang.

‘That’ll be Star.’ Visible relief crossed Liam’s freckled face. ‘She went to get some fags from the shop.’

‘So where is James?’ I said, pressing him.

‘He’s going down to Vang Tau to meet the investors, I think. Seaside resort,’ Liam muttered. ‘Decided not to stay in Saigon. Too hot at this time of year.’

The doorbell rang again. ‘Shall we?’ he said with something like desperation, and we made our way down the hall, my brain whirring.

‘You’re not rushing straight off, are you?’ I asked, opening the front door. ‘Have a cup of coffee before you go?’

‘I’d love to, but we’re in a rush, actually.’ Liam’s discomfort was almost palpable. ‘We’ve only got the room for one night. Sorry.’

‘Oh,’ I said, nonplussed. Star peered at me myopically from the doorstep, her fur collar framing her pointy little face, black leather boots up to her thighs, tiny frayed denim skirt.

‘How do, Rose?’ Her flat Northern tone was friendly. ‘Nice to see you. I like your hair.’

I hadn’t brushed it all day, but she was in earnest.

‘Thanks,’ I mumbled.

‘Did you get it, Liam? Can we get gone now?’

‘Yep.’ He gave me a bear-hug. ‘Got it. Thanks, Rosie. Sorry I scared you.’

‘I’ve got a manicure booked at three,’ Star said, turning back to the car. ‘Wax hands and all.’

‘Right.’ I had no idea what she meant. ‘Well, enjoy.’

‘We will.’ Liam beamed at me – a small boy off the hook. I grabbed his hand as he turned away.

‘Liam.’ I was starting to feel hurt. ‘Why didn’t James tell me where he’d be?’

‘Dunno, Rosie.’ He shrugged. ‘Do you tell each other much these days?’

‘Is that an accusation?’ I felt a cold stone in the pit of my stomach, but his tone had been guileless.

‘No. Just an observation.’

‘Are you really sure you won’t stay for a cuppa?’ I said, suddenly loath to be alone.

‘Another time, Rosie.’ He glanced at the car. ‘It’s just – I don’t want to blow this. I really like her. And you know me and women.’

‘Er, yeah.’ Liam was the archetypal Jack-the-lad. ‘I do know you and women.’

We both looked at Star, busy redoing her dark lipstick in the car mirror, contorting her neat little face for the perfect pout.

‘I’ll try and stop by tomorrow on our way back, OK?’

‘Not sure I’ll be here,’ I said, attempting a smile. ‘Got to collect the three musketeers from my mum’s. You go and have fun.’

‘Well, I’ll call,’ he said. Star beeped the horn and then turned the stereo up. Dance music thumped through the chilly morning air.

‘Time waits for no man, eh?’ I said.

‘Maybe, but with tits like that, I’d wait for her any time.’ Liam’s face split into a broad grin. ‘By God, she’s good in bed. Legs like a rubber—’

‘Liam!’
I pushed him in the direction of the car. ‘Too much information, thanks very much.’

After they’d gone I felt desolate. I stared at my mobile, willing it to ring, but it didn’t. I turned on the radio whilst I began to pack.

‘Lord Higham arrived at the Tory Conference in Blackpool today,’ Martha Kearney announced.

‘Brilliant,’ I muttered. I couldn’t find my usual overnight bag. Perhaps James had moved it. I opened the cupboard and poked around.

‘He is Cameron’s guest speaker,’ she was saying. ‘And whilst Higham’s aides are denying any rumours that he will try to make a leadership bid, some believe Cameron is keeping him firmly where he can see him.’

‘Huh,’ I muttered. ‘Blackpool. Slumming it, poor thing.’

I spotted the black leather corner of my bag on the shelf above my winter coat; I tugged hard to free it. A big brown envelope of photos fell to the floor, the images scattering at my feet. I bent to pick them up. A town-house at night, a smart town-house, Georgian probably, with shiny white pillars and clipped topiary. People coming and going out of the front door; no one I recognised. I realised they were all men. Then an earlier photograph, dated the same November night last year as the others, but this one taken before midnight; a group of young women, high-heeled, long-haired, trench-coats belted tightly, a couple in fur coats, probably fake, pulled up around hard little faces, the lights from the streetlamps bleeding into the night.

And then finally, someone I did know. Lord Higham, walking down the front stairs of the house, talking on a mobile phone, shirt unbuttoned, his jacket slung over one shoulder. Three o’clock in the morning.

UNVERSITY, FRIDAY
13 MARCH 1992

O, thou bewitching fiend, ‘twas thy temptation,
Hath robbed me of eternal happiness …
What, weep’st thou? ‘Tis too late; despair. Farewell.
Fools that will laugh on earth, must weep in hell
.

Doctor Faustus
, Marlowe

James was still close behind me as we stepped from the Randolph’s lift, my nose running from the cocaine. When Dalziel opened the penthouse door and took my hand to pull me inside, I could feel him trembling, his skin glossy with sweat, his hands clammy. Paler than I’d ever seen him, he was obviously wired, his teeth grinding, so high that he was almost rigid, though it was unclear exactly on what.

‘Nice pad,’ James said, peering into the suite. ‘What’ve you been up to then? Your dad’s downstairs, isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ Dalziel snapped. ‘Celebrating his poxy wedding anniversary. A treat for all the family, I don’t think. For Christ’s sake,’ he’d spotted Lena now, who could barely stand, ‘I told her not to get too fucked, stupid tart.’

‘Yeah, well,’ James stared at Dalziel, ‘maybe you should have told her that six months ago.’

Dalziel turned his back on us and stalked into the suite. ‘Wait there,’ he muttered over his shoulder.

I’d never seen Dalziel lose his cool properly before; the nearest he’d ever come was at the pub that night when Yasmin had railed at me. His sister Yasmin. I glanced down at my hand where he’d been grasping it. Something dark and sticky had marked my palm.

The boy with the bullet head was waiting at the foot of the stairs. He looked petrified. ‘You heard him,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Wait there.’

‘Keep your hair on,’ James retorted. ‘What’s all the bloody secrecy about? Satanic rites?’

‘I thought this was meant to be fun,’ I agreed. The coke was such a brief buzz, and I was freezing and doubtful. I yearned for the numbing bliss of my opium.

‘Fun?’ Bullet-boy stared at me. ‘Did you? Did you really? It is not fun, it is our mission.’

A handbell rang somewhere. I realised then, following James and a still-swaying Lena up the stairs of the penthouse, that I hadn’t thought much about it at all; I’d just thought about Dalziel and where my next hit was coming from. Only now I felt an increasing sense of dread.

Music was playing – Handel’s
Messiah
, which I recognised from the cathedral: that Dalziel often played at home, a soprano singing ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’. The entire room was candlelit and the thick carpet had been slashed and pulled up. Strange chalk marks and circles were drawn on the floorboards below.

‘Christ,’ James laughed nervously, ‘this is going to cost someone a fucking fortune.’

A huge ornate four-poster bed squatted at the back of the room, entirely curtained in thick red brocade. In front of it, someone had constructed a makeshift altar on which sat a bottle of golden liquid and a cup.

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ James said, moving towards the bed, and poured himself a drink – but Lena was too fast for him. The bottle went flying and smashed on the floor. She had possession of the cup; she drank it down in one.

‘Greedy bitch,’ James muttered. For a moment, Brian looked furious. Then he shrugged. ‘She’ll be sorry,’ he murmured.

The room was stifling and I recognised the smell of incense from the Latin Masses my grandmother had taken me to in France, and something else, something sweet – which I later realised was chloroform.

And then a door opened behind us and we turned our heads to see Dalziel saunter into the room, chest bare and a pentangle painted on it, his hair greased back, his eyes painted black again. He smiled at us and it was a truly frightening smile, his teeth bared – and I saw it was because his soul was not present any more. He was empty and fearless with hatred and amphetamine.

‘Welcome to Pandemonium.’ He stalked to the bed and pulled the front curtain back. ‘Welcome to Hell.’

There lay a sleeping child, hair dark as night on the snowy pillow, face pallid as marble.

And in Dalziel’s shadow Bullet-boy walked, and he held before him a coiled rope.

My stomach plunged.

‘What the fuck’s going on here?’ James demanded.

Lena staggered where she stood. ‘Christ’s sake,’ she moaned. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘Christ won’t help you now, my dear,’ Dalziel deadpanned, and he turned to face us. ‘It’s all Christ’s fault in the first place, you could say.’

‘He’s unconscious, isn’t he, that kid?’ James accused, staring at the motionless form. ‘What the fuck are you doing, Dalziel?’

‘What do you think?’ he sniggered and his eyes were wild and dark in the candlelight, two spots of colour high on his chiselled face. ‘Merely honouring my father and my mother.’

I looked at him and for the first time I was utterly repulsed. ‘What do you mean?’ My voice was high-pitched with stress.

‘The final commandments, of course: Five and Six. “Honour your father and mother,” and of course, the key. The one you must have all been wondering about.
You shall not murder.’

‘Murder?’ James and I said in unison.

Lena bent over and threw up.

‘This is my half-brother, Charlie.’ Dalziel gazed down at the child and then pushed the dark hair back from the little boy’s face almost tenderly. ‘I don’t like him very much; I don’t think the world would be a worse place without him. My father probably won’t even notice, he’s got so many kids, and his mother – well, his mother is a whore.’ He looked up at us and I saw that he was mad now, that he obviously had lost all sense of reality, his eyes flicking round the room nervously, starting at shadows and daemons. ‘Just like his big sister Yasmin. My stepsister.’

Or not mad, perhaps. Maddened. I thought of the failed attempt with the horse. I stared at my friend.

‘He’s my twenty-first birthday present to myself. But,’ he looked round at us again, his smile stretched taut, ‘as usual, I’m happy to share.’

‘Dalziel.’ I reached my hand out to him. ‘You’re joking, right? He’s only a little boy.’

‘And if he was a grown-up, that’d make it all right, would it?’ Dalziel giggled and my skin felt icy.

‘No, of course not.’ I was confused, the brandy and the sleepless nights and the stress snarling up my weary brain. ‘But you don’t want to hurt anyone, do you? Not really.’

‘How the fuck do you know that?’ he hissed. ‘How the fuck do you know anything about me, any of you? You’re all fucking stupid, the lot of you. God, you make me sick, you stupid, stupid fucking idiots.’

And with a plunging feeling, a feeling of despair, I remembered what Yasmin had said in the pub that night. I realised that if you feel you have nothing to lose, you are genuinely lethal.

‘Well, I care.’ James was speaking very fast. ‘You’re not going to hurt anyone, not when I’m around.’

‘Oh, good, James,’ Dalziel smiled at him. ‘I thought you were too weak to act – but perhaps you’re not, after all. I thought I had chosen you for nothing, but perhaps I was wrong. I do hope so.’

‘What is this – some kind of warped challenge?’ James asked. ‘You’re fucking insane.’ Sweat was running down his face and he stepped nearer Dalziel until he was standing almost beside the bed. Lena was groaning on the floor and I looked at Brian and started to move forwards and then he threw Dalziel the rope and grabbed me, restrained me. I could feel Brian’s hands were shaking, really shaking, and I thought I could probably overcome him. And all the time I kept thinking how could I have been so stupid, how stupid, how stupid …

‘Perhaps I am.’ Dalziel stood now so he was face to face with James, and in his hand he held a knife. ‘You’ll have to decide now, won’t you, James? You’ll have to make your own decision for once in your life, without me leading you.’

James put his hand inside his jacket and brought out the brown paper parcel that Dalziel had given him earlier, and in one fluid move unwrapped it. A stiletto knife in an ivory sheath. He stared down at it as if it were alive, as if it might rear up and stab him in the face. It was identical to the one Dalziel held.