Lady of the Shades (30 page)

‘Go fuck yourself,’ I cut in brusquely.

Dash frowns. ‘Anyone ever mention that chip on your shoulder?’

‘I’m ready,’ Gardiner says. He’s standing sideways to us, right arm levelled in front of him, left arm bent slightly behind his back.

‘So long,’ Dash says, patting my cheek. ‘It was fun while it lasted. I’ll give your love to Antonia. Give mine to the ghosts.’

He steps away. He hasn’t taken more than two strides when Bond Gardiner fires. My eyes snap shut and my stomach goes cold. I wait for the pain, but there isn’t any. I don’t
dare hope he’s missed, so I assume my nerve endings are slow to react. But then someone groans and it isn’t me.

Opening my eyes, I spot Sebastian Dash lying on the ground in a pool of blood, his stomach ripped open, gazing crookedly at the mess bulging out of the shredded gap with a look of agonized
confusion. ‘What the fuck?’ he gasps, sticking a couple of fingers into the cavity to make sure it’s real.

Gardiner advances, never lowering his arm, ready to fire again if Dash goes for his gun. I stand rooted, as stunned as Dash. The assassin looks up. His eyes are wide, appealing for answers.
‘You shot me. I think I’m –’

A torrent of blood gushes up his throat and out of his mouth. Gardiner steps back quickly to avoid getting his shoes splashed. Dash seems to snap back to life at that, and scrabbles for his gun.
He prizes it free of its holster, but his fingers are slow, and wet with blood. He doesn’t stand a chance.

Gardiner puts two more bullets through Dash’s ribcage. The gun drops limply from the assassin’s hand and he sinks into the grass, face white, body shuddering. He’s suffering a
more painful death than Langbein. I can’t say I’m sorry, though I don’t exactly rejoice, knowing that a similar fate is surely in store for me.

Dash tries to staunch the flow of blood, but even in his distressed state he knows it’s a hopeless task. Giving up, he lets his head flop back and stares at the sky. An almost serene look
passes over his face as he whispers, ‘Antonia.’

Then he’s dead, and it’s my turn.

Bond Gardiner casts a cold eye over me.

‘Why?’ I ask quietly.

The gangster’s head cocks to the left. ‘I had to.’

‘
Why?
’

He wipes the gun clean, strides across the glade and sticks it in Langbein’s hand, then he pats down the officer and finds a Swiss army knife. He extends the longest blade and steps up
behind me. I tense, expecting him to slit my throat, but instead he sets to work on the ropes. Within seconds I’m free, my extremities tingling as blood flows back into them.

‘If I hadn’t killed Dash,’ Gardiner says, snapping the knife shut and pocketing it, ‘I’d have had to kill you. And I didn’t want to do that.’

I limp forward, rubbing my hands together, half afraid I’m dreaming. ‘You’re going to spare me?’

‘Not
going to
,’ he corrects me. ‘I
have
spared you. You’re free. Get the fuck out of here before I change my mind.’

In a daze I start away, thinking he’ll grab Dash’s gun and shoot me in the back. When I reach the edge of the clearing and he still hasn’t fired, I stop and slowly, against my
better instincts, turn. My ghosts are howling silently, spitefully. If they could give voice to their fury, they’d probably be screaming, ‘Not fair!’ I ignore them and study Bond
Gardiner. He’s standing over Dash’s body, staring down with an unreadable expression.

I return and take up a position to Gardiner’s left. He doesn’t notice me at first. When he does, his features darken. ‘I told you to go.’

‘I can’t, not until you tell me what’s going on.’

He sighs, then nods sombrely. He turns away from Sebastian Dash and moves to the far side of the car, where he doesn’t have to look at the corpses. I follow, lean against the hood of the
engine next to him, and wait while he produces a book of matches and starts playing with it, the way he did in the pub. ‘You really believe it was Andeanna’s ghost you fell in love
with?’ he asks.

‘I know that it was.’

‘You accepted everything she told you through the mystic?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re a fool,’ he grunts. ‘When you killed that bodyguard,
Andeanna
told you he was Axel Nelke?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, at the seance, she said through the medium that Nelke was her lover from long ago and she didn’t actually know the name of the bodyguard?’ When I nod, Gardiner snorts.
‘After you butchered the guy in the mansion, did you frisk him for ID, or did you simply leave his cards in his wallet and bury them at sea with him?’

‘Of course not. I went through his pockets and took . . . ’

I stop, horrified. I’d forgotten about the cards, but I can visualize them now that Gardiner has reminded me. Credit cards, a driver’s licence, a membership card for Blockbuster. I
only flicked through them, but I got a good look at the name, the same on every card.
Axel Nelke
.

Gardiner chuckles as the penny – one of the pennies – drops. ‘The guard you killed
was
Axel Nelke. He was one of my boys.’

‘But Andeanna . . . her lover . . . she said . . . ’

‘She lied.’

‘No. There must have been another Axel Nelke, this guy’s father or uncle or –’

‘Don’t insult yourself,’ Gardiner snaps. ‘She played you. She knew who he was. My guess is she lured him there on purpose. I think he was a guinea pig. She wanted to see if you still had a killer’s touch.’

‘You’re lying. You want to torment me. You’re saying this to . . . ’

‘What?’ Gardiner jeers.

‘ . . . confuse me,’ I finish lamely.

‘Why should I?’ he retorts.

‘To throw me off the scent. To stop me . . . ’ I run out of ideas.

‘If I wanted to stop you, I’d have killed you. Even a lovesick lunatic like you must be able to see that. Right now, I’m the one person in the world you can trust, because I in
no way stand to benefit from lying to you.’

He’s telling the truth. It would be easier if he wasn’t, if this was part of some scam to sidetrack me, but it would have been far more straightforward for him to shoot me than set
me free and lie to me. The guard was Axel Nelke. Andeanna lied about him.

What else wasn’t true
?

‘Did the Turk kill her?’ I croak. Gardiner doesn’t answer. He seems focused on the matches. ‘Did he!’ I shout.

‘Do you have an address for Etienne Anders?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ I reply, befuddled.

‘I want it.’

‘What does she have to do with –’

‘You were set up!’ he barks. ‘There was no ghost. I doubt if Anders was behind the scam, but she’s part of it. If I find her, I might be able to wring the truth out of
the bitch.’

‘But Anders was only a channeller. Andeanna spoke through her.’

Gardiner slaps me. When I stare at him numbly, he slaps me again, then grabs my neck and pulls my face in close to his. ‘Can’t you get it straight, you fucking moron? There. Was.
No.
Ghost. It was a con job. Someone dressed up as Andeanna and tricked you into killing Mikis, then hired a clever psychic to make you believe she was a spirit.’

‘No,’ I moan, pulling away. The matches drop. He bends to pick them up. I use the few seconds to think of something to prove I’m not a patsy. ‘Greygo,’ I gasp.
‘He saw the ghost too. He’d been to see Anders as well.’

Gardiner’s expression softens. ‘Poor Greygo. He was so anxious to learn about her, always asking questions, wanting to know. He must have been an easy mark.’

‘What do you mean?’

Gardiner plucks loose a match, lights it, watches the flame flicker down, then blows it out. ‘Greygo has an active imagination,’ he says through the thin stream of smoke.
‘Mikis used to say he was away with the fairies. Whoever manipulated you got to Greygo beforehand. I don’t know how they did it, but if they fooled someone like you, it can’t have
been that hard to mesmerize a mixed-up kid.’

‘No. You’re wrong.’

‘Think about it, Brad. Greygo went –’

‘
Ed
,’ I interrupt. ‘My name’s Ed.’

‘Whatever. Greygo went to lots of mediums. He missed his mother, and nothing we told him about her was enough. He always wanted more. Of all those psychics, only one could put him in touch
with his mother? Only one could succeed where the others failed?’

‘Logic doesn’t work with ghosts. Sometimes shades can only speak through –’

‘Can it,’ he snaps. ‘You were conned. So was Greygo. If you can’t see that, you’re dumber than I thought, and maybe I
should
finish you off and leave you
here with those two.’ He jerks an angry thumb at the corpses behind us.

‘Why haven’t you killed me?’ I ask, curious in spite of everything.

‘Too complicated. The police won’t believe that Langbein and Dash wiped each other out, but they’ll accept it because they’ll be glad to be rid of the pair. But if I
throw in a third body, they won’t be able to explain it away, so they’ll have to investigate for real.’

I think about that, then shake my head. ‘I don’t buy it. You could have dumped me in the trunk and killed me elsewhere.’

‘
Now
you tell me,’ he chuckles, pretending to groan, hoping I’ll drop it.

‘Why spare me?’ I press. ‘Why tell me about Nelke? I’ve admitted to killing the Turk. Why aren’t you carving your revenge out of my flesh?’

‘Because you weren’t to blame. You were a tool in some cunning fucker’s hand. When I find him, I’ll do plenty of carving, but I don’t shoot messenger
boys.’

It’s a plausible excuse. Another time I might believe him. But Gardiner has been visibly shaken, and I can see through him as clearly as I can see Sebastian Dash’s bloody remains
through the windows of the car.

‘The truth, Bond,’ I say softly. ‘Let’s not bother with lies any more. There’s no place for them here. Tell me why you spared me.’

Gardiner stares at the matches, runs a finger over them, speaks without looking up. ‘Because I took pity on you.’

I almost laugh. It’s his most pathetic lie yet. I open my mouth to berate him, then close it slowly, not having said a word. Because it
isn’t
a lie.

‘Why, for God’s sake?’ I mutter.

‘Not for God’s sake,’ he says. ‘For Andeanna’s.’ He lifts his head, and his eyes are hard but soft at the same time. ‘You shocked me in the pub when you
turned up with talk of Andeanna having a lover. Since you knew so much, I fed you a half-true story, hoping that would satisfy you. If I’d known who you really were . . . ’ He steels
himself and says, ‘Andeanna had a lover, but Mikis never knew.’

My eyes narrow. As bewildered as I am, I understand what Gardiner is saying. ‘It was
you
,’ I whisper.

He nods with ferocious sharpness. ‘That’s why you’re alive. Because I see the love I felt for her mirrored in your eyes. And although it wasn’t the real Andeanna you fell
in love with, you thought it was and you were prepared to sacrifice everything for her. I respect that. You killed Mikis and Axel, so I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself.’

‘Christ,’ I groan. ‘Mary fucking Mother of God.’

‘Don’t blaspheme,’ he scolds me.

‘It was all bullshit,’ I mumble. ‘The Turk didn’t know about her affair.’

‘No.’

‘He didn’t kill her.’

‘No.’

‘I thought . . . even when I was convinced that she wasn’t a ghost, when I assumed I’d been set up . . . I thought only a vengeful lover or relative would go to such twisted
lengths to kill a man.’

Gardiner grunts. ‘I was closer to Mikis than anyone else on this shitball of a planet. Even if he’d murdered Andeanna, I couldn’t have retaliated. I could have hated him, but I
couldn’t have killed him or allowed someone else to.’

‘This is crazy. Why would she lie to me? What does a ghost stand to gain by lying?’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Gardiner roars. ‘When will you get it through your thick fucking skull? She wasn’t a ghost. You were conned.’

‘No,’ I disagree. ‘You weren’t there. You didn’t hear the way Anders spoke, the way her face changed shape to become Andeanna’s. It wasn’t a charade. It
was really her.’

‘You never met the real Andeanna!’ he howls. ‘Don’t you get it? The woman who seduced you was an impostor. You have no idea how Andeanna talked or how her lips lifted
when she was happy or how her nose twitched when she was mad. You know nothing about her.’

‘You’re wrong,’ I defy him. ‘It
was
Andeanna. She knew too much not to be. She had access to the mansion. She was there when I killed Nelke and the Turk. She
knew about the affair and the story you told me about her husband killing her.’

‘Anders could have learnt most of that from Greygo,’ he says.

‘Did Greygo know about the affair?’ I challenge him.

‘Well, no, I don’t think so, but –’

‘
But
nothing. The ghost knew that Andeanna had been unfaithful. She didn’t reveal her lover’s real name, but that’s because she wanted to protect you, like
you’d protected her.’

‘No,’ he growls. ‘She wasn’t a ghost.’

‘She was!’ I yell, going face to face with him. He’s a head taller and outweighs me by thirty pounds, but I don’t care. I could take on the devil himself, the mood
I’m in. ‘Stop denying it. It doesn’t make sense any other way. She was a ghost.’

‘An impostor,’ he mumbles, taking a step backwards.

‘A ghost.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Why?’ I follow him as he retreats. ‘Why are you so set against the idea? Because you don’t believe in ghosts?’

‘It’s not that.’

‘Then what?’ He doesn’t answer. ‘
What?
’

Gardiner stops backpedalling and lets me run into him. ‘It can’t have been a ghost,’ he says flatly, then puts his lips to my ear and hits me with a thunderbolt that sets me
adrift once again on the seas of bewildered madness. ‘It can’t have been a ghost because Andeanna isn’t dead.’

TWENTY

St Michael’s Psychiatric Hospital lies close to Darlington, in the north-east of the country, not far from Joe’s native Newcastle. I toy with the idea of inviting
Joe along for the journey – he knows the area and could serve as a guide – but that would mean telling him the truth, and I don’t want to do that, not until I’ve confirmed
it.