Light Errant (36 page)

Armani, Jasper Conran, Nicole Farhi in both sharp and casual moods: how could we choose? Everything we laid hands on seemed to fit, we must have matched Diarmuid's ideal as closely as we matched each other; everything felt wonderful as we paraded the narrow aisles, twirling and posing like idiots.

Me, I'd have chickened at the last, I'd have settled for jeans—designer jeans,
natürlich
—if Jamie had allowed me.

He wouldn't, though. “If I'm going down there grand, then so are you,” he said, “and I am. Laura'd never forgive me, else. She's going to want to see this...”

See it and keep it, I reckoned; Cousin Diarmuid would have a job reclaiming this gear, if he ever tried.

Jamie fixed on Ralph Lauren, in the end. I found a two-piece in charcoal grey that must have been made to measure some unknown but lusty lad; it was too smart even to be labelled. It wasn't that which grabbed me, though it might have been measured exactly for me. It was the red silk lining, flaring unexpectedly when I swung the jacket open. I loved it, and Jamie wouldn't let me take it off.

Sober dark socks of heavy silk, that felt amazing on my feet; and then we raided the shoe-cupboard and rebelled just a little against the implicit formality of our suits, each of us picking a serious pair of boots, Docs for him and Cats for me.

Half an hour at least we'd taken in there, likely more, and still Uncle James hadn't despatched anyone to fetch us down. That was strange, it was unnerving, it made me wonder again why the hell he'd had us brought here. Jamie was getting fidgety also, once we'd stamped around a bit to check the boots out. Fun-time was over, we both knew that, though we did drag it out a little longer, to raid a drawerful of watches and a few other essentials from the jewellery-box. Jamie took a couple of matching gold rings, I noticed, one too small for his wedding-finger. He didn't wear the other, though it was a perfect fit. He just slipped them both into a pocket and turned away, conspicuously avoiding my eye. I found a pair of earrings, tiny jade buddhas that went into my own breast pocket as I struggled to remember whether Janice had pierced ears. If not I could always buy her the holes as an extra present, if she'd only sit still for it...

o0o

That was that, though. One last survey of our finely clad and discreetly-glittering selves in the full-length mirror that made the door so heavy; one last grin at each other that mutually faded; and we pulled that heavy door open, his fingers above mine on the handle so that neither one of us was doing this to the other, and we walked out and down and in.

Into a room of murmuring man-talk, smells of whisky and good cigars, an air of quiet triumph and patient waiting. That last the most unexpected, though I hadn't counted on any of this: my family was hardly famous for its patience, and I couldn't think what they were all so visibly waiting for.

Uncle James was in positively expansive mood, for him. He acknowledged our arrival with a nod that held no disapproval for the time we'd taken, a twitch of the eyebrow to register our sartorial eloquence, and a generous wave of the hand towards Cousin Diarmuid's sideboard, where spirits were.

I thought probably I ought to eat, we both ought, it had been a long time since the burgers; but there were nuts and olives to chew on, and I had no appetite for anything more.

Macallan for me, Laphroaig for him, the cool bugger, and a bottle of Bud each—the Czech stuff, the proper stuff, no American derivatives for Diarmuid—as a chaser; we retired into a corner, with no more information to mull over than a murmured, “Just wait, you'll see,” from Conor when we tried to interrogate him.

o0o

We waited, we speculated in shrugs and whispers, we checked the time constantly on our brand-new watches; good practice, that, for shooting our brand-new cuffs. And we picked specks of lint off each other's sleeves and wondered where on God's good earth lint came from, because no one ever actually used it for anything except bandages, you never saw it around and yet it was always there in specks, waiting to cling to any particularly smart suiting that happened to wander past...

We were bored as hell, in other words. And bone-weary, spoiling the cut of our clothes by sagging at every joint; and we'd run totally out of things to say to each other and wouldn't talk to anyone else, because no one would tell us the one thing, the only thing we really, really wanted to know.

We did think briefly about a getaway, slipping out and calling a taxi, going after the girls without an exeat from Uncle James. But something big was happening or due to happen, there was unfinished business still; and if even Jamie's dad thought we ought to be there, I was reluctantly inclined to agree.

o0o

At last, something did happen. At precisely 2:05 (I checked), Diarmuid's telephone rang.

Uncle James answered it, without even a glance at his host for permission. He spoke, listened, spoke again; then hung up, swept a glance around the suddenly silent room to be sure he had everyone's attention, and nodded towards the door.

Still no one was talking, or not to us. They muttered to each other, too low to overhear, and began to file out. We went with Conor when he beckoned, but he wouldn't answer questions; he just smiled with a grim satisfaction, and told us again to hold our horses, we'd see when we got there.

o0o

Into the cars once more, this time both of us in Conor's, and off we all went in convoy: up onto the dual carriageway and along the route of the river till we came to the first bridge over. We crossed there and headed back east, towards the coast again; and then south, leaving the main road and following a tourist trail that led nowhere except to a pub on the high cliffs with a famous cave beneath, that they'd done out as a restaurant.

We parked by the pub, which was dark of course and all locked up, this time of night. The moon was sinking now, but still bright enough to throw our shadows over the edge as we trekked in silence and single file along a footpath above the cliff.

Soon we could see lights ahead of us, bright lights where no buildings were. No roads either, but those were a car's headlamps for sure, dipped to shine on the turf. Doors were open, interior lights were on too, showing us the high boxy shape of the car. Uncle James' Range Rover, that was, well up to the bouncing ride over rough ground it must have had to get itself here.

There were figures too, silhouetted against the light, standing waiting for us. Slowly, my tired mind was working this out. The rough hand of Macallan justice was in action tonight. Uncle James was in vengeful mood, and he'd chosen a spectacular theatre to hold his private circus in.

o0o

A couple of hundred feet below us, the sea crashed and thundered unseen. Just here, more than the cliff defied it. A limestone spur ten or twelve metres wide thrust out maybe another fifty metres, though the unstinting work of water swirling at its base had hollowed it into a great arch, a landmark for sightseers and sailors both.

They were cousins, of course, at the car, more male scions of my wide-branching family. With them was one man else, standing tall and still, all too clearly a captive although no one's hand was on him. None needed to be, Macallans don't hold or bind their prisoners.

Nor was the man a stranger. Despite the strange glaring light and the black shadows it cast—or maybe not despite, maybe because of—I knew him instantly. Knew him from another place of shadows and glare, difficult seeing. The tunnel under the bridge, the man with a torch in one hand and a tube in the other, a teasing joke on his tongue as he CS'd us for his pleasure...

“Who
is
he?” I hissed, barely above a whisper. Meaning the question for Jamie, perhaps for Conor, not seriously expecting an answer; and receiving one unexpectedly from an unexpected source, from Uncle James himself, some few paces distant.

“He is,” he said with a slow satisfaction, “the Assistant Chief Constable with special responsibility for this city. He is a man with whom this family has had an understanding, for many years. His family owns and runs Pirate's Island, by special dispensation. He is also the man responsible for all the recent outrages against us—but I think you know that already, do you not?”

Well, yes, I did; I just hadn't realised that my uncle was on to him too.

“I began to suspect,” he went on, “when the police station burned down yesterday. It was reported to me that the fire seemed ... unnatural. Unlikely. When I attempted to contact this man,” whom it seemed he wouldn't even dignify with a name, “I was told he was unavailable. Unavailable to me! So I made enquiries elsewhere, and learned that a number of women had been held in the police station for some time; also that they had been removed shortly before the fire. I presume that was your doing, by the way, Benedict? The fire?”

I was about to confess it, but Jamie stepped between us. “Mine as well, father. They had our girls too, they had Laura; and we thought we could rescue them...”

Instead of being rescued by them
, but that I was not going to say.

“You should have come to me.” He fixed us both with a portentous frown, his displeasure equally divided. “However, events have turned out well, despite your meddling. When the women came across the water this evening—and that was well managed, Jamie,” with a nod, all the approval it seemed he would allow his son for the minor miracle he'd worked, “they confirmed to me that they had been in the hands of the police. That meant that this man was responsible, beyond question. He had already left the district in a hurry, this afternoon; but I had had him watched and followed, in case my earlier suspicions proved justified. Collecting him tonight was not a problem.”

And oh, he was pleased with himself, my uncle. Problem solved, normal service to be resumed immediately.

“What are you going to do with him?” I asked, though I thought I could guess.

“He will take a walk,” said Uncle James, with an unpleasant little chuckle and a glance at the rough rock outcrop. No accident, I realised, that the car was parked just so, where its lights threw a beam all along the arch.

That was my uncle's special talent, to make people do what they didn't want, to work their bodies against their struggling will. Once, he'd used it on me; I could still remember the terror as my muscles jerked to his command, my mind a helpless prisoner, unable even to raise a scream of protest. And all he'd done to me was sit me in a car I didn't want to sit in.

Turning my head away from the memory, I saw tonight's intended victim standing alone among his enemies, knowing for sure that he was due to die, though probably not knowing how. I thought of him taking that brief and cruel walk, pirates and planks, I thought,
a long walk off a short pier
; and I knew how it would feel, every step his unwilling legs would stumble over the rock under my uncle's unrelenting gaze until they took a step too far, a step off rock and into air.

And I grabbed Jamie's arm and pulled him away from his father, away from all our indifferent cousins. “Jamie, I don't, I don't want any more killing.”

“What?” He seemed honestly surprised, almost bewildered. “For God's sake, Ben. This is the bastard who had Josie killed, and Karen. And that kid Charlie, delivered his bloody
head
, remember?”

Yes, I did remember, I was not about to forget. Nor forgive, but even so. “I just don't want anyone else to die,” I repeated. “It's got to stop sometime, it's got to stop
now
or it never will,” and I meant more than just the killing, I meant everything my uncle and my father and all my family did in this town. “And I can't stop him, Jamie, it's got to be you.”
For Laura's sake
, I thought about adding, and didn't.
For your own sake, for both of you and the kid too; she won't stay with you else, she's too decent to tolerate this
—but no, let him work that out for himself.

Which he did, perhaps. At any rate, he nodded roughly and turned back towards his father.

“Dad, no.”

“What? What do you mean, no?”

“I mean you can't do this.” He was speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear; deliberately so, I guessed. Committing himself, making a public stand, leaving himself no back door to scuttle out of. Laura would have been proud. “There's been too much killing already. Karen and Josie, they're dead, they're out of it; but so are two of theirs, and the rest of us are safe. This isn't justice, it's cold murder, and I won't let you do it.”

Uncle James stared, and then he laughed, loud above the muttering that surrounded him. He didn't even bother to answer Jamie; he turned his head and gazed almost benignly at his captive, and the man began to walk.

Began to sweat, too, for all his determined, silent pride. Christ, I was with him all the way, remembered panic sweating my own skin as I relived the few moments I'd felt Uncle James' hand in my head, tugging my strings. I wanted to scream for him, because I knew he couldn't scream for himself; I wanted to sob, I wanted to look away, I wanted to run away; above all I wanted to stop him, to hurl myself on him bodily if that was what it took to halt that inexorable march.

And didn't, did none of those things. Bodily hurling was as futile as screaming, I'd only be bodily dragged off again. Running away would help me no more than it helped him. At the least I had to be there for him, I felt an imperative urge to watch, to share what I could; but more than that, maybe far more than that, I had to be there for Jamie. I could do nothing here, but Jamie could. Not only the best of my many cousins, he was also the strongest in his talent. Maybe my will could stiffen his, help him stand up to his father with more than words...

o0o

Whether he needed my help just then, I don't know. Whether he felt even a shadow of my mute urging,
do it, Jamie, hold the guy back, break your father's concentration, anything, but do something. Please...?