The Order of Death

by Hugh Fleetwood

  ‘He might, anyway. You don’t know him.’

  ‘Oh I think I do,’ Smith breathed mysteriously. ‘I’m a great expert on human nature. But anyway—so it’s a risk. Well? You’ve got to take risks. There’s no game in the world without a risk. And then, just think, with me dead—you’d be safe. I mean really, completely safe. With me alive—you can’t be sure.’

  Fred listened to the boy, pale in the doorway, tempting him. He listened to the boy’s heavy breathing, and to his own. He imagined the scene, and he imagined Smith’s blood spreading out in the snow. Perhaps, he thought, rather than go through all that business in the park, with the knife, and with all the ex­planations that would follow, he would just shoot the boy in the street, as soon as he was sure there was no one around, and run. Yes. That would be much better. And also, that way, Smith would be taken off guard. If he was planning to make some move, do something to make the game more exciting, he would probably do it when they got to the park. But if they never did get to the park…. Oh yes. And then he would come back and his apartment would be safe again, and Bob—well, as Smith said, he would just have to risk Bob.

  He listened to his breathing, and felt his mouth dry with excitement. He left his heart pumping blood through his big body. He told himself that it was madness; absolute, total mad­ness.

  He stood up and crossed the room and walked past Smith.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘Your clothes are in the closet.’

  *

  They were ready. He had tied Smith’s hands behind his back, put a sock in his mouth, and wrapped his cashmere scarf round his neck and chin. He had the boy’s cap pulled down over his own head, right down to his eyes. As soon as they were in the street he would put on the dark glasses, too. He had his gun ready in his pocket. Everything was ready. He nodded at Smith, and Smith, whose red-rimmed eyes were glistening and running, nodded back. They walked together down the corridor….

  And then the phone rang. It rang twice, and then stopped. Smith shook his head violently, and made sounds through the sock in his mouth, which Fred knew meant ‘don’t answer’.

  But he had to. What if Bob had turned the gift of his moral dilemma round in his hands a bit, and decided that, after all, he didn’t really like it, or want it? What if Bob had already told someone? What if Bob—the phone started to ring again, and he bent down to pick it up.

  Smith leaped at him, and almost knocked him over. He kicked at him and tried to push him away from the phone. He tried to butt him with his head. He tried to stand over the phone and make it impossible for him to pick it up. But Smith’s hands were tied behind his back, and he was thin, and weak. Fred hit him once, quite hard, and then, as the boy collapsed on the floor, his eyes not just running now, but actually crying—with fury? with pain?—he lifted the receiver. ‘Bob?’

  ‘Yes. Listen Fred—you haven’t done anything to that boy?’

  ‘No. Of course I haven’t.’ Fred heard that he was panting, and that his voice was thick. He wondered whether he should try to explain why to Bob. But he decided not to.

  ‘Thank Christ,’ Bob said. ‘Because listen Fred. I know you’re not going to like this, but I think—in spite of everything—and I know what this means—we should hand the boy over.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The game was over. Or, to be more exact, since it had never actually started, the game was off. That was the first thing Fred realized as he heard Bob’s words. The second thing he realized was that, while he despised Bob even more for having chickened out; for having, as it were, returned the gift almost unopened, he was also very relieved. The plan would never have worked. It never could have worked. Either something would have gone wrong, or—which was more likely—he would have never been able to see it through, and would have chickened out himself. The third thing he realized was that he should never have allowed Smith to tempt him into it. And the last thing he realized was that if he didn’t persuade Bob to change his mind, he was doomed.

  He said—and his voice was quite clear now, though very prim—‘I sort of agree with you Bob. I’ve been thinking about this myself. But we’ve got to find a way of handing him over without this place getting—you know. In fact I think I’ve found a way. But I must talk to you about it. Can we meet tomorrow morning?’

  He said it, he thought, magnificently. There was no doubt in his voice, no hesitation. There was only the tone of a calm reasonable person suggesting something reasonable.

  Bob’s relief, when he spoke, was as pronounced as his own; and he allowed himself to sigh aloud now. ‘Thank God,’ he said. And then, to justify his concern: ‘I was worried about you Fred. I know how much the apartment means to you, and what a shock this must have been. I was scared you might do some­thing—wild.’

  How kind of you, Fred thought. He said, ‘I’ll see you at eight tomorrow morning then.’

  ‘Where? At the apartment?’

  ‘No,’ Fred said firmly. He didn’t want Bob coming to the apartment anymore. Okay, he couldn’t kill Smith, but whatever he did do, he wanted to do by himself, without Bob’s influence. Smith was his property, his concern. ‘I’ll meet you on the corner of Thirty-Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Bob said, doubtfully.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Fred reassured him. ‘I’m not going to kill the boy.’ Then he laughed, at the absurdity of the idea.

  So did Bob—unhappily. He also said, unhappily, ‘I didn’t think you were. Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Yeah. Thirty-Fourth and Fifth.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Fred hung up, and turned back to the fallen Smith. He went over to him and took the scarf off him, and the sock out of his mouth. The boy had stopped crying, but his blotched, miserable face was looking evil and spiteful.

  ‘Coward,’ he said.

  Fred smiled at him—quite easily—and felt, for the first time, that he was really in command of the situation. ‘Yeah,’ he said affably. ‘Maybe I am. But I was playing your game before, and it wouldn’t have worked. Now we’re going to play mine.’

  ‘Will you please untie my hands,’ Smith tried petulance now.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I have to pee.’

  ‘Pee in your pants.’

  ‘I’ll ruin your carpet.’

  ‘And I’ll make you clean it,’ Fred said pleasantly.

  ‘You’ve spoiled everything. I should never have come here. First you have that other guy who shares this place with you, and then you let him tell you what to do. You’re weak, just like all the rest.’

  ‘You should have done your homework better.’

  ‘You can’t just keep me here.’

  ‘Why not?’ Fred said, an idea coming to him. ‘Who’s going to miss you?’

  ‘My grandmother, for one.’

  ‘What’ll she do?’

  ‘She’ll ask the police to look for me if I don’t turn up.’

  ‘The police aren’t going to waste their time looking for a creep like you. And even if they did—they’d never find you here. You’re a secret, like this apartment.’

  ‘How long,’ Smith drawled flatly, lying on the floor, and suddenly recovering his social manner, ‘are you planning to keep me here?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Fred said, the idea that had come to him taking form in his head now, and settling there, comfortably. ‘But maybe—forever.’ He smiled again. ‘I won’t let Bob come here any more, and as I’m buying him out—no one will ever come here any more. Ever. And you’ll be here.’

  A prisoner. Forever. Oh yes … perhaps it was not only a good idea; perhaps it was an idea that would have occurred to him anyway, sooner or later. Maybe, in a way, he had willed Smith upon himself. He suddenly pictured the weeks, and the months, and the years ahead; the years of work, and the changes of season, and the promotion and the money and the easy, regular life; and more than ever they seemed full of promise and hope and happiness. He would come to his secret world every day,
and in his secret world would have his dream; only in this dream —which was, paradoxically, his reality—there would be, as per­haps there always should have been, someone else. A reminder of the so-called real world; a reminder that the Enemy was outside, and would always be there, ready to destroy him if he ever made a slip. Without such a reminder he might get careless. But with a hostage, a representative of the Enemy—which was what he had first thought of Smith as, and which was what Smith was—he would never forget. He would have a slave in his kingdom; a slave who had come to him to represent the weak and the guilty; all those people who were destroying the land, and would destroy him if they got the chance. And hadn’t he envisaged, in his dream of society, a class of slaves, of voluntary slaves who submitted to the rule of the strong? And what was Smith, if not a voluntary slave? He had come to him of his own free will, and cast himself into chains; and now he would stay with him. And so his apartment, his secret world, would become a microcosm of the world as it should have been; where the weak, who loved guilt, were the ruled; and where the strong, and the innocent—those who didn’t know the meaning of guilt—were the rulers.

  ‘Forever,’ Smith echoed, sounding unsurprised, unafraid, and almost uninterested.

  ‘That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’ Fred murmured deeply.

  Smith wrinkled his nose. Then he jiggled his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Your wanting me to kill you was a trap. It wouldn’t have worked. It was just some sort of kick you were trying to get. Like playing Russian roulette.’

  Smith smiled. ‘Well you might have killed me. But I doubt it.’

  It was the sort of trick the weak always played on the strong; trying to make them guilty….

  ‘I was planning to shoot you as soon as we got outside, more or less.’

  ‘First of all, you wouldn’t have shot me—ever. You’d have lost your nerve. And second, if you had somehow got your nerves together and pulled the trigger—well, I guessed you’d do it as soon as we got outside. And so we probably never would have got outside. I figured that depending on how strong my nerves were, I would have either started running as soon as I put a foot outside the door, or I would have made some sort of noise in the basement, where you couldn’t have shot me.’ He smiled again, languidly. ‘What I was really planning to do, one way or another, was to get completely away from you. That way you’d really have been on the rack. Not knowing where I was, what I was going to do.’

  Once again, Fred felt the boy start to weave a web of madness about him; a web that would trap him if he wasn’t careful.

  But he said, ‘And will you try to get away now?’

  Smith laughed. ‘Oh, I can’t tell you that, can I? That’d be against the rules. I guess if I get tired I’ll just stick my head through a window and call for help. Someone’ll hear me even­tually. Or I’ll make a phone call. Or call down to the doorman. And you can’t go away and leave me tied and gagged for too long, otherwise I’ll die of thirst. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?’

  ‘You can survive eight hours without water.’

  ‘I guess,’ Smith murmured.

  Fred looked at the boy curiously, and then said slowly, feeling that he might be told the truth at last, ‘Why did you come here?’

  But Smith only frowned, and sighed, ‘Jesus. I thought I’d made that clear. I’ve told you enough. I wanted to confess.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing to confess to. Apart from the fact that you’re crazy, and you like to play sick games.’

  ‘But you can’t be sure. I might just be playing games now. But that doesn’t mean to say that what I’ve told you about me isn’t true.’ He stared Fred in the eyes. ‘I am the cop-killer.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘Well you must admit I’m mad enough to be, even if you don’t think I am.’

  Fred said, ‘Get up.’

  Smith did so.

  ‘Go down to the bathroom where you were before.’

  Smith did so—and Fred followed. He untied the boy’s hands, and told him to strip. When he was naked again, Fred threw his clothes out into the corridor. Then he filled up the basin with water and told him to drink—as much as he could. Smith did. Then he moaned, ‘I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since early this morning.’

  ‘I’ll bring you some food tomorrow morning. You won’t starve.’

  Smith smiled. ‘Okay.’

  Fred tied his hands in front of him, then went down the corridor to Bob’s bathroom, took some surgical tape off a shelf there, that Bob always kept in case of accidents, returned, and taped the boy’s mouth up. When he had finished he nodded and said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’

  He could see from his eyes that Smith was smiling at him. He muttered, ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’

  Smith shrugged.

  Fred said, ‘Well just to be sure you are, there’s one other thing I have to do before I leave. You know—just so we both remem­ber this is only a game.’

  He saw, finally, a flicker of fear in the boy’s eyes. He smiled. ‘And that’s—this.’

  And as he said ‘this’, he raised his knee and crashed it into the boy’s groin. And then, as he fell writhing, choking through his taped mouth, to the floor, he kicked him in the back. And then he lifted him and hit him again and again in the face. And then he let him fall to the floor, and kicked him again, all over. And then, without another word, he washed the blood off his hands in the basin, walked out of the bathroom, locked the door behind him, and left the apartment.

  *

  Next morning, at eight, he met Bob. Standing in the bright cold early morning sun on the corner of Thirty-Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, watching the cars splash through the brown wet slush, he told him: ‘I might have done something mad. But I don’t think so. You see I’m sure that kid wasn’t the cop-killer. I know he wasn’t. He’s just got some sort of masochistic hang-up, and knew that he’d put us—or me, because he didn’t know any­thing about you—in the corner, by showing up like that. I think he wanted me to try to kill him or something. But anyway—I let him go. I know it’s a risk, but I’m a pretty good judge of character, and I don’t think he’ll say anything about the apart­ment to anyone. He’s got no reason to. My bet is he’ll search round for someone else who’s got a blackmailable secret and then, instead of blackmailing them, force them to—deal with him, if you see what I mean. He’s crazy of course, and he’ll get himself killed one of these days. But that’s his affair. The only thing is, I thought just in case he does say anything to anyone, out of spite or something—we shouldn’t go to the apartment for a while. I’d say a month. Just in case there’s anyone watching it. And especially you. Because he knows my name, and so I guess if he does want to he can do something about me. But—you didn’t tell him your name, did you?’

  ‘No,’ Bob said. ‘Well, I told him it was Bob, but nothing else.’

  ‘So you’re safe. As I say—I’m pretty sure we both are. But you know—just in case he hangs around and tries to follow you. I think if we both keep away for a month—if at the end of that time nothing’s happened, we’re okay.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bob said slowly. Was he not quite convinced? Fred tried to think of something else to tell him, to keep him away. But before he could, Bob went on ‘I guess we just have to learn to live with threats from people like him if we—you know. That boy was like the manifestation of our guilty conscience, coming to remind us.’

  Fred tried—successfully, though only just—to resist the temp­tation of saying something sarcastic. Guilty conscience my ass, he told himself. To Bob he merely said, ‘Well you’re out of it now. In fact you really don’t need to go there ever again, if you don’t want. Tomorrow or the day after I’ll call the lawyer, and then—you won’t need to have a guilty conscience any more.’

  How sincere he sounded….

  Bob smiled sadly. ‘I think I’ll always have it. But at least—you know—that boy turning up really made me think about
myself. Something like that really makes you face up to things, and admit things to yourself—you know—’

  ‘Yes,’ Fred said, watching a woman in a long grey coat and brown boots step carefully into the middle of a puddle, ‘I know.’ He paused. ‘You didn’t take the things you came to collect last night with you, did you?’

  ‘No. I didn’t. But there’s no hurry. You can either bring them to me one day, or I’ll pick them up myself in a month or so.’

  ‘I really think it’s better.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bob said, looking gravely at Fred, ‘you’re right.’

  *

  Did he suspect anything, Fred wondered again, as he went to a hardware store to buy a hammer, some nails, and some sealing strips and boards which he was going to put over the bathroom window, so that he could partially soundproof the room, and be less afraid of Smith’s making any noise that might be heard. Possibly. But even if he did, he was sure he wouldn’t go near the apartment again for a month. Or rather, he was sure he wouldn’t go near the apartment again, ever in his life. Not only had he no reason to, but, more than anything, he wouldn’t want to know….

  *

  Three days later they went together to Fred’s lawyer in New Jersey—a discreet man, who was also the lawyer to some of Fred’s financiers, and who didn’t know, or didn’t care to know, that his clients were policemen—and signed the papers relating to Bob’s sale of his half share in the apartment. Fred gave Bob a cheque, and Bob, as he took it, shook Fred’s hand. And then they made their separate ways back to Manhattan.

  *

  The weather, after the snow, became fine and stayed fine, and for three whole weeks the air was shrill and bright and clear, and Fred, as he went about his work, as he followed his daily routine of buying the Times, and as he went to the apartment, felt that he had never before been so sure of himself, so happy, and so sure of man’s mastery over the world. The whole enor­mous granite-based city of New York had never been so vibrant, and yet so settled, and never had the ordered, symbolic streets and buildings been so challenging, so defiant of the shifting earth. They were here, they seemed to proclaim to the blue winter skies, and let tremors, winds, or merely pushing buds menace them, they would withstand the threat. They might be ripped up, torn down; but they would rise again brighter, taller, stronger. They might be attacked—by invaders from without or barbarians from within—but they would always, in one form or other, survive. They would always survive; because they were not just steel and concrete. They were ideals….