by Ian Rankin
Down this way. Hold on though ... He stopped again. What was he doing?
Witch had already taken a shot at him. She knew he was here. So why not let her find him? Was she behind him, following, watching patiently as he ran himself ragged? That would be typical of her, biding her time until he was exhausted, then catching him off-guard. Yes, he could run this maze for hours and never find her. Not unless she wanted to be found. He walked back the way he'd come, glancing behind him. What he needed was a dead end, and he found one: an alleyway leading from The Shambles. He staggered into it, tipping over a litter-bin, and leaned against the wall, breathing hoarsely, coughing. One hand was against the wall, supporting him, the other was inside his jacket, as though holding his ribs or rubbing away a stitch. Whenever he paused in his loud breathing, there was silence around him, almost oppressively heavy.
And inside him, a pounding of blood.
'Hey, priest.' Her voice was quiet. He had not heard her approach. He turned his head slowly towards the mouth of the alley. It was dark in the alley itself, but the street was illuminated. He knew he could see her better than she could see him. But she knew it too. Perhaps that's why she was standing to one side of the alley's mouth, partly hidden by the corner of the wall. She was aiming a pistol at him.
She looked different. Not just physically different - that was to be expected - but somehow calmer, at peace.
'Are you satisfied now?' he asked between intakes of breath. 'Now that your father's dead?'
'Ooh, Mr Elder, and there I was thinking age had slowed you down. Yes, I'm satisfied.' She paused. 'Just about.' The gun was steady in her hand. She had made no attempt to enter the alley itself. Why should she? It was a dead end. He was not going to escape.
'What now? Retirement?' he asked. 'Your Dutch friend tells us you were paid a million dollars for the assassination.'
'A million, yes. Enough to buy a lot of retirement. What about you, Mr Elder? I thought you were retired, too.'
'I was, but how could I turn down the chance of finding you?'
He saw her smile. 'Finding me again,' she corrected. 'Tell me, Mr Elder, how's your back?'
'Good as new.'
'Really?' She was still smiling. 'You must be ready for another autograph then. Something a bit more permanent.'
'Do you remember,' he said, 'in Docklands, just before you gave me that final kick . .. ?'
'You started to ask me a question.'
'That's right. I want to ask it now. It's important to me.' He paused.
'It's the reason I've been hunting you so long.'
'Go ahead and ask.'
He swallowed drily, licked his lips. His mouth felt coated with bad coffee.
'Paris, eight years ago, in June. A bomb went off in a shopping arcade.
Was it you?'
She was silent for a tantalising moment. 'You'll have to be more specific'
'No, it was either you or it wasn't.'
'No interviews allowed.' Her finger began to squeeze the trigger.
Elder called out: 'Biddy, no!'
The use of her real name froze her for a second. A second was all Elder needed. The hand inside his jacket was already gripped around the Browning's butt. He swung and fired, diving further back into the darkness as
he did so. He fired off three shots, stumbling backwards all the time, seeking safety in the shadows and the dustbins and the stacks of empty boxes. Three shots. None of them returned. He waited, listening. Some dogs had been startled awake and were barking in the distance. A window opened somewhere nearby.
'What the hell was that?' he heard a voice say. 'Sounded like guns.
Call the police, love.'
Yes, call the police. Slowly, Elder got to his feet and walked to the mouth of the alley, keeping close to the wall, his gun-hand hanging at his side. Then he stuck his head out into the street.
And the cold metal mouth of a pistol touched his forehead.
Witch was standing there, smiling unsteadily. Her grip on the gun wasn't steady either. She was wounded. He daren't take his eyes off hers, but he could see a dark stain spreading across her right side. She placed the palm of her hand against it, then lifted the hand away, her fingers rubbing slickly against each other. Elder could smell the blood.
'Biddy,' he said, 'you don't hate me.' His whole head felt numb from the touch of the pistol against his brow. He felt dizzy, giddy. Witch's smile grew wider.
'Hate you? Of course I don't hate you. It's just that I don't want to .. .'
she swallowed '.. . to disappoint you.' She fell against the shopfront, her gun-arm dropping to her side. Elder took hold of her and eased her down so that she was sitting on the ground, legs in front of her, back resting against the shopfront, the same rag-doll posture in which she'd left her father. Only then did he remove the pistol from her hand. From the lack of resistance in her fingers he knew she was dying, if not already dead. He heard feet running, several pairs of feet, and calls.
'Down this way?'
'No, down here.'
'The car's parked at Goodramgate.'
"Try The Shambles.'
'Take that street there
And then someone was standing in front of him.
'Found him!' the voice called. It belonged to a uniformed constable.
The constable looked young, still in his teens. He stared in horror at the bloody bundle nestling against Dominic Elder.
'Is she ...?'
And now more footsteps. 'Dominic! Are you all right?'
Joyce crouched down in front of him, her eyes finding a level with his.
He nodded.
'I'm fine, Joyce. Really.' He looked up. Greenleaf was standing there too now, pistol in his hand, not looking at Elder but at Witch.
'Here she is, John,' said Elder, still holding the unmoving body. 'Here's what all the fuss was about. A kid who didn't like her dad.'
'Her dad?'
'Jonathan Barker. He's on the wall between Goodramgate and the Minster.'
'Not alive, I presume?'
'Not alive, no.' Elder looked down at Witch again. She looked like Christine Jones. Now, she would always look like Christine Jones in his mind, just as for two years she'd looked like a down-and-out. He wondered what she looked like really. He wondered if even she knew.
Greenleaf holstered his gun. 'We call them “domestics” on the force,'
he said. 'Family fallings-out .. .'
'That's what this was then,' said Elder, letting the body go and rising slowly to his feet. 'A domestic'
Joyce Parry slipped her arm around his waist. Her fingers spread out across his back. His back had no feeling at all.
Doyle kept his head bandaged for a few days, even though the doctors had told him he needn't bother. But he said he liked the way it made him look, and so did his girlfriend.
'She says I look like a war hero.'
'Or a lobotomy patient,' added Greenleaf.
Elder laughed. They were standing in the East End boxing club, which again had been hired for one of Doyle's by now notorious parties. The French lager was piled high in cardboard boxes of forty-eight bottles per box. The punch-bags were in use, as were the parallel bars.
'He's sharp, isn't he, Dom?' said Doyle, nodding towards Greenleaf.
Elder nodded. 'But how do you feel really, Doyle?'
'Oh, I'm fine. Just a spot of amnesia.'
'Oh?'
'I seem to have forgotten all my character defects. Ay-ay, here comes lover boy.'
They turned towards the door. Barclay was walking tall, having just arranged by phone with Dominique that he'd be spending next weekend in Paris with her.
'Mama's idea,' she'd said, but he hadn't believed it.
Doyle had turned away from Barclay and towards the table. When he turned round again, he was holding a bottle of beer.
'There you go, Mikey. You don't need a bottle-opener, just twist the top.'
'Right, cheers,' said Barclay. Greenleaf knew what was coming. As Bar
clay twisted the bottle-top, a welt of foam burst from the bottle and sprayed his shirt.
Doyle tutted. 'Still a bit lively from the trip.'
Later, while discussion raged as to which curry house should receive the party's late-night custom, the one they'd used last time having said never again, Elder slipped away. He was going to hunt down a black taxi, but saw in the distance a seedily-lit cab office, so started walking towards it.
'Stealing my car again?'
He turned and saw Barclay following him. And when he looked, he was indeed standing next to the white Ford Fiesta. Barclay unlocked the passenger door.
'Hop in, I'll give you a lift.'
'You don't know where I'm headed.'
'I'll give you a lift there anyway.'
The trip took the best part of half an hour. At the end of it, Joyce would be waiting for him. Like last night and the night before. Tonight was their final night together: Tommy Bridges was going off on holiday and Elder's garden needed him. But Joyce had some holiday-time owing, too, and she was making plans to visit before the month was out. They'd see how it went. Now that Witch was behind him, maybe Dominic could relax a little. Maybe.
'A penny for them,' said Barclay.
'I'm wondering whether to envy you or not.'
'Why's that?'
'It's hard to put into words without an overload of cliches.'
'Try anyway.'
'You're just beginning, Michael.' Elder stopped abruptly. He couldn't say it. Barclay nodded anyway.
'I get the message,' he said.
Elder smiled. 'I hope so.'
'By the way, how's the patient?'
How indeed. Earlier today Elder had travelled to the hospital in Leeds.
Witch was on a life-support system, her brain activity still sluggish.
Without the machines . . . The doctor had shrugged. He couldn't see the point of keeping a killer alive.
Elder could . .. well, sometimes he could. He sat by her bed for half an hour, alternately staring at her face, at the tubes running from nose and mouth, and at the machinery itself with its constant bleep and the slow hiss of pumped air.
'You never did answer me,' he said quietly. He turned from her, the better to examine the workings of the machines around them. He followed the snaking line the cables took to the electrical sockets at the bottom of the cream-painted wall. He glanced now and then at the plugs, at the machinery's several on/off switches, so clearly marked.
So, so clearly marked.
And finally, he rose to his feet, quietly, softly, so as not to disturb.
There was a flutter from her eyelashes, movement behind the eyelids themselves: REM, they called it, Rapid Eye Movement. She was dreaming.
He wondered what she was dreaming of. He touched her bare arm, feeling its delicate warmth. Her face was ghostly pale, her lips almost colourless. Elder leant down over her and planted a kiss on her forehead.
The machine gave a sudden double-blip, as though somewhere inside her the kiss had registered. Elder smiled and stepped away from the bed, placing the chair back against the wall, and finally standing in front of the machines themselves, his fingertips just touching the cool painted metal.
Table of Contents
Monday 1 June
Cassandra
The Operating Theatre
The Protean Self
Enterprise & Initiative
The Shooting Gallery