“Because he would’ve killed me.”
“Then I’m glad you did.”
* * *
The Tuesday night attack doesn’t happen.
We wake Wednesday morning and it feels as if all the air has been sucked from the building, leaving us living in some sort of vacuum where there is nothing but existence.
Blair’s eyes are swollen and red from crying and looking at her pains me. I shower alone, needing the time away from her to collect my thoughts and press my head hard enough against the cold tiles that it hurts.
I should tell her the truth. I should tell her what I know, about the note that Ben left, that I’m almost certain he’s alive and in hiding, but to do so would place her in danger because it’s safer if people think he’s gone. For him and for her.
But I still feel like the bastard I am.
She isn’t in the room we shared when I come out of the shower and I’m not feeling like company. In another hour I’m heading back to London for one last push before voting opens tomorrow but it’s the last place I want to be, although I do want to be there.
I pull on clothes and head outside, looking more like a student than a politician. The air is cold and brittle, February is the shortest month but sets in forever, it seems.
I head to the banks of the loch, the place I came to the day I was here for the first time as an adult and saw Blair, when we danced in the rain. It isn’t raining now. It’s just fucking cold.
The walk round the castle is brutal with the winds; heading back inside and finding an open fire and a book sound appealing, more appealing than doing what I have to and I’m like Blair because who am I doing this for?
Some battle against my father that he doesn’t give a shit about? Claiming victory over my brother? Proving to the people back home that I’m not the son of a woman they claimed was a whore?
Something changes nearby. A molecule alters itself and nothing else fits. My back stiffens. They moved the family’s rooms last night in case someone did manage to attack the castle, in case there was an invasion reminiscent of the Vikings. My walk quickens and then breaks into a run, stones crunching under feet that feel too heavy.
All my life I’ve worked off instinct. My father tried to get me to plot and plan and theorise and strategize. But that isn’t the way the sea works. You can only guess at the tide and never predict it, or master it. You can only aim for it not to take you under its caressing waves and to do that, you listen to it, the way the wind speaks about you. And this is instinct that has direction:
They’ll come in from the east road. Early morning.
I call Micky as I run, not giving him anything concrete because this is all a feeling and the sound of an engine I’ve heard in the distance like a low growl of thunder. It’s the car I see first, a foreign number plate with a dark-haired woman sitting at the wheel. I’m breathless through running and trying to talk at the same time and the car’s parked just outside the border to the Stewart grounds and it’s unmanned. Unguarded. Because it should be. Because there are cameras.
Majken gets out of the car and she holds a gun, a nice little handgun that’s a make I don’t recognise and I figure has been modified.
“Well you made this easy.” She lifts up a gun but never fires.
Another shot ricochets through the air and I watch her topple backwards, knocked against the car by the force of a bullet I had no idea was going to come.
The man in the car starts to drive off, but another shot fires and then another, and now my gun is involved, a bullet from it cracking the windscreen and the driver stops.
I’ve possibly killed someone else, a second person in less than two weeks and I don’t feel anything about it.
Micky jumps out of an SUV that’s just pulled up, his limp pronounced as he walks. He heads over to the woman, her dark hair too black against skin the colour of Cornish cream.
“Good shot.” He looks to where I’m standing and where the shot came from and his brow is creased.
“Wasn’t mine. I didn’t hit her.”
Micky stares down at Majken’s unmoving body. “Sniper rifle. And you generally have a handgun.”
I suspect he knows every detail about it.
“Spot on.”
“Who was the first shooter?”
“Is she dead?” I don’t want to answer him.
