The Wolf in Winter

by Connolly, John

  CHAPTER

  XLIII

  Angel and Louis followed the trail through the dust, the interior lit only by a single lamp that flickered in a corner. The room smelled of long-withered herbs, the scent of them infused in the grain of the wood and the peeling paint on the walls, but underpinning it was a medicinal odor that grew stronger as they approached the drapes concealing the back room.

  And there was another smell again beneath them all: it was the unmistakable reek of rotting flesh.

  Louis had replaced his gun in its holster, and now Angel did the same. Slowly Louis reached out and pulled aside the drapes, revealing the room beyond, and a man seated at a desk lit only by a banker’s lamp. The angle of the lamp meant that the man was hidden in shadow, but even in the darkness Angel could see that he was yet more misshapen than when they’d last met. As they entered he raised his head with difficulty, and his words were slurred as he spoke.

  “Welcome,” he said. “You’ll forgive me for not shaking hands.”

  His twisted right hand reached for the lamp, its fingers so deformed that they appeared to have been lost entirely, the digits reduced to twin stumps at the end of the arm. Angel and Louis didn’t react, except for the merest flicker of compassion that briefly caused Angel’s eyes to close. It was beyond Angel’s capacity not to feel some sympathy, even for one such as this. His response didn’t go unnoticed.

  “Spare me,” said the man. “If it were possible to rid myself of this disease by visiting it instead on you, I would do so in an instant.”

  He gurgled, and it took Angel a moment to realize that he was laughing.

  “In fact,” he added, “I would visit it upon you anyway, were it possible, if only for the pleasure of sharing.”

  “Mr. Cambion,” said Louis. “You have not changed.”

  With a flick of his wrist, Cambion moved the lamp so that its light now fell upon his ravaged face.

  “Oh,” he said, “but I have.”

  ITS OFFICIAL NAME WAS Hansen’s disease, after the Norwegian physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen, who, in 1873, identified the bacterium that was its causative agent, but for more than four thousand years humankind had known it simply as leprosy. Multidrug therapies had now rendered curable what had once been regarded as beyond treatment, with rifampicin as the base drug used to tackle both types of leprosy, multibacillary and paucibacillary, but Cambion was one of the exceptional cases, the small unfortunate few who showed no clinical or bacteriological improvement with MDT. The reasons for this were unclear, but those who whispered of him said that, during the earliest manifestations of the disease, he had been treated unethically with rifampicin as a monotherapy, instead of in conjunction with dapsone and clofazimine, and this had created in him a resistance to the base drug. The unfortunate physician responsible had subsequently disappeared, although he was not forgotten by his immediate family, helped by the fact that pieces of the doctor continued to be delivered to them at regular intervals. In fact, it wasn’t even clear if the doctor was dead, since the body parts that arrived appeared remarkably fresh, even allowing for the preservative compounds in which they were packed.

  But truth, when it came to Cambion, was in short supply. Even his name was an invention. In medieval times, a cambion was the mutated offspring of a human and a demon. Caliban, Prospero’s antagonist in The Tempest, was a cambion—“not honour’d with a human shape.” All that could be known of Cambion for sure, confirmed by his presence in the old apothecary, was that his condition was deteriorating rapidly. One might even have said that it was degenerating, but then Cambion had always been degenerate by nature, and his physical ailment could have been taken as an outward manifestation of his inner corruption. Cambion was wealthy, and without morals. Cambion had killed—men, women, children—but as the disease had rotted his flesh, limiting his power of movement and depriving him of sensation at his extremities, he had moved from the act of killing to the facilitation of it. It had always been a lucrative sideline for him, for his reputation drew men and women who were at least as debased as he, but now it was his principal activity. Cambion was the main point of contact for those who liked to combine murder with rape and torture, and those who devoutly wished that their enemies might suffer before they died. It was said that, when possible, Cambion liked to watch. Cambion’s people—if people they even were, as their capacity for evil called into question their very humanity—took on jobs that others refused to countenance, whether for reasons of morality or personal safety. Their sadism was their weakness, though. This was why Cambion’s services remained so specialized, and why he and his beasts hid themselves in the shadows. Their acts had been met with promises of retribution that were at least their equal.

  When Angel had last seen Cambion, more than a decade earlier, his features were already displaying signs of ulceration and lesions, and certain nerves had begun to enlarge, including the great auricular nerve beneath the ears and the supraorbital on the skull. Now the ravages of the disease had rendered him almost unrecognizable. His left eye was barely visible as a slit in the flesh of his face, while the right eye was wide but cloudy. His lower lip had swollen immensely, causing his mouth to droop open. His nasal cartilage had dissolved, leaving two holes separated by a strip of bone. Any remaining visible skin was covered with bumps that looked as hard as stone.

  “What do you think?” said Cambion, and spittle sprayed from his lips. Angel was glad that he hadn’t chosen to stand closer to the desk. After that first, and last, encounter with Cambion, he had taken the time to read up on leprosy. Most of what he knew, or thought he knew of the disease, turned out to be myths, including that it was transmitted by touch. Routes of transmission were still being researched, but it appeared to be spread primarily through nasal secretions. Angel watched the droplets of spittle on Cambion’s desk and realized that he was holding his breath.

  “Don’t look like you’re getting no better,” said Louis.

  “I think that’s a safe conjecture,” said Cambion.

  “Maybe you ought to try—” Louis clicked his fingers and turned to Angel for help. “What’s that shit you use? You know, for your scabies.”

  “Hydrocortisone. And it’s not scabies. It’s heat rash.”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” said Louis. He returned his attention to Cambion. “Hydrocortisone. Clear that shit right up.”

  “Thank you for the advice. I’ll bear it in mind.”

  “My pleasure,” said Louis. “You give what ails you to SpongeBob SquarePants outside too?”

  Cambion managed to smile.

  “I’ll let Edmund know what you called him. I’m sure he’ll find it amusing.”

  “I don’t much care either way,” said Louis.

  “No, I don’t imagine you would. As for what troubles him, he has a condition known as lagophthalmos—a form of facial paralysis that affects the seventh cranial nerve, which controls the orbicularis oculi, the closing muscle of the eyelid. It leaves him unable to properly lubricate his eyes.”

  “Man,” said Louis, “you quite the pair.”

  “I like to think that Edmund’s exposure to me enables him to put his own problems into some kind of perspective.”

  “It would, if you hired a bodyguard who can see right.”

  “Edmund’s not just my bodyguard. He’s my nurse, and my confidant. In fact”—Cambion waved his right arm, displaying the stumps—“you could say that he’s my right-hand man. My left, though, continues to have its uses.”

  He displayed his left hand for the first time. It still had three fingers and a thumb. They were currently wrapped around a modified pistol with an oversized trigger. The muzzle of the gun pointed loosely at Louis.

  “We was going to kill you, we’d have done it already,” said Louis.

  “Likewise.”

  “You were hard to find.”

  “Yet here you are. I knew you’d get to
me eventually, once you’d exhausted all other avenues of inquiry. You’ve been tearing quite a swath through the city, you and your boyfriend. There can’t be a stone left unturned.”

  It was true. Within hours of the shooting, Angel and Louis had begun asking questions, sometimes gently, sometimes less so. There had been quiet conversations over cups of coffee in upscale restaurants, and over beers in the back rooms of dive bars. There were phone calls and denials, threats and warnings. Every middleman, every fixer, every facilitator who had knowledge of those who killed for money was contacted directly or received word: Louis wanted names. He desired to know who had pulled the trigger, and who had made the call.

  The difficulty was that Louis suspected the shooter—or shooters, for Louis believed that the combination of shotgun and pistol used pointed to a team—hadn’t been sourced through the usual channels. He had no doubt that they were pros, or, at least, he had started off with that assumption. It didn’t smell like amateur hour to him, not where Parker was concerned, and the likelihood of two gunmen reinforced that belief. If he was wrong, and it turned out that some enraged loner was responsible, then it would be a matter for the cops and their investigation. Louis might get to the shooter first if the information leaked, but that wasn’t his world. In Louis’s world, people were paid to kill.

  But the detective’s connections to Louis were well known, and nobody of Louis’s acquaintance would have accepted the contract, either as the agent or as the trigger man. Nevertheless, it had been necessary to check, just to be sure.

  There was also the distinct possibility that the hit was related to Parker’s movements through darker realms, and with that in mind Louis had already made contact with Epstein, the old rabbi in New York. Louis had made it clear to him that, if Epstein discovered something relating to the hit and chose not to share it, Louis would be seriously displeased. In the meantime, Epstein had sent his own pet bodyguard, Liat, up to Maine. She was, thought Louis, a little late to the party. They all were.

  A third line of investigation pointed to the Collector, but Louis had dismissed that possibility almost immediately. A shotgun wasn’t the Collector’s style, and he’d probably have come after Angel and Louis first. Louis suspected that the Collector wanted Parker alive unless there was no other option, although he still didn’t understand why, despite Parker’s efforts to explain the situation to him. If he ever did manage to corner the Collector, Louis planned to ask him to clarify it, just before he shot him in the head.

  Finally, there was the case on which Parker had been working before the hit: a missing girl, a dead man in a basement, and a town called Prosperous, but that was all Louis knew. If someone in Prosperous had hired a killer, then it brought the hunt back to Louis. He would find the shooters and make them talk.

  Which was why he and Angel were now standing before Cambion, because Cambion didn’t care about Louis, or Parker, or anyone or anything else, and he dealt, in turn, with those who were too vicious and depraved to care either. Even if Cambion hadn’t been involved—and that had yet to be established—his contacts extended into corners of which even Louis was not aware. The creatures that hid there had claws and fangs, and were filled with poison.

  “Quite the place you have here,” said Louis. His eyes were growing used to the dimness. He could see the modern medicines on the shelves behind Cambion, and a doorway beyond that, presumably, led to where Cambion lived and slept. He could not visualize this man making it up a flight of stairs. A wheelchair stood folded in one corner. Beside it was a plastic bowl, a spoon, and a napkin. A china bowl and a silver soup spoon sat on the desk beside Cambion, and Louis spotted a similar bowl and spoon on a side table to his right.

  Curious, thought Louis: two people, but three bowls.

  “I was growing fond of my new home,” said Cambion. “But now, I think, I shall have to move again. A pity—such upheavals drain my strength, and it’s difficult to find suitable premises with such a gracious atmosphere.”

  “Don’t go running off on my account,” said Louis. He didn’t even bother to comment on the ambience. The apothecary’s old premises felt to him only a step away from an embalmer’s chambers.

  “Why, are you telling me that I can rely on your discretion—that you won’t breathe a word of where I am?” said Cambion. “There’s a price on my head. The only reason you’ve got this close is because I know that you declined the contract on me. I still don’t understand why.”

  “Because I thought a day like this might come,” said Louis.

  “When you needed me?”

  “When I’d have to look in your eyes to see if you were lying.”

  “Ask it.”

  “Were you involved?”

  “No.”

  Louis remained very still as he stared at the decaying man. Finally, he nodded.

  “Who was?”

  “No one in my circle.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Although it was only the slightest of movements, Angel saw Louis’s shoulders slump. Cambion was the last of the middlemen. The hunt would now become much more difficult.

  “I have heard a rumor, though. . . .”

  Louis tensed. Here was the game. There was always a game where Cambion was concerned.

  “Which is?”

  “What can you offer me in return?”

  “What do you want?”

  “To die in peace.”

  “Looking at you, that don’t seem like an option.”

  “I want the contract nullified.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Cambion placed the gun, which had remained in his hand throughout, on the desk and opened a drawer. From it he produced an envelope, which he slid toward Louis.

  “Talking tires me,” he said. “This should suffice.”

  “What is it?”

  “A list of names—the worst of men and women.”

  “The ones you’ve used.”

  “Yes, along with the crimes for which they’re responsible. I want to buy the contract back with their blood. I’m tired of being pursued. I need to rest.”

  Louis stared at the envelope, making the calculations. Finally, he took it and placed it in his jacket pocket.

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Those names will be enough.”

  “Yes, I think they will. Now, the rumor.”

  “A man and a woman. Married. Children. Perfect Middle Americans. They have only one employer. A handful of hits, but very good.”

  “Their motivation?”

  “Not money. Ideology.”

  “Political?”

  “Religious, if what I hear is true.”

  “Where?”

  “North Carolina, but that may no longer be the case. It’s all I have.”

  Behind them, the yellow-clad giant named Edmund appeared. He handed Louis a slip of paper. On it was written a cell phone number. The meeting was over.

  “Soon I’ll be gone from here,” said Cambion. “Use that number to confirm that the contract has been rendered null and void.”

  Louis memorized the number before handing the paper back to Edmund. It vanished into the folds of the giant’s hand.

  “How long you got left?” he asked Cambion.

  “Who knows?”

  “Seems like it might be a mercy to let the contract run its course,” said Louis, as Edmund stepped aside so that the two visitors could leave, and prepared to escort them out.

  “You might think that,” said Cambion, “but I’m not ready to die yet.”

  “Yeah,” said Louis, as the drapes fell closed behind him. “That’s a damn shame.”

  CHAPTER

  XLIV

  Ronald Straydeer was not unfamiliar with sleeping outdoors. He’d bedded down in the jungles in Vietnam, the Great North Woods o
f Maine, and beside pot plantations in upstate New York during a period of misunderstanding with some rival growers, which came to an end when Ronald put one of them headfirst into a narrow hole and proceeded to fill it in.

  Thus Ronald understood the necessity of good nutrition and proper clothing, particularly when it came to cold weather. He wore polypropylene, not cotton, next to his skin, because he knew that cotton trapped moisture, and the action of convection meant that cold air and damp drained the body’s heat. A hat with earflaps covered his head, because when the head got cold the body began to shut off circulation to the extremities. He kept himself moving constantly, if only through the gentle shuffling of his feet and minute stretches of his arms, fingers, and toes, generating heat as a by-product. He had brought plenty of water, and an assortment of nuts, seeds, energy bars, jerky, and salami, as well as a couple of MREs—because sometimes a man needed a hot meal, even one that tasted as if it had been made for pets—and containers of self-heating soup and coffee. He didn’t know how long he might be out in the wild, but he had packed enough food for four days, or more if he had to be abstemious. He was armed with a licensed hunting rifle, a Browning BAR Mark II Lightweight Stalker in .308. If it came down to it, he could claim to be hunting squirrels or hare, even coyotes, although the Browning wouldn’t leave much of a varmint behind apart from bits of fur and memories.

  He had been fortunate with this location. The woods around the ruined church were a mixture of deciduous and evergreen, but more of the latter. He bedded down in the thickest copse he could find and covered his sleeping bag with branches. He made a careful recce of his surroundings but did not enter the church grounds—not out of superstition but simply because, if Shaky was right, the church was important, and people tended to protect places that were important. He checked the gate and the fence, and saw nothing to indicate that the grounds were guarded electronically, but he still didn’t want to risk setting off any kind of hidden motion sensor. Neither did he attempt an exploration of the town itself. Ronald was a striking, imposing man, and he attracted attention. Perhaps he would be seeing more of the town soon enough.