by Adam Blake
By that time, Gassan had the phone receiver to his ear and his hand on the key pad. As he pressed 1 – for an external line – Wales’s right arm straightened like a whip and the knife that had been in his hand was in Gassan’s chest. The professor sat back down again, eyes wide, hands fluttering in uncoordinated protest.
Kennedy threw herself forward before Wales could recover his balance, and grappled with him. It wasn’t an attack, it was more of an embrace. She was hoping to trap Wales’s arms against his body, as Rush had, and stop him from using the remaining knife.
He twisted against her and Kennedy could feel his intimidating strength. She couldn’t maintain the hold. Wales’s left arm came free and he slammed her hard against the wall. But they were so close together now that it was hard for him to bring the blade to bear against her. He stepped back.
Rush – amazingly, still in the fight – kicked at Wales’s legs. It was a glancing blow, with almost no leverage behind it, but Wales stumbled, and it took him a fraction of a second to right himself – long enough for Kennedy to throw her left arm out, smashing the glass on the security alarm. The sound of the thin plate breaking was almost inaudible.
The sound of all the room’s door locks cycling was much louder.
Wales drove her into the wall with the full weight of his body and kicked her legs out from under her as she fell. At the same time, the shutters came down across the windows with a grinding shriek of metal on metal, taking out most of the light.
‘Lockdown,’ Kennedy gasped. She was on her stomach, pressed painfully into the angle of wall and floor, Wales’s knee in the small of her back, his body overlaid on hers so that every movement she might have made seemed to be forestalled in a different way. Wales held the knife right up against her throat: she felt the sting as it broke her skin and something like the heat of a blush as a little of her spilled blood trickled down into the hollow of her breastbone. ‘No way in or out, Alex. So whatever you do or don’t do to us, you’re not walking away from this.’
The man was bending low over her, his face almost on the same level as Kennedy’s and an inch or so away. His wide eyes, alien and inscrutable, stared sidelong into her own. The red tide brimmed behind them, threatening to spill down his cheeks.
‘The average response time is twelve minutes,’ Kennedy wheezed, fighting the urge to pull away from the blade – as though the man were a cat and any movement from his prey would trigger instincts so strong that conscious thought wouldn’t come into it.
Rush was still down, or down again, folded around his injured crotch. Emil Gassan had slumped back in his chair, hands clasped to his chest in an incongruous attitude of devotion. Thornedyke had backed away until he hit the wall and stood frozen, watching, his lower jaw hanging down in mute horror and dismay. ‘And there’s what,’ Kennedy said, forcing the words out from lungs that felt hollowed out like gourds, ‘six or seven doors between you and the street? How good are you with locks?’
It was impossible to tell what was going on behind the red-rimmed, open wounds that were Wales’s eyes. He said nothing, and the razor edge at Kennedy’s throat didn’t move. But the expression on his face, now, was one of serious thought.
Rush spoke for the first time, from behind them. Kennedy didn’t dare turn to see what the boy was doing or if he’d managed to get upright again. His voice was strained and tremulous. ‘Alex,’ he said, ‘listen to me. What you’ve done … it’s just breaking and entering. Maybe theft. You might not even go to jail. But if Professor Gassan dies, that’s murder. You’ve got to stop this. Give yourself up. Don’t be stupid. Nobody cares that you nicked a bloody book.’
Footsteps sounded from outside and someone knocked on the door – tentative at first, then more loudly. A second later there was an answering knock from one of the other doors. The room was surrounded, and the police were coming.
Wales seemed to weigh these things in the balance. He let out a long, slow, steady breath, but his left arm tensed. The blade bit a fraction of an inch deeper into Kennedy’s flesh, making her flinch and stiffen.
‘I swear to God,’ Rush said again, desperately, ‘you won’t go to jail.’
Wales straightened, removing his weight from Kennedy’s back. ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I won’t.’
He drew the knife across his own throat.
12
Some hours – maybe four, maybe five – went by in fuzzy staccato. Disconnected freeze-frames, the intervals between them filled with endless replays of that one indelible instant. Kennedy tried to shut it out with other thoughts, but it ran over and under and through them, the way Alex Wales’s blood had run over the knife blade and his shirt and the table and the oatmeal carpet and Kennedy’s hands and Rush’s hands as they tried to stanch the endless flow.
And through it all, Wales had smiled at them, contemptuously amused by their futile attempts to keep him alive against his will.
Kennedy had given two statements to the police, one to the regular Met, the second to one of the many anti-terrorist agencies, all of whom were on high alert because of the recent spate of fires, explosions and car-bombings. There was no question of her being blamed for the death. Rush’s testimony agreed with hers on every count, and the investigating officers were seeing these events in the light of the attack on her, two nights ago, where it now seemed more likely than not that Wales had been the aggressor. Thornedyke and Gassan would corroborate Kennedy’s story, too, no doubt, but neither could be approached for an opinion right then. Thornedyke had gone into screaming hysterics immediately after Wales’s suicide, had continued to show signs of distress and panic through the removal of the body, and on arrival at the hospital had been put under sedation. Emil Gassan was in intensive care and might not survive.
The forensics, too, supported an assumption of suicide. The angle of the gash in Alex Wales’s throat was consistent with a self-inflicted wound and although nobody had said so to Kennedy, they would obviously have checked the knife-hilt for prints by this time and found only those of Wales himself.
But the emergency room staff were if anything even more reluctant to let go of Kennedy than the police were, convinced first that some of the blood that had dried and caked on her must be her own and then that she must be suffering from shock.
And maybe she was, at that, but hot, sweet tea wasn’t going to help her out of it. She had to get away from solicitous bystanders and professionally neutral cops, and work out for herself what all this meant.
The Judas People. The Judas People running headlong into her and Emil Gassan. How could such a thing happen? What mechanism could even begin to explain it?
She had to call Izzy. Make sure Izzy was okay. Okay, maybe it didn’t make too much sense, when you looked at it closely – why wouldn’t she be? – but the instinct was too strong. Impatient of getting herself discharged from the hospital, or of persuading the friendly, inquiring detectives to tell her she was free to go, she went to the bathroom and called from inside a locked toilet.
Izzy didn’t answer and Kennedy started to panic. But as she was in the process of dialling again to leave a message, the phone registered an incoming call.
‘Sorry, babe,’ Izzy said. ‘Missed you by a second, there. Everything okay?’
Everything wasn’t, but Kennedy was suddenly tongue-tied. Izzy was still safest where she was. And telling her what had happened would mean an argument, because she’d want to come back and look after Kennedy, be there for her, and that was the last thing that Kennedy wanted right then. The assassins of the Judas People didn’t work alone, they worked in twos or threes. The man who’d called himself Alex Wales was down and he wasn’t getting up again, but there could be – would be – others.
Kennedy stammered through a few minutes’ worth of banal lies about how everything was okay and how nothing at all, either good or bad, had happened to her.
‘Well, God knows, I can sympathise,’ Izzy said, sounding glum. ‘A game of Trivial Pursuit with Hayley and Richard has been the highlight o
f my trip so far. And it was the family edition, babe, so they took me to the cleaners. Have you ever heard of Frankie Cocozza?’
‘No,’ Kennedy said. ‘Izzy, I’ve got to go. Someone just came in.’
‘Okay. What’s that echo? It sounds like you’re in the loo. If you’re in the loo, and someone just came in, you’ve got a harassment suit right there.’
‘I’m … in a hallway.’ Kennedy’s mind was still firing randomly and she realised suddenly that the next day’s papers would be full of the violent suicide at Ryegate House. There was no way Izzy wasn’t going to get to hear about it. So she switched horses in mid-banality, came clean and gave Izzy a heavily redacted version of recent events that amounted to: someone died.
‘Right in front of you?’ Izzy demanded. ‘Someone just died, with you standing there? I don’t get it.’
‘It was … it’s hard to explain, Izzy. But I’m fine. I’m totally fine. He killed himself.’
‘He what?’
‘He killed himself. It was the guy who broke into the museum storeroom. We caught him. But he killed himself.’
‘Oh my God.’ The long silence at the other end of the line indicated how nonplussed Izzy was: silence wasn’t normally her thing. ‘So it’s over?’
‘That part of it’s over.’
‘Then it’s safe for me to pack up and—’
‘No. No, it’s not. Give me a couple more days.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
‘A couple of days is how long I’m gonna last, Heather, with the wicked witch giving me the evil eye every time I use a bad word.’
‘All right.’
‘You know how many bad words I use.’
‘All right, Izzy.’
‘No, babe. It’s not. It’s not all right. You’re telling me you’re fine, but you don’t sound fine, and I know how you lock things down inside. God knows, I paid a lot to find out. Say the word and I’m there. I’m there right now.’
‘No, Izzy. Stay where you are. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘Okay. Okay. Heather?’
‘Yes?’
‘Call me tomorrow.’
‘I will.’
‘Promise.’
‘I promise I will.’
‘You know, some people find dirty phone calls cathartic. If you need my professional services …’
‘Oh, for the love of God! Tomorrow, Izzy.’ Kennedy hung up, even more restless and distracted than she’d been before the call. She missed Izzy, still resented her, was afraid for her, wanted never to see her again and wanted to see her right then.
And then there were the Judas People, who still made no sense. No sense at all.
When the doctors and nurses were done with their scattershot solicitude, they reluctantly agreed to release Kennedy on her own recognisance.
Before she left, she asked about the others. Both Gassan and Thornedyke were unconscious, one was stable, and there wouldn’t be any more news before morning. Rush had been released a couple of hours before.
But he hadn’t gotten far. When Kennedy walked out onto the street, he was waiting for her right by the entrance – leaning on a sign which told her that this was University College Hospital, on Euston Road. She hadn’t even thought to ask, and if anyone had told her, the news hadn’t sunk in.
Rush looked haggard and punch-drunk with tiredness. The right side of his face was swollen, the eye mostly closed.
‘I want to talk this over,’ he told her.
‘Tonight?’ Kennedy asked.
‘Tonight.’
‘It can’t wait?’
Rush shrugged – a gesture that took in his injury, hers, the hospital, the whole crazy situation. ‘Well, you tell me.’
Kennedy hesitated. Of all the questions he might ask her, there were only a few she’d be happy to answer. But she had to admit that there were a whole lot more that he was entitled to ask. She looked at her watch: it was 9.30 p.m. The night was – grotesquely and impossibly – still young.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk.’
They took a cab back into town. Kennedy had it drop them off at a pub on Upper St Martin’s Lane, the Salisbury. They could have walked, but the presence of the cabbie constrained conversation and gave Kennedy time to think about what she was going to say to Rush.
The boy tried to buy the round. Kennedy sent him to find some seats instead, got the drinks – a pint of lager for him, Jack Daniels over ice for her – and went and joined him. He’d chosen a corner table, was sitting with his eyes on the door. His hands, as he drank off half the pint in one long swallow, were shaking. His battered face was drawing more than a few curious or uneasy glances from people at the tables around them.
‘So how are you holding up?’ she asked.
Rush just shook his head. She took that to mean that the jury was still out.
‘You saw it coming,’ he said. ‘Some of it. You knew what Wales was going to do.’
‘I had no idea what he was going to do.’
Rush took another sip, put the mostly empty glass down. ‘But you knew he was dangerous. That he had a weapon. You were moving towards the alarm before he pulled those knives. So I’m thinking you could tell me what the hell it was I saw today. Because right now, I feel like I’m drowning. I don’t know what just happened to me. I almost died, and it’s like a meteor fell out of the sky and hit me in the head, or something. It makes about that much sense to me, you know?’
Kennedy swirled the glass, let the ice clink against its sides, but felt no inclination to drink. Her stomach was as tight as a fist.
‘You’re in mild shock,’ she said. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t go back into work. If I were you, I’d take a few days off. What you’ve just been through wasn’t business as usual.’
He stared at her, bemused and unhappy. ‘Is that what you’re going to do? Take a few days off?’
‘No,’ Kennedy admitted.
‘No. Because there’s something bigger behind this, isn’t there?’
‘Yes.’
His good eye widened. ‘I knew it. I knew it from your face. I want you to tell me about it.’
‘I can’t do that, Rush.’
‘Can’t?’
‘Won’t, then. Trust me, it’s a lot better for you if you don’t know. If you don’t get any closer to this than you already are.’
‘What does that mean?’ Rush asked.
Kennedy tried to pick her words with care, but she felt stupid and tongue-tied. ‘It’s the sort of thing … once you know it, you can’t just walk away. There are consequences.’ It was the wrong thing to say, she could see from his face.
‘I’ll take my chances,’ he said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Look, I do feel like I owe you something, Rush. But it’s not an explanation, it’s a warning. You asked me if I knew who Alex Wales was.’
‘Do you?’
‘I know his … family. I’ve met them before and I know what they’re like. They’re going to be looking for payback for what happened to him. From everyone who was in that room, just as soon as they find out who was there. So your best bet is to get far away from Ryegate House for a while and let this die down.’
‘And you think if they really want to find me, they won’t keep looking?’
Damn. Good question. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘They’ll keep looking.’
‘Exactly. And you’re going straight back in there tomorrow morning and picking up the investigation, right? I’m not stupid, Heather. Not as stupid as I look, anyway. I know there’s stuff you didn’t work out. Questions you still need to get answered.’
Kennedy’s heart sank. ‘Rush, questions are pretty much all I’ve got,’ she said, allowing her exasperation to show through in her voice. ‘These people broke into Aladdin’s cave and stole a single book. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe they broke in and burned a book. Can you come up with a plausible explanation for that? Because I can’t. And that’s before we even get to the part whe
re I let Emil Gassan, who I kind of count as a friend, get stabbed – maybe fatally – right in front of me. So yes, I’m still hired. I’m still on the job. But your job description is a little different from mine.’
‘I didn’t even mean any of that,’ Rush said.
‘No? Then what did you mean?’
‘I mean why was Wales still there? He stole – okay, stole or else destroyed – that book three weeks ago. If the job was finished, he should have cut and run.’
‘So?’
‘So the job wasn’t done. He came back because he had unfinished business, and whatever it was, it was something that made it worth the risk of sticking around through a police investigation.’
Kennedy had reached the same conclusion, but she didn’t want to have this conversation with Rush. She just wanted him to understand how close he was to the edge of a precipice and to have the sense to walk in the opposite direction.
‘Have you got any holiday coming?’ she asked.
‘Holiday?’ Rush was derisory. ‘I haven’t even finished my probation yet. I’m casual labour.’
‘Then be casual about it,’ Kennedy said. ‘Don’t turn up for work tomorrow. If they bounce you, shake it off and walk away. You’re young. You’ll bounce right back. Stay away from Ryegate House. And if anyone asks you about what went down today, don’t answer.’
‘What if it’s the police?’ Rush demanded sardonically.
‘If it’s the police, stonewall them. You don’t remember, you didn’t see, nobody told you a thing. You’re just poor bloody infantry.’
‘You’re making a lot of assumptions.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like that death means the same thing to me that it does to you.’
‘Death means the same thing to everyone,’ Kennedy said sharply. ‘It means your hearts stops, your brain cools and people start referring to you as “the body”. There’s no such thing as a good death, Rush. There are just some that are worse than others.’
Rush tapped his beer glass with his thumbnail, watching it rather than looking at her. ‘My best mate died in a knife fight at school,’ he said, in a tone that was almost conversational. ‘He got stabbed. And my first girlfriend killed herself with sleeping pills because her step-dad raped her. She sent me a text to say goodbye and I couldn’t get there in time. She must have known I wouldn’t, but she wrote that message anyway. I still have it. I went after him and almost killed him, except that when I had him on the ground I couldn’t do it. Didn’t have the right mindset, I suppose.’