We Are Death

by Douglas Lindsay

  Jericho didn’t engage, but it wasn’t as though he didn’t completely agree. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t be for him. He would be long gone, living on his Hebridean island, looking at the sea.

  That was the plan, right?

  ‘It’s not moving,’ said Jericho, hoping to get the conversation back onto the investigation. Indeed, hoping for absolutely no conversation at all about anything, but if there was going to be some, it might as well be relevant to why they were there.

  ‘No, hasn’t for a while. Looks like he’s come to rest. It’s not far from here, so we’ll be slowing it down, maybe make a drive past to check it out. Nice area. A lot of big houses. I think we’re going to find guards on the gate. Or, at the very least, a big fucking gate, you know what I’m saying? You don’t mind if I say fuck?’

  He glanced in the mirror, and didn’t receive any noticeable opprobrium.

  ‘Coolio,’ he added.

  They drove in silence for a few moments, but Markussen wasn’t the type to allow that to last very long.

  ‘So, we’ll see where he is, then we can scope the joint, probably send a drone over...’

  ‘You have police drones?’ asked Jericho.

  ‘Like, sure, man. Totally. I love those things. Not... I’m not saying I get to fly ‘em. Anyhoo, we do that, and we get onto city and get the plans for the house, see if there are any weak spots. I mean, obviously, we’re the police and we can just barge in there if we want, but I expect you don’t want to do that. Not a lot of point, is there? If there’s something going down, chances are it stops the second we announce our arrival. So better to arrive unannounced, eh? OK, cool, this is the street. Third house on the left. Hey, I knew this South African guy once, and when he said, like, third house on the left, it sounded like he was saying third arse on the left. It was too funny, man. Nice and easy, but don’t slow too much, Henrik. OK, there we go, yep... guards. Probably best if we don’t all stare. I don’t really need to tell Henrik not to slow down, he’s been doing this shit for forty years. Henrik thinks I’m a bit of a dick, don’t you, Henrik?’

  ‘Bigger dick than that,’ said Henrik, with a thick accent.

  Markussen laughed, then they were beyond the property, moving along the street, looking up at more huge houses set back from the road.

  Geyerson’s house was large, up a slight hill, modern, on three stories. There was a guard post, with blacked out windows, more guards obviously positioned at the top of the driveway.

  ‘They didn’t look like the same guys who were guarding Geyerson at the restaurant,’ said Badstuber.

  ‘No,’ said Jericho.

  ‘So we don’t know how many guards we’re dealing with,’ said Markussen. ‘Cool. I’ll get onto the local security companies, see if any of them are talking.’

  Jericho immediately presumed they’d never divulge that information, but maybe things were different. Here he was, third country in a row, out of his comfort zone, feeling little more than a spectator.

  Round another corner, then the driver started to pick up speed as they headed back towards the centre of town.

  ‘You guys want to come back to the station, we’ll try to put some shit together about the house?’

  Jericho caught his eye in the mirror and nodded.

  ‘Coolio.’

  Finally Markussen seemed happy to allow the car to fall into silence. They watched the grey, late summer’s day in Oslo pass them by. The calm settled easily upon them, as though Markussen had finally decided it was time to allow the rest of the car its will. Back onto busier streets, they stopped at a red light, third car in the line, and watched the pedestrians stream across.

  Jericho and Badstuber could feel it. There was a chance of some resolution. They were coming to it at last. And as they looked out windows at either side of the car, Jericho was aware of her next to him, aware that she was thinking about him. And he was worried about her, because he knew the evening was unlikely to pass without incident. And when you couldn’t see the assassin, you had no idea where the bullet was coming from, or at whom it would be aimed.

  47

  Haynes stood on the promenade – the sloping roof of the opera house rising behind him – amongst the tourists, looking between and through the crowd, hoping to see her. He didn’t know her well enough yet to know if she regularly wore the same clothes, the same jacket. It was warm, she likely wouldn’t be wearing any jacket.

  He dialled the number again. Fifth time. It still wasn’t ringing.

  His feeling of impotence increased with every moment; the worry snarled in his stomach. Why hadn’t he got her to stay on the phone? They could have talked as she walked. She could have told him what had happened to her and how it was that she managed to be walking through a foreign capital with a new phone.

  He turned round, glanced up at the roof, the great sloping walkway that comes right down to pavement level. There were easily two hundred people walking up there.

  He looked back over the immediate crowd again, then turned and walked quickly up the slope. He walked about halfway up, then turned and looked down over the crowds, over the surrounding area, the water in front of the opera house and the streets and hotels beyond.

  There was no sign of her.

  His phone rang. Heart in his mouth, he put it straight to his ear without looking at the number. Jericho’s voice was like a giant weight, crushing the last glimmer of hope.

  ‘We’re on.’

  Haynes swallowed, confused, his eyes still darting here and there, desperately, over the crowd.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Game’s afoot. Need you at Police HQ. They’re expecting you at the front desk. I’ll text the address.’

  Jericho hung up. Haynes slowly lowered the phone from his ear, and once again looked at his watch. It had been forty-five minutes. What if she took forty-seven minutes?

  He let out an exasperated breath. He had no choice. The boss wanted him, and how could he argue? It wasn’t like he was waiting for a six-year-old. If Leighton got here eventually, and everything was all right, she could call him again.

  Another look at the phone, as though just staring at it would make it ring, then he put it in his pocket and walked quickly down towards the promenade.

  *

  ‘What didn’t you understand?’

  Leighton sat with her head down, the car moving slowly in a queue of traffic. Develin was sitting beside her in the back seat, his head still, eyes diverted past the driver’s headrest to the street ahead. He had barely looked at her since his man had pointed the gun at her, she’d considered making the run, and then had reluctantly given herself up.

  Not knowing that Develin had already ordered Haynes’s murder, she was going to do everything to make sure he was safe. Everything, that was, short of never seeing him again.

  ‘Professor, you seem like an intelligent woman.’

  ‘You never told me I had to make my decision in the next twenty minutes,’ she said.

  Her voice was without conviction. If she had seen Haynes, her intention had been to tell him everything. She hadn’t had to think about it. The chance to learn so much history no one else knew was, of course, appealing. But what was the use of knowing things that were not generally known, and what was the point of choosing to live without the person you’d decided might be the one you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, when you couldn’t even live with yourself?

  ‘You disappoint me,’ said Develin. ‘But then, I think we both knew which choice you would make.’

  His voice tailed off, as though there was something left unsaid. She finally turned and looked at him, although his gaze remained resolutely forward.

  ‘I like you,’ he said after a while. ‘I thought I’d give you the chance. Shame.’

  ‘What now?’ she asked, although she was already looking away again by the time she said it.

  She hadn’t intended to ask. Why give him the opportunity to talk, to explain things, to dominate her? She didn’
t want to know anyway. She had given herself up, back into their hands, in the hope that it might help protect Haynes. Now it was up to them, and there was nothing she could do. Why think about it? Why even ask? She cursed herself for the question.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Develin. ‘I don’t like killing people I like.’

  She swallowed, stopped herself looking at him.

  ‘We’ll see,’ he added. ‘As you can understand, the options are limited. It’s not as though we have a prison. Not anymore.’

  *

  There were nine of them in the room watching the images sent back by the drone. Another screen showed film being taken from the house across the road. On another screen, the plans of Geyerson’s house. In another room of the station, the owner of the house, who had been found, collected, spoken to and brought in, waited to fill them in on any details they might have missed from the rest of their surveillance.

  Haynes felt like he was on the set of a film. So different from any police control room he’d been in at home. Everything looked new, everything seemed to work. No one was shouting. Often enough, he thought, people were happy to say how terrible things are in Britain, how small, how underfunded, how obsolete. Haynes was, for the first time, seeing evidence of it.

  The operation was running smoothly with no one seemingly in charge. Markussen was directing the local police, while deferring to Jericho and Badstuber. A collaborative effort. That was something else Haynes didn’t recognise. He couldn’t imagine Dylan, or anyone else – even Jericho – letting a foreign officer onto their patch and listening to their suggestions, never mind taking orders from them.

  ‘They’re going to know there’s a drone above the house?’ asked Jericho.

  Markussen shook his head.

  ‘Nah, it’s high enough. They won’t be able to hear shit.’

  ‘I thought all those villagers in Pakistan could hear drones above them for days before they finally let fire?’

  Markussen smiled, amused by the question.

  ‘Dude,’ he said, ‘those things are huge. They have, like, missiles on them. Ours has a camera. It’s much smaller, and also much lower to the ground, which is why you get such a great view.’

  ‘They’re still going to see it, surely,’ said Haynes, feeling the need to back up the boss, irritated by Markussen.

  ‘Maybe if they spend their time looking straight up in the air. A quick glance and they’ll just think they’re looking at a bird, some shit like that.’

  Markussen looked like he was the only one convinced by this, so he smiled again. ‘Look, if no one turns up and your man moves back to the hotel, then I’ll give you this one, OK?’

  For the first time since they’d been watching, a car pulled up at the gate. Black Audi, darkened windows. The room went quiet as they all watched, waiting to see how it would play out.

  Not unexpectedly, the gate opened with neither driver nor guard emerging, and the car moved slowly up the driveway. It parked in front of the house, a moment, the driver’s door opened, she walked around the car, opened the nearside rear passenger door and a man stepped out. Asian, dark grey suit. He paused, looked around, the camera across the road got a perfect shot of him, and then he entered the house without ringing the bell or knocking.

  The diver returned to the car, then it moved off slowly to a road at the side, around to the rear of the property. They all looked at the drone feed to see the car parking behind the house. The driver got out and walked into the house through a back door. Again she didn’t knock.

  ‘We can check for that guy?’ asked Jericho.

  An officer leaning over a screen at the side of the room said, ‘Already on it, give me five.’

  The team’s attention returned to the front on camera, waiting for someone else to arrive at the gate.

  ‘We come to it,’ said Jericho. ‘The players have started to arrive.’

  ‘Maybe he’ll be the only player,’ said Markussen.

  ‘That’s possible,’ said Jericho, ‘but that’s a damn big house he’s rented to pick up just one person.’

  ‘Totally.’

  ‘We should start getting our plans finalised, and be ready to go. Let’s have a quick chat with the owner.’

  Jericho paused, looked around the room.

  ‘Sorry, we shouldn’t be too heavy-handed. The guy’s doing us a favour. Just me and Markussen.’

  Haynes nodded, but the apology wasn’t really directed at him.

  ‘Of course,’ said Badstuber.

  Jericho, not for the first time, let his eyes linger upon her for a moment or two longer than necessary.

  48

  ‘Would things have been different if I’d spoken to you two months ago? Two weeks ago?’

  Darkness was finally beginning to arrive. The lights of the city were on, cars cutting bright columns of traffic on the streets below. There were still boats out on the fjord, the last of the daylight being smothered by the low cloud that had hung over the city all day.

  The whole thing felt utterly surreal. Everything that had happened since Sergeant Haynes had come to her office the previous week had felt faintly ridiculous. She had walked into her own adventure story, with overseas travel, romance, murder, a secret society and evil men in suits.

  And now she was standing at the window of a room in a luxury hotel, a gin and tonic in her hand, drinking with the Devil.

  ‘You don’t know,’ he said, answering the question for her. ‘That’s reasonable.’

  ‘Tell me what’s going to happen.’ she said. ‘And tell me again why I can’t just smash this glass, stab you in the neck, and walk out of here.’

  Did her own inaction make her complicit? Would the true heroine of this story have made more of an effort to escape? All along she had accepted the quietly spoken threats, the notion that her captor was all-powerful and that resistance was utterly useless.

  ‘This is our hotel,’ he said. ‘We own it. We own the staff. If someone saw you walking alone through the hotel, they’d stop you.’

  ‘Every member of staff is a guard? Even the cleaners and the, I don’t know, bellboy, or whatever they’re called these days?’

  He caught her eye in the window, looking slightly surprised at the question.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said.

  He made a nonchalant movement with his own glass.

  ‘We have one in every capital.’

  He smiled, and suddenly she realised that he was attracted to her. No longer caught up in foolishness, it was obvious that he really did like her. The fact that she was still alive wasn’t just because they thought she’d be a useful person to have in their organisation.

  She held his gaze for a moment, then lowered her eyes. Put her lips to the glass, took a slow drink. Swallowed. Looked back out at the fast-approaching Oslo evening.

  How to play this new realisation was as much out of her territory as everything else from the past week, but she was a woman and he was a man, and it couldn’t be that difficult.

  ‘So, I’m curious about one thing,’ she said. ‘You haven’t done much to tempt me, apart from kidnap me, twice, which isn’t really the best way to attract a girl. Tell me what’s happening tonight, at least. Tell me why we’re in Oslo.’

  Develin smiled, nodding to himself, as if acknowledging that they were playing the game. He didn’t usually talk, but he’d already been thinking about it. Telling her the story might be the only way to reel her in. And there was no doubt that he wanted to reel her in. He’d even managed to persuade his bosses that it was to their benefit. Not that it wouldn’t be to their benefit, but it certainly wasn’t his primary concern.

  His agenda was set for the evening in any case, but he might as well make one last attempt at getting her to join up. That way he could take his time with her, rather than following through on his current plan, which was to rape her and kill her.

  The thought of it, of lying with her naked, of sliding inside her, of biting and sucking her breasts, had bee
n with him all day. He’d been nice to her, he’d given her the chance, and she’d shown her true colours. Shame about what was going to have to happen.

  ‘You spoke to Commander Drummond. You got him to translate the book you stole from our library in Paris.’

  ‘We brought the book back.’

  ‘You photographed its pages, Professor, we’re not stupid. So you made that connection, and Drummond told you the gist of the story. The incredible tale of the Honourable Featherstone. Well, apart from the fact that the old fool really needs to learn to keep his mouth shut, it’s all true.’

  He took another drink; the ice clinked in the glass. He caught her eye and smiled. He recognised that she really didn’t see through him. She might not think it a game, but she didn’t think he was capable of doing what he was. Just a mild-mannered guy in a suit who gave orders.

  ‘There had long been a myth of the lost valley in the mountain of Kangchenjunga. The fact that people disappeared there, and that others emerged years after having been lost, not a day older. Featherstone found his way there. We don’t know if he went looking for it, or whether he stumbled across it by accident. He stayed, then thirty years later he left. Unlike others, however, he didn’t leave empty-handed. He took with him the Book. The Book of Lazarus.’

  Leighton couldn’t help smiling. And then, perhaps, she even let the gin speak.

  ‘That’s bullshit,’ she said, then smiled curiously at herself. ‘Really, that’s not true. There is no book of Lazarus.’

  ‘Why do you say that? It was two thousand years ago. How can anyone know exactly how many books there were written about Jesus, or who wrote them? And do you think if there was such a book, a book that outlined the powers of Jesus Christ, that detailed in some way the alchemy and the magic behind his miracles, that the Synod of Hippo would’ve included it in the Bible? Hey, why don’t we let everyone know how he did it!’