All the furniture cover business premises were torched next. Then two of the clubs. Then one of the snooker halls. By the weekend, Harlan’s manor was decimated and everyone around him was nervous, backing away because he was knocking heads together. He shrieked at anyone who came near. When the police turned up, asking questions about the helicopter crash – as the AAI men had said they would – and about the destruction of his businesses, he sat through it, answered convincingly, then the instant they were gone he roared around the place, throwing priceless vases into mirrors, swiping bone china off the dining table, trying somehow to work off the murderous rage that was building up in him at the sheer injustice of it all.
His crew, one by one, faded away. With his loss of control of the manor came a loss of control of himself, making him dangerous. Fucker would as soon shoot you as look at you right now. His men weren’t stupid: after one of them answered back and found himself battered to a pulp, they made themselves scarce.
Harlan left the Tower Bridge apartment and drove the Porsche out to the Essex place, passing the empty gatehouse where once she had lived, but like everyone else in his life she hadn’t seen fit to be nice to him. He thundered up the drive, screeching to a halt outside the main house. He’d half expected to find it all gone up in flames, just like everything else, but there it was – solid, enduring. His house. Not Charlie’s. His. Deep breaths, deep breaths. It was all going to iron out, he knew it. Javier would come to meet him, they would talk, it would all be OK.
Yeah.
It would.
Harlan got out of the car and looked around at his kingdom. His. Not Charlie’s.
You’re not the man your father was . . .
Those words had tapped straight into all his insecurities. Because he wasn’t Charlie’s son, it was true; he was the son of some random idiot who had screwed his drugged-up mother for a couple of quid – and he had been the result.
He stared around at the grounds. Empty now, the grass getting a bit long. Nobody about. No gardeners, nobody on the gate. Nobody on the door of the house. Everyone had scarpered. Bad news travelled fast, and the bad news was, Harlan was ready to kill the next bastard who said a word to him about anything. He wondered about Nipper, about Ludo. They’d been his closest, his best. Now where the fuck were they? Nobody knew. Others had searched for any sign of them; they hadn’t been found.
They’d let him down. Just like everyone did.
He went into the house and closed the door behind him.
Inside, it was dead silent.
No Charlie.
No Nula.
No Milly.
Only him. He liked it like that. And when he met Javier at the hotel, he would put everything right. Start to rebuild. Yes. He could do it. He was confident that all would be well.