The Hunter's Prayer (10 page)

He put the camera down as the car moved in his direction. He took in the driver, a middle-aged woman, and then the two girls in the back. As they talked to each other, he could see his daughter’s face. For a moment, it looked as if she were looking directly at him, her smile for him.

He got out of the car without thinking what he was doing, walked over to the house and rang the bell. Almost immediately he heard a commotion inside. He was right about the younger child: there were excitable shouts nearby followed by a mildly chastising adult voice growing in volume as it approached from deep inside the house. The door opened and he was faced by a maid.

‘Hello. Do you speak English?’

The answer was clear. She gave him a look as if to suggest he was being intentionally awkward, and then said something that he took to be a request to wait there. As she closed the door, he caught a glimpse of a little blond boy in long shorts and a T-shirt. He was peering out but as soon as he made eye contact with Lucas he ran off into the house.

When the door opened again, Madeleine was standing in front of him, wearing a simple red summer dress, her hair pulled back loosely into a ponytail. Her figure was still perfect, her face as youthful as it was in the one picture he had of her.

He was ambushed by how beautiful she was, no less so than he had been all those years before. For a second, he couldn’t speak and, whatever shock or emotion his appearance had inflicted on her, she didn’t speak either. It was as if she were trying to remember what her response was meant to be to this situation, one she must surely have imagined, even planned for.

‘Hello, Madeleine. I waited till she’d gone out.’ The spell was broken, the sound of his voice apparently all she’d needed to remember how they stood.

‘Big of you. What are you doing here, Luke?’

‘It’s good to see you, Madeleine.’ The child called her and she automatically closed the door behind her before responding, her tone pleasant, indulgent. He could imagine her being a good mother. He knew this wouldn’t go well, though—that closing of the door, an expression of her desire to keep him even from her other child, upon whom he had no claims.

She turned back to him and said again, ‘What are you doing here?’

The only route open now was directness.

‘I want to see her. I know I made a promise but I want to see her, talk to her. And maybe she wants to meet me, find out who I am.’

‘We made an agreement.
You
agreed not to see her, specifically to protect her from the knowledge of who you are, the kind of person you are. And what, now because of a selfish whim you want to expose her to all of that?’

‘Selfish, maybe, but it’s no whim. I changed my life, Madeleine. Not soon enough, I’ll admit, but I changed it.’

Her tone was softer but still insistent as she said, ‘Our lives have changed too, Luke. We’re a family, happy, settled. It’s the wrong time for this. I’m asking you to go away—not for me, for Isabelle.’

‘Isabelle?’ He choked on the word, his throat tightening with emotion. He couldn’t believe it overwhelmed him so much just to hear her name for the first time, to be able to say it, the three syllables like some perfectly formed haiku.

Madeleine appeared not to notice. ‘Yes, her name’s Isabelle, and she’s happy, and not curious. Besides, she doesn’t speak English, only ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ ‘hello.’ I’m assuming you still don’t speak French?’ He shook his head, sensing that beneath her gentle tone was real malice and bitterness. He could imagine Madeleine steering her away from English all these years, knowing the barrier that language would place between them. ‘So tell me, Luke, what good would come from a meeting, what good for Isabelle?’

She was right. The girl was clearly happy, and how could he say this wasn’t a whim when in fourteen years it had never crossed his mind to learn her native language? How could he not have thought of that? He couldn’t even think of anything to say in response to Madeleine, could only nod, dejected.

‘Please don’t come back, Luke. Promise me.’ He didn’t want to promise. He wanted her to ask him in, to tell him about her life. He wanted to hold her again, to help her out of that light summer dress, to feel her skin against his. It was never too late.

‘I’ll be out of Paris by this afternoon.’ He turned away and then heard her call behind him.

‘Promise me.’ He didn’t respond, just kept walking to the car, and by the time he got there and looked back, the door was closed.

He couldn’t understand how a promise from him could be of any worth to her now. But at the moment, he couldn’t understand anything. What was the point? If there was never going to be a way back, what was the point of any of it?

Chapter Ten

T
hroughout the dark summer, this was what she’d focused on to keep sane and yet, just one week into term, she knew she shouldn’t have come back, that it was too soon. She’d thought this would be a return to something, but it was like a glaring compare-and-contrast exercise—the person she was now against the person who’d left for the vacation three months before.

It was five o’clock. She’d just come out of a lecture on the Romantic poets and was part of the damp, twilit migration that filled the campus, students heading to final lectures or back to their halls. She blended in well enough, but she felt like she was carrying a virus that none of the people around her were aware of.

There was definitely a sickness within her. Her blood was unstable, always running too hot or too cold, filling her with violent urges or rendering her too fragile and lifeless to leave her bed. And she could no longer cope with society, with small talk, with friends who pretended to show an interest but who just wanted ammunition for gossip.

She spotted Chris walking towards her. He was the main reason she’d come back and the main reason she should have stayed away. He’d written a letter a week after visiting her at Simon’s so she’d known it was over, but she’d still believed that if she came back to college they might be able to pick things up again, at least remain friends.

She’d gone to his room on her second day back, but he hadn’t even been able to look her in the eye, his body tense as soon as she touched him. And he’d kept using that same phrase, ‘like I said in my letter,’ as if the sentiments he’d expressed there had been beyond his control, as if he had no choice but to abide by them.

She wasn’t sure what to say to him now, and rehearsed the possibilities in her head, deciding that a casual hello would be best, something that showed how relaxed she was and that she understood things were different. She became less confident as they neared each other, but at the crucial moment he denied her the opportunity to say anything by bowing his head and looking at the floor.

Ella was sure he’d seen her and she stopped, shocked and infuriated, and confused because she couldn’t understand what she’d done to deserve such coldness. She’d blamed herself earlier in the summer, but she’d been wrong—Chris had failed
her
and she hated him for it.

She looked at the back of his head as he walked away and felt the rage building up inside her. Before she knew what she was doing, she was pursuing him through the crowd. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him around. He looked momentarily afraid and then angry.

‘Don’t you dare ignore me!’

Chris almost screamed in response, ‘What’s your fucking problem?’

A dozen answers spilled into her head at once, none of them strong enough or big enough to counter the cruelty of his simple four-word jibe. He’d treated her appallingly, abandoning her when she needed him most, but with a few careless words he could dismiss her as some obsessive former girlfriend and cast himself as the victim. It wasn’t fair.

‘I don’t have any problems. Remember?’

‘You need to see a shrink.’

She laughed scathingly and said, ‘You can’t even bring yourself to smile and say hello, but I’m the one who needs a shrink.’

He didn’t respond and a moment later he shook his head a little and started to turn away. It incensed her that he was refusing to take her on or even acknowledge her argument. She wouldn’t be ignored. Furious, she pulled him back by the arm again and, before he could speak, slapped him hard across the face.

He raised his own hand in reflex and looked set to strike her back, but stopped himself. Her hand was stinging and his cheek had reddened almost immediately, his right eye looking watery. It had clearly hurt, but he still denied her what she most wanted, dropping his hand and turning again, walking away into the crowd.

Ella became aware for the first time that a few people had stopped and were staring at her now. When she met their gazes, they moved on quickly. She too continued on her way, energy draining from her as if she were wounded.

By the time she got back to her hall the anger had subsided, but she felt weak. She decided to check the kitchen—if no one was in there yet she’d cook something. There were two people making dinner, though, Scarlett and Al, so she made for her locker and got bread and jam to take back to her room.

Scarlett had been a friend in the first year, less so since, and gave her a cheery hello as she walked in. She hardly knew Al, but he was a prick and had made crass jokes all week about the stuff that had been in the papers over the summer.

As she closed her locker, he said, ‘Ella, have you been in my room?’ She turned and looked at him, waiting for the punch line. ‘I think you left your horse head in my bed.’

‘That was almost funny, Al.’

He turned to Scarlett and said, ‘She smiled—I’m safe for another day.’

Scarlett looked embarrassed and tried to shush him.

Ella was irritated by Al Brown, but at least he was upfront. She despised Scarlett and all the others because they made a less than convincing show of being tactful and supportive, and all the while, she knew they were talking about her, had heard them whispering outside her door or been met by a sudden silence as she entered the kitchen.

Back in her room, she made sandwiches and wondered what she had to do to get her life back. She had to leave college, that was a given, and to accept that she could never go back to being the person she was before. Whatever life she fashioned for herself, it would have to be one that incorporated the baggage of the last three months.

Maybe she also needed to take things into her own hands. It had been an easy escape, shirking her responsibility by convincing herself that other people were looking into the murders. But the resulting guilt and frustration had almost certainly played a crucial role in bringing her down, and were no doubt key ingredients in the anger she felt constantly bubbling beneath the surface.

She looked at the clock. It was nearly five-thirty. She reached into the drawer for a piece of paper and rang the number on it. The answer came so quickly that she was thrown for a moment, the reason for her call not yet fully worked out.

‘Hi, Vicky. It’s Ella Hatto here. You said I could call you.’ There was a pause. Vicky Welsh had probably dealt with a hundred crimes since their meeting and it seemed to take her a second or two to place Ella.

When she spoke, though, it was with an urgency, as if she feared Ella might hang up, ‘Ella, how have you been? What can I do for you?’

‘I just wanted to know if there’s been any progress.’

‘Uh, we are still exploring some lines of inquiry, but I have to be honest, we don’t have anything concrete.’ There was another pause before she proceeded gingerly. ‘And of course, you’re not really helping yourself, Ella.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean. The clues to your family’s killers have got to be hidden somewhere within your dad’s business dealings. Now I know that some of his business in the past was a little colorful, but I promise you, that’s not what we want to investigate. We don’t want to tarnish your dad’s name, just to find evidence that might point to his murderer.’

‘I can’t.’ She wanted to, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to betray Simon, and she was fearful that, despite Vicky Welsh’s promises, her dad’s name
would
be tarnished one way or another, with revelations this time, not just innuendo.

‘Would you at least talk about it with your uncle? Maybe ask him why he’s so determined on being uncooperative?’

‘You don’t understand. I . . .’

‘Don’t decide now. Think about it and we’ll speak again.’

‘Okay.’

‘We’re still on your side, you know.’

‘I know. Thanks.’

She hung up the phone and thought back over their brief, unsatisfactory conversation—she wasn’t helping herself, she was hindering their search for the killers. She was convinced that if her dad were with her now, he’d tell her not to fall for it, to listen to Simon.

Maybe he’d also tell her that the time had come to call Lucas. She could imagine her dad talking to her now, using the tone he reserved for fundamental truths about how life should be lived—always ask for an upgrade, always ask for a discount, never leave a drink unattended, buy property, don’t rent it, trust Lucas, never trust the police.

She wouldn’t betray Simon or allow them to dismantle the business her dad had built, certainly not for the kind of justice they’d hand down if they ever did find the killers. At least if Lucas found them, he’d have no qualms about delivering the punishment they deserved.

She took the copy of
The Nibelungenlied
off the shelf, the bookmark still in place at the point she’d reached when Lucas had broken the news. Before meeting him she’d never seen a gun, never seen someone killed, never seen a dead person; his entire world had been alien to her, and she knew that if she took up his offer of help she’d be embracing it and becoming a part of it. But it was a compact she was willing to make if it helped her achieve this one thing.

She turned to the page where he’d written and without hesitating, she dialed the number. It took a while to connect and then rang for a long time before the phone picked up. There was silence and Ella waited for the answering machine to kick in before realizing that there wasn’t one, that Lucas had picked up the phone but remained silent.

It seemed typical of him and she smiled as she said, ‘It’s Ella Hatto here.’

‘Are you in trouble?’

‘No, no.’

‘That’s good.’ There was a pause. She could sense him struggling to think of something to say, something other than asking her why she was calling. ‘So how have you been?’

‘Okay. I’m back at college.’

‘Good.’

‘Actually, not okay. I thought I could get back to normal but I can’t, not until the people who did this are caught, and that’s not looking likely any time soon.’

‘Why did you call me?’ The question was okay now, loaded, a suggestion in the tone of his voice that he knew but wanted confirmation.

‘I want you to help me find them. I’ll pay you.’

‘No. No payments—I retired.’

There was one of his pauses, even more disconcerting on the phone. She waited for him to continue and when she realized he wasn’t going to, she said, ‘But you will help me find them? I thought you could . . .’ He interrupted.

‘Don’t say any more. What room are you in?’

‘I’m in Radstone Hall on the campus. Room D76.’

‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ Another pause, but after a few seconds he added, ‘I’m glad you called. Bye.’

‘Bye.’

She smiled to herself as she hung up the phone. What had her world come to, that speaking to Lucas could leave her feeling more calm and at peace than she’d felt in months? During most of the time she’d spent in his company, he’d seemed like the manifestation of her problems. But for all his failings, he’d been her salvation, he’d been true, and now he’d be the weapon with which she would avenge her family.