Days later, Javier Matias was sitting at a side table in the Savoy Grill and getting pretty fucking annoyed. He flicked back his silk shirt cuff and glanced at his Piaget Emperador Cushion watch – it was his proud boast that it had cost him nearly half a million dollars – and scowled.

That son of a bitch Harlan Stone! Who the fuck did he think he was, to keep him waiting like this? One o’clock Wednesday, he’d said. Now it was nearly two. Javier was severely pissed off with Stone already, and now this. In all his business dealings Javier placed a great emphasis on manners, on punctuality. He looked around him at the other diners and his mood was not improved by their happy chatter.

‘Would you like to order now, sir?’ asked the waiter, coming over for the second time.

‘You know what?’ Javier got to his feet, slapping his napkin down onto the pristine table. ‘I fucking wouldn’t. And if that asshole Harlan Stone ever shows up, tell him he’s finished. It’s over. OK?’

Not waiting for a reply, Javier stormed out of the restaurant and was gone.

159

Tank and the others departed, leaving Beechwood Farm feeling weirdly empty. Slowly, things got back to normality. Belle rode out on Lady Marmalade, helped Jack around the farm, and late in the afternoons they swam in the river, until the weather turned and it got too cold.

The police had been in touch, leaving a phone message at the house about Harlan. When Belle returned the call and explained that Milly – Harlan’s next of kin – was unwell, they told her that he had been found, dead and partially digested in the central pool of the zoo when someone in the nearby village had raised concerns about the animals kept there by the – clearly absent – owners of the house.

‘My God. That’s awful,’ she said.

She sometimes thought of him, spitting bile at her in his last moments while the caiman ate him. Sometimes, dreams about that day woke her, sweating, in the night. She didn’t know if there would be a funeral or a memorial for Harlan, and she didn’t want to know either. He was dead; that was enough for her.

As the days were shortening and the leaves starting to fall, Stevie brought Milly to the farm and then he too departed.

Milly was so changed. Thinner, more serious.

Belle hugged her when she arrived. ‘Mills! I’m so glad you’re here,’ she said.

Milly looked like she’d been through hell. When they spoke later, she told Belle that she still wanted the drugs, and that Stevie had told her she would want crack every day for the rest of her life but that she must never, ever take it, because that would be the end of her.