by Evans, Jon
"Oh, please," he said dismissively. "Write them with my left hand. Little detail to keep the authorities off the trail. It's the details that tell in the end. Anything else?"
As he said 'end,' I saw movement below me, and I looked down, and I saw that little spark of light tumble down into the darkness and disappear. I gasped. Morgan didn't notice, or thought I was just panting with fear, as I had on that Indonesian beach.
"You're going to rot in hell," Lawrence said.
I heard two very faint clinks from below. I put together what had happened. A piece of limestone used as handhold or foothold had suddenly come loose, and Hallam had dropped the flashlight. That explained the two noises. But there had been no thud of anything large hitting ground. Hallam still clung to the sheer cliff beneath us. I wondered if he could make his way up to the trail in the dark. I doubted it. Rock climbing is hard enough when you can see what you're doing. Feeling your way up blind would be nearly impossible, even for Hallam. He would try, but I didn't think he would make it. He would make another mistake and fall to his death. We were on our own.
"Hell?" Morgan laughed again. "Heaven and hell. Really, Lawrence, I thought better of you. Such dreamy juvenile notions. Still I can understand them at the moment. No atheist in a foxhole, they do say. Best you ready yourself for whichever one you're heading to in the very near future, though." He sighed theatrically and came out from behind the boulder, shaking his head. "I do wish that Hallam had come though. Still, best-laid plans gang oft agley, hey? Me and Nicole here will have to have some fun without any appreciative audience to watch." He reached down and ruffled her hair fondly, like a child's. "You're a tomcat, aren't you girl? You're not going to beg for your life and offer to do anything I want if I just stop hurting you. Not that like that cunt Mason. You know how I talked her out of that tent of yours, Woodsie, that night in Cameroon? I told her you had a surprise for her. And a surprise she got. She sucked cock like a two-dollar whore, she did — down, boy!" as I came to my feet at those last words, snarling. Morgan leveled his gun at me and took two quick steps back from Nicole, who had tensed for action. For a moment I was going to rush him, but I got hold of myself and crouched back down.
"That's better," Morgan said. "See, I just don't think they'd make up the appreciative audience we deserve, hey Nic old girl? But don't you worry. Even if you're going to be stubborn and uncooperative there's still a good deal of pleasant shenanigans we can get up to. Makes it even better, I must say, a girl who won't give up the fight. It's a rare treat."
"You demented motherfucker," Lawrence said.
Morgan shone a big shit-eating grin in his direction and I knew he was only seconds away from shooting us.
While he looked away Nicole adjusted her position slightly, moving from a sitting position to a crouch.
"It doesn't matter whether you shoot us or not," I said, trying to keep him distracted. "We've told the whole fucking world about you. FBI, Interpol, everyone."
"Oh, come on, Woodsie," Morgan said. "Now you're just being boring. The eighth deadly sin, old boy. I could give them my fucking autobiography and they wouldn't be able to touch me. You know that. And I'm sad to say, but you won't be much more than a footnote, mate." He raised the gun. "Now it's time to write your final —"
Nicole launched herself into the air and drop-kicked him like she was a World Wrestling Federation star. It very nearly worked. A shot exploded from his gun but went miles over our heads. The flashlight flew from his hands and he staggered almost to the edge of the trail before recovering hs balance. He tried to stop the rolling flashlight with an outstretched foot, but he was a fraction of a second too late.
Lawrence grunted as he flung the stone he held at Morgan's head. He just barely missed.
For an instant, as Morgan's flashlight fell, it illuminated Hallam against the cliff face. He reached for it but it was just too far away.
Morgan started to raise his gun towards me.
Three thoughts flashed through my head. I now held the only light; Lawrence and I, facing Morgan with a gun, would be far better off in complete darkness; and Hallam needed a light desperately. The solution was simple and obvious.
I lobbed the flashlight underhanded and dove forward onto my belly, scraping my hands hard enough to draw blood. As the light fell past the level of the trail there was another shot. I was sure that one had been meant for me.
Then the darkness was absolute.
I tried to figure out what to do next. My indecision was interrupted by a thump and a muffled grunt from ahead of us. He was struggling with Nicole. I was about to rush him when another shot rang out. For a moment I was terrified he had killed her. Then there was a light shining straight in my eyes, from above the boulder, and when I covered my eyes against the glare I saw Nicole lying doubled over in front of the boulder. She was gasping for breath but there didn't seem to be any blood. I glanced over my shoulder.
"Now you two just remain exactly where you are for the moment," Morgan said, his voice amused and casual. "Down on your bellies where you're good and harmless."
Nicole finally sucked in a long, loud breath and started to breathe normally again. She'd had the wind knocked out of her, nothing more. The third shot had been fired only to keep Lawrence and me away. I glanced at Lawrence. He was crouched, ready to spring, but it was too late. We exchanged a look and slowly followed Morgan's orders.
"Nice one, Nic," Morgan said. "Well done, fair play, all of you. Throwing that torch away, a stroke of genius, Woodsie, truly it was. It's a pity for you I was a Boy Scout. I reckon it's that fine organization's training that led me to bring another torch. Be prepared, they did tell me, time and time again. Speaking of which, sad as I am to say, it's time for you three to be prepared for one of the two great inevitables. And I reckon you all know I'm not talking about taxes."
"Fuck you," Nicole said. "Talk all you want, torture us all you want, do what you like, Morgan, it doesn't change a thing. You are fucked in the head. And you're a dead man. Hallam is going to find you and kill you."
Morgan yawned ostentatiously.
"Who do you think you are, Morgan?" I asked abruptly. We had to play for time, and I had a new game in mind. "You crazy motherfucker. You think you're the Great White Hunter, don't you? Tracking the most dangerous game? You're a sick deranged asshole, that's all you are."
"Boys," Morgan said, aiming the gun as Nicole closed her eyes, "I fear the time of your useful existence has come to its —"
"You're no better than Number Five," I said.
There was a long pause. Then Morgan said incredulously, "What did you say?"
"Number Five. The one who does the hookers in Bangkok."
There was silence for a little while and then he began to laugh. "Woodsie, Woodsie, Woodsie. For a man so stupid you can be so smart. How the fuck did you find out about that?"
"I know all about The Bull," I said. "Tracked it down from that computer you used in Tetebatu." I wished I could see him, judge from his expression whether my ploy might be working, but all I could see was the blinding orb of his flashlight, bright as the sun, and the gleam of the gun barrel.
"I cleaned that up," he said.
"Not clean enough. The Bull isn't near as secure as Number One thinks. Holes the size of Mack trucks in your security."
"Is that so. You're a marvel, Woodsie. Almost a shame to kill you. Ought to leave you alive to plug those holes. Pity it isn't practical now."
"How'd it start?" I asked. "That's what I really want to know. I know Laura was your first, but how'd it start? How did they get in touch with you? And why?
"What do you want, Woodsie, my life story?"
"If you'd be so kind as to oblige," I said.
He laughed. "You're a good sport, Woodsie. I did always like you. Playing for time, hey? Trying to extend your existence by couple of minutes by any means possible? Well, can't say as I blame you… In a nutshell then. I mean, you understand my position. I still have to kill the two of you, deal wi
th Nicole — and I'll tell you one thing about rape and torture and evisceration, old boy, they always take longer than you expect, time flies hey? — dress the bodies with the knives, snap a few photos, and then get back to town and see what I can do about Hallam and Steve before I leave on the morning bus… what I'm trying to convey is that it's a busy night ahead and I haven't much time to spend dictating my autobiography. So. In a nutshell."
He cleared his throat and began: "Laura wasn't actually my first. Year before the truck I was in Vietnam and I did two girls there. In Saigon. A couple of whores is all. I'd brought them back to my hotel for every man's fantasy, you know, and, Christ, what happened was almost an accident, truth be spoken. If they hadn't tried to relieve my of my money belt it would never have happened. But it did happen, and you know, I felt I had a knack for it. Felt I'd found my calling, see? Various, you know, difficulties, moral confusion, repression, various psychological conundrums that I won't trouble you with, wrestled with those for the next year. And it was really Africa that brought it all back out to the surface again. All that raw primal kill-or-be-killed life all around us, see? Brought it back to the old forebrain. Three weeks into the trip I was thinking every night about killing one of you, believe that?"
"And why Laura? Well, why not? I was quite sweet on her, see? Wanted to see her die like the bitch-cunt she was, too, but the two aren't so totally incompatible as the likes of you might imagine. And at that monkey ranch in Nigeria, when the two of you were having a bit of a spat as you may recall, we had a little chat and she made it quite clear that the one was never going to happen, so I figured, why not the other, hey? And I'd been in touch with The Bull before I came. All that confusion and torment and so forth, I went hunting around on the Net, spent a fair bit of time there if truth be told, and they got in touch. So it all came together very conveniently, see? Very conveniently for me too. I was an unhappy man before, I'll tell you that. I'm sure I seemed pleasant enough, but I was desperately unhappy. But now, now I'm doing what I was born into this world to do. That's all a man needs to do to be happy. Very simple really."
He shrugged. "And that's the story, my story, that's the long and the short of it. And now, if you'll all excuse me, and even if you won't, I'm going to pursue my happiness in my own inimitable way."
He leveled the gun for the last time. He must have seen something in our expressions, for at the last moment the flashlight wavered, and he lowered the gun and began to turn. He never made it. Hallam rose up behind him like vengeance incarnate and with an animal's roar he grabbed Morgan and flung him over the edge of the cliff like a rag doll. Morgan was so surprised that he didn't even scream.
For a few seconds nobody moved. Nobody said anything. Nobody breathed.
We heard the wet crunch of impact, and that seemed to galvanize us into motion. Hallam dropped the flashlight he carried and rushed to Nicole, cradled her in his arms, tugged at her bonds with clumsy fingers, and then he gave up trying as both of them began to weep like children. Lawrence and I exchanged relieved glances and moved to stand at the edge of the gorge.
Morgan's flashlight had miraculously survived the fall, and his body had landed in its cone of light. He lay curled in a mostly fetal position, with a single arm outstreched. A pool of blood seeped and collected around him.
"Good riddance," I said, and spat.
A long silence followed.
"Christ," Lawrence finally said. "I don't know about you lot, but I could use a beer."
That broke the silence, and all four of us laughed.
"Good throw," Hallam said to me.
I smiled back. "Nice catch."
We walked slowly back down the trail to the hotel. Hallam and Nicole clung to each other as if they had been krazy-glued. Lawrence, wonder of wonders, produced a pack of Marquise cigarettes. Locally manufactured filth. We smoked them all on the way back, once we stopped shaking enough to light them. The gorge seemed warm now, warm and welcoming.
Steve was half-mad with anxiety by the time we finally returned and nearly crushed the four of us to death with his welcoming embrace. "Next time," he kept saying, "somebody bloody else can stay behind."
Chapter 27 Fare-thee-well
It was past midnight by the time we had all reunited, swapped stories, demolished a six-pack of San Miguel, and soothed ourselves enough to make sleep a possibility. The morning bus left at five-thirty, which didn't leave much time for shut-eye, but better five hours than none. We set our alarms, group-hugged for a full minute, and went off to our respective beds.
We made it onto the morning bus with time to spare. I wasn't at all groggy. A few seconds after I woke up, the memory of the previous night shocked me fully awake. The others seemed pretty sprightly too. Hallam and Nicole sat at the back of the bus with their arms wrapped around each other, Steve took the two seats in front of them, and Lawrence and I sat in front of him. This time I took the aisle seat as I had discovered the hard way on the way to the gorge that the Moroccans do not build near enough legroom into their window seats.
We didn't really talk. But it was a good kind of silence. A comfortable kind. It was an awful thing that had happened but we had come through it all right, and we had come through it together. I thought to myself more than once, on that bus trip, that these were just the people I wanted on my side when push came to shove, and that it was good to be around them. I think maybe they thought the same. I had crazy fantasies of moving to London. Well, the London part wasn't crazy. It was the part about Talena coming with me that didn't seem fully grounded in reality.
In four days Crown Air would fly us from Gibraltar back to London, which meant that even allowing for the inevitable travel delays we had a couple of days to kill. We spent them in Essouaira. A town by a gorgeous windswept beach on the edge of the Atlantic, popular but not too popular with the Lonely Planet crowd. Moroccan kids played soccer on the beach. Hash was cheap and only technically illegal. A chain of old watchtowers that dated back to practically the Roman Empire lay along the beach here, staring down the chain of shipwrecks that littered the ocean, and we spent our days beach-hopping from one tower to another.
It was a good time. Hallam and Nicole barely left one another's side. They weren't distant, exactly, but Steve and Lawrence and I could tell that they were so wrapped up in one another's world that there wasn't really room for anyone else, so we gave them a lot of space. Lawrence made it clear that my brief suspicion of him was forgiven and forgotten, and Steve radiated his usual good cheer, and the three of us ate and drank and smoked and swam and played soccer with the Moroccans. It was a good time. I didn't feel at all bad about Morgan. I don't think any of us did. It was like Hallam said, a lot easier to deal with than we might have expected. He was a monster, and we had rid the world of him. Not so hard to look in the mirror after that.
We weren't worried about the authorities. I strongly doubted that anyone would find Morgan's body anytime soon. The hotel would just keep adding to his tab for another few days before wondering where he had vanished to. We had signed in under false names and could not be traced here. And the Moroccan police were, well, not exactly the sort to strike fear into the heart of evildoers everywhere. And even if they did find the body, and then find us, what evidence did anyone have? We would simply deny everything. I understood how getting away with murder had been so easy for Morgan for so many years.
So easy for Morgan and the others.
"So what about those other four?" Lawrence asked me, our second night in Essouaira, as he and Steve and I sat around a table smoking. Lawrence had become quite a heavy smoker, although he assured us that he'd give it up the moment he set foot back in England, that it was a travel thing only. I even believed him.
"Which other four?" I asked. His question had come out of nowhere.
"Numbers One, Two, Three, and Five."
"Oh, them." I'd nearly forgotten the other Demon Princes. "Not my department."
"Aye," Steve said. "Get some other lot to handle them. I
reckon we've done our bloody bit and then some."
"I suppose I'll send out that article," I said. "After I edit out all the Morgan references. Can't hurt. Warn people that they're out there. Maybe make them sweat a little, make Interpol try a little harder to find some way to go after them. But that's the end of the story for me."
"For us," Steve said.
"I'll drink to that," said Lawrence, and we clinked our San Miguels together.
But that conversation spurred an idea. Maybe I wasn't quite finished with The Bull after all. Maybe there was one more thing I could do.
* * *
The picture was the hardest part. I'm a programmer, not a graphic designer, and Essouaira's sole Internet café was not exactly well equipped with all the latest software. Eventually I tracked down some freeware graphic-editing software called LView and worked out how to put it through its paces. At least the picture itself was a good one, from the archive of Africa pictures I kept on my Unix account. Morgan wearing his shark-tooth hat, in Todra Gorge no less. There were others in the picture, Carmel and Nicole and Michael, but I used LView to cut Morgan's head out and then expand it to passport-picture size. The Swiss Army knife pictures I took straight from Victorinox's web page. A little cutting, pasting, rotating, and reflecting, and voila: two Swiss Army knives, blades extended, crossed in an X over Morgan's smiling and still recognizable face.
I accessed The Bull via Safeweb so they would never be able to track this access back to this Essouaira cafe. I doubted that they had the necessary technical expertise in the first place, but then again when dealing with a group of psychopathic murderers there is no such thing as too paranoid. I went to their registration page and chose "Toreador" as a password. And voila, I was Number Six.
Entry #: 58