‘I’ve taken over everything. I’m running the hotel now.’
‘You’re managing it?’
‘Well, I’m managing it, yes. But I’m the new owner.’
‘Has Nick Surtees gone too?’
‘It all happened yesterday. I’ve wanted to run this place for a long time, and I heard Nick wanted to sell up, so we did a deal.’
‘Just like that? They were here yesterday, and didn’t say anything about it.’
‘I think they’ve been planning it for a while.’ Teresa was looking blankly at him. He said, ‘My wife will have brought the bread by now. Excuse me.’
She stared after him, as the service door swung closed behind him. The news, trivial though it probably was, went round and round in her mind. She knew that managers of hotels didn’t regularly consult their guests about business matters, but both Nick and Amy had seemed so open and willing to talk that she was surprised neither of them had said anything to her. ‘Goodbye’ would have been pleasant.
She poured her coffee and sipped the orange juice, while she waited for the toast. A few minutes later the man returned.
As he put down the toast—racked in the British manner, to ensure more or less instant cooling—she said, ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before. Don’t I know you?’
‘Maybe you’ve seen me around the hotel. I used to come into the bar from time to time.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘I used to have a beard. I’m Amy’s brother-in-law. David Hartland.’
Then she remembered that day, in the market, this man talking to Amy. There had been something aggressive about his behaviour, but it had been unimportant at the time. And another time, she had seen him leaving the ExEx building.
‘So you’re the brother of…?
‘Jason’s older brother. That’s right. You probably know what happened to Jase?’
‘Amy told me.’ And her own personal memory of Jase, lying dead on the roof of the house in Eastbourne Road.
‘Jase and I wanted to take over this hotel, long ago, when Nick’s parents were running it. Nothing came of it back then, but when I heard Nick was selling up I didn’t want to miss a second chance.’ He had stepped away from her while he spoke, and was standing by the service table. He opened one of the drawers and took out a handful of knives and forks, which he wrapped in a cloth he had brought with him. ‘Things are changing in Bulverton. Maybe you’ve heard. There’s a lot of new money coming into the town.’ He glanced in the direction of the table recently vacated by the four Americans, though Teresa couldn’t immediately see the connection. ‘People’s lives are going to be transformed, and the town will follow. Ten years from now Bulverton will be a different place.’
‘So you bought the hotel—just yesterday?’
‘We haven’t done the legal stuff yet, the paperwork, but we shook hands on a deal. Nick’s using a lawyer in London. I’ve got my own. You know how long lawyers take. In the meantime, Nick and Amy wanted to get going straight away, so they left yesterday evening. Most of their stuff’s still upstairs, but we’re storing it for them until they want it.’
‘Do you know where they’ve gone?’
‘They didn’t tell me,’ he said, but in a way that Teresa knew meant that they actually had. ‘I think it’s like a honeymoon, you know.’
She laughed then, but more because this news needed some kind of release than because she found it amusing.
‘So am I likely to see them again?’ she said. ‘I was starting to get on well with Amy.’
‘I wouldn’t know. Maybe if you’re still here in a month or so? But the way they were talking yesterday, it didn’t sound like they were planning to return to Bulverton. A lot of unhappy memories here. For them, and for a lot of people.’
‘Yes, I know.’
There didn’t seem to be anything more to say to that.
Dave Hartland headed back towards the kitchen with his bundle of cutlery, and Teresa started on her rapidly cooling toast. She was upset by the suddenness of the changes in the hotel; it felt almost like a personal affront, that she had offended Nick or Amy in some way. Of course it couldn’t be anything like that—or so she hoped.
Teresa had often tried to put herself in the minds of the people in this small town, the sharers of collective grief. She knew too well how it felt to suffer an individual loss, but had no idea of how different it would feel to be one of many who survived a massacre. Did it provide more comfort or less, to know you weren’t alone? The upheaval, the shock, the sense of betrayal, the guilty feelings of the survivors, the intrusion of the press…all these were elements of crisis aftermath that were known about and studied by psychologists, but none of their research could explain how it actually felt to be amongst those involved. Before she came to Bulverton, Teresa had thought she might identify with the people here, because of Andy, but the truth was that the only thing they seemed to share was the emotional stasis that had followed. The paralysis of feelings, of ambitions, of movement, of hopes, consumed everything. You simply tried to continue as before, letting the grief roll over you, knowing that nothing could be worse than what had happened, but also knowing that it could never get better.
In fact, it never did get better. Andy was a permanent loss; all that had happened since his death was that she had slowly, painfully, started to face up to the fact that she would never see him again.
While she was finishing her coffee, Hartland walked through the dining room without looking in her direction, put back the cutlery he had taken from the drawer and removed some more. He returned to the kitchen.
Teresa picked up her newspaper and walked through to his office. He was not there, so she knocked on the connecting door and looked into the kitchen. Hartland was there with a woman, presumably his wife, but he made no introduction. They were both wearing aprons and had the cutlery spread across a newspaper on the table.
‘Mr Hartland,’ Teresa said. ‘I’m sorry to do this to you so soon after you’ve taken over the hotel, but I will need to check out in a day or two.’
‘That’s no problem. Do you know exactly when it will be?’
‘No, not yet. I need to fix up a flight, and there are a couple more things I want to do here in town. It won’t be today, at least, but I’ll check out maybe tomorrow or the next day.’
He had removed his apron while she was speaking, and now moved across to the door on the far side of the kitchen, which Teresa knew led to the tiny reception area in the main entrance hall. This had been only rarely used by Nick and Amy. He held the door open for her, and indicated she should go through ahead of him.
He switched on the computer terminal on the desk, and they both waited while it booted up. He fumbled around at the keyboard, apparently trying to find the hotel records.
He said, ‘I haven’t had a chance to check your bill until now. There was so much other detail to get through yesterday.’
‘You want to sort it out, and talk to me later?’
‘Let me see if I can find your account.’ Teresa had seen Nick and Amy working on the program several times, but she didn’t think she should offer to help. ‘Don’t worry about walking out on us the first day we’re in business,’ said Hartland. ‘After you and the others have left, my wife and I are not planning to take in any more guests.’
‘You’re just going to run it as a pub?’
‘Well, yes. But we’ve got plans for the place. I have to put in a planning application to the council, because we want to convert the building into a sort of multimedia pub. You ever hear of that before? We’ve been to a couple in London, and a large one opened in Brighton two months ago. There’s so much unused space in this building, and the car park is empty most of the time. With the position on the main road it’s ideal. I don’t suppose you have that sort of thing in America?’
‘We have multimedia. But pubs?’
‘It’s what people call them. A multimedia pub is a kind of multiple entertainment complex all under one roof. The heart of it all, and where we’ll
start, is a large bar and brasserie extending the whole length of the front of the building, with a terrace for the summer. After that, we’ll convert the other floors. We’re going to have a disco in the cellar, there’ll be a family room and restaurant at the back, and an internet café in one of the function rooms upstairs. We’re going to make the whole of the top floor into boutiques and craft studios. We want people to bring their kids, so we’re going to build an indoor adventure playground, with a gallery where the parents can watch their children and have a few drinks. We’re even thinking of putting in a gym, so people can work out before they come in for a drink or a meal. You know the old bam at the back that Nick and Amy used for storage? We’ll convert that. And we’re probably going to have an extreme experience facility here as well. I was talking to those friends of yours from America. Their company will be franchising ExEx in this country soon, and if I move fast we’ll be the first private facility on the south coast.’
‘You certainly do move fast,’ Teresa said, impressed by the man’s ambition.
‘I’ve spent all my life in the town, watching this place run slowly into the ground. You know what it’s like upstairs: the whole place needs clearing out and starting from scratch. Well, Jean and I know how to make the place profitable, and we aren’t getting any younger, so we’re putting everything we’ve got into this.’
‘I guess so.’
Teresa couldn’t imagine how much it would cost to undertake a full-scale conversion along the lines he had described, but it must run into millions. Hadn’t she seen him running a market stall in the Old Town? That was hardly the sort of enterprise which would develop enough spare capital for an expansion along these lines.
She waited a few minutes longer, but it was clear he couldn’t find the hotel records on the computer. It made her impatient, watching him fumble around with simple software, and she knew she wasn’t helping by standing over him. She suggested again they could sort out the account later. He seemed relieved to agree.
CHAPTER 32
Thinking about crossover and how to avoid it, Teresa came into a clearing in the trees, where three long wooden tables had been set up. A young woman was sitting at one of the tables, with plastic cups and plates, scraps of food, and several toys spread all about. She was laughing, and her child was running around on the grass, wrapped up in his game.
Teresa retreated as far as she was able, back and back into the recesses of Grove’s mind. How could she use his eyes, yet look away?
Grove brought out his handgun from the concealment of his jacket with a deliberate, wide swinging motion of his hand. He cocked the gun, working the mechanism three or four more times, relishing the sound.
The noise made the woman turn towards him. She saw the gun levelled at her, and panicked. She shouted in terror to her child, trying to twist round on the heavy log, to get across to the little boy, but she seemed paralysed by her fear. The boy, thinking it was still a game, dashed away from her. The woman’s voice became a hoarse roar, then, after she had sucked in her breath, she was incapable of further sound.
Teresa thought, Grove has never handled this gun before!
He was holding it one-handed, like an untrained beginner. She corrected him instinctively. She steadied his gun-hand by gripping his wrist with his free hand, she forced him to aim a little low, to allow for the recoil, and she made him relax his trigger finger, made him squeeze the trigger, not jerk it.
As the woman at last scrambled away from the log, Grove shot her in the head, then turned his gun on the child.
She was back in the stolen car, with the gun hot on the seat beside her. Teresa’s mind was racing defensively: It’s only a scenario! It was real but it’s not real now, it happened before, the woman knew nothing, there was nothing I could do to stop it, I must not interfere, Grove must continue, that woman and her child were not hurt, it’s all imaginary. They were dead months before I came to England; Grove killed them without my assistance.
Yet she knew Grove would almost certainly not have killed them without her intervention.
‘Shut that fucking noise!’
In her distress she allowed herself to spread forward in Grove’s mind, so she could ride in the forefront of his thoughts, to witness his actions without interference. If she went too far forward she became as one with him, jointly responsible; too far back and she became detached from his raw motives, and so became capable of influencing him. How to strike a balance between the two?
As Grove drove towards Bulverton, Teresa repeatedly shifted mental position, trying to find the place where she could observe most closely without feeling the pressure against her of that hot breath of banal cruelty.
When she was forward, what appalled her most was his lack of reaction to what he had just done. She was still squirming in horror at what she had witnessed, but Grove was complaining to himself: he’d stolen the wrong car, a pile of shit, fucking exhaust making a lot of fucking noise, the only money he had was the forty quid he’d nicked but he didn’t want to spend that because he was going to celebrate later. Where’s that bitch Debra? Bet that Mark shafted her last night, the bastard, need more money, should have looked through that woman’s bag…
Teresa was still trying to settle somewhere in his mind when he slowed the car and swung it on to the forecourt of a Texaco filling station. Another car was leaving, waiting with its nose out in the main road, indicating left. The driver glanced up at Grove as he passed.
Grove stopped the Montego at an angle across the pumps, making it difficult for any other car to drive in from that direction, then picked up the handgun and walked across to the shop.
A young woman with dark hair—Margaret Lee, who had refused to be interviewed by Teresa—was sitting alone at the till, skimming through a magazine spread on the counter in front of her. She looked up as Grove strode towards her between the racks of magazines and bars of chocolate, and saw the gun at once.
After a moment of uncertainty, she leapt back from the counter, one arm flailing in the air. In the same instant, a grey metal security barrier came rattling noisily down from the ceiling and crashed on to the surface of the counter. Several small items stacked there—display cards with special offers, air-mile vouchers, a box of ballpoints—scattered across the floor as they were dislodged.
Teresa felt Grove’s anger rising, and he fired the gun several times at the barrier. The bullets made visible dents, lodging in the mesh surface without penetrating. Grove raced across to the barrier and bashed it with his elbow. It hardly budged.
There was a large notice printed in the centre of the barrier, which Grove scarcely glanced at, but which Teresa could read:
This security barrier is bulletproof, fireproof and soundproof
IT CANNOT BE REOPENED BY THE STAFF
Do not attempt to force it
An automatic alarm message has been sent to emergency services
Grove uselessly fired two more bullets at the barrier, then looked around for something to steal. There was a tall refrigerator cabinet filled with drinks, so he shattered its glass door with a couple of rounds. He reached inside and took out two cans of Coke. He kicked at one of the heavy display stands, but succeeded only in shoving it a short distance across the floor. He grabbed some magazines, and thrust them under the arm of his gun-hand.
He walked unhurriedly across the forecourt to the Montego, and opened the front passenger door. He threw the stuff he had stolen inside, then laid the handgun on the floor of the car, between the front seats.
He opened the luggage compartment and took out the rifle. Holding it with the muzzle aloft, he made a show of snapping the ammunition clip into place, and cocking the weapon. Traffic went by on the main road, only a few yards away, the people inside the vehicles apparently noticing nothing.
Teresa, in Grove’s mind, seated immovably behind his eyes, saw everything.
She eased forward to try to enter his mind, but shrank away. His mind was blank, insofar as any mind can be f
ree of thought. All she found was an almost wordless blur of images: Girl kill find hit fucking stupid door window run get car…
Once again, risking intercession in the scenario, Teresa retreated as far as she dared. Grove was now stepping across the forecourt, heading for the side of the building where a night-cash window was situated. He came to a halt directly in front of it, raised his rifle and took a steady aim at the glass. Although there was a light on in the room behind, there was no sign of Margaret Lee.
Grove maintained his stance, and a few seconds later was rewarded when the young woman slowly stood up. She turned to face the night-cash window, and immediately saw Grove pointing the rifle at her.
He fired. The recoil punched against his shoulder, and the strengthened glass shattered into opacity. He fired twice more, both bullets hitting the glass but apparently not penetrating.
Grove went quickly to the window, but the crazing was so fine that it was impossible to see through into the room beyond.
Grove turned and walked back to the car. He slung the rifle on to the back seat, then climbed in and started the engine. Without another look back he stepped hard on the pedal, screeching the tyres, and noisily clouting one of the pumps. He continued to accelerate as he reached the road, swinging on to the carriageway without regard for traffic. He drove frantically towards Bulverton, flashing the headlamps at anyone who was in front of him, and overtaking recklessly.
Inside Grove’s mind Teresa felt herself relaxing. Normally, any other person’s fast driving, apart from Andy’s, struck fear into her heart and numbness into her thoughts, but she knew Grove could not hurt her. Even if he drove head-on into an oncoming car she would not be physically hurt. Anyway, she knew no accident was about to happen, because no accident had happened.
Grove was forced to slow when an empty coach pulled out from a side road, and lumbered heavily along towards Bulverton. Grove braked the Montego sharply, followed the coach, then pulled out to overtake. Two police cars were approaching, their headlamps on full beam and their electric-blue strobe lights flickering. The wailing sirens were a deafening chorus. Grove ducked back behind the coach, but as soon as the police cars had passed he pulled out again.