Читать книгу Soul Murder - Daniel Blake - Страница 12

‘You don’t recognize me?’ I ask.

Michael Redwine shakes his head. He can’t speak, as I’ve put duct tape across his mouth; and he can’t take the tape off or lash out at me, as I’ve cuffed his hands behind his back. The cuffs are those thin plastic ones, good for one use only.

One use only is all I need.

Besides, the plastic won’t last long, not with what I’ve got in store for him; but by the time he’ll be able to break them off, he’ll be long past doing anything at all.

His mouth moves furiously around the gag, spilling saliva down his jaw. It takes me a moment to work out what he’s saying.

‘You’re praying?’ I ask.

He looks at me with wide eyes and nods.

‘That’s funny,’ I say. ‘I didn’t think people like you believed in a higher power.’

His brows contract in puzzlement.

I look round his apartment again.

Nothing much wrong with it, truth be told. He lives in The Pennsylvanian, about the most luxurious apartment block in all of downtown. It’s built on the site of the old Union rail station, and the arched canopy which covers the main entrance is often cited as the most captivating architectural arrangement in all of Pittsburgh.

The Pennsylvanian has thirteen stories, the apartments getting ever grander the higher you go. Redwine’s apartment is on the tenth floor, where the building’s loft homes are located: all elegant arched windows, crown moldings, wood paneling and intricately detailed, fifteen-foot ceilings. The windows give on to warehouse roofs and overpasses swooping towards the Strip. Far below me, streetlights glow low sodium.

This, all this luxury, is what you get when you’re one of the premier brain surgeons in all Pennsylvania, possibly in the entire United States.

And all this luxury means nothing when you’ve done what Michael Redwine did, and you’re going to be punished like I’m about to punish him.

I open my bag and bring out a red plastic container. It can take a gallon, and pretty much everyone in the world recognizes its shape and what it’s designed to hold.

Redwine is screaming mutely behind the duct tape even before I open the lid and let him smell the gasoline.

‘Remember what you did?’ I ask, beginning to pour the gasoline over his head.

He jerks his body across the floor and tries to stand; anything to get away from the pulsing glugs that mat his hair to his forehead and run into his eyes.

He kicks at me, but I skip easily out of reach, still pouring.

The gasoline is drenching his shirt now, rivuleting down his trousers.

‘Remember what you said to me?’ I ask.

He throws himself against the wall; to knock himself out and spare himself the agony of what he knows is coming, perhaps, or as a last desperate call for help.

Neither works. He’s still conscious, and no one’s coming.

‘And remember what I said to you?’

When the plastic can’s empty, I put it back in my bag.

I take out the juggling torch and the lighter. Then I put the bag by the door, the easier to grab it fast on my way out if I have to make a sharp exit.

I light the torch’s wick and look at Redwine. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone more terrified in my entire life.

‘Isaiah chapter fifty-nine, verse seventeen,’ I say. ‘“For I put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation upon my head; and I put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and am clad with zeal as a cloak.”’

The torch flares in my hand like the fount of justice. I take a step towards him.

He backs away until he reaches the far corner and can go no further.

He curls himself into a ball and turns his face away from me.

I lower the torch to his shoulder.