Rogue Elements (25 page)

This time she walked well ahead of him, pointedly ignoring his attempts to soothe and settle her. At the bar in Rue des Tonneliers she drank steadily, accepting shots from strangers, buying drinks for dark-eyed students. Arkell nursed a single beer, watching her disintegration with feelings that he acknowledged went well beyond professional concern. When the music was ramped up and an impromptu dance floor established in a cramped corner of the bar, she turned to him with a brittle smile and said, ‘So let’s dance!’ Her full lips were glistening; beneath those two confident front teeth her rounded chin trembled a little; one eye, heavy with shadow, was drawn a little wider, further accentuating the off-centre gaze.

He put down the beer. ‘It’s late. We should get back.’

‘It’s not even dark out there!’

She swivelled away and seized the wrist of one of the dark-eyed students, a boy in a paisley waistcoat and grubby houndstooth trousers. He followed her willingly. The music was trashy German pop, made worse by a substandard sound system. Klara’s movements were a little ragged from the booze, but in tight white jeans, sequinned T-shirt and tilted fedora she made an undeniably appealing figure on the dance floor. She laid her forearms on the shoulders of her partner and teased his groin with occasional bumps from her own. Then, to the surprise of the student as much as those watching, she leaned in close and put her tongue in his mouth.

Arkell pulled her away.

‘Jealous?’ she laughed. She was still dancing, her arm rhythmically jerking in his grip.

‘This is not going to help you get over Gavriel.’

‘Stop treating me like a fucking invalid!’ She wrenched free of him. ‘If you want to play, let’s play. Otherwise, go home!’

He looked around the ring of students that had formed – at the insolent grins of boys almost half his age. Philosophers, musicians, botanists with so much to learn. He saw her through their eyes: the hot older woman with lips tender red and eyes hungry as theirs.

‘I’m staying.’

‘OK, Englishman. Let’s do it!’

She took his hands in hers and drew him close. The heat of her was engulfing. He’d forgotten what it could feel like. There had been little reason to dance in the last nine years. Little opportunity – at least, that he had chosen to take – to move in melding unison with a lithe and tempting body. She was beautiful. Her breath was a wild thing on his cheek. The urge to taste her was profoundly disturbing.

‘We should go,’ he muttered hoarsely, and this time she complied without a murmur, interweaving her fingers in his and slipping in his wake through the forgotten students.

Outside on the street, she tried to kiss him.

Awkwardly, he said, ‘I’m not right for you.’

‘God, I’m not asking you to marry me!’ Her face darkened.

He didn’t answer. Her fingers were still caught up in his, and he closed his hand around hers and dragged her away from the bar.

Klara cleaned her teeth, removed her make-up and undressed in furious silence. He stepped into the bathroom while she climbed naked into bed, and when he came out the light was off and the thin summer quilt was drawn tight around her. He collected the spare pillow and blanket and sat on the carpet, his back against the door. Sleep was only a distant possibility.

His mind had roamed to a dozen places and ages before she spoke. Her words, in the darkness, took on a disembodied character. ‘I have to tell you why I can’t help you any more.’

‘You’ll feel better tomorrow. This evening doesn’t matter.’

‘It’s not about this evening.’ After a long pause she said, ‘If this story you told me is true then I can’t any longer see Gavriel. Not as my lover.’ Her voice was rigid. Void of warmth. ‘But I understand now I have to choose my side. I’m not just some stupid girlfriend, you know. I have values. I have a sense of responsibility.’

‘Klara, what’s this about?’ He considered turning on the light, but feared it might make her retreat into her shell once more.

‘You tell me Gavriel is fighting against the people who want to legalize drugs, yes? And you are fighting for them.’

‘I said he’s trying to murder three politicians.’

She seemed to ignore that. ‘My brother died with an overdose. Did you know that? When you came sniffing around my apartment dressed as a priest, had you already spied at my past and found that, yes, I in fact have lost someone I loved?’

He stared into the darkness. ‘I had no idea.’

‘He was a selfish bastard sometimes, but very talented. I loved him, like anyone is going to love an older brother who can do anything. He played the saxophone . . . Ach, it doesn’t matter. He had a good job in a bank, buying and selling companies. Then someone at work got him into coke. He had difficulty to calm down after a big night in the clubs so he smoked spliffs. That didn’t work so he tried stronger stuff. Skunk. I didn’t see him for three months. He showed up at my university, a mess: he had quit his job, given up his apartment. He needed a place to stay, crashed with me, did a lot of coke. It made him frantic – he scared me. I caught him smoking crack. He was changed: no more lightness, no more generosity. Just suspicion and resentment. One time he passed out on my bed and shat himself. I can still smell it. He stole my money and denied it. When I accused him, he punished me by ripping up my study notes. He left without telling me.

‘We searched for almost one year. The police found him dead in a . . . you say “squat house”? He was living with two Turkish street cleaners and two Russian “artists” who were cheating welfare. They hid his body in a cupboard, inside a plastic sack to stop the stench. One of the Russians was arrested for fraud and the house was searched. This is how they found him. My brother was so stupid, but I don’t blame him. I don’t blame the squatters. I don’t blame his job or the people he worked with. I blame the drugs. End of story. I’m not going to continue a relationship with a man who kills people for his job. But Gavriel is trying to stop the arseholes who want to increase the use of drugs – and you are trying to help them. It’s not difficult to choose between you.’

The realization that something had gone badly wrong in Europe struck Madeleine Wraye as she was approaching Beirut Rafic Hariri international airport in a battered taxi. She had been unable to reach Joyce on his mobile before or after the dinner with George Vine. She tried his home number, listening numbly as Sophie Joyce cheerfully announced, ‘He’s had to go abroad for work. I’m afraid I’m not allowed to say where.’

She called Arkell immediately. ‘Hang on,’ he answered. The sound of a door opening and closing. ‘Klara’s just gone to sleep. She’s not in a great way. Don’t want to wake her up.’

‘Is everything all right?’ she began, stalling her own bad news.

‘We’ll get there. What about your end? I haven’t heard from your analyst yet about Yadin’s whereabouts. Time’s running out.’

‘I think he may be in Strasbourg.’

As she stepped into the cool of the terminal building, Wraye heard the silence from France as loud as colliding ships.

Eventually: ‘This guy have a name?’

‘Joyce. Edward Joyce.’

‘He’s got Yadin’s location?’

‘I believe so.’

‘And he’s bringing it to me?’

Wraye sighed. She was going to have to apologize for someone who worked for her, and she hated that. ‘Probably not.’

Arkell was catching up fast, but he wanted it spelt out. ‘He thinks he’s going to do this himself?’ The incredulity in his tone was, she had to admit, entirely justified.

‘Look, Simon, I’m sorry. Joyce is a fuckwit. But he’s my fuckwit. Whatever trouble he’s got himself into –’

‘Get me the address,’ interrupted Arkell. ‘I’ll find another weapon.’

Edward Joyce came round to find blood in his left eye. He knew it was blood because his distorted vision was pale red. His forehead felt wet. The blood was trickling from somewhere near his hairline. Beyond that, he couldn’t analyse any further. Both his hands were tied behind his back.

He tried shifting position. Nothing moved. Whatever he was tied to was unequivocally solid and stationary.

Yadin’s face loomed red and unfocused before him. ‘There are things you need to tell me,’ he murmured. ‘I’m sorry. There will be some pain now.’

There was already pain. A throbbing in Joyce’s skull was complemented by aches in his stomach and face. But the agonizing assault that came out of nowhere at that moment obliterated those more familiar impressions. He had never felt anything like this. Despite all the training, the grim accounts from those few officers who’d seen real torture, he hadn’t imagined anything close to this. He didn’t even know what it was that Yadin had done to him. He didn’t care. As he screamed, all that he could think was:
Stop!

There was something in front of his face. Held between finger and thumb, what exactly it was Joyce couldn’t tell. It was red, but then everything was red. Displayed for a second longer, it dropped out of sight. Joyce suspected the thing, the unidentified object, had once been a part of him, but he was too groggy and too swamped by the aftershocks of pain to work out which part.

‘Are there more like you in the building or outside?’

Shaking his head sparked a debilitating nausea in Joyce. It was as if he’d tripped a switch, waking the entire length of his intestine, turning it into a writhing serpent of bile. Only when he tried opening his mouth to throw up did he realize it was already open and stuffed with wadded material. A momentary image of the girl in the nearby apartment came to him. Still bound, still gagged. She might be stuck there for days now.

It was his first acknowledgement that he was not going to leave the apartment alive.

Had he vomited? He was confused. It seemed he hadn’t. From a distance, he heard Yadin say, ‘We’ll make sure of that,’ and thought he was talking about the same thing. Then the murderous pain struck again. More acute, more drawn out. Where was it coming from? His whole body was rigid, charged. The scream that sounded so muffled to his ears echoed alarm-loud through his brain. He couldn’t work out where the damage was, couldn’t make himself care.
Stop. Just stop.

His eyes were tightly closed. If there was another gory trophy Joyce did not want to see it. A vision of Sophie, smiling that concerned, loving smile she always wore when she knew something was wrong. ‘Again,’ she said. ‘Is there anyone with you? In this building or outside?’ Her fingers tugged the wad from his paralysed mouth. She seemed genuinely anxious to hear the answer.

‘No,’ he rasped. ‘It’s just me.’

It made her happy, that answer. He could see now that she was perched on the edge of the tree house. His tree house. Perfectly level, every baton screwed in place, the wood polished and shining in the sunlight. Maya was balanced on a window sill, laughing to herself. Jasmine was storming up the ladder and down the slide, up the ladder and down the slide, a perpetual cycle.
Look at me! Daddy, look at me!

‘You’re not the one who followed me in Cyprus.’ There was a frown in Sophie’s voice, despite the lovely smile. ‘Are you?’

‘No,’ he freely admitted.

Was he smiling? He felt like he was smiling. A quick double slap on his face made him open his eyes.

Yadin was gazing tiredly at him, a kitchen knife liberally bloodied in his right hand.

‘I have a family,’ said Joyce. The chill of awakening consciousness spread through his veins. It seemed to stop his heart. ‘I have two beautiful daughters. Five and three.’ There were tears running down his cheeks, he realized, and for once in his life he didn’t feel ashamed. ‘She’s called . . . They’re called . . . M – . . . Jasmine and Maya.’

‘Good,’ said Yadin. ‘That’s good.’ He leaned forward and patted Joyce’s wet cheek with the red blade of the knife. ‘Let’s talk about the man in Cyprus.’

At 1.25 a.m., Avenue du Général de Gaulle was empty, and the apartment blocks to the east of it mostly dark. Arkell knew better than to make assumptions about the sleeping patterns of residents near a university, but as he crossed the square in front of Yadin’s tower block he seemed entirely alone in the city. The night was always a calming time for him, when the complexity of urban life fell away and he felt again the silent crunch of African sand beneath his boots.

Instead of a Legion rifle, he held a Colt Defender 9mm concealed inside a folded jacket. His Berlin dealer had not been able to source a weapon in Strasbourg, and Arkell had had to drive across the Rhine to meet a man from Stuttgart halfway. The Colt was all the guy had. If Arkell needed to use it, at this time of night, the noise would be heard across half the city.

So. A swift exit would be called for. He adjusted the hood of his sweatshirt against the CCTV cameras around the tower block entrance. The lock on the toughened glass door was electronically controlled and protected by a wide lip of steel. No subtle way in. He used the butt of the gun to crack the lower glass pane and his jacket-wrapped fist to punch out the fragments. No alarm, at least none audible. Nevertheless, the CCTV might be monitored. Mentally, he started a stopwatch.

Arkell took the fire stairs, preferring the solid certainty of six flights to an elevator that might be under remote security control. He took three deep breaths at the top to steady his right arm. The jacket he let fall in the stairwell, holding open the door. You never knew what might matter. An apartment door was slightly ajar. Dark inside. Not the right one. He took the torch from his pocket – cheap plastic, the best on offer at the petrol station near the border. Yadin’s door was locked, a standard nightlatch which Arkell picked in an instant. Easing the door open, he padded silently inside.

He could smell blood straightaway. An immediately familiar stench that he hadn’t encountered in years. Closing the door behind him, nudging the latch with the slightest metallic whisper back into place, he switched on the torch.

The living room was empty, the kitchen area clean and apparently unused. One bathroom and two bedrooms made up the rest of the apartment. Arkell knew with certainty that the smell of blood came from the furthest bedroom. Nevertheless he checked the other rooms first, taking care to shine the torch beam into every corner and behind each door. Then he walked into the second bedroom and threw on the lights.

Nobody.

Arkell lowered the Colt, made the weapon safe and slipped it into his pocket. It was clear Yadin was no longer present. Nor was Joyce in any meaningful sense. The evidence of his prolonged agony was laid out in a neat row on the nightstand, bloodied pink, oddly artificial-looking. Cause of death was equally unsubtle. His throat had been slit, ear to ear.

Always deliberate.

Arkell wondered if this was a message aimed at him personally. The nightstand made it plain that Yadin now knew everything Joyce had known about his mission. About him. What
had
Joyce known? Wraye would never have shared his real identity. But Joyce would have been able to describe Arkell’s appearance, detail some of his attributes and methods. He would have revealed how much they knew and did not know about Yadin and the people who had commissioned him. And he would have told Yadin about Klara.

Only then did Arkell remember the one thing that should have occurred to him as soon as Wraye rang: Joyce knew his address in Strasbourg.

He called Klara’s mobile. It was switched off. He tried the pension, but there was no answer. Stopping only to check Joyce’s pockets, he rushed out of the apartment, wiping the door handle and lock clean as he went. In the corridor, he paused. That other apartment, door still slightly ajar in the middle of the night . . .

He went in fast, gun extended, a blitz search that brought him to the dark bathroom and the collapsed girl in under ten seconds. Untying her, he filled the mug with water and allowed her two sips before asking roughly in French, ‘The man who did this . . . blond or dark?’

‘Blond,’ she rasped.

Arkell was out of the building and driving fast long before she was ready to call the police.

Gavriel Yadin stalked through the black Strasbourg night, his few items of clothing, his equipment, and the two packages from Kolatch in a backpack loosely slung over one shoulder. The British agent’s gun went in the canal. His passport, phone and wallet would be mailed in the morning to a domestic address in north London in case they were of interest to Kartouche.

When Yadin came to the cathedral, he paused a while and rested his forehead against the Vosges sandstone. He wished he could feel God’s presence, that God might come briefly into existence to make sense of all this. Tonight he had welcomed Death. The subsequent killing had made far less impression on his soul than that sense of his own ending. He had killed many times, had feared death on occasion, but that was the first time he had looked into his own grave with something bordering on relief. And it had made him stronger.

Let’s take the strangeness out of death. Let’s get used to it. To practise death is to practise freedom.

Pressing his hand against the smooth stone, he pushed himself abruptly away from the Christian wall. The knuckles were bruised. He allowed himself two painful minutes to think about Klara Richter, then put her from his mind. Priorities. He needed sleep. To check into a Strasbourg hotel now would be to lay a blazing trail for the authorities. How hard would it be to run a search of single men who had taken a room without a reservation in the hours following a murder? In such cases, when there was a clear operational need, Yadin felt no compunction for the actions that must follow.

Selecting a modest apartment above a bakery in Rue des Juifs, he forced the lock on the street entrance, bolted the door behind him, went upstairs and shot the young couple as they slept. His suppressed HK made only four curt cracks in the silence of the bedroom. Yadin took the one pillow that was still white and went to sleep on the couch next door.