The Serpent Papers (60 page)

I close my eyes and let him smell me, let him kiss me – and summoning my courage,
wait
, his hands tender,
wait
,
I shift my weight towards him very slowly, I reach with my hand and touch his hair. He sighs like a child and moans softly, running my fingers through his hair, he breathes deeper, the cold pressure of his knife against my thigh pushing harder, persistent, calm, soon he’ll break the flesh – it is a dance, one he has practised – I let him enter the trance slowly – overwhelmed by pain, I slump forward, my hand reaching down his back, towards the table, straining, ever so gently – until there! I am there! My fingers straining, the glass is mine! The searing rage of my wounded palm burns harder but it is mine! Raising my arm above his head I pause, muscles tense:
Let him lift his face!
Oriol looks up as I bring the jar crashing down with all the strength in the world, onto the Roman chiselled one, the Siren, the Botticelli Angel of Death – those warm and luminous eyes – shattering the glass on his forehead – he roars! The smell is overpowering – the yellow liquid burns my hands – his blood runs with formalin as he jerks backward – the fluids roll into his pupils, the gas rises, his hands go immediately to his eyes – the knife clatters to the ground. His body topples, he roars again, one hand to his eyes and lunges at me, desperate, eyes stuck shut with the milky liquid, I scrape the knife from the floor and lunge away from him, not waiting to help as he rights himself,
run
, leaping out of my chair! Adrenaline drives me forward. I veer down the passage, and I hear a crash, and footsteps pounding after me, stumbling, unsure, but faster! Faster! The fool! The fool! There is not a millisecond of doubt as I run with the weight of the fear against my chest! Desperate for the night I run, for the dark mouth of the cave, driven to the glow of moonlight, searching for an exit as I careen through the curving tunnel I run! I run like hell, lungs yearning for the clean air, the cold night air, my bare feet skidding on damp stone, feeling my way through the tunnel, the cold pressure of fear against my chest, not thinking of the blood, not thinking of the pain – the forest throws up her arms to me – and – No! I do not turn back! I do not look to see the mouth of the cave or if that beast has followed me, though I can hear his breath behind me – I am certain – so faster I run, past the statues, the fountains, across the lake and into the forest I go, pushing into the dark woods, breaking the branches of trees! Now! Sirens! The whirling scream of sirens! I run faster, following the sounds, the crunch of footsteps and the swaying lights, barking dogs attack the forest as I stumble towards the lights! Then – THWAAACK like a bullwhip! Echoing! Careening off stone edges! An explosive ear-cracking barrel-of-a-gun cry!

A singular-definitive-death-whoop shrieking into the forest!

The moon reels. A flutter of wings roars from their nests as I reach the moving shadows and their lights, the ravenous bloodhounds, Fabregat’s wolf face stern before the black-coated army – the heavy boots snapping twigs – here come the dogs baying! Yapping! Blood wet against my chest – I keep my secret, stumbling towards them sobbing, holding up my hands. The colour drains from their cheeks.

Epilogue

Island

Boat tickets to Mallorca in winter are not expensive. From Barcelona you can get to the island for twenty euros on a good day. All that I have left on myself is the pain in my hands. A low throbbing hum, a sharp needle through my palm, fingers swollen. Listless and heavy. They have been bandaged awkwardly for a day, and still I struggle to move them without hurting, though the sting itself can bring a certain kind of pleasure. I stand on the deck of the ship, and watch Barcelona disappear on the horizon. Insomnia has taken hold and it is difficult to sleep more than five hours. This sleeplessness lends itself to a wild breathless state, coupled with the adrenaline of escape.
Time. You’ll need a lot of that for this job.
I return to my cabin. Take a glass of water. Try and sleep. I look to my bandaged hands, holding them up, above my face as I lie on my back. They smell of disinfectant. I move my index finger slowly.
Sting. Sting.
But I like the feeling.
I am alive
. The cuts he made were clean, very surgical, carving out each line of two simple drawings made in flesh – the snake on my left hand, the cross on my right. Stiches in both, but I may keep the scar. Once the wounds heal they tell me I can cover them up – hide them – but first we hope my body will rinse itself of these marks until they are just fine little lines. Fingers twitching, I rifle through the plastic bag I had filled at the chemist, pull out the weapons of a new arsenal.
Perhaps this will help?
I line each eye with a thick black rim, adding smoke to my lids, and heavy strokes of mascara.
Trying to hide the bruise.
A rich, tinted foundation and a light gold bronzer, giving my freckles a more luminescent tan. The crack in my lip unnerves me but I am determined not to recognize myself. I do not want to see
him
on me.
I do not want to feel his hands or smell his breath. I do not want to think it is my fault, and I hate the voice inside me that threatens to pull me down.
Down down down.
Brown powder around the rim of my eyelashes darkens the earth in my eyes.
I will not let him dictate my form.
I go to the ship bar to test my disguise. I am electric and drunk, stepping out of my skin again and again, inventing an entire story for myself – the region in Barcelona this false me comes from, her reasons for going to the island. I order three rum and Cokes and drink them too quickly, one after the other, and then a coffee. The bartender asks about my hands.
I broke a mirror.
Bad luck. At the bar I read the evening paper. Across the front page they’ve splashed Oriol Duran with the tagline: ‘FACE OF A KILLER? INQUIRY INTO FATAL SHOOTING’. I scan the lines.
Coroner reports that Oriol Duran’s death was instant. Shots fired in self-defence, claims deputy commissioner. Protects rights of officers to anonymity.

What does a liar look like? I stare at the photograph of Oriol Duran.
A liar looks like you.
A liar hides as much as they reveal. A liar is not afraid to con. A liar tells no one, not even themselves, who they are.

I order another drink. Maybe my hands will stop hurting then.
A liar looks like the face of Inspector Fabregat behind a man with a smoking gun.

‘Couldn’t have asked for more.’
Fabregat had said, when he broke it down into beats. They came to take me to the airport, and I was missing. Luckily they already had Oriol’s name from the blood. So it was an easy correlation. But what they did not factor in was
where
Oriol had gone. His family home in the woods. And so there were unexpected delays.

Delays that cost me my hands.

‘You have to understand that Oriol Duran always touched everything.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

Fabregat edged closer.

‘Before I could sink my teeth in that summer of 2003, the whole thing had been turned off. Duran pushed back, began to put the screw on. Said I was fucking up his reputation. Said I was orchestrating a witch-hunt in the theatrical community. In this city he has power. His friend Sánchez is a rich and influential man. Eventually the calls came in from the top.’ Fabregat’s face tightened. ‘I was wasting time and resources in the wrong places. I had lost my cool. I needed a break. You know the drill. But retired? Did I say that, Nena?’

He had smiled, wolf-like.

‘No. I never retired.’

You shot him.
I want to shout.
And what will you do with his cave full of women’s tongues?

Fabregat looked through me into something else.

‘When you contacted us, I seized the chance to do something bold. Something big, Nena.’

And he wants me to know that he’s grateful. My stomach turns. Fabregat was never interested in the meaning of ancient symbols or coded poetry, or the long-dead memories of an English scholar. But he was intrigued by what I represented. A lone girl who matched a profile. Who could be given a cap and cape and sent into the forest.

‘Of course I knew we could keep you safe.’

My hands throb louder.

‘We were just waiting. We wanted to know which one of them would emerge. Would come out to play. Because I was certain he would. You were so like the others, Nena. I knew when I met you . . . You were made of the same stuff.’

The words stick to me. Consume me.

When I return to my room on the ship, I throw up twice in the toilet. On the deck of the ship, after a restless night, I am recovered now, if one can call it that. I watch the sunrise on the landing. This deck is empty. All the sea is mine. Dawn kisses the Mediterranean with light you can only have on water, where the abyss stretches to either side and the sun rises over a straight horizon. The sun already warming, the only thing cold is the sharp wind off the sea, like the thoughts that stalk across my mind, made stronger by the speed of the boat, and the spray lashing up from the waves. Spring is coming, cardigan loose over my shoulders. My bags are packed in the room below, apartment emptied of my belongings. The island of Mallorca rises on the horizon, a blue mound before lilac turrets of cloud. Seagulls flock overhead and there are powdery crests on the waves. The smell of salt and smoke, a rising billow from a bonfire near Dragonera that blankets the white capped waters.

At the port I see him waving. Down where the ship comes in! He calls and laughs, flapping his hat in the wind.
Home. I am home.
Dirt under fingernails, warm hands. When I emerge from the ship, walking down the gangway, he comes running, more stiffly than usual, lifting me up in his arms he kisses me firmly on the lips, then puts me down, blushes and apologizes. I reach out to touch him. His face spattered by a multitude of red scabs, the remnants of cuts made by the broken glass of his windshield. Francesc winces and gently catches my hand, moving it away from his cheek and looks at the bandages. The mark where the blood has begun to soak through.

‘Who did this to you?’ Francesc asks, his voice colour-tinged. I embrace him, my lips hot on his mouth, I pull him towards me and he picks me up in the air and I feel the hard full chest of him, the mountain earth on his skin, the hint of rosemary in his hair. I do not want to talk about it. Not here. Not ever. I want to pretend it never happened.
You have been working in the garden
, his hand firm on my chest, my dress tugging at his belt.
Was it worth it?
he whispers. I don’t tell him yet, but I have made sure it was.

At home I settle into my own desk, my proper desk, my lair facing the garden and the yawning mouth of the valley. Then ritual. I open my brown satchel and remove, with all the tenderness of a lover, my Serpent Papers. The work will be translation. I have not told Fabregat. I have no intention of doing so. I have caught them a killer and paid for it with my hands; I touch the papers, the vellum so delicate – so frail! Francesc interrupts me, standing in the doorway. I can feel him, sandalwood and ash, fresh spring onions and mud from the garden, sage and turmeric, and the musky odour of work, of sweat, of muscle. I turn around. His face very still, his eyes very gentle.

‘Let me hold you,’ he says. ‘I’ve missed you.’

That night he takes me walking. The moon blinks as we traverse steep shale, snaking through the wood until we reach a ledge above the village. Looking out to the emerald bell tower.
Calm. For once. For a night at least. Maybe more? Then I will tell Bingley. Then I will tell all of them.
Storm clouds part overhead, disintegrating into thin streaks of soot on the sky, pulled back like a fine grey powder. Our waxing moon strikes the spindly Mediterranean trees, illuminating the mound of a ruined mill. Francesc touches a stone cross beside us, a beacon of history emerging from the rock above his village. He encourages me to do the same. I decline.