‘He objected?’ said Max.
‘Strenuously,’ said Redmond. ‘But his co-workers rounded on him and said he had to. So… he did.’
Christ, thought Annie.
‘And so,’ said Redmond with a sigh, ‘the people who had once been Sam Farrell’s friends attacked him, and the locomotive backed into him. Crushed his chest and stomach as flat as a pancake. Killed him.’
‘And then Arthur Biggs was so tormented with guilt that he hung himself,’ said Annie, thinking of what Sandy had told her, and that she had to find the Biggs family and speak to them.
‘Did he? I didn’t know that.’
Steve was coming back down the stairs in his size elevens, the treads creaking under his weight as he did so. He caught Max’s eye, shook his head, and then went off further along the hall and started looking in the downstairs rooms. Mitchell sent a look at Max; Max stared him down. Mitchell left the room, went along the hall toward the kitchen.
‘Tea, anyone?’ asked Redmond, and he stood up.
‘No thanks,’ said Annie and Max together.
Then all the lights went out.
92
Utter blackness descended. Annie froze in her chair. Something brushed by her leg, there was a scrabble of movement, and then someone grabbed her arm. She let out a shriek.
‘It’s me,’ said Max, and then Steve was in the room and the wavering light of the torch was blinding Annie. Steve cast the beam around. ‘That other geezer shot past me out the back door,’ he said.
So – no Mitchell.
Steve cast the torch’s beam around the room.
And no Redmond, either. He was gone.
‘That bastard makes my skin crawl,’ said Max as he started the car and drove them back to Holland Park.
‘Me too,’ said Annie. She wasn’t convinced that Redmond had told them the complete truth about what had happened to Sam Farrell. Redmond was a game player. You couldn’t trust a word that came out of his mouth.
Steve had searched everywhere in the house and the grounds, but Jackie wasn’t there. So where the hell was he? And what had made him scream that way? Annie shivered to think of it, what could have happened to him. All right, he was a walking disaster, drunk and disgusting most of the time, but he’d been making an effort to shape up over this last week or so, and he’d been on her side when no one else seemed to be.
She thought of Redmond, sitting there like butter wouldn’t melt. But she knew that bastard of old, just like Max did. That cool polished exterior hid a squirming worm-fest of nastiness that could be unleashed at a moment’s notice. Priest, pervert or crook, Redmond’s basic personality never changed. He was disturbed, and disturbing, and there was history between them. Bad history. Annie could never forget that it had been Constantine who had tried to kill both Redmond and his twin sister Orla back in the seventies. And it had been Annie’s own daughter, Layla, who had finally put a stop to Orla’s sad, twisted life.
‘Are you going to come in?’ asked Annie when Max pulled up outside her house.
‘What, to hear more tall tales?’ Max sighed.
Annie looked at him in exasperation. Before Jackie’s phone call, Max had been about to make love to her. She knew it. Now he was cold again.
‘We can talk,’ she said. ‘Can’t we?’
Truthfully, she didn’t want to be alone, not after this evening, not after hearing that godawful scream and staring into Redmond’s expressionless eyes.
He shrugged. ‘If you want,’ he said, and got out of the car.
Annie got out too, shutting the door after her, crossing the pavement, starting up the steps. There was something, a bundle of rags, something like that, near the door, lit by the carriage light over it.
‘What the f-’ she started, coming to a halt as her feet met a puddle of dark oil.
They had found Jackie.
93
Jackie could almost have been asleep. He was sitting, legs sprawled open, his back to the navy-blue double doors of the house, his head slumped forward on his chest.
He’s asleep, she told herself. Or drugged? She was hoping against hope that this could be true.
Max passed her where she stood frozen on the steps. And then she realized. It wasn’t oil at her feet, it was blood, and it had flowed down the steps from Jackie’s body. Unable to move, too shocked to move, she watched as Max crouched down by Jackie, lifted his head and then…
‘Oh, holy shit!’ said Annie, her hand flying to her mouth and bile surging into her throat. Jackie’s neck had been slashed open and his shirtfront was soaked through with blood. She could smell the coppery stench of it now; it hit her in a wave.
Max let Jackie’s head fall back down on to his chest. It was like releasing a puppet’s strings, Annie thought. There was no life left in Jackie; he was dead.
‘Stay there a minute,’ said Max, and got out his key and opened the door.
Jackie fell back across the threshold and lay there, inert. With Annie’s body blocking anyone’s view from the road, Max dragged Jackie into the hall, then motioned for Annie to come on in. She did, stepping around the dark waterfall of blood, gagging, her feet leaden, her heart pounding dully in her chest.
She closed the door behind her, flicked on the hall lights and looked down at Jackie. The brilliance of the chandeliers only served to highlight the awful pallor of his face, the deep wound across his neck, the half-open lids showing filmed-over eyes that saw nothing.
‘Shit,’ she moaned.
Max was crossing to the hall table, snatching up the telephone. She didn’t even listen to what he said, her mind was spinning out of control and all she could think was that this was down to her. All evening, she’d been afraid of something like this, and now here it was. Jackie had helped her – and he’d died for it.
Max returned to her side, took her arm. There was blood all down his shirt and on his jacket. ‘Come on, let’s go in here,’ he said, and guided her across the hall and into the study, shutting the door firmly after them, turning on the lights.
‘Chris and Tone are on their way,’ he said.
Annie nodded. This had happened before here, this procedure. A clean-up. A dead body shipped discreetly out and disposed of. Which meant no Christian burial for Jackie Tulliver, just a trip out into the depths of the English Channel or down into the concrete foundations of a new building or a motorway bridge.
‘Oh God,’ said Annie, sitting down behind the desk and sinking her head into her hands. She looked up at Max. ‘Do you think Redmond…?’
‘Dunno. Would he have had the time? What about his creep of a mate, that Mitchell sort. He’d been up to something, before he came in the back door. Could be that this is his handiwork.’
‘I can’t believe this.’
‘Shit happens,’ said Max.
‘Is that all you’ve got to say? Jackie’s dead, and you say “shit happens”? That poor little bastard, he was mourning his mum and drinking to numb the pain, and all your lot, all you rotten fuckers, you turned your backs on him because you thought he was a loose cannon and not to be trusted.’
Max gave her a long look. ‘He wasn’t to be trusted. He turned into a drunk. You can’t ever trust drunks.’
‘I think he would have got himself back on track, with some help.’
‘Well, that ain’t going to happen now.’