Harm's Reach Read online

  ALEX BARCLAY

  Harm’s Reach

  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  77–85 Fulham Palace Road

  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

  Copyright © Alex Barclay 2014

  Cover design layout © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

  Cover design by stuartpolsondesign.com

  Cover photographs © Fotoartak / Alamy (woman, path); Shutterstock.com (trees).

  Alex Barclay asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780007494514

  Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007532179

  Version: 2014-09-17

  Dedication

  To Ger McDonnell

  for finding lost plots, unravelling twists,

  and being an unflawed heroine

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Alex Barclay

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  Ingrid Prince realized that the white walls in every Prince family home created a diorama effect. People watched from the outside, studying, deducing, then leaving, even after brief encounters, with lasting judgements. Ingrid Prince, the beautiful, radiant wife! Robert Prince, the handsome, wealthy husband, a man of fine stock!

  Oh, what they see … and don’t see.

  Ingrid closed her eyes.

  I am safe. I am safe. I am safe.

  ‘Close those beautiful cat eyes, Ingrid, and say it three times. “It” is wherever you want to take us. I am Tahiti. I am Tahiti. I am Tahiti. Then – bam! – eyes open – bam! – I shoot!’

  She could hear Sandro Cera’s voice in her head as he stalked around her all those years ago. Handsome, talented, orphan, immigrant Sandro Cera, the rags-to-riches-and-back fashion photographer; Ingrid Prince, at his feet, blonde, tanned, extended on the white floor of a freezing studio in Brooklyn, shivering by a faulty space heater.

  Camera in hand, Sandro would rise up onto the balls of his feet, crouch down, close in, create distance, his body twisting and turning as if he was the one to be captured.

  Ingrid did as he asked, closed her eyes, used his three-times trick.

  ‘No lips moving!’ Sandro said. No leeps. ‘These are thoughts I’m talking about. Three times, sweets, three times: I am silent, I am silent, I am silent!’

  ‘My teeth are chattering is why my lips are moving!’ said brave, bold, new-girl Ingrid, just turned seventeen. ‘I’m fucking hypothermic … times three.’

  Click flash click flash click flash. And the photo that made them both famous was the one that was taken just afterwards, as Ingrid laughed, her head thrown back, then forward, the lens capturing a warm and beautiful smile with no Brooklyn ice, just St Tropez, St Tropez, St Tropez.

  It was a different world. It was New York in the Nineties – when they partied below ground and cauterized their hearts’ wounds with the fire of quick fucks. Sandro Cera had been dead years – a gradual, then sudden junkie demise. In the live art installation of Ingrid’s life, Sandro Cera was the lightbulb in the corner, flickering ominously, bound to blow.

  Yet his was the advice she was now hearing.

  Three times.

  I am safe. I am safe. I am safe.

  Ingrid looked around the Colorado rental. Even the temporary homes she sought refuge in were white-walled, sparsely furnished, neutral. When their SoHo loft was shot for an interiors magazine, the stylist pared it back even more, took pieces away. Pieces: furniture, paintings, sculptures, reality. How suddenly the landscape can change when its elements are plucked away.

  Ingrid heard a noise at the front door. Light on her feet, she walked out into the long polished hallway. Her suitcases were at the end by the door: a set of five, olive green, edged in brown leather with accents of gold.

  Now, there was banging at the door, hammering. Ingrid froze. The door burst open. She felt a rush of adrenaline.

  This is not how it ends. This is not how it ends. This is not how it ends.

  She backed into the kitchen, then turned, set to run for the French doors, but she could make out two dark figures standing there. Ingrid was briefly blindsided by her reflection in the glass.

  She knew what she looked like to others. She knew what her husband looked like.

  A Swedish proverb came to mind: Alla känner apan, men apan känner ingen.

  Everyone knows the monkey, but the monkey knows no one.

  1

  Five weeks earlier …

  Denver, Colorado

  Special Agent Ren Bryce was sitting in an aisle seat of a three-star hotel conference room, primed to run. She was dressed in blue jeans, a white tank and gold strappy heels. Her dark hair was in a shiny ponytail, her makeup was for going out. Since she’d sat down, she had been twisting the silver-and-go
ld cuff on her narrow wrist, opening it and closing it. It was shaped like a lightning bolt.

  I wonder does it work? Will it make me fly? Or zap people.

  She looked around.

  Men, women, no children, gathered in a beige room on a sticky Sunday night. Everyone so, so miserable.

  There was a lectern in front with an A4 printout stuck to it that read: ‘Bipolar Support’.

  Annnd so explains the misery.

  Up ahead, a large lady moved awkwardly to the stage. She was wild-haired and makeup-free, except for the crazy shade of cherry on her lips. She looked as if she had dressed under pressure; grabbed a blouse and skirt from a peg in the hallway on her way out the door and slipped her feet into a pair of sandals she’d left in the garden.

  ‘Partying …’ she began.

  Oh, dear God, do not laugh at this poor woman whose only parties may have been Twilight-themed.

  The speaker continued: ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Before I start, I should say that tonight I am going to talk about mania.’

  This will be good …

  Ren checked her watch. She was here only because her boss had told her to come.

  There’s a first time for everything, Gary Dettling, and a last time. In this particular instance, they are one and the same.

  Gary Dettling had been her boss in the Undercover Program and also her case agent on the deep cover investigation that nearly destroyed her. She had done a dazzling job, though. Her investigation was the exemplary one, the one still used in UC training. Ren’s own boyfriend, Ben Rader, had studied her case. But the official story didn’t include the part where, within months of finishing the investigation, the exemplary agent was diagnosed bipolar. Ren had yet to talk him through that bonus feature.

  She looked around the room at the ordinariness of everyone.

  What could any of you know about what it’s like to be me?

  The woman at the lectern continued: ‘Imagine telling someone who has been at a spectacular week-long party that the next night, they have to be in bed by ten p.m. As they are dancing on a table, laughing, swigging from a vodka bottle, surrounded by friends, new and old, you tell them that, really, they should stop. This feeling, this amazing feeling is not good.

  ‘As you reach out to prise the bottle from their hand, they will see you as reaching inside their soul to switch off a light. And they will claw at your hand to stop you, and as they do, they will look into your eyes with one of two things: an anger so intense that it could take your breath away, or a hurt so deep that it could break your heart. Who are you to take away their high? You are supposed to love them, you are supposed to value their happiness above all else.

  ‘And the following will happen: they will attack, and it will hurt. It will hurt.’ She looked up at the crowd. ‘Face the manic, face the consequences. Poop the party, prepare to be pooped on.’

  I need to get out of here. This is wildly accurate.

  Ren bent down to grab her purse from the floor. She caught sight of the little orange bottle of mood stabilizers inside.

  Five months. Yay … great to have you on the show …

  ‘And as your loved one attacks,’ the speaker was saying, ‘and as the pain rips through you, they will further your pain by turning to someone else instead. Who can they find to party with when you won’t? Who can they spend all their money with? Maybe all your money. Who can they have all that sex with? Not you. You are pathetic. You are a nag. You want them to be miserable. You just want to control them. That’s all you want. You don’t really love them. You are now the enemy.’

  There are people crying in here. I can hear people crying.

  ‘Hey, nice tits,’ said the guy three seats away from Ren.

  What the? Ren turned to him. And Happy Manic Descent to you!

  The guy shifted one seat closer.

  Ren held up a finger to him. ‘OK, you have to be shitting me.’

  ‘I’m not!’ he said, beaming. ‘You are really beautiful.’

  May the scales of mania fall from your eyes.

  ‘This is not happening,’ said Ren, her voice low. ‘Go back to your seat. And …’ She pointed at the lectern.

  This is for you, buddy.

  He did as she asked.

  ‘Dayum, though …’ she heard him say.

  The woman on the other side of him slipped her hand under his, squeezed it, gently. His wedding band shone.

  Another lost victim, searching for the husband who is right there, but gone on his travels, not a care in the world.

  ‘Your loved one will retreat,’ said the speaker, ‘or run … or hide from you. Or at least will attempt to. They don’t yet know that what they are running from is pain. Overwhelming pain: loss, rejection, grief, fear. They don’t know yet, because they’re having too much fun. Secret fun. They can’t admit that while you’re sick with worry, they’re having a blast. They may see your tears, but they don’t feel them. They’re waiting for a text or a drink or a party or a pay check or new friends who don’t know who they are or who loves them or what really lies in their heart or what needs to be protected. Your loved one may endure your interventions, your attempts at reasoning with them, but really? They’re in their own world. It takes different things to get through to different people; it won’t always be obvious. And what worked once before may not work the next time.

  ‘Until you find a way, they will dig their heels into the bright green grass of their dazzling universe of plenty. They will tune into whoever is emitting the same Day-Glo frequency. Imagine a fluorescent pink jagged line running through the city just above head height, visible only to the manic or the drunk, or the drugged, or all of the above. And they are each holding a magical hook and they can just reach up and ride around on that line all night long. And they will do that until, eventually … days, weeks, or months later, they will lose their grip.’

  Ren closed her eyes. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the beautiful, damaging world I miss.

  She walked to the back of the room and quietly made her way out.

  The name is Mania … Mrs Mania.

  I-80, Nebraska

  Laura Flynn changed radio stations until she heard what she needed: words that would find her in the dark; a song that would fill this little car with the right message, a song that would back up her journey. This wasn’t her first life-changing decision. There had been others; some borne of tragedy, others borne of happiness or kindness or love. This was different – this was the consequence of an extraordinary misjudgment. She was halfway across Nebraska, halfway into a cross-country expedition and, if she stopped too long to consider it all, she should have been searching for a song with madness in the title.

  Here I am, twenty-six years old, a girl from a small coastal village, yet it is in the Midwest I find myself at sea.

  She changed station again. She heard an evangelist; deep, male tones of crazy. This is what I’m talking about.

  ‘Right here, right now,’ came the voice, ‘in the terrible darkness of our world, sins – like rats – are crawling out of every gutter, creeping into our homes, burrowing under their foundations, the foundations of righteousness and virtue. A virus of sin is finding the weakest chambers of our sinful bodies, where it will fester, from whence it will spread. I’m talking about diseases of the mind, the soul, the heart, the loins.’

  Laura Flynn laughed out loud.

  The presenter’s voice cut through. ‘Those were the words of Howard Coombes, who will be speaking at Monday night’s service to honor the victims of the Aurora Theater shooting.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy, we are both headed in the same direction,’ said Laura. It might just be hell. She laughed again.

  I can laugh. At least, I can still laugh. Even at my ‘seriously, is this really my life?’ moment, the ‘how did it all come to this?’ Janey Mac!

  ‘Janey Mac’ was a polite alternative to Jesus Christ. It was years since her sister had told her about a guy called Janey Mac who used to drink
in the dive bar where she had worked in Yonkers. Janey Mac got his nickname long before then. It was a three-story nickname. His last name was McMullen. Mac. He thought he was God. Jesus Christ. And he was a supplier of guns. Janie’s Got a Gun. The result was: Janey Mac. When he fled to Chicago to get away from a warrant, he became Janey Mach 3. Laura liked that. And as a story, it always raised a laugh.

  Laura’s sister had once mixed with the wrong kind of people. But sometimes the wrong kind of people ended up being exactly the kind of people you needed.

  The car filled with flashing lights; headlights from behind. They flashed again. It wasn’t a police car. She drove on. The lights flashed again.

  Maybe I have a broken taillight. Maybe the trunk is open.

  This was her first time driving the car, maybe she was missing something. She checked the panel in front of her; no warning lights. She pulled in. Her heart was pounding. The car behind pulled in too. Should I be nervous? She could see someone, a man in black, pulling a mask up over his face, running toward her. Oh my God. Her heart rate shot up. Then he was in her side mirror. Right there.

  No, no, no. She began to scramble for the door handle. Her fingers were numb. Move. Move. Move. But he was there, he was opening the door. It was open. He was holding a gun. Laura stared up at him, willing herself to speak, willing herself to tell him no, don’t do this, why are you doing this. Nothing came out. Speak! Scream! Shout! She managed to turn her body toward him. His eyes, vaguely familiar, stark in the rectangular cut-out from his black mask, flickered.

  Confusion? Fear? Did it matter?

  Laura closed her eyes, squeezed them shut. The blast deafened her. There was a second one. She felt a searing pain in her ear. She could smell earth, the grass, the night. She felt a breeze. Through the ringing in her ears, she heard footsteps. When she opened her eyes, he was gone. Her ears still ringing, she could make out the sound of his car door open, then slam shut, the engine starting, the car skidding, turning, leaving her behind.

  Her whole body started to convulse.

  What was that? What the hell was that? How could he miss? He was right there. He must have more than two bullets.

  Minutes passed. She sat with her hands clamped onto the steering wheel, her forehead pressed against it.