Blood and Ashes

Chapter 50

Millie let me in and we walked to the kitchen. There I found an old friend waiting for me. Not Don, but Fluffy the tomcat. It stared at me from the top of a counter. The cat had been cleaned up, the matted fur brushed, and it looked like it had gained a few pounds in weight. At least its name suited it better now. I scratched it between its ears and the cat purred. ‘Looks like you’re being well looked after, boy.’ Millie was watching me from across the kitchen, trying to decide why I had come. ‘My lifestyle makes keeping a pet a little awkward these days. Fluffy can stay here, can’t he?’

‘Beth and Ryan have fallen in love with him. It’s good that they have something to keep their minds off what happened.’

‘Where are they?’

‘In the sitting room, watching TV. You want to say hello?’

‘No, it’s best if they don’t know I’m here.’

She nodded. The children had lost their parents in terrible circumstances and they didn’t need reminding of that by my reappearance.

‘How are the little ones?’ I asked.

‘It isn’t easy on them. They’re both traumatised, as anyone would imagine, but my dad has brought in the best counsellors that money can buy. Time’s a healer, they say, but I’m not sure they’ll ever fully recover from this.’

Children should be insulated against the horrors that Beth and Ryan had had to endure, but that was not the way of the world. My hope was that they weren’t victims of such terror ever again: my real reason for being there.

‘What about Don?’

‘Dad’s upstairs in bed. You can go up, if you like. I’ll wake him.’

‘Later, Millie. It’s you I’ve come to see. Come take a walk with me.’

‘Where to?’

‘Somewhere else. I don’t want the kids hearing any of this.’

Millie followed me through the house. At the front door she paused and looked back along the hall to a closed room from where canned laughter filtered. No children’s voices joined in with the merriment.

‘C’mon,’ I said softly. ‘They’ll be OK alone for a few minutes.’

She trailed me down the path, across the road and on to the green. I led her to the wishing well where I rested a hip against the brickwork. Millie stood beside me, her arms folded under her breasts, her dark hair hanging past her eyes. I looked all around. A few townspeople were out and about, but none of them in earshot. I patted the wall next to me, invited her to sit.

Millie squeezed herself tightly, reluctant to leave the children unchaperoned for long. She held that pose for a beat, then it was as if she deflated and her hands swung listlessly by her sides. She sat on the well alongside me, head down. ‘You’ve come to tell me that this isn’t over with, haven’t you?’

‘Hicks and Gant are finished with,’ I reassured her. ‘The final few members of their organisation have been rounded up and are in jail. All the others are dead.’

‘Good!’ She snapped her head up and her eyes were no longer full of sadness. They were hard chips of ice, full of resolution. ‘They deserved to die.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Perhaps? There’s no perhaps about it? They burned my sister to death, Joe.’

I wasn’t so sure about that any more.

‘Why would they?’ I asked.

‘To torment my father… What else?’

‘Hicks wanted your dad dead. Why would he have Brook murdered then wait so long before attacking your family at Adrian’s house? It doesn’t fit…’

Millie stared at me, realisation hitting her like she’d run full-pelt into a brick wall. ‘It was Vince Everett? Is that what you’re telling me?’

A couple of things Vince had said to me had got me thinking: ‘ What I sometimes have to do isn’t FBI procedure either,’ and even more damning; ‘ I had to get into his mind, become Vince Everett in every way. I had to think like him, act like him, do what he would do. It wasn’t nice being in his head like that, but I had to show those assholes that I was a worthy ally.’

To gain acceptance into Hicks’ hate-filled organisation, it wasn’t a stretch to think that they had demanded an act of loyalty from him. Had Vince’s test extended to murdering Don Griffiths’ daughter?

‘I can’t be sure, but it’s beginning to look that way,’ I said.

‘But he’s supposed to be one of the good guys…’

‘Sometimes the boundaries aren’t so easily defined.’ Considering even myself a good man wasn’t easy when my track record of violence screamed back at me in argument. ‘Vince works for the government. He does what they tell him. Maybe they ordered him to do whatever was necessary to infiltrate Gant’s crew.’

‘You’re saying that the government advocated it, that they are responsible for Brook’s murder?’

‘Not the government, just certain self-serving factions within it.’

‘What can we do about that?’

‘Right now? Nothing.’

‘I won’t accept that. My sister was murdered…’

I held up a hand. ‘No. Actually, there is something. You can keep on living.’

Millie snorted and made to walk away. I grabbed her wrist and held on to her, pulled her close and gathered her in my arms. Whispering, I said, ‘As much as it hurts, you must keep quiet about this. Your dad could still be seen as a threat to them. If you speak to anyone about Vince or his bosses, then I’m afraid I won’t be able to save you.’

‘Brook was my sister,’ she said. She looked up, her eyes filled with tears. ‘She didn’t deserve to die like that. The people responsible should be made to pay!’

‘I agree.’ I released her and she took a step backwards. I could see the devastation in her face. Her features had folded in on themselves. She was reliving the horror, seeing her sister burning to death in the wreckage all over again.

‘You’re going after them?’

The garrotte mark on my neck was a distant memory now, but it still burned.

‘I think that Vince will show up somewhere down the line.’

‘But you don’t think it will be here?’ She cast a fearful glance across at her home, thinking about the children.

‘That won’t happen,’ I reassured her. ‘Not unless you talk.’

Her eyes became slits again. ‘What if I shout it to the rafters?’

I stood up. ‘Come on, Millie.’

‘We could draw him here, couldn’t we? You could be waiting. You could get the bastard.’

Part of me considered the proposition, but only for a nanosecond.

I shook my head. ‘Forget him, Millie. Forget your hatred of him. Just get on with your life again.’

She looked disbelieving. ‘You’re going to let that bastard get away with this?’

‘I’ve no option,’ I said. ‘There’s always the chance I could fail and I’m not prepared to let that happen. Beth and Ryan still need someone around to love them.’

Millie’s head finally went down, and the relaxing of her shoulders made her look small and frail. It seemed my words had pushed through her anger and offered her something else to concentrate upon. She reached out tenderly and touched my chest. Then her fingers dropped away and she walked slowly across the green towards her house.

I didn’t follow.

My time here was over.

At least, I hoped so.

Maybe it was just the sun through the clouds, casting shadows in the alleyway across the green. For the briefest of moments, I was sure I’d caught sight of a face peering from within the darkness. But when I focused on the place, the face was gone. And so were the killer eyes I could have sworn were staring back at me.