‘Ludo. Nipper. They said anything to you? Been in touch?’

‘No, Boss.’

There was taking the piss, and then there was this. Harlan was standing there in the middle of the floor tapping a baseball bat into his open palm. He was going to get some answers today, or else.

Sammy’s face was wary as he watched Harlan with the bat.

‘Boss?’ he asked. ‘Why would they talk to me? They’d talk to you, wouldn’t they.’

‘So you’ve heard nothing at all.’ Slap, went the bat in Harlan’s palm.

‘No. Nothing.’

‘Get some more boys down there, find out what the fuck’s going on, OK?’

‘Boss, they’ve probably got it under control.’

‘Then they should be telling me that. Don’t you think?’ Slap went the bat again. Then Harlan pointed it at Sammy. ‘You know anything, you better spit it out right now.’

‘Nothing, Boss,’ said Sammy, feeling his mouth go dry. These days, when you looked into the eyes of Harlan Stone you saw a funhouse party going on in his brain. He was losing it. He had this obsession about Belle Barton, finding her, getting rid of her, and it was taking over his entire life.

‘I’m surrounded by fucking idiots,’ snarled Harlan. Whap. The bat slapped into his palm again.

If he comes at me with that, I’m going to leg it, thought Sammy, bracing himself.

‘Get some more people down there. Do it,’ said Harlan.

Sammy fled.

139

Next morning, Jack was up early again. Belle heard him talking on the phone for a long time. Then they ate breakfast. With no horses to muck out and no hens to collect eggs from, Belle occupied herself by cleaning up the inside of the house while Jack prepared that night’s dinner.

At just after one, a battered old Jeep rolled up at the front of the house and six men emerged from it. Through the kitchen window Belle saw them coming. There was something in the way they moved, the tense and watchful way they held themselves, that reminded her of Jack. He’d heard the Jeep pull up, and let them in to the house.

‘Christ, here you are, Jackie boy. Talk about the arse end of nowhere,’ one of them said.

Belle went to the door and looked out as the men greeted each other with hugs, back-slapping and a lot of swearing. The one who’d been driving flicked a look at her.

‘See you’ve been busy,’ he said to Jack with a grin.

He didn’t seem to notice her scars. In fact, as they turned toward her, all six of them, none of them seemed fazed by the state of her.

Jack took her hand in his. ‘This is Belle,’ he told the men.