Peter James - Dead Man's Grip

‘They expect you?’

‘No. I think they know who I am. I was in the accident involving their son, Tony.’

‘You wait, please.’

The light went off. Carly waited, clutching her iPhone, her finger on the Send button. She turned and saw Detective Investigator Lanigan leaning against his car, smoking a cigar. He gave her a good-luck shrug. She caught a whiff of the rich smoke and it reminded her for an instant of Kes.

A minute later, the gates began to swing open, in almost total oiled silence. There was just a faint electric whirr. Feeling sick with fear, she climbed back into the car.

Carly stepped out into the silence of the night. Above her loomed the façade of a huge modern mansion. It looked dark and unwelcoming, with barely any lights showing. She turned back to look at the limousine, having second thoughts. It was parked a few yards away on the woodchip-covered drive, close to a Porsche Cayenne sports utility vehicle. Floodlights printed stark shadows of shrubs and trees across an immaculate lawn. Her nerves shorting out, she sensed faces peering from the darkened windows down at her. She swallowed, then swallowed again, and stared at the front door, which was set beneath an imposing portico with square, modern pilasters.

Christ, am I up to this?

The silence was pressing in all around her. She heard the faint, distant, restless sound of the sea. She breathed in tangy, salty air and the scent of freshly mown grass. The normality of that scared her. These people, their life going on as normal. Their son was dead, but they still mowed the lawn. Something about that spooked her. She had not mown the lawn after Kes died. She’d let the garden go wild and the house turn into a tip around her. It was only for Tyler’s sake she eventually pulled herself together.

Before she had a chance to change her mind, the front door opened and a woman emerged, unsteadily, dressed in a turquoise tracksuit and sparkly trainers. She had short, blonde hair, an attractive but hard face, and held a martini glass tilted at an angle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her whole demeanour was hostile.

Carly took a few, faltering steps towards her. ‘Mrs Revere?’ She tried to put on the smile she had been practising, but it didn’t feel like it was working. ‘Fernanda Revere?’

The woman stared at her with eyes as cold and hard as ice. Carly felt as if she was staring right through her soul.

‘You got fucking balls coming here.’ The words were slightly slurred and bitter. ‘You’re not welcome in my home. Get back in your car.’

The woman scared her, but Carly stood her ground. She had been preparing herself for a whole range of different responses and this was one of them, although she had not factored in that Fernanda Revere might be smashed.

‘I’ve flown from England to talk to you,’ she said. ‘I just want a few minutes of your time. I’m not going to begin to pretend I understand what you must be going through – but you and I have something in common.’

‘We do? We’re alive, that’s about all I can see we have in common. I don’t believe we have much else.’

Carly had known all along this was not going to be easy. But she had nurtured the hope that perhaps she could get a dialogue going with this woman and find some common ground.

‘May I come in? I’ll leave the moment you want me to. But please let’s talk for a few minutes.’

Fernanda Revere drew on her cigarette, snorted out smoke through her mouth and nose, then tossed the butt away with a contemptuous flick of her jewelled hand. It landed on the drive in a shower of sparks. With her drink slopping over the rim of her glass, she tottered back and gestured for Carly to enter, glowering hatred, only faintly diluted with curiosity, at her.

Carly hesitated. This woman looked dangerously unpredictable and she had no idea how her husband was going to react. Glad now that Detective Investigator Lanigan was sitting outside the gates in his car, she surreptitiously glanced at her watch. Thirteen minutes left before her first text.

She entered a grand hallway with a flagstone floor and a circular staircase, and followed the woman, who bumped against the wall several times, along a corridor furnished with antiques. Then they entered a palatial drawing room, with a minstrel’s gallery. It had oak beams and tapestries hanging from the walls, alongside fine-looking oil paintings. Almost all of the furniture was antique, except for one item.

Seated, with his legs up in an incongruously modern leather recliner armchair, was a man in his fifties, with slicked-back grey hair and dense black eyebrows, watching a ball game on television. He held a can of beer in one hand and a large cigar in the other.

The woman walked towards him, picked up the TV remote from the antique wooden table beside him, peered at it for some moments as if she had never seen one of these before in her life, then muted the sound and dropped the remote back down with a clatter.

‘Hey, what the-’ the man protested.

‘We have a visitor, Lou.’ Fernanda pointed at Carly. ‘She’s come all the way from England. How nice is that?’ she said icily.

Lou Revere gave Carly a weak smile and an abstracted wave of his hand. Then, keeping his eyes on the silent players on the screen, he turned to his wife and reached out for the remote.

‘This is kind of an important moment in the game.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Fernanda said. ‘Well, this is kind of an important moment, too.’ She reached down, picked up a pack of Marlboro Lights and shook out a cigarette. Then she gave Carly a crushing glare.

Carly stood awkwardly, eyes darting between the two of them, thinking, trying desperately to remember her script.

‘Know who this bitch is?’ Fernanda said to her husband.

Lou Revere grabbed the remote and unmuted the sound.

‘No. Listen, I need some quiet here.’ Then he added, ‘Get this lady a drink.’ He glanced disinterestedly at Carly. ‘You wanna drink?’

Carly felt in desperate need of a drink. And the sweet rich smell of the smoke was tantalizing. She craved a cigarette.

‘I’ll die before I give this fucking bitch anything,’ Fernanda Revere said, staggering over to an antique drinks cabinet, the doors of which were already open, and clumsily refilling her glass from a silver cocktail shaker, slopping the contents over the side. Then she drank some, put the glass down, tottered back over to her husband, grabbed the remote and switched the television completely off.

‘Hey!’ he said.

She dropped the remote on to the rug and stamped hard on it. There was the sound of splintering plastic.

Carly’s fear deepened. This woman was crazy and totally unpredictable. She looked at the man again, then back at the woman, before sneaking a glance at her watch. Three minutes had passed. What the hell was the woman going to do next? Somehow she had to bring her out of her anger.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Her husband put down his beer and ejected himself from his chair. Turning to his wife, he said, ‘Do you know how important this goddamn game is? Do you? Do you care?’

He strode towards the door. Grabbing him by the arm and dropping her glass, which broke on the floor, Fernanda screamed at him, ‘Do you fucking know or care who this bitch is?’

‘Right now, I care about the New York Yankees winning this game. You know how bad it would be if they even just tied?’

‘And you fucking think they care that you’re watching? You want to just focus a second? This is the bitch who killed our son. You hear what I’m saying?’

Carly watched him, her eyes swinging between them. She was trying to keep calm, but her nerves were in meltdown. The man stopped in his tracks and turned towards her. He glanced for a moment back at his wife and said, ‘What do you mean, hon?’ Then he turned back to Carly, his whole demeanour changing.