Kill For Love (10 page)

Chapter Sixteen

It had never happened before and
she wondered what she had said or done to cause it. She lay motionless. Gadden
was silent alongside her. She could feel his leg resting against hers. He
hadn't spoken and she was afraid to. Somewhere, perhaps from an adjacent room,
she could hear the sound of one of his records. She pulled a sheet across them
both.

"Tell me about Owoso."
The request was muffled, his face pushed into the pillow.

She thought she must have
misheard. "I'm sorry?”

He turned his head to her.
"What happened? In Owoso. What really happened that day?"

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do.”

Was he punishing her? Was this because
of their failure? His failure? Or did he consider it her failure: her failure
to arouse him? "Why do you want to know?"

"Just tell me."

Later she would wonder why she
hadn't got up from the bed at that moment. Perhaps it was embarrassment that kept
her there. "It was on television," she said. “You probably saw
it."

It would have been difficult to
miss. Thrilled by their scoop WSN had syndicated sections of her Owoso report
to all their rival news stations. It had gone around the world.

"I saw what they chose to
show us. But I know there was more." His voice was soft, coaxing.

She could feel his breath on her
skin. She stared into the folded drapes of the four poster bed. "It
was...untransmissable. No television company could have shown everything. I
tried to tell them. They wouldn't listen."

"Tell who?"

"The rebels...freedom
fighters, the FLO, the Front for the Liberation of Owoso. I tried to explain
that television audiences in the rest of the world would be sickened by the
violence. They didn't believe me. They said it was exactly what they would want
to see." The pictures ran again in her mind.

"Well, you can't blame them
for thinking that, can you? Wasn't that why you were there? To show us all the massacres
first, fast and soonest?" The derision in Gadden’s voice cut into her.

She didn’t answer. Was that why
she'd been there? She didn't know any more. Slowly, feeling for the words, she
started talking, crowding out the silence of her doubts. "FLO spells Flo.
Everyone thought they could reason with them...the Foreign Office, the State
Department, the U.N...."

"You were wearing a cream
shirt with breast pockets…”

A curious thing to remember!
"Yes." And she pictured herself speaking to camera as earlier that
day she'd set the scene, crisp and efficient in freshly ironed clothes, imagining
she understood everything about Owoso, but knowing hardly anything.

"It was splashed with blood.”

The odour of horror seeped back.
It had never been far away. She’d arrived back in London still wearing the soiled clothes,
having left everything else behind. "I didn't realise at the time,"
she said.

They lay still as Kate sifted
through her memories. The music in the next room seemed louder now.

"Tell me." His voice
was calm and even.

The thrill of imminent sex which
had summoned her to bed was gone. She was aware of his skin, his body, but it
no longer spelled intimacy. They'd tried to be intimate and it hadn't worked.

“Tell me.”

She began to talk: "No one
had expected it. The front line was supposed to be seventy miles away in the
forest. We'd been invited to the President's summer palace. It was remote, by
the sea, cooler. He thought he was safe there. He was using us, WSN, to appeal
for more help from the West. We understood this. In those situations everyone
wants a sound bite on the seven o'clock news. We'd let him have his say and
asked some questions about his government's violation of human rights. All the
usual things. Then suddenly there they were."

She could sense Gadden listening.

"We'd heard some gunfire to
the south earlier," she went on. "We should have left then, but I
insisted on staying. Perhaps…perhaps I half guessed something might happen and
wanted to be there. The others put the shooting down to high spirits by some of
the army, thinking it was just young soldiers letting off steam." She
hesitated, then began again. "We'd just finished transmitting some
unedited footage and were repacking the Land Rover when they just seemed to
roll out of the jungle...the FLO. We didn't notice their guns at first, and
because hardly any of them wore uniforms, we thought they were a delegation of
local people. But then a government guard put up an arm to wave them to stop
and they machine gunned him where he stood. He didn't have time to be
surprised."

And she watched the young soldier
thrown backwards by the velocity of the bullets, as she’d remembered it so many
times. "I'd never realised anyone could die so quickly."

"Go on."

He moved closer and she felt his
hand on the curve of her body between waist and hip. She was distantly puzzled
by this, but Owoso filled her thoughts.

"There was panic everywhere.
People tried to run into the forest and were hacked down. A boy who did the
gardens had his head nearly cut in two when he ran into a machete. There were
girls who worked in the kitchens and cleaned the palace. The FLO took them for
themselves. Those who didn't co-operate were shot."

"The blood on your shirt? It
wasn't your blood."

"No." The music now
seemed closer, in the room with them. "Why do you want to know?"

"Don't you want to tell
me?"

Kate stared into the darkness.
She'd never talked about it before. Not in detail.
W
hen
she’d got back, she'd wanted to talk, desperately, but her colleagues had
tiptoed around the subject. Then after her breakdown, yes, she could admit it to
herself now, it had been a breakdown, they'd gone out of their way to find
other things to discuss. She’d quickly given up trying. "It's
painful," she said.

"Yes."

"It was the President's
blood. He had a new young wife...sixteen, I think, possibly younger. He thought
we could help him. He came running to us, pulling her after him, begging us. At
first we thought he wanted to hide in the Land Rover, then we realised he
thought he might not be harmed if we were there, that the presence of the
television camera might protect him. He began asking us to start transmitting
again, to send what was happening live by satellite to the outside world. He
didn't realise that time had to be booked, that we couldn't just do it whenever
we felt like it.

"The FLO just watched,
surrounding him, laughing as he pleaded with us. They were drunk, excited. Some
of them had been doing a lot of drugs. They thought they were under a spell of
invincibility. They were hardly more than boys. Then suddenly they got bored
and one of the older ones took his rifle butt and smashed it into the
president's face. That was the signal for the others to join in. I was standing
quite close. The blood seemed to explode out of him. They would have killed him
then, but..."

She stopped. Gadden had moved
closer to her.

"Go on."

"I..."

"Please. I want to know. I
want you to tell me."

He turned to her, and in the half
glow from the garden lights she caught sight of his eyes. They were unblinking.
She stared at them.

"Tell me," he repeated.

She tried again. "They held
us overnight in a hut by the seashore. I tried to comfort the President’s wife.
She was a child really. She was crying for her mother and sisters. They took
her out three or four times for sex. She knew what was going to happen to them
both. She could scarcely stand up she was so frightened."

Kate watched again as the moths
made their haphazard circumventions of the light bulb, hearing the sound of
Abba coming from another hut, then listened as a couple of the young rebel
guards occasionally sang along. "They were listening to records,” she
said. “Enjoying them.”

"Yes, you said. In your
report, you mentioned it."

She could scarcely remember what
she'd said in her report. That had been the following morning. She'd been
trying to describe the night, filling space, as, with guns trained on them, she’d
watched the captives led out of the huts towards the beach at just after dawn.

The WSN cameraman, Rajah, a
plump, jovial Indian from Kenya,
a freelance hired for the job, had been trembling as he'd held his camera. He'd
refused to film at first. That was when they'd attacked Liberty, the local Owoso translator. Colin,
the WSN satellite engineer, had been screaming into the satellite phone,
begging for a vision link, a Kalashnikov at his neck, saving Liberty's life.

"We expected to be
shot," she went on. "During the night the FLO had been out into the
villages rounding up everyone, demanding that they come to watch. A huge crowd
was filling the beach. There was drumming. It went on and on. Everyone was
afraid, including the people watching. They executed a government minister
first. Then others. One of their wives pleaded, offering herself."

And she saw again the woman running,
like a frightened hen, in circles of terror, begging for mercy, bargaining for
her life, while the soldiers laughed, and pointed at the blood running down
between her legs. Then bored with the sport, and irritated that her pleading
hands had besmirched his new uniform, pillaged from the summer palace, one of
the rebel officers deliberately tripped her, pushed his automatic rifle into
her breast and opened fire. Her body jumped and shuddered as the bullets cut
through her into the sand.

"Keep filming," the
officer had said. "You came here to take pictures for the satellite. Take
your pictures. Show them in London and America
what we do to bad people here…” She stopped.

"Yes...?" Gadden
prompted. "And then…?”

She could feel him against her.
But it was different. The music that she’d thought to be coming from another
room was now quite loud. It was in the room with them.

"They made us film
everything and send it live by satellite..."

"And you? What did you
do?"

"You saw. They made me
report it. They took the President out. They castrated him. In front of his
wife. He screamed. She was sobbing. Then they took her, making him wait and
watch her die. She couldn't walk, so they dragged her. They tied her to a post.
They were bad shots. They were too far away, like in the films. She was gasping
in agony. They forced us to carry on filming. In the end they cut her throat to
finish it..."

"And him?"

"Longer. They wouldn't let
him die. He bled to death."

She was staring into the
blackness of the room, hearing the waves, and the grunts and squeals and unrequited
prayers for a merciful death. The drums had finally stopped.

She'd never told it before,
though she'd lived with it, every day. She'd heard later that Liberty had hanged himself. Rajah had
returned to Nairobi
and gone to work in his father's grocery store. Sometimes she saw Colin, the WSN
engineer, but they never talked about what had happened. He had an internal job
at the studio now and was seeking early retirement.

They hadn't been harmed further.
The FLO had turned them loose at the border. Twelve hours later they'd been
back in London,
with Kate Merrimac the most famous foreign correspondent in the world. She'd
been taken straight to hospital.

She realised now that her face
was wet, although she hadn't been aware that she'd been crying. Putting her arm
up, she wiped her eyes.

At her side she felt Gadden stir.
She thought at first he was getting up from the bed. But he moved against her
and she felt his erection press into her thigh. She was so surprised she didn't
immediately move. The music,
his
music, his guitars and mournful, pleading voice, was now loud, with them, in
the room. Putting his head into the angle of her shoulder and neck he slipped
his hand between her legs, touching her.

 
She recoiled. "No," she gasped, and,
pushing his hand, pulled away from him.

He followed her, gripping her
shoulder, pulling the sheets back, and hauling himself on top of her.
"No!" he mimicked, as though it were a game. And he kissed her lips,
his mouth open. “Come on, Kate! You know you want it.”

She moved her face away. His
touch repelled.

He leaned more heavily, his knee
forcing her legs apart.

"No!"

"For Christ's sake!"

“
No!
” She was shouting now, her hand at his throat, her leg buckling
up and kneeing hard into him.

Momentarily his pressure eased in
pain. “Agh!”

But in that second she’d forced
him from her and was sliding across the bed and then out of the room and into
the bathroom.

Slamming the door, she locked it,
her body convulsing.

Chapter
Seventeen

She knelt on the bathroom floor
as waves of nausea gripped her. The horror she’d been forced to witness in
Owoso had become a pornographic fantasy of which she’d allowed herself to
become both its narrator and then object of desire. She felt blood-soaked.

At length the sickness passed and
she began to shiver uncontrollably, and, reaching up, she pulled two large bath
towels around her for warmth. Then she lay quite still, curled in a foetal
position. An hour passed, maybe more, before she heard her bedroom door open
and close as Gadden left. She didn’t move, but was aware that the music she’d
heard had ended at some point. She hadn’t noticed when.

It was a long night without
sleep, of shock and confusion, but mostly of self-disgust, and only as the
monotone light of an autumn dawn reached the window did she unlock the bathroom
door. Stepping cautiously into the bedroom, she dressed and quickly packed.
Lastly she put her phone into her jacket pocket.

The house was silent and she
assumed everyone else to be still sleeping. But as, carrying her bag, she made
her way out on to the landing and along to the stairs, she became aware of a
movement behind her. The freckled Swedish girl, Agnieta, who the previous evening
had asked Gadden for a song, was standing watching her. Like a guard, her
pretty face was expressionless.

Ignoring her, Kate began her
descent of the stairs. Dana, the American girl from the kitchens, was stationed
on the floor below. Where the previous evening both had been giddy with smiles,
now they offered no reaction.

She carried on down to the hall,
but, as she did, it quickly, silently, began to populate. The Glee Club, young
men and women, some still in their night clothes, their expressions ranging
between puzzlement and rancour, were assembling to watch her.

Kerinova was standing in front of
the main door, her bleached, blank face almost luminescent. “You’re leaving
us?” she said

Alongside her stood Stefano and Kish. There was no sign of
Gadden.

“Yes.”

“Without saying good-bye to
Jesse? He’ll be disappointed.”

Kate didn’t answer. But, walking
around the Estonian, she made for the door.

Stefano blocked the way.

“May I get past, please.”

He didn’t move.

She turned another way.

Kish stepped forward to stop her.
 

She looked around at the hostile
faces. Then, with her eyes back on Stefano, she slipped a hand into her jacket
pocket, pressed the
send
button on
her phone and lifted it out.

“WSN-TV,”
came the voice of the switchboard operator down the phone.

For a moment she noticed
Stefano’s eyes switch to Kerinova.

“WSN…can I help you?”
repeated the operator.

“This is Kate Merrimac…” Kate
spoke into the phone.

Kerinova didn’t wait. “Somebody
open the door,” she snapped. “Our television friend is leaving.”

Two young men hurried to unlock
the oak door. It creaked as it opened and a draught of cold morning air swept
into the hall.
 

Kate stepped outside on to the
terrace, half-expecting to be grabbed from behind. It didn’t happen. Without
looking back she went down the wide steps towards the long avenue of trees, her
phone to her ear. She was trembling.
 

“Hello, Kate…Are you there?”

 
“Yes. Sorry about that.” She tried to
concentrate. “I wonder could you do me a favour. I’m down in Cornwall,
near Haverhill,
and I need the number of a local taxi service. Do you think you could find one
for me, please?”

“Sure, Kate…just hold on…”

It was a long walk to the Haverhill gates. No sound
followed her from the house, just the certain knowledge that as her every foot
crunched on the gravel, bitter eyes followed her. The jolly, sunny atmosphere
of Haverhill
was gone. The place was now sinister and alien. She’d been afraid before on
many occasions many times, and often understandably. But nothing about Jesse
Gadden and the people he called his family was understandable.

Twenty minutes later she was
sitting in the back of a Toyota being driven to Penzance. The driver asked no questions about why she
should be walking along a Cornish country lane at just after seven in the
morning, and she offered none. At the railway station she was grateful when the
buffet opened at eight o'clock, but, though she bought the Sunday newspapers,
she didn’t open them. She couldn't read. Her mind was still trying to come to
terms with the implications of what had happened. Jesse Gadden had undergone a
complete personality change.

She wanted to phone Seb Browne
and Beverly in Galway, but, unable to face
their inevitable questions, she texted them.
“JG interview cancelled. No need for further research. Come home
soonest. Will explain later. K.”

 
Then at 8.33, switching off her phone so that
she wouldn’t get their reply, she caught the Penzance
to Paddington express.

It was just after two fifteen
when she arrived back in London.
She’d planned what she was going to do. Getting a plastic bin bag, she’d
dropped every Jesse Gadden CD and accompanying booklet into it. Then, emptying
the kitchen garbage can on top of them, she took the bag outside and put it in
the dustbin. She wanted no trace of Jesse Gadden in her home.

Finally, after checking her voicemail,
she went up to her study. Among other messages on her computer was an email
from Seb.
“Hi Kate, Thanks for the text.
Sorry about the interview. Bloody rock stars. What happened? Cold feet? I hope the
bastard gets foot rot. Actually, as it happens, Galway
might not be a complete disaster! By the way, Beverly, who’s been listening to
Jesse Gadden on her iPod for three days solid, says ‘hello’, and wants you to
know that I’m not as bad as she thought! We’ll see about that! See you
tomorrow.

Seb.

PS. In haste… am
attaching my Gadden research notes for you to read.”

That was one attachment she
wouldn’t be opening, she told herself, and went to unpack her bag. Her new,
blue dress would go to Oxfam. She never wanted to see it again, or the shoes
she’d worn. It was only as she was pushing her jeans into the washing machine
that she heard a jingle,
and, feeling
inside the pockets, pulled out a set of keys. They were to the Haverhill video library.
She’d forgotten to hand them back. Now she never would. Chucking them into a
cubby hole in her roll-top desk, she undressed, took a long bath, swallowed two
Diazepam and went to bed.