Never Tell (14 page)

We galloped across the field, with only the moonlight to guide us; galloped until we were sweating and panting ourselves. The ground was flying beneath our feet, clods of earth thrown up in the first field, then through the next into the short January wheat as I clutched the horse’s wiry mane, threading my fingers through the coarse hair, and leaned low over his neck. I thought I’d never felt anything so electrifying in my life as riding this horse beneath the stars.

Finally we stopped. Dalziel dismounted under a huge oak tree and held a hand out to me. The moon was a brilliant white orb in the black sky, the stars like a map of the world above us, and I was wide-eyed and childlike with the thrill of it all. I was the luckiest girl in the world.

As I slipped to the ground, legs shaking, the boy was climbing over the metal gate in the fence of the field we now stood in. An old Mini was parked on the other side, engine chugging.

‘Are you ready?’ Dalziel said to him as I stroked my horse’s nose and whispered endearments.

‘Are you sure about this?’ the boy muttered. His accent was Northern, the vowels elongated. He looked nervous, his fists curled by his hips. ‘I thought you was joking.’

‘I gave you the money, didn’t I?’ Dalziel snapped. ‘Hold him.’

I watched as the boy took Dalziel’s mount by the bridle, crooning to the big horse. He wheeled him round, nudging the horse’s shoulder to get him to move. Dalziel was delving in the rucksack.

‘Number Eight, hey, Rosie!’

I racked my brain. ‘What is Number Eight?’

‘“You shall not steal” of course.’ He pulled something long and black from the bag. ‘And we have. Stolen well, my lovely.’

And I looked again and realised with a horrible squeeze in my belly that Dalziel was holding a rifle in both hands.

‘What are you doing?’ I stuttered. I suddenly didn’t feel so high. The barrels of the gun glinted in the moonlight.

‘Number Six too.’

‘Mate,’ the boy said, ‘here, mate.’ He stepped in front of the horse. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

‘Good for you.’ Dalziel was quite calm. He cocked the gun at the horse, at the boy. ‘I haven’t.’

‘Dalziel.’ My own horse was stamping now, walking backwards, pulling on the reins as if he recognised the danger. ‘What are you doing? Put the gun down.’

‘No, Rose. “You shall not murder,” remember. And settle some scores as well.’

‘What scores?’ The leather was biting into my hand, chafing my palm.

‘The horse ain’t done nothing wrong, whatever your grievance with the boss.’ The boy was small, but he pulled himself up to his full height. The black horse towered over him. ‘Let him be.’

‘What boss?’ I was feeling increasingly frantic and sick. ‘Dalziel, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Christ has nothing to do with it.’ Dalziel levelled the rifle at the horse’s great chest, the boy still between gun and beast. ‘Step out of the way.’

‘No.’

‘Step out of the way.’ I heard the tension in Dalziel’s voice now. He gestured with the gun. ‘Move – or I’ll shoot you both.’

‘Dalziel,’ I stamped my foot desperately, ‘put it down, now.’

‘Or?’

‘Or, or I’ll –’ I’d seen a phone box near the car – ‘I’ll call the police.’

Dalziel contemplated me for a moment, without ever moving the gun.

‘I thought you were my compadre, Rose.’

‘I am. But this is wrong, Dalziel. You know that. You don’t need to kill him. He’s so beautiful.’ I edged closer. ‘Please, Dalziel. Put the gun down.’

He stared at me as if he didn’t know me. Then he raised the gun and fired in the air. Both animals shied, my horse rearing again so I was pulled almost right off the ground, my arm yanked almost from its socket, making me drop the reins as I did, my hand stinging wildly as the leather ripped the skin from my palm.

Dalziel levelled the gun at the boy’s chest again; the boy pushed his cap back on his head.

‘Go on then.’ He stood firm, soothing the dark horse, murmuring sweet nothings to him.

For a moment Dalziel didn’t move. None of us did. I held my breath, down on my knees in the mud. And then finally, he lowered the gun. Slowly I picked myself up off the ground.

‘I was only joking,’ he said, laughing a strangely tremulous laugh. ‘You knew that, didn’t you?’

‘Some fucking joke.’ The boy swore furiously and spat on the ground towards Dalziel’s feet. Dalziel raised the gun again.

‘You’re mad, mate.’ The boy stared at him. ‘Fucking mad,’ and then he vaulted onto the horse’s back. He booted the animal and they cantered off the way we’d come, stopping only to gather up the grey’s reins, before kicking his horse on. I could feel the vibration of the great hooves through the damp ground as I tried to stand.

I’d rarely experienced so much relief as I felt in that moment, as I watched the horses turn to black dots beneath the moon.

Dalziel and I drove back to his sports car in silence. I couldn’t trust myself to speak: I was still shaking, and when I got out of the Mini to change vehicles, I was sick into the hedge. Whatever he’d given me had worn off totally, and the opium I’d smoked earlier that evening had left me with a terrible headache.

As I straightened up, I read the glossy white sign above the gate. There was a flouncy black monogram that was hard to decipher, an H and an S; a J perhaps. I didn’t care, frankly. I just wanted to go home now, to crawl into my bed and to sleep the whole nightmare off.

As we pulled up outside my college, Dalziel pushed his hair back from his face.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, and I paused, my hand on the car door. I realised I’d never heard him apologise for anything before. ‘I don’t know what got into me.’

‘What was that stuff you gave me?’ I asked quietly.

‘Just something one of the med students sold me.’

‘What was it?’ I was insistent. I was angry. I’d never really felt angry with him before, but now I was scared and ashamed.

‘Methamphetamine.’ It meant nothing to me. ‘I thought it would be fun.’

I opened the door and staggered out. I just needed to lie down.

‘It wasn’t, though, was it?’ he said sorrowfully. ‘Rosie, I’m so fucking shit and useless sometimes.’

He looked bleak as he leaned over and pulled the door shut. Before I could reply, he was gone.

* * *

A week later it was my birthday, and I had dinner in a cheap Italian with Jen, Liz, James and a few others, glad to have some other friends, to be honest; aware I’d made little effort with them lately. Dalziel was still off the radar and I was finding it painful. I went to bed that night with James, a little tipsy, sad but resolute. The next morning, though, a huge bunch of white roses was waiting for me in the porters’ lodge, the first flowers I’d ever received. The porter winked at me as I fumbled with the envelope.

‘Let me take you out to apologise, dear Rose,’ the little card said. ‘Call me.’ So I did, and we arranged to meet in The Turl.

Dalziel never drank in town; he said it didn’t behove him to, as a third year. We met in the pub, where he gave me a first edition of Thomas de Quincey’s
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
, inscribed from ‘Your loving friend and fellow dreamer’.

‘Rosie.’ He kissed my cheek. ‘You look lovely. Look, I’ve just got to meet a man about a dog in Jericho.’

‘Dalziel—’ I started to protest, but the glint in his eyes silenced me.

‘I won’t be long, I promise. Buy a drink. Buy three.’ He gave me a twenty-pound note and was gone.

Clutching the book, I’d bought myself a gin and orange and was making my way back from the bar when a slender dark girl with peroxide hair blocked my way. She wore very high heels and a skin-tight black dress with a biker’s leather jacket over it; in her perfect nose sat a tiny gold nose-stud. Yasmin – the girl who had been with Dalziel in the pub the first time I met him, and the girl I caught him with that night at the Oxford Union, I realised blushing now, in my first term. It seemed so long ago, but actually it was only a few weeks.

‘I recognise you,’ she announced. Her tone dripped with boredom but her stare was caustic as paint-stripper. ‘You’re this term’s inamorata, aren’t you?’ Her accent was as refined as Dalziel’s; it suggested years of easy privilege.

‘Not really,’ I mumbled, suddenly nervous. Next to her feline beauty, I was more carthorse than Joni Mitchell, in my leggings and beads. ‘We’re just friends, actually.’

‘Really?’ She raised a pencilled eyebrow. ‘What are you reading?’

She grabbed my book before I could stop her. ‘Ha!’ she said, flipping through it. ‘One of
them.’

‘One of what?’ I held my hand out for my book.

She shoved it at me. ‘Tell me,’ she scoffed, her red lipstick too thick over her luscious mouth, ‘is he still banging on about his bloody Society X? So fucking infantile. I couldn’t bear it any more.’ She lit a Marlboro cigarette without offering me one; considered me for a moment before exhaling into my face. ‘I tell you, he’s damaged, that boy. I’d watch him, if I were you.’

‘Why?’ I shook my head, confused. ‘What do you mean – damaged?’

‘Positively curly-wurly cuckoo, my dear.’ She tapped the side of her peroxided head with a red-varnished finger. Her nails were horribly chewed. ‘Anyone who’s sent away to school at five is fucked up, aren’t they? Speciality of the upper classes, of course.’

I realised she was drunk.

‘And even more fucked up if it’s just so their dear mother can drink herself to death.’

‘Five years old?’ My heart went out to Dalziel. ‘But – I thought his mother was alive?’

‘His
third
stepmother might be, last time I looked.’ She dragged hard again, scarlet staining the cigarette filter. ‘Just about. But she hates him anyway. And then of course, there’s Lucien and Charlie, not to mention Annabella and Rebecca, spoiled little cow.’

I had no idea what she was talking about. For some reason she was becoming agitated.

‘Christ!’ she expostulated with disgust. ‘You want my advice –’ I didn’t but she was going to give it anyway – ‘run a fucking mile.’

She threw the cigarette on the flagstone floor and ground it out with a pointy leather toe. Over her shoulder, I watched Dalziel walk into the snug on the other side of the pub.

‘Nice to meet you,’ I mumbled, banging against a paunchy drinker in my rush to get away.

‘Just don’t say no one warned you,’ she shrieked after me.

I felt a little shaken as I joined Dalziel. ‘Friend of yours?’ I asked him as the girl provocatively wrapped her arms around a short black guy, watching us the whole time.

‘I’ve known her for years,’ was all Dalziel would say, and soon after that we left. But I saw him glance back as the street door closed behind us. For the first time since I’d known him, he looked visibly upset, his pale face flushed with colour. Worse than upset, in fact. He looked shaken to the core.

Chapter Seven
GLOUCESTERSHIRE, MARCH 2008

I was due at the
Chronicle
the next day, but I was so tired I couldn’t concentrate, and I was conscious I was stalling Tina about the Kattan piece. Consciously I’d made the decision to have nothing to do with him, but I was aware that deep down I still felt more allegiance to Xav than the
Chronicle
, and that maybe I owed it to him too. And it was eating away at me; in honesty I was loath to give up the story entirely; it just wasn’t in my professional nature and I thought Xav was right: there was definitely something going on. I thought of the man being dropped onto the gravel; the stacks of petrol canisters, the Islamic tattoos; the unmitigated tension. I made a few surreptitious calls to a few contacts from the old days: Louise at the Press Association, Guy at Reuters, just putting out feelers on the family; and then I wrote a review of the Cheltenham Players’ rendition of
A Little Night Music
(truly dreadful, but the refreshments had been cracking, so I wrote a lot about them).

I stopped at the upholsterers on the way to collect the twins; they were re-covering our old divan with an incredibly expensive red velvet that James had left over from the Paris VIP room. As I entered the dark little shop, the quaint bell above the door jangled.

‘Oh, Mrs Miller.’ The salesgirl seemed slightly flustered as she emerged from her lair of fabric rolls and ribbons.

‘Is it ready?’ I smiled expectantly.

‘Actually we haven’t been able to finish the order yet because I couldn’t process the credit card.’ She busied herself refolding a bundle of golden silk. ‘Mr Ballantine’s such a terrible stickler, I’m afraid. Shall we just check we have the right details?’

Flummoxed, I gave her the card. It failed again. I found another one; to both our relief, this one worked. I’d have to remind James to top up the account. He was so slap-dash about money.

As I pulled up in the drive with the twins, dance music throbbed incongruously from the sedate old house, the naked rose tree creeping carefully between the rattling windows. In the kitchen McCready was hiding behind the ironing board, the cat hunched at her feet; her tracksuit a bright vermilion today, matching the thread veins in her apple cheeks.

‘Awful lot of swearing going on,’ was all she would say, her mouth a tight line. She took the twins out into the garden as I began to lug the Hoover upstairs, pausing in the hall as I heard raised voices from the sitting room. It was Liam and James, I realised, though it was hard to decipher the conversation over the beat of the music. I was about to open the door when Liam said, ‘Don’t fucking tell her.’ I heard something else angry and incoherent, then I was sure he said, ‘I’m warning you.’

Fingers on the door handle, my stomach rolled queasily.

James replied, but I couldn’t hear him properly. After a few minutes, all I’d made out were James saying,’ … too much money’ and, ‘ … asking for trouble, mate.’

I breezed into the room. James was facing the door and saw me first, but Liam had his broad back to me and he jumped when I spoke.

‘Coffee, anyone?’

‘God, you scared me,’ Liam said guiltily as I went to kiss him. ‘I’d love one, sweetheart.’ He was particularly pasty-looking this afternoon, a great bear of a man wearing a red checked shirt that did nothing for his freckly complexion.