“She ran,” I said. The Turk rolled his eyes and gestured at Biker, who lifted his fist. The same knuckledusters, the same cheek, the same pain and the same stars bursting behind my eyes. But this time I felt something crack in my face, and my mouth filled with hot salty blood.
“Please,” I said, blood spluttering from my lips and spilling down my chin. “I told her to run and hide, I don’t know where she went—” I looked up again at Biker and flinched away, and my look rested just a little too long on the crooked door of the woodshed directly opposite the farm. I shook my head to try and conceal what I’d done and lowered my eyes, spitting blood and snot on the cobblestones, feeling my cheekbone grate under the bruised and torn flesh of my face. Biker cocked his fist again.
“Wait,” said the Turk.
“She went into the woods,” I babbled, “hid out in the old smokehouse. She’ll have gone for help—” There was so much blood in my mouth I was almost gargling, but the Turk wasn’t listening. He had followed my careless glance over to the woodshed ten meters away from where we stood, its rickety door held shut by a rusting loop of wire running from the handle to a hook cemented into the doorpost.
“Quiet,” said the Turk. He gestured to Biker with a tilt of his chin. “Buscar allí,” he said.
I groaned and coughed and spat. “She’ll have called the police by now—”
“I said be quiet,” said the Turk.
I watched helplessly as Biker strolled over to the woodshed. His pistol poised in his right hand, he untangled the wire from the hook with his left. The door, hanging crooked on its ancient hinges, swung back halfway with a lazy creak. I dropped my hands from the back of my head to wipe the blood from my mouth and rested my palms on the cobblestones. Dean had turned his back on me to watch Biker; the Turk’s body faced me, his gun hanging loose in his hand, but he’d turned his head away.
Biker peered cautiously round the doorpost and squinted into the dark; it was pitch-black in there, and all he could make out were shelves lined with tins of ancient chemicals. Taking his pistol in both hands, he stepped into the doorway, raised his biker boot and kicked the door fully open.
With a massive flat bang a fireball exploded from the open doorway in a burning cloud, and lethal splinters of oak shrapnel flew outwards from the disintegrating door. The blast blew the roof off the shed and Biker off his feet, and when his back hit the cobblestones his clothes and hair were singed and smoldering and his face was a blackened mask oozing blood.
Dean and Karakurt had both recoiled instinctively, but it was the Turk I went for, diving forward to slam my body into his and sending us both tumbling in a heap. He was flabby and out of condition, while I was half his weight again, rock-hard from my work in the fields. His pistol went flying and I landed two good punches to his face, knocking him into a daze, before I hauled him to his feet.
And then my left knee burst apart in a shattering explosion of pain, and I fell, dragging the Turk down with me. When my right leg hit the cobblestones the pain redoubled, coursing up my leg and my spine to my mouth, but I was already screaming in agony. I felt the Turk wrench himself free of my grasp and instinctively my hands dropped to clutch at my knee instead, but all I found was a mess of broken bone and torn ligaments. I could hear Dean cursing and the Turk panting; I didn’t know which of them had shot me in the leg. I fought desperately to focus, to put the agony someplace else, to try to think clearly—this wasn’t over, I couldn’t give in to the pain—
I opened my eyes and spat blood. The cloud of dust and smoke from the explosion was clearing, and the ringing in my ears was slowly fading. I didn’t look down at my knee—that wouldn’t help—so I turned my head to the sky, and saw a tendril of smoke wisping from the muzzle of Dean’s pistol, pointed straight downward at my face. He staggered a little, and his hand was shaking, but at this range that wouldn’t matter.
“You fucking prick,” he was saying, over and over. There was blood running down his cheek from a splinter embedded in his face a finger’s width from his left eye. “You fucking prick.”
“Not yet, not yet!” shouted the Turk, also half deafened by the blast—but his tone was one of annoyance rather than anger. When I turned to look at him he was laughing—at my ingenuity or my malice, or the fact that neither of those had been sufficient to kill him. He had survived yet again, only now he had one less employee to pay off.
“Sodium chlorate!” whooped Karakurt. “Fertilizer bomb! Did your father teach you that? The Irishman?”
I didn’t answer; my leg was going numb. Either I was better at this mind-over-matter than I thought or I was losing too much blood.
Karakurt chuckled as he bent to retrieve the big silver pistol I’d knocked from his grasp. “Any more surprises, Crusher? The dog, the rock, the booby trap, what else have you got? The girl, she is hiding here somewhere with a shotgun, isn’t she? And the first one to find her will get his head blown off. But that will still leave one of us, and whichever one it is, believe me, both of you will pay.” He looked about. “But we are not going to do this your way.” He pointed his pistol at my uninjured right knee. “Your girlfriend is going to come to us. And she had better not be carrying any shotgun.”
“I told you,” I said. “She ran.”
“Too bad for you,” said the Turk. “Do you like it here? Living the life of a farmer? It’s hard, isn’t it? Have you thought about how much harder it will be when you are a farmer in a wheelchair?”
He cocked the pistol and I saw his knuckle whiten as he tensed his finger on the trigger.
“Don’t,” called Zoe.
I angled my head towards the house and groaned, and not from the pain in my leg. Zoe was walking out of the door towards us, empty-handed but for an old towel. I’d thought she’d agreed to the plan—that she’d hide, and while I distracted the Turk she’d run into the woods; or if she couldn’t do that, she’d bunker down in the cubbyhole where I’d stashed Charles Egerton’s old shotgun and wait for them to come looking. Instead she was here, kneeling beside me, tearing the towel into long thin strips, blanking Dean and Karakurt like a paramedic would ignore rubberneckers at a road accident.
“Why?” I whispered through clenched teeth. I knew what she was planning to do and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
“You came for me” was all she said. And lifting my leg, she bound the bloody mess with the towel, cinching it as tight as she could, and the pain nearly made me pass out.
“Inside,” said the Turk.
Now the dressing helped. When Zoe grabbed my arm and heaved, and Dean reluctantly lent her a hand, the crude bandages helped me push the agony to the back of my mind and focus on how we were going to get out of this. Soaked in cooling blood, the left leg of my jeans flapped against my calf, and I could feel the material stick to the skin and peel off with every step. I couldn’t take any weight on that leg, but supporting myself on Dean and Zoe, I managed to hop along, the Turk to the rear shepherding us back into the house at gunpoint. It did occur to me to grab Dean, but I couldn’t shield both myself and Zoe with him, and anyway the Turk would happily shoot either of us right through Dean.
The kitchen was warm and full of the smell of stew, but it wasn’t cozy and homey anymore with Dean and Karakurt strutting around it. While the Turk lifted the lid of the pot and sniffed, Dean pulled the chair facing mine out and sat down. I saw a twinge of pain on his face as he bent his right leg, the one I’d stamped on a year ago.
“Good meat,” Karakurt said to Zoe, who was standing by the hearth with her arms folded. “But you should not use green peppers in stew, it makes it bitter.” Zoe and I exchanged a glance. The stew was mine, not hers—Zoe couldn’t boil an egg. But we weren’t going to share any more of our lives with the Turk than we had to.
“It’s not for you” was all Zoe said.
The Turk frowned, as if disappointed. “It’s funny,” he said. “I grew up in a place just like this. But smaller, not so much land. My uncle worked us eighteen hours
a day, all the year round, and still we never had enough food. But he understood the ancient laws of hospitality.” While he spoke he laid out two bowls from the rack, picked up the ladle and filled each one with stew. “When guests come, even uninvited, you feed them. He would make the women lay out all our meat and olives and cheese, and he and our guests would feast. And for weeks afterwards the rest of us would have to eat leaves from the trees.”
He placed a bowl in front of Dean, took a seat at the head of the table and, picking up a fork, speared chunks of green pepper and set them aside on a saucer. I knew what he was up to, and it had nothing to do with the laws of hospitality. He’d explained to me last summer, in the shadow of that massive shredder: It is not enough to kill a man. You must first enter his house, eat his food, defile his wife, and slaughter his children, while he watches.
“And now,” said Karakurt, “the wheel has come full circle. I find you hiding here. It was not hard, by the way—the details of the will are on file, accessible to anyone, for a modest fee. And I like this place. I like what you have done with it. I think it will suit my purposes very well. I will tell the locals you sold me the farm and returned to England. They are used to that. Gringos come, looking for a new life in Spain, then discover to their amazement that no one speaks English, and they cannot buy baked beans, and then they slink off home with their tails between their legs.”
Karakurt was a surprisingly fastidious eater who never spoke with his mouth full, but soon his spoon was scraping the bottom of the bowl. Dean was less enthusiastic; I saw him pushing aside the mushrooms and onions to pick out the lamb, as if he was only eating to oblige his boss and piss me off.
“Talking of hospitality…,” said Karakurt. He pushed his chair back, stood, then went to the doorway to the cowshed, pushing aside the curtain we had hung there as a door. He checked out our rumpled bed and nodded approvingly, then turned to Zoe. “In,” he said.
She didn’t look at me, and she said nothing, and she didn’t move.
“Or we can do it in here,” said Karakurt. “On this table. This is your home, so it’s your choice.”
I tried to push my own chair back, only to feel a surge of pain from my smashed knee that made my head swim.
Karakurt looked at me and grinned. “Relax, Crusher,” he said. “You don’t have to watch. But when I am done with her it will be Dean’s turn. Then you will watch.”
Zoe’s face remained impassive, but I saw her clench her fists as she walked round behind Dean, who sat there slurping gravy, and entered the bedroom.
Karakurt dropped the curtain behind her and leered at me at he slipped off his leather jacket. “How does she like it, your girlfriend? Actually, forget I asked, I don’t care how she likes it. I like it rough. I like it when they put up a fight. And I bet this one will defend her virtue like a wildcat—the little virtue she has left. Hey, you think I can take her? Come on, I trained in your gym. You want to lay a bet?”
“I bet she walks out of there and you don’t,” I said.
The Turk snorted. “Sit back, relax,” he said. “I am going to make this last.”
“I’d get a move on if I were you,” I said. “You’ll be dead very soon.”
“Please,” snorted Karakurt as he unbuckled his leather belt and pulled it free. “You are the one bleeding to death. And now you are trying to delay the inevitable, to irritate me with silly threats.” He wound the belt round his fist with the buckle outwards. “If he tries to move again,” he said to Dean, “shoot him in the other leg.” He pushed the curtain aside and followed Zoe into our bedroom.
Dean grinned at me, wiped gravy off his chin and shoved the bowl aside.
“Whoever fixed your teeth that time,” I said, “they were rubbish. You dribble like an old man taking a piss.”
I needed to talk, and to get him to talk, to cover the noise of what was happening next door. The heavy curtain muffled nothing; I could already hear blows and whimpers.
“How’s your knee?” said Dean. “Hurts, doesn’t it? I’ve been looking forward to that all year. Come on, have a go—I’d love to give you a matching set.” He pulled the pistol from his belt and laid it on the table, resting his hand on it, daring me to make a move.
I folded my right leg back under my chair, kept my left relaxed. The pain from my shattered knee was now a constant burning throb, which made it easier to push aside. But I was losing blood, and I didn’t know how much time I had before I’d be too weak to act.
“And when I’ve done the other knee,” Dean was saying, “I’ll do your ankles and your elbows. Then we’ll start on your teeth.” Reaching inside his jacket, he pulled out a pair of pliers and brandished them at me. “Kemal gave me a few tips. You think my teeth are bad? Just wait till I’m finished with yours.”
“Oh yeah, Kemal,” I said. “I heard they had to pick him up with a street sweeper.”
Dean grimaced as if he’d eaten too quickly. His chair creaked as he leaned back; it didn’t quite drown out an animal groaning from next door, but Dean seemed not to notice.
“How much is the Turk paying you?” I said. “Can’t be as much as you’d make turning him in.” I dropped my hands into my lap and felt for the frame of the table.
“It’s not about the money,” said Dean. “Working with him I get to do shit like this to big annoying jackasses like you.” A thought occurred to him, very slowly, like treacle dripping. “You know what? I think I’ll do your girlfriend’s teeth before I do yours. You can sit there and listen. I’ve only tried it once before—I’ll probably break a few, but practice makes…perfect.” He was sweating, I noticed, and pallid, and the hand holding the pliers trembled. “ ’Cos if she doesn’t have any teeth, she won’t be able to bite me when I stick my—”
He dropped the pliers with a clatter on the table and clutched his stomach. Then he stared at me, and started to gag, and suddenly he knew what I’d done, and his right hand reached for his gun, but he was too late. Taking all my weight on my right leg I stood up, gripping the edge of the table and heaving it up with the last dregs of my strength, flipping it over to land on top of him. It knocked Dean out of his chair, bouncing the back of his head hard off the rough stone wall, and I hurled myself across the upset table to grab him. My lame injured leg sent jagged shards of pain ripping up my spine, but I let my hate and my fury overwhelm it and one hand closed around Dean’s throat while the other pinned his wrist to the ground.
He was full of fury too, and he thrashed and writhed under my grip, but the rat poison burning into his stomach was sapping his strength. His fingers clutched at my face and tried to gouge my eyes, and his dying desperation drove his fingernails into my face, scoring my skin, but I screwed my eyes up and kept my grip hard round his throat, and held it there, and finally his fingers flexed and relaxed and fell, and his whole body sagged. When I opened my eyes again Dean was staring upwards and white foam was bubbling from his mouth, running through his crooked teeth and down his chin onto my hand.
I snatched my hand away and wiped it on his shirt; strychnine can be absorbed through skin contact. It works faster if it’s eaten, but it’s too bitter to be used as poison in food, unless you mask the taste with something more bitter still—like green peppers thrown in at the last second.
It is not enough to kill a man, the Turk had told me. You must first enter his house, eat his food, defile his wife…. We were lucky he’d tried to do it in that order.
I sat back, panting, and listened; there was no sound from the bedroom. Hauling myself upright using the leg of the upturned table as a prop, I limped to the bedroom doorway and dragged the curtain aside.
The Turk was dead. His eyes were staring, his back was arched, and both his arms were thrown back in an absurd pose, as if he was diving out of a window. I knew strychnine could do that, but I’d never seen it; I’d never wished that agonizing death on anything, even a rat, until today. Zoe had helped things along, I could see; I recognized the handle of the knife protruding from
the Turk’s belly, pointing upwards into his heart—it was the razor-sharp kitchen knife I’d used to prepare the stew.
“You all right?” I said. It didn’t sound like a stupid question till I heard myself ask it.
Zoe, still in my oversized red T-shirt, sat on the edge of the bed, her face pale, her eyes closed. “I wasn’t sure if you’d done the poison,” she said. “I hid the knife in here before I came out to you.”
“That was smart,” I said, limping round to hold her.
“No, it wasn’t,” she said, and rising to meet me, she swayed a little. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. I noticed she was clutching her side, just under her ribs. When she lifted her hand away there was a spreading stain, a darker crimson soaking the red cotton. “He fought back,” she said.
“Oh Christ,” I said. “Lie back, lie still, I’ll get help.”
“No, no, not in here. Not with him. Take me outside.”
Somehow we carried each other out of the bedroom, through the kitchen, back into the afternoon sunshine, although I could feel her growing weaker with every step. Outside the front door she finally sagged and I let her sit down for a moment on the stone bench under the almond tree.
“Can you make it to the car? I’ll take you into town,” I said. “Get you help.”
“Finn, you can’t drive,” she said. Her voice was growing softer. “With this car you’ll need to change gears.”
I’d been so worried about her I’d forgotten my smashed knee, and when I looked at it now I saw the struggle with Dean had opened it up further; the strips of towel were soaked in red, and the left leg of my jeans was glistening with fresh blood.
I fumbled for the mobile phone in my pocket and found a contact.
“Txaparro? Finn. We’re hurt…. Gaude—zauritu? Help…lagundu. Bai…bai…” He’d already hung up.
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