by R J Bailey
The thought of bullets reminded me about those two expensive Sigs in the car, but I dismissed any idea of going for them. Konrad was holding an over-under shotgun. He wouldn’t even have to make the effort to aim to do me serious damage. And I was fairly certain the Irish woman knew what she was about.
Konrad began to whistle as he approached, the same atonal sound I recalled from his inspection of the Peugeot. I wasn’t sure whether he couldn’t actually whistle or he had some strange Hungarian tune going through his head. Either way, it wasn’t a pleasant sound.
‘What’s your game, Konrad?’
A lance of bright light shot out from his arm, straight into my face, and I closed my eyes. Too late. Bastard. He’d ruined my night vision.
As he came closer, still waving the torch at me, I turned my head away. When I sensed him standing close to me, I turned and let out a little gasp. He didn’t look like the Konrad I had last seen in the kitchen back at the chateau. His jowls had shrunk, the beard had gone and the skin on his face was smooth. No pockmarks. Yet the voice was the same.
‘What happened to you?’
‘You know, working in the movie business you meet all sorts of interesting people. Make-up artists, for example. Useful when it is important that someone doesn’t recognise you.’
‘I still don’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen you before this job.’
‘Not you, that bitch up there. Who should be wide awake by now.’ I assumed he meant Mrs Irwin. So they had face-to-face history together. Hence the disguise. And those bloody dark glasses, which he had now jettisoned.
‘Is Freddie up there with her?’ I asked, more in desperate hope that I had misunderstood the woman than anything else.
Konrad shook his head as if it was heavy with sorrow. ‘Sadly, no. It’s a very intimate gathering we have here. No room for extras. Shall we?’
I stood my ground. ‘Where is she?’ I demanded, with a force I couldn’t back up.
Konrad didn’t answer, simply indicated I should move by pointing the end of the shotgun up the track.
‘What have you done with Freddie?’ I shouted.
Compared to me, he sounded calm and rational when he eventually spoke. ‘We can end it here, right now, if you wish. You’ve always been surplus to requirements, Sam. Right from day one. I’d get moving if I were you.’
The woman had shifted to cover Myles and she, too, directed us up the track. Grudgingly, I began to put one leaden foot in front of the other.
When we were a few metres away, she dipped inside the Renault and pulled out the Rapha bag. A glance inside and she swung it around her head and flung it down the hillside, where it rustled away into the darkness. Hell of a way to treat a couple of reasonable Sigs. But I guessed they had all the weapons they needed.
‘You’ve been very resourceful,’ said Konrad from behind me. The accent was different now, softer, as if, now he had dumped the physical trickery, he was slowly morphing into his new self. It had taken on an Irish lilt, softer than the woman’s, but still noticeable. ‘Clothes, a car, a gun. Money, I assume. I thought you’d be banjaxed when I left you like that. I should probably have killed you on the beach or at the chateau. Still, you’re here now. Let’s get the party started.’
We began to walk, the sleety rain stinging my face, our two hosts bringing up the rear, the torch beam dancing about just in front of us so we didn’t stumble. Myles looked at me with a ‘what’s going on?’ expression. I shrugged. I knew we’d find out sooner or later. I had the feeling Konrad had something to get off his chest. Except, he wasn’t Konrad, was he?
‘Konrad, can you answer me something?’ I asked, my breath coming ragged as the path steepened.
‘What?’
‘What’s your real name? You’re not Hungarian, are you?’
‘No. But George Konrad was. The old man who taught me the armouring business.’
‘Who is dead.’
‘Sadly, yes. But it was useful to borrow his background. Hungarian is the closest language to Basque. You know that? That and Maltese, so they tell me.’
‘So you’re Basque?’
‘Well, as they say, I’ve got Basque in me somewhere.’ He spoke in a much stronger mock-Irish brogue that might have been meant to amuse, but it didn’t sound funny to me. It sounded like the voice of a killer. ‘They used to call me Anjel McManus Garzia. But as we are amongst friends, Anjel will do.’
I couldn’t help thinking that he didn’t look much like any kind of angel to me. Unless it was an avenging one.
When I was sixteen, I decided to have some fun. My dad was a miserable bastard. He did it professionally. If miserable bastards had an SAS wing, he would have been the commander-in-chief. Life at home was joyless. Glasses weren’t even half full. They were empty in my dad’s world. Unlike most other parents, mine had never discovered social drinking. I swear they had the only drinks cabinet in the land that still held a bottle of South African sherry. It was brought out no more than three times a year. When the neighbours were gorging on Smirnoff Ice, Malibu and Black Tower, Mum and Dad were still living in the Babycham years.
So, when I was tall enough and curvy enough to pass for eighteen, my friend Egg and I launched a mission to explore the world of alcohol. And we wanted to find out about the real thing, not the alcopops, like the White Lightning and Bacardi Breezers our contemporaries were downing in the park. We had an advantage in that Egg’s parents ran a pub. It didn’t last long. The advantage, not the pub. It’s still there. But after several clandestine visits where we got away with some sneaky sampling, we had a bet about who could have one shot from every optic in the bar. It ended in vomit and being barred.
Once we had recovered from the we’ll-never-drink-again phase of alcohol abuse, we started to frequent pubs out of town where we had no chance of being recognised. In those days, they rarely asked for IDs, it was all a matter of confidence, which Egg had in spades. And clubs, diamonds and hearts.
We had two places that we knew were always a good bet: the Swan Inn, which was an old man’s boozer, with a carpet so sticky you felt like you had Velcro soles on when you walked across it; and the Queen’s, which was in the process of becoming what we would later call a gastropub. Both were low-lit, the Swan because most of the bulbs had blown and the landlord was too tight to replace them, whereas the Queen’s was going for a soft, female/couple ambience and had real candles on the tables.
At the Queen’s we would sit in a booth at the back, shrouded in shadow, only exposing ourselves when Egg ventured forth for a refill. She was bustier than me, which always distracted the barman. It was a battle to stop ourselves giggling at our audacity, but we saved that for the bus home.
One night, the door to the pub opened and a couple walked in. I didn’t recognise him at first. He had on a brightly coloured shirt and jeans. Jeans! At his age. It was my dad. But that wasn’t my mum with him. As the woman shucked her coat, I recognised her as Mrs Anderson from his office. Egg, who had followed my gaze, put her hand on my knee and squeezed.
Don’t do anything stupid, it said.
I was transfixed though. It was my father’s face that held my gaze. It was unrecognisable. It moved, changed, rearranged itself into strange, foreign (to me) shapes. He was grinning. Laughing. Offering quips. The fucker was having a good time.
We waited until he had gone to the bar before we slipped out. We crossed the Queen’s off our list. Sticky carpets for us from then on. I worried for a week about how to tell Mum, but one night, over a typically glum dinner, Dad announced that Mrs Anderson was moving to Peterborough, and the office would need a new purchasing assistant.
I never saw him that happy again. But I learned a lesson that had stood me in good stead. That two, or more, very different people can occupy the same body. So the fact that Konrad had emerged as someone else didn’t faze me the way it might have.
All that did worry me was this: how come Konrad had managed to fool me?
We trudged on, past fi
elds of stunted trees to the left and right, the track still climbing, albeit very gradually. I didn’t make the mistake of burning up my energy wondering about what lay ahead. It was what it was. Nothing I could do about it. Nothing I could do for Freddie if they’d . . .
I shut it all down. If I was going to get us out of this, I really needed to concentrate on the matter at hand. I wiped away hair that was plastered to my forehead. The fine rain had penetrated through to my T-shirt and I was shivering, despite the exertion.
‘Left here.’
As I turned I saw the building ahead, a dark block against the mountains, a single light burning on the ground floor and a lamp glowing above the door. It looked almost welcoming. Except I knew that was the last description of what was going to happen here. I could make out the familiar silhouette of the Peugeot, parked just to the side.
‘Stop. Hands on heads. Kneel.’ The woman used words like a whip, snaking out and snapping at us. I didn’t like her one bit. In fact, every time I thought of Freddie, I wanted to break her neck. I was certain she would have done her, not Konrad. The woman would do the dirty work, and with some pleasure, I suspected.
‘Now.’
‘Do as she says,’ I muttered to Myles, despite my fantasies of squeezing her carotids down to the thickness of pipettes. ‘It’s not what you think.’
I laced my fingers together, pressed them against my scalp and sank onto the damp gravel. I felt it press through the cloth and into my knees. Myles slumped down next to me with a peevish yelp. The Irishwoman came past – well out of grabbing distance – and unlocked the door, kicking it open with her heel. Her eyes had never left us. And I also knew that Konrad – Anjel – was behind us, keeping us covered.
The woman backed into the stone-built structure, gave a quick glance over her shoulder and, obviously satisfied, beckoned with her free hand. ‘In ye come.’
We struggled to our feet and entered. There was a portable oil stove pumping out some heat, but even so it was as chill inside as outside. The thick walls and the high ceilings saw to that. There were bits of old agricultural or industrial machinery around, including some sort of press. The air was sharp with the smell of something organic from long ago. A fruit was my guess.
The woman had pushed back the hood and unzipped the jacket. I put her at mid to late thirties, with thick auburn hair cut to her shoulders and what in other circumstances might have been lovely green eyes. In fact, she was quite delicately featured, an effect only ruined by the curl of her lip.
There was a rough wooden table on the left-hand side of the room. Beyond it sat Mrs Irwin, one hand raised as if asking permission to go to the toilet. On closer inspection I could see that the wrist was handcuffed to the bracket of a hefty cast-iron pipe that ran down the wall. She was awake and seemed alert, although her left cheek was badly discoloured.
‘Mom!’ Myles cried, taking two steps forward.
‘Stay where you are, Myles. We can do the teary reunion soon enough,’ said Anjel, closing the door behind him. He flicked on a few more lights and the room brightened. Then he swung the shotgun at me. ‘Strip.’
‘Whathefuck?’ asked Myles.
‘She knows why.’
I knew why. Konrad reckoned the guns and the clothes might be the least of my resourcefulness.
‘I’ll catch my death in here,’ I protested. It was a moment before I appreciated the horrible irony of those words.
The woman disappeared through a doorway and I heard a cupboard open and close. She came back with a thick grey blanket and threw it at my feet. ‘Strip,’ she repeated.
I began to pull damp clothes away from skin and over my head.
‘Did you take the opportunity to have a feel of those tits?’ Anjel asked Myles.
‘Shuthefuckup,’ the lad said.
‘While she was out, I mean?’ Anjel smirked. ‘After all, old habits die hard.’
‘Shut up!’
Anjel laughed. Then he saw the expression on my face. ‘My God, I forgot. You don’t remember, do you?’
I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of admitting I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
‘Myles here, he likes his women comatose.’
‘Shut up!’ Myles bunched his fists but didn’t shift.
I was beginning to suspect Myles might have done more at his college than smoke some weed. Was that what Nina had been talking about? But that could wait.
I stepped out of my shoes, peeled off the black jeans and threw them in a heap. Now I was down to my socks and underwear. ‘Really?’ I asked.
‘Siobhan. Do the honours, will you?’
The once nameless woman stepped over and looked me up and down. She reached in and poked each of my breasts in turn and then ran her fingers around the elastic of my knickers. I looked down and saw something metal poking from beneath her sleeve. Something familiar.
‘Nice watch,’ I said.
‘Shut up. Turn around. Slowly.’
I did so. Goose bumps started to rise on my arms and legs. I was fighting to keep my teeth from chattering. It was as if all my body heat was wicking away through the stone flags my stockinged feet were planted on.
Siobhan kicked at my pile of clothes, hoofing them away over the floor.
‘OK, you’re clean. Pick up your blanket.’
I did so, and wrapped it tightly around me. Sadly, Siobhan was spot on. I didn’t have a weapon hidden anywhere about my person or in one of my pockets. I was not only clean, I was clean out of ideas.
Myles shrugged off his jacket and began to unbutton his shirt.
‘You’re OK,’ said Anjel.
‘No, he’s not,’ said Siobhan.
‘I’m soaked, man,’ said Myles through chattering teeth. ‘I’ll get pneu-fuckin’-monia.’
Siobhan snorted her derision but went and fetched him a blanket just the same. He stripped to the waist and wrapped it around his upper torso. Siobhan gave him a pat down but, as expected, the boy wasn’t holding anything either.
‘Let Myles go.’ It was Mrs Irwin, her voice both croaky and thin. ‘It’s me you want.’
‘And you I have.’ Anjel pointed at the chairs around the table. ‘Shall we sit and make ourselves comfortable?’
I shuffled over and sat down. Anjel gingerly lowered himself into place at one end, grimacing slightly. The gunshot wound again, no doubt. That dressing would need changing. I didn’t feel much like volunteering.
Myles moved around the table and stood next to his mum. She was sitting in a high-backed oak chair. A belt ran around her waist, securing her to it. ‘Can’t you undo the cuffs?’ Myles asked. ‘Look, they’re cutting into her skin.’
Anjel nodded to Siobhan, who released the arm. Mrs Irwin groaned with relief and began rubbing some life back into it.
‘Why the charade?’ she asked Anjel. ‘All this Konrad shit. Why didn’t you just kill me?’
‘You’re the last one,’ he said, almost wistfully. ‘It’s been a long time. I didn’t want to rush it. You changed things by bringing your son along. I had to ditch him. Then Snow White here,’ he nodded at me, ‘gets free and gets organised and so here we are.’
Mrs Irwin glared at me, which I thought was rather missing the point of who had caused all this. ‘Sorry. Just doing my job. So was Freddie.’
‘Your Freddie,’ said Anjel, ‘is no longer a player.’
The euphemism made me boil over, just for a second.
‘Fuck you.’
Anjel simply smiled, as if indulging a childish tantrum. ‘Well, Myles, I guess you’re wondering why we are gathered here today. What exactly your mom has done to deserve what is going to happen to her.’
Myles was stroking his mother’s hair. He, too, looked like he would happily eviscerate Anjel given the chance.
‘Jesus fucking Christ’, I said, ‘I’d like to know what this is all about, you sick fuck. Can we have the short version?’
‘Siobhan, can you make some coffee? I’ll be OK h
ere for five minutes.’
Siobhan tucked the Ruger LCR in her waistband.
From the pocket of his waterproof jacket, Anjel fetched the big Brno pistol. He laid it down in front of him, but kept his hand next to it. He was at the far end of the table from me. He had nothing to worry about.
‘Two sugars,’ I said, as Siobhan turned to go.
I got two fingers instead.
‘What is this all about?’ I asked when she had left the room. Maybe now he was by himself the old, reasonable Konrad might return. Although I suspected that had been a construct for my benefit.
‘It’s about a flat battery.’
‘Don’t play games,’ I said with all the exasperation I felt.
‘It was a flat battery that killed Andrea,’ Anjel said to me.
‘Andrea?’ I asked.
‘It was an accident,’ said Mrs Irwin before he could answer my question.
‘You know, they all say that. The thing about bombs, they are just a dumb device, they never know who they are meant to kill.’
‘Like I said, it wasn’t designed to kill her. She was an innocent bystander.’
‘Yes. She was.’
‘But you have a family history of bombs going bad, don’t you, Anjel?’ Mrs Irwin said with just a hint of vitriol. ‘Maybe it’s karma.’
Now Anjel looked at me. ‘My mother was part of an IRA active service unit. She had been trying to bomb a British Army base in Cyprus. They were penetrated by the SAS and she had to go on the run. The IRA hid her in the Basque Country, where she met my father, an ETA activist. She was known as Eneca, the fiery one, because of her red hair. And a tendency to blow things up. They were both killed during an operation to plant a bomb in Majorca. The device went off prematurely. You see, as I said, you never know who is going to get killed, once you start making bombs.’
