A Few Words for the Dead (23 page)

‘I could just possess you and do it myself.’

‘If you could do that, why haven’t you? I think you’re bound to him. Is that how it works? Are you now fixed in one body?’

‘Of course not.’

‘You don’t know, do you? You don’t know how this works any more than I do.’

‘Just get over here and cut me loose!’

This time I actually had the knife pressed against the rope before I regained control. Was Lucas’s power somehow stronger now?

‘Do it!’ he shouted.

I squatted down behind him, holding on to him and thinking of the man he used to be. Then I cut his throat.

I held him as he choked and swore and bled and thrashed and remembered that first night I’d met him, that brilliant night of laughter that had led to this.

‘So you stopped it,’ Ryska asked. ‘You killed it?

She stared at Shining and noticed he was crying. She didn’t know how to handle that.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, wiping at his eyes. ‘I think maybe you were right after all. I did love him rather.’

‘You had to do it,’ she said, falling back on clumsy attempts to reassure him over his actions.

‘Of course I did,’ he replied. ‘What else could I do? I couldn’t let him go.’

‘And it was worth it,’ she said, ‘wasn’t it? You stopped it.’

Shining rubbed his face, trying to shake off a sadness that had clung to him for thirty years. ‘So you believe me now, then?’ he asked. ‘It wasn’t so long ago that you were hinting that everything I said was make-believe. Aren’t you going to try and suggest that it was all just an implausible cover-up? That I’m a traitor who assassinated Lucas Robie? Surely that’s your job.’

‘My job was to interview you,’ she said, ‘and draw conclusions from that.’

‘And the conclusion you’re supposed to draw is that I’m at best a lunatic, at worst a traitor.’

‘Are you?’

‘That’s up to you to decide, isn’t it? I’m tired of trying to preach my corner, to hell with it. People can believe the evidence or not.’ He looked at the camera. If she reviewed the footage, she’d see for herself the truth of what he was telling her, she’d see herself possessed. He thought about mentioning it and then decided he couldn’t be bothered. No more begging for belief. ‘I’m sick of holding everyone’s hand. And as for whether I stopped it, no, I didn’t. I thought I had, for many years I thought I had, but then it reappeared. Brief visits at first, the sort of thing you could write off as paranoia. An overheard phrase, a smile in a crowd. But then, recently… it’s been getting stronger.’

Ryska didn’t reply and, for a moment, he thought she’d been possessed again, then he realised she just didn’t know what to say. He could hardly blame her.

‘It’s coming for me,’ he said, ‘and those around me. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole business is one of its games. How difficult would it be to take over Albert Fisher for a few minutes and set the ball rolling? You’ve heard what it can do. I’ve been tucked away in a box, removed from play, forced to relive the time I first met it. It’s exactly the sort of twisted, stupid, thing it loves to do.’

She stared at him for a moment and then made her choice. She decided, against all her better judgement, against all her training, to trust August Shining. She decided to believe.

‘But how can it be stopped? If killing its host didn’t work then what else is there?’

‘Killing its host
will
work. I have it on excellent authority.’

‘Whose authority?’

He smiled but decided not to explain it was hers, or the entity that had been speaking through her. He was still digesting the details of their last conversation together and didn’t think trying to explain them to Ryska would help.

‘The process takes time,’ he said, ‘for the two to become fully bonded. I was too quick. It was only damaged, terribly so, that’s why it took so long to build its strength back up. But next time…’

‘Next time? How will you know who it means to possess?’

‘Oh, sorry, I thought that was obvious. It’s going to be me.’

Albert Fisher was telling a young woman who worked in PR how terribly important he was. He gave no details, naturally, but had become an old hand at communicating in a series of knowing winks and half sentences, giving just enough information to make him sound all the flavours of brilliant. She seemed impressed, but then he’d had so much gin and tonic that his ability to read people — or stand up straight — was not at optimum.

Paramount was the perfect place to get drunk if you liked pissing away money looking at a good view. Situated at the top of London’s Centre Point, the glass windows offered a panorama of most of the city. Naturally this attracted a certain amount of people who wanted to look at it and imagine owning it all.

Fisher was not one of those people. What he did like, though, was rubbing shoulders with those he considered less important than himself. Fortunately for him, this was pretty much everyone. He drank alongside businessmen and media figures, all the while basking in the warm glow of superiority and overpriced, imported gin. The overpriced imported gin tasted like normal gin but with just a hint of bank balance. He thought it quite delicious. He had another mouthful of it while watching the distant lights of a jumbo jet pass over the city.

‘Of course,’ he said, turning back to the woman who worked in PR, ‘I can’t really talk about it.’

This wasn’t going to be a problem because she had wandered off. He could see her black hair bobbing away towards the opposite end of the bar.

‘Terribly rude,’ said a man next to him, ‘she obviously doesn’t realise how important you are.’

Fisher turned to look at the man. He was in his early thirties, his suit was shiny and, while his white shirt was buttoned up to the neck, he’d forgotten to put on a tie.

‘Do I know you?’ Fisher asked.

‘We’ve worked together a fair bit over the last few weeks,’ the man said. ‘Though you weren’t aware of it.’

‘How could I possibly be unaware of working with you?’ asked Fisher, concerned that his professionalism was being questioned.

‘What?’ the man asked, staring at him in confusion. ‘Sorry, mate, do I know you?’

But the man who was no longer entirely Albert Fisher didn’t reply. He simply walked away.

‘Nutter,’ the man said, forgetting him instantly.

At the other end of the bar, the woman from PR finally relaxed having managed to extricate herself from Fisher’s conversation.

‘You all right?’ asked her friend, smiling in that way a friend does when secretly taking pleasure in someone’s embarrassment.

‘I thought I was going to be stuck with him all night. You could have come and rescued me.’

Her friend shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to cramp your style. Not planning on seeing him later, then?’

‘I hope I never see the boring old sod again!’

She wasn’t to get her wish. She saw Albert Fisher again only a few minutes later. She was, at least, saved his conversation this time. He didn’t say a word as he sailed past her on the other side of the window.

April had been tempted to refuse the food Oman had offered her, the idea of having a Peking duck wrap hand-fed to her by a psycho having almost entirely robbed her of her appetite. But only almost.

She took the food but struggled with the drink.

‘What the hell is this?’ she asked.

‘Christmas flavoured cola.’

‘Did they not have any water?’

‘What’s the point of that? It doesn’t taste of anything.’

It was like having a child choose the groceries.

She drank as much as she could stomach and then leaned back in her seat, wondering when the opportunity to break free might arrive.

They sat like that for three hours. At one point April even fell asleep.

She woke to feel Oman pulling at the bindings on her wrists. ‘Time to go,’ he said. ‘Are you ready?’

She certainly was, tensed to move the minute she had her opportunity. He extended the blade of a craft knife, slipping it under the plastic of one of the ties.

‘Any second now,’ he said, chuckling to himself.

He cut the tie and handed her the knife. ‘You finish off,’ he said.

She grabbed it.

Oman screamed as the woman who was no longer entirely April Shining went to work.

Toby and Tamar ran through the labyrinthine halls of Gatwick Arrivals. Up stairs, down stairs, along motorised walkways, it sometimes seemed as if the plane had landed them at another airport altogether.

‘Try the phone,’ Toby said, weaving between a family grumpily returning from a fortnight in Crete.

‘No reception,’ Tamar replied.

Queueing to get through passport control was torturous, Tamar constantly checking the phone reception. They were, of course, surrounded by signs asking them to keep their phones switched off but, like every other passenger to ever get off a plane, she ignored them.

The phone beeped just as they reached the passport desk.

‘Your phone’s supposed to be switched off,’ mentioned the customs official in the way of a person who simply has to say a thing, whether they believe it important or not.

‘Sorry,’ said Toby.

‘No worries,’ said the customs official.

As soon as they had passed through, they checked the phone.

‘Text from April,’ said Tamar, tilting the screen towards Toby.

‘Map link,’ Toby replied, tapping it so that it opened in the phone’s map app.

‘It is where we must go,’ said Tamar. ‘We should hire a car.’

They spent an irritating half an hour doing just that and were on the road three-quarters of an hour after having disembarked from their plane.

‘I hope he’s all right,’ said Toby, not for the first time. ‘Trust him to get in trouble when we’re in another bloody country.’

‘It is fine,’ Tamar assured him. ‘We have been as quick as we can. A few hours.’

‘A lot can happen in a few hours,’ Toby assured her, glancing down at the map on his phone before passing it to Tamar. ‘Guide me.’

The phone beeped and the Assassin was tapping at it before the vibrate alert had even ceased. He had his location and a time: Two hours from now. His client liked to cut things fine.

A calm descended over him at last, the agitation falling away to be replaced with a sense of purpose. Now it was all about the work. Now it was about what he did best.

He had no need to pack anything, having been so close to leaving several times already. He just picked up his coat and his bag and walked straight out of the door.

He would need a car. This wasn’t a problem, in fact he had anticipated it. What he hadn’t anticipated was the short length of time he had to secure one and reach his destination. It wasn’t a problem but it was an irritation. After all the inactivity, he disliked the fact that he was now being made to rush.

He hailed a taxi and leaned through the window holding out two one hundred pound notes.

‘This is to hire you for a couple of hours,’ he said, dropping it onto the dashboard. He removed another note of the same value. ‘And this is a bonus because it’s government business and I need you to turn your radio off and not report your position.’ Finally he showed the driver some ID. ‘This is who I am and you’ll be doing your country a great service if you help me.’

The taxi driver, a jovial man in a flat cap covered in metal badges, looked at the ID briefly and picked up the money. ‘Get in,’ he told the Assassin. ‘But if you don’t mind me saying so, there’s a better way of vanishing from the control’s radar for a bit than just switching the radio off.’

‘Such as?’ asked the Assassin, climbing into the passenger seat. The driver looked at him warily.

‘You’re supposed to be in the back.’

‘I want to see where we’re going. You don’t mind do you?’

The driver hesitated but the three hundred pounds had already made up his mind. ‘Fair do’s, sit where you like.’

‘The radio?’

‘Aye, hang on.’

The driver picked up his receiver and spoke into it. ‘Debbie, my love, I’ve just had three buckets of pizza and Stella upchucked all over the backseat. I’m going to be out of action while I clean up.’

‘I hope you charged ’em!’ shouted Debbie through the speaker. ‘Filthy toe rags.’

‘You bet I did, flower, you bet I did. Give you a shout when I’m free.’ He put down the radio. ‘And you’re bloody lucky the GPS tracker’s on the fritz as usual, otherwise they’d have known where we were going anyway.’

‘Pleased to hear it.’ He gave the driver the directions and they set off.

‘You able to tell me anything about it?’ the driver asked. ‘Doesn’t matter if you’re not. This isn’t the first time I’ve done government work.’

‘Really?’ the Assassin asked.

‘Oh yeah, I’ve got up to all sorts in my time, don’t you worry about that. I know the score. Discretion is my middle name. Bill Discretion Tanner. Pleased to meet you.’

‘Likewise. How long do you think it’s going to take to get there?’

‘This time of night the traffic’s not too bad. Jump onto the motorway. Bob’s your uncle, Fanny, she’ll be your aunt.’ Bill Discretion Tanner thought for a moment. ‘An hour and loose change?’

‘That’s fine, but less if you can manage it, the clock’s ticking.’

‘You leave it to me, son, I’ll have you there before you can say Goldfinger.’

‘What’s the time?’ Shining asked.

Ryska went outside and fetched him the box of his belongings. ‘See for yourself.’

Shining glanced at his watch as he replaced it on his wrist. It was getting late, time to wrap things up. The first thing he wanted to do was ring April – no doubt she’d be close to blowing up the Houses of Parliament by now. If there was one thing you could rely on with April, it was trouble would escalate around her if she didn’t get her own way.

He picked up the phone, tapping the message alert to open her mails.

Then his world changed.

‘Shining?’ Ryska stared at him as he slowly slid down the wall behind him. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’

‘All good?’ asked Jennings, stepping from outside, the smell of a freshly smoked cigarette on his breath. He saw Shining, sat on the floor, staring at his phone. ‘What’s happened?’