‘ You don’t hate me for what I’ve done?’
‘ No, I don’t hate you. You got caught up in something that ended up taking over your whole life and if I’d have been in your shoes, Ian, who knows? I might’ve done exactly the same thing, I don’t know’.
‘ That’s very rational. You continue to amaze me with what you can accept’.
‘ Did you kill Conor Naughton, Ian?’
‘ Yes’ said Ian, simply.
‘ And is that all?’
‘ I’ve asked them to let me go and they will once I’ve done one more job for them’.
‘ To kill Campbell?’
‘ Correct. He’s here in Manchester and he knows where I am. Look Mark, if you want to get yourself away from here I’ll understand’.
‘ Don’t talk crap!’
‘ I didn’t know about Campbell until after I’d asked you to move in with me otherwise I’d never have asked you. I can keep you safe if you’re near me or it might be better if you disappear for a while’.
Mark put his glass down on the coffee table and fixed Ian with a determined stare. ‘ If you think I’m going to run from this, from you, then you need to get to know me a lot better. We are going to sort Campbell out together and we’re going to see it through’.
‘ He might try and get to me through you’.
‘ I’d worked that out’ said Mark. ‘ So there’s something you’ve got to do for me’.
‘ What?’
‘ Show me how to use that gun of yours’.
Ian reared back and looked horrified at Mark. ‘ Have you lost it?’
‘ Ian, I saw you putting it in the bedside drawer last night’.
‘ You can’t be serious?’
‘ It makes perfect sense, Ian’ said Mark, firmly. ‘ You’ve got to show me how to use that gun because I need to be able to defend myself and you if need be. I’m not sleeping with a gun in the room if I don’t know how to use it’.
Mark was standing in the living room of the house he’d grown up in waiting for the estate agent to come and value the place for rental. He felt a strange kind of comfort standing there. He could feel his Mum and Dad all around him. He wondered if they could see the gun he was carrying in his inside jacket pocket.
His brother Simon was sitting on the sofa, still in his overalls and padded jacket from his engineering job. Mark looked out of the window, watching for any signs of trouble, any signs of evil, any signs of Derek Campbell.
‘ What are you looking at?’ asked Simon.
‘ Oh just taking one last look at the neighbourhood’ answered Mark, lightly. ‘ I’ll probably never move back here again’.
‘ You really think you’re going to go the distance with Ian don’t you’.
‘ Yeah I do, Simon’ said Mark. He had no doubts about the path his life was going down. It just seemed right that he should be there for Ian and do whatever he could to protect him. Ian was a soldier. Not like a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan but a soldier nonetheless whose life had forced him into some devastating compromises. He was worried, anxious, for both Ian and himself. This wasn’t an ordinary situation by any means. But he’d promised Ian they’d get through it together and they would.
‘ So why do you seem a bit tense? I mean, you’re holding on to your mobile as if your life depended on it. What’s going on?’
That was a question that Mark really didn’t want to answer. Mark had never lied to Simon, not even when they were kids but he couldn’t tell Simon anything about what was going on, even though he wished he could.
‘ Nothing’s going on’ said Mark, still looking out of the window. ‘ It’s just that Ian likes to send me regular texts that’s all’.
‘ Ian seems a bit tense too since the incident at the rugby club’
‘ Well wouldn’t you be?’
‘ Has anything else come out about what happened?’
‘ The police are handling it’ said Mark. That wasn’t a lie. The Greater Manchester force were investigating it but they wouldn’t get anywhere. Ian’s MI5 handlers knew who’d planted the bomb that had torched the rugby clubhouse but that was another thing Mark couldn’t share with his big brother.
‘ You’re sure about moving in with Ian? I mean, you have only known him five minutes’.
‘ Simon, you know me, I don’t piss about when something feels right and this feels more right than anything that’s ever happened to me before’.
‘ I don’t believe you’re telling me the truth’.
‘ I thought you liked Ian?’
‘ I do’ said Simon ‘ There’s just something that’s making me feel uncomfortable about all this and I’m looking out for you like I always do’.
‘ Just trust me, Simon’.
‘ What’s going on, Mark?’
‘ Ian and I have just got to sort out some stuff, that’s all. Now I don’t ask for intimate details of your and Anne’s relationship so don’t you ask me about mine and Ian’s. Okay?’
‘ Is he HIV positive, Mark?’
‘ No, he isn’t! How dare you ask that!’
‘ Are you HIV positive?’
‘ For fuck’s sake, no!’
‘ You can’t blame me for worrying, Mark!’
‘ Oh, so that means you can ask all the clichéd crap about gay men and their lifestyle?’
‘ Alright, alright, I’m sorry’.
‘ Simon, I appreciate that you worry but I don’t want to argue with you so please, enough. Okay? You know me better than anyone else on this planet and you know that I’m tough. But if I don’t want to talk about something then I won’t’.
The estate agent arrived in his sharp pin-striped suit and a manner that was bordering on the downright cocky. He looked the place over and declared confidently that he’d be able to get seven hundred a month for it.
‘ It’s well kept, the metrolink’s at the end of the street, it’s handy for the M60 and the area is just the right side of Stretford to market it as being in Sale which is worth a hundred quid a month in itself’.
‘ Right’ said Mark. ‘ So will you do the usual stuff with the papers and I think you’ve got a website, haven’t you?’
‘ Won’t need to do any of that’ said the estate agent ‘ I’ve already got someone lined up for this place’
‘ Already?’ said Simon.
‘ Oh yeah. A gentleman came in this morning and told us what he wanted. This’ll suit him nicely. I’ll have him signed up by this time tomorrow with any luck’.
Mark never gave a second thought as to who that gentleman might be.
‘ You’ve got about an hour’ Shaun announced when he came in.
‘ Until what?’ Natalie asked anxiously. She’d gone through a whole packet of cigarettes that day. She’d had false nails put on to stop her from biting the real ones all the way down to the quick.
‘ I’m a girl down’ said Shaun ‘ Jacqui has gone and got herself in hospital. She’s fallen over and broken her leg or something the stupid bitch. Anyway, I need you to take over her clients tonight. She’s got two bookings, one local, one businessman from Paris. They’re both expecting the works and she can’t give it to them so you’ll have to’.
Natalie could’ve been sick. ‘ No’ she said ‘ I won’t do it’.
‘ I beg your pardon?’
‘ I’m not going to do this’.
‘ You don’t say no when I’m the one who’s asking you’.
She felt the tears start to fall down her cheeks ‘ Shaun, the baby’.
‘ You haven’t got rid of that yet?’ he demanded.
‘ Shaun, how can you even think of other men touching me when I’m carrying your baby?’ She slumped down in the chair and cried. He was tearing her apart.
‘ There wouldn’t be any fucking baby if you’d done what I’d told you to!’
‘ I can’t!’ she wailed. ‘ I can’t do it!’
She didn’t see him cross the room but felt his hand grip her wrist and literally pull her out of the chair.
‘ Shaun!’ she pleaded. ‘ Shaun!’
He dragged her along the hallway and into the bedroom.
‘ Get your face on and your fancy clothes and get out there! And tomorrow, I’m going to take you down to wherever you need to go and you’re going to get rid of that kid. Understood? I said, understood?’
She stretched out her hand to try and steady her shaking body. Her hand fell on the pair of scissors that were sitting on the bedside table. Her fingers clasped around the cold steel. He was still leering over her and all at once time had stood still. She tightened her grip around the scissors and found the power in her arm to bring them through the air and into his neck. His hand released her. He tried to speak but he couldn’t. His eyes had widened with shock and terror. She was sprayed with his blood all over her face and her dress. She saw the life flooding out of him and to help it on its way she stabbed him again. She had control. He could do nothing. He was helpless. He fell to the floor. His blood was everywhere but she felt strangely at peace. In that moment she was free. Free from Shaun, free from her uncle. She heard the gasp. She saw the plea in his eyes. Then he was silent and she didn’t have to listen to him anymore.
She stared at the horror in front of her. She still had the scissors in her hands but she let go and they fell to the floor. Time had started moving again. She shifted back along the floor trying to get as far away from it as she could and huddled in the corner, just a short distance from the hit of Shaun’s wide open eyes. She tried to look away but they were holding her. They knew what they were doing. They were eating away at her inside and paralysing her. What could she do? Her body was shaking. She’d killed the father of her child. She’d killed the man she’d loved but who had made her so unhappy.
She managed to lift herself up and shuffle along the wall to the door. She had to step over the body and then she ran to the bathroom and threw up. She couldn’t stop shaking. If only she could get a hold of herself and work out what to do. The silence was deafening.
She stepped out of the bathroom and could still see Shaun’s head through the open bedroom door. It was a face she’d touched and kissed, held and stroked. Now it was torn and covered in gallons of blood. It was al over the carpet, the bed, the chest of drawers. She was covered in it. It was in her hair, on her skin, under her fingernails.
She slammed the bedroom door shut with her foot and made it into the kitchen where her violently shaking hands managed to slop some vodka into a glass. Then the air exploded with the sound of Shaun’s mobile ringing and she screamed, dropping the glass to the floor where it shattered into tiny pieces.
Shaun had changed the ringtone on his phone last year after they’d been on holiday in Ibiza. Every time it rang the club jingle reminded them of that fortnight in the sun. They’d been happy on that holiday. Natalie had felt more relaxed than she’d ever done, lying in the sun all day and having a wild time at night dancing and clubbing into the early hours. Belfast and the realities of being part of Shaun’s family ‘firm’ had seemed a million miles away.
‘ Shut up!’ she shouted.
Whoever the caller was they were persistent. The phone was going on and on and on. She placed her hands over her ears and waited for the sound to go away.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Natalie woke up with a start, with that feeling that she was falling off the edge of some high building. She put her hands out to touch herself back into the land of the living and realised that she was still slumped on the kitchen floor with her back against the unit by the sink. She must’ve fallen asleep some time but she couldn’t remember having done so. There was a fog inside her head that suddenly cleared when her eyes set on the horror that she could see across the hallway. Shaun was still there. His eyes were still wide open. The blood had stopped pouring out of him and was now dried and congealed in a patch of deep red that had seeped into the hallway.
There was no way Shaun’s father would let her get away with what she’d done. He’d want retribution. She was as good as dead if she didn’t come up with something. She was well used to overcoming the blows inflicted upon her by others. Shaun had started off so different. He’d charmed her. He’d bought her drinks and had seemed nervous the first night they went out together. He was gorgeous. She was thrilled to be on his arm and she’d given him all the love she’d never had. But then he’d slapped her a few times. He’d punched her and she’d had to hide away for a while more than once. But he was gorgeous. She was his girl. But he’d let her down. He’d wanted her to kill their baby and for that he deserved to die. Instead of getting rid of their baby she’d got rid of him.
She got herself onto her feet and stepped through to the bathroom. Under the shower she washed every bit of the last twelve hours off her skin and out of her hair and thought as hard as she could about what she was going to do. She couldn’t very well hide the fact that she’d killed Shaun … but then again … a plan came to her so easily she almost laughed with relief. She was going to have to be careful with every detail but she was convinced that she could take control of what happened next. The way ahead was becoming very clear. It wasn’t going to be like it had been with her uncle. Life was about to start and for the first time it was going to be on her terms.