Annabelle strode into the room and took off her sunglasses. Her hair was tied back, accentuating the fine bones of her face, the harmony of her lips, nose and eyes. Hardly any make-up. She was wearing a black V-neck jumper, tight-fitting denim jeans and black suede trainers with white lightning flashes emblazoned on the sides.
Jack sat up a little. “I’ve got the handcuffs ready,” he said. “Just how you like it.”
Annabelle pushed the sunglasses into her red canvas shoulder bag and lifted her chin slightly. She looked down at Jack. She took in a slow breath through her nostrils and eased it out again — a sigh almost, but not quite. Her eyes dismissed him: pity mixed with contempt.
To Peterson, she said: “Well?”
The detective nodded at the bedspread on the floor. Annabelle turned, stared at it, expressionless but for the faintest contraction in the corners of her eyes.
“Both of them?”
“Take a look.”
“I’ll be fine.” Annabelle reached into her bag and pulled out a white envelope that looked like it contained a small paving brick. She tossed it to Peterson. He glanced at the contents then slipped the envelope into his inside pocket.
“What about him?”
“Ziggy’s boys should be here any minute.”
“Then I’ll be off, Detective.”
Peterson stretched, reaching above his head with his long, monkey arms. “No you won’t,” he said through a long exhale. “You’re staying right here.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want you to meet my fiancée before you go.”
“What are you talking about?” Somebody walked into the room behind her.
“Me.”
Annabelle swung around.
“Hey Mum.”
Peterson had his gun out, pointed at Annabelle. Louisa walked across the room and sat down next to him on the arm of the couch. She took the gun from him, keeping it aimed at her mother. The detective beamed.
“I borrowed your jacket,” she said to Annabelle. “I hope that’s okay.”
Peterson reached out and rubbed her thigh. “It’s your jacket now, baby.”
Louisa leaned over and put her arm around his shoulders. She kissed him on the side of the head, smiled at her mother.
Outside, all at once, rain began pouring down with a roar, pummelling the corrugated-iron roof.
Jack stared at Louisa’s smooth, unblemished nineteen-year-old face. Then he had a look at Peterson’s. Maybe somewhere deep down he had a beautiful soul.
“We’ve discussed it and we want a traditional church wedding,” said Louisa. “Something small and intimate.”
“Who’s going to walk you down the aisle?” asked Jack.
“Maybe you can,” replied Louisa without looking at him. “Or maybe not.” The tone was beyond her years and all the more chilling for it.
“I think Mr Susko might be busy.” Peterson got up, walked over and stood beside Annabelle. The new son-in-law-to-be hugged her to him. She was still staring at her daughter.
“Don’t look so shocked, Mother,” said Peterson. “It’s a lot of money you’re getting. Turn the Pope against God.”
“And I love him, Mum.”
“And I love her, too, Mum.” Peterson was smiling like a spoilt kid born too close to Christmas, who always got two presents. Jack hated those kids.
“Does anybody have a cigarette?” asked Annabelle.
The detective reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack. He snapped the lighter. “That’s it, Mother,” he said in his oily voice. “Just relax.”
Annabelle smoked. “Did he get you a ring?”
Louisa smiled and held up the back of her left hand.
“It’s not very big.” Annabelle dropped her cigarette to the floor, letting it burn. “I warned you about cheap men.”
Peterson gave her a dirty look and stepped on the cigarette. His back was still to Louisa and Jack on the couch. He did not see his fiancée wink at Annabelle.
Jack did. His eyes widened and the muscles in his body contracted. He watched her stand up. For a moment he felt sorry for Peterson. Then the moment passed.
She fired three times. The detective arched his back and then his legs gave way. He fell. No last look at his love. No shocked eyes. No terrible realisation. Nothing.
~24~
Annabelle Kasprowicz stretched out her foot and pressed Peterson’s arm.
“Think we should call an ambulance?” said Jack.
She ignored him, crouched down beside the body and reached into the jacket for the white envelope.
The detective’s right trouser leg had come up a little. Jack could see the edge of a black leather holster strapped to his ankle.
“Let’s go, baby,” said Annabelle. “Quickly.”
“Can I get a ride?”
“I don’t think so, Jack.”
“No? We could stop for coffee somewhere on the way, chat, have a laugh. Maybe some chocolate cake? My shout.”
“Always the funny man.”
“Better than psycho woman.”
Annabelle took the gun from Louisa. “I don’t want to kill you, Jack,” she said. “That’s for Ziggy to worry about. But maybe you don’t need two nuts.” She pointed the gun at his crotch. Her lips pressed together into a hard line.
Jack had never seen this woman before. “I thought you liked my nuts?”
“I like balls, Jack.”
“That’s good. You’ll get plenty in the women’s penitentiary.”
Louisa walked over and peered through the curtained window. “Shouldn’t we tie him up or something?”
“We’ll lock him in the bathroom, there’s —”
“Mum! I think I just saw someone out there!”
“Get away from the window!”
There was the sound of a crash, of smashed glass and splitting timber.
Detective Sergeant Keith Glendenning ran in through the back door. “Put the weapon on the ground! Now!”
Instead, Annabelle fired. Glendenning’s shoulder snapped back, his body spinning around to follow it. Before hitting the ground his gun fired once: all the bullet did was put a small hole in a lot of air.
Jack dived to the floor, grabbed at Peterson’s trouser leg. Then somebody started yelling from outside. More guns opened up, shattering the front windows of the house. He pulled the gun free of the holster.
There was blood on the sleeves of his suede coat. If only Peterson had grabbed the goddamn black denim jacket …
He held the gun up, lying across the detective’s body. Annabelle saw him and fired. Jack fired too, squeezing the trigger three times. One of the bullets found Louisa over by the window.
“Louisa! Louisa!” Annabelle ran to her daughter.
Shit. Jack sprang to his feet and dived onto the linoleum of the kitchen floor. Glendenning was not there anymore. And the gun had slipped out of his cuffed hands, nowhere to be seen. Fuck.
He pressed himself up against the kitchen cupboards. He stuck his head out, looked across the room and saw Annabelle crouched over her daughter. After a moment she stood up, turned her head and locked her eyes onto his like a homing missile. Then she advanced on him, right arm stretched out before her, police-issue Glock in hand. The red flashes from the barrel did not correspond with the sound, like the discrepancy between lightning and thunder. A bullet hit the cupboard just above Jack’s head. Fuck.
He dived through the back door. He landed in a lot of wetness. Fantastic. Now his two-hundred-dollar pants were ruined, too.
~25~
Jack ran across the steep backyard, weaving between a clothesline, a brick barbecue and a small shed. He slipped into the trees edging the property. The rain was heavy, almost gelatinous, and already poured down the hill in rivulets. Jack splashed through, trying to keep his balance, but it was hard to run handcuffed. A bullet whizzed overhead.
The slope of the hill forced a diagonal path down: before he knew it, Jack was out of the trees and running across a
bare hill-flank of sodden grass that dropped down quickly to the coastline and then vanished into a grey mist of rain blowing off the ocean. There was nowhere else to go. Not without a helicopter. Or a hang-glider.
Another gunshot. He heard the bullet smack into the soggy ground somewhere nearby. Fuck. He ran down the slope.
Three seconds later, over he went. He hit the ground, rolled like an unfurling carpet, then began to slide. The ground split open beneath him, he fell, but the ground came back again and he hit it hard with his hip, and slid some more on his side, like a human luge. His mouth was open but it did not help slow him down. Then something caught the handcuffs and nearly ripped his arms off.
Jack’s wrists were torn with pain. He closed his eyes, tried to rein in his breathing. In a few moments he got it down to a steady shit … shit … shit. He could feel cold air blowing up from beneath his feet. He could hear waves crashing. He understood that he was dangling precariously somewhere. At least the rain had stopped.
It did not take Annabelle long to get there. She looked down at Jack hanging by his handcuffs and did not say a word. And there it was. The nobody-home eyes. Ziggy’s seven veils look, just like he had warned Jack all that time ago.
“Hey, listen,” he called out. “What do you say we get married? Right now? We could kidnap a priest and bring him back.”
Annabelle pointed the gun at him, fired a couple of times, missed because of the acute angle. She kept the gun pointed. When Glendenning called out she did not hear him, not even when he fired into the air. She took a step, down the slope leading into the ravine, tried to angle the gun. Fired again. Took another step: but this time found nothing beneath her foot. Her scream lifted all the birds in the trees. They flew across the sky like a torn black curtain.
Jack ducked his head, braced. Annabelle’s body thudded into him, mostly catching his right shoulder. The handcuffs held. Her body flipped over his back. Jack stretched his head around and caught a glimpse of the silver lightning strike on the side of one of her shoes. Then nothing. Darkness. She had fallen off the end of the earth.
~26~
It was cold inside Susko Books. Jack’s bandaged wrists ached. He kept his overcoat on while the heaters cranked up. Eventually they would stain a little of the damp air around them with thin electric warmth. With a bit of luck, in a couple of hours he might be able to loosen his scarf.
Wednesday. Glendenning had suggested Jack take the whole week off; but, bruised and tired as he was, hanging around home in fleecy clothing reading the paper had never been his style. The police had also offered him the services of a counsellor — to help him process what had happened. He told them he had Lois, and they nodded and said it was good that he had somebody he could talk to.
Jack sipped his long black. Lois had not been interested. Even the bit about Annabelle Kasprowicz being in with Ziggy Brandt from the beginning, about how they both wanted her father gone, had not sparked her interest. Or the bit about how Annabelle had set Jack up, at Ziggy’s suggestion, by recommending him to her father, by letting it slip that she had heard of a good bookseller, then waiting for Hammond to call Jack and put their plan in motion. Lois yawned. He told her about the corrupt cop, the sad cousin, the lonely poet, the sex, the money, the body count, about how Ziggy had got away with everything because nobody could find Kasprowicz’s body. Whatever, Lois had said. Get over it.
And to think that some people out there had to pay for good advice.
The phone rang. Jack put his coffee down on the counter and picked up the receiver.
A nasal voice said: “You got any books by Edward Kass?”
Jack did not fall over but his heart gave a quick kick and a breath caught in his throat. Then he heard sniggering. He knew who it was. “I’m going to burn your house down. Today.”
Chester Sinclair laughed harder. “Feel free,” he said. “I need the insurance.”
“But you’ll be inside. With an apple in your mouth.”
“Now why would you want to do that? To your best friend Chester? The one who could make today your lucky day?”
“Are you moving interstate?”
“But the deal is, I want a cut.”
“Chainsaw or razor?”
“Sixty per cent.”
“Chainsaw.”
“Well, are you interested or what?”
“Yes. I would like to kill you with a chainsaw.”
“Come on, listen to me. You still got that copy of From Russia with Love?”
“Maybe.”
“What’s it worth, five, ten grand?”
It was Jack’s little investment. He was saving it for a rainy day. He remembered it had been raining since Saturday.
“You think I’m going to give you sixty per cent?”
“You haven’t seen her yet.”
“Sinclair, you’ve actually done pretty well, you know. Working on two brain cells for most of your life.”
“Her mother’s Japanese, her old man’s Swiss. Loaded. He’s a James Bond nut and it’s his sixtieth in three weeks.”
“And she walked into your bookshop?”
“Why the hell not?”
“Fifty-cent paperbacks do not an antiquarian make.”
“The Swiss are canny with their money.”
“Canny?”
“Look, I told her I’d check with someone I knew who might be able to do her a good deal on a rare copy and then I’d call her. She’s staying at the fucking Hilton.”
“Obviously watching every cent.”
“So? We in business?”
Jack took his scarf off. “Not for sixty per cent.”
“Half.”
“Sinclair, if this isn’t a big load of some kind of Swiss–Japanese bullshit, I’ll pay you a finder’s fee. Five per cent.”
“Fifteen.”
“Seven.”
“All right, a nice even ten.”
“Eight,” said Jack, pulling a cigarette pack from his pocket. “Call me when you’ve worked out it’s the number before nine.”
“Wait! Okay, okay. Done. I’ll give you her number. Let me get the card.”
Jack lit a cigarette. His brain ticked over some figures. The Fleming book was worth anything between ten and fifteen grand. Maybe Sinclair was right: a lucky day after all.
“Here, you got a pen?” said Chester.
“Ready.”
“Her name’s Leroux. Annabelle Leroux.”
Jack stopped writing. “Are you trying to be a smart-arse, Sinclair?”
“What? That’s her fucking name.”
“You sure?”
“Annabelle Leroux for Christ’s sake! Come an’ have a look at the card if you want.”
“Fine, fine.” Jack tapped the pad with the end of the blue pen. “What’s the number then?”
Chester gave him the number. “Wait till you see her. A knockout. I love those Eurasian chicks.”
“You should have asked her out. Or were you wearing your tracksuit pants?”
“Eight per cent, Susko. And don’t try and bullshit me about how much you get. I want to see the receipt.” He hung up the phone.
Jack walked over to the reference section and picked up the OED. Then he changed his mind. Today he would try the Chambers dictionary. What kind of day? Good or bad?
Bright or cloudy? He closed his eyes and opened a page. He ran his finger down the paper then stopped. He opened his eyes and read.
fain1/ fn/ (archaic and poetic) adj: glad or joyful; eager (with to); content for lack of anything better; compelled; wont (Spenser). • vt (Spenser) to delight in; to desire. • adv gladly.
Jack Susko smiled. That the name Annabelle Leroux had slipped into his mind the moment before opening his eyes had nothing to do with it.
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Death by the Book jsm-1 Page 19
