Geldof wheezed out the droplets he’d inhaled at the revelation his mum was still alive and stared at his grandfather with eyes so wide his contact lenses crinkled.
“Zounds!” he said once he’d recovered his breath.
His grandfather gave up trying to wipe off the pink stains. “Still playing with medieval expletives, I see. Zounds, indeed. I didn’t want to tell you until now so you wouldn’t get your hopes up, but when I sent in my team to sprinkle your father’s ashes over the house, I had them go to the supermarket to look for your mother’s body so we could do the same. They found a trail of blood leading from an aisle to a walk-in freezer. No body.”
“But Terry said he saw the pigs kill her.”
“I spoke to him. He was perched on top of a shelf and only had a few seconds to look before he fell and the pigs began chasing him. He didn’t have time to take a pulse. He thought she was dead, but she must have just been badly wounded. Your mother is a tough woman, Geldof. You know that better than anyone.”
“Why didn’t she come back to the house? We were there for at least another day.”
Geldof knew he was trying to pick holes in the theory; not because he didn’t want her to be alive, but because he wasn’t ready to believe it. While he hadn’t come to terms with her death or his inability to say farewell, to have her resurrected so abruptly freaked the shit out of him. It seemed too much like a far-fetched plot from the cheap South American soap opera the housekeeper watched on her lunch break. Any minute now he would probably discover he had a moustachioed evil twin he didn’t know about.
“Maybe her wounds were too severe to move immediately,” his grandfather said. “Or maybe she had to wait for the pigs to leave. All I knew was that there was no body. So I started looking around.”
“You mean you’ve found her?” Geldof said, aware his voice was rising so quickly in pitch it would soon only be audible to dogs.
“Your mother didn’t know, but I knew exactly where she was after she ran off with you and that washed-up soldier husband of hers. I kept tabs on her movements and known associates, looking for some opportunity to either reconcile the family or, in the worst-case scenario, have her arrested so I could claim custody of you.”
“You would have done that?”
“She named you after that awful Irishman. That alone almost made the case for her parental rights to be revoked.”
Fair point, Geldof thought. Even though he’d ditched his long-standing plans to change his name after the death of his parents, the reaction of others when he told them what he was called still brought choking embarrassment.
“And then filling your head with all that woolly nonsense,” his grandfather continued. “I loved your mother, and I love her still, but she was a principled fool. She was making you weak, my boy. There’s no room in this world for the weak.”
Geldof frowned. He’d had months to think about his relationship with his mum. She hadn’t made him weak; that was entirely his own doing. She was one of the strongest people he’d ever met and had only being trying to transmit this strength and moral certitude to him. Yes, it had been a spectacular pain in the arse, but the clear-eyed distance the final absence of death brought allowed him to see past his teenage resistance and appreciate her actions.
“That’s not fair,” he said. “Mum was a good woman.”
The old man rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. You’re far too intelligent to make the mistake of idealizing the dead.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. Everybody does it. When somebody gets knocked over or has a heart attack, the obituary piece is all sweetness and light. Nobody ever writes, ‘John was a shiftless, odious toad who was too fond of cheap lager, slapped his wife around, and smelled like ripe feces. We’re glad he’s dead.’ Even if it’s true.”
“Well, she’s not dead, is she?”
“Not for the last five minutes, as far as you’re concerned. Anyway, back to the point. She was aligned with all kinds of crazy people: mystics, peace campaigners, would-be eco-terrorists. ‘Beardy-weirdies,’ I believe they are referred to in the common parlance. These people had hideouts across the country, so I had them investigated.”
“But the country is full of infected, not to mention the fact that anybody who tries to leave gets filled full of lead. You can’t just wander in and poke about.”
“Correct. But, with enough resources at one’s disposal, you can get your hands on any satellite image.”
Geldof, already irritated with the questioning of his new image of his mum, was growing frustrated at his grandfather’s long-winded approach. It was so typical of him: he always had to give a lead-up that showed how rich, powerful, and resourceful he was. The better Geldof got to know him, the more he understood why Fanny had spirited the family away. “Just tell me where she is.”
“I’m getting to that. At one of the locations on my list, a remote camp up in Scotland, the satellite images showed people living there. Quite a few people actually. One of them—a very large man with a propensity for tie-dye who is a known associate of my daughter—was recognizable from the shots. The resolution wasn’t high enough, so I had some friends in the military send a drone over to take some better pictures.” He reached into his valise and placed an envelope on the table. “I warn you, it’s not pretty.”
Geldof slid out the first picture and quickly put it down, tears brimming in his eyes. He’d only caught a glimpse of the hollow, scarred face and cropped hair, but he knew it was his mum. The pigs may not have killed her, but they’d destroyed her poor face. He took a minute to compose himself, unsure whether the tears were a result of how damaged she looked or having proof that she was still alive. “What’s she doing up there?”
“That I’m not sure of, but I assume doing what she does best. Surviving. Resisting. It appears to be a commune of some sort: one can only presume immune or uninfected from the way they’re hiding out.”
Uninfected. That’s when it hit him: he might get to see her again, might get to say what he should have said instead of being so immature and contrary, might get to erase the distance that had grown between them down the years until it became what he’d believed was the impassable chasm of death.
“If she doesn’t have the virus, we can get her out,” he said, his irritation forgotten in a sudden burst of hope. “We have to get her out.”
His grandfather raised an eyebrow in what may have been a gesture of approval. “I concur.”
“You can send the people you hired to look for Mum’s body, right?”
“Alas, no. They got killed before they could get out again. It was all very messy. That’s why I stuck to air-based surveillance afterward until I could be sure your mum was alive. However, I happen to know some other gentlemen who may be prepared to undertake such a mission for the right kind of money.”
“What sort of gentlemen?”
“They’re a mixed bunch, led by a very capable South African chap. I used them when I was having a slight problem with a West African president who wouldn’t cooperate with my plans for expanding my coffee plantations.”
“You mean lawyers? How’s that going to help? Are they going to parachute in with their black umbrellas and smuggle Mum out in a giant briefcase?”
His grandfather twiddled his moustache. Geldof was still getting used to his signals, so he wasn’t sure whether it was an evil genius twiddle or an awkward confession twiddle. It was only when his grandfather gave the chops a final twang and bared his white and even false teeth that Geldof figured it was the former. “You have a lot to learn, my boy. I mean mercenaries.”
Geldof’s mouth dropped open. “You organized a coup?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘organized.’ ‘Funded’ would be more apposite.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“Not if you don’t get caught. Some would call it immoral. I console myself with the fact that he was a very bad man that nobody missed when he was deposed. I must hasten to add he wasn’t killed. It was all relatively bloodless.”
“Relative to what?”
Grandfather Carstairs looked at Geldof, his eyes devoid of any remorse. “Relative to other coups in which more people died.”
This man, whose blood flowed through Geldof’s veins, had killed in the name of profit. Now Geldof understood why his mum had been such a relentless campaigner: her father was a heartless blackguard. Geldof hid his disgust behind a large swig of iced tea, pretending to grimace at the tartness. Now was not the time to reveal how he felt. It was clear that he needed his grandfather and the men he could command to see his mum again. He couldn’t let emotion get in the way—although his automatic moral outrage revealed just how much of his mum’s teachings had seeped through his defenses. He felt a burst of closeness to the maddening woman that only increased his desire to see her again.
“Can you call them?” he said.
“They prefer to do business face-to-face,” his grandfather said, apparently unaware of Geldof’s reaction. “It’s a trust and don’t-get-caught-talking-over-the-phone thing.”
“So you’ll have to go see them?”
“No,” his grandfather said, his eyes crinkling. “You will.”
Geldof almost laughed. “Me? What do I know about negotiating with mercenaries?”
His grandfather leaned forward and slapped the table. His voice became low and hard. “When I was your age, I was well on my way to earning my first million. You, on the other hand, mooch around this villa on my dollar feeling sorry for yourself. It’s time to earn your keep.”
“But…”
“No buts. You are my sole male heir, and I want you to take over my business one day. I need to know you’re up to the job. Are you?”
And there, finally, was the expectation. Admittedly, being asked to prove himself by hiring a team of mercenaries wasn’t the same as attending business school, but it amounted to much the same thing. Geldof swallowed his desire to tell this horrendous old man where to stick it. His mum—unexpectedly, amazingly, and wonderfully alive—was still in peril. Regardless of his resistance to becoming a business tycoon and his growing disdain for his grandfather, he needed to play along until she was free. “I think so.”
“Don’t think. Know. To succeed, you’re going to have to deal with some bad men, and these men are just about as bad as they come. I need to know that you will do whatever it takes to get the job done. The job in this case is saving your mother’s life.”
Geldof forced himself to meet his grandfather’s unwavering gaze, imagining the moment when he would unflinchingly kiss his mum’s wounds and make it all better. “Where do I need to go?”
The old man leaned back, reverting to what Geldof now understood was a studied, and very misleading, image of a fragile old man. “Nairobi.”
After a moment’s silence, Geldof said, “Sorry, where’s that exactly?”
His grandfather sighed. “Given your name, I would have thought you would know. Africa. Kenya, to be precise. I’ll see if I can set the meeting up for a few days from now. We need to move fast. It’s looking increasingly like they’re going to finally get around to bombing Britain, and I’d hate for something to happen to her now that we’ve found her.”
As his grandfather called his assistant over and instructed him to set up a meeting and book tickets, Geldof walked to the edge of the balcony, keeping his back to the table so his face would not betray him. Once he’d hired the men to get his mum out, he was done here. His grandfather was right that he’d been floating and feeling sorry for himself. This turn of events had broken his paralysis. There was no way he was going to follow in the footsteps of such a man, and staying on in the villa would give the impression that was what he wanted to do. Plus, he was pretty sure his mum would refuse to come here and see her father again. Once Fanny was out of Britain, another disappearing act would definitely be in order.