The Oktober Projekt (12 page)

Up in the bedroom Nick turned on his bedside light, puncturing
the darkness with a savage click. He viewed the room as though it bore the
evidence from a scene of crime. The bed still held their imprint, fresh sheets
ruffled and creased he noted avoiding going near it, preferring a chair on his
side of the bed. Though how many others could make that claim of avoiding Angie
in that bed he couldn’t decide. Silence from the radio marked Angela’s return,
walking straight in, naked. Too much wine Angie, too many dinners with Guy he
decided, watching pouches of flab bounce at the top of her legs.

‘I’m going to see a solicitor, on Monday,’ she announced
curtly, watching him with her sly eyes. Nakedness had never troubled her, she
was as natural in any state and believed inhibitions were for the stupid and
ugly. Another of her cannibalised beliefs she’d acquired at the Slade. What was
the other? Love is an unattainable state, sex is a base desire. He stared at
her face deliberately avoiding her body.

‘Great,’ he said, realising that she actually wanted to make
him feel inadequate, perhaps even crave what he couldn’t have again. She
shrugged and he couldn’t help glimpsing the movement in her breasts.

Pulling on a clean T-shirt and knickers she sat at her dressing
table. She’d more pots of cream and lotions than an alchemist he thought,
watching her apply barriers to prevent wrinkles and lotions to dam the onset of
middle-age. Anger in one big icy hand slid over his intestines, squeezing,
releasing, squeezing again; funnelling shock into the pit of his stomach. This,
after all the years of trying, was finally the end. Blowing his hair off his
hot forehead, Nick shook away the icy fingers. This then the end of a life not
lived for cover, but his own life written off; discarded like a blown workname
and this realisation sent his whole system plummeting on a continuous
free-fall.
                            

‘I’ll move out for a while,’ he offered as she slipped between
the sheets.

No movement from Angie’s side of the bed, her new total
exclusion zone and Nick’s eyes roved onto the curtains, picking out faces
rising from the coloured swirls and blocks of print; demons, monsters and screaming
mouths all sniggering, taunting him.
  

‘Good, because it’s over. You, me, this house, we’ve reached
the end of the road,’ Angela said dully. ‘Just go, now, right now, we’ve
nothing more to say.’

Instead he took a shower, the spray too hot, too cold; another
tradesman Angie would have to hire to rectify the house’s little misdemeanours.
After re-strapping his ribs from the first-aid kit, and a change of clothes, he
pulled down an overnight bag from the top of the wardrobe cramming in a few
warm shirts, trousers, socks and underwear. If she wanted the house she could
have it.
 

Downstairs he started throwing her symphonies and concertos to
one side. A sudden rush of fury at her wilful rejection at reconciliation
overloaded Nick’s circuits, shorting his fuse. He rummaged through his CDs. Led
Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Hendrix, Roxy Music, Bowie, Brubeck; albums
before Angie came along were added to the bag. By the telephone, a pad they
used for passing on messages. Ripping out the numbers from a page she had
titled
His Calls
, Nick skimmed the
numbers and saw one of his missed calls attributed by Angie to ‘The Bitch’, his
wife’s shorthand for Jane Stratton.

Switching off the lights Nick grabbed his bag and banged the
door behind him, the lion’s head knocker rattling for all it was worth. On the
street Nick made a visual sweep, left and right; his face tinted a pale orange
from the street lamps before striding off for his car. Another of my funny
habits Angie, the ones you always complained made us look ridiculous, though
you wouldn’t know how many times they might have saved your life. Same for the
agents I had to run he recounted, climbing into his Saab. Grubs out of the
woodwork, that was what Angie used to call them. It’s something she wouldn’t understand,
she’d never tried, never made the effort. This leaves us where exactly, he
asked himself; two isolated lives that we’d tried to live as one, but it didn’t
take long for Angie to see through the charade, Nick decided and one day Angie,
you’re going to have to admit the truth, we hated ourselves and each other for
not being able to love. He started the car and drove off at speed.

• • •

Nick made the drive to Devon in just
over three hours, reaching the remote detached cottage before four in the
morning. Locking the Saab, hoisting his bag onto his shoulder a blast of sea
air whipped his tiredness away, rising up over the cliff less than half a mile
away. To stand in the darkness was a relief, as though an old friend had been
anxiously waiting to greet him. This spot more than London was where he
considered home, his nearest neighbours a row of ex-coastguard cottages used as
holiday lets a quarter of mile further along the cliff, a small village for
provisions lying a mile behind inland.

Both keys turned with effort and the swollen door, sticking in
its frame as usual, required a brutal push from Nick’s shoulder to swing it
open. Cold damp air streamed around him and Nick began his usual ritual of
acclimatisation. On a shelf inside the porch an oil lamp crackled and hissed as
he lit it, his only means of illumination until he’d turned on the power. No
gas and no telephone, no modern design fads and whims; this is how he wanted
it, basic just like him. Inherited from his mother the cottage was his hideaway;
a jealously guarded retreat where he rarely invited anyone, much to Angie’s
disgust. She saw the place as a chance to impress pleading with Nick to let her
modernise it, redesign it, but he always refused. In summer he’d have all the
sash windows open, the breeze carrying in the smell of sea, the fields, and a
heady aroma of stock. In the evening, depending on the weather, the incense of
wood smoke drifted in.

Opening the inner door to let the light follow him in, the
first kick hit Nick hard just below his left shoulder. Coming in for a second
attack, the figure in motorcycle leathers and helmet threw a string of stinging
punches to Nick’s head and neck. Rammed heavily back against the porch’s thick
sharp walls, the attacker’s knee landed at speed in Nick’s groin. As Nick
collapsed, his attacker delivered another brutal kick hard in his chest as he
went down. Rolling to his right, Nick scrambled up, avoiding another lethal
punch. Springing off the balls of his feet, Nick launched a fierce counterattack,
elbows and fists flying.

Breaking free from a disjointing hold, Nick gasped, needing
air, one of his ribs trying to burn its way out of his chest. A vicious
headbutt snapped Nick’s neck back, the helmet splitting his nose. Reeling,
another savage punch sank Nick to his knees.
 

Unzipping his leathers, drawing a hunting knife from a chest
scabbard, the attacker lunged at Nick. On his back, Nick used his legs, all his
power in his right leg to unbalance his attacker. Reaching behind him, Nick’s
fingers locked onto the curved shaft of an axe used for chopping kindling.
Sliding his hand down the shaft to balance his swing, Nick drove the axe
viciously into the side of the attacker’s knee, spilling the tall figure into a
heap. Back on his feet Nick roared with fury, using his body weight as he
struck three decisive hacks, the final one embedding the axe head deep into his
attacker’s neck below his helmet.

Panting, his ribs severely battered and inflamed, Nick
collapsed next to his attacker, a gurgling noise and stream of blood coming
from under his helmet. Unbuckling the chin strap, Nick tugged off the helmet.
On his back in his final moments of life, Nick recognised one of the drunks
from the stairway he’d passed on his way up to the apartment of Lubov’s mistress.
Kneeling, his breath coming in savage heaves, Nick looked for identification,
but all he found was a tattoo on his attacker’s right shoulder; a star with a
clenched fist bearing an AK-47 emerging from it, which Nick knew identified him
as a member of the Spetsnaz, an elite Russian special forces unit.

Dragging himself into the main room, Nick sat wearily down at a
deal table set before the window, clutching a mug and bottle of Laphroaig.
Outside, the dawn came with a rush, folding the light into the sea forming a
damp November day starved by the cold. Between long pulls of Laphroaig, Nick
rang Paul Rossan on his mobile. The call finished, he lit a cigarette and
stared at the sea; dark and still, patches of soft morning light heaving and
falling with the swell.

• • •

When Jane Stratton heard the news
concerning Nick around a quarter to six that morning, she immediately set out
for Devon. A nasty wind dried the air, raising goose bumps down her arms as she
walked away from Poplar Dock and her sleeping lover. Taking the long route,
Jane checked both ways along Boardwalk Place, over-doing what rational people
call road sense. She made a fist round her bunch of keys, pulling them through
her fingers into an improvised weapon that she kept tucked inside her pocket
all the way to her car.
 

As Rossan supervised the unofficial removal and disposal of any
trace of his attacker, Nick had pulled on his jacket and set off for a walk in
a filthy mood, marching along the coastal path for about a mile before the
weather finally broke. Ephemeral flecks of snow were flying in the air and the
temperature must have been at least minus three with the wind-chill, already
his feet felt numb. He blew into his hands as the horizon darkened; either more
snow or a storm was approaching, either one would be the only excuse he needed
to turn around.

An icy gust whipped powdered snow against his face and Nick
looked up with a frown when he heard his name being called. Jane stood at a
curve in the path a hundred yards ahead of him, her hair mauled by the wind.

‘They sent you to write me off?’ he said, an uneasy edge to his
voice.

‘You know I’d never do that.’ She held out her hand for him,
taking his weight as he climbed over a wooden fence edging in a narrow steep
path snaking down to a coastguard post perched on the tip of a cliff.

‘How’s Paul coping?’ he asked, jumping down.

‘He’s made all the arrangements,’ she said. ‘Want me to get you
a doctor to check you over?’

‘I’m fine, I’ll make it through the week. Any more details you
need for your report?’

‘Not much patience for anyone right now, have you?’ She linked
his arm, letting him lead. And for the first time in this strange light, she
could also see what a gruelling time he’d had in Moscow; as though part of the
Nick she knew and once loved had never made it home.

‘I’ll recover.’

‘Want to tell me about it?’

‘Another time.’

‘Sure.’

Below them the sea crashed into the rocks and gullies
determined to go further inland. They must have walked three hundred yards
before he turned to see if they were alone, Henchard keeping an appointment
with his Lucetta. He lit a cigarette cupping his hands against the thickening
snow.

‘Teddy and C will have to be told?’ Jane said, an infected edge
to her voice.

‘And what’s required in return?’ From her narrow frown he knew
he was going too far, risking never finding what Lubov claimed to be so
precious; unable to repay the deaths he’d been made responsible for.

‘A little bit of faith,’ she snapped, walking on, pulling up
the collar of her thick coat as a screaming wind lifted a cloud of snow,
whisking it over the headland in a fine spray.
 

 
‘I’m right out of
faith at the moment, can’t say when I’ll be restocking.’

‘Put me down for an advance order,’ she said.

‘You might be in for a long wait.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘How’s the body being handled?’
 

‘The back-story the police are releasing is that he’s a
Ukrainian tourist on a biking holiday, camping off the beaten track when he was
viciously robbed and murdered. The team have chosen a remote location in Cornwall
to pitch a tent, provide him with some personal kit, maps, bike, and the signs
of a struggle. Everything’s taken care of.’

‘Is it?’ he replied, not sharing her mood.

Motoring in towards the coast a fishing boat ran for shelter,
its shape lost against the dark sky, a small green starboard lamp fading and
gleaming on its mast.

‘So what do you propose to do?’ She couldn’t bear to look at
him, his face had the waxy tint of a victim, someone who’d given up, didn’t
care.

‘Stay low, watch my back.’

‘Good, you do that.’

‘That your professional opinion?’ His voice dipped, low and
drained.

‘You sure you can rely on me?’ she huffed.

‘I used to think I could, in the past.’

‘You’re not in a very forgiving mood Nick.’

‘I’m not the forgiving sort.’

Her face had a disquieting beauty to it as it fastened on him,
half in tenderness, half in reproach; a disenchanted lover’s glare probing the
stubborn defences. In the turbulent stormy light she looked younger, intense
and annoyingly desirable.

‘Maybe you should cooperate, let me, Roly, Paul and Teddy
handle it.’

Like a terrier he couldn’t let go of his victim. ‘Is that what
they asked you to offer?’

‘No. And I haven’t given up on you,’ she said, rebuffing a
stray thought of why she almost became his wife.

The coastguard hut loomed up at the end of the path, its
whitewashed perimeter wall a cool grey in the damp light. They drifted in and
sheltered from the wind and snow, sitting close together on the same step they
could have been survivors from a wreck. She raked her hair with her fingers;
don’t look at me, don’t see how I’ve given away my concern, inside she wanted
to scream. Tridents of lightening cut into the waves and the snow gave way to
hailstones that peppered their legs.