by Rennie Airth
It was the waiting that was hardest. The police when they came had been in no hurry to take her where she needed to be. The first to arrive had been two young coppers in uniform, a man and a woman. Other than asking her what had happened – the who and the how and the when – they had left her to herself while they busied themselves clearing the snow away and marking the spot where Mike’s body lay on the cobbles with tape and then beginning the job of questioning the other residents of the mews who had gathered around to find out what they had seen.
Pretty soon more police had arrived including four detectives, one of them Malek. They had conferred for a few moments and then Malek had come over to where she was standing by Mike’s body.
‘I’m so sorry about your aunt, Addy.’ He had held her gaze. ‘I’ll drive you to the hospital now. We’ll talk there.’
As they left in his car a second ambulance had arrived to collect Mike Ryker’s body and take it to the mortuary.
‘Did you know him?’ he asked, and Addy had nodded.
‘He brought me here. I was supposed to pick up my stuff. He wanted to tell me about his daughter, but I couldn’t take the trouble to listen.’
‘What are you saying?’ He didn’t understand.
‘Never mind.’
There was no point trying to explain how she felt, she didn’t know herself. It was like she was two people, one of them speaking and carrying on normally, the other watching, and she knew that at some point she would have to wake up from the spell she was under and take a grip on the present. But not yet, she wasn’t ready. All she could do was stare out of the car window as they made their way through the snow-covered streets to the hospital.
There, at reception, she had learned that she couldn’t see Rose yet.
‘She’s receiving emergency treatment at the moment,’ the nurse at the desk told them. ‘You’ll be told as soon as there’s any news on her condition.’
She had let Malek lead her to the room where she was now and it was while she was sitting there on her own, head down, staring at the floor that Dr Ranjit had brought her the news about Rose.
Now Malek was back. He pulled up another chair close to hers. Somewhere in the midst of the fear that gripped her – the thought of Rose fighting for her life had thrust all other thoughts from her mind – Addy was aware that he was treating her gently, as though she were fragile, as though he didn’t wish to cause her any further pain. But he also wanted answers. Before he could start, though, a uniformed constable knocked on the door and came in. He was carrying two bags with him. Malek went over to have a word with him. He took the bags from the man and put them on the desk.
‘These were lying in the snow near where your aunt was,’ he told Addy. ‘We want you to take a look at them – the contents, I mean, and tell us if there’s anything that strikes you as unusual.’
‘The big one’s mine.’
She got up and opened the bag for him to see what she’d put in, clothes mostly.
‘You can go through it if you like. The other one belongs to Rose. She had it with her.’
Malek opened the zipper on the overnight travel bag Rose had been carrying.
He pulled out the first object that came to hand and held it up for her inspection. Addy took it from him.
‘Grumble …’
‘I’m sorry?’ Her whisper had barely carried to him.
She was silent, remembering. What was it Rose had said that day? ‘I’m going to keep him for ever. Wherever I go, he goes.’ And as though the words held a hidden power, the memories they brought in their wake shattered the spell she was under, bringing her back to the moment, releasing her tears.
‘Oh, Rose …’ Hugging the tattered body to her chest, she burst into deep, racking sobs.
Shocked, Malek reached out a hand to comfort her, but then quickly withdrew it. Giving her a chance to collect herself, he went slowly through the contents of Rose’s bag and by the time he was done Addy’s tears had dried.
‘I gave this to Rose years ago.’ She held the bear close to her. ‘She took it with her wherever she went.’
‘You can keep it,’ he reassured her. ‘We don’t need it.’ Then, clearing his throat like a signal that things were about to change, he resumed his seat facing her. ‘I’m sorry, Addy, but we have to move on. Let’s start at the beginning. Did you know your aunt would be at the house?’
She shook her head. ‘Like I told you, I went there to collect some things. Rose called me on my cell. She thought I was in New York.’
He waited in vain for her to explain.
‘Then, if it wasn’t your aunt who invited you to London, who did?’
Addy could only shrug.
‘It really threw her though. I could tell from her voice. But I already knew something was wrong. You see Rose and I were …’ But she couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t say that Rose was the person she loved most in the world and felt closest to and now she didn’t know if that last bit was even true any more. What had Rose been hiding from her?
‘Did you ever trace her phone?’ All she could do was put a question to him.
He shook his head. ‘There was no signal. She must have dumped it. The battery was probably dead. She used another phone to call you. We took a look at it. There are no leads we can use.’
She told him how Rose had been keeping watch on her house from across the way.
‘Was she afraid of something … or someone?’ he asked.
‘She must have been. But she didn’t say what or who.’
‘She didn’t tell you anything?’ Malek was disbelieving.
‘There wasn’t time. We were only in the house for a minute. She said we had to get out at once. All I know is she was scared, really scared.’ Addy could see he wasn’t satisfied with her answer. ‘We’d just left the house when I saw Mike coming towards us. He’d had to park his car. It really shook Rose seeing him there. She wanted to know who he was, where I’d met him.’
‘She thought he was part of whatever was going on? Is that what you’re saying?’ Malek seized on the point.
‘Maybe. But then I saw this other man. He just appeared out of the darkness. He must have been hiding. I recognized him and called out a warning to Mike.’
‘You recognized him?’
‘It was the same guy who called at the house last night when I was there – this was just before the thing with the Arab woman. He was looking for Rose.’ She saw the expression on his face. ‘I know, I didn’t tell you about him before, but there seemed no reason to at the time. All he did was ask if Rose was there and said he’d be back the next day. It had nothing to do with what happened afterwards.’
Malek’s raised eyebrows suggested otherwise.
‘OK … I see what you mean … but there could be a connection.’ She was starting to get a headache. ‘He’s Russian, by the way.’
‘How do you know that? Did he tell you?’
He was pushing harder. He wasn’t getting what he wanted from her.
‘It was his voice. I’m good at accents.’ She wasn’t going to explain how being an actor helped. If he didn’t believe her that was his problem. ‘I already gave a description of him to the cops who got there before you.’
‘You said he looked like a bat.’
‘That was because of his eyes, the way they stuck out.’
He wanted to know about the attack next, how Mike came to be killed and Rose so badly hurt. She’d had to take him through it step by step right up to the point where Rose lay bleeding in the snow and she was calling for an ambulance.
‘Let me see if I’ve got this right.’ Malek frowned. ‘This man’s attack on your friend Mike was deliberate, and from what you say he was coming for you next. But the stabbing of your aunt – that sounds accidental. He had his knife pointed up and she landed on top of him. Is that correct?’
Addy had had to go back to the moment, to an image she was trying to wipe from her memory, when Rose had come to her aid and thrown h
erself forward on top of their assailant.
‘I don’t know. Could be.’
‘And there’s one other thing I don’t understand.’ The frown had deepened. ‘Why did you shout a warning to Mike? What made you do that?’
Addy needed time to fashion her reply. Her headache was getting worse.
‘When he called at the house last night, the bat, there was something about him, the way he looked. It scared me.’
‘But you didn’t think it was worth telling us that when we questioned you later?’
Well, pretty fucking obviously not. Addy could feel her hackles rising. Did she have to admit it? And couldn’t he stop with his questions? All she wanted now was to know how Rose was, what they were doing to her, and she’d been on the point of making her feelings clear when the door opened and a man looked in. He caught Malek’s eye. They went out into the corridor together and stood talking for a minute. She saw Malek make a phone call.
‘Your friend Ryker – didn’t you say he was a commodity broker?’ he said, coming back into the room.
‘That’s what he told me.’
‘According to a card we found in his wallet he was a “security consultant”, whatever that means. He was employed by a big American company called Safe Solutions. They have an office here in London. Does that mean anything to you?’
Addy shook her head.
‘I’ve just spoken to their duty clerk. He doesn’t know anything about it, says he’s never heard the name Ryker. We may have to wait till tomorrow to find out more.’
She said nothing.
‘Addy, we can’t just leave things this way.’ He sat down in front of her again. ‘Are you sure you’ve told me everything you know?’
Before she could reply the door behind him opened again. This time it was Dr Ranjit who stuck her head in.
‘Miss Banks, come quickly!’
Addy leaped to her feet. Ignoring Malek’s cry of ‘Addy, wait!’ she ran to the door and followed the doctor who was already hurrying back down the way she had come, talking over her shoulder as they went.
‘The internal injuries she suffered were even worse than we thought. We were doing our best to repair the damage, when her heart gave out. They’re trying to resuscitate, but I’m afraid we’re losing her.’
Holding Grumble close to her chest, Addy stumbled after her through a pair of swinging doors and then through another pair and she saw they were in the operating room with a crowd of people, nurses and doctors, all of them wearing masks and they were standing around a bed and when Addy tried to go forward, force her way through the crowd, Dr Ranjit held her back.
‘Wait.’
Addy stood rooted. It was just like the movies. What she knew was called a crash cart was placed by the bed and a man was holding two defibrillators, one in each hand. She heard him say ‘Clear!’ and when the others stood back he pressed the pair of paddles to the body on the bed and Addy saw for the first time that it was Rose who lay with her front bared, and the bloody wound that was either where the bat had cut her or the result of the surgery she was undergoing, or perhaps both, was plain to see. Her body jumped from the electrical shock and then lay still. The man with the paddles made a sign to a nurse who upped the charge on the monitor. ‘Clear!’ He said it again, with the same result. They went through the routine a third time and then the man said something in a low voice which Addy didn’t hear. But she knew from watching this kind of scene on television, and with a finality that turned her heart to ice, that he was declaring the patient dead.
There was nothing she could do now and she stood patiently in the circle of Dr Ranjit’s arm while the nurses disconnected Rose from the tubes attached to her body and then covered her wound. Placing her arms close to her sides, they drew a sheet up over the length of her body leaving only her head uncovered.
‘Now, if you wish,’ Dr Ranjit murmured in Addy’s ear.
She went forward to the bed and looked down at the still figure for long minutes, consigning to memory every inch of a face that she knew as well as her own, one she had loved for as far back as she could remember, and without reserve.
Then, because she couldn’t stand to gaze at it any longer, she bent and kissed Rose on the forehead, just once. When she turned to go she found Dave Malek standing behind her.
‘Come, Addy.’ He took her hand. ‘I’ll take you home.’
NINETEEN
Like a cellist drawing a chord from his instrument, Kimura ran the stone down the edge of the steel blade. The movement produced a high, keening note, not especially pleasing to the ear, but comforting nonetheless. He had been repeating the same action for nearly an hour, first on one side of the sword, then the other, and although it was well after midnight he was ready to continue for as long as necessary until the edge was razor-sharp.
The room where he sat cross-legged on the floor was furnished in the Japanese style, but with little imagination and with the kind of prints that might have come from a catalogue: Mt Fuji, inevitably, two paintings of birds on the wing, and one larger than the rest that showed a great blue wave about to break, a picture Kimura knew was famous and by an artist whose name he surely ought to know but had long since forgotten. The basin in the corner was hidden by a screen on which a geisha garbed in colourful costume was depicted. What was welcome, though, was the bed, a simple futon laid out on the matting-carpeted floor, on which for the first time in many days he had passed a long night’s sleep free of dreams.
The house where he’d found sanctuary – a modest two-storey dwelling – was less than ten minutes’ walk from the restaurant where he had eaten and on ringing the doorbell he had found the owner, a simply dressed man well into his seventies to judge by his appearance, awaiting his arrival. After a brief exchange of courtesies he had been shown to his room on the top floor by a woman he assumed was the man’s wife. Warned perhaps by the owner of the restaurant, they had not burdened him with enquiries, seeming to accept his shabby appearance and lack of any personal effects as perfectly normal and requiring no comment. But there was something more, and it had not escaped Kimura’s notice: a nervousness that translated into a desire to please. It wasn’t respect exactly; it was rather a fear of offending, which told him that exiles though they were – he knew from the restaurant owner that the couple had been resident in London for thirty years – they had recognized him for what he was. Either that or they had been forewarned by the restaurant owner, in which case it meant that none of them were deceived, they had not forgotten the position that men of his kind had once held in society. Men whose blood line went back centuries to the time of the samurai and who in spite of all the laws that had been passed in the interim outlawing their very existence still pursued their ancient profession in one guise or another: men to step aside from.
Rising early that morning, he had made his way to a small sporting goods store where he changed his uncomfortably large overcoat for a padded jacket well supplied with pockets and also bought a woollen cap of the kind favoured by skiers. Dressed now in clothes very like those worn by others about him and aware from the mingling of races he’d observed on the crowded pavements that his own appearance would excite little interest, his earlier fear of discovery had receded and instead of returning to the house and spending the day indoors as he’d planned, he continued to wander the streets.
He had no immediate goal in mind. Eventually he would have to return to the house he had broken into to see if the woman he sought had returned. But he intended to wait for at least a day so as to give the police time to complete their investigation. Although he would have found it hard to put into words, he was still possessed by the conviction that in some way he was fate’s instrument and nothing that had occurred in the past two days – the extraordinary chain of events that had followed his escape from his pursuers, the fact that he was still at large and free to pursue his goal – had altered his growing certainty that some unseen hand, divine or otherwise, was guiding his steps. How his quest would
end was still uncertain, but he was waiting for a sign, and late in the morning, when his wanderings had led him to an area crammed with small shops, most of them dealing in antiques of one kind or another – and centred around a street with the unusual name of Portobello – he stopped outside a store in one of the side streets leading off it to gaze at the collection of old weaponry displayed in the window.
It was the swords that had caught his eye. They were of various kinds – sabres, scimitars, needle-thin rapiers – and he had stood gazing at them for some time while an idea slowly took shape in his mind. Eventually he had gone inside.
‘You have Japanese swords?’
He had directed the question at a bald-headed man who was sitting behind the glass-topped counter reading a newspaper with the aid of a pair of spectacles perched on the end of his nose, and who had looked up with an enquiring glance when Kimura had entered.
‘As a matter of fact, I do, sir.’ The man had risen to his feet with some difficulty, easing what looked like stiffened joints. ‘I keep them in the back. If you would wait a moment?’
Disappearing through a curtained doorway, he had returned presently with two lengthy cardboard boxes, which he laid on the counter. Removing the lid from one of them with a flourish, he stood back.
‘There you are, sir. Beautiful, isn’t it? They were craftsmen in those days.’
Kimura had removed the curved, single-edged blade from the box and held it up to the light. Just as he thought! This was no katana dating from the Shinto period, or even the one that followed (both famous for the skill of their swordsmiths); this blade had not been made from the specialized steel used then – tamahagane it was called – nor had it been treated with the wet clay slurry which, after heating and quenching in cold water, caused the steel to be hardened so that later it could be ground to the finest razor’s edge. This was a weapon dating most likely from just before the Second World War when all Japanese officers had been obliged to wear a sword and numerous blacksmiths with no knowledge of traditional methods had been recruited to produce the weapons. Proof of it could be found in the government stamp on the tang, something no true craftsman’s sword would ever have carried. But it was a katana nonetheless, and though the edge was blunted and the steel rusted in places, properly prepared it would serve the purpose he had in mind.