The Language of Bees (38 page)

I bent to pick up the slipper, then froze.

Air had brushed my skin, the briefest of touches. The air currents in the house had altered, just for an instant; had I not been standing in the doorway with an open window across from me, I should not have noticed it.

I strained to hear movement from below. Nothing: four minutes, five—and then a faint creak from the direction of the old, dry staircase, instantly stifled.

I eased the knife from my boot scabbard and straightened slowly; he and I both waited for the other to betray ourselves.

I cast a glance at the window: How many creaks in the fifteen feet of floorboard between me and it? How long would it take the big man to sprint up the stairs—or, back down the hallway and out of the front door—and take aim at my fleeing back?

The knife hilt grew warm in my hand, then damp. I moved it briefly to my right hand to wipe my palm, then took it back, my fingers kneading it nervously.

It is such an easy thing, to become prey. Especially for a woman, for whom biology and nurture conspire to encourage a sense of victim-hood. When terror sweeps through the veins, we become rabbits, cowering in a corner with our eyes closed, hoping for invisibility. And a large man with a gun is a truly terrifying thing. I regretted coming, berated myself for not bringing someone with me; stood helpless, waiting for my death to come up the stairs. Bad judgment yet again, to face a gun with nothing but a sweaty-handled throwing knife.

I felt a ghostly slap on the back of my head, and Holmes’ voice exhorting me,
Use your brain, Russell, it’s the only weapon that counts
.

With a lurch, my mind dragged itself out of the spin into panic, my eyes casting about wildly for alternatives to a bullet.

Knife, yes, but this was an entire house full of deadly objects, from that neck-tie across the back of the chair to the electric lamp to the sharp pencil by my foot, and all manner of heavy objects with which to pound, pummel, and gouge a nice large target like my stalker. Heavens, if I could get him down, I could smother him with the teddy bear.

A pencil. I looked at the light-switch on the wall beside me, and stooped for the drawing implement, sliding the knife almost absently into its scabbard.

The switch was one of those with double push-plugs, currently in the ON position. I shifted around to face it (thankfully, the floor made no remark) and put my right thumb on the OFF button. Resting the pencil-point in the space between the button and its casing, I took a breath, and in one quick motion pushed the switch and snapped the
lead point off in the space, effectively locking it down. The light from the hallway streamed through the door onto the window opposite.

The clamour of pounding feet—up the stairs, not down—covered my own swift steps into the lee of the chest of drawers. The doorway darkened, filled with angry man, who cursed as he fumbled and failed to work the switch. I wrapped my hand around the hair-brush I had grabbed from the chest-top, then tossed it underhand against the meeting-place of the curtains.

He heard the sound and half-saw the motion of the fabric, and leapt across the room to rip away the curtains and thrust his head and shoulders out of the window, gun aimed at the ground below.

I was already in motion, knife in one hand, snatching up Damian’s cravat with the other. He heard me coming and nearly managed to extricate himself from the window before I slammed into him, knocking him half out of the room, then jerking the upper window down hard across his spine. He bellowed and shoved back hard. Glass and wood crackled, then went abruptly silent as he became aware of the tip of my knife, pressing into an exquisitely sensitive, and currently exquisitely vulnerable, part of his anatomy.

“Drop the gun,” I said loudly. When he failed to respond, I twitched the knife, and his squeak was followed by a thud from the flower bed below. “Now show me your right hand.”

His body tensed to brace himself against falling, and his right hand waved briefly on the other side of the cracked pane. Good enough. I wound the cravat around his ankles and snugged it into a messy but effective one-handed knot.

It took some doing to get the weight of him out from the window without permitting him freedom of motion, and he nearly had me twice, but finally, with his belt, three neck-ties, and the rope-tie from a dressing gown, I had him trussed. Bleeding, enraged, and trussed.

I walked on uncertain feet over to the light-switch, and managed to unscrew the face-plate and prise out the sliver of lead. I could hear him all the while, struggling against the various bonds.

By the time I got the lights on, the worst of my reaction had sub
sided, and I was faced with a conundrum—not, What to do with him? because I knew what I was going to do with him, but—How do I get him to talk?

I’d seen enough of this type of man to know that he would absorb a lot of damage before opening his mouth. If I were Holmes, or Lestrade, this man would spit on my questions. I could threaten him further with the knife, but it would take a lot to convince him that a mere girl would carry out the threats.

He’d be right, too: I might be willing to damage a thug to save Holmes, but for Damian and his daughter?

The man on the floor lay still now; I could feel his eyes on my back. I circled the room slowly, letting him think about his situation. That he was neither cursing nor demanding to know who I was told me that he had more brains than his overdeveloped muscles suggested.

I looked down at the trestle table and its litter of paint and drawings, and became aware that I was looking at myself.

Not myself, as in a mirror, but a simple, flowing continuous line of ink on paper, elegant as a Japanese master. It was not a sketch, it was a finished piece, done on a sheet of dense and expensive paper. At the lower left was its title:
My Father’s Wife
. It was signed Adler.

I deliberately pushed it out of my mind, and reached for one of the tubes of paint, juggling with it for a moment before laying it back on the table. I put the knife down beside it, and returned to my captive. His eyes held mixed fury and contempt, which was fine. What I needed to see there was fear.

I grabbed the lapels of his coat. He smirked, expecting me to tug and struggle against his weight, but the secretions of the adrenal gland can be turned to strength as well as fear, and I hauled him in two great backwards strides to the corner of the worn carpet, and let his head thump down against the bare boards.

“Hey! What the hell is going on here, sister?”

I went around the room, methodically piling up the furniture until the carpet was free of encumbrance.

Then I rolled him up in it.

He was cursing now, an astonishingly vicious torrent, ever more breathless. Still silent, I walked back to the table for the knife, then knelt on the floorboards beside his head. I held up the stained blade for him to study. He looked at it—he couldn’t stop himself, a thin, shiny blade edged with scarlet—but he did not believe I would use it.

I didn’t. Instead, my eyes watching his face, I put it to my mouth, and slowly, appreciatively, licked it clean.

It was not blood, of course, it was bright red paint from one of Damian’s tubes, but it was far more effective than mere blood. I took out a handkerchief and patted my lips delicately, then slid the blade away into its scabbard.

The unexpected can be frightening. His eyes no longer held contempt.

“You shouldn’t have cursed,” I told him.

I could see him wrestling with the unlikeliness of that opening statement. “What?”

“If you’d held a deep breath instead, you’d have more room now. As it is, your lungs are constricted. You’ll probably pass out after a while.”

“Lady, you’re in deep trouble.”

“When is he coming back for you?”

“Any minute.” I had been watching his face, and saw the lie.

“I don’t think so.”

“He’s coming up the drive now.”

“I don’t think he’s coming at all. Certainly not in time to save you.”

“You’re not going to use that knife on me.”

“Of course not. I don’t have to. Tell me, how’s your breathing? Getting any easier? You think you’ll manage until your boss comes back for you?”

The first shadow of uneasiness passed through his eyes, telling me what I needed to know.

“I don’t think he’s coming. And next Wednesday, when those nice people come for their meeting. Do you think they’ll persist until they get into the house, or will they just knock politely and, when no-one answers, go away?”

His breathing quickly grew more laboured.

“You see? I don’t need a knife. I don’t need to do anything, just walk away and lock the front door behind me.”

“What do you want?” He said it with more obscenity, but I overlooked the words and spoke to the question.

“Where can I find the man who just drove off and left you here?”

He told me what I could do with my question.

I sighed, and stood up. At the motion, the uneasiness returned.

“Oy,” he said. “Honest, I don’t know. I know what he says his name is and I know generally where he lives, but he never told me what he was doing, and he never had me go to his house.”

“You’ve worked for him since last autumn.”

“Yeah, but it’s just that, working for him. I drive him around, I do things for him. He never asks me what I think or tells me anything more than what I need to know.”

I moved away, and he cried out, “Wait, don’t”—I was only fetching a cushion from the chair. He eyed it warily, and looked relieved when I dropped it on the boards and settled onto it.

“Tell me what you do know about him.”

“And if I do?”

“I’ll see to it that you don’t die here. If you don’t talk, I’ll go away and you can take your chances that someone will hear you shouting. Oh, and I’ll strap a belt around your legs first. You won’t be able to roll out of the carpet.”

He didn’t believe that I would use the knife, but he did believe this. He talked.

His name was indeed Marcus Gunderson, and he called his boss The Reverend, a name that was half disdain and half deference. The Reverend had called himself Thomas Brothers, and all the people at his church knew him by that name, but Gunderson had helped him set up that identity back in November.

“What’s his real name?”

“Dunno. Honest, I don’t know.”

“How did he find you?” I asked.

“There’s a group run by some of the churches, helps men when they come out of nick. Find jobs and that, you know?”

“And you were freshly out of prison?”

“Four years in The Scrubs.”

Wormwood Scrubs prison was aptly named for the bitterness of one’s experience there. “So this Brothers presented himself as a fellow churchman willing to give a convict a second chance.”

“’S right.”

“Instead of which, he gave you a second career. Did you drive a young woman down to Sussex last Friday?”

“Friday? No, he gave me the day off Friday, and the week-end.”

I watched him closely, and although I could see that he was concealing some knowledge, I did not think he was lying outright.

“And tonight? He’s not coming back for you, is he?”

“No.”

“Then how will you catch them up?”

“I won’t.”

“What, he’s just driving off and leaving you here?”

“If he wants me, he knows where to find me.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said, although I thought I might.

“He’s his own man. I work for him, I’m not his partner. There’s a lot he doesn’t tell me, there’s a lot he does without me.”

I couldn’t see that line of questioning taking me any further-either he was lying and he would continue to lie, or he was telling me the truth. I decided to leave it, and asked him about his background; about The Reverend and his scar, and
Testimony;
about what he knew, and didn’t know, and guessed. After twenty minutes or so, his answers were coming shorter, his eyes wilder as he struggled for breath.

“You got to let me out of this,” he said.

“I can’t do that, Marcus.”

“I’ll die in here, and then it’ll be you that’s up for murder.”

“If you just relax and breathe slowly, you’ll be fine.”

“I can’t breathe, I tell you!”

“You’re probably thirsty, though, from all that dust. How about a drink?”

“Christ!”

“Tea? Beer?”

“You are a piece of work, lady!”

“Thank you.”

Before I left the room, I strapped a belt around his legs, so he couldn’t reverse the roll of the carpet. I wasn’t gone for more than five minutes, but when I got back, he was sweating with the fear that I had abandoned him.

The string of curses he gave at my entrance was weaker than his earlier efforts. I blithely shoved the carpet tube a quarter-turn over with my foot, then held the glass of beer to his mouth. The curses stopped, and although the floor under his face was puddled with the spillage, most of the contents of the glass went down his throat.

We talked for another ten minutes, until I was satisfied both that I had as much from him as I could get, and that he was not going anywhere for a while. I undid the belt, gently kicked him along the floor until he lay limply on top of the carpet, and then went downstairs to make another phone call to Mycroft.

“I’m sorry to wake you a second time,” I said, and gave him the address of the house, and the request that he find someone at Scotland Yard who could rouse Lestrade and send him here to pick up Marcus Gunderson.

“He should be unconscious for another couple of hours,” I said. “I located the Veronal that Brothers probably used on Yolanda. And turnabout’s fair play—it works a treat on large men, too.”