The Losing Game (15 page)

Lucas—Dante knew it, as he’d known when Lucas asked him to take him home that they would end up fucking—was about to get himself into a world of trouble.

Dante remembered Lucas’s handset, left on the counter in the kitchen. Easing up from the bed, Dante tiptoed from the bedroom and down the stairs. Gift of gifts, Lucas didn’t have a lock on his handset. Dante slid open the screen and installed the tracking software he could use to follow him. He rinsed out his wineglass in the sink, filled it with water, and returned with it to the bedroom.

Lucas blinked open one eye. “I thought you might have gone.”

“I went to get you a glass of water.”

Lucas was deliciously pliant, and Dante would have loved to stay, to bend him every way his body would bow. But Dante had begun to sweat. He could smell it on himself—the rancid stench of a liar and a stalker—on top of the staunch scent of sex.

Perhaps he got a whiff of the same from Lucas too. Perhaps that was why he said, “I have to go,” when he really wanted to stay.

“Will I see you again?”

Dante hesitated a little too long.

Lucas sat and gulped a mouthful of water. “You can say no. I did say no strings. However, if you tell me I’m nice but it will never work, I’m going to punch you in the face.” He chanced a wan smile that squeezed the breath out of Dante’s chest. “Just saying.”

“You’re not nice. You drank a ninety-quid bottle of wine like it was plonk, and you fuck like a ten-quid whore. I’ll call you.”

Before Dante could escape, Lucas curled his hand around the back of Dante’s neck and kissed him. His mouth still tasted of the wine, and his tongue moved possessively against Dante’s.

As kisses went, it was another breath-stealer. If he kept this up, Lucas was going to be the death of him.

DANTE LEFT
Lucas sore and aching and unable to wipe the grin off his face, even with the lingering pain in his heart. Lucas washed up the glasses and dishes by hand and promised himself an early night.

But he couldn’t sleep. His laptop beckoned.

He’d promised himself he’d stop this nightly Internet ritual. Once he’d made up his mind to kill Richard Shaw, he no longer needed to go on Facebook. He didn’t need to look at Shaw parading his beautiful family, his myriad friends, and his bountiful fucking social life. That would all be gone soon enough. A clean slate ready for the impending New Year.

Lucas sat on a counter stool in the kitchen, curled over his open laptop, finger hovering.

“Go to bed. Have a glass of water, and get some sleep.”

Better check. Make sure he’s going to the Blue Bell tomorrow night.

“He’s going to the Blue Bell. Just like he does every Friday.”

Richard Shaw was a creature of sickening habit. An arrogant man at the top end of his fifties, with ample means and a fondness for beer. A wife, a daughter. A vintage Aston Martin that he publicly lamented (not two days after the verdict) that he wouldn’t be able to drive for another four years. Four years banned from driving for killing another human being. The outrage!

Lucas scrolled down, hands shaking, back and back on Shaw’s timeline until he got to October. To the offending post. Lucas had every one of the names of the commenters memorized. Every person who had commiserated at Shaw’s bad luck and his harsh sentence.

He read the comments again, as if coming back to them they might miraculously be different. Lucas felt the sting on the back of his eyes. He rubbed them with his finger and thumb, pushing back the tears.

“Fuck him. Fuck them.”

Lucas scrolled up to the latest post. Friday night.
Bill Massey and Denny Ross and Richard Shaw. Usual time, usual place.
Until Shaw, Lucas thought no one used Facebook anymore. Not with FriendMe, and Mates, and Splosion. Evidently, a whole generation still did, and half of them publicly.

The Blue Bell was nestled on a quiet road on the southeast corner of Roseport Island, close to the old ferry landing, about a mile from Shaw’s house. At the end of the summer, Lucas had followed him a few times, waited tucked behind the hedgerow opposite, hidden. He’d watched Shaw stagger out, an hour after closing, with his paralytic friends. He’d watched them wobble and walk, or sometimes drive home, not always in a taxi. He’d fantasized about confronting Shaw until the cramp in his legs had forced him to shake out his legs and sorrily slink home.

Lucas closed the laptop. He drank a glass of water.

In the hallway, he stopped in front of the photographs hanging on wall at the bottom of the stairs. “Night Ma, night Dad, night Grace.”

The third stair creaked, as it always did. Grace had liked it that way.

They’d bought this house together. They’d shared the bills, the housework, and the maintenance, which meant everything in it was a reminder of her, no matter that Lucas had boxed, donated, or thrown away almost every possession she’d left behind. Her laughter echoed off the walls. Sometimes Lucas was convinced he could smell her perfume.

What would she make of this last seven, eight months? Would she tell him to forget it and move on? Or would she tell him to stop being a fucking wuss and do it? Get Shaw back. The bloke had it coming to him.

The next day, Friday, work passed as slow as glaciers. Lucas ate lunch—a cheese sandwich—at his desk. He turned down an offer to join Lily and some other colleagues for a drink in the evening.

“I’d love to, but I think I’m coming down with something. Don’t worry, I’ll be right as rain for the Christmas party in a couple of weeks.”

Lucas took the bus home. He hung up his coat in the hall. He closed every blind and curtain in the house and showered—like a sort of ceremonial cleansing. Wearing gloves, he took the gun and bullets from their hiding place, under the end kitchen cabinet, behind the plinth.

Every night since he’d bought it, Lucas had sat with the unloaded gun in his hand. He’d practiced pointing and firing. He’d loaded and unloaded the magazine with bullets.

It hadn’t stopped there. He’d done his research. He could make it to Roseport Road without being seen by a single street camera. At eleven, the Parchment Makers would be turfing out, and Lucas could cross with the throng. On the other side of the road, the footpath disappeared into Milton Gardens. He wouldn’t take any chances. He’d cover his head and face. He was increasingly confident he could escape scrutiny or recognition.

Once he was in Milton, he’d use residential streets and cut-throughs. He’d lay in wait. Bide his time. When Shaw left the pub, Lucas would follow him for the first twenty or thirty meters of his walk home, from behind the hedgerow running parallel to the road. It would be over so fast Bill and Denny wouldn’t be able to take it in. They’d be looking at their mate Richard bleeding on the floor before it registered he’d been shot.

Lucas wouldn’t stop to gloat. He’d do the job, and then he’d run like the wind, over the field, into Hare’s Lane. He’d dump the gun, his gloves, and the old coat Adam had given him, in a domestic bin. Then he’d walk home, head down.

When he got back to his street, he’d jump the fences and go in through his back door, the same way he’d left. In the kitchen, he’d strip and put all his clothes and his shoes, in the washing machine. He’d shower,
scrub
, then get into bed, where, if anyone came asking later, he’d been since nine o’clock.

Lucas had thought to wait. A few days before Christmas would have been ideal. But since Avery died and he and Dante had connected, he no longer wanted to wait. He didn’t want to lie to Dante. He couldn’t. He’d tell him about it after, but he didn’t want to draw him into what should have been his business and his alone from the start.

Ironically it was that first meeting with Dante, and the evening with Adam, that had made Lucas realize that.

Maybe Lucas’s plan wasn’t foolproof, but it was the best he could do. He was certain he could make it work.

At ten o’clock, Lucas sat in the dark, in his kitchen. He looked at the latest on Facebook. Denny had posted a picture of Shaw with a crowd of people, holding drinks, flushed and grinning. Good. Shaw was at the Blue Bell.

Lucas tried to calm, regulating his breathing, in to a count of three, out to a count of three. He tried to imagine his life after this. He’d never completely get over his losses, and he might have some nightmares about taking a man’s life. He’d have to live with that. His emotions weren’t the point. The point was justice. The system had failed Grace. Lucas was balancing the scales. After this he’d be able to move on.

Dressed in his usual running gear—old trainers, thick running tights, a hoodie, and over that, the waterproof jacket Adam had given him, Lucas left the house at ten to eleven—through his back door, so as not to run the risk of a neighbor seeing him leave via the front. The loaded gun was tucked into his waistband, his scarf wrapped over his mouth and nose. The chill air clawed the skin on the tops of his cheeks and around his eyes. Lucas ignored it. Adrenaline and movement would warm him in no time.

At the end of his garden, he jumped the low fence onto the Patels’ unkempt lawn. Their house was dark, the curtains drawn. They didn’t own a dog. Unnoticed, Lucas climbed their wall and lowered himself silently into the street.

He crossed Roseport Road as planned, amongst a rabble of Friday-night drinkers, guarding against the bitter night in gloves, hats, scarves, just like him. In the park the footpath glistened under a clear, starry sky and a half moon. The night’s temperature was a gift, the ground frozen solid. No footprints.

In the field next to Hare’s Lane, Lucas checked his handset. Twenty-five past eleven. Checking the road, either side of the Blue Bell, he saw only a lone drinker meandering toward Milton. The car park was almost empty. Anyone left inside would be on their way home in the next few minutes. Except, hopefully, Shaw and his cronies. They nearly always stayed for the lock-in. Denny regularly posted pictures of them sprawled over the bar.

One visible CCTV camera pointed over the car park. Others probably lurked out of sight. Pressed up to the far side of the tree dissecting the hedgerow, just inside the field, Lucas kept his eyes peeled and his ears open. From his hiding place, he could tuck himself out of sight if anyone left the pub and decided to take a shortcut across the field. Equally, he could make his move, edging along the field parallel to the road, the moment Shaw and his cronies made their exit.

Inside the pub, someone switched off the lights. The few drinkers remaining must have been in a room at the back.

The minutes passed. Lucas waited. His fingers and toes gradually lost feeling until they were completely numb. He tried to stamp out the cold. He couldn’t stop shivering.

Like the patches of white frost on the road, his doubts grew. If he got too cold, he wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger on the gun. What if Shaw had already left?

Distant sounds seemed amplified in the dark. The hush and hush of the waves on the seashore on the other side of the field, the intermittent low moaning of the wind, cars slowing and accelerating somewhere out of sight. Lucas sniffed hard, and his ears rang.

He checked his handset again, as the flash of headlights and the rumble of a car engine split open the silent darkness of the lane. At the same time, voices and laughter ballooned from an opening side door.

Shaw, Denny, and Bill stumbled into the car park.

DANTE WAS
ready to call it quits for the night. By the looks of things, Lucas had come home from work at the usual time, stayed in, and gone to bed at nine o’clock. Except, at ten to eleven, Lucas had emerged from his back door, and judging by the pace on the GPS tracker, he was on the move. Fast.

This wasn’t a usual night run. He’d left via the back, which meant going through his neighbor’s garden.

Weeks ago, before he met Lucas, Dante had shoved the surveillance gear from his fake burglary at Rashid’s into the back of the samples cupboard in the basement. He didn’t think he’d ever have need to wear the jacket or night-vision glasses again, or the boots or gloves.

Liar, liar. Then why did you keep them?

He was suited and booted in five minutes. On the road five minutes after that.

Keeping a safe distance, Dante caught up with Lucas half a mile from Milton, and continued to follow him in his car. When Lucas stopped in the field over the road from the Blue Bell, Dante parked farther along the street and proceeded on foot.

He only got close enough for his night-vision glasses to pick up Lucas’s body heat. Though he might have managed fairly well without them. Anyone leaving the pub in a car with a mind to look into the field could spot him when their headlights swept across the road.

Lucas’s trainers had tiny fluorescent strips at the heel. Similarly, his running tights had a reflective seam running along the backs of his calves. Every time a car went by, Lucas’s lower legs and feet lit up like fireflies. Only this was England. No fireflies here, even in the summer.

The night freeze bit and clawed. Dante pulled his hat down over his ears and tightened his cuffs around his gloves.

Field gear had moved up a notch since the 2020s. Dante hadn’t owned any kit back then. A few of Flynn’s men had, though nothing like the thin black jacket and trousers, reinforced with Kevlar technology, and polymer gloves that Dante wore now. SilentSole boots kept his steps light and quiet. With the black night-vision glasses and his dark brown skin, Dante was practically invisible.

While Lucas hid behind a tree, his infrared image glowing like a beacon, Dante crept along Hare’s Lane and joined the road farther down. Doubling back, keeping out of sight of the lone drunkard stumbling toward Milton, he edged his way to the back of the pub.

Looking at the roof of the rear extension on the Blue Bell, Dante wondered if he had it in him to climb up and position himself in the deep shadow cast by the old chimney. He needed the vantage point to see into the pub car park, as well as to be able to observe Lucas hidden behind the hedgerow, while remaining above the field of view of the CCTV cameras.