Lost Girl (24 page)

At six he fell awake, fatigued and harrowed by the night’s carousal. Dropped from the bed to go and douse his punished body in shallow, tepid bath water, meagrely drawn
from what sputtered out of ancient pipes that made the floor of the communal bathroom shudder. Once his metered ration had dripped to an end, he dried his body and forced himself to swallow a dry
bread roll and a cup of black coffee. He dressed in clean clothes that felt like a holy blessing around his punished skin, and packed away his belongings. He needed to move far away from where he
had been an agent of murder.

The night’s visions had left his nerves jangling, his thoughts at the edge of panic; it took hours before he felt better. He’d never been religious, and soon after his
daughter’s disappearance he’d lost all faith in the instinctive vestige of belief that there must be more than this world. He had no faith in justice or fairness, or any of the old
values of the old world, but he didn’t know what he believed in after the previous evening at Yonah Abergil’s. King Death’s notions of an inevitable and engulfing chaos,
encroaching upon everything about him, even impressed him as the most realistic current option, informed by his experience. He truly felt as if he’d been touched by . . . he did not know
what.

In a wind-maddened dawn, he drove through a sopping world to the place Yonah said the kidnappers had kept a lair, an old church in Brixham; a place only a few miles away from where his daughter
was taken.

While he waited for Gene Hackman to call and take his report, he planned to make certain that both kidnappers were dead. And the father understood that his motive for such an early start was
mostly driven by the knowledge that he had finally brought himself to the attention of people who would not rest until his actions were avenged sevenfold.

‘Where are you now?’ Gene Hackman’s call broke the father from a doze he’d been unaware of entering, and returned him to the noise of rain pelting the
car. He’d parked on the outskirts of Brixham and the windscreen blurred the sea grey and spray-hazy. The police officer was using a new ident and no visual.

The father coughed sleep from his voice. ‘Brixham. For good reason.’

‘You alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Distance from Somerset is no bad thing.’ The man’s voice had changed from the last time they had spoken, and verged on breathless. ‘There’s a shitstorm brewing. I
wonder . . . if you should go to ground, for a while.’ The father sensed the detective’s serious misgivings over their association.

‘Not possible. The men who took my daughter were down here. It was a local job.’

There was a loaded silence; the father prompted the detective. ‘Gene, you sound different. Can you talk?’

‘For a while. I’ve some bad news. Because of last night, your activities are already queue-jumping the murder squad’s busy agenda. Rina Agnelli, Yonah Abergil’s missus,
has described your visit in great detail. And some clever prick over here has identified similarities in the recent slayings of at least two Kings, Rory and Yonah. There’s a pretty good
description of you from The Commodore, and Bowles’s neighbour looked right at you too. Those two eye-witness accounts have been matched, and now linked to Abergil. Further forensic
investigative measures are going to be pursued across all of the crime scenes. If that happens, we’ll soon have your DNA because you puked in Bowles’s house and dripped blood all over
Rory’s floor. Your records are in the national database. So it will just be a matter of time, my friend.

‘Ballistics are also checking the slugs you left in Rory, and these will tie you to Murray Bowles and Nige Bannerman, but not Yonah. There’s already some talk of how you chose your
targets, and why. Some people are nervous. Like me.’

The father closed his eyes. ‘The weather will hamper things.’

Gene disregarded his last comment as if it were wishful thinking that didn’t warrant serious consideration. It was all the father had had to hold on to: the idea that everything else was
far worse than what he was doing, and that what he had done didn’t really matter. He’d also stopped believing this sometime during the previous night.

‘Yonah Abergil has
friends
on the job. I knew that. I told you. Council too. So once you are in their frame, Yonah’s little helpers on the force will track your movements,
your vehicle by satellite, your financial transactions. Your car’s legit, so back-dated movements and expenditure will give them the caseload. All of it puts you on the spot for all the
shootings. Open and shut case. Because of your car, your whereabouts will be ascertained in no time. If you’re lucky, it’ll be us that come for you. If someone here makes a call and
tells
them
where you are, the Kings will get there first. Count on it. It happens. So ditch that motor and fast.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You will. Your motor has to go. It is your only chance to run for a bit longer. Your family hatchback needs to be driven a very long distance from where you are sitting, or you will not
have the time to finish this. Leave it where I can find it. Message me the location at this ident. And I will scrap it. Don’t buy anything unless it’s with cash.’

The father swallowed. A cloud of unpleasant gas erupted from the floor of his stomach. He thought he was going to be sick into the footwell. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t finish up. I couldn’t have made it any clearer about what was at stake if you went up against one of
them
.’

‘I couldn’t . . . her, the girl. She was, I don’t know . . . just there, a girlfriend. She couldn’t have heard anything.’

The officer’s voice hardened. ‘I gave you a new shooter. I told you. No witnesses.’

‘She wasn’t supposed to be there, or the fucking nurse!’

There was a long pause, both men breathing heavily as they bit back on trading the accusations they needed to let fly. The officer changed his tack. ‘OK. OK. This shit always gets
complicated. Let’s cool our heels. Think.’

‘I . . . I won’t be apprehended. I can’t be. I know that. Because of what would happen to me. But they’ll never know about you. I promise.’

‘You think?’ The officer laughed unpleasantly. ‘Upstairs is suspicious about the getaway in Torre, and there are some very good descriptions from Rory’s little mates, who
are all pointing the finger at a plain-clothes cop and vigilante collaboration.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s a shit sandwich that we’re spread on, any way you look at it.’

‘The information you gave me, it was good. Abergil gave up the men who took my daughter. I know now. I know who they are, or were. And I’m pretty sure he wasn’t lying. If you
hadn’t helped me, I wouldn’t have this. It matters. What you did matters.’

‘That’s something. I’m pleased for you. I am, I mean it.’ His voice trailed off and he sighed. ‘You really worked him for it. Christ alive. You shot out his fucking
knees. Blinded him in one eye. He’d never have got that eye back. Detached retina from blunt trauma. You royally messed him up.’

The father couldn’t speak. The strength leaked from his body at this recital of his savagery.

The officer laughed. ‘And he deserved everything he got. His end was the cause for some celebration, shall we say, for some on our side, and let’s leave it there. I have no problem
with what you did. But the girl, Rina, his missus, you’d have more time on your clock if she wasn’t in the picture, shooting her mouth off like a tragedy queen in a three-grand dress,
all because that sack of shit she was screwing got whacked.’

‘She came home with him in the car.’

‘It happens. At least for some. She’s a bit of all right.’

‘I separated them. Secured them. The nurse got free. She went for a gun. Jesus Christ, they had them stashed all over. The other woman, Rina, I restrained her. Twice. I watched her. I
questioned Abergil in another room so she wouldn’t hear. I don’t think . . . I don’t know . . . I couldn’t do it. Not her. I tried to think of a reason. A way
to—’

‘Kings will know it wasn’t a hit from a rival. Not business, or the old boy would have bought it too. They’ll most likely guess that this was a private matter and that
isn’t good for your future either, my friend.’

‘I’m going to assume that his associates—’

‘A little annoyed? Burning up. That’s what they are. They’re all over us, or their proxies are. There’s top brass in local government on their payroll. What some people
will do for a pork chop, eh? But I mean
they
won’t hesitate. You know that? Not with you. Or your wife. Or your girl, if she is . . . You know. It’s not my lot who should be
concerning you right now. But you’ve no way out even if we take you. They’ll get your head off your shoulders with a sharpened spoon in the nick. This shit will come full circle. But
we’ll
also know about you too, so then you’ve both sides, and where they meet in the middle, coming at you.’

The father blew out his breath. He clenched his fists, started to shout. ‘I don’t have much choice, do I? I never did. They take my little girl for money . . .’ His voice
broke, forcing him to choke the emotion back down. ‘Money . . . from some sick bastard! But if there is any complaint from the parents, then out comes the machete. How . . . How did this
happen? To us? To people? How? Why am I here?’

‘I know. I know. I know.’ The officer repeated himself distractedly, as if his mind had wandered. The father recognized the thin, vague tone. It came from men out of their depth, who
only later considered the full repercussions of their actions; men who were never made for this work. ‘What did Yonah give up?’

The father still fought for control of his voice. When his breathing had returned to normal and his pulse settled a little, he gave the detective the details and names from Yonah Abergil’s
forced confession.

‘I’ll check them. All new to me, but that doesn’t mean much. Our knowledge of who’s running with them down here is patchy. I’ll see if anything turns up and call
you back.’

‘Thank you. I had to do it. Back there . . . I didn’t have any choice.’

‘Might still be bullshit from Yonah. Even with no knees and one eye gone south, we can’t assume that a piece of shit like him would start playing fair, or go making any deathbed
confessions. It’s like they became a different kind of animal years ago. They’re really different, you know? Like they know something we don’t. But it is a small comfort to know
that my interference might not have been in vain. Especially if you find . . . if you know what happened to her. I can guess what that will mean to you.’

It’s like they became a different kind of animal years ago
. The father thought of the shrines, the painting, the sense of being chased through the night to his car, his dreams. He
wondered if he should mention this, but then didn’t know how to express it. How was such a subject broached? ‘You will call me when the police know . . . when they know it is me who did
all of this?’

‘Count on it. But I’m guessing that before our lot mount any kind of manhunt, because of all the shit that’s going on with the new bug and the blustery weather, your details
will be passed to the Kings. Anything to do with Kings always gets out. They’ve friends in higher places than we’ll ever have access to. So if you haven’t done so, I’d brief
your wife, right away. She’ll need to go somewhere a lot safer than her home address.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘You’ll be calling on his dad too when the Kings fancy you for this. He wasn’t top brass, but Yonah Abergil was blood. They’ve done scorched earth, root and branch
clearances on whole clans for a lot less than this dust-up. I can’t remember the last time they had such a personnel setback either. And when I shut my alarm system off for a few minutes, I
am secretly bloody elated about that. But we are in the deepest shit. Make no mistake.’

The father began to shake. The atmosphere of the car seemed to thicken, the temperature rise. Unless he got a window down and got that wet, violent air onto his face and inside his body, he
thought he’d have a seizure, a total shutdown. ‘I’ll . . . I’ll never give you up. Know that.’ He couldn’t get anything else out of his mouth.

‘Hey, what the hell, you think I didn’t know how this would go if we tried it on? Maybe it doesn’t matter any more. Have you seen the news? Who’d have thought a pandemic
would have an upside for someone.’

The father wasn’t sure who the officer was talking to.

After he abandoned the car in Newton Abbot, he took one of the few cabs still outside the train station back to Brixham, and called Miranda on the way down. She had never
picked up at her new ident. Praying she’d heeded his request, he left a message, urging her again to run if she hadn’t yet done so. He took a long moment and forced himself to imagine
her safely ensconced in a warm cottage, hundreds of miles from her parents’ house, or at least on the move out of the Midlands. Any other scenario he simply could not bear. In case their
idents were being monitored, he decided against calling Miranda’s parents.

Once the taxi had pulled away, the father walked on legs he could only marginally feel beneath him to the only pub in Brixham still open above the harbour. The other functioning businesses
behind the seawall were closed in anticipation of what was building out at sea. He needed to eat something substantial and then investigate accommodation too, but the prospect of being in a small
room with his thoughts, while he watched the world fall apart onscreen, had made the public house an attractive digression.

A locally brewed beer in hand, the father made his way to a window seat at the far side of the bar room, the furthest point he could retreat from the other customers, to wait for his handler to
call again with information on the lawyer, and confirmation the abductors were dead. No time had been specified for further contact. Days might even pass until the detective called, to tell him
where to go next to resume the cull – the lawyer, this facilitator, the go-between, the enigmatic Oscar Hollow, because the father would need an address for him. And once he had the lawyer in
his hands, he would get the identity of the man who paid for his girl.