We Are Death (37 page)

He stood inside the door until he heard the footsteps on his level, then he was out onto the landing in a quick, silent movement. Three more men in front of him, each one surprised. They all reacted quickly, yet they all died, the knife dragged across all three throats. If anyone watching had thought that Morlock had rehearsed killing three men in a confined space with a knife, then they would have been right. In such situations the reactions of men varied only slightly, their movements predictable and desperate.

The bodies fell close to one another. Morlock stepped to the side, making sure no blood stained the front of his top or trousers. It was unlikely that he was going to need to repeat his pretence of officially working here, as he had with the Indian’s party, but he had to leave the option open.

There was a noise downstairs, the front door being pushed back against the weight of a body. Morlock glanced up the stairs, still not in a position for his eyes to fall on the door behind which negotiations were taking place, and made a quick calculation of how many men would still be in there.

Too many for him to burst into the room and take them all out at once. He’d get most of them, but in that kind of situation the risk was just too great.

For the moment it was time to disappear and see how things played out without him. His presence would be called for soon enough.

*

‘S
eventy-five billion.’

They were rising steadily in fives, the amounts barely seeming to matter. Monopoly money. Money to burn.

Geyerson wasn’t preening, he wasn’t celebrating. He didn’t trust any of these people, and they wouldn’t trust him. Until he was out of here, until the book was in their possession and he had absolute confirmation that the money was in the bank, he was still going to be worried.

The fact that two of them had stayed in and were now bidding to a preposterous level, worried him more than anything else. Were they just making up numbers, now? Did it matter to either of them where this stopped? Would they ever actually stop, or just keep going and going?

That wasn’t supposed to happen either.

‘Eighty billion.’

‘Eighty-five.’

One of the guards touched Geyerson on the shoulder.

‘Thought I heard something downstairs.’

Geyerson hadn’t heard anything and knew they were well covered below. Wondered if his man was just looking for an excuse to nip outside for a cigarette. Hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

The guard moved away, didn’t look at his boss – the one of the eight in the room who was nominally in charge of the detachment – opened the door, closed it again behind him as he left.

He stood for a moment, listening. He could hear movement downstairs. Movement, in itself, didn’t mean anything. There were other guards, there were the other bidders, who had left without bidding. He contemplated putting his head back round the door and getting someone to go with him, but was never really going to do it.

Down the stairs quickly, his gun drawn, waiting to shoot the first person he saw who shouldn’t have been there.

*

T
hey moved in, stepping over the bodies, only making a cursory check to see if they were still alive. If this was the work of the man who had killed the previous four members of Geyerson’s climbing team, as they assumed it was, there would be little need to check if any of the victims lying here were breathing.

‘I think we have enough dead bodies here to make the morning news,’ said Markussen quietly, stepping over a guard at the foot of the stairs, his weapon already drawn.

He hesitated briefly before heading up the stairs. He had already called for more back up, but wasn’t of a mind to wait for it, not when they were in the middle of an active situation.

There were three further officers with them, alongside Haynes, Badstuber and Jericho. Only Haynes and Jericho weren’t armed.

‘You know how to handle a weapon, gentlemen?’ asked Markussen. ‘It might be an idea to pick one up. You can take it from me that you’re authorised.’

Haynes looked quickly at Jericho, who nodded. That was the only authorisation of any use to him. Jericho, who had never in his life used a gun in the course of an investigation, did not follow.

Markussen barked an order in Norwegian to one of his men, who turned to the destroyed control panel, quickly accepted that there was nothing to be done with it at this stage, and then he was out the front door, back down towards the gate.

‘You should have a weapon,’ said Badstuber, touching Jericho on the arm.

He shook his head but didn’t offer any platitudes on the likelihood of his being all right without it. He might well not be. His chances in a gunfight, even if he’d had a gun, weren’t all that much better.

Markussen started moving up the stairs, one of his men at his side, Haynes next in line. They hesitated when they saw the bodies lying on the first floor landing, then moved quickly up the last few stairs to the next level.

Three more corpses, throats slashed.

The bullet that hit Markussen came out of nowhere. The guard coming down from above, seeing the bodies on the floor, assuming the worst, fired without thinking. The bullet struck Markussen in the shoulder, travelling from above, and continued down, deep inside his body.

Shots rang out, the guard coming down the stairs grabbing desperately at his moment of frantic, bloody fame, and in not waiting to establish who exactly it was he was shooting at, saving Morlock quite a lot of work. Just as Morlock had thought might happen.

He let off three more bullets before his fire was returned. A quick, frenzied burst of noise, guns blasting, bodies falling or diving, and then finally the man who had started it all taking two bullets in the chest and crumbling noisily and awkwardly down the stairs, his neck breaking in the fall.

Markussen lay dying, his head resting on the legs of one of Morlock’s earlier victims. The police officer who’d been climbing the stairs beside him had also been hit. A bullet in the face, one in the leg. He was not yet dead, but was definitely out the game. Haynes had been hit in the arm. Badstuber, Jericho and the other police officer were unharmed.

‘Fuck,’ said Haynes, gripping the place high on his right arm where the bullet had passed through.

Badstuber and Jericho backed against the wall of the stairs and looked up. There would likely be more coming.

‘We need to get out,’ said Jericho. ‘We’re not armed for this.’

The Norwegian officer moved ahead, his weapon held out in front of him. Badstuber glanced at Jericho, indicating that she couldn’t really leave him on his own.

‘Sergeant,’ said Jericho to the Norwegian, ‘lower your weapon and get back downstairs. These people are just going to be firing blindly, and we have no idea how many of them there are...’

Footsteps on the landing upstairs, voices raised.

‘Police!’ shouted Jericho. ‘Hold your fire!’

The noise upstairs stopped. They could hear voices, lowered now, as there was some discussion on how to proceed.

Jericho was standing with his back to the wall, three steps below the first floor landing. Badstuber and Haynes were kneeling, guns ready, on the steps above him. The Norwegian sergeant was leaning over Markussen.

There was a moment of calm, everybody knowing that it could go either way. Jericho suddenly felt out of his depth. Old. He was a detective anyway, it wasn’t as though he’d been happily doing this kind of thing in his youth. He’d never been involved in a shoot-out in his life. How absurd that it should happen now, three weeks before he retired.

If they backed off and met up outside with the arriving law enforcement, they could end up in some sort of Waco-style stand-off, which would be bad for everyone. The alternative, getting into a gunfight here on the stairs, was liable to leave most, if not all, of them dead.

‘There’s someone else here, taking your people out,’ shouted Jericho. ‘We need to get you out of the house to safety. Lower your weapons, come downstairs, and... let’s just get the fuck out of here. Come on!’

The moment wasn’t over. The longer it went on, the greater the chance they got out of there alive, but until they were all actually out of the house and the police had arrived it wasn’t going to be finished. And whoever had started the killing was less likely to allow things to play out so calmly.

Of course, on top of that there was the other presence. Someone else hovering in the background, just out of sight and sound and understanding, waiting to play a part Jericho did not understand.

A gun went off. No one really knew where it came from, but that didn’t matter. It was Morlock. Having decided there had been enough silence and introspection for several gunfights, never mind just the one, he’d removed the silencer and taken a shot, without aiming at anyone in particular.

But who fires the bullet that gets things going is a question for investigators and historians. For the combatants at the time, all that matters is the sound of the gunshot.

A moment, another brief silence, and then the air exploded.

––––––––

T
hey could still hear footsteps, the occasional bullet. They had also begun to recognise the duller thud of a silencer and knew that the Grindelwald killer was at work.

Haynes, Badstuber and Jericho had retreated to the room along the corridor in which the Indian non-bidder lay dead, along with his two bodyguards. Jericho had led them there, the fact that all three of them were now wounded helping his conscience in leading them from the fight. It might have been sensible, but it still felt wrong.

As well as the wound in his arm, Haynes had received one in the side, this bullet also passing through. There was blood, but as far as any of them could diagnose, it was unlikely to be life-threatening. Badstuber had been shot in the lower leg, and had had a narrow escape, with a bullet cutting her cheek. Jericho had been shot in the thigh.

They had hobbled along to the first room they came to, bundled inside, closed the door, and were now waiting with guns drawn for the door to open.

The police sergeant ahead of them on the stairs was dead. The other officer with whom they’d arrived had returned to the fray, and as far as they could make out more police had arrived, but the reinforcements did not yet seem to include an armed SWAT team. This in itself, to Jericho, felt peculiar.

Jericho was behind an armchair, Haynes and Badstuber behind a small sofa, all three of them trying to hide the pain. The sounds from around the house were punctuated by occasional gasped breaths.

‘Just like a Saturday evening in Wells,’ said Jericho, and Haynes grimaced in return.

‘Are you kidding?’ asked Badstuber, seriously.

‘No,’ said Haynes. ‘If you take away the guns, the excitement, the ancient magical books and the ridiculous sums of money.’

Badstuber nodded, winced again as another burst of pain shot up from her leg.

‘I could do with your mate, Durrant, sir,’ said Haynes, ‘and his thesis on withstanding pain. Fuck...’

Jericho shook his head, didn’t look at his sergeant. Durrant was the last thing anyone needed in any situation. Yet he was here, somewhere. He could feel him, his lingering presence, and still with his part to play. Outside there was a lull, yet there was something about it. Something to make it feel temporary.

‘You never know, you may get your wish,’ said Jericho.

‘What d’you mean?’ asked Haynes, although he wasn’t really concentrating on the conversation.

Jericho had his eyes on the door. Badstuber looked at him, only a couple of feet away.

‘He’s not here,’ she said.

Jericho glanced at her, caught her eye, then looked away, troubled. Didn’t want to talk to Badstuber about it. Didn’t want to face the truth.

‘He’s not here,’ she repeated.

‘Who’s not here?’ asked Haynes.

‘The voice I heard... when I was outside your hotel room in Marrakech, the voice I heard. It wasn’t Durrant. It wasn’t even a man’s voice. Who was it?’

Jericho closed his eyes. Sure it was Durrant. That made sense, didn’t it? That Durrant was still haunting him. That was what happened in life. You were haunted by your past, and he was being haunted by Durrant. Bound to him, attached to each other by some strange cord neither of them could explain.

‘You were talking to a woman,’ said Badstuber. ‘Who was it? Why did you say it was Durrant? Why do you keep saying you’re being haunted by Durrant?’

‘It
is
Durrant,’ said Jericho. ‘It has to be Durrant.’

‘What?’ said Haynes, but he realised he was superfluous to whatever was going on. He wasn’t about to get an answer.

‘Durrant’s dead, Robert!’

Jericho twitched, lowered his head, pressed it against the back of the seat.

‘Who were you talking to?’

‘I was talking to Durrant,’ said Jericho quietly, his voice low and wavering.

Haynes looked over at him, then back to Badstuber. She was staring at Jericho, her face compassionate, demanding almost that he let her help him, but he wasn’t returning the look.

What was he avoiding, Haynes wondered. Why was it that Badstuber could know that much about him in a few days, that she could see through him so easily, when he had barely scratched the surface after working for him for nearly three years?

The answer to that, at least, was straightforward. Jericho was always more likely to let a woman in. Men got nothing other than a brick wall. Women also got the brick wall, but just occasionally there would be a brick missing, occasionally they would get a glimpse of the other side.

The door opened. Immediately they were all up and alert, eyes and weapons aimed round the side of the furniture, although Jericho was still not armed.

Nervous eyes looked into the room, then the door opened further and Geyerson walked in, clutching a folder to his chest. He did not appear to be armed, nor did it seem as though he spotted the three figures hiding behind the seats.

Looking warily down at the bodies of the Brazilian and his men, he quickly stepped further into the room, closed the door behind him and turned.