The Man Who Killed (28 page)

Her auburn hair was pinned up, more or less how she wore it in life. In life. I touched my own face, and felt my mouth tighten. She was gone, forever, and yet here she was again, one last time. It was such an incredible sequence of events leading me to this infernal place at such an instant, scarcely credible, and yet here I was. The man who loved her more than anyone in all the world stood over her lifeless body. I needed a cigaret.

In the close atmosphere was a deep, evil savour I didn't overmuch like. So many things had happened that I'd already begun to forget or couldn't tell myself the truth about. I wanted brandy, opium, a needle to numb me. With impious hands I lit a vesta and with it a Forest and Stream. A pretty picture in the crypt. Smoke cleaned out my lungs and the fag end was on the ground by the time Smiler returned. He was quiet and ghostly. I took a large sheet from him and wrapped Laura as tenderly as I could, breathing over her and smelling the faintest hint of her toilet water and powder, of herself mingled with earth. I made her up as an Egyptian mummy, a pharaohess, Tut-Ankh-Amon's queen. Smiler'd found a bag and helped me hoist Laura into it. Once upon a time and on the open sea she'd be sewn into her shroud but in this age it was a sack of rubber closed with lightning fasteners. Suddenly I was incredibly tired.

“Did you bring the rest?” I asked.

Smiler flinched.

“Yes, yes I did, but what do you need it for?”

“Hand it over.”

My eyes burned into his and he saw how serious I was. Smiler took two stoppered vials from his coat and handed them to me warily. I took them to the table and opened my deck next to the rusty blood-spattered lancets, saws, probes, clamps, and broken Erlenmeyer flasks. It was an unprofessional mess. Regardless of the fact that this was not a room for careful work the instruments should have been washed and dipped in disinfectant, for the sake of those of us still living.

I dripped water in a spoon and put powder in, then boiled with a match. A new hypodermic would've been fitting considering the surroundings but there was no time for such niceties, not with the elixir so close. I removed my coats and rolled up a sleeve, bound the cord over a bicep, and held it taut with my teeth. Smiler watched me and I watched him as I made the injection, pushing the plunger to its resting place. Loosening the cord my body went slack; I floated backward to a wall, Smiler's mouth agape.

The black magic worked its charm and in a very few minutes I was back on my toes, ready to move. I re-dressed and tested my strength at the slab, placing my hands under the clammy rubber. I lifted. She was light as a bird, hollow-boned even at dead weight. With the amount of morphine I'd taken I felt flushed with fresh power.

A jerk of my neck had Smiler scuttling to unshoot the bolt of the vault door. He swung it open on creaking hinges and fresh air came in.

“Follow me,” I said.

“What, now? Where to?”

“We're going to put her back in the ground, and then alert the authorities. This way you're safe.”

Smiler goggled and followed as I shuffled down the passageway. There was an angled trap above my head. It was difficult to climb up the slanted scuttle; bags of waste were normally dragged out to incinerators by another route. This was typically a one-way channel. Smiler and I came out into a quiet yard with no overlooking portals, another precaution of the planners. Above us on all sides were shuttered, barred windows. In the mean, grassy square we heard the scurry of rats.

“What time is it?”

Smiler consulted a pocketwatch.

“Half-four.”

Tricky dusking light had fooled my eyes. We wanted no witnesses to our departure. Between this wing of the hospital and a freestanding block crept a narrow passageway. I hoisted the heavy bag over my shoulder and walked between the dripping brick walls. By following a little-used path edging a football field I came out through a broken wooden fence. The grade led upward to the covering thickness of trees. Judging that our movements had been unobserved I stopped and set my load against a trunk. Smiler wheezed behind me. I unbuttoned my collar and fanned myself with my hat.

“Where're we going?”

“The burying ground. They're gravediggers, so they must have found her in the cemetery.”

“Which one?”

“The Protestant, naturally. We'll see if we can find out what happened. Perhaps something was left behind, a clue. Then we can get them.”

“Do you know who did this?”

I cast my mind over the preceding days. “I believe so.”

“Then... then, what?”

“We'll put her back. You can telephone the police. Use a callbox and disguise your voice. The body snatchers won't breathe a word; they're probably drinking to forget it as we speak. This way the dons won't find out, your parents neither.”

Lame as it sounded to my own ears, Smiler seemed to find this plan plausible enough. I wondered about him. He wasn't a bad fellow, really. Recent adventures with Jack had toughened me to whipcord. I now took activity such as this in my stride. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up flying an airplane onto a dirigible accompanied by a drunken Eskimo quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald. Poor Smiler, though, was gobsmacked with shock. In his experience transporting a body up a mountainside in the gloom was a perilous challenge. To me this fatal course felt pre-ordained.

It was cold enough to keep good people by the hearth in their homes. No such luck for yours truly. The sky now a dark purple and the terrain ideal for camouflage, concealment. I might be making a mistake, but it didn't feel like one, instead as though it was my destiny to walk this trail. Who other than I understood the significance of these surroundings, this landmark to my frustrations and disappointments? None now breathing. Near here I'd found strawberries, on the side of the mountain once an old Huron boneyard. Their palisade stood hereabouts, rotted away and ruined by succeeding ages. Everything fades to dust and tonight would be lost for all time. Only the rock would stand, the royal mountain, and even it would one day erode in the rain and snow.

Tangled roots underfoot on the steepness. Smiler forged ahead now, visible in his white coat. What was he thinking? Frightened of me, of the evidence of crime I carried, of losing his place in the world through implication and accessory after the fact. They were all reasonable fears. I kept an ear out for any disturbance. In these parts burrowed red foxes that hunted at this sneaking hour. Smiler's breathing had regularized but my heart hammered under the strain. Laura was ninety-five pounds, no more, her hair fine and red, her features delicate and precise. My God. This is what I'd come to, carrying the corpse of the woman I loved through the night in my drug-bolstered arms. I slowed. Smiler rounded a curve. Beyond the slope, past the breaking clouds, I saw a smear of deep maroon where the sun had set and, low on the horizon, a sharp pinpoint of scarlet: Mars. We'd covered a mile on an ellipse up the northwest flank of the mountain and were nearing the edge of the park proper. In a ragged stand of pine I stopped to catch my breath and gently placed Laura on a declivity. The second and final rigor mortis had not yet set. Smiler jogged back to where I rested. He squatted and huffed.

“So,” I said. “What'd you talk about with Houdini at the Princess?”

This startled him. He hopped up, eyes darting nervously to Laura, mute witness to this macabre scene.

“I saw you with Jacques Price and another fellow. What happened?”

“We, we went to see him.”

Smiler sat again and it poured from him. He spoke rapidly, the sound of his own voice reassuring himself. I kept a careful eye on his panic. He was on my leash yet and needed to stay tied to me for the time being.

“Jacques and I went to, we went to talk to Houdini. Jacques was going to sketch him for the school 'paper. There was a knock at the door and someone showed up.”

“Who?”

“Whitehead.”

“Who?”

Smiler told me. It was a character named Whitehead. Apparently, he was a divinity student and a Christian. He'd begun asking Houdini screwy questions about the Bible.

“What kind?” I asked.

“Did Houdini believe in it? Had Jesus performed the miracles or were they put-ups?” said Smiler.

Whitehead asked Houdini if Jesus had walked on water and healed the sick. Houdini demurred but replied that if he'd been alive back then he could've done the same stunts and the world would now be praying to Harry Houdini. After that statement Whitehead punched him.

“Pardon?” I asked.

“Whitehead had heard that Houdini could withstand any blow, and Houdini nodded. So Whitehead punched Houdini in the stomach.”

“What'd you do?” I asked Smiler.

“Nothing. It came right out of left field. Whitehead stuck around a bit and then left. Houdini didn't look too good and asked us to go. He had a show that night.”

“That's it?” I asked.

“That's it.”

Smiler's tale was fishy as haddock and had Jack's fingerprints all over it. We'd waited in the dressing room while Jack consulted his 'watch, that I recalled. This Whitehead character was probably Jack's cat's-paw. To what end?

Near half an hour had passed and my sweat had cooled on me. Neither beast nor fowl could be seen or heard in the stillness fallen over the woods. I'd taken the precaution of leaving a half-dose in my syringe and injected it now. In the near dark I saw the expression on Smiler's face, contempt crossed with fear.

“Let's go.”

Again I lifted the unwieldy sack onto my shoulder. We
resumed the climb along a devious path that, after several minutes, opened to a wide area bordered by a wire fence. Through a ragged opening we climbed up onto a bluff overlooking the graveyard. Here we stood on the tomb of the Molsons, their crypt a tall lighthouse with the clan's crest carved on the stone. The ground from here sloped down to the south, studded with headstones, draped urns, and obelisks leaning off-true. A light peacefulness reigned as a wind stirred scattered autumn leaves. Enough light remained to lead us up a rise to a far and quiet corner. Then the sky went black and through frazzled clouds I saw the first stars come out. Smiler followed me, not smiling now.

There it was, just over there, a neat hole in the ground. We stopped. Three open graves waited, with pyramids of dirt piled by each. Two were untouched since their original excavation. The third site had been disturbed.

“Here,” I said.

I set down the bag and sat, drained and sweating. Smiler said nothing and rubbed his hands to keep them warm. I summoned a little strength and with as much care as I could muster went down into the first hole and gently settled Laura into it. I said no prayer but climbed out of the pit and told Smiler: “Bury her.”

He looked around for a spade and then at me.

“Fill it,” I said.

“How?”

“Get your hands dirty.”

Smiler began to protest, then sighed and started pushing dirt into the hole. He kicked with his feet then got on his knees to shovel and scrape. In twenty minutes the earth was level again. I lit a cigaret and stepped back.

“How's that?” he asked.

“Not bad.”

He turned to me.

“Now you,” I said.

“What?”

“Get in the next one.”

“What? Why me?”

Smiler noticed the gun in my hand.

“Mick?”

“Get into that hole, you lousy son of a bitch.”

I pointed the Webley at him. For reasons of his own, Smiler raised his hands. His mouth opened.

“Mick, please, please no.”

“Do it or by God I'll shoot you down like the fucking dog you are. You did it.”

“I did?”

“You killed her.”

“Mick, you're, you're mad! Why would I kill her?”

“I caught you.”

“No! Mick, I, I swear!”

I cocked the hammer. Smiler moved crabwise to the middle grave and slowly inched his way into it. He stood, his hands still held high, white lab coat dirtied.

“Mick, it wasn't me.”

“Yup, that's true,” I said.

“Then, why this?”

“‘Who will help the widow's son?'” I teased.

Smiler's voice filled with relief. It was as black as the ace of spades now. Only the faintness of his coat was visible.

“I'm on the level,” Smiler said.

I looked down at him in his hole. “You sure are.”

“The square.” Smiler then said something that was probably the Mason Word and put down his arms. Houdini, Jack, Sir Lionel Dunphy, they were all the same. I was outside looking in.

“Mick, Mick, you know! You know I didn't do this. I didn't kill her. Laura.”

“Yes, I do,” I said.

“Then who did?” asked Smiler.

“Me.”

There was a moment of silence. Smiler broke it by blurting in terror: “I come from the East!”