The Predators

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

‘Hello.’

‘Where’s the lady?’ Mary had been waiting eagerly, on her feet just inside the door when she heard the key grate. Now there was a plunge of disappointment.

‘She couldn’t come,’ said Charles Mehre.

‘She promised!’ She’d become her friend. Been kind to her. It wasn’t fair.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is she coming later?’

‘No. Just me.’

‘She promised!’ Mary repeated.

Charles Mehre shrugged.

‘I want to come outside,’ insisted Mary.

The man hesitated, blocking the entrance to the cell. ‘All right.’

He hardly moved. To pass she would have to brush against him. Mary stayed where she was. ‘I can’t get by.’

He giggled, still not moving. ‘You can if you squeeze.’

‘I don’t want to squeeze.’ He was very much like Victor, the garden boy back home. She became aware of something, surprised, but decided against referring to it yet. She was very uncertain about what was happening.

He finally shifted, although still not very much. But she was able to pass without touching him. He smelled stale. Mary went to the bench seat in front of the table at which she’d eaten on previous evenings with the woman.

‘We’re going to play games,’ he announced.

‘I don’t want to play games.’ The woman hadn’t told her about this: about anyone coming but her. It was the two of them, she’d said: special friends. Better friends than she was with dad and mom. She’d started to believe her.

‘You must!’

His voice was suddenly loud, harsh, and Mary didn’t like it. Why hadn’t the woman come, like she’d promised? ‘Where’s my food?’

‘No food.’

‘Why not? I always have food now.’

‘Not tonight.’

‘Why not?’ Mary said again. That wasn’t fair either. She did always have food now. Why was this man being mean?

‘Because.’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘No food.’

‘You’re bad!’ said Mary, talking to him as she talked to Victor at home.

‘Not bad!’ The voice was loud again but this time in protest.

‘She’ll be mad at you.’

‘No!’ The tone changed again, sulkily.

‘You don’t like her being angry at you, do you?’

‘Won’t be. Gaston said.’

Gaston, thought Mary. ‘She will be, if you don’t give me something to eat.’

‘Dance for me.’

‘No.’ She didn’t like this.

‘I want you to dance for me.’ The harshness was back.

‘I’m too hungry.’

‘Will you dance for me if I get you something to eat?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Properly, like I want you to dance?’

‘I want to eat something.’

He remained uncertainly between her cell and where she sat, shifting from foot to foot. ‘All right.’ He started across the room, towards the stairwell door, but stopped halfway, frowning back suspiciously as if there was something he didn’t understand. His lips moved but Mary didn’t hear what he said. She made herself sit back against the cushions, as if she were settled. He continued on and Mary tensed with his every step, moving the moment the door closed behind him.

The carpet deadened the faintest noise of her running across the room. She listened, against the door. All she could hear was her own heartbeat, bump-bumping in her ears. She pushed the door towards its frame before pressing the handle down, actually holding her breath. The door moved, swinging soundlessly inwards. She stood at the opening, staring upwards, able to see an oval of light at the top. A black and white checkered floor, she remembered. A heavy door, heavier than the one she’d just opened so easily, leading outside. She wouldn’t be able to run, if it was blowing as hard as it had been when they’d brought her here. Didn’t matter. She could hide, once she got outside. That’s all she had to do, get outside. She went up the first two steps, then stopped. She was frightened. She knew downstairs: her room with the sliding peephole in the door and the bathroom and the strange room with a big screen and the round dance floor in the middle. Felt safe there: safe with the woman although not with this man. The man who wanted her to dance. That was silly, a man wanting her to dance. It wasn’t like dad wanting her to dance. That would have been different. All right. She’d never danced for dad, though. It looked a long way up, to the oval of light. She had to get there. Get away. Get outside. She went up two more steps. Stopped again. She wished the woman was there. Someone she felt all right with. Mom or dad. Why hadn’t they paid? The woman said they didn’t care. Didn’t want her. She hadn’t believed it at first but they hadn’t done anything to get her back. And she seemed to be the reason they had a lot of their fights. But she’d seen dad cry, on television. Heard him say he loved her and did want her. It was the woman who was kind to her now: showered and dried her. Last night they’d gone through her backpack and looked at her schoolwork and the woman had even given her a lesson, but as a game, not the proper geography for which she’d got the B. The questions had been easy but she’d really tried and the woman had been pleased with her: called her a clever girl. She’d been proud to be called clever. Now she was confused: confused and frightened, although she didn’t know what she was frightened about. Just not knowing. Being alone. She didn’t want to go outside: didn’t know what was out there. Perhaps they were all up there, all the men in stupid masks who’d looked at her through the hatch. She wished there were more of them, not just this man who smelled bad and laughed in a silly way, as if he knew a joke that nobody else did.

There was the noise of a door, opening, closing. Footsteps across the hall. Mary scurried back, closing the downstairs door behind her and running to where she had been sitting. She was there, against the cushions, when he entered, a tray balanced across one arm.

There was bread and cheese from the previous day. The milk only half filled the glass and had lumps in it and was sour when she tasted it. The bread was stale but she made herself eat it, as slowly as she could. She pared off the cheese in small slivers.

‘You’ve got to shower. Take your clothes off.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘You must.’

‘Why?’

He frowned. ‘She says.’

‘She changed her mind. She told me yesterday she doesn’t want me to do that, not any more.’

‘Not true.’

‘Why aren’t you wearing your mask?’ she asked finally.

When he smiled Mary saw his teeth were very uneven, as if there were too many crowded into his mouth: she hadn’t worn her brace for days now.

He said: ‘Don’t have to, not any more.’

‘Why not?’

‘Doesn’t matter any more.’

‘Why not?’ she repeated.

‘Secret,’ he snickered. He reached out, to touch her hair, but Mary pulled back. He sniggered again.

She’d eaten too much cheese, practically all of it, to prolong the meal and now she felt sick. She wished she’d gone up the stairs. She didn’t feel safe down here any more.

‘You’re pretty.’

Mary couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘I like you. Like your hair.’

‘I don’t like you touching it,’ said Mary, pulling away again.

‘Nice hair.’

‘Leave me alone!’

‘Haven’t got to.’

Mary didn’t think the sickness she felt had anything to do with what she’d eaten: it wasn’t like a tummy upset pain. ‘Did she say that?’

‘Yes.’

‘She told me you did. Told me herself that you didn’t have to touch me.’

‘She didn’t.’ He’d been sitting next to her on the bench, close enough to reach out towards her. Now he got up and crossed to the tape deck and CD equipment against the wall beside the large screen. He stood there, staring at it in total bewilderment, awkwardly touching switches and knobs. ‘No music,’ he complained.

‘We don’t want any music,’ Mary said nervously.

‘To dance,’ said the man. ‘We need music to dance.’

‘I don’t want to dance.’

‘Yes!’ The harsh loudness was back. He wasn’t sniggering or laughing any more. ‘Have a shower and then dance: play like you did with her, for the towel. Play with me.’

‘I didn’t like that,’ said the child. ‘I don’t want to do it again.’

‘I’ll slap you. I want to slap you.’

Victor! She had to treat him like Victor. ‘That would be bad.’

He shook his head. ‘No one knows.’

‘It’s not right, to hit people.’

‘Nice. Good.’

‘No! No, it’s not good. It’s wrong.’

‘He said I could.’

‘Who?’ She didn’t know what to do! Dad! Please, dad! There was no one to tell her what to do. I won’t be naughty again, God. I promise. Help me and I’ll be very good. Please, God.

‘Gaston.’

‘Gaston doesn’t want you to hurt me.’

‘He does. Said I could.’

Mary started to tremble. There was a lock on the inside of the bathroom door. Could she pretend to do what he wanted: get inside before he could follow her and lock him out! She might be able to, if she was quick: quicker than she’d been when she tried to run away from the woman the other time. She could pretend to dance a little first, make him sit down to watch to give herself the chance. What if he got to her before she locked it, like the woman had done? She’d be even more trapped then. Have to do what he wanted. Or he’d hit her. He’d said he would hit her: wanted to. ‘I want to go back into my room now.’

He shook his head. ‘Not any more.’

‘You mustn’t hurt me. Do anything bad to me.’

‘I can.’

‘If you do you’ll go where bad people go.’

He frowned at her, head to one side. ‘What?’

It had been the ultimate threat against Victor, when she’d wanted to make him cry. How much longer could she go on talking, keeping him away? She still felt sick and now her throat was beginning to get sore. I won’t make Victor cry ever again, God. I promise. ‘You know where bad people go?’

‘Jail.’

‘That’s it, you’ll go to jail.’ Mary seized on the word. ‘Go to jail for a very long time. For ever.’

‘No one knows.’

‘They’ll find out.’

‘Can’t.’

‘My father can. He’s a very important man. Lots of special people work for him.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘If you go away – leave me alone – I’ll tell my father you were kind to me,’ promised Mary. ‘Then they won’t send you where the bad people go.’ She wanted to make pee pee: already felt wet. Do the other thing: very much wanted to do the other thing. Her stomach was rumbling, making rude noises. She tried to keep her bottom tight together.

‘ME NOW!’

The words roared from him, furiously. He’d shown no sign of losing his temper and Mary screamed out in shocked surprise at the unexpected noise. He was coming towards her, arms outstretched, hands cupped, and she cringed back against the seat, trying to slide sideways round the tiny table so that she could run. Run where? She didn’t know. Just run. Around the room. Anywhere. Run to the bathroom. He snatched out, grabbing her arm as she darted to her right, pulling her towards him and Mary brought her other hand up, trying to push him off. His smell was much worse, not just his body but the breath from his ugly mouth. He was grunting, squeezing her.

‘STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!’

Mary was scarcely aware of the words at first, not until the woman reached them, beating at the man with open-handed slaps. The woman got between them, slapping the man again and again. He roared, not a word, just a sound, and slapped the woman back and she screeched, clawing at him so that Mary saw blood burst out on his face. Mary fell back against the table, hearing it split as it tilted, spilling her back on to the bench.

The man wasn’t fighting back any more. He was standing with his arms cupped about his head, trying to protect himself but mostly just standing there, letting himself be beaten. And the woman was beating him, aiming her blows, kicking him, and shouting in French. The man began to retreat towards the door under the onslaught and she kept up the attack, driving him from the room and disappearing through the door, still clamouring at him in French.

It was only then that Mary saw there was someone else, a man she hadn’t seen before, standing just inside the entrance. He was very tall and oddly thin, his stomach curved in instead of out, the strangeness made more obvious by the way his shoulders humped, bringing him forward. His mask was frightening, black leather cut with spaces for just his eyes and his mouth but very tight, like a skin over his head and face. He carried the sort of bag that doctors used.

In bad English he said: ‘Poor little one. Poor, poor little one.’

‘Don’t hurt me,’ pleaded Mary, her voice catching in a sob. ‘Please don’t hurt me.’

‘I won’t,’ said Pieter Lascelles. ‘I promise I won’t hurt you.’

Mary was sick and she’d wet herself and there were tiny blood spots inside her knickers that frightened her but the woman said she wasn’t ill but that it was growing up, becoming a woman, and she wasn’t to worry. Until they dried, after she’d washed them, she didn’t have to worry about u.p.’s.

The woman had showered her and afterwards cuddled her on the cushioned bench. Mary lay with her legs curled up, wanting to be held, wishing the man with the skin mask wasn’t in the room with them, spoiling it. Mary didn’t want anybody else with them: she liked it with just her and the woman.

It took some time for the catch to go out of Mary’s voice as she told the woman what had happened and all the time the woman held her and smoothed her hair and several times Mary felt the woman press her lips to her head, kissing her. Over and over she kept repeating ‘poor baby’ and ‘my poor darling’ and ‘poor love.’

‘He wanted to hurt me,’ sobbed Mary. ‘Said Gaston said it would be all right. Wanted me to dance. Shower and dance.’

‘It’s all right. All over now. He won’t come here ever again.’

‘I want you.’

‘I know you do, my darling. I’ll take care of you now: I’ll always take care of you.’

‘Please don’t leave me alone.’

‘I’ve got to: there are things I have to do. But you’ll be safe.’ She pulled away from the child. ‘I want your backpack: the one we looked through last night.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to use it for something.’

‘All right.’ Mary felt important being able to lend the woman something she wanted.

On their way into Antwerp Lascelles said: ‘She’s very pretty.’

‘And she’s mine!’ declared Felicite.

The gaunt man looked across the car towards her. ‘Would he have killed her?’ There was no emotion in his voice.

‘I think so.’

‘He’s a liability: all your people are. Can you stop him coming back again?’

‘Yes,’ said Felicite shortly.

‘I think we should get it over with soon.’

‘When I’m ready, not before.’

‘She’s not just pretty,’ mused the doctor. ‘Remarkably brave considering what she went through back there.’

Felicite was at the Mehre gallery, confronting the brothers. Charles sat even more huddled than before in the upright chair, crying. Gaston stood defensively by the window, as if he saw it as a way of escape. There was no pretence of drink-offering hospitality.

‘I didn’t know he’d gone. I sent him to collect a bureau in Ghent.’

‘Liar!’ accused Felicite. ‘You sent him to kill her!’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

Gaston stopped protesting.

‘Who of the others knows?’ Felicite demanded.

‘All of them.’

‘Bastards!’

‘What are you going to do?’

Felicite didn’t know. That realization made her even angrier. They weren’t obeying her any more. ‘Wait,’ she said inadequately. ‘You can wait – all of you – to find out.’

‘Gaston said I could,’ mumbled Charles from his isolated seat.

Claudine lay with her head into Blake’s naked shoulder, liking the way his arm felt holding him to her: liking the whole feel of his body along the length of hers. It had been wonderful. She couldn’t remember how long it had been – couldn’t remember sex – but she didn’t think it had ever been like this. He’d been incredible. Always thinking of her before himself, her pleasure before his, but at the same time there’d been a frenzy, an urgency more than passion the first time and then he’d taken her again, twice, and each time she’d come. She’d forgotten that, too. Now she felt wonderful. Relaxed, from the sex and the Librium, but with no tiredness. Instead her mind was pin-sharp and her skin burned, tingling against his.

‘You OK?’

‘Wonderful.’ There had to be another word! ‘You?’

‘You wouldn’t know.’

It seemed an odd thing to say. It didn’t matter. ‘Now we’ve joined the Europol club. I guess it’s like the mile high club.’

‘No!’ he said.

Despite the darkness she was conscious of his seriousness. ‘I don’t think we need to analyse it,’ she said. Which for her would be a change.

‘Perhaps we do.’

‘It happened, Peter. Because of a lot of outside things, but it happened and it was…’ she stopped, refusing to use the word yet again ‘… and it was sensational but I don’t expect you to propose marriage. If you did I’d refuse.’

‘I used you,’ he said.

‘I don’t remember complaining. Or fighting,’ she said, trying to lighten his mood. He was spoiling things.

‘I want to tell you something… need to tell you something… but I’m frightened.’

‘What of?’

‘What you’d think of me.’

‘Does it matter what I think of you?’

‘I think so.’

‘Your choice,’ she said.

Blake didn’t speak for a long time. When he did it was with difficulty, the words uneven, disjointed. ‘There were two of us. I didn’t know that. I wasn’t told. Neither was she. That’s the system, you see. If one gets blown there’s still another one in place, but you can’t bring him down because you don’t know…’ He lapsed into another long silence.

Lying as she was Claudine was conscious of his breathing becoming shorter. ‘What was her name?’ she prompted, knowing his need.

‘Anne. Her family were from Kildare…’ He grunted, bitterly. ‘I suppose that’s how it started with her and me. Like you, tonight. Frightened, not wanting to be alone after seeing someone killed. We had to take part in operations, of course. Prove ourselves. Our initiation was a bombing in Enniskillen. A British soldier died. We both saw it happen: saw him blown to pieces…’

‘But it became more than fear and sex?’ Claudine prompted again, when he didn’t continue after several minutes. It all had to come out, brutally if necessary. Blown to pieces echoed in her head: briefly she had a mental image of a crimson explosion and a body without a head.

‘We still didn’t know about each other: not properly, I mean. We used to have long conversations about how we’d get married when it was all over – when the cause had been won and there was just one Ireland, I mean – and all the time I knew it would never be possible because of who I really was and she would have been thinking the same because of who she really was, neither of us knowing that we could have got together when we were withdrawn…’

‘What went wrong?’ said Claudine.

‘There was to be another operation on the mainland. The strategy of bombing the City of London, hitting the country’s financial centre, was judged a success so it was decided to keep it up: force a lot of foreign banks to relocate in Frankfurt. My contact was a barman at the Europa Hotel, in Belfast. We used to drink there, Anne and I. She knew him by sight. The Semtex movement into Britain was decided at the last minute: more than a ton. The devastation would have been greater than either Canary Wharf or the Baltic Exchange. I hadn’t used the emergency system before – actually met him away from the hotel – but I had to, for the van carrying the explosive to be identified and followed from its arrival at Holyhead. I made the call from her flat: I went there ahead of her from the planning meeting and decided I couldn’t wait or risk a public kiosk, that Anne’s phone was safer. She must have come in sooner than I thought and heard me, although I didn’t think she had. I didn’t think she was in the house. She must have followed me – can you imagine it, doing her proper job! – and I saw her, just after I passed the details…’

His breathing became even more difficult and Claudine guessed he was crying and was glad for his sake they were in darkness. ‘Don’t stop, not now.’

‘He must have had an English watcher, too: someone compartmented like we all were who saw her and thought he was blown. I never knew. But he was withdrawn: took the information with him. We made a big thing about it in England. Followed the van to London, swept up the entire cell that was going to plant the bombs. The head of the anti-terrorist unit gave a press conference. And the stupid bastard talked about inside information: actually used the word infiltration. There were only ten people who could have known, Anne and I two of them. They had a source inside the Belfast telephone exchange I didn’t know about. They traced the call from Anne’s flat to the Europa bar: the bar from which my man had been withdrawn…’

Claudine waited.

‘I don’t want to go on.’

‘Yes,’ she insisted.

‘They got her.’

‘That’s not it, is it?’

‘That’s enough.’

‘Not for you it isn’t.’

Blake’s voice was flat, as if he was reading words that had been written down. ‘There was what they called a trial: Anne in front of every one of us who’d known about the Semtex shipment. She denied it, of course. Said she didn’t know about a hotel barman, which was true. Never once looked at me… They took her away, after finding her guilty. They decided to torture her, to find out if there were any others… we were all to gang rape her, then she was to be tortured.’

‘You didn’t let them get to her, did you?’

‘She was already naked when I went into the room, spread-eagled on the bed. I went mad. Intentionally. Screamed and shouted that she was a whore and a slut: made myself uncontrollable, which wasn’t difficult, although not for the reasons they all thought. She never said a word to betray me. Only looked directly at me at the very last minute. I shot her dead, before they realized what I was doing.’ Blake moved slightly away from Claudine, who for the first time became aware how wet her cheek was, from his tears. ‘I killed her twice. Once by being careless and then by pulling the trigger. She let it happen, to save me… And they all said what a good and loyal soldier I was: forgave me for spoiling their fun before they could find out if there was any other infiltrator.’

For once in her over-confident life Claudine didn’t know what to say. ‘The proper English trial at which you appeared?’ she groped. ‘They were the men?’

‘Six of them. They all got life. But they’ll be released, of course.’

‘If you and Anne made up two who knew and there were six properly tried, that leaves two missing.’

‘We were to put a bomb in Belfast city centre: our reprisal for the interception of the Semtex and the arrest of the cell in London. We were going to use the sewers: crawl in and crawl out. Devastate the place and kill God knows how many above. It was to be an hour fuse. I shortened it to two minutes. They went into the sewer ahead of me and I shouted down that there was a patrol and I had to close the manhole. It made a crater twenty metres deep and forty metres across.’

‘You were believed, by other people?’ queried Claudine.

‘I didn’t run: knew I couldn’t if it was to be accepted as the sort of mistake they often made. The explosion broke my left leg and right ankle…’

‘Were you trying to die?’

‘The other six hadn’t been sentenced then.’

‘What if they had been?’

He didn’t reply.

‘Peter?’

‘I’d have gone into the tunnel with them.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t. And I’m glad you told me. It’s better…’

‘I haven’t finished. Since then I haven’t been able to do this. Not until tonight.’

Oh God! thought Claudine. They weren’t talking love – love didn’t come into it – but there could be a dependency here.

‘That’s what I meant by using you. Are you angry?’

‘No,’ she said cautiously. ‘But let’s not think about what happened as anything more than it was.’

‘I won’t,’ he said.

He would, she knew.

The first of the early morning cleaners found Mary Beth’s rucksack just inside the school entrance and imagined it had been left there by a pupil the previous day, although it was rare for things to be left lying about. Madame Flahaur recognized it immediately for what it was and fortunately told her secretary to call the police before opening it. The school principal collapsed immediately with severe heart palpitations at the sight of its sole content, a child’s severed toe.