Bleeding Hearts (51 page)

‘I wasn’t one then either.’ It took me a little while to sit down. The bandages and plasters were tight across my body. Beneath them, the healing wounds were itching like hell.

Johns was nodding, as though I’d merely confirmed something. I wanted to damage his shiny face, the wealthy confidence in his eyes. He wasn’t afraid of me. He’d seen worse than me before, if only in his dreams.

‘I’m afraid I’m a bit in the dark,’ he said.

‘That makes two of us. Tell me about Mrs Ricks’s death.’

‘What? Again?’

‘No, this time I want the truth. You weren’t surprised she died, were you?’

‘No.’

‘Why was that?’

He pouted, his lips touching the tips of his fingers. Then he sat back in his chair, touching its sides with his arms. ‘You killed her?’ he said.

‘Yes.’ I didn’t mind him knowing, not now. If he was going to be honest with me, he’d expect me to be honest too. In fact, he’d demand it.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘In that case, I’ve something for you.’ He stood up and went to his safe. It was a free-standing model, dark green with a brass maker’s plate, like you see the bank robbers dynamite in old cowboy films. He unlocked it with a key and turned the handle. When he looked round at me, I was pointing a pistol straight at him. It didn’t faze him, though last night it had fazed Scotty Shattuck when I’d relieved him of it.

‘There’s no need for that,’ Johns said quietly. He opened the safe wide so I could see inside it. It was packed full of papers and large manila envelopes. He lifted the top envelope out and handed it to me. It didn’t have a name or anything on it, and felt flimsy in my hand. I gestured for him to return to his chair, then sat myself down. I put the gun on the desktop and tore open the envelope. There were two typed sheets inside, written as a letter. The signature at the bottom read Eleanor Ricks.

I started to read.

‘If you’re reading this, you’ve done well, and you’re sitting in Geoffrey’s office. Maybe you’ve got a gun trained on him. Maybe you intend him some harm as vengeance for what you’ve been through. Please, believe me when I say he doesn’t know anything. I’m leaving this with him as proof of that. If you’re here, you probably intend him some harm. I wouldn’t like anything to happen to Geoffrey, so please read this before you do anything.

‘Another reason, I suppose, is that I feel this tremendous need to get it all down, to tell someone ... even if it has to be you. Indeed, I can think of no better figure for my confessor.

‘Actually, I say Geoffrey doesn’t know anything, but by now he probably knows quite a lot. I didn’t tell him anything, but he’s not stupid, and I needed his help, so he knows a little.

‘For example, I asked him to call the police at a certain time, some minutes before I would be walking out of the hotel with Molly Prendergast. That will be the hardest thing to do, walk out of there knowing you’re waiting for me. I know that when I walk out of that hotel, dressed in the colours you’re expecting, I’ll be trembling. But I’d rather know why I’m afraid, and know something’s going to stop me being scared and angry and in pain. Rather that than the slow, internal death.

‘All the same, I’ll be shaking. I hope I make it out of the door. I hope I make an easy target for you. Please, I hope I didn’t linger. I found out several months ago that my condition is terminal. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want that. But I felt this flow of frustration within me, anger that there would be so many projects left unfinished ... including this one, my present one.

‘I got the idea from Scotty Shattuck. Or, rather, thinking of Scotty, I came up with the idea. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably spoken with Scotty.’

I paused and looked up at Geoffrey Johns. He was staring out of the window. Oh, I’d spoken with Scotty. I’d done a lot more than that, too. But he was alive, and it’s amazing what they can do in hospitals these days, isn’t it? I started reading again.

‘Scotty helped me. I knew him from assignments in the Falklands, when he was a soldier, and later in ex-Yugoslavia, when he was a mercenary. I knew I could never commit suicide, not self-assisted suicide. My will to live, you see, is strong. It’s the pain I can’t stand. I asked Scotty if he thought he could kill someone for money. He rambled on in his usual way, then he mentioned you. An assassin. A good one, not cheap, but a very public success. And I got the idea. Because if my assassination was spectacular and public enough, then other journalists, the media, the police, maybe even Interpol or some other international group ... they
all
might start asking who would want me killed. And that would lead them to investigate the Disciples of Love. Maybe then they’d uncover the cult’s secret, whatever it is. I
know
there’s something there. I weep to think I’ll never know what it is ... unless there’s a heaven.

‘I’m giving this to Geoffrey with instructions to keep it safe, just in case you ever come calling on him. I wonder if you will? I mean, I’m timing things just right. The police will be contacted a few minutes before I walk out on to the steps. There’s a station not far from the hotel, but I’m not sure of the protocol. Maybe the police will have to be issued with firearms, delaying their arrival. Maybe they’ll suspect a hoax and not turn up at all. You may be caught, or you may escape. If you’re caught, the story becomes even bigger, with more media attention. If you escape, maybe you’ll be driven to wonder why and how the police were tipped off. And by whom.

‘God, you could end up doing my work for me, couldn’t you? It’s horrible not knowing how any of this has turned out. I’ve planned and arranged the whole thing, and I’m the only person who won’t be around to see what comes of it. I want headlines, not an obituary. I hope I got them.

‘I’m telling Geoffrey to tell the police there’s an assassin in the apartment block across the street from the hotel. That’s where you’ll be, though I know I can’t possibly stipulate anything like that in my instructions to you. I’ve had to be careful with those, so you won’t suspect me straight away. I keep thinking of the wrong turnings the media could take. Maybe they’ll suspect Freddy, or an enemy from my past. I wasn’t exactly kind to the Bosnian Serbs, or to the mercenaries, come to that. Not that Scotty knows that; he’s never read my piece. He says he never reads. I know that, for money, he’d probably kill me himself, but I prefer the thought of your anonymity. I want a stranger to kill me, and I want somebody more competent than Scotty.

‘Forgive my typing. I’m getting a bit shaky. There are tablets I can take, but they deaden everything, and with so little time left, I want life, not a numb, hazy delusion of well-being. I see everything so vividly. A single blade of grass has more beauty than any painting, but any painting can make me weep.

‘I hope my timing is right. I’m afraid the police may arrive too early and scare you off. I must wind my watch. These days, I often let it run down. But I’m determined that on my last day, everything will run the way
I
want it to run. I’ll be in charge. I wonder if I have the power to stop you killing afterwards? I mean, maybe you’ll be so shaken up that you’ll retire. That would be good. I’d be saving lives and sacrificing none. Tell Geoffrey I’ll miss him. Bless him, he always loved me.’

There was a signature, nothing more.

I looked up at the solicitor.

‘She left two envelopes,’ he confirmed. ‘The first one was to be opened the day she ... died. I opened it at the time stated, and it said to call the police anonymously and tell them a murder was taking place outside the Craigmead Hotel. I’d to put the other envelope in the safe until someone came for it.’ There were tears in Johns’s eyes. ‘I phoned the police, but then I phoned the Craigmead and had Eleanor paged. They paged her, but she never came to the desk. She just walked outside, ignoring the call, and was shot.’

‘She set the whole thing up herself,’ I said. I’d known as much since last night, when Shattuck had admitted it. He’d known who was hiring me, but not that she was her own target. When he heard the news, he fled. Up until last night, he’d thought I killed the wrong person. But I’d put him right on that.

Who’d known what Eleanor Ricks would wear that day?

No one but herself.

Geoffrey Johns was blowing his nose. Then he got up and walked over to a cupboard, where he found a bottle of whisky and two glasses. He stood with his back to me, pouring.

‘She said I’d know you when you came ... I’d know to give you the envelope. Tell me, please, why did she do it?’

By the time he turned round again, I’d already left the room. I took her confession with me. I didn’t owe Johns anything. The only debts I owed were to the dead.

31

The village was one of those Hollywood-style affairs, by which I mean it was so quintessentially English that you suspected it had to be fake.

Certainly the people seemed fake, like actors playing their given roles, be it bumpkin or squire or commuter. Everyone in the hotel bar was called George or Gerry or Arthur, a few of them wore cravats, and they drank from pewter tankards. The bar had wooden beams painted black. They looked like plastic, but weren’t.

Bel loved it. Our room was all Laura Ashley, picked from a brochure or magazine feature and copied exactly. The bed was a new brass four-poster with a flower-print canopy. The walls boasted hand-painted wallpaper, so the manageress told us. It’s just as well she mentioned it, for you’d never have guessed otherwise. It looked like wallpaper, and very plain wallpaper at that. It wasn’t even signed.

I had to smile when the first thing Bel did in the room was switch on the TV. She lay on the bed with the remote, picking complimentary grapes out of a bowl and popping them into her mouth.

‘Look at that,’ she said.

She’d found the CNN news. Two East European nation-states were on a war footing.

‘Looks like my phone call didn’t do much good,’ I said.

I was on my best behaviour throughout. I didn’t complain. I was compliant, agreeing with everything Bel said. I’ve said before, I’m very good at looking like I fit in, like I’m normal, just like you are, standing at your bar with your tankard, or walking your dog around the golf course, or choosing yourself a new sweater or shirt. I can do all those things and show nothing but contentment.

It’s an act, that’s all.

Hoffer’s a good actor too. He believes his role. He’s all method. I get the feeling we’ll meet up again, whether we like it or not. We’re not two sides of the same coin; we’re the same side of the same coin.

Not that Bel suspects any of this. She thinks it’s all over. She thinks we came here for a lovers’ weekend, a break from the past. From this day on, we’d be starting anew, putting the horror behind us. At lunch and dinner, I held her hand across the table and exerted the gentlest pressure. The light in her eyes was pure and radiant, almost unbearable in intensity. I kept swallowing back words, images, sentiments. I kept true to myself in the realm of thought.

We walked around the village. There wasn’t much to it. Narrow streets, sloping up from the main thoroughfare on both sides. A train station, shops, five pubs, the one hotel, a churchyard with rose bushes all around it. Nobody poor seemed to live here. Bel didn’t know that when I stopped to admire a particular house, I had an ulterior motive.

It was a large detached property with a low front wall and a well-tended garden. There was a gravel driveway, and a Volvo estate parked by the front entrance.

Bel squeezed my arm. ‘Is this the sort of place you want to live?’

I thought about it. I wanted a penthouse in Manhattan, so I could look down on an entire city, like holding it in my open hand.

‘Maybe,’ I said.

There was a nameplate by the garden gate, but I deflected Bel’s attention by pointing to some trees across the road. Maybe she wouldn’t have noticed the name anyway, not that Ricks is
such
a common name.

They were Eleanor Ricks’s parents.

This was where she’d been born. Just over forty years ago. I’d read that much in the papers. Her parents had been eloquent after her murder. They weren’t in favour of the death penalty, even for terrorists. That was big of them.

Bel and I made love that night under our canopy. The room was costing £85 a day, including Full English Breakfast. My reserves were pretty low. Soon, I’d have to raid my Swiss account. Bel had posed the question of jobs. She thought she could get work as a secretary or something. And maybe I could ... well, there’d be something I could do.

Sell burgers maybe, or stack supermarket shelves, like Hoffer had suggested.

We made love, as I say, and she went to sleep. I got dressed again and went down the stairs. The bar was still busy with Saturday night spenders, but nobody saw me as I passed into the night.

I walked through the village. Even at night it was picturesque, all hanging baskets and tile roofs, distant hills and low stone walls.

The walls around the cemetery were high though. The Real England had no place for death. Even so, I was coming here to pay my respects. The gate was unlocked, so I pushed it open. The wrought iron swung open in silence.

It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. There were still fresh flowers on Eleanor Ricks’s grave. I stood there for a while, shuffling my feet, hands deep in my pockets. I wasn’t really thinking anything. After about five minutes, I left the cemetery again.