by Gary Haynes
He walked up the wooden staircase, knowing the release of dopamine from his workout wasn’t going to ease the stress of watching the DVD, as he’d hoped. He knew too that it wasn’t going to ameliorate the memories the sight of a Kalmyk girl would evoke. He’d put off watching the DVD, even though he’d been desperate to get a copy. He knew why. But he decided that after taking a shower, he would force himself to do so.
*
Gabriel had slipped out of bed, thumbed on his smartphone light and had watched Roxana for a few seconds.
She looked beautiful, he thought, the lovely contours of her sculpted neck, the peace that had descended on her sleeping face. He considered kissing her forehead, but walked over to the door and unhooked his bathrobe. He knew she couldn’t even hate him anymore for the distance he’d placed between them.
He ambled along the balcony to the stairs, heading for the kitchen. Reaching it, he made himself a cup of green tea and carried it into the living room.
Seven months had passed since his niece had gone missing, and as usual he couldn’t rest. He decided to watch some TV and sat on a couch. He channel-surfed until he found a programme he felt able to watch, a black and white documentary featuring several jazz musicians in New Orleans.
An hour later, after the film had finished, he got up and walked slowly to the stairs. He took them one at a time, feeling wretched. At the top of the staircase, he turned right and headed for the bedroom she’d slept in the night before she’d disappeared, as if in a dream state. His sister and her husband worked away from home quite often, both employed in the commercial insurance business, and he and Roxanna had said they’d be pleased to look after Sangmu when their own schedules allowed.
He hesitated at the door that still had her name on it, as if he was some superstitious archaeologist about to encounter the contents of a cursed and ancient tomb.
A couple of seconds later, he turned the brass knob and entered, flicking down the light switch on the wall. The room hadn’t changed at all. He and Roxana had agreed on it, even if this was the only thing they did agree on, now. He stepped almost reverently over the pale carpet to her bed. He sat down on the soft duvet and took the framed photograph from the white bedside table. It was the first photograph his sister had given him of Sangmu. One where she was still in her native Kalmykia, a poverty-stricken region of mostly barren steppe, he now knew.
She wore a pair of cheap joggers that looked stained and worn at the knees. Her skinny upper body was clothed in a threadbare green jumper, which appeared three sizes too big. He rubbed his thumb over the image of her face. In contrast to her body, her cheeks were chubby. They looked sunburned. His sister had said that Sangmu’s surviving relations were pleased that she’d been adopted by a couple from the US, especially after they’d been assured that they’d be sent regular updates on her progress and that every few years she’d be brought home, so that she would always know where she was from and who her extended family were. He’d come to believe that, before her disappearance.
He forced a smile as he stared at her dusty black hair in a bob; her fringe wasn’t quite straight, and it was too high on her forehead, as if she’d cut it herself. She was smiling, despite her predicament, revealing large lopsided teeth. Her lips were full, her eyes vital. She was barefoot and stood on the edge of arid scrubland in the north of her homeland.
There was the culmination of generations of desire for something better in those eyes, he’d thought.
*
In his study, sitting in front of his laptop, Gabriel viewed about twenty minutes of the two-hour-long DVD before he thumbed the pause button on his remote and began to weep silently. The only sound that had been on the DVD had been something he’d recognized. Something primordial that had resonated, as if it had triggered a genetic memory of sound made aeons ago. It had been occasionally accompanied by what he’d regarded as an artificial wailing.
Beyond the brutality and subjugation, he’d noticed something peculiar. The abuse had looked dance-like, at times almost tender. But there’d been something else too. It hadn’t been simply perverted sexual gratification. Something akin to a ritual had been evident.
He’d looked intently at her in freeze frame, and he’d kept on freeze framing at specific moments. But the photography had been such that the girl’s whole face had been shown rarely. For the most part, all that had been visible had been an eye, a partial profile, itself half shrouded by her black hair. He hadn’t recognised her, save to say her individual features had looked classically Kalmyk.
Carla had been right about the killer. He was dressed in the robe of a Tibetan monk and wore a skull-like mask. Apart from the swastika emblem, the back of the robe was embroidered with an animal that had looked to him like a hybrid. The body of a hound and the head of a lion. The reared-up body and head were pearlescent, the flamboyant tail and mane turquoise. The roaring mouth, flailing tongue and flared nostrils, a flaming red, and the eyes yellow sapphires.
Gabriel stood up now and half-stumbled to the bathroom, whereupon he washed his face with water, cupping it to his skin, again and again and again. He was a criminal lawyer, but his clients weren’t physically violent. He lived in Brooklyn, but in an affluent neighbourhood. He hadn’t experienced anything like the DVD, and he wondered if he could continue to watch it. But he knew he would. He knew he had to.
He thought the mask was both repellent and extraordinary. He guessed it represented some sort of demon, with a mouth like a toad’s and rows of square teeth, together with four huge fangs. There was no nose, only two small holes. The eye sockets were deep, but appeared to have eyes at the base, which were painted scarlet. Five miniature versions of the mask were attached to the head, with the same sunken red eyes. Two wing-like flaps protruded from the neck area, like misplaced ears, the same colour as the eyes. In the centre of the forehead was a larger eye, with a blue iris, surrounded by a white eyeball, the third eye of Buddhism. The rest of the mask was a dull yellow hue.
He wondered if it was a tribal death mask, or an elaborate, eastern image of the Devil. He wondered who this man was and who the girl had been. He didn’t know if finding the makers of the DVD would lead him to Sangmu. But the outside chance was enough to energize him. To shut down those who were doing such damage to innocents, too. But first he had to become familiar with what he had seen, and work forward from that.
He brought up his search engine and moved his mouse rapidly. He found images of the lion-like creature on the robe quickly enough.
A few further minutes later, he was staring at an image of an identical mask.
39
New York City, two days later.
The Russians had flown into JFK on a standard Aeroflot scheduled flight from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport. There were three men in their early twenties and the woman, who was thirty-two. She spoke broken English. She’d told immigration control that they were in the entertainment business, but that their visit was partly for pleasure and partly in the hope of making some contacts, that they intended to stay for one week only. They had return tickets and just enough US dollars not to arouse any overt suspicion, despite their appearances.
She’d acted for the old man on a few occasions, although they were not friends, not even acquaintances. She had never met him, nor did she know anything about him. She was unaware of the source of his obvious wealth, the money he used to pay for her services, of his collection of DVDs at the ghost house.
César Vezzani had met them at a hotel, as agreed. The Morning Inn was a bland, red-brick tower in Long Island, Queens, just under two miles from the airport. The lobby was all off-white tiles and opalescent glass, the staff mostly recent immigrants for whom English was a second language. He’d learned that meetings such as this were often best conducted in public areas. They didn’t appear out of keeping, if the other people present and the nature of the space meant that a high degree of anonymity was assured. A hotel lobby met those objectives.
He’
d always thought the Russian woman had excellent cheekbones. The straight blonde hair was shaved up on one side, the remainder mainly worn in a ponytail, especially while she was working. Her hair was closer to the colour of milk than wheat, he thought. The eyes were acid green, like those of a Persian cat and her body seemed out of kilter with her face. Her neck was muscular. She exuded strength but wasn’t freakish. She looked like a powerful female athlete, a sprinter, perhaps, with the height of a rower. He knew she was a consummate killer, with or without a weapon.
Today, she was wearing a leather jacket and well-cut jeans. Her red blouse matched the flat-heeled, blood-red boots. Her nickname was Fury, after the chief torturers of the underworld, the bringers of vengeance. He’d always thought it an apt moniker.
They sat in the lobby and began drinking vodka. The young men talked Russian to one another. Vezzani thought they looked remarkably similar: black suits drawn taut over heavy frames, with granite-like, clean-shaven faces.
He handed Fury a flight bag. The contents included four disposable mobile phones, contact numbers, addresses suitable to stay at, 10,000 dollars in used notes for expenses and a sealed white envelope. She unzipped the bag and peered in, then rummaged around, obviously looking for firearms. He watched her, not a little fascinated.
‘There is mistake,’ she said. ‘No guns in here.’
Vezzani shook his head. ‘No mistake.’
‘It joke? Yes?’
‘No joke.’
‘Then we buy our own.’
He moved forward and grasped her forearm. ‘He won’t like that,’ he said, referring to the old man.
He saw her flinch. A man with no past and no profile, who was not averse to paying for torture and murder, was a man to be feared, even by a contract killer like Fury.
One of the young Russian men looked at Fury. ‘You got a problem with pig face?’ he said, in his mother tongue, referring to Vezzani.
‘Pig face would knock your teeth out before you got to your feet,’ she said, speaking back to him in Russian.
Vezzani removed his hand and sank back into the pleather couch, not knowing what had been said. But the acerbic atmosphere was clear enough. Not that it bothered him. Combined with his solid physique were years of perfecting the art of savate, the French martial art that utilized vicious kicks and disorientating slaps with the open hand. It had been developed by sailors in Marseilles in the early nineteenth century, when the use of a clenched fist in a fight had been outlawed. He was lethal too.
The Russian smirked, and he dug out a red and white packet of CCCPs. Vezzani was familiar with the cigarette brand and clenched his jaw. The Russian wiggled the packet in his hand, and he and the other two got up and walked to the glass entrance doors.
‘I don’t like that brand,’ Vezzani said, referring to the Russian initials for the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.
‘It iron,’ Fury said, and flicked her ponytail with a wave of her long fingers.
Vezzani grinned. ‘Irony.’
‘Irony. Yes.’
He didn’t believe her. Russians like those who had just left were oddly nostalgic for the Soviet Union, or at least the power it had represented. He wondered why the old man used such people, even given his admiration for the woman.
He said she should spring Hockey when he was going back to the prison after a visit to court. Nearly half of all escapes occurred during transport, he said. And of those, nearly three-quarters were from vehicles. The brunette called Charlene Rimes, with the tattoo on her back, and her big-mouthed boyfriend, Billy Joe Anderson, should be questioned after that.
Hockey had gotten a message to Vezzani via Jim Saunders, who had visited him in prison, that had informed the Corsican where Rimes and Anderson lived, and provided other useful information, such as their smartphone numbers. Vezzani knew the authorities didn’t have a clue who they were, for now at least, and that meant he was one step ahead.
‘Kill them any way you like,’ Vezzani said.
She didn’t even blink.
‘As for Hockey, the envelope contains the names of relevant federal officers, their duty rosters and home addresses,’ he said. ‘We checked the state records and the ones that live with women are ticked.’
‘And the soon to be dead people?’
‘There is a short list of questions we need them to answer.’
She nodded.
‘There’s also a list of people you can trust in the US. Use them. They’ll get you vehicles. They’ll help you out. They’ve been told to take orders from you. Only you. He holds you in high regard,’ he said. He looked at her beautiful and pitiless eyes. ‘I hold you in high regard. Are we OK?’
‘We OK.’
‘Guns?’ he asked, hoping for the right answer and demanding it with his own eyes.
‘No guns, César Vezzani,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Don’t kill any cops. Or federal officers. Clear?’
She smiled, her large, symmetrical teeth the colour of coconut flesh.
‘It’s vital,’ Vezzani said.
‘Too much heat already?’ she said.
He couldn’t stop a troubled look clouding his face.
‘Tell him price doubled,’ she said.
40
Brooklyn Heights, the same day.
Gabriel now knew that the hybrid animal on the back of the killer’s robe in the DVD was a snow lion, a mythological beast that had been the emblem of Tibet on postage stamps and currency, and adorned its military flag between 1912 and 1950. It represented fearlessness, the protector of Buddha in paintings. Sculptures of it, fashioned from bronze and stone, were to be found guarding what remained of Tibet’s temples and holy sites. It was a celestial creature that was said to leap from one Himalayan peak to another.
He knew too that the mask worn by the killer was a wooden Tibetan demon mask, the making of which was a religious art form. Such masks were often worn in monastic rituals, a yellow mask depicting profound knowledge. Wearers of demon masks were deemed able to communicate with the deities. It was a Citipati mask, a wrathful deity, a reminder of the eternal cycle of life and death.
The sound he’d recognized had been made by the elongated dharma trumpets of Tibetan monks, the sound sometimes referred to as singing elephants. The wailing that had accompanied it had been the music of the femur trumpet, crafted from a human leg bone.
He’d begun scouring obscure online journals and specialist websites, the images from the DVD still flitting through his mind like fragments of a nightmare. He was convinced that there had to be a link between what the killer wore and the victim, a Kalmyk. The Kalmyk people were Tibetan Buddhists, he knew, which meant that the man in the mask was either a Kalmyk or someone disturbed enough to dress as a monk of their religion in order to murder one of them.
*
Gabriel saw Roxanna in the living room, curled up on the couch. She wore a pair of white shorts and a light blue T-shirt. She was watching a French film: Pierrot le Fou. The Blu-ray covers of Les Enfants du Paradis and L’Atalante lay on the glass-top coffee table.
‘I thought we were going out to lunch,’ he said.
‘I’m going away for a few days,’ she said, matter-of-factly.
Standing, he felt inept.
She bolted upright. ‘You’ve left me already, Gabriel. You can see that, can’t you?’
Roxana left him that afternoon, taking with her a compact suitcase of clothes.
The double blow had left him reeling. He’d walked around outside, ghost-like, for weeks, seeing people in the streets like him. People whose wrecked lives showed in their eyes, in the pallor of their skin, their gait and demeanour. Hopeless, broken people. Hollow people. He’d gotten drunk often. He’d pulled off the highway and put his head to the steering wheel. He’d sat in public places, lost in his misery. He’d punched more than one wall.
41
The Bronx, New York City, two days later.
She left a fast-food restaurant at 12.45 pm, holding
the glass door open for some rowdy school kids. Her hormones were raging, her appetite skewed and insatiable. She’d covered her cheese burger with mayonnaise and had gulped it down in half a dozen mouthfuls.
The sky was a dowdy patchwork of white puffs and grey streaks, but it was humid, and she wore a floral maternity dress that seemed to amplify her already enormous bump. It was a ten-minute walk to home. Blue-collar workers used to gaze at her when she walked by. From the windows of trucks and holes in the road. From ladders and scaffolding. Now, they didn’t, or if they did, it was with a curious closed-mouth smile that she figured was half sympathy and half affection. But nothing remotely sexual, except for the odd pervert. This lack of acceptable attention pissed her off. She was a soft-featured Italian, her thick hair the colour of sable fur, her sensuous mouth the colour of plums.
The brown-brick houses she passed had jerry-built porches and lean-to garages made from inexpensive, mismatched materials. The lack of visual amenity was exacerbated by occasional litter-strewn gardens and paved yards. Even the thick cables attached to the obtrusive telephone poles dipped heavily in the middle.
She walked on past the blocks of flats and deserted warehouses, all but a few shop fronts boarded up. But she knew a lot of people in the neighbourhood and it was home. It had always been so. Her name was Francesca Carpenter. Fran, to her friends.
She came to a piece of waste ground, with a calcified wheelbarrow and a rusted, portable cement mixer the only signs of the abandoned building site. She heard a vehicle pull up a few yards behind her. It began to creep forward, making her feel nervous.
A black SUV appeared in her peripheral vision, the front passenger window down.
The woman had blonde hair in a ponytail and eyes like green quartz. No, like a seagull’s, she thought. Cruel. Her black leather jacket was zipped up to her chin, despite the heat. She knew instinctively that something wasn’t right. But it was the middle of day. Nothing could happen to her here.