Christopher Brookmyre (57 page)

'Okay, fired is a little harsh. But definitely suspended. Or rather, indefinitely suspended. Mrs Fleming has informed me you're under the misapprehension that there's something you could still be taught about computers if you went to college. As I believe the only way you could be disabused of this notion is to actually go there, I am prepared to facilitate it in any way I can. And given that I now understand you're not quite as adept as your "data salvaging"

achievement suggested, then who knows?'

Lex felt her eyes fill up. Her throat was still swollen, but she managed three weeping, whispering words.

'Thank you, sir.'

'There is a condition.'

'Uh-huh,' she managed.

'Stay in touch. Because once you've gone back to Canada, got your degree, worked in an office for a while and generally acquainted yourself with how tedious normal life actually is, there will still be a job waiting for you here.'

'Sure,' she sniffed. 'You'd always be able to find me anyway.'

'This is true,' he said, and hung up.

'Is everything okay?' Rebekah asked.

'Yeah,' Lex replied. 'Everything's okay.'

Jane found Bett in the drawing room where they'd first met, standing by those huge windows and looking out upon the gardens in the twilight. A call had come through from the hospital, which he had transferred to her in her bedroom where she was getting ready for dinner. A final meal here, a time to say thanks, a time to say goodbye. His voice had been soft but a little stiff as he informed her of the call, much as he'd sounded any time the subject of Tom came up. She knew then that he'd be in that room, knew that he would be by those windows. He had his sanctuary upstairs, but that was where he retreated to be alone; this was the place he felt most robust in dealing with others.

'Tom's awake,' she reported. 'I'd better go in and see him. I know we're supposed to have dinner, but . . . '

'Not at all. I understand. I'll drive you.'

'No, no, never bother. Best that I go myself,' she suggested.

'Of course, whatever you think. But before you do, before you see him, we have to talk.'

Jane wanted to procrastinate, tell him she had to go right away and that they could talk later, but she knew neither of them would buy that. She took a seat at the big table. 'Okay,' she said.

Bett walked over and sat down next to her.

'You've taught me a great deal this past week or so, Jane,' he said.

'I've taught
you
?'

'Yes. And I've very much enjoyed having you around. Which is why I have to ask, before you see your husband, whether I might yet be able to tempt you to stay.'

Jane thought this sounded as desirable as it sounded insane, and her selfdefence mechanisms went into operation upon reflex.

'We were two people thrown together in extremely emotional circumstances,' she said, thinking aloud. 'I don't believe in fairy tales, Bett. I can't see a happy ever after for the two of us here in your mansion.'

'I don't believe in fairy tales, either, and you should know that. What happened between us meant a lot to me, but I'm not kidding myself. Neither of us is exactly naive.'

'Then why are you asking me to stay?'

'Because I just let my most talented protegee go and I need a replacement. I'm offering you a job.'

'Oh come on, Bett. I survived what we did but I don't think I'd be so brave or daring when it's not my nearest and dearest that's at stake.'

'Neither do I, and I believe your judgement and discipline would be the better for it. You're a natural, Jane. You were born for this.'

She looked at his face, realised he wasn't kidding. Bett was never kidding. That, of course, left deluded, but he was never that either. And she knew the only reason she was trying to convince herself that this idea wasn't viable was that she wanted it so much. It was like all her life she'd had dreams she could fly, and every morning she woke up and found her feet stuck to the ground; but this past couple of weeks, she had flown, she had soared, and now that she knew what that felt like, she wasn't coming back down again if she could help it.

'You can stay here until you find a place of your own. I can offer good wages, foreign travel, company car. Not
that
company car. Though, if that's what it takes . . . Name your terms.'

'I have only two,' she stated. 'One, plenty of time off to see my family.'

'Not a problem. What's two?'

'The firm does a wee "homer" for me before I start.'

Jane let him off with the offer of the Diablo and instead borrowed his other car, a Porsche Carrera, to get to the hospital in San Raphael. She stopped it at the end of the drive, watching the gates slowly open, her eye caught again by the name etched amid the iron creepers and thorns, and then it hit her. Maison Blah, she'd heard Lex say, assuming she meant as in blah blah blah, but it wasn't, and nor was it Maison Rla. She'd misread the curlicued caligraphy: it was Maison
Bla
.

Bla an Tir. Gaelic.

She laughed as she put it together, where he was from: a town by a river, sure enough, but not one you'd want to grow up in if you were a boy called Hilary. No wonder he'd learned how to fight.

She remembered when Ross was wee, how Tom used to tick him off if he left his bike lying outside rather than storing it in the garage: 'If you don't look after it, some bad boy from Blantyre will come and take it away.'

Pity he hadn't heeded his own lesson. Now a very bad boy from Blantyre was taking away his wife.

They had a wedding photo sitting on top of a nest of tables in one corner of the living room, dwarfed now by larger portraits of Rachel and Thomas. A full-sized print of it had hung in the downstairs hall for several years, until the glass had smashed when it got knocked off the wall by Ross during a misadventure involving a bow and a rubber-suckered arrow. It was sun-faded by that time anyway, and should have been taken down long before. Jane's admonishment of Ross for his carelessness masked her gratitude to be rid of it, and, truth be told, she'd been reluctant to look out even the smaller print she had by way of a replacement. Something about it had always bothered her. She looked good enough in it, hair and make-up immaculately (and unaccustomedly) administered by professional hands, her dress so delicate, and Tom beside her, so smart and undeniably handsome. But while he was staring into the camera, uncomplicatedly happy, she had this far-off look about her, dreamy but not quite smiling, disconnected.

It had been on the photographer's instruction. He'd told her and Tom where to look, composed the frame. 'Look like you're already thinking of leaving,'

he'd joked to her. But down the years, even when things were better, that far-off look unsettled her. Yes, it was posed, but she couldn't help wondering whether the photographer saw something and acted upon it, whether she was already looking far away on the inside. His direction notwithstanding, it wasn't where her eyes were pointed that haunted her about the portrait: it was how distant she seemed from her newly married spouse. She found Tom sitting up in his hospital bed, reading the
Daily Record
. He was in the south of France, but there was some alchemy by which Westof-Scotland males could always procure a copy of that awful rag no matter where they were.

'Catching up on the Celtic?' she asked.

'Aye. I'd forgotten all about the UEFA Cup. We ended up watching the Barcelona game on that bloody boat, can you believe that?'

'After the past fortnight, I can believe anything. Who do they have in the next round?'

'Ach, some mob called Villareal. Never heard of them. It'll be a skoosh. Shooty-in.'

'Good, good. How's the wing?'

'Well, we've Agathe down the right and . . . '

'I meant your arm, Tom. Sore?'

'A wee bit, but I've got this patient-controlled thing for analgesia. I just push a button when it starts to hurt.'

'So you're sitting comfortably, then?'

The homer

He stood with his back to the bar, a bottle of lager in his hand, and surveyed his men: assembled around him and awaiting his command. It was half past midnight and they had a lock-in, the landlord turfing out all but his crew when the time came. But this wasn't for a bevy session. This was for business.
Serious
business.

They had all answered the call: Tommy, Deek, Panda, Jai, Goggsy, Wee Flea, Fat Paddy. All, that was, except Big Chick, who wasn't expected to be answering any calls for a while. The poor cunt was cooped up in his bedroom back at his mammy's house, a quivering wreck who couldn't get to sleep at night because he went mental if the lights went off.

Two days they'd been chained up in that basement, in the dark, in complete blackness. Two fucking days. Pishing where they sat, drinking water through a tube, starving hungry and all the time having no idea when or if they'd ever get out.

But one thought had sustained him throughout it all, and now it was time for that thought to be made flesh.

The bitch had been seen again, at last. She was back in EK, arrived just today. He knew, because he'd had somebody watching the house for a week. She had returned, stupid or arrogant enough to think she could just waltz back into town and forget who ran the fucking show, forget the liberties she'd taken. He didn't care who she thought she was or who those bastards in Barcelona had been. The point was, they fucking well weren't with her now, were they?

The way he saw it, she'd left him no choice. This wasn't just about revenge, it was about reputation. So far, nobody else knew what had happened in Barcelona, other than that it had left Big Chick greeting like a wean every night, but it was only a matter of time before the rumours started. He couldn't afford that, and he really couldn't afford the truth to get out. So tonight was a simple necessity, and one he was sorely looking forward to. He'd soon see how
she
liked being tied up and knocked fuck out of, how she enjoyed all the things he'd been dreaming up for her while he rotted for two days in that stinking hole.

331

'Right, boys,' he announced, calling them to order.

Which was as far as he got.

The lights went out and, a fraction of a second later, there was a deafening crash of glass, like every window in the place had been simultaneously smashed. He heard panicked shouts, soft impacts, groans and heavy thumps, sensed movement all around him but saw nothing. Then he felt arms about him, struggled in vain as he was pinned and twisted, violently hauled off his feet and brought down, hard and horizontal, on the pool table. The lights came on again. He sat up and looked around. All his men were unconscious, lying on the floor where they had fallen, the coloured-fibre tails of tranquilliser-darts jutting from each of their chests. But they were not all he saw.

There were three figures standing before him, dressed all in black, each holding a pistol, their faces masked by some kind of goggles, presumably for seeing in the dark. The one dead ahead began walking slowly towards him, the other pair moving in again to hold him as the figure approached. Some craven sensation of fear told him he knew that walk, a woman's walk, that he'd seen it before in Y-pishingly familiar circumstances. The woman put a hand to her forehead and removed the goggles. Oh shite.

The other two sat him up to face her. She stared at him, coolly contemptuous, then reached into a pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. She unfolded it and handed it to him.

'Read it,' she said. 'Aloud.'

He looked at the sheet, his hand trembling as he held it. It looked like a blown-up photocopy, the type oversized and slightly distorted.

'READ IT,' the woman demanded.

He read.

'Retribution,' he began. 'Noun. Punishment or retaliation for an insult or injury.'

'Very good,' she said. 'You see, Anthony, it occurred to me that following our last encounter, in your juvenile wee mind you may believe you've some account you need to settle with me and mine. So I ask you: Retribution. Do you know the meaning of the word?'

'Aye,' he told her. 'I just read it to you.'

She shook her head and took back the paper. Then she scrunched it into a ball and the other two gripped him as she stuffed it into his mouth.

'No, Anthony, that was just the dictionary definition. You come anywhere near my family again and I'll teach you the fucking meaning.'

• Titlepage
  
• Contents
  
• Toyz
  
• Sports cars and casinos
  
• The specialist
  
• Ride, then
  
• Abduction: how to do it properly
  
• Unsafe building
  
• The land of do as you please
  
• Dislocation
  
• Bhoys n the hood
  
• Vital away fixture
  
• Project fuckwit
  
• The perfect apprentice
  
• A tale of a tub
  
• I, spy
  
• Oil and water
  
• Decent, normal, sensible girls
  
• A Basque tale (old as time?)
  
• Stolen glimpses
  
• Twilight and dark water
  
• One last bullet
  
• The homer