I reflected that when he had found Ian and Stephen with me he had attempted to leave and intercept his friends before they reached my room. No one could tell whether the outcome would have been much different if he’d succeeded. The friends were about as predictable as forked lightning.
I took a toothmug to the bathroom, half filled it with water, and brought it back to hold to Malcolm’s mouth. It did little more than wet his lips, but that seemed to be all he wanted.
Looked at my watch. It was two minutes since I’d given him the second injection: four since the first. It seemed a lifetime.
Ian was recovering fast and beginning to ask questions. It was extraordinary, I thought, that no one at all had heard the fracas and come running. No one had heard... or reacted... to Malcolm’s scream, and I would have thought they would have heard Malcolm’s scream in the Kremlin. When the bugs were switched off, the walls were deaf.
Malcolm went into another sudden and devastating collapse. I grimly filled the syringe from the last ampoule and injected the teaspoonful into his muscles.
There was no more naloxone: no safety margin for any of us.
16
The upswing came again. He breathed a little more positively and regained consciousness, although his skin was still greyish blue and his pupils remained pinpoints.
‘I feel... dizzy,’ he said.
I gave him a few sips of water and said casually, ‘Was it you or your friends who poured the stuff on Hans Kramer?’
‘Christ, sport... not me. I’m no killer...’
‘What about the horse box?’
‘Only meant... to hurt you... frighten... send you home.’ He took another sip. ‘Reckoned you wouldn’t stay...’
‘But your friends weren’t fooling,’ I said. ‘Not in Gorky Street, and not by the river.’
‘They said... not safe... with Kropotkin helping... you might... find out... things.’
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘And that was after you told them that I knew what Hans Kramer had said when he was dying?’
‘Bloody boy... Misha...’
‘Was this deadly liquid your idea, or Hans Kramer’s?’ I said.
‘I learned of it... by chance. Got Hans... to steal it.’ He achieved a faint sneer. ‘Stupid bastard... conned him... he did it for nothing... for his ideals...’
‘He went to the Heidelberg Clinic,’ I said.
‘Christ...’ Even in his cooperative state, he was unpleasantly surprised. ‘In the telex... didn’t think you’d spot that, but it was... risky. They wanted to prevent... you from seeing it.’
‘So why did they kill Hans? Why Hans, who had helped you?’
He was tiring visibly. His voice was faint, and his breathing was still slow and shallow.
‘Cover... all... tracks...’
Ian stood up restlessly and came over to the bed. It was the first close view he’d had of Malcolm since the attack, and the shock penetrated the inscrutability of his face.
‘Look, Randall,’ he said, horrified, ‘leave all these questions until he’s better. Whatever he’s done, it will keep.’
He had no idea, I thought, of the sort of thing we were dealing with, and it was hardly the moment to tell him.
I gave Malcolm some more water, and because of Ian’s intervention he began to reflect and regret that he had so willingly answered. Reactivated hostility sharpened visibly in his pin-point eyes, and when I took the glass from his lips his whole face settled into the old stubborn mould.
‘What are their names?’ I said. ‘And their nationality?’
‘Sod off...’
‘Randall!’ Ian protested. ‘Not yet.’
‘One of them is Alyosha,’ Stephen said, steering a careful path round the chair, and crossing to join us. ‘Didn’t you hear? Malcolm called one of them Alyosha.’
There was almost a laugh from the bed. A large sardonic sneer twisted his mouth. His voice, although almost a whisper, came out loaded with spite.
‘Alyosha, sport,’ he said. ‘Will kill you yet.’
Stephen looked at him incredulously. ‘But your friends tried to kill you... It’s Randall who saved you.’
‘Balls.’
‘He’s confused,’ I said. ‘Just leave it.’
‘Christ...’ Malcolm said. ‘I feel sick.’
Stephen looked rapidly around for a suitable receptacle, but there wasn’t one, and it wasn’t needed.
Malcolm’s shallow breathing perceptibly lessened. I picked up his wrist, and could feel no pulse. His eyes slowly closed.
‘Do something,’ Ian said urgently.
‘We can try artificial respiration,’ I said. ‘But not mouth to mouth.’
‘Why not?’
‘That stuff was thrown at his face... You can’t trust it.’
‘Do you mean he’s dying?’ Stephen said. ‘After all?’
Ian energetically began pulling Malcolm’s arms up and backwards in the old method of artificial respiration, refusing to let him go without having done everything possible.
Malcolm’s neck and hands and bare chest turned from bluish grey to dark indigo. Only his face stayed pale.
Ian persevered, hauling the rib cage up and down, trying to get air into the lungs mechanically. Stephen and I watched in silence for what seemed a very long time.
I didn’t try to stop him. Stopping had to be his own decision. And I suppose some quality in Malcolm’s total lack of response finally convinced him, because he reluctantly laid the arms down to rest, and turned to us a blank and Sphinx-like face.
‘He’s dead,’ he said flatly.
‘Yes.’
There was a long pause while no one could quite bring themselves to say what was in all of our minds, but Ian at length put it into words.
‘The doctor’s on his way. What do we tell him?’
‘Heart attack?’ I suggested.
The others nodded.
‘Let’s tidy up, then,’ I said, looking round at the aftermath of battle. ‘What we desperately need is some rubber gloves.’
The small glass jar still lay on its side under the guarding chair. I reckoned it would have to be shovelled somehow into a toothmug, and was looking around for a suitable long spoon for supping with the devil when Stephen brought out his packet from the chemist.
‘What about these?’ he said. ‘They’re supposed to be impermeable.’
On any other occasion we’d have laughed too much to make it possible. Instead, I quite seriously dressed the thumb and fingers of my left hand in preservativy, keeping them in place with an elastic band round my knuckles.
Stephen had protested that as they were his preservativy, it should be he who used them, especially as I was proposing a left-handed operation. Shut up, I said, and let’s get on. It was my job, I thought. It was where the buck stopped. A matter of the beginning and the end of responsibility.
He removed the chair. I knelt on the floor, and, summoning up an act of faith in the baggy and improvised rubber glove, picked up the little jar and stood it upright in the tooth glass.
My mouth, to be honest, was dry.
The jar had looked more or less empty when it lay on its side, but this had been deceptive. There was now clearly about a dessertspoonful of pale golden liquid lying in the bottom. Pale gold... a pretty shade of death.
‘The cap of the jar must be somewhere,’ I said. ‘But don’t touch it.’
Ian found it under the sofa. He shifted the end of the sofa, and I picked up the small screw-top and put it in the glass alongside the jar.
‘What will you do with it?’ Stephen said, looking at the remnants with understandable awe.
‘Dilute it.’
I took the toothmug into the bathroom and stood it in the centre of the bath. Then I put in the plug, and turned on the taps. The water poured in in a tumbling cascade and the level quite soon rose to cover the glass. The little jar floated out like a bathtime toy, still holding its fearsome cargo. I pushed it, with my covered fingertips, into the depths.