The Mortality Principle

by Alex Archer

  The two bodies belonged to men who had been sleeping in the open air for quite some time. Their clothes were torn and tattered and caked with thick mud. They had almost certainly been looking for shelter when their killer found them. Could he have saved either man? Had the fact that the featureless brute had evaded their swords damned these two hapless souls? Perhaps. That was the best answer he could offer. Now it was between him and his God. He lowered his head and offered a prayer for the damned.

  The priest echoed his “Amen.”

  Roux used the silence to think.

  The woman, Claire Clairmont, had been right to be afraid. How close had they come to being murdered in their beds? They were dealing with something so far beyond the known and the holy, something on the very verge of aberration, that it could never know redemption. Someone needed to find this ghastly killer and put an end to its reign of terror before it could truly begin, and that someone was Roux.

  He was the Lord’s sword in this just as he was in all things.

  17

  Annja woke with a start to find that her room was in darkness.

  She had been covered by the throw from the bed.

  She had been listening to Roux recount his story, but had fallen asleep during its telling. The painkillers had to have been stronger than she’d expected. She struggled to focus for a moment, realizing she had lost much of the day. It was night outside.

  “Roux,” she called, throwing the bedspread aside, and attempted to stand. She felt the dull stiffness in her bones, having slept in such an unnatural position. Her muscles ached every bit as they had when she’d left the hospital.

  There was no reply.

  The bathroom door stood open, and the room beyond reduced to a single white contour, the curve of the bathtub’s side; the rest of it lay shrouded in darkness.

  Annja was alone.

  Despite Roux’s promises, she had no more idea of what the killer was than when she had chased it across the rooftops.

  Her cell phone lay on the coffee table in front of her.

  A quick glance showed that it had been switched to silent and that there were missed calls from both Garin and Lars, her cameraman.

  Only Lars had left a message. “Hi,” Lars’s voice said sheepishly. “Hope you aren’t angry with me, boss. Turek drank me into the ground. I have only just surfaced and I’ve got no idea what day it is, never mind time. Give me a call if you need me to do anything. I’m really sorry about this.”

  She could hardly complain. It wasn’t as if he was the only one who’d slept the day away.

  Annja’s mouth felt dry and her tongue a little too large for it.

  There was no point in calling him back yet. It wasn’t as if they could get more daytime footage, and they’d gotten more than their fill of night shots the previous day. She wasn’t even angry with him for going to the bar rather than returning to the hotel with her. That had been as much her call as his, but if he’d headed back with her, then maybe they would’ve gotten some footage of the killer, which would have been priceless.

  Roux, she was sure, was already out searching the streets.

  He knew this killer and had for a very long time.

  She wondered for a moment if he had slipped her something when he’d brought her the water to wash down her painkillers. He’d wanted to go after the killer himself, and her unconsciousness certainly made that possible. But that wasn’t him, was it? That was more Garin…

  So where did she start?

  She needed to get out, really stretch, work her muscles, or she wouldn’t get her body back into shape. Really, what she wanted to do was reach into the otherwhere and draw the sword back into the here and now, pushing herself through a punishing workout with it in her grasp. But she needed more space than the hotel room offered for something like that—and that added its own complications. Where could she go that a woman brandishing a sword wouldn’t attract attention?

  She was easing herself into her jacket, wincing as she moved her shoulder, when her phone rang.

  It wasn’t Roux or Garin. It was the journalist, Jan Turek.

  She snatched the phone and answered.

  “Jan,” she said. “I hear you had a good night.”

  “Something like that,” he replied noncommittally. “I’m just calling to see if you’ve heard the news.”

  “Assume I haven’t,” Annja said. “What news?”

  “There’s been another killing.”

  “Last night?” she asked, the memory of the body in the alleyway flooding back as if her mind had pushed it away, but like the tide it was impossible to fend off forever. And then there was the memory of falling.

  “No. I mean now. Like right now. Within the hour. I got a tip. I’m heading over there to check out the scene.”

  “Where?” she asked, grabbing a piece of the hotel notepaper and scrambling for a pen to write down the directions to the crime scene. It wasn’t inside the city.

  “He’s on the move,” she said, more to herself than Turek. The thought had leaped into her mind, but she knew instinctively she was right.

  “You think?” the journalist asked, though obviously the thought had occurred to him, too. “Maybe he was afraid that things are getting a little too hot for him inside the Old Town. Too many people looking for him here.”

  “No. No one even knows what he looks like. He’s got no reason to leave what’s proved to be a very rich hunting ground,” she disagreed.

  Not true, she contradicted herself, he’s got every reason to leave if he knows we are closing in on him.

  “I’ll see you there.” Annja hung up on him, aches and pains of her fall forgotten.

  Five minutes later she had punched the details into her rental car’s navigation system and was pulling out of the hotel parking lot in search of another one of the lonely dead.

  18

  It felt good to be behind the wheel.

  The traffic moved steadily as she picked up the flow moving out of the city. The headlights transformed Prague yet again. It was no longer the tourist trap or the site of some bachelor’s last stand. Under the headlights it was a city out of time. A relic. A monument. It was like the castle up on the hill, on display. Something to be marveled at.

  The moment the road widened, Annja floored the accelerator and watched the needle climb on the speedometer.

  There was something about speed that brought her to life. She didn’t want to think what that said about her personality.

  She took the bends faster than she needed to, ignoring the blaring of horns as she wove in and out of traffic, determined to reach Turek as quickly as she possibly could.

  She flashed past road signs without taking any notice of them, relying on the screen on the dashboard and its orders to take the next left in two hundred meters to direct her through the labyrinth of the city and beyond, as the numbered distance to her destination slowly fell.

  When she saw the blue flashing lights ahead of her, she knew she had reached her destination.

  Turek was already there.

  “What have we got?” she asked when she saw the reporter walking toward her.

  “The police aren’t letting anyone near the body, but the word is that we’re looking at another vagrant. This one was trying to get out of the city.”

  “Any idea if he’s connected to our witnesses?”

  Turek shrugged. “Not without seeing him.”

  “And we’re sure it’s the same killer?”

  “As sure as we can be,” a voice behind her said. Annja turned to see the same police officer she had spoken to at the crime scene the previous morning striding toward them.

  “Miss Creed, isn’t it?” He pulled her name from somewhere in the recesses of his memory. “I’m beginning to think your being here is more than a coincidence.”

  “I couldn’t keep away,” she said.

  “This is not a tourist attraction,” he said reproachfully. “I think now would be a very good time for you to explain wh
y I find you at the site of a second murder in as many days.”

  “She’s with me,” Turek said. “I’ve been following the case for the press.”

  “Oh, yes, I know all about your conspiracy theories, Turek.” The policeman shook his head like he couldn’t quite believe anyone was stupid enough to fall for the journalist’s nonsense about the golem coming back.

  “I’ve only been reporting what the street people have been saying. I don’t tell them what to think.”

  “Because that would be immoral, wouldn’t it? I’m not sure whether I should laugh at these newfound ethics of yours, Turek.”

  “You’re sure that it was the same killer?” Annja said, putting herself between the two men. She didn’t want this to turn into a fight they couldn’t possibly win. They needed to have the police on their side, or at least not have them against them. Deliberately antagonizing the law was about as stupid as it got.

  The officer turned to face her. “The injuries are consistent with the previous victims. That’s as much as I’m going to tell you, Miss Creed, until I understand the part you are playing here.”

  “I almost caught it, whatever it was,” Annja said, and regretted it as soon as she had said it. She wanted to find the killer, but she wouldn’t be able to do that if she was in an interrogation room batting away endless questions about her involvement in the investigation.

  “I think you need to tell me a little more about that,” the policeman said.

  She’d caught Turek’s attention, too.

  “Last night,” she said, “after I left Jan and my cameraman, I was walking back to the hotel when I heard something. It took me a moment to realize the noise was coming from above me. Someone was up on the rooftops.”

  “Not from your window this time? That’s twice you’ve come close to our killer. I suppose you know that there was another murder last night.”

  She nodded that she did.

  “I’m surprised we didn’t see you there actually. I’m not sure I want to know the answer to this, but are you able to give us a description this time?”

  Annja nodded again. “Big. Well over six feet tall. Thick-set, barrel-chested but light on his feet. He didn’t walk—loped is a better word for the way he moved. And he was fast. Sure on his feet as he ran across the roof.”

  “Did you get a look at his face?”

  “Not really,” she said.

  She was sure that she had caught a glimpse of his face, of features that looked as if they weren’t quite finished, like a child’s drawing rather than a face itself. But how could she tell him that? Or, more correctly, how could she expect him to believe her if she told him that? It didn’t matter if her description echoed those of the two homeless witnesses…in fact, that would almost certainly convince him that she was screwing with him. So no, she wouldn’t offer a description of the killer’s face.

  The policeman made a few quick pencil strokes in his notebook that didn’t resemble the words she’d said, nodding as he did so. He didn’t ask any more questions. Annja waited patiently for him to say something, but he didn’t. He just turned and started to walk away. Nothing she’d told him came as a surprise, of course.

  The policeman stopped and turned after he had only taken half a dozen steps.

  He tilted his head slightly to the right and said, “I hope you’re not keeping anything from me.”

  “Nothing,” Annja said, holding up her hands. “I’ve told you everything I saw.”

  “Too bad. Well, there’s nothing here for you to see. If I’m honest about it, I would be very grateful if I didn’t see you at another crime scene.” It was a dismissal.

  Turek started to mumble something about the freedom of the press, but Annja silenced him.

  There was no reason for them to stay there.

  The killer was long gone.

  Finding him meant working out where he’d go, and that was more important than wasting time trying to get a look at the corpse. One dead body at the killer’s hands would look very much like another. They wouldn’t learn anything from it even if the police allowed them to get close enough for an examination.

  Annja was sure the killer was traveling on foot.

  An hour ago he had been here. Even if he could move fast, he could be no more than a couple of miles away and tiring.

  “Where does this road lead to?” she asked Turek when the policeman was out of earshot.

  The journalist shrugged and reeled off a list of towns that meant nothing to her. “After that you reach the border with Poland.”

  Poland?

  Would the killer try to leave the country?

  Did he even think in terms of geographic borders?

  She stared down the road, but there was no movement save the wind through the treetops.

  The Villa Diodati was on the shore of Lake Geneva, hundreds of miles away across the breadth of Germany. The killer, assuming he was Roux’s killer, was a long way from home, but Poland was in the wrong direction to suggest that was where he was heading.

  If he managed to escape them here, there was no telling where or when he might resurface to begin killing again.

  She couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Annja already blamed herself for the homeless men who had died since she had first heard that scream from her window. This was at her door. The man on the road up ahead was dead because she had failed to stop the killer when she had the chance. His blood was on her hands. Whatever guilt Roux felt for failing to stop the killer all those years ago was nothing compared to the swelling grief and rage Annja felt at her own culpability now. The baton had passed between them. Now it was up to her to stop the killer.

  Whatever it was.

  19

  Roux had been prowling the streets for an hour before he caught the whisper of gossip: another body had been found.

  At first he’d dismissed it, thinking the street people were still learning about the death that had landed Annja in the hospital, but he quickly realized he was wrong when they started talking about a location on the outskirts of the city.

  He had almost gone in search of the dead, but stopped himself. The trail of bodies wasn’t about to go cold, but Garin was most certainly up to something and that was what he should be following. He was absolutely sure of it. Roux had almost lost Garin a couple of times, as there was no seeming pattern to his movements as he tracked from main plaza to narrow alley from narrow alley to tourist trap to seedy side street and back again, checking the twists and folds of the Old Town in search of the killer.

  These were the places the killer knew.

  Roux knew that because they were the same places that he and Garin had trod long ago, too.

  Eventually something about the elaborate pattern changed—and it changed so quickly Roux was almost cornered and caught as Garin doubled back on himself.

  He ducked into a deeply recessed doorway, under the shelter of gargoyles, and hoped that scant cover would be enough.

  He watched and waited, listening to the soft footfalls as they faded, until he was absolutely sure Garin had kept walking and it was safe to emerge from his hiding place.

  Luckily for him, Garin had been concentrating on his cell phone as he had walked, oblivious to anything else going on around him. His stare had been obsessive. He didn’t look up from the screen once. It took Roux a minute to realize what was going on: Garin was using the phone’s GPS to track someone. Or something.

  He watched from fifty yards behind as Garin entered the hotel’s underground parking lot, glad that he had moved his own vehicle, parking it on the street.

  The game was changing, but how, exactly, and why? There was every chance the sudden change of plans was due to a woman, but Roux had a sneaking suspicion that wasn’t the case—and it wasn’t just because he trusted Garin about as far as he could throw him, either. Garin was up to something. His intent focus on the phone pretty much guaranteed it.

  Roux barely managed to slip behind the wheel of his rented fou
r-by-four, only moments before Garin roared out of the parking lot in a flame-red Ferrari. There was no way Roux was going to be able to keep up with the Ferrari as it peeled away from the standing start, laying a thick strip of rubber on the blacktop. He instinctively lowered his head as Garin thundered by, but he shouldn’t have worried; Garin had eyes only for the road in front of him.

  Roux watched the taillights flare and gunned his own car into life, setting off after Garin. It took everything the four-by-four’s engine had to keep up with Garin’s labyrinthine chase through the canyons of the city.

  As he drove out of the city, Roux turned on the radio.

  Once he had been fluent, but the years hadn’t been kind to the old man in that regard. The language had mutated and now he was reduced to speaking a smattering of Czech rather than claiming any sort of fluency. He understood enough, though, to follow the report that there had been another killing. Talk now was of a serial killer stalking the city’s homeless.

  Roux didn’t like what he was thinking, but that didn’t mean he could stop himself from thinking it: Garin was fleeing the city. That he was here and not on the outskirts where the latest murder had occurred might prove his innocence in one regard, making Roux his alibi, but his actions now surely damned him in so many others. There was a connection here, whatever it might be, and Roux was determined to get to the truth before the night was over. The city stank of betrayal. Again. How many times would he fall for Garin’s repentance and contrition? How many times would he allow himself to think, right up until that crippling moment of realization, that things could ever be the way they once were between him and Garin? Fool me once, Roux thought, shaking his head. He didn’t need to finish the rest of the aphorism.

  The only small mercy was that Annja would not be there to witness the confrontation.

  Garin drove aggressively, pushing the sports car into gaps that didn’t appear to be there. Its engine roar was like a dragon’s claiming the night for its own. It was all Roux could do to keep him in sight as Garin overtook another slow-moving vehicle.

  Four seconds later Roux was behind it, trying to find a route through with his wider four-by-four. He counted the seconds, willing the driver in front to pull over to let him through, but without the flashing light of an ambulance or cop car, that wasn’t happening. Frustrated, Roux rode hard on the vehicle’s fender, tailgating it. Some bland late-night lonely-hearts music came on the radio. He reached down and killed it, then took a gamble, changed up and mounted the sidewalk, forcing the car in front to pull out into the center of the road as he bullied his way through. A couple of pedestrians scattered, terrified as the madman drove on the sidewalk for fifty yards before dropping back onto the road proper. Horns blared in protest. Roux ignored them, eyes fixed on the road ahead.