Sextet (55 page)

Reaching the top floor at last, he had a glassy sense that it was not a dream, after all, but that everything was now going to calm down; normality was about to prevail, no-one was going to get hurt, and the child—he realized the child must be Tomas Court’s son—was going to be safe.

He had a
reason
for thinking this, he saw, stepping onto the landing and slowing his pace. The abductor, he could now see, was not a man, but a woman. He could see why he had made that mistake: the woman was wearing trousers and her hair was hacked raggedly short. He could also see that she was holding a knife—but he found he was not alarmed by the knife. A woman must be as incapable of hurting a child as he was of hurting a woman: this creed it did not occur to him to doubt. He felt totally sure that the instant the woman saw he did not intend to hurt her, she would give him the child and surrender the knife. Fighting to steady his breathing, he began to walk towards her.

‘You’re frightening him,’ he began. ‘He’s only a little boy and he’s terrified. Please, put him down. You can’t want to hurt him. Give me the knife…’

The woman had been scratching and banging at the elevator doors. As soon as he spoke, she made a panting, grunting sound. She darted away, across the landing, which was large, and backed up against the bannisters. Colin hesitated; there was a sheer ten-storey drop behind her. He felt a vertiginous fear then; his shocked calm began to fragment; the floor began to move, and the dome tilted above his head.

‘Precious, precious,’ said the woman, and cut the child’s face.

Blood welled; Colin looked at the blood welling up in disbelief. She had cut the boy just below the eye, very close to the eye; blood welled up and dripped down over her fingers, which remained clamped over the boy’s mouth. Colin saw the child give one terrified convulsive movement, then fall limp. He could both see and smell his terror now; he could also see that the knife, a long, thin switch-blade, was pressed up against the child’s bare throat.

‘Oh, dear God, what are you doing? What are you
doing
? You
cut
him,’ He stared at the woman. ‘You—how can you do that? You can’t want to hurt a child. It’s so wicked,
wicked
. Please—give him to me. I’m not going to touch you, or hurt you. Let him go. Let him go
at once
…’

‘He stinks. Filthy little know-it-all.’ The woman spoke in a low rapid voice, eying him. ‘You take one more step and I’ll jump.’ She frowned. ‘I’ll cut his throat.’

‘You can’t do
both
. What are you
saying
? Look, please—listen to me. Why are you doing this? What’s the
point
? You can’t get away from here now. That elevator isn’t working. Every resident in this building will have been calling the police…Please, give him to me.’

He stopped. He could hear just how stupid and fatally inadequate he sounded. He could not understand why these arguments, so true and so obvious, would not be properly expressed. He tried to look at the woman; think,
think
, said some irritating, confusing voice in his head. He began to see that the woman was very afraid; her face had a twitchy, jittery look; she was breathing in and out very fast and beginning to shake. Colin took another step forwards. He wanted to make a rush at her, a grab at her—but the knife was just under the boy’s ear, and that ten-storey emptiness lay in wait.

‘Precious. Precious baby,’ said the woman, in a low crooning voice. She looked down at the boy; Colin risked another silent step forward. Her head jerked up and the white of her face flared at him.

‘Do
you
have a baby?’

‘No, not yet. Look—
please
. Let me help you. You need help…’

‘Call the elevator. Tell Joe to bring the elevator
up
…’ Colin was afraid to move away to the elevator. If he did, he would be at a greater distance. She might jump.

‘The elevator isn’t working,’ he began. ‘I told you—it won’t come. It’s broken down. Listen—’

‘I had a baby once.’ Her eyes flashed at him. ‘Didn’t I, Jonathan? Where’s my baby now? Rushed down some drain. Tossed out with the trash.’ Her mouth moved. ‘Get the elevator. Get the fucking elevator, right now, or I’ll jump.’

She made a jerking movement and the child gave a moan of fear. Colin’s heart leaped. He started to move towards her fast, because he suddenly saw with absolute clarity that if he did not act now, and act quickly, the unthinkable was going to happen right in front of his eyes, and fifteen seconds from now the boy would be dead. I’m going to
kill
her, Colin thought, moving, propelled on sudden violent rage, and realizing that he
could
kill her, if only he could get hold of her before she used the knife.

‘Get the elevator, Colin,’ said Tomas Court’s voice. ‘Get the elevator now. Do what she says.’

Colin stopped dead. Tomas Court had spoken sharply; he was standing on the far side of the landing, at the top of the last flight of stairs. Colin stared at his white face. He decided he was going mad; surely there was no way in which Court could have recovered and made it up those stairs? Yet there Court was, breathing quietly, if with obvious pain. He paused for only a second, looking at the woman and his son, then he began to walk towards them, his hand held out.

‘Jonathan, don’t move,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘Just stay still. Colin, get the elevator, please. Now, Maria—do you want me to call you Maria? I don’t think of you by that name. I think of you as Tina. I always will, and always have—if you’d said yesterday that your name was Tina, it would have made all the difference. Didn’t you realize that?’

The use of this name had a magical effect. The woman became still; she stared at Court and made an odd, gentle sound in her throat. Colin found he could breathe again. He darted across to the elevator and summoned it in the certain knowledge it would not come. Hope winged through him; he knew this was the correct thing to do, because Tomas Court had instructed him. Court knew this woman; he could
reach
her in a way Colin could not. Disaster was about to be averted, Colin thought. Two men against one woman was no contest, in any case. He could now see every frame of this movie playing itself out; it was a movie he’d seen a million times; it had a kindly director, who ensured that the hero disarmed the assailant, or, failing that, resolved everything quickly, without bloodshed, after a brief and well-choreographed fight.

At any moment, Tomas Court would give him a
signal
, Colin thought. He’d stop talking and give him a signal, and the two of them would launch some effective, concerted male attack. He moved back towards Court, who was still speaking. He found the scene in front of him would not stay still, but kept jerking about; he found Tomas Court was not only ignoring his presence and failing to give him any signal, but saying things that made very little
sense
.

‘Didn’t you get my messages?’ he was saying, in a quiet, puzzled way. ‘All those messages I sent? I don’t understand why you’re doing this. You must see—I can’t talk to you now, not with the boy here; he’s in the way. Look at me. Tell me you got those messages, Tina. Tell me you understood.’

The woman’s grip on the boy slackened for a second. Her mouth moved. ‘Messages?’ She stared at Court in a mesmerized way. ‘I sometimes thought—when I was alone…’

‘I can understand that.’ Court had finally come to a halt a few feet in front of her. Colin edged his way to Court’s side. He could see that Court was looking at the woman with tenderness and with regret.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ he went on, in a quiet voice. ‘Trust me. I’m not going to touch you—though I want to very much. All this time…’ He gave a sigh. ‘You know not one day has gone past without my thinking of you? I’ve read your letters a thousand times. I know them by heart. There’s one you wrote—’ He hesitated. ‘And I keep it next to my heart.’ He sighed. ‘How is it you know me so well? You’re closer to me than anyone I’ve ever known. I can talk to you without any fear of being misunderstood—and you can talk to me the same way. That’s how close we are.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘Put the boy down, Tina. He’s in the way. You’re so very dear to me. Give me the knife.’

The woman began to cry. She cried in a heart-rending way, Colin thought, making ugly, gulping sounds, and twisting her face. Colin found he pitied her, and that Court’s quiet words, for all their obvious effectiveness, made him uneasy. They were familiar to him, but he could not place them; recently, he felt, he had heard, seen, or used words that were very similar himself. He shifted his weight from his right foot to his left; he had some vague, nasty sensation of evil, breathing quietly, standing close.

‘Hate you,’ said the woman, glancing down. ‘Hate you, hate you, hate you…’

‘Of course.’ Court glanced towards the knife; it had moved a little, but not, Colin thought, enough.

‘Don’t
always
hate you,’ she added, in a low voice. An expression of irritation passed across Tomas Court’s face. As soon as the woman saw it, she made a low, moaning, anxious sound. Hope, and fear, flickered across her face.

‘You know what I want, Tina?’ Court fixed his pale gaze on her. ‘I want you in my arms—and at this moment I want that more than anything else on this earth.’

‘Lies.’ The woman’s eyes flashed at him. ‘Lies, lies, lies,
lies
.’

‘No. The absolute truth.’ Court’s pale gaze did not waver, but again that expression of irritation passed across his face. ‘I’m not arguing with you, Tina. If you want to hurt me there are more imaginative ways of doing it than this. When I tell you to put him down, I mean it. Now do it.’

‘Shan’t.’ She stared at him. Court, to Colin’s alarm, gave a sudden shrug and a look of dismissal.

‘Fine,’ he said coldly. ‘Fine. You’re boring me. Jump.’

Colin stared at him in stupefaction. He heard himself make some low sound of fear and protest. ‘Oh,
Christ
,’ he said, starting to move forward, because he could see the woman’s expression altering, and he could see her starting to turn towards that ten-storey drop. She lifted the boy high in her arms, and Colin knew that she was about to throw him. The child gave one terrified cry; Court did not move, and as Colin lurched forward, the woman dropped the boy at his feet.

Colin made a grab for him; he got his arms around him and started to scoop him up. Neither Court nor the woman had moved, Colin thought, and he could sense that they were looking at each other, that their gaze, which he could feel rather than see, was interlocked. He gripped Jonathan more tightly, and the instant he touched him, the boy began to fight. He was half-crazed with fear, and the fear gave him strength. Colin was straightening up with the boy in his arms, trying to back away, to get him out of the woman’s reach, and the boy was
fighting
him. It was like trying to hold an armful of fish. The boy threshed and squirmed; he rained down punches and slaps on Colin’s head and face. He sank his teeth into Colin’s hand, and as Colin tried to catch hold of his arms, he began to kick and scream. He caught hold of Colin’s hair, and tugged at it. ‘Jonathan, Jonathan,’ Colin said, trying to calm him, trying to get him out of the woman’s reach and away from that ten-storey drop. The boy rose up in his arms, arching and yelping. For a moment Colin could see nothing but his flailing arms, and that moment was all it took.

Darkness moved; something clattered to the floor, and somewhere to the side of him, something bunched. Over the boy’s shoulder, past his white face, Colin saw Tomas Court enfold the woman in his arms. He knew that was all right, because he had heard her drop the knife. He started to tell Jonathan this, that it was all right, that he was safe, that it was over—but Jonathan was still yelping and screaming and trying to scratch his face.

Colin ducked his head away; he heard a crunching sound, then a sharp exhalation of breath, and he began to realize that some blow had been struck. He started to turn, and heard himself make some sound, of fear, of protest. ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’ Jonathan cried, and Colin froze in horrified disbelief.

He watched the woman move upwards and over the bannisters with a gymnast’s grace. She went over backwards, head first, in a beautiful dive; he saw her eyes widen and her hands grasp space. She seemed to hang there, supported by air, for an immensely long time, then she disappeared from sight. Tomas Court stepped back from the bannisters. He brushed at his jacket—one sleeve was torn; he stood listening, white-faced.

There was a silence, then a faint, thin cry, then a thud. Colin, shocked, appalled, unable to move, did not need to look over the bannisters to know what had happened; he knew she was ten floors down on a stone floor, and she was dead. He began to tremble violently; he found he had begun to weep. The little boy, sensing some change, made a whimpering sound, lay still and covered his face. Colin cradled him tightly against him and stared at Tomas Court, whom he could scarcely see for distress.

‘Why? Oh, dear God,
why
? Tomas—she’d let him
go
. He was
safe
. Tomas—she was this poor, mad, pathetic thing. Oh,
Christ
. You hit her. I heard you hit her

‘I did not hit her. Colin, I tried to take the knife from her. She was struggling—I don’t know what happened. One second I had hold of her, the next she was toppling over. These bannisters are deadly; they’re not even waist-height…’

‘Ah, dear God, you
pushed
her. You lifted her up and pushed her over…I can’t believe—Christ,
Christ
…’ There was a silence; this silence, to Colin, was very loud. It was filled with clamour and movement and cryings out. He buried his wet face against the boy’s hair. Tomas Court put his hand on his arm; Colin flinched and held the boy tight.

‘Colin,’ Court began, in a quiet voice. ‘Colin, you’re in shock. Wait until you’re calmer before you speak. It doesn’t matter what you say to me, I understand—but what you say matters very much when you talk to the police.’

‘She believed you.’ Colin raised his eyes to Court’s. ‘All those things you said to her—all those
lies
. She believed them. This awful mad
hope
. Tomas, she’d given me the boy, she wasn’t dangerous any more. Oh, why did you touch her? Why did you
lie
? It was horrible—’