The Outsider, page 20
‘I don’t know yet. We’re working that out right now.’
I imagined a room full of people at her end listening, planning, making arrangements with speed and skill, and I felt very slightly comforted. At least I wasn’t on my own.
‘I can’t drive too slowly. And it needs to happen soon.’
‘I know.’ A pause. ‘Sorry, I’m not taking it out on you.’
‘Not like you to apologise.’
‘Don’t get used to it.’ I heard a voice mumbling in the background, though I couldn’t make out the words. After what seemed like an eternity, Opal said, ‘Are you listening?’
‘Of course.’
‘We’ve found a suitable place for what you have in mind. It’s about forty-five minutes from your destination. That gives us as much time as possible, but it should be feasible for you to stop there without arousing any suspicion.’
‘Give me the details.’
She read them out and I memorised them.
‘I’m signing off now.’
‘Be careful.’ The urgency in her voice came through very clearly.
‘I always am.’
After the call ended I slid the phone into the gap between the back and the base of my seat, retrievable if I really needed it but invisible. Now that the car was silent I felt alone, travelling through the night with my terrible burden. I kept thinking about the kitchen, and the phone, and whether I should have claimed it as my own to save Naomi. I could have come up with a story on the spot to explain it. I had training for that, and the nerve to make it convincing. Naomi hadn’t stood a chance.
Opal would have said no, that it was too much of a risk. She hadn’t even hinted that she thought I could have handled the situation better, or that I should have taken the blame.
I wished I’d done it anyway.
I almost missed the sign for the services, even though I was looking out for it. The buildings glowed on both sides of the motorway, which made it perfect for me: twenty-four-hour shopping and petrol and food, whether you were travelling into Wales or out of it. I indicated and came off the motorway, Harry following faithfully. We hadn’t discussed a stop and as his car came up behind mine I could see he was frowning.
I pulled into the car park (mainly deserted, at that time in the morning) and found a dark corner where the floodlights had gone out. Harry stopped nearby, his engine still running. I jumped out and crossed to his door.
‘Why are we here?’
‘I need a break.’ I was shivering; the night air was cold and I was genuinely tired. ‘I’m falling asleep.’
‘How can you?’ Den swallowed. ‘I’d have thought the stress would keep you awake.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s not working.’ I yawned widely. ‘If I crash it’ll be awkward.’
‘All right.’ Harry turned off his engine and lights. ‘We might as well have a break too.’
‘Not here. We can’t be seen together. If we’re seen in the same place ignoring each other it’ll raise as many questions as if we’re together.’ I nodded in the direction of the other services. ‘If you go there for your coffee and petrol, I’ll meet you back on the road. Set off in an hour exactly?’
‘Fine.’ Harry started the car again and Den put his hand out to stop him.
‘Hold on. We can’t just leave his car.’
‘Why not?’ I was jumping from foot to foot, trying to stay warm.
‘You know why.’
‘She’s not going to run away,’ I said flippantly.
‘Christ.’ Den’s face was blank with shock. ‘You really are cold, aren’t you?’
‘Freezing,’ I agreed.
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I know.’ I sniffed. ‘Look, it’s not what I wanted to happen but there’s no point in getting wound up about it. Her troubles are over.’
Den gave me a sick look as Harry slid his window up, effectively ending the conversation. This version of me was ruining my reputation as a nice guy, but it would probably impress Geraint’s family, I reflected, jogging towards the buildings without risking a look back at Harry’s car or my own.
The best I could say about the next sixty minutes was that they passed. I drank coffee and tried to look as if I had nothing on my mind except the remainder of the journey, when in fact all of my thoughts were focused on what might be happening outside.
When I went back, the car was still sitting where I had left it. No one moved in the car park; there was no sign anyone had come or gone. I had a strong compulsion to open the boot and check inside but it was far too risky, even if I thought there was no one around.
I took my time about getting back onto the motorway, but when I came down the slip road headlights from behind dazzled me in the rear-view mirror: Harry and Den, right on time.
Opal had been wrong; it didn’t take us as long as she’d expected to get to our destination. We made good time on the motorway, and then a main road, and then a series of smaller roads that cut through the dark, sleeping countryside. I went wrong once, accidentally, and got a toot from Harry’s horn to call me back to the right route. Left to my own devices I’d never have found the woods, let alone the narrow, rutted track Harry had indicated. I stopped the car when it could go no further, the wheels losing their grip on icy mud so the vehicle slewed sideways. I got out and stretched cramped limbs as the other car stopped, a little way back. The air stung my skin and the forest pressed in around me, dense and threatening, like something from a fairy tale – or a nightmare. On the purely primitive level, it was an unsettling place to be, but that wasn’t why my heart was thumping.
Nothing was more frightening to me than the men who had followed me all of that way.
I had no illusions. If Geraint had decided it was safer for me to be dead, given what I knew about him and his son, this would be the end of the road.
28
‘It’s harder than you’d think, isn’t it?’
Den was crouching at the side of the trench Harry and I had dug during a miserable, sweating hour. He was holding a powerful torch so we could see what we were doing, but he kept forgetting and pointing the beam away from where we were digging, illuminating distant tree trunks and, once, the bright eyes of an animal that disappeared the next second. The place we had chosen was on a slight slope under some sparse pine trees, well away from the road, where the disturbed ground wouldn’t be particularly noticeable but there wasn’t too much undergrowth for us to battle.
I straightened up and leaned on my spade, easing my back. I had stripped down to a T-shirt despite the cold, and sweat was gluing it to my body. ‘I hadn’t thought it would be easy.’
‘Ever done this before?’
I shook my head. ‘You?’
‘No.’ He was barely doing it now, if it came to that. Den had dug for about ten minutes early on and then handed the spade back to me. Gravedigging was an occupation for the staff, not for Geraint’s son-in-law. He nodded at the other end of the trench. ‘Harry has.’
Geraint’s minder had been ignoring us, his spade biting into the ground with efficient regularity. He turned at that, fixing Den with a reproving eye. ‘Less of that.’
‘What?’ Den spread his hands. ‘I thought – Mark’s one of us, isn’t he?’
Is that it? I wondered. Or is it that you don’t mind talking frankly in front of me because you know I won’t have the chance to pass it on? I grinned to hide the dark direction of my thoughts, and said, ‘Digging a grave fits with your overall image, Harry, for what it’s worth. I’m not shocked.’
He gave a short, bitter bark of amusement. ‘Nothing shocks you.’
‘Not much,’ I agreed, and started digging again, the air heavy with the old-wine smell of turned earth, and the sweet scent of the pines.
‘That was a while before you came,’ Den said. He wedged the torch between his knees and rubbed his hands together to keep warm. He was a compulsive talker when he was nervous, I had noticed.
‘Is that what happened to the chauffeur? Neil, wasn’t it?’ I looked up to see the other two had stopped what they were doing to stare at me. ‘Look, I’m not stupid. There was a vacancy for me to fill. I don’t know what happened to him, but I guessed it might have been a messy departure. Juliet told me he didn’t get to say goodbye.’
‘You can say that again.’ Harry’s voice was pure gravel.
‘What happened?’
‘Geraint shot him,’ Den said. ‘It happened in the flat above the garage.’
I blinked. ‘He shot him himself?’
‘There are some things he outsources and other things he likes to do personally.’ Den smiled, a shade uneasily. ‘It was a message.’
‘Who was the message for?’
‘Neil was one of Evan Verdi’s lot. We roughed him up and he admitted it. He must have thought Ger would let him go if he told the truth, but that was never going to happen.’
I looked blank, even though I had been at a briefing that meant I was familiar with every detail of Evan Verdi’s criminal history. He was a Welsh thug with Italian ancestry, a small-time operator who had got big all of a sudden, a few years earlier. One lucky deal involving a vast shipment of cocaine was what had changed his fortunes. We’d heard about it too late to intercept the shipment, and the money was hidden away before we could trace it. He had settled into a life of criminal activity that was increasingly ambitious and concerning. He would see Geraint as competition, I thought, and he would want to make a name for himself by bringing down the older, more successful man. No wonder Geraint had been stressed enough to have a heart attack, with someone like that snapping at his heels.
‘Who’s Evan Verdi?’
Harry scratched his head, leaving a streak of mud. ‘Remember the goons who tried to get hold of Juliet?’
‘Yeah.’
‘His men.’
‘Right.’ It was falling into place now – why they would want to frighten Juliet, why Geraint was so upset about them bothering her, and why he had reacted with such unfathomable violence. You spy on me, I’ll kill your spy. You come after my family for revenge, I’ll kill the people you send. Keep trying and you’ll be a dead man too. ‘So the chauffeur disappeared. Where did he end up – somewhere like this?’
‘Somewhere like this.’ Harry pointed towards the road where we had left the cars. ‘About a hundred yards that way, on the other side of the forest.’
‘I wondered how you knew about this place.’
‘It’s a useful spot.’
‘Used it before that?’ I hoped it came across as making conversation rather than questioning him, but he just smiled and shook his head. Harry was too wily to offer me any information he didn’t have to share.
‘I thought it was just that Neil had had a falling out with the boss,’ I said, getting back to digging. ‘And you wondered why I’ve been working so hard.’
‘The boss likes you,’ Harry said.
‘I’d still watch your step with Juliet if I were you.’ Den gave me a wry smile. ‘He’s a hard man to please and even more so if you’re the reason his daughter is happy. Or unhappy, if it comes to that.’
‘No shit.’
We dug in silence for another thirty minutes, until the trench was thigh-deep and Harry declared himself satisfied with it.
‘I’ll get it.’ Harry made heavy work of scrambling out of the grave.
It.
Her.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said. ‘They’re harder to handle when they’ve stiffened up.’
Den made a gagging sound that seemed involuntary, but it more or less expressed how I was feeling.
I levered myself out of the hole and made my way through the woods, not hurrying, with Harry breathing heavily behind me. This was the most dangerous moment, I thought, of the many I’d survived so far. I would be allowed to carry the body to the grave, because there was no point in killing me near the car and having to drag my big, heavy body all that way. If the plan was to kill me, Harry would wait until Naomi had slid into her final resting place and then he would put a bullet in the back of my skull. The grave was deep enough for two, if you were prepared to do a shoddy job of it. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, there was no need to go as deep as we had dug, I thought. No one would pass by for a long time, if ever. The land we stood on was private, according to the sign I’d driven past on my way in, and I was willing to make a guess about who owned it.
I managed a tuneless little whistle as I opened the boot of the car and looked down at the plastic-shrouded figure. I’d seen her when I took out the spades and had taken the opportunity to cover her face with a flap of plastic sheeting so the brutal injuries weren’t visible. There was enough of a suggestion of ruined features and clotted blood to make Harry catch his breath.
‘Is she definitely dead?’
‘Definitely.’ I reached in and jabbed a finger into the unyielding flesh, which made Harry hiss in disapproval. ‘Sorry. I thought you wanted to check.’
‘I did. But I always liked Naomi.’
‘Me too.’
‘He shouldn’t have done it.’
‘No.’
‘This is part of looking after her. Burying her properly, I mean.’ He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘God love her.’
Yes, you should cry for her. I bent and picked up the body with a grunt of effort, slinging her stiff form over my shoulder. ‘She feels heavier.’
‘Dead weight.’ Harry sniffed a couple of times. ‘Can you manage?’
‘Yeah.’ I carried the body back towards Den’s torchlight, and Harry followed after shutting the boot.
‘Drop her in,’ Den commanded, taking charge. He wanted to take over from Geraint, I thought, because Bruno was never going to be capable of running any kind of empire. Den was a businessman at heart, not a killer, but needs must. He was as dangerous as Bruno, and I wanted to lock him up.
I let the body slip down off my shoulder and lowered it into the grave as gently as I could. She was curled up with her hands to her chest inside the plastic wrapping, and the body looked pitifully small at the bottom of the trench. The tape had a pearlescent sheen in the torchlight, zigzagging up her body.
I picked up a spade. ‘Better get on with this.’
‘Wait.’ At the sound of Den’s voice, my heart stopped. This was the moment when I would learn my fate, if my death had been planned before we ever left Haulton House. Or this was the moment when my plan would unravel in front of me, if something had made him suspicious. Either way, I had a profound sense that I had reached the end of the line. This clearing, this dark and secret forest, was a place for endings. But I wasn’t ready yet. The spade trembled in my hands as I considered what I could do: swing it to hit Harry hard enough to knock him out, and then tackle Den? It was a matter of guessing which one had the gun. A fifty-fifty chance.
Now or never …
Den jumped down into the grave, one foot on either side of her. ‘I want to get her rings.’
‘Fucking hell,’ I began, and Harry grabbed my arm to warn me to stop.
‘They’re too identifiable.’ Den pulled out a folding knife and slit the plastic, rummaging inside it. ‘Shine the torch down here.’
Pale pink varnish gleamed in the torchlight. I watched him slip the rings off: wedding ring, engagement ring, a weighty eternity ring from her slender right hand.
‘At least they came off easily.’ He straightened. ‘Was she wearing earrings, can you remember?’
‘No. And no watch.’
‘Good.’ He tucked the poor little hands back inside the sheeting and clambered out. ‘That was hideous. She was cold.’
‘As you’d expect,’ Harry commented.
Den looked at us both, defensive. ‘Geraint would have asked about the rings. They’re worth a lot of money.’
Neither of us said anything and after a moment, Den shrugged. ‘Fill it in now. Make it look as if we were never here. I’m going back to the car.’
He disappeared between the trees, and we stood there, waiting until we heard the clunk of the car door. Then Harry moved, stiffly, to pick up the second spade. I tried to work some saliva into my mouth. I still wasn’t sure that I was safe, but if Harry was filling in the grave, he was unlikely to be planning to put me in it.
‘What’s that saying?’ Harry said, shovelling earth. ‘“He knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” That’s Geraint.’
‘You know him better than I do,’ I said, refusing to be drawn.
‘I know him too well not to see his flaws. I love him, but he gets things wrong.’ Harry stood for a moment, looking down at the body. ‘This is wrong. And I’ll tell him that myself.’
29
I wasn’t naive enough to think the Carters would change their ways after Naomi’s murder, but it still shocked me how completely she was forgotten once the dark earth of the Welsh woodland hid her from view. Bruno might have mourned or wallowed in guilt but he was out of sight, at a phenomenally expensive rehab facility in France. His every physical and emotional need would be met, the brochure promised, with complete discretion. Money would smother what he had done, just as it blurred away the gap Naomi had left. No one spoke about her; no one cried over her. Juliet went around in a daze but when I tried to talk to her she slid away from me. What had Geraint said to them when I was driving his daughter-in-law’s body to her secret grave? Enough of a warning to make Naomi’s name unspeakable.
Little Tessa was too young to ask awkward questions about where her parents had gone but I heard her crying, shushed by one of two nannies that Geraint had hired. They were from a most prestigious agency and were far too professional to ask questions, but their presence in the house changed things as they moved smoothly through their shifts, caring and tending and cooking. Tessa stayed with Cassie the rest of the time and Cassie was competent enough with her, but clearly resented the extra work. Most of the time it was the nannies who cared for the little girl, at least when they were in the big house. I cursed them internally as all discussion about Geraint’s businesses – and any plotting for the spectacular he was planning – was conducted behind closed doors. It shouldn’t have mattered, except that somehow I’d lost my position of trust. I was being left out.
I imagined a room full of people at her end listening, planning, making arrangements with speed and skill, and I felt very slightly comforted. At least I wasn’t on my own.
‘I can’t drive too slowly. And it needs to happen soon.’
‘I know.’ A pause. ‘Sorry, I’m not taking it out on you.’
‘Not like you to apologise.’
‘Don’t get used to it.’ I heard a voice mumbling in the background, though I couldn’t make out the words. After what seemed like an eternity, Opal said, ‘Are you listening?’
‘Of course.’
‘We’ve found a suitable place for what you have in mind. It’s about forty-five minutes from your destination. That gives us as much time as possible, but it should be feasible for you to stop there without arousing any suspicion.’
‘Give me the details.’
She read them out and I memorised them.
‘I’m signing off now.’
‘Be careful.’ The urgency in her voice came through very clearly.
‘I always am.’
After the call ended I slid the phone into the gap between the back and the base of my seat, retrievable if I really needed it but invisible. Now that the car was silent I felt alone, travelling through the night with my terrible burden. I kept thinking about the kitchen, and the phone, and whether I should have claimed it as my own to save Naomi. I could have come up with a story on the spot to explain it. I had training for that, and the nerve to make it convincing. Naomi hadn’t stood a chance.
Opal would have said no, that it was too much of a risk. She hadn’t even hinted that she thought I could have handled the situation better, or that I should have taken the blame.
I wished I’d done it anyway.
I almost missed the sign for the services, even though I was looking out for it. The buildings glowed on both sides of the motorway, which made it perfect for me: twenty-four-hour shopping and petrol and food, whether you were travelling into Wales or out of it. I indicated and came off the motorway, Harry following faithfully. We hadn’t discussed a stop and as his car came up behind mine I could see he was frowning.
I pulled into the car park (mainly deserted, at that time in the morning) and found a dark corner where the floodlights had gone out. Harry stopped nearby, his engine still running. I jumped out and crossed to his door.
‘Why are we here?’
‘I need a break.’ I was shivering; the night air was cold and I was genuinely tired. ‘I’m falling asleep.’
‘How can you?’ Den swallowed. ‘I’d have thought the stress would keep you awake.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s not working.’ I yawned widely. ‘If I crash it’ll be awkward.’
‘All right.’ Harry turned off his engine and lights. ‘We might as well have a break too.’
‘Not here. We can’t be seen together. If we’re seen in the same place ignoring each other it’ll raise as many questions as if we’re together.’ I nodded in the direction of the other services. ‘If you go there for your coffee and petrol, I’ll meet you back on the road. Set off in an hour exactly?’
‘Fine.’ Harry started the car again and Den put his hand out to stop him.
‘Hold on. We can’t just leave his car.’
‘Why not?’ I was jumping from foot to foot, trying to stay warm.
‘You know why.’
‘She’s not going to run away,’ I said flippantly.
‘Christ.’ Den’s face was blank with shock. ‘You really are cold, aren’t you?’
‘Freezing,’ I agreed.
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I know.’ I sniffed. ‘Look, it’s not what I wanted to happen but there’s no point in getting wound up about it. Her troubles are over.’
Den gave me a sick look as Harry slid his window up, effectively ending the conversation. This version of me was ruining my reputation as a nice guy, but it would probably impress Geraint’s family, I reflected, jogging towards the buildings without risking a look back at Harry’s car or my own.
The best I could say about the next sixty minutes was that they passed. I drank coffee and tried to look as if I had nothing on my mind except the remainder of the journey, when in fact all of my thoughts were focused on what might be happening outside.
When I went back, the car was still sitting where I had left it. No one moved in the car park; there was no sign anyone had come or gone. I had a strong compulsion to open the boot and check inside but it was far too risky, even if I thought there was no one around.
I took my time about getting back onto the motorway, but when I came down the slip road headlights from behind dazzled me in the rear-view mirror: Harry and Den, right on time.
Opal had been wrong; it didn’t take us as long as she’d expected to get to our destination. We made good time on the motorway, and then a main road, and then a series of smaller roads that cut through the dark, sleeping countryside. I went wrong once, accidentally, and got a toot from Harry’s horn to call me back to the right route. Left to my own devices I’d never have found the woods, let alone the narrow, rutted track Harry had indicated. I stopped the car when it could go no further, the wheels losing their grip on icy mud so the vehicle slewed sideways. I got out and stretched cramped limbs as the other car stopped, a little way back. The air stung my skin and the forest pressed in around me, dense and threatening, like something from a fairy tale – or a nightmare. On the purely primitive level, it was an unsettling place to be, but that wasn’t why my heart was thumping.
Nothing was more frightening to me than the men who had followed me all of that way.
I had no illusions. If Geraint had decided it was safer for me to be dead, given what I knew about him and his son, this would be the end of the road.
28
‘It’s harder than you’d think, isn’t it?’
Den was crouching at the side of the trench Harry and I had dug during a miserable, sweating hour. He was holding a powerful torch so we could see what we were doing, but he kept forgetting and pointing the beam away from where we were digging, illuminating distant tree trunks and, once, the bright eyes of an animal that disappeared the next second. The place we had chosen was on a slight slope under some sparse pine trees, well away from the road, where the disturbed ground wouldn’t be particularly noticeable but there wasn’t too much undergrowth for us to battle.
I straightened up and leaned on my spade, easing my back. I had stripped down to a T-shirt despite the cold, and sweat was gluing it to my body. ‘I hadn’t thought it would be easy.’
‘Ever done this before?’
I shook my head. ‘You?’
‘No.’ He was barely doing it now, if it came to that. Den had dug for about ten minutes early on and then handed the spade back to me. Gravedigging was an occupation for the staff, not for Geraint’s son-in-law. He nodded at the other end of the trench. ‘Harry has.’
Geraint’s minder had been ignoring us, his spade biting into the ground with efficient regularity. He turned at that, fixing Den with a reproving eye. ‘Less of that.’
‘What?’ Den spread his hands. ‘I thought – Mark’s one of us, isn’t he?’
Is that it? I wondered. Or is it that you don’t mind talking frankly in front of me because you know I won’t have the chance to pass it on? I grinned to hide the dark direction of my thoughts, and said, ‘Digging a grave fits with your overall image, Harry, for what it’s worth. I’m not shocked.’
He gave a short, bitter bark of amusement. ‘Nothing shocks you.’
‘Not much,’ I agreed, and started digging again, the air heavy with the old-wine smell of turned earth, and the sweet scent of the pines.
‘That was a while before you came,’ Den said. He wedged the torch between his knees and rubbed his hands together to keep warm. He was a compulsive talker when he was nervous, I had noticed.
‘Is that what happened to the chauffeur? Neil, wasn’t it?’ I looked up to see the other two had stopped what they were doing to stare at me. ‘Look, I’m not stupid. There was a vacancy for me to fill. I don’t know what happened to him, but I guessed it might have been a messy departure. Juliet told me he didn’t get to say goodbye.’
‘You can say that again.’ Harry’s voice was pure gravel.
‘What happened?’
‘Geraint shot him,’ Den said. ‘It happened in the flat above the garage.’
I blinked. ‘He shot him himself?’
‘There are some things he outsources and other things he likes to do personally.’ Den smiled, a shade uneasily. ‘It was a message.’
‘Who was the message for?’
‘Neil was one of Evan Verdi’s lot. We roughed him up and he admitted it. He must have thought Ger would let him go if he told the truth, but that was never going to happen.’
I looked blank, even though I had been at a briefing that meant I was familiar with every detail of Evan Verdi’s criminal history. He was a Welsh thug with Italian ancestry, a small-time operator who had got big all of a sudden, a few years earlier. One lucky deal involving a vast shipment of cocaine was what had changed his fortunes. We’d heard about it too late to intercept the shipment, and the money was hidden away before we could trace it. He had settled into a life of criminal activity that was increasingly ambitious and concerning. He would see Geraint as competition, I thought, and he would want to make a name for himself by bringing down the older, more successful man. No wonder Geraint had been stressed enough to have a heart attack, with someone like that snapping at his heels.
‘Who’s Evan Verdi?’
Harry scratched his head, leaving a streak of mud. ‘Remember the goons who tried to get hold of Juliet?’
‘Yeah.’
‘His men.’
‘Right.’ It was falling into place now – why they would want to frighten Juliet, why Geraint was so upset about them bothering her, and why he had reacted with such unfathomable violence. You spy on me, I’ll kill your spy. You come after my family for revenge, I’ll kill the people you send. Keep trying and you’ll be a dead man too. ‘So the chauffeur disappeared. Where did he end up – somewhere like this?’
‘Somewhere like this.’ Harry pointed towards the road where we had left the cars. ‘About a hundred yards that way, on the other side of the forest.’
‘I wondered how you knew about this place.’
‘It’s a useful spot.’
‘Used it before that?’ I hoped it came across as making conversation rather than questioning him, but he just smiled and shook his head. Harry was too wily to offer me any information he didn’t have to share.
‘I thought it was just that Neil had had a falling out with the boss,’ I said, getting back to digging. ‘And you wondered why I’ve been working so hard.’
‘The boss likes you,’ Harry said.
‘I’d still watch your step with Juliet if I were you.’ Den gave me a wry smile. ‘He’s a hard man to please and even more so if you’re the reason his daughter is happy. Or unhappy, if it comes to that.’
‘No shit.’
We dug in silence for another thirty minutes, until the trench was thigh-deep and Harry declared himself satisfied with it.
‘I’ll get it.’ Harry made heavy work of scrambling out of the grave.
It.
Her.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said. ‘They’re harder to handle when they’ve stiffened up.’
Den made a gagging sound that seemed involuntary, but it more or less expressed how I was feeling.
I levered myself out of the hole and made my way through the woods, not hurrying, with Harry breathing heavily behind me. This was the most dangerous moment, I thought, of the many I’d survived so far. I would be allowed to carry the body to the grave, because there was no point in killing me near the car and having to drag my big, heavy body all that way. If the plan was to kill me, Harry would wait until Naomi had slid into her final resting place and then he would put a bullet in the back of my skull. The grave was deep enough for two, if you were prepared to do a shoddy job of it. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, there was no need to go as deep as we had dug, I thought. No one would pass by for a long time, if ever. The land we stood on was private, according to the sign I’d driven past on my way in, and I was willing to make a guess about who owned it.
I managed a tuneless little whistle as I opened the boot of the car and looked down at the plastic-shrouded figure. I’d seen her when I took out the spades and had taken the opportunity to cover her face with a flap of plastic sheeting so the brutal injuries weren’t visible. There was enough of a suggestion of ruined features and clotted blood to make Harry catch his breath.
‘Is she definitely dead?’
‘Definitely.’ I reached in and jabbed a finger into the unyielding flesh, which made Harry hiss in disapproval. ‘Sorry. I thought you wanted to check.’
‘I did. But I always liked Naomi.’
‘Me too.’
‘He shouldn’t have done it.’
‘No.’
‘This is part of looking after her. Burying her properly, I mean.’ He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘God love her.’
Yes, you should cry for her. I bent and picked up the body with a grunt of effort, slinging her stiff form over my shoulder. ‘She feels heavier.’
‘Dead weight.’ Harry sniffed a couple of times. ‘Can you manage?’
‘Yeah.’ I carried the body back towards Den’s torchlight, and Harry followed after shutting the boot.
‘Drop her in,’ Den commanded, taking charge. He wanted to take over from Geraint, I thought, because Bruno was never going to be capable of running any kind of empire. Den was a businessman at heart, not a killer, but needs must. He was as dangerous as Bruno, and I wanted to lock him up.
I let the body slip down off my shoulder and lowered it into the grave as gently as I could. She was curled up with her hands to her chest inside the plastic wrapping, and the body looked pitifully small at the bottom of the trench. The tape had a pearlescent sheen in the torchlight, zigzagging up her body.
I picked up a spade. ‘Better get on with this.’
‘Wait.’ At the sound of Den’s voice, my heart stopped. This was the moment when I would learn my fate, if my death had been planned before we ever left Haulton House. Or this was the moment when my plan would unravel in front of me, if something had made him suspicious. Either way, I had a profound sense that I had reached the end of the line. This clearing, this dark and secret forest, was a place for endings. But I wasn’t ready yet. The spade trembled in my hands as I considered what I could do: swing it to hit Harry hard enough to knock him out, and then tackle Den? It was a matter of guessing which one had the gun. A fifty-fifty chance.
Now or never …
Den jumped down into the grave, one foot on either side of her. ‘I want to get her rings.’
‘Fucking hell,’ I began, and Harry grabbed my arm to warn me to stop.
‘They’re too identifiable.’ Den pulled out a folding knife and slit the plastic, rummaging inside it. ‘Shine the torch down here.’
Pale pink varnish gleamed in the torchlight. I watched him slip the rings off: wedding ring, engagement ring, a weighty eternity ring from her slender right hand.
‘At least they came off easily.’ He straightened. ‘Was she wearing earrings, can you remember?’
‘No. And no watch.’
‘Good.’ He tucked the poor little hands back inside the sheeting and clambered out. ‘That was hideous. She was cold.’
‘As you’d expect,’ Harry commented.
Den looked at us both, defensive. ‘Geraint would have asked about the rings. They’re worth a lot of money.’
Neither of us said anything and after a moment, Den shrugged. ‘Fill it in now. Make it look as if we were never here. I’m going back to the car.’
He disappeared between the trees, and we stood there, waiting until we heard the clunk of the car door. Then Harry moved, stiffly, to pick up the second spade. I tried to work some saliva into my mouth. I still wasn’t sure that I was safe, but if Harry was filling in the grave, he was unlikely to be planning to put me in it.
‘What’s that saying?’ Harry said, shovelling earth. ‘“He knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” That’s Geraint.’
‘You know him better than I do,’ I said, refusing to be drawn.
‘I know him too well not to see his flaws. I love him, but he gets things wrong.’ Harry stood for a moment, looking down at the body. ‘This is wrong. And I’ll tell him that myself.’
29
I wasn’t naive enough to think the Carters would change their ways after Naomi’s murder, but it still shocked me how completely she was forgotten once the dark earth of the Welsh woodland hid her from view. Bruno might have mourned or wallowed in guilt but he was out of sight, at a phenomenally expensive rehab facility in France. His every physical and emotional need would be met, the brochure promised, with complete discretion. Money would smother what he had done, just as it blurred away the gap Naomi had left. No one spoke about her; no one cried over her. Juliet went around in a daze but when I tried to talk to her she slid away from me. What had Geraint said to them when I was driving his daughter-in-law’s body to her secret grave? Enough of a warning to make Naomi’s name unspeakable.
Little Tessa was too young to ask awkward questions about where her parents had gone but I heard her crying, shushed by one of two nannies that Geraint had hired. They were from a most prestigious agency and were far too professional to ask questions, but their presence in the house changed things as they moved smoothly through their shifts, caring and tending and cooking. Tessa stayed with Cassie the rest of the time and Cassie was competent enough with her, but clearly resented the extra work. Most of the time it was the nannies who cared for the little girl, at least when they were in the big house. I cursed them internally as all discussion about Geraint’s businesses – and any plotting for the spectacular he was planning – was conducted behind closed doors. It shouldn’t have mattered, except that somehow I’d lost my position of trust. I was being left out.
