Dead Man's Grip

80

Pat Lanigan, standing by his car and smoking his cigar, heard an automobile engine fire up, then saw the gates opening. Was the crazy English woman coming out already? She’d only been there five minutes. He glanced at his watch again, double-checking.

It was a positive, he thought, that at least she was coming out. Although if she had only lasted in there for five minutes, then for sure it had not gone well. Maybe she’d had some sense knocked into her reckless little head.

Then, to his surprise, instead of seeing the limousine, he saw a Porsche Cayenne, with the silhouette of a woman at the wheel, come at a reckless speed through the gates, then accelerate past him like a bat out of hell.

He turned, clocked the licence plate and watched the tail lights disappear round a bend in the lane. This did not feel good. He glanced down at the display of his phone. There was no text, no missed call. He didn’t like this at all.

He flicked through his stored numbers and dialled the Suffolk County Police duty office, explained who he was and asked them to put an alert out for the Cayenne. He wanted to know where it was headed.

Fernanda Revere braked to a halt at the T-junction by the gas station, pulled a cigarette pack out of her purse, shook out a Marlboro Light and jammed it between her lips. Then she stabbed the cigar lighter, made a left and accelerated down the highway. Everything was a blur in her drunken fury. She overtook a slow-moving cab, her speed increasing: 70… 80… 90. She flashed past a whole line of tail lights, lit her cigarette and tried to replace the lighter, but it fell into the footwell.

She was shaking with rage. The road snaked away into the distance. Steering with one hand, smoke from the cigarette curling into her eyes, she rummaged in her purse and pulled out her diamanté-encrusted Vertu phone, then squinted through the smoke at the display. It was a blur. She brought it closer to her face, scrolled to her brother’s number and hit the dial button.

She overtook a tractor-trailer, still steering with one hand. Had to get away. Just had to get away from the bitch polluting her home. After six rings, it went to voicemail.

‘Where the fuck are you, Ricky?’ she shouted. ‘What the fuck’s going on? The English bitch came to the house. She’s there now. Do you hear me? The bitch who killed Tony is in my house. Why isn’t she dead? I paid you this money, so why isn’t she dead? What’s going on here? You gotta deal with this, Ricky. Call me. Goddamn call me!’

She ended the call and tossed the phone down beside her on the passenger seat. She did not know where she was heading. Just away from the house and into the rushing darkness. The further the better. Lou could get rid of the bitch. She’d go back when Lou phoned her, when he told her the bitch was gone, out of their home, out of their lives.

She overtook another car. The night was hurtling past. Oncoming lights were a brief, blurred flash, then gone.

Tony was gone. Dead. He’d nearly died as a baby. That first year of his life he’d been in hospital on a ventilator for most of the time. Much of it inside a perspex isolation dome. She’d sat there day and night, while Lou had been working or kissing her father’s ass or out on the golf course. Tony’d come through that, but he was always a sickly child, too, a chronic asthmatic. At the age of eight he’d spent the best part of a year bedridden with a lung virus. She’d spoonfed him. Mopped his brow. Got him through it. Nurtured him until slowly he’d grown stronger. By the time he reached his teens he was just like any other kid. Then, last year, he’d fallen for that stupid English girl.

She’d begged Lou to stop him going, but had he? Never. All he’d done was give her a whole bunch of crap about letting kids live their own lives. Maybe some kids would be fine in a foreign land. But Tony had been dependent on her. He needed her. And this proved it.

Three scumbags had taken his life away. Some asshole in a van. Some asshole in a truck. And this drunken bitch who had the nerve to come to their home with her whiny little voice. I’d just appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and Mrs Revere and explain what happened.

Yeah, well, I’ll tell you what happened, Mrs Whining Bitch. You got drunk and you killed my son, that’s what happened. Any part of that you don’t understand?

The speedometer needle was hovering on 110mph. Or maybe it was 120, she could barely see it. A light began flashing on the passenger seat. Her phone was ringing, she realized. She grabbed it and held it up in front of her. The name was blurry but she could just about read it. Her brother.

She answered it, hurtling past another car, still steering with one hand into a tight left curve. The cigarette between her lips was burned right down to the butt and tears were streaming from her eyes and on to her cheeks.

‘Ricky, I thought you were dealing with this?’ she said. ‘How do you let this stupid bitch come to the house? How?’

‘Listen, it’s all cool!’

‘Cool? She came to my house – that’s cool? You wanna tell me what’s cool about that?’

‘We have a plan!’

She steered the car through the curve, then there was another curve to the right, even sharper. She was going into it too fast, she realized. She stamped on the brake pedal and suddenly the car began snaking left, then right, then even more violently left again.

‘Shit.’

She dropped the phone. The cigarette butt fell between her legs. There were bright lights coming in the opposite direction, getting brighter and more dazzling by the second. She heard the blare of a horn. She jerked the wheel. The Cayenne began a lumbering pirouette. The steering wheel suddenly turned with such force it tore free of her hands, spinning like it had taken on a mind of its own.

The lights got brighter. The horn was blaring, deafening her. The lights were straight at her eye level. Blinding her. She was spinning too now, like the wheel. Backwards for a second. Then sideways again. Sucking those blinding lights towards her as if she were a magnet.

Closer.

The horn even louder, shaking her eardrums.

Lights burning into her retinas.

Then a jarring impact. A clanging metallic boom like two giant oil drums swinging into each other.

In the silence that followed, Ricky’s voice came through her phone. ‘Hey, babe? Fernanda? Sis? Babe? Listen, you OK? Babe? Babe? Listen, we’re cool. Listen, babe!’

But she could no longer hear him.