Cold Revenge (Willis/Carter #6)(99)

‘Yes, Archie, stay still, it’s okay.’ Willis switched her gaze to Cathy. ‘Let him go. You have a lot of mitigating circumstances, believe me, you will get a deal. You are a victim of Douglas’s, like so many others.’

Archie began to wriggle and Dwyer gripped him tighter.

‘I won’t get a deal. I know about deals. I made a deal with the Mafia that Douglas was coming out and we would be opening all these restaurants and now that’s all falling apart. It’s all screwed. They will kill me. If I’m going, I’m going out in style. People will remember who I am. I’ll be the woman who jumped off the new complex on the Isle of Dogs with a small boy, a policeman’s child. He will be famous and so will I.’

With no words, just by holding his gaze, Willis was telling Archie to focus on her, not to be frightened, not to panic. He was staring at her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tucker coming. He was stooped over, holding his neck, dripping blood. He was slowly making his way towards Dwyer and Archie.

‘We’ll give you protection if you testify about those times in the bungalow, tell us what really happened?’ Willis watched Tucker but his progress was so slow. He was unsteady on his feet and she could barely stand to look at him. It was taking a supreme effort for him to stay upright.

‘If I told you what I know about the things I saw, the things I did, that others did, you’d never let me out again. I’m finished, whichever way you look at it.’

Willis kept her main focus on Archie. His black hair was flying around his face but he didn’t cry, he didn’t waver. Dwyer stepped nearer to the edge of the scaffolding and below them they heard the shouts of the men bellowing up for them to get back. They heard the scream of police cars coming and a helicopter approaching.

Dwyer pulled Archie closer to her as the helicopter hovered overhead, glancing down over the scaffolding and then back at Willis. Momentarily distracted by the chaos of the scene she didn’t see Scott Tucker launch himself forward. It all happened so fast that she barely fought him as he wrenched Archie from her. Tucker released the boy and Archie ran towards Willis, who caught him in a tight embrace. She buried her head in his dark curly hair, feeling relief for a second before she looked up to see Tucker staring at her. A knife was sticking out of his chest. For a moment time froze until, to her horror, Tucker and Cathy Dwyer fell over the side of the building.





Chapter 50


Douglas stared at the spot on the wall that had been his portal to the outside world and he filled his lungs with breath as he practised his Tai Chi. He moved his hands in circles, like the wheels of a train, and tried to block out the banging doors in the corridor outside. He practised his controlled breathing – inhaling, holding the air in his lungs, expanding his ribcage. He felt the bones stretch, the lungs push against his ribs. He practised his meditation, snatching the flashes of anger as they popped into his brain and putting them inside red balloons and sending them skyward. He stood with his back to the door. He had had all the details worked out. The colour of the napkins, the quality of the cloth, the way they felt to the touch, the crisp, clean folds. The cutlery, the crockery, the layout of the tables. But now, the visions in his mind were becoming contaminated.

He focused on a spot on the wall straight ahead. It was a point of irritation for him; a spot of dirt that wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard he scrubbed it. The scrubbing only made it worse, it spread it, it removed some of the paint and left it looking much worse. He took a few steps towards it until it was level with his eyes and he stared straight into it as he’d never done before. The layers of old paint, the years of dirt from people who had passed through the cell, lived there for a while, left their lives in the walls, their crimes, their failures, dead and dying dreams in the wall.

He looked at the calendar, which he’d turned forwards to June. The picture of the sea, so still, the sand so white. In June he was getting out. But why did he feel the sand slipping between his toes, being sucked down the cracks in the cell floor? Why did the sunny picture make him sweat on such a cold day? It was the horrible realisation that he might never feel the cool water between his toes. It had taken him years to control his anger and to harness his thoughts. Douglas breathed, held the breath and as he let it go he released another balloon that burst, showering his world with blood. The old anger inside him made him want to open his mouth so wide that his jaw cracked either side of his head. He wanted to scream, roar, bellow in fury, so loud that it burst the eardrums of all who heard it and in their silent agony he could walk through the corridors, the walls, pass through the prison doors and slaughter everyone who dared to look at him.

Douglas clapped his hand silently in front of his face as he stood in front of the hole in the wall. He turned to wave at the calendar with the girl who looked like Heather in the photo.

‘Officer Kowalski?’ Douglas called out and the officer came to talk to him through the grille.

‘Sorry about all your troubles, Douglas. I hear you’ll be back on trial, you’ll have to leave here, go back to high security.’

‘Please step in here a moment, I have something of great importance to tell you.’

As Kowalski turned to close the door behind him, checking quickly that none of his colleagues was watching, Douglas picked up a boning knife he’d stolen from the kitchen. He looked across at the calendar and the month of June and he could no longer see it for the blood.