Джеймс Паттерсон - Revenge

Then, ten minutes later, he’d rung back. “You want them all to suffer, though, don’t you?” he said. “The whole of them Drakes.”

“I don’t care, Dad. I just want to watch her die.”

“But wouldn’t it be good, princess?”

“I don’t see how, without the Chechens getting suspicious.”

He chuckled. “Well, sweetheart, there are ways and there are ways . . .”

CHAPTER 49

SUSIE FELT STRANGE, surreal, as though her mind and spirit had lifted outside of her body and she was looking down on events with an almost dispassionate air, as though what was being discussed was nothing to do with her. How else was it possible to process the fact that this woman was sitting there calmly, smiling almost sweetly, presentable and reasonable, talking about the time she made plans to kill Emma?

On the table lay the gun. Watching over them was the CCTV camera. Susie had dredged up those lessons Shelley had given her. Safety catch. Cocking the weapon. Don’t snatch the shot.

At school she had been a gymnast and a good sprinter. She knew she was fast—or used to be, at least—and maybe she could be fast again, now, when it counted. Could she make it to the gun before Karen? Would she be able to use the gun if she got there? How long would it be before more men came rushing to the bitch’s aid?

“You’re telling me,” she heard herself say—again, there was that detached part of her that registered the disbelief in her own voice—“you’re telling me how you killed my daughter?”

“From one mother to another,” said Karen. She pronounced “mother” like “muvva.” From one muvva to anuvva. “I think it’s only right that you know the truth. I know I’d want to if I were in your shoes. I’d want to know everything.

“It’s out of respect that I’m telling you this, Susie. Because we’re women, aren’t we? We know that we’re stronger than the other lot. We suffer.” She patted her stomach. “We know suffering that they’ll never know, and we know that we can take it, because we’re tough, ain’t we? That’s why you’re not sitting there shitting yourself, blubbing like a baby. That’s what your husband would be doing in your position, ain’t it? How did he react when darling daughter died?”

Darling daughter. Susie felt her hatred increase by a couple of notches.

“I bet he started ranting and raving, didn’t he? The checkbook came out. Because they’re all like that, aren’t they? Worst combination is a bloke and a bit of money—it turns them into big babies. Is that how your hubby was, Susie? Did he throw a tantrum while you watched calmly on? Now I bet that’s right, ain’t it? I bet he did. Come on, answer me.”

Susie found herself nodding despite herself. Why not? It was true. Guy had not been there for her; he had nurtured his hatred instead. The way she felt now. Was that what it was like inside Guy’s head all the time?

“You see? And is it him who has been taken? Is it him sitting in some grotty cell in a garage with only Dirty Dancing on DVD to watch? No, of course it ain’t. It’s you who has to carry the can. You who has to suffer. Always you, Susie.”

“And Emma,” Susie heard herself say.

“Oh yes, and Emma,” said Karen. “You see? I knew you were strong enough to carry on.”

It was as if the whole world was in this cell. As though the planet had shrunk to consist of just Susie and Karen, facing each other across a grubby room, with a glass of water, a sandwich, and a gun on the table between them.

“Then carry on,” said Susie.

Karen nodded, satisfied her little speech had done the trick. When she looked away, Susie found her eyes going to the gun once more. She had attended a course once, the sort of thing that bored housewives like her did when the kids left home, “mindfulness” or something like that, and one of the techniques they’d taught was visualization. You had to picture yourself doing what you wanted to do. You had to imagine yourself succeeding at it.

“So we went in to see her that day.”

The day she died. “How did she look?” Susie found herself saying.

“Did you not see the video?” said Karen, surprised. “You must be about the only person who hasn’t.”

Susie shook her head. “In any case, I want to know how she looked when she arrived for work, not how she was when she was all dolled up to do a job.”

Karen threw her head back, snorting with laughter. Her earrings danced. “It’s not fucking Hollywood, you know. She just came in with the same slut clothes she normally wore. She was a gorgeous girl, no doubt about it. They all are at Foxy Kittenz, it’s our stock-in-trade. But between you, me, and the gatepost, she looked zonked out. She looked like somebody who did too many drugs, you know, too much heroin.” Karen stopped, looking sharply at Susie. “Did you know that about her, Susie? Did you know that little Emma was using the spike?”

Susie shook her head slowly. “Not at the time.”

Karen smiled her strange grin again, making her look almost vampiric. “Of course not. Of course you didn’t. There’s a song, ain’t there? About a posh girl with a rich daddy who decides to slum it just for the hell of it, to see how the other half lives. ‘Common People.’ You know the one?”

Susie didn’t bother to answer, just stared at Karen as though observing an alien life form, aware now that there was nothing remotely truth-telling about this session; it was simply an exercise in mental torture.

“‘Common People’ by Pulp, that’s the one. That’s what I think of when I think of Emma. She started to mix with the likes of us, then it all got a bit too much for her, didn’t it? In the song, the girl can ring Daddy and Daddy can stop it all, but your Emma didn’t do that, or couldn’t do that. Why was that, Susie?”

“We’re not posh,” said Susie, dimly wondering why she even bothered making that point. “Guy was an engineer. Up north. He was made redundant. He used his redundancy pay to—”

“I googled him,” spat Karen. “I googled him fourteen years ago. Fuck, it was so long ago, I probably didn’t even use Google. It was probably Ask Jeeves or some shit like that. It’s not him I’m accusing of being posh, Lady Muck, it’s you.”

Karen’s color was rising and Susie wondered if she should be afraid, but with a dim sense of triumph she realized that she wasn’t.

“Because you certainly didn’t live in the north or get made redundant from any engineering job, did you? Privately educated, that’s you. Met Guy Drake at a charity function.

“Poor old Emma, she probably didn’t know where the roots lay. On the one hand she’s got all this wealth, public-school friends of her own, privileged money; on the other hand, there’s Daddy, giving it the big ‘when I were a lad’ speech. Working-class hero, all that malarkey. Am I right? No wonder she ended up so fucking confused.

“Here, I wonder if she ever thought that Daddy might secretly approve of what she was doing. What do you think? What do you think a psychiatrist might have to say about that? Like, was there something deep inside? Was she trying to win her daddy’s favor? They say that’s what all little girls do.”

“Like you, you mean,” said Susie.

“Very good, missus.”

“You wanted to win your father’s love by murdering my daughter.”

Karen sneered. “I didn’t need to win my dad’s love by murdering your daughter. This is the whole fucking trouble with you, you have such a high opinion of yourself, you think the whole world revolves around the Drake surname. I already had my dad’s approval, I gained it years and years ago and I gained it by not being a pussy. And I gained it by being clever, which is why I offered Emma a choice.”