Джеймс Паттерсон: Revenge

The two men acknowledged one another with nods, and Shelley wondered why he felt uncomfortable. Was it something as simple as professional jealousy? After all, there was a time when he was the one the Drakes called upon for close protection.

Or was it something else? Like why, when your daughter has just taken her own life, do you feel the need to employ security? Ex–special forces security at that.

The man next to Bennett was taller and younger, with close-cropped hair. He gazed over at Shelley but made no attempt to greet him, just stared, and for a moment their eyes locked, the guy trying to stare him out. Have it your way , thought Shelley, breaking the stare. I’m not playing .

A short while later, attendees filed into the crematorium. On their seats was an order of service, “A celebration of the life of Emma Jane Drake,” bearing a recent photograph of her. The small news piece Lucy saw on Mail Online had been little more than a headline, “MILLIONAIRE’S DAUGHTER FOUND DEAD IN HOSTEL,” and a couple of paragraphs of text. This girl he had known as a child had grown up to be a beautiful young woman. She’d had her mother’s fine features, her father’s determined eyes, an innate intelligence that was all her own.

Neither Drake nor Susie was in any state to give a eulogy, so the service was conducted entirely by a celebrant. Mourners chuckled and nodded in recognition at her descriptions of Emma as a bright, curious little girl, in love with life, ponies, and Destiny’s Child, in that order, as besotted with Mommy and Daddy as they were with her. No doubt about it, she’d enjoyed her only-child status, but rarely letting it tip over into spoiled-child territory.

Shelley had been curious to hear what she’d done next, and by all accounts she’d continued to show promise at her all-girl public school. Head girl, no less, she’d discovered a passion for theater. So much so that when she’d moved on, it was to York University and a BA in Theater: Writing, Directing, and Performance.

She’d never completed the course. And here the mourners’ chuckles died in their throats and the fond reminiscences ceased as the celebrant tactfully skirted the details of her last years, saying only that, like many of us, Emma had her demons, and that despite the love and support of her parents, Guy and Susie, who had reached out to her many times over the years, those demons had eventually claimed her.

Drake and Susie sat ramrod straight in the front row, the backs of their heads betraying nothing of their grief—nothing until the coffin disappeared behind the curtain, when Susie’s shoulders dropped and Drake did something that was extraordinary and yet perfectly forgivable in the circumstances: he let out a long impassioned wail, a sound dredged from the very depths of his soul.

As the service ended, Susie took him in her arms. His shoulders shook as he wept, his head buried in her so that at least he was spared the sympathetic looks of the mourners as they filed out of the crematorium quickly to escape the weight of his grief.

Outside they stood making small talk. When the two grieving parents eventually appeared, Drake was red-eyed but composed. Shelley shot Lucy a look— Would you mind waiting? —and was about to move over to them when he found himself intercepted by Bennett.

“Captain Shelley of the SAS,” said Bennett with a smile appropriate to the occasion. He held out a hand, and for a childish moment Shelley considered refusing to shake it. “It’s an honor to meet you,” continued Bennett.

“It’s nice to meet you too, mate,” said Shelley, although he wasn’t so sure about that. “Bennett, isn’t it?”

“In one,” said Bennett, glowing a little.

“You on close-protection duty, are you?”

“Something like that. I’ve got a man on the perimeter keeping the press at bay. Couple of paps he’s needed to chase off but that’s about it. Just general security, you know?”

Shelley nodded, trying to keep it casual. “That’s all, is it?”

“That’s all, yes,” replied Bennett, throwing up a barrier.

“Fair enough,” said Shelley, acting as though he bought it. But when he walked across to see Susie and Drake, he could sense the eyes of Bennett and his minion upon him.

He and Drake shook hands and he could feel the grief radiating off him like heat from a fire.

“Thank you so much for coming, David,” said Susie. They kissed and she enveloped him in a cloud of the same scent she’d worn all those years ago, the smell of it taking him straight back there—back to their home, excursions out with her and Emma, those shopping trips . . .

“I’m so, so sorry,” he said, trying to find the words. “Emma was really something. I think you know how fond I was of her. I only hope that she did too.”

“She did, David, she did.” Susie was one of the few people who had ever called Shelley “David.” It sounded strange and slightly incongruous, and another time he might have laughed. But not now.

He found himself wishing he could ask how she had done it, how Emma had killed herself. He wanted desperately for Susie simply to surrender the information. Indeed, it was almost as though there was a gap in the conversation waiting to be filled with that piece of information, and maybe Susie sensed it, too. He saw her lips part, words forming . . . and then her husband spoke instead.

“We appreciate you coming, Shelley,” said Drake, his Manchester accent undimmed by the years in London. “I know it’s normal to invite everybody for a drink and a bite to eat to remember Emma, but we’ve decided we’d rather say our goodbyes here. I hope you understand.”

“Of course, mate, of course,” said Shelley, at the same time unable to rid himself of the idea that there was something odd about it.

Standing some way off, Lucy had been talking to some of the mourners. He’d seen her embrace a girl who would have been about Emma’s age—a friend or a cousin. He couldn’t help but notice that Drake was keeping an eye on things in that corner, too. Bennett and his mate drifted across, hoping to achieve Shelley had no idea what. If it was to try to intimidate Lucy then good luck with that.

Lucy was wrapping up her conversation as Shelley finished saying his goodbyes to the Drakes and stepped away.

She took his arm as the funeral-goers dispersed.

“Did you ask how it happened?” she said. They reached the Saab and climbed in.

“I chickened out,” admitted Shelley ruefully. He picked his hat up off the back seat and fitted it back on his head. A Christys’ newsboy cap. Like him, it looked like a worn relic from another age, and just wearing it made him feel more himself again.

“Thought you might. So I asked for you. Well, I didn’t ask outright. I dug.”

His fingers dropped from the ignition key. “Yes. And?”

“She shot herself, Shelley. Took herself off to that hostel and ate a bullet. And if anybody knows anything more than that, they’re not saying.”

For a moment he simply sat in silence, absorbing that fact, thinking, She shot herself. But before that, she called me. Why did she call me?

He reached for the key to start the car. “Did you see any paparazzi hanging around?” he asked Lucy.

“No,” she said.

“No, me neither.”

CHAPTER 5

THEY ARRANGED TO meet in a coffee shop in Islington, close to where they used to make contact on another job.

It was funny, thought Shelley, how you never really left your old life behind. You just added to it, like the old masters reusing a canvas. You painted over it, but it was still there underneath all those layers, and at some point it would make its presence known again.