The Woman in Silk
Page 25
TWELVE
In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter
Long ago.
Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
88
Sunlight.
Shimmering whiteness on the frosted window panes.
Here I am.
A wood fire burning in the grate. The smell of burning pine.
Here I am in my bed.
With a splitting head. Drenched in cold sweat.
In my room, my room. Once my nursery:
—with its Japanese six-panel folding screen, the early nineteenth-century byobu of the Edo period with its delicate black-and-white images of figures dancing on a golden floor holding fans. Here are the African hides, Indian rugs, lace curtains, the crochet blankets.
For a hundred years or more this is how the Stirlings have liked their bedrooms.
Now with Sophie.
—sitting on his bed looking at him with a worried smile.
“Happy Christmas,” she said.
“Happy Christmas,” he croaked. “Are we—okay?”
“We’re alive.”
“What happened?”
“The good news is they’ve gone.”
“Teresa and Francesca?”
“Left at dawn.”
“Don’t …” he said. His eyes closed. “Don’t go near the kitchen.”
“I already have. Made breakfast. Porridge and cream. Bacon and eggs.” (He remembered Teresa’s breakfast menu. Or had it been Francesca’s?) “Toast, marmalade and a glass of freshly squeezed juice. Coffee and hot milk.”
“In the kitchen?”
“Where else?”
“There’s a whole lot of explosives down there.”
“They didn’t go off, did they?”
“There are wires. Tubes. Canisters.”
“The bad news is there’s a bloody awful mess. Someone … they shit themselves.”
“Did you speak to anyone?”
“There’s no one here,” she said. “Just us.”
“No one?”
“All gone.”
“Hold my hand,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“Bruised and shaken.”
The night was coming back—“I thought they’d killed you.”
“I guess that’s what they intended. And you too.”
“I think you’ll find it was their last throw.”
“Who knows?” she said. “Thank God you found me.”
“What time was it, where was I?”
“Dawn. You were in the hall.” She cradled him in her arms. “Can you face breakfast?”
“I’ll try.” He dragged himself from the bed. “We’d better check on Sumiko. Are you up to Christmas lunch with the pair of them?”
“You decide.”
“No, you.”
“Let’s do it,” she said.
“I stink of the crypt.”
“So do I.”
“You want to bath with me before breakfast?”
“If there’s hot water.”
Shrouded in steam, she said: “You know what my Christmas present is to you?”
“Don’t make me guess.”
“A room with a double bed tonight. The Hallmark in Carlisle.”
“Not here?”
“No, Hal. Not here.”
“I’m thinking of Sumiko.”
“So am I. It may be for the best you don’t tell her.”
“And best I call the police—except, no cell phone.”
“Mine’s down.”
“We’ll call from the village and wish Moster Lees a Happy Christmas.”
89
The Towers stood alone eyeing their departure with a kind of triumphant indifference.
For the first time in centuries it looked serene, very still: as frozen as the enormous icicles in its windows—bars of an asylum—the whole resembling a prehistoric corpse frozen for eternity in some cavernous mortuary’s refrigerator.
He drove the Range Rover carefully down the icy roads.
“I know when I’m beaten,” he said. “It was always going to beat me in the end.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. I won’t return.”
“In the New Year perhaps?”
“Next year? No.”
“Sometime?”
“Never.”
“Perhaps you’d have been better off without it in the first place.”
“You’re asking my opinion?”
“It seems so.”
“You give evil hearts and hands too much credit.”
“Think so?”
“That’s how you’ve been seeing things.”
“Like what things?”
He thought of the nurses, of MacCullum and the rest rejoicing in their Christmas victory. “You know what I’m talking about.”
She seemed to read his thoughts. “The possessed—Teresa and Francesca God knows who else, they haven’t won either.”
“Think not?”
“They haven’t gained possession of The Towers, have they?”
“No one has, Sophie. No one’s got The Towers. No one’s got anything.”
“Matter of fact,” she said, “we’ve still got each other.”
The sun shone across the moorland bathing Christmas morning in pale pink, blue and pink.
He couldn’t resist one final glance at the old enemy. It returned his glance like an incarcerated high-risk lunatic, its face literally vacant and without regret. If it saw what he saw, it wasn’t saying.
Sophie looked back too. She was peering through the rear window in a crouch when she suddenly straightened up.
“Someone’s following us.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know.”
He gradually decelerated. “When you put that box of food in the trunk did you notice anything?”
“Like what?”
“A box, say—anything you didn’t put there yourself?”
Even 1lb of high-explosive would blow the Range Rover to kingdom come. Say, even an old-fashioned mix of nitrobenzene and sodium chlorate. But nitrobenzene has a very powerful, unmistakable odor. Unlikely, but it could have been packed in an airtight container to disguise the telltale smell. The bomber couldn’t have forced a way into the Range Rover. But MacCullum could’ve. He had keys.
“Did you check inside the food boxes?” he said.
“Check—what?”
“Did you notice anything?”
“No.”
“When you got into the car—notice anything then?”
“Like what?”
“Hand marks in the frost. Think, Sophie. Footprints in the snow?”
“Don’t think so,” she said, once more peering through the rear window. “It’s there. The hearse.”
Hal pulled up sharply. “Jesus Christ …”
He looked back.
In the distance—at the top of the hill, the hearse was drawing to a halt.
Making to turn off the engine, he thought better of it. “Sophie. Do exactly as I say. Move slowly—very slowly. No hurry. Watch your step on the ice. I want you to get out … carefully—so as not to rock the suspension, okay? Now open the door—carefully.”
“What is it?”
“Just do it, Sophie.”
She did as he told her.
“Cross the road. Take it easy. Into the field. Stay calm. Keep listening to me.”
She stepped over the frozen ditch, up into the field and blundered through the snow.
“Stop there,”
he shouted. “Lie down—flat, flat in the snow. Go on. Flat. Don’t move again until I tell you. Cover your head with your arms. Right down. Further. Good. Don’t raise your head.”
In slow-motion he got out of the Range Rover, walked to the back of it and looked inside.
He saw a low pile of greasy blankets. Protruding from them was the edge of an unfamiliar blue rug neither he nor his mother had ever possessed. Unfamiliar, yet familiar. The bright blue of a Carlisle United Football Club rug with the club motto Be Just and Fear Not.
With slow deliberation and the lightest touch he slowly raised the rug.
90
The open cardboard package lay beneath it
—laced with detonating cord, Cordtex, its penta-erythritol tetranitrate explosive core coated in plastic: gelignite, commercially produced Frangex. Used in quarries—
He found a terminal: an Eveready Energizer PP9 battery, and a Casio alarm clock.
The clock was timed to fire the bomb in six minutes. 6 minutes = a very short time.
He looked closely at the circuitry. Traced its path. The tiniest inadvertent movement would close the contacts = N.
He took a step back. From the corner of his eye he saw a movement.
Sophie was peering at him
“Get the fuck down,” he shouted. “Lie flat.”
“What’s happening?” she said.
“Get down. Don’t move.”
His fingers were steady. The adrenalin rush caused his eyes to widen, his pupils to dilate.
He watched for any involuntary twitch. No nerve signaled fear. He visualized how he’d take the bomb apart, what needed touching, where to move things, how to finish: the disconnection.
He slowly removed the battery from the clock, then the Cordtex from the charge.
Matched by the brightness of the snow, the minutest rainbows dancing on the frost, the rush of pleasure was luminous.
Euphoria = Big E
The hearse had disappeared.
He walked slowly across the road and stepped across the ditch. Following her tracks, he waded through the powdery snow and crouched down beside her.
“The hearse’s gone?” Sophie said.
“Don’t count your eggs. My guess is there’s another bomb. Means he may have tried to trigger the first bugger by remote control, failed and fucked off out.”
“How do you know?”
“I can read bastards’ minds.”
“How?”
“Because it’s my business. That’s what I do. It’s the only thing I know about, see? That and disabling bloody bombs like that fucker. I guess there’s more of the same—enough stuff inside it to blow the Range Rover to what Paddy calls smidirīn, a.k.a. holy shit.”
91
“We just wait?”
“For as long as it takes.”
Nothing moved.
“We go on waiting?” she said.
“Other man’s move.”
“Where is he?”
“Waiting up there, that’s what I’d be doing. Shielded by the hill, that’s where I’d be waiting.”
“You think he’s alone?”
“Doubt it. I’d have taken precautions. I’d have witnesses to it.”
“Witnesses to what?”
“The fact we blew ourselves up.”
“Sorry?”
“That’s what he wanted.”
“We blew ourselves up?”
“You and me. He wanted me to do it—while the balance of my mind was disturbed. He’s thinking Coroner. Self-satisfied old fart, always satisfied. Ever heard of a Coroner who isn’t fucking satisfied? Satisfied that the deceased was ‘capable of forming the intention to take his own life. Oh yes, by the way, neither drugs, alcohol nor psychiatric illness played a part.’ But I didn’t. I didn’t blow myself up. I didn’t blow you up. I didn’t even blow up my mother’s fucking Range Rover. And you tell me—is the balance of my mind disturbed?”
“The forensics will tell another story.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Forensics will show who planted it.”
“Exactly. That’s why he’s waiting. The shit is waiting to finish the job. Waiting. When it goes up he’ll come down here and make very sure the evidence is obliterated. Witnesses will help him complete the job. Believe me, he’ll have Francesca and Teresa with him. That’s what nurses do best.”
“Do what?”
“Clean up. After the living and the dead. Clean up Unholy Shit. That’s what one of them told me. She said: ‘That’s what we do twenty-four-seven, we handle hurt.’ Could’ve said shit. ‘Not like the people who’ve died hereabouts. MacCullum says this place has a history of distress and hurt and misery and madness and demons. They’ve brought pain here each time there’s been building works, even minor repairs to old pipes and electric wiring. You tell me why the workmen don’t want to come up here. This place scares grown men shitless. They hate coming here. Too many people have died here …’ That’s more or less what she said.”
“Teresa or Francesca?”
“I don’t remember.”
Still they waited.
“You know what—I mean about who said what about hurt and misery and madness and demons?”
“What?” she said.
“I no longer give a fuck.”
“How much longer, Hal?”
“I’ve told you. As long as it takes. It’s a game of cat and—”
“mouse” he was saying when the second bomb exploded.
92
Snow, steam, grit, metal parts, fragments of fabric and tires blasted out a mass of spurting flames and burning smoke. Blew the Range Rover to smidirīn …
Covered in snow, they waded through the field to the ditch.
Except for the billowing cloud of black-and-bluish smoke and spouting flames, nothing moved.
When they heard the gun’s report from the car up the hill, they shuddered.
She grabbed his hand.
He barely flinched. There wasn’t a flicker of anxiety in his face. He had the air of the man on guard. Well used to clearing up other people’s shit. The quiet pleasure of the explorer, well used to No Man’s Land, frustration and disappointment, who’s finally arrived. The solitary hunter home from the hill. His hill. His home. Back in charge. In charge of himself absorbed in the game he knew best.
“Let’s take a look-see,” he said. “You prepared to look?”
She grimaced. “Yes and No.”
“It won’t be a pretty sight.”
93
Blood drenched the warm interior of the hearse. The stench of burning flesh filled the air.
The shotgun lay near MacCullum’s head. Rather it lay where his head had been connected to his body a few minutes before. Actually the jellied blob was scarcely recognizable as a head.
Blood had soaked into MacCullum’s Christmas Day suit, his Sunday best.
He wore a tie, still neatly tied beneath the chin. You could see the crest of the Cumbria coat of arms on it. The Parnassus flowers on the green border representing Cumberland interspersed with white roses of Yorkshire superimposed with the red roses of Lancashire.
To the left, the bright red bull with nasty-looking horns. To the right, the bright red dragon with a pointed tail. The dragon was sticking out its tongue at the head of a ram. Beneath the coat of arms was the motto: Ad Montes Oculos Levavi. “I shall lift up mine eyes unto the hills.”
Not anymore you won’t.
Francesca’s eyes must have filled with terror at MacCullum before he killed her. There weren’t any eyes left, just scarlet and purple and black bloodied craters filled with ooze. You couldn’t say they were staring death in the face because there were no faces left.
The turmoil of the spilled blood and flesh made it impossible to tell immediately who’d killed whom and in what order.
Hal wiped blood from his hands.
Neither of them noticed the bright red nurse’s cardigan. It lay in the snow next to the waist bel
t with its nickel-plated clasp.
Hand in hand, they walked slowly back down the hill.
94
She said: “I hate to think …”
“Of what?”
“Of all that might have happened.”
“I hate to think of all that did.”
“Is that what you say to people whose lives you’ve saved?”
“The dead? Let’s not talk about them now. I tell the living I’m an ordinary person doing an ordinary job.”
“That’s not entirely true.”
“Isn’t it? They listen but they don’t hear, Sophie. The dead—they can’t listen but they hear.”
“How about you?”
“It’s quiet now,” he said.
“What can you hear?”
“Silence.”
95
Broken by the crescendo of a searing cry.
The wail was terrible. He’d heard such screams more times than he cared to remember.
He began to run—
following—
—the trail of dark red smears in the snow.
The cry reached up through the still of the day to the sky.
The questions that would remain unanswered were three-fold:
How had she got there unnoticed?
How had she stumbled unseen from the bloodied hearse to the Range Rover’s smoking wreck?
Why?
The answer to the last question could be found in what she was clutching in her hands.
Hal saw:
The original Second World War Japanese naval dagger and scabbard in mint condition.
The blade, razor sharp.
He saw her standing there: eyes wide as if now at one with Priscilla and Sada Abe.
His strange memory of the future came back a final time.
“Teresa,” he said gently. He knew full well what she was about to do. “Teresa—DON’T.”
The gentle wind gusted snowflakes across her haunted face.