by Lex Lander
‘Hey!’ she squealed as I charged past. ‘We’ve got visitors.’
‘Go and let them in then,’ I snapped, without turning or slackening my pace. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’
‘Why not use the downstairs john?’
There being nowhere to secrete a gun the size of the Python about my person, I had hoped to slip it behind a cushion in the living room, where we would entertain our visitors. The Gravemakers were too quick for me though. As I hit the foot of the stairs Mrs G’s coo of rapture reached me through the open door of the living room: ‘Oh, what a lovely room! So much wood– and that cheminée! I do love French cheminées.’
A dresser, a massive oak structure with an oval mirror and many drawers, stood in the hallway. Into a drawer went the Python. If I needed it in a hurry … Well, I just hoped I wouldn’t need it in a hurry.
‘Hello there!’ I bounced into the room, bursting with phoney goodwill.
‘W-we came to invite you to our party,’ Gravemaker said, blinking furiously, as if afraid I was about to fall on him in fury. ‘I hope it is not inconvenient.’
‘Not at all, not at all,’ I blathered. ‘Do sit down. A drink perhaps. Lizzy get some ice, will you? Mrs Gravemaker, what’s your poison?’
She reared back. ‘Poison?’
‘Ha, ha!’ Gravemaker nudged her teasingly. ‘It is an English joke. It means what do you like to drink.’
No hardware on him, I was relieved to note: lightweight slacks free of bulges, close-fitting grey sweatshirt, the only bulge being his tummy. Likewise his wife, as far as I could tell without a strip search. She had on a flared pinkish dress with tight bodice. She wasn’t even toting a purse.
Drinks were distributed, and as dusk slid into twilight and lights sparkled down in La Massana, I sank into an armchair nursing a king-size vodka.
We were barely settled when Mrs G leapt up, almost spilling her Cinzano Rosso, and asked if she might use the … er … er.
‘Out the way you came, turn right, then first left.’
‘Oh.’ Confusion. ‘Perhaps Lizzy …’
‘Lizzy, take Mrs Gravemaker to the er-er, will you?’
Lizzy stifled a giggle. ‘Okay.’ Her smile was wide and natural. I was to remember it.
‘I wonder if I might trouble you for a little more soda,’ Gravemaker said as Lizzy conducted his wife from the room.
‘No trouble.’ I set my glass down, relieved him of his, and transported it to the bar in the far corner for a two-second squirt. It was now ninety-percent soda, but that was his business not mine.
When I turned he was by the patio doors, looking out onto the illuminated terrace. The wind had risen with the fall of night and was soughing through the archway around the side of the house, ruffling the surface of the swimming pool.
Gravemaker blew his nose and thanked me for his debilitated drink.
‘Cheers.’ He drank in nervous gulps and nodded his approval. ‘Much better, thank you.’
I smiled politely and further insulated myself with vodka. Lizzy returned with Mrs G. They seemed to be getting on well together.
‘Lizzy was showing me your salon,’ Mrs G bubbled, fingers fluttering around the locket that hung from her neck. ‘The furniture looks antique.’
‘It is.’ I was rather proud of the dining room with its Louis XIV decor. ‘You should see my insurance premiums.’
‘Please?’ My humour was incomprehensible to her.
So I explained, which made for some dutiful mirth, then moved on to other equally trite and uninteresting topics.
Whether on account of the drink or the company, I was beginning to feel distinctly light-headed. While I was puzzling over this the door-bell rang. Which was odd because I hadn’t noticed any vehicle lights and it was impossible to enter the drive unseen from this room at night. That alone should have alerted me; in fact, it did but only belatedly, after Lizzy had rushed off to answer the door.
‘Wait!’ I shouted, out of a vague sense that something was out of kilter. But already a voice reached me from the hall: ‘Good evening, miss.’
Lizzy’s exclamation of surprise was instantly converted into a cry of pain. It galvanized me into movement. The exact nature of the danger was as yet ill-defined, shapeless like figures in a fog. Yet danger there was, and the thrill drove me to toss my drink, glass included, into Gravemaker’s face, before rushing from the room. Weaponless and, for all my forebodings and my mental vigilance and my preparations, caught as wrong-footed as could be.
My callers were two in number and male in sex. The one was blond and muscular, only too well remembered as Rik de Bruin’s right-hand lackey in Tangier, name of Christiaan. His companion was a new acquaintance: smaller, wirier, and all in denim.
Christiaan had an arm lock on Lizzy. She was squirming feebly. His grip didn’t allow for much free-play, and her tae-kwon-do skills were no use unless she could break free. Denim Suit had eyes only for me, and I only for the thing he was pointing at me, at gut level. This particular thing consisted partly of a silencer tube, accounting for a good half of the total length. The curved magazine suggested automatic fire capability.
‘Let her go,’ I snarled at Christiaan. I was mad but not mad enough to argue with the gun. Christiaan just snickered. Gravemaker joined us, dabbing vodka from his eyes. Denim Suit tossed him a small automatic.
‘Tell him to let her go,’ I pleaded with Gravemaker, judging him to be the senior member of the group. A backhander across the mouth was all my grovelling earned me. I licked blood from a split lip.
‘What’s happening, Alan?’ Lizzy quavered, wide-eyed.
‘Nothing to be frightened about, little lady.’ The speaker was a fourth man, stepping over the threshold. Christiaan and Denim Suit moved deferentially aside for him.
Fleshy lips contorted in a jeering grin, staring eyes, crinkling at the corners in his triumph; the persona of menace that sat astride his shoulders like a Horseman of the Apocalypse. It came as no surprise to see here on my doorstep the pitted features of Rik de Bruin.
Twenty-Four
‘Whatever it is you want,’ I said to de Bruin, ‘just don’t hurt her.’
Appeals to better nature would be wasted on these people, about that I had no illusions. Still, rather a wasted entreaty than none at all.
‘Let us sit down and behave like civilised people,’ de Bruin proposed, at which Christiaan and Mrs Gravemaker hauled a swearing, struggling Lizzy off upstairs.
So we sat in the living room while bumps and crashes resounded overhead. Something breakable smashed. The cessation of noise when it did eventually come was abrupt. Ominously.
If only I could think straight. But now that I was seated again the earlier giddiness had returned, was worse if anything.
‘No harm will come to your little lady,’ de Bruin reassured me. He sat directly beneath the floor lamp so that the light threw a shadow across the upper part of his face. ‘Save your concern for yourself.’
The threat that lay behind that piece of advice made no impact on my fogged brain.
‘Are you going to explain?’ I said thickly. ‘Or do I have to guess?’
‘You can please yourself. As far as I am concerned …’ he gave a baying laugh, ‘… you can remain in ignorance.’
‘What did you do with Clair Power?’ I demanded.
De Bruin’s stare was blank.
‘Is she alive?’ I said.
‘Is who alive?’
It was becoming an effort to speak. My tongue felt swollen, a fat sausage filling my mouth.
‘What are you doing to the girl?’ I mumbled. Voices reached me faintly from upstairs. Whatever had been done to Lizzy, to subdue her, was not sweet-talk. And this was the girl I had sworn to protect …
‘Questions, questions. Soon you will have no need to ask questions … Warner. That is your real name, is it not? André Warner?’
Answering was not worth the effort it would take.
He eyed me pensively. ‘Do you feel
a little tired, by any chance?’
Denim Suit cackled and waggled the silenced gun at me.
‘Do you know what a barbiturate is, Mr Warner?’ Gravemaker said.
‘Barbit … bart …’ I gave up.
‘Barbiturates,’ Gravemaker repeated softly. ‘Nembutal. Goofballs.’
Drugs? They had drugged me?
‘In your drink,’ Gravemaker confirmed. I didn’t remember asking him. ‘Virtually tasteless.’
If I still had control of my facial muscles I would have laughed. People only put drugs in drinks in Agatha Christie whodunits. But what was happening to me was no fiction.
De Bruin’s image was fuzzy, like an image viewed through frosted glass. I squeezed my eyelids tightly together but when I opened them it was no clearer. The light hurt, making me squint.
‘You … shits,’ I croaked.
‘That’s it.’ De Bruin again. ‘Call us bad names. You will feel better. But hurry …’ Through a haze I saw him check his watch, ‘your time will soon be up.’
Denim Suit cackled again, a sound that was chilling in its mindlessness.
Upstairs a gun went off.
Once, twice, three times the shots crashed through the house. Everyone froze. I was the first to thaw. The effort required was gargantuan but, fear for Lizzy temporarily shredding the fog, I leapt out of the chair and ran, or rather reeled, towards the door. Ahead of de Bruin and the rest by seconds only. I didn’t expect to reach the door without taking a bullet or two. But for whatever reason de Bruin wanted me not merely alive but unharmed; his ‘Don’t shoot!’ command had a panicky ring.
The stairs loomed ahead, stretching upwards to infinity, swaying as in an earthquake. Or maybe the stairs were static and all the swaying was me. Somehow I forced my legs up the steps and, as I reached the top, Christiaan staggered out of Lizzy’s room, clutching at his face. He moaned gibberish. I chopped him on the side of his bull neck and almost broke my wrist. It was enough to topple him though, and in toppling his hands spread to break his fall, exposing a face pitted with dozens of tiny holes, oozing scarlet.
Of course – the shotgun-pistol.
Happily for me, Christiaan’s fall had projected him down the stairs to collide with Gravemaker who had been within grabbing range behind me. I didn’t linger to watch the show but the sound effects were satisfyingly cataclysmic. Hope rekindled, I lurched into Lizzy’s room. Vaguely aware of feet pounding the stairs anew. Lock the door, must … lock … the … door.
Thankfully the key was in the lock. I kicked the door shut, turned the key with stiff, bloated fingers. It was a solid door but it wouldn’t stand up to a sub-machine gun. Although I didn’t know it then they were as anxious to avoid making bullet holes in the house as they were in me. The guns were mostly dressing.
My fading vision took in the scene inside the room. Lizzy was on her back on the bed, the Gravemaker woman astride her, striving for possession of the gun that Lizzy held in a grip so tight that the tendon on the inside of her wrist stood out like a length of rope. In the passage outside, a foot thudded against the door. Move, Warner, move, you lazy bastard!
The signals were getting through to my extremities clearly enough, only the motive power was lacking. It was as if I were wearing weighted boots. Then Lizzy let rip a yell for help that sucked me forward like a sluice pump. I grabbed Mrs G by the shoulder. She wriggled free without much effort and dove into the space between bed and wall. Lizzy, pistol flailing, lunged after her. I caught her ankle and, expending most of what little strength remained to me, dragged her back onto the bed.
‘Not now!’ I mumbled, my mouth full of tongue. I prised her fingers from the gun, which I then used to crack the skull of the cringing woman on the floor. Effective, if a little ungallant. The gun slipped from my fingers. I lost track of it, which was a shame.
Lizzy clutched at my shirt front. ‘What do they want? They … they’ve given me an injection. Do you think I’m going to die?’
‘Injection?’ I couldn’t make any sense of it. ‘Got … got get ’way.’ As if to instil in me a little urgency, the door creaked under another assault. On the other side voices were raised in dispute. Again the door shuddered.
‘Must escape,’ somebody said. Me, I think.
Lizzy’s face crumpled. ‘They’ve done something to you as well, haven’t they?’ She looked around. ‘The window … it’s not far to the ground. We can jump.’
I nodded and my head felt as if it was about to fall off.
‘Jump,’ I agreed, without understanding.
Lizzy flung the double window wide open. Cool night air eddied in, reviving me a shade. Enough, with Lizzy shoving and pulling, to home me in on that gateway to salvation.
‘You first,’ I wheezed.
‘No, you.’
Wood was splintering someplace close by. I didn’t argue. I couldn’t remember the words anyhow.
How we made the transition from window to ground will forever remain a closed cell in my memory. I have a muzzy recollection of clinging to the sill by my fingertips, and of my body jarring and my neck snapping back, and of cool grass tickling my nostrils. The sound, remote now, of the bedroom door giving way coincided with Lizzy landing beside me, light-footed as a cat.
A yell in Dutch told me they were only a jump behind us.
‘Come on!’ Lizzy dragged me off my stomach, and together we plunged down the slope, skirting the terrace with its bright lights.
Shouts from behind. Still no bullets flew. They weren’t needed. Any minute now I was likely to come to a standstill of my own accord. I tripped on a tuft of grass, taking Lizzy down with me. It wasn’t a heavy fall. I was just glad to lie down.
Lizzy crawled over to me. ‘Rattle your dags, Alan, it’s not bedtime yet.’
With only minimal contribution from me, she had me up and moving. It was a mystery where she found the strength.
Then we were standing before the garage. Well, Lizzy was. I slithered to the ground, a useless deadweight.
‘We must take the car.’ The voice came from miles away. Something stung my cheek. It could have been a slap. I was too tired to care. Another slap. And quite a few more. I growled, some of the cotton wool wiping from my brain.
‘Alan, get up! They’re coming.’ Slap-slap-slap. ‘You must get up … the car.’ Slap-slap.
‘The car? What about it? I raised an arm to ward off the blows that were loosening my teeth in their sockets. The murk shredded, and Lizzy’s sweet face leapt into view, every line, every contour sharp-etched. I blocked a slap on its way in. ‘All right, all right, you can quit the rough stuff.’
Partially revived, I pushed her aside and tottered to the garage door. Normally this was opened remotely but the remote control was presently on a shelf in the living room. Fortunately it had a manual back-up in the shape of a combination lock.
‘Is the key gadget in the car?’ Lizzy asked, clinging to me while I spun the dial.
It wasn’t, which meant using the spare clamped to the chassis in a magnetic box. Explaining all that to Lizzy was beyond my present powers of speech, so I settled for an affirmative grunt.
The lock tumblers tumbled sweetly. The up-and-over door clattered up on unoiled rollers and simultaneously the night was bisected by a flashlight beam above. A hushed call followed. Rubber soles padded across the terrace. The beam was crisscrossed by another, like searchlights seeking enemy bombers.
Inside the black cavern of the garage I stumbled and fell against the runabout, a Peugeot 205 I had inherited from the previous owner of the house as part of the deal.
‘Switch the lights on,’ I said unthinkingly to Lizzy.
‘What! They’ll know we’re here!’
‘Oh, yeah … yeah.’ I pushed her towards the Aston, followed unsteadily and went down on my knees beside the driver’s door to grope under the bodywork.
‘Stop wasting time!’ Lizzy, uncomprehending, hissed.
‘Key here,’ I muttered. My flash of lucidity was on
the wane. My fingertips felt numb, incapable of distinguishing metal from plastic.
Running feet, the crunch of gravel. Any moment now they would be on us. I barked knuckles on bolt heads, gouged skin on a flap of metal. Part of the chassis shifted, a ghost of movement– there it was! I dragged the little magnetic box free of the frame to which it was attached. I plucked the key fob from the box, almost dropping it. More vital seconds were lost while I clambered into the driving seat, every action awkward and robotic, my limbs unresponsive. Torchlight found us, flooding the rear window.
A yell, summoning reinforcements. I recognised Gravemaker’s voice. Divine forces must have taken charge from then on because I sure as hell had no hand in it. No need to insert the key fob with this car. The engine fired at a touch. The forces even selected reverse for me and switched on the lights.
‘Look out!’ Lizzy’s warning tugged my head round.
Gravemaker was beside my door, pistol thrust forward, mouthing in Dutch. He didn’t scare me. I was invincible. I thumbed the internal door lock pad even as he wrenched at the handle. He kicked the door. My insurers wouldn’t like that, I thought crossly.
Handbrake off. Thank you, divine forces. Clutch out, accelerator down. Backwards we went on squealing tyres with a thrust that tumbled Lizzy against the dash, which fortunately on the DBS is passenger friendly.
A human figure was briefly illuminated in the back-up lights. It leapt sideways, but not quickly enough. A glancing blow that didn’t slow us by a single mile per hour, and all behind was wide open spaces. I braked savagely, spinning the rear wheels so that gravel sprayed against the inside of the wheel arches like buckshot. I shifted from Reverse into Drive. The divine forces fumbled it, going into Park instead. Lizzy was back in her seat now and belting up, none the worse for her mishap. Still no shots. Noise was out. Noise meant neighbours phoning for the police. For now, I guessed they would rather let us escape than shoot. We took off, rear wheels spinning, tail wagging. Down the drive we tore, slipstreaming gravel. Round the tight left-hander, then a straight run to the drive entrance, slowing for the road out of habit. Which way? I couldn’t even make that simple choice.