Sins of the Father (25 page)

“No!” Kael shouted. Looking up the stairs through the double door archway, he lowered his voice. “I usually wait for you to tell me who to go after. What’s the fucking difference, you stupid dick!”

“The difference is that one is necessary and the other is gratuitous. I’m bringing you in for a psych assessment. I thought you had calmed down since Angel. Now I don’t know what the hell to make of you.”

The irony of a psych assessment drew a harsh laugh from Kael. “When we met, I was twelve years old and you were sixteen. You told me later you knew the day you met me that I was a cold-blooded killer. So you sought me out at Cambridge ten years later, recruited me into SIS, and then trained me to be as assassin. And now—let me get this right…” He paused for effect. “You are complaining because I kill. You think I need a psych assessment because I kill. What’s wrong with this picture, Stephen?”

“There is a huge difference between your work and killing some stranger in a back alley! The man was a successful architect, for God’s sake.” Kael assumed Conran must be alone since he had gone from a frantic whisper to shouting.

“Was he married?”

“Yes. Thank God he had no children.”

“Tell his wife to get tested for venereal disease. Ask her if he ever hit her.”

There was a long pause. “I’m not suggesting he was a model citizen. According to the police, the wife was not exactly devastated at the news, but that is hardly relevant.”

“Fuck off and don’t annoy me with this again. Did you find any information on Romodanovsky?”

“No, not yet. But if he is your father, it would make perfect sense! You’re both self-serving, evil bastards!”

“Then I assume you will be having Romodanovsky prosecuted for rape and me for murder very soon.”

Conran hung up.

“Daddy, are you okay?” Angel stood on the bottom stair looking at him. “The girls want their stories.”

“Yes, I’m coming.” He drained his glass and stood up.

Zoe and Amelia shared a big bedroom with pink walls. They had matching beds with pretty pink bedding and little frilly canopies over the top. Toys, dolls, and books lined every shelf and window ledge. An ornate dollhouse stood on the floor with small items of furniture scattered about the rooms. Kael had never been in a girl’s bedroom before. He looked up at the ceiling where a sky was painted with clouds and stars.

Holding hands, the girls craned their necks back to look up at him. “Do you like our bedroom, Uncle Kael?”

“It’s very pink and messy,” he said, looking at the toys lying on the rug.

Angel knelt in front of the bookshelf, perusing the many offerings. “Pick a story each, girls. We’ll read Amelia’s first because she is the youngest, and then Zoe’s second because she is the oldest.”

The logic behind Angel’s statement was lost on Kael, but he said it with such gravity that neither girl questioned it. Kael wandered over to look out of the window while Angel read the first story. The big back garden below had colorful swings and a slide in the middle. A climbing frame and a number of ride-on toys were scattered about.

Angel’s melodic voice made him turn back to watch and listen. The three sat on a pink love seat with Angel in the middle, still managing to hold the book even with his arms around the girls. When he was finished, he looked up at Kael, smiling. “Your turn, Daddy.”

Kael looked around for somewhere to sit. Being so big, he was afraid to sit on the beds. Everything looked so fragile. Angel pulled the girls onto his lap and scooted over, patting the seat beside him. Angling his body into the small space beside them, Kael felt huge and awkward. “What am I reading?”

Zoe got a book from the shelf. “Read
Alfie’s New Boots
.”

Halfway through the story about a little boy who got a new pair of wellies and went splashing through puddles in them, both girls got up to demonstrate their own splashing technique. They began to stomp about the room pretending to splash water, screaming at the top of their lungs. After Conran, who had made him more irritable than he realized, the noise of the screaming made Kael’s scalp tighten. His nerves felt frayed. He’d rather be out on a hit than here reading a story to two little girls in their cozy bedroom. One glance at Angel showed the boy laughing at their antics.

“Sit down and let’s finish,” Kael said, but no one heard him. “Be quiet!”

The girls stopped, looked at him for a long frozen moment, and dissolved into tears.

“Daddy!”

Getting down on his knees, Angel gathered the girls to his chest. They wrapped their arms around his neck and cried loudly on his shoulders. The look on Angel’s face when he turned on Kael would have got him a slapped arse under other circumstances. He bared his teeth and glared. After what seemed an eternity of comforting them, Angel began to talk to the girls.

“Uncle Kael didn’t mean to be loud and bossy, did you?” His emphasis on
loud and bossy
was very annoying.

“No,” Kael mumbled. “But they were giving me a headache.”

“Sorry, Uncle Kael,” Zoe mumbled through her tears.

“Oh, uh, well…I’m sorry too, Amelia,” he said.

“I’m Zoe.”

“Sorry, Zoe. I’m sorry to both of you,” he said. “Sorry, Amelia. I didn’t mean to shout.”

Angel waved him closer. Awkwardly he got down on the rug and sat cross-legged looking at them. After a few minutes of cautious glances, the girls climbed into his lap, and he finished the story. Only when he felt their tiny bodies in his arms did it dawn on him how fragile they were, how breakable and easily hurt. He felt like a piece of shit.

Carefully he stood, still holding the girls, one on each arm, their heads resting on his shoulders, and he rocked them until they fell fast asleep. “Good work, Daddy,” Angel whispered.

With immense care, Angel helped him get them into bed without waking them. Ducking under the canopies was the hardest part. For a moment, they stood looking with relief at the two sleeping children, one dark-haired, the other blonde, until Kael mouthed,
Let’s go
. They crept out of the room, leaving on a night-light.

In the living room, Kael poured another whisky and drank it in one gulp. “Now they hate me.”

* * * *

Miserable for the last couple of hours, Kael was sitting on the couch with Angel sprawled beside him resting on his shoulder when Freddie and Adam arrived home a little after ten thirty. Freddie, jolly and effusive as ever, poured them more drinks. “Is Angel allowed a wee dram of firewater?” he asked Kael.

“No, he’s fine. He had a beer,” Kael told him.

Freddie and Adam talked for twenty minutes or so about the girls’ teachers and how well they were doing in school before asking how it went.

“They hate me.”

Kael had said the same thing repeatedly over the last couple of hours while Angel comforted him.
“They don’t, Daddy. They love you.”
When he persisted, Angel had finally ordered impatiently,
"Stop beating yourself up. They’ll be fine.”

“What happened?” Freddie asked, his face awash in sympathy. “The girls adore you, Kael.”

“I raised my voice, and I scared them. I didn’t mean it, but they were screaming their heads off and I was getting agitated. I’m not very good at this sort of thing.” Freddie looked at Adam, and they both burst out laughing.

Kael glared at them. “Why is that funny?”

“You’re such a big old ogre,” Freddie joked.

“I don’t want to be an ogre. They were crying. I felt like shit.”

“I don’t think they were really all that traumatized.” Angel pulled his iPhone from his pocket and began to flip through the pictures.

“You took a picture?” Kael was instantly annoyed.

Angel was already on his feet, crossing the rug to show his phone to Freddie, whose chubby face broke at once into a rosy-cheeked smile. “I’ll delete it. And I don’t see why we can’t take a few pictures. People see you on the street all the time. There’s CCTV everywhere in this country.”

With his forefinger waving in the air, ready to tell Angel off for being cheeky, Kael was completely ignored by all three.

“Awww, look at that!” Freddie burst out. “Adam, look.” Adam got up from his seat and sat on the arm of Freddie’s chair. “Awww,” he repeated. “Show Kael.”

Throwing himself down beside Kael again, Angel showed him a picture he had snapped of him rocking the girls to sleep. They looked so little in his arms, heads resting on his shoulders. It was very sweet, and he couldn’t help but smile. Then a brilliant thought popped into his head. “I know. We’ll get them more Barbies. Then they’ll love me again.” Perplexed when all three of them began to chuckle once more, Kael said again, “Why is that funny?”

Freddie piped up. “Because you’ve never in your life cared who liked you, and here you are desperate to get into the good graces of a couple of kids.”

No wonder Freddie was laughing at him. If he had any sense of humor, he would laugh at himself. The other night, he had killed a random stranger, and now he was near to having an anxiety attack because he had made the children cry.

“Delete the picture,” he told Angel—who obeyed at once.

“What’s the deal with no pictures?” Adam asked.

“I’m in security. It’s safer all round,” he said.

“I saw you going into the MI6 building in the city a few months ago,” Freddie said quietly. “Do you work for them?”

“If he told you, he’d have to kill you,” Angel said.

“And what’s our Angel going to do next? You’ll get your A levels this year, right?” Freddie smiled at Angel.

“Yes, sir. We’ve already applied to three universities for me.”

“You don’t look too excited about it.” Still sitting on the arm of Freddie’s chair, Adam leaned against his husband.

Glancing up at Kael, Angel said, “I want to make Daddy proud, so I’ll do whatever I have to.”

Pulling his boy close to his side, Kael kissed the top of Angel’s head. “I’m already proud of you. You know that. And tomorrow you can help me choose some Barbies for the girls.”

A scream issued from up the stairs, and a frightened voice called out, “Uncle Kael.”

Adam jumped to his feet. “That’s Zoe. She’s having that nightmare again.”

“Let Kael go. She called for him,” Freddie said.

Already on the bottom stair, Adam said, “She’s terrified when she has that nightmare.”

From his seat, Freddie said firmly, “Adam, let Kael go. Go on, Kael. Be quick. Redeem yourself.”

Taking the stairs two at a time, Kael paused briefly at the top to ready himself for what he might find before entering the bedroom. Sitting in the bed, her hair messy and her face wet with tears, Zoe stretched out her arms to him. Kael lifted her out of bed, surprised at how tightly she wrapped her arms around his neck. “The monster was here,” she whispered.

“Where is it?” he asked.

Zoe pointed at the window. On impulse Kael walked toward it as the child clung harder to him. Reaching out, he opened the window. “Get out, monster, and if you come back, I’ll spank you. Don’t make me do it.” With that he closed the window again. “There. He’ll never come back again.”

“How do you know?” Zoe asked.

“Because I told him not to, and he’s scared of me.” With a sigh of contentment, Zoe kissed his cheek. “Why did you call me instead of Angel?” he asked quietly.

“I knew you’d make the monster go away,” she said.

For the next ten minutes, Kael rocked her gently until she was breathing evenly against his neck. Even when she was asleep, he was reluctant to put her down and stood for another few minutes rocking her and wondering how Ekaterina was doing.

Chapter Fourteen

Standing by the river Thames, leaning on the wall, Sharon Saunders wondered if it was a good idea after all to show up at her son’s flat without getting in touch first. A momentary impulse had made her grab her bag, throw on her coat, and walk to Lime Street Station to get the train to London. Part of her knew it was time to tell Kael the truth, and part of her never wanted to think again about her lovely son’s father.

“Mum? What are you doing here?”

With a smile, she faced the great big handsome man her son had grown into. “Hello, luv. I hope you don’t mind me showing up like this.” For years she’d had no idea where Kael lived. He had never invited her there, always coming to visit her or taking her to stay in fancy hotels and guesthouses in the country. It was lovely, but she had never seen his flat until Angel had shown up in her son’s life.

“Did you phone?”

“I did, luv. I phoned when I got here. You must be switched off.”

“Is everything all right, Mum? Is it Shawn again?”

Hugging him around the waist, she said, “No, luv. I need to talk to you, and I didn’t want to do it on the phone.”

“Couldn’t it have waited?” Kael was always blunt. He had good manners. She had taught him those and the posh school had polished them, but he had always said what was in his head, and often it was inappropriate.

“No. It couldn’t wait another minute.”

The man in a fancy coat opened the door of the building, and they took the lift up.

“Where’s Angel?” she asked as they entered the silent, perfectly clean and ordered flat.

“He has the chess club after school today.” Kael hung their coats in the hall cupboard. “And he asked if he could meet his friend Jack after that. He’ll be home by seven.”

Following him into the kitchen, she said, “He has to ask?” Kael gave her that “please don’t ask about my private life” look that she had seen over the years. “He’s a lovely boy. Make me a cup of tea, son.”

Kael filled the kettle and plugged it in. “Do you want a snack? We can go out for dinner when Angel gets home.”

“No, luv. Just the tea.”

Nervous at what she had come to tell him, she wandered into the large, perfectly tidy living room. Even when he was a lad, Kael had been tidy, always wanting everything in perfect order. He had kept his bedroom spotless, unlike all the boys he had played with as a kid. She watched him now carrying the tea in, placing the lovely white porcelain cups and saucers with great care on leather coasters on the glass-and-oak coffee table. “Come and sit down. Where’s your overnight bag?” he asked as if he had just noticed she had brought nothing with her.