by Rennie Airth
‘Jesus!’
It was a sword. A freaking sword!
Uncle Matt had seen it too, and in the silence that had fallen, she caught his shocked whisper.
‘Oh, shit!’
And that should have been that – sayonara, Uncle Matt. Hideki Kimura was going to do the business on him, slice him up and leave the bastard to bleed to death just like that poor guy in Cyprus; just like Rose. And scared though she was, Addy was determined to stay and watch. She was the one who had set this up. She couldn’t chicken out now. But she’d assumed Kimura would simply plug him or something. If she’d known about the sword!
And then she saw the other one, the other sword. She hadn’t noticed it hanging from Kimura’s shoulder until he unhitched it and tossed it across the stage to Uncle Matt, who had moved away and was standing poised on his toes, wondering whether he could make it to one of the exits before his enemy nailed him – that was what it looked like – but who had caught the second thing thrown to him that evening, and once he had it in his hands, once he’d slipped the blade from its sheath, had readied himself for action.
Addy couldn’t believe her eyes. What kind of crazy Japanese shit was this – like give the other guy a chance? Her knight in shining armour must have a screw loose. What made it even worse was the look on Uncle Matt’s face as they squared up to one another. He was happy now that he had a weapon in his hands. He believed he could take the other guy. It was written all over him – the self-belief, the arrogance. He was actually smiling, and he even had the presence of mind to glance her way. It was just a look, nothing more, but it told her more clearly than any words what lay in store for her once this was over.
And from the start it began to look like he was right. As they circled one another, Uncle Matt seemed the quicker of the two, lighter on his feet and making quick feints with his sword, which Kimura would respond to with defensive blocks that never quite made contact with the other’s sword, because Uncle Matt would check his stroke. It was like he was just feeling out his opponent, testing his reflexes.
Kimura on the other hand was into some weird ritual – at least that was what it looked like – the kind of thing that Addy remembered seeing in old samurai movies, twirling his sword around in his hands, pointing it first this way, then that, and moving in a stylized way, too, until it began to seem more like he was performing a dance rather than a fight for his life (and hers, incidentally).
Neither man said anything, both of them intent on the moment, only their breath, which Addy could see issuing from their mouths in frosty puffs, giving some indication of the intensity of the duel they were locked in. Uncle Matt had changed his tactics. Previously, like Kimura, he had been holding his sword with two hands, making his sudden feints and each time drawing a reaction from his enemy, though their weapons didn’t touch. Now he switched to a one-handed approach and, looking more like a classical duellist standing sideways on, he began a series of sudden lunges with the point of his weapon, his long reach seeming to give him an advantage over the shorter man. The strategy had forced Kimura into making some last-minute parries and now the silence of the empty theatre was broken by the ring of steel on steel, and it was Uncle Matt who was advancing, pressing his opponent back.
It was during one of these repeated attacks that disaster all but overcame Addy’s guy. As Uncle Matt lunged forward once more and Kimura brought his sword down to parry the thrust, his back foot slipped on what might have been a wet patch on the boards. The error was slight, but enough to cause him to drop his sword a fraction, allowing the point of his opponent’s weapon to pierce his guard and nick his side. Or so it seemed to Addy, who could see the tear in Kimura’s padded jacket. But the wound, if it was a wound, didn’t seem to slow him – he had quickly regained his balance – and there was no sign of blood, though that might have been down to the jacket’s dark material.
Whatever the result, the sight seemed to encourage Uncle Matt, who pressed his attack and having driven Kimura back with a series of thrusts, he suddenly changed tactics again and, grasping the hilt of his sword with both hands he aimed what looked to an appalled Addy like the death blow, slicing his blade across and down at his opponent’s unprotected body.
Except Kimura wasn’t there.
How he was able to react so quickly Addy never knew, but all of a sudden he was into a pirouette, spinning around like a ballet dancer on his points, and not retreating this time, stepping inside the descending blade, his own sword flashing in the light, and for a moment the two of them were locked together, bodies fused, before they broke apart and Addy saw one of them stumble and then fall flat on the boards while a round object came spinning through the air towards her, spraying blood and landing not two steps away from where she stood.
It was too much, more than she could deal with, and she felt her knees start to buckle. A few seconds more and she’d be stretched out on the boards herself, right alongside the blood-streaked head. Yet somehow she fought off the feeling of dizziness. Somehow she forced herself to look down at the lurid face.
The eyes were bad enough – they were empty and staring. But it was the mouth, stretched wide in a silent scream, that held her stricken gaze. Weird as it seemed, he might just have been grinning at her, and without thinking – barely aware of what she was saying – she repeated the words with which she had greeted him earlier.
‘Hey there, Uncle Matt! Look at you.’
THIRTY
With the hood of her padded jacket pulled up against the bitter cold, Addy stood shivering in the deserted street, waiting for her Uber ride.
She was trying to get a grip of herself. Like a junkie coming down from a high, the experience of the past hour had left her in pieces, hardly able to function, while a succession of images shot through her mind, one after the other, like snapshots from a carnival peep show.
Worst of all was the picture of Uncle Matt’s face grimacing up at her from the floor like some demented gargoyle. She couldn’t deny she’d wanted to see him dead – couldn’t and wouldn’t – but reality had a way of bringing things home to you and she wondered how long it would take to erase that particular memory from her mind. (Try never.) But if that was the price she had to pay for those last shocking seconds when his head had parted company from his body, so be it. Although the good book might look at it another way – Vengeance is mine the Lord was supposed to have said – Addy could see why He might have wanted to keep that particular satisfaction for Himself.
It sure beat turning the other cheek.
What followed, though, had left its own bittersweet mark, even if it was less harrowing than the drama she had just witnessed. Unable to move from the spot where she stood, she had watched as Kimura went about the business of setting things to rights – she could think of no other words to describe the way he had calmly brought order to the bloody spectacle. First, thinking perhaps to protect her from the worst of the scene, he had taken Uncle Matt’s coat from the chair where it hung and covered his headless body. Next he had collected Rose’s MacBook, with the memory stick still fixed into it, from the floor where it had fallen – though Addy hadn’t seen it happen, she realized Uncle Matt must have dropped it – and placed it in the shoulder bag, which he took from the chair where Addy had left it hanging. He had carried the bag across the stage to where she was standing and solemnly handed it to her. Coming to herself with a start – she’d been watching it all in a half-drugged state – she noticed that the tear in his jacket was showing a darker stain around it.
‘You’re hurt.’
Instinctively she’d reached out a hand to him, but he had checked her gesture, taking hold of her wrist in a light grasp and pushing it away. He had looked at her then for a long moment, so long in fact that Addy felt they had been struck that way, the pair of them, petrified, turned to stone, his dark unblinking eyes fixed on hers just as hers were nailed to his. It was as if he were searching for something in her face, she thought, and then, as if he had found what he was looking for, he
lifted his hand and laid it gently against her cheek.
‘Brave girl, you go.’
It was an order she was only too ready to obey, and when she saw he had nothing more to say to her – they would be his only words – she had walked on uncertain legs across the stage, avoiding the spot where Uncle Matt’s life blood lay spread in a wide puddle, to the same arched doorway she had come through. There she paused to turn and look back one more time. He was watching her, and when she lifted a hand in farewell he had replied with the same gesture.
It was the last glimpse she would have of him, she was certain of that, and when she walked off-stage a moment later it was into darkness, and she was lost to his sight as well.
All she felt now was exhaustion. She was drained, more tired than she’d ever been in her life; it was the relief of tension, the simple fact that against all the odds she’d somehow escaped unharmed from what she knew was a piece of hare-brained recklessness, one that was all of her own making. Riding back to Molly’s she tried to go over it in her mind, everything that had happened, all that had been said in the nerve-racked minutes she had spent facing a man she knew was a killer, but the effort was too great and before long she dozed off, only waking when the car drew to a halt at Carlyle Square.
All she wanted now was to crash. Dealing with Molly Kingsmill would have to wait till tomorrow. But she knew she couldn’t bring herself to spend another night under the same roof as the woman and she asked the driver to wait for her. She would only be a few minutes.
What she had planned to do was slip into the house quietly, retrieve her stuff from the bedroom upstairs and then make tracks for Rose’s house where she meant to remain. But when she opened the front door, it was to find Molly standing in the hallway. She must have been watching through the darkened windows of the sitting room and seen the car arrive.
‘Expecting someone else?’ Addy asked. Molly’s mouth opened and shut, but no sound came out. It made Addy think of a goldfish in a tank. ‘Are you feeling OK? You look a little pale.’
‘Addy?’ She finally got a word out. ‘I’m sorry … what?’
‘Gotta dash.’ Addy kept on going and sailed past her to the stairs. ‘Be down in a minute.’
‘No, wait …’ Molly called after her, but to no effect.
It was the work of a minute to dump all her stuff in her bag, not forgetting Grumble, who had made the trip back from Rose’s house with her earlier that evening and was looking a little the worse for wear what with the slit in his stomach that was yet to be repaired. Rose had hidden the memory stick in the one place no one would have thought to look, or so Addy had reasoned before performing her small act of surgery earlier. But she was sure now that it must have been Uncle Matt’s idea in the first place. He had wanted to get rid of her before collecting the bear, which he knew would be among her things, either at Rose’s house or Molly’s.
‘Don’t worry, old fellow,’ she murmured as she slipped the bear into her bag. ‘I’ll soon have you looking yourself again.’
When she went downstairs again it was to find that Molly hadn’t moved. She was standing in the hall under the chandelier with its spray of jewel-like pendants, hands on hips.
‘Just where do you think you’re going?’ The change of tone was a sign she’d collected herself.
‘What does it look like?’ Addy stopped. Their eyes met. ‘Normally I’d thank you for having me, but in the circumstances that hardly seems appropriate.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Molly glared.
‘Peter Flynn sends his regards. No, I lie. Actually he’s never heard of you.’ Addy saw her hostess catch her breath. ‘I meant Uncle Matt. He’s the one who said to say hello.’ Addy paused, relishing the moment. ‘If you could see the look on your face …’
‘This is a ridiculous conversation.’ Molly was treading water, trying to stay afloat. ‘Uncle Matt! Are you out of your mind? Can’t we at least go into the sitting room and talk like civilized human beings?’
‘’Fraid not, I’m in a rush. Before I go, though, there’s something I want to ask you.’ Addy held her gaze. ‘When I left the house tonight, did you wonder if you’d ever see me again?’
‘How can I answer a stupid question like that?’ Molly’s face had gone pale.
‘I’m just curious.’ Addy shrugged. ‘But I can’t stay to talk about it. The truth is I’m bushed. We can discuss it another time.’
She started towards the door, but the other woman moved to block her.
‘You’re not going anywhere.’ This was Molly the way she had been with the cops that first evening, Addy remembered. This was Molly taking no shit.
Addy’s eye fell on a porcelain stand placed on the floor next to her. In addition to a pair of umbrellas it held a walking stick with a brass knob and she plucked the object out.
‘Oh, this is going to be fun,’ she said. ‘I’ve been longing to take a swing at you.’
‘Have you gone quite mad?’
‘Cut the crap, Molly. Game over.’ They were facing each other like a couple of cats, Addy thought, on the point of mixing it, hair on end, claws out. ‘Didn’t I just say I’d been talking to Uncle Matt? You might be interested to know we had a really good chat, covered a lot of ground. I got the whole story. And don’t think your name didn’t come up. But then sad to say things went haywire and Uncle Matt kind of lost his head. You won’t see him again.’
She let it sink in. Molly’s face was ashen.
‘You’re quite the piece of work, aren’t you?’ Now that she was into it, Addy found her blood was up. ‘Do you know what first put me on to you? It was that calendar you’ve got hanging in the kitchen. I noticed it when I was talking on the phone, but it didn’t strike me then the way it should have. Later I remembered though – there was one day in the month of December that had a cross marked on it, just one, and it was the day I arrived, the day you turned up at Rose’s house saying you were looking for her and what the hell was I doing there? But you knew I was coming, didn’t you? Later, too, I couldn’t figure out how that Russian creep just happened to be outside Rose’s house when I went there with Mike Ryker. All I could think was he must have followed us from that pub where we met. But nobody knew I was going to meet Mike there, so I couldn’t understand it. And then I remembered. You did. I should have got on to that sooner, but I was a little shaken up what with Rose being dead, and you being oh-so helpful. Still, I’d managed to figure out your part by the time I talked to Uncle Matt. He just added a few touches. And now there’s only one thing I’m curious about. Perhaps you’d enlighten me. Were you fucking him too?’
‘God! Must you be so coarse?’ Molly looked away.
‘Coarse!’ Addy flared. ‘I’ll show you coarse. Rose’s funeral is coming up in a few days and I’m telling you now if you show, I’ll spit in your face. And that holds for any other venue. You cross my path in New York, you get the treatment, my word on it, and if people want to know why, I’ll tell them, down to the last detail. How you made a friend of a woman whose shoes you weren’t fit to lick and then betrayed her. How she ended up dying in the snow while you waited around for your pay-off. Yes, the fucking money – that was all it was about. Christ! What sort of person are you?’
Addy thrust her face up close to the other woman’s.
‘And when I’m done with that, when I’ve given them the whole story, I’ll tell them what you are, Lady Kingsmill, and that’s a piece of shit. Now get the fuck out of my way.’
She swung the brass handle of the stick over her head as hard as she could, shattering the chandelier, and as Molly cowered, hiding her face from the flying shards, Addy pushed past her to the door and there was no one to stop her.
THIRTY-ONE
The pain had lessened somewhat, but the wound kept bleeding and Kimura realized it must be deeper than he thought. He had started with the idea of cleaning up the site of his duel with Charon, of leaving the police with no clear idea of what had happened other than th
at one or more people had broken into the theatre and blood had been spilled. The stain on the stage could not be wiped clean.
But he had toyed with the idea of removing the body, which was no longer bleeding, of dragging it through the backstage area out into the courtyard and then, if he could find the strength and providing there were no witnesses around at that late hour, dropping it into the river.
But as soon as he tried to shift the corpse he realized that the task would be beyond him in his weakened state. He would have to simply leave things as they were and quit the scene. The police would be left with a puzzle it would take them a while to fathom, and since he saw no reason to aid them in their task he had picked up the severed head by the hair from the spot where it lay and, with the two swords hitched over his shoulder, set off.
Given what he was carrying he could hardly travel back to where he was staying by taxi, and in any case, he knew that the police would soon be questioning cab drivers who had picked up late-night fares in the vicinity of the theatre. He would have to return on foot. But he had no sooner started on his journey when he discovered that the effort might be beyond him.
Barely halfway along the footbridge he had used earlier to cross the Thames on his way to the theatre, he had to pause to rest and, finding the long pedestrian way virtually deserted, he dropped both the head and the two swords into the river. The swords would sink while the head would be borne away downstream and quite likely never be found.
When he had crossed the bridge earlier, he had come from the direction of the Houses of Parliament – familiar to him from photographs he had seen – and he set out to retrace his tracks, moving more slowly now and feeling the pain in his side growing sharper all the time. His jacket and the shirt and sweater he wore beneath it were all soaked in blood. Although he could see the glowing eye of Big Ben drawing closer, he had not yet reached the end of the long stretch of road flanking the river when he knew for a certainty that he would not have the strength to complete his journey.