Tick-tap-crack.
But this was not Gelareh’s flat. This house was older, much older. Its ceiling was domed and rendered. The courtyard was too bright to look at directly—the light poured in from the west, cooled by the winking sea of grapevines and honeysuckle and jasmine, but still dazzling. A breeze played at another curtain: more strands of thick, rough wool seeded with pottery beads. A figure was passing through it and out into the courtyard and the last of the day. From outside came the sounds of children laughing and playing.
“You’ll see,” said a woman beside the curtain, and she drew the beaded strands closed again. She smoothed her hands on the cloth she had tied about her loose dress. Then she seemed to realize that Oscar was behind her and she turned.
Her hair was black, held back by a worked-leather clip. She was tall and slim but luxuriantly curved; the makeshift apron knotted about her waist accentuated her hips. She was not young, but certainly not old—Oscar would have said she was his own age, in her mid-thirties, but any number refused to stick. Her beauty was timeless. A long, straight nose, narrow and in perfect proportion to her high forehead. Her lips were full; high cheekbones dropped sleekly to a strong jaw and a long neck. The skin of her arms and neck was the color of almond meal; her face was a shade paler. Her eyes were wide-set and almost black, outlined by kohl and long lashes.
She gazed at Oscar, and her eyes sparkled. She was either delighted or furious; amused or disappointed; lustful or chaste. All he was sure of was that she recognized him. Her lips drew upward in a pleasant smile.
“Well, well,” she said. “Here you are.”
Only she didn’t say that. The words she said were older, curled with accents from a land Oscar had never seen, but, somehow, he knew them.
“I was asked to keep an eye on you,” the woman said. She scrutinized his face a little longer, then she gestured with long, slender hands toward the kitchen. “Help us with the walnuts.”
Tick-tick.
The kitchen was part of the same vaulted room, and as he approached the cooking smells grew stronger. Everything was set at knee height, so one could work while sitting on the flagstone floor. The wide bench of the same whitewashed handmade brick was two feet high, and its top was polished stone almost invisible under vases spilling with basil, baskets of plums and apricots, smaller vessels of fragrant seeds, tiny open sacks of orange, brown, and yellow herbs. White cloth sacks were suspended in an alcove pantry, and Oscar could see the pink curves of garlic bulbs and the serrated leaves of angelica. Two little brown cockatiels stirred in their head-tucked sleep in a carefully wrought bronze cage. Sweet woodsmoke rose to a hole in the ceiling from a waist-high fire pit upon which was a hot stone and, on it, a circle of flatbread cooking. A girl knelt on a reed mat beside the fireplace, attending the bread.
“Turn that before it burns,” the woman suggested.
The girl nodded—I know, I know!—and reached for the bread, tweezing it between her fingers and flipping its uncooked side onto the stone. The girl turned and grinned at her achievement. It was Megan. She saw Oscar, and her eyes widened just a little in pleased surprise.
“Don’t be so cocky. Take it off now,” the woman said, and Megan plucked the flatbread off, put it onto a wooden platter, then reached for a ball of dough that she began teasing out into a flat disk. “Easy, don’t poke holes in it.”
“I won’t,” Megan said, and rolled her eyes conspiratorially at Oscar. There was no sign of her crippling brain damage. She was again the normal young girl, pretty with the freshness of youth, that she had been before Oscar’s car hit her. Except she was older. Three years older. She grinned as a sleek cat rubbed itself against her thigh.
A dream, Oscar realized. I am having a beautiful dream.
The woman led Oscar to the other side of the low bench, and he saw a third figure who had been hidden behind a flourish of sweet basil. He sat cross-legged with a bowl of walnuts on his lap and was cracking them open with a wooden mallet—tick-tick-tap. Jamy wore a plain white shirt and dark-brown trousers. He looked up at Oscar and smiled. His eyes were hazel and reflected the rectangles of warm light pouring through the windows and courtyard door. Oscar felt the woman’s hand gently press on his shoulder. He sat beside Jamy, who handed him a second mallet and moved a small basket of husked nuts closer. Oscar sat, and realized that his pains were gone.
A very pleasant dream.
No, said another voice in his head. A soberer voice. You’re dying.
“So,” the woman said, but didn’t say. “We need to decide if you’re staying for dinner. We have plenty, but we need to plan.” Her voice was as refined and lovely as her face. It reminded Oscar of desert dunes—tight ripples on long curves, with sharp edges between light and shadow.
Oscar felt a warm nuzzle on his buttock and looked around to see another cat rub itself against him. He scratched behind its bony shoulders, and its purr vibrated through his fingers. He realized that he was hungry. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. The aromas of rice and herbs and yogurt and fresh flatbread made his mouth water.
“I don’t know,” Oscar replied. He looked at Jamy and Megan. “Are you staying?”
“I’d like to,” Jamy said. He had a soft, pleasant voice.
Megan frowned, but Oscar couldn’t tell if it was at the question or the hot bread she pulled off the cooking stone.
The woman took a small tuck of skirt on each thigh, lifted, and sat in a graceful descent that allowed Oscar to see, very clearly with the afternoon sun shining through the thin cotton, the shape of her strong, slim legs. She sensed his stare and raised her black eyes to meet his. Again, they sparkled, either with displeasure or delight. She patted her hands with flour and began to roll more dough.
“Well, the day is fading and you need to decide.” She looked at Jamy. “Is he quick at decisions?”
Jamy shrugged. “Some,” he said. “Others …” He looked at Oscar, a small reproach, vanished with a grin. Tap-tick-crack.
The four of them fell pleasantly silent for a moment, preparing their foods in the glow of late day. A breeze brought in the smells of sorghum and dates, cows, distant sand, and the more distant sea. Outside, in the brilliant afternoon light, Oscar could make out the forms of children laughing as they ran after a ball, or chased one another for the sheer delight of it.
The sunlight gleamed off something near Oscar’s knee.
Glass. Two circles. And metal. Moechtar’s glasses.
“He doesn’t need them anymore,” the woman said, and whisked them away.
Oscar nodded and shelled walnuts, pleased by the simple feelings of their smooth wood and yielding nut flesh under his fingers.
I might stay, he thought. This is nice. Yes, I think I will—
Knocking interrupted. Knuckles on a door somewhere out of sight.
The woman sighed and kept rolling her dough.
More knocking. Insistent now.
The birds in the bronze-wire cage stirred again and looked up. Oscar could see that they weren’t cockatiels; they were too full and fluffed, their heads more flattened. They were tiny owls. One of them looked at Oscar, and he was sure its amber eyes narrowed in recognition. Then it yawned and showed its gray, dry tongue.
The knocking grew sharper. And a new scent arrived on the air. Not the bread, not the spices—something farther away but growing stronger. Meat cooking.
The woman rose to her bare feet, and Oscar found himself watching her breasts move as she stood.
“Why is it,” she said, “that when you sit down to do something someone decides that now is the time to disturb?” She looked down at Oscar and smiled. It was beautiful but dangerously hard. Her nostrils flared, and she licked her lips. “What would you do?”
Oscar suddenly knew who was knocking at the door. He knew what the smell was.
“Send them away.”
The woman’s dark eyebrows arched, as if she found his answer obvious. “Regardless?” she asked.
“Of?”
The woman shrugged her slim brown shoulders. “Manners. Obligation. Gifts. Appetite.”
Megan coughed conspicuously and dropped a disk of dough onto the hot stone with a sizzle.
“This is your house, isn’t it?” Oscar asked.
The woman lifted her chin. “Do you not like it?”
“I love it,” he answered, honestly.
This seemed to content her, and Oscar realized that he would not like to displease this woman. Her cats rubbed at her shins and calves. He envied them. “So?” she asked.
“Do you want what she brings?”
The woman shrugged, but it was a knowing gesture. Megan studiously poked at the bread.
“Then it depends on what pleases you most,” Oscar continued. “Receiving gifts. Or doing as you will.”
The woman kept her gaze on Oscar. The sun was dropping in the sky, and the greens in the room were being supplanted by warmer tones: coppers, dark golds, reds. Her eyes were lost in the shadows of her sculpted cheeks. It seemed as if he were staring into two dark wells. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.
The woman went to the cage, and the tiny owls stretched their wings and landed on her finger. Oscar could see their needle-sharp talons bite into the woman’s skin, but they drew no blood.
“Come on, you lot,” she said, and the cats trailed their mistress as she walked with her own catlike grace out of sight.
Tick-tick, crack.
Oscar looked at Jamy. The boy seemed to feel his stare and blushed, embarrassed. Oscar leaned over, kissed the boy’s cheek, and roughed his hair. Jamy grinned and batted away Oscar’s show of affection.
“Hey,” Oscar called to Megan.
She looked up from her bread. She smiled, but her cheeks were wet.
Oscar rose, dusted walnut shell off his pants, and knelt beside her. There must be words, he thought. There must be words that can express a thousand sorrows and a thousand regrets. But none came. He felt her hand on his own head, much softer than the way he had just touched Jamy.
“An accident,” Megan said softly. “That’s all.”
He looked up, and his eyes swam with tears.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
The girl wiped his cheeks with a thumb and gave him a piece of bread. “No complaints,” she insisted.
The room was becoming cooler now. In contrast, its hues grew warmer with the setting sun. Coral pinks. Ember reds.
The hallway the woman had gone down was dark. And from the direction of the door came the sudden sound of a woman’s scream.
Out in the courtyard, the children’s laughter stalled for a moment, then redoubled. Such things were drops in the ocean, sand grains in the desert. And Oscar realized that he didn’t want to stay. Not yet.
The door clicked open.
Oscar stood.
The woman was returning through the dark hallway—a black form in a gray, nestlike tunnel. It was perhaps a trick of the half-light, but the tunnel itself looked wider, higher, darker. The birds looked as large as mastiffs, and the cats as long as crocodiles … and the woman herself was tall, so much taller, filling the hallway. Her feet did not pad but clacked on the flagstones, and from her back spread not shadows but dark and powerful wings. But it was her face that trapped Oscar’s eyes. It was beautiful still, but beautiful in the way an eagle in flight is beautiful. Inhuman. Her eyes were wide and large and the color of liquid copper. Her nose was long, hard, curved over her mouth. It dripped.
Then the woman stepped into the pleasant, brass-warm glow of sunset and the owls were small and fluffed, and the cats petite and remotely curious, the woman just a woman. But in the late light her face and skin and dress were red. Red, the color of fresh, thick blood.
Her eyes rested on Oscar for a long moment.
“You’re leaving,” she said. It was not a question.
Oscar nodded. “If I can.”
Her hands rose, and Oscar flinched. Then she touched him. And her skin was warm. She pressed herself to him, and he felt her firm flesh through thin cloth. Her breath, as she kissed both cheeks, was warm, and smelled of blood.
“I shall see you soon.”
She looked over Oscar’s shoulder and nodded. Jamy stood, brushed off his own trousers, and came to Oscar’s side. He sighed.
“Can’t he stay?” Oscar asked.
“He does stay,” the woman said, leading Oscar to the alcove he arrived through. “He is playing outside. But he goes with you, too.”
She smiled and drew aside the curtain of wood and tiny beads. As she held the strands aside, he saw that the beads were not pottery at all. They were tiny, carefully painted knuckle bones.
Then the screaming started.
Chapter 43
It was Zoe. She was shouting at him to come on, to come on, Oscar!
Jesus, but it was cold. Why had he left that warm, lovely kitchen?
Come on! Breathe!
He rocked on the ground. Her face was on his.
Cold. And beneath it, pain, awful pain, like a layer of acid bound in ice. His heart lay still in his chest, waiting for his decision.
Oscar!
Hell.
Beat, he said. Go on, and beat.
So it did.
He struggled like a fish thrown back into water, gasping and thrashing.
And with the air, rushing in through throat and nostrils, the tang of gunpowder and the salty stench of blood.
Somewhere behind the rumble of thunder, sirens wailed.
Epilogue
No rain today. Oscar watched the sky with a cynical gaze. The clouds were as delicate as tiny fish scales, and so high and thin that they seemed themselves a pale blue. Nearby, the small leaves of pepper trees sighed in the breeze. Closer still, a deliberate cough.
Oscar looked down from the sky.
The clergyman caught his eye and nodded at the little silver pail of soil. Oscar stepped forward to the graveside. He took a little dirt in the scoop and tossed it down onto the casket. The soil tapped on the lid like fingers on a door. Oscar gave it no mind. He knew there was no one inside. Not really.
Oscar adjusted a crutch under one arm. He hovered in the background while the other mourners drifted away; he felt conspicuous in his dress uniform, although no one had given him a second glance except Jamy, who looked amused, and Zoe, who did not.
There weren’t many people at Sandro’s funeral. Vic Pascoe was in a wheelchair, his senile eyes staring vacantly as his nephew pushed him toward the parked cars. The commissioner had been unable to come: he was on remand, and on suicide watch. But the deputy commissioner had attended, in blues so richly ornamented that he looked like a flag come to life; he’d shaken Oscar’s hand and said that they just didn’t make detectives like Sandro Mariani anymore, all the while looking Oscar up and down very cautiously and no doubt thinking, So this is the one.
Foley came, after confirming that there would be a wake with a bar tab, and was chatting salaciously to the deputy commissioner’s buxom aide-de-camp, whose watch needed a lot of checking. It was Foley who’d spirited to Oscar the Scenes of Crime photos from Chislehurst. They showed a large pool of blood where Oscar had lain while Zoe resuscitated him. He’d bled from the leg and the chest: the slug from Moechtar’s gun had collapsed a lung, shattered two ribs, and missed his liver by less than a centimeter. Jon’s body was photographed lumped like a wheat sack at the bottom of the stairs. Moechtar had been shot cleanly through the left temple and was slumped over Megan as if listening for a pulse. There was none: Megan had been opened up like Penny Roth. “They found her bits in that thing,” Foley had explained with disgust. “In that clay thing. Chaume, that fucking butcher bitch.”
It was Anne Chaume’s body that was most interesting, and most unpleasant to look at. There was sufficient skin left on one finger to print and match with items in her bedroom, and thus confirm that the body was hers. The corpse had been flayed: her face and breasts and the skin of her arms and legs had been ripped from
her body. The gouges in the bones of her skull and anterior rib cage were, in places, a quarter inch deep. Her eyes had been plucked out, and her soft organs torn and savaged. Many chunks, Foley said, were just plain missing. He’d looked at Oscar, wanting more, but Oscar had said nothing.
In the hospital, Oscar learned that the commissioner was being charged as an accessory to murder, and had, by all accounts, gone quite mad. In his bed, Oscar had been asked a lot of questions. He’d answered them all but said nothing of his trip into the kitchen where he shelled walnuts with Jamy Brum and watched Megan smile as she turned flatbreads on a hot stone. Anthony McAuliffe could not be found, so Oscar arranged Megan’s funeral from the hospital. Hers had been yesterday, his father’s today, Neve’s tomorrow. The minister was now talking to the funeral director. The mourners were gone; time to wrap it up. Sandro’s headstone, next to Vedetta’s, looked good. Oscar had paid to add a boy’s name below his mother’s.
Oscar shifted on his crutches and started back to the parking lot alone, wincing at the pressure of the crutch pad in his armpit.
Zoe waited on the footpath, a scowling sprite. She found funerals unpleasant, she claimed, but he knew that she simply didn’t like the look of him in uniform. Up the road, something caught Oscar’s eye. Parked under a wide Moreton Bay chestnut tree was a sleek white patrol car. Haig leaned on its hood, admiring the lawns.
Oscar looked at Zoe. “Give me another few minutes?”
“I have to work today,” she said.
He nodded and shuffled stiffly toward Haig, who was lighting a cigarillo.
“I didn’t see you at the service,” Oscar said.
“Well,” Haig said, clicking his lighter shut. “We both know you don’t notice the obvious.”
Haig gestured toward a nearby open rotunda, and Oscar nodded.
“Not a bad stick, your father.” Haig walked with his hands in his pockets. “Incorruptible. We had a fight once. An actual fight. I can’t even remember what it was over.”
The Broken Ones Page 37
