by J. F. Kirwan
The third strategy was intellectual, and wouldn’t last long once panic overwhelmed him, once his body was on fire. He knew that The Torch burned people this way specifically to precondition their fear response, to maximise it, so that the victim would often start screaming even before the burning really hit them. Greg countered this with a sobering fact. No matter how bad the pain would be, he knew from countless burn survival cases that the pain was worse once the burning stopped, when the flames died out and fresh air reached whatever was left of the skin and raw nerves.
He knew he’d forget this inconvenient truth soon enough, and that the Serengeti would only last a while, and that once he could no longer focus on his breathing he would scream for The Torch until his lungs burst.
The taper reached his feet. The flame immediately swelled, and the heat began to scorch Greg’s toes. His muscles wanted to recoil, to bring his knees up towards his chest, but that wouldn’t help, and would ultimately make it worse, so Greg willed his legs to stay where they were, forcing the muscles to stand down, suppressing the involuntary reflex. The pain tore at him, dragged his mind to the point where the flame had already burned through the layers of bandage and had begun blackening his toes.
Greg’s mind was on fire, but he kept his mouth shut.
Still The Torch did nothing.
Still Greg did not move.
The Serengeti was aflame, Greg’s mind a firestorm as the blinding heat progressed along his feet, barbecuing then eating his flesh. He let it go. Breathe in… breathe out…
‘It must scream,’ The Torch said.
Greg didn’t react outwardly to the excruciating agony. He prayed shock would set in and protect him, but no, at least not yet, because The Torch knew what he was doing, delaying the onset of shock by burning his victim slowly, progressively. Greg’s heart pounded out of control, he sweated profusely, and his entire body trembled, but he kept his head and body in the same position in which he’d started, the tight bandaging masking his tremors, soaking up his sweat. His mind was losing control, reason had shut down, his thoughts flickered from one hellish image to another, from Joan of Arc to Dante’s inferno to…
Br… ea… the…
The Torch stood up. ‘It must scream!’
Greg used all his willpower to keep his mouth welded shut.
The Torch heaved Greg into an upright position, facing the mirror. The fire began to rise faster, licking up Greg’s shins, and he felt his flesh try to shrink inward, away from the ravaging flames. A cough threatened to turn into a cry, and Greg ground his teeth together, knowing that one single whimper would unleash an unending, wailing banshee. He would not give The Torch the satisfaction! He bit his lip, made it bleed, using this fraction of sweet pain to distract him from the deluge engulfing his body, and he stared with horror as the shock finally kicked in, due to the fire’s accelerated progress, flames racing up his torso.
What he saw in the mirror was a human torch, and he no longer felt the need to scream, instead recalling what The Torch had said to him. Time to die. Next to him, his murderer and torturer jumped up and down like an angry boy, his face more anguished than any Greg had ever seen. Greg lost control, and he took in one final, shrivelled breath, preparing to scream his heart out.
‘Scream, it must!–’
Greg barely heard the gunshot, instead he watched as The Torch froze mid-sentence and looked down at the spreading splash of red on his sandy gown. He tried to wipe it off, and his mouth moved like a fish drowning in air, trying to say something, but nothing came out. The Torch crashed headlong into the mirror, shattering it, blood spurting spasmodically from lacerations in his neck.
Greg heard an explosive hiss and was suddenly doused in white powder that made his eyes sting. He watched the flames snuff out, and saw his body as if it was someone else’s, his legs charred and black, shreds of bandages here and there, below the knees the worst, because that’s where it had burned deepest before The Torch had lifted him up.
He collapsed, and someone caught him, bracing his fall. Donaldson. Matthews and Finch were behind him. Finch looked terrified. No, horrified.
‘Don’t try to talk,’ Donaldson said. ‘Help is on its way. Lucky for you that bastard showed Jennifer this room, bragging it was where he would burn you to a cinder.’ He quickly unbandaged Greg’s face, wincing when he saw what The Torch had done to his nose. He touched a few other areas of the singed bandages, testing them.
‘Leave them be,’ Greg said, shakily. ‘Let me see him.’
Matthews joined Donaldson and together they helped him into a seated position, much easier now that layers of bandage had burned away, and Greg studied the dead killer. Finch also moved forward to take a closer look, or to ensure that this time he was really dead.
He looked like a wax model, his shiny face leached of blood. A single word popped into Greg’s head: childlike, forever trapped in that horrifying moment decades earlier when his parents had been killed before his eyes. On closer inspection, The Torch looked confused, surprised by his own untimely death, as if it wasn’t part of the plan.
Not what had been promised.
Greg relaxed a fraction, and as he did so the protection of shock began to ebb, and the pain kicked in with a harsh vengeance, as if it had only been playing before. He began to shake, and bit down on the fresh, blinding agony. He heard footsteps, people running down a corridor towards them, Finch shouting, ‘Morphine, we need morphine!’ But it was no good. Greg couldn’t hold back any longer, and the cry built in his throat and roared out of him, The Torch finally getting what he’d wanted.
39
Eight weeks later
Greg was finally out of hospital. The doctor had said he could do some light yoga, it would be good for him. Later. Maybe. He was sitting in a café, waiting for someone. Not Jennifer. She’d visited him in the ward for burn victims a couple of times. Three in fact. She’d had little to say. She’d been traumatised. Seeing him brought it back every time. Like her, he was a psychologist. He fucking got it. PTSD is what it is, as if divorce hadn’t been enough already. They’d been advised to have joint trauma counselling. Again, later. Maybe.
Maybe not.
He took another sip. Tea, not coffee. Doctor’s orders. He’d seen Finch. She was taking some leave with Simon. Said she didn’t know if it would work without a war to unite them, but she was going to give it a try. He wished them all the luck in the world. He’d jokingly asked who was going to look after the child – aka Matthews – while they were away, and she’d made a face, as if it wasn’t that funny, saying he’d gone off on a manhunt in Aberdeen. Change of scenery might do him good, Greg had offered, again eliciting a face. Greg let it go, but secretly he didn’t fancy Simon’s odds. Finch was single, but already married to the job, with an oversized kid to take care of. And, he had to agree, she and Matthews made a damned good team.
The café was noisy, full of seasonal cheer. He was glad for it, relieved to be out of the hospital ward. They say the worst thing about third degree burns is the rehab afterwards, the weeks and months of pain. No shit. The meds were keeping the worst of it at bay. Mostly. Another two weeks and he’d be off them. Then…
The door opened with a jingle. Donaldson bustled in, ordered a macchiato. No pastries. He’d lost a lot of weight. Apparently, he’d taken up swimming. The new look suited him.
‘Greg, I won’t ask how you’re doing. You look better though.’
Not good then, just better. Still, honest reality was what he needed right now.
‘Any news?’
Donaldson blew across the froth on his coffee, then set the cup down. ‘He’s gone, vanished. All leads frozen over.’
The Painter. He’d escaped from the lower security facility while everyone had been chasing The Torch. The Divine’s endgame all along. He wanted a legacy. Not Rickard. He’d used him and The Torch to clear the competition out of the way – Alfred Ellerton and his son, The Dreamer – then to take Greg out of the picture by trying t
o frame him for murder. The other victims were collateral, keeping Rickard in the rites-of-passage game and Scotland Yard looking in all the wrong places. Greg wondered if the sequence of killings could become a process, a way of inducting would-be serial killers. That would be a chilling game changer. The Painter had been the knight, the unpredictable piece on the chessboard. And now that chessboard was wide open again.
Donaldson interrupted Greg’s thoughts.
‘He may just lie low. Disappear.’
‘Retire, you mean?’ So much for honest reality.
Donaldson took a sip, then smacked his lips. ‘Come back then. Rickard’s post is still open.’
‘I’m not a psychiatrist.’
‘You’re all shrinks to us, Greg.’ A smile.
Greg tried to reciprocate, but it crumbled into nothing.
‘You getting therapy?’ Donaldson asked. ‘I mean now that you’re out?’
‘Psychologists are notoriously bad at taking therapy.’ A smile edged out of nowhere. It hung around this time. ‘We always know best.’
‘That’s better,’ Donaldson said.
But it wasn’t. Not by a long way. The Painter would take his time. He was patient. He’d wait until things had really cooled down. And then he’d start over, seek out others, build a small, tight cell of serial killers, executing The Divine’s strategy.
The Apostles will follow.
No one else believed it. No one wanted to. When he’d told the hospital psychiatrist about it, Greg had watched the subtle shift in her attitude: no longer one colleague talking to another, instead transitioning smoothly into doctor-and-mildly-paranoid-delusional patient.
‘Do you believe me? My legacy theory?’ he asked Donaldson.
‘Wish I didn’t.’
‘So, what do you think I should do?’
Donaldson drained his coffee. ‘I think you should start doing yoga, play the long game, date that Anushka girl who keeps checking up on you, then emigrate and raise kids.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
Donaldson didn’t hesitate. ‘Come back in, get back in the saddle, work until you detect signals that he’s up to his old tricks, then track him down and put the sonofabitch back where he belongs.’ Donaldson stood, zipped up his jacket. It had started to snow. ‘Anyway, it’s Christmas Eve, and Muriel has invited me over for turkey with her mum.’
‘Doesn’t get much better than that.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Donaldson passed him a paper bag. ‘Merry Christmas. I’m trusting you on this. The bullets are only meant for The Painter in case he comes calling. They’re not for you.’
He nodded goodbye, shook Greg’s hand. ‘Don’t be a stranger.’
Greg sat at the table in his home with his Christmas present in front of him. Shiny and fully loaded. Next to a bottle of Talisker was a third-full tumbler of the amber nectar, no ice. On the otherwise empty wall opposite was a single photo.
The Painter.
Greg took a swig of his whisky, let it warm his throat. He couldn’t quite believe he was back here again. A loaded gun, a tumbler of alcohol, and a decision to be made.
But this time, not to blow his brains out.
The decision was simple: go back to the Yard, or get out of this completely, just be a psychologist, help people who deserved to be helped.
The church bells rang.
Midnight.
Time.
Two choices. Fifty-fifty. If the gun ended up facing the wall, he’d go back to the Yard, pick things up again, and settle in for the duration. If, when it stopped, the gun faced him, he’d reinvent himself, leave the big city, and start afresh.
He put his hand on the Colt, spun the revolver, and watched it turn.
Acknowledgments
I’m indebted to fellow Parisian writers Dimitri, Chris, Marie, Mary Ellen and Gwyneth, who challenged and supported me in equal measure throughout the two years it took to write this book, as well as my pre-readers, Beatrice, Andy and Laura, and the fabulous team at Bloodhound Books, who helped me raise my game. And thanks to Sheila, who put up with my endless tapping at the keyboard at all hours. Many thanks, all of you.
A note from the publisher
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