The Hunter's Prayer (4 page)

He stopped them a half-flight short of the bottom and went down to check out the lobby. There was only one person down there and it wouldn’t be long before he was attracting flies. Lucas walked to the open street door, searched out a taxi and waved it over, at the same time checking the street, a cafe along the way in particular.

He went back into the lobby and waved them down. By the time they reached the street door the taxi driver was standing there, the trunk open, ready for the luggage.

‘Santa Maria Novella,’ said Lucas, and then retreated into the lobby. ‘Chris, you put the bags in the car.’ Chris carried the bags out on his own and the driver looked on, nonplussed, glancing in a couple of times to where Lucas stood with Ella in the shadows. ‘You get in the front, Chris. Ella, you sit behind the driver.’ As they stepped out into the barrier of heat, Lucas scanned the street again, taking in the cafe, cars, doorways, people walking. There was nothing he could see. Once he was sitting in the taxi, he pulled his gun, holding it casually by the side of his leg. He kept scanning the people and the traffic around them, stepping up a gear every time they slowed or stopped. The taxi driver could sense it, looking at Lucas in the rear-view a couple of times but turning away quickly whenever they made eye contact.

They hadn’t been followed and, though any other time it would have been a classic danger point, he began to relax when they reached the railway station. He still moved them quickly, though, and drew the blinds as soon as they were inside their private compartment.

When the train started to move, Lucas released the blind on the window. The sunlight burst in, the air dancing with illuminated dust. Ella screwed her eyes up against the brightness, then looked at Lucas. ‘Are we safe now?’

‘I think so. No complacency, but you can take it easy for a while.’ It was like he’d given them a muscle relaxant: both of them sank into their seats with relief.

‘And you’ll call my dad from Milan?’

‘That’s right. Three hours.’ He caught a look from Chris and wondered if he suspected what that call might reveal. Possibly he thought Lucas already knew there was no one to call, that her father was dead. Lucas didn’t know that for sure, but he was almost certain that’s how it was, that somewhere along the line Hatto had upset someone enough for them to bring it back on his whole family. And it made him wish he
could
speak to Hatto now because he wanted to know what line he’d crossed, and on whose territory, to inspire a vengeance like this.

Twenty minutes out of Florence, Chris fell asleep. Ella was looking out the window and had been since they’d left. He wondered what she was thinking about, guessed it was probably just the whole storm of the last day, trying to make sense of it.

Not long after Chris had fallen asleep, she turned and stared at Lucas for a while, finally saying, ‘I’ve been thinking about that man at the hotel.’ He nodded, just to show that he was listening. ‘You think he was there to kill me?’ He nodded again, this time a regretful confirmation. She’d already reached that stage, though, of brushing to one side the fact that people were trying to kill her; she was deeper in than that. ‘You see, that’s what I don’t understand, because he could’ve killed me, but he didn’t. The way he was looking at me, it was like he’d changed his mind.’

‘He might have changed it back,’ said Lucas, attempting to dispel any doubt as to whether he’d needed to kill him or not. ‘You’re an attractive girl—it threw him. If someone more professional had been waiting in that lobby this morning, I would have lost you.’

She looked surprised by his words, misinterpreting them, perhaps, because she said, ‘Would it have mattered to you, if you’d lost me?’

‘To my pride, maybe my reputation. I don’t know you well enough to care beyond that.’

‘Is there anyone you do care about?’

The speed of her response threw him, a hemorrhage of faces and names, memories, all of them evaporating away into nothing in the hostile environment of his consciousness.

‘Not anymore, not for a long time. I care about my books, my solitude.’

‘You sound like an old man.’ He smiled but didn’t reply and she said, ‘Have you got anything to read?’

‘Sure. I’ve got
A Journal of the Plague Year
by Defoe—that’s what I was going to read next, but you’re welcome to have it. And you know I’ve got
The Nibelungenlied
. You should give it a try; it’s a good story.’

She looked unconvinced but laughed a little and said, ‘Go on then, I’ll try it.’ He was pleased. It wasn’t often he got the chance to recommend books to people, let alone have them follow those recommendations. She might even finish it before they parted and want to discuss it with him.

The two of them sat opposite each other reading and Chris slept. It was like they were ordinary people on a straightforward journey. Maybe she still saw herself like that, unaware how deep this fault line ran. There might be a way back to an ordinary life for Chris but hers was changed for good.

Lucas found it appropriate somehow to be reading of rumors and the approach of plague, the steadily increasing tally of deaths. He’d become adept at shutting the present out while he was reading, but he was clicking off the minutes in the back of his head, conscious that this slumberous calm would be torn too soon.

About half an hour before they reached Milan, he stopped reading altogether, keeping his eyes on the book only to avoid conversation. Chris had woken and was checking his watch every few minutes. Ella was still reading but she was beginning to look restless too.

Lucas was calmer than they were but he was uncomfortable all the same, knowing that he could put it off no longer, make no more excuses. It almost made him wish they’d be ambushed again in the station, just for the further diversion it would cause.

It would have been a good place for them to take a pop at her too, but he was confident now that they were clear of trouble. Even so, he still played it cautious as he moved them to the next train, stung by the slip he’d made that morning.

Before leaving them in the new compartment, he gave Chris the gun again but told him to take it out only if he was certain they were in trouble, stressing that he thought they were over the worst. Then he left them, checked his watch and found a phone that was away from the telltale background noise of the station.

At first he thought it would run onto the answering machine again, but on maybe the last possible ring it was picked up and a woman said hello. He knew.

‘I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number; I was trying to reach Mark Hatto.’

There was an awkward pause before the woman said, ‘No, you have the right number. I’m a police officer. Could I ask who you are, sir?’

‘Of course. I’m Philip Hatto, Mark’s cousin. Now if you don’t mind me asking, why are you there? Is everything okay?’

Another awkward pause, suggesting she was new to this aspect of her job.

‘Do you have someone else there with you, Mr. Hatto?’

‘My wife’s here, but what’s that got to do with anything? What’s going on?’ It was like he’d said to Chris that morning about watching movies: he knew the part he was playing, the script he was meant to use. It was probably the same script she’d used in role-play during her training.

‘I’m afraid I have some very bad news, Mr. Hatto. We were called to the house this morning by a member of staff. I’m sorry to have to tell you that your cousin, his wife and son have all suffered gunshot wounds, each of them fatal.’

‘They’re dead?’ He wanted to make sure she hadn’t misused the word ‘fatal’ in her attempt to break the news gently.

‘I’m afraid so.’ He hung up the phone. It was what he’d expected, but it didn’t mean anything to him. The news had all the impact of an election result in some country he’d never heard of.

The only thing that mattered to him was that he had to go back and tell Ella that her family had been killed, and he didn’t know whether she was safe, whether she’d ever be safe. That was some news to break to a girl who’d been as close to death as she had been today.

As he walked back along the platform, a couple of pigeons took flight from his path and he followed their ascent for a few seconds, up into the vaulted sky of the terminus. For a moment, it seemed like he could still hear the flapping of their wings, even above the train noise and the background bustle of the station, and it gave him a strange sense of peace.

It made him want to be home and done with this. He was heading home, but the fragmented longing he’d just experienced had been for something more distant, unreachable: the touch and smell of skin, warmth, a laugh, a breeze off the sea . . . memories too painful to dwell upon, a sense of home that had never really belonged to him.

He knocked on the compartment door and waited for Chris to open it.

‘I’ll stay out here in the corridor until we leave the station. Close the door again.’

Chris nodded but from behind him Lucas heard Ella say, ‘Did you speak to him?’

He looked over Chris’s shoulder. He thought she’d come close to guessing a couple of times, but there it was in her face; for all her intelligence, for all that had happened, she didn’t have a clue.

‘No, I didn’t. I’ll explain once we’re on the move.’ She looked baffled but Lucas nodded for Chris to close the door. He had to wait, because she’d react badly and he needed the noise of the train’s movement to drown out any sound of distress.

A couple of people squeezed past him in the narrow corridor and then the train started to ease along the platform, imperceptibly at first, the movement so smooth it looked like the neighboring train was moving. He waited till they were clear of the station, speed and racket building.

Maybe Chris had said something or maybe, given a few minutes to think about it, she’d begun to stack things up. Either way, as soon as he stepped inside she said, ‘What’s happened? Just tell me.’

‘Your family’s dead. The police answered the phone.’ She didn’t call out, didn’t cry. It was like he’d spoken in a language she hardly knew and she was still translating in her head. Yet the expression on her face was familiar to him; it was how people looked after being shot.

Lucas heard Chris whispering, ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ and turned for a moment to look at him. He was sitting on the edge of the seat with his face buried in his cupped hands.

‘All of them?’

He looked back at Ella and said, ‘Yes, all shot, probably the same time as they tried to get you last night.’

‘But why?’

‘Your dad must’ve fucked someone off in a big way. And he had enemies.’

Her face and thoughts finally fused, dissolving into each other, a sudden violent retching of tears and emotion and strangled words.

‘Ben didn’t have enemies.’ She could say no more, falling apart into sobs, and then Chris was holding her and she was clinging on to him. He was whispering words of comfort now and the more he said the tighter she held him.

Lucas stepped back outside and closed the door. At first he couldn’t hear anything from inside the compartment, the train noise covering for them as he’d hoped. As his ears adjusted, though, her distraught cries became clearly audible and he started to look around uneasily, feeling exposed.

Someone came walking along the corridor, an elderly woman, too fat to pass him. The most natural thing would have been for him to give way by stepping back into his compartment, but he didn’t want to open the door and let the distress contained there spill out.

Instead, he walked along a little way and ducked into an empty compartment to avoid making eye contact with the woman. He walked back then, and for the second time his ears tricked him into thinking she’d quietened. But it was still there, an incoherent wailing, growing louder, more intense.

And there was nothing he could do to help. He could keep Ella Hatto alive, he could kill for her, but he could offer no comfort, no compassion. He didn’t have those things within him, and it made his skin crawl to stand there in earshot of her distress because it exposed him for who he was. He was a man with a gun, nothing more, and he didn’t even want to be that.

Chapter Five

S
he puzzled over the skirt through the first fuzzy moments of wakefulness. She seemed to be wearing a long skirt, one she didn’t recognize. She was slouched awkwardly and she felt if she moved she’d be able to see it properly and she’d understand.

Chris was holding her, though, and the train was rocking gently and she didn’t want to move. And then from the corner of her eye she saw someone else in the compartment with them, and then recognition: Lucas.

She jumped up in the seat, startled, full of dread. Chris released her. Lucas looked up from the book he was reading, curious perhaps, no more than that. She was about to say she’d had the most dreadful dream but her conscious thoughts had caught up with her.

Her family was dead. Lucas had told her. Men like those who’d tried to kill her had gone to their home and killed her parents, killed Ben. The tears started to form again, her throat tightening, but she fought clear of it, focusing on the moment.

‘How do you feel?’ She looked across at Lucas but the question hadn’t been his. He was already reading again and she was puzzled as she looked at him, trying to work out if he was scared of her emotions, his own, anybody’s, or if he just didn’t feel anything at all.

There had been moments in the last twenty-four hours when she’d thought there had to be something more to him, softer depths. That morning with Chris, the conversation she’d overheard from the bathroom, and just the way he was seeing them through this—it all gave the impression that they were more than just a job to him.

But looking at him now she had her doubts. He wasn’t like they were. It didn’t matter anyway; Lucas didn’t matter—not against being alone, not against half of who she was being erased like that.

And she still couldn’t find a way to register that fact. It was too big, too final. How could they be gone? How could Ben not be there? It seemed so unreal that she began to speculate on the ways in which Lucas could have been mistaken. Or possibly he was lying—like Chris had said, they didn’t really know who he was or that her dad had sent him.

‘Ella? How do you feel?’ Chris’s face and that question and she knew it was true. They were dead. She’d cried herself to exhaustion, her jaw aching still, and yet even now she felt like she didn’t have the space, the distance, the facts, any of the things she needed to come to terms with it.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, finally answering him, and her own voice sounded strange, like she was underwater, or lost in some heart-sickening dream.

‘I went and got some drinks. Do you want some? Coke? Water?’

‘Water, please.’ He handed her the bottle. The water was warm but she took a couple of mouthfuls, then more as she realized how dry her throat was.

At first she thought it was getting dark but looking out of the window, she saw the sky was overcast and that the landscape they were passing through was alpine and damp.

‘Are we in Switzerland?’

Lucas looked away from his book long enough to check his watch but didn’t answer.

‘You’ve been asleep for a few hours,’ said Chris.

‘If you want to freshen up you should do it now. We’ll be there soon and then it’s about a thirty-minute drive.’

‘Where are we going?’ She had nowhere to go, nothing to return to, a truth that should have torn her again but all her pain was dulled now, smothered by the emotional fatigue that was in every cell, every nerve ending. She felt like nothing would ever shock or hurt her again.

‘I’m taking you to my place for a night or two. Then I’ll take you into Zurich and hand you over to the consulate.’

She looked at Chris and realized they’d discussed it while she’d been sleeping. It bothered her, though she wasn’t sure why.

‘What will the consulate do with me?’

‘I imagine they’ll repatriate you.’

‘I mean, where will I go?’

Lucas looked baffled for a second before saying, ‘You’re an adult. You can go wherever you want.’ It made her feel spoiled and pathetic to think of herself as someone helpless while he saw her as an adult, someone capable of looking after herself. He seemed to reconsider, though, and added, ‘I suppose they might suggest you go to your uncle or any other family you’ve got.’

She didn’t have any other family and now she imagined the scenario getting worse, knowing that Simon was a partner in the business, that he was as likely to be a target of the killers as her father had been.

‘What if they killed my uncle, too?’

He thought about it for a while, apparently weighing things up.

‘It’s possible, but your dad’s the one who was connected.’

‘Connected? Your dad was like a gangster?’

She looked at Chris, trying to work out from his expression whether he was impressed or disgusted by the possibility. It was what Lucas seemed to be suggesting, but her dad was anything but gangster material. He’d always been a benign presence in the house, distant but loving.

She looked questioningly at Lucas but he glanced in turn at Chris, as if to ask whether it was wise to discuss this kind of family business in front of him. It was laughable, given what he’d seen, given too that it was business she hadn’t known about herself until now.

‘I’ve got no secrets from Chris.’

Lucas shrugged and said, ‘He was no gangster. He knew a few but he was never in organized crime himself. He started dealing drugs in the late sixties, made a lot of money, invested in property, moved into the arms trade. Then the drugs led him into financial services, offshore banking, that kind of thing, cleaning other people’s drug profits. And he kept investing, buying up property, legitimate financial concerns, IT companies, you name it. He was a good guy.’

She stared at him in disbelief. Only the final five words had reminded her of the man she’d known as her father and she couldn’t quite work out how Lucas had slipped them in, how they’d seemed to him like a fitting conclusion to all the sleaziness he’d just described.

It couldn’t be right anyway. How could her family have had secrets like that at its core without her ever knowing or even suspecting? Surely her mother had known, and yet there’d never been any sense of disquiet or concern, never any attention from the police, never any fears about security.

Lucas had to be wrong or it was like her whole life had been a lie, her parents recast as strangers, her memories false. Only Ben remained true because he’d been kept as ignorant as she had, and now he was dead and would never have the slightest idea why.

She started to imagine how it might have been, whether the killers had gathered them all together first, or killed them wherever they’d found them in the house, whether Ben had had time to be scared. She backed off, though, the thoughts too precipitous.

It took an effort to block it out again but then she said, ‘You’re mistaken. If my dad told you all that stuff, he was probably just trying to impress you or something.’

‘What makes you think that would impress me?’ Lucas looked momentarily offended but appeared to soften again and said, ‘He filled in the details and the backstory. The rest was out there—he was a player.’ She put together what he was saying with all that had happened but as if reading her mind, he said, ‘Don’t jump to conclusions. To me, this smacks of payback from long ago. You know, in a business where people disappear for fifteen-, twenty-year stretches, you can never completely forget about the enemies you made in the past. Someone who orchestrates the death of an entire family strikes me as someone who’s had a long time to think about things.’

She looked at Chris, wanting an expression from him of sharing her incredulity. She couldn’t quite meet his eyes, though; there was a look on his face like his thoughts were tumbling as fast as hers but in a different direction. She wanted at least some communication with someone who’d make her feel less alone in this, but all she had was Lucas, redrawing the map of her world.

‘I’m sure you’ll understand that it’s quite difficult for me to take all this on board.’

‘What’s to take on board? Your dad was okay. He had a good run in a risky business. Now he’s dead.’ Then he added, like an afterthought, ‘And of course, you’re now a very wealthy young woman.’

She laughed in shock, wanting to distance herself from everything he’d been saying, wanting Chris to see that she was distancing herself from it.

‘I don’t want that kind of money.’

‘Trust me, there’s only one kind of money. And if you think otherwise, if you think the interest on your savings is clean, then you really do have a lot to take on board.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Chris, suddenly animated. ‘You’re honestly trying to suggest there are no ethical ways of making money?’

Lucas said only, ‘We’re here. Get your bags together.’ He stood up and she noticed the train was slowing.

They had to be safe here, wherever they were, but even now Lucas hurried them through the station. She searched for a name board but couldn’t see one and a moment later they were standing next to a sleek black Mercedes.

He opened the trunk for the bags and Ella said, ‘Do you mind if I sit in the front this time?’

‘Feel free.’

They got in and drove off, climbing steadily away from the town. It was just before six by the clock on the dash, still too early for sunset, but the cloud cover had sewn dusk into the fabric, and after a few minutes of driving, a fine drizzle added to the sense that they were losing themselves in a dark landscape.

Lucas pointed and said, ‘There are CDs in there. Why don’t you choose something to put on?’ She opened the glove compartment and took the CD off the top.

‘I love Nick Drake,’ she said. ‘My dad has the original record of this.’

‘I’ve only been into him for a couple of years.’

‘Did my dad recommend him? He’s always banging on about music from the sixties.’ She wondered if that was how he’d come to deal drugs, not as a criminal but as a youthful idealist.

Lucas smiled and said, ‘Your dad and me, we were never . . . Well, we never discussed music. Amazon recommended it to me.’ Ella smiled too, amused somehow because nearly every song she loved was associated with a moment, a person, an event, and yet here was Lucas, taking his cues from an algorithm.

She put the CD in the player and relaxed into her seat as the soft lull of the music started, the windshield wipers gliding silently in front of her. She felt warm and secure, the car moving smoothly through the sodden landscape, the rain hanging in the air like mist. It was like they were driving through the ragged edges of clouds.

‘Sorry about your family.’ She looked at him, surprised, touched too, even though it was little more than a politeness, one that might have come several hours earlier at that. But after one day of knowing him, she sensed it was probably a departure for Lucas to be expressing sorrow or regret for anything.

‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’ She thought suddenly of that morning, of Lucas gently wiping the blood from her face, his fingers sensitive, caring. She’d been too shocked to take it in at the time but the memory of it now made her realize there was something she should have said earlier too, an omission that was understandable, perhaps, in her case but that still needed to be put right. ‘And, Lucas. Thank you.’ He glanced across at her, uncertain. ‘For saving my life.’

‘It’s what I was sent to do.’

That was it, the door was closed again, but she hadn’t been mistaken; that other person was there, somewhere. She said no more either, but sat and listened to the music and watched the world sliding by and tried to keep her mind hitched up there on the immediate, on the passing moments. She was too spent to let it go anywhere else.

The time would come soon enough anyway, when she’d have to think about those things again. And she’d be forced to face the facts of how they’d died, of who they’d been, of the uncertain future that lay ahead of her.

That was all out there, and maybe it was selfish, but for a few hours she wanted to pretend like it hadn’t happened. ‘River Man’ was playing, a song she wanted to associate in her memory with this drive, with Lucas and Chris, but with nothing else.

They passed through a small village, then through a mix of pasture and dense woods. She counted only two other houses, warmly lit, and then ten minutes after leaving the village they turned onto a narrower track, following it for a few hundred yards until they reached his place.

When she got out of the car, she could understand the appeal; the rain had stopped and the air felt intimately close, the silence like held breath. The house was layered in shadows. It looked like a traditional alpine house—the outline, the balcony stretching across the front. It was modern, though, timber and glass.

‘Did you build this?’

He was at the trunk, getting the bags out.

‘No, the guy who built it died, and his wife didn’t want to stay here afterwards. Lucky for me.’ They made towards the house, but after a few steps he turned to say, ‘He died of cancer.’

They followed him up the stairs into a small porch where he stopped to turn on the lights and check what looked like a complex alarm system. He led them into a large room then: living room, dining room, kitchen, spread across the whole upper story, the walls lined with books.

‘I’m not really geared up for visitors but make yourselves at home.’ He gestured towards an internal staircase. ‘Guest bedroom and bathroom are downstairs at the back.’

Ella looked at Chris with a smile and held her bag out.

‘Sure, I’ll take the bags down.’ He turned to Lucas and said, ‘Want me to take yours?’

Lucas seemed amused by the offer but said, ‘Thanks. Mine’s the bedroom at the front.’

Ella walked around the room, which looked amazingly tidy. She noticed some unopened letters on a side table, so she guessed he had someone come in while he was away. She altered her course slightly so that she could pass close enough to see what was written on them.

It took her by surprise, not because it wasn’t his name, but because they were all addressed to ‘S. Lucas.’ She turned to find him looking at her from across the room.

‘Lucas is your surname,’ she said, brushing off the embarrassment of being caught snooping.