by Peter May
She shut the door and hurried back into the living room and was picking up her book as Slater slipped his key in the lock.
CHAPTER NINE
The temperature had dropped overnight and the sky was heavy with the threat of snow from dark clouds that scraped the skyline. The cold, quiet streets were empty in the first light of this Sunday morning, milk bottles standing on doorsteps, Sunday newspapers stuck in letter boxes. The occasional taxi cruised past the grey terraces where the shutters were still closed, curtains still drawn. Brussels was not yet awake. In an hour the first sombre citizens would leave their homes and make their way darkly to early Mass among the flickering candles in ancient churches and the raised incantations of pious voices. A sheet of yesterday’s newspaper fluttered across the Square Ambiorix and in the children’s swing park the swings swayed gently back and forth, a rusted link squeaking in the cold air.
Slater turned his car into the square from the Chaussée Martel, his daughter seated quietly in the back staring sullenly from the window. Tania knew her father was nervous, agitated, as he had been so often recently. But this morning she felt more than that. She sensed his fear with a growing trepidation. The pressure of her own unease was building inside her and she became aware that her hands were gripping the edge of the seat so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. Slater caught sight of her face in the rearview mirror and thought, thank God she’s at peace. He could not see her hands. Again he cursed Sally. Of all the mornings for her to call off. The last thing he had wanted was to take Tania with him on this of all visits. Nothing had worked out according to plan. The arrival of Bannerman, Sally’s call-off. He had not been able to face breakfast this morning, and now he felt slightly sick. His heart was hammering away at his ribs and his palms were damp with perspiration.
He wiped them one after the other on his trouser legs and swung the car into the Rue de Pavie. There were cars parked below the Residence Ambiorix, but down the length of the street there was only one other vehicle. It was parked outside Gryffe’s block. Slater pulled up in front of it and switched off the engine. He half-turned towards Tania. ‘You’ll have to stay in the car, little one.’ It was foolish to have hoped that this was something she might accept, and he watched as the scream rose in her chest. Both of her hands clutched at the back of his collar as her voice filled the car. He twisted himself in the seat and took her arms to hold them firmly. ‘You must,’ he said, imploring her. ‘I can’t take you in. Please don’t start.’
The strength that seemed to seize her when she threw a tantrum never ceased to amaze him, and he had to grasp her arms so tightly that he feared he was hurting her. She wriggled down in the seat and forced one leg up, her foot catching him on the shoulder. He struggled to hold her now, hindered by the back of the seat, dreading the screams that followed each series of deep, breath-catching sobs. ‘For Christ’s sake, stop it!’ he shouted, letting go one arm so that he could slap her hard across the face. Immediately he regretted it. It did no good, he knew. And he watched the red weals spring up raw and vicious across the white softness of her cheek. Her free hand clawed at his face, nails drawing blood above his right eye. He grasped the offending hand and twisted it, holding it away from his face. ‘All right, all right, all right! I’ll take you in. Just stop it, please! Stop it! I’ll take you in. But you’ll have to stay in the hall.’
Almost at once he felt a relaxation in her arms. But it was several minutes before the screaming stopped and the sobbing subsided and she fell back passively in the seat, pale and breathless.
He turned around to face front, then dropped his face into trembling hands and wiped away the sweat. He was shaking all over, breathing in short, uneven bursts. He reached for his cigarettes and lit one, glancing at his watch. Nine-thirty. He glanced along the dead street and thought, there is still time to pull out of this. But it had gone too far now. He had passed the point of no return weeks ago. He cursed his own weakness. You have no stomach for this, he thought, and yet he knew that even this was better than the bleak despair of a future without hope. He stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and stepped out of the car into the bitter cold wind that blew down the Rue de Pavie. He opened the rear door for Tania and the child scrambled out clumsily on to the cobbles, clutching at her father’s arm. She sensed something dreadful and clung to the only familiar thing she knew. Slater pressed the buzzer and heard it sound somewhere far off inside. They waited a long time in the cold before they heard footsteps approaching and the door opened.
Gryffe looked dishevelled, worn and weary, as though he had not slept. He stared out of red eyes at Slater and then at the child. ‘Jesus, you’re a callous bastard, Slater, bringing your kid.’
Slater’s words almost clotted in his throat. ‘I had no choice . . .’ But he stopped short of making excuses. There was no reason that he should. Where once he might have felt pity for Gryffe, he despised him now, though even hatred could not salve his troubled conscience. Gryffe moved aside to let them in and closed the door behind them. It was dark in the hall, gloomy, the only light coming from a skylight high up above the stairwell. ‘She’ll wait in the hall,’ Slater said, and he prayed that this time she would accept it.
Gryffe nodded curtly. ‘Through here.’ He led the way into the back room. His suit was crumpled and Slater guessed that he had spent the night on a settee or in a chair. He glanced back at Tania as he closed the door. She seemed almost oblivious at being left on her own and was wandering into the cloakroom, attracted by the smell of coats and their softness to touch.
*
Kale had been awake throughout the night. He had heard Gryffe return shortly after two. First he had gone upstairs and then come back down, and Kale had heard him moving around, pacing between the study and the back room for nearly an hour. At length the house had fallen silent again, though Kale had not heard Gryffe go back upstairs. He guessed that the politician had probably fallen asleep in a chair or over his desk, and he had remained crouched painfully in the darkness, cold and uncomfortable, behind the filing cabinets.
The sound of the buzzer had woken him out of a light, restless slumber and he had heard Gryffe stirring in the back room and then going out to answer the door. There were voices in the hall, and now both men were coming into the study from the back room. Kale eased himself up, straightening his stiff, painful limbs. It was still dark in the cupboard, only the faintest line of grey daylight below the door. He shone his pencil torch on his watch. Nine thirty-five. Then he located the two revolvers, grasping Gryffe’s heavier Colt in his gloved right hand and slipping the lighter gun into his left-hand coat pocket. He picked his way carefully to the door, all his mental and physical energies concentrated on doing this thing right.
He could hear the two voices, raised now. They seemed to be arguing. Kale could not make sense of it. Money, it seemed, was the issue. But that was none of his concern. He tightened his hand around the handle and eased the door open about two inches, screwing his eyes up against the sudden glare of light, holding himself absolutely still until his pupils had contracted and the light no longer pained him. Gryffe was standing behind his desk, his back to Kale. Beyond him the other moved into Kale’s line of vision; a thin, pale, frightened-looking man. Ginger hair and beard. Perfect, Kale thought, with an almost inhuman detachment from what he was about.
He had no thought for the men he was about to kill, their pains, their loves, all the years they had lived until now; years that he would rub out, so that only the faintest impression of their existence would remain on the pages of history. So it was with most men. What did it matter that they had ever lived? They all died, sooner or later. All the futile years. He took a single step back and levelled the Colt through the opening of the door.
‘Don’t be a fool, Gryffe,’ he heard the ginger-haired man saying. ‘I can ruin you.’ Gryffe stooped and opened the top right-hand drawer of his desk and stared blankly into i
ts emptiness. Kale squeezed the trigger, gently, fondly, almost as though he were stroking it, and then recoiled from the blast in the confined space of the cupboard. The bullet punched a hole in the centre of Slater’s chest and threw him back against the wall, blood spewing from the wound. He was dead even before he fell forward on to his face.
Gryffe spun around, fingers of fear closing around his beating heart, in time to see a small, mean figure in a dark, shabby coat slip out from the walk-in cupboard behind him. The man’s face betrayed nothing. He held Gryffe’s Colt .32 and was pointing it at him.
‘Don’t move,’ Kale said quietly, almost in a whisper. He slipped out from behind the desk and crossed quickly to where Slater lay crumpled in on himself, blood spreading rich and dark on the carpet. The gun still pointed at Gryffe, Kale bent to check the dead man’s jugular, just to be sure. He stood again, taking out the second gun with his left hand.
Gryffe was paralysed by a cocktail of fear and confusion. He could not believe that he was about to die. There was no need for this. Not now. Slater was dead. He clutched at straws, struggling to find his voice.
‘Lamb fixed it, didn’t he? It was Lamb. To get me off the hook.’ Kale nodded and lowered the Colt. Gryffe felt an enormous surge of relief and almost buckled at the knees. ‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘Thank God.’
Kale smiled. A curious, mean smile. ‘Here,’ he said and threw Gryffe the Colt. The politician caught the gun, a reflex action. He saw Kale switch the other gun to his right hand and level it quickly. The bullet made a small neat hole in the centre of Gryffe’s forehead. There was not the same force in the second shot and Gryffe staggered back only one step before tilting sideways and striking his face on the edge of the desk as he went down.
Kale hurried over, again to check that the shot had been fatal. The man was quite dead. Then he returned to Slater, crouching to lift the top half of the body up so that he could pull the right arm out from beneath it. He took the hand. First he would need miscellaneous prints on the gun. An index print on the right side of the barrel, a thumbprint on the left side behind the chambers, two fingers on the trigger guard. They would not be totally convincing, but they would be good enough in the confusion there was certain to be. He fitted the gun carefully into the hand and bent the arm back below the body, allowing the torso to fall over it again, the way it had happened naturally. He stood up and glanced back across at Gryffe. The Colt had fallen from his hand. But that would not matter. It was his gun and it had his prints on it. He went back to the cupboard and checked that he had left no tell-tale signs, then carefully closed the door. What counted now was to get away quickly, without being seen. It was unlikely that anyone would have heard the shots. The nearest apartment block was at the end of the street. Kale took a last look round then slipped into the back room and out into the hall.
It was still and gloomy here and he waited, listening behind the front door for nearly a minute, before removing his plastic shoe covers, opening it and glancing out. The street was deserted. He pulled the door closed behind him and his footsteps receded hastily down the cobbled pavement.
*
It was a full five minutes before Tania stirred among the coats and felt confident enough to come out into the hall. She had heard the raised voices, the shots, and then someone moving softly around the study. She had seen the thin, dark figure emerging from the back room. The high-cheekboned face with its deep-sunk eyes and clear sallow skin. Now she stood in the hall, the silence of the house pressing around her. She was confused, afraid. She wished she could call out. She took small heavy steps from the hall into the back room. There was a strange smell of burning in here. An empty armchair by an old marble fireplace, a bookcase full of dark, bound books. A heavy, gilt-framed picture on the wall. The French windows into the study stood open, and still there was no sound. Where were they? Her father and the other man. Another few steps and she could see into the study. She stood motionless, staring, the horror of understanding what she saw growing inside with a force and a pain that she thought would choke her. And then the first cry of anguish ripped into the silence of her consciousness.
CHAPTER TEN
I
Bannerman stirred among the sheets, the thickness of sleep still in his head and throat. His mouth felt dry and furry from the drink the night before and he had the faintest pleasurable recollection of having fallen asleep with a woman beside him. But now she was gone.
His immediate inclination was to turn over and pull the sheets tightly around him and slip back into the world of dark, shallow dreams from which he had just emerged. But there was an annoying flicker somewhere in his subconscious that took several seconds to surface. Something had woken him. The sleep had not been broken naturally. He was not quite sure why that should worry him. He pulled himself up on one elbow to look at the clock and felt the cold bedroom air rush in beneath the covers. It was nearly a quarter to eleven. Slater, he remembered, had a meeting with Gryffe at nine-thirty. Was that this morning? Sally had said she couldn’t babysit. Had he taken Tania with him? Bannerman frowned and listened carefully. There was someone in the living room. Perhaps Slater was back already.
He cleared his throat of phlegm and swung his legs out of bed, feeling the first throb of pain in his head. He sat for a moment rubbing his eyes then blinking and looking out of the window across the roofs of the tenements and terraces. He had forgotten to close the shutters the night before. A vague memory of Sally in the darkness of the room returned to him, bringing a rush of regret. Had he really slept with her? He had no recollection of it. He stood up and pulled on his dressing gown.
The hall was dark and he padded to the living-room door, scratching his head. ‘Hello?’ he called. There was no reply. He pushed open the door and saw that the curtains were still drawn. Above the fireplace a painting of hunters on a snow-covered hillside was swung out from the wall where it was fixed with hinges. A wall safe concealed behind it stood open. He had taken no more than two steps into the room when something struck him hard on the back of his head. The pain shot down his spine like long needles, and the floor swung crazily towards him, striking him with a sickening force that hammered the breath from his lungs. The moan that escaped his lips sounded strange, disembodied, as though it had come from someone else. It was far, far away in some other world into whose darkness he was now falling.
*
Kale looked down at the still body on the floor. He was breathless and tense. For just a few seconds it crossed his mind that he should kill this one too. But he quickly dismissed it. There was little point in drawing more attention to the incident than was necessary. Still, it irritated him. It was untidy, the only loose end in the affair. He’d been told the flat would be empty, and he had taken that on trust. He was a fool. He should have checked first. He pulled the body over to have a look at the face. It would be as well to remember it. Already the right cheek and temple were bruising where they had struck the floor. It was a wide, hard face that you would remember with little difficulty. Some blood was oozing from the mouth where the man had bitten his lip on impact. Kale let the body drop back and kicked the prostrate form viciously in the side. It was unnecessary, but there was a grim satisfaction in it, and it released a little of his tension.
He stepped over the body and crossed to the safe, lifting out the black briefcase and closing the door. He swung the picture back against the wall and pushed his gun into his coat pocket. Then he recrossed the room and slipped quickly down the hall to the front door. He closed it behind him, carefully replacing the key below the mat.
*
Bannerman felt the pain of consciousness slowly returning. The dull, hard ache at the back of his head increased to the point where it seemed to numb itself. He felt as though he had been kicked in the face and there was the bitter iron taste of blood in his mouth. He forced his eyes open and they hurt sharply even in the half-light. He screwed them shut, opening them again a l
ittle more slowly. A light groan escaped involuntarily from his throat as he tried to turn himself over. More pain. This time right down one side of his chest. Now it hurt even to breathe.
He lay for several minutes before he tried moving again. This time he gritted his teeth against the pain and pulled himself heavily up to his knees. Immediately the blood rushed to his head and he felt giddy and sick. He dropped one hand to the floor to support himself, and swayed slightly back and forth until the sick feeling passed. His breathing was rapid and shallow and everything about his body was, he discovered, stiff and sore to move. What the hell had happened? He fought to remember. Even that seemed to hurt. But slowly recollection returned. The dark hall, the sounds of movement in the living room. The open safe above the fireplace. He looked over and saw that it was closed now, the painting flush with the wall. He waited yet another few minutes before trying to get to his feet. Then he leaned against the door jamb breathing hard, feeling the pain wash over him time and again. With a slight shock he saw that the clock on the mantel read after twelve. He must have been unconscious for over an hour.
Then he tensed as he heard voices on the landing outside, and a key sounded in the lock. He turned to look down the length of the hall as the door opened. There were three men, one in uniform. The uniformed officer pulled a gun clumsily from a black leather holster and raised it towards Bannerman. He shouted a warning in a language that Bannerman did not understand.