Michael Carr peered worriedly at himself in the mirror. He found it hard to get used to his new image. His thick dark hair had been cropped to within half an inch of his skull and, together with his eyebrows, bleached almost white. But was it enough to avoid recognition? It was all very well for his mother to keep telling him no one would recognize him, but he didn’t have her confidence. He just wished she’d been able to change his appearance as much as she’d changed her own. From the dowdy, care-worn, grey-haired woman who had first gone to Paget’s house, she’d become a handsome black-haired businesswoman, smartly dressed and looking ten years younger.
“Are you sure they won’t recognize me, Mum?” he asked for perhaps the tenth time in the past few days. “I mean, my face is still the same.”
Mary Carr bit back a sharp reply. “But it’s not, Michael,” she assured him soothingly. “You don’t look a bit like the picture in the
paper. You’ve changed a lot since that picture was taken, and they’ll be looking for someone with dark red curly hair, not a blond with a close crop.”
“But the eyebrows—they look … well, they don’t look real.”
“I could hardly leave them dark, now could I, Michael? Besides, no one pays any attention to things like that these days.”
“But I still don’t think—”
His mother came to the end of her patience. “For God’s sake, Michael, will you stop going on and on about it? That’s all you’ve done since this began. You were keen enough at the start. Anyone would think you didn’t care about what happened to your sister.”
“I do, Mum, honestly I do, but I didn’t expect it to be like this. So much killing, and now we’re in the papers and on telly and everybody’s looking for us.”
“No they are not! How many times do I have to tell you, Michael? They are looking for those two people in the photographs, and we don’t look a bit like them. They are looking for a mother and son travelling together, not for two single people living in different motels. And they have no idea what car to look for now.”
God! he could be thick at times.
Michael shrugged sheepishly. “It’s just that I don’t want to go to prison like you did, Mum,” he muttered. “That place gave me the creeps when I used to come to see you.”
What the hell do you think it did for me, Michael? You’d be even more worried if I told you I don’t give a shit what happens to either of us as long as we finish what we set out to do. I’m finished anyway, and you never did have a future.
Mary Carr put her hands on her son’s shoulders and turned him to face her. “It will be over soon,” she said soothingly. “There’s just one more thing to do, and then it’s finished. Do I really have to remind you that I spent ten long years in that prison for something I didn’t do? Donald was such a gentle man. Even if what they said about him at the trial was true—which it wasn’t—I could never have hurt him, let alone kill him. He loved me, Michael, I know he did,
and I loved him. But Gillanne was my life, Michael—as well as you, of course—and they tore us apart.” Her voice hardened. “They destroyed our lives, Michael; they destroyed Gillanne, and I promised myself that they would pay for that, and keep on paying for the rest of their miserable lives.”
Mary’s eyes bored into those of her son, and her fingers dug into his arms. “They killed her, Michael. Always remember that. And I hold every single one of them responsible for her death. It’s your duty to help me do what must be done. Do you understand, Michael?” He winced as her fingers dug in deeper.
He nodded wordlessly and turned away, afraid that if he faced her a moment longer he might blurt out the truth. Don’t ever tell her, Michael. Promise me you’ll never tell. Cross your heart and promise!
He’d crossed his heart and promised. Gillanne always knew what was best, and he’d kept his word. He just wished … He pushed the thought away. What was the point of wishing for something that could never be? Gillanne had always been his mother’s favourite, but it had never occurred to him to resent it. He’d adored his sister. Even though she was younger by more than a year, she’d always been there for him; always taken care of him, helped and defended him when others became impatient with him for being slow or making a mistake. He’d loved his sister, and cried for days when she died.
He just wished his mother would look at him the way she’d always looked at Gilly.
He’d thought things would be different when his mother asked him to help make those responsible for Gillanne’s death pay for what they’d done. He’d felt such a glow of pride. This was his chance to earn her respect, and get back at those who had driven his sister to her death. Perhaps, then, his mother would look at him the way she’d looked at his sister all those years ago.
But it hadn’t happened, and it was his own fault, because no matter how hard he tried, he could never seem to get it right. The trouble was, he couldn’t stand the sight of blood, and his mother had
had to do the girl in Bournemouth, and the two women in Reading and Richmond on her own, with him standing by with the car. But she’d insisted that he help her with Paget.
She’d been really pissed off about Paget. “The man has no wife, no parents, no girlfriend,” she’d said disgustedly, “so I’ll just have to cut the bastard’s throat and watch him die. But I’ll need you to take him from behind, so don’t let me down, Michael. Make sure you get it right this time. And for Christ’s sake, don’t be sick!”
It had been cold in that workers’ hut, and they’d had to wait so long that he’d wanted to give up. But not his mother. She’d made him wait it out. But his fingers were so numb with cold by the time Paget arrived that he’d had trouble gripping the short length of pipe.
He’d got it almost right. He’d come up behind the man and hit him exactly as his mother had told him—except he didn’t have quite the right grip on the weapon, and the man had moved his head as he was about to strike. Still, he had gone down.
But then they’d had to run when the police car came round the corner. His mother had raged for days when she learned that Paget had survived, and she blamed him for the failure, saying he hadn’t held the man still while she slashed his throat.
They’d driven south that same night, and he’d thought that now, at least, they would have to lie low for a while, because the police would be out in force trying to track them down. But he was wrong—as usual, he thought bitterly.
His mother had planned to do Gerald White during the Christmas holidays. “Give his mother a nice Christmas present,” she’d said. “All nice and neat on her doorstep. See how she likes that when she wakes up in the morning.” But, still fuming over the bungled job on Paget, she’d decided she couldn’t wait for Christmas. “We’ll have to let things cool down a bit before we go back and finish Paget,” she told Michael, “but we might as well be doing something useful while we’re waiting. We’ll do White now.”
Michael’s stomach churned as he relived the awful scene. He’d vomited all over the road, and his legs had turned to water when his
mother had ordered him to help carry the boy to the house. They’d ended up dragging him most of the way, and Michael felt his face grow hot with shame for being so weak and useless and letting his mother down.
Since then, he’d done everything she’d told him to do; watched the house, reported to her everyone who called there; followed the woman who had driven Paget home from the hospital, then followed her again after she’d stopped to ask if he needed help. He’d been scared when she spoke to him. He thought she was going to ask why he had been following her, but instead she’d asked if she could help him. She was nice, but when he told his mother that, she’d smiled for the first time in days.
“We’ll keep an eye on her,” she’d said. “Perhaps the good Lord is interested in justice after all, and we’ll have another chance. If this woman means anything to Paget at all …” She left the rest unsaid, but her eyes glittered, and Michael wished he’d never told her.
G. Lovett was her name. It hadn’t been hard to find out once he’d tracked her to where she lived in Friars Walk. She was beautiful, and he couldn’t help thinking that Gillanne would have looked very much like her, had she lived. He didn’t know the woman’s first name, but it was curious that she should have the same initial as Gillanne. Not very likely her name would be the same, though; he’d never heard of anyone else called Gillanne.
They’d followed her out to Paget’s house a couple of times, but it wasn’t until Christmas Day that they had seen the two of them walking arm in arm.
“Beautiful,” his mother had crooned softly when she returned to the car. She laughed, her voice grating even more than usual. “They make a lovely couple, Michael. I think the Lord’s been kind to us.”
She’d followed them as far as the bridge, walked past them as they sat on the wooden seat, before returning to the car. “I don’t think he would recognize me now, not after all these years,” she’d said, “but there’s no point in taking chances, is there? So go down the path and keep an eye on them. But be careful, Michael. As soon as
they show signs of coming back up to the road, get back here quickly and we’ll follow them.”
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to do what she asked, but the river valley was such a breathtaking sight that he’d become engrossed in the frosty scene. Almost too late, he’d looked up to see Paget and the woman coming toward him. They couldn’t have been more than fifty feet away, and he’d panicked. He didn’t think they’d seen him—too absorbed in each other to notice—but he couldn’t be sure. So he’d scrambled up the bank to get off the path, but when he’d looked back he thought he saw the woman watching him. He’d broken into a run crossing the road to where his mother waited in the car.
Michael cringed inwardly as he recalled the way she’d looked at him as he scrambled into the car and started the engine. She hadn’t said a word, but she didn’t need to; he knew what she was thinking. He’d failed her once again.