Double (14 page)

“Copies?”

He smiled at me, a small, shy, proud smile. “Of everything Cassiel threw at me in his bag. Of everything I handed in to the police.”

“Evidence.”

“Exactly. It wasn’t nothing, like the police said. It just took some working out.”

“And what did it say?”

Floyd looked at me. “That Frank is in it up to his neck. And that you are not the first person he’s killed.”

Floyd said Frank was crooked. His flashy car, his expensive shoes, his handsome lifestyle, were all stolen, all incriminating, all built on quicksand.

“Everyone thinks he’s this big success,” I said.

“He is,” Floyd said. “He looks that way, anyway.”

“So who’s Mr. Artemis, then?”

“Who
was
he,” Floyd corrected me. “He’s long dead.”

“Okay. Who was he?”

“Mr. Artemis was one of Frank’s clients, a wealthy old recluse with a fortune and no family. A perfect steal,” Floyd said.

“What are you saying?” I asked him.

“Frank robbed him,” Floyd said. “He stole his money and then I reckon he killed him.”

“Are you serious?”

“Look him up. Lonely old millionaire, died of natural causes. Turned out to be a lot poorer than anyone thought he was.”

“And you think Frank took his money?”

“I know he did.”

“But you don’t know he killed him.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it past him. Would you?”

I thought about Frank’s perfect front; his smart, successful, capable self. Could a murderer hide himself away that well? Could he walk around without a trace of remorse?

According to Floyd, Frank had a bank account in Switzerland, filled with siphoned-off money. He’d been stealing from Mr. Artemis for years.

“Well, how come he didn’t get caught?” I said. “How come nobody knew?”

“Cassiel knew.”

“How?” I said. “How do you find out about something like that?”

“I’ve no idea,” Floyd said. “He’s not here to ask.”

Cassiel had left details in code, in a notebook. He had records of online transactions saved on disks. Floyd had spent hours going over them, weeks and months trying to make sense of them all.

“Everything’s there,” he said. “Frank’s Swiss account, and Cassiel’s account too.”

“Cassiel’s?”

“Cassiel was blackmailing Frank,” Floyd said. “I worked out what he was doing. He’d set up an account of his own. Frank was putting money in there regularly. The amounts were getting bigger and bigger. It was all being taken away from him.”

“So Frank had stolen from his client, and Cassiel was stealing from his brother?”

“Yes. Except Frank didn’t know it was Cassiel. Not at first. I guess he just knew that if he got caught he’d go to prison for a very long time. He didn’t know who’d found out about him. He didn’t know who he was paying. But he paid because he was scared.”

“He didn’t know it was his own brother?”

“No. But he found out.”

“How?”

“God knows,” Floyd said. “Maybe Cassiel got lazy when he got rich. Maybe he spent too much money. He had the best clothes. He bragged about getting a car the moment he was old enough. He was flashy like Frank, flashy and unsubtle.”

“You didn’t like Cassiel very much, did you,” I said.

Floyd laughed, but his face was grim. “I didn’t like Cassiel and Cassiel didn’t like me.”

“So why did Cassiel give his bag to you?” I said. “Why did he trust you with it if he didn’t even like you?”

“I don’t know why he chose me. I think he was desperate. I think he chose the first person he saw, it’s that simple. And he said I was the last person Frank would think of.”

“So why are you doing this?” I asked him. “Why are you bothering?”

“Murder is murder,” Floyd said.

“You think Frank killed Cassiel.”

“I know he did.”

“And you think he killed this Mr. Artemis as well?”

Floyd shrugged. “I don’t have proof,” he said. “I just think he did. Would he kill his own brother just for money? I think there was more to it than that.”

“Okay.”

“And if you’ve killed once, I think it’s not so hard to kill again. If you’ve got everything to lose.”

I nodded. “Murder is murder,” I said. “And a lie is a lie.”

“Nobody’s died because of you,” he said.

I thought about Grandad. I thought about Cassiel.

“But somebody’s death could go unnoticed. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Just because me and Cassiel weren’t friends doesn’t mean I want to see Frank get away with it.”

“I understand,” I said. “I get it.”

Floyd told me again what Cassiel said to him that night, the night he disappeared.

“He said, ‘I’m finished. He knows it’s me. It’s all over. I’m dead.’ He was terrified. Frank killed him,” Floyd said. “He killed him, and he deleted his own account, and he took Cassiel’s.”

“So Frank’s account was Mr. Artemis?”

“No. Cassiel’s was Mr. Artemis. You can imagine how that made Frank feel, paying back the money he’d taken from a dead man. Whether he killed him or not, it must have felt like revenge. Frank’s account was under a different name.”

Nothing was making sense. My head was swimming with it.

“And what happened to that account?” I asked.

“He emptied it. I think he emptied it and wiped it. I think he killed Cassiel and then he got into the Mr. Artemis account and deleted his own.”

“Covering his tracks.”

“Exactly. And then he wiped everything from Cassiel’s computer.”

“Frank said I did that. He told me Cassiel did that so nobody would find him. He said that’s what the police told him.”

“Of course he did,” Floyd said. “He knew you didn’t know. He knew you’d admit to anything he said Cassiel had done.”

I blinked and swallowed, and it started to make sense.

“Cassiel’s account was Artemis, not Frank’s,” Floyd said. “That’s why when you said his name to Frank it would have floored him. You shouldn’t know. That’s why he’s afraid of you, whoever you are. All the money went into Cassiel’s Artemis account on the night he died. After he died. That’s where Frank put it.”

“Go over it again,” I said. “Just once. Just simply. Tell me what you know.”

Floyd took a deep breath. He held my gaze, and he spoke calmly, and he counted off a list of things on his fingers.

“I know Frank stole money from a rich old man who didn’t live long enough to notice,” he said. “I know Cassiel was blackmailing him. I know Cassiel set up an account in Mr. Artemis’s name, and Frank paid money into it. I know that Frank found out it was Cassiel’s, and I know that Cassiel tried to run. I know that Cassiel gave me the evidence, hard as it was to decipher. I know that Frank killed his brother and hid his body and transferred all the money.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve got the PIN,” Floyd said. “I finally worked it out. A lucky guess, believe it or not—Zero-five-one-one. The Fifth of November. I’ve got access to Frank’s Mr. Artemis account. There’s more than a million pounds in it. I checked.”

F
loyd said it was up to me what happened next. He said as far as he could see there were four possible things that could happen.

“Number one. You could go to Frank,” he said, “and tell him what I know, tell him what I told you.”

“Why would I do that?”

Floyd looked at me. His eyes very dark, very matter of fact, unafraid. “There’s a lot of money at stake here,” he said. “You and Frank might decide to kill me, split the cash, and get on with your double lives.”

“Don’t be sick.”

“You might want to carry on being Cassiel Roadnight,” he said. “Don’t you?”

I didn’t answer him. “What’s number two?” I said.

“Number two, you leave me out of it, but you and Frank agree to keep each other’s secrets. That might work.”

“What for?”

“I can’t prove a thing because of you,” Floyd said. “If you go on being Cassiel, then Cassiel was never murdered.”

“I make Frank safe,” I said.

“Exactly. Which is why he might not kill you. Which is why you might be safe too.” Floyd tried to smile. “It’s a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship,” he said. “We did them in biology at school. Parasites.”

“Nice.”

“Well, I’m useless without you, and Frank needs you as much as you need him. You could help each other out.”

“I guess we could,” I said.

“You’ve got to hope Frank’s thinking that too, right now—otherwise you’re dead.”

“And what about you?” I said. “You know I’m not him. Wouldn’t you say something?”

Floyd laughed. “Me?” he said. “Are you joking? Who’s going to believe me?”

He was right. I was safe for as long as I wanted to be. Safe, if you could call it that.

“Number three,” he said. “You just take the money. Take the money and go and be Chap Nothing, somewhere else. You’ve got the PIN.”

“So do you. How come you haven’t taken it already?”

“I don’t want Cassiel’s blood money,” Floyd said. “I’d rather have nothing.”

“And the fourth?” I said.

“Oh, the fourth.” Floyd grinned. “That’s my favorite. The fourth is we get Frank.”

He picked up a rock and smashed it down on the bank, splitting other smaller stones apart, showing the glittering wounds inside.

“How?” I said.

“I know how. But I don’t think I can do it without you. You just have to decide.”

The warren wasn’t empty anymore. The man with the dog had gone, but a gang of eight or nine kids was coming, and a woman with her baby, and a couple holding hands.

“You should go,” he said.

“Go where?”

“Go back to the house.”

“And do what?”

“See how the land lies. Make up your mind.”

I couldn’t believe he was leaving it up to me to decide. Should I save myself and stay as Cassiel Roadnight, balanced precariously with Frank, but still balancing? Leave as a millionaire? Or should I throw it all away, and Frank with it?

Should I punish Cassiel’s killer or use his death to my advantage?

Floyd had shown me everything, and now he was letting me choose. I think it was the most generous, reckless thing anyone had ever done for me. Anyone since Grandad.

“I’ve made up my mind,” I said. “I’ve done that already.”

“No,” Floyd said. “You can’t do it like that. You can’t do it so fast.”

“Yes I can.”

“Please. Don’t. Go home and think about it. Go home and call me tomorrow.”

“Go home and risk another night with Frank?”

“Pretend you’re on his side,” Floyd said. “Pretend you’re going for option number one.”

“Where did it happen?” I said.

“What?”

“Cassiel. Where did Frank kill him?”

“Right here,” Floyd said. “Somewhere here on this common, at Hay on Fire, when it was crowded with people.”

“Is he buried here somewhere?”

Floyd nodded. “I think he is.”

“How did Frank do that?”

“I’ve no idea,” he said. “I wish I knew.”

That’s what I was thinking about when I got back to the house. I opened the door and walked into the kitchen, and they were all there, making breakfast, clearing away, and I couldn’t see them almost, because all I could think of was where Cassiel was. How Frank had killed him. What he had done with his body.

Frank was perfectly, alarmingly, chillingly normal. He looked up from the table and smiled. He didn’t blink. He didn’t miss a beat. “Hey, little brother,” he said with his mouth full, and he winked at me.

He winked.

I smiled back. “Hey.”

Frank had already made up his mind about the choice I would make. Let him think that. Let him think.

Helen kissed me on the cheek and slipped her arm around my waist. She rested her head on my shoulder. Edie was busy at the sink. She didn’t look up.

I would miss them. I found myself looking at the room like it might be the last time I’d see it. I found myself watching them like I knew I’d never see them again.

“You’re still wearing those clothes,” Helen said.

“I know.”

“You look like you slept in them.”

“I did.”

“There’s plenty of hot water,” Edie said. “Have a bath, Cass, for our sake as well as yours.”

I laughed. “Okay. I’m going, I’m going. Look,” I said, walking into the corridor, opening the door to the stairs. “I’m gone.”

“Good,” she called after me, and Helen said, “Edie!”

Yes, that was it. Tomorrow or the next day, whenever it was done, I was gone for good.

I locked the door and ran the bath and got in it this time. I lay in the hot, still, stolen water, and I thought.

I was lying back with my head half underwater. I was listening to the loud drip of the tap, and the
swoosh
and
plip
of my moving body in the bath. Frank knocked on the door.

“Cassiel,” he said. “Can I come in?”

“No,” I said. No way.

He spoke quietly, close up, through the wood of the door. I remembered the first time I spoke to him on the phone, how his lips brushed against it, how loud he was in my ear. I wondered why I hadn’t found it menacing then—his cool, calm self-assurance, his utter lack of surprise. I remembered him holding my face when he saw me, examining me because he knew I was a replica, because he knew I was a fake. I hadn’t seen it. I’d been so vigilant and on my guard, and still I hadn’t seen it.

People see what they want to see, that’s what Floyd had told me. They see what they expect and want and need. I was no exception. Floyd was right. I’d seen a big brother. I’d seen what I wanted.

Frank’s voice was smooth and low and predatory. He said, “I’m sorry about yesterday, about walking out.”

“It’s okay.”

“I understand now,” he said, “what you meant. I understand you perfectly. I think we understand each other.”

“Yes, Frank,” I said.

“Because we’re the same, aren’t we, you and me,” he said. “And we need each other.”

I put my head under again. I turned the hot tap on with my foot. I listened to the thunder of water landing on itself in the bath before I came up for air.

“Yes,” I called to him. “You’re right, Frank. We are exactly the same.”

I lay there and thought about this sweet and ordinary and affectionate family, this perfect life I’d longed for, this slice of normal I’d taken without asking. I thought about my own family, wherever they might be, and if they remembered me at all, if they even knew I existed. I thought about Cassiel, who was murdered by his own brother and then robbed by me while he lay in his grave.

I knew what I would do from the moment Floyd sat with me at the river and laid out my choices, from the moment he told me the truth. It wasn’t a question of deciding.

I was going to get Frank. I was going to find Cassiel Roadnight and bring him home. It didn’t matter what happened to me. I was past caring about what I deserved. It was time to make amends.

You can’t just steal a life. You can’t be somebody else and get away with it. In the end, you have to give it all back.

•  •  •

It was a strange, gentle, tense afternoon. After lunch, Helen and Frank went shopping. Edie and I played cards. Nobody had any work to do. Nobody did anything. It was like a Sunday. I said so.

I said, “It’s like the weekend every day here.”

“How do you mean?”

“Nothing happens.”

“We just sit about, you mean,” she said. “Spending Frank’s money.”

The thought of it made me cold. If they knew about Frank’s money. If they knew who’d died for it.

“I know,” Edie said. “I think I might die of boredom.”

“So, do something.”

“Like what?”

“Get away,” I said. “Get a job. Go to college.”

“What can I do?” she said. “What am I any good at?”

“Lots of things. You can do whatever you want.”

“What a load of crap,” she said. “What have you been reading?”

“Okay,” I said. “You can
try
to do whatever you want.”

“Better.”

“Go to art college,” I said. “Do something cool. Don’t be bored and spend Frank’s money anymore. It’s not worth it.”

She looked at me funny. “Okay, Uncle Cass. I will. Thanks for the advice.”

“Don’t mention it.”

She looked at her cards. “I’ve won,” she said. “I’m out. I beat you.”

I went to bed early. I was shattered from not sleeping the night before. I didn’t know how I would sleep that night either, how it was even possible with Frank in a room across the hall. I knew he could come in and kill me at any given moment, at any time he liked. I had to hope Frank believed me. That I was just like him. That I was in it for the money. If he thought that, then I might survive the night.

I phoned Floyd. I stole Edie’s phone and called him from my room. I told him I’d decided. I told him there was no decision to make.

“Move the money,” I said.

Floyd’s voice on the other end of the phone was hushed like mine, and just as urgent.

“What?”

“Hit him where it hurts,” I told him. “Do it now, before he does, if it’s not too late.”

“I thought about that,” he said. “I thought maybe he’s moved it already.”

“Have a look,” I said. “If he has, then fine. He won’t be around much longer to spend it. If he hasn’t, open a new account and put the money in it. Rob him.”

“What name shall I do it under?”

“Do it under yours. I don’t care.”

“I can’t do that. It can’t be a real name. It’s a million pounds, for God’s sake.”

“Chap Hathaway,” I said. “Call it that.”

“Is that you?” he said. “So are you going to disappear with all the cash?”

“I don’t want Frank’s money,” I said. “I don’t want a penny of it.”

“Okay.”

“And it’s not my name,” I said. “I don’t know what my name is, I told you. I don’t have one.”

“Chap Hathaway,” Floyd said.

“No, hold on,” I said. “I have a better idea. Put it in Cassiel’s name.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s his. Because he died for it.”

“And you’re not going to . . . ?”

“I told you,” I said. “I don’t want it. I’m not him anymore. After this I’m not sticking around.”

“It’s good of you,” Floyd said.

“What is?”

“You could have it all now, if you wanted,” he said. “It’s good of you to give it all away.”

“It’s not mine to give,” I said.

“But still.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” I said. “I couldn’t live with myself if I did anything else.”

We said good-bye. “How’s it going to happen?” I said. “What are we going to do?”

“It’s got to happen at Hay on Fire,” he said. “It’s got to happen exactly like before.”

Hay on Fire. The Fifth of November.

“Don’t sleep,” he said. “Lock your door.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll try to stay alive.”

I put Edie’s phone back and stuck the chair under the door handle again. I lay in bed, too scared to sleep and too tired not to. Even when I slept, I dreamed I was lying awake in that room, listening out for Frank, waiting for my own death.

It was Helen that woke me up in the middle of the night, not Frank. She begged me in a whisper to let her in.

I opened the door to stop her talking, more than anything else. I opened it and got back into bed, because I wanted her to be quiet. She sat down next to me. We listened to the quiet in the house. We listened together to nothing. I wanted to put the chair back against the door. I wanted it all to be over.

“Is it because of what I told you?” she said.

“Is what?”

“Did you run away because of what I said?”

I didn’t understand her. I wasn’t Cassiel, so I didn’t know.

“I need you to tell me if that was the reason,” she said. She took my hand and pulled it to her lap and held it.

I didn’t speak. I tried to see her face in the dark, but I didn’t want her to see mine, so I kept the light off.

“I told you because I thought you should know,” she said. “I didn’t mean for it to hurt you.”

“It didn’t,” I said.

“I know that’s not true, Cassiel,” she said. “He’s a part of you and always will be. When you’re a twin, that’s how it works.”

I didn’t understand what she was saying. My brain felt thick and slow with fog.

“What? What did you say?”

I put the light on. Helen picked up my muddied shirt and folded it, without knowing, I think; just for something to do.

“You came into this world together,” she said, while the quiet house seethed and whispered around us. “You and Damiel. I didn’t want you to live your whole life not knowing about him. Was that wrong? Was I wrong to tell you? Or did I wait too long. Was that it?”

Damiel.

You couldn’t forget a name like that. That was what the girl had called me. That’s what Grandad said.

“Where is he?” I said, staring at her, trying to keep my voice down. “No one told me. Nobody spoke about Damiel before.”

Helen shook her head. “He’s gone,” she said. “And nobody knows. I told you that. It was a terrible time. Frank and Edie were in care when you were born, when they took you both from me. I never told them about him.”

The room was spinning. I got out of bed and leaned on the windowsill and retched, but I couldn’t throw up.

“Are you okay?” Helen said. “What’s wrong?”