Outside the church, Dominick’s brothers slapped his shoulder and stood in an awkward huddle around him as Elizabeth’s coffin was placed in the back of the hearse. He spoke to Dominick’s wife, who wept when he hugged her. The sound reached Amanda, a faint, jagged wail that bristled the hairs on her arms. She signalled to Shane, who moved unobserved towards the group. Their embrace would perfectly illustrate the ending of this wretched story.
She was still unable to understand Elizabeth’s sons’ decision to move their mother into a nursing home. Old people needed their familiar surroundings about them; but they had insisted that, as she couldn’t be trusted to turn unscrupulous reporters from her door, they were left with no other option. They complained to the editor of Capital Eye, claimed that Elizabeth had never intended her conversation with Amanda to be published. Since then, she had been under siege from the press in her own home, terrified to leave in case she was bombarded with questions.
Amanda understood the media. Their interest in Elizabeth would have faded away in a few days and the nursing home was an overreaction, a harsh and unnecessary decision. She had been saddened but not surprised to hear that Elizabeth had died three weeks later.
As the funeral cortège drove from the church grounds, Karl Lawson walked towards the car park. Amanda moved from the shelter of the yew to a nearby grotto where a statue of a pensive Bernadette stared upwards at the embracing arms of the Virgin Mary. The grotto gave her a view of the car park. Only a few cars were left and the one he unlocked must have been picked up in a scrapyard.
He turned suddenly, as if he had sensed her presence, and came swiftly across the car park towards the grotto. A wall on one side blocked Amanda’s exit. The only other way to leave would place her directly in his path. Her heart grazed her chest; a peculiarly unnerving pain that always reminded her of the consequences of making mistakes. She knelt on a kneeler and, like Bernadette, stared raptly upwards at the statue of Mary.
His voice came from behind her. ‘Vengeance is mine.’ He spoke softly but distinctly. ‘And recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip…’ The quote sounded biblical and threatening. Was he reminding her of Dominick Kelly? His religious fervour as he waited for death to claim him? Amanda stood up from the kneeler and turned to face him. She had never noticed the colour of his eyes until now. Cloudy green-grey, like the sea before it stormed. He paused, as if allowing the words to settle between them. She remained silent, struggling and failing to find something to say that could connect them. She was the first to look away. He walked back to the car park, folded his long figure into his car and drove away.
Her feature on Elizabeth’s funeral, illustrated with an enlarged photograph of Karl Lawson and Siobhan Kelly embracing outside the church, made the late edition of Capital Eye.
Amanda needed to move on and concentrate on other stories. The Shroff brothers, for one. She was writing a series of features on their criminal activities for Capital Eye and had been commissioned by a publisher to follow that with a non-fiction book about the family. Her first book. Thanks to Hunter, she had enough research to fill the pages and more besides. The Shroffs repelled and fascinated her in equal measure. Four generations of pitiless moneylenders, that was how they began their dynasty. Originally, their family name was Cummins but Flab Cummins, the great-grandfather – who had been as famous for his sense of humour as for his brutality – had changed it to Shroff by deed poll when he discovered the word meant an Asian banker or money charger. They had expanded into drugs and the three brothers, now dominating the gang, were ruthless and dangerous enough to terrify Amanda into a burrow, if that was her inclination. It wasn’t. She was fearless, verging on reckless. Her days of hiding in her bedroom with Rebecca and a cat were over. In a fortnight’s time, five double-page spreads would run in the weekday editions of Capital Eye, culminating in an interview with her in Eye on the Weekend, the Saturday magazine supplement.
She stayed late at the office, anxious to finish a feature on the Shroffs. The fact that Killer was on remand in Danevale awaiting trial added to the immediacy of the story. Had Karl Lawson come across him? Had they spoken to each other, shared life experiences? Prison must be the ultimate common denominator.
It was after nine when she drove into the Arbutus Complex car park. She picked up her post from the mailbox and entered her apartment. After she had eaten and cleared the dinner dishes into the dishwasher, she poured a cup of decaf coffee and opened her mail. Bills, mostly, apart from a small Jiffy envelope. Unable to see a letter inside, she reached into the bubbled plastic and touched what felt like something solid wrapped in cotton wool. Curious, she pulled the wad from the envelope.
The bullet was layered in such softness that the crude feel of it against Amanda’s skin was electrifying. A jolt coursed through her arm, along her spine, and the bullet – hard, cold lead glossed with metal – fell on to her lap. She jumped to her feet and flapped at her skirt as if to douse a flame. The bullet dropped with a dull thud to the floor and rolled a little before lodging against the leg of the table. She rummaged in the envelope and found a card. The next bullet will be delivered from a gun. Watch your back, Amanda.
She left the bullet on the floor and stepped out on to the balcony. Five storeys up, the noise from the city was a distant hum. The wind shrilled as it blew hard against the glass walls of the complex, flapped the dead patio plants and the stacked sun chairs waiting for summer. Watch your back, Amanda. Below her, pedestrians moved to a soundless rhythm. A grey, indistinguishable procession that never looked upwards – except for him. He must be down there. Waiting. Watching. His gaze filled with the same hatred she had seen on the night of his arrest and today at the grotto. She shivered and folded her arms across her chest. Her living space had been contaminated so that, despite the cold, she was reluctant to return inside.
Eventually, the wind drove her indoors. In the kitchen, she pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and lifted the bullet from the floor. She studied its slender sheath, the deadly penile tip. She imagined it penetrating her heart. A bull’s-eye shot. She replaced it in the envelope.
Vengeance is mine, he had said, standing rigid before her. She Googled the quote on her laptop. It came up immediately.
Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly. Deuteronomy 32:35
Chapter Twenty-Four