The Thing Itself (21 page)

The road widened as it neared the southern entrance gate and the signs to the
funivia
. He turned left immediately outside the gate and walked a couple of hundred yards uphill towards the ticket office.

When he saw the procession of slight green baskets making their way up the mountain face on a narrow black thread, he shook his head. He'd been expecting a proper cable car, with room for sixteen or so in each cage.

He bought a ticket and went to join a small queue. He watched the baskets come down. They were like birdcages with standing room for maybe three adults. Protective wiring came up to waist height. They were spaced at twenty-yard intervals on a cable loop that never stopped moving. Passengers jumped on as the cage swung round in a slow arc at ground level, the mechanic slammed the gate closed and they were on their way.

The cages looked fragile and the top of the mountain a long way away. Tingley thought he could see the cages wavering in the wind. He tidied things away in his pockets, felt the pistol fastened at the small of his back.

He clambered aboard the next cage and with a jerk it began a smooth ascent towards the mountain. Within moments Tingley was looking down at a rough scree of broken white rocks some hundred feet below.

He looked back at Gubbio falling away behind him. The plain beyond was vast, the foothills beyond that tiny. His cage brushed the tops of a clump of pine trees. Tingley smiled a hello at a couple with a little girl coming down about ten yards across from him.

He overbalanced as the cage reached the first of a series of tall metal pylons through which the cable was threaded. He grabbed for the guard rail as his cage tilted and juddered by. The sun was high in the sky, wisps of cloud hanging motionless. Tingley closed his eyes.

There was a flat concrete platform at the top, about twenty yards long. A man grabbed his cage and pushed away the safety bar so that he could drop out on to the concrete. The platform was beside a terrace café.

Tingley got a beer from the bar. He threaded his way through noisy youngsters playing table tennis, table football and videogames. He found a table with a view over a gorge and back across the Gubbio plain. Below him Gubbio seemed tiny, its red shingled roofs bright against the light green of the fertile plain.

To the side of him the mountain opened up into a series of valleys, their slopes clad in dark green firs and pines. In the cool under the umbrella Tingley looked for the glint of a scope attached to a sniper's rifle.

Three girls at the next table were discussing a boy. An old David Bowie song,
The Man Who Sold The World
, was playing on the radio. Tingley sipped his beer. It was warm. He looked over as the cages bobbed up and on to the landing stage.

He went cold inside his shirt; his mind and his heart both raced. He watched Drago Kadire drop off the cage and walk into the café.

‘D
I Gilchrist, come in.'

Sarah Gilchrist noted the formality as she stepped into the chief constable's office. Karen Hewitt usually addressed her as ‘Sarah'.

‘Ma'am.'

Hewitt looked at her over her glasses.

‘We have a problem.'

Gilchrist said nothing.

‘The weapon Miss Simpson used to defend herself is illegal in this country.'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘And I gather you have admitted that the weapon is yours.'

‘I have, ma'am.'

Hewitt shook her head, her long blonde hair swaying as she did so. Her skin was pale and tired.

‘You understand that when you lost your right to carry arms after the Milldean incident, those arms included the taser legally issued to British police officers.'

Gilchrist shuffled her legs.

‘I do.'

‘So the fact that a serving police officer in such a situation has an illegal volt gun, illegally imported . . .' Hewitt shook her head. ‘For God's sake, Sarah – what were you thinking?'

Gilchrist bit back what she wanted to say. That at the time she was thinking someone had just burned down her flat and she felt her life to be in danger.

‘I'm sorry, ma'am.'

‘So am I, Sarah, so am I.' Hewitt looked weary. ‘I think this might cost you your job.'

‘It was used in self-defence—'

‘I know that,' Hewitt said fiercely. Her sour breath wafted across Gilchrist. Last night's garlic and too much coffee today. ‘But I need to distinguish between that fact and the fact that you, not Miss Simpson, had illegally imported this weapon.'

Gilchrist bowed her head.

‘You are under immediate suspension—'

‘But, ma'am, DI Williamson and I—'

‘—pending a tribunal to consider your dismissal.'

Gilchrist left the office red-faced. She considered going back to tell Williamson but decided simply to go home.

Back at her flat, Kate was fast asleep on top of her bed. Gilchrist stood by the balcony looking over the square, her mobile phone in her hand. She got through to Reg Williamson on the first ring. She told him what had happened.

‘I'm sorry to hear that, Sarah. Damned sorry. But, listen, we can turn this to our advantage.'

‘I don't see how.'

‘Take a holiday. Take a friend with you. I'd go myself but I wouldn't get the leave now you're not in the office.'

‘Reg—'

‘I hear Homps is very nice at this time of year.'

Tingley reached mechanically for his beer. Kadire emerged from the café carrying a coffee cup, looked around for somewhere to sit. Tingley turned his head away and watched out of the corner of his eye. Kadire found an empty table between Tingley and the cable railway and sat down, facing the platform. Tingley noted he had dispensed with his cane.

Renaldo di Bocci had told Tingley where Kadire was going to be just before he died. Tingley didn't kill Di Bocci – well, unless the shock he'd given him hustling him into the stairwell had brought upon the old criminal's heart attack.

Tingley put his glass back heavily on the table. Just do it and get out, he advised himself. Just walk over and put the silenced gun in his ear, pull the trigger and walk away. Except that there was nowhere to walk. There was no way off this mountain except by the cable car.

Then leave. Tingley got to his feet. His chair scraped loudly on the concrete floor. Kadire was sitting quite still about fifteen yards away.

Tingley didn't hurry, choosing a route as much out of Kadire's line of vision as possible. He itched to look back but resisted the temptation. He felt sure he could feel cold eyes boring into his back.

In the café he made a pretence of looking at postcards whilst watching Kadire. He was sitting as before, except that now he was reading a newspaper, ankles crossed. According to Di Bocci, he was waiting to meet an important drug dealer.

Tingley went out of the side door of the café, skirted the edge of the terrace and watched the queue of people waiting to take the cable car back down the mountain. A basket arrived every forty-five seconds so a queue of six groups cleared in about six minutes. A fuck of a long time to be standing on the top of a mountain with a dead man slumped at a table twenty yards away.

Tingley was hidden from Kadire, but even if he abandoned his assassination of the sniper, once he stepped forward on to the platform he would be directly in front of his intended victim. Kadire had only to glance up to see him. Then all hell would break loose.

Fuck it.

Tingley had always moved deceptively fast. Liquid. Probably nobody at the tables he slid between even noticed him as he came alongside Kadire.

Kadire noticed. Tingley doubted the sniper knew who it was but he saw him jerk to see who was suddenly beside him.

Tingley had been thinking about a pay-off line but hadn't come up with anything. So he leaned down, stuffed the silenced gun in Kadire's left ear, clapped the folded newspaper to the other ear and pulled the trigger.

W
atts was huddled over a mug of black coffee in his father's wingback when his phone rang. He recognized the number.

‘Hello, Sarah.'

‘I'm sorry to disturb you but I wondered how easy it would be for you to go back to France.'

‘Varengeville-sur-mer?'

‘No. Carcassonne.'

‘Cathar country.'

‘You know it?'

‘I know the history books. The Templars—'

‘Don't. My mind freezes when I hear that word. I used to go out with a SOCO who kept trying to force-feed me thrillers that involved the Templars.' Simpson realized she was blathering from nerves. ‘I never read any, on principle . . .'

She trailed off.

‘You don't like being force-fed?'

‘That would be me, Bob.' She cleared her throat. ‘We've located Bernie Grimes in a place near Carcassonne.'

‘Bernie Grimes?' Watts thought for a moment. ‘The armed robber supposed to be holed up in Milldean?'

‘Maybe he can give us a way in to the Milldean Massacre. A way in to Charlie Laker and William Simpson.'

‘You want me to go and see him?'

Gilchrist swallowed.

‘With me.'

Watts frowned.

‘I don't quite understand. Officially? How would that work for Karen Hewitt?'

Gilchrist explained her status.

‘I'm sorry to hear that,' Watts said. He pondered a moment. ‘What do you think we can achieve unofficially? Why would he even talk to us?'

‘I haven't thought that far ahead,' Gilchrist said. ‘We might need to overstep the mark.'

Watts considered. Quite aside from anything else, how would it feel to be alone with Sarah for such a length of time? Their brief passion had long faded. Hadn't it?

‘What about Kate?' he said. ‘Do you think we can leave her on her own?'

‘She's safe enough, if that's what you mean,' Gilchrist said. ‘What do you think, Bob?'

‘I was thinking of Kate's emotional state rather than any immediate physical danger.'

‘We could always take her with us,' Gilchrist said.

Watts thought for a few more moments.

‘OK. You're on.'

In the movies, brains and blood always splatter everywhere with a head shot. But a bullet from a small calibre gun funnelled through a silencer just rattles around the brain then lodges there.

Tingley cradled Kadire's head for a moment before straightening him in his chair. He put the newspaper down on the table.

‘Ciao,' he said, for anybody who might be listening, patting Kadire's shoulder for anyone who might be watching.

He walked over to join the small queue of people waiting to go back down the mountain. He shuffled forward as a couple and their two children went out on to the platform. Tingley could see Kadire now, slumped in his seat. Blood was coming out of his ear.

A fat curly-haired man in drooping jeans and a short-sleeved yellow shirt was regulating the
funivia
. Sweat glistened on his face and had begun to stain the back of his shirt.

Tingley was next but one.

He willed himself not to look back at Kadire. The man was dead and Tingley was the Invisible Man. He always had been. Nobody had seen him kill Kadire.

Another couple went on to the platform, leaving Tingley exposed at the gate. The fat man led him to a point where he was standing directly opposite Kadire. He kept his eyes lowered and for what seemed an age willed himself invisible, always expecting someone to cry out and point the finger at him.

A cage appeared over the rim of the platform. The three young girls inside were laughing. The man on the other side reached forward and unhooked the door. The cage bobbed as he slowed it down slightly with his right arm. The first girl – tall and elegant in shorts, tights and flat pumps – dropped out. The man was walking alongside to help the second girl. She jumped and stumbled slightly, but he steadied her with his right arm whilst keeping hold of the cage with his left.

The cage was between Tingley and Kadire's slumped body when the third girl jumped out. The cage jerked and continued round. The first two girls joined the third and the man on that side cracked a joke with them. They laughed, forming a group with him between Tingley and Kadire.

Within a second the cage was in front of Tingley. Gripping the iron rim, he swung himself in. The gate clanged closed behind him and with a lurch he swung towards the edge of the platform. Just before he dropped over the line, Tingley looked back. Kadire was slumped exactly as before. A waiter was ambling towards him.

Gubbio approached slowly. As the cage made its steady progression, Tingley was strung tight.

The couple in front were larking about. The man shifted his weight to frighten the girl as their cage wobbled. She gave a little scream of pleasure and fright.

The cages coming up were empty. Tingley reached the first pylon and the cage jerked. There were speakers on the pylon and a metallic voice had begun to comment on a football match. Tingley heard the sullen roar of the crowd. The girl in the cage in front shrieked again.

A large insect landed on Tingley's neck. He lightly wafted it away. Two brightly coloured birds chased each other between the pine trees below him. Tingley was acutely aware of bird songs, the faint thrum of traffic, a car changing gear. He looked across at the nearest tree, tempted to reach out and brush the branches with his open palm.

His nerves were screaming. In the bright sunlight the trees were etched sharply against the deep blue sky. He had an intense sensation of now-ness. He was pondering this when he saw Miladin Radislav coming up in a cage thirty or forty yards below him.

K
ate Simpson was sitting on Sarah Gilchrist's balcony waiting for her coffee to cool. The sun had come out between the showers but she still felt shivery. Frankly, she was terrified at the thought of going to prison for what she'd done to the man who had attacked her. And mortified that her actions had got Sarah suspended. And furious with her father for visiting this upon her. Otherwise, she was fine.