John whirled round as someone approached them across the field. ‘Who’s that?’
There were gasps as everyone followed his gaze. It was a man, striding purposefully, marching straight towards them.
Arni stepped away from the group, holding his hand out to keep them back, and picked up his cane which was propped against one of the stones. As the man got closer, he raised it, brandishing it like a baseball bat. ‘Big mistake, mister.’
The man stopped. ‘You know who I am,’ he said.
Arni tensed, the cane took a twitch.
‘Mr Kenyon,’ Henry said, and grinned, his eyes glaring. ‘Nice of you to call in. You know some of us, I believe. Lucy, say hello.’
Lucy curtsied, mocking him.
Ted flushed and scowled.
Arni looked back at Henry, and then back at Ted Kenyon. Then he started to smile. ‘You’re brave.’
‘Killing young women may be your thing, but I’m not going to let it happen,’ Ted said.
Arni looked at Dawn. ‘You’re too late,’ he said, his smile getting broader. ‘And you are on your own.’
‘Am I?’
John felt a jolt of panic as Ted looked towards him.
Arni looked around, trying to see into the trees. ‘Are you?’
‘John Abbott?’
Everyone looked towards John.
Ted followed their gaze and pointed at John. ‘I know who you are, John Abbott. Do your duty, for Christ’s sake.’
Arni looked at John. ‘What do you mean, “do your duty”?’
John was thinking of some way to bluff it out, but Ted spoke again. ‘I don’t know your real name, John Abbott, but remember your promise to serve the public. I’m relying on you now.’ Ted looked at Dawn. ‘Whatever you have done.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Gemma said, stepping forward.
‘He’s an undercover cop,’ Ted said, and nodded towards John.
There were murmurs amongst the group. People were looking at him, pulling away.
‘You’ve no choice now,’ Ted said. ‘So what’s it going to be? Do your duty, or be at the mercy of these people? You know what they can do. Don’t let another daughter die.’
John felt a churn in his gut, his hands slick with sweat. He looked at Gemma, who was backing away from him, her eyes angry, a tremble in his lip. He saw Dawn, naked and stretched out, the stone stained by her blood.
Then he heard Henry begin to laugh.
Everyone looked round.
Henry just laughed louder.
‘Henry, what is it?’ Gemma said.
‘Do you think I didn’t know?’ he said.
‘You knew?’ Gemma said.
‘Of course I did, I’ve known all along. Lucy, take a bow.’
Lucy bowed extravagantly.
Henry’s face straightened, and now there was a glimmer of anger in his eyes. ‘They think we are stupid, just misguided nobodies, but we are the people with the vision for a better life. We’ve talked about how the world is, how we want to change it. They know what we stand for, and then suddenly someone is in the paper for writing graffiti about wanting to be a free man
,
and when he says sorry in court, the lawyer does a long speech about how he is rich but lost, looking for a meaning.’ He shook his head and scowled at Ted. ‘John was just cheese in the mousetrap, waiting for me to spring forward. Except that it doesn’t work, if I can see the trap as well as the cheese. Am I wrong yet, John?’
John didn’t answer. He swallowed and licked his lips.
‘Lucy did well,’ Henry continued. ‘They put your address in the paper, but you knew that, John, because that’s how we were supposed to find you. Except that Lucy checked you out first, followed you around. She saw your little meets with your minders.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything, Henry?’ Gemma said, her voice filled with anger. ‘I slept with him. You told me to.’
‘Because it was a test of my message,’ Henry said. ‘What if my message was so strong that it could turn the mind of someone who came to us to betray us? And it worked. John is with us now, not against us. He proved that tonight.’
All eyes turned to John, who nodded, panting and scared. ‘I’m with you,’ he said.
‘So prove yourself,’ Henry barked, and pointed towards Ted. ‘You know what to do.’
Ted took a step back. ‘So Billy Privett was about your message, and my daughter, Alice?’
John stopped.
‘One of these people killed my daughter,’ Ted said, tears jumping into his eyes. ‘If he is your inspiration,’ and he pointed at Henry, ‘then I pity you, because he is just a murderer. And just as greedy as everyone else, because he hooked up with Billy Privett because of his money, nothing more.’
‘John, kill him,’ Henry said, his voice rising in pitch.
‘And then when Billy wanted to tell all, they silenced him. You know nothing of humanity. Who did you use as bait? Lucy?’
‘John!’
‘I know what happened to my daughter,’ Ted said. ‘And so will everyone else, because you didn’t get every copy of the video.’
Henry clenched his jaw and took a deep breath through his nostrils.
‘What happened, Henry?’ John said.
Henry pointed at Arni, and then grinned. ‘Tell him, Arni.’
Arni put his cane under Ted’s chin. When he spoke to John, his eyes never left Ted. ‘If the girl doesn’t want to join the party,’ he whispered, ‘sometimes it takes a little persuasion.’
Ted swallowed but didn’t move. A tear ran down his cheek. ‘You raped her, Mason,’ he said. ‘A sweet, intelligent, beautiful young woman.’ Then he snarled at Arni, ‘And you killed her, you cowardly bastard.’
Ted went to lunge at Arni, rage in his eyes, but Arni jabbed the tip of his cane into Ted’s neck and he stopped. His hands were balled into fists.
‘We drowned the evidence,’ Henry said. ‘We had to protect the group. No man is perfect, and Arni did wrong, but my humanity, my kindness, forgave him. You are just vengeance, nothing more. A little bundle of hate.’
‘I look at you and I see cowardice,’ Ted said.
‘John, kill him,’ Henry said.
John’s breaths were coming fast now. He looked at Henry and then at the knife that was next to Dawn’s sprawled body.
Ted was looking at him, shaking his head, eyes wide and imploring.
John looked towards Gemma, but she shook her head, her mouth set in anger. He cast his eyes to the sky and the stars seemed to swirl around him, some faded out by the moon, small wisps of cloud moving across it. Emotions welled up inside him as he was assailed by past memories. The thrill of his passing out parade, the early days in uniform. Arrests. Escapes. Deaths. The laughter of those who walked away. The tears of those who didn’t get justice. His first year undercover, living amongst the junkies and thieves, and how he came to like them, knowing that he could have ended up like that himself, just a few decisions in his life that went the right way. He had sat in judgement too much, and forgotten that everyone is the same, just people trying to make their way through life. He had ended up lost, not knowing why he was doing what he did. Going undercover had cost him a lot, he knew that. His marriage. His life. All the police had done was strip his life away. Henry hadn’t given him the answers, it was the group. The togetherness. The bond. It felt like he belonged somewhere.
John thought of Gemma. Her touch, her hair soft in his fingers. Her skin under his fingertips.
He looked round at the group again. Gemma had a tear in her eye. He had let her down, had kept secrets, but that was Henry’s way. They left their old life behind when they entered the group.
The knife was still sticky from Dawn’s blood as John picked it up. He pushed his way through the group and stood in front of Arni, who pressed on Ted’s shoulder with his cane, so that he went to his knees.
John took some deep breaths. He glanced back at Gemma, who was nodding slowly. Henry was grinning now.
John nodded to himself and moved towards Ted Kenyon.
Charlie watched, transfixed, as Ted confronted the group. He fought the urge to go across and help him, but Ted was outnumbered and Charlie wouldn’t change that. He needed to stay alive to get Donia. But it was such a waste, because the woman on the stone slab was obviously dead, and so nothing Ted could have done would have saved her.
He realised then why Ted had done it. Ted was acting as a distraction, because he couldn’t let another daughter die. It was a message to Charlie to get Donia out of there.
He looked at his phone again. There was one bar, just, but it kept flickering, the signal wavering. He scrolled through the numbers he’d dialled before and called Sheldon. He cupped his hand around the phone, and when it was answered, he whispered into it, ‘It’s Charlie. They’ve just killed someone, and now Ted is in danger. A farmhouse on Jackson Heights, with standing stones. Hurry.’
He couldn’t hear anything. He looked at his phone again to see that he’d lost the signal. He didn’t know how much of that had gone through.
Charlie looked back towards the group. They were looking at Ted. This was his chance to slip into the front door. He would be in view, but it seemed to be the only way.
He gripped the corner of the wall and edged forward slowly. Nobody looked over. As he moved towards the doorway, the light from the hall started to shine on him. The best thing to do was not to go too quickly, to make sure that nothing attracted their peripheral vision. He just kept on moving steadily, and then he was facing down the hallway, and those people at the stones were fifty yards behind him. He couldn’t see them, because he was facing away from them, and so he wouldn’t know if they could see him until he heard the shouts from behind.
When he stepped inside the house, he put his back to the wall, so that he didn’t make shadows across the grass. He edged along, his hand making light brushing noises as it ran along the wallpaper. The cottage smelled of stale food, boiled vegetables, and of piss and shit. He covered his mouth and nose with his arm as the stench made him recoil.
He looked along the hallway and saw that he was heading towards some kind of living room. There were ashtrays on the floor and cushions around the edges of the room. There was a clock on a mantel, but the hands were still. The way ahead was dark.
He didn’t have an exit plan, he knew that. What would he do when he got in there? What if the door into where Donia was held was locked? He hadn’t thought any of this through, and the more he moved inside the cottage, the more his escape routes narrowed. He had already seen from the outside that the room had a metal grille on the window. He thought again on what Ted had said, that Donia was just bait, for whatever it was that they wanted.
The thought of what they would do to her when she wasn’t required as bait anymore emptied his mouth of moisture.
It was too late to go back.
His nose itched from the dust. The further he went, the more the room came into view. There was no one there, just the signs of communal living. A large dirty pot in the middle of the floor, the remains of some kind of stew around the sides. There were dishes scattered around the room, the remnants of spliffs in an ashtray made out of a large shell. There was a window, and he saw the metal grille on the other side of that glass. There were bottles underneath containing liquid, rags sticking out. Petrol bombs. It looked like Henry’s group were getting ready for a siege.
As his hand felt along the wall, he came across a doorframe, and then a doorknob, round and wooden. He turned it slowly. As he pushed, he expected to feel the rattle of a locked door, but instead it started to open.
He looked quickly towards the group outside. Still no change. Then he heard a whimper from the room. A young woman.
He made a silent prayer that he was making the right choice, and then pushed the door open fully and stepped inside.
When he closed the door behind him, he put his sleeve across his nose and gagged.
Ted was pushed to his knees, gasping as he felt the crack of Arni’s cane on his shoulder. The grass was damp underneath him.
He looked up at John Abbott, whose arm was stretched towards him, gripping the knife tightly. He could feel the tip against his throat, just pushing, not piercing. A sharp pinprick. It felt wet from blood. Was it his own? The blade trembled lightly, but he knew he couldn’t move.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ Ted whispered, swallowing, pushing his skin harder against the tip. ‘We could stop this. You could blame it on drugs or a breakdown. I could even forget what I saw, because she would have died anyway. But John, let’s end this.’
‘What’s he saying?’ Henry said. ‘Don’t listen to him. It is temptation, that’s all. Remember who he is, what he represents. Think of our mission, what we have planned.’
John faltered.
‘Come with me, John,’ Ted whispered. ‘Just put the blade down. Use it against them.’
‘John, kill him!’ Henry shouted. ‘Don’t give him an opportunity. The time is now.’
John looked back to Henry. The tip of the blade moved away, just a fraction. The grip on his shoulder slackened. Ted moved quickly, his hand snapping upwards to grab John’s forearm.
John yelped, pulled away, making the blade sweep sideways, an instinctive reaction.
Ted gasped as he felt the slash as heat across his skin. John stepped back, shock on his face. He looked at the dagger in his hand, and then at Ted. He turned to the group. Henry was laughing.
Ted coughed. Liquid splashed down the front of his chest. He looked down. There was blood down his shirt. His hand went to his throat. It felt wet. He pulled it away. More blood.
He coughed again, and when he tried to breathe in, the air didn’t make its way to his lungs.
John looked down at him, the dagger limp in his hand now.
Ted could hear laughter. He tried to take another breath, and the night air made him grimace as it rushed into the wound across his throat. But he couldn’t fill his lungs. He coughed again, and he felt the warm, oily taste in his mouth.
He tried to stand up so that he could escape, but the ground didn’t feel even. It was moving so that he swayed with it, his arms out. He felt clammy, his vision speckled, small dots of colour dancing in front of him. He looked at Henry and shivered. Sounds faded, the grass lost its colour, his view like television interference.