Last Line (5 page)

Frantically he shook his head. Another voice spoke there sometimes as well as Anzhel Mattvei’s. A deeper and older one, older than sin. He didn’t know whose it was. There had been another church too, and in it something dreadful had happened. The memories moved in him, slow dark shapes under ice.

Something dreadful. The sun found its way to the low step three yards in front of him. It coalesced, a red-gold nimbus in the dust. It lit up the man lying there, dragging Michael’s attention to him at last.

John had landed on his back. He was sprawled across the altar step in a scatter of broken stone. Dust coated every inch of him, turning him into a serene plaster saint, the only holy presence left in this deconsecrated place. He looked as if he had stretched out on his bed and fallen asleep. Michael had seen him like this a dozen times, when they’d had to share quarters on one op or another. He slept with a child’s abandonment, a cat’s enjoyment and concentration. Michael, who couldn’t sleep at all without a wall at his back and a gun under his pillow, had envied him.

He dropped to his knees beside him. He brushed back the tangle of soft hair from his face. “John,” he whispered and slipped an arm under his head, raising him.
Don’t move a fall victim
. His training echoed, but nothing could hurt John now—nothing ever again. Disbelief rose in Michael—panic and a loneliness deeper and blacker than space. “John,” he choked, cradling him, leaning close over him. “Oh God! Oh no. No!”

Movement rippled in the body he held. Michael started back with a faint cry and almost dropped him. Tears had splashed into the dust on John’s face—Michael’s own, falling still as he sat up. “J-John? Griff?”

The green eyes opened. After a long, long moment when they seemed to be watching an unseen sky, they focused on Michael’s. “Christ.” he rasped. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Michael stared down at him. He took him in—the wide, startled gaze. The fine dust-caked skin with blood running palpably under it—blood pulsing, beating, driven by his living heart. The lovely mouth, half-open in shock… Suddenly everything in Michael’s world boiled down to a wild desire to kiss that mouth, and he bent over John, whispering his name.

He couldn’t. He froze. John had raised a hand, reached round him and clasped the back of his neck. His face was still a blank of astonishment, but in it Michael could somehow read his absolute acceptance, a silent
yes
that reverberated in the air around them. “No,” Michael told it desperately, recoiling.
No. I am corrupt, untouchable
. “No, I can’t… John! Jesus, how the fuck… How the fuck are you alive?”

The hand at his nape clasped in his shirt. Blinking, John looked past him and up into the void through which he’d fallen. “I dunno. I… No idea.” Abruptly his face contorted. He clamped his other hand to Michael’s shoulder. “Oh Mike. It hurts!”

“Fuck. Let go of me. Let me lay you flat.”

“Nn-nn. Please don’t let go.”

“I have to. God knows what damage I’ve already done you.”

“I’m not damaged. I…” He shuddered, gritting his teeth. “There’s just so much
pain
.”

“I know. Okay, okay, let me call help for you.” Propping him against one knee, Michael scrabbled in his jacket pocket for his radio and phone, dropped both, and was stilled in his dive after them by the death grip of John’s hand around his wrist. “Griff, let me go!”

“No. Listen to me for a moment.” Against his will Michael stopped. John’s eyes were burning. “I don’t
get
you, Mike. We share everything. Every day, every…” He broke off, coughing. “It’s not like there’s anyone else. I can see in your face how bad you want me sometimes, and I…”

“John. Please.”

“And I’m all fucking yours. You know that. I don’t get you…”

The great wooden doors burst open. Michael jumped hard, moving to shelter John, but suddenly outlined in the light from outdoors he could see the wide bulk of Sir James Webb. He was flanked by policemen, paramedics, officers with rifles running to cover all points of the derelict church. Michael wanted to tell them to stand down; the game was over, played out. He found he couldn’t speak at all.

Webb limped slowly toward them. A massive bull of a man who hadn’t changed his lifestyle or food intake since having one kneecap torn off him by a bomb in County Armagh, he blocked out the light. He had been a major in the British army then, and his much-decorated retirement and knighthood hadn’t consoled him one bit. He looked down on his men. “Still alive, then, Griffin?”

“I… Yes, sir.”

“You too, Agent South?”

Michael drew a breath. He would have used it first to demand paramedics, and second to tell his boss what he thought of him for not bringing them down in a storm—but suddenly they were there, surrounding him, green uniforms and competent hands, carefully lifting his partner from his arms. “Yes. Yes, sir.”

“Good. In that case one of you can tell me why the bloody hell you killed my witness.”

“Killed him…” Michael’s head was spinning. He could scarcely remember the fight that had led up to the shift of woodwork and stone and what he thought had been the end of his world. “We didn’t. He jumped. He—”

“If anyone’s interested, he’s still alive too.”

Webb jerked up his head. Michael, still holding tight to John’s outflung hand, picked out through staticky clouds the voice of Last Line’s chief physician. A formidable woman and the only one of Webb’s employees who didn’t give a toss about his temper or his war wounds, she was kneeling with a group of other medics on the far side of the church. “Only he’s doing what he
should
be doing—dying of internal injuries, fast. You better get over here, Webb, if you want any moving last words.”

Michael felt a tug as John withdrew his hand. His reactions were delayed. For a moment, he couldn’t look away from the lumbering hulk of his boss, heaving off to inspect this new phenomenon. Then he blinked and frowned, reaching to steady himself on the floor. John, surrounded by bewildered paramedics, was getting to his feet. He was making use of their support, and he was white as a cod, but he was standing. “Something must have broken his fall,” one of the paramedics said wonderingly, whether to himself or his colleagues, Michael wasn’t sure. “I’ll…I’ll go get an ambulance pulled right up to the doors.”

John detached himself from their grip. He swayed a bit, then steadied. “I don’t need an ambulance,” he said. “I just want to get out of here. Please, Mike.”

* * *

Michael led him to the car. He had agreed to go to hospital but objected to doing so flat on his back.

“I, er, might need you to drive. I’m a little bit stiff.”

Michael came to a halt. He had had his arm around John’s waist. Now he let go of him, except for a steadying grip on his shoulders. He eased him back, examining his face in the sunlight. The fire engines and police cars were on the retreat, an ordinary morning beginning to unfold in the streets around them. He could hear planes overhead and the shout of kids on their way to school. “John,” he said. “That was a thirty-foot fall.”

“Well, like they said, something must have broken it.” John put a tentative hand behind him and winced. “My arse, I think.”

Michael swallowed. If he laughed, it would tip into hysteria. “All right,” he said. “Yes. I’ll drive.”

“Speaking of the fucking incomprehensible… Why didn’t your mate Piotr blow up like Nagasaki when he fell?”

“Don’t know. Webb’ll tell us, no doubt. Maybe the explosives were fakes or duds.” He looked down. “He wasn’t my mate, John.”

“Then who the hell was he? He knew you. Why—”

“For God’s sake.” Reaching around him, Michael pulled open the Jaguar’s passenger door. “Okay, so you’re Lazarus, and you’re walking around now like nothing happened. But you scared the shit out of me, sunbeam, and there’s no way you’ve got away with it. Get into the damn car—if you can—and—”

“All right, all right.” John was smiling, his face lit up with surrender. If he remembered his outcry on the floor of the church, there was no sign of it now. He put out his hand to the car door.

A fat blue spark leapt from the metal to his fingertips. Michael saw it—heard the crack. He grabbed John, steadying him against his recoil. “Ow, you
bastard
!” John commented feelingly. “How the fuck can that happen? It’s static buildup, isn’t it? I haven’t even been near her!”

Michael didn’t know. He clamped a hand to his mouth. This happened to John all the time. He couldn’t touch a car—or a metal stair rail, or the barriers on the Tube—with impunity. To Michael’s shame, he always found it funny. But now, juxtaposed to his near-death plunge, the relative stoicism with which he’d handled that—to see him wince and suck his finger like a kid at this tiny injury… Events caught up with Michael, and he sat down on the Jag’s bonnet, tears of laughter welling in his eyes.

Chapter Five

Low, insistent bass; a rattle of glassware. Sweeping lights, although Webb had ordered a retirement party, not a bloody disco, and was at this moment stumping around behind the scenes looking for someone to shout at. The peculiar clatter of tight-wound men and women finally letting off steam.

It took time and a hell of a lot of alcohol. Michael caught the barman’s eye and silently requested a fourth refill for his vodka. The first three hadn’t done the trick at all. He was as painfully tense now, as twitchy and restless as when he had arrived an hour ago.

He didn’t want to be here at all. John was fine—somehow a battery of X-rays and an MRI showing his spine intact—but the hospital wanted him kept overnight for observation, and it was Michael’s instinct not to be far from him. He might not have slept on a chair in the corridor exactly, but nor would he have gone off partying if Jeffrey Hall’s partner hadn’t intercepted him back at HQ, reminding him that Jeff, an unlikely survivor of fifteen years at Last Line, was due to get turned out to grass at the Dog & Duck that night. And Jeff was a good friend. Distractedly Michael had promised an hour or so later.

And here he was. He leaned his elbows on the sticky bar top. John would have pulled a face and mopped the surface down with napkins, not wanting to spoil his Armani jacket. Michael’s wasn’t exactly Primark, but he didn’t honestly care. He just wanted to do his duty here and get out.

And go where, he didn’t know. He wouldn’t be able to sleep. He felt as if the marrow of his bones were on fire. The events of the day flashed across his vision in time with the strobes, but out of sequence, ragged, too bright. John starting to attention in the church. An impossible face—Piotr, for God’s sake, a long-dead ashkeloi gypsy—appearing like biblical vengeance in the shadows far above. And John falling. Again and again Michael’s flashbacks reverted to that, played it out as a backdrop to everything else, until he was seeing it constantly. He had looked into Michael’s eyes.
Mikey.

Michael put his face into his hands. Part of him had died when he’d seen his partner start to fall. The rest of him would have followed soon enough if John had been lost to him. He knew that. And yet, down in the dust, when John had opened his eyes and lain there like a miracle, ready to accept his kiss, Michael had denied him. Again. One more time and Michael was fairly sure he would hear cockerels crowing before sunrise.

“Penny for ’em, Agent South.”

Michael jumped. He turned on the uncomfortable barstool and saw Diane Shaw, Last Line’s longest-serving female agent, clambering onto the seat next door. He gave her a reluctant smile. The night had washed a fair amount of traffic his way, most conspicuously Jeffrey Hall, who had popped up several times now, on each occasion assuring Michael more fervently than the last that he loved him—no,
really
loved him, and he wasn’t just saying that. Michael had grinned, hugged him, posed for photos. He was fond of Jeff too, and anyone who had survived this racket long enough to retire certainly deserved his wild night. Diane, however, was definitely a more attractive prospect. Her hair was down around her shoulders, and she’d left her professional deportment somewhere on the barroom floor. “They’re not worth it, Di. How about you? Enjoying the party?”

“It’s like watching bears at the zoo. How’s John?”

“Still in hospital. But they think he’ll be okay.”

“Thank fuck for that. I heard he nearly joined Webb’s beloved dead this morning.” She gave the bartender a beaming smile and accepted the Budweiser he handed her as her royal due. “So, he’s all tucked up for the night. Which leaves you…free, I suppose?”

Michael looked at her with some affection. She was laid-back, sweet natured and brave, and it wouldn’t be the first time he had taken her up on the offer. The fact was that an occasional girlfriend made life simpler. He could tell John he was straight and have it be true, if just barely. It kept his other colleagues off his back. Diane took her pleasures as they came and pursued her own business when they were over. She was a friend.

He would hurt her if he slept with her tonight. His hands would close too hard on her soft skin. Or he would bank down his fires as fiercely as he could and yearn in silence for an answering flame… No. Not fair on her and about as far from what he really wanted as…

“Am I interrupting, then?”

Michael knocked over his glass. Diane, who had a cat’s reflexes even when drunk, caught it and set it down safely on the bar. “John!” she said, her lovely smile betraying only the faintest disappointment. “I’m so pleased you’re okay. No, darlin’. Safe to say you’re not interrupting anything at all.”

She slithered off her stool and disappeared into the crowd. For one second Michael looked after her—then had no eyes for anything but the apparition of his partner, pale and smiling, hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Christ almighty, Griff! You’re meant to be in hospital.”

“I know.” John shrugged, the movement displaying his broad shoulders, their contrast to the graceful lightness of his hips. Helplessly Michael held up Diane’s template against him, all her gentle beauties, and watched them crumble to ash. “But I got bored, and…worried about you, to be honest.”

“Did they discharge you?”