By CLARE LONDON (26 page)

Baz continued to fall, the chair slipping out from under him. Liquid ran down his face, dark trails in the half light, drops falling from his nose and chin. He still gripped the knives, but his limbs were uncoordinated. His mouth was open, and he looked nothing more than startled. On his way down, he collided heavily with the table and finally slumped to the floor, sprawled between two of the table legs in a spreading pool that could have been red wine and could just as well have been blood. His fists opened like limp buds and the knives clattered out onto the kitchen tiles.

Silence. All I could hear was my own harsh breathing. My legs were shaking so hard I couldn’t stand. I scrambled on hands and knees back to the relative safety beside the kitchen cupboards. I just wanted to get beyond Baz’s reach, even though he wasn’t moving now. It was difficult to avoid the smashed glass, and I nearly put my hand on a large shard. It rocked back and forth, the torn label flapping wetly. As far as I could see, it had a fancy Spanish name on it with a big Roman numeral; its concave surface was covered in dust.

“Fuck, Seve.” My voice was very hoarse. “That wasn’t an expensive one, was it?”

Seve knelt beside me, his hand on my shoulder. He’d pulled his sweats back up around his waist. “Are you okay?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. “We need to get dressed.” My mouth opened and words came out, but I couldn’t take much responsibility for them. “We need to get shoes on. Clear up this mess.”

Seve ran his hand gently over my head as a parent might try to console a scared child. He stood up and carefully made his way to the light switch. The light came on with a flood of fluorescent white that made me wince. All around us, the floor was covered with shattered glass and spilled wine. Baz lay motionless on the cold, wet, too-shiny floor tiles.

Seve glanced at me. If he’d meant to smile, I had to tell him it looked a hell of a lot more like a grimace. He stepped gingerly around the carnage and crouched over Baz, placing his fingers on Baz’s neck. He made a small sound of exhalation.

I clasped my jeans to my chest, ignoring the fact both legs were soaked with booze. “We must call an ambulance.”

“He’s dead, Max.” Seve said it calmly, but I could see his shoulders shaking.

“Dead?” Don’t you just hate those people in films who repeat the bad news like a parrot?

“He must have hit his head on the corner of the table. It was an unlucky blow—for him, anyway.”

“But….” I had no idea what to say. “That wasn’t meant to happen.”

Seve sighed. “Max, the kid was insane. This is for the best. He was going to kill you.”

“Well,” I said. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

“What?” Seve looked both angry and amazed. “Don’t tell me now you care a fuck about a manic, murderous little—”

“It wasn’t me he was sent to kill,” I said. “I’m not saying he wasn’t going to slit both our throats when he found us together, but he was surprised to find me here.”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“You,” I said. “I reckon he was here for you.”

SEVE prised my jeans out of my hands and found me a pair of his sweats and a sweater to wear. I couldn’t seem to stop shivering, though the flat wasn’t cold. When I pulled the sweater on, the neckline caught on my cheek, and blood from one of my cuts smeared the luxurious wool. Seve never even flinched.

He dragged a sheet off his bed and rolled Baz’s body up in it. The parcel looked like an obscene mix of shroud and cocoon. There was surprisingly little blood, so I assumed the blow to the head had hit a pressure point rather than cut him open. I didn’t think too closely about the logistics. We pushed him against the wall by the door and started clearing up the mess on the floor. As I mopped tiles and swept up more slivers of glass than I’d ever have imagined would come from just one bottle, it didn’t seem too weird to have Baz’s body lying in the room with us. But then I think I was still in shock.

Seve changed out of his blood-spattered sweats and dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. I bound up his arm with a bandage from his medicine cabinet, and in return, he washed the shallow cuts in my cheek and neck. It was a quiet time between us, and I found it oddly touching. Then I twisted back the ends of my hair with an elastic band and went to settle myself in the living room. I needed recovery time. Seve offered to make a hot drink—compared to me, he didn’t seem too bothered about working in the kitchen alongside his uninvited guest.

Half an hour later, I was still huddled on the couch. The cashmere sweater was fabulously soft and doing its job in warming me up, but I had my hands gripped around a second mug of hot, sweet tea and I was still shaky. Seve was pacing the room.

“That was a bloody good move, Seve. The thing with the wine bottle. Feeling me up, distracting him….”

“It was obvious.” Looked like Seve had regained his natural arrogance. “I could see the way he looked at you.”

“What?”

“Not sexual,” Seve said impatiently. “A kind of devotion. Anything involving you would have been a distraction to him. I used that to gain some time.”

“He’d still have killed me.”

“Yes,” Seve said. “He’d still have killed you. When you heard him break in, why did you tell me to keep out of the way?”

“Huh?”

“What the hell were you going to do, Max?”

I shrugged. Damned if I knew. I was certainly no action hero. “I just wanted to stop anyone getting to you, I suppose. This is your home, your… sanctuary.”

“You think I’m vulnerable? You think you can take on lunatic intruders by yourself?”

“Well, we can all see how that went,” I said dryly.

“You wanted to protect me,” he said slowly. It sounded like he couldn’t understand the concept. Not sure I could myself.

“I wanted to talk him out of it. I thought I could.”

“He was too far gone. It was in his eyes.”

“I know.” I was thankful Seve didn’t tell me how rash I’d been, though I’d told myself plenty of times in the last half hour. “We should call the police.”

“Not yet. Let me think, Max. What the hell makes you think he came for me?”

I worried my lower lip. “Peck sent him, I’m sure. Yeah, Peck’s starting to think I’m a threat because of what I know about the London operations, so I’m sure he wants me out of the way. But you said you’ve been nosing around the business yourself and haven’t been as careful as you could have. He’d want to warn you off too. And then Baz….” Seve glanced at me, so my voice must have sounded as odd to him as it did to me. “He was surprised to see me here. He was almost apologetic about killing Stewart… in front of me.”

“I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it! Peck has nothing to do with the central office functions, so he wouldn’t have known I was nosing around, as you say. That would mean….”

“Your uncle must have told him.” Instructed him.

“Uncle would not….” Seve’s words dried up.

“Maybe Peck didn’t mean to kill you. Maybe he sent Baz just to scare you off. But Baz was never controllable.”

Seve shook his head as if trying to clear a tangle of disturbing thoughts. He didn’t turn to face me when he spoke next. “Who’s Stewart?”

“Huh?”

“You said Baz killed Stewart. And you’ve… said his name before. In your sleep.” Seve seemed to be forcing each word out between his teeth. “Did you know him in London?”

“Seve,” I said slowly. Dear God, we’d only spent two nights together, and it was as much of a minefield as our waking hours. “This is really not the time.”

“For what?”

His brow was creased in a frown, and I felt a strange, exhilarating rush of care for him. “For inquisition.”

But he didn’t let go. I imagined that was never Seve’s forte. “It’s his lighter, isn’t it? A souvenir, you said.”

I nodded.

“Was he your lover?”

If I hadn’t been fighting off a stress headache, I’d have rolled my eyes. “He was a friend, not a boyfriend. He was a counselor, helping the kids on the streets.” Helping me. “But I believe your uncle thought Stewart was messing with the club’s courier runs, and wanted him gone.”

“Was he like me?”

This was so not like Seve that I laughed out loud. “Are you really wearing the jealous hat, Seve? I can’t believe it!”

He looked dogged. “Would you have stayed in London? If Stewart hadn’t been killed?”

The inference was stayed in London with Stewart. I was too weary to argue. “I expect so.”

“I repeat, was he like me?”

“What are you saying, Seve?” Was he asking me to stay with him? Be with him like I’d wanted to be with Stewart? I would have treasured Stewart’s friendship all my life; I would have stayed as close to him as I was allowed. I would have followed his principles until they were my own.

What were Seve’s principles, compared to that?

“I spent too long in that world, Seve,” I said. I was definitely still in shock, and so I was treading very carefully along this thin, cracking ice that was our conversation. We’d just killed someone, hadn’t we? In self-defense, maybe, but we’d both contributed to his death. Seve had hit him with the bottle, but I’d been just as keen to see him dead. I remembered Baz leaning over me as I knelt on the floor, shifting the knife in his hand to a better grip. I remembered the ice in Seve’s tone as he tempted him to watch us. I didn’t know if I felt grateful for being saved or resentful at being manipulated. I didn’t know what I felt. “I’ve been there. Baz’s world. Peck’s world. Your uncle’s world, for that matter. But I got out, you see. And I don’t want to be sucked back in.”

He stared at me. There were dark circles under his eyes that I’d not noticed before. “You needn’t be.”

“We need to call the police, Seve. Get this all sorted out.”

“Soon.”

I sighed. He was reluctant and—to be brutally honest—so was I. There’d be questions. Suspicion. And then more questions. Seve sat down heavily on the couch beside me and reached for the bottle of water I’d left there the previous night. He took a long swallow, then passed it to me. I drank too, then handed it back. In my befuddled state, it seemed one of the most intimate things we’d ever done together.

When his phone rang, we both jumped. I glanced at the clock. It was barely 5:00 a.m. Who’d be calling Seve at this hour of the morning? He picked it up from the table where we’d left our stuff the night before. He glanced once at me as if considering whether to take the call away from me, but he stayed put. I could hear the high, excited pitch of the caller, not giving him much opportunity to reply. And I saw the way his face paled.

“Who is it?” I hissed.

Seve’s eyes didn’t meet mine. “I understand. Of course I do, mamá. Soon, I promise you. Let me call you back.” He disconnected.

“Tell me,” I said.

“It was Mama. She’s been trying to call me since last night. Since I went to see her about the club, she’s been looking into my uncle’s business. And yesterday….”

“What?” I could see his eyes were full of shock.

“She was burgled. Nothing was taken, but the house was ransacked. And she’s received several anonymous calls. Someone has been in her house, is accessing her life, is harassing her.”

“Your uncle? Peck, working on his behalf?” God forbid, not Baz, even if he wouldn’t be doing anyone any harm now.

“I don’t know, but she believes my uncle has initiated it. Enough evidence was in the records to make her suspicious of my uncle’s finances—there’s a trail of potential money laundering. She had made an appointment to see him tomorrow, but now….”

“She should get away from him,” I said urgently. “Get her somewhere safe. Then she can pass the investigation to people who know what they’re looking for. Who are qualified to take the risks.”

Seve looked at me. His expression was strange, as if he were happy and sad at the same time. “But that is exactly what I must do, Max. You’re right. Go to her and protect her. Between us, we have enough to go to the police. But until they can protect her by arresting my uncle and anyone else who is involved, I’m the only help she has.” He blinked hard. “I must go to her as soon as possible.”

“Of course you must.”

“Max, you don’t realize….”

“What?”

He sounded exhausted. “She has already fled to her home. In Madrid. I must go to her there.”

I stared at him for a long moment. The look on his face was awesome; it was soft and hard and bitter all at the same time. It reached right through me to something far beyond. It was a look of angry challenge and also a look of defeat.

“What are you really saying? What about…?” I struggled to say it. “About Baz?”

He reached over and ran his hand behind my neck. It was as if he wanted to pull me in for a kiss, but all he did was stroke my skin. “Leave it to me, Max. Leave it all to me. Let me and Mama clear up this mess. I promise you that we will. It’ll all be okay. My uncle will be exposed and arrested. We’ll all be safe.”

I didn’t want to stare at him—I didn’t want to lose my righteous anger into the dark, vibrant depths of his eyes. What I wanted was to see my face reflected in them as I did when we were held close. I wanted to see that hint of nervousness, the softening of the arrogance that had been gradually disclosed to me over the last few weeks. I wanted that truth, at least. “You want me to keep quiet about this? To let you dash off to Spain and leave me here, with some kind of promise that it’ll all be okay?”

“It will, Max. I do not promise lightly. Mama is scared, but she’s honest and determined. But I need to be able to join her in Spain. I need a few days to plan things with her.”

“What happens to Baz’s body in the meantime? You’ll leave it propped up in your kitchen between the dishwasher and the fucking fridge?”

He winced. “Of course not. I will… arrange things.”

“And me? What will you arrange for me?”

His grip tightened. “You will not be at risk. I will not allow it. Just give me this time, Max. Let me do this. And then I’ll be back. Trust me.”

I wanted to shout, Why the hell should I? But I wasn’t a kid anymore. Even if what happened tonight had been outside my control, I’d put myself in this situation. The choices I’d made, the paths I’d taken—they’d led me here. A thread of cold understanding had sprung up inside me, growing like a shoot out of a seed—one of those you grow on a school windowsill in a jar, you know? All green and new and slightly amazing. I resurrected a long-buried memory—we’d all grown one of those seeds when we were kids in school. Mine had shriveled away from neglect. Jack’s had grown steadily and modestly until we planted it outside. Louis’s had lain dormant for the longest time, then burst up six inches overnight and sprouted a flower or whatever. He’d been the talk of the class for days. I tried to get him to admit he’d dosed it with some secret fertilizer, but he never confessed.