Instruments Of Darkness (36 page)

    'We're very touched,' I said and Clifford grunted and took his glasses off and put them in his shirt pocket. Nina peeled herself away from Kershaw and turned to me. She was feeling a little cockier now that she didn't have bullets ripping past her ears. I could tell she was still smarting from the humiliation and her damp skirt reminded her of it. She swung her arm back and prepared to give me a taste of her open palm. Kershaw caught her by the wrist and shook his head at her with some meaning in his eyes. He took her by the hand to a door covered by a curtain at the side of the room and opened it. They whispered a few things and he came back to me and searched my pockets and found Jack's keys. He went back to the door. There was some more discussion and she disappeared.

    Clifford pushed some cold cream and Kleenex over to Kershaw and moved a bin around with his feet. Kershaw watched me as he wiped his face off, throwing heavy handfuls of tissue into the bin. His eyes were hollow, the cheekbones pronounced, the jawline sharp and with muscular corners, but he had full lips that looked as if they'd done some kissing in their time but belonged to a bigger face. He finished cleaning himself and put his head down into the light and looked at me with wide eyes and a question mark on his forehead.

    'Like it?' he asked.

    'Impressive,' I said.

    'You don't recognize me?'

    'You lost a lot of weight.'

    'Two 'n' 'alf stone,' he said, with some of his native south London accent creeping over the Home Counties stuff he'd recently learned.

    'Been enjoying yourself in the afterlife, Steve?'

    'No.' He snapped it off like a piece of rock. 'I 'aven't. Apart from being very hungry, you've been giving me a lot of trouble.'

    'Trouble's one thing dead men don't usually get.'

    'My wife's been giving me hell.'

    'Maybe you wronged her in a previous existence.'

    'I'm not laughing,' he said looking at me straight, his head cocked to one side. 'And nor is she.'

    'What was it, Steve?' I said, crossing a leg. 'The infidelity, the perversion, the lust, the greed, or the brutality.'

    'Christ, you've got some fucking gob on you.'

    'Right now it's all I've got.'

    'Steve,' said Clifford, and Kershaw turned to see him gently batting the air over the blotter with his hands.

    'My wife might not look very much but she's got a temper on her.'

    'What's she done to you? Tied you down and slapped you about a bit. Or is that private?'

    'She was pro-castration at one point.'

    'That's the least she could do for humanity,' I said. 'Is she still here then?'

    'Flight delayed,' said Steve. 'Now listen to me, Brucey boy, because this is going to keep you alive. If she comes in here before we get you out, I want you to keep your big gob shut.'

    'About what?'

    'Women.'

    'Like Nina?'

    'You're not listening to me, are you, Bruce?'

    'Like Françoise Perec?'

    He picked up the rifle. 'You ever caught one of these in your teeth?'

    'Steve,' said Clifford, cautioning him again.

    Kershaw's lips had disappeared into thin dark lines. They were stretched tight across his teeth, which looked sharp. His eyes hadn't narrowed but something behind them had. His pupils were smaller than a snake's nostril.

    'Sorry, pal,' I said.

    'I'm not convinced.'

    'I'll pull a hair from my nose.'

    'You won't have to when you see what Clifford's going to do to your Kraut bird.'

    Clifford's hands were clasped across the blotter and he looked out into the room as if he was invigilating an exam. The downlighter hooded his eyes and did nothing for his image as a patrician banker.

    'Clifford's got a taste for it after the Perec girl. He's got some new ideas. He's better prepared. So this is what'll happen. You'll go for a drive with Clifford to one of the bank's guest houses on Lake Togo; very quiet, very isolated, nobody for miles, you'll like it. Clifford'll show you his new techniques. He likes an audience. I haven't got the stomach for it. When he's finished with the girl, you know, after a couple of hours or so, he'll take your gun, stick it in that big mouth of yours and give you a new skylight. So keep it shut and it might not happen.'

    Kershaw sat on the corner of the desk, which Clifford wasn't happy about, and clasped his hands around one knee. He looked at me as if he expected me to believe him. Me, who'd just seen the rough trepan work he'd done on his late partner's head and whose last words to me were: 'You don't know shit.' Shit was something I was beginning to know a lot about. I'd been submerged in it for a week now, and that's the best way to learn a language.

    In the silence that followed Kershaw's offer, Clifford got to his feet with some plastic cuffs in his hand. He was going to put them on me when
^-
Kate Kershaw entered the cone of light. Clifford went back to his seat and opened and closed a drawer. I did my best to relax now that I knew I had more time, and Steve tensed. Kate was dressed in her usual no-frills way - a black T-shirt, a short black skirt and black pumps. Her legs were strips of muscle secured to the knuckles of her knees and ankles. Her hair was wet and she smelled of soap. She had her head back and sniffed the air which wasn't that nice to sniff.

    'Still here?' I said, and she turned to me.

    'What's left of me, Mr Medway. They say I'm leaving at four or five in the morning.'

    'How's Elizabeth?' asked Clifford.

    'Sleeping.'

    'She must be tired,' I said, 'after breaking down that bathroom door.' Kate frowned at me, Kershaw let his knee go and brushed non-existent lint off his slicks. Clifford, the iceman in his alabaster shirt, seemed to stop breathing.

    Kate Kershaw was definitely not 'in'. I didn't know if she was as far 'out' as Jack had been, but she definitely wasn't 'in' with this particular 'in' crowd. It didn't mean that she was
with
me, but it probably meant she wasn't against me. Looking at the other two possibilities in the room, she was the only chance of an ally I had.

    'I don't understand, Mr Medway,' she said.

    'It's nothing, Mrs Kershaw. I'm just tired and talking rubbish.' Steve and Clifford relaxed and I brought myself up to the marks for the final push.

    'Why did you have to kill Gildas Sologne?' I asked.

    'You know why?' Kershaw said to his wife.

    'My husband needed an ID change,' said Kate. 'Been a naughty boy as usual -'

    'Gildas Sologne,' Kershaw interrupted with the sort of French accent that orders fish and chips on the Cannes Croisette and never gets served, 'couldn't paint his way into a corner. Bloody load of crap. All that lost youth and innocence. Bollocks to it. "Faggy stuff" Clifford called it. He was as queer as a short-necked giraffe.'

    'You killed him because he was gay?' I asked. 'Or because you didn't like his painting?'

    Kershaw had blundered around that first question with the talent of a mountain bear in a dentist's waiting room. Kate was making him tense. He got himself under control and threw out a dead-end remark.

    'He was HIV positive.'

    'Put him out of his misery.'

    'Why not?'

    'Come on, Steve, why did you kill him?'

    'Why did I kill him?' he said to himself, trying to work out where this was going to lead him and whether he minded being led there.

    'You haven't forgotten?' asked Kate, the interest bristling off her. Kershaw twitched his head at her.

    'He was the right size, right hair colour, right eye colour.'

    'Yes.'

    'And the only two people who knew he was there was me and Armen and he never left the house.'

    'Why was Gildas here?' I asked.

    'Like I said, he was HIV positive. He hadn't known for long and he got this romantic idea into his head that he would leave Paris, come to Africa and paint. Then, when he was ill, he'd kill himself or get Armen to help him. Armen and him lived together in Paris.'

    'Who killed Armen Kasparian?' I asked, trying to keep him working.

    'Professional,' said Clifford. 'A Chicago friend of mine knew some buck-hungry Liberians with some Semtex. They hopped over the border and snipped him off for fifteen grand. Gildas had already told Steve everything he needed to know. Even gave him Kasparian's card. A very trusting kind of guy.'

    'You don't have to feel too sorry for Kasparian,' said Steve. 'He was HIV positive too.'

    'The "me" generation gets into mercy killing.'

    Steve snorted back a laugh.

    'When did you know you were going to kill Gildas?'

    'Weeks ago. He told me everything about himself within the first four days. He didn't have anybody to talk to, you see, so he tells me his whole life story and leaves me thinking this is a gift. So a few weeks, ago, I start showing B.B. the sketches and get Kate to talk to him about art materials and stuff.'

    'Nice touch with the baboon.'

    'He told you that, did he? It didn't fool him. It was his way of showing he liked me. I think he knew I was up to something, but that was the kind of bloke he liked.'

    'Crooks and killers.'

    'Crooks. He loved watching people trying to rip him off. He thought I might be a candidate. I must have disappointed him by not clearing the bank account out. I just didn't think of it.' Kershaw was more relaxed now, answering questions that didn't get too close to the bone. I was planning on a little lull before we got to the hard stuff.

    During the grilling, I checked out Kate Kershaw to see if anything else was a surprise to her. From the start she believed that she was down here to get her husband a new ID, and now it was up to me to show her, without too much desperation, that there was a greater scheme which didn't include her future.

    She surprised me. I didn't have her down as the brutal type. She wasn't unnerved by her husband and his convenience killing. Then again, she wasn't a pretty woman and Steve liked pretty women. When I'd first mentioned Nina Sorvino and Steve's sadistic tastes to her, that indignation wasn't fake. She hadn't liked the idea of her husband's infidelity but Steve had somehow persuaded her it was part of the plan. She must have met him that night when she went missing from the Sarakawa saying she was in the Keur Rama restaurant. He must have smoothed her over and even persuaded her to steal the photographs whose missing detail she'd noticed when I first showed her the two-shot in the car.

    Her problem was that she loved Kershaw and she was totally loyal to him. She looked as if she might have a job to hang on to him with just her natural beauty. So she'd got plenty on him. I should think she had enough to put him away for the rest of this millennium and most of the next, but plain Kate went along with whatever Steve said as long as he stuck with her. Steve hadn't liked to swerve out of line too much in case she'd got talkative, so he kept his part of the bargain and did his best to love her back.

    Nina's packed cases had made it clear that Steve was planning on a greater disappearing act than Kate had envisaged when she agreed to go along with his new ID scam. I had that feeling from the way Kate had sniffed the changing wind when she first came in that she was beginning to realize this. It was bad luck on Steve that her flight had been delayed and she'd got involved in this ugly postmortem. It probably meant that he was going to have to kill her. Something that wouldn't be as easy for him as: Bang. Next.

    'Why did you kill him, when you killed him?' asked Kate, showing him he wasn't home free just yet.

    'I told you.'

    'The Perec girl recognized you.'

    'That's it.'

    'Take us through it.'

    Kate folded her arms, leant back and put out an aggressive toe in Kershaw's direction. His eyebrows flickered as if he just realized something, but he shrugged and straightened himself up, putting his hands under his armpits. I liked the way she'd used the word 'us'.

    'Authority's a funny thing.'

    Tell me about it,' said Clifford, who rocked back in his chair and showed me that he did have a pair of eyes and not just burnt-out sockets.

    'I will. Twenty years ago my car gets towed away in London.'

    'And you've never forgiven them,' said Kate.

    'Shut up and listen,' he said, spearing his lips. 'I send a mate down to pick it up so I don't have to pay all my parking tickets. He gets there and the copper in the Met car pound recognizes him for non-payment of alimony and does him. This Perec bird is supposed to be a textile designer but she's working for the IMB and she's got a boyfriend in the Drug Squad. She recognizes me as Stan Davidge, a known drug trafficker. I'm three stone lighter, tanned and working in Africa buying sheanut and she nails me.'

    'Are you on the run?' I asked.

    'No.'

    'You just didn't want her sticking her nose into your latest piece of business.'

    'Top marks, Bruce.'

    'Why the new ID then?'

    'The heat back in the UK. Nothing chargeable, but uncomfortable.'

    'And not just for him,' said Kate.

    'No, I should imagine you've been through a great deal,' I said.

    'How do you know she recognized you?' asked Kate.

    'You know me, Kate, I'm paranoid,' he said, drilling her with a hard look. 'I know trouble when I see it. If I'd seen Bruce I wouldn't have let him anywhere near this. Jolly Jack Tar thought he was being bloody clever when -'

    'But how
exactly
did it happen?' asked Kate, her voice hacking away at him like a machete.

    'I told you,' he said, kicking back at the desk which put a crease in Clifford's shirt.

    'I want the detail,' she said, her back straightening, her neck fanning out.

    'It was a look.'

    'When did this
look
happen?' She gripped the back of my chair which cracked.