I KILL

by Lex Lander

  The professional in me weighed the odds and was not impressed. To remain out here in the open, on a road with only two exits, was not healthy either. The shooting at the service area would have been reported, the police mobilised.

  Head won over heart. I would run for cover. Such damage as had been inflicted on Lizzy was done. After all, I would be no use to her in a Dutch jail.

  I still felt like a coward and a heel.

  The resolution made, I pushed my luck further by fetching the Ithaca and wrapping it and the Korth in my parka – the parka whose description would soon be travelling along the wires to every police station in the country. I dumped this bundle in the ljsselmeer. Not the most thorough of disposal jobs, but the best I could do at short notice. It sank fast, at any rate.

  I restarted the Porsche and took off fast, as if de Bruin were still ahead, still running from me. In a way I wished he were. Without him, I felt like a rebel without a cause.

  Making it off the dike didn’t mean all my troubles were behind me. Crossing the frontier into Germany was out of the question. That’s exactly where they expect a fugitive to turn up. I would have to go underground inside Holland.

  The Porsche that had served me so well was now a liability and had to go. Abandoning it by the roadside would be as good as sticking up a poster saying WARNER WAS HERE. Much more sensible to lose it in the cavern of some multi-storey car park.

  This solution duly applied (in the town of Leeuwarden), I entrained to Amsterdam, to hole up among a hundred thousand illegal immigrants, drop-outs, and ageing hippies. My new base was a sleazy but marvellously nondescript flophouse. The press made much of the killing at the service area – it was even reported on Sky News – until a double killing in Rotterdam replaced it. De Bruin’s death was not mentioned. Presumably the submerged Rolls was still undiscovered. Being in Dutch, most of what the newspapers printed was beyond my comprehension, though I did struggle through some of their reports with the aid of a dictionary. An identikit picture of “the killer”, presumably built up by eye-witnesses from the restaurant, bore no resemblance to the image I saw in my mirror every morning. I chortled over it. All in all though, my week in Amsterdam was memorable only for its unremitting tedium.

  A week later I felt safe enough to move on. I caught a train to Breda in the south of Holland and went from there by bus to Baarle-Nassau, a small town just inside the Dutch-Belgian border. Thence on foot, ultimately to cross an unpatrolled section of the border early on a fine, frosty morning, with the false dawn blanching the eastern sky. Nine o’clock saw me breakfasting ravenously at an hotel in the Belgian town of Turnhout, and noon buying a rail ticket for Brussels at Antwerp’s Central Station.

  And by noon the following day I was home free in Andorra.

  Thirty-One

  White fingers of snow reached down from the mountain tops into the ravines, and the sky was that brittle blue, so fondly reminisced over during my long sojourn in the damp air of England. It was as if I had left Andorra only yesterday. With the winter tourist season approaching its zenith, the towns and the slopes were clogged with members of the skiing fraternity. Some came for the sport, some for the après. The hoteliers and the bar-keepers put out the welcome mat and rubbed their hands and counted the euros, the pounds, and the Swiss francs, not forgetting the dollars, and beamed on every foreign accent.

  Not that the tourist industry was uppermost in my thoughts as I stood in the doorway to sample the razor-edged air that morning, two days after my return. The lightening of my black mood did not last. The drained swimming pool and the terrace bereft of its gaily coloured furniture served only to bring back painful images of those days of summer and sun and Lizzy. Especially Lizzy.

  Visitors were not part of the morning’s program. I was not ready to resume socializing. They came anyway: Lucien and Madeleine, my friends and saviours. Deep down, beneath the self-pity, I supposed I was glad to see them. Any company had to be healthier than moping in solitary confinement.

  ‘We saw the taxi arrive last night,’ Madeleine explained.

  I kissed her cheeks. ‘I was going to come over later.’

  ‘Is there any … ?’ they began together and broke off together.

  Madeleine frowned Lucien into submission. ‘Is there news about Elizabeth,’ was her predictable enquiry.

  I shook my head slowly. The conversation dried up for a minute or so, then Madeleine asked if I needed anything.

  ‘What about food, for instance?’

  ‘Thanks, Madeleine. Señora Sist has kept me well stocked.’

  ‘A treasure, that woman,’ Lucien enthused, looking slightly uncomfortable.

  ‘I suppose you’ve been paying her wages,’ I said, and to my ears it rang like an accusation.

  He shuffled his feet on the living room rug. ‘It is nothing, my dear André.’

  ‘You embarrass me, but I’m grateful. I’ll square it with you later, and tomorrow night I’m going to take you both out to dinner at Le 1900.’ Le 1900 was Andorra’s finest and grandest restaurant.

  ‘It is not necessary …’ Madeleine murmured.

  Lucien overruled her with a trenchant ‘We accept!’

  A Calvados later they went home. I missed their company the instant I closed the door on them.

  For only the second time in a decade or more I entered a house of God for reasons other than touristic. The church so honoured was in La Massana. I had visited it once before, not long after setting up home in Andorra. That visit had been a washout in the sense that it made no spiritual impact. No impurities had been purged, nor healing hands laid on me. The outcome had been disillusion.

  It was mid-afternoon when I slipped through the door of age-darkened wood that smelled of earth and incense and polish and the many thousand bodies who had passed through it over the centuries. I had the place to myself. I sat, ill-at-ease, in front of the baroque altar. As before, what I sought there was unclear, lacking shape. Was it peace? Comfort? Redemption? Absolution then? No, surely not that. No hypocrisy, above all.

  The sun no longer streamed through the slitted windows. It grew cold. I sensed hostility around me. Rejection. I sighed and my breath came out white. Okay, God. You win. Again.

  I left. No wiser, no saintlier. An outcast.

  That night I got drunk. And not merely merry or tipsy, but blind, stinking legless drunk. Sorrows not so much drowned in alcohol as impregnated with it. It lifted me to that higher plane beyond total intoxication, where the images sharpen, and whispers become shouts, and the sense of smell heightens to a supernatural degree. And the sights and sounds and smells were all of Lizzy.

  Lizzy offering me the forbidden gift of all of herself.

  Although not conscious of climbing the stairs, I was somehow in my bedroom. My gun, the trusty Colt Python in my hand. It felt at home there. It was loaded, as always. I stroked the blue barrel with my finger tips. My lethal mistress of these past twelve years. We were like a middle-aged couple: no longer lovers but inseparable through habit.

  Down the stairs I lurched, each foot meticulously planted. Some inner compulsion drove me from the house onto the terrace, the frost searing my nostrils, my breath condensing. Underdressed in my light sweater I didn’t feel the cold; inside, at the core, I was a crackling bonfire. My steps were slow and deliberate, like a mourner in a funeral procession. I stumbled once, twice, then my feet slid from under me and I fell, losing the gun. In panic I grovelled for it in the frost-frizzed grass, located it painfully with my kneecap, sending my breath hissing through my teeth. I hugged my knee until the pain dulled, then staggered upright. Another step forward and I was back down on the hard earth. There to remain.

  No need to cock the Python. Just squeeze the trigger and out would pop a bullet. A big, butch 9mm bullet with a round nose. Made of lead, designed to spread. Hey, that rhymed. A neat round hole where it goes in, a cavity big enough to stuff your fist in where it comes out. That didn’t rhyme, though it made a macabre kind of prose.

>   The muzzle rested against my temple. Ice-cold and soothing. A pulse pounded beneath it, anticipating the kiss of death, longing for it even.

  The sky above was encrusted with stars. It was a fine night for dying. Too bad about Lizzy. I had done my best. In my ears a ringing started up. I dismissed it as pre-suicide tinnitus. It went on, undermining my resolve, dragging me back from the precipice. Against my thigh a vibration. Couldn’t put that down to stress. It stopped abruptly. Fine. To continue then …

  The ringing and the vibration recommenced. My mind cleared, like a fog bank blasted away by a gust of wind. It was my fucking cell phone. I groped in my pocket, somehow fumbled the response button, and hauled the phone to my ear. It was a long, exhausting haul. I could have used a rest en route. It was squawking at me before the journey was completed.

  ‘You’re not there! Why aren’t you there?’ The voice was petulant, accusing, instantly recognizable. ‘Oh … shit!’ A sob, distress but no tears. ‘Come for me, Alan…’

  ‘I am here,’ I managed to say, my tongue a fat slug in my mouth. ‘I am here, sweetheart.’

  An indrawn ‘Oh!’ of disbelief. Then, ‘You’re there, you’re really there?’

  ‘Yes,’ I mumbled, my brain still firing on only half its cylinders. ‘I’m really here. Are you all right? Where are you?’

  ‘I can’t believe it, it’s really you.’ Her voice was breathless, lower and huskier than I remembered it. ‘Now, listen, listen! I don’t have much time. I’m in a basement, under a house. The nearest town or whatever is called Le Maynil. At least that how it sounds. Have you got that? Le May-nil.’

  ‘Le Maynil. Yes, I’ve got it.’ I was sobering, but not fast enough. ‘Where is it, I mean …’ What did I mean? ‘Which fucking country? That’s what I mean, fuck it!’

  ‘I don’t know, might be France. It’s in a forest, it’s got a high brick wall all around, the house is brick too.’

  ‘But how …?’

  ‘No, listen! The wall has revolving spikes on top and there’s an iron gate, so come in a tank.’ A snigger here, nerves not mirth. ‘Something else: the house has a turret thing, you know, like an old castle. That’s it, that’s all I can tell you. I’d better go before that bastard Christiaan comes back. I used a nail to pick the lock and get to the phone. You’d be proud of me, I’ve been practicing for days. Alan … Alan, I miss you. Please come soon. It’s horrible, they’ve done … things …’ She broke off with a sob of a different kind.

  ‘I’m coming. Just hang in there a bit longer. Tomorrow, or the day after at the latest …’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ A seconds-long silence was ended by an indistinct few words that might have been ‘I love you.’ Then came the whine of a dead connection.

  It took me a while to absorb the fact of Lizzy’s call, the confirmation that she was still alive, still the same old spunky kid. Even if they had ‘done things’. De Bruin had already paid for that, though if I could I would have resuscitated him and made him pay all over again – slowly and in excruciating agony. If some of his cohorts were still active, I would ensure they received their dues too.

  Le Maynil. Maybe in France, maybe not. It certainly had a French resonance. The Internet would lead me to it. I staggered to my feet lurched off towards the house. It was farther than I thought. The study was my first port of call, to switch on the computer. While it was doing its warm-up thing, I showered, hot-cold, hot-cold, alternating. It was brutal. But I was coming back to life. I brewed coffee. The percolator was too complicated for my booze-addled head, so I settled for reliable old Nescafé Gold Blend. Then, with a cupful in my gut, a refill in my hand, I returned to the study, still bumping into door frames, but at least ready to go to work.

  Google it, the solution to all ills. I managed to type the words Le Maynil. A ton of references popped up, none of which was a place. Okay, who said I was going to strike a lode at first go? Le Maynile? Forget it. Le Maynill then. Ditto. Le Maynille, although that would have been pronounced May-neel, not Maynil the way Lizzy said it. What I lacked was a private eye’s talent for ferreting. Anyhow, Le Maynille was a bust.

  I rocked back precariously in my swivel chair (leather, ergonomic, multi-positional; company executives for the use of). Sounds like Maynil, she had said. A click inside my skull. The pronunciation of ‘may’ in French is closer to the English ‘my,’ so if Lizzy’s rendition of it was true, it would more likely be spelled Meynil. Into my faithful search engine went Le Meynil. No go, but indirectly I struck gold with it. ‘Did you mean Le Mesnil?’ Google demanded imperiously.

  Excitement clutched me. It was short-lived. Le Mesnil existed all right, in spades. At least twenty communities of that name in France. Where to start? In most cases the Mesnil was part of a double- or treble-barrelled name, as in Le Mesnil Gillaume, Le Mesnil-St-Denis, et al. Just two entries – one in France, one in Belgium – were suffix-free. Try those first then. Le Mesnil France was a village in open countryside. No forest. So that was ruled out. On to Le Mesnil Belgium. In the Belgian province of Namur, almost on the border with France. Population 155.

  In the Ardennes.

  The Ardennes. Extensive forested area. Scene of the last great hopeless offensive of the German army in 1945. It wasn’t a certainty. It wasn’t even a probability. For now, though, it was my only hope.

  When I crossed the border from France into Belgium it was long after dark on the “tomorrow” I had predicted for Lizzy’s salvation. According to my calculations, the drive to Toulouse airport, the flight to Brussels or Nancy, a rental car to my destination, with the usual delays added, would be no quicker than driving myself the whole way in my brand new Aston, identical replacement for the one I had written off escaping de Bruin’s mob. So I did exactly that. Nine hundred and twenty-two kilometres at an average of 130kph plus stops.

  Desperate as I was to begin the hunt for Lizzy’s prison, I realised that to go blundering about in the forest after dark would just get me lost. So I had advance-booked a room at the two-star La Folie, an auberge within sight of the border, and less than a kilometre from Le Mesnil village. The location of the house with the turret was anybody’s guess. Again, a private eye would have known what to do. I would only know what to do after I found it. Oh, yes, that part of the plan was already cut, dried, and set in concrete.

  After a tossing-turning night on a mattress that felt as if it were stuffed with rubble, I kicked off the enquiry process over a breakfast consisting of a hard baguette and a soft croissant, with honey and jam in little pots. It being well out of season, I shared the salon with only a couple of suits. The manager waited on us in person. I snared him as he was delivering my coffee.

  ‘You know a place around here, in the woods, with a crenellated tower and a wall around it?’

  The look he gave me was tinged with suspicion.

  ‘Are you looking to buy such a property, monsieur?’

  ‘No, I’m visiting a friend, but I’ve lost the address and telephone number.’

  The suspicion faded somewhat.

  ‘Alors …’ Extensive lip-pursing and headnodding, which ultimately became headshaking. ‘I regret, it is not familiar to me.’

  ‘I think I know the place, monsieur,’ one of the suits piped up. ‘I was there last week.’ A self-effacing smirk. ‘I sell insurance.’

  As the manager drifted away, buck duly passed, I crossed the room and pulled up a chair at the suit’s table.

  ‘Can you describe it?’

  ‘It is as you say, a house with a little tower, comme ceux d’une forteresse.’

  ‘Built of brick?’

  ‘Ah … yes, yes, I believe that is so. The walls also.’

  Well, it sounded like a respectable contender for the house I was seeking.

  ‘How do I get there?’

  ‘It’s not easy,’ he said, with an oblique grin that hinted it was bloody difficult. ‘The road is very bad, more like a track really.’ He produced a notebook from his hip pocket, and proceeded to sket
ch a plan. ‘Here is La Folie …’

  Ten minutes later I was away from there, cheque paid, overnight bag in the trunk, the friendly suit’s sketch on the seat beside me. It took me south, back towards the border. Immediately before the unmanned customs shack a dirt road led off to the right. With the GPS advocating a different route I swung onto it. The Aston’s springs protested at the jarring surface. Fortunately there had been an overnight frost, so the famous Belgian mud was set hard. Across an area of scrubland consisting of stunted trees and bushes, to a fork. There I bore right, veering away from the border, towards a line of trees, grey-looking conifers mingling with denuded deciduous. Through the trees, out onto another open stretch, more trees ahead. Trees extended on three sides. This was tree country all right. The sun was out, weak and watery north European sun, with hardly enough wattage to cast shadows. The dirt road cut through yet another double row of trees, pines mostly, planted by man. A few hundred metres later, another double row. Ahead lay solid forest, pretty much all evergreens, planted by nature. God, let it be the right place.

  As if to accentuate the dangers lurking there the sun went behind a swathe of cloud, draining away what little colour there had been in the wintry landscape. Into the trees I plunged, bouncing, the track narrower now and potholed. The forest embraced me, sombre and vaguely menacing. I braked and, leaving the engine ticking over, got out. I opened the apology for a trunk and used a crosshead screwdriver from the car toolkit to remove six screws from a panel on the underside of the trunk lid. No vehicles passed in either direction. Silence cloaked me. Not so much as a birdcall, just the steady murmur of the car’s engine and my own breathing. The panel fell away from the lid. Inside was a compartment with a number of spring clips. Designed to hold rifle, shotgun, or two or three handguns. The Korth was there, with an underarm holster and twenty four rounds in speed-loaders. I strapped on the holster and distributed the speed-loaders about my upper body. My leather windcheater smoothed out the bulges. Zipping up, I checked the cylinder. Five rounds only, one chamber empty as always. I freed a round from one of the speed-loaders and topped up. Revolvers are more dependable than automatics, which was why I had historically favoured them. Their disadvantage lay in the six-shot capacity compared with twelve to fifteen for most modern autos, and their unsuitability for sound suppressors. These were limitations I lived with when needs must.