Conn Iggulden - Blackwater

I tore the letter into tiny shreds in case someone had the time to glue it back together in between emptying the bins of a hospital. Even though I knew it was stupid, I still made sure the pieces ended up in two separate bins.

I kept the second try short. It said I was having trouble with Carol and I didn’t know what to do. If you’d asked me then what I was hoping for, I probably couldn’t have told you. I couldn’t handle Denis Tanter and I couldn’t see a way out. That’s when you ask for help. You don’t know what the help is going to be. If you did, you could probably do it on your own. I put it in the hospital postbox and walked stiffly away from it without looking back. It was done. He would either come or he wouldn’t.

Two days later he left a message on the answering machine to say he was on the way. Nothing more, just ten seconds of his voice while I sat and watched the machine. Hearing him brought back a lot of unpleasant memories. I took my half-empty bottle of Laphroaig to keep me warm, put on my best black suit and wrote a letter to Carol. I left it on the kitchen table where she would see it if she came back. After that I walked down to the beach, and when it was dark I stood on the edge of the black sea, looking out. I finished the whisky and scooped up a little salt water to cut the taste of it. It was as bitter as I was, and it was around then that I stopped feeling the cold and walked into the water.

I don’t know how long I stood there before he found me. He’d read the letter on the table. I knew he would.

I told him all of it as we walked back along the dark streets of Brighton. The wind had picked up and I was shivering so he gave me his coat. It smelled of cigars and his aftershave, which wasn’t one I knew. It was a better coat than I have ever owned and I could feel its weight and softness like the first touches of guilt.

He hardly commented as we walked together, asking just an occasional question about Denis or Michael, my impressions of them. I had to tell him more than I wanted to about Carol or it would have seemed nonsense. It came out in pieces, and once he looked at me and shook his head in slow amazement.

‘And you want her back?’ he said. I hated him then.

I told him everything I could remember, anything that might help him to understand the two men who had come into my life and pushed me to desperation. I tried not to think that I was considering murder or, at the least, allowing murder in my name. I wanted them out of my life, and somewhere during the second beating in my kitchen I had stopped caring how it happened. Perhaps it was when my first finger was bent far enough to snap. Shame leads to rage in men, did you know that? If you want to see a white-hot tantrum, try humiliating a man, especially in public. Try making one afraid and then laughing about it.

I was too cold to take pleasure in the conversation with my brother, but I could see that he did. Even without his coat he seemed too full of interest to feel the wind off the sea. He moved his hands in sharp cutting gestures when he talked, and he laughed at my description of Michael, making me repeat details so that he would know either of them on sight.

I hadn’t realized how much planning would go into removing two men from the world. My brother was my single extra card, my one advantage that no one else knew about. He’d parked a mile from the house and walked. No one had a clue where he was and no one would ever be able to connect him to anything that happened. For a few days at least, he was going to enjoy himself. No guilt, no conscience.

We sat at the kitchen table and he swore when I told him there wasn’t anything left to drink in the house. I’d thrown the empty bottle of Laphroaig into the sea before he came, a better splash in imagination than it actually was.

‘You’ve seen Michael alone, so they’re not joined at the hip,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘It would be easier for me if I can catch each one by himself.’

‘But if you make a mistake and get caught, the other one will kill me.’

‘Or you’d kill him, little brother. Don’t think I don’t know you,’ he said, with a strange glint in his eye. I remembered him kicking the limp head of the man outside the club in Camden and I shuddered.

‘I’d try,’ I promised him. He nodded.

‘You’d do it to save Carol, I know you would.’

I didn’t like him mentioning her. I wanted to think about the problem, not what would happen afterwards. I didn’t want her to know anything about it. Denis would just be found somewhere and his death put down to one of his unpleasant business partners. No one would suspect me and no one would know my brother had even been in Brighton. I wanted it clean.

‘Mind you, the only way to get him somewhere we can prepare is to tell him Carol wants to see him. A pub car park at night, say. When he gets fed up waiting, he comes out in the dark and I do something very violent for ten or fifteen seconds.’ He seemed to be enjoying the prospect and I had to swallow hard to clear the burning trail that surged up under my tongue.

‘It’s too risky. You can’t predict when he comes out so there could be a family standing by his car, or a group of drunks peeing in the gutter – witnesses. Even if you managed to… stop one of them, the other one would shout, or run. We’d never get away with it. It’s madness to think you could -’

‘All right, Davey, don’t get in a froth,’ he said curtly, cutting me off. ‘You might run down to the off-licence before it closes and buy me something stronger than orange squash. I might get the ideas flowing then.’ He smiled then, so cold and self-assured that I wanted to throw up. ‘Best to do it here, anyway, in this house,’ he said, looking around the kitchen. ‘We’ll get them where we can control things. He’s a man who employs a thug and breaks fingers. You’ll get away with a self-defence plea and they’ll never even know you had help.’

‘Are you wearing gloves?’ I asked him, suddenly. He was.

‘That’s more like it, Davey boy. Now you’re thinking.’

The front door clicked open and I jumped to my feet in fear. My brother didn’t move and when he saw who was standing there he just smiled, his eyes half hooded with interest.

‘Hello, Carol love,’ he said. ‘Did you bring anything to drink?’

I saw her flicker a gaze to me and then back to him, wondering what we had been discussing. She looked rested and she’d had her hair cut. There was a new bag on her shoulder and she looked as beautiful as always. New shoes too, I noticed, when my eyes dropped at last.

‘It’s always nice to see one of Davey’s family,’ she said coolly, her eyes making a complete lie of it. I could feel the dislike between them and I wondered if they’d fight if I left to get whisky. I realized there would be at least one witness to the fact that my brother was in Brighton, and my stomach churned. Why couldn’t she have spent a few more days discovering her inner child or whatever the hell it was she got up to on these trips?

‘I’d better get to bed,’ she said, staging a yawn. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ My brother didn’t look up, and when she’d gone I realized she hadn’t even asked about my splinted hand. She hadn’t seen it, I was half certain. She’d expected a welcome and instead there we were, looking… well, looking like a couple of conspirators planning a murder.

My brother leaned forward and spoke in what was barely a murmur. ‘Having her here is going to be a problem,’ he said. Then he grinned. ‘However, this isn’t a bank robbery and I don’t need to spend ages planning it. Just make sure she’s well clear when we get your two friends into this kitchen one more time.’

‘She’ll tell the police you were here,’ I said, just as quietly. I couldn’t meet his eyes, but it had to be considered. The police wouldn’t be looking at a lone man defending himself against two vicious career thugs. They would be looking for a lone man’s brother, mysteriously vanished from Brighton the very day after a double murder. When I did look up, he was frowning, turning it over and over in his mind.