He could hear the two voices, raised now. They seemed to be arguing. Kale could not make sense of it. Money, it would appear, was the issue in dispute. But that was none of his concern. He tightened his hand around the handle and eased the door open about two inches, screwing his eyes up against the sudden glare of light, holding himself absolutely still until his pupils had contracted and the light no longer pained him. Gryffe was standing behind his desk, his back to Kale, and beyond him, the other moved into Kale’s line of vision; a thin, pale, frightened looking man. Carroty red hair and beard. Perfect, Kale thought, with an almost inhuman detachment from what he was about.
He had no thought for the men he was about to kill, their pains, their loves, all the years they had lived until now; years that he would rub out, so that only the faintest impression of their existence would remain on the pages of history. So it was with most men. What did it matter that they had ever lived? They all died, sooner or later. All the futile years. He took a single step back and levelled the Colt through the opening of the door.
‘Don’t be a fool, Gryffe,’ he heard the red-haired man saying. ‘I can ruin you.’ Gryffe stooped and opened the top right-hand drawer of his desk and stared blankly into its emptiness. Kale squeezed the trigger, gently, fondly, almost as though he were stroking it, and then recoiled from the blast of it in the confined space of the cupboard. The bullet punched a hole in the centre of Slater’s chest, throwing him backwards against the wall, blood spewing from the wound. He was dead even before he struck the wall, and he fell forward heavily onto his face.
Gryffe spun round, a hellish icy fear clutching at him, in time to see a small, mean figure in a dark, shabby coat slip out from the walk-in cupboard behind him. The man’s face betrayed nothing. He held Gryffe’s Colt .32 and was pointing it at him.
‘Don’t move,’ Kale said quietly, almost in a whisper. He moved out from behind the desk and crossed quickly to where Slater lay crumpled in on himself, his blood spreading out rich and dark on the carpet. The gun constantly pointing at Gryffe, Kale bent to check the dead man’s jugular, just to be sure. He stood again, taking out the second gun with his left hand.
Gryffe felt paralysed by a mixture of fear and confusion. He could not believe that he was about to die. There was no need for it now. Not now that Slater was dead. He clutched at straws, struggling to find his voice. ‘Lamb fixed it, didn’t he? It was Lamb. To get me off the hook.’ Kale nodded and lowered the Colt. Gryffe felt an enormous surge of relief so that he almost buckled at the knees. ‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘Thank God.’
Kale smiled. A curious, mean smile. ‘Here,’ he said and threw Gryffe the Colt. The politician grasped the gun that had been thrown him, a reflex action. He saw Kale switch the second gun to his right hand and level it quickly. The bullet made a small, neat hole in the centre of Gryffe’s forehead. There was not the same force in the second shot and Gryffe staggered back only one step before tilting sideways and striking his face on the edge of the desk as he went down.
Kale hurried over, again to check that the shot had been fatal. The man was quite dead. Then he returned to Slater, crouching to lift the top half of the body up so that he could pull the right arm out from beneath it. He took the hand. First he would need miscellaneous prints on the gun. An index print on the right side of the barrel, a thumbprint on the left side behind the chambers, two fingers on the trigger guard. They would not be totally convincing, but they would be good enough in the confusion there was certain to be. He fitted the gun carefully in the hand and bent the arm back in below the body, allowing the torso to fall over it again, the way it had happened naturally. He stood up and glanced back across at Gryffe. The gun had fallen from his hand. But that would not matter. It was his gun and it had his prints on it. He went back to the cupboard and checked that he had left no tell-tale signs, then carefully he closed the door. It was important now to get away quickly, without being seen. It was unlikely that anyone would have heard the shots. The nearest apartment block was at the end of the street. Kale took a last look round then slipped through into the back room and out into the hall.
It was still and gloomy here and he waited, listening behind the front door, for nearly a minute, before removing his plastic shoe covers, opening it and glancing out. The street was deserted. He pulled the door closed behind him and his footsteps receded hastily down the cobbled pavement.
It was a full five minutes before Tania stirred among the coats and felt confident enough to come out into the hall. She had heard the raised voices, the shots, and then someone moving softly around the study. She had seen the thin, dark figure emerging from the back room. The high cheek-boned face with its deep-sunk eyes and its clear, sallow skin. Now she stood in the hall, the silence of the house pressing around her. She was confused, afraid. She wished she could call out. She took small heavy steps from the hall into the back room. There was a strange burnt smell in here. An empty armchair by an old marble fireplace, a bookcase full of dark, bound books. A heavy, gilt-framed picture on the wall. The French windows into the study stood open, and still there was no sound. Where were they? Her father and the other man. Another few steps and she could see into the study. She stood motionless, staring, the horror of understanding what she saw growing inside with a force and a pain that she thought would choke her before the first cry of anguish ripped into the silence of her consciousness.
Chapter Four
I
Bannerman stirred sluggishly among the sheets, the thickness of sleep still in his head and throat. His mouth felt dry and furry from the drink the night before and he had the faintest pleasurable recollection of having fallen asleep with a woman beside him. But now she was gone.
His immediate inclination was to turn over and pull the sheets tightly around him and slip back into the world of dark, shallow dreams from which he had just emerged. But there was an annoying flicker somewhere in his subconscious that took several seconds to surface. Something had woken him. The sleep had not been broken naturally. He was not quite sure why that should worry him. He pulled himself up on one elbow to look at the clock and felt the cold bedroom air rush in below the covers. It was nearly a quarter to eleven. Slater had had a meeting with Gryffe at nine-thirty, he remembered, and had said he was taking the child with him. Bannerman frowned and listened carefully. There was someone in the living room. Perhaps Slater was back already.
He cleared his throat of phlegm and slipped out of bed, feeling the first pain in his head. He sat for a moment on the edge of the bed rubbing his eyes then blinking and looking out of the window across the roofs of the tenements and terraces. He had forgotten to close the shutters the night before. A vague memory of Sally in the dark of the room returned to him, bringing a rush of regret. Had he really slept with her? He had no recollection of it. He stood up and pulled on his dressing gown.
The hall was still in darkness and he padded to the living room door, scratching his head. ‘Hello,’ he called. There was no reply. He pushed open the door and saw that the curtains were still drawn. Above the fireplace a painting of hunters on a snow-covered hillside was swung out from the wall where it was fixed with hinges. A wall safe concealed behind it stood open. He had taken no more than two steps into the room when something struck him hard on the back of his head. The pain shot down his spine and through his head like long needles, and the floor swung crazily towards him, striking him with a sickening force that hammered the breath out of his lungs. The moan that escaped his lips sounded strange in his ears, disembodied, as though it was not he who made the noise. It was far, far away in some other world into whose darkness he was now falling. Darker. Darker.