Ruthless (43 page)

‘Some people are hard to kill,’ said Redmond.

Hadn’t Max said something very like that? And maybe he’d been right. Perhaps Redmond was here, alive.

Or maybe not.

‘You died years ago,’ said Annie. She wanted to believe it. Wanted to know that this was just the drink, summoning up old demons.

‘Oh, the plane crash?’ Redmond’s eyes were mocking. ‘You think I’m that easy to rub out, Mrs Carter? I survived it.’

Just like Orla,
Annie thought. She didn’t say it aloud, didn’t dare: she didn’t want to fasten his attention on Orla, on what had happened to her, because then . . .

Then I’ll be finished.

But it was all right. Because he wasn’t real, she was imagining this, it was OK. Her brain told her it was real, that he looked like a living, breathing man, but her brain was awash with alcohol. The danger here was
Rufus,
not Redmond.

But he looked
so real
. . .

‘And you know what happened, after I survived that crash, Mrs Carter?’ he asked.

His voice was just the same, with that cool southern Irish lilt. Annie shook her head.

‘I decided that Orla and I . . . ah, it was a painful decision, you know, but I decided that I wasn’t going down the criminal path after that. I knew Orla would, but I didn’t want that. I felt – and this may sound strange to you Mrs Carter,’ he said with a wry half-smile, ‘but I felt I’d been spared for a reason. Orla would never understand that, so I had to keep apart from her. I didn’t want to go down evil ways any more. I wanted to make changes.’

It was a big bloody change all right. Annie looked at this apparition and now she
knew
it was all in her head. Redmond was evil to his bones; he didn’t have it in him to change.

She stared up at him, the dim light from the lamp hollowing out his cheeks and his eye sockets, giving his pale skin an eerie, skeletal patina. He looked like something otherworldly, something spectral and terrifying. She shivered hard.

Like someone walked over my grave
, she thought.

‘And that’s what I did,’ he went on, his eyes burning cold fire into hers. ‘I repented, Mrs Carter. Like you should repent.’

‘Me?’ Annie blurted out.

‘You have blood on your hands,’ he said.

Annie looked down at her hands, clasped there on the table. In the lamp’s glow, for a moment they were
red.
She drew in a gasp of horror, sickness rising into her throat – she could almost
smell
the blood.

She blinked.

And then they were just her hands again, no blood, nothing. She closed her eyes and groaned. When she opened them, he would be gone. She knew it.

Please God let him be gone.

Almost frightened to, she opened her eyes. And he was still there, watching her.

‘Confess,’ he said silkily, moving closer. ‘Confess your sins to me, Mrs Carter.’

‘I don’t have any,’ she gulped, her head spinning.
He isn’t real,
she told herself.
Like the blood wasn’t real.

‘We all have sins,’ said Redmond, and he reached across the table and laid a hand on her head.

Annie flinched. His hand was warm. It was . . .

Real.

No. Not real. Couldn’t be. False, like the blood.

He let his hand rest there. ‘I absolve you, Mrs Carter,’ he said softly, and his hand pressed down, harder. She felt as if she was being hammered down into the chair, such was the pressure of his hand lying there on her head. Annie screwed her eyes tight shut and prayed for this to be over.
Not real, he’s not real, he’s NOT REAL . . .

After what felt like an eternity, his hand lifted. Annie sat there, hunched, shuddering, clutching her arms around herself. Slowly, she dared to open her eyes.

There was no one there.

She let out a hard breath of relief and slumped forward on the table. She’d imagined it.

Then there was a noise at the door. She was so gripped with terror that she let out a whimper. He was coming back, Redmond was coming back to get her . . .

But it wasn’t Redmond. It was Rufus.

‘Come on, Mrs Carter,’ he said. ‘It’s time.’

104

They were close to the building now, its black outline stark against the night sky. The flickering light of a lantern showed shapes and shadows moving around inside. They could hear voices. Steve had one hand on Layla’s arm; while the rest of them could see perfectly in the dark with the army-issue night-sight goggles, she was stumbling on the uneven ground, and her guts were twisted with anxiety.

If Mum was really here, was she still alive?

‘Do you think Rufus has got her in there?’ she whispered to Max.

‘No talking,’ he said.

The voices in the shack were getting louder. A man’s voice – and a woman’s.

Rufus had yanked Annie from her chair and was holding her upright, but she could barely stand. Her head was spinning and she thought she would throw up any minute. The room was careering around her. Rufus gave her a violent shake, and her feet went from under her. She hit the hard flagstones, but felt no pain.

Anaesthetized
, she thought. She had a mad urge to laugh.

Grabbing her arm, he hauled her roughly to her feet.

‘Come on,’ he said.

And he snatched up his torch from the table and dragged her outside.

105

It was a cold night but Annie barely felt it. She stumbled along beside Rufus, him lighting their way with the torch. She was cocooned in a soft blanket of booze. Then he dragged her off of a rough driveway and the light of the torch showed a stretch of grass. There was a misty rain falling. The smell of the sea was stronger out here, and she could hear the faint offshore tolling of a buoy. It was all like a dream. At any moment she was going to wake up in her bed in Holland Park.

But she knew she wasn’t.

Rufus came to a halt. As Annie stared down at the cone of light thrown out by the torch, a chill of fear began to penetrate the alcoholic haze. There was a spade thrust upright into newly turned soil. There was a mound of freshly dug dark earth. And there was a hole. The torch swung further over. The hole was deep. Four, maybe five feet.

Her heart froze in her chest.

This
was what Rufus had been doing out here, when he’d come into the building with dirt on his hands and mud on his boots. He’d been digging.

Torchlight illuminated his face and she could see that he was grinning.

‘Yes, Mrs Carter. It’s a grave. Ah, let’s be more specific. It’s
your
grave.’

He shook her again. Annie gave a weak cry and fell to her knees in the dirt. The light was on her now, blinding her. She saw him move, fumble in his pocket. She saw the taser. She was right beside the grave he’d dug. She heard the horrible thing crackle and hum as he switched on the power.

He’s going to zap me and throw me into the grave,
she thought in horror.
Then he’ll fill it in.

Rufus was going to bury her alive.

106

‘Mum! That’s Mum, I heard her voice, he’s got her!’ cried Layla.

She broke free of Steve and stumbled forward in the dark, running towards where Annie and Rufus were, beside the grave.

With the benefit of the night-sight, Max saw Rufus stiffen. The beam of the torch swung their way. Annie was on her knees. Rufus was raising the device in his hand, pointing it down the torch’s white beam at Layla who was running straight at him, uncaring, thinking only of getting to her mother.

‘Mum!’ Layla ran to Annie.

‘Get back, get away from him,’ said Annie, her words slurring.

Shit,
thought Max, and raised the gun, taking aim. But he couldn’t get a clear line of sight. Layla was between him and Rufus. And Rufus was about to shoot her dead.

‘Hey!’ shouted Alberto, off to the left, trying to draw fire.

Rufus paused. The light from the torch swung out to the left, then back. It was the moment Max needed. He moved aside, took aim. Then he became aware that there was something digging hard into his ribs: it felt like a gun.

‘Let’s all just drop the weapons now, shall we?’ said a deep Northern Irish voice in his ear.

‘Who’s there?’ demanded Rufus, the torch’s beam flashing wildly about.

The shot was almost deafening in the deep country silence. Rufus reeled back, clutching at his shoulder, staggering, dropping the thing in his hand – not a gun, Max noted, what the hell was that? There were other men here now, four of them, big hooded bruisers, all armed. Rufus collapsed to the ground.

Slowly, Max dropped his gun, took off the goggles and let those fall too. Alberto, Steve and Sandor did the same. The four hooded men snatched up everything. The man who had jammed his pistol into Max’s side went over to where Rufus lay, gasping, on the ground. Max watched him in the faint light from Rufus’s fallen torch. He had a stick and leaned on it heavily as he walked. Max thought he looked very ill, like he had something going on inside, a cancer eating him. He’d been a big man, you could see that, but the flesh had dropped from his bones and he was thin across the shoulders now.

‘Rufus,’ said Big Don Callaghan, looking down at the man on the ground.

Max could see that Rufus’s eyes were open, staring up at the man who’d shot him.

‘Don,’ said Rufus, panting. He almost seemed to be grinning. Then he winced, stiffened. ‘Ah, you just couldn’t let it go, could you?’

‘And why would I? Little Peter lying in a cold grave, burned to a cinder.’

‘I did penance for Pikey, Don,’ said Rufus, fighting to get the words out.

‘Not penance enough,’ said Don, leaning heavily on his stick. ‘But now you have.’

And he raised the pistol in his hand and shot Rufus straight between the eyes, three times.

107

Now what? wondered Max. These Irish had the drop on them. They had the guns, the sights. He looked over at Layla hugging Annie to her. Fuck’s sake. There was nothing he could do. If the frail old geezer with the stick wanted no witnesses, they were all toast.

Max started walking towards Annie and Layla. To his surprise, the men with the guns let him.

‘She OK?’ he asked his daughter.

‘I’m absolutely
fine
,’ slurred Annie.

Max glanced at her curiously. She sounded drunk, but that couldn’t be. Then he stood over Rufus. He was dead, no doubt about it. He turned and looked at the man who’d shot him.

‘I’ve no quarrel with you,’ said Big Don Callaghan.

Close to, by the light from the torch, Max could see that he had the pallor and sunken cheeks of the terminally ill.

‘Nor me with you,’ said Max, moving in front of Layla and her mother.

Don looked down at Rufus. ‘It’s done now. Finished.’

With that, he walked away from the man he’d been chasing for fifteen years. Soon his hobbling form merged with the shadows of the night. His men followed. Then they were gone.

Annie was stumbling upright. She nearly fell again. Max grabbed her, stared at her face.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ he said. ‘Are you
drunk
?’

‘That does appear to be the case,’ she said, and started weaving her way unsteadily back towards the building.

‘Whoa!’ Max caught her arm as she tottered sideways and almost went down again.

‘Redmond’s in there,’ she said, pushing him away.

‘What?
’

‘Redmond.’ Annie stumbled to the door. ‘He’s a priest.’

‘
Redmond Delaney?
’ Max followed her. Drunk? She was pissed as a
rat.

‘He’s in here, he was talking to me . . .’ Annie all but fell through the door.

The lantern was still burning, its flame flickering, on the table. The whisky bottle, nearly empty, was there, and the two tin mugs.

‘He’s . . .’ she started, then she stopped dead.

Redmond wasn’t there.

He’d never been there at all.

She turned unsteadily. Grabbed the wall and held on.

‘Honey, you’re drunk. Come on,’ said Max, going back to the door.

Annie stood there, alone and swaying, staring around at the room where Redmond had talked to her, absolved her of her sins.

Max is right, it didn’t happen, it was just the drink . . .

And then her eyes fastened on something on the table just beside the lantern. There was a faint golden glint there. Annie lurched over and groped along the table, supporting herself. She reached out and picked the object up, held it in the palm of her hand and stared at the gold crucifix. It was Redmond’s pectoral cross. The mark of the priesthood. She felt gooseflesh break out on her arms. Felt the hairs on the nape of her neck stand up.

Oh my God. I didn’t dream it,
she thought.
He was here.

A faint breath of air wafted over her face, and she looked up.

The door at the back was hanging wide open, admitting the salty sea breeze.
Not a dream then. Not the drink.
Her hand folded over the cross, and she slipped it into her pocket.

‘Come on,’ said Max, reappearing in the front doorway. This time she went with no argument.

‘Where’s Alberto?’ Layla was outside, fretfully sweeping the torch around the area. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see
Sandor
either.

‘Dunno,’ said Max, none too bothered about it. He took a firmer hold on Annie, who was staggering about like someone caught out in a high wind.

‘But . . . we have to find them. We can’t leave without them.’

‘Yeah,’ said Max. ‘We can.’

And then Layla looked at her father’s face and she understood. Alberto had vanished into the night and he wasn’t coming back. He was
gone.

She swept the torch around again.

There was no one there.

Alberto was gone, with faithful Sandor at his side.

He’d evaded the Feds and now he would simply slip out of the country and disappear. Layla was overcome with anguish as the magnitude of it hit home. She was never going to see him again.
Never.