When to Hold Them
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, honestly, thank you.’
Crystal had offered to drive Vince to the airport or to the ferry. He was going to go abroad, he said. Grow a beard, disappear. ‘Get contact lenses,’ she advised.
‘Borneo, maybe,’ he said.
‘Borneo? What’s there, Vince?’
‘Orang-utans.’
‘Really?’
‘No, not really. My daughter, actually, but I think she’s probably on her way home now. You know … her mother. Wendy. I didn’t kill her, you know.’
‘Never thought you did, Vince.’
‘Thanks. I thought I might try and help, you know, people. Women, girls. Maybe help build a school or something. Teach computer skills. India, Africa, Cambodia, somewhere like that. Somewhere far away from here.’
‘Good for you, Vince.’
Vince was in the passenger seat next to her. Candy was in the back, watching a DVD. Brutus the Rottweiler was sitting next to her. He was surprisingly companionable. Anyone looking at them would have thought they were a family.
She was going to the Palace to pick up Harry. Obviously she was going to have to tell him that his father was dead, but not yet. Right words, right time. There was no hurry. Tommy was going to be dead for a long time. She wouldn’t tell Harry what an evil bastard he’d been. He’d find out one day, but that day could wait. Candy need never know. A change of name, a change of place. A new truth or a new lie. Same thing, in Crystal’s opinion.
Crystal had no idea where they were going to go or what they were going to do when they got there. The road was open, all the way to the horizon. Christina running.
She would have taken Vince further but he was eager to ‘get on’, and when they reached the station she said, ‘Sure?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, really, this’ll do, Crystal,’ so she dropped him on the station forecourt and watched as he ran inside without looking back.
‘We have to go,’ she said to Harry.
‘Go?’
‘Yeah, go. Leave. Leave town.’
‘You’re leaving?’ He looked distraught.
‘No, we’re leaving, Harry. The three of us.’
‘What about Dad?’
‘He’s going to join us later, Harry.’
‘There’s just one thing before we go though,’ Harry said.
‘What’s that, Harry?’
Getting the Hell out of Dodge
They took the long way round, driving on the back roads over the wiley, windy moors. Ronnie had reclaimed her own car, no more blues and twos for a day or two. Operation Villette was over. All that was left was the paperwork. An awful lot of it. ‘The third man’ had been arrested. Nicholas Sawyer. There was a rumour that the Intelligence Services were involved, that for years he had been selling secrets to anyone who would buy them and, failing other routes, this was their way of getting him. The wall around this rumour was impenetrable. It was ‘a meta-jigsaw piece’, Reggie said.
‘Eh?’
Operation Villette and the House of Horrors case were knotted together and had still not been entirely untangled, but it was not theirs to puzzle over any more.
‘Just let it go,’ Gilmerton said at his retirement do a few days later. (A nasty booze-up from which they made their excuses and left early.) ‘You’ll come out of it smelling of roses, not shit. That’s the important thing.’
‘What next?’ Ronnie asked Reggie.
‘Thought I might put in for an exchange abroad next year.’
‘Abroad?’
‘New Zealand.’
‘Wow.’
Reggie had seen Jackson take the gun from the hand of the Polish girl, Nadja, after she killed Stephen Mellors. And then he’d knelt down and said something she couldn’t hear to Andrew Bragg as the sirens drew nearer and nearer. Ronnie had managed to get out and phone for help. It was brave to run, she couldn’t have known that someone wouldn’t shoot her in the back. Shooting someone in the back never looks good to the police and the judiciary. It entrammels you in procedure, the law, the media, immigration. It takes away your choices. It taints you. Reggie knew that was why he did it. The girls had been through enough.
And yet if Ronnie had been there and not outside on her police radio, Reggie would never have gone along with his lie. It was something between the two of them now, a barrier.
Just before the Armed Response Team crashed up the stairs with none of the delicacy you might expect in a hostage situation, Jackson had murmured to Reggie, ‘So Bragg shot Mellors.’
And after a pause she said, ‘Yes, he did.’
And without the gun no one could say for sure. There would be gunshot residue, of course, but the