Jessie Keane: Ruthless

This Redmond Delaney was a priest.

‘You’re not real,’ said Annie, shaking her head. ‘You’re dead.’

Redmond was moving forward, coming over to the table. He tilted his head to one side, stared down at her. ‘Am I, though?’ he asked her tauntingly.

‘You’re dead,’ she repeated. ‘I’m drunk, and you’re dead.’

‘Some people are hard to kill,’ said Redmond.

Hadn’t Max said something very like that? And maybe he’d been right. Perhaps Redmond was here, alive.

Or maybe not.

‘You died years ago,’ said Annie. She wanted to believe it. Wanted to know that this was just the drink, summoning up old demons.

‘Oh, the plane crash?’ Redmond’s eyes were mocking. ‘You think I’m that easy to rub out, Mrs Carter? I survived it.’

Just like Orla, Annie thought. She didn’t say it aloud, didn’t dare: she didn’t want to fasten his attention on Orla, on what had happened to her, because then…

Then I’ll be finished.

But it was all right. Because he wasn’t real, she was imagining this, it was OK. Her brain told her it was real, that he looked like a living, breathing man, but her brain was awash with alcohol. The danger here was Rufus, not Redmond.

But he looked so real …

‘And you know what happened, after I survived that crash, Mrs Carter?’ he asked.

His voice was just the same, with that cool southern Irish lilt. Annie shook her head.

‘I decided that Orla and I… ah, it was a painful decision, you know, but I decided that I wasn’t going down the criminal path after that. I knew Orla would, but I didn’t want that. I felt – and this may sound strange to you Mrs Carter,’ he said with a wry half-smile, ‘but I felt I’d been spared for a reason. Orla would never understand that, so I had to keep apart from her. I didn’t want to go down evil ways any more. I wanted to make changes.’

It was a big bloody change all right. Annie looked at this apparition and now she knew it was all in her head. Redmond was evil to his bones; he didn’t have it in him to change.

She stared up at him, the dim light from the lamp hollowing out his cheeks and his eye sockets, giving his pale skin an eerie, skeletal patina. He looked like something otherworldly, something spectral and terrifying. She shivered hard.

Like someone walked over my grave , she thought.

‘And that’s what I did,’ he went on, his eyes burning cold fire into hers. ‘I repented, Mrs Carter. Like you should repent.’

‘Me?’ Annie blurted out.

‘You have blood on your hands,’ he said.

Annie looked down at her hands, clasped there on the table. In the lamp’s glow, for a moment they were red. She drew in a gasp of horror, sickness rising into her throat – she could almost smell the blood.

She blinked.

And then they were just her hands again, no blood, nothing. She closed her eyes and groaned. When she opened them, he would be gone. She knew it.

Please God let him be gone.

Almost frightened to, she opened her eyes. And he was still there, watching her.

‘Confess,’ he said silkily, moving closer. ‘Confess your sins to me, Mrs Carter.’

‘I don’t have any,’ she gulped, her head spinning. He isn’t real, she told herself. Like the blood wasn’t real.

‘We all have sins,’ said Redmond, and he reached across the table and laid a hand on her head.

Annie flinched. His hand was warm. It was…

Real.

No. Not real. Couldn’t be. False, like the blood.

He let his hand rest there. ‘I absolve you, Mrs Carter,’ he said softly, and his hand pressed down, harder. She felt as if she was being hammered down into the chair, such was the pressure of his hand lying there on her head. Annie screwed her eyes tight shut and prayed for this to be over. Not real, he’s not real, he’s NOT REAL…

After what felt like an eternity, his hand lifted. Annie sat there, hunched, shuddering, clutching her arms around herself. Slowly, she dared to open her eyes.

There was no one there.

She let out a hard breath of relief and slumped forward on the table. She’d imagined it.

Then there was a noise at the door. She was so gripped with terror that she let out a whimper. He was coming back, Redmond was coming back to get her…

But it wasn’t Redmond. It was Rufus.

‘Come on, Mrs Carter,’ he said. ‘It’s time.’

They were close to the building now, its black outline stark against the night sky. The flickering light of a lantern showed shapes and shadows moving around inside. They could hear voices. Steve had one hand on Layla’s arm; while the rest of them could see perfectly in the dark with the army-issue night-sight goggles, she was stumbling on the uneven ground, and her guts were twisted with anxiety.

If Mum was really here, was she still alive?

‘Do you think Rufus has got her in there?’ she whispered to Max.

‘No talking,’ he said.

The voices in the shack were getting louder. A man’s voice – and a woman’s.

Rufus had yanked Annie from her chair and was holding her upright, but she could barely stand. Her head was spinning and she thought she would throw up any minute. The room was careering around her. Rufus gave her a violent shake, and her feet went from under her. She hit the hard flagstones, but felt no pain.

Anaesthetized , she thought. She had a mad urge to laugh.

Grabbing her arm, he hauled her roughly to her feet.

‘Come on,’ he said.

And he snatched up his torch from the table and dragged her outside.

It was a cold night but Annie barely felt it. She stumbled along beside Rufus, him lighting their way with the torch. She was cocooned in a soft blanket of booze. Then he dragged her off of a rough driveway and the light of the torch showed a stretch of grass. There was a misty rain falling. The smell of the sea was stronger out here, and she could hear the faint offshore tolling of a buoy. It was all like a dream. At any moment she was going to wake up in her bed in Holland Park.

But she knew she wasn’t.

Rufus came to a halt. As Annie stared down at the cone of light thrown out by the torch, a chill of fear began to penetrate the alcoholic haze. There was a spade thrust upright into newly turned soil. There was a mound of freshly dug dark earth. And there was a hole. The torch swung further over. The hole was deep. Four, maybe five feet.

Her heart froze in her chest.

This was what Rufus had been doing out here, when he’d come into the building with dirt on his hands and mud on his boots. He’d been digging.

Torchlight illuminated his face and she could see that he was grinning.

‘Yes, Mrs Carter. It’s a grave. Ah, let’s be more specific. It’s your grave.’

He shook her again. Annie gave a weak cry and fell to her knees in the dirt. The light was on her now, blinding her. She saw him move, fumble in his pocket. She saw the taser. She was right beside the grave he’d dug. She heard the horrible thing crackle and hum as he switched on the power.

He’s going to zap me and throw me into the grave, she thought in horror. Then he’ll fill it in.

Rufus was going to bury her alive.

‘Mum! That’s Mum, I heard her voice, he’s got her!’ cried Layla.

She broke free of Steve and stumbled forward in the dark, running towards where Annie and Rufus were, beside the grave.

With the benefit of the night-sight, Max saw Rufus stiffen. The beam of the torch swung their way. Annie was on her knees. Rufus was raising the device in his hand, pointing it down the torch’s white beam at Layla who was running straight at him, uncaring, thinking only of getting to her mother.