Jessie Keane: Ruthless

Rufus nodded slowly. ‘Knowing Orla? Unlikely. So I’m thinking you did something to stop her.’

Not me, thought Annie. Layla stopped her.

And now Orla was out in the English Channel somewhere, being nibbled by crabs and fish, tossed and swept by deep underwater currents. She was gone for good this time.

‘I never saw her,’ said Annie.

‘You’re a liar,’ said Rufus. He tipped his head at the mug in front of her. ‘Drink up.’

‘I don’t…’

His eyes were hard. ‘I know you don’t. There’s nothing about you I don’t know. Drink it.’

Annie picked up the glass, sipped the liquid.Then without warning, Rufus leaned across the table, grabbed her neck, tipped her head back, and forced the mug painfully against her lips. The whisky gushed into her mouth, burning, choking her. She swallowed convulsively. Felt it forge a molten path all the way down to her stomach.

‘ Shit, ’ she spluttered, turning red in the face.

‘I said, drink it. Don’t play with it.’ He was pouring out another mugful. ‘Now this one,’ he said, lifting it to her mouth.

‘No…’ Annie couldn’t get her breath.

But Rufus forced her head back, and she choked as the whisky filled her mouth again. She swallowed. Gagged. She was going to be sick, but that was good, wasn’t it? Get it out of her system, because this was going to make her drunk very fast, and ill even faster.

She had no tolerance for alcohol. Never had. First there had been the revulsion over her mother Connie’s drinking, then the realization that she personally could not drink at all. A doctor had told her she was extremely sensitive to it. Some people were. She hated the taste, and a single glass of fairly low-proof wine was enough to make her feel drunk.

This was forty per cent proof whisky.

This was going to knock her out.

This was poison to her.

‘And again,’ said Rufus, pouring her another. He winked at her while she sat there choking and retching weakly. ‘It’s for the best. Orla can’t finish this, so I’ll have to. And this will deaden the pain.’

Pain? The pain of what?

‘There it is,’ said Steve. ‘Look, there’s a light. Someone’s inside.’

They’d stopped the car, steered it off the road and into a little stretch of woodland where it couldn’t be seen from the lane. Everyone piled out. The night air smelled brackish and damp. Layla shivered.

‘Too risky taking the car any further,’ said Max. ‘Better on foot from here on in.’

Alberto and Sandor were unloading things from the back of the car. To Layla, it looked like military gear. She nearly lost it when they started handing around sets of gloves and black goggles.

‘What are those?’ she asked.

‘Night sights.’ Max, Steve, Alberto and Sandor were putting them on.

‘Don’t I get a pair?’

‘No, honey, you don’t. You stick close to Steve. Wherever he goes, you go. Steve – you watch her. Layla – you stay with Steve. And when he tells you to do something, do it. OK?’

Suddenly their goggles were glowing red. It was surreal. Then Alberto started handing round guns.

‘Jesus,’ she said.

‘Watch it. I can hear an engine,’ said Alberto. They could see headlights coming along the lane. As one they moved back, away into the woods. Max pushed Layla down on to her knees beside him.

The car shot past their hiding-place and carried on along the lane.

‘Come on,’ said Max. ‘Let’s get up there.’

Annie didn’t know how many whiskies she’d drunk. She’d lost count after seven. She only knew that she was drunk. She felt an almost detached interest in this unfamiliar phenomenon. Her head seemed to float above her body like a helium-filled balloon. Her limbs had become loose, disjointed. There seemed to be no coordination between her brain and her arms and legs any more.

And now he was forcing yet more whisky into her.

‘That’s the way, Mrs Carter, get it down the little red road,’ he said.

It burned her, choked her, her stomach churned and rebelled. But he held her head back. Rivers of it ran out the sides of her mouth, spilled over her clothes, on to the cold flagged floor beneath her feet. But most of it, she swallowed. She had to. She thought that if she didn’t, he would find some other way of getting it down her. Maybe a rubber tube straight into her stomach. She didn’t want that. This was bad, but that would be a damned sight worse.

God, I’m going to be so sick in the morning, she thought. If I live that long. Which I won’t.

That thought brought both pain and rage with it. Never to see Layla again. Or Max. If she wasn’t sitting in a chair, she would be falling over. She felt so hot, so dizzy, disconnected from reality. Maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad. In fact Orla could tell her about it. Maybe Orla was going to come staggering through that door, fresh from the sea, dripping and dead, crustacea hanging off her tattered flesh, starfish in what remained of her hair…

Oh, she was drunk.

She looked around her and Rufus wasn’t there any more, he’d gone outside again.

And Rufus was right: drunk was good.

Whatever happened now, she wouldn’t feel it very much at all.

That was when the door opened.

It wasn’t Rufus who’d come in. Was this what happened when you were drunk – and Annie was very drunk indeed – did you start to hallucinate? She’d heard of the DT’s, had seen her mum in the grip of it once or twice.

So yes, she was imagining things. Because there was no way that Redmond Delaney could be standing there. He’d died in a plane crash. He couldn’t be alive.

Could he?

This was weird stuff. Seriously weird. Annie squinted at this thing that must have been conjured up by all the whisky she’d had shoved down her throat. There was no way this could really be Redmond. But… he looked older. He was still pale, still handsome, those jade-green eyes set in that long, sober, ascetic face, but there were a few wrinkles now, and his hair was a little less brilliant in its redness even if it was still neat, close-cropped to his skull.

Of all the Delaney clan, Redmond had always been the neat one, with an ingrained elegance. Pat had been a great untidy, shambling brute, Tory had been much feared before someone decided to shoot him dead, Kieron had been the pretty one, the baby of the family. Annie didn’t think that any one of the others could hold a candle to Redmond for sheer good looks – or the devastation he could wreak when he set his warped mind to it.

This isn’t Redmond, she told herself. This is the drink. That’s all.

‘Mrs Carter,’ he said, seeing her sitting there at the table.

Annie recoiled. Was she imagining this? Somehow her brain had furnished her with an older image of the Redmond she remembered. And now the thing was talking to her in Redmond’s voice.

Oh shit, what is this?

Annie’s eyes slid down. Oh, now this was the weirdest thing of all. This imaginary drink-induced Redmond was wearing a white collar, a bright gold pectoral crucifix, and a long dark robe. A soutane, wasn’t that what they called it? She wasn’t sure. She felt terror shake her then, felt like a rat when a terrier has it caught helpless in its jaws. Drink-sodden or not, this was real enough to feel like the worst threat she had ever faced.

‘God bless all in this house,’ said Redmond, his green, green eyes smiling with all their old cruelty and cold calculation straight into hers. He made the sign of the cross in the air.