The Poison Tree (33 page)

“Rex, this is your writing,” said Biba.

“I didn’t send it,” he said. I had a flashback to the evening earlier in the week when I had passed out in the Velvet Room. I saw myself tapping the blue folder, telling Guy that everything to do with the house was in there. When I had woken up it had been moved . . . but not by Rex.

“You bloody wrote it, though,” said Capel. “I was willing to make peace with you, I took you to the pub, and two days later I get this, this abusive letter calling me a cunt and listing all the ways you’ll get the law on me. The bloody
law
. I’m your
father
. You don’t know how good I’ve been to you. Do you know what this house is worth? Do you know what I could charge if I rented it out?”

“You weren’t supposed to see it,” said Rex.

“I bet I fucking wasn’t, but I’m glad I have. I know what your true colors are now. You nearly had me going as well. I was this close to signing it over.” Capel made a pincer of a meaty thumb and forefinger.

“Dad, please. Let me explain.” Rex rocked back and forth on his heels, his hands clasped to his head. I had seen him in this state before but then Nina had calmed him down. I wished with a fervor that was close to prayer that I had asked her to tell me the words that would bring him back to me.

“Look at the pair of you. Look at this place. You can’t look after a house. You aren’t up to the responsibility.” He looked at me and then craned to see Guy. “You’ve turned it into some kind of . . . hippie commune.” He spat out the phrase.

“Dad, no! I love this house, I’ve got so many plans for it . . .”

“I don’t want to hear it.” The idea that occurred to him manifested itself as a cold, thin smile. “In fact, I want the lot of you out.”

“But where will we go?”

“You’re twenty-six years old,” said Capel dispassionately. “Get a job. Rent an apartment.”

“He’s twenty-
four
!” shouted Biba, but her words bounced off her father’s back. Capel did not slam the door but closed it quietly behind him, leaving his children homeless with the softest of clicks. The engine of his expensive car purred softly into the distance.

Rex leaned back against the wall. I don’t think he would have been able to support himself without it. He closed his eyes. So this is what someone looks like, I thought, when their world is destroyed. Biba looked from the letter to the door and then back again. If there had been any good glass in the house, her shriek would have shattered it.

“Is anybody going to tell me what the fucking hell is going on?” She stood like a little girl, arms and legs stiff and splayed.

“It was never supposed to be sent,” said Rex weakly. “I was just letting off steam.”

“Then how the bloody hell did Dad end up with it? Karen?” I shook my head. “
Guy
.” His name was a statement, a conclusion, not a question. Even then he could have lied, he could have denied sending it. But while Guy might be able to spin an alter ego for himself at leisure and lie by omission, when put on the spot he did not have the resources to defend himself with stories. He stepped out of his dark doorway making an open-handed gesture.

“I did it for you,” he said to Biba, showing her his dirty palms. “I was trying to force his hand. I did it for you so that he’d give you the house.”

“How did you even find out about it?” asked Rex. He had recovered from the blow of his father’s words and was shaking with a white, wild anger. Guy looked to me for support and explanation. I could have taken my share of the blame then, but I did not see why I should board his sinking ship. I shrugged and poked a loose tile with the toe of my shoe.

“How could you do that to us?” snarled Rex. A little fleck of spittle from his mouth landed on my cheek. “Your stupid idea has ruined three lives. We’ve lost everything, and it’s all your fault.”

“I was only doing it for you,” Guy repeated, turning to Biba. “I love you.”

“Love? You couldn’t have thought of a better way to make me hate you!” Guy drew breath to speak again but she cut him short. “Shut up! Shut up! I’m sick of the sound of your voice! I’m sick of the sound of your music! I’m sick of the sound of you eating and
breathing
, and your
fucking
cell phone.”

As if Biba had summoned that particular nemesis, she was interrupted by a thin melody, the inescapable peep of Guy’s cell. The little green screen glowed through the pocket of a hooded jacket that hung on the end of the banister.

“I’m going to turn that bloody phone off once and for all,” said Rex as though by extinguishing the phone he could eradicate Guy himself and all he had done. Guy acted as if electrocuted and ran to pull it away from Rex, tugging so violently that the hood, which was fastened to the body by snaps, came away in his hand. The pocket containing the phone was heavily weighted down and Guy stretched trembling arms out toward it.

“Give me my jacket.” His voice quavered. “Give it to me.”

“Fuck off.” Rex held the jacket by the scruff of the neck and slowly reached into the pocket. It continued to ring as Rex fumbled and then froze. His expression changed from one of anger to one of terrified recognition. Now his hands, too, were unsteady as he pulled out not a ringing telephone but a small black pistol.

We had mocked Guy’s background and teased him about his ability to get his hands on a weapon. Desperate to prove us wrong, desperate to impress Biba, he had risen to our careless challenge.

It is extraordinary the things you think of in extremis. So much had happened in the space of a few minutes and so much was threatening to happen in the moments that followed. But I was not wondering where we were going to live, or whether we were going to die, or where Guy had gotten the gun, or anything related to my immediate and terrible circumstances. The uppermost thought in my mind was, why is that dark, dull shade of gray called gunmetal? The gun that Rex gripped was not gray at all. It was a stocky little L-shape and its casing was the same satin-sheened black as a cockroach’s shell.

Rex flexed his fingers and rearranged them around the weapon in an approximation of the correct grip. He held it up to the light and then slowly lowered it until the barrel was level with Guy’s brow. His hand was steady. The only tic that betrayed emotion was the rapid rise and fall of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed hard, twice.

“Why shouldn’t I?” he said, raising one eyebrow.

Guy and Biba both looked like they were going to cry. They were the self-proclaimed risk-takers while Rex had always played safe to the point of tedium. Now that real menace was at his fingertips, the hedonists were losing control while he remained calm. I told myself not to panic, that Rex did not know how to use a gun, but I did not convince myself. I was ignorant of firearms and how they worked. I did not know whether it was necessary to be taught how to operate a gun at all or if training was only necessary if you wanted to learn to fire it accurately. I did not know if Guy knew how to shoot, either. He was certainly not acting like someone comfortable or familiar with weapons. He had brought it into the house but he was as afraid as the rest of us. Rex moved his thumb a fraction and a click reverberated through the hall. Was he releasing the safety catch or pulling it back on? Did he know, himself?

I did not know what I was going to say until after I began to speak.

“It’s okay,” I said. I found myself between Rex and his weeping target without quite knowing how I had gotten there. I began to gabble, feeling no control over my cascade of words. “It’s only a fake, isn’t it, Guy? Just something you got hold of to freak us out. Well done. It’s worked. Joke’s over.” I was confident only that Rex would not hurt me. I stood before him, opening my hands like a book, and his amnesty was marked by a tiny sigh of resignation. The gun that he placed in my hands did not feel fake. It felt heavy and powerful and clammy and horrible. In my right hand I held it lightly by the handle, letting the barrel dangle down toward the floor, terrified of touching a trigger or a catch that would fire the gun. Removing myself from the gap between Rex and Guy, I extended my arm behind my back so that neither of them could reach it. All that mattered was keeping it away from both of them.

When I had taken four or five steps back, Guy sprang across the room like an animal released from its trap. He seemed twice, three times Rex’s size as he stood over the smaller man and drove his fist into his stomach. Rex’s body folded toward his knees like a pair of scissors closing. When he looked up, it was to see Guy’s fist coming on course for his jaw. The opening of the flesh was almost audible as the lips that I had spent the summer kissing were split. Blood spilled from Rex’s mouth and onto his shirt, splashed on the tiles below him. I screamed stop it, stop it, stop it, over and over but my words were wasted. I could not break up the fight with words alone and I did not dare to put the gun down in case Guy took possession of it. On my right, Biba was clutching her own stomach as though she, too, had been struck.

“Biba!” I said. “Do something!” I gestured to Rex and Guy and then to the gun in my hand, showing her that I could not intervene myself. My grip was so loose that she took it from me without effort. My hand made a series of vain clutches in the air but by then she had it in a two-handed grip. The click of the catch was loud enough to catch Guy’s attention. He threw Rex to the floor and scrambled for the stairs. When she said his name again it was not a scream but a hiss.

“Guy.”

He turned to face her as she pulled the trigger. The impact caught him on the shoulder and sent his body flying backward: it was the first time I had ever seen him move quickly. His head made contact with the bottom stair. There was a sickening crack that I think was the sound of his neck breaking. He came to rest with his head propped up by the stair at an unnatural ninety-degree angle to his body and his eyes looking out into the hallway, wearing an expression not of accusation but of absolute surprise.

The bang had felt like a punch to both sides of my head. I had my hands over my ringing ears as I turned my attention from Guy’s body to Biba. She had stumbled backward after firing the gun. Her grip on it had loosened only slightly and she stared at it as if it had found its way into her hands and fired itself. Rex’s mouth looked as though it had been smeared across his face and his teeth and gums were outlined in red. He drew himself up to all fours and then to a standing position and stood with his back to where Guy lay. Biba and I followed his eyes to the spot where Tom Wheeler stood.

His body was convulsed by a silent, dry retching and his hands were clasped over his mouth. His eyes blinked rapidly behind frameless glasses. He must have let himself in to complain about the noise but not even our arch-critic could have predicted the scene he surveyed now. He shook his head once, twice, and then turned on his heel. He could not have run quickly enough. The first bullet spun into the mountain of wine bottles, sending emerald shards into the air, but the second shot hit Wheeler in the collar, penetrating his body at the point where his neck became his spine. He fell forward, landing facedown on the rough and dirty weave of the welcome mat, the weight of his body jamming the door shut. With alarming swiftness the blood flowed from the wound, staining his pink polo shirt a deep rose that darkened to burgundy as it spread. It was like watching a flower bloom on a time-lapse photograph. The gun dropped from Biba’s hand and clattered to the floor. In the street outside, a woman’s voice began wailing. The ringing in my ears distorted the sound of her voice, bringing it in and out of my hearing. Biba sank to the floor and arranged herself in a cross-legged sitting position where she stared at her hands. My insides felt sluiced with icy water and for a sickening moment I thought I would lose control of my bowels. Hands flat on my stomach, I fixed my gaze on the wall behind her, afraid to look up, afraid to look down, afraid to turn around. I wanted to throw myself on the floor with the other bodies, to lie facedown with my eyes closed until something happened to make the whole horrible scene go away.

Rex dripped tiny beads of blood across the black and white floor as he crossed the room to where the gun lay, halfway between Guy’s slouched body and Wheeler’s prone one. He bent down and picked it up, holding it gingerly this time and making sure it pointed toward the floor. He wiped it clean against the fabric of his trousers and then polished it with the hem of his shirt. His lower lip was clamped underneath his top one, and when he released it to speak he winced.

“I’ll handle it.” He managed to sound confident even through a thick lisp. For a moment an upward-lurching euphoria gripped me. He’s got a plan, I thought. Rex is going to clean our fingerprints from the gun and put it in Guy’s hand. We can blame Guy for killing Wheeler and say that he went on to shoot himself. Nobody will ever have to know the truth apart from the three of us. Rex will think of a version of events that we can all agree on and by the time they—I could not yet bring myself even to think the word
police
—arrive, the three of us will know it verbatim and we will be impenetrable. The notion was dismissed almost as soon as it was thought. They will know, I thought with a sinking heart. They have people who specialize in this sort of thing. They can tell the difference between murder and suicide from the angle of the bullet and the way the body falls. Rex has got a plan, but they will know. I reached out to touch his cheek but he held his hand out to stop me.

“I’ll handle this,” he said again. “Get your things and take Biba and go out through the back.”

“They won’t believe he did it.” I nodded toward Guy but didn’t look at him.

“I’m not going to say he did,” said Rex. He finished polishing the gun and closed his own palm around it. I understood at once what he was doing.

“Please don’t do this,” I begged.

“Just take Biba and go.”

My handbag had been hooked over the edge of the banister, underneath Guy’s jacket. In it was everything I needed.