One Night (18 page)

Harry had parked his car up outside five minutes earlier and pulled his phone out again. He didn’t make a call this time, instead he fired up an app he had on it. Harry wasn't usually a man with much use for such things, he liked to think of himself as a traditionalist. He always strove to have the best though and everyone said the phone in his hand was the best so he'd strolled into a store, laid his money down and bought one. There was a lot you could do w
ith it, more than Harry could really be bothered with, but when one of the boys had shown him this particular piece of software he'd immediately seen the possibilities it afforded. It was amazing the things you could do with technology nowadays. He’d used the app a few times now, mostly for playing practical jokes on people, but once or twice for more serious matters. The results had been satisfying. Very satisfying.

Sitting there in his car he knew he didn’t have a lot of material to play with but he thought there was enough for what he wanted to do. Enough to have the effect he desired on Eve at least.

All war is deception, he thought to himself and smiled.

In the cafe he walked up to his niece and bent to kiss her cheek. She pulled away.

“Eve,” he said. “That hurts.”

The girl didn’t respond.

Harry reacted with mock anger. She could tell that he was playing up for his men as much as he was talking to her. Acting the tough but fair uncle. The hard man with a heart. She thought sometimes that he wasn’t a real person at all, just a mixture of different behaviours and phrases he’d picked up from watching too many gangster movies. "What's he done to you, this scumbag?” he said. “Has he turned my favourite niece against me?"

Eve remembered that phrase from her childhood, Harry had used it when he needed one of his favours. She half expected him to pull out a chocolate bar to get her to talk.

She sighed. "He hasn't done anything to me, Harry. He's just a guy I met and went for a drink with."

"Not just a drink, a meal too from what I hear. Big spender, this friend of yours."

"You hear? Did you hear it from the gang of thugs in the van who attacked us?"

A flash of anger crossed Harry's face and then he smiled. Eve knew what a temper he had, she’d seen it possess him, turn him into a snarling monster. She also knew that he prided himself on his ability to maintain control. He liked to plan everything he said and did like one of the generals he admired so much planning a military campaign. Sometimes she thought he hated that temper as much as everyone else did.

"Eve, you don't know what this guy is like. I know he's turned the charm on with you but he's an animal, left a trail of bodies in his wake he has. Besides, when I sent the boys in the van I had no idea you were with him. How could I have predicted that? That my niece would be gadding about town with a lowlife like him. Tell me, Eve, how?"

She hated the sound of her name in his mouth. Harry had read somewhere that using someone's name helped you influence them and so you knew he wanted something from you because he'd repeatedly name you. She remembered him doing it as a child, when he wanted one of his favours. Saying it over and over, wearing her down with it. She'd learned at school that the first woman had been called Eve, had learned about the fall from Paradise. She imagined that Eve's name on the serpent's lips had sounded like hers did on Uncle Harry's. Slightly drawn out, as if elongating it gave it more effect.

Harry pulled up a chair and sat opposite her.

"Talk to me sweetheart, tell me you didn't know what he'd done." He had a look on his face that almost looked like genuine concern, she said nothing though, she knew that look from the past. As soon as you let him draw you into a conversation, as soon as you started accepting his version of reality, he’d got you. He had a way of chipping away at your resolve like a sculptor working on a lump of rock, slowly taking a little away here, a little there, until he’d formed you into what he wanted. Created the you that he needed to fulfil whatever nasty little plan he was hatching that day.

“You need to listen to me, Eve,” he said, with an earnestness and concern in his voice that could have won him an Oscar. “This guy is very bad news. He was using you darling, using you like the poor sods he left dead in London. He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Damaged goods, is what I hear. Terrible childhood, but that’s no excuse for the things he’s done.”

Eve sat silent, refusing to talk to him. Every minute I sit here, she thought, is a minute for Joel to get further away.

Harry sighed. “I didn’t want to have to do this, Eve,” he said. “But you have to hear it. You have to know what kind of man he is.”

He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and put it on the table in front of him. “You leave me no choice,” he said.

His fingers tapped the screen and Eve heard the voices coming from the phone’s speaker. A conversation.

"Did you find my niece? Tell me she’s ok. Did you get the toerag who took her?" It was Harry’s voice.

"Yeah I got him, took the bat off him and shoved it up his arse.” This was Joel now, sounding angry, scared but excited too. Harry looked at her across the table with a look that said I told you so.

“You!” said Harry’s voice. “Tell me you haven’t hurt that girl. I’ll give you anything you want for her back safe. Anything. Just let her go.”

“Fuck you,” said Joel, and Eve felt her heart pause for a second. Stop beating as it hung on Joel’s words. Joel the man she loved. “And fuck her too,” he said with a rage in his voice that tore through her like a knife.

She looked away from Harry, couldn’t meet his eyes, couldn’t stand the cold glint of satisfaction she could see in them. She thought back to the moments she had shared with Joel. The tenderness, the joy. She had felt more happiness in the last few hours than in the last year and it was all because of him. Had it been a lie? His angry words were still echoing round the room, bouncing back again and again to her brain. What did she believe? What she had felt with him. What she had seen in his eyes when he held her or this, a few words tumbling out of Harry’s phone. Harry the trickster. Harry the man who had never brought her anything but pain.

“No,” she said. “No. I don’t believe you.”

Harry tilted his head to one side and examined her like a cat eyeing up a mouse it was toying with. He sighed. He was frustrated that she’d seen through his little charade but there was always another way. There was more to war than just deception after all.

“You always were a bright girl, Eve. Too clever for your own bloody good.”

He picked the phone up and put it back in his pocket.

“Here’s the deal. Your man is in Southend somewhere. I will find him, you know I will. Nothing happens in this town without me knowing about it. It might take a few hours but he’s been up all night screwing you so the poor sod must be knackered. So I’ll say it again, I will find him.” He punctuated the last four words with his fist, slamming it down onto the table with each one.

“And when I find him I will kill him. It won’t be quick. It won’t be easy. It will be slow and as painful as I can make it. By the time I’ve finished he will beg me to put a bullet in his brain.”

He sat back and smiled. “Of course it doesn’t have to be like that, Eve, my darling niece. All I really want is that bag. If I had that I’d let him go. Let him swan off to wherever the fuck he wants to go and live out the rest of his days in peace. That’s what I’d do if I had the bag.

“So what’s it going to be? Are you going to tell me where it is or are you going to wait here while I find him and drag him back so that you can watch him die? Your choice, Eve. Your choice.”

Joel had stayed sitting on the walkway for twenty minutes thinking. Harry's words had shaken him, hurt him.

He felt like Charlie Brown with that bloody American football, queuing up time and again to take a kick at it only to have it pulled away. Did he have something broken inside him? Some part of his makeup that his parents had either failed to pass onto him or had ripped away from him when he was abandoned? Not just a need to trust but an inability to pick people who were worthy of his faith in them.

He’d had his eyes open with Eve though, wide open after the shock of Danny turning on him, and he had really thought he could trust her. They had shared something, something that felt like the most precious thing on earth to him. Had it all been a lie? Just a game she was playing? He didn’t know what to think anymore. Well maybe there was one thing, he knew he didn’t trust Harry.

He’d heard of him. Harry’s reputation had spread as far as London, not that the two places were far apart. Harry was the self-styled king of Southend, the man who ran the town with an iron fist. Nothing went on there without his say so. If there was one person whose radar Joel hadn’t wanted to get onto when he arrived here it was Harry’s. But he’d managed it, managed to blunder into the man’s family for fuck’s sake.

Eve... he couldn’t shake the feeling she’d given him. The joy. Everything Harry had said to him made sense, except the lingering sense of her in his heart that told him the man had lied. There was that last word too, the last thing she had said to him after Harry’s men had found them. “Run”. Had she said it just to get rid of him or because she genuinely wanted him to escape? He had to know, he realised. Had to know for sure if he’d imagined the desire and affection he’d felt coming off her in waves.

He tried to put the emotion aside and think logically. Harry would be after two things, him and the bag. If he couldn’t have them both Joel was sure that the ageing villain would settle for the cash. And Eve knew exactly where it was.

Joel raised himself up again and peered over the railing at the amusement park. The guy he’d knocked out was gone now, either woken up himself and staggered off or dragged away by his mates. There was a car parked by the main gates, something big and shiny enough that it had to be Harry’s.

The lights were on in the cafe and he guessed that was where they’d gathered. What was Eve doing? Had she told them where the bag was as soon as he was out of earshot? Or was
she keeping his trust? He realised then that he didn’t care about the money anymore, all he wanted to know, needed to know, was whether she’d given him up or not. He had to get to the bag and see if it was still there. He had to know.

He could see pretty much
the whole park from where he was but the angle meant that he couldn’t see the mock western town surrounding the mine cart ride. The only way he could tell for sure if the bag was still there would be to get back down to it. It wasn’t a thought he relished but he could tell his heart wouldn’t rest until he knew for sure. Would he be able to get back into the park without them spotting him? Probably, he thought. You didn’t make a career as a safe cracker without being good at sneaking about in the dark.

Watching the park the whole time Joel stood and stretched. He’d been crouching for long enough that his muscles felt cramped and he didn’t want to do anything until his body was loosened up and ready. The last thing he needed was to have his muscles fail him if he had to run. He was dog tired after being up all night and needed to keep his wits about him. He knew that it was as important that his brain was ready for what was coming next as his body.  He sucked in three deep breaths of the cold night air, felt it fill his lungs and start to oxygenate his brain. The fresh air helped drive the tiredness away and make him more alert. As his mind cleared he pushed his emotions down, forcing Eve from his thoughts. He had a clear goal now and he needed to focus on that. See if the bag had been taken and if it hadn't get it out of there as quickly as he could. Or should he wait a while? Not just grab the bag but see if she led them to it?

Either way, the most important thing was to get down there quickly and find a good vantage point to view the bag’s hiding place from. And the sooner he got there the better the chance that he'd beat Harry’s men to it.

He checked the park again, running his eyes over every part of it and the route he would have to take to get back to the tear in the fence. There was still no-one in sight. That meant it was time to go.

He ran quickly back along the walkway, his trainers landing lightly on the concrete and making hardly any sound. Running down the stairs he wondered if he was being an idiot, if he shouldn't just be running for the hills and thanking God that he'd made it this far alive. He knew he couldn't do that though. He had to know the truth about Eve. And besides without the money he had no future. As soon as he'd run from that house, the moment he had chosen to keep going and not taken the money where he was supposed to he'd sealed his fate. He was a marked man. Hunted. And he would be until the money was in the hands of the man who had backed the job. Joel knew that his only hope was to disappear and to do that effectively he needed the cash in that bag.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and ran on, eyes scanning left and right all the time, checking every point at which one of Harry's men might appear. Nothing. They must still all be inside the park. Inside with Eve. He hoped she was okay. He realised that he couldn't feel any anger towards her, his feelings were still too tender. Whatever
she'd done he didn't wish her harm.

His feet carried him across the road to the beach. It felt good to be running again, his muscles warming up, the endorphins hitting his brain and lifting his mood. He'd get through this one way or another. Emotionally as well as physically.

The sand made little sighs as he ran across it, the grains slipping against each other under his feet. He'd never been to the beach as a kid, had always longed to when he saw it on TV. The sea had seemed so wonderfully open and free to a kid who was used to never having any privacy, who had a dozen other children shouting and banging around him all the time. He'd have loved to come here as a child; to the beach and the park. Now he was here it was twenty years too late and for all the wrong reasons.

He could see the split in the fence up ahead now, waiting for him. The gateway back into the park. It was the door that would take him back to Eve and the truth about her feelings for him but he knew it was also the way back into the lion's den. Harry's men were there in force now, and they wouldn't be
as easily evaded as they had been before.

He reached the fence, and his fingers closing on the cold metal of the chain link. He imagined walking away, the future that path held for him. Always running from the men who now wanted revenge on him and never knowing whether Eve had betrayed him or not. That was no life, he'd rather be dead than live like that.

His fingers pulled the rip in the fence open again and he stepped back into the park.