Checkmate (43 page)

I paced up and down my bedroom, the phone in my hand. 'What should I do? Call the police?'

'For your own daughter? Are you mad?'

'Then what should I do?' I asked, frantically.

'Sephy, calm down,' Mother tried to soothe.

'How can I calm down? You didn't hear what they said, Mother. I did.'

'What made you listen in on the extension in the first place? D'you listen every time Callie Rose makes a phone call?'

'No, of course not. I was napping and something woke me up. I thought maybe I'd missed the phone ringing, so I picked it up and I heard Callie talking to Dad's new wife, Grace.'

'She's hardly new, dear. They've been married for over a decade.'

'That's not the point. Callie Rose is up to something terrible and I can guess who put her up to it. After she got off the phone to Grace, she immediately phoned some guy and he congratulated her on getting in to see Dad. Mother,
I'm scared to death. I think . . . I think Callie was talking to Jude and he kept calling her "soldier". Oh my God! You . . . you don't think Callie had anything to do with what happened to the Defence Minister? Or maybe the bombs that went off at the airport last weekend? No, she couldn't've . . . my baby 'wouldn't do anything like that . . . Mother, I'm so—'

'Persephone, get a grip,' Mother snapped. 'Look, d'you want me to come over?'

'No. Just tell me what to do.'

'You and my granddaughter need to sit down and talk. Really talk.'

'How? She can't bear to be in the same room as me. I enter, she leaves,' I said. 'She'd never listen to anything I have to say.'

'Then we have to find a way to make her listen.'

'How? It's never going to happen, short of locking her in a room with me.'

'Then that's what we'll do. You come over to my house tomorrow morning at nine. I'll invite Callie Rose over at ten and then the two of you can talk.'

'She'll leave the moment she sees me,' I said.

'Then she won't see you until it's too late for her to do anything about it. You can hide out in my cellar and when Callie goes into it, I'll lock the door.'

'Why the cellar? It's freezing down there,' I protested.

'It's the only room in my house which has a lock on the outside of the door,' said Mother.

'How can you sound so calm?' I cried. 'Callie's going to do something really stupid. Something that's going to ruin her life. I can feel it.'

'Then, we'll have to make sure that doesn't happen,' said Mother.

'How? Jude has got his hooks into her. If she doesn't do what he wants tomorrow, she will next week or next month. He won't stop till he ruins her life because he knows that's the only sure way to get to me. It's just like him to organize something for Callie's birthday. That man doesn't miss a trick.'

It was very quiet at the other end of the phone.

'Mother . . . ?'

'You just be here tomorrow at nine and leave the rest to me,' said Mother at last.

'What can you do?' I said with more open scepticism than I'd intended. 'Mother, I didn't mean it that way. It's just that you're . . . you're ill and

'I'm ill, Persephone, not ga-ga. Now, you're going to have to trust me. OK?'

'I——'

'D'you trust me or not?'

'Yes, Mother.'

'When we've finished here, get Callie to call me. I want to talk to her. And do me a favour, Sephy. Stop calling me Mother.'

'But I've always called you Mother,' I frowned.

'Yes, and I've always hated it. Call me Mum.'

'Yes, Mum.'

'See you tomorrow, Sephy.'

'Yes, Mum.'

'And Sephy,'

'Yes, Mum?'

'I love you.'

Mum put down the phone immediately before I could utter a word. She loved me . . . She hadn't said that for the longest time. Not since I was a teenager. Not since before Callum died. Mum loved me. And just like that, the wild panic I'd felt subsided a little. A very little. But I was still scared to death. I loved Mother . . . Mum very much, but even if her plan to get me and Callie Rose talking to each other worked, she still couldn't sort out our other problem with Jude. No one would be able to do that. Jude was too clever, too powerful. But she obviously had something in mind. One last appeal to Meggie to talk to her son perhaps? Whatever it was, I didn't need sharply honed instincts to know that one way or another, the following day, Callie Rose's birthday, was going to be a turning point in all our lives.

My mobile phone rang for the second time in five minutes. How strange to be so popular this late in the day . . .

'Hello?'

'It's me.'

'Hello, you!'

'What're you up to tomorrow, birthday girl?' he asked.

'Nana Jasmine just phoned. She's having some friends round for lunch tomorrow and she wants me to go round in the morning and help her.'

'What happened to her cook and that other woman, her P.A.?'

'They're both away apparently,' I said.

'So are you going?'

'I guess so. She's not been too well, so she isn't all that strong at the moment. She said she asked Mum but Mum's busy. So that leaves me. I thought I'd hang out on her beach for a while, then head to her house.'

'Want some company?'

'Well, I'm not—'

'Don't say no. I want to see you tomorrow. Please?'

I surprised myself by saying, 'Yes, OK then. But only on the beach. And I can't stay long
–
I have to be somewhere else in the afternoon.'

'Fine with me. I'll meet you there then.'

'You'll have to go right round Nana Jasmine's house to get to the beach. You still remember the way?'

'Of course. See you tomorrow.'

He rang off. I wondered why I'd said yes. Did I really want to see him on my last day? My head told me no, but my heart knew my head was lying. It would be the last time I ever saw him and I wanted a fresh memory of the two of us together to take with me into the night. If I'd been asked which one out of Lucas or Tobey I'd want with me on my last day on Earth, I would've replied almost without thinking. How strange that when it got down to it, my heart's choice wasn't the same as my head's.

Letter-writing has never been my forte, but no matter. Something tells me this letter will get all the attention it deserves. It's taken me long enough to write, but the tone as well as the information contained within had to be just right. He might be able to suppress the letter at one or two newspapers where he can call in favours, but surely not the whole lot? Of course, the beauty of a computer and a printer is the joy of typing once and then making lots of copies. I did think about emailing the letter to every news desk in the country that published an Internet address, but I'd probably make a mess of that. And emails can be too easily dismissed as being the work of cranks or hackers or malicious coders.

I am not a malicious coder.

I am a mean, malevolent ex-wife.

I'll make sure that if Kamal's lot do come to power, he will not be joining the party. The moment the contents of this letter become generally known, Kamal will be finished. He'll be out in the political wilderness, never to return.

Now I have a few other details to take care of before tomorrow morning. The first thing I need to do is have a heart to heart with Meggie McGregor. I need to find out where her son is and I'm going to need her help.

I can't get to sleep. Not that I expected to be out like a light but this wide-awake feeling isn't pleasant. Two-thirty in the morning and sleep is just a memory. I'm never going to be able to drift off now. My mind won't wind down. I keep thinking about all the things I'm going to miss. Both my nanas and Lucas and Tobey and chocolate ice cream and the sea and sunrises and sunsets. And my mum. In spite of everything, I'm going to miss my mum. I think she's my major regret. I wish . . . I wish we could've had something different, something
more.
And now that'll never happen. But as Uncle Jude said, sometimes sacrifices have to be made.

And I'm so tired of all this.

So if I have to lie on my back and stare into the darkness until the morning comes, then so be it.

This time tomorrow, I'll be getting all the sleep I need.

I can't do this for much longer. The pain is fiercely intense now, so bad that I want to throw my head back and howl like a wounded animal. I want to flop down onto the hotel bed and curl up into a ball. I want to press the switch and end my torment . . .

But I can't.

I promised Meggie as much.

I took two more painkillers out of my pocket and held them clutched tight in my free hand. I was ready to cram them into my mouth but I'd already given in and taken some earlier. Any more would definitely dull my reflexes and I couldn't afford to give Jude any quarter. One slip on my part and it'd be my last.

'Meggie, what d'you want me to do?' I asked quietly.

Maybe if I lowered the timbre of my voice, I could disguise just how truly vulnerable I was.

'I don't know, Jasmine. I wish I did, but I don't know anything,' Meggie replied. 'Except that I'm staying here.'

'Mum, no,' said Jude, urgently. 'You need to leave. I can take care of myself

'Meggie, you can't stay,' I told her, ignoring Jude. 'Sephy is locked in my cellar with Callie Rose. You have to let them out.'

Meggie regarded me with a sad smile.

'You knew I'd want to stay, didn't you?' she said softly.

'I suspected you might.' I nodded. 'You have to leave.'

'And if I say no?' asked Meggie.

'Then we all leave this room.'

'And if I say yes?'

'Then you leave this room alone.'

'I see.' Meggie turned back to her son. We all sat in silence for at least half a minute. 'Jude, tell me one thing worth dying for?'

'Lots of things are worth dying for, Mum,' said Jude, scathingly. 'The
L.M.
, freedom, the cause . . . I know you haven't forgotten what they did to Dad and Callum.'

Meggie's eyes sparkled with unshed tears. 'Now tell me one thing worth living for,' she said.

Jude stared at her. He opened his mouth like a drowning fish. 'I—' Jude managed the one word before his mouth snapped shut.

Meggie nodded sadly. 'That's what I thought. You deliberately went after Callie Rose to turn her against Sephy, and please don't insult my intelligence by denying it.'

'I wasn't going to,' he said.

'That's the first honest thing you've said to me in years,' Meggie told him. 'Jude, tell me the truth, did you murder Cara Imega?'

Jude sat back and regarded his mum, his eyes dark and cold as the bottom of the ocean. 'So we're back to that again? You've already made up your mind, Mum, so why bother asking?'

'I need to hear it, Jude. Did you murder that girl?'

'I didn't murder anyone, Mum,' Jude said with a calculated smile. 'Murder implies I unlawfully took the life of another person. All I did was kill a Cross.'

My gasp of horror was lost beneath Meggie's. The tears she could no longer hold back slid mournfully down her cheeks. Poor Meggie. My heart wept for her. There but for the grace of God went Minerva or Sephy or even me. What must've happened to Jude to make him hate all of us so much? I, in my complacency, was probably part of the problem. I cringed to remember how, a lifetime ago, I'd told Sarah, my personal assistant, to fire Meggie because she hadn't provided me with the alibi I'd needed. Was that when all this began with Jude? If I hadn't fired her, would we all be sitting here now? The hatred Jude had inside was far worse than the cancer eating me up. For him there was no hope, no reprieve, no remission. No act of degradation or violence would ever be enough for him. His hatred fed on itself and the more it devoured him, the more it wanted. And Jude had never seen that. Or maybe he just didn't care.

My heart wept for him.

My heart wept for all of us.

'This bomb you gave to Callie Rose, who was it for?' I asked.

Jude turned contemptuous eyes on me. 'I didn't give Callie a bomb, she made it.'

'Who was it for?'

'As you're wearing the thing, I'd say that was academic,' said Jude.

'It was for Kamal Hadley, wasn't it?' I said. 'You wanted to make a martyr out of my ex-husband.'

Jude turned away from me. He wasn't going to deign to throw another word in my direction. No matter. I could guess.

Jude was a fool. He wanted to deify my husband and his particular brand of noxious politics. What did Jude think would happen if Kamal was murdered by the
L.M.
? Ah, but it wouldn't be the
L.M.,
would it? It'd be at the hand of his own granddaughter. And what kind of statement would that make?

Meggie stood up wearily. 'Jude, I want you to know something. I want you to remember this. I love you very, very much.'

Jude didn't reply. He didn't know how. Meggie bent down to kiss her son on his cheek, before straightening up. Turning to face me she said, 'I'm leaving. Alone. I'm saying yes.'

She headed for the door.

'Meggie,' I called after her without looking away from her son. 'Tell Sephy and Callie Rose . . . explain this to them. And tell them I love them very much.'

The door of the room opened. Moments later it clicked shut with a symbolic finality.

Jude and I were alone again.