Only a couple of months since they’d buried Beezer, and here they were again. But not burying, not this time. Cremating. ‘Poor fuckers were cremated anyway,’ said Ludo loudly, and Harlan told him to shut the fuck up and show some respect, but he was smiling – smiling – as he did so.
At the local crem they all assembled and watched the red gold-braided curtains slowly draw apart, saw the coffins bearing the already burnt remains of Charlie and Nula Stone slide away into the waiting furnace. Then with horrible finality the curtains closing again. And that was it. Finished. They were gone.
Belle glanced across and there was Harlan in his black designer suit, his arm around Milly, who was shaking with sobs, her face drowning in tears.
Belle looked at her own father – Charlie’s best friend since childhood – standing there like a rock, grim-faced but not crying because he was old school, he was tough; Terry Barton hardly ever cried. Then her mind went back and she saw it all again – the helicopter whirling out of control and plummeting into the lake at Charlie’s house on what should have been such a great day for the Stones. It sent a chill right through her, every time she allowed her mind to replay it. She tried not to. But somehow she couldn’t seem to make it stop.
Without Charlie Stone, without his huge appetite for life and all that it had to offer, there was a void in all their lives. The vicar had said how Terry had loved to sit with Charlie in Cooks’ Pie and Eel shop in the Cut next door to the Young Vic, watching as Charlie devoured four portions of pie and mash and then finding room for a trip to the boozer. They’d all tried to laugh at that. With Charlie, everything had been excess. Eating, drinking – everything. His lust for life was monumental. And money. He wanted stacks of money – and he wasn’t choosy, Belle now knew, about the way it was earned.
Without Charlie Stone, her dad seemed bereft and troubled. Terry spent hours on the phone, and then there were whispered conversations in the kitchen between him and Mum, conversations that abruptly ceased when Belle came into earshot. Everything seemed tense and unreal. Because now of course Harlan was in control. His new young bloods were ever-so-gently shoving Terry and the older men aside, forcing them out of the business, off the manor.
Since the crash and leading up to the double funeral, Belle had been watching Harlan. She thought that he seemed to have grown, somehow. Following the awful deaths of his adoptive parents, he seemed to blossom, to expand, to relax out into every corner of Charlie’s manor and make it his.
Now she knew about the secret side of the business that the Stones and the Bartons were involved in, she wondered how she could have been so naive for so long. A furniture manufacturer’s, paying for superyachts, million-pound cars and helicopters? If she really thought about it, it was a stretch. But add in a drugs enterprise with the high addiction rate that crack cocaine delivered, and the whole thing started to make sense.
Charlie had been a drugs baron.
And so – she didn’t want to believe it, but she had to – her dad had been party to it all.
When the ceremony was over and they were back at the big house, everyone swilling back drinks and eating sandwiches, Belle went over to Milly, who was huddled on the sofa, staring into space.
‘Can I get you anything, Mills?’ she asked her, sitting down beside her.
Milly looked up as if surprised to find her there. She shook her head.
‘This is the worst day,’ said Belle. She squeezed Milly’s hand. ‘It’s awful. I know it is. But after today, things will be easier.’
Milly nodded, saying nothing.
‘Mills . . .’ Belle hesitated. Milly was grief-stricken and she was going to add to it. Unless Milly already somehow guessed the truth . . . ?
‘You know when I was talking to you about going into the Clacton accounts office and asking for a job?’ began Belle.
Milly looked at Belle. ‘Of course I do. You said you wouldn’t ask Terry or Dad directly because they’d only say what the hell did you want a job for, didn’t they already give you enough?’ She sniffed and dredged up the ghost of a smile from somewhere. ‘You were right, too.’
‘Well, I went there.’
‘You did?’ Milly’s attention sharpened. ‘What was it, a complete disaster?’
‘No, it was . . . it was bloody odd, Mills. It was a house in a row of houses, and there were people working in there, and . . .’ She paused. She didn’t want to say it. But she had to. ‘I think – no, I’m sure – that they were manufacturing drugs.’
Now Milly was fully focused on Belle. ‘Are you mad?’
‘No. I saw it. And I checked it out. They were making crack cocaine.’
‘Oh come on.’
‘I talked with Einstein. He told me. After all, what have we ever known about the business our dads are in? Precisely nothing. What have we ever seen from these factories? Nothing. What has anyone ever told us about all these wood and fabric “imports”? Nothing. We’ve been kept in ignorance. Fed bullshit.’
Milly’s pallor was almost grey against her shapeless black funeral dress.
‘I spoke to Mum about it. She went apeshit that I’d been there. She knew about it. So does my dad. And your parents did too. And Harlan. They’ve probably been running the whole thing for years, under the cover of the furnishings business. Mills – I didn’t want to tell you this, but I had to,’ said Belle.
‘You really think my dad was dealing drugs?’
Belle shook her head. ‘It’s more than that, Mills. Dealing? No. That’s the thin end of this. I think your dad was way above that sort of thing. What about Javier from Colombia, that bloke he’s been trying to cosy you up with? There are families out there who make a fortune from drugs and Javier is probably from one of those. He wasn’t doing anything with furnishings, that was all a blind. There are cartels, they’re hugely wealthy people. I think your dad was in tight with them. And he wanted to get in even tighter, which is where you came in. Keep Javier firmly onside and Charlie could get a fortune beyond his wildest dreams.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Milly, shocked.
‘Neither did I, at first. But now? I do.’
‘What are you going to do, Belle?’
‘Talk to my mum again. And my dad. See what they have to say.’
Milly looked at her friend. ‘More bullshit?’
‘Probably.’ Belle’s eyes drifted over to Harlan, standing there chatting, laughing. Charlie and Nula were dead, and he looked like he was at a Christmas party, having fun. It was obscene.
‘You know,’ said Milly quietly, ‘my mum was a little bit crazy, but I tell you Belle, this is where crazy really starts. When they let Harlan into their lives? They let a demon in. A fucking monster.’
Milly surged to her feet and was gone, out into the hall, shoving past the mourners, running off up the stairs.
‘She OK?’ asked Nipper, coming over to Belle.
Belle stared at him with dislike. Harlan’s toy poodle. ‘No. Not at all.’
He sat down on the couch. Oh fuck off, thought Belle. But he didn’t.
‘How do you think it happened? The accident?’ she asked Nipper.
He shrugged. ‘Helicopters are dangerous things,’ he said. ‘The servicing has to be top-notch. You hear of accidents. All the time.’
‘Harlan told me it takes months for the Air Accident people to sift through it all. To find out what really happened.’
‘Yeah. He’s right. The AAIB are bloody thorough. But dead’s dead, ain’t that so? It won’t bring either one of them back, no matter what they find.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget that day,’ said Belle.
It was so vivid in her mind, even now, over a month after the event. The panic, the shouting, the wail of the fire engines and the police cars, the ambulances to take the bodies away to the morgue – and then in the days after that, the Air Accident crew came in with heavy lifting gear, disassembling the wreckage that remained and taking it off to their headquarters in Farnborough.
Belle stared at Nipper, sitting there. He was watching Harlan, just like she was. ‘You really think this was an accident?’ she said.
Nipper’s eyes swivelled to her face. ‘What are you saying?’
Harlan’s attitude was so relaxed, so in charge. He looked her way and half-smiled, and she felt a shiver go right through her.
‘It suits him,’ she said. ‘Them being gone. Out of the way.’
‘Don’t let him hear you say that,’ Nipper said, giving her a steely-eyed look.
‘I’m not scared of him,’ said Belle. She nodded toward Ludo, who was lounging against the wall beside the door. ‘Or any of you pet apes he likes to hang around with.’
Then she thought of Harlan chasing her down the road in his Porsche, and his parting words to her, and suddenly she wasn’t so sure.
‘Well,’ said Nipper, standing up, ‘you fucking well ought to be.’