Rules of Honour (34 page)

‘Understood?’ Rink asked me.

‘Crystal clear,’ I said, half turning as if to retreat to our car. Then I turned back. ‘Actually, there is one other thing . . .’

The man lifted his chin, a reflexive jerk at my question.

My hand came up and my SIG cracked.

‘Why are you still standing up when you’re dead?’ I finished.

The question was lost on the thug. My words had arrived after the bullet that drilled his left eye and then fragmented against the orbital bone, sending slivers of white-hot lead into all corners of his cranium.

The man tipped backwards, landing in a billow of grit on the garage forecourt. Apart from a little blood around his eye socket there was no hint of the untold damage within his skull; that was the beauty of a soft-nosed slug. No blowing off of heads.

‘Whatever happened to the idea of
not
shooting the messenger?’ Rink asked.

‘It was kill him now or kill him later. Either way he was going to end up dead. This way we gain an advantage . . . and a nice new car.’

‘You’re a step or two ahead of me,’ Rink said as he bent to retrieve the map. ‘What have you got in mind?’

‘Let’s get this asshole in the trunk first.’

I popped the trunk of the big sedan, and there was room even for the bruiser to fit inside. We couldn’t leave him here. Neither could we leave behind Andrew’s car. While Rink drove it a couple of blocks away, I checked that there was no one around who might have witnessed what had just occurred. Thankfully there wasn’t. I’d already taken note that the only CCTV camera in sight was positioned to cover the entrance of the auto shop, and was directed away from us. My car was an import with a stick shift, but the big sedan was an automatic. I’d driven enough of them – Andrew’s car included – that the different driving experience gave me no problems. I eased the car out of the lot, and drove to where I’d agreed to meet Rink. He was waiting by the kerb, Andrew’s car hidden from sight behind a row of shops like a mini-strip mall. He’d left the keys in the ignition, I guessed. This time tomorrow the car would be gone, stripped of its parts, the remainder burned on some vacant lot. He got in our new acquisition; slinging the weapons he’d brought on the back seat. Immediately I set off, my subconscious radar sending me towards the bay.

‘I’ve figured out your plan, brother,’ Rink said, as he unfolded the map. ‘They aren’t expecting us to arrive for two hours. They’ll think that we’ll have to go fetch Parnell and Faulks and will be preparing a welcoming party for us. They won’t be expecting us coming right now.’

‘That was my plan,’ I agreed. ‘So long as the idiot they sent wasn’t supposed to call them when he delivered the message, we’ve a good chance of surprising them.’

‘Did you check if he had a cell on him?’

‘None.’

Rink searched in the glove compartment but there wasn’t a phone there.‘Maybe he was going to use a call box.’

‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘They probably expect that you’ll do exactly as you were told. They know how much your mom means to you, and think you’ll hand over the old guys without question . . .’

I left that hanging on purpose, gauging his response.

‘Well, that isn’t going to happen,’ he said. I didn’t think so, but thought it best to check. If we did make the exchange, in reality all that would result would be the deaths of all three of the original lynch party. Markus Colby would kill Yukiko and both the old men first chance he got. He’d already have tried to have us killed by then, his reason for recruiting Chaney and his gang. The rules of honour meant nothing to Markus, and what goes around comes around. Fair enough. The gloves were about to come off; actually they already had when I placed a slug in the guy back there. If he wanted dirty fighting then that was what he was going to get.

‘Someone will be watching,’ I said. ‘But they won’t be alarmed when they see this car arrive. Our buddy in the trunk probably had instructions to go back to lend extra firepower at the exchange.’

‘They won’t see me coming,’ Rink said, and it wasn’t an empty boast. ‘As we approach, let me out. They’re only expecting to see one guy in this car. They won’t be watching their backs for another.’

‘Where am I going?’ I asked.

Rink arched an eyebrow at the map he’d unfolded in his lap.

‘Somewhere I know well,’ he said, stabbing a finger at where someone had literally marked the map with a red X. I was surprised to note it was near Chabot Lake where we’d left the old men with Velasquez and McTeer. Rink went on. ‘When I used to visit my parents, my dad and me went hiking out there all the time. Right there –’ he touched the map once more, a half-inch from the X ‘– there used to be an old lodge house. I just bet that’s where they have my mom.’

‘Makes sense,’ I said, pushing the sedan towards the Bay Bridge. ‘Let’s go get her back.’

Chapter 39

Snow Child had never actually seen snow.

Or if she had it was when she’d been too young to remember it now. She had seen it in picture books and in a movie at the cinema once, but never the real thing. Snow was brilliant white, but when she’d watched that movie it had looked grey on the screen. Everything looked grey in that movie, in one shade or another. The snow then had looked like the ashes at the edge of the fire she now poked at with a twig. The ashes and cinders fascinated her, the way they looked almost solid to the touch, but actually crumbled to powder as fine as talcum when she probed them with her stick. She wondered if snow disappeared when touched. Maybe that was why she was called Snow Child. She prided herself on her ability to disappear so she could not be
touched.
She was better at hiding than Rose or any of the other girls, and that was the only thing that kept her safe from the guard with the bayonet. Usually.

This time she was so focused on the ashes in the fire pit that she was unaware of his scrutiny. Or the way the cold winter sun glinted on the lenses of his spectacles as he studied her from the corner of one of the dormitory sheds. There was always noise here in the Rohwer camp, always the sound of the tread of marching feet, so his were lost among the others as the guard approached her from behind. The first she knew of his presence was when the cold gleam of his bayonet flicked the twig from her hand and it dropped among the cold cinders.

Yukiko was terrified of the blade.

She let out a wordless cry, even as she twisted around to stare up at the giant towering over her. She fell on her back, the ashes puffing round her: snow falling
up
towards the sky.

He was in silhouette over her, but the lenses of his spectacles flared with an errant beam of light, giving him the look of a
tengu
– a mountain demon – as he bent to inspect her.

She thought that he must know.

Had he been aware that she had hidden under the piles of laundry in the wash-house? Had he known that she’d witnessed his attack on Rose, and had he taken secret pleasure in the knowledge? Had he come now to make sure that she never told another soul about what he’d done?

He placed the tip of his bayonet against her cheek.

‘What are you doing?’ he growled.

‘I’m . . . playing . . .’

‘In the dirt, just like a little yellow rat?’

‘It’s not dirt it’s –’ she was about to say snow – ‘ash.’

‘It’s filth.’ He stared down at her. ‘You’re filthy. Look at your clothing, your face. You have dirt all over you. Get up.’

She couldn’t rise for the steel glinting in her vision.

He leaned down and grabbed the front of her jacket.

‘Up I said. Now get over there. To the washroom and get yourself cleaned up.’

He did not release her. He held on to the front of her coat. Staring at her from behind the colourless lenses. He cocked his head left to right. She felt filthy, not due to the ash, but to the salacious way in which his lips puckered.

‘You’re a small one, ain’t you. How old are you?’

Yukiko couldn’t find the words. Her throat was pinching shut.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ He propelled her towards the wash-house, her feet barely touching ground as he half carried her there. Yukiko desperately tried to scream. If she screamed someone would come and stop the monster. If she screamed loud enough her dad would hear all the way from Tule Lake and he would come back to save her. But panic had struck her dumb. The big man pushed her inside the washroom, pausing only to check over his shoulder, ensuring that no one had seen him carrying her there. Then he followed her in.

Yukiko could feel fat tears streaming down her cheeks. They dripped from her elfin chin, pattering on the collar of her rough cotton jacket as she shivered uncontrollably. They did not move the guard to pity, if anything they excited him all the more.

‘Get them off. Those filthy clothes. Off. Now.’

He prodded her with the tip of his bayonet, hooking it under the centre button of the three on her coat.

‘Take it off, or I’ll cut it off. I might not be too careful and might also cut off your hide.’ He prodded again with the bayonet.

Her fingers trembling, Yukiko plucked open the buttons and shrugged out of the coat. It fell in a heap behind her. All she wore beneath was a shapeless off-white shift that covered her to the knees. Her legs had the benefit of knee-length socks and sturdy black clogs, but her bare arms were like twiglets protruding from the cuffs of her shift. The tip of the guard’s tongue flicked over his dry lips. He made a noise as if he was clearing a bug from his throat.

‘Take
all
of it off.’

‘P . . . Please . . .’

‘Off.’ His voice had dropped an octave. She would never know if the hoarseness was through anger or longing.

The door creaked open and a lady stepped inside the wash-house.

Yukiko did not know the lady’s name. She only knew her as the older sister of her friend, Harumi.

The guard spun, immediately lifting his gun and aiming the fixed bayonet at the lady.

‘Get out,’ he snapped.

The lady feigned misunderstanding. She bowed, bowed, bowed, entering the room, talking gently in Japanese. She went past both Yukiko and the guard, heading for the shower cubicles. She gave the guard a shy tilt of her head as she went by, bowed her lips in a smile. Harumi was twelve years old, while her sister was that much older at fifteen. To a child as young as Yukiko, a fifteen year old was a grown woman, a lady, in comparison. But to the monster she would still be a child.

The guard lowered his rifle, and he turned to look down at Yukiko.

‘Filthy yellow rat,’ he said to her. ‘Get outta here . . . and keep out of that damn fire pit in future. Next time I’ll make you scrub yourself raw.’

Yukiko grabbed for her coat and darted for the door.

She hauled it open, her only wish to be as far away as possible.

Yet she stopped and sought the eyes of the lady.

‘Domo arigato,’
Yukiko whispered. Thank you very much.

The lady looked back at her, her features a well of desperation now. Yet she straightened herself as the guard approached her, shoving her further inside the cubicle. There was no door. The guard turned around, pulling off his spectacles and shoving them into his jerkin pocket. He caught Yukiko watching.

‘Out,’ he mouthed silently.

Then he smiled at her, a silent promise that one day he would have his time with her.

Yukiko fled.

She did not see the lady again. Not alive, any way. Two days later the lady was found hanging in a closet, shamed into taking her own life after what she had tolerated on Yukiko’s behalf. She should not have been shamed: her actions had saved the little girl.

Years later, Harumi would marry Bruce Tennant. In the decades since, Yukiko had forgotten much about Harumi, but never had she forgotten her sister, the lady who gave her own innocence to the beast in order that the Snow Child remain chaste.

She also remembered the look that Charles Peterson had cast after her as she’d fled the wash-house.

It was the same one his bastard son wore now.

He also promised that he’d have his time with her, after he’d checked out the shouting and gunfire above.

Chapter 40

For some time I’d held the impression that Markus Colby was someone who had followed misguided reasoning when setting out on his murder rampage, and that deep down, he saw himself as the good guy avenging a supreme wrong. Was Markus any different from Rink in that respect? Both men were out to avenge their murdered fathers. Well, the answer was right there before me now. Rink’s actions were driven by an impulse to save life as much as they were to take Markus’s, whereas there was nothing to vindicate the killer. Markus had beaten, hanged, shot, stabbed, injected and burned his victims, and had taken satisfaction in their deaths. But now he’d overstepped the mark by a long shot. By taking a vulnerable old woman, he’d committed the inexcusable. He’d stooped to the level his father had when he’d also targeted the vulnerable and innocent. I knew that Rink desired nothing more than to see Markus dead at his feet, but he’d never stoop that low. And he sure as hell wouldn’t take any delight in the man’s death. He would only be relieved.