Lynch (5 page)

‘No!’ the woman screamed. ‘Stop it!’

The kids were crying.

Fernandez went down on his knees, gripped the man by the throat, and pushed the barrel of the gun against his forehead. ‘I said no one leaves this cabin. Are you understanding with me now?’

‘Yes,’ the man said, his eyes clenched. ‘Yes. I understand.’

Chapter 6

Clark
had taken a kitchen chair and placed it out on the wooden porch to drink her morning coffee and watch the world amble by when Scott joined her. He was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and a loose-fitting yellow T-shirt that proclaimed him to be
98% Full of Complete Awesomeness (2% Bullshit)
.

Clark
laughed and Scott said, ‘Katherine’s idea of humour.’ He sat on the floor beside her, elbows on his knees, and stared out across the garden. ‘Those birds never stop singing,’ he said.

‘I love it,’
Clark
said. ‘All I hear in the mornings are car horns and sirens.’ Her sigh was heavy and full of thought. ‘I envy you. Living in the countryside seems so idyllic.’

‘Not when you’re living a lie,’ Scott said.

‘You’re not living a lie,’
Clark
told him. ‘You’re living a life. It doesn’t matter what name you use, you’re still alive. Enjoy it.’

‘I’m grateful for the life you’ve given us,’ Scott said, referring to their witness protection, ‘but I can’t help thinking about the past.’

‘That’s only natural. It’s when you start talking about your past that I’ll have to kick your skinny arse from one side of
Yorkshire
to the other and back. Twice.’ She finished her coffee and put the mug on the floor beside her chair. ‘You’ve been given a clean slate,’ she said. ‘Lao Tzu said something like, “When you let go of who you are, you become what you might be.” You just have to roll with life the way it comes.’

‘Ever the wise owl,’ Scott said. ‘What time do you go back to
London
?’

‘Are you in that much of a hurry to get me out of your life again? You think if you pack me off, you’ll stop thinking about your past and start looking to the future?’

Scott laughed. ‘That’s not quite what I meant, but yeah, basically.’

Clark
smiled, folded her arms and stretched out her legs in front of her. ‘I’ll probably leave after dinner.’

‘What are you hiding from me, Ann?’

‘I’m not hiding anything.’

Scott turned to face her fully. ‘I told you yesterday, I know you better than that. You’re withholding something and it scares me.’

Clark
refused to look at him, keeping her eyes focused on the distant trees. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘Is it about that Fernandez guy? The whole thing in
London
?’

She looked at him at last. ‘No, you’re safe, Scott. I told you that. It’s nothing about the case.’

‘What then? You come here with a photograph of a man we’ve never seen before and make like that’s the best excuse you’ve got. It seems a bit flimsy to me.’

‘Scott, please.’

‘Come on, Ann. Don’t keep me in the dark, it’s a scary place to be.’

She sighed, looked back out across the garden. ‘I’ve been suspended from the force.’

‘Suspended? What for?’

‘Can I get away with saying it was a rookie mistake?’

‘Rookie?’ he scoffed. ‘You were born a pro. What happened?’

‘I can’t go into detail,’
Clark
said. ‘It’s an ongoing case. But I made a mistake and they suspended me for it.’

‘You let your heart get in the way again. How long have they given you?’

She shrugged. ‘As long as it takes them to investigate. Couple of weeks, probably.’

‘What kind of mistake?’

‘I can’t answer that,’
Clark
said. ‘Can you leave it now?’

Scott shrugged. ‘Okay, sure.’ He stood up, dusted off the seat of his cut-offs and watched a car pull into the bottom of the long driveway. ‘In that case, you can stay another couple of nights. You still owe me a Chinese and a bottle or two of wine.’ He grinned and playfully punched her shoulder.

Clark
laughed. ‘You have a memory like an elephant.’ She stood beside him and watched the car approach. ‘Although maybe you don’t—you haven’t forgotten about another date, have you?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

Jesse pulled the car up and waved through the windscreen. Conscious of the T-shirt he was wearing, Scott waved back and folded his arms across the slogan.

When he stepped out of the car and took his sunglasses off, Jesse said, ‘I took the liberty of checking the rota. I saw you weren’t working so figured we could maybe do something?’

‘I haven’t even showered,’ Scott said.

‘Then you’d best get to it,’ Jesse laughed.

Scott shrugged and smiled. To
Clark
he said, ‘Now even my colleagues are making demands of me. I’m blaming you for that.’

As he went inside the house,
Clark
said, ‘You have no one to blame for your laziness but yourself.’

His voice carried out from the darkness within. ‘I heard that.’

Clark
settled back in her chair and Jesse sat on the steps. ‘Where are you taking him?’ she asked.

Jesse grinned, a wide, honest smile. She liked him. ‘Don’t tell him, but I’ve packed a picnic. We’ll take the horses out across
Harrogate
and find a nice spot somewhere.’ He paused. ‘Unless you think he wouldn’t like that? You know him better than I do.’

Clark
smiled back. ‘I think he’d love that.’ She chewed the inside of one cheek for a moment, weighing up how to say her next words. Eventually, she said, ‘Be nice to him, Jesse. I know it’s only your second date—first if you don’t count dinner with me and Katherine—but just…be nice to him.’ She couldn’t put it any other way without it sounding like a threat. Which it was.

Jesse smiled again, a faint blushing heat rising in his cheeks as he lowered his eyes from her. ‘I will,’ he said. And he sounded like he meant it.

He sat in the passenger seat and breathed in the smell of wet dog. It was one of those heady smells that was equal parts pleasant and unpleasant. He and Ryan had often talked about getting a puppy, although they could never agree on what breed—he’d wanted a golden retriever, Ryan had wanted a great Dane.

At the thought of Ryan, here in Jesse’s car, Scott mentally berated himself and sucked his lower lip into his mouth in a sulk. He had been grieving since London, and while it had only been a year and a half since his death, he had concluded a couple of months ago that no matter how much he wept or how much he reminisced, nothing would bring Ryan back from the dead. He knew he’d always carry him in his heart—nothing could replace the totality of the love they had shared—but he now knew that, one day, he might love again. He just had to remind himself to look beyond the past.

Jesse had been largely silent on the car journey, refusing to tell Scott where they were going in an attempt to cloak the day in mystery, and so to break the silence, Scott now said, ‘What kind of dog do you have?’

‘I’ve got two completely insane chocolate labs but they stay at my mum’s. Einstein and Nietzsche.’

Scott laughed. ‘Sensible names,’ he said.

‘I couldn’t have picked worse names for them, they really are mental.’

‘Well, Nietzsche had a mental breakdown, and just looking at Einstein shows he was clearly insane, so maybe it’s not such a bad fit after all.’

Jesse raised an eyebrow. ‘Look at you,’ he said, clearly impressed. ‘They had history books in
Ireland
?’

Scott slapped Jesse’s leg and said, ‘Cheeky. We even had electricity. And they recently introduced that Eighth Wonder of the World: running water.’ He had noticed the direction they were heading in—towards work—and now that they pulled onto the country lane leading to the Silverwood Centre, he said, ‘Where are you taking me?’

Jesse beamed. ‘I called Sylvia this morning. She has Blossom and Lea tacked and ready for us. As long as we have them back by six, we can go where we like.’

When they had parked up and Jesse had transferred some things from his car to the saddle bags on Blossom that Sylvia had placed there at his request, Scott pulled on the riding boots he kept in the office. He swung his leg up over Lea and tipped an invisible hat to Sylvia.

‘You boys have fun,’ she said. ‘None of that
Brokeback
Mountain
stuff out there, you hear?’

‘Sylvia,’ Jesse laughed. ‘How dare you!’

Scott looked out across the land. ‘Let’s find a sunset,’ he said, raising a chuckle from Sylvia.

Jesse spurred his horse forward. ‘This way into the night.’

‘Have them back by six,’ Sylvia called after them.

When they trotted off the grounds of the Silverwood Centre and out onto the country road, Scott asked, ‘Which way?’

‘We’re on a potholed strip of tarmac that cuts through a landscape of fields and hills on either side. I don’t think it really matters which way we go.’

Scott smiled and shrugged. Nudging Lea to the right, he said, ‘Let’s get lost then.’ And Jesse followed.

Lea was a magnificent silver dapple—her coat a light chocolate brown, flecked with paler patches, her mane and tail a long, flowing silver. The silvering hair around her eyes and muzzle made her appear aged, but she was only four years old, used at the school for some of the more advanced riders.

In stark contrast to Lea’s sleek chocolate coating, Blossom was piebald, a random splatter of black and white, as though a modern artist had picked up a paint tin, closed his eyes, and slung the paint around.

As they walked nose to tail behind one another along the stretch of road, they talked lazily about their respective childhoods. Scott was reticent at first to offer up anything that may give his true identity away, but the more he spoke, the easier his words flowed. He enjoyed Jesse’s company and was able to speak freely without being too specific about place names and people. He talked about his father’s disappearance when he was three years old, how most of the memories he had of his dad were second hand from his mum. She raised him singlehandedly and raised him well. He didn’t say that his mother was also dead and Katherine was an imposter. He talked about school and about friends, but he avoided any reference to Ryan Cassidy.

Perhaps it was a nervous energy, but when Jesse began talking about his own life, he seemed to flit from one story to another like the flick of a switch in his head. ‘And then in secondary school when I was sick of all the taunting and bullying, I just came out with it. Told them all I was a big screaming homo and if they didn’t like it they could pretty much just fuck off.’

‘Ouch,’ Scott said. ‘I’m guessing they didn’t take it too well?’

‘I was the one who didn’t take it well. Cracked rib, fractured elbow and a broken nose.’

‘Jesus,’ Scott breathed.

‘It could have been worse,’ Jesse said. ‘Once I was back from hospital, one of the bullies—this massive fart of a fifteen year old—decided he wanted to experiment on me, if you know what I mean. Didn’t last long, thankfully. Anyway, I had a run of abusive men over the years and decided to go celibate about two years ago.’

‘How’s that working out for you?’ Scott asked.

‘I’m getting itchy.’

When their laughter had died, Jesse looked around, reined in Blossom, and said, ‘This’ll do.’