Alex Barclay - Harm's Reach

‘It’s a secure property,’ said Ren. ‘Have the security gates been breached?’

‘No,’ said Ingrid.

‘Is there any other way onto the property?’ said Ren.

‘No,’ said Ingrid. ‘No.’

‘Then stay right where you are,’ said Ren. ‘Lock your doors. The Sheriff’s Office should be there right away.’

‘I’m afraid to stay here—’ said Ingrid.

‘It’s the safest place to be,’ said Ren. ‘Trust me.’

Twenty minutes later, Ren and Janine were pulling up to the gates of the rental. They were wide open. Cars from the Sheriff’s Office were abandoned out the front, lights flashing.

Fuck.

Ren and Janine jumped out of the Jeep. The first thing they saw was a stream of blood snaking down the driveway. It was coming from under a black tarp, the shape of a body clear.

Oh God.

The driver’s door to Ingrid Prince’s Range Rover was open.

Kohler started walking toward them.

Ren could vaguely hear crying. They looked beyond the body, beyond the driveway into the house where Ingrid Prince was rocking back and forth, an investigator beside her, her arm around her.

‘What happened?’ said Ren.

‘He must have gotten the code,’ said Kohler. ‘He got in the back door. She heard the noise. She came out the front, tried to leave, he ran after her, he raised the gun. She says she barely remembers. She panicked. She reversed. She knocked him down. She’s distraught in there. She’s covered in blood. She won’t see a doctor, says she’s fine. She just wants her husband. She said she tried to help him... but it was too late. She said he said sorry, though. He said sorry about Laura.’

Ren looked past Kohler to the lump under the tarp. ‘What the fuck is all I have to say. What the fuck...’

‘Better him than her, I guess...’ said Kohler.

A week later, Ren, Janine and Robbie managed to have the same evening off. They sat in Woody’s having pizza.

‘Can anyone call this a celebration?’ said Ren.

‘Definitely not,’ said Janine. ‘This is called simply: sustenance.’

Bare sustenance for you, my beautiful, delicate friend.

‘Do you want to hear something beyond fucked-up?’ said Ren.

‘Coming from you?’ said Janine.

‘It’s about Walter Prince,’ said Ren. ‘I realized how he stalked two of those little Orchard Girls — it was the letters the Irish immigrants dictated to him. They weren’t just telling their families back home what was going on with their children — they were giving him information he could use to find them or gain their trust. Like “Little Mary is eleven now, getting so big, walks home every day by the creek...” Walter Prince didn’t mail those letters, not out of spite, but because they could have been used as evidence against him... What a sick fuck.’

‘That just gives me shivers,’ said Janine.

‘People will visit the Prince mansion for the Christmas Eve ball or pay for the guided tour...’ said Ren. ‘When really, I think it should only be open for Hallowe’en.’

‘I think we should go,’ said Janine.

‘Sign me up,’ said Ren. She turned to Robbie. ‘Do you have your iPad?’

‘Yup,’ said Robbie.

‘Can I take a look?’ she said. Please tell me you’ve cleared your History.

‘Sure, go ahead,’ said Robbie, handing it to her.

‘I just want to see if the grand event’s still going ahead after the entire Prince family shitstorm,’ she said.

‘I doubt it,’ said Janine.

She Googled the Princes, put in the timeframe of the previous week. ‘Ooh,’ she said. ‘Stalker shots.’

There was a picture of Ingrid Prince, taken on the beach in the Hamptons the previous weekend. She was dressed in a blue floaty cover-up and a floppy hat.

‘That woman is so stunning,’ said Ren. She showed the others.

Janine pointed to the caption: After some time away from the spotlight following the tragic death of her friend, Laura Flynn, ex-model Ingrid Prince, five months pregnant, debuts her baby bump on the beach at her Hamptons’ hideaway.

‘Debuts her Moonbump,’ said Ren. ‘But, yikes. She hasn’t announced the fake miscarriage yet.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘The longer the delay, the greater the empathetic outpourings, I guess.’

‘Celebrity is so weird,’ said Janine.

Ren scrolled down to the next photo of Ingrid Prince in a beautiful mismatched bikini: red bottoms, blue-and-white stripes on top. And sandwiched in between, a very clear, very real baby bump.

Janine, Ren and Robbie all stared at each other.

Oh. My. God.

‘Looks like Conor Gorman’s obsession with Ingrid wasn’t a one-way street,’ said Ren.

Ingrid Prince was waiting for her driver at the rental in Golden. She had returned from New York for the last time to finally pack her things. She sat now on a high stool, elbow bent, leaning with her forearm on the kitchen island, scrolling through texts. They had been popping up on her cell phone all morning, since the Hamptons photo appeared online.

Hey, hot mama!

Looking good! x

Suits you!

Ah, the secret hideaway... B-)

Must check has hell frozen over: it appears your belly is bigger than mine...;-)

Ingrid held a hand to her belly. Twenty-two weeks gone; her baby conceived on an icy January night in Golden in front of the fire with a handsome boy, fresh from a bar fight. This was her golden child, her golden ticket. And quite by accident! Fate had been kind! And Robert wouldn’t know the difference. Whether the baby would have dark Irish looks from a line of rich Princes, or common Gormans; no one would be able to tell. And if there was ever a reason for her husband to look closer, she was the keeper of the secret he would never want revealed, a secret even the tabloids wouldn’t want to publish. It still turned her stomach to think of it.

She had burned the Special Forces badge. When the package arrived from the Prince mansion, she just thought it would be some more interesting stuff; Robert had shown her some of the things from the first package. She thought it would be jewelry or tattered love letters or something old and exciting. But it wasn’t. It was a badge that meant Desmond Lamb could not possibly have been Robert’s father: he was gone for almost the entire year of 1957; the timing was all wrong. But it was worse than that. And when she had found out, it was too late. Laura Flynn was already pregnant. She had told Laura, she had confided in her in the way that one confides in a dependant; you can tell a true dependant anything. They can’t leave. They have no home, no money without you. She had begged Laura to have an abortion. She would still get paid. Ingrid would pay her. She had done the groundwork — she had researched clinics on Simone’s laptop. Yet, still, Laura had wanted to keep the baby. Who wants to keep a baby that isn’t even theirs, when the mother herself doesn’t want it? It wasn’t a baby, anyway. It was some kind of monster.

She was surprised that Laura had told Conor the day she came to take him away. She was surprised at someone as vulnerable as Laura deciding to run. Laura Flynn was braver than she thought. And Conor, more volatile, more dangerous, and more in love. Didn’t men want no ties? Didn’t sixteen-year-old boys? Why was sex not enough? It was bizarre.

Conor’s phone call to her the night before Laura died: ‘Laura knows something about Robert. She’s on her way here. I have to meet her tomorrow. She wants me to leave with her. But I won’t. She can’t make me. Now’s our chance, Ingrid. She said she was in Chicago, talking to some guy who could get us into Canada and back to Ireland. But now’s our chance. To start a new life. If Robert’s been doing something wrong, if he’s, like, going to go to prison for fraud or something... we can be together...’