Arms and the Women (47 page)

Oh shit! she thought. What to do? Rush forward and scoop her up? Or hope that no one else noticed her? But they must do when they resumed their forward progress, they were right in the way.

And even if Rosie somehow managed to remain hidden, how long were the dogs going to remain under constraint, particularly Carla, who must be bursting to leap out at her mistress . . .

Stay!

That was why Feenie had suddenly started bellowing at them. She too had spotted the lurking trio and realized that her own dog was the greatest danger. Realized also that a few more steps would bring them right up to the girl's hiding place, so caused the delay with the fence. And then she'd gone on to let Rosie know what had happened to Novello.

That was good thinking. Rosie's instinct to hide probably derived from her reluctance to be caught having disobeyed the injunction not to go beyond the fence. Now she would know there was something seriously wrong.

'There we are,' said Popeye, laying the severed ends of the plastic barrier on the ground. 'Let's go.'

They began to advance once more.

To Ellie it seemed they were heading straight for the spot where her daughter lay concealed. Again, a vision of Rosie making a sudden movement and Jorge taking a potshot came into her mind. But Feenie was ahead. She had to trust in Feenie. They entered the shrubbery, following an old overgrown path. Ellie couldn't help glancing sideways at the place where the trio had been crouching. There was no sign of life, human or canine. She let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and felt it stretch her lips into a huge smile, which Popeye happened to catch as he glanced at her. He looked puzzled to be in receipt of such a display of happiness. She didn't care. With each step beyond the spot her spirits rose. Whether Rosie would or could do anything to bring them help she didn't know. Great if she could, but all that really mattered was that her child wasn't going to be part of whatever lay in wait for them at the pavilion.

She'd been sure that Feenie was grossly exaggerating the instability of the ground earlier, but now it seemed to her that she could actually feel it moving beneath her feet. She knew, of course, it was partly ocular, deriving from the sense of a world in disintegration that the raging shrubbery gave her, and partly down to the difficulty of maintaining balance when leaning into a strong gusting wind, especially when you were concentrating on keeping someone else upright, but it still felt like walking across the deck of a ship in a tumultuous sea.

No, correction. As they got closer to the edge of the cliff, she became more and more aware of what was happening to the sea. She could feel its spray in the air, hear it exploding against the cliff face, and now she could see it surging below into ever-changing mountain ranges of green and black water. This was designer God's original computer program, projecting how the wilder reaches of His world would look. Now the Andes, now the Rockies, all building up to His Himalayan masterpiece. No one would be walking across the deck of any ship in these seas.

They were almost at the Command Post now. Set on a narrow stack of granite, Feenie had said. How narrow was narrow? This felt like one of those land-hungry storms which wasn't going to go away empty-mouthed.

Feenie was opening a door. She turned and bellowed that they were here and would they please be careful in case there were any broken windowpanes or other potential sources of damage.

She had to shout to make herself heard above the wind, of course, but what she was shouting was so inconsequential. . .

Last time she had shouted unnecessarily it had been to quieten Carla and warn Rosie . . .

There's somebody inside the pavilion, thought Ellie.

They went inside, stepping into a small anteroom with three doors off it, one to either side, one (a double door this) straight ahead. The side doors, Ellie recollected, led respectively to a lavatory and to a small kitchen, which in turn had a door opening onto the steps down to the storage cellar.

Feenie stepped forward and flung open the double door which led into the viewing chamber.

'Oh, my God,' said Daphne.

It was a moment of terror and sublimity. It was like stepping through a door and finding yourself on the peak of Kanchenjunga. It was like floating through an airlock and looking down at the Milky Way. It was most of all like opening a magic casement on the foam of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.

The wall before them comprised a single pane of reinforced glass running the whole length of the building. Beyond it was nothing but air and sea. And such air, and such sea, the one fit domain for Valkyries and Harpies and flying dragons and golden rams and randy swans and all the wailing souls of the newly dead, the other for Sirens and Krakens and Scylla and Charybdis and the victors and the vanquished of toppled Ilium and the drowned and the shipwrecked sinking into their happy graves to the music of old Triton blowing his wreathed horn.

Ellie stared, speechless. Beside her, Shirley Novello forgot her pain and wondered if she had come to the bounds of living. Big Ajax and Little Ajax uttered their first sounds, grunts of awe, and pressed forward to get a closer look. Even Jorge, pistol dangling forgotten in his nerveless hand, seemed completely rapt.

'Impressive, isn't it?' said a voice behind them. 'Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside.'

Ellie turned.

A woman had appeared from somewhere. Presumably, since the door was open, from the kitchen. In her hands was a short-barrelled automatic weapon like the ones everyone - terrorists, freedom fighters, police ARUs, kids robbing post offices - seemed to carry nowadays. The woman was young, slim, dark, and very beautiful.

Ellie was sure she'd never met her but equally sure she'd seen her before, and very recently.

'You can drop the guns if you like. Or even if you don't,' said the woman.

Big Ajax and Little Ajax looked enquiringly at Jorge.

Jorge glared accusingly at Luis. Ellie guessed that at school when teacher demanded who'd put the drawing pin on her chair, Jorge was pretty quick with the accusing finger. Always someone else's fault. Daphne's fault that she got her nose mashed, Novello's fault that she got shot, all our faults when he finally got round to massacring us . . .

'Now!' said the woman with sudden force.

Slowly, Jorge stopped and laid the gun on the floor, with Big A. and Little A. following suit.

That's better,' said the woman. 'Now we can all sit down and talk this thing through.'

Sounded good to Ellie. Except, it struck her, that they were one short of
all.

Popeye hadn't come into the pavilion with the rest of them.

He came now, quietly, knife in hand, moving far more rapidly than Ellie's warning scream.

His left hand seized the woman's long black hair, dragging her head back, while his right set the gleaming blade against her exposed throat.

'Hello, me darling Kansas,' he said. 'How're you doing? Give your gun to Luis here. There's a good girl.'

She didn't look like a good girl. She looked like a girl who'd like to be very bad indeed. But obediently she released the weapon into Luis's hands.

'Right,' said Popeye. 'Now we can relax and enjoy ourselves.'

He let go of her hair and put the knife away.

She turned her head to look at him.

'Uncle Paddy,' she said. 'I knew it had to be a mistake when I heard you were dead.'

'Reports slightly exaggerated, darling.'

'Well, I'm really glad to hear it,' said the woman.

She sounds as if she means it too, thought Ellie. Uncle Paddy? Kansas? Which, Toto, I've a feeling we're not in any more. What the hell is going on? And where have I seen you before?

And then it came to her in one of those flashes of utter clarity.

She recalled precisely where and when she'd seen these beautiful features.

But when the clarity started to fade, she found its aftereffect was to leave her understanding even more benighted than before.

xiv

a face from the past

'What the hell is a painting of Kelly Cornelius doing hanging in Feenie Macallum's hall?' asked Andy Dalziel.

By the time Peter Pascoe skidded to a halt before Gunnery House, he'd regained some measure of control, and when he saw the front door gaping invitingly open, he approached it comparatively cautiously. Then he heard rapid footsteps on the gravel drive and turned to see a man running towards him with something black and metallic in his hand.

Pascoe ducked low, drove his right shoulder into his attacker's gut, straightened up to lift the man's winded body high in the air, and speared him head first into the gravelled drive.

The object he was carrying went spinning away. It wasn't after all a gun, more like a radio, but Pascoe didn't pause to investigate. If this guy was one of the five who'd just turned up, that left only four and the way he felt at the moment, odds like that were in his favour.

He went through the front door low, like the hero of a TV action movie. This faintly mocking self-awareness was perhaps an index that reason was beginning to reassert itself, but if there'd been another open door, he would probably have kept going. Instead, once he'd established the large entrance hall was empty, he saw there were three doors off it, all closed. He paused to make a decision, and reason took the chance to get its messages through to his muscles.

A second or two later it was reinforced by the restraining arms of Andy Dalziel, who had done considerable violence to the engine of Sempernel's car in pursuit.

'Easy, lad,' said the Fat Man. 'They're out of the house now, lucky for you. Getting yourself shot's not going to help any bugger, is it?'

'We outnumber them. Andy, there's only four of them left. Has someone got a hold of that guy out there? He'll tell us what's going off.'

He spoke with the certainty of a medieval torturer.

'I fear not, Mr Pascoe,' said Sempernel, coming through the front door.

'Shit. The bastard hasn't died on us, has he?'

'Happily not. The bastard is in fact one of my operatives whom I'd advised on the radio of your approach and instructed to intercept you before you came to harm.'

'Oh God,' said Pascoe, remembering the vicious force with which he'd speared the man into the gravel. 'Is he OK?'

He broke free of Dalziel and went to the doorway.

The man was sitting on the ground, leaning back against a car. He looked dazed, and his forehead and left cheek were tessellated with gravel.

'I'm sorry,' said Pascoe. 'I thought . . .'

Then the grazed and bleeding features began to tug at his memory. Surely this was the man he'd seen with the Fraud Squad super in the court, the man who matched Ellie's description of the male half of the couple who'd tried to lure her out of the house with their story about Rosie being sick . . .

'Bastard,' he said. 'I wish I'd broken your neck.'

He turned back to Dalziel, and found him standing rapt before the life-size painting hanging on the wall opposite the main door.

And . . .

'What the hell is a painting of Kelly Cornelius doing in Feenie Macallum's hall?' the Fat Man asked.

Pascoe looked.

Dalziel was right. There she was, standing next to a fellow who could have modelled for Ozymandias, Kelly Cornelius to the life, that combination of classic bone structure and vibrant life, like Galatea feeling the first strong pulse of warm blood through soft flesh as Aphrodite's breath quickens the cold ivory.

What did it mean? thought Pascoe. What did any of it mean?

He said to Sempernel, 'What's going on? Have there been any more shots? Who was firing? Where are those men who arrived? What are we doing standing around here? What in the name of God has happened to my wife . . . ?'

'Do take it easy, Mr Pascoe,' said Sempernel. 'You are an amazingly impetuous young man. If you had stayed to hear Jacobs's whole message, you'd have learnt that when he first thought he heard a shot, he went to investigate before reporting in. There was a deal of activity on the terrace at the rear of the house. Eventually he saw a party of ladies amongst whom he recognized your wife . . .'

'He would, wouldn't he? The bastard's seen her before.'

'Indeed. As I was saying, he saw them process through the garden towards some kind of summerhouse on the cliff - '

'So there wasn't a shot?' interrupted Pascoe.

'I'm afraid there probably was,' said Sempernel gravely. 'Jacobs observed your wife and her friend, Mrs Aldermann, supporting your officer, WDC Novello, whose arm appeared to be in a sling.'

'Shirley? Oh Christ. And what about my daughter? Did he see Rosie?'

'He didn't mention her but that doesn't mean she wasn't there. Jacobs had to observe from some distance, naturally..’

'He'd have seen her. If there was bother, she'd not have strayed far from her mother. How the hell can you let something like this happen to innocent people?'

'Sometimes it's hard to separate the innocent from the guilty, Mr Pascoe,' said Sempernel significantly. 'And sometimes it's distance rather than closeness which lends accuracy to the view.'