The Boat House (30 page)

He'd be taking her for all of them.

The Venetz sisters' Renault stood before him, waiting for its gruesome load. He made a wide circle around it, and glanced back to be sure that he wasn't being followed.

Help would take something close to an hour to get to him. There would have to be CID, forensic, scenes of crime, press officers, the works. The valley would be like one big circus for a while, and the aftermath would probably never be forgotten.

He unlatched the door of the Metro.

"I owe you an apology," the waitress said.

THIRTY-EIGHT

He spun around. She was behind him, still a few yards away, but she must have been moving so silently that she could have been on him before he'd known it.

She said, "I think I made a mess of your radio."

He didn't need to look. The car hadn't been locked, and the radio was easy enough to reach. She must have done it all that time before, and she must have known that he was there and watching as she'd staked Amis and hung him up to dry. Waiting for him to betray himself, waiting for him to make a move. He couldn't even imagine how anyone could be so cool.

"Why?" he said. "Why have you done this?"

But she only shrugged. "We were a long way from the lake," she said, as if that would explain everything. "I'd planned to move him later, but… you got here ahead of me."

He was looking her over. She'd probably claw and scratch and struggle like a wild thing, but his size and strength would count for more as long as he was prepared to use them ruthlessly. Amis might have done the same, but he couldn't have been prepared.

"Miss Peterson, isn't it?" he said, trying to reassure her as he looked for a way to come in at his best angle, but she didn't reply. "It's all over, all right? Now let me help you."

She smiled in a way that he didn't understand.

"I've had your kind of help before," she said.

"Come on," he said, putting a cautious hand out to take her arm. "Get in the car with me. It's the best thing you can do."

She looked into his eyes.

It was as if a screen of humanity had dropped away behind her own, a screen that had been no more than paper thin. Aldridge was looking into twin pits that bored all the way down into Hades itself. The river of fear ran through him, and it ran cold. There was no question any more about what had happened or how, no bewilderment to be felt because now he
saw
. Nothing about her had changed, and everything was different. A hole had been punched in the fabric of reality, and a demon had stepped through.

A demon that wore a young woman's skin; but no less of a demon for that.

"You don't know who I am," she said. "You've no conception of
what
I am."

"We'll find out," he said, taking her arm.

But her arm wasn't there.

Something hit him hard from behind, and he started to go down. His mind was out of step, unable to register what was happening. Something blurred before him and his head snapped around to the side, and then he hit the ground. He struggled to rise. She grabbed the back of his shirt in two handfuls and shook him like a rug, beating the breath out of him in two great shockwaves.

He lay there, numbed and dazed and dizzy and dismayed, and realised that she'd done all of this in a matter of maybe a couple of seconds. It was as if he'd been hit by a car.

She was lifting his feet.

She was dragging him toward the cafeteria.

He scrabbled for purchase with his hands on the new tarmac, and felt his fingernails tear. She had a grip like a blacksmith. He tried to raise himself and kick his legs free; she flicked him like a rope, and his head cracked hard against the floor.

He saw lights. They were like popping flashbulbs.

And he let himself go limp.

He wouldn't underestimate her twice. She was whip-fast and totally ruthless, like the maddest of mad dogs. Size wasn't the issue here and neither was strength, although she had plenty of that. He had some unofficial mace in the car, a little handbag-sized spray that he'd picked up somewhere and never had a use for. He wished that it was in his hand right now. He could zap her and then, while she was blinded and struggling, maybe he could get one wrist cuffed to an ankle.

They were almost at the cafeteria again. She dropped his legs, and walked over to open the doors.

He waited until he could hear the sound of the hinge, playing dead right up until that moment.

And then, without looking back, he launched himself up and he ran.

She was faster. She caught at the loose part of his shirt but he spun around and managed to pull free, sending her off-balance for a moment. He didn't stay to watch her recovery, but lit out at top speed for the only place of safety that he could think of; not the woods, where she'd move with ease, and not any of the buildings either.

He aimed for the generator shed, just a few yards away and around the corner.

The unmuted beat of the generator told him that the door would be open even before he could see it. He dived through and into the cage, slamming the cage door shut behind him and scrabbling for the key that he hoped to hell would still be in the lock. It was, but on the awkward side; he'd barely got it turned and out when Alina flew through the door and, without even attempting to stop, hit the bars hard. Her arm shot forward like a piston, grabbing for Aldridge as he dodged back.

She caught him, but only just. She missed his throat and took a pinch of the flesh under his chin; even then she might have been able to draw him closer, but the sweat of fear and exertion had made him slippery and difficult to hold. She held him for a second, but then he fell back against the thumping generator and left her clutching the air.

He was on fire. He felt as if he'd been nipped by red hot pincers, titanium crabs' claws with a brutal strength behind them. Alina slowly withdrew her arm, and held the bars with both hands.

She was smiling again.

She said, raising her voice to make herself heard, "I know someone whose wife loves him more than anything, but he's no longer sure that he loves her back. She lost his baby and he tries not to blame her, but he does. Isn't guilt a strange thing, Mister Aldridge?"

It almost worked; he was only a heartbeat away from throwing himself against the bars to reach her. If he did, it would be over. It took everything that he had to resist her. The cage wasn't big, but it was big enough; and as long as he stayed in the middle, he'd be safe.

"I could wait for you to come out," she said.

"Don't stay around on my account."

But she inclined her head slightly, as if conceding a point. "There's too much to be done," she said. "I suppose I'll have to find you later." And then, with her smile still in place, she moved to leave. The shutters had been restored.

"Give it up," he called after her. "You're finished."

She looked back at him.

"You mean, my secret's out?" she said. "You won't live that long."

He couldn't believe that it was going to be so easy; and he was right. She was busy outside for a time. Then he heard her on the roof. She was pouring something around and suddenly the hut was filled with the stink of petrol. It was the spare can from the back of his own car, at a guess. Quietly, alert to her every move, he turned the key in the cage lock and let the door swing open; and when he knew for sure that she was climbing down on the opposite side, he eased open the door of the hut itself and made a silent dash for cover.

A while after that, he heard the Renault leaving. Parts of the hut were already in flames by then.

Had he still been in the cage when the generator's tanks went up, he'd have been barbecue meat.

"Oh, Jesus," Pete said. "Oh, God Almighty."

"I know," Diane said. "I know."

"How can you really be sure it was the man who followed you?"

"You know I can't, he was too burned-up. But I know it was his car because of the pictures in the dust…"

"Pictures in the dust? Come on."

"…and because I got more than half of his number as he went by me after I'd stopped on the road. Same car, same man, Pete. He says that Alina's dangerous and the question we've got to face now is, do we believe him and what do we do about it?"

"I don't know," Pete said.

By the Toyota's interior light, he looked again at the cuttings that Diane had handed to him. They were out by the lake, having pulled off the road onto an unmade strip of soft shoulder that overlooked the water. It was a pleasant spot with a view, but at best there was space for no more than half a dozen cars. No one ever stopped here for long, and most went by and never stopped here at all. Some people had pulled in ahead of them, and had walked the few yards down to the shore with a big golden dog that was now splashing around after a ball. The long shadows of the mountains lay across the water, deepening by the minute.

On top of all the accident and incident reports that were in the familiar layout of the area's local newspaper, there were three or four sheets of facsimile paper with the header line of a London based cuttings library. Two of the faxed items were marked as coming from the
Herald Tribune
. The others were from something that he'd once heard of but had never before seen, the English language edition of
Pravda
.

Diane said, "Petrovna? Peterson? That's got to be her, hasn't it?"

And Pete nodded.

Diane went on, "I had to pay money to get all this, but it was worth it. She's mentioned by name in the index of some archive, as well. We could probably get a copy, but it's somewhere in Munich."

"Radio Liberty," Pete said absently, leafing through some of the other cuttings without actually reading any.

"She told you?"

"I think she mentioned it one time."

"She talked about all that to you? About being Russian and being in hospital, and everything? Then you know it's all true."

He closed the book. "I know that the first part is true. The
first
part. But she never told me she'd killed anybody."

"Oh, sure. She wouldn't want to hold back on something like that, would she? I mean, if it was me, I'd work it into the conversation every chance I got."

Pete said quietly, not meeting her eyes, "You can stop trying to sell this to me. You don't have to."

He was thinking;
It's like there's two of me. One who knows what she wants, and the other who tells her what she can have.

He was thinking;
Rusalka, you'd say heartbreaker. I have it on the best authority
.

He was thinking of how the woodland seemed to know, falling silent when she stepped out; here walks madness, let it pass.

And even now in his heart he could sense the lure of the Rusalka, her siren call to the hungry and the incomplete.

"I can believe it," he said. "I think I just… I just don't want it to be."

There was silence in the cab for a while. On the banking below them, the big golden dog emerged from the water and shook off a spray like a hail of diamonds.

Diane said, "What do you want to do?"

"I think we ought to talk to her," Pete said.

THIRTY-NINE

He watched the fire for a while. It was spreading to the main building now, running in tongues along the gutters. There was a big fire hose on a standpipe across the yard, but on its own it could be of little use. Sparks were lifting and floating toward the trees, dying like fireflies before the journey was completed; it would only need one to reach the tinder of the undergrowth, and he'd have the beginnings of a major woodland blaze on his hands.

But right at this moment, that was the least of his concerns.

The sight of destruction was almost hypnotic, but Aldridge tore himself away and made for his car. The keys were gone and his radio, as she'd promised, had been taken out, stamped upon, and neatly put back into its place. He had no less than three personal radios that were intended for issue to volunteer Special Constables and which could be clipped to a lapel or carried in a pocket, but all of these were at the house on their plug in charger.

He looked around. On foot, it would take him anything up to an hour to make it to the lights of home. He had to get a message through somehow. He wondered if there was a working phone in the ski centre itself.

The air inside was already hazy with smoke and, of course, the lights had failed; he made his way by the fireglow from the windows and found the phone in the place where the carpenter had been sleeping. He picked it up, and heard a tone. He dialled quickly, not knowing how long it would be before the line came down. The smoke was getting perceptibly thicker. Any minute now, the walls or the roof would burn through and he didn't want to be inside when that happened.

He closed his eyes and gave a brief, teeth baring groan of frustration when he heard the ringing tone stop and the line switch to the distinctive hiss of the answering machine. His own voice came on a moment later and he drummed his fingers, looking around; the message seemed endless. He wondered if Loren was home, or not. Sometimes she just ignored the phone and let the machine take care of business; she'd stand by and listen, but she wouldn't pick it up.

"Loren?" he said. "It's me. It's Ross. If you're there, lock the doors and windows. Or better still, get out of the house. Don't leave a message or anything to say where you've gone, I'll phone around and find you. Don't be scared. I'll explain when I get back."

An intense, reddish light under one of the doors told him that it was time to get out of there, and fast.

He hung up, and he ran. He was coughing when he got outside. The building was lit from within now, like a shadow theatre, and it was almost as if he could see figures dancing across the big foyer windows.

But he turned his back, and started away.

He'd only one regret.

And this was that he'd told her,
Don't be scared
.

It was dark when he finally got there, but the outside light was on. Maybe Loren had only just arrived back from wherever she'd been. The side door to the house was on the latch but there was a window open alongside it. Village life had tended to make them lazy about home security. He went in and called her name.