Ralph’s Children (17 page)

‘You want some more?’ Jack turned to her.

‘Let’s get on,’ Roger said.

‘Right,’ Simon said.

The air hung still and silent for a long second.

‘Still want to know,’ Jack asked Laurie, ‘how you’re going to punish each other?’

There was nothing now, in the whole world, that she wanted to know
less.

‘It’s simple,’ he said. ‘Like we said.’

‘You –’ Roger spoke to Laurie – ‘are going to punish
her
–’ she nodded towards Kate – ‘by being her victim.’

‘And you,’ Jack said to Kate, ‘are going to punish her—’

‘No,’ Kate interrupted, steeling herself for another slap. ‘I’m not.’

‘By
executing
her,’ Jack finished.

Laurie gave a small moan, turned chalky white and passed out, Roger just catching her before she fell sideways.

‘Hold her steady,’ Jack said.

Pig held her from the other side, her head slumped over her chest.

‘I’m not going to do anything to her,’ Kate said. ‘Whatever you do to me.’

‘What about,’ Jack asked, ‘if we do it to Emmie?’

Kate felt as if a klaxon had gone off inside her head.

Flashes danced across her mind’s eye of Rob’s sweet daughter.

‘You—’ She couldn’t speak.

‘That’s right,’ Roger said. ‘We have Emily.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Kate said, at last.

Laurie was coming round again, her face ghostly white, but all Kate could think about now was Emmie and how much Rob loved her, and they
couldn’t
have her, it was impossible.

No more impossible than this.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said again.

Less conviction in her tone this time.

‘If we don’t make a call –’ Roger checked her watch – ‘in fifteen minutes, to say we’ve finished here—’

‘Then they’ll finish little Emmie,’ Jack said.

Laurie was listening, trying to take things in, not really
wanting
to.

Kate licked her lips. ‘Prove you have her.’

‘We don’t have to prove anything,’ Roger said. ‘You have to do what we tell you to do.’

‘Unless you don’t give a damn about Emily,’ said Jack.

‘She might not,’ said Simon, ‘with her track record.’

‘That’s true,’ Pig said.

‘Doesn’t make much difference,’ Jack said. ‘We can find other ways to
make
her do it anyway.’

Laurie let out a whimper, her eyes terrified.

‘Even if you do have her . . .’ It was a struggle for Kate to keep her mind working. ‘If you’re so pro-life, you won’t hurt a child.’

‘Won’t be us
making
her be hurt though, will it?’ Pig said. ‘It’ll be you.’

‘Times-a-wasting,’ Roger said.

‘You’re right,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s do it.’

Laurie made a choking sound behind the tape over her mouth.

‘She’s going to puke,’ Pig said, freaked.

‘Don’t,’ Jack told Laurie. ‘Pig doesn’t like puke, and it’s not in the game.’

‘Jesus,’ Kate said, disgusted. ‘
Jesus.
’

Jack struck her hard with the back of his hand.

‘Careful,’ Roger cautioned again.

Not her imagination then. They didn’t want her hurt, at least not so it showed.

‘Get up,’ Jack told Kate.

She blinked away the involuntary tears of pain, didn’t move.

‘Come
on
, girls,’ Jack said. ‘Time to get up and play.’

He bent down, took hold of Kate’s left arm, Simon taking her right, hauling her up off the sofa. Over by the table, Pig and Roger pulled Laurie to her feet, and she yelped with pain.

‘Move,’ Jack ordered Kate. ‘
Move
, bitch.’

‘I can’t,’ Kate told him. ‘My legs are numb. I need a moment.’

‘I think,’ Pig said, ‘we’re going to have to untie their ankles to get them upstairs.’

Kate stared up at the gallery where she and Rob had made their bedroom.

‘No untying,’ said Roger.

‘Couldn’t we make her do it down here?’ asked Simon.

‘That’s not the game,’ said Jack.

‘OK.’ Roger changed her mind. ‘We’ll untie their ankles.’

Laurie’s eyes were fixed on Kate now, beseeching.

‘I’m not going to hurt you, Laurie,’ Kate said. ‘We’ll be all right.’

‘You think?’ Jack said.

He ripped off another length of tape and covered her mouth again.

‘Let’s play,’ said Roger.

Teamwork.

Jack held Kate while Simon cut the bandages around her ankles, then gave the knife – which looked to Kate like one of their sharpest kitchen knives – to Jack, who tucked it into his
belt; and Kate wanted to kick out, but her legs just weren’t
working
, and Pig gripped Laurie while Roger freed her feet, but she was too weak to stand, and they had to drag her
towards the spiral staircase.

‘Move,’ Jack told Kate again, while Simon’s gloved fingers dug into her right forearm. ‘Move, or have another kid on your conscience.’

Insanity, it was all too crazy to be
real
, but the other three were already halfway up the stairs, and Kate could feel the blood starting to flow again through her arms and legs, and
oh, dear God, what if they
did
have Emmie? And they were frogmarching her now, Jack yanking her upward, Simon right behind her, and it was hopeless, there was nothing she could
do.

She saw the others reach the top of the stairs, turn right, saw Roger and Pig dragging Laurie to the bedroom alcove, saw them push her on to the bed, turn her on to her back.

Laurie began to wail.

That new sound, of pure mortal terror, seemed to blow apart Kate’s helplessness.

They, too, were at the top, the gallery narrow for three people moving together.

Now.

She kicked out violently, struck Simon’s left leg with her right loafer, so hard that the other woman cried out, stumbled, let go of Kate’s arm, and Kate
used
the instant,
used every ounce of her pent-up inner rage, shoved at her with her right hip—

Saw it happen in slow motion.

Simon losing her balance, her arms flailing, hands clutching air then falling forward, her momentum sending her crashing through the wooden rail—

‘Simon!’ Pig’s cry from the alcove was of purest horror.

‘Go!’ Roger took the initiative, swiftly knelt on Laurie’s thighs, pinned her down. ‘Pig,
go
!’

‘She’s
OK
!’ Jack’s harsh shout of laughter jarred them all, and he grabbed Kate’s hair with one hand, her arms with the other, yanked her right to the
edge. ‘See what you
didn’t
do, bitch.’

Kate stared down and saw that Simon’s fall had been halted by one of the thick old iron hooks, its sharp point snaring her overalls and saving her life.

‘Simon!’ Pig was already halfway down the staircase, trying to reach her. ‘She’s not moving!’

‘She’s fine, Pig.’ Jack began moving again, dragging Kate towards the alcove. ‘We have to finish this!’

‘
Simon!
’ Pig was distraught. ‘Jack, she’s not answering!’

‘For God’s sake, Jack,’ Roger called, ‘let Pig see to her.’

Kate saw that she still had Laurie pinned down, the young woman still and silent again, immured now in her personal nightmare.

‘Let’s
go
, Jack!’ Roger told him.

‘All right.’ Jack took the knife from his belt.

‘Jack, come
on
,’ Roger urged again.

‘I said all
right.
’

He turned Kate around, his free arm tighter around her chest, and she let out a cry, waited for the blade in her back, then jumped as she felt first her right glove being pulled off her hand,
then, swiftly and shockingly, the coldness of steel against her palm and fingers.

Jack turned her back again, so that she faced the bed.

Laurie’s eyes were closed, and Kate hoped to God she’d passed out, and why had she
done
that to Simon? She’d made things even worse, accelerated them . . .

Jack was holding the knife out in front of himself, blade down.

He was hesitating, Kate could
feel
it, he was wavering.

‘Jack?’ Roger felt it too.

‘This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.’ He sounded odd. ‘The game.’

Suddenly, with more horror swelling in her chest, Kate understood how the game
was
meant to go.

Her prints on the knife.

Execution.

‘It’s not going right.’ Jack’s grip on her was still tight. ‘Not the Chief’s great fucking plan, is it?’

‘Careful, Jack,’ Roger said.

In control now, yet
she
wasn’t certain either, Kate sensed.

‘I put the knife in her hands now and untie her, she’ll stick it in me, not
her
, stands to reason,’ Jack said. ‘So I got no choice, do I?’

Kate kept her eyes on the surgical-gloved hand still holding out the knife.

‘But it’s a bit of a thing, right?’ He still sounded odd. ‘
Doing
it.’

Something shifted between them.

Something
big
changing in the atmosphere.

Hope shot through Kate.

‘You don’t have to, Jack,’ Roger said. ‘We can change it.’

‘We can’t change the game,’ he said.

‘Why not?’ Roger said. ‘The Chief isn’t here. If you don’t feel right . . .’

She
cared
about him, Kate realized, could hear it in her voice, feel it. These four all cared for each other, they weren’t just some gang of cold-hearted villains, they—

And then Pig let out a terrible howl.

‘She’s
gone
!’

Kate felt Jack go rigid.

‘The hook’s gone right through
her
.’ Pig’s voice was anguished. ‘Simon’s
dead
.’

Laurie opened her eyes.

Sam filled her mind: his birth, his being taken from her at the clinic, his lovely smiling face.

‘You,’ Jack said to Kate. ‘
You
did this.’

She felt it, literally
felt
the heat of his rage as he raised the knife.

She shut her eyes, thought about Rob, about wasting love.

The sound she heard as the warm spray hit her face was thinner than a baby’s wail.

Droplets on her eyelids, on her nose, her cheeks.

She commanded herself not to look – if she kept her eyes closed, she would not have to
see.

What Jack had done to Laurie.

But she had to look, knew she had no choice.

A necklace of blood.

Laurie already gone.

And now Kate was screaming inside.

J
ack had just called.

‘I’m in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘Turner can’t hear me.’

A thrill ran through Ralph.

‘Is it done?’ she asked, knowing from his voice that it was.

‘Yeah,’ Jack confirmed. ‘But the game’s not over, Chief.’

She heard him tell her about Simon, grief striking hard as a hammer blow.

Time passed, evaporated, ceased to register or matter.

Ralph remembered Simon as she had been in the early days, soft and fair and sweet and very young. The most innocent of them all, always.

‘Chief?’ Jack said at last. ‘You OK?’

‘No,’ she answered. ‘Of course not.’

‘Me neither,’ he said.

Ralph tried to assemble her thoughts, assemble
herself.

‘How’s Pig?’

‘Like you’d imagine,’ Jack answered.

Something different was whipping up in her now, along with the grief.

Rage.

‘So,’ she said, ‘it was her. She did that to Simon.’

‘Fucking right she did,’ Jack said.

Ralph knew that she needed to still her own emotions, at least for a time. To help her surviving children deal with this.

To finish this imperfect game.

‘Right,’ she said.

T
he first thing they had done after killing Laurie was to attend to Simon.

Jack’s grasp on Kate’s hair in those minutes had been so brutally tight she had felt the roots shrieking as he’d made her lean with him over the rail, watching Roger help Pig
ascertain that their friend was truly dead.

There was no doubting that Pig was right. The hook had pierced Simon’s left breast and probably her heart, impaling her.

Ending her life.

Kate had looked down and seen the glistening, horrifying, dark red pool on the stone floor directly below.

She thought, though the stocking over Roger’s face made it hard to be sure, that the terrorist was weeping.

No such doubts about Pig.

‘Right.’ Jack had spoken at last, his voice low and choked and savage. ‘Right.’

Roger had looked up at him. ‘What do we do?’

‘Call Ralph,’ he had said.

Kate registered the name. Another from the Golding novel. The Chief’s name.

‘Shoes first,’ Roger said.

Her weeping already over, her grief, at least for a time, contained.

‘We need to check our soles,’ she clarified. ‘For blood.’

Kate had felt barely alive in the lull that had followed the killing.

Two killings, she supposed.

Supposed, too, that from their point of view she had killed Simon. Except she did not feel that pushing a person bent on murder qualified as
killing.

They
were responsible for Simon’s death.

Not in their book, though.

Kate had found that she could not think about – knew she must not allow herself to think about – what had been done to Laurie Moon. A stranger, and yet her
sister
. About the
unspeakable brutality of it.

Later she would think about it, find out about her.

If there was a later.

Back downstairs – after speaking, Kate presumed, to their Chief, to the newly named
‘Ralph’
– Jack hog-tied her in the centre of the living
room, ensuring that Simon’s body was in her line of vision.

‘Careful,’ Roger said again as Jack tethered her wrists to her ankles, and he made a sound that was half grunt, half snarl, but the bandages were released just a little.

God, it
hurt
, caution or not, though the pain was almost welcome, helping to blot out the hideousness of the memory of Laurie Moon’s killing – but then Kate’s eyes
fixed on the gory sight of the dead terrorist, and any relief was gone.