by Andy Maslen
Panting, almost retching, she looked back the way she’d come. She could see her own footprints, but that was all. Fuck! He’s running. She sprinted back the way she’d come and emerged into the clearing just in time to see Collier climbing back into the SUV. A trail of blood led all the way from the edge of the clearing, past Lynne Collier’s body and towards the SUV. I hit you, you bastard!
The car engine started with a roar and Stella levelled her gun at the windscreen. The range was too great but she didn’t have a choice. If she waited, he’d be gone and she’d have no chance to reload. Then she’d be alone out here with a corpse and an FBI agent making calls to the local sheriff. She pulled the trigger, aiming as best she could despite the ice clinging to her eyelashes.
The shot was hopeless. She didn’t even hit the car. But Collier wasn’t leaving. The wheels were spinning as they struggled to find traction, then he was slewing in a wide circle and coming round and straight towards her.
No time to reload! Fuck! Why couldn’t I have more bullets?
She started running again, back toward the lake. She had one, final thought. A last roll of the dice, Stel, and then we’re done.
With the car drifting left and right, sliding and slithering as it gathered speed, she threw the gun aside and reached into her pocket. There you are! My friend. My little helper. She grabbed the well-worn leather tube and pulled it free. Snapped off the retaining strap and tipped the thirty one-pound coins into her gloved palm. Waiting until the last possible moment, when she could see Collier’s insanely grinning face through the windscreen, she hurled the coins at the glass with all her might, imagining them penetrating the toughened surface and smashing into Collier’s head.
They spattered and cracked the windshield with dozens of white stars, rattling like distant firecrackers. She flung herself into the snow as Collier wrenched the wheel over and went into a slide. Side-on, the rear wheel hit a pile of sawn logs and the big car flipped over before landing on its wheels and sliding down a steep incline and out onto the ice. It spun round a couple of times before coming to rest thirty yards from the shore.
Gasping, Stella got to her feet and grabbed the revolver from the ground. She fumbled her glove off and fished out a handful of rounds from her pocket, but her fingers were shaking so much she couldn’t insert them into the chambers. Finally, she pushed a single round home and rotated it to the top of the cylinder before snapping it shut.
A loud crack made her look up. Stretching out from the SUV, a deep-turquoise fissure had appeared in the ice beneath the front wheels. Another bang, as loud as a gunshot, sped away across the frozen surface of the lake. The front of the car jerked downwards. Then a volley of loud cracks rang out. The rear sank a couple of feet into the ice, as sharply as the front had done.
Stella ran to the edge of the lake. The ice looked thick. Certainly thick enough for some mad old fisherman to tow his ice house out there. But maybe there were thinner spots. Maybe the wooden house weighed less than a massive 4x4. She slithered out onto the ice, arms held out like a tightrope walker.
She reached the car as it sank up to its waist through the ice. Huge chunks had smashed and cracked and crept up the side of the car, crushing themselves against the doors and hemming the prisoner in. They were beautiful, she thought. Turquoise, sea-green, baby-blue. And inside, Collier was hammering on the glass. She reached the car just as he fired at the windscreen. The bullet had not been aimed at her. The already-damaged glass shattered and she saw his hands emerge, scrabbling for grip on the edge of the metal frame.
“No!” she shouted.
She flat-footed her way across the ice to the sinking car, which was now mostly below the surface. She clambered onto the hood, which was tilted up at a thirty-degree angle.
Collier’s face was bloodless. She could see water swirling around his waist. He raised the pistol, but dropped it. His hands were flapping like fish. Eyes wide, he called out.
“Please! Get me out, Stella. I’m sorry!”
“I’m sorry, too,” she shouted back, kneeling up on the sheet of freezing steel.
Then she leaned forward, stretched her right arm out just like she had back in Lac La Croix with Ken White Crow, aimed carefully, and shot Adam Collier straight between the eyes.
His head jerked back, fountaining blood onto the ceiling of the car. She retreated to the relative safety of the ice as the freezing waters of the unnamed lake outside Preston, Minnesota closed over the head of the final member of Pro Patria Mori, and murderer of her family. His face, fish-belly white beneath the water, sank out of sight, eyes staring, mouth open. Down into the dark.
67
Home Again, Home Again
She threw the revolver into the hole in the ice. Then turned and slithered back to the bank, avoiding the cracks radiating from the hole like a child’s drawing of lightning bolts. Lynne Collier’s body lay in the centre of a frozen red flower. Stella looked back at the hole in the lake. Bending, she took hold of Lynne’s hands, which were as cold as the snow they lay on, and dragged her down to the shore and out onto the ice.
When she reached the hole, she looked down. The SUV had disappeared. Clearly the lake had a very steep drop-off here. She towed Lynne to the edge of the hole and then, kneeling, rolled her in to join her husband. The body sank slowly, leaving swirling strands of blood that coiled in the vortices created by the body’s descent. She stood. Looked back at the drag marks. The snow looked as though an artist of non-human scale had stroked their brush, loaded with carmine, across the snow. For a brief moment, Stella contemplated obscuring the blood with more snow, but a thin, keening cry above her made her look up. Stark against the whitish-grey sky, a bird of prey was circling. Yes. Mother Nature would do a more effective job of cleaning up than Stella ever could.
Stella returned to her car, climbed gratefully into the still-warm interior and started the engine. She reached for her phone, intending to send a text to Ken White Crow. As she pulled her arm back to dig into her pocket, her injured shoulder made its presence felt with a sudden flare of pain.
“Fuck, that hurts,” she hissed, remembering having read somewhere about the amazing anaesthetic effects of adrenaline and stress. With her own stress levels approaching normal, the nerve signals being fired into her brain from her shoulder were now being fully received and understood.
Leaving the engine running, and the heater on full blast, she wearily climbed out again and took her coat off, wincing with each movement. She dropped the coat onto the snow, another irregular red patch against the white. Twisting her head as far to the left as she could manage, she used the tips of her thumb and forefinger to spread the ripped woollen edges of her sweater and T-shirt. The skin beneath was torn away revealing a wet red stripe of flesh. It was bleeding freely, but not spurting. She went to the trunk and rummaged around under the duvet, hoping the rental company had seen fit to include a first-aid kit. No such luck. She lifted the carpet-covered boot floor by the steel D-ring. A mechanic or a valet at the rental company had left a half-used roll of duct tape inside the spare wheel. Sighing, she retrieved the tape, ripped off a length and strapped up her shoulder as best she could. Shivering violently, she bent to retrieve her coat.
Then she was back inside the cabin, pushing the selector lever into Drive. She pulled her phone out again and sent a short text to Ken White Crow.
Leaving now. Will be where we met Judith at 4.00 p.m.
Ken was waiting for her when she drove into the clearing. He nodded and held a single hand up in greeting.
“You, OK?” he asked, when she climbed stiffly out of the car.
“My shoulder’s hurt. A bullet chewed a chunk of skin off.”
Collecting her bags from the rental’s trunk, he spoke over his own shoulder.
“We can get that seen to at the medical centre when we’re back on the reservation.”
Stella frowned.
“How are we getting back. The lakes down in Minnesota were frozen.”
&nbs
p; He smiled.
“Come and see.”
Waiting at the edge of the lake was a two-person snowmobile with a small trailer hooked onto the back.
Half a world away, Callie had known all along, deep down, that she had to let Stella follow the trail all the way to its final, bloody ending. But she was far from content. She’d sat up half the night on the phone to Gordon, arguing back and forth over the pros and cons. In the end, he’d pulled rank.
“And believe me, it’s not something I enjoy, Callie. But Christ, woman, ye leave me with no choice. Let Stella do what she has to do. Then you can grab her, knock her out, do whatever you have to. Understood?”
“Yes, boss. Understood. Just not happily.”
“Aye, well, I can deal with an unhappy officer from time to time.
Stella stepped off the Air Canada Boeing 777 at Heathrow, two days later. No jetway being available, the passengers had to descend the stairs onto the concrete apron and walk to the terminal. The “cold snap” the pilot had advised them to protect against in his final message felt almost tropical in comparison to the bone-chilling cold of Chicago and Minnesota. Despite the sun’s being out in a sapphire-blue sky, Stella felt the heaviness she’d been carrying all the way back from Lac La Croix intensify.
That’s it, she thought, as she waited to go through passport control. It’s over. They’re all dead. Even Other Stella is gone. Just me left.
She’d called Jason from Toronto, and he’d said he’d pick her up from the airport. When she finally emerged into Arrivals, there he was, smiling and looking anxious at the same time.
Forty minutes later, he was carrying her bags into the house. Elle, with Georgie on her hip, and Polly greeted her, one warmly, the other effusively. Stella felt herself answering their questions robotically, as if Other Stella was still present, taking control and leaving her a mere passenger in her own body. Jason uncorked a bottle of white wine and poured the adults a glass each. He raised his own.
“We’re glad you’re back,” he said. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
She took a mouthful of the chilled wine and felt something start to uncoil inside her as the alcohol hit her stomach. The tension of the past two years was finally, properly, beginning to leave her. She looked at Elle, who was smiling at Jason. She looked happy. Beautiful and happy. The baby had grown since Stella had last seen her. Her little fingers were curling and uncurling, like sea anemones, as she reached for her mother’s glass.
“Looks like Georgie’s got a taste for the good stuff,” Stella said.
Elle laughed.
“Yup. But I think we’ll keep you, Madam,” she turned her eyes on Georgie and smiled, “on milk just for the moment.”
“What about me, Mummy?” Polly asked with a petulant little curl to her mouth. “I don’t drink your milk anymore so can I have some?”
“You won’t like it, darling.”
“Yes, I will. I will absolutely love it.”
Elle rolled her eyes at Stella.
“Here you are then. But just a tiny sip, sweetie,” Elle said.
She tilted the rim of her glass to her elder daughter’s lips. Polly sucked at the wine then grimaced and spat it onto the floor.
“Yuk! That tastes like wee!”
Over the adults’ laughter, she pulled a face then stomped off. Stella watched her go and felt the internal tussle of her emotions as an almost physical sensation. To leave this living family behind to join her own. Was that really her only option? But every day without Lola and Richard had been a struggle to get through. Resuming drinking had helped, although this time round she’d been careful never to retrace her steps down the booze-soaked path that had opened up before her after their funerals. The pursuit and destruction of the members of Pro Patria Mori had given her a sense of purpose that had sustained her over the previous two years. But now, having drenched herself in the blood of her victims and seen friends and allies caught in the crossfire, she realised she didn’t want to go on any longer. I’m tired. Tired of it all. I just want to rest. And tomorrow I will.
“You all right?” Jason asked, pulling her attention away from her inner world.
“Yeah, I’m fine. You know, just a little tired, Jet lag.”
“Is that all? You look sad,” Elle added, reaching across the table to take Stella’s hand.
Stella sighed.
“I was just thinking of Lola. She’d be two-and-a-bit by now.”
“Oh, Stella. You poor thing. Has seeing Georgie brought it all back?”
Stella shook her head.
“Not really. It’s never gone away. I told you I thought she was still alive, didn’t I? And all the time it was only Mr Jenkins.”
“You did. Look, what can we do to help? You’ll stay here with us for a bit, won’t you?”
“I’d love to, thanks.”
“That’s great. And there’s really no hurry. Take your time. Go back to work. Get yourself sorted and whenever you’re ready to start looking at houses, Jason will help, won’t you darling?”
Jason took Stella’s other hand, so that for a moment she felt as if she was under arrest. He smiled and it was an expression so full of compassion that Stella felt the tears pushing and squeezing their way out.
“Of course I will.”
She smiled at him. The Drinkwater brothers were beautiful souls, both of them. It was just so unfair that hers was dead.
After a meal of spaghetti and homemade meatballs with garlic bread and red wine, Stella pleaded exhaustion and headed upstairs. In the guest bedroom, she sat on the bed and pulled her boots and socks off. The feel of the carpet under her toes reminded her of the dreadful night when she’d first seen Other Stella. Her alter ego had stepped out of the wardrobe mirror to explain that her baby was dead and what she was clutching to her breast, what she had been checking on every evening before going out running, was Lola’s teddy bear.
She pulled the chair over to the wardrobe and climbed up. She reached over the decorative cornice, fingers outstretched, and swept her hand right to left. Her stomach lurched. The Glock had gone. No! It was further back than she remembered placing it. Her fingers closed round the grip and she drew the gun towards her before lifting it down.
After the little snub-nose revolver she’d used to kill Collier, the Glock felt unnaturally clumsy in her hand. She turned it this way and that, examining the various controls. The slide release catch. The magazine release switch. The trigger safety. Using muscle memory, she closed her eyes and dropped out the magazine, catching it in her left palm. She thumbed out the remaining rounds and tossed them up and down in her hand so that they clinked and jingled against each other. Then, with a practised, efficient movement, she thumbed them all back again.
Tomorrow, she thought. I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll walk to the cemetery. Go to their graves. Rest my back against the cold stone. It won’t hurt. Not if I do it properly. Then we’ll all be together again.
Stella stuffed the Glock deep into her rucksack. Closing the bedroom door behind her, she walked down the hallway, the carpet soft under her bare feet. As she reached the midpoint of the stairs, she heard Jason’s voice. He was speaking to someone. Elle, she thought at first. But then, no, not Elle. He’s on the phone.
“Yes,” Jason was saying. “I picked her up from Heathrow this afternoon.” Pause. “No, she seemed fine.” Pause. “OK, we’ll see you about nine.”
“Who were you calling, darling?” Elle asked.
“Callie. She’s coming tomorrow to pick Stella up.”
“Do you think she’s all right?”
“Who, Callie?” Yes, she’s—”
“No, Stella. She won’t say what she was doing in the States all that time. She can’t just have been travelling. She’s not a student.”
“That’s why they want her back again. Callie needs to interview her.”
Coughing loudly on the stairs, Stella made her way down and entered the kitchen. Jason put on a smile, which, Stella t
hought, was the worst attempt at playing “an innocent man” she’d ever seen.
“Hey, you. How’s your room?” he asked.
“It’s fine,” she answered. “Snug as a bug in a rug.”
The following morning, Stella got up at five. She pulled the curtain back. The garden was dark. She dressed quickly, retrieved the Glock from her rucksack and went downstairs.
68
Cop Killer
Wearing the red coat she’d bought in Chicago, Stella walked on silent feet through the kitchen and unlocked the back door. She looked up. No stars. Clouds had blanketed southwest London overnight, and the temperature was cold but still balmy compared to the wilds of the northern USA. She walked to the far end of the garden, where an old oak tree rose majestically out of the lawn, its gnarled trunk swollen at its base.
Stella sat with her back against the tree.
She closed her eyes and tilted her face upwards, imagining, despite the dark, and the cold, that she was facing a warm summer sun, feeling its kindly rays heating her skin.
The gun was heavy in her hand, but that was fine. She still had strength to lift it, and place the hard steel of its muzzle against her chest, right over her heart.