‘Take whatever you want,’ he said.
‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Take it!’
‘You know I’m not here for that.’
‘There’s money in the kitchen!’
I paused. ‘You remember where Mary keeps the money now?’
He realized what he had said even before he’d finished the sentence. I could see him wince, like the air had been punched out of him. His shield cracked a little.
‘Malcolm?’ Mary said, a small voice from behind me.
He glanced at his wife as the crack started fragmenting, the shield disintegrating, piece by piece. After a few seconds, his body relaxed. Straightened. He smiled and held out his hands.
‘You got me, David,’ he said.
This time his voice was different.
The same one I’d heard in Bristol.
‘Malcolm?’
Mary again, even weaker this time. I looked back over my shoulder. Her eyes were fixed on her husband, tears running down her face. When I turned back, Malcolm was staring at me, his face, his physicality, changing in front of my eyes. He seemed to broaden, to fill out, nothing of him sagging any more. He ran a hand through his black hair, the grey flecks passing between his fingers, and then the fading shell of a dying man was gone completely.
‘You’re him,’ I said. ‘You’re the one Jade talked about. You’re the reason they couldn’t kill Alex. That’s how you were on to me from the beginning.’
He shrugged, glanced at Mary. Back to me.
‘The first time you came here, I spoke to Andrew and told him it might come to this. That was why he sent that… freak down to visit you in Cornwall. We wanted to see what kind of a man you were. When Legion told us about the photo you had of Alex, I knew we might have to fight you. We were protecting a secret, and part of the secret was with you. By the time you made it down to Bristol, to the house we had down there, I thought decisive action was needed. I needed to sort things out myself.’
I ran a hand across my face, across the bruises put there by him.
‘How did you get to Bristol without Mary knowing?’
‘Mary’s a nurse, David. She works shifts. The people she gets in here to look after me…’ A pause. A smile. ‘They’re fucking monkeys. Useless. That night I came to see you… I drugged them.’ He brushed himself down, like he was blowing dust away from an old book cover. ‘I wanted to see first hand what we were dealing with.’
I looked at him.
‘How did you become involved?’
‘Involved?’ he said, smirking. ‘I didn’t become involved, David. I ran the fucking thing.’
‘The farm?’
‘Everything. Where do you think Al’s money went?’
‘You took the five hundred grand?’
‘I took more than that.’
‘How much?’
‘It doesn’t matter now. It’s untraceable. The money’s been through the system and back out again. Al threatened us, threatened all of us. I took what was mine.’
‘It wasn’t yours.’
‘Don’t take the moral high ground, David. You have blood on your hands, remember. More than me.’
‘I doubt that.’
‘Whatever helps you sleep at night. Buying a farm and a bar and renting a flat with some stolen money — that’s not the same as murder, David. It’s not the same at all.’
‘You murdered Al.’
‘What?’
Mary’s voice from behind me.
‘No, I didn’t,’ he said.
‘Malc?’
He glanced at her, then back at me.
‘It was your idea,’ I said to him. ‘You wanted to do it. But you didn’t have the balls. You pushed Alex into doing what you wanted then turned your back on him when he cried out for help.’
‘I never asked him to do anything.’
‘You put the seed of an idea in his head, hoped and prayed he would do it, even told him to do it when he started having doubts — and then turned your back on him when he did exactly what you wanted. Have you any idea what you did to him?’
‘Malcolm?’
Mary again, her voice barely audible. I glanced back at her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, her face white and fixed, almost frozen by the shock. She swayed a little and placed a hand on the wall. I turned back to Malcolm — his eyes hadn’t left me.
He shook his head. ‘You amuse me, David. You’ve no idea what it’s like to raise a child. No idea. I loved Alex, loved him, but he was reckless. What he did was stupid. Talking about it and doing it are two entirely different things. He offered to talk to Al, not to drive a car through him. When he came to me, he came expecting me to believe in what he had done. But what he had done was wrong. I told him to go somewhere and lay low. It ripped the heart out of me, but it was the best way to protect him.’
‘It was the best way to protect yourself.’
‘I was protecting our son.’
‘You sent Alex to the farm. You weren’t protecting him.’
‘He turns up on Michael’s doorstep after five years — it wasn’t going to be long before he started leaving a trail. I wanted him away from the places that could hurt him.’
‘You tried to erase his memory.’
‘You’ve got it all wrong, David. I protected myself at the beginning. I had to. When the police came calling I was very focused. When Alex’s car turned up in Dover they came here and asked some questions about Al, but by then I’d decided to use this disease as cover, which made it difficult for them. Mary answered most of their questions. She could handle that. They were generic questions. I could tell they didn’t have a clue where to start. But it wasn’t them I was worried about. They were the front line. If it got any further, they would bring out their best soldiers. That was what I was really worried about. But, as it turned out, we never heard from the police again. And by that stage — unfortunately — I had chosen to take this route. And I’ve had to stick to it.’
‘And this is it now — one big lie?’
He didn’t reply. But I could see the answer in his face. This wasn’t it. It was going to be Mary waking up one day and finding he was gone.
‘No one wanted him on the farm,’ Malcolm said. ‘No one. Andrew fought against me, so did Legion, even Michael didn’t know if it was a good idea. Michael. This was a boy I’d known since he attended the church down the road. A boy who watched his brother get stabbed to death dealing ecstasy. A boy who tried to get away, go travelling, but came back because he had nothing here and nothing out there. His parents were dead. And I took him in, told him about what we were doing and what a difference he could make to our cause. I changed his life. Turned it around. And when I asked for one thing, he fought me on it.’
‘Michael has some humanity, whatever his flaws,’ I said. ‘He could see what you were doing to Alex. To all of them.’
‘Malcolm?’ Mary said from behind us again.
He didn’t acknowledge her. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘You knew what they would do to him.’
‘I knew because they told me,’ he said. ‘After he left, I thought about Alex every day for five years. I thought he was dead. Then when he came back, when he went to see Michael, I knew the next stage of his life might be even harder for us than the last. Because I had to learn to know my son again through other people. Through Michael and Andrew and the others on the farm. And Alex had to forget in order to get on with the process of living. It was painful, but I helped him. I gave him a way out. But he couldn’t know the farm was mine. He couldn’t know I knew about him. It would have been too difficult for him.’