Touch (28 page)

“Mention you? No. But by now it’ll be too late to run; you’ll only draw attention to yourself. I suppose the question therefore is, how well do you really know Samir Chayet?”

“Why? Why did you do this?”

“Kepler –” he spoke like a father, sad at a school report “– you are a slave trader. A murderer. A thief of time. But this isn’t even about you. I’m far too self-important to enact petty revenge on a passing acquaintance such as yourself. What you must understand is, much as I loathe you, more than that – more a thousandfold than that – I find myself disgusting. Truly repugnant. The luxury of having armed killers prepared to do that which for so long I have longed to do to myself but lacked the courage to attempt is, it seems to me, such a rare privilege that I dare not pass it up.”

The sound of rain.

I stood, hands locked on the back of a squat wooden chair, knuckles curling white. Janus swirled the last dregs of wine in the glass. Swallowed. His gaze wandered to look at nothing much, before drifting up to the ceiling, some other place.

Words surfaced and sank like potatoes in a pot, and I said nothing.

A bluff.

A practical joke.

A trick played by a tired old ghost too bitter and cynical to remember that within every pair of eyes that beholds him, a mind watches too.

I looked at Janus, and Janus, feeling my gaze, looked back at me, and he didn’t care if I lived, and he didn’t care if he died, and he was not lying.

I moved.

Across the room, to a low wooden door; duck through into a tiny toilet with a sloping roof, squint into the single mirror above the sink and stare into the face of Samir Chayet. Worn for four hours and counting, never regarded. I am in my early forties? Straight dark hair, cut close, beard trimmed – not brilliantly but with a serviceable pair of scissors – almost certainly by myself. My skin is sanded elm, my name could be French, could be Islamic; Algerian will do as a guess, but what then? A mother, a father, a birthplace, a language, a religion? I feel around my neck for a crucifix – none – check my fingers for rings, fumble in my pocket for wallet, phone. I switched my phone off on acquiring Samir, never be available to make a fool of yourself; now I thumb it back on and tear through my wallet. I carry fifty euros in cash, two debit cards with the same bank, an ID telling me what I already know – Samir Chayet, senior staff nurse. What does a senior staff nurse do? I knew this once, long ago, when I was a medical student in San Francisco, when I was young and painted my toenails. Times have changed. I left those toes behind when I grew bored with patients being diseased, and now Samir Chayet has new toys to play with, new rules to learn, and I know none of them.

The sound of Janus moving in the room next door. Three hours is a long time when you’re armed men with access to a helicopter. Running water in the kitchen: Janus doing the dishes.

“You know, they’re probably already here, yes?” he calls out.

Helpful.

Contents of the wallet. Credit cards are dangerous – easy to ask me for the pin number, easy to catch me when I get it wrong. A library card, a couple of loyalty cards, union membership, a receipt from a local golf course.

Who is this man, Samir Chayet?

I look in the mirror, run my fingers through my beard, my hair, down the edge of my sleeve. I stare into round brown eyes that as a child would have begged for more and never been denied. I feel my belly, a little saggy but not embarrassingly so. When I raise my eyebrows, it seems that my whole scalp rises; when I frown, it’s as if my forehead is trying to touch my nose. I lift the lid of the toilet cistern, drop my wallet and phone inside and close it.

Right now the question of who Samir Chayet is is not as important as who he
seems
to be.

“Are you ready for pudding?” Janus’ voice drifted through from the kitchen.

I stared at my reflection for a moment longer, and turned out the light.

“What is it?” I asked, slipping into the kitchen, but now my words were Maghrib Arabic, slow to pass and heavy to form.

Janus stood at the sink, a pair of yellow Marigolds pulled over his withered hands, suds of washing-up liquid hanging off the front of his shirt. His eyebrows rose at the sound of my voice, but in the same language with an eastern accent, he replied, “Crème caramel with a raspberry and vanilla sauce. Hand made by someone in a supermarket.”

“It sounds lovely. Shall I dry?”

A flicker of surprise in the corner of his lips. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

I picked a tea towel off its hook, lined up at Janus’ side, started methodically drying the dishes. “Ever tried making crème caramel? Yourself, I mean?” I asked, testing the words as they ran through me, remembering the shape of them, warming to my theme.

“Once. When I was a housewife in Buenos Aires. It collapsed in the pot, looked like banana puke.”

“That often happens.”

“You a chef?”

“I was, for a while.”

“Were you any good?”

“Used too much chilli. Management were disappointed that I wasn’t sticking to the style for which I had been acclaimed. I told them that it was bland and undersized. They told me to reform my ways or find a new job. I reformed my ways and found a new job.”

“Sounds unfulfilling.”

“I wanted to test a hypothesis.”

“Which was?”

“That the tongue of a chef could taste more – biologically, I mean, that there was something chemical in its capacity to taste more fully – than any other man.”

“And?” Curiosity lifted Janus’ voice, the scourer ceased for a moment in its rounds across the dishes.

“Damned if I could see what the fuss was about. I have worn some of the greatest musicians of the day and still cannot hear the sublime in Mahler. I have dressed myself in the bodies of great dancers, and certainly my muscles were flexible enough for me to stand on one leg and suck my own big toe without strain, and yet…”

“Yet?”

“I was forced to conclude that, though the body was toned to perfection, without the confidence of experience the feat for which it was honed still evaded me. It was a deep disappointment the day I realised that the lungs of an opera singer and the legs of a ballerina were not enough to achieve perfection in the form itself.”

“You didn’t want the hard work.”

“No one wants the hard work. I suppose you could say I lacked motivation.”

We worked in silence; the fire burning in the room next door, until at last he said, “I imagine running looks bad.”

“What?”

“If they’re already here, I mean.”

“Ah, yes. Running would raise a few questions.”

“So,” he went on, “you intend to bluff it out? Dress yourself as a civilian?”

“That’s the plan.”

“And you think drying the dishes will help?”

“I think that our kind never work together. I think that we are lonely. I think we want friends, that we need… companionship, more than company. I think that everyone’s afraid, but more so when we are alone. We should have that pudding now.”

“You’re in for a treat.”

I put the last dish on to the rack and drifted back into the living room as Janus emptied the fridge of its sugary confections. Two white plates of crème caramel adorned with magenta sauce were laid out for my consideration, a silver spoon beside each. I tried a sliver and was cautiously impressed. Janus sat opposite, his pudding untouched.

Then, “Did…”

I took another bite.

“Would you…” he tried again, his voice shaking round the edges. Stop. A slow breath in, a long breath out, and at last, “I think I will have that morphine now, please.”

I laid my spoon down, leaned back in the chair. “No.”

“No?”

“No. You want to die, be my guest. You want someone here to give you the strength to go through with it, an audience for your big moment – fine. You want to stop the pain, that’s an entirely different matter.”

His bones stuck up white beneath the ragged redness of his knuckles; his smile was wide, eyes narrow. “How long do you think you have left to live, Samir?”

“You took the answer out of my hands. We do that, you and I. You’re a good cook.”

“I worked hard for it. Are you not —”

His words were barely formed, the sound balanced on the edge of his tongue, when the lights went out.

There was no
thunk
of circuit breakers, no snap of electricity tearing itself apart. The lights were on and then they were off, and we sat together, shadows against the bright orange of the fire, the rain drumming on the window pane, the
drip-drip
of the kitchen tap as it emptied itself into a still-soapy sink smelling of chemical lime. I looked to where the shadow of Janus sat, back straight, neck locked, hands curled around the edge of the table.

We waited.

“Samir?”

“Yes?”

His voice shook, his hands knocked against the wood. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Not running.”

“As you said, it would have been predictable.”

The
thump
of a boot outside the door, the flicker of a shadow across the window pane. I thought about all the rugs on the floor, how the water would destroy them. I pushed my plate away from the edge of the table lest its contents be spilt.

“Samir?” A stammering, a heat, that might have been acid tears on a ravaged face.

“Yes?”

“Good luck.”

A metal object broke a pane of glass. I pulled my hands over my ears but still heard the flashbang roll on to the floor. I ducked beneath the table, and the light as it exploded knocked against the back of my brain. I curled up with my knees to my chin and my elbows covering my head as the front door slammed off its hinges, as heavy boots and heavy men charged in from the front, from the back, their trousers tucked into their socks, their sleeves taped around their gloves, and through the scream of my ears and the whining in my brain I half-heard Janus climb to his feet, hold his hands out wide and proclaim in cheerful bouncing English,

“I fucking
love
this body!”

He must have moved as he spoke, must have lunged, tried to grab, because the gunfire that ensued – a burst of silenced shots – kept going long after the body had fallen. I half-opened my eyes, and as my retinas strained to adjust to the restored gloom, I saw the pocked body of Marcel hit the floor on the other side of the table, each silenced shot a crater in his chest, one through his throat, another through his lower jaw, the final one to the head, and even as he lay there, the shooter fired and fired again, three more bursts, Marcel’s shirt popping and splattering red blood as the bullets bit in, until silence descended save for the drumming of the rain.

Then, as was inevitable, someone put a knee in the small of my back, a gun against the base of my neck, and I begged for mercy in what I hoped was my very best Maghrib Arabic.

Military hit squads never do things by half.

If you could throw some circuit breakers, why not cut a power cable.

If you could cut one power cable, why not cut all power to the town.

That’d be convenient.

I sat, knees tucked up in front of me, hands at my back growing numb from the cable ties, and watched heavily armed men lift the broken and bloody corpse of Marcel… whoever he had been… from the scarlet-soaked floor of his living room, deposit it in a black rubber bag and carry it outside. As they did this, more of their colleagues, all silenced pistols, balaclavas and a bare minimum of skin, stood over me, guns levelled at my head, their expressions unknown. Every now and then I begged. I begged for mercy, I begged for answers, I begged for them to leave me alone. I begged on behalf of my dear and beloved mother who would not live without me. I begged for my dreams not yet fulfilled. I begged for my life. And I did so in a language which they didn’t speak.

Eleven men.

They could have killed Janus with fewer, but eleven there were, distinguishable only by height and movement. They swept the house by torchlight, examined the half-eaten remains of dinner on the table, the cutlery drying in the kitchen. They patted down my pockets and, finding no identification, barked in Parisian-accented French, Who are you? What is your name?

I made a guess at how French would sound if spoken with an Algerian accent and replied, I am Samir. I am Samir Chayet. Please don’t kill me.

What are you doing here, Samir Chayet?

I was here to see Monsieur Marcel. Monsieur Marcel was going to help me.

Help you do what?

Help me get a job. He was friend with my cousin. Please. I don’t speak your French well. Algerian, you see? I am Algerian. I have not been long in your country, please let me go; are you police?

They are not police. One of the skin-clad darknesses approaches another, murmurs in his ear. What is this, who is this man?

He claims to be Samir Chayet, Algerian. His French is poor. He has no identification papers on him. We can’t be sure.

Eyes settle on me, study my face, and a voice breathes, Will he be missed?

Show no reaction. My French is not good enough to understand a conversation about my demise. Show no fear. Focus on the problem at hand. Focus on innocence.

Then a voice speaks, and its French is heavily accented, and even through the language barrier I recognise that sound, and against the fire I recognise that shape, that height, that build, and the voice says, “We can’t stay here. Do we take him?”

And the voice is known, because it was once my own, a comforting heaviness as I twisted it round Turkish, Serbian and German, before shoving a sock in its mouth and leaving it handcuffed in silence to a radiator in Zehlendorf, all those faces ago, and the voice is that of Nathan Coyle, murderer, assassin, fanatic and, quite possibly, salvation.

His boss replies, “Take him,”

And this they proceed to do.

I sat, hands tied, head covered, in the back of a van in the middle of nowhere, and I prayed.

It had been a long, long time since I’d prayed.

I rocked, and in breathless Arabic I gabbled my imprecations to the All-Merciful, the All-Seeing, the Compassionate and Mighty, and when I’d run out of clichés, I babbled a few more things besides, until finally someone nearby shouted, “Will you please shut him up?!”

A gloved hand pulled the bag from my head, caught me by the chin, tugged my face round hard. I stared into eyes which had for so long regarded me with contempt from the bathroom mirror and heard a familiar voice proclaim in soft, poor French, “Quiet now. Or we’ll shut you up, understand?”

And for a moment I felt almost hurt that he didn’t recognise me, as if there might be something in my eyes, in a twitch of iris and a contraction of pupil which whispered,
Hello, stranger
.

“Please,” I whispered. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Coyle pulled the bag back over my head.

We slowed.

We stopped.

Hands pulled me from the vehicle. Through the cloth across my face I saw nothing, not even the glow of the moon.

A voice called, Kestrel, help me!

Arms linked arms with mine, one on either side, led me along tarmac, then gravel, then soil going steeply downhill. A rough path which slipped beneath my feet as I stumbled in the darkness. The sound of a stream rushing below, the cracking of twigs, stir of an engine growing distant. In the darkness a bird shrieked, its midnight rest disrupted by the intruders, and mud became pebble, became wet rounded stones, became a damp riverbed where I was pushed to my knees.

“Please don’t hurt me!” I wailed, in French, then Arabic, then French again. “I am Samir Chayet. I have a mother, I have a sister; please, I never did anything!”

Two – three at the most – bodies moved around me. They have taken me here to die.

“Please,” I sobbed, shaking in my bonds. “Please don’t hurt me.”

It’s OK to piss yourself in these circumstances. It’s only a physical thing.

The click of a gun near my head. This was not how I planned on things ending.

Janus.

Do you like what you see?

“Galileo.”

The word slipped from my lips, a bare breath in the dark, and instantly hands were there, grabbing me by the throat, pulling my head back and up, and though I couldn’t see him, I could feel Coyle’s body against mine, his hands wrenching me up. “What did you say?” he hissed. “What did you say?”

“Step back,” barked another, the man in charge, the man who, if I had to speculate, was going to do the killing.

“Galileo!” Coyle pulled the hood off my head and stared into my eyes, shook me and roared, “What do you know of Galileo?”

I stared up into his face and whispered, a bare breath in the cold night, “
He lives
.”

A shot in the dark, the single
snap
of a silenced pistol. I jerked, trying to work out where it had gone in. The hands that held me let go; I fell to my knees. So did Coyle. His face hovered an inch from mine, eyes wide, mouth shaping an O of surprise. I looked down at myself and saw no bullet wound. I looked up at him, and there was a shininess to his jacket, a growing patch of darkness that caught the torchlight and reflected it back crimson.

The crunch of the gunman’s boots behind me, and there’s only one him, it seems, just one man sent to kill two birds.

He looked past me into Coyle’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, raising the gun. “I have to follow orders.”

Overhead the clouds have cleared and the sky is sprawled with a thousand stars framing cliffs dug out by this busy little gorge. In daylight the place might have been beautiful: black stones washed with silver water. By torchlight strapped to the end of a silenced pistol it is a lonely place to die.

Coyle moved. In the dark I didn’t see his hand close around the gun, but I felt the movement, saw torchlight twist and turn, heard the double
crack-crack
of pistols firing, the ground briefly illuminated chemical-yellow, heard the
smack
of lead against bone. I looked up and saw the gunman, weapon held to fire. He took a step, and his foot slipped on the rocks. Took another, and his legs went out beneath him. He fell, head cracking open on the stony ground, arm slapping into the flow of the river.

Coyle fell. First onto his belly, then his face; twisted to one side, bounced on the wet stones.

The headlights of the van were high above us, and no one shouted, no one cried foul murder, no one came.

“Coyle!” I hissed, and he tried to raise his head at the name. “Cut me loose!” His head sank back on to the stones. “I can help you, I can
help
you! Cut me loose!”

I shuffled like an infant on my knees towards him, saw the light glisten on the blood where it was beginning to seep through his shirt. “
Coyle!
” His eyes were open, and he made no answer. I bent down towards his face. Only a thin pale line showed around his eyes, all other parts of his skin protected by layers of fabric, plastic and tape. But it was enough, so I bent down and kissed him on the softness of his eyes

pain
 

I bit back on a scream, stuffed my arm into my mouth to hold it in, shaking, shuddering pain rocking through my body. It ran through the tight muscles of my neck, through my locked-up belly, down to my knees and exited through the throbbing soles of my feet. It originated from a bullet, low calibre and slowed by a silencer, but still a bullet, wedged in my right shoulder, in a bundle of nerves that shrieked their distress, shredding thought and blurring all other sense. In front of me Samir Chayet swayed, blinking in the dark. I pushed myself up on my left arm, heard blood roar behind my ears as Samir began to whisper the usual refrain of what, where, how, his voice rising as the panic began to bite. I slid on to my knees, fumbled at my chest, my trousers, my belt, until I found a small blade. “Wait,” I whispered, and my voice was cracked, and as Samir spotted the rapidly cooling corpse to his left he began to shout, to cry out, to lament without much direction or sense.

“Wait,” I hissed again, pulling the balaclava from my face. “Stay still.”

He gasped in air as I rested the blade against his back, managed to pull down a sob. I turned the knife against the cable ties that bound his wrists and, with a jerk that nearly took me to the ground again, cut him free. He fell on to his hands and knees, shaking, and I rested the blade against his throat.

He froze, an animal locked in place. “Listen,” I hissed, first in Arabic, then in French, remembering that the Samir I had played was not the Samir I had been. “I’m losing a lot of blood here. Touch my skin.”

Terror, incomprehension in his eyes. I turned the knife a little with my wrist, letting him feel the scrape of it against his skin. “Touch my skin.”

I let the blade track his throat as he leaned into me, hands shaking, and as his skin brushed against the side of my face I threw the knife into the darkness of the river and

switched.

My heart was racing, piss in my pants, sweat on my back, eyes burning with tears wanting to be shed, but blessed relief! With a cry Coyle fell back on the ground, clutching the hole in his shoulder, and I rubbed blood back into my hands and hissed, “Coyle!” I scrambled over to him, felt the blood hot on his shirt. “Do you carry medical supplies?”

“The van,” he replied. “In the van.”

“How far are we from a town?”

“Four miles, five – five!” His face twisted, legs kicked back against nothing as he writhed beneath me. Sometimes people writhe to get away from a thing that scares them, sometimes to remind themselves that they have a body beyond the pain. This was both.

“I can help you! I can get you away from here. Your own people have betrayed you – are you listening to me?”

A half-nod, a wheeze of broken bloody breath.

“I can get you out of here, get you medical attention, but you need to trust me.”

“Kepler?” Not much of a question, but he asked it anyway.

“I can help you, but you need to give me your call sign.” A half-laugh that quickly dissolved into the pain. “Coyle!” I snarled. “Kestrel – whatever your name is – they are going to kill you. I can keep you alive. Tell me.”

“Aurelius,” he wheezed. “My… call sign is Aurelius.”

I pressed my bare hand against his cheek. “If you’re lying,” I whispered, “we’re both dead.”

“You find out.”

“I need your clothes,” I said, reaching for his belt. His bloody hand pressed against my own, stopping it before I could undo the buckle. “I’ve seen it all before.” His hand didn’t move. “I need to hide my face.”

His hand fell away, and I pulled his trousers free one leg at a time. His shirt crackled like Velcro as I peeled it away from him. Beneath it he wore blue Lycra, the blood glistening, moving like a living thing as it filled the fibres. His trousers were too short, his jacket too tight, and I felt almost surprised. I slipped his balaclava over my face, smelt his sweat within it. I picked up his gun, checked the magazine, pressed my own discarded shirt against his wound, felt him flinch.

“You’ll be OK,” I murmured, and was surprised at how level my own voice seemed. “You’re going to make it.”

“You don’t know that,” he replied.

I pulled the magazine from my gun, threw it aside, buried my hands in my pockets so that no man might see the bare skin. I began to climb back up the muddy path, the crooked riverside made more treacherous by the rain, towards the light of the truck on the road above.