The Ties That Bind (36 page)

‘What are you doing here, sir?’ said Vaughan, and despite the formal address, it wasn’t his usual deferential tone. Grand’s voice rose as his incomprehension deepened.

‘
I’m
the one asking
you
that. You said you was going down the gym. Come on, Vaughan, don’t play silly buggers.’

Sandy was actually wringing her hands; Vaughan was more controlled, only a twitch in the muscles of his right cheek betraying his panic, until he spoke.

‘I, I . . .’ Vaughan was, for once, wrong-footed. It was clear that the wheels had come off their plan. What were the stakes for the conspirators now? Their arrangement depended on Grand remaining alive and ignorant. Now he was only one of those things. It hardly seemed possible that Vaughan’s job – not to mention Sandy’s tenure in this house – could continue on the other side of this, suggesting that the rich man’s life was worth as little as Luke’s. Were they going to kill both of them? Who would be first and who would have to watch? How? What, then, did that mean for Jem, who would be here any minute? Had his arrival become a potential source of rescue or would his be the next body to come flying down those stairs? Luke didn’t know any more. He didn’t think his kidnappers did either.

Luke tried to warn Grand off, knowing how futile his muffled shout was: even if Luke could make him understand that Vaughan was the last person he should trust, the last person with the answers, the old man would not have the time or ability to run.

All eyes were on Vaughan. He was starting to lose it, his face glossy with sweat.

‘Vaughan?’ said Sandy in an overheard undertone. ‘What are we supposed to do now?’

Master plotter he might have been, but now Vaughan acted without premeditation. He lunged at the stairs and reached up to hook a huge arm around Grand’s legs so that they buckled at the knee. He dragged him down by the ankles, letting him fall the last few feet. Old bones hit bare concrete. Something went crack and Grand flapped like a shot bird. The oxygen rolled into a dark corner.

Sandy tiptoed towards Grand and, when he twitched, she jumped nervily away, as though from a mouse. Luke gave an internal sigh of relief when she missed the water bottle, still half-full, by inches. Saliva dampened his vile gag at the sight of it. He used his furred tongue to ease another inch of cotton from his mouth.

They both ascended the steps again, Vaughan in a single lope, Sandy in a squirrelish scuttle, and surveyed their prisoners from the doorway. Their authority now lay only in their physical advantage.

‘Have you got any more of that rope?’ she asked him in that same pointless whisper. ‘Shouldn’t you restrain him? While we wait for the other fella? While we decide what to
do
?’

‘I’ve only got enough for one more,’ said Vaughan. ‘You said the other one was a big bloke. Don’t worry, he can’t even go for a piss without my help. No way he’ll do these stairs on his own. We’ll just lock them in for a bit.’

‘
Vaughan?
’ said Grand, and his voice was suddenly a helpless old man’s. On his lips the name was an arrow that pierced Luke’s heart, but it bounced off Vaughan as though from a breastplate. He looked down at the broken bodies on the floor and then without a word, the door closed and the key was turned in the lock. Hushed urgent voices dwindled to nothing as they took their conversation elsewhere.

Luke wondered how many foul damp cellars Grand had occupied in his time. He looked perfectly at home in this literal underworld, softly spotlit by the bare bulb and framed by dark corners and gloomy shadows. Apart from his prone position, only a black smudge on his overcoat and a lopsided tie-pin betrayed that he had not arrived here deliberately.

Grand hauled himself into a sitting position in three sharp movements, each one accompanied by a painfully long, shallow breath. Even in the middle of all this, Luke found room to admire the old boxer rising from the floor to kiss the glove he knows will lay him out again.

Finally Luke spat out the bulk of the gag. The scarf hung round his neck, sodden and foul.

‘Mr Grand, are you all right?’

‘Give me a minute, get my breath back.’ He hauled himself across to where his oxygen tank had landed.

‘Look out for the . . .’ began Luke, but it was too late. As Grand’s hands closed around the neck of the tank, his left foot knocked the bottle of mineral water onto its side. The lid, loosely on, spiralled around like a coin in a shove ha’penny machine, and the remaining half-pint of water spilled. The little puddle spread. Filthy though the floor was, if it had been within reach, Luke would have lapped at it. He watched in despair as the water was absorbed by dust and grime.

‘Jesus boy, the state of you,’ panted Grand, when he was connected to his lifeline again. ‘I know a body that needs to go to hospital when I see one. What
did
you do to deserve this? What’s he gone off with her for?’

God, where to begin? There had been enough half-truths told in the pursuit of this book, and look where it had got them all. Luke decided to reveal all he knew and hoped Grand’s heart could take it. He tried to use as few words as possible, editing them in his head before speaking.

‘He’s in on it too. The blackmail.’ Grand started; whether in shock that Luke knew about the blackmail or disbelief that Vaughan could be in on it, it was impossible to tell. ‘They’ve been splitting the cash between them for years. That’s why they want me out of the way. If I put the truth out there, they lose their money.’

Grand was immediately on the defensive. ‘He
wouldn’t
. Not Vaughan.’ Luke felt worse than when he had broken the news of Kathleen’s death. Still, he had to find a hammer to drive home the blow. Love and trust kept them both in danger.

‘I’m sorry, it’s true. Think about it. All those years Dave was taking her the money she never asked for more. And then a few months after Vaughan starts, suddenly she’s making extra demands?’

Grand’s face collapsed and sagged as the remaining rock in his world crumbled to powder.

‘I treated him like a . . .’ Grand paused to pant and Luke wondered which word had been on his tongue. Brother? Son? Upstairs, Luke thought that Sandy and Vaughan were in the sitting room. They weren’t moving around any more but their voices, deep and shrill, sparred above.

‘I’ve only got myself to blame,’ said Grand.

‘
What?
’

Even in acceptance Grand took refuge in denial. ‘If I’d been upfront with him, if he’d known he stood to inherit from me, he’d have had no need, would he? It’s my fault for playing mind games.’

‘Mr Grand, the man’s a monster. Look what he’s done, just for a bit of pocket money! If he’d known he was coming into
real
money, you wouldn’t have survived five minutes after the ink on the will was dry.’

‘Hardly pocket money,’ sneered Grand. Luke marvelled; the millionaire really did notice every penny. ‘Christ, if I get out of here in one piece, I’ll be ringing my brief before you can say “disinherit.” ’

If they got out of here alive. It was the biggest ‘if’ of Luke’s life. It occurred to him that if Grand had been straight with him about Sandy in the first place, neither of them would be here now. Candour was catching; Luke let rip.

‘I
wish
you’d fucking told me,’ he said, the words abrasive in his throat. ‘I asked you straight out about the girl in the red coat, and you denied it. If you’d told me she was blackmailing you, I’d never have come here again.’

‘Look, I gave you what you wanted,’ said Grand. ‘You got a confession to
murder
. That’s what you was after, wasn’t it? I didn’t think it’d matter, not when you had your scoop.’ He was back to his old trick of speaking on the inbreath as well as the out. Luke had got so used to the noise that he had ceased to notice it; now, here Grand sounded like a monster.

‘So you thought it was OK to confess to murdering your best friend, but not to threatening a woman?’

Luke, intending sarcasm, had clearly tapped into Grand’s arbitrary chivalric code.

‘Exactly,’ said Grand. ‘It wasn’t my finest hour, threatening her and I’m certainly not proud that I let some little tart off the local rag diddle me out of a small fortune. That’s one reason I told you what I did to Jacky. To get me out of the arrangement.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘That’s why I come here tonight: to tell her that her little game was up.’ Grand paused to catch his breath. So one way or another, Sandy’s game would have been up anyway. Luke relaxed at this, felt a little of the responsibility for their present situation spread its weight across Grand’s shoulders.

‘I was going to tell her that I wanted her out of the house . . .’ In Grand’s ensuing long rasp, Luke understood that he almost certainly owed his life to Grand’s decision to have it out with her here, tonight. ‘. . . and I didn’t care what she did with her poxy evidence.’

‘She showed me the lens before you got here,’ he said. ‘It was never in a vault. She had it here the whole time. It’s in her pocket now.’

Grand let slip a vinegary laugh. ‘Crafty bitch,’ he said, his anger shot through with admiration. ‘All the more reason I should’ve brung it to an end. I mean, it’s a lot of money she’s had off me.’

There was that miserly streak again. ‘With respect, I’m surprised you even noticed it,’ said Luke.

Grand puffed his chest as best he could. ‘Obviously
I
don’t notice twelve grand a month.’ He didn’t seem aware of his own mistake. ‘But there’s plenty that would. I’ve got my charities to think about. I mean, where does she even spend it? It’s not on bloody housekeeping, I can tell you that much. Rat shit everywhere.’

‘Twelve grand a
year
, you mean,’ corrected Luke.

‘A
month
.’ Impatience further shortened his breath. ‘Vaughan takes Cassandra twelve thousand pounds cash, every month. He goes early, on the first Monday of the month, while I’m in the office.’

Luke saw with crystal clarity the depths of Vaughan’s deceit. Thinking out loud was the only way he could make sense of what they had done. If that meant he had to trample on Grand’s bruised emotions, so be it.

‘Christ, he’s been ripping her off too. If you’re giving him twelve K a month, he’s keeping . . .
Bloody hell
, he’s been keeping eleven and a half of it! She only gets five hundred. He’s been taking the piss out of both of you.’ The final pieces of the puzzle locked together and they were a horribly perfect fit. ‘I
wondered
why they would think my death was worth such a petty sum. Well not her, she’s crazed when it comes to these papers, they’re all she’s got, but
him
. . . I didn’t see why a man like him would risk it all for so little. But, what . . . over a hundred grand a year, for as long as he can keep it going?
That
makes sense. I mean, that’s twice what most people make in a year . . .’ His voice was going again, the sides of his throat constricting. The roof of his mouth felt dry enough to crack. ‘I can see how that might be worth a life. Or two.’

Or three, depending on what happened when Jem arrived.

Chapter 54

A sudden violent cramp in the front of Luke’s thigh had him crying out. Grand hauled himself over to the mattress, his left leg dragging behind him like a dead weight. Luke wondered why he wasn’t screaming but his only expression of pain was a sharp gasp with each new movement.

‘Let’s see the damage at the back,’ said Grand. ‘Can you roll over?’

Luke lurched onto his front to expose his wrists. The wolf-whistle was a professional assessment of the damage, as diagnostic as any doctor’s frown.

‘How bad
is
it?’ asked Luke.

‘It makes your face look pretty. They’ve done you over good and proper, haven’t they?’

‘Can you get me out of it?’ He tried not to picture the misshapen fingers that didn’t look capable of undoing a button.

‘I need something to cut the rope with. There must be a toolbox or something with a blade in it somewhere.’ Grand’s voice grew fainter and his breathing even more laboured as he shuffled across the floor. Another wave of exhaustion swept over Luke, pushing down on his eyelids. He fought to keep them open. From a dark box in a shadowy corner Grand retrieved an old-fashioned penknife with an ivory handle and a rusty hinge, opened it and pressed the sharp edge to the palp of his finger. It didn’t look good for anything except spreading butter. He had to saw, rather than cut. Blunt as the blade was, when it nicked Luke’s sore wrist, he screamed into the mattress but seconds later came the release as the bonds were broken. Grand let the knife drop, coughing with the exertion.

Luke tried to put his hands out to steady himself, and rolled off the mattress onto the hard floor, tasting dust. His limbs were heavy as sandbags, and not until pins and needles began to stab at his extremities, finger by finger and toe by toe, could he move them again.

‘They’ve made proper fucking mugs of us both, boy,’ inhaled Grand, rubbing his hands together. ‘What are they
doing
up there, anyway? What are they waiting for? Why hasn’t he got the balls to come down and finish us off if that’s what he’s going to do?’

‘Half an hour ago, I could have told you exactly what they were going to do,’ said Luke. ‘They wanted me dead and you alive, and both those things were as important as each other. They’ve got my . . .’

He drew breath to tell Grand about Jem and his destined part in their plan but Grand held a crooked finger to his lips. Vaughan and Sandy were outside the cellar door again, not tiptoeing or whispering any more but shouting. Luke shuffled on his bottom to the base of the stairs, the better to hear them.

‘But where will you
go
?’ said Sandy.

‘I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. Will you get off my arm?’

‘You can’t just leave me here!’

‘Well, I’m not bloody taking you with me, if that’s what you’re after.’

‘Don’t be
ridiculous
,’ she hissed, and Luke knew this anger came not from the implication that she might want to be with Vaughan but the idea, the insult, that she might abandon her house. She might have terrible capabilities that Luke could never have predicted but he knew that leaving her home and her work was not one of them. She had intended to kill rather than part with her archive, and she still might.