by Carl Goodman
Eva stood on the edge of the walkway. ‘You don’t imagine for a moment I’m going to walk across that thing, do you Mathew?’
He swept his hand dismissively. ‘Why not? You did when it was down on the ground in front of the fresco. It’s not like it’s a tightrope or anything. It’s steady as a rock. It’s an easy walk, Eva. Provided you don’t fall that is.’
She wasn’t sure about that, not sure at all. ‘What are we doing here, Mathew?’
‘What do you think we’re doing here, Eva?’
She scoffed. ‘Rogerian psychotherapy? Really?’
He laughed. Then he stopped. ‘What do you think we’re doing here, Eva?’ Harred demanded. The change in his tone was immediate, like a light switch being flicked. Psychopath, it said.
‘I’ve come to take DS Flynn home,’ Eva said. She tried to keep her voice as hard as his. Harred’s destroyer could show no weakness.
‘And what do I get?’
No weakness. No sign that she was terrified. She took a breath, snarled and shouted: ‘You know what you get!’ Down below, on the cold stone she heard the crash of the door and marksmen running to take up positions. Before he could say anything Eva turned her wrath on them. ‘ARU stand down! Stand the fuck down and get the fuck out until I tell you to move!’ She couldn’t see them, but Harred could, she assumed, because from the look on his face they must have followed her instruction.
Then the look on his face became unreadable. He took a step onto the walkway. ‘Meet me halfway,’ he told her.
Flynn tried to shake her head. Eva ignored her. For a moment she thought she could refuse, but then Harred turned his back, reached around and opened the valve on the catheter.
Just a trickle. Flynn’s blood filled the tube and began a lazy drip. Globules of wine-red fluid fell through the air and splashed on stone. Nine point eight metres per second squared, minus air resistance. About two and a quarter seconds, Eva estimated, from when it seeped from the end of the catheter until it stained the smooth grey flagstones. It would not kill her quickly. But it would kill her.
Harred wandered onto the walkway. A spotlight shone behind him; she could only see him in silhouette. ‘So is this all bullshit or do you have something for me?’ Two feet wide. She could cope with that. Eyes fixed on his outline, brows hooded, Eva too stepped out onto the walkway.
She didn’t dare look down, walking as though in a trance. Hands stuffed into her coat pockets. Collar turned up. Jaw clenched so tight her teeth hurt. ‘I have something for you,’ Eva assured him. Then, in a sudden moment of clarity, she asked another question. ‘What was it about Fredrick Huss’s photograph that inspired you?’
The question took Harred off guard. ‘Beyond atoms and electrons and neutrons and quarks, scientists tell us that at the truly fundamental level the universe is made from one-dimensional oscillations they call “strings”. They name it string theory. Imagine that. You, me and all physical matter in this plane of creation, formed by vibrating strings. I believe that, by pure chance, Fredrick actually caught the shadows of them in his photo, although he didn’t understand that. Taut and perfect like stretched-out harp strings, the universe plucks them and they sing the song of all existence. They cast their shadows over Lily in his picture, but it wasn’t as good a representation as I could achieve. They were giving me a clue, an insight into the fundamental nature of all creation. How could I resist them?’ He seemed to think it was an explanation, Eva thought. She could only see it as further evidence of his madness.
They stopped a dozen feet from one another. He hadn’t lied, Eva thought. The walkway was as solid as any pavement. ‘So?’ Harred demanded.
Eva licked her lips. ‘I’m not supposed to be here,’ she said, ‘not really. I know everyone says that, but in my case it’s actually true. I’m a computer scientist by training. I got involved with the police because they needed people with my background. Cybercrime, hacking, you know the stuff. Anyway, after a while they offered me a job and the opportunity to become a DI in cyber after a couple of years’ training. Well, I took it.’ She watched to see if he was really listening.
Eva took another step. ‘I’d seen things, you see. There are even bigger monsters in this world than you, Mathew,’ she told him. ‘Oh, they think you’re a bad boy to be sure. The eye-slicer, that’s what they call you back at the nick, because they don’t understand you; but there are people out there who prey on children and who do things that you, you would not paint. That’s why I decided to be come a cop, because in cyber I could do something about it. They run their servers and they hide behind their onionskin routers and scurry around in their darknets, but the truth of the matter is that I am seriously good at this stuff. They cannot hide from me.’
‘Destroyer,’ Harred mused.
‘Maybe.’ Eva took one more step.
She had his attention. She could see that. ‘The problem was that to become a DI I had to do some ordinary police work as well. Rotations, they called them. On one of those rotations somebody tried to kill me. Legend has it they actually succeeded, although obviously it didn’t take.’ Eva searched his eyes. He didn’t blink. ‘The trouble was they did succeed in killing someone very dear to me. That was bad enough. When I discovered the truth about Colin Lynch, it became too much.’
‘Which was?’ Harred finally asked.
‘Oh no,’ Eva said, ‘that’s not for you, Mathew. That’s someone else’s secret, it’s not for you. My secret is for you. You’ll like it better anyway.’
This time it was Harred who licked his lips. ‘Who else have you told?’
‘Not a living soul,’ she said, hoping he would not hear the lie of omission in her voice. She had not told her but Leticia North had probably worked it out. And, she reminded herself, the thought tinged with dejection, so had Alastair Hadley. ‘Come closer.’ He frowned. ‘I don’t want Becks to hear. This is only for you.’
They stopped an arm’s length from each other. Eva lowered her voice. ‘There is a man called Semion Razin,’ she told Harred. ‘Nothing about him matters very much except that he is very powerful and very dangerous, and Colin Lynch was his enemy. I know that you know about Lynch,’ she added. Then she corrected herself. ‘Well, Lynch was competition to Razin, which is the same thing as an enemy. I told you I’m good with computers. Lynch set up a meeting with his most trusted lieutenants because he had a huge deal coming together. They were due to meet at a place called Winter’s Gate Farm. I made sure that Razin’s men knew when that was going to happen.’
She turned her head away for a moment. ‘I caused the death of Colin Lynch that day,’ she said, then stared at him again. ‘He was blown to pieces by a bomb that I organised, that I located the explosives for, that I told them where to plant. Murder by remote control. Except I don’t think of it as murder. It was natural justice.’ She had to admit it to herself because she had admitted it to Harred. That was exactly how it felt.
The smile that split Harred’s face seemed almost obscene. He nodded his head and wagged his finger at her as though he had known all along. ‘Destroyer,’ Harred gloated. ‘I knew it the moment I set eyes on you.’
Eva gave him the hint of a nod. ‘Well, you were right. Now I want you to keep your side of the bargain. I want DS Flynn safe and sound.’
He frowned at her. ‘Does she mean that much to you?’
‘It’s about loyalty,’ she took another step towards him, ‘about being as good as your word. Of all people, Mathew,’ she made herself sound sincere even though the words stuck in her throat like a bone, ‘I know you understand that.’
She still couldn’t read his expression. He said nothing for a moment. Then, slowly, he reached out and stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. She forced herself not to flinch. ‘Why don’t we die today?’ he whispered. ‘Why don’t we just say to hell with them, and cross over into the infinite domain? No more tears, no more pain, just the unending river and golden sunlight, and those sharpest of shadows that cut the devil
from your eyes. Here,’ Harred said as he grasped her hand, ‘let’s do it. Let’s take one step and move on now.’ She felt the tug of his arm. He was pulling her towards the edge.
‘I still have work to do,’ she told him, panic growing inside her. ‘Today is not the day.’
‘But,’ he whispered, ‘suppose I say it is?’
She tried to pull away but he was far too strong. Her hand writhed and slipped but he dragged her anyway. ‘I said no,’ Eva shouted at him. Laughing, Harred ignored her and tried to shove her over the edge.
She had known he would try to kill her. She had felt it in her gut, in the place where all her darkest fears coiled and writhed like a nest of vipers. Of course he would try that; so she had come prepared.
Eva pulled Jeremy Odie’s stun gun from her pocket and jammed it into his arm. Harred screamed. Pain, rage and indignation. Eva ignored them all and kicked him as hard as she could. He staggered backwards so she threw herself at him. Kicked him again. With another scream Harred tumbled back into space.
And then the scream became a laugh. Instead of falling, Harred hung suspended in the air a dozen feet from her. ‘I’m impressed,’ he chortled. ‘I wouldn’t have walked on that bloody thing without a harness.’ She could see the hidden wire now, attached to a pulley in the ceiling. The light behind him had concealed it. He had told her he once worked on flats and rigging in a theatre. The evidence of that was all around her, in the scaffolding and the cables. She should have expected something like this. She avoided his eyes. Perhaps she had.
Eva ignored him and crossed over to where Flynn hung crucified on iron poles. ‘I know what you are now, Eva,’ Harred chuckled as he mimed ridiculous swimming motions in the air, ‘you’re the same as me.’
‘If you think that,’ she muttered as she started to untie Flynn, ‘you haven’t understood a damn thing.’ Eva found the tap to the catheter and pushed it closed.
‘Stop.’ Harred’s voice changed again. He had manoeuvred himself to the edge of the scaffolding tower. ‘Cotter pin,’ he explained. ‘All I need to do is give it one good tug. I have actually thought this through,’ he said as he braced his feet against the tower.
She could imagine. Eva stopped moving. The pin would probably unlock the platform she and Flynn were now on. Nine point eight metres per second squared, Eva thought as she stared at the ground far below. ‘So what do you want?’
‘I’d like to see you die,’ Harred admitted. ‘I’d like to kill you again. I don’t hate you, but it would be lovely to watch. Elegant, you understand? I think I probably will. But before I do, what else have you got?’
Eva gave him a long, sharp sideways look. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she said. Harred waited. ‘In the event of my death, the officers outside are under strict instructions to destroy the fresco.’ The expression on his face became hard. She knew she had him then.
‘Acetone.’ She turned to look at him. ‘I think that would do it, don’t you? Start at the top and spray down. All that work. All those years ending up as just a brown puddle on the floor. And all images of it will be destroyed too. That’s what happens if I…’ she nodded her head at Flynn, ‘we, don’t get out of this alive.’
Harred snarled. ‘You dog-fucking bitch.’
‘Probably,’ Eva agreed. ‘But here’s the thing, Mathew. Becks and I walk out of this alive, I guarantee the fresco is safe. You have my word,’ she added.
His hand rested on the pin. She could see his knuckles whiten. For a moment she thought she had failed, that Harred would pull the pin and the platform would tumble over, tossing her into the air and crushing Flynn under its weight. Then with a bellow of rage he pushed himself away from the scaffolding tower.
‘I’m keeping you to that,’ he snarled. He slipped his hand under the jacket he wore, folded his hands across his chest, pointed his feet and slid quickly towards the floor. ‘Bye Eva,’ he sneered as he fell. ‘I’ll be watching you. You’ll see me again soon.’
She thought he would slow. Instead he plummeted towards one of the darkest areas that he had covered with black fabric, laced with twinkling white LEDs. When he touched it, the fabric enveloped him and he disappeared.
She pulled the tape from Flynn’s mouth. ‘Fucking hell,’ Flynn screamed as she watched the place where Harred had vanished. ‘Did he get away?’
Eva stared at the fresco for a while, and then shrugged and went back to untying Flynn. ‘I thought he might have another way out,’ she said as she worked away at the ropes binding Flynn’s arms. ‘It was a Norman church before New Thought turned it into their cathedral. They usually had a crypt. There’s probably some passageway out into what used to be the graveyard. Which is sort of fitting,’ she added as she freed Flynn’s right arm, ‘because Mathew Harred is about to run slap bang into Will Moresby. And Moresby is going to bury him.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sutton stood behind her desk. The early morning sun lit the room with burnished gold. Dust motes hung in the air and sparkled in its light. Neither she nor Eva had slept.
‘You didn’t tell Command that Harred might try to use a tunnel to get away.’ Sutton glared, but then she always glared, Eva thought. She suspected that sometimes she even glared at the gross indignity of feeling happy.
‘I didn’t know for sure,’ Eva said. ‘It was just a guess. But if he was going to try I couldn’t think of anyone better than Will to get in his way.’
‘Quite,’ Sutton mused. The glare verged on feral. ‘I imagine Harred will want to sue given his injuries, but I can’t see he’s got a leg to stand on.’
It would have been hard to disagree. ‘Harred hammered Odie to death. I think Will’s actions were commensurate.’
Sutton lowered herself into her chair. She didn’t invite Eva to sit. ‘The remaining question,’ she said as she massaged her leg, ‘is, where is Fredrick Huss?’
The one thing she hadn’t been able to work out. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know about Huss’s role in all this. He’s the one connection I haven’t been able to understand. He found Harred and brought him to Berta, but whether that was innocent or intentional I have no idea. The photo though,’ she thought back to the party, to the black-and-white image hanging on the wall in Nicholson’s collection, ‘the photo of Lily with the shadows across her. There was something else about it. It seemed so professional. Berta had some fine work in her collection, but Huss’s photo didn’t look out of place. We need to keep looking for Fredrick Huss,’ she said as the morning sun made patterns on her eyes. ‘There’s a lot we don’t know about him.’
Sutton sat in silence for a while. ‘I had my reservations about you,’ she told Eva eventually. ‘I still have. You’re not my kind of copper. You haven’t done the job year in and year out. You haven’t stood in line waiting for promotion. You jumped the queue. Some people would be pissed off about that.’ Eva wondered if she was supposed to shuffle or feel embarrassed, but she did neither of those things. ‘Then again,’ Sutton continued, ‘none of that stops you from being a good police officer. And against all odds it turns out you are. Not my kind of cop, but then the world is changing yet again, so maybe my kind of cop is not what we need. I sometimes think you’re more at ease with computers than you are with people. The thing is though,’ Sutton put her elbows on her desk and rested her chin in her hands, ‘when we first met I told you to give your team some reason to respect you. Against my expectations it looks like you ticked that box.’ Eva waited. Sutton scowled. ‘In case you hadn’t grasped it yet, this is my way of saying well done. Get used to it. It doesn’t get any better than this.’
It was good enough though, Eva thought. It was absolutely fine. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s much appreciated.’
Sutton shrugged. ‘It’s been a long night. Go and get some rest. You’ve earned it.’
‘Thank you again,’ Eva said as she went to close the door behind her. ‘But it isn’t over yet.’
* * *
Eva walked through the town cent
re. In the old apple market, under the imperious stare of a gilded queen, street-food vendors had begun to open their stalls. She strolled through a cloud of scents and smells so strong she could almost taste each and every dish. In her mind she pictured the lands that had conjured up the recipes, with a promise to herself to visit them one day. She saw grilled pork from Vietnam, burgers from America, gyoza from Japan and jerk chicken from the Caribbean. Eva resisted food for the time being but stopped at a cafe in Fife Road to order a cup of freshly ground coffee from the Yirga Cheffe region of Ethiopia, dried by the natural process so the beans had more time to absorb the sugars of the cherry. She sniffed at the obsidian-black liquid and breathed in the pungent odour of fruits that seemed to burst somewhere inside her head, and for a moment nothing else mattered.
What is right? Eva asked herself the question as she sat on a stool sipping the coffee and watching the town drag itself into wakefulness. She found she couldn’t answer. Perhaps it was an imponderable question. Maybe she might as well ask: what is truth? But Eva doubted that.
Yet again, perhaps the question itself was presumptuous. Maybe she had no right to ask it, because her definition of right might be a million miles away from someone else’s. She turned her thinking around. What is wrong? Eva asked herself. She felt on much firmer ground with that question.
What was wrong was that a criminal had been protected by those who purported to uphold the law, and still protected even when that criminal had killed their own colleagues. Where did you go when the law itself proved to be corrupt? Who could you turn to when the very fabric of justice was shown to be perverted? A much easier question, Eva thought, because she already knew the answer. You turn to yourself.
Colin Lynch had killed with alacrity. He deserved to be behind bars, but even if he had gone to prison he would have been out within a period of time that would have seemed nothing short of obscene. Lynch was untouchable in the eyes of those who administered the law. And so Eva had taken the law into her own hands.