Читать книгу The Girl Who Got Revenge: The addictive new crime thriller of 2018 - Marnie Riches, Marnie Riches - Страница 6

Brechtus Bruin was not aware that the kitchen clock ticking away on the wall was counting down the last few minutes of his ninety-five years. His movements had slowed of late, and now his complexion was noticeably wan and waxy. Perhaps he was finally feeling the poison in his bones that rainy morning. He must surely have been wondering that his shaking, liver-spotted hands wouldn’t obey his still-sharp brain, telling him to pour the coffee.

‘Here, Brechtus. Let me help you. Please.’

His guest had been sitting at a worn Formica table in that homely place, waiting. He had been drinking in the familiar scene of the cramped kitchen with its sticky, terracotta-painted walls. Savouring the stale scent of cakes that had been baked decades ago by Brechtus’s long-dead wife. Now, he stood to take the kettle from the old man.

‘You sit down. I’ve got this. Honestly.’

‘I don’t like people fussing,’ Brechtus said, wiping the sweat from his poorly shaven upper lip. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve not been feeling myself. You know?’ His breath came short. His Adam’s apple lurched up and down inside his haggard old neck. ‘Not just my bad back. More than that. I feel…’ He pursed his deeply pruned lips together and frowned. ‘Wrong. Horrible, in fact.’

Brechtus Bruin fixed his guest with the dulled irises of a dead man walking. There was fear and confusion in those bloodshot eyes; eyes that had seen almost a century of life. Even at his grand age, it was clear that he didn’t want to go. But any minute now, one of the greatest heroes of Amsterdam’s WWII resistance would be nothing more than an obituary in de Volkskrant.

Slipping a little extra Demerol and OxyContin into the old man’s coffee cup, he hoped that the taste wouldn’t be bitter enough to put him off one final swig.

‘There you go, Brechtus,’ he said, setting the mug down on the table. ‘Drink it while it’s hot. Maybe you’re just coming down with something. There’s an awful lot of bugs going round at the moment.’

The coffee sloshed around as the old man raised the mug to his mouth with an unsteady hand. His thin arms barely looked capable of holding even this meagre weight.

Go on, drink it, the guest thought. Let’s finish this.

He savoured the sight as Brechtus Bruin gulped down the hot contents, grimacing and belching as he set the cup back down.

‘I think maybe the milk was off,’ he said.

Still, the clock ticked. Even closer to the end, now. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Brechtus’s pallor was the first indication that the medication had started to do its work. Then, the sheen of sweat on the old man’s face grew suddenly slicker, giving him a waxy look, as though he were preserved in formaldehyde. One side of his face started to sag in a strange palsy. The old man’s eyes widened.

‘I feel…’

He tried to speak, but it was as if the poisonous cocktail was paralysing his vocal chords.

‘Help. Oh.’

Brechtus Bruin’s guest watched with amusement as the elderly war hero clutched at his chest and inhaled deeply, raggedly.

‘I don’t—’

‘What is it, Brechtus?’

With his other grey, gnarled hand – already blue at the fingertips – the old man grasped at the tablecloth, tugging at it as though the fabric were his mortal coil and he was holding on for dear life. Everything that had been placed on the table fell with him and the cloth, clattering to the floor. Broken china everywhere; coffee spattered across the varnished cork tiles like the victim’s blood from a well-aimed headshot in a shoot-’em-up movie. Finally, still gasping pointlessly for air like a determined goldfish flipped out of its tank, Brechtus lay on the floor, limbs splayed in improbable directions. Pleading in the old man’s eyes said he didn’t want to leave this life.

Did he suspect? Did he realise that this friend of old, a guest in his home, had committed the ultimate act of betrayal?

It was too late. When his eyes had glazed over, the guest knew that his latest victim was dead. To be certain, he squatted low, pulling the fabric of his shirt aside to reveal the small tattoo of a lion on the aged, freckled skin of his shoulder. The lion wore a crown and carried a sword. It was flanked by the letter S and the number 5.

He checked for a pulse.

Nothing.

Whistling to himself, he started to wipe the place down of fingerprints, careful to pick up from the floor the shattered remains of the coffee cup that he had drunk from, disposing of them in a small plastic freezer bag that he had brought in case of exactly this kind of accident. What a shame that the silly old bastard had made such a mess on his way out of that overlong, sanctimonious life. He pinched his nose against the smell of death, already rising from the body. Tiptoed over the spilled coffee to ensure he left no footprints.

Turning back to survey the scene, he decided that this termination had been well executed. On to the next one. By the time Brechtus Bruin’s body would be found, he would be sufficiently far away to evade suspicion. The method of killing was flawless. And most important of all, he thought, as he pulled the door to the house closed, he was certain that Brechtus Bruin had suffered in the last few weeks of his life.

What a cheering thought. He smiled and was gone.