A Love to Kill For

by Conor Corderoy

  I said, “Mary-Jane is a loose cannon.” She didn’t answer. I said, “Isn’t she?” She nodded. I went on. “She’s unpredictable, and she doesn’t really know what she wants. Right?” She nodded again, not looking at me, looking at the floor. I ran my fingers through my hair. I was exhausted. “If you’d listened to me instead of her, you’d have this box by now. It would be yours. You understand that?” Now she looked at me and nodded. “You need to exert some control over her. You can do that, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You both turn up at my place the day after tomorrow, six-forty-five p.m. I’m going to give this back to Rupert and I’m going to talk to him.”

  She was shaking her head. “No.”

  I said, “Shut up! You know what Rupert told me? He told me Mary-Jane never stole a thing from him, because everything he had already belonged to her.” She gave her head a sharp twist away from me. In the growing dawn, she looked pale. “Rupert is a nice guy, Catherine. Maybe he’s a schmuck. But if he is, so is Mary-Jane, because she’s lost as much as he has—or more.”

  We were quiet for a moment. She didn’t say anything, so I went on. “I’m pretty sure he’ll take her back, if she’s willing. If we can get del Roble in the frame for Strickland’s murder, and Mary Jane goes back with Rupert—and I get paid—everyone’s a winner…right?”

  “I suppose.”

  I said, “I’m beat. Be at my apartment. Both of you. Okay?”

  She said, “I will.” She said it to the gray window. “We will.”

  On the way down, I collected two of the safe passage documents from reception and told the receptionist Catherine Howard would be collecting the other two. Then I went out, climbed into the Land Rover and drove back to Maria’s place.

  * * * *

  The front door was open, as I had left it. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but it was only a couple of hours. She was sitting on the terrace in her usual place, drinking black coffee. There was a bottle of cognac by the coffeepot. She watched me step out, but she didn’t say anything. She poured me a cup and laced it with some brandy. I sat next to her.

  “It’s time to go.”

  She smiled at me. “Not much point in staying, is there?”

  I shook my head. I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of the safe passage documents and handed it to her. She stared at it for a moment, then took it in her hand. “What about you?”

  I smiled, “I’ve got a job to do too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of.”

  She tried to laugh, but didn’t quite make it. After a moment she got up and went into the house. Ten minutes later she reappeared with a bag and a coat. She said, “I’ve said my goodbyes to Rosalia.”

  A flash of blue light flashed across the sky and overhead rumbled a roll of thunder. A cool breeze moved in through the trees. I could smell rain on the air. I stood to move to her, then took her sweet face in my hands. I smiled and said, “Did I ever tell you…?”

  She smiled a smile I knew was just for me. I knew she would never smile that way for anybody else. He eyes were alight and dancing, and she said, “What?”

  “You have cute freckles.”

  I bent to kiss first the tip of her nose, then each freckle I could find on her face, then our mouths were searching for each other, and it wasn’t cute anymore. It was serious and hot in a way I had never experienced before, and we were holding each other like neither of us wanted to ever let go.

  I knew it was crazy but I didn’t give a damn and neither did she. I slipped her coat off her shoulders and her bag fell to the ground. Her breathing was ragged. She started to undo the buttons on my shirt with trembling fingers. She ran her hands, cool and small, over my chest and slipped them up my neck to hold my face. I hadn’t had shaky hands with a woman since high school, but now they were trembling so bad that I was having trouble undoing her blouse, until she put her lips to my ear and whispered, “What’s wrong with you? Tear it off!”

  She pulled back just enough so our faces were almost touching. She was smiling and she had a hungry look in her yes. My belly was on fire, and I could hear my own breath rasping in my throat. I took hold of her blouse then ripped it open to stand looking at her smooth, flat belly and her perfect breasts. She was watching me looking, smiling at me. I could see her chest rising and falling with short, rapid breaths. Her bra wasn’t the armor plating women wore these days. It was delicate black lace, and through it, I could see the sweet pink of her nipples, standing proud.

  I looked into her eyes and gently stroked her breasts with the backs of my fingers. The feeling of her smooth skin under the rough lace, her hungry smile and her full, half open lips were awakening a bestiality in me that I didn’t want to control. Next thing, I was crushing her small, yielding body in my arms, biting into her delicate neck, seeking her hot lips with my mouth. And she was tearing at my buckle, loosening my belt. Then we were in a frenzy. I took off her bra to feel her breasts tender and sweet against my skin. She tore off my pants and I fell on my knees to slip her jeans down over her perfect hips, holding her silken ass in my hands, kissing her belly, burying my face in the gentle mound of her bush. I could hear myself repeating her name over and over.

  Then she was kneeling in front of me, holding my face in her hands, and we were kissing, deep inside each other’s mouths. We fell, stumbling, rolling on the rush mat on the terrace, tangled in each other’s arms and legs, writhing and pushing, lost in each other, kissing and licking. Then I was inside her, sliding, sinking deep and pulling out, before driving deep inside her again, slow and rhythmic, kissing a thousand little kisses. She was small and delicate and fragile, but lithe and strong and clinging to me. Then we were gritting our teeth and she was clawing at my back. The pain and the pleasure were mingling into something so intense that I thought I would burst. And I did. Then I kept coming, pounding into her as she clung to me with her arms and legs, screaming through her teeth.

  The orgasm lingered for a long time, like gentle electricity flowing between us, making us twitch and hold on to each other. We lay, perspiring, damp in the sultry air, feeling each other’s bare skin, kissing each other’s faces, eyes and lips, whispering to each other.

  She said, “Liam…”

  I kissed her and said, “Liam is dead.”

  She frowned, looking into my eyes, but she didn’t answer.

  Overhead, blue lightning backlit the clouds and thunder rolled across the sky. Then, with a soft hiss, rain began to fall and we lay, spread-eagled and laughing, letting the rain drench and cool our burning flesh.

  Finally, we stood, unable to let go or stop kissing, and we made our way, stumbling, laughing and holding hands, up to the shower. We showered together, soaping each other’s skin and shampooing each other’s hair, like we owned eternity and we had all the time in the world. Then we toweled each other dry and got dressed, in silence, lost in each other’s eyes.

  I did one more thing that I had to do, and we left.

  We drove in silence. The new day had brought autumn rain with it, and heavy charcoal clouds were hanging over La Maroma in the north and spilling down into the valleys. The sticker on my windshield was still working, and as we drove through the first checkpoint, lightning flashed, thunder rolled and the heavens opened up and the rain became torrential. Maria looked at me and smiled.

  “She doesn’t want me to leave.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “La Maroma.”

  It took us an hour and three quarters in the downpour to get to the airport. We were waved through the checkpoints and finally pulled up outside a terminal deserted except for soldiers in green uniforms and Guardia Civil. I took her bags and walked through the echoing hall to the departure gates. At security we showed the guardia our safe passages. He studied them for a moment then jerked his head at me. “You! Your luggage?”

  “I haven’t got any.”

  He turned to Maria. “Your bags.”

  S
he showed him her bags and he pointed to a table. I lifted them onto the table and he made her unzip them. Then he went through them meticulously, from her underpants to her sweaters and her box of cosmetics and makeup. While he was doing it, I found myself taking her hand, holding it, reassuring her. He obviously didn’t find what he was looking for because after he had ransacked it, he told her to put the stuff back and he walked away.

  Through the plate-glass windows, you could see the runway, and the great passenger jets stranded on the tarmac in the torrential rain. These planes no longer flew. Instead, not far from the nearest exit gate, there was a sixteen-seater air taxi. The embryonic Republic of Andalusia, struggling for life with the promise of massive oil reserves, could not afford the gas for a passenger jet.

  We stepped out onto the tarmac, sheltered from the rain by the overhang of the upper stories. I stopped there. I knew Catherine was on the plane, and I didn’t want her to see me. I turned to face Maria. “This is where I leave you, sugar.” She smiled up at me and put one hand gently on my chest. “You absurd dinosaur.”

  “We are what we are.”

  “Please reconsider. Won’t you come?”

  I shook my head. “There are things I have to do, Maria. Things you can’t understand. Things I don’t even understand myself.”

  “Liam, I hated you when… Just tell me, did any of it mean anything?”

  I took hold of her chin in my hand and smiled like I meant it. I did. “We will always have Çalares, kid. We didn’t have… We’d lost it, but we got it back last night.”

  She gave a little laugh. “You silly fool!” Then, more serious, “When you said you’d come back…”

  I nodded. “And I did. But I’ve got a job to do. I’m no good at being noble, but even a grifter like me can see that the problems of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

  I bent to kiss her. Then I handed her her bags and, as she took them, I took her face in my hands and kissed her again. It felt good. It felt right. It felt like something I wanted to keep doing for a long time. For the rest of my life. “The keys to my apartment are in your bag. Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”

  I watched her run through the rain and climb the steps into the jet. The door closed behind her and the aircraft taxied toward the runway. It came to a halt and for an interminable thirty seconds did nothing. I felt a sick knot in my belly. Then the engines began their high-pitched whine and it began its takeoff run. The nose lifted and it climbed up, heading for the clouds, north, and away to safety.

  I watched it disappear and turned. Four Guardia Civil were stepping out of the terminal. They paused to wait for me. I began to walk and as I approached, a lieutenant stepped forward. “You are Liam Murdoch?”

  “I am.”

  “Take us to your vehicle.”

  I smiled. They hadn’t found it in Maria’s bag, so now they wanted to check my car. I couldn’t see a way out so I shrugged and said, “Okay.”

  I led them to the four-by-four in the car park. The lieutenant turned to me. “Keys!”

  I smiled sweetly at him. “I haven’t got any. It’s stolen. But it’s okay. It’s open.”

  He stared at me a moment, then ripped open the door. The four guardia went through the vehicle like ants on speed going through a picnic. After a minute the lieutenant stepped out from the cab. He looked real serious. He was holding the automatic I’d taken from his dead colleague a few hours earlier. I knew what was coming, and I knew he was going to be looking a whole lot more serious when I’d finished answering his next question.

  “What is this?”

  I said, slowly and clearly so he wouldn’t make any mistakes, “It’s an automatic pistol. I stole it from a Guardia Civil I shot last night. Then I used it to kill Colonel Fermin Garcia. I blew his head off at the Abbey of Thelema. If you have a problem with that, phone your boss and ask him if it’s okay.”

  They slammed all the doors and, while he was on his cell to his boss, I climbed in the cab and sparked the engine. As I pulled out of the car park and into the downpour, I could see him and his little green gang clambering into their Seat Ibiza. They’d been told to follow me. The game was afoot. The hunt was on for the box. I smiled as I hit the highway. I may even have laughed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Speed was everything now. I hit the gas along the freeway, not because I was trying to outrun the guardia, but because I had thirty-six hours to get back to London, and I had to do what I had to do before I got there. The wipers were going crazy, marking a rhythm like a clock with an adrenaline overload. All I could see as they swept away the water was a thick mist of crashing rain. But as I approached Velez, I began to see convoys of military trucks and armored cars heading east, and overhead the scream of bomber jets began to compete with the thunder. You didn’t need to be a genius to guess what was happening. The Kingdom of Castilla-Galicia—what was left of Spain—had started an all-out assault from the Mediterranean, and Tejero was launching what forces he had to defend his eastern frontier.

  At Algarrobo I came off the freeway and turned left on the roundabout. With the guardia still on my tail, I started to climb back up into the mountains. About halfway, just after Sayalonga, I found I was driving into heavy, low-lying cloud, and the torrential rain turned to fog. Visibility was maybe ten or fifteen feet. I should have slowed to a crawl, but I couldn’t. There was a kind of madness in me, an insane drive to move on, to get where I was going. I drove at sixty and seventy miles per hour on the straights, seeing nothing but the black road racing at me through white fog and took the blind, hairpin bends at fifty. I had no idea what was coming the other way or where the road would lead. All I knew was that now I had found Maria, for the first time in my life I cared whether I died or not, because for the first time I really had something to live for. But if I had to die that day, it was a good day to die.

  Eventually I came to the town of Archez, shrouded in the densest fog I had ever seen. I crossed the bridge and took the turn off to Çalares then the winding, dirt track toward Sinead’s villa. The fog got denser as I drove and soon I could barely see two yards ahead of me. Before long I was completely disorientated. The almond and olive trees that dotted the landscape were just black, twisted silhouettes that reared out of the mist like dancing snakes.

  Then, as though by some miracle, the big, blue iron gates swam out of the fog in front of me and I pulled up and killed the engine. In the orange-yellow haze of the headlights, I saw that they were open. Somehow I’d known they would be. I climbed out of the Land Rover, pushed through the gates and walked down the overgrown path. It was like I was walking through a tunnel of fog. Slowly, the veranda, then the house, emerged into view. And on the veranda, I saw her long, dark form sitting coiled, waiting for me. I felt the hairs prickle on the back of my neck, and my skin went cold. I climbed the steps to the porch and stood looking down at her.

  I said, “What did you do to me? How did you do it?”

  She was no more than five feet away and she was looking up at me, but in the mist I couldn’t make out her features. Her voice said, “There is no way you can know that or understand it.”

  “Bullshit!”

  She seemed to wince at the violence in my voice. “Liam, I can help you, but not if you attack us.”

  “Yeah? How about I can help you, but only if you stop bullshitting me?”

  “There are things that are beyond your understanding. You can’t understand them.”

  “Try me! Let’s begin with how you did that to me? Did you drug me? How did you and Zoltan get into Maria’s house? How did you swing the phone call? How did you do it?”

  Her face seemed to turn away. “Zoltan?”

  “Stop playing games, Sinead! You were both there and you know it!”

  “Zoltan is dead.”

  “Tell me about it! I was there! I killed the son of a bitch! Enough with the games, Sinead!”

  She was silent for a while. Then she rose, and in the dense
mist it was like she levitated. Then she was moving toward the door. I heard her say, “All right, Liam. Follow me.”

  The front door was ajar, and though she had gone inside, it remained dark. I followed her in and saw light filtering out of a half-open door at the end of the hall. I shouted, “No more games, Sinead!” but there was silence. I moved down the hall toward the living room then stepped in.

  As I entered, I heard her voice. “Everything is changing, Liam.”

  And somehow the fog had come into the room through an open window. But outside there was a bright, diffuse light, like sunlight through thick smoke, and I couldn’t make out why, because it had been foggy and heavy and dull and gray when I was driving up. The fog was so thick I couldn’t see the walls—only Sinead standing across the room, like we were inside a cloud. I heard myself say, “What the hell?” but it was like somebody else’s voice. Then Sinead was saying, in her soft, rhythmic, lilting brogue, “There are things beyond your understanding. Just the basics are quite hard to grasp. Reality, Liam, is plastic and mutable, and the things that stand in your way will fade. With our help, you can reach understandings that your mind can’t grasp—realities that are so much finer when matter fades from under your feet.”

  As she said it, I realized the floor had gone, and she was saying, “How deep can you go if the floor vanishes from under your feet now?”

  And I was plunging down, or I might have been soaring. I heard myself yelling at her, “How?”

  Then her face was real close to mine, and I could feel her breath very soft on my skin, smelling of jasmine. She said, “In trance you are transmuting. When your consciousness flies, everything alters. You are conscious of endless dimensions. There are too many things to grasp.”

  I shook my head. Her words made no sense, but I felt like they were penetrating my brain with a life of their own. I said, “No! How do you do this?”