HE GOT IN through a rear window that had not been properly returned to its latch. His foot landed in something soft: a tray of dog food, he saw, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He realised instantly that he was not alone in the house and told himself that maybe that was a good thing. From deep inside the house came the sounds of exertion – grunts and thoughtless curses – and the squeal of wood as either its tensions were released or increased. It was the sound of light wind filling a sail, timber finding its own balance.
He padded to the door, taking care not to disturb any of the steel pots hanging from hooks on the wall. One of the pots was on the range, a thick skin having developed on its contents. Yesterday’s soup, by the look of it. In the hallway, about a dozen pairs of heavily muddied wellington boots stood to attention. The walls were festooned with brass and leather trinkets. A door on the right of the hall gave on to a drawing room with a fireplace, cold ashes in its hearth, and a table with a chess set, its pieces set up for a game that had managed just one move so far: king’s pawn advanced two squares. Classic, predictable. Sean smiled. He had the measure of these men. The paper tiger that was Ronnie Salt; the tragedy of Vernon Lord; Tim Enever who had impressed him at first, before it became clear that he was just a shabby fence. They were no-marks this lot, lowlife chancers who had hit the big time and were beginning to realise that it was a little bit too big for them.
He returned to the hall and whispered up the stairs. Momentarily, before he reached the landing, he thought he heard the beep of a car horn. He glanced out of the window up the lane to the taxi, the shape of which he could just see behind the hedgerow. No other cars.
Okay. Okay. Keep moving.
Bedrooms. Four of them. All empty. A bathroom. Ditto. He returned to the stairs. That creaking, squealing noise again. Very clearly, he heard a voice: Test it. Have a swing.
He was about to put his eye up against the crack in the door when he heard a chair being drawn back on its hind legs. He turned to see Vernon Lord standing by the chess set, looking at him. A gun was dangling from his right hand. His left held the chair and he was nodding his head, inviting him to sit.
“There’s always someone else who can do things better than you,” Vernon said as Sean entered the room. “You could practise for hours, finger shadows, perfecting a little rabbit, say, and someone will come along and do a honey osprey tearing a mouse apart.”
Sean sat in front of the black pieces. Vernon sat opposite, regarding the carved wooden figures with the interest a hungry man displays for a good steak. “Do you play?” he asked.
“I have done. When I was younger.”
“Course you have. Bright, healthy lad like you. With your big words and your gymnasium muscles. You look the part, mate, but you’re soft. You talk the talk but you don’t walk the walk. You don’t even limp the walk.”
Sean said, “If you’re trying to get a rise out of me, you’ll have to try harder.” He moved his own king’s pawn, mirroring Vernon’s move.
“There’s a surprise,” Vernon noted. “Follow my leader. That’s you all over, isn’t it? You could have had what you wanted, you know? You could have been somebody instead of fucking using me to get inside, to get at us.” He swept the pieces to the floor with his left hand and brought the fist holding the gun crashing onto the board. The barrel dented the soft wood, its muzzle pointed at Sean’s gut. Vernon’s palms were raw with rope burns.
“All I want to know is,” Sean said, trying to keep his nervousness in check, “who was it that killed Naomi Clew?”
“Who the fuck,” Vernon sneered, “is Naomi Clew?”
“I can answer that.” Another figure at the door, removing his suede gloves finger by finger.
Sean turned in his seat. He moved his lips but the air rushing past them didn’t possess enough strength to carry the name. The man had been with him since childhood but had not been allowed to dally in his thoughts too often. A man that was as synonymous with misery and dread as any of the wraiths from the Brothers Grimm.
“Godspeed, Sean,” the other man said. “Long time no parlay.”
“I never thought I’d see you again,” Sean managed at last.
“Oh, I thought we’d bump into each other eventually. I was young when I saw you the first time. And I’ve kept myself fit, see? Five per cent body fat, you know. Five per cent. Not bad for a bloke pushing fifty-seven. D’you know, I’ve got cholesterol levels so low you’d have to be a worm to read them.”
He leaned against the back of a sofa and folded his hands neatly across his waist. Without switching his focus to Vernon Lord, he said: “Naomi Clew was one of the Inserts. The next wave. The new, improved, bright white, satisfaction-guaranteed-or-your-money-back Inserts that were being trained to go In Country to do for Mr. de Fleche, the bad man they wanted to tick off for trespassing.
“I was paid a hefty wedge, hefty for the 1980s anyhow, to blow these little bastards away. I’m still collecting a fair bit of interest on that pile, even though I didn’t make the first kill until Christmas.”
“You bastard,” Sean said. He could feel his heartbeat rising in his chest, in his throat, until it was sitting behind his ears, pulling tight the skin of his forehead.
“Hey, don’t have a go at me. I argued that we didn’t need to do it. You scarpered before I got the chance to open my account. But I had my orders from up high. They didn’t want to run the risk of your tiny minds being reactivated. They were quite happy to live with the fact that you might find it odd that you healed more quickly than the other girls and boys when you burned your fingers, but what did that matter, as long as you didn’t work out why?
“Truth be told, I have slowed down a bit over the years. And since it was you that found the Clew bint… do you realise, when you first knocked on the door, that she was still alive by the way? Since it was you that started up the itch in our little family’s balls that just would not be scratched, we had to call in outside help.” Here, Gleave’s smile faltered. “Not that it’s done us much good, it has to be said. But anyway. We seem to be on top of things now. Out of the three Inserts, Verny, only two are left, and they are both fucked.”
It became just another noise after a while, a noise that couldn’t get beyond the thrum of heat in his head. Even Vernon Lord seemed bored by Gleave’s speech.
“What is it you want?” Sean asked.
“I just want to plough my own furrow,” Vernon said. “I’m just making my own sweet way in the world.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Sean sneered. “You fucking evil piece of shit. You fucking body-snatcher.”
Vernon screwed up his face in mock disgust. “Ouch,” he said, and started laughing.
“You bent old bastard,” Sean continued, stoking his rage, letting it come, getting on top of it, controlling it for what he needed to do next. “You ancient, sad old has-been. But no, I’m being kind. Sad old never-was, more like.”
Vernon had stopped laughing and was stroking the butt of the gun. “Stop it right there, you little shit,” he said. Now it was Sean’s turn to laugh.
He said, “You think a gun can do me any harm, hey?” He got up and slapped Vernon hard across the face.
“You fuck!” Vernon screamed, lurching back and swinging the gun until it was flush with Sean’s forehead.
“Go on!” Sean screamed. “Go on!”
Gleave said, affably, “Do it, Vern. Shoot him.”
The sound of the blast in the closed room was enormous. A hole burst open in the back of Sean’s head that enabled Vernon Lord to watch the framed painting directly behind him take the exiting bullet. Sean staggered back and slumped onto his backside. His head slammed back into the fireplace and his hair caught fire. It smouldered, filling the room with a sickly-sweet scorching.