House of the Hanged. Mark Mills

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СКАЧАТЬ glanced up and down the cutting. He remembered the drill: remain focused and deal with the immediate situation. There would be time enough later to weigh the bigger questions.

      He had to move the man; he couldn’t leave him lying there. But what if he had lied? What if he had an accomplice? What if the accomplice was waiting out there somewhere in the shadows for Tom to show himself? He went with his gut, taking the man at his word. Everything about him suggested a lone operator.

      He checked the man’s trouser pockets so that nothing would be lost in transit. He turned up a key. It was attached to an oval metal fob familiar to his touch, even if he couldn’t see it properly in the darkness.

      Shouldering the man proved easy enough, and he tried his best to ignore the unnatural geometry of the shattered limbs bumping against him as he bore the burden back to the villa. For much of the way, he stuck to the level ground afforded by the railway tracks, bearing left into the vegetation just before the crossing that led to the gates of the villa.

      Somewhere along the route the man died. Tom couldn’t say when exactly – he had sensed no change in the inert weight – but when he laid his load as gently as possible beside the yew hedge fringing the terrace and felt once more for a pulse, he detected nothing.

      So be it, he told himself. It’s probably for the best.

      He glanced up at the twisted old vine. Probably no more than twenty minutes had elapsed since the dead man beside him had set about scaling the plant, but he knew in his bones that everything had changed in that brief time, everything he had built here.

      He had just heard the first resounding trumpet blast against the walls of his private Jericho.

      He smoked two cigarettes in quick succession while the bath was running, and he topped up his brandy glass before climbing into the water. His feet stung like Satan, but there were no deep cuts, just lacerations. His penis – he noted, with a mixture of curiosity and alarm – had shrunk to the size of an acorn.

      He dressed in dark clothing then made a methodical tour of the bedroom, first recovering the pistol from beneath the bed. It was a Browning 1922 with a full clip. Common sense dictated that he dispose of it, but a second weapon was a welcome addition to his limited armoury, especially one with more stopping power than his Beretta.

      The floor was spattered with blood from the man’s smashed nose, as were the sheets and blue twill counter-pane, but he could use those to wrap the body in. The person he feared most was Paulette, his housekeeper. She might not say anything about the missing counter-pane and African carving, but she would certainly register their absence. Nothing in the house escaped her eagle-eyed notice, and it would be wise to have explanations ready.

      The broken carving upset him, for symbolic reasons as much as anything. It was a spirit figure from the Baule people of the Ivory Coast, a woman shaped from wood as black as coal, her skin polished to a silky patina except where it was marked by intricate scarification. She stood on short, flexed legs – now broken off at the knees – her hands resting gently on her protruding belly. Her breasts were full and pointed, and there was something ineffably serene about the gaze of her almond eyes. Even now, they seemed to carry in them the knowledge of what she – his spirit wife, his protectress – had done on his behalf.

      She had given her legs for him, and she had taken those of the man outside in payment of her sacrifice.

      He pressed the two parts of her together. He would take her to Paris and see her made whole once more, but for now, he carried her downstairs and locked her away in a cabinet in his study, along with the syringe and the small bottle of chloroform which the Italian had left outside on the bedroom terrace. Returning upstairs with a mop and pail, he sluiced the bedroom floor. It was best to do it now, while the blood was still wet. It would be dried and encrusted by the time he returned.

      The Italian was definitely dead; his body had noticeably cooled. Tom rolled him in the sheets and the counter-pane, heaved him over his shoulder and set off down the path to the cove.

      He felt painfully exposed as he emerged from the treeline into the moonlit glare of the beach, but a few seconds later he was in the boathouse, safe from prying eyes.

      He worked by the light of a lone hurricane lamp. First he took a length of rope and trussed up the bedcover bundle. This he then rolled on to a sheet of heavy-duty tarpaulin and laid an anchor on top of it. For good measure, he headed outside, returning with two large rocks which he also placed on the body. Folding over the tarpaulin, he bound it tightly in place with more rope – round and round, and also lengthways – until the finished product looked like some monumental Italian salami.

      It was a struggle, but he managed to carry it in his arms to the rowboat, staggering across the sand and dropping it into the bottom of the boat. He kicked off his shoes, rolled up his trousers, and hauled the rowboat towards the water.

      The Albatross was the obvious choice but he decided against it, not wishing to curse the sloop by bringing a corpse aboard. This consideration came at a hefty price. He almost capsized his dinghy while trying to haul the package aboard, receiving a crack on the head from the boom for good measure, which almost blacked him out.

      He short-tacked into the warm breeze blowing in from the southwest, relaxing a little as he cleared the bay. The sail still gleamed unnaturally white in the moonlight and the dinghy only made sluggish headway, but he was in open water now, the seabed dropping sharply away below the boat. He knew that it plunged to eight hundred metres or more in the channel between the coast and the islands, six or so nautical miles off, but he would have to content himself with maybe half that if he didn’t want to run into the fishing fleet. He could see their lights sparkling on the horizon like a swarm of fireflies.

      When he was ready he lowered the mainsail, removed the tiller and the rudder then heaved the body up on to the transom. After his close call back in the cove, he knew that if he put it over the side the weight of it might cause the Scylla to heel over and capsize.

      He eased the package off the aft. It didn’t sink at first, buoyed up by the pockets of air inside the tightly bound tarpaulin. However, these slowly filled with seawater and it finally dipped beneath the waves. Convention dictated that he mark the moment with some words, a token tribute, but he struggled to find the will. The Italian had gambled and lost. If he didn’t know the rules of the game he should never have taken to the field of play.

      Raising the mainsail, Tom set a course for home.

      Sleep was out of the question. His body was weary, aching, clamouring for rest, but his brain danced wildly in open rebellion. He wound up the gramophone and found himself reaching for the Goldberg Variations. The rigid, almost mathematical, structure of Bach’s masterpiece might help lend some order to his thoughts.

      It didn’t. He knew the piece so well that every cadence ran ahead of the needle in his mind, and he sat hunched at the table on the terrace in stunned immobility. The coffee he had made for himself was cold by the time he even looked at the key in his hand.

      It was a hotel key, and the oval metal fob was engraved with a room number: 312. The name of the hotel wasn’t marked. It didn’t need to be; he’d placed enough surplus guests at the Hôtel de la Réserve over the years to recognize the fob. The hotel was a grand affair that towered over the narrow beach. When alone in Le Rayol, which was most of the time, he would often wander down there of an evening for a cocktail and a bite to eat. He was known to most of the staff, and he could even count Olivier, the manager, as a friend. He certainly shouldn’t have any difficulty gaining access to Room 312. He was in possession of the key, and his presence in the hotel was unlikely to arouse too much suspicion.

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