Until Death (23 page)

Christos looked up. ‘What are you doing?’

‘It’ll work, just watch. I’m showing Yannis how polo is played.’ The polo mallet was on the coffee table. ‘Come on, Flo, help me hold it.’

‘He’ll fall off,’ said Florence, matter-of-factly.

‘No, he won’t,’ said Sylvie, getting irritated. ‘It’s just a bit of fun.’ She tried to hoik Yannis over the stool.

‘Are you sure that’s safe?’ asked Christos.

Yannis took the mallet and tried to hold it up but his grip was poor and it fell to the floor.

Sylvie pulled him off the stool. ‘Stand here, Yannis. Hold the bottom of the stool and I’ll show you how to swing the mallet.’ She climbed on to the high stool. ‘You know how you’re learning to sit up tall in the saddle when you go horse-riding with me?’

Kelly wanted to spit at her.

‘Well, it’s the same when you play polo. Hand me the mallet.’ She almost snatched it from Yannis’s grip. ‘Now you swing right round with your arm. You need to put all your effort into it, that’s how you play. Like this!’ Sylvie straightened her arm and swung the mallet right round, just as Christos shouted out something that sounded like ‘No!’

Sylvie’s arm flew round at great speed behind her and upwards, straight into the fish tank. The mallet hit the glass panel of the fish tank at its moment of maximum force and bounced out of Sylvie’s hand, clattering away. Everyone froze. Across the room, Kelly could see the small chip in the glass. For two full seconds they held their breath, then the first crack, an inch long, crept slowly across the glass, followed by a sharp noise like ice giving way on a frozen lake. Another crack snapped, much faster now, across the glass from where Sylvie had hit the middle of the pane, to the bottom corner and then Kelly heard Christos shout something incoherent as the glass panel exploded and a thousand litres of water came cascading from the shattered tank across the living room floor, the force upending the chair and stool that Sylvie was sitting astride and sending her skidding across the marble floor, her screams mixing with those of the kids. The water swung under Medea and she fell with a thump that sent her glasses skittering away under the grand piano. Christos dropped his iPad in the current flowing past him, and tried to chase it. The water started barrelling down the stairs. It rushed over Kelly’s ankles, pondweed catching on her shoes. Flashes of tropical fish darted this way and that, gasping their last breaths. She saw the model of the competitor’s ship coast away under the furniture. She bent down and picked up the iPad, the concentric rings of the tightening storm over the Atlantic lasting for a few more moments before the screen snapped to black.

Sylvie was screaming, her features wild and stricken as the extent of the damage spreading through the house began to dawn on her.

Kelly felt a thrill of victory as she watched the other woman on her knees, her expensive boots ruined, desperately trying to scoop up tropical fish as they swam past, water lapping up against the far corners of the room. Sylvie might be worming her way into the family, pleasing Christos in bed, ingratiating herself with the children, wandering through Kelly’s bedroom at night, but she was still an outsider, she wouldn’t know how much that fish tank meant to him. Kelly was pretty sure that Christos and Sylvie never talked of anything so mundane as the fish.

And then Kelly started giggling and found she couldn’t stop. She could feel Flo’s shoulders heaving with delight as she too became infected, and then Yannis also, until they were screaming with laughter. The flat and its expensive contents, its showy trinkets and crushing memories were being destroyed by the woman who had so much desire to keep it perfect. It was a rare and beautiful moment of joy.

K
elly felt hysterical. She hadn’t laughed like this, sensed this release for many months. Medea was trying pathetically to mop with a bucket, and the kids were still screaming and running around, swishing the currents of water with their feet. Kelly felt the tears flowing over her cheeks, the laughter pouring out of her. Sylvie was moaning and ineffectually running this way and that, Christos was shouting instructions at no one.

Something in Christos snapped. ‘Stop laughing. All of you stop laughing.’ He shouted it loud and harsh, the flush of red on his neck and face impossible to ignore. They all fell silent and looked at him, his chest heaving. He gazed around the ruined room, and then he looked up at the ceiling. Kelly could hear the faint cooing, the persistent scratches above their heads. ‘Those pigeons.’ The tendons were straining in his neck, his fists were clenched tight. ‘Those fucking pigeons!’

A strangled noise came out of his throat and he splashed across the room to the kitchen, the sound of heavy furniture sent flying, hard things rebounding off surfaces. The women stood frozen where they were, too rapt or terrified to move, until he re-entered the living room, a black object in his palm that Kelly only realised was a gun when Sylvie screamed. The next instants were a chaotic scene of smoke and dust and falling plaster as Christos began shooting at the ceiling, screaming and firing as the wailing women threw themselves on the children or under tables. ‘I’ll teach those fucking pigeons! They never give me a moment’s peace!’

Kelly grabbed her children’s hands, keeping low and running to the stairs, but Medea was already occupying them, crouched down and shouting at her son. In Kelly’s rush she slipped in the water and Yannis’s hand slid from her own. The noise was terrific, reverberating round the marble floors and walls, plaster and dust raining down on the sodden floor. Christos didn’t stop, firing again and again and again until the bullets were gone and the harsh clicks of the spent gun were all that could be heard. Then he swore and hurled the gun hard across the room. It bounced and rotated and skidded into the corner under a window.

Kelly realised she was flat on the floor, pondy-smelling water soaking into her clothes. The silence after the chaos seemed deafening. Kelly dared a glance upwards, braced for a toe cap or a pair of hands round her neck.

She saw Sylvie had her arms out towards her husband, tears in her eyes. ‘My love, stop. We’re nearly there, so nearly there, Christos.’ He glared at her, a sheen of sweat on his face. ‘We agreed we’d do this. After all our work …’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t—’

Medea broke in. ‘That’s enough. Control yourself, Christos, there are children here.’

‘Women. The bane of my life, a coven of women!’ He walked away into the kitchen and they heard the clatter of something being swept off the table.

Sylvie set off after him but thought better of it. Kelly tried to stand. She was shaking all over. Medea was attempting to calm the children, who were whimpering. Kelly looked at her; the shock on her mother-in-law’s face was plain to see. The gun had been as much a surprise to Medea as it had been to herself. It dawned on her that she had been living in a house with a loaded gun in it. Christos must have hidden it well, customs hadn’t found it in their search.

Sylvie and Kelly faced each other. ‘Nearly where?’ asked Kelly. She stood up taller. ‘So nearly
where
?’

Sylvie had a dusting of plaster in her hair that made it look grey and aged her fifteen years. A hard look of hatred had formed in her eyes. The fiasco with the fish tank was probably the first thing that had seriously driven a rift between the husband and the lover, so it was turning into Kelly’s fault.

‘I will win, Kelly, make no mistake,’ she spat.

‘There’s nothing you can win. Don’t you understand?’ Kelly found it in herself still to laugh. ‘He’s married to me, remember. And despite what he might have said, he’s never going to let me go.’

A harsh sound came out of Sylvie’s mouth at that. ‘No, he’ll never let you go. He’ll never love anyone as much as he loves the lonely and beautiful—’

‘Mummy?’ They were interrupted in their battle by Yannis, standing next to the grand piano, his bottom lip quivering. Kelly ran towards him and hugged him tight, trying to soothe away his sobs. He held something hard and spiky in his hand that poked her in the stomach. She pulled away and looked down. It was the competitor’s ship.

‘Don’t worry, Yannis, it’s over now. No one will hurt you. We can repair the fish tank, it was an accident.’

She felt someone coming closer; Sylvie was wading across the room towards her, her mouth a tight line. Sylvie opened her mouth to say something, but the words died on her lips. At that moment the streams of water, pulled down through the building by gravity and the Victorian gaps and fissures in the brickwork and beams, hit the electricity cables and the fuse box and the power shorted and the alarms went off.

R
icky had booked in to the hotel two days ago, and was still getting used to the way the wealthy lived. He’d asked the receptionist for an upper floor, the higher the better. He wanted to be close to her, to have a room right under where she lived. The receptionist had huffed and puffed and turned to consult an electronic board and tapped at the screen with nails that were too long. He’d asked for a single and discovered that there was nothing as straightforward as a single or a double any more, rooms were Superiors, Super Kings, or Club Queens. He had not a clue what she was talking about. In the end, since everything seemed to be masquerading as something else, he took the cheapest room on the top floor that overlooked the railway.

He had spent hours wandering the hotel, getting a feel for how it all worked, the service lifts, the staff shift changes, the plain doors down the side of the building where the workers hung around and smoked. There were conference rooms and lobbies, different cafés and restaurants. His old habits were beginning to reassert themselves: a desire to understand how an organisation worked, where the weak spots were, where the angle was.

Now he was having an early evening whisky and ginger in the bar when he saw two maintenance men hurrying across the lobby to the service lift. No one hurried in this hotel unless there was a reason. It unsettled the paying clientele. But these two weren’t thinking about disguise. He downed his drink and followed. He watched the lift climb to the top floor.

He took the next lift and arrived at the top floor only moments behind the maintenance guys. They were talking in the doorway of one of the rooms. He walked over. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Oh, nothing serious.’ The guy was probably lying, but Ricky wasn’t going to condemn him for that. ‘There’s a flood from the penthouse upstairs. Fish tank’s exploded, or something. We’ve got complaints about water dripping into the hotel rooms below. All in a day’s work, I suppose.’

They all instinctively looked up at the ceiling, expecting to see something.

‘What’s that noise?’ Ricky asked.

‘Their alarm, probably. The water’s shorted the whole place.’

Ricky left the workers there. As soon as he hit the stairs, he began to run to the ground floor.

I
t was the smell that hit the Wolf first, the unmistakable odour of a novice at sea – the tangy notes of vomit, of stale food, someone enclosed in a small space for too long, and not enjoying it. He stepped into the room and the door swung shut behind him with a precise-sounding click. A woman was lying on the bed, the sheets rumpled beneath her. Magazines were discarded on the floor and there was a bucket nearby. She had her eyes half closed but they widened with fear and surprise when she saw the man who had entered. She began to scrabble further up the bed away from him.

Her big round belly had pushed her jogging bottoms below it and her T-shirt above it. They stared at each other for a couple of seconds before she gave a little scream and the Wolf, in a delayed reaction, put his hands up as an apology.

‘I just want to talk, just to talk. You speak English, yes?’

‘Yes, of course I speak English.’

She was young, her hair very dark and straight and hanging long behind her. She was pretty in a simple way and wore no wedding ring.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Isabella.’

‘How old are you?’

‘I’m twenty-two.’

‘Can I get you a drink of water, juice?’

She shook her head.

‘You’ll need something sweet to make you feel better. Bad weather at sea.’

‘Why are you in my cabin?’

‘Why are you going to London?’

‘You first. Why have you broken into my cabin?’

‘There’s a situation on the ship.’

Her eyes widened with surprise and he could sense that fear wasn’t far behind. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We’ve got a man overboard. Your man.’

She looked like she was going to cry. ‘I want to see the captain.’ She was getting agitated.

‘The captain is looking for a man presumed dead and steering a ship with millions of pounds of cargo on board through a severe storm. He isn’t going to see you. Instead, you’ve got me.’

She didn’t answer.

‘When we dock, Isabella, there will be customs and police.’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘No one wants to be asked a lot of awkward questions, considering what’s in there.’ He stared at her swollen stomach and she shifted uncomfortably under his gaze and pulled her T-shirt down over the bulge. ‘I just need to know why you’re on this ship. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to know.’

‘I’m going to see my family.’

‘What family, exactly?’

She crossed her legs and looked defensive. ‘My family.’

The Wolf took a chair and sat down. He was taking his time, there was no need to rush. ‘You need to tell me who your family is.’

‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’

The Wolf looked at her and the ship emitted a low groan like an animal in labour. ‘I think we both know that you do.’ He leaned back in the chair as a flurry of water hit the porthole. ‘Neither of us is going anywhere. We’ve got hours and hours to go like this. Let’s at least distract ourselves. Tell me your story.’

T
he women had to concentrate on the strictly practical and get the alarm turned off. Medea and Sylvie hurried downstairs to the fuse box and the emergency numbers. They didn’t want the security service to come and see the state of the living room ceiling and what had caused it. Kelly splashed over to the far end of the room and picked up the gun from under a window. It was heavier than she had expected, and colder. She put it in the pocket of her tunic and felt it stretch the material with its weight.