Blood Falls (26 page)

‘Uh, the name’s Vic. I’m meeting someone. Leon …’

‘Ah, Mr Race’s guest.’ A hundred-watt smile, all of a sudden. ‘If you’d like to follow me.’

He threaded a path through tables full of happy, wealthy-looking people. All of them white, most middle-aged or above, apart from a sprinkling of young men with their girlfriends. No kids in sight, but not a bad thing in Vic’s view. Letting rugrats into pubs had always struck him as a terrible mistake.

His table was in a prime location at the back of the room, which Vic now saw had a magnificent view out to sea. Okay, so it was pitch black and drizzling, but Vic could use his imagination.

‘Great place,’ he muttered.

‘Thank you, sir. Mr Race said to inform you that he’s running late. Can I get you a drink while you wait?’

Vic hesitated, that agonising, unmistakable hesitation of the impecunious, and the waiter glided in with: ‘Mr Race also suggested you could dine here as his guest …’

That was more like it. Vic nodded away the pause as if he’d merely been debating what to have. ‘Glass of still water, please.’ He smacked his lips. ‘Got a hell of a thirst on me.’

The waiter nodded, every bit as puzzled as Vic wanted him to be.

‘Very well, sir—’

‘Plus a pint of Guinness. And a double brandy. Hennessy if you have it.’

The waiter turned away. Vic grinned. He caught a man at the next table giving him a surreptitious glance, and he nodded a greeting. The man quickly averted his gaze.

He chuckled. So no one wanted to look him in the eye? Who gave a fuck when there was free food and drink on the way, and a big cash payout for afters?

He didn’t fit in, he knew that. He was unshaven, dressed like a tramp. Probably stank to high heaven, if the behaviour of those girls on the train was anything to go by: vicious little tarts dancing past his seat, holding their noses and singing, ‘Poo, poo, poo!’ to each other. If he’d had a knife on him, he’d have …

‘And fucking enjoy it too,’ he growled. ‘Bitches.’

‘Your drinks, sir,’ the waiter said. Made Victor jump, the denial already forming:
I wasn’t serious. I never touched them
.

He shook himself like a dog on a beach, forced his clenched teeth open and remembered:
Positive
.

His drinks. The water had ice cubes and lemon, as clean and clear as a polar morning. The Guinness had a perfect white foamy head, like the Irish Sea on a stormy night, and the brandy sat in its fat glass like a wicked uncle with a dark gleam in his eye.

Sup up, my lad, and see where I can take you
…

Victor licked his lips. His reduced circumstances meant he’d been more or less dry for months. And now this.

Gonna be one hell of a night
…

Forty-Five

JOE STARED INTO
his wine glass, rotating the stem between his fingers while he tried to decide if he was more amused than irritated, or vice versa.

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t Diana?’

‘I can’t answer for her. In my case, it just wasn’t that important. Glenn and I have very little to do with each other.’

‘But you were curious to see whether Diana would tell me first?’

‘Are we going to fall out?’ Ellie asked, a mischievous look in her eye.

‘Of course not. I just don’t understand why you both let me put my foot in it.’

‘For the entertainment value?’ She laughed. ‘Seriously, I didn’t say anything because I don’t think it’s relevant. Diana might feel differently. The way she deals with her guilt is to view me as a rival. A bitter, resentful woman desperate to lure her husband back. Your presence here could be seen as giving me a more appropriate form of revenge.’

Joe shook his head. ‘You’ve lost me now.’ But that wasn’t quite true. He said: ‘In what way is Diana guilty?’

‘Glenn and I were still married when their affair began. A perk of his job, you see?’ She gave a chilly smile. ‘I could never understand why he seemed to prefer renovations and extensions rather than
new-builds. After we split up he admitted it was because there was more chance of shagging a bored housewife, a stay-at-home mum. Much more fun than some muddy site full of blokes in low-slung jeans.’

‘Is that when it started, during the building work?’ Joe asked. ‘But Roy was still alive …’

‘I don’t know for sure,’ Ellie said quickly, and he wondered if she was just trying to spare his feelings. ‘Put it this way: I don’t think Glenn would have been deterred by the fact that Diana was married. I’m sorry.’

Joe sighed, ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m stunned. It isn’t what I’d expect from Diana …’ He thought of the retirement party, and Diana’s lament:
It’s not my future
. Joe had been guilty of dismissing her fears, and Roy perhaps even more so. ‘It must have been devastating for you,’ he said.

‘Yes and no.’ She avoided his gaze for a while, staring at her glass. ‘Things were never that great between us, to be honest. I’d always suspected that he played around. At that point I didn’t know he’d slept with one of my best friends two days before our wedding.’

‘That’s appalling.’

‘It is, but he can’t help himself. A born charmer.’ In unison they turned to look at the photographs on the mantelpiece. Joe saw now that Alec was the image of his father: the same strong features, the same cheeky glint in his eyes.

Reading his mind, Ellie said, ‘Don’t. It’s my worst fear. I just hope I’ve managed to instil a bit more respect. A greater sense of loyalty. Not that Glenn hasn’t been a pretty good dad, to be fair.’

‘This is very rude of me, but if your son’s twenty-one, how old were you when you had him?’

She laughed. ‘It’s not rude. I’m choosing to take it as a compliment. Alec was conceived when I was sixteen. I was a mum at seventeen.’

‘And Glenn?’

‘He was twenty-two. Five years older.’

‘Bloody hell. I bet that was popular with your parents?’

‘They didn’t know.’

‘What?’

‘I ran away from home when I was three months gone.’

Ellie popped out to check on dinner, returned with the wine and refilled their glasses. She explained that she’d grown up in Oxford, with regular family holidays in Trelennan. At fifteen she had a holiday romance with Glenn, rekindled a year later, after which she discovered she was pregnant.

‘I knew my parents would go ballistic. They’d envisaged sending me to uni, where I’d get a great degree, have a career, meet some lovely middle-class professional and deliver grandchildren at the appropriate time, and not a moment sooner.’

‘So you ran away? And Glenn took you in?’

‘Not exactly. I turned up here one night and announced that I was “with child”. Scared him half to death. His mum, bless her, gave me a place to stay and more or less forced Glenn to do the right thing.’

Joe nodded. It would be insensitive to suggest the relationship was doomed from the start, but that seemed to be the inference.

‘In time he came round to it. Obviously I know now that he had his little diversions whenever he wanted them. And his mum could see that I was a positive influence. I encouraged him to complete his apprenticeship, and after a few years to set up on his own.’

‘And what about you? Your plans for university?’

‘They went on hold.’ Ellie gave him a sad, wry smile. ‘I finally did the degree a few years ago, through the Open University. Not quite the debauched artistic melting pot I’d dreamt of, but hey. I had Alec, and I wouldn’t have exchanged him for anything. Life doesn’t always go the way you plan …’ She faltered, seeing something in Joe’s face that he didn’t know was there. ‘I suspect you’re probably the last person who needs to be told that.’

‘You could be right.’ Eager to change the subject, he said, ‘I see now why you feel so strongly about Alise and her sister.’

Ellie nodded. ‘I suppose my natural sympathies do lie more with Kamila. When Alise told me, all I could think was:
Maybe she doesn’t want to speak to you. Maybe she doesn’t want to be found
. That’s incredibly painful for the family of a runaway to accept, but sometimes it’s true.’

‘You really believe Kamila could be intentionally ignoring her sister?’

‘Absolutely. Once you’ve made that break, it takes huge determination not to go crawling back home. A single phone call or text can be enough to demolish your resolve.’

‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ Joe said. ‘Still, it’s academic now.’ He described the message he’d had from Alise. Before Ellie could seize on it as proof of her ‘cry wolf’ theory, he added: ‘And yet, the day before, she sent me the details of this guy that Kamila originally ran off with. Why do that and then abandon the search?’

Ellie was perplexed. ‘I agree. That makes no sense. What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t see there’s a lot that I
can
do.’

‘If you’ve got this man’s details, there’s no reason why you couldn’t carry on making enquiries.’

‘Do you think I should?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ She tipped her glass slightly in his direction. ‘But I can sense that you want to, so I’m trying to make it easier for you to decide.’

Joe couldn’t help laughing. ‘You’re always two or three steps ahead of me. I don’t know. Maybe I will.’

Ellie sat up, had a gulp of wine. ‘Time to eat now. And open another bottle. Perhaps, through an alcoholic haze, the answers will become clear.’

Dinner was a delicious beef stifado with salad and French bread. They ate in the dining room, which had the feel of a room kept for special
occasions. Lots of family portraits in here, including one of Ellie as a new mother, looking little more than a child herself.

‘I’ve been puzzling over the timeline,’ Joe said as they came to the end of the meal. ‘You and Glenn splitting up, Glenn going to work for Leon, and his affair with Diana. Did they all happen around the same time?’

‘And is there a link? That’s what you’re wondering.’ Ellie shut her eyes, sifting through her memory. ‘I think the job at the B&B came first, and obviously that’s when he met Diana.’

‘She and Roy had just moved here?’

‘Within the first year or so. The job went on for a few months, on and off. Then he was contracted to work at Leon’s home, so for a while he was going back and forth between them. And then he just announced one day that he was winding up the business and going to work for Leon.’

Joe nodded. That fitted perfectly with his hunch. ‘And it came as a shock?’

‘Absolutely. He’d worked so hard to make his business a success. Why throw it all away to become … I don’t know … arse-licker-in-chief to Leon Race?’

‘And he never gave you an explanation?’

‘At that stage we were barely talking. The marriage was well and truly on the rocks, even if I hadn’t found out about him and Diana.’

‘And nowadays,’ Joe said. ‘Looking back on it, do you understand it any more than you did at the time?’

‘Not really. I can only put it down to a kind of hero worship.’

‘Of Leon?’

Ellie nodded. ‘That was always the impression I got, even though Leon is five or six years younger than Glenn. And it applies to a lot of other people he employs, and the hangers-on. Creeps like Derek Cadwell and Councillor Rawle.’

‘But why?’ Joe asked. ‘What inspires such adoration?’

‘Now we’ve reached the million-dollar question, and I need pudding before embarking on a reply. What do you say?’

Joe patted his stomach, which had seemed full to bursting. Now he realised there was a tiny space he’d been reserving for a dessert.

‘Sounds good to me.’

Forty-Six

IT DIDN’T TAKE
long till all three glasses were empty. A magical process, Victor thought. Osmosis or some shit like that.

Just reading the menu was a thrill, like a top-quality porn mag that hit all the right buttons. He was stuck on whether to order two main courses, though he also wanted a starter.

Without being asked, the waiter had brought him a selection of bread, which might have been home-baked, it tasted so fresh. The bread came with a couple of little bowls with liquid in them. At first he’d confused them with those bowls you use to clean your fingers, but then he realised they contained something edible. Oils of some kind. Tasty.

He devoured the lot, mopping up every last drop of oil and licking his fingers with noisy appreciation. He had one grimy forefinger stuck in his gob when the waiter reappeared. The smarmy smile wavered for a second.

‘Ready to order, sir?’

‘Yeah. I’ll start with pâté, then the salmon thing with pasta, but can I have the chicken with the wine sauce as well? Kind of a side dish?’

‘Of course, sir. Anything else?’

‘Chips.’ Vic winked. He was feeling warm, expansive. ‘Gotta have chips with a good pub meal, eh?’

‘And something else to drink?’

‘Yeah. Same again.’

‘Guinness, brandy and water?’

‘Don’t bother with the water.’

He watched the waiter glide away, and sighed contentedly. Around him the buzz of conversation went on, but it seemed curiously muted now, as though his brain was tuning it out. He sat back in his chair and stretched. He felt gloriously warm and comfortable and light-headed. No wonder: tipping booze into an empty stomach, chased by the bread and oil …

When he opened his eyes, the drinks were being placed in front of him.

‘Fucking great service—’
Whoops
. Bit posh here for that sort of language.

‘Sorry,’ he said. The waiter had already moved away. Another one, a girl, was bringing him the pâté. He beamed, but she seemed to be concentrating on a spot just over his shoulder. Maybe it wasn’t advisable, a great big smile, when he had so many missing teeth. Better just to grin.

‘Thanks. Lovely.’ The words sounded slurred. He should eat this before he touched any more booze.

Except the brandy glass was empty. How the f--- did that happen?

Oh well. He picked up a knife, smeared pâté on a triangular sliver of toast. Get some proper grub inside him and he’d be fine. Clear his head, concentrate on what he came for.

The payday of his life. This was going to be his retirement fund, and with it he fully intended to drink, smoke, snort, swallow and inject himself to death. Maybe he’d last a year, a year and a half. Go out early, but happy.