Authors: Jessie Keane
The Make (13 page)
Suze and Claude were in the lounge at the front of the house, watching
Dickinson’s Real Deal,
when they heard the noise begin. It was instant and shattering. It sounded like a high-powered motorbike had just revved up outside the front door.
But it wasn’t a motorbike that was revving . . . was it? They both shot up from their seats, alarmed, and were halfway out into the hall when whoever was out there started attacking the front door with a chainsaw. The noise picked up a gear, becoming deafening. Splinters of wood started coming off the inside of the solid wood door and dropping on to the welcome mat.
‘
Jesus!
’ screamed Suze.
‘
What the f . . .?
’
Within a couple of minutes they could see the damned thing, chopping the door into firewood. In not many
more
minutes, whoever was out there would be in here, with a working chainsaw in his hand.
Suze retreated halfway up the stairs, milk-white with terror. Claude struggled to get past her, out of the hall, knocking her flat in the process. They were both screaming incoherently, both stricken with fear.
Then . . . silence.
Silence broken by loud, vicious swearing from outside the door, which was still bolted, still shut fast. Splintered, yes; wrecked, oh yes, certainly. But still in one piece.
‘
Fucking cunting thing,
’ they heard loud and clear. ‘
Bastard fucking thing, what the . . .’
Suze sat quivering on the stairs. It was going to start up again. She knew it. And once whoever was out there was in
here
, they were going to be sliced salami.
‘Oh Jesus,’ sobbed Suze, noticing even through her fright and distress that Claude had already legged it upstairs.
Now she could hear other voices outside. Neighbours’ voices . . .?
‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ Frightened voices, but brave too; trying to help.
‘
Fuck off.
’
Silence.
‘
For fuck’s sake, out of
petrol?
You tosser!
’
Suze sat there and listened. Her door was a wreck. They’d break it down now, come and get her. For now, something had saved them. The chainsaw was out of petrol. Some guardian angel; some fluke stroke of luck. But that sort of luck couldn’t last.
She shivered and cried, huddled on the stairs, her hands clapped over her mouth because she was so afraid, so afraid that if she made a noise now, just the slightest squeak, they’d get that door down and, fuck the neighbours, they wouldn’t care, nobody really cared, and before she knew it she was going to be dead meat.
Now there was no sound from outside the door. None at all. She sat there for a full five minutes, too scared to move, while Claude cowered upstairs. When he ventured down at last and touched her shoulder, she was so jumpy that she shrieked.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. He was sheet-white and sweating, his glasses slipping down his nose, his usual aura of perky arrogance a thing of the past. ‘S’me, Suze. What the fuck?’
But she just shook her head and stared at her ruined front door. She knew with a sick certainty that he would have
stayed
upstairs, would not have defended her, if those bastards had got through the door with that thing.
23 December
With nothing else to occupy her time after Lorcan’s call, Gracie got on with tidying up the flat. For one moment there she’d almost thought Harry was okay and had just been off on a bender or something. She’d thought, for one blissful moment, that there was going to be some good news among all the bad.
But no.
Now it turned out that this ‘young slim blond boy’ must have been a friend of George’s, nothing more, who had realized the hospital wouldn’t give out details, or allow a visit from anyone except relatives, and had simply claimed to be his brother.
Bugger it.
Gracie worked all morning tidying, cleaning – and by lunchtime she was hot, dusty and tired. She stopped for a shower and a bite of lunch straight from freezer to microwave, then wondered what to do next. She turned on the radio in the lounge – she’d refolded the sofa bed; all was neatness and order.
Yeah, you’re anal, Gracie, and you know it
had been one of Lorcan’s angry jibes at her. And he was right. She was buttoned-up, neat, tidy, with a brain that whirred constantly, looking for solutions, answers – she couldn’t help that.
Christmas carols boomed out of the radio. She dis approvingly tweaked down the volume on ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’.
She wandered into Harry’s bedroom, stood in the doorway, angelic voices trailing her. It was all immaculate now; he wouldn’t even recognize the place – and would pretty quickly turn it back into a tip, given the chance. Right now, she would
welcome
Harry coming in here with his gentle grin and his charming good looks, and turning his room back into a pile of shit. He’d always been such a sweet boy . . . and she’d missed him. Now, she just longed for him to be safe and to come home.
She went on to George’s room.
George wasn’t sweet. The George she had grown up with was irritatingly overconfident and endearing in equal measures. She stood there and looked at the computer set up in the corner. She’d dusted around it this morning, carefully. She used computers a lot in the course of a day, and it would be something to pass the time, anyway, if she could get on line. She could email Brynn, catch up. And maybe there might even be some clues to Harry’s whereabouts on there?
She went over and sat down at the computer. Found the plug, switched on. She supposed that George might carry his password around in his brain, like she did, but George was scattier than her and he
might
have written it down somewhere. She started opening drawers. Lots of crap in there: rubber bands, staplers, old batteries, discarded pizza receipts. She opened the next, looking for a scrap of paper with the password on, a diary, something like that . . . and instead she found a drawer full of money.
At first she just stared, gobsmacked. The drawer was
stuffed
with money, overflowing with it. Fifties and tens and fivers, all bundled in there. There had to be thousands, just stuffed into a drawer. Why not in a bank?
Gracie sat back, frowning.
Well, why not? Why wouldn’t
she
put money in a bank?
She always did. But if she didn’t . . . then it would be because it was hooky money. Ill-gotten gains. Something she didn’t want the taxman to get wind of. But George worked for Lorcan, that all went through the books. Lorcan was straight-down-the-line legitimate in his business dealings, she knew that. He wouldn’t pay George cash in hand and, anyway, George’s earnings from Lorcan’s business wouldn’t amount to this in half a
year.
Keeping your cash in a drawer suggested eccentricity or simple guilt. Knowing George, Gracie was willing to bet on the latter.
She closed the drawer, leaned forward, focused again on the computer screen.
As she expected, the Omnipass box had come up, but she ignored it, closed the box down. A fighter plane logo flicked up, with
George
beside it. She clicked on
George
, expecting to get no further without the login password. But the system continued to open up. A full-page screensaver popped up next, a pic of George, Harry and a mate all gurning at the camera. Then she clicked on ‘Start’ and ‘Internet Explorer’, and within a minute she was on the World Wide Web.
He really ought to use a password
, she thought.
That’s careless.
But she was glad he hadn’t. A woman’s voice with a posh accent was saying ‘Welcome. You have email.’ Gracie clicked on ‘Read’. There were thirty-two emails waiting there. She sighed and went to the kitchen, made a cup of tea and came back with it. Then, methodically, feeling like a sneak thief, she started reading through her brother’s mail. It was a revelation.
There was junk among the mail, of course; there always was. Spam and offers to ‘expand your member’ – yeah, even
she
got those. But there were other things, lots of other things, all intriguing, all bewildering. She glanced over at the window. The light was starting to go. It was nearly three fifteen and already the winter’s night was closing in, and with it were coming great, yellow-grey clouds. There was a dusting of snow coming down out there again. She clicked on the Anglepoise lamp beside the computer, and read on.
What puzzled her most were the emails from all these women. Saying things like ‘fabulous service, can’t thank you enough’ and ‘will use you again, very pleased’.
Use him again for
what?
And Harry wasn’t exempt from this roll call either. The women mentioned both Harry and George by name. Fascinating. And these obviously weren’t girlfriends. These were people who had clearly paid for a service.
She drank her tea, sitting back, staring at the screen, her mind whirling. Then she got up, went to the window. The snow was coming down harder and it was starting to settle. She could see bigger flakes in the car headlights passing on the road, could see a pristine carpet of white on the feeble stretch of lawn at the front of the block. Shivering a little, although it was warm in here, she flicked the blinds down and went back to the computer. Stared at the screen.
They’d been providing a service.
To
women.
Gracie was drawing the only, the obvious, conclusion. On impulse she Googled
George Doyle.
Google came up with a maths professor; a chain of gents’ outfitters; an estate agency in Pembrokeshire . . . and George Doyle who ran the ‘hottest male escort agency in the whole of London’.
George
, she thought.
You little bastard. What you been up to this time?
She left George’s room and went through to Harry’s. Started throwing open cupboards, yanking out drawers. It didn’t take her long to find Harry’s stash, which looked to her highly trained, casino-boss’s eye to be at least equal in amount to George’s.
She went back into George’s room, looked at the screen-saver of her happy, healthy-looking brothers, mucking about with their little blond pal.
What’s been going on here?
she wondered. She clicked on and the screensaver vanished; there were the emails again. She selected the gushing-with-praise ones from the women. Then she looked in ‘Recently deleted emails’ and found a whole stack of them in there, too. There were so many. She picked a few at random. Jackie Sullivan. Laura Dixon. Jemma Houghton. Melissa Whitehead. Oh . . . and this was interesting. Sandy Cole was here. Gracie sat and thought about that. Sandy had been a client . . . and now she was engaged to George.
She printed them all, and turned off the computer. Her mobile started to ring. She picked up.
‘Hello?’
‘Gracie, can you come over?’ said her mother’s voice.
Gracie looked at the phone. Then she said: ‘What the hell for? So you can have another go about me coming on to your boyfriend? I don’t think so.’
‘Shut up, Gracie, this is serious. Get over here, will you?’ said Suze, sounding fraught.
Gracie heard the tension in Suze’s voice. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Just get over here, for the love of God. Just for once in your life, will you do what I ask you to?’
‘It’s snowing,’ said Gracie.
‘Please!’ howled Suze, and then she started to cry.
Despite herself, Gracie felt alarm shoot up her spine. She stood up. ‘What’s going on? Is Claude there with you? You’re not on your own, are you?’
‘Please just come over,’ sobbed Suze.
‘I’m coming, all right? I’m coming. Don’t worry. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
23 December
Gracie got a taxi over to her mum’s place. It was a long, hard journey and the driver moaned copiously throughout the trip. The traffic was a nightmare and the wheels spun and slipped on the blanket of snow.
‘This lot’s gonna freeze overnight,’ he told her. ‘You seen a gritter out here? I ain’t. It’ll be a bastard tomorrow.’
Inching through the traffic, he told her all about how mass immigration was ruining the country, how the Labour Party hadn’t turned out to be New Labour at all, just old Labour repackaged. And look at the fucking mess they were in now.
Gracie kept her opinions to herself. She was worried about Suze. She phoned Suze’s number on the way over there, but now Suze wasn’t picking up. Anxiety ate at her. All right, she and her mother had never been the best of pals, but she hadn’t liked the frantic edge to Suze’s voice. Something bad had happened. Suze was scared. And, much to her surprise, Gracie found that she wanted to be there, quickly, if only to reassure.
She thought of seeing Claude again. Well, fuck him. He gave her the dry heaves, but she had met a great many creeps in her life and she hadn’t backed away from any of them, not yet. Let
them
back away. She was fucking-well coming through.
At last she was there. She paid off the driver and crunched through the snow along the pavement and up the little front path leading to Suze’s door. Once there she stopped and stared at it in disbelief.
Suze’s front door looked like some gigantic cat had attacked it. Huge gullies had been cut into the wood, as if a tiger had scraped its massive claws down it. The wood was scored so deeply that in places she could see right through to the hall. Suze’s pathetically cheerful little red-berried Christmas wreath was on the ground, and looked like it had been trampled underfoot by an invading army.
Gracie drew a startled breath, lunged forward and hammered at the door.
‘
Mum!
’ she yelled. ‘
Mum, it’s me. Open up.
’
She heard movement from the other side of the door, saw shapes shifting through the vicious score-marks.
‘Who is it?’ came Suze’s tremulous voice.
‘It’s me, it’s Gracie. Come on. Let me in.’
She heard the chain come off, the bolts go back. The door swung open. Suze was standing there, her mascara streaked all to hell, her face sheet-white, her mouth trembling.
‘Oh my God, what’s happened?’ asked Gracie, hurrying forward, taking Suze in her arms.
She hadn’t intended to, but if someone looked this shot away, what else could a person do?
She pushed in, hugging her mother, looking back at the door.
‘What happened to the damned door?’ she asked.
‘Ch-ch-chainsaw,’ said Suze, shuddering.
Gracie’s jaw dropped.
Chainsaw?
A hideous chill stole over her. Someone wanted the whole Doyle family to suffer, it was clear. But for what? That was what she couldn’t figure out. All she could think of was George in intensive care, and Harry fuck-knew-where.
‘The damned thing ran out of petrol,’ said Suze, and she gave a semi-hysterical laugh against Gracie’s shoulder. ‘I heard them talking. I was sitting on the stairs. It ran out of petrol, and if it hadn’t . . . if it hadn’t . . .’
Suze was crying again.
Jesus
, thought Gracie, horrified.
‘Where’s Claude?’ she asked, thinking that Suze needed him now, creep or not.
Suze pulled back a bit as Gracie closed the door. ‘Oh,’ she sniffed, ‘he’s gone.’
‘Gone where?’ asked Gracie. She hurriedly turned and put the chain and the bolts on.
Fuck me, and what good’s that gonna do against a chainsaw if they go for petrol and come back again?
‘Gone as in fucked off,’ said Suze, and now she looked angry as well as scared. ‘Half an hour after this happened, he just packed his bags and went. Didn’t even say goodbye.’ Suze’s eyes filled with fresh tears and she flopped down on the bottom stair. ‘I was going to
marry
that gutless wonder, can you believe that? When
this
happened, he pissed off upstairs. Left me to it.’
Tosser
, thought Gracie. But maybe with a chainsaw about to burst through the door, any one of them would lose their nerve. And she didn’t think Claude, for all his smiles and posturing, had that much nerve to start with.
‘I’m supposed to be going in to see George tonight,’ sobbed Suze. ‘And now this . . . oh God, Gracie, what’s happening to our lives? Why are these people doing all this to us? I’ve never hurt anyone. Neither’s George, I’d bet my life on that. And Harry!’ Suze was sobbing even harder now. ‘My poor Harry. They’ve cut off his beautiful
hair.
What else might they be doing to him, Gracie?
What else?
’
Gracie pulled her mother into her arms and patted her back as she would pat a child’s. Suze cried hard for a minute or two, and Gracie felt like joining in. But there were things to do. They didn’t have the luxury of time right now.
‘Come on through to the kitchen,’ said Gracie as Suze’s tears subsided a little. ‘I’m going to pour us out a drink and you . . . just get some stuff together, Mum.’
Suze looked at her with reddened eyes. ‘Stuff? What . . .?’
‘Do it, Mum. Chuck a few things into an overnight bag, and hurry up.’ Gracie looked back at the ravaged front door. ‘We’re going to get you the fuck out of here.’