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Overture
Chapter 10
Sepulchres
Edward parked half a mile from the
He opened the rear door, and Nelson sprang out onto the still unfamiliar paving slabs, displaying reserved interest in them, having been raised from birth on nothing but the soft, boundless Wiltshire grassland. The growl of the streaming traffic also troubled the dog, and he responded to this by hunching down against the side of the Land Rover.
Edward reached down, smoothed the animal’s flank with one warm, practised hand and clipped on the lead. For one moment, it seemed as if nothing short of force would persuade Nelson from the safety of his shelter, but he eventually acceded to the gentle tug of the lead and traipsed out, keeping as close to Edward’s heel as was possible.
As he walked, Edward fumbled in his pocket for the set of keys he’d taken, very quietly and gently, from Gordon’s kitchen drawer. Subterfuge wasn’t one of his overriding characteristics, never had been and probably never would be, but he realised that if he’d suggested this plan of action to his son, he’d have been met with a hasty and emphatic refusal.
The hotel loomed over him as he turned the corner and stalked down the alley beside it, making for the service entrance. The ant-farm busyness of the city faded with each step, so much so that it almost seemed artificially muffled, as if someone had dropped a thick, dark cloak over the entire world. The only sounds that now penetrated the musky silence in the alley were the occasional clap and whistle of feral pigeons taking flight from the upper storeys.
Hefting the keys in his palm, Edward paused, and craned his neck to stare back up the alley at the bright, damp thoroughfare he’d just left. Nelson, sensing the hesitation in the air, sat back on his haunches and snorted faintly. Edward glanced down; his sense of indecision fractured along some subconscious fault seam, and then he slipped the key into the lock and twisted it.
The door opened not with the prehistoric screech of doom that Edward had been expecting, but rather with a discreet click of the latch and yawn of the hinges, as if the whole had been subjected to a very recent and very conscientious oiling. He pulled it closed behind them with the same quiet hiss, and gently flipped the latch to be sure that it was locked once more.
Only now did he unclip Nelson’s lead. This was a matter of prudence, at any rate, as the dog was by now up on his hind legs, pawing at the empty air and threatening to choke himself with his own collar or, failing that, with sheer frustration. Maddened by newfound freedom, he sprinted to the end of the dust-haunted passage and disappeared into the kitchens before Edward could do so much as press the light-switch and study his surroundings.
The neon tubes flashed, paused and pulsed into life just as Edward heard the fading skitter of claws in the next room and, after this, he was left quite alone in both sight and sound. Cursing vaguely beneath his breath, he followed the dog into the echoing kitchen.
The room was much larger than he’d been prepared for, although it was also – he double-checked this – much cleaner, too, being all but spotless. Chrome handles and steel worktops glinted in the warm light from the doorway as he negotiated the maze of shelving and reached the door to the cellars.
As he did so, he pulled up and stood, framed by the narrow doorway, gazing down the cold stone steps into wonderland. Someone had strung ropes of fairy lights along the walls to act as a guide. They were charmingly haphazard; here was a string of plastic flowers, there a multicoloured riot which would not have looked out of place on a Christmas tree.
Further down the steps there were hung what looked like illuminated
clownfish, and finally...Edward had to suppress a spasm of laughter at the apposite
metaphor as he realised that the last strand of novelty lights were plump and
pleasant white rabbits. Touched by this
in spite of his uncertainty and troubled conscience, Edward, like
Emerging at last into the coal cellar, he stopped for a second and held his breath as he heard the soft whisper of song creeping out, up the stairs to the wine cellar and into his ears. He strained to identify it, but the words were in some foreign language and the melody was wholly unfamiliar, although unmistakeably operatic in the best traditions of high coloratura.
The door to the stairs was standing ajar, and now that Edward’s eyes were adjusting at last, he noticed that it was spilling a gentle, subdued pillar of goldenrod light out into the gloom. He stalked towards this, and reached out for the handle, which proved to be ethereally cool beneath a palm which was, he suddenly realised, glazed with sweat.
Pulling the door back, he shifted through the gap and sidled down another flight of bare flagstone steps, these even narrower and more vertiginous than the last. The light swelled as he edged down into the heart of the wine cellar, however, as did the music, until Edward could detect every nuance and echo of the singer’s voice.
Ignoring this for the time being, he swung his gaze around the open space before him, studying the paintings, the thick dark rugs and curtains, the crystal-bedewed lamps and, lastly, the piano, upon which had been set an expressively ornate candelabra and a glass of red wine, which was blended with scintillating ruby highlights. The aria, he could now see, was issuing forth from the bronze horn of a gramophone in a far alcove.
The three swaying flames of the candelabra pricked at Edward’s eyes until he focused intently on them, and it was only now that a soft scrape of claws on flags entered his ears, and he started back as Nelson padded around from behind the piano, ears held back at angles and panting gently and rhythmically. The dog ambled forward, shook his head a little, and then sat down and raised his chin. Just one half second too late, Edward realised that those glossy black eyes were fixed upon something behind him.
Two things meshed in one single scrap of time. Edward saw a flash of movement in the dog’s pupils, and felt the slightest shift in air pressure upon the back of his neck. He drew one fraction of the breath he needed to swing around, but got no further than that before a freezing blade edged up against his throat and a voice, all carefully modulated glissando, filtered through to him.
“He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf,” said V, with just the faintest, finely- whetted edge of humour about his tone.
Edward had been preparing panic in the depths of his instincts, but to his own amazement, a bubble of anger eructated to the surface of this swamp, followed by another, then hard on its heel, a glistening rush of fury. His hand moved of its own accord, snaked up and grasped the pommel of the knife, twisting it out of V’s hand to the accompaniment of a soft grunt of surprise from behind him.
He spun around, turned the knife in his hand and levelled it point-first at V, who spread his arms in surrender and took one step backward. Edward watched, detached, as the tip of the blade trembled just a fraction, and then he lowered his arm, although he did not slacken his grip.
“I found you half dead in a ditch,” he said, ice sparkling upon each syllable. “I carried you back to my home. I patched you up. I protected you from those soldiers. You really think you can frighten me now?” And with this, he tossed the knife across the no man’s land between them. V caught it delicately by the hilt and slipped it back into its sheath at his belt.
“You know what,” Edward added, eventually, forcing himself to meet those hollow eyes, “I think I liked you better before you put that bloody mask on.”
V tilted his chin infinitesimally. “You are the first to tell me so, Edward,” he replied, coolly, “but be assured that you will not be the last.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth,” said V, curling one hand in the air for the most subtle emphasis. “I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
Nelson passed between the two at that moment, tail swinging, seemingly oblivious to the spider’s web of tension in the air. He nuzzled V’s glove, and then sat down beside him.
Edward made himself pause, studied the tableau before him, and then carefully retracted his next words before they could reach his lips. The first night that he’d taken V into his home, he’d formed an embryonic suspicion about the man. That suspicion, he could feel, was finally beginning to bloom.
He realised, with brutal and unexpected clarity, that he was dealing with a psychopath. Whether he’d always been that way or had been warped into submission by the half understood evils perpetrated upon him at the detention centre was not remotely relevant. The fact that V was incisive, intelligent, sophisticated and erudite was of no concern beside the fact that something, somewhere in the recesses of his brain, had snapped a spring and was now freewheeling.
Edward finally finished composing a new sentence in his head, and coughed gently.
“Why am I here?” he asked, and pulled the letter from his pocket to stress the point. “You said you needed my help. With what?” He threw the envelope down onto the piano without looking at it, and then folded his arms, waiting. He watched the mask turn away, only briefly, and then heard a tiny sigh.
“Have you ever caught the scent of unadulterated fear, Edward?” said V, taking several measured paces as he spoke, circling the piano with Nelson trotting at his heels. “It’s the basest odour you can imagine and, what’s more, it’s contagious. Fear spreads like influenza and, just the same, can take a heavy toll upon whole civilisation. Fear is a lethal disease, and I’m afraid that Gordon has fallen victim to it. He will need you.”
This seemed to be the whole of V’s message. Edward watched him carefully as he picked up the wine glass and raised it in a peculiar and cryptic toast.
“Can I tell you a little story, lad?” said Edward, approaching the piano and facing V across the candle flames, which were creating soft sparkles deep inside the eye sockets. Presently, V nodded curtly, and Edward hesitated before he began to speak.
“I was there when Gordon was born. It wasn’t very common in those days, and the nurses tried to tell me I shouldn’t, but I was having none o’that. I stayed. And when he arrived, I made a promise. Didn’t know it at the time, but I did. I promised that I’d always protect him.
“Always means what it says, lad,” Edward reiterated, resting his fingertips on the lacquered wood before him. “That promise didn’t wear off just because my boy grew up. The only problem I’ve found lately is that when you have a kid, and you swear to defend ‘em, you can’t predict every kind of trouble they might end up in. Sometimes, it’s hard to know exactly how to help.”
As if taking upon itself to punctuate the moment, an Underground train pounded past the cellar at that point. The wood beneath Edward’s fingers thrummed softly, and the wine in the glass rippled and jolted for a second or two. He stared at it until it stilled once more, then continued.
“I’ll protect him from you if I have to,” he said, firmly. “Is that the way it has to be?”
“Do you remember what I said to you before I left your home, Edward?” asked V, and he tilted his chin in an exaggerated gesture of curiosity that was almost catlike. “I told you that there was a storm coming. Metaphor can be troubling at the best of times, but even so, I feel I may not have been clear enough. If so, let me speak plainly.
“This country is on the edge of the abyss, and there is nothing that I can do to stop its fall. There are times when events have their own momentum, and nothing will do but for mankind to learn its lessons the hard way. This has happened before. It will happen again. Won’t you please sit down?” he added, indicating the sofa.
Edward considered declining, but he was well aware that he would hear what he was going to hear no matter what and, in that instance, he might as well be seated. When he was settled on the sofa, with Nelson stretched out on the rug before him, V moved into the light once more and went on.
“I have much to do before the balance will be restored,” he said, and his voice, although gentle, was also declamatory. “I have no expectations of you or your family, and never had. There are many years of difficulty ahead of us all, and I have neither the inclination nor the ability to make predictions as to any of it.”
Edward nodded grimly, and then felt the dog shift against his foot, and snort in the midst of a doze.
“What are you doing about the trouble you’re in at the moment, though?” he said. “You do know that a couple of detectives have been asking Gordon about those people you killed?”
“I know,” said V, starting to pace once more, hands clasped – somewhat nervously, Edward thought – behind his back. “Matters are all but resolved, believe me. I am leading the police astray.”
“Yes, you’re good at that,” said Edward, quietly and bitterly, although he bit into his tongue as V halted mid-step and swung around, cocking his head sharply. “Never mind,” Edward said, hastily. “How sure are you that you can keep them occupied?”
“One thing that I have found in recent weeks,” said V, his words flavoured with good humour, “is that the Metropolitan Police operate with all due regard for the principle of Occam’s Razor: for them, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. I have every confidence that they would much rather address the whole matter as a gangland feud than involve an over-complicated subplot concerning a man without a motive for murder.”
Edward grimaced, and then stood up abruptly. This placed him in sudden an unexpected proximity to V, who appeared to stand his ground. Edward experienced only the mildest pause, but he shook it off without difficulty and gripped V by the shoulder, applying a light but communicative pressure.
“Thank you,” he said, meaning it. “I know you didn’t mean for any of this to happen, but you’ve got to understand that you don’t come between me and my son. I don’t care how many knives you’ve got and I don’t care how strong you are, if he’s hurt because of you, I’ll see you in hell.”
These words rang in the vaulted arches of the gallery like a bell or, more appropriately, like the echoing crash of a dropped glass. For the space of several heartbeats, Edward sought the desire to regret them, or at least regret having spoken them aloud, but couldn’t see the capacity within himself. Shrugging, he stared across the few inches of space between his face and that death’s head mask, and refused to blink.
At length, V dipped his gaze and stepped back, breaking the physical contact between them. Edward pulled his hand back and gripped it in the other, almost as if he’d been burned; his palm was tingling gently, although it might have been his overwrought imagination. Nevertheless, he cast a sidelong look as V smiled warmly. Gordon was right, he said to himself. You can see his expressions after a while.
“Your honesty puts me to shame,” said V, shaking his head self-depreciatingly, “as does your courage. I could have killed you, and you knew this, yet you faced your fear. It seems that I was quite right to contact you once more.”
“Where do we go from here, then?” said Edward. He glanced down at Nelson, who was sitting upright, his lip lifted, studying them both with an attitude of determined concentration, and then returned his attention to V.
“Go home,” V told him. “Be with your family. If anything can save humanity, it is love and selflessness. I wish I could appreciate that, but in lieu of experience I have understanding. I will make no further requests of either of you, if that is your wish.”
“That wasn’t what I said,” Edward shot back. “Do you think I thought twice about putting my life on the line for you? If that’s the case, then you didn’t listen to me either, did you?” He ground to a halt, looked down at the dog once more, and went on. “All that I’m asking is that you be more careful. Robbing trains is stupid. I’d tell any one of mine the same thing, so I’m telling you too. Okay?”
V stretched out a hand. With that skewed eye for detail that came as part of the package of confusion and desperation, Edward noticed for the first time that instead of the heavy leather gauntlets that had fitted the costume his late wife had made, V now wore light, close-fitting velvet gloves, although still in the same shade of perfect and unsullied black.
This mad observation done with, Edward reached out and shook the hand. Beneath the velvet, which was otherwise quite smooth and soft, he swore that he could still feel the ridges of scar tissue on those fingers. It was faintly perturbing, but he maintained his grip even so.
“We have an accord,” said V, and laughed pleasantly.
After Edward had gone, leading Nelson – who’d left with several mournful backward glances and with his tail at half-mast – V waited in a pool of silence for several minutes, to make sure that he was alone once more. His ears picked out the smack of the latch on the outer door, and he turned towards this, marking time for the next sixty seconds.
Only after this did he reach up and unbuckle the mask, sliding it away from his face with painstaking care. He laid it upon the piano and picked up the wine glass, draining the rest of the contents in one healthy draught.
Still moving with exquisite patience, he leaned across the glossy surface towards the candelabra and snuffed the first flame. A pause, and he then extinguished the second, leaving the cellar in darkness pierced only by the guttering light of the one remaining candle. He grinned fiercely, and then blew out this last flame, plunging the gallery into thick and impenetrable darkness.
Then, walking with the sure-footed grace of any other creature of shadows, he replaced the mask, checked the knife-belt and crossed the room to fetch his cloak.
Gordon’s mobile phone buzzed, the vibration turning it around on its axis until it fetched up against the water glass, and it was the resultant clicking and jangling that woke him with a jolt and a laboured gasp.
He groped for the phone, missed it by inches, and was just a second too late to take the call. He blinked several times, wiped the grit out of his eyes and focused on the screen. One missed call from Anne. He debated calling her back immediately, but soon after came to an instinctive conclusion that, whatever she wanted, if she were calling him at home it was bound to be something so complicated or stressful that she couldn’t handle it by herself; and both of those prospects could wait until he’d woken up a little more.
By the clock on the display, he saw that it was almost one in the afternoon and, thus, that he’d been sleeping for a good six hours. Dreamless sleep, thankfully, he added on some lower subconscious plane. He put the phone down, and sagged back into the pillow with a deep, heartfelt sigh along the way.
Sleeping during daylight hours had never really agreed with him. More often than not, when it had been necessary to do so, he’d wake with a vague but indomitable malaise about him that nothing but fresh air could cure. Of course, he was forced to admit, that was usually because he’d been used to waking late with a titanic hangover.
As he nursed this revealing contemplation as if it were an orphaned kitten, his phone buzzed again, just once. Rolling over, he picked it up to see that there was a text message waiting. Opening it, he saw a short and somewhat acidic billet-doux from Anne.
I know you’re there. Meet me in the Dick Whittington on Highgate Hill at 3.
There was, he knew, no getting out of it. After three eventful years, Anne had a better understanding of Gordon’s mental processes than he did himself, and she’d know that he’d picked her message up. More importantly, if he didn’t turn up, she’d know why not, which meant that he was effectively trapped. Groaning quietly, he struggled out of bed and headed downstairs.
He found a scrawled note on the kitchen message board as he went to make some much-needed tea. Have taken Nelson for a walk. Be back this evening. Might stay a few days if that’s all right. Sorry I didn’t wake you but I thought you needed it. Dad x
Perusing this shorthand for meaning within context, Gordon decided that he was far too tired and drained to over-analyse anything much, and switched on the kettle without further contemplation. As he waited for the water to boil, he composed a short message to Anne, accepting her request.
He headed out to Highgate sometime later in an extremely ambivalent state of mind. He no longer believed that Anne’s summons had anything whatsoever to do with work and, if he were honest with himself, had never really believed so from the start. The late autumn sun, though low in the sky and heading for another boiler of a sunset, was strong enough, and after a while he pulled his sunglasses out and slipped them on as he drove.
Gordon wasn’t overly familiar with the area, but the pub was easy enough to find, near the crest of Highgate Hill and directly opposite a looming, dark stone Catholic church. He pulled his glasses off as he stepped into the musty interior of the pub, looked around and spotted Anne propping up the bar as if she’d been there all afternoon.
“Okay,” he said, wearily, wandering over to her. “What’ve I done now?”
Anne stared at him over the rim of her glass for long seconds, then finally lowered her drink and turned to face him.
“It’s more about what you haven’t done, my dear,” she said tartly. “You see, I had this insane idea that we were friends, but I might have been wrong. You’ve been ignoring me for a week now. The only time I can get any sensible conversation out of you is when it’s work-related. Why?”
Gordon had been expecting many lectures from this meeting, but this particular spiel was so far outside his frame of reference that he hadn’t even begun to compose a response in advance. He choked faintly, rewound his brain and stared down at the carpet as he spoke.
“I didn’t realise I’d been doing that,” he said, all honesty. “Can you forgive me? I didn’t mean to put you aside. And we are friends,” he added, softly, finally looking back up into Anne’s penetrating blue eyes. She reached out to where his hand lay on the bar, and squeezed it firmly.
“Of course I can forgive you, you stupid sod,” she said, still grasping his fingers. “I’ve forgiven far bigger idiots than you in my time. The trouble is...” she went on, and now withdrew her hand slowly, “...the trouble is that that’s not all I wanted to talk to you about. Do you mind if we go for a walk? I don’t want to do this in here.”
Anne led the way across the road and around the corner into a steep, winding little side alley that, where it wasn’t overhung with tree branches, was overshadowed by towering edifices on both sides. The sunlight was nothing but a suggestion as they headed southward and, after a moment’s pause for thought, Gordon realised where she must be taking him.
“
Without further ado and without giving him time to comment, she pushed through the gate and paid their admission price, then beckoned him down the main pathway into the tangled forest of mausoleums, marble angels and moss-hung steles. The gravel paths were well-kept enough, although they stuck to the middle of the pathway to avoid the healthy puddles of slick, rich mud that lurked to either side.
“I always come here when I need to get some serious thinking done,” Anne told him, still not meeting his gaze. Rather, she stared at the glimpses of sky that peeked between the branches of yew and oak, watching a squirrel race through the canopy and hearing it disturb a blackbird, which rocketed out of the tree with a strident ik-ik-ik of alarm.
“Anne...” Gordon began, but she’d already moved on. He shrugged, bewildered, and followed her around a bend in the track.
She’d come to a halt beside one of the few graves that he’d known was here; Karl Marx’s. Gordon peered up at the colossal stone bust with vague distaste, and stopped for a moment to consider that even in death, he would not and could not be so tasteless as to request a monument that self-aggrandising.
He approached Anne and, as he did so, she stepped up on her toes, which was a necessity given the difference in their heights, and took his face between her palms. He flinched momentarily, but stood firm, and could only note with some curious mental distance that her hands were uncommonly warm.
“I want you to look me in the eye and tell me something, Gordon Deitrich,” she said, her fingers pressing into his cheek. “I want you to tell me that you had nothing to do with Tricia’s death.”
In the painful silence that followed this, Gordon heard the blackbird whisper past them on silken wings, still chiming out its panic over some threat or other. He remained fixed by Anne’s gaze, however, and thought with painstaking care about each and every word that he was about to utter.
“I can’t,” he said, and then wondered how his carefully composed mental speech had been transmogrified, on the way out, into these two hopeless and directionless syllables. He knew that in the half of one second that he’d taken to say them, he’d given almost everything away. He saw, at long last, Anne’s expression falter and shift into something that looked like a blend of horror, dismay and grief and was much more than the sum of those parts.
“I didn’t kill her,” he whispered, not out of expediency, for there were no eavesdroppers, but simply because his throat seemed to have shrivelled and dried. “I got her involved, and that’s why she’s dead. Anne, for God’s sake, you must see that’s why I have to keep you out of all this.”
Anne had removed her touch from his face now, although she remained close, and took his hand instead. Gordon saw an errant tear form on her lower lashes, and couldn’t watch any more. He turned his face up to the darkening sky instead.
“But you do know who did kill her?” she asked, stumbling a little over the phrase.
“I do, but...” he cleared his throat, since his voice had all but disappeared now, “...I can’t go to the police. Please don’t ask me why. Just trust me. I wouldn’t do or say anything that I didn’t think was necessary to keep you safe.”
“And who’s going to keep you safe?” she retorted, her head on one side, eyes rimmed with red.
Gordon was about to respond when some sixth sense jerked his head up savagely. He swung around, looking for something that had snatched at his peripheral attention. At last, he turned back and stared past Anne’s shoulder to the clustering graves in the older section of the cemetery; stones and tombs that were placed so close together that there was barely passage between them, and in some cases what little space there was had been filled with shrubs and trees. Somewhere in that nightmarish jungle, somewhere in its gathering shadows, he had seen a flash of silver and a trace of black.
He stepped around Anne and headed for the dense foliage, his heart constricting and struggling in his chest as if preparing itself for the very last beat of his life.
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