Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Six - Part One

SAN FRANCISCO

 

 

“He’s on his way Molly, that’s all I’m going to tell you.”

She sighed, running a lick of hair back over her ear and turned so that her cell phone didn’t pick up the wind. She was on the seafront; the breeze was very vivid and clear. It was a beautiful day. “Come on David, please.”

David Eden paused. Molly pictured him there at her father’s house, wondering briefly if he still kept his crisp black uniform on now that his employer was dead.

“He has been found in London,” he said. “He made contact with Stephen Miles, the attorney we contracted. Miles informed him of the inheritance and the current situation with the estate. He also put him in touch with me here.”

Molly let her little finger play with her lip. “You’ve spoken to him?”

“Yes. Early this morning. He called from the airport in the UK.”

“And?”

“He seemed very nice; what do you want me to say? He seemed well spoken and friendly. Not the stereotype Englishman; just… nice.”

“Is he coming here?”

“Yes he is. He’ll be arriving after six tonight.”

She didn’t say anything in reply.

“Molly? Are you alright?”

“Yeah David. I’m okay.” Her voice felt so low and sluggish. “I’m sorry about the way I’ve been acting. It’s just... I don’t know David. I feel...”

“I know Molly.”

“Everyone thinks I’m selfish; and I am really. I am. But not in the way they think.”

“I know.”

Two women roller skated by with a dog between them on a leash.

“Are you going to meet him at the airport?” she asked.

“Yes. He’ll be very tired after his journey. It’s an eleven hour trip. I expect he’ll rest up this evening. Tomorrow is the house sale.”

“The what?”

“Your father specified in his will that he wanted to sell all his things; his collections, so that they could go to people who really wanted them. By coincidence that’s tomorrow.”

“What time?”

Eden’s voice became stern. “I don’t think you should come here Molly. You should do what I told you and forget all about it. There’s nothing positive that can come of your actions.”

“What time?” she asked again.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Five - Part Twenty Three

 

Jack left the women’s magazine he’d found on the seat in the waiting area where he’d picked it up and got to his feet. He took his boarding pass out of his back pocket and scanned the name of his destination: San Francisco; thousands of miles away from where he was now.

He wondered briefly about the people who would be waiting to meet him there and about what his life held in store: this new destiny. 

The stewardess was smiling at each boarder as she checked their passes. He joined the back of the queue.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Five - Parts Twenty One & Twenty Two

 

Sam ran into Terminal 1 at Heathrow.

He slowed down, jogging through the crowds, moving as quickly as he could without calling too much attention to himself. Too many people and he didn’t know what Catholic even looked like beyond the blond hair. It was useless.

Passport control was across the arena. He ran toward it, weaving either way between men and women getting ready to depart. The gun was in his pocket. His sister was dead. The man who’d done it was somewhere beyond there. He reached into his coat. He was almost at the gateway. Suicide to threaten his way through but there was no other choice. He closed the remaining distance across the floor, then stopped exactly where he was.

There were two armed guards either side of passport control: one man, one woman; dressed in black; bullet proof vests, the word “POLICE” printed on a label at the front, Heckle and Koch sub-machineguns held forty five degrees up from the horizontal.

Sam’s fingers were touching the grip of his pistol inside its holster. The woman looked at him and then so did the man. The girl on passport control said, “Can I help you sir?”

For a second Sam tightened his grip on the pistol; then he withdrew his hand and took a step backwards. The male guard glanced at two children squabbling over to the right. The woman kept her eyes on Sam.

He drew his sunglasses up onto his face and turned on his heel.

 

 

22

 

 

Sam spotted an information desk with a young black man behind it. He walked up to it and smiled thinly. “Could you tell me the destination of planes leaving to the United States in the next two and a half hours?”  

The young man nodded. “Whereabouts?”

“I’m not sure. My friend didn’t tell me the exact location he was going to.” Pressure at his temple. “But there can’t be too many planes leaving for the states in the next couple of hours can there?”

He tried to laugh, to lighten the conversation, but it came out empty and false. There was a slight withdrawal in the young man’s demeanour.

“There are two flights for America within the next two and a half hours,” said the young man. “San Francisco and New York.” He put his finger on the computer screen. “The San Francisco one is starting to board already.”

Sam didn’t bother to thank him.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Five - Part Twenty

Sam marched straight through to the back kitchen, kicking open the door: table; two unmatched chairs; dark, dirty wallpaper; the need for electric light even in daylight. The ogre man was near the back door. He withdrew warily as Sam entered.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing dipshit?”

Sam pulled out his gun and aimed it at the man’s head. “Shut up.”

Panic then fear in his ugly face, a glance at the door.

“Sit down,” said Sam. “Quickly!” He circled the big man, driving him toward the table. “I said quickly!” He smacked the barrel of his pistol against the man’s head, not hard enough to damage the gun or knock him out. The man struggled to sit down. Sam leaned against the table in front of him. “What’s your name?”

“Eric Jameson. I’m the landlord.” Pouting childish voice now that he no longer had control. He was sweating. “What do you want here? Money?”

“No. I’m looking for Jack Catholic. He just left in a taxi.” Jameson blinked at him, staring.

“He’s moved out. He’s taken all his shit with him.”

Sam leaned closer, so close now that the reek and heat of this man was coming up against his face. “Where’s he gone?”

Jameson squirmed in the chair, apparently only wrestling for a second before his sense of self-preservation overtook his loyalty. “The airport. America. I don’t know where. He’s inherited a ton of cash from some guy. He’s gone to collect it.”

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Five - Parts Twelve to Nineteen

Sam checked his gun again. He didn’t know what he was planning to do. This close and he didn’t know. He checked his gun, then he threw open the front door.

The huge bear trap of the house tingled, waiting, sinister.  

Narrow stairs to the right; mouldering carpet; wood veneer; damp-stained walls; corridor leading back to a kitchen and a further doorway beyond.

Sam crossed the threshold.

The jaws of the trap started to move, but they didn’t snap shut as Jack had imagined they would, they crept closed insidiously, taking their time, until finally grinding shut with a brittle scraping whine as Sam closed the door behind him.

He glanced up the stairs then down the hall toward the back of the building. Someone near the rear of the house was calling a name. Sam sprinted up the stairs.

He reached the landing. There were three doors, the one with the number of Jack’s room was central. There was a tabby cat on the brown carpet at the foot of the door frame, snarling, raising its fur. Sam looked back to the door and lifted his foot. The lock splintered out of the door frame as it smashed open on the first kick.

A man inside cried out; corridor through to a living room; bedroom and kitchen through doors off the corridor. The man was in the lounge. He stood up from the sofa. Sam pulled out his gun. The throbbing in his head was intense.

“Who the hell are you?” cried the man: blond hair; muscular.

Sam smashed him across the face with the back of his hand. He staggered, and Sam grabbed his hair, mashing his face down against the carpet. “You killed my sister!”

“What are you talking about?” Thick Scottish accent.

“I’m talking about—”

Sam froze exactly where he was.

This wasn’t Jack. Jack was English.

He cranked the man’s back up, tightening the grip in his hair.

“Where is he you little bastard?”

 

 

13

 

 

“What do you want dipshit?” said Jameson.

Jack smiled. “I just came to say goodbye. My taxi’s here.”

Jameson was sitting at the table in his kitchen, his feet up on an old tiny grey school chair. “Goodbye.”

“I’m sorry about the rent Mr Jameson. I really am.”

“Yeah; well. Go on then, get out.”

Jack laughed. “Okay, sure. God, it’s going to be boring for you around here with a rent-paying tenant moving in.”

“Okay, okay. That’s enough humour. Go on.”

He turned to go.

“Hey Jack?”

He paused at the door. “Yep?”

Jameson got up and walked over to the sink. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll see you later.”

Jack smiled and walked out into the hall. One last feel of the place around him with its damp air – even that smelled nostalgic now – then he opened the front door and ambled down the steps.

 

 

14

 

 

Sam came round the corner at the top of the stairs, sprinted down and hit the hall floor, then he ran toward the back of the house.

 

 

15

 

 

The taxi driver said, “We’re going to have to be quick if you want to catch your plane.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” replied Jack. “How fast can you get me there?”

The driver grinned and ran a hairy hand back through his greasy hair. “Bloody fast.”

 

 

16

 

 

Ugly big ogre of a man with a pot belly in the back kitchen.

No sign of Jack.

No sign at all.

 

 

17

 

 

“Hit it,” said Jack.

The taxi pulled away from the curb and quickly got up to speed. The driver turned up the radio. Jack leaned back in his seat and smiled to himself, relieved. There had been no avenging angel to catch him and that meant that he was right; he was meant to get away from there. Wherever fate was taking him, his path was being kept clear.

 

 

18

 

 

Sam got to the front of the house and outside. The gun was still in his hand. The taxi was gone.

He cursed, knowing he should have just waited on the pavement instead of going inside.

He looked left, scanning down the street, eyes trained for movement. But there was nothing.

 

 

19

 

 

Up the road to the right, the taxi slowed and turned off, heading down toward the main junction.

“Where’s your plane to anyway?” asked the driver, raising his voice over the sound of the music.

Jack looked at him and smiled, raising his eyebrows. “San Francisco.”

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Five - Parts Ten & Eleven

Sam slowed the car right down; then he saw it: the road sign, clearly visible between two parked cars, and accelerated.

He took stock of the house numbers. Not all of them were visible; some were missing completely, others obscured, but he got a glimpse of one at last: thirty five. He needed another to lock down which direction he should be travelling in. There it was: twenty seven. He started counting down as he drove. Jack’s house was seventeen.

There it was: narrow Victorian; steps up to the front door, railings down either side; private hire taxi outside; no visible parking spaces. It didn’t matter. Sam just slammed on the handbrake in the middle of the road, then he was out and moving quickly.

The pressure against his brow was starting to build.

Paintings on the back seat of the cab; engine running; driver rapping the steering wheel in time with radio music; dashboard meter ticking.

Sam ran up the steps and paused at the door. It was very slightly ajar. Adrenaline was flooding his system. That was good. This was it. No way that bastard could escape now. He put his hand on the door then paused. The name “JACK” was in the doorbell slot for one of the upstairs flats. It was Lucy’s handwriting.

Sam slipped the pink card out of its place and held it in front of him at chest height. The handwriting was so indicative. Those four capital letters illustrated her personality completely: playful; innocent; open; happy.

Another surge of adrenaline entered his bloodstream.

She was dead now. This little card was one of the few artefacts that recorded who she’d been in any way. She could never be playful or happy again. Because of Jack.

Sam dropped the slip of pink card into his breast pocket and checked his gun.

 

 

11

 

 

Jack turned the corner at the top of the stairs and started down.

The sky was overcast through the little window he passed but that was okay. He’d be leaving the British weather behind very soon.

He reached the hall. The front door was ajar but that didn’t matter; he’d be going straight out in a minute. He turned and headed down the dark corridor into the back of the building to look for the landlord. His rooms were at the rear, beyond the communal kitchen.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Five - Parts Eight & Nine

Sam hit the edge of Hounslow and accelerated, overtaking the next two cars on the inside.

He had pranged his car a dozen or more times already but he didn’t care; he was almost there.

Hounslow was a relatively seedy district close to Heathrow airport, the skies a constant network of criss-crossing aeroplanes. Sam didn’t like the area; he avoided it.

He turned sharply onto the main shopping street. A mother and child staggered back at the mouth of a crossing. He didn’t slow down, ignoring the red light.

In his mind the plan view of the A to Z map overlaid the three dimensional image of reality. He was visualising the landmarks he recognised and tallying that in with the location of Jack’s house so that he could second guess the turnings ahead of time.

It was less than half a mile away now. Realising that almost made him slow down.

But he didn’t.

He accelerated.

 

 

9

 

 

Jack pushed his cuff back and looked at his watch. Time up. His avenging angel wasn’t coming. He couldn’t wait forever.

The seat belts in the back seat of the taxi looked like they were going to hold his paintings in place just fine. His suitcase was wedged in the cavity behind the front passenger seat. It might dig into his back a little but that was okay; it was only a short journey. He slammed the back door then motioned for the driver to wind down his window. “Could you hold on for a second? I just want to say goodbye and check I haven’t forgotten anything.”

The driver was unshaven. He had so much gel in his hair it looked out-of-the-shower wet. “It’s your money mate.” He pointed at the digital meter wired into the dashboard, already totting up the minutes. “Take as long as you want.”

The front steps of Jack’s building were wide, spreading out like a pyramid to their base. He jogged up and paused at the door. There was a nametag for each room in the building in a column of slots running down the right hand side of the doorframe. Next to each was a doorbell that didn’t function. Several of the buttons were missing. For a long time there had been no note to say what his name was in the corresponding slot; until Lucy had scribbled “JACK” in massive babyish letters on a slip of pink card and shoved it in. He reached up to slip the card out of its slot. He touched the edge of it, taking hold in his thumb and first finger, feeling a quiver of loneliness. He should take this with him to remember her; to remember the happy times. But he didn’t. He left it for the next tenant to remove and throw away. Then he headed upstairs.

He went into his old rooms and looked round at the tatty furniture and seventies décor the next tenant would inherit: pink flowers as big as a man’s head on the wallpaper blotched with brown swirls of damp, white blocky furniture units coming apart, drawers with their bottoms hanging out. This had been his first real place and like no other room he had lived in, it represented the dreams of making it as an artist that had led him to drain his account on day-to-day living while he concentrated on his work instead of getting a proper job. Now he was leaving it behind. He stared absently round for the last time.

Then he heard a sound in the corridor. The door came open. He stepped forward to meet the man who was pushing through, a box of what looked like books in his arms.

“Oh, hi,” said Jack. “You just moving in?”

“Yeah. You couldn’t help me with this could you? It’s coming apart.” The guy was Scottish.

“Sure.” Jack grabbed the bottom of the cardboard box and slid it out of his hands. “Nice to meet you. I hope you enjoy living here. I’ll get out of your way.”

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Five - Parts Six & Seven

 

Sam struggled with the paperback A to Z, trying to prop it on the steering wheel as he scanned the index pages without dropping his speed on the dual carriageway. He found the name of Jack’s road in Hounslow and flicked the pages back frantically to find it on the map.

The road was level, tall railings running down the centre to delineate the two carriageways. Crude London housing came up close to the road, only a pavement away. He shot past a speed camera. It flashed as it took a picture of his licence plate. He almost laughed.

The traffic was too thick. It was slowing him down, veering in and out of each lane and he couldn’t risk being stopped for speeding. He whipped the wheel round and dropped into the slow lane then accelerated past the jeep that had been hogging the road. They drummed their horn but he ignored it, twisting the wheel clockwise again to drift around another car up ahead.

Then he jerked on the brake.

There was a police car fifty yards down-carriageway in the slow lane, cruising along on the button of the speed limit. Sam checked the speedometer automatically: sixty; twenty miles over the limit. He pressed the brake and slowed. The jeep he’d undertaken swelled in his rear view and banged the horn again, they hadn’t seen the police car, but he didn’t accelerate.

He checked the speed gauge: forty. Up ahead the police car was keeping exactly the same pace, forming a moving wall; daring other drivers to go faster. Sam looked at the dash clock and cursed. There was no actual deadline here as such but there was no telling what Jack’s moves would be. He was guilty of murder. Catching him at his home address was unlikely and every moment that passed decreased the probability factor.

Sam gently pressed down on the accelerator with his eyes on the police car. The speedometer slid up to forty two. He started to pull forward. He pushed down another few millimetres. The distance between him and the police car started to narrow.

No sign they had noticed but he was risking everything. He was a wanted man. If they pulled him over he was in trouble. He raised his foot off the gas and the car dropped back. The gap between him and the police car widened.

But getting there quickly was crucial. It could be vital for all he knew. He gave the engine more fuel. The distance started to close: thirty yards now; twenty.

He kept his eyes on the car. The driver silhouette was becoming clear: only one man. Did that make it any better?

Fifteen yards. Twelve. Ten.

The road tilted downwards, the left hand side becoming low rent red brick factory units.

Five yards ahead now. The nose of Sam’s car came level with the rear end of the police car and he started to coast past.

The speedometer said forty eight. He’d crept up more than he realised. They were going to notice. He went to release the pressure on the foot pedal then realised the police were speeding too. They had to have been going forty five at least. That didn’t help him though. Speeding was speeding, even if the police were doing it too.

He came level with the driver, trying not to look across. In his peripheral vision the policeman turned to look at him, his blurred head becoming pale.

One second passed. Two. Three. Did he recognise Sam? Another second passed; then another.

Sam still didn’t turn, didn’t give him a chance for a frontal view for definite identification; then he looked ahead and smiled.

The policeman was still looking across at him. The strobe lights on the roof of the car came on, flashing blue. Sam let himself turn to look the cop in the eye; and winked.

The police car rammed hard into the back of a line of cars stopped at a feeder traffic light. The bonnet collapsed in on itself. The back wheels left the ground. The glass in every window shattered. The policeman crumpled up against the wheel, folding over on himself.

Sam’s car shot past down the open road in front of him with nothing to stop him reaching his destination. And now he did allow himself to laugh.

 

 

7

 

 

Jack sat on the back step of his lodging house in a rectangle of sunshine, scratching the little ginger cat behind its ears. His eyes were only half cracked. His eyelashes formed a misty veil over the grimy back alley that imbued the same kind of glow he tried to impart to his paintings.

Tick tock, time edged on toward the moment he could leave this trap behind and start his quest for real. He waited for the taxi to arrive, stroking this little cat and trying to feel at peace, however much the mounting tension of imagined forces closing in tried to imbue a sense of terror.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Five - Part Four & Five

 

Sam ran to his car, stubbed his fingers on the catch in his haste, threw the door open and jumped straight in. He was already lifting the clutch as he turned the key in the ignition.

The car shot forward, swerving out into the street. It smashed against a blue Audi parked on the other side, slicing paint right down its flank. There was a firework flicker of sparks before his car scraped clear with a thunk that shook the whole chassis.

He dropped to second, pressed his foot to the floor and jerked back in his seat when the turbo shot in. He didn’t change up again until the engine was roaring then he hit the accelerator down as far as it could go.

A corner came up to the right. Sam swung round it with as much momentum as he could, cursing that it slowed him, then changed down gear and punched it again.

 

 

5

 

 

Jack’s paintings were still intact, propped up against the brick wall beside the wheelie bin in the covered alley at the side of the house.

He lifted the first one, inspecting it for damage. It was the image of a woman standing on the side of a rain-drenched road, her children around her, staring upwards as the water soaked into her clothes. There was desperation in her eyes but a peace as well. It was clear that her predicament was hopeless from the way she was dressed, but the serenity in her expression was like that of an angel. He loved it. And it wasn’t damaged at all; none of them were really apart from a slight smudge or two of blur where water droplets had landed on the surface of the paint. That didn’t matter too much. He could touch them up when he had time.

He picked up the first three and took them inside, set them on the kitchen table and got the parcel tape and brown paper from the cupboard under the stairs. It wasn’t worth risking them being damaged further but he had to be quick. It was pure dumn luck he’d managed to get a cancellation ticket to San Francisco at such short notice and he had less than an hour to get there.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Five - Part Three

Jack strolled up to the front steps of his former abode with his hands in his pockets, whistling the theme tune to the science fiction TV puppet show, Stingray. He had always loved it as a child, watching it religiously every morning during the long school summer holidays. The opening music was the best part as the secret goodie base that looked like an innocent collection of office buildings folded back on itself, secret compartments opening up inside to the military installation below.

Stand by for action! Anything can happen in the next half hour!

Never were those words truer in his life than now, as he stood about to enter his old home. The plane ticket was booked at Heathrow. After a brief stop here it was straight to the airport to check in, then he was going to be taking to the skies, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean toward the United States.

He had committed a murder two days earlier and this house was still the metaphoric bear trap he had known it to be when he returned twenty four hours earlier. If anything, the spring on the trap was wound even tighter now, ready to snap shut instantly, and once it was closed it would never open up again. He paused, one foot hovering shakily over the first stone step, fear and what was probably a cross between self-preservation and common sense telling him to think twice.

Why risk it? Why not go straight to the airport and make a getaway? Every moment he was here was a moment the forces bearing down on him could close in. If he turned around and walked away then he was safe. But maybe that was the reason that he needed to go inside. Jack was an optimist, there was no denying that; he tried hard to look for the good in anything, however bleak. He tended to visualise what happened to him in a positive way then define his own reality around that. That way he lived the life he wanted to lead. It was what he had always done and it was what he was doing now… since the murder.

He’d managed to convince himself that Fate was keeping him free for a higher purpose, but he was no fool. He might define his own reality by choice but he knew enough to know there was always a chance he was wrong. That was why he was here. This was the last test that the course he was on was real. After he had left the country, any forces after him would be more than hard pressed to track him down. Here was their last and best chance to do it. If they caught him here he was wrong about everything and deserved whatever punishment was in store. If they didn’t then he would finally be sure.

And besides, he had unfinished business.

He walked up to the front door and let himself in.

“What the hell do you want?” snapped Jameson, Jack’s old landlord, nursing one of his massive hands in the other at the far end of the hall. “I’ve already got someone else moving into your place.”

Jack pushed the front door back against the wall of the hallway, letting the morning light spill in around him. “I left some things here yesterday Mr Jameson,” he said, “and I have an account to settle.”

“That pissing cat just raked me again,” said Jameson. He pointed to the scrawny ginger thing on the stairs with its wet and muddy fur. It was scowling.

Jack picked it up and it relaxed instantly, purring in his hands. “She’s great.”

“She’s a bitch.”

Jack dropped her back down. She curled round his legs. He reached into his back pocket for his wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

“More than you’ve got dipshit!”

Jack smiled. “I’m sorry I couldn’t pay before but I just came into some money. I can pay you now.” He started counting it out in twenties.

The door swung shut behind him and once again, the rusty, tetanus-riddled jaws of the trap quivered, but did not snap shut.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Five - Part Two

The following morning, as Jack was getting his wake-up call, Sam left his car and walked thirty yards down the road to the derelict house.

He always kept an eye on its current status. There were no arrangements being made for its resale or renovation: broken windows; rust everywhere; high hedge at the front shielding his activities from the street and the neighbours; red car with four flat tires in the drive, plants growing inside it, filling the dark interior. Fronds crept out through the splintered windscreen.

He slipped into the undergrowth to the right of the porch and made his way round to the back. The grass was wet and long. He paused, hand slipping inside his jacket. The grass was far too trodden down. Someone had been there recently and regularly.

The gun was loaded with a full clip.

He scanned the windows visible from where he was. A face: small, round, female: a child. She disappeared instantly.

Sam calculated probabilities then he finished making his way round as far as the back door. It was made of thin wood, painted green in the alcove of red brick, paint scratched. The padlock he’d put in place was gone. It was bent and broken to the right of the step in the weeds. The door wouldn’t open to the touch.

He raised his foot and kicked hard. It budged slightly. He whacked into it again and again. A child started screaming at the other side. Another joined in. Sam pounded the door, smashing his foot into it until whatever was on the other side had moved back enough to widen the opening. He forced his way through: kitchen without a cooker: plastic sheet covered table with an armchair dragged up to it that hadn’t been there when he last visited; three dirty plates; a boy, no more than eight, crying.

“Shut up,” said Sam.

The child stopped, glared at him, then continued. He moved through to the rest of the house.

In the hallway were two doors and a staircase. Rotten dampness filled the air. A woman appeared in the right hand doorway, the girl from the window at her thigh, a baby in her arms. She was in her early twenties; dressed in a purple outfit that showed dirt stains down the length of one side. She looked relieved and tense when she saw him. She eyed his clothes then she looked at his face. “We’re not doing any harm. Just give me a minute to get my things together.”

Sam walked straight past her and started up the stairs. “Keep out of my way. I don’t care if you stay. Suit yourself.” She wasn’t worth constructing The Lie over.

He got to the upstairs landing and walked straight through to the front bedroom: bay window, no bed, bare boards; a filthy brown Indian rug. He strode to the corner, pulling his penknife out. The floorboards were screwed down. He flipped out the screwdriver head and set to work.

Movement in the doorway: the little girl was watching. Her mother’s voice from down below: “You come down here now Kirsten! You keep away from him!” The girl didn’t move. She was staring, lips hanging half open. “Kirsten!”

Sam jammed the main blade of his knife between the boards and prised it up. He reached into the darkness and pulled out the miniature safe he had left there. The girl was over by the window. He stood up and took it to the mantelpiece.

Flicker of a police siren nearby. Sam tensed, and the girl did the same. He looked at her oddly. She had strange instincts for a child. He wondered briefly how long she had lived like this. Then he shook his head: irrelevant; focus.

The miniature safe was wrapped in black cloth inside a small sack. He removed these quickly and unlocked it. This was half of his most easily accessible emergency stash. He had never planned to need it. The girl continued to watch him, closer now than she’d come before. He didn’t bother to tell her to get lost. He counted through the cash, double-checking the amount then paused, and on a whim, unfolded a hundred pound note from the bundle and handed it to her. She took it but didn’t say a word. Sam looked at her a moment longer them pocketed the rest. There was enough to cover all mid-term eventualities.

Beneath the money at the bottom of the metal box was a collection of letters. He lifted them out, turning them over. He felt strange and queasy suddenly. He set them down on the mantelpiece.

The girl was still watching him quietly. “What are those?”

“Letters,” replied Sam. “They’re nothing. They’re from my sister.”

“Why did you keep them in there?”

He looked at her. He didn’t know why. He picked up the most recent one. It was strange to see Lucy’s handwriting now she was dead. The strokes were so narrow and tall, each word beautiful. Even the paper was crisp and pretty, faintly pink. He opened it right out, not really focusing on the words themselves.

“Are you okay?” said the girl.

Sam glanced down at her. “I’m fine. Be quiet.”

He put it back down and started to gather them up to take with him. Then he stopped.

“What is it?” asked the girl.

He picked up and scan-read the letter. The date was three weeks previously. Lucy was saying that she wouldn’t be staying at her house for the next few days. That she could be “reached at Jack’s.”

And there at the bottom was his address. The address of the man who murdered her.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Five - Part One

LONDON

 

 

Jack thought about the trap his house was now. It was the only place on earth he could be found easily. He was right not to be going back there. Here at an airport hotel he was safely hidden away. But on the other hand, there was unfinished business he was neglecting. He couldn’t escape the feeling that he needed to go back one last time.

The woman behind the counter revolved round from the mail slots and erupted in pleasure at seeing him. There was a quiet reserve in this practised politeness but false though it was, it was spellbinding. Her hair was very dark and sleek, cut halfway down her neck and keeping close to the contours of her head; her eyes were overlarge and adorable. Jack met her smile and she brightened further. “May I help you sir?”

“Yes please. I want to have a room and I’ve just come into a very large sum of money.”

The receptionist tilted her head to the right. “Of course.”

There was more hard cash right now at the very edge of his grasp than he had ever felt beneath his fingertips. It was time to begin spending it. The hotel was the most expensive he could get with easy access to the airport. The lobby alone was vast and open and deliciously hot after the streets outside and his long walk; there was so much space and beauty. It was gorgeous. He was led up to his room near the top of the building by a young porter. He took it as slowly as he could, allowing the objects around him to take on a different form in his perceptions. This wasn’t reality anymore, they were phantasmal images from his dreams and his imaginings made into something he could reach out and touch.

He couldn’t reconcile with it, even with it surrounding him. As he had been told of the inheritance it had felt separate from where he was standing. It had been as though he were watching another person’s life through thick glass. But here, now; it should have been different; and it was; it was something else entirely. There were sensations here that he had never felt, as though unused parts of his brain were opening up and becoming active for the first time. It was a vision: all of this, so unlike anything that had come before. It wasn’t just the sensation of walking through wealth and beauty, that could be experienced in the Tate Gallery; but  the realisation that all of this was to be a part of the rest of his life. Everything was different now and would be for every single day that followed.

When he was finally left alone he stood for minute after minute, just looking. His rooms were magnificent. He lay out on the enormous bed; he ran water into the vast old-fashioned stand-alone bathtub and lay beneath the surface of the bubbles, holding his breath until he couldn’t do it anymore. Finally hungry, he ordered platefuls of food through room service, then he got drunk on white wine, collapsing with his back against the bed to watch a film on the vast but cleverly concealed television set.

It was the dark horror of Event Horizon, a tale of space explorers making contact with the horrors of Hell. Lying there amidst all that wealth, barely conscious from the drink, its lurid and disturbing images took hold of him and gripped his mind in a way they never could have otherwise. The film was a rapid strobe of deliciously gratuitous violence. It was a creation designed for a separate level of consciousness.

This was his life now: this wealth; this pleasure; this beauty.

But the horror was part of it too. That was for sure.

The horror was part of it too.

When the film finished he lay in the dark staring upwards for a long time. Finally he sat up on the edge of his bed and reached for the light.

It was no good. The nagging in the back of his mind was insistent. He couldn’t just forget about it: the unfinished business back at his flat. He was leaving the country in the morning. This was his last chance to go back before he left. He picked up the phone and dialled.

“Reception. Can I help you?”

“Hi. This is Jack Catholic in room 801.”

“Yes Mr Catholic.”

“I have a flight in the morning but I want to pop back to my flat beforehand. I was wondering if I could get a slightly earlier wake-up call.”