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Overture
Chapter 12
Pursuit
Finch drew the car into a fortuitous parking space some thirty yards from the house he was looking for, dragged the handbrake up with a decisive tug, unbuckled his seatbelt and slumped back into his seat, sighing breathlessly all the while.
The street was preternaturally quiet, and the blanket of silence pressed in upon his ears to an almost uncomfortable degree until he adjusted to the fact that here in a quiet, affluent backwater of Green Park, unlike his own home ground in Lambeth, midnight meant what it said.
The engine finally settled down, leaving nothing but the steady tick of Finch’s watch to punctuate the still air. He sat rigid for a few minutes, counting the seconds, until he developed the uncomfortable sensation that his heartbeat had become inextricably slaved to the relentless rhythm of the watch, and shook himself out of his torpor.
If Finch had one single space in his head still reserved for honesty of admission, he’d own up to the fact that he’d had no continuity of plan besides the black, dragging desire to find out how Gordon Deitrich was linked to the robbery and the murders, if indeed he was. What he’d do if he found a link, he had no idea. Who he’d take his tale to, he couldn’t say. The most he was able to cling on to was the hope that he might at least be satisfied with knowing the truth behind the affair, even if it couldn’t end in an arrest.
Even as he shifted in his seat, though, Finch tacked a mental scarlet letter onto his last parcel of consideration and branded it a lie. This sudden movement had pressed something bulky and angular into his side, beneath his overcoat, and this in itself was enough to resurrect the memory of the strange kink in his thought processes that had assailed him just before he’d left his flat.
He’d taken his gun from the wardrobe and cradled it in his palm, hesitating for no reason that he could immediately identify. It was a standard police issue revolver, and Finch had never felt as much as a hint of doubt regarding its capabilities. Disregarding this unreasonable fillip, he’d been about to holster the weapon when he’d paused once more, this time flicking through some disturbing mental back catalogue.
Someone had killed six people with insolent ease, pitting knives and bare hands against men so inured to violence that they probably even went to bed armed. Someone had snapped Patricia Garnet’s neck with one hand, and Finch was painfully aware that breaking necks was nowhere near as simple as the movies held it to be. Someone had had both the brute strength and the medical precision to render three railway staff unconscious with a single pinpoint blow.
The post mortem photos had clicked through his mind as if on a ratchet; a procession of thin-lipped gashes bled white and bleached whiter still by the lash of the coroner’s hose. There’d been not one wasted slash, not one unnecessary slice, not one hasty, uneven jab. There weren’t even, he realised with a sick lurch in his stomach, any defence cuts on their hands. Every wound on those corpses had been functional and efficient to the point of being pathological and served no other purpose than to kill, and kill very well.
The conclusion that his fear-plated mind was trying desperately to avoid was that whoever he was going out to hunt was much stronger and much faster than he was. Glancing back down at the weapon in his hand, he’d felt the last of his confidence in it dissolve and put it back, reaching instead for the box at the back of the shelf.
Now, Finch unshipped the heavy pistol from the shoulder holster and stared at it as if expecting it to bite. It was a Heckler & Koch Mk23 with laser sight that he’d picked it up on a drug raid four years before. Why he hadn’t turned it in at the time, he had no idea, and he’d stowed the loaded weapon away in spite of every instinct born in the back of his otherwise methodical, conscientious police officer’s brain that was screaming at him not to be so monumentally stupid.
It was a trophy, he’d decided later, although without much conviction. The big game hunter’s entitlement. It had spent the next few years resting very securely inside a locked steel box at the back of his wardrobe, waiting for...waiting for this moment, said Finch in the confines of his head, although he blanched at the melodramatic cast of the phrase and shoved it aside as soon as he’d conceived it.
He shivered reflexively and put the pistol away once more, although he remained overly conscious of its bulk, nestling almost smugly against his ribs.
Applying a mental slap to his attention, Finch turned his gaze back toward the house up the street and settled down once more, still trying to ignore the weapon under his coat. In spite of the fact that he felt as if he were wearing a prickling robe of apprehension, he was idiotically tired after more than a week of excesses, late nights and fractured sleep due to the demands of the case, and his eyelids fluttered gently before he realised what was going on, and propped himself back up.
He’d brought a coffee from the canteen at the Yard, but that had been more than two hours previously, and he didn’t have a doubt that it would be well on its way to stone cold by now. Even so, caffeine was where you found it, and he prised the lid from the cup and swallowed, trying to see that as much of it as possible bypassed his keener tastebuds.
As an aid to the coffee, he reached out and drew the window down. The breeze that crept into the car was colder than he’d thought it would be, but if it helped to keep him awake, all to the good. Propping the half empty cup on the dashboard, he blinked heavily and dropped his hands to the bottom of the steering wheel, feeling the faintest, lightest slick of sweat between his fingertips and the cool plastic.
After several minutes, Finch’s eyelids wavered again and, this time, he didn’t fight them. His breathing slowed and hissed in his chest as he sank into a light doze.
Some time crept by, during which the white-noise mutter of passing
traffic on the distant
The shadows outside the car barely moved, although something moved within them, and it was as if the figure had brought the fog with it on the trailing edge of its cloak. Fresh, sticky tendrils of autumn mist played and curled around its feet as it moved, and appeared to deaden the sound of its footsteps as it approached the vehicle.
A pause, more for effect than for confirmation, and then V stooped and glanced into the open window of the car, studying the detective with a mixture of detached curiosity and refined amusement. Reaching out as carefully as a spider spinning a web, he passed one gloved hand in front of Finch’s face, and the slightest, mildest chuckle escaped his lips as Finch merely went on sleeping.
V reached lower now, and inched his fingers inside the detective’s coat, still moving with insectile patience. A brief moment of hesitancy as Finch turned his head in the depths of dozing, and then onward. Finding a wallet, V drew it out and flipped back the cover, scrutinising the name on the warrant card, as dispassionate as a sculpture.
It was in the midst of replacing this that V’s explorations located the butt of the pistol beneath Finch’s arm. He liberated a soft breath, taken just a little by surprise, and then uncurled his fingers from the thick grip once more.
V withdrew his hand with some reluctance, although his bearing contrived to suggest that had he not other business to attend to, he’d have been content to play the hunter a little longer. As it was, he stepped back and slipped a hand into his pocket, extracting a small, clear plastic bag.
At the sight of this, V did nothing more obscure or arcane than smile gently beneath the mask, and if anyone had been in a position to see that smile, they would have described it as little short of seraphic. Since the mask continued to smile for him anyway, V contented himself with that and then, drawing open the vacuum seal on the bag, he tipped it out into one cupped palm. Meanwhile, the fog continued to thicken, drawing in around the car as if it were pulling a veil over an indecency.
Gordon lay back on the sofa, suffering a vague idea that he should go to bed, but torn between this and the knowledge that it would be too much effort to get up again, open the door and climb the stairs, especially as he was reasonably comfortable where he was.
He’d returned, some time previously, from an end-of-shooting party that the director had decided to throw at the last minute. Almost literally, Gordon reflected acerbically, although he found he was hard pressed to believe that Ray Broadman could lay on a decent party even if he’d had the rest of the millennium to lay the groundwork.
It had been Gehenna, as far as Gordon was concerned. Not only was he the star of the show, and as such denied the luxury of being able to linger on the sidelines near the buffet table, but he’d spent the entire evening with a facetious grin plastered over his face, apparently being introduced to people he already knew very well, and all the time conscious of the thick glass wall that separated him from everyone else.
He had felt like an overlay. He’d been shuttled from pillar to post, smiling blankly, making the smallest small talk he possibly could, and all the while carrying the nightmarish idea that he need only scratch at the surface of it all to uncover a hint of the dark, corrupted mess that lay beneath the illusion.
It had all been too much to maintain, after a while. Gordon had formed a half-hearted story about a migraine, nodded graciously at the assembled crew and withdrawn.
There had been a note from Edward on the coffee table, announcing that he was going to bed, and wishing Gordon goodnight. Nelson, for his part, was curled up in the armchair, and had raised no more than a laissez-faire eyebrow as Gordon entered the room.
Gordon was now slumped on the sofa as if someone had opened his valve and deflated him. He pulled at the bow tie, not yanking quite as hard as he’d have liked to, mindful of the fact that it was a rented tuxedo. The knot slipped, and he eased it away from his neck, then popped the top button on his shirt and inhaled both noisily and gratefully now that he no longer felt as if he were being garrotted.
From his supine position, he turned an eye upon Nelson. The dog gave every impression of being sound asleep, but Gordon could see that the animal’s eyes were merely slitted rather than closed. Wondering why, he craned his neck a little, but Nelson was giving nothing further away.
Gordon lifted his head a little, and swallowed a mouthful of lukewarm Perrier. That done, he propped the glass on his chest and stared at it, his eyes lit by the hypnotic rainbows shot through the crystal by the table lamp.
How in God’s name are you going to get back to your life after all this, he asked himself, his eyes still fixed – although not quite focused – upon those haunting lights. Each flicker carried a fractured memory with it. Diamonds...blood...rats...tunnels...desire. Disjointed images shuffled through his mind like a zoetrope, simultaneously both fleeting and persistent. Without warning, a hot tear ran from the corner of his eye; he ignored it.
The living room door squeaked back on its hinges, and Edward slipped into the room. His hair was awry, and Gordon could see that if his father had been sleeping at all, he’d been sleeping badly and sporadically. He shifted up and made room on the sofa.
“Just got home?” asked Edward, subsiding onto the cushions. Gordon nodded slowly.
“About fifteen minutes ago,” he said in an undertone, trying his best not to disturb the dozing Nelson. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“No, no,” Edward replied, just as softly. “I never sleep that well away from the farm, don’t you worry about it. So, how was this party of yours?”
“I...er,” Gordon began, and then caught his father’s eye. He spotted the glint he’d known since he was old enough to string a sentence together; the glint that said if you lie to me, I’ll know, and he subsided, changing direction. “Not good,” he said instead, shaking his head distractedly. “I don’t feel as if I belong any more. Do you know what I mean?”
“More so than you think,” murmured Edward, and he sat back, his gaze falling upon the framed print over the fireplace. Gordon followed that gaze, studying the picture with the intensity of anyone else who has found their attention suddenly focused upon an object that has been a part of their local scenery for many years.
Gordon had obtained it from a friend while he was still a student with a contemptible standard of living, trading it for a bottle of apple schnapps. It was a reproduction of Magritte’s Homesickness, and depicted a fine, white granite bridge upon which were two figures, glowing beneath a slumbering sunset sky, neither of which seemed to wish to pay any attention to the other.
The first, a statuesque lion, lay upon the path in an attitude of idle contemplation, one paw upturned as if it had very recently been studying its pads for something to do to pass the time. Its eyes were cast aside from the artist, towards some unseen object of scrutiny.
The other figure – a man – was, in the manner of most of Magritte’s human studies, all but faceless, turned away and staring blindly out over the parapet. He radiated poise and melancholy in equal measure, and the one particular curiosity in the whole composition were the black wings, wind-torn and sombre, folded artlessly upon his back.
The print was one of the few possessions that Gordon had carried with him through all his later incarnations; he had no clear idea what had bonded him to it so intimately, or even why it would have seemed a terrible sacrilege to remove it from the cheap plastic frame that it had come fitted with. All he was able assume for himself was that in some way, the print represented continuity, and that without some anchor to his past, such as it was, he might as well set adrift for good.
Gordon’s brow creased as he traced an eye over the figure leaning upon the parapet; he ran his gaze down over those macabre wings which seemed to draw the eye back and back again, he took in the fine black clothing and the all but horizontal set of the man’s shoulders, which bespoke many ambivalent emotions, chief amongst which was echoing loneliness sheathed in a thick protective cloak of hauteur.
This was unfamiliar to him. Despite his best intentions, Gordon doubted that his initial reaction to the painting had been even one-tenth this abstruse, and had probably stretched no further than relief at having finally found something large enough to cover the unsightly tear in his bedroom wallpaper.
This time, things were subtly but crucially different. Gordon’s eyes rounded out, he stared at the back of the pensive, winged figure in the picture and slotted several more pieces of the jigsaw into place.
Only then did it occur to him that his father was speaking. He started, and half-turned.
“Sorry, Dad,” he mumbled. “I was miles away. What was that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Edward, kindly. “I know where you were, anyway.” He reached over, picked up the Perrier from the table and drank what remained inside. Pulling a face, he set the empty bottle back down on the glass top with painstaking care and sat back again. Returning unfocused eyes to the print, he went on.
“What you want to know, unless I’m wrong, is this,” he said, evenly. “You want to know how to get on with your life after what he’s put you through. Right?”
“That’s the essence of it, yes,” said Gordon, seeing no point in embellishment, understanding that his father was several steps ahead in any event.
“Do you think there’s some big secret to that, my boy?”
“If there is, I’d like to know about it.”
“Well, there isn’t,” said Edward, gruffly, and then, appearing to recant this clipped tone, softened his features and turned towards his son. “No secret at all, you understand, besides this one: you do what you have to do. That’s all. The alternative is crawling under a blanket and never, ever coming out again for the rest of your life. Don’t you think there were times I wanted to do that after your mum died?”
Gordon couldn’t help it. His eyes burned, and he sagged. For long seconds, he bore an image of his mother’s face in his mind. Not as he’d last seen her, not wasted and pale, but blossoming with youth and with a healthy rose in each cheek. Then, just as abruptly as it had arrived, this chromatic memory withered and left him alone.
“Don’t you feel different, though?” he asked, working the words through the sharp catch in his throat. “The party tonight...I couldn’t. Something set me apart from everyone else. I could feel it.”
“Something’s always set you apart, son,” was the reply, given as gently as a hug, but it wasn’t until Gordon felt his father’s rough, worn hand on the back of his neck that he drew his knees up beneath his chin and shivered deeply and penetratingly.
“Is that a good or a bad thing?” he asked, his voice a little muffled.
“That’s entirely up to you,” said Edward. “The only person who’s in charge of your feelings is you.”
There was a faint sigh from the floorboards in the hall. The living room door swung back once more, but this time it was with a ringing sense of inevitability that Gordon glanced up, eyes pink and misted, to see V gliding through the doorway.
In the smoky gloom of the room, he looked even taller than ever before, and held his hat reverently before him, clasped between elegantly spread fingers. A shaft of light from the sodium lamps outside had strayed through a minor chink in the curtains, painted a gilded highlight down the supple curve of the mask’s roseate cheek and tinted the arch of its nose. The rest of his form, black enough to provide nothing more than an echo to a shadow, was in thrall to the darkness.
“Gordon, Edward,” said V, his smooth voice oiled further still with propriety. “You’ll forgive my intrusion, but matters can no longer be resolved without consultation.”
The solemnity of the statement suffered somewhat as Nelson woke from a twitch of a dream, bowled from the chair and lumbered up to V’s feet, sitting down and paying him no less tribute than a god could expect from a supplicant. V bent to stroke the dog’s head warmly, and then straightened up as if no such interruption had taken place. Soft hair swung to and fro for a second and then stilled, curling infinitesimally upon his shoulders.
It was Edward who first found his voice, even clotted as it was through lack of sleep.
“Consultation on what, lad?” he asked, sharply.
“I came to inform you that there is a police officer watching this house,” V told him, his tone careless, verging upon banal, and he flicked a hand as he spoke. Edward’s reaction, however, was not so dismissive. He hauled himself up from the sofa, vibrating with anger.
“If that’s so,” he said, forcing the panic from his voice like water from a sponge, “then why the hell did you come here?” V raised a finger, making some token attempt at placation, and waited with precise patience for Edward to subside before continuing.
“I was not seen arriving, believe me,” he said. “I entered through the gardens. Thus far I have caused no harm. You will be pleased to hear that the police have suspended the case, in any event.”
Edward started to relax, paused, and replayed the last few moments of conversation in his head. Curling one wiry eyebrow, he stepped up to V and fixed those pitch-dark eyes with as steady a stare as he could muster.
“If the case has been suspended,” he said, slowly, and then jerked a thumb at the window, “then what is that copper doing out there?”
“Ah,” said V, and now he studied the back of one glove as though thoroughly absorbed in its every curve, flaw and stitch. “I don’t believe that Detective Sergeant Finch is acting within the purview of the law any more. He is, to employ a dreadfully hackneyed metaphor, a loose cannon.”
Edward allowed a small trickle of relief to soak through his bones, and he wiped one hand down his face.
“That’s better,” he said, exhaling mightily. “Now if you’ll just slip out the...”
“No,” said V, not loudly or even emphatically, merely imparting the word with a keen, well-timed spin that cut through Edward’s voice like a shark’s fin through a lagoon. Edward teetered on the verge of a fresh syllable, but sheer surprise cut him in his tracks, and he fell silent through force of uncertainty as V went on, snaring the sudden gulf in the exchange.
“Do you know the origin of the phrase ‘loose cannon’, Edward?” asked V, mildly. Edward opened his mouth, hesitated, closed it once more and settled for a confused shake of the head. V nodded gently, as if he’d anticipated this response, and continued. “The term hails from a far more nautical time and place, and refers to the erratic behaviour of a cannon that has broken free of its mount below decks.
“Loose cannons cannot be predicted, Edward. They smash everything in their path. It is probable that the only thing that Mr. Finch will damage upon this errand is his own career and standing, but I cannot tolerate the extant risk that he will also harm us.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” said a soft voice from somewhere between them. Gordon uncurled himself from his seat, rising inexorably, brushing the creases from his trousers with meticulous care and attention to detail. Only when this was achieved to his satisfaction did he stand up straight and, with an idle fascination for sudden, revelatory detail, it finally occurred to him that he was actually one or two inches taller than V.
Incredible, the difference that pressure of attitude can make, he mused but, aside from this annotation, he barely broke stride as he smiled good-naturedly at the death’s-head mask in front of him.
“Gordon?” asked V.
“I asked what you were planning to do about this,” repeated Gordon, quite patiently.
Beneath the lacquer of self-control, Gordon detected a faint song of puzzlement, and V dipped his head to one side for a moment, as if trying to encompass a troubling new development. Then, breaking the thread of communication between, V stepped back one pace and turned his hat up with a flick of the wrist, settling it on his head with a smart tap and adjusting the brim one quarter of an inch with the same fluid movement.
“Let them be hunted soundly,” he said, his voice vibrant with what sounded like rare pleasure. “At this hour lies at my mercy all mine enemies.”
Gordon held his breath for long moments, and it seemed to him that V paused for just a few seconds longer than expected, almost as if he were waiting for Gordon to say something else. Then he turned in a flamboyant swirl of cape, and left the room. Several seconds later, the front door opened and closed with a decisive click. Edward sagged.
“Is he going to...” he began, but was silenced once more as Gordon held up a hand and lapsed into an impenetrable swamp of thought.
“’At this hour lies at my mercy all mine enemies’” he repeated, under his breath, all but oblivious to the presence of his father. “I know what that is, it’s...” Jerking his head up, Gordon crossed the room, ducked down behind the armchair and rooted amongst the haphazard volumes on the bottom of the bookshelves. Finding what he sought, he tugged it out with a grunt of satisfaction and flipped the heavy cover back, flickering through the onion-skin leaves as his brow creased.
Edward stepped up and laid a hand on his son’s elbow, mystified beyond all reason, but Gordon stopped at a page and ran a finger down one narrow bracket of text, still murmuring distractedly to himself. He froze, then tapped the page firmly and, closing the book smoothly and gently, laid it aside.
Edward’s bewilderment grew as he watched Gordon turn on his heel and pace back to the fireplace, hooking his fingers over the limestone mantelpiece, turning his eyes up to the Magritte print.
“So this was a test?” he whispered.
“What’s the matter,” said Edward, slowly. “What did you find?”
“What if I decide to fail, V?” asked Gordon, still in that same grave monotone. “How much of this depends on my decision, hm?”
“Gordon...?” Edward persisted, wrapping his arms around himself to ward off a chill that was only half the responsibility of the weather. Gordon swung around and took his father by the shoulders.
“I understand everything now, Dad” he said, placidly, “and I know that I have to go after him. If anything happens to me, remember that I love you.” With that, he turned away, head down, and stalked out into the hall.
Edward caught Gordon up just as he was shrugging his overcoat on, and pulled something from the next coat hook.
“I can’t talk you out of this?” he asked. It occurred to Gordon that he might well have paused before shaking his head, but if he did, then it was fractional.
“Then here,” Edward went on, firmly, extending his hand. Gordon took the dog lead and cocked his head, questioning. “You’ll never track him alone,” Edward went on, trying to explain. “Go on, the pair of you, get going before it’s too late.”
Nelson had, with his finely tuned sense of hearing, already caught the soft click of his lead, and now sprinted out into the hall, tail lashing. Gordon bent, clipped on the lead and then stood quite still, one hand resting on the latch.
“Your mum’d be proud of you,” said Edward, hoarsely, his voice scarcely more than a whisper.
“She’d be proud of you, too,” responded Gordon, and then, swinging the door back, he slipped out into the eddying midnight fog, Nelson padding at his side.
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