by Nick Louth
It was a grand but dusty place with a dark wood canopy bed, lit only by a single hanging bulb. There was a huge wood-framed mirror on the far wall, and the image she saw reflected in it took her breath away. It was Mira, wearing the gorgeous white wedding dress. She had pins in her mouth, and was putting her hair up in a French twist. She had huge long earrings glittering with diamonds, and a necklace to match. She looked to Ellie like a princess. ‘You are so beautiful,’ she said. Mira smiled briefly then beckoned for her to come in, so she could shut the door.
‘Listen to me very carefully, Ellie. I have a gun. It’s in my jacket. Don’t be frightened when you see it. I don’t want to use it, but I’m going to save both of us.’
Ellie nodded. ‘I texted where we are to Virgil. Was that the right thing to do?’
‘You know Virgil?’ Mira seemed gobsmacked.
‘Yes. He caught me hanging round your flat. Sorry.’
‘That was you?’ Mira said, then sighed. ‘I had thought I could fix this on my own without anyone knowing, but I have doubts. So, yes, you did the right thing. But it’s hopeless. He’ll never get here in time.’
Ellie stared at Mira and then blurted out. ‘Do you really love this guy?’
Mira laughed, a short harsh sound pitted with bitter knowledge. ‘I used to, when I was your age. But this man is not the man I adored.’
‘So why are you marrying him?’
Mira put her finger to her lips at the sound of footsteps. ‘Look, I’ve found you a white skirt and bodice that might fit,’ she said brightly, but then looked at the girl’s scuffed pink trainers. ‘We can’t do anything about the shoes though.’
Ellie whispered in Mira’s ear: ‘He says he’s got a dead body in the red case. And a spare case just my size.’ She began to cry hot quiet tears, and Mira wept with her, holding her close as her body shuddered in terror.
‘It won’t happen, Ellie, trust me,’ Mira whispered.
A few minutes later Mordant knocked on the door and summoned them for a dress rehearsal. Ellie came out, wearing the new clothes, and saw that he had prepared a buffet of supermarket sandwiches and cake, and a bottle of champagne with two fluted glasses. Mordant himself was dressed in a formal tailcoat with a white bow tie, a crisp white shirt and shiny black shoes. He looked so like a prince that it was impossible for Ellie to believe he could enjoy killing, and travel about with suitcases full of bodies. Mordant ushered them past a camera and tripod, for a formal pose in front of the fireplace. ‘That’s where a portrait of my great grandfather Sir William Hooksworth hung. It’s very sad that it’s not here. My late mother would have been very proud.’ He pressed a remote control and took a picture, then went back to adjust the camera.
Mira reached into her bodice and pulled out a small black pistol. ‘Okay Will,’ she said. ‘I’m here and as you can see I’m ready to marry you. It’s time you kept your side of the bargain. First, take the website down, then give me the car keys. Now.’
He stared at her. ‘Mira, please put that ridiculous thing away.’
‘I’ll shoot!’ Mira yelled, her jaw set hard. ‘Don’t think I’ll hesitate.’ She stretched her arms and aimed for the middle of his chest.
Mordant simply ignored her, took a slice of cake and fed it into his mouth. ‘Hm, not bad,’ he said, tipping his head approvingly.
‘Mira, don’t shoot him,’ Ellie pleaded.
‘It’s alright, Ellie,’ Mordant said finishing a mouthful of cake. ‘It looks like a nice little Beretta 9mm, but actually it’s a replica. There’s no firing pin.’
Mira squeezed the trigger and the gun simply clicked. She looked in disbelief at the object in her hands which had let her down. ‘Ram said he’d protect me.’
‘Well, he did. It looks good enough to fool a casual observer. He probably wouldn’t have the connections to get the real thing. You weren’t too clever about it either. I saw from the sag of your jacket that you had something heavy in the external pocket. I’d merely suspected a phone. I had a good look when you were in the loo.’ He brushed the crumbs off his hands. ‘Nice try though. Spirited.’
Mira began to cry, crumpling onto a chair. ‘What do you want from me?’
The sound of some kind of aircraft intruded. Mordant turned and ran to the window. There was nothing visible but the rhythmic thudding of rotors pulsed through the building.
‘Right,’ Mordant said, seizing Mira’s arm. ‘We’ve even less time than I thought, so we’re bringing the wedding forward.’ He took a handkerchief from his pocket, extracted a gold ring and turned to Mira. ‘Do you Lydia Mira Nikolayevna Roskova, take me…’
‘Where’s the vicar?’ Ellie interrupted. ‘It can’t be real if you don’t have one.’
Mira laughed. ‘Ellie, my darling, the whole bloody thing is a charade. It really doesn’t mean anything anyway. It only exists in his head.’
The look that Mordant then gave Mira made Ellie feel very fearful for her. ‘You gave me a solemn undertaking,’ he growled. He pushed his face close to hers but she didn’t give ground. ‘You called me in desperation and I saved you. I cleaned up the mess, wrapped the bodies in plastic and wheeled each in turn back to my studio in my largest suitcase. That was six consecutive trips on the vaporetto trying not to look suspicious. I was even good enough to dispose of them…’
‘In acid!’ Mira yelled.
‘Yes, because it works. And because the engraving studio had gallons of it. I took all the blame that should have fallen on you, and for ten years I have said not a word. I had never killed anyone, yet they thought me the monster. You of course, are as pure as a saint.’ His face twisted. ‘Mira, the embodiment of innocence. If they only knew what I know.’
Mira said nothing, but stared at him, her face grim and obstinate.
‘Come on, my dear,’ he hissed. ‘Think of the website, ready to fire the pictures of you and those dead girls into the inboxes of a dozen newspaper editors. So, once again: Do you Lydia Mira Nikolayevna Roskova, take me William Mordant to be your lawful wedded husband?’
‘I do,’ Mira breathed.
‘And I William Mordant,’ he gabbled. ‘Take you Lydia Mira Nikolayevna Roskova to be my lawful wedded wife. Yes I do,’ He pushed the ring on her finger, and then seized her face, kissing her passionately. Mira’s arms hung limp at her sides, and she looked as if she might faint if he released her. He broke away from the kiss and then said: ‘So I pronounce us man and wife. Now, sadly, we have to leave.’
Ellie, having edged to the window, could see that the helicopter had landed on pasture at the far side of the lake, sending a flock of waterfowl into the air. Two people jumped out and were running, ducking low beneath the spinning rotor, towards the hall. They had a quarter mile or so to cover. Mordant followed Ellie’s gaze, and ran to the window. ‘Virgil Bliss. Well, well. That side gate is locked, he’ll have to climb the wall. Come on, Mrs Mordant. We’re going to the car.’
‘I’m going nowhere until you kill that website,’ Mira said.
‘You’ll do what I damn well tell you,’ Mordant said, bundling her up effortlessly and carrying her struggling form over one shoulder down the stairs. They were nearly at the car when they heard a noise coming from the old stables away to the right. Someone was climbing the flint wall. Virgil’s shaven head could just be seen edging over the top.
‘Virgil, Mira’s here!’ yelled Ellie.
Mordant opened the boot of the Toyota, tossed the screaming Mira inside as if she was luggage, and slammed it shut. He climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine and sped away down the drive in a spray of gravel. Ellie immediately ran to the large wooden side gate next to the stable and slid the rusty bolt back. ‘They’ve just driven off,’ Ellie said as Virgil eased the gate open.
‘Fancy a trip in a helicopter then?’ he asked. Her face lit up. ‘You’ll have to run fast,’ he said, as he and Ram raced her back to the chopper.
Chapter Thirty
Leonard Lucifer Smith had left Clitheroe a f
ew minutes ago, and was hammering the Transit along the B6478 in the Forest of Bowland as he phoned his son.
‘So where are you now?’ Lawrence Wall asked.
‘Just turning off to Hooksworth Hall. You were up here just a few months ago, weren’t you?’ he said.
‘Yeah, fucking awful weekend,’ Wall said. ‘I tell you Dad, that woman drove me crazy, but I can’t get her out of my head. Do you know what she said to me?’
‘What?’
‘That when she was thirteen she had promised to marry her old art teacher. So I says “Well, you’ve got me now so you’d better forget him,” and you know what she says then?’
‘Surprise me.’
‘She says: “Sorry Lawrence, he still owns me heart and soul. You’ll never be in his league.” ’
‘So you lamped her one, right?’ Lucy said, with enthusiasm.
‘Yeah, and how. But it’s nothing compared to what I’d like to do to him.’
‘Get in the fucking queue, my son,’ Lucy chuckled, throwing the van round a tight corner on the rutted track, which was now passing between high drystone walls. He only saw the Toyota at the last moment. It was coming head on, and there was no room to pass. Both vehicles skidded to a halt with inches to spare. ‘It’s him!’ Lucy bellowed. ‘I’m gonna fucking ’ave ’im.’ He dropped the phone, and taking a deep breath to fight the agony he expected, leaned carefully down into the passenger footwell. He grasped the bag in which the Browning was stowed. By the time he’d eased himself upright, gun in hand, the Toyota was reversing back down the lane. Lucy took a few seconds with his eyes shut to fight a wave of nausea. A reminder of what Mordant had done to him. But he had a minute or two. If he remembered right from all those years ago, there was no other way out for Mordant’s car but past him. He grabbed a packet from his pocket, popped out and swallowed another six ibuprofen and washed it down with a swig of Red Bull. Then he banged the Transit into gear and set off after his enemy.
* * *
The helicopter rose sharply over the lake and north towards the forbidding towers of Hooksworth Hall. Virgil could see that a good three quarters of the hall, including the chapel and belvedere, were covered in scaffolding. Beyond the formal garden, much overgrown, the lane went east towards Easington Fell and the main road into Thewick and Clitheroe. Virgil had watched as the Toyota, after almost colliding with the Transit, had reversed back a good half mile then turned right down a narrow walled lane. This southern track was rough, muddy and ran beside tumbledown farm buildings to an ancient stone bridge over the river that provided the estate’s southern boundary. Mordant probably didn’t know it yet, but the long drover’s bridge was damaged. Most of the third arch of the four had fallen into the river, leaving a ten-foot long section of parapet on the right hand, with just a thin margin of stone walkway connected to it.
There was an adjacent hilly sheep pasture beyond the lane that the chopper could land in, so he directed the pilot there. The one unknown was the other vehicle, the Transit van now following Mordant. Virgil thought it was unlikely to be workmen on a Saturday, but too soon to be the police who were just leaving Clitheroe. If they were Mordant’s friends, that would make life even tougher.
As the helicopter touched down Virgil, Ram and Ellie leapt out into the field. To their left the river was in spate, caramel swirls topping iron-dark waters laden with branches and other debris. They ran down across the rough boggy tussocks, struggling towards the drystone wall which separated them from the lane. There was a metal gate at the far corner next to the Toyota. They could see Mordant had pulled Mira from the car, and was dragging her towards the bridge. She was struggling with her long white dress in the muddy lane. The Transit had stopped right behind the Toyota. The enormous figure of Leonard Lucifer Smith, who Virgil recognised from the newspaper coverage of his escape, began to emerge, bellowing at Mordant.
Virgil needed to get Mira away from this confrontation, so put on an extra spurt of speed. He vaulted the gate easily, and sprinted past the Toyota onto the bridge. Mordant had already reached the third arch, and was dangling a screaming, struggling Mira over the edge, both her slender wrists grasped in one hand. Virgil recognised a huge strength in that grip.
Mordant faced him now. ‘Any closer and I’m going to let her drop.’
Virgil paused, his eye drawn to the drop, twenty feet onto a damaged and jagged stone pier, and then another ten into the dark racing waters. Mira was yelling and kicking out desperately trying to get some kind of foothold on the edge of the bridge, but the tangled train on her mud-spattered dress stopped her feet getting any purchase.
The gigantic figure of Lucy walked slowly level on Virgil’s right. In his peripheral vision he saw the gun, raised and pointed at Mordant. ‘Don’t be an idiot!’ Virgil yelled and leapt for the weapon. But Lucy’s massive left forearm blocked him, and swept back into his throat like a falling tree, flinging him against the left-hand parapet as if he weighed nothing.
Virgil got to his feet just in time to see Lucy open fire. Blood flowered like a rose across Mordant’s shoulder. He let go of Mira, who screamed as she fell, kicking sideways against the stone pier. She just cleared the jagged stonework and tumbled into the water. Virgil ditched his jacket, leapt onto the parapet and dived thirty feet into the turbulent river. The cold impact of the water was like a hammer blow, and as he surfaced he saw the billow of Mira’s dress ten yards ahead of him, meshed with twigs and heading downstream, like the plumage of some twisted swan. He ducked a snagging branch, then drove out hard with a fluid front crawl towards her. The gurgling water sucked on them both greedily, a thousand insistent fingers interwoven with Mira’s voluminous dress, tugging powerfully. She reached out for him, and cried his name, as the water turned them both over, dragging them downstream. Finally he caught her arm, and as they were drawn past a riverside willow, grabbed overhead at a low branch.
Of the next five minutes of icy struggle Virgil had little memory until strong hands pulled him ashore and wrapped him in an exposure blanket. His bleach burns were throbbing, and his vision fuzzy, but he was still aware of blue lights, high visibility jackets, and the sound of radios. ‘Where’s Mira?’ was his first question.
Male voices reassured him that she was fine, thanks to him, and in an ambulance. ‘She wants to see you.’
Virgil was helped to his feet, and the first person he recognised was Ellie, who rushed up to hug him. ‘Oh, you’re so wet and cold!’ she said. ‘Come on, get in the warm.’
He was led to an ambulance, inside which Mira was sitting wrapped in a blanket, with a muddy face, cut lip and scarecrow hair. She was holding a hot drink. ‘I was an idiot, Virgil, for thinking I could do it alone.’ She smiled, and passed him the mug. ‘Have some soup.’
The back door of the ambulance opened and Ram poked his head in. ‘How are you doing?’ he asked Virgil. ‘And thank you for saving her.’ The pulsing clatter of a second helicopter arriving drowned out the rest of his gratitude, but it showed clearly on his face.
Ellie joined them, bringing a fresh flask of soup, courtesy of the Fire Brigade. ‘The cops have recaptured that huge bloke now,’ she said. ‘Whoa, he’s very scary.’
‘Ah, that’s Lucy,’ Virgil said. ‘But what about Mordant? I saw he got shot.’
‘He still managed to kick the Lucy guy somewhere low and nasty which made him fall over,’ Ellie said. ‘But Lucy still had the gun so Mordant ran away, trying to balance on the parapet. He’d nearly made it, but he got shot again, and fell onto the stones and smashed his head. The air ambulance is here, but I heard one of the policemen say he’ll be lucky to survive.’
‘I have to go to him,’ Mira said, getting up. Two female paramedics outside the ambulance seemed surprised to see her stride out, bare feet on the track, dressed only in a blanket, but she brushed off their requests to return to the warm. Virgil followed, squelching along in his socks. Ellie went with them, completing what looked like a muddy refugee family. They passed through a gate into
the paddock where the air ambulance had landed, a hundred yards away. Beside it was a yellow spinal board with someone on it, being tended by three paramedics.
‘I want to say goodbye,’ Mira said as she ran up. Mordant’s face was flecked with blood, a huge bruise showing from beneath a dressing on his temple.
‘He’s barely conscious,’ said a helmeted paramedic. ‘We have to get him off quickly to have any chance.’ Another member of the crew helped lift up the spinal board into the chopper.
‘Will, it’s me,’ she said, reaching for his hand. His eyes flickered open for a moment, and he smiled and said something, inaudible in the roar of the rotors. Mira pressed her ear to his face, and Virgil saw her nod and smile. Eased away from him by the crew, Mira stood back and then shouted into the gathering roar of the engines, as the doors were closed and the crew climbed in: ‘Will, I won’t forget what you did for me all those years ago.’
* * *
After the helicopter became a dot in the sky Ellie walked up to her. ‘Mira? You know he said you killed some girls. You didn’t, did you?’
‘I caused their deaths, but it was all a terrible accident. I didn’t really mean to.’
‘Why, what happened?
‘I was bullied, Ellie. Bullied mercilessly and horribly because I was new at the school, and had the wrong accent. Sometimes I wanted to kill myself.’
‘What did you do to them?’
‘It was on a school trip to Venice. There were three of them. I’ll never forget them. The leader was Amber Tompkins. She was blonde, sporty and popular, and had a seventeen-year-old boyfriend with a car. Her number two was Keeley Corcoran. She was pale, skinny, and lived in a caravan with her mum and three tough brothers. She used to delight in inflicting agonising Chinese burns, which she did on my first day at the school. But the worst was Destiny Simpson. She was clever and sly, and thought up all their cruellest ideas. On the first day in Venice, Keeley emptied my suitcase down the stairs of the hotel. But it was Destiny who stole my phone and texted a declaration of love to the best-looking boy in the class. The first I knew about it was when his girlfriend, the captain of the netball team, slagged me off in front of everyone while all the boys laughed. It was horrible. I begged Destiny to give me my phone back, but she said I had to buy it back with a bottle of Bacardi.
