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Harry listened, mesmerized. Limited. That described how she felt every minute of her day. Boxed in by her mother, who was always so disappointed in her; labelled at school where she failed to measure up. With a flash of insight, Harry realized he was telling her how to cope with her life.
Without warning, Dillon dropped her hands and sat back, as though suddenly embarrassed at his own intensity. ‘End of lecture. Thanks for talking to me.’ He jumped to his feet and headed for the door. ‘I’ll see myself out.’
Harry stood up, dizzy at the sudden change. ‘But wait – what happens now?’
Dillon shrugged. ‘Probably nothing. I’ll need to inform your parents about everything you’ve been doing, but no one’s going to prosecute a thirteen-year-old girl. Do it again though, and you’ll be in trouble.’
He stood with his hand on the doorknob and looked over at her, his eyes still slightly feverish. ‘Someday I’ll have my own company, with the best engineers in the country.’ His lips twitched, and he winked at her. ‘Stay out of jail long enough and maybe I’ll hire you.’
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Cameron stood outside the wrought-iron gates. The girl was inside the house, and had been there for almost an hour. He pressed himself up against the bars. He badly needed to finish what he’d started.
He dug his fingernails into his palms. The train station had been such a fuck-up. She’d been so light, like a child. But the instant he’d broken contact with her, the mob of commuters had barged in front of him, blocking his view. He’d heard the shrieking trains, seen them crashing by. But the crowd had robbed him of the sight of her fear.
Without that, it wasn’t finished.
He peered through the gate. The driveway looked like a landing strip with all those fucking lights. He made out the shape of the house ahead, two lit windows glowing in the dark. He leaned his face against the cold metal and imagined the girl in one of those rooms. Heat filled his groin.
But he’d been told to back off.
He shook the railings, testing their strength. They stretched at least twelve feet into the air, welded on either side to a concrete wall that rolled away into the shadowy road. A pole-mounted surveillance camera rotated above him, panning its way down the driveway back towards the gate. Cameron ducked to one side, out of its line of sight. Houses like this were all the same. Prison walls, fence-mounted sensors, infra-red cameras. Maximum perimeter protection. For all the good it did them. There was always a way inside.
He began to circle the property wall, trailing his hand against the ivy that had stitched itself into the brickwork. He could smell the damp woodiness of the forest around him. Something rustled in the undergrowth, a small mammal on the move. Cameron reached a side gate and gazed again at the long L-shaped house. How spectacular it would look swallowed up in flames.
But he’d been told no fire. Not yet.
Not many people understood fire the way Cameron did. Mostly they were afraid of it. But Cameron had spent time getting close to flames, so close that he could almost touch their trembling colours and slender tongues.
He moved further along the wall, caressing the ivy leaves. Trapping someone in fire was so much more satisfying than shoving them in front of a truck. You got to stay in the shadows and watch the effects of what you’d done. Not like a road accident, where everything was over in a single scream. With fires, the build-up of euphoria was gradual, ending in a trance-like state that sated his need to see things burn.
He’d heard that many serial killers were fire-setters in their adolescence. Son of Sam, for instance. He’d started thousands of fires. Cameron smiled. He wasn’t in that league yet. One day, maybe.
He tried the latch on the side gate. It was locked, but the steel bars felt crumbly, the paint peeling away in his hands. He took a closer look. The gate was older and rustier than the other one, the welding not so secure. Cameron’s breathing quickened.
He might have been told to back off for a while, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get close to her.
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The wardrobe turned out to be a walk-in closet bigger than Harry’s own bedroom.
She padded over to the rail that ran the length of one wall and browsed through the hangers. The clothes seemed to come in a variety of sizes, but all bore the same designer labels and glitzy evening style. Harry sighed. With her bruised face and battered shoes, it wouldn’t be a good look.
She turned to rummage in the shelves behind her and found a pair of men’s jeans, a wide belt and some crisp white shirts still in their cellophane wrapping. A few minutes later she was dressed, the shirt tucked in and the belt cinched tight over the loose-fitting jeans. She made her way downstairs, wondering about the women who’d left their clothes behind.
Harry found the room at the back of the house where she had left Dillon, and pushed open the door. There was no sign of him.
She peered around the room and guessed this was where he did most of his living. It was a combination of office and bachelor’s den, and smelled of leather and grilled cheese. In front of the television was an oversized armchair complete with footrest and beer holder. Harry had a hard time picturing Dillon with his feet up watching TV.
Dominating one wall was a large black-and-white photograph, maybe five foot by four. It was a recent shot of Dillon, taken from an aerial viewpoint. He was sitting cross-legged on a deserted beach, and all around him were a series of lines and spirals traced in the sand. The pattern was Celtic in effect, and formed an ornate grid that took up half the beach.
‘It’s a simply connected maze.’
Harry spun round to find Dillon standing in the doorway watching her. He’d changed into smart chinos and a blue rugby shirt, and he carried a silver tray in his hands. He nodded towards the photograph as he moved into the room.
‘I used to carve them out everywhere I went. In the grass, in the snow. Once I even built one with mirrors.’
Harry turned back to the photograph. The confusing swirls reassembled themselves into paths and dead-ends, and she recognized it as the sort of maze she used to do as a child.
‘What does simply connected mean?’ she said.
‘Every path you choose leads either to another path or to a dead-end.’ The tray rattled as he set it down on the coffee table. ‘The paths never re-connect with one another, so it’s the simplest kind of maze to solve.’
Harry squinted at the maze and tried to follow one of its paths, but her eyes started to cross and she gave it up.
‘I never knew you were so hooked on mazes,’ she said.
‘Didn’t you ever wonder how I named my company?’
She threw him a questioning look.
‘Lúbra is the Irish for labyrinth,’ he said.
Harry smiled. ‘Nice.’
She eyed up the tray. He’d brought a bottle of brandy, two crystal balloon glasses and a plate piled high with sandwiches. Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten all day.
Helping herself to a sandwich, she sank into one of the chairs. Dillon handed her a brandy. He raised his eyebrows at the men’s shirt and jeans, but made no comment.
Harry slugged down a mouthful of brandy. ‘Look, I’m sorry about all that stuff with Ashford.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And I’m sorry about earlier, too. When I clammed up on you. I do that sometimes.’
Dillon busied himself with a sandwich. ‘That’s okay, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’
Harry sighed. She may as well come right out with it. ‘It’s because of my father. I think he’s involved.’
Dillon frowned. ‘In what? The break-in?’
‘All of it.’
‘The guy at the train station as well? But that’s crazy. Why?’
‘Because of what that guy said. The Sorohan deal, the ring – it all points to my father.’
‘I don’t get it.’
She held his gaze. ‘The Sorohan deal was the one that blew up in my father’s face and got him arrested.’
Dillon’s expression cleared. ‘Oh. I see. But what –’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t ask me any more, I haven’t worked it all out yet. The point is, you know how I get about my father.’
Dillon rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah. Prickly.’
She smiled and shrugged. ‘Yeah, well.’
‘Have you mentioned any of this to the police?’
Harry flashed on an image of the silent detective who’d come to her apartment that evening. She shook her head. ‘I can’t. They might start investigating him again.’
‘Well, he’s already in prison. What else can they do to him?’
Harry put her sandwich down. Suddenly she wasn’t hungry any more. ‘He’s getting out.’
‘I thought he got eight years.’
‘Remission.’ Harry’s throat seemed to be closing up. ‘He could be out any time.’
Dillon seemed to work it out. ‘So if he gets investigated for any of this, his remission will be on hold?’
‘Or thrown out altogether.’
There was a pause. She could feel Dillon’s eyes on her.
‘Look, you need to talk to your father,’ he said. ‘I’ve been telling you that for months.’
She shook her head and stared at her glass. She cupped it in one hand and swirled the golden liquid around in it. ‘When I was a kid, I thought he was wonderful. He made all these marvellous promises, and the ones he kept were magical.’ She traced a nail through the grooves in the diamond-cut crystal. ‘Almost worth the disappointment of the ones that he forgot.’
‘Sounds like you and he had quite a bond.’
She smiled. ‘My sister Amaranta had a hand in that. When I was five, she told me our parents had found me on the street as a baby. She said they were going to keep me for a while, but that later, they planned to sell me on to the neighbours.’
Dillon laughed. ‘Typical big sister stunt.’
‘Trouble was, I believed her. For months I felt like an outsider in my own home. My mother was distant with me anyway, for reasons of her own, so that didn’t help. I finally blurted it all out to my father, and he cleared things up for me. I suppose from then on, I saw him as some kind of ally.’
Dillon sipped his brandy. ‘And that all changed when he was arrested?’
She shook her head. ‘I’d already had enough long before that. Living with constant let-downs gets to you after a while. When he got sent to jail, that was kind of the end.’ She shrugged and smiled. ‘We don’t get to choose our parents, do we?’
‘I suppose not. Although you could say my parents chose me.’
Harry raised her eyebrows.
‘I was adopted,’ he explained. ‘My adoptive parents couldn’t have children so they took me in when I was a baby. But by the time I was two, my mother was miraculously pregnant.’
‘Don’t tell me, you got overlooked in favour of the natural child and it gave you a mass of complexes.’
Dillon paused. ‘For a while, maybe. I certainly know what it’s like to feel you’re an outsider in your own home.’ He shrugged. ‘But then they tried to make amends and ended up over-compensating. I got all the attention, and it was my brother who got the complexes. He went right off the rails in the end. Drugs, prison – the works.’
She sucked down her brandy, not sure what to say. ‘So we both have families with murky pasts?’
‘Looks like it.’
Harry waved her arm around the room. ‘Well, it hasn’t done you any harm. Look at this house. It’s amazing.’ Her ears started to buzz and she wondered was she getting a bit drunk.
‘It’s not bad.’ Dillon looked pleased with himself.
Harry scanned the room. ‘Mind you, you seem to do most of your living in here.’
His smile slipped a little. ‘Not when I have guests, which is most of the time. And when I don’t, I can shut the world away. High walls, electronic gates – if there’s one thing money can buy you, it’s privacy.’
‘Or isolation,’ Harry said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Dillon frowned, and stood up.
‘Come on, you look exhausted. You should get some rest.’
He grasped her hand and helped her to her feet. She stood facing him for a moment, only inches away from him, their body heat mingling. Then he turned away and strolled over to the French doors on the other side of the room, beckoning for her to follow. ‘But first I want to show you something.’
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The first thing Harry noticed when she stepped outside the door was a pungent scent that reminded her of Christmas trees. It hung in the air like eucalyptus, and instantly cleared her head.
She peered into the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Then she saw it. Inky black, looming up from the centre of the lawn, was a gigantic wall of hedge maybe twelve feet high and wider than a football pitch.
‘My God,’ Harry said. ‘Is that a maze?’
As she spoke, the moon broke through the clouds and she could see that the dense evergreen had been planted in the shape of an enormous enclosed rectangle, extending as far back as it did across. There must have been over an acre of hedge out there.
‘Awesome, isn’t it?’ Dillon said. ‘The previous owners planted it about twenty years ago. I just had to have it. Come on, let me take you in.’
He strode across the lawn, his trainers making whispering noises against the dry grass. Harry followed, stopping in front of a red triangular flag that marked the entrance to the maze. She felt her brain dissolve into pulp, the way it always did when confronted with a navigational challenge.
‘I feel like I need to throw a six to start,’ she said.
Dillon laughed. ‘Come on, before the moonlight goes. I want to show you what I built in the centre.’
She followed him in. The spicy pine fragrance was more intense inside the maze. All around her were curved, towering hedges. The rough clay path was only a few feet wide, so they were forced to walk in single file.
Dillon took a sharp left, and Harry trotted to keep up. The path followed a tight arc, and suddenly Dillon disappeared. The moonlight waned, and Harry’s skin prickled. She quickened her pace.
‘What do you do if someone gets lost in here?’ she called out.
‘We talk them in from the viewing deck.’ He sounded close by, only a few feet ahead. ‘It overlooks the whole thing. But if you do get lost, just follow the left-hand rule.’
‘The what?’ She clung to the main path, refusing to be tempted by left or right turns.
‘Put your left hand on the hedge, follow the wall and keep walking. You’ll get out eventually.’
By now, the moonlight had completely vanished, turning the hedges into black walls. Harry stretched her hands out in front of her, feeling her way around the blind bends.
