‘Yes, I understand. But we really don’t need them,’ she says, and puts the phone down.
I raise my eyebrows. ‘What’s your charity turning down?’
‘Vaccines that are almost at the use by date. A woman representing the pharmaceutical giants wanted to flog these vaccines to us. And when I said no, she was willing to give them away for free.’ She scrunches her forehead. ‘What’s that all about?’
I smile. Maybe another time I will tell her about that scam. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m keeping busy,’ she says bravely, as two large tears roll down her face.
I wipe them away with my thumbs. ‘Good. You keep busy. Is Billie coming over?’
‘Yes, she’ll be here at ten.’
‘Good.’
‘So you’re off to see Jay.’
‘Yes. I’ll call you after and let you know what’s going on.’
‘Could it be a trick?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh, my darling, I love you so much.’
‘Wait for my phone call.’
‘Always.’
I kiss her on the forehead, breathe in the scent of her, to fortify me on the most difficult day of my life.
The meeting with Jay is over quickly. Obviously, he thinks I’ve taken leave of my senses—it is in every ‘uh’, ‘um’ and uncomprehending pause that finds its way into his sentences. But he is too discreet to come right out and say it. I leave his office clutching copies of the papers Victoria requested. Copies of Sorab’s return, copies of my freedom from the world I somehow became trapped in. I feel a flicker of excitement inside me, but I hold back.
Too much can still go wrong.
I get outside on the street and a long black limousine with heavily tinted windows stops in front of me. The back door closest to me opens. I am not afraid of death. I never have been. I’ll do what I have to do to keep my family safe. I bend down, look inside, take a deep breath, and get into it.
‘Monfort,’ I state quietly.
‘And what should I call you?’ he asks tonelessly.
‘Hopefully, you won’t see me again, and that will be a moot question.’
He smiles. In the daylight his skin is particularly repulsive. White and translucent, the veins grass green. Like the damp underside of a frog.
‘But you will see me again.’
‘After today I’m finished.’
‘I’m afraid your services are still required. Stepping off the train is a dangerous business.’
I look at my platinum Greubel Forsey Tourbillion, acquired for a cool half a million dollars at Christie’s Important Watches auction two autumns ago. I take it off and place the timepiece on the console between Monfort and me. To anybody not in the know the gesture is meaningless, but to the true insider and the practitioner of dark esoteric energy, he will understand it perfectly. The gesture is unmistakable.
Then I get out of the car, close the door, and begin to walk in the opposite direction. Ten yards away Brian makes a U-turn and stops beside me. I get in.
‘Take me to that bitch,’ I say.
Twenty-Nine
Blake Law Barrington
I turn away from the window when I hear her come in. Not fast. Slowly. This is the last part. I am almost free. The lock on the chain is about to break.
The door closes behind her. She is dressed in a black and white suit, and her trademark black pearls encircle her throat. Her hair is shining and loose around her shoulders. Our eyes meet. It is impossible to think of her as anything else but my greatest enemy.
I hold out my phone.
She doesn’t say a word. Looks at the papers I have spread out on the plastic table, and takes the phone from me. Our fingers don’t touch.
She dials, waits for the connection and says just three words: ‘The Speculative Woman.’ Then she ends the call and puts it down on the table between us. I sit and so does she. Neither of us says anything. After a while she picks up the papers that are on the table and casually, as if they are a magazine that she does not care too much for, glances through them.
I turn my head and look outside. It is a beautiful day. The sun is shining. I am so tense I feel the tension inside my body wanting to manifest in some physical way. I take shallow breaths and control myself. The only sounds are of her flipping uninterestedly through the papers. After a while even she cannot be bothered to fake interest in them. She tosses them on the table and looks in my direction. I don’t turn to look at her so she, too, turns her head and looks out of the window
Twenty minutes later my phone rings. My heart is thudding so loud she can probably hear it. I pick it up and Brian says, ‘We got him.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, my voice sounding thick and guttural. For the first time since Brian called to say that Sorab had been kidnapped that lump of ice in my chest melts.
I look up at her. She is watching me curiously. As if I am an oddity she cannot understand. Or she is a child. The look unnerves me. I have arranged for her to be murdered. She is my sister.
‘Siblings used to kill each other for power and inheritance,’ she says.
‘I don’t want anything from your father. It’s all yours.’
‘Sometimes siblings just want revenge.’
‘Is that what you want, Victoria?’
‘I did.’
‘What’s changed?’
‘You have friends in high places.’
Surprised, I stare at her. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You didn’t know, did you?’
‘Know what?’ I can feel the tension coming back into my body.
‘They are not done with you.’ And she smiles. A cruel taunting smile. ‘You can’t ride off into the sunset just yet, Blake.’
I stand. ‘Are you ready to go?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Let’s go then.’
She takes the papers on the desk and I ring the bell.
The nurse comes and opens the door. We walk to the reception desk. The doctor is hovering about waiting for us. I nod at him. He nods back and smiles at Victoria. She smiles back and then we are walking out into the sunshine.
Victoria lifts her face toward the sun and breathes a sigh of satisfaction.
I look at her. She is my sister. The thought is foreign. I can’t murder her.
She turns and looks at me. ‘If she had not come we would have mated and bred. And produced something special.’
I shudder inwardly. ‘We might have produced monsters.’
She smiles. ‘You don’t understand. That’s what they want.’
A hired chauffeured Bentley comes to a stop at the bottom of the steps. ‘Here’s your ride. Goodbye, Victoria.’
She shrugs and walks down the rest of the steps and gets smoothly into the back of the car. The driver closes the door and tips his head toward me before he drives off. For a moment I stand on the steps and lift my face toward the warm rays of the sun as Victoria had done. I can’t do it. I can’t kill another person in cold blood.
I take out my mobile and call him. He picks up the call, but does not say anything.
‘Abort the plan. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. Plan aborted,’ the voice on the other side says quietly.
My breath comes out in a great rush of relief, ‘Thank you.’
I feel a sudden shift inside me, a strange letting go. All the actions that have brought me to this moment have been sanctioned by a higher power than their demonic God. He did not win. Never once in my nightmares did the horse manage to break down the flimsiest of wooden doors and come to me. And never again would he be able to.
I will take my little family and go where no one knows us.