The Hunter's Prayer (13 page)

Chapter Thirteen

S
imon saw her first. She’d been surveying the bar from the top of the steps for thirty seconds or more before she noticed him waving in exaggerated slow motion. She laughed and walked over to him, kissed him on the cheek.

As they sat down, he said, ‘Well I can see why you chose this over coming and staying with us again.’

She looked around and said, ‘It’s basic, I know, but it’ll do until I find somewhere permanent.’ The waiter came over. ‘I’ll have a Pussyfoot, please. Simon?’

‘Oh, just a Coke or a mineral water or something.’

‘Make that two Pussyfoots.’ The waiter smiled and left. ‘Fuddy-duddy!’

‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you back at college. You know if there’s anything I can do . . .’

She appreciated the offer but knew that Simon couldn’t help her with the one thing she really wanted.

‘Thanks. And you know, I didn’t come here because I was unhappy with you and Lucy. I just thought it was time to pick up the pieces, become a bit more independent.’

He nodded his understanding and said, ‘Do you plan to go back at all? To college?’

‘Next year, perhaps. I’ll see how I feel nearer the time.’ The waiter put some snacks on their table. She picked an almond out. ‘I suppose life just suddenly feels too serious to be at college.’

‘Perhaps it’ll feel different next year.’ The drinks arrived and Simon looked slightly embarrassed by the extravagance of the glass and its contents.

She laughed and said, ‘It’s nonalcoholic. Try it.’

He sucked on his straw and admitted defeat. ‘Yes, it’s pretty good.’ He still seemed vaguely uncomfortable, as if the drink’s appearance was out of step with his image of himself. ‘Now, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to do nothing with your time so I’ve put together some homework for you.’ He looked around, then reached down and took a folder out of a briefcase next to his chair. She’d never seen him or her father carrying a briefcase before and it looked out of place. She wondered if it was his or if he’d borrowed it. ‘These are some profiles of the various companies within the family business. If you feel like visiting any of them, seeing how they operate, it’s easy to arrange.’

‘All in good time, perhaps. I am interested and I will look through this but . . .’

‘I know. I understand. You don’t have to get involved. But it’s good for you to know a bit more about it, just in case.’

She finished the sentence in her head, knowing that he meant just in case he wasn’t around, and she said, ‘You don’t think we’re still in danger?’

‘No!’ He was almost too dismissive.

‘But we could be. I mean, why did they try so hard to kill me and then just give up? And the police—they don’t
know
we’re safe. They removed the protection because nothing happened over the summer, but that doesn’t mean anything.’ Too much had spilled out, giving the impression she’d been dwelling on these things, which she had.

Simon looked calm, though, as he said, ‘This is why I want you to put your mind to something else. Look at the file.’ She put the folder next to her on the banquette and patted it.

Her phone rang then and she looked at the call display. ‘Estate agent,’ she said to Simon as she answered it. ‘Hello?’

‘Are you still in the Savoy?’

She felt visibly flustered for a second but Simon was poking noncommittally at the snacks. ‘Oh, hi, Peter. Yes, I’m in the American Bar with my uncle at the moment.’

‘Can you be ready in half an hour?’

‘Half an hour?’ She looked at Simon and he gestured for her to go ahead. ‘Yeah, that should be fine.’

‘I’ll pick you up.’

‘Okay. See you then.’ She hung up the phone and said, ‘It’s a flat in Kensington. They’ve been really awkward about viewing so I didn’t want to pass up on it.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I have to dash off soon anyway.’ He took one more mouthful of his drink, picked up his briefcase.

‘Simon, I don’t mean to go on, but don’t you ever wonder if they’re still out there? I mean, don’t you ever wonder if they’re just biding their time, if they’ll have another go at us?’

He frowned slightly. ‘Sometimes. Luce worries about it, as you can imagine. She still checks on the boys two or three times in the night. But I think whoever wanted Mark dead must feel avenged enough by now, and must be smart enough to know that killing you or me won’t add anything to that revenge.’

‘You don’t think about getting revenge yourself?’

‘Of course,’ he said, a touch of sadness in his face. ‘Irony is, Mark probably would have known people who could take it for him. But we don’t. All we have is the police, for what it’s worth. No good thinking about revenge—all the things they say about it are true.’

She nodded and felt guilty for keeping Lucas a secret from him. She knew all the clichés about revenge, too—how it served no purpose and provided no gain. But she was locked onto this path because she needed to know who’d killed them, and once she knew, how could she not want them to suffer for what they’d done?

She’d thought she wanted justice, but Lucas had opened her eyes to that paper-thin fallacy. Justice, even if it were done, would mean a prison sentence and that would never be enough. The burden of the survivor was hers; that’s all there was to it. They had to die.

When Lucas picked her up, she was in the car for a minute or so before she realized it was his Mercedes from Switzerland.

‘You drove here? I mean, to England?’

‘It’s not a bad trip, and I had to call on a couple of people en route.’

She took in the surroundings, feeling oddly connected to his world again by being there. She opened the glove compartment where the CDs were but instead of the previous selection there was a new series of discs.

‘You’re learning French?’

‘Trying to.
C’est très difficile
.’

She was puzzled by this apparent branching out; he didn’t strike her as someone who liked stepping outside his routine. She was about to press him on the subject but he said, ‘Aren’t you curious as to why I called you or where we’re going?’

‘I just assumed you found out something.’

‘I found the guy who killed your family. I’m taking you to him.’

‘Already?’ She couldn’t believe it. After a summer of inertia and frustration she hadn’t expected Lucas to produce results in a little over a week. She wasn’t even certain she was ready.

‘This was the easy bit. I haven’t found the guy who ordered the hits. I’ve found the guy who carried them out. But he’ll lead us to someone else and so on.’

She wanted to tell him to turn back to the hotel, to hand the man over to the police and let them follow his leads, to forget about the whole thing. And yet she wanted to see him, to see the last face her brother had seen as he’d looked up from his bed. She wanted to look into those eyes and see what was there.

‘Where is he?’

‘In a derelict engine shed. Wouldn’t have been my choice but the guy I have working for me has a melodramatic streak.’

‘You’re holding him captive?’

‘I don’t think he’d have accepted an invite.’

‘Did he put up a fight?’

‘No, it was . . . We just brought him in. He’s a Bosnian Serb, Vasko Novakovic, based in London for about seven years, works for himself.’

‘Has he told you anything?’

‘I haven’t spoken to him yet.’

‘Will he tell us anything?’

‘Who can say?’ He paused and she expected it to go on indefinitely, but after a few seconds he added, ‘I was wrong, by the way. As far as anyone knows, your dad didn’t have any enemies.’

‘But . . .’

‘I mean from the old days. Whoever did this is probably someone close to him now, a disgruntled employee, or . . . Well, someone close, anyway.’

She found it hard to believe that anyone who’d known her father or worked for him could have hated him that much. A business rival, yes, or someone he’d inadvertently crossed in the past, but not someone close; her dad hadn’t been the kind of person to inspire that kind of hatred. It had to be a stranger, just like the stranger Lucas was driving her to now.

‘I think you’re wrong. I mean, surely you can’t account for everyone from the past, and you can’t account for business rivals. Think of all the businesses he owned.’ She thought of the folder Simon had given her and decided to study it when she got back to the hotel. ‘I just can’t see it being an employee.’

‘Maybe not.’

He fell silent. He seemed to be enjoying part of this, the intrigue perhaps. She hadn’t thought so in Italy but maybe he enjoyed the killing too, finding some thrill in pulling the trigger and ending a life. For all she knew, the man he was taking her to was the same. Perhaps rather than doing the job coldly and dispassionately he’d knocked on the door of their family home and got a power trip out of the murders he’d committed there—a seductive combination of pleasure and profit all rolled up into the destruction of a family.

They drove across a stretch of wasteland before reaching the brick engine shed, its windows smashed, part of the roof missing. Buddleia bushes were growing wild around it, still full of purple flowers but looking forlorn in these surroundings.

Lucas parked alongside the shed next to a Range Rover and they got out of the car. A train ran past on one of the lines about fifty yards away with a short, half-hearted roar before dying away. She wondered how many of the people on board had noticed them there. It made her conscious that she’d left the law behind, that she was becoming the person the police had half suspected her of being.

She followed Lucas into the shed. With part of the roof missing it was bright inside and weeds and a single buddleia were growing among the debris and broken glass. It had the oily smell of industry and decay about it.

As soon as she walked in, she noticed the guy standing in the middle of the shed: short dark hair, lean, wearing a black suit with a black shirt underneath. It took her a moment longer to see the other man sitting on the floor, his arms handcuffed behind his back. He looked broken and dejected, his hair disheveled, face bruised, T-shirt dirty and bloodstained. And he looked young. Lucas had talked about him being in London for seven years and she’d imagined someone older, not a guy in his mid-twenties.

‘Ella, this is Dan Borowski. Dan, Ella.’ The guy in the black suit smiled at her. He was in his mid to late twenties too, and good-looking, but she was unnerved because he looked so much like the stereotype of what she supposed he was—a contract killer or a gangster, somebody from the underworld. ‘And this is Vasko Novakovic.’ Lucas turned back to Dan and said, ‘Thanks. I’ll call you later.’

‘No worries.’ Dan looked down at Novakovic and then at Lucas again. ‘He’s heard of me but he hasn’t heard of you. How about that?’ Lucas nodded at Dan, amused. Dan left and she heard his Range Rover pull away across the gravel, then another train passing.

‘Come over. Take a closer look at him.’ She stepped closer. Novakovic looked up at her and away again. ‘We don’t want to hurt you. All we need is information.’ He looked up at Lucas, disbelieving. ‘Mark Hatto, his wife, his son. Where did the hit come from?’

He nodded, a grim acknowledgment, as if he’d known that job would lead him into trouble. He seemed to weigh things before shrugging and saying, ‘Bruno Brodsky.’ Lucas smiled at Ella, a look of self-satisfaction, though she had no idea why.

‘Ask him why he killed my brother.’

Novakovic looked at her in surprise, as if realizing for the first time how she was involved. ‘He doesn’t have to ask me. My English is good.’ He hesitated before saying, ‘I was paid for three people—your father, mother, brother.’

‘He was only seventeen,’ said Ella.

Novakovic looked unimpressed. ‘I do what I’m paid to do. Brodsky tells me kill the boy, I kill the boy. Brodsky tells me kill you, I kill you.’

He seemed almost to be gloating and she could feel her confused and overwhelmed emotions settle into disgust and hatred. When she’d first seen him sitting there, she’d hoped he might be full of remorse, that she might even be able to find a way to forgive him.

But he didn’t care anything for what he’d done to her or her family. If anything, he seemed to be reveling in it. She felt sick, too, because she knew that even when Lucas killed him it wouldn’t erase the memory of that smug arrogance.

‘Okay, Ella, let’s go.’ They both looked at Lucas in surprise and he said, ‘He was the messenger, not the murderer. It’s difficult, but you need to see that distinction—there’s no revenge here.’

It took her a moment or two to soak up the absurdity of this. She thought of her mum and dad, of Ben lying perfect and lost in that casket, and she knew in every cell of her being that she wanted this monster dead, as ultimately unsatisfying as she knew that would be.

‘Kill him.’

‘What are you going to do, Ella—kill everyone who came anywhere near this contract?’

‘Just him. Lucas, I’ll pay you, but how can I let him live knowing what he did? How can I?’ He didn’t respond. ‘You’re saying it was just a job for him. Well, make it just a job for you. I’ll pay you whatever the going rate is but you have to kill him. You have to.’