Chapter 41
‘Holly,’ Charles barked.
‘Dad?’ Holly said.
‘Take the gun from him.’
‘From Patrick?’
‘Who else do you think I mean?’
She took a step towards me. She was so used to doing what her dad asked it was almost an automatic reaction. But then she paused.
‘Don’t do this, Holly,’ I said.
Charles’s voice was smooth. ‘It’s for your own safety, Patrick. We’re going to calm everything down. Sort all of this out.’
Still, Holly hesitated. I met her eye, shook my head. She looked agonized. Unable to choose between us.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Miranda said. ‘Give it to me.’
She snatched it before I had a chance to react. What was I going to do, anyway? Shoot her? I had no intention of using the gun. Maybe, too, there was a part of me that didn’t want Holly to have to decide. Maybe I was afraid of which side she would pick.
‘Good girl,’ Charles said to Miranda. ‘You keep hold of it for a moment and stand beside me. Holly, you come here, too.’
This time, she did as he commanded. If he had been working out downstairs, he had changed out of his gym clothes and was wearing jeans and a black sweater, with trainers on his feet. I wondered how long he’d been standing on the other side of the door; how much he’d heard.
It was interesting that he’d chosen to enter the room as Zack was about to tell us about the decision to kill Samir.
‘You sanctioned it, didn’t you?’ I said to him. ‘Maybe more than that. You told Zack to murder Samir. You were so desperate for that app.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
But I could see it on his face, and on Zack’s. He was lying.
‘Dad,’ Miranda said. ‘The girl.’
On the ground, Zack was still kneeling on Avril’s back, and she was groaning like she was in as much pain as Zack obviously still was. Sweat continued to pour off him. I could smell it: acrid and sharp.
‘All right. Zack,’ Charles said, ‘let her up.’
Zack got off Avril and stepped aside. She got to her feet, wincing, and Zack said to Charles, ‘I need to get to a doctor.’ As he said this, he grabbed the first-aid kit and tipped the contents out, tearing open the packet of painkillers and washing three down with the whisky, drinking it straight from the bottle again.
Finally, he approached Miranda and gestured for her to hand over the rifle.
He held it in his good arm, looking very much like he wanted to shoot Avril.
But he didn’t point the gun at her. He left that to Charles.
‘Sit down,’ Charles said to Avril, and, tentatively, she sat on the sofa. ‘Okay, good. We’re going to take a minute to think about this.’ Charles’s voice was relaxed. ‘So Zack killed Samir, did he? He confessed to that? In front of all of you?’
‘He murdered my mum, too.’ Avril still sounded brave. Defiant in the face of this man who had a gun trained on her.
Charles shook his head at Zack as if he were deeply disappointed in him. A parent who’s been called in to school to find out his son has been up to no good. It was all an act. Surely everyone here could see that. He had told Zack to kill Samir, or at least gone along with the plan.
Zack didn’t speak up. He was so loyal to Charles it appeared he was willing to take the blame for all of it.
‘Oh, Zack. I’m so disappointed in you.’
‘This is such bullshit,’ I said. ‘Holly, he’s lying. Your dad was involved in Samir’s murder. I bet he told him to kill Morag, too. All they care about is that fucking app. About all the money it’s going to make them.’
Charles shook his head, as if he felt sorry for me.
‘I care about family,’ Charles said. ‘And I would have happily welcomed you in as well, Patrick. It’s such a shame.’
‘What are you talking about now?’
Charles turned to Holly. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know you like him. But I need to shut this down now. All of it. And he’s useful. It’s good that you brought him here.’
I backed away. It wasn’t hard to figure out what he meant by useful.
Charles was going to tell everyone that I had confessed to murdering Morag, and probably Lewis, too.
Zack would back him up, obviously, and I had no doubt Miranda would go along with it.
The police already thought I was guilty and, after I’d escaped from custody, they wouldn’t need much persuasion to believe Charles’s version of events.
But what about Holly? Surely she wouldn’t go along with this.
I looked at her, but she refused to meet my eye. She must have realized what her dad was planning, and was still torn. Me. Or her family. Because she must also have known that her dad was lying. That he was involved in Samir’s death, and therefore Morag’s.
There was one other thing. If he could persuade Holly to side with him, what was he going to do with Avril?
He was going to have to kill her, too.
All this time, she had been watching, her eyes darting between Charles and Zack and me. If she was as clever as I thought she was, she would have figured it out. She knew they were going to lie, cover everything up. But for that to work, she had to die.
She threw herself at Zack.
He wasn’t expecting it, especially when she went straight for his wounded arm, punching him where she had shot him.
He screamed and clutched at his shoulder, dropping the rifle. She grabbed it. Across the room, Charles raised his gun for a second, then, as Avril pointed the rifle at him, he ducked – behind Miranda.
There wasn’t time for Miranda or anyone else to react, because Zack roared at Avril and tried to grab the gun back from her.
She evaded his grasp and squeezed the trigger. The first shot went wild, striking the wall.
He tried to move, but he was too slow. She pulled the trigger again, and shot him in the chest.
I expected Miranda to scream; for Holly to cry out, too. But Miranda was frozen, staring at her husband’s body with her mouth open. Holly had taken a step backwards, almost colliding with the cabinet. She seemed to have gone into a dissociative state, her face blank. I needed her to come back.
Charles emerged from behind Miranda and approached Avril, a smile on his face.
‘These rifles only hold three bullets, don’t they, sweetheart? You’re out.’
I could see from her expression that he was right. She dropped the gun and slumped on to the sofa, clenching her fists and breathing heavily.
Zack’s body lay still near her feet.
Charles smiled. He didn’t seem to care that Zack, the son he’d never had, was dead.
He had gone fully into problem-solving mode.
He addressed Holly and Miranda. ‘My girls. Everything that’s gone wrong for us, I’ve fixed it.
Elizabeth dying. All that nonsense from 2006.
Your affair and the divorce, Miranda. Your drug problems, Holly.
I made it all better, didn’t I? Every time.
I don’t even know how many times I bailed Lewis out. ’
He turned to me. ‘Do you know what the two most important things in life are, Patrick?’
After a beat, I ventured an answer. ‘Family?’
‘That’s one of them. Elizabeth always used to say that family is everything, but there’s something else that’s just as important.
Your reputation. Without that, you are nothing.
Whenever I have a problem, I can call in favours, loans, help.
People keep buying Gravitas’s products. It’s all because of my reputation. ’
‘As a family man?’
He liked that. ‘That’s part of it – a very large part of it – but also as a business leader, a thinker, a philanthropist. A visionary.’
‘A narcissist?’ said Avril.
Charles laughed. ‘You young people. Everyone’s a narcissist these days.’ His smile slipped away. ‘If only you hadn’t seen Zack with that boy. None of this would have happened. We’d be having a lovely Hogmanay. Listen.’
He cupped his hand to his ear, and I heard it. A crackle in the distance. Something whizzing, followed by a bang.
Fireworks.
‘Happy New Year.’ He took aim at Avril. ‘I wish there was another way.’
‘No!’
Holly stepped in front of his gun. Finally, she had come back to life.
‘Holly, move out of the way.’
‘No, Dad. You can’t do this. She’s part of our family, too.’
He shook his head. ‘Holly, get out of the fucking way. She’s not really family. Blood, maybe, but that’s all.’
Of course. In the chaos of the evening I had almost forgotten that, as Lewis’s daughter, Avril was related to Charles.
‘You can’t kill your own granddaughter!’ I shouted. ‘She won’t say anything, will you, Avril?’
She shook her head rapidly. Her hands were up. For the first time this evening, she looked terrified. Miranda was still frozen to the spot, watching but not doing anything.
‘Shut up,’ Charles said to me. ‘Holly, move, or I’ll have to move you.’
‘No.’ Holly stood firm. ‘Dad, you can’t do this. You know why.’
‘Don’t say it.’
‘No. I’m not going to let you kill my sister.’