Italy might be where Garth goes next. A good place to lick your wounds, and Garth has wounds for the first time since he was a kid. He was all set to go last night, before Elizabeth found him at the house deep in the woods.
How on earth had Elizabeth found him? Garth has no idea, but he is glad that she did. She told him what she knew, and she told him what she wanted. Told him who had killed his wife, and told him how to get his revenge.
Garth walks past the toilets, past a man with a sad face and a briefcase playing an arcade machine, past a red-eyed woman pushing a stroller. He places a hand on her shoulder and says, ‘It’ll get easier, you’re doing a great job,’ and walks on. An old man sits hunched over a cardboard cup of coffee. Garth dips into his own pocket and gives the man a ten-pound note. ‘Get yourself some food, pops,’ he says. Garth finds kindness interesting. It’s not really his thing, but Samantha would have spoken to the mum, and would have given the old man money for food, so that’s the sort of thing Garth will do from now on.
And then Garth sees his wife’s killer. He sits down opposite her.
‘Hey, Nina,’ he says.
‘Garth,’ says Nina. ‘Thank you for meeting me.’
‘You have something I want,’ says Garth. ‘Let’s get this done quickly. I have to be out of the country and I’m guessing you do too?’
‘I don’t have to go anywhere,’ says Nina. ‘No one knows I have the box, except you. No one saw me steal it. And you don’t seem the type to tell. So I’m in the clear.’
Elizabeth told Garth about the theft. As soon as she’d known about the box, she’d had only two suspects: Nina, and her boss, a professor. A friend of Elizabeth had set off a fire alarm, another friend, a computer guy, had rigged up a little camera, and Nina had walked straight into her trap. A guy from the KGB has been tailing Nina ever since. They knew she had the box, but they had no evidence to prove that she’d killed Kuldesh to get it. Which is why Garth is here.
He’d rung Nina last night, told her he couldn’t find the box for love nor money, but, if she ever stumbled across it, he had a client who would pay handsomely for it. Which is actually true, but Garth knows he is not getting the box. Elizabeth wants it, and when she told him why, he happily agreed. Garth’s reward is seeing his wife’s killer go to jail. Ideally he would like to kill her, but Elizabeth is a bit too canny to let him get away with that. You have to know when you’ve met your match.
‘You have it?’ Garth asks.
Nina opens a bright blue IKEA bag at her feet. In the bag is the box.
‘Can I touch it?’ Garth asks.
‘Sure,’ says Nina. ‘But try anything and it leaves with me.’
Garth can’t help but laugh. He touches the box. It’s kind of a buzz. Samantha would have loved it, he knows that. They’re crazy, all of them, Samantha, Nina, Kuldesh. Childish, getting so excited about a box. Garth got excited about how much the box was worth, sure, but not about the box itself. So someone made it a long time ago? Get over yourself. So it has the eye of the devil? Ain’t no such thing, Garth knows that. The devils walk among us.
But Kuldesh had laid down his life for it, and Nina had killed for it. Samantha probably would have killed for it too, Garth has to accept that, but Nina got to her first. As soon as Nina worked out that Garth knew what the box was, she’d signed Samantha’s death warrant right then and there. And he’d gone off to eat a burger while she’d done it.
Though, now he thinks about it, how
He expects that Nina would have killed him too if she could, but Garth isn’t easy to kill. Many have tried.
‘You set up the company like I told you?’ Garth asks, taking out his phone.
Nina nods.
‘Then you’ll get an alert the second the five million hits your account,’ says Garth. ‘After that, it’s up to you. They’ll never trace that account, but how you get the money into regular accounts is your business. You can look this up online.’
‘I’ve been doing little else,’ says Nina.
‘Why’d you have to kill him?’ says Garth. ‘That’s the only bit I wouldn’t have done.’
‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ says Nina.
‘Nina,’ says Garth. ‘I don’t think like other people, you get that?’
‘I get that,’ says Nina.
‘Then don’t lie to me,’ says Garth. ‘You don’t need to. I respect what you’ve done. You saw an opportunity, you’re making five million, while everyone’s chasing their tails.’
‘Thank you,’ says Nina.
‘But I still don’t get why you killed him? Why not just scare the guy and take it?’
‘He was eighty, Garth,’ says Nina.
‘OK,’ says Garth.
