Sam saw his expression change.
‘Tell me,’ she said, watching him disappearing into the past.
Ben nodded as his mind drifted back. He’d never spoken to a soul about the events of that night, and as he talked about being woken just before midnight by his friend Alexia’s call to his hotel, and tearing into the hammering rain of one of New York’s worst storms, he began to feel a long-held tension begin to drain from his body.
‘He was trapped upstairs in a home improvements warehouse,’ Ben said, softly. ‘I could have called for backup, but that meant every chance of him weaseling out through any number of holes in the justice system. There simply wasn’t enough hard evidence and I was working way out of my jurisdiction too—not a good place to come from when you want to put a case together. Anyway, quite frankly, I wanted him dead.’
Ben sighed, his eyes focused on the past.
‘Go on,’ Sam said.
‘I knew that going up and flushing the bastard out would be suicidal. Back then, if I’d thought I could definitely take him with me, I would have given a shot, but he was up high and had a clear view of the stairwell.’
‘How long was it before you thought of the acetone?’ Sam asked.
This time Ben laughed.
‘How much do you know?’
‘Only that it was you that sent the place up, but it took a few months to work it out. By that time you were finished with the feds.’
‘More like they were finished with me,’ Ben said, a trace of bitterness in his eyes.
‘Don’t you think you’re in a better place now—successful business, independence, and no masters telling you what to do?’
‘Sam, getting tossed out of the job cost me a lifetime of initiative,’ Ben said. ‘By the time I’d got set up again the trail to that prick had gone cold, as they say in cowboy movies, and I’ve never been able to pick it up since.’
‘Until now,’ Sam said. ‘How did you fix his face?’
‘Aah, that was almost the end of me,’ Ben said, continuing. ‘We’d exchanged a few shots and I was crawling behind the counter. It was a standoff really and then I happened to look into a storeroom. It was loaded with thinners—big drums of it. I just rolled a couple of towards the stairs, gave them a couple of rounds from my shotgun and then tossed a wad of burning rag into the mix. Trouble was it went up too well. My clothes were smoldering from the heat and I had to back off. He was waiting and chose that moment to jump off the mezzanine floor. I was sure he’d landed badly so I ran through the flames to finish him off. But he must have hit the floor like a cat. The next thing I knew was that he’d jumped me and we were both on the deck. My gun had gone and we were rolling around in all this burning crap. He’s incredibly wiry and strong. Before I know it, he’s straddling me, his fingers are buried in my neck and I can feel myself fading out—you know, when it goes quiet no matter how noisy it is and all you can hear is the blood washing around inside your head?’
Sam nodded. She’d been there.
‘Unbelievably, he’s laughing. I can’t hear him through all the popping and banging from the fire. All I can see is this huge fixed grin stretching right across his face, and that was enough to make me lose it. I used the last of my strength to thrash and buck and, while he’s concentrating on maintaining his grip, I get my fingers around a chunk of timber and whack him in the face with it. That’s when his luck ran out. I didn’t hit him hard, I didn’t have the strength. But the timber had some sticky goo on it like tar that was burning furiously. One second he’s having the time of his life and the next he’s running around screaming like a banshee with half his face on fire ... I was really lucky.’
Sam exhaled slowly.
‘See him again after that?’
‘No, I had to get out fast. I could smell my hair burning and most of my clothing was burnt through.’
‘How did you know he hadn’t died when the rest of the acetone and paint went up?’
Ben thought for a moment before replying.
‘I assumed he had,’ Ben replied, ‘he’d have been in terrible agony. He disappeared into the back of the building where there was no way out, and the whole place virtually blew itself to pieces soon after I exited. At the time I thought it was impossible for anyone to survive that intensity of fire.’
Sam smiled.
‘Well, we know he did, because two weeks later, you were still looking for him.’
‘You could have helped,’ Ben grumbled.
‘Ben, you know better than that. You wouldn’t have listened to us or anyone else back then. So, how did you know he was still around?’
‘The bastard sent me a present,’ Ben said, finally, ‘something only I would recognize—a piece of his burnt flesh.’
‘Jesus,’ Sam said, face turning in disgust..
‘Yup.’
‘C’mon Ben, we’d better get you somewhere a little less exposed,’ Sam said, ‘and then our first priority is to trace those emails that Cara was sent from Australia. I suppose your guys can do it less obviously than ours?’
Ben smiled crookedly and Sam’s heart did a skip.
‘Faster too and nobody will ever know they were there.’
The Boy
‘Nice car.’
Kralinsky stared at the scruffy young man in front of him. Arms full of computer peripherals, he’d climbed out of his brand-new Jaguar and then almost dropped the lot. He was sure the ragged youth standing by his car was there to mug him.
The boy’s old teacher looked closer and grinned.
‘You shit, you never wrote. Not once.’
The boy frowned.
‘I never had anything from you.’
‘My letters to the institute,’ Kralinsky said, ‘they all came back ‘return to sender’. I thought you were ignoring me because you wanted to be left alone.’
The boy thought for a moment.
‘There was a fire at that dump about a month after I left. Big surprise, one of the kids lost it and torched the place. Maybe some of the admin records got lost. Come to think of it, I never received anything from them after that and just assumed they were slack.’
The boy swayed slightly and Kralinsky took in his emaciated appearance. He nodded towards the entrance to a two-storied building. It was brand-new and, in the sunshine, the acres of windows made it sparkle like a giant diamond.
‘C’mon, we’re in there. Let me dump this stuff off and we’ll grab some breakfast.’
*
The boy ate slowly, chewing every mouthful with ferocious pleasure. Kralinsky’s grin never faltered as he kept the food coming. Eventually the boy allowed his empty plate to be taken and sat back with a sigh.
‘No more school?’ he asked.
Kralinsky laughed.
‘Did they tell you where to find me?’
The boy nodded.
‘I don’t go there anymore. Not that my life isn’t meaningful. I’ve got my project to look after, and your stuff—that takes a while. As the years went by, I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever show up.’
‘My stuff—what do you mean?’ asked the boy.
Kralinsky’s eyes danced.
‘You really have no idea, do you?’ he said. ‘I think we’d better go back to the office. On the way, how about you tell me what you’ve been up to since you left?’
They walked slowly as the boy brought Kralinsky up to date, leaving out some of the finer details about Jilly.
‘The last few weeks were hard,’ he said. ‘I was sleeping under bridges and grabbing some half-eaten food out of the trash. It’s quite competitive, you know,’ he grinned. ‘Eventually, I got to hear of Holy Apostles. I was pretty down and out by then.’
The boy told him of the first week when he wandered, shocked by Jilly’s attempt on her life and then his own sudden demise.
Annette was right. He thought too much of Jilly to contemplate going back. As he trudged the pavements he knew that her threats were more than likely baseless, but he cou
ld never take the risk of being wrong. He’d taken only what he could carry and fled, leaving his house keys on the hall table and wondering what lies Annette would tell her sister.
He lost his backpack on the fifth night. He’d once heard Brett talk of the moles, a colony of people romantically depicted as living deep in the unused parts of the subway. He went to check them out but, after days of searching, he was none the wiser. Many of the homeless he spoke to laughed at the idea and chased him away. But one wild-haired man, emerging from a recessed doorway, said that he was on his way to where the moles lived and invited him along.
‘I should have known better,’ the boy said, with surprising good humor, ‘and I was lucky to get away with my life.’
The boy described how they’d been plodding along an unused level beneath Bergen Street, an abandoned station.
‘It was strange,’ he said, ‘walking along the track and listening to the trains whooshing through nearby. At first I was frightened. I expected one to come rushing down our track and squash us flat. Gradually it became quieter. Eventually all we could hear was a distant rumble, the sound of our footsteps and a lot of water dripping.
‘That’s when things went wrong. I had my flashlight on which began to fade, but my guide didn’t seem to notice and powered on. I just stumbled after him until I realized that he’d disappeared.’
‘Left you there?’ Kralinsky asked.
‘Not exactly,’ the boy said, smiling at his own stupidity. ‘He must have been hiding nearby, although I’ve no idea how he could see down there. When I took my pack off to have a rest he took it, and I never heard a thing.’
‘How did you get out?’
‘Not too easily,’ the boy confessed. ‘It took two days of inching around in the blackness and cracking my head a few times before I found an unlocked door back into the real world.’ He laughed, ‘A bit like Alice in reverse.’
‘Why didn’t you come around sooner?’ Kralinsky asked, as they reached the building.
The boy shrugged.
‘It’s been a long time and I felt embarrassed having to ask if you had any of the money. When I didn’t hear from you, I assumed it had been used up and then forgot about it. Then, when things got a bit rough, I wondered if I could ask you for a small loan.’
Kralinsky, still smiling, held the door open. Inside, the boy found himself in a marbled foyer. A huge reception desk faced him and behind it sat a smiling young woman. The boy was suddenly conscious of his appearance and looked at Kralinsky.
‘This way,’ he said, giving the girl a wave. He swiped them through an electronically locked door. In front of them a door was marked ‘Staff Amenities’.
‘Steam bath, showers, the works,’ Kralinsky said, ‘I’ll have a pair of jeans and a shirt sent in. Take your time and then let Pattie out there know you’re ready and I’ll give you the tour.
Half an hour later Kralinsky met him in reception and ushered him through another door.
‘You smell a lot better,’ he said.
‘Look, thanks for all this,’ the boy said. ‘I appreciated the food too, but I really don’t want to interfere with your work any more.’
‘Interfere?’ Kralinsky chuckled. ‘This is one of the best days of my life and I’m going to enjoy every second of it. Look!’
The boy stopped and stared.
They were in a large room crammed with benches, humming with electronic equipment. There were thirty, maybe forty, white-coated men and women moving between the work stations, monitoring screens and endlessly spooling tapes. Chatting among themselves, they looked relaxed, but the boy could also sense an atmosphere of purpose.
‘This is the lab,’ Kralinsky said, with obvious pride.
‘My God, this is fantastic—so futuristic. Do work here?’ he breathed.
‘Over here,’ Kralinsky said, unlocking the door to a large office. Inside, the boy looked around. One entire wall was a window, looking out onto the activity in the lab. A mahogany conference table and ten plump leather chairs dominated one end of the room, a vast desk the other.
‘Some of the dividends went into starting this up. We got in on the ground floor of the IT boom and haven’t looked back.’
‘IT?’ asked the boy.
‘Information Technology,’ Kralinsky said, ‘an old term with new meaning these days. ‘Like it?’ he asked, smiling.
The boy’s gaze took in the pristine appearance of the room, settling on the empty surface of the desk.
‘It’s cool, but it doesn’t look like you do much work here.’
‘It’s not my office that’s why. You can’t move for stuff where I work and it just keeps piling up. No, this place is waiting,’ he added with an impish grin.
‘Waiting? Who for?’ the boy asked, curiously.
‘Remember that wad of money you gave me all those years back?’ Kralinsky asked. ‘Remember how you wanted me to invest it?’
The boy nodded.
‘I was working with computers back then, repairing them in my spare time, remember?’
The boy looked at him with admiration.
‘And you turned it into this?’
‘Sort of. I had a call from a friend, urging me to put money behind an emerging software company. They had a daring expansion plan and needed start-up investors fast. I went in with most of your money, keeping a little in reserve just in case it all went pear-shaped. There was no need to worry. The company exploded and now Microsoft is a household name. As of yesterday, those shares are worth over eight hundred million dollars.’
Kralinsky paused, enjoying the stunned expression on the boy’s face.
‘This is your office. I’ve always kept one ready for when you decided to show up. This,’ Kralinsky said, pointing through the window, ‘is your company. You also have a plant in Silicon Valley producing microchips like there’s no tomorrow.’
Kralinsky watched the boy’s face, gleefully.
‘Now, about that loan you wanted. Of course I’m happy to lend you a few bucks, but I’ll be charging you phenomenal interest. And, believe me, you can afford it.’
15. Midtown, New York
Brunch and a nice chat
Sarah Marsden was sitting in the most elegant restaurant she’d been in for years, with a spectacular view of Fifth Avenue. Some of the best food in the world was in front of her and it was all—the surroundings, the view, the food—completely wasted on her.
‘What are you talking about?’ she asked, irritably. ‘Corsfield wouldn’t use a ghostwriter.’
Two hours ago when the phone rang, she’d been sitting on the couch wrapped in a duvet, watching as the horrific Chicago bomb scene was played and played again. As soon as she recognized the voice, she picked up.
Her reservations of the previous night seemed hard to quantify as the cheerfully confident young man, introducing himself as Ethan, explained that his client wanted him to discuss a ghostwriting project with her. He wouldn’t give any more details, merely inviting her to brunch at the Peninsula to discuss the possibility.
Sarah had slept surprisingly well. Perhaps the painkillers and more wine than she’d initially intended to drink helped. Yesterday’s carnage outside Chicago’s City Hall appalled her, but deep down she actually felt a disturbing sense of relief that her own wretched story had been shunted away from the main news feeds. Ethan’s invitation was a welcome diversion and, from an income perspective, it was well timed.
The waiter refilled her coffee cup and asked if everything was alright. Nodding, she looked down at her untouched food and tried to eat.
‘Zachary Corsfield has a condition you scribes refer to as writers’ block,’ Ethan Cross said. ‘The bottom line is that he’s washed up, become an alcoholic and hasn’t written a word of the last book in the trilogy. He’s going to disappoint a great many people including his publisher and his bank manager if something isn’t done soon.’
‘More like the entire world,’ Sarah murmured, staring sightlessly across the room, think
ing about Corsfield’s phenomenal success.
She was one of the few people she knew that hadn’t read him. Shoot them up, bite them, kick them and murder them, dark fantasy with gratuitous violent sex didn’t appeal. When she read, she preferred to rattle through biographies and historical novels, giving her the sort of distraction her word-weary brain needed to wind down at the end of the day. By all accounts, Corsfield’s books weren’t anything particularly literary, but they were extraordinarily compelling and seemed to appeal to his readers’—and there were many of them—darker sides. She wondered if this was a good time to ‘fess up to not being a fan, but Ethan got there before her.
‘We appreciate that his novels probably aren’t your cup of tea. Nor mine, to be honest.’
‘Why talk to me then?’
‘Because we know you can write in his style if you want to.’
‘Sarah looked at him quizzically.
‘What?’
‘Remember Expendable?’ Ethan asked.
Sarah snorted. She remembered that project well. The storyline was shaky and she’d tried to improve it by introducing a sub-plot. The client screamed that she’d hijacked his novel, complaining that she’d watered down the complexity of the narrative and was delivering an easy read. Bemused, Sarah had gone back to the original storyline, padding its weaknesses wherever she could. As always, the client is the boss.
‘That was truly awful,’ she said.
‘And it turned out to be a best-seller,’ Ethan grinned.
‘And who is we? You haven’t said who you’re representing.’
‘Aah,’ Nathan sighed, obviously surprised at Sarah’s directness, ‘have you heard of Argon?’
Sarah stared at him incredulously.
‘You have to be joking,’ she exclaimed, loud enough to attract a quizzical look from the waiters’ station. ‘You’re with Mass Murder Incorporated?’
Ethan stared at her, struggling not to laugh outright at the name the media had dubbed Argon with a couple of years ago—before Argon bought their silence with a great deal of the folding stuff, he reminded himself. He shrugged in an effort at apology.
The Last Book. A Thriller Page 11