Untouchable (34 page)

Lennart strides over and grips me under the arm. Steadies me against the side of the car.

‘Wait here.’

He walks round and opens the boot. I can’t see what he’s doing from this angle, but I hear a grunt of effort as he heaves something out. There’s a heavy sound as whatever it is drops to the ground.

‘Up!’ orders Lennart sharply. For a moment I think he’s speaking to me. Then in the half-light I make out the shape of someone struggling to their feet. A man, I realize, as he stands, though his face is obscured by a kind of tight black mask.

What the fuck …?

Lennart prods him in the back with the gun and grabs his arm. He waves the gun at me, using it to point at a path through the undergrowth.

I can’t move. I feel sick, my legs quivery. Who is this? What the hell is Alex doing? The reality of my situation finally hits me and I start crying again.

‘Come on!’ hisses Lennart, pulling the figure towards the open countryside. I stumble after them, slipping in the mud, still not able to see the path clearly. My head throbbing with the effort of movement.

After five minutes or so we emerge into what looks like marshland. I can hear reeds swishing in the wind, a smell in the air of grass and damp earth. Lennart takes my arm again, steers me across to another track. Water oozes up around my feet, seeping into my boots and soaking the bottom of my jeans.

Now it’s happening, now all this is finally drawing to a close, part of my mind is alert, racing, calculating my chances of escape. But only a small part. Most of me knows it’s futile, and with this admission something settles over me.

A kind of peace.

Somehow I always knew this was coming. Knew my life would bring me here, walking in the dim dawning light with this shadowy man. My Nemesis. Suddenly it feels like it doesn’t really matter any more; with no choices left, I may as well accept the inevitable.

‘This’ll do,’ he says, as we arrive at a small clearing in the grassland. It’s windier here, more exposed. Gusts whip up my hair, tug at my clothes. I shiver in the damp dawn air.

Lennart releases the figure and for the first time, in the gathering light, I notice he isn’t wearing shoes. His socks are dark with wet and mud, and I can see he is shaking, either with cold or fear.

Oh God … Panic rises up again, closing my throat. I feel my chest contract, my lungs threatening to shut down. I try to breathe more slowly, then force myself to turn and look at Lennart. It’s drizzling again, a fine mist of rain settling on his features. I hover there, trembling, as it soaks into my hair, my clothes.

I left my coat in the car, I remember, along with my handbag. I wonder what he will do with them. I guess I’ve no more need for them now than this man has for his shoes.

I wonder, too, what he’s done. How he’s managed to get himself on the wrong side of Alex Lennart.

‘Ever have the feeling we’re simply going through the motions?’ Lennart asks, raising his eyes to the fat crescent of the moon, still visible towards the horizon. He stares at it briefly, then withdraws the gun from his pocket. Holds it in his right hand, appraising the fit, the weight of it. ‘I don’t know. You always hope there can be some other outcome. Other than the obvious, I mean.’

He turns to me. ‘A Taurus,’ he says, showing me the gun. ‘Very discreet. You ever handled one?’

I shake my head. A double execution, I think. More efficient, I guess, than offing us individually.

Alex studies my face for a second, his expression almost regretful. Then raises the gun level with my chest.

I close my eyes. Stand there, legs trembling so much I can barely stay upright, breath stalled in my lungs. My body trying desperately to prepare itself for its own dissolution.

Just do it, hisses a voice inside my head.
Just fucking do it.

The seconds fall away from me, one by one. But the impact doesn’t come.

‘Grace.’

Tentatively I open my eyes and look at Lennart. See now what I missed before – he’s holding the gun by the barrel, offering it to me.

‘Here.’ Lennart flicks the handle towards me. ‘Take it.’

I step forward and do as he says. ‘Is it loaded?’

He smiles. ‘Of course.’

Hand shaking, I check the safety catch. I aim at the ground a few yards to the side of me and pull the trigger. There’s a loud snap and a chunk of earth flies up into the air and lands somewhere in the reeds.

Jesus. I let the implications of this sink in. Spin round before Lennart can grab me, but he’s just watching. Smiling.

Then, swiftly, he pulls the mask off the man staggering beside him. I feel a slam to my guts, a punch of raw emotion.

Fuck, no …

No, no, no, no,
no
.

He blinks, eyes adjusting to the light. His face looks slack. Drugged, I realize, though he seems to be coming round. Gaffer tape covering his mouth. But still unmistakably Michael. Though his hair is longer and even in this light I can tell he’s aged, two deep lines running from nose to cheek, like scars.

Michael’s eyes focus on me, widening as they take in the gun in my hand.

‘So, Grace,’ says Alex, nodding towards it. ‘What’s it to be? Are you ready to cross that line?’

I gaze at him for a second, then down at the pistol in my hands. And remember my first trick. Standing by the door waiting for a man to arrive. Telling myself I could back out at any time, yet no part resisting when the knock came. Letting myself get swept along until it was too late, until there was no way back.

Just like with Michael, I think. Walking right into the trap he laid for me, blindfolded by my own desire.

‘Grace?’

I raise my eyes to Lennart. ‘You killed Amanda,’ I say. Not asking, stating.

He sighs. ‘Actually, for what it’s worth, that was more Hardy’s doing than mine. I may trade in violence, but in my opinion it’s rarely a solution for anything. And I was right, because the problem didn’t end with her, did it?’

He spreads his hands in a gesture taking in our situation as well as our surroundings. ‘Here we all are.’

I look back at Michael, relishing the weight of the weapon in my hand. The rightness of it. A mounting sense of anticipation that’s almost sexual. Lennart doesn’t move, simply studies my face, that half-smile playing across his lips.

And I understand, as if for the first time, just how very dangerous he is. For someone like me, this man is crack cocaine. My drug of choice. My body feels the pull of him like an addiction. Like the constant craving for nicotine that never quite leaves my consciousness.

As I turn back to Michael and raise the gun, I sense Alison Tennant watching me from the shadows of my mind. I touch the trigger, feeling my arm begin to tremble, remembering that client, the one who was a soldier in the Falklands. That moment he described.

Kill or be killed.
What kind of choice is that?

Michael’s eyes fix on mine. I force myself to stare right into them. Search for a sign of pleading, of fear, of begging for forgiveness.

Find only contempt.

My finger caresses the smooth curve of metal beneath it. So cool, so … seductive. I see Alison’s body, hanging in her parents’ garage. Michael staring out the window of that flat, turning to me.

You’re all the same, you fucking bitches
.

I lift the gun a bit higher. Aim for his head. Close my eyes and will myself to squeeze. An instant later I feel the weapon wrenched from my hand and before I can do anything, say anything, there’s a sharp whiplash crack and Michael’s body folds in on itself, crumpling forward, landing a few feet away.

‘Oh God …’ My legs collapse beneath me and I sink to my hands and knees. I stare at Michael through the half-light, waiting for movement. His body twitches for a moment, then stills.

‘Oh God …’ Something like a scream builds in my throat. A howl. I can’t believe what I’ve just seen. The terrible, unassailable
reality
of it.

Dead. Michael is
dead
.

‘Grace. Let it go.’

I look up at Lennart, still holding the gun, arm by his side. He’s looking at the body with a wistful expression. ‘I know I said violence is rarely a solution,’ he says, pulling a plastic bag from his pocket. ‘Well, this is one of the exceptions.’

‘But I was going to …’

Lennart looks at me. His smile has a touch of indulgence. ‘Were you? Well, we’ll never know, will we, Grace? Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t, but either way, I wasn’t going to leave you with that on your conscience.’

I stare back at him, numb with shock. Then watch, bewildered, as Lennart removes the gloves from his hands and stuffs them into the plastic bag.

Gloves? He wasn’t wearing those before.

He holds the bag up in front of my face. ‘Our little insurance policy, Grace; I had to appease the boys with something.’ It takes me a moment to register what he means. Of course. My prints are all over the gun. All he’d need to frame me for Michael’s murder.

After all, it’s not like I haven’t got a motive.

Lennart steps towards me and pulls me to my feet, gripping my arm. I stagger, try to stay upright. I’m shaking so hard it’s nearly impossible, my mind still trying to process everything that just happened.

‘If it makes you feel any better, if it wasn’t him it would’ve been you,’ he says.

‘How do you mean?’ I stammer.

‘I’ve had somebody watching him, since his release. He was gunning for you, Grace, if you’ll excuse the pun. Waiting for an opportunity. Without poor Alison to torment, you were his next best option – especially after you testified against him in court.’

I swallow. Think of the visit to my father’s bedside. Jesus.

Lennart releases me. I resist the urge to back away.

‘Just so we understand each other, Grace. We both walk away from this. We forget it ever happened, OK?’

My eyes dart back towards the body crumpled on the ground. ‘But what about …’

‘What about him?’ shrugs Alex. ‘It could have been anybody. A man like that racks up enemies like a dog gets fleas. Nobody will suspect either of us. Besides, I can easily furnish you with an alibi, should you need one.’

I stare at him. Of course he can. I’m beginning to think there’s nothing this man can’t do.

I look back at the body on the ground. Was I going to kill him? I wonder, my stomach sinking, conscience kicking back in like a reflex. Could I really have done it?

I may as well have pulled the trigger, I think. After all, I had the gun. I could have stopped Lennart, stopped all of this.

And yet I didn’t.

I glance up at Lennart. He’s grinning, as if reading my mind. Taking a step towards me, he runs his hand through my damp hair. ‘Stop punishing yourself, Grace. He got what he deserved. You know that, so let it go.’

He tugs my face up to meet his. Presses his thumb against the end of my nose and draws it down over my lips. ‘But what about me? Can you leave me unpunished? Are you willing to let me get away with so much?’

I stare back at him, right into those cloud-grey eyes. ‘There’s nothing I can do to you that would make any difference,’ I say, finally acknowledging the truth of it. Seeing more clearly now. Lennart values his own life no more than he valued Michael’s.

‘Clever girl,’ he laughs. ‘You’re right. I made that Faustian pact some time ago, and the devil has my soul in hock. I’m just marking time till he gets his hands on me.’

He inhales, looks up again into the sky, then scoops his hand round the back of my head and pulls me towards him. ‘But equally I could say the same of you, Grace. Part of you would have liked it to have ended here, wouldn’t you? An end to all that torment. Peace, at last.’

I don’t reply.

Lennart lowers his head and kisses me on the mouth. I don’t resist. Simply wait until he draws away.

‘But that would be a shame, Grace. To paraphrase Hannibal Lecter, the world is a far more interesting place with you in it.’

He releases me and takes a step backwards. Stares out across the marshes, seeming to ruminate on something as he surveys the featureless grassland, the pylons and wind turbines in the distance.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I’ll take you home.’

‘So this is it?’ I ask. ‘The end of all of it?’

Lennart smiles. A heavy, sad sort of smile. ‘Haven’t you got what you wanted?’

I gaze out across the rain-soaked landscape, then back at him. And realize I probably have.

49

Friday, 17 April

Two emails again, after I’ve deleted the backlog from clients. The first from an unknown mailbox. Nothing in the message except a link to an article in the
London Evening News
. I click on it, my heart beginning to race the instant I see the headline.

MAN FOUND SHOT ON MARSHES

The body of convicted rapist Michael James Farrish was found yesterday by a dog walker on Rainham Marshes in Essex. Sources have confirmed that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the chest. Farrish was released from Brakeford Prison in Leeds two months ago, after serving five years for breaking and entering and violating a restraining order. Police are appealing for witnesses to the crime, which they believe occurred in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

I go back to the email, examine the address.
[email protected]
.

Mephistopheles? Then I remember Faust’s demon, the devil’s representative, the collector of the souls of the damned.

I click on reply. Write just two words.

Point taken.

Seconds later a text bleep on my phone:
My offer still stands. Whatever it takes, Grace.

The second email is from Julia, informing me that my father died early this morning. ‘Peacefully,’ she says, though it’s hard to imagine him doing anything without protest.

I stare at the screen for a minute or two, absorbing the fact of his passing, listening to the ringing in my ears. Tinnitus – one of the few things we ever had in common.

What do I feel, I ask myself after a few more minutes pass. And the answer comes, like a benediction.