Cold Kill

by Rennie Airth

  Thinking it must be Sarah from across the way, Addy opened the door and went, ‘Aargh!’ That was how it came out – something between a gasp and a squawk – because standing there on the doorstep was … well, if it wasn’t a bat it was the next best thing.

  The man was tall and wore a long black coat and a black felt hat, but it wasn’t that – it was the eyes. They stuck out like a pair of grapes. Protuberant – that was the word. Protuberant eyes, a receding chin and ears that put Addy in mind of a couple of ice-cream scoops. Scared the shit out of her.

  ‘Forgive me.’ The bat made a neat bow. (Foreign – no question about it. Addy had an ear for accents. And how about that r? It sounded Russian to her.) ‘Is Mrs Carmody at home?’

  Definitely Russian. A Russian bat.

  ‘No.’ Addy shook her head. ‘I mean not right now. I’m expecting her soon.’

  ‘This evening perhaps?’ The eyes seemed to widen. He kept staring at her. It gave Addy the creeps.

  ‘Erm, no … I mean I don’t know, tomorrow maybe. It’s the weather, you see …’ Addy waved her hands about as though that might help. The creeps were getting creepier. She didn’t know why, but for some reason she was scared. Not shocked, like a moment ago, but scared-scared. And it wasn’t because of his eyes or his ears or his long black coat. It was him. Something about him.

  The bat went on staring at her. Addy got ready to yell. (What was the matter with her? There were people around, Sarah, neighbours, lights in all the houses.) All she knew was if he made one move towards her, just the tiniest motion …

  ‘Until tomorrow then.’

  He made another bow, then turned and walked away and Addy’s breath came out with a whoosh.

  ‘Can I say who called?’ Count Dracula?

  The bat didn’t answer or look round. He gave no sign he’d heard her, just went on walking towards the end of the mews and then he was round the corner, gone.

  Addy stepped back and shut the door, locked it, put on the chain. And then took a couple of deep breaths.

  What a performance!

  Another triumph for Miss Adelaide Banks in her well-known interpretation of There’s Something at the Bottom of my Garden, otherwise known as The Overheated Imagination.

  Just wait till she told Rose. The guy was probably a friend of hers, some Russian émigré type, a poet maybe. There were lots of Russian poets. Maybe this one had spent time in a labour camp when he was a boy, which accounted for his peculiar appearance. Haven’t you heard – they used to hang them by their heels from the rafters at night? And now he was living in the West and Rose had met him some place, at a concert, say, and … and though Addy liked making up stories about people she met, inventing whole fantasy lives for them, she knew, was bullshit.

  The guy had scared her, and she didn’t know why.

  But Rose would – might – and Rose would be here soon, and in the meantime she wasn’t going to think about bats and vampires and things that went bump in the night. For Christ’s sake, Addy, you’re going to sleep here. She would get settled, take a shower and then go over the road and have dinner with Sarah and her husband. Yeah, and tell them all about it.

  First she went into the kitchen and checked the back door – it was locked and bolted – then carried her bags upstairs and unpacked them in the small guest room at the front of the house. Between the guest room and Rose’s bedroom at the back was a bathroom – Addy could have found her way around blindfolded, Rose had gone over every inch of the house in her letters – and after she had taken a shower and changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt, she opened the door to Rose’s room and peeped in.

  Not to pry, she told herself, just to take a peek, see everything was in order. Rose’s photograph of the two of them was standing on the bedside table where she’d have expected to find it, though the one with Uncle Matt was missing. Perhaps Rose had taken it to Paris with her. The important thing was Grumble had gone too. He wasn’t in his usual place sitting on the throne of pillows on Rose’s bed kind of surveying things. Addy had never forgotten what her aunt had told her all those years ago.

  She went downstairs and checked the time. It was a little after six. Addy decided she would give it an hour and then go over and join Sarah and her husband. She lit the gas fire, hauled out a couple of old photograph albums from the bookcase that had caught her eye earlier and settled down on the white hearth rug in front of the flickering flames.

  Memory time.

  Addy loved family photos – and particularly the way Rose stuck them in an album, didn’t just leave them in her phone or laptop – the ones of them both together and of Grandma and Grandpa back in the old days (even if you were only twenty there were still times that seemed like ancient history), but she had her own copies of most of them and soon she skipped forward, following the tracks of Rose’s life with Uncle Matt.

  Mexico … Bangkok … Athens … New Delhi. Uncle Matt had worked for a big trading company, General something, and they had spent months, sometimes years, living in all kinds of romantic places. When Addy was a little girl she used to wait for the postcards she knew Rose would send her, longing for the one that would say, Dearest Bear, looks like we’ll be meeting soon … and then Rose would be back, sometimes alone (Addy much preferred that), sometimes with Uncle Matt, and if it was summer they would go to the Cape or Nantucket and Rose and Addy would spend hours on the beach together and Uncle Matt (if he was there) would promise that next year he was going to fly Addy over to wherever they were living and show her the best time. But he never did.

  Truth to tell, they had never really hit it off, she and Uncle Matt, and Addy knew it was her fault. She’d been just too damned possessive of Rose, always wanting her attention, wanting her love, but although both had been given in great measure, Addy had never been deceived. You only had to see them together, Rose and Matt, see the way she looked at him, to know where her heart lay.

  Spain … the end of the line. Addy found a photo in the second album of Rose and Uncle Matt in fancy dress: Rose in a lace mantilla with a comb in her hair, Matt in bullfighter’s garb. Matt the matador! Still, you had to hand it to him – anyone else would look like an asshole, but Uncle Matt could play the part. Long and lean, he was facing the camera with that arrogant stare those guys cultivated. Hey, toro! Matt the matador. Matt the actor. It took one to know one.

  It had all ended a year ago in the mountains, the Sierra Nevada, where Uncle Matt’s plane had gone down – a piece of junk he’d rented in some no-account town on the coast because he’d had to get to Madrid to catch a flight to New York. It was something to do with work that wouldn’t wait. Rose had been going with him, but changed her mind at the last minute – Addy didn’t know why, she’d never dared ask – and Uncle Matt had bought it. And the worst thing was Rose had never forgiven herself. Not because she hadn’t stopped him going. Because she hadn’t been on the plane with him.

  Jesus! Addy shut her eyes. You should leave memories alone, let them lie. Rose had called them from Madrid afterwards. After she’d gone up into the mountains with the police and they had shown her the wreck: after she’d identified Matt’s body. Addy had never talked to her about it, never asked her anything, but Rose had told Grandpa that seeing her husband’s body was the worst moment of her life.

  ‘I think I went crazy for a while,’ she had told him. It wasn’t long after that Grandpa and Grandma had died, within weeks of each other, and Rose had been left with only Addy for family.

  The album ended with the Spanish photos. There was nothing more after that. The last pictures had been snapped on somebody’s yacht. Mallorca, Rose had printed at the top of the page. There were photos of both of them on deck with other people, different groups, and – hey! – Addy bent closer. Wasn’t that …?

  Well, wouldn’t you know it! Molly Kingsmill, in the all-too-visible flesh. She was sitting on the rail between Rose and Uncle Matt: Lady M herself. In a white bikini. With boobs out to here.

  So that wa
s where they’d met, Rose and Molly. Somehow Addy had always assumed it was London. But now it made more sense, Rose deciding to come and live here. It must have been Molly’s idea, her new chum Molly. Addy couldn’t help it. She knew she was jealous and possessive and probably a pain in the ass, but she just couldn’t see what Rose saw in the woman.

  But no doubt she’d have another chance to find out. Molly would be around as soon as Rose got back, count on it. Christ! Maybe they’d have to spend Christmas together, the three of them. All Addy hoped was that Mike came through – called her, like he said he would. It’d be something to dangle under Molly’s aristocratic nose, something to stuff up her jumper (if there was any space left). But then a terrible thought occurred to her. She was ready (she hoped) for Mike to take a shine to Rose rather than her. It would be the natural thing, given their age and her age and all that shit. But what if he got the hots for Molly?

  Enough! Addy slammed the book shut. Think of something else, anything else. She took the albums back to the bookcase and as she put them away her eye lighted on a word, a title, a name!

  Olivier.

  Magic. Pure magic. She hauled out the book and there he was on the jacket – those eyes, that mouth – white-haired and stricken, and it must be, yes it was … Addy had checked the cover. Olivier as Lear.

  King Lear. That was a tragedy, and there was another as far as Addy was concerned and it was this: she had been born too late. Oh, not by much. Just a few decades earlier and she could have hoped that one day they might share the same stage. Adelaide Banks and Sir Laurence Olivier. (Well, the other way round, naturally.) True, he would have been old even then, but Addy was slight and she would have done it somehow, made herself light, light as thistle-down, and he would have carried her on to the stage, blinded and howling out his pain and grief.

  Thou’ll come no more.

  Never, never, never, never, never!

  And it was true, it would never happen now, not ever …

  The doorbell rang again.

  Addy checked the time. Just before seven. Must be Sarah come to fetch her, she thought. She put the book away and went to the front door and – oh, no, wait a minute – maybe the bat was back. He’d said tomorrow, but Addy wasn’t taking any chances and she looked first to see that the chain was in place before she unlocked the door and opened it a few inches.

  It wasn’t the bat and it wasn’t Sarah. It was some Arab woman wearing a mask and a veil and even as Addy registered the fact – there wasn’t time to be surprised – the woman launched herself at the door, smashing it open, ripping the chain attachment out of the frame so that it swung inwards catching Addy a crack on the forehead that sent her reeling back, tripping over a stool behind her and landing on the floor, flat on her ass.

  Too amazed, too dumbfounded, too totally blown away to do anything but sit there gawping.

  Next moment the woman was there in the hallway beside her, and Addy lost it – she plain went berserk, because vampire bats were one thing, but some scrawny little Arab bitch busting in! Scrambling to her feet, she hurled herself at the creature, yelling at the top of her lungs, but the figure she grabbed at wasn’t there and instead something hit her in the pit of the stomach like a hammer and next thing she knew she was on the floor again, this time doubled up on her knees with the breath knocked out of her, gasping and choking.

  A hand like a steel claw caught hold of the back of her neck and she felt her head being lifted. Then it was there, right in front of her – the veiled face. The woman was looking at her. The eyes behind the mask were black and unmoving. They seemed to burn into hers. It went on for seconds.

  Then the hand on her neck shifted. It took a grip on Addy’s dark curls and suddenly she was wrenched upright and dragged towards the stairs, up the stairs, on her feet at first, then on her knees, and the woman wouldn’t stop, she just kept on hauling, and Addy tried to yell but she hadn’t any breath, and when they reached the top the woman went first into Rose’s room, pulling Addy behind her, then turned to go to the guest room, and though Addy was swinging at her now, punching her in the back and the ribs, it was like hitting a tree trunk, the woman didn’t seem to feel it, and—

  And someone was shouting.

  It was a man’s voice coming from the floor below.

  The woman let go of Addy’s hair and went to the stairs. Staggering after her, Addy saw a grey-haired man standing in the hallway.

  ‘You … you …’

  He shouted when he saw the Arab woman and tried to grab hold of her when she came down the steps, but the black-cloaked figure easily eluded his waving arms and ran out into the night.

  From the top of the stairs, on shaky legs, Addy witnessed it all, and then did something she’d done before at acting school. (She’d tried it this way, she’d tried it that, but whichever way she tried somehow it never seemed natural. This time, though, it was for real.)

  She fainted clean away …

  And came to on the sofa in the sitting room downstairs to find Sarah bending over her asking, ‘Addy … Addy … are you all right?’ And although her head was still spinning – she was having trouble trying to recall exactly what had happened – at least she was safe and sound.

  For a while anyway, but the feeling didn’t last. Soon afterwards the cops arrived and from that moment on things went downhill fast.

  An Arab woman? What Arab woman?

  There were two of them in plainclothes: a Detective Inspector MacSomething and a younger guy who wrote down everything Addy said in a notebook. Also some other cops in uniform who wandered in and out of the house – Addy could see the flashing light on their car outside through a chink in the sitting-room curtains.

  Did she know any Arab women?

  They were polite enough, but in a British kind of way that wasn’t really polite. They were just humouring her, and it was clear from the expression on their faces that they thought she was wacko.

  How about her aunt then – did she know any Arab women? Was Rose by any chance Israeli?

  Great guess. Give the man a cigar. You could tell by the name, couldn’t you? Carmody. Big Tel Aviv family. Ask anyone. Addy had to bite her tongue to stay civil.

  Had anything like this ever happened to her before?

  Like every time there was a full moon? Jesus!

  The questions kept coming.

  Thank God, Sarah was there, she and her husband Bill, who had heard Addy yelling from across the mews and come running over. Bill was the grey-haired man Addy had seen at the bottom of the stairs just before she passed out. And Bill had seen the Arab woman, hadn’t he? So they knew she wasn’t making that up. But it didn’t help. She still felt lousy. Her head throbbed, her stomach ached and her scalp was still burning from the attentions of that hair-pulling bitch.

  Not knowing how badly she was hurt, Bill had also called an ambulance, which arrived before the cops, but after a medic had looked her over and found nothing broken, no serious damage et cetera, he’d told her there was no need for them to take her to hospital. (How about the patient’s self-esteem? Addy wanted to ask. Care to run a check on that?)

  Once he was done, the detectives had gone to work. Addy told them what had happened. Told them a second time. Told them a third time. She could see they weren’t buying it.

  ‘And you’re sure she didn’t say anything?’ DI MacBirdbrain asked for maybe the five hundredth time. Addy’s headache was getting worse. She wondered whether she ought to tell them about the bat, decided no. They’d put her away for sure, probably in a straitjacket.

  The younger cop who was taking notes looked up. ‘Could it have been a man?’ he asked.

  Hey! Why hadn’t she thought of that herself? Addy nodded eagerly.

  ‘Yeah, I think so. She was too strong, know what I mean?’

  She felt better already. It had really been bothering her: the thought that not only had she had the shit kicked out of her, but the perpetrator was some itsy little dame.

  ‘A man dres
sed as an Arab woman?’ MacDumbo frowned. This was getting deep. Better send for Sherlock.

  Someone was making a noise outside the front door. Addy heard voices. A woman was speaking. ‘Just tell me who’s in charge …’ And then the door opened and in swept …

  ‘Addy! Is that you? What on earth’s happened? Where’s Rose?’

  She was wearing a fur coat with her blonde hair piled on top of her head like a golden helmet and, looking up at her, Addy couldn’t credit her own reaction. She would have sworn on a Bible – whole stacks of them – that she would never in her life have been pleased to see Molly Kingsmill.

  But she was.

  ‘Hi, Molly …’

  ‘Addy! Good God! What on earth are you doing here?’ She strode over to the sofa, pushing the cops aside. ‘Who are you two?’ She glared at them.

  ‘Madam, if you don’t mind …’ MacNumbnuts began, but Molly did. Molly minded like hell. Molly wanted to know exactly what was going on, like right now, and it was left to Addy to simply lie back and watch. There was nothing she had to say, nothing she needed to do. For once she was on the other side of the footlights, part of the audience, taking notes almost, because if you were an actor you had to know everything: how people behaved, all sorts of people, and lying there Addy knew that what she was witnessing now was a master class in what it was like to be rich.

  Rich and beautiful and upper class – to be all those things at once and not give a shit about anyone.

  NINE

  Night, and once again

  While I wait for you …

  Kimura murmured the words through clenched teeth. But it was no use. The effort it took him to control his chattering teeth drove the thought from his mind. He had never been so cold.

  In his flight from the mews he had lost both sandals and had had to run through the snow in socks that had rapidly become drenched with icy water. The socks were discarded now and his feet warmly covered, but feeling had still not returned to his toes and he flexed them repeatedly, striving to restore the sluggish circulation.