Ralph’s Children (12 page)

‘Couldn’t we use a replica gun?’ Simon asked.

Ralph wondered why she hadn’t thought of that, was glad Simon had.

‘Yeah, OK,’ Jack said. ‘If it makes you feel better.’

‘It would,’ Ralph had said.

Doubt had gnawed at her that Jack might say one thing and do another, which meant the only way to be certain would be to insist on inspecting the gun when the time came. Except she
wouldn’t be there, and anyway, it would be insulting to Jack and unsettling for the group.

The group was everything to her. With every passing year, every phone call, every reunion, every
game
, that became more clear to her.

She wrote once in her journal:

But just hours later, she wrote:

They chose a newsagent’s because Jack said there was likely to be a decent amount of money in the till, and because the shop they chose in Summertown, a mile or so from
the school, had a particularly smutty top shelf.

They went in on a Sunday night, because the teacher was home alone in his Barton flat over a café that closed at weekends, and because they knew by then that Mitcham’s only
neighbour went away every Friday until late on Monday.

‘You’ll have to get to the shop first thing,’ Ralph had said during planning. ‘The newsagent does his banking after the paper rush.’ She’d paused. ‘I
know you’ll have all that under control, Jack.’

‘Did I say a word, Chief?’

‘You’re very patient,’ Ralph told him. ‘I’m just keen for us to cover all bases.’

‘We know,’ Roger said.

Ralph heard the gentle irony, felt affection behind it and was warmed.

* * *

‘If
anything’s
out of place,’ she told them all during their last conversation before the game, ‘you have to promise me you’ll pull
out.’

Jack told her not to worry.

Simon said she hadn’t slept for a week.

Pig said he’d felt sick for a fortnight.

Roger said she had never been so scared and excited in her life.

‘Best part I’ve ever played,’ she said.

‘Real life,’ Ralph reminded her. ‘Real consequences.’

‘I’m not sure,’ Roger said candidly, ‘I’ve ever understood the difference.’

They would wear black stockings over their heads, it had been agreed, except for Simon – in case Alan Mitcham recognized her voice – who would remain outside in wig and glasses,
their emergency getaway driver again.

So three against one.

‘He’s not especially strong, so far as I know.’ Simon’s main role had been to provide information about her colleague. ‘I’ve watched him when he’s had
to take PE a couple of times, and he’s pathetic.’

‘Wanking the only exercise he gets, then,’ Jack had said.

Afterwards Ralph wrote:

* * *

Guilty as charged, and locked up in HM Prison Oakwood.

Innocent Beast, though only of
that
crime. Guilty as all sin in their eyes.

What had followed though, a month later, had not been in the original plan. And yet it had become necessary, Ralph had been forced to accept, because after Roger had called in a favour from a
contact at Oakwood, she found out that Mitcham was claiming to have remembered new and ‘significant’ details about the gang.

‘It might be bluff,’ Roger told Ralph on the phone, ‘but what’s scaring me is that most of what we had on him came from Simon.’

‘And you think he’s linked it to her?’ Ralph felt ill at the thought.

‘With all that time to think, I suppose the penny could have dropped,’ Roger said. ‘And Sy was the one sitting outside, so someone might have noticed her.’

Ralph was silent.

‘He needs shutting up, Chief,’ Roger said. ‘Fast.’

‘How much have you told your contact?’ Ralph was alarmed.

‘Not a thing,’ Roger had assured her. ‘It’s on the grapevine.’

‘We need a meeting,’ Ralph said.

‘I don’t think there’s time.’

‘We have to at least tell the others,’ Ralph insisted.

‘Of course.’ Roger paused. ‘I gather it can be arranged. For the right sum.’

‘
It
being shutting him up?’

‘Permanently.’

Ralph felt a shudder go through her. ‘Dear God.’

‘I know,’ Roger said. ‘Not simple or safe any more, is it, Chief?’

‘Couldn’t we just arrange a reminder of how it would go for him in there if they knew about the photographs?’ Ralph felt suddenly on the end of a hook, struggling for her
immortal soul. ‘It worked in the first place.’

‘Trust me, Chief, it’s because of the photos that this
can
be arranged, no questions asked,’ Roger told her. ‘That’s how much his sort are
hated.’

‘But mightn’t a beating be enough to keep him quiet?’ Ralph was still hanging on.

‘How long for?’ Roger said. ‘Do you really think we can take that chance?’

Ralph took another moment, thought about Simon, who’d wanted to change her mind and shop the teacher rather than play the game; who was, of all of them, still the most innocent.

‘How much?’ she asked.

And knew, right away, that she was lost.

She spoke to the others one at a time.

It was, they all knew, a massive step into the abyss, and yet they all agreed to take it, making Ralph feel, with a sense of quiet, clamping bleakness, that it was as if they had always known
this would happen.

Jack had been shocked at first, but had swiftly seen the point, and Pig had been more afraid for Simon than about what it meant to him, had therefore not argued as much as he might have.

‘I don’t want this,’ Simon had said. ‘This is wrong.’

‘None of us wants it,’ Ralph had told her.

‘But you’ve more or less said it’s for
my
sake.’

Ralph heard her desperation. ‘It’s for all of us,’ she told her. ‘Like always.’

‘But surely,’ Simon went on, ‘if something happens to him, they’re even more likely to go back and look at what happened before.’

‘But he won’t be around to give evidence,’ Ralph said.

Simon had been silent for a moment.

‘We’re really going to do this, aren’t we, Chief?’ she said at last.

‘I don’t see,’ Ralph told her, ‘that we have any real choice.’

All of them trying to block out the truth: that they were about to be party to the greatest of sins, and no part of it a game. Their abiding awareness of Mitcham’s wickedness had helped,
of course, and their desire to protect Simon had enabled them to believe they had no alternative. They were, Ralph thought, all afraid of breaking ranks, of smashing the group, ruining the
friendships which had become everything to them. So they had stood together and agreed to it.

To murder.

The hit had been costly in more ways than moral. Neither Simon nor Roger could afford much, but Jack had accumulated some ready cash, Pig had badly wanted to contribute, and
Ralph had known it was her duty to pay the lion’s share.

Immortal souls
all
down the Swanee then, she supposed.

Hers first in line.

Mitcham’s game had indeed changed everything. There was no going back from there, and they all knew it.

Nothing but a trial run, as things had turned out, for the ultimate game.

A
ll this, and now fog too.

Not a pea-souper, but bad enough, and driving the last mile to Caisleán in the dark was always a strain on the eyes, but anything more than a slight mist was enough to disorient, to blot
out the familiar and give the illusion of shifting landscape.

The relief when Kate saw in her headlights the signpost that she and Rob had erected at the junction with the long track leading to the barn over open grassy land, was considerable. Another
memory, of Rob hammering that post into the ground while she had held a glass of champagne for them to share . . .

Not that Caisleán looked in the least welcoming this evening as the Mini jolted over the last section of bumpy track and stopped.

A black slab with a pitched roof in a grey blanketed world.

For just a moment, Kate felt oddly unnerved.

‘Daft,’ she told herself out loud.

She switched off the engine, leaving the headlamps on to light her path to the barn, fished the keys out of her bag and went to unlock the front door.

It opened with a creak.

Kate leaned in to flick the switch on the wall inside, and Caisleán came alive.

‘Thank you, Mr Edison,’ said Kate.

She walked back to the Mini, pulled out her weekend bag and shopping, then turned off the headlights, shut and locked the doors, slipped that key into her bag and went inside.

Kicked the front door shut behind her.

Everything looked as it should.

Lovely. Just as she and Rob had intended.

Soft caramel-coloured sofa with burgundy cushions and throws, two warm kilim rugs on the stone floor that Rob had bought without her at an Istanbul market. The heavy, rustic oak dining table,
chairs and old oak chest they’d found together in an Oxford auction. The tiny kitchen off to the right, the bathroom to the left. The spiral staircase up to the galleried first floor that had
once been a hayloft – some of its original timbers and iron lamp hooks retained for atmosphere – where they had made their bedroom.

Where they used to sleep together and make love and watch the stars and the dawn through the skylight over their bed.

Kate set her bags on the floor and walked into the centre of the room.

‘Hello, Caisleán,’ she said softly.

Awash, suddenly, with loneliness for Rob.

She thought of the wine bottles in with her shopping.

A glass would help.

She started to turn.

Heard them,
saw
them, as they emerged, moving swiftly out of the bathroom and kitchen, from the cupboard by the front door and from the back of the little house.

‘Hello to you, Kate,’ one of them said.

Four terrifying figures in red overalls with black stocking masks over their heads, flattening and obscuring their faces.

Kate opened her mouth to scream.

‘Please don’t,’ one of them said.

A woman, her voice only slightly muffled by her stocking.

‘All right.’ Kate’s heart pounded like a jackhammer. ‘I won’t.’ Shock made her hoarse. ‘Take what you want, then please go, I won’t stop
you.’

‘What we want,’ a second figure – a man – said, ‘is you.’

‘Oh, God,’ Kate said.

‘Better sit down,’ the third – another woman – told her.

Kate did so.

I
t was almost one a.m. when Laurie – who’d given up on sleep and was flipping through that week’s copy of
Heat
– heard
a quiet knocking on her door, which startled her since neither of her parents ever came into her room at night.

‘Come in.’

It was her father, in dressing gown and slippers.

‘What’s wrong, Dad?’ Laurie closed the magazine.

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Pete Moon answered.

He asked if she minded if he sat on the edge of her bed.

‘Course not.’

‘I just want to say –’ he spoke slowly as he sat, like someone groping his way forward, which was not a bit like him – ‘that I sometimes think you’ve
forgotten how much your mum and I love you.’

Laurie said nothing, wondering where this was going.

‘You’re so busy hating us . . . ’

‘I don’t hate you, Dad.’

Which was only half a lie, since much of the hate she’d undoubtedly often felt since conceiving Sam had been more disappointment than real hatred. Plenty of that.

‘I hope you know,’ Pete went on, ‘that if we thought Sam wasn’t happy, wasn’t fulfilling his potential—’

‘How can you know if he’s happy or not when you never see him?’ Her retort came sharply, almost automatically.

‘We get reports,’ her father said, ‘as you know. Which all tell us about his happy nature. Which you do too, Laurie.’

‘And if he wasn’t?’ she asked. ‘Happy?’

There was a silence.

‘Then I imagine we’d have to think about something else.’

‘Such as?’

‘That would be up to you,’ Pete said.

‘Since when has anything about Sam been up to me?’ Laurie asked.

‘It’s all been up to you,’ said her dad. ‘Your mother and I have always gone along with your decisions.’

She was staggered. ‘How can you say that?’

‘It’s true,’ Pete insisted. ‘Fundamentally. We may not have handled things the way you would have.’

Laurie was silent again, new imaginings clanging in her brain. Was this a new trick, perhaps, to stop her visits to Sam? Or maybe they were going to say they couldn’t afford Rudolf Mann
any more, and where would they want to send him then?