The Hunter's Prayer by Kevin Wignall Read Free Book Online Page A

The news had all the impact of an election result in some country he’d never heard of.
    The only thing that mattered to him was that he had to go back and tell Ella that her family had been killed, and he didn’t know whether she was safe, whether she’d ever be safe. That was some news to break to a girl who’d been as close to death as she had been today.
    As he walked back along the platform, a couple of pigeons took flight from his path and he followed their ascent for a few seconds, up into the vaulted sky of the terminus. For a moment, it seemed like he could still hear the flapping of their wings, even above the train noise and the background bustle of the station, and it gave him a strange sense of peace.
    It made him want to be home and done with this. He was heading home, but the fragmented longing he’d just experienced had been for something more distant, unreachable: the touch and smell of skin, warmth, a laugh, a breeze off the sea . . . memories too painful to dwell upon, a sense of home that had never really belonged to him.
    He knocked on the compartment door and waited for Chris to open it.
    ‘I’ll stay out here in the corridor until we leave the station. Close the door again.’
    Chris nodded but from behind him Lucas heard Ella say, ‘Did you speak to him?’
    He looked over Chris’s shoulder. He thought she’d come close to guessing a couple of times, but there it was in her face; for all her intelligence, for all that had happened, she didn’t have a clue.
    ‘No, I didn’t. I’ll explain once we’re on the move.’ She looked baffled but Lucas nodded for Chris to close the door. He had to wait, because she’d react badly and he needed the noise of the train’s movement to drown out any sound of distress.
    A couple of people squeezed past him in the narrow corridor and then the train started to ease along the platform, imperceptibly at first, the movement so smooth it looked like the neighboring train was moving. He waited till they were clear of the station, speed and racket building.
    Maybe Chris had said something or maybe, given a few minutes to think about it, she’d begun to stack things up. Either way, as soon as he stepped inside she said, ‘What’s happened? Just tell me.’
    ‘Your family’s dead. The police answered the phone.’ She didn’t call out, didn’t cry. It was like he’d spoken in a language she hardly knew and she was still translating in her head. Yet the expression on her face was familiar to him; it was how people looked after being shot.
    Lucas heard Chris whispering, ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ and turned for a moment to look at him. He was sitting on the edge of the seat with his face buried in his cupped hands.
    ‘All of them?’
    He looked back at Ella and said, ‘Yes, all shot, probably the same time as they tried to get you last night.’
    ‘But why?’
    ‘Your dad must’ve fucked someone off in a big way. And he had enemies.’
    Her face and thoughts finally fused, dissolving into each other, a sudden violent retching of tears and emotion and strangled words.
    ‘Ben didn’t have enemies.’ She could say no more, falling apart into sobs, and then Chris was holding her and she was clinging on to him. He was whispering words of comfort now and the more he said the tighter she held him.
    Lucas stepped back outside and closed the door. At first he couldn’t hear anything from inside the compartment, the train noise covering for them as he’d hoped. As his ears adjusted, though, her distraught cries became clearly audible and he started to look around uneasily, feeling exposed.
    Someone came walking along the corridor, an elderly woman, too fat to pass him. The most natural thing would have been for him to give way by stepping back into his compartment, but he didn’t want to open the door and let the distress contained there spill out.
    Instead, he walked along a little way and ducked into an empty compartment to avoid making eye contact with