Last Rites (32 page)

Preston had already arrived.

The owner of a Ford Mondeo, heading back late after the annual pharmacists’ dinner-dance, had been left at the roadside in evening dress, lucky to be unharmed. Preston’s neck hurt him as he drove, and as he crested the hill that would take him down to Lorraine’s house he ground his teeth, sensing the relief. Since being back in the city, the only sounds of police activity he’d heard had been distant and sporadic, moving away.

He hurried, still limping slightly, across the front lawn and pressed his finger hard against the bell, hammered with the stock of the shotgun against the door. Come on, come on, come fucking on! Then it was Derek, calling from inside, wanting to know what was wrong. The kitchen blinds moving, Lorraine’s face. Her voice raised in fear, anger. Both voices, arguing. Preston yelling, striking the door again. Harder. Back across the street, one bedroom light went on and then another. Someone, inside, unbolting the door, freeing the chain.

As soon as the door began to open, Preston pushed it wide.

Lorraine had pulled a cardigan over the shoulders of her nightdress; her face was ashen as she moved back against the wall. Farther along the hall, Derek, wearing pajamas, was standing by the telephone, receiver in his hand.

Preston slammed the front door shut behind him; three strides and he’d wrenched the phone from Derek’s fingers, smashed the set from the wall with the gun, torn the wires free with his hand.

The children, Sandra and Sean, were clinging to one another on the stairs.

“Lock it,” Preston said to Lorraine, pointing toward the front door. “And then get them back upstairs. And you …” He rounded on Derek, the end of the shotgun barrels hard against his neck, under his chin, forcing back his head. “Get in my way, anything, you’re dead. Understand?”

Eyes wide, Derek nodded.

“Don’t hurt him,” Lorraine said. “There’s no need to hurt him.”

“I thought,” Preston said, “I told you to get those kids out of the way.” Sean was crying, Sandra trying to comfort him. “While you’re there, get some clothes on, chuck a few things in a bag. Passport. We’re leaving.”

Lorraine’s eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, Michael. Michael, Michael.” She sighed and slowly shook her head, eyes closed.

“Do it,” he said. “There isn’t the time.”

She looked at him, looked at her children. “The gun,” she said. “You won’t need it.”

Preston nodded. “We’ll see.”

Sitting alongside Resnick in the back of the car, Helen Siddons was busily punching numbers into her mobile phone. “If you’re wrong about this,” she said.

Resnick shook his head. “I’m not wrong.” The pieces were in place now: he knew. “Maybe I wish I was.”

“What happened to your head,” Lorraine asked. They were in the middle room, the dining room, partition doors closed across. She had sent Derek upstairs to be with the children. “It’s swollen, there above the eyebrow. There’s blood. A cut.”

Preston touched it absentmindedly. “I don’t know.”

“What happened?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Lorraine had pulled on a T-shirt and cotton sweater, sneakers, jeans. There was a black travel bag near her feet. “Michael,” she said, “you know this is stupid. Crazy.”

“Get me an aspirin,” he said. “Something. Then we’re going.”

Hearing her in the hallway, Derek called down in a loud whisper, asking if she were all right. She didn’t answer. Back in the dining room she gave her brother two Neurofen and a glass of water.

“Michael, please …” She touched the back of his hand, sliding her fingers between his. “Listen to me.”

“Come on,” he said, pulling away. “We’re leaving.”

They were almost at the front door when an amplified voice broke through from outside: “This is the police. We have the house surrounded. I repeat, this is the police …”

There were four of them inside the command van: Siddons and Resnick, Bill Claydon, in charge of the Tactical Response Unit, and Myra James, a sergeant with special training in hostage negotiation. With the telephone in the house out of commission and Preston showing no disposition to engage in dialogue, negotiation was difficult.

Three monitors gave them grainy black and white pictures of the house; one camera by the fence at the far end of the garden, covering the rear; another, using a zoom lens, was focused on the front; the third was in the helicopter, turning noisily overhead.

Thirty officers from the Serious Crimes Squad and the Special Support Group were surrounding the house; of these, all were wearing body armor and half were armed. Six marksmen from the Tactical Response team were positioned at intervals around the building, each in continuous contact with Claydon through their headsets.

There were two ambulances waiting on standby, uniformed police holding back the television crews and cameramen. The houses close by had been evacuated.

It was now almost fully light.

Claydon pointed toward one of the screens. “We could be through those French windows in what? Five seconds, six. Set up a diversion at the front.”

“He’s got kids in there,” Resnick said. “Two of them.”

“We don’t know if they’re with him, if he could harm them. If he would.”

“We don’t know enough.”

“We don’t even know,” Siddons said, “what he wants.”

Claydon laughed. “What he wants, get out of there in one fucking piece, a plane to the other side of the earth, untold riches, happiness ever after, that’s what he wants, poor sod.”

They sat in virtual silence, save for the helicopter chattering overhead.

“Seven,” Claydon said, suddenly clapping his hands. “Seven on the dot. If he’s not given us something by then, I say we go in hard. What d’you say?”

“He’s already killed twice,” Resnick said.

“Three times,” Siddons corrected him.

“Three times,” Resnick said to Claydon. “Why are you in such a hurry to have him do it again?”

Inside the house, Preston had watched Derek and Lorraine, as under his instructions they moved furniture to barricade the front and rear doors. When the police made their move, and he was certain they would, he wanted what little time these precautions would earn him. One minute. Two. What he didn’t yet know was how he would use it.

“Talk to them,” Lorraine kept saying. “You have to talk to them.”

Myra James knew the bulletproof vest she was wearing under her blue sweatshirt would protect her from anything but the highest velocity bullet fired at close range. Maybe. But the helmet? Ruefully, she smiled. So much of her unprotected. Her Gap jeans already had a small tear below the knee.

Using the megaphone, she announced her intention: to walk toward the front door and place the mobile phone she was carrying down on the step. All someone had to do was open the door a few inches and take the phone inside. Then they could talk, find a way out of this situation before anyone was hurt.

After setting down the phone, Myra forced herself to stand there for several moments, staring at the door and waiting. But nothing happened, there was no immediate response. Slowly, she turned and walked away, willing herself not to lengthen her stride the closer she came to safety, not to run. The sweat was running freely down her back and legs and soon, she knew, unless she could change, it would be chafing her thighs.

Sandra came and stood just inside the dining-room door, working her lower lip between her teeth. She looked at the shotgun, which now lay diagonally across one end of the dining-room table. She felt Preston staring at her and, though she didn’t want to, made herself look back at him. He seemed old, older than her mum and dad. Tired. She wondered what it was he’d done. There was a lump, a bruise, right over his eye. She tried to remember him, there at their house, in that room after the funeral; the way he’d looked at her when she’d handed him something to eat, smiling, but still sort of funny, and his voice, nice and soft, not like now.

“What is it, sweetheart?” Lorraine asked.

“It’s Sean. He’s in the toilet. I think he’s being sick.”

Lorraine started to move toward the door and Derek stopped her, a hand on her arm, a shake of the head. “Run back up,” he said over his shoulder to Sandra. “Sit with him. Hold his hand. He’ll be okay.”

Sandra hesitated, looking past Derek at her mother, wanting to do the right thing.

“Go on,” Derek said. “Do like I say.”

When she’d left the room, Derek said to Preston. “Let them go. Let the kids go, why don’t you? What harm have they ever done to you?”

“Derek …” Lorraine began.

“What? You going to take his side about that as well?”

“Don’t be so ridiculous, I’m not taking his side.”

“Like hell you’re not.”

“You’ve not got the first idea what you’re talking about,” Lorraine said.

“No?” Derek looked at them, one to the other. “Don’t I?”

Preston got to his feet. “Bring them down.” He told Lorraine to fetch the mobile phone from the front door, waiting fast by her as she eased it open, ready if the police should try anything. But all that happened, as soon as they had it inside, the phone rang.

“Talk to them,” Preston said. “Whoever it is. Tell them the kids are coming out. Tell them if they try anything, someone will get shot.”

The children were at the foot of the stairs, on either side of Derek, listening.

“Come here,” Preston said.

Hesitantly, Derek walking close behind them, they did as they were told. They had coats on, Sandra had her school bag on her shoulder.

“Come here,” Preston said again and Sandra knew he was talking to her.

She went forward half a dozen paces, then stopped. He could reach out to touch her and he did. Touched his fingers to the side of her face, her cheek, and she flinched.

“You know who I am?” he said.

Sandra nodded, eyes downcast. “Yes.”

For a moment, his hand rested on her shoulder. “Tell them,” he said to Lorraine, “they’re coming out now.”

“Go with them,” he said to Derek, who was bending down, adjusting Sean’s laces.

“I can’t.” He was trying to see Lorraine’s face, read her expression.

“Go,” Preston said.

“I’ll be all right, Derek,” Lorraine said. “Go on.”

Siddons leaned forward and jabbed a finger at the screen. “It’s Preston, he’s coming out.”

Resnick shook his head. “It’s the husband.”

Siddons was already on her feet. “Myra, come with me. Let’s talk to him, find out what’s going on.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” said Claydon ponderously. “And then there were two.”

But Resnick was still staring at the front door, wondering what was going on in Michael Preston’s mind, what was going on inside.

“Are you sure you don’t want any?” Lorraine said, and when Preston shook his head, she poured gin into a tumbler, sipped at it, poured in a little more. Ten minutes since he’d spoken anything more than the occasional word. She carried her drink around the table to where he was sitting and stood close behind him, one hand resting high on his shoulder, fingers splayed. He leaned his head sideways against her arm. His breathing was ragged as cloth caught in the wind.

“It would never have worked, Michael. You know that, don’t you?”

It was a while before she realized he was crying.

“You remember that time,” Lorraine said, “we were on holiday with Mum, a caravan. Filey, I think it was. You were just sixteen.”

“Bridlington. It was Bridlington.”

“We made that kite, well, you did. Flew it along the beach, from the dunes.” She paused. “That was the first time.”

“Don’t.” He half turned, red-eyed.

“Why not? Isn’t it what this is all about?”

“No.”

“Isn’t it?”

He turned away, reached up for her hand. “You said you loved me, Lo.”

“I did.”

“We’ll always be together, that’s what you said.”

“We were kids.”

“No. Your two, they’re kids. We were older, knew what we were doing.”

“Did we?”

Standing, he touched her arms, the nape of her neck, kissed her hair.

“Don’t.” She pushed away but he caught hold of her wrist and pulled her back; held her tight, tighter.

“You know I want you.”

“No.”

“All I’ve thought about …”

“Michael, no.” She wrenched herself away and moved again till the corner of the table was between them, the shotgun still lying there, blunt and inviting. “It’s not the same; I’m not the same. I know it’s been different for you and I’m sorry, but you’ve got to see …”

“See what?”

“This … this person you’ve been, you’ve been dreaming about, fantasizing about, whatever—it isn’t me. I’ve got all this, a home. Kids. Michael, I’m married now, don’t you understand?”

He laughed, harsh and ugly. “That’s not a fucking marriage, it’s a sham.”

Lorraine pushed a hand up through her hair, swallowed down some gin. “It’s not a sham, Michael. It’s what marriages are.”

His fingers brushed the shiny stock of the gun. She was beautiful, beautiful to his eyes. “That night …”

“No.”

“That night it happened …”

“Michael, please …”

“Listen, you got to listen.”

“Michael …”

He lifted the shotgun and slammed it down, gouging the table. “Listen to me.”

“All right,” she breathed, “all right.” So many years she had gone without exactly knowing; anxious to keep it that way. The evidence Michael had refused to give in the dock, the plea in mitigation; the expression in his eyes when they took him down, the last thing she saw.

“He caught me,” Preston said. “Sneaking out of your room. Laughed. Slapped my face. Snatched hold of my hand. Pressed my fingers up against his nose, sniffing. “Lovely, isn’t she? Choice. Ripe. I was wonderin’ when you’d start getting yours.” And he laughed again and winked. “Keeping it in the family.”

Tears were running down Lorraine’s face, unstopped.

“I hit him,” Preston said. “Kept hitting him. Dragged him downstairs and into the shop. Kept hitting him till he was dead. Our fucking father!”

She held him then and kissed him and, not looking him in the eye, she said: “He’d come into my room, after I’d gone to bed; the way most dads, I suppose, do. Tuck me in, tell me a story. This little piggy went to market, this little piggy … It was just tickling at first and then he started, you know, down there, his fingers, down between my legs. Still tickling. Later on, when I was older, it would be when he came back from the pub, then it was more, he … When I got my first period, he stopped. Never came near me, not again. Not after that.”