Читать книгу The Last Temptation - Val McDermid, Val McDermid - Страница 13

Carol leaned back on the sofa, one hand clutching the phone, the other kneading the fur of her black cat, Nelson. ‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’ she asked, knowing it was a formality. Tony never offered anything he didn’t mean.

‘If you want my help, I’ll need to see whatever brief they give you. It makes much more sense for you to bring it with you so we can go through it together,’ Tony said, sounding matter of fact.

‘I really appreciate this.’

‘It’s not a problem. Compared to what we’ve worked through in the past, it’ll be a pleasure.’

Carol shuddered. Someone walking across her grave. ‘You heard about Vance’s appeal?’

‘It was on the radio news,’ he said.

‘He’s not going to succeed, you know,’ she said, more confidently than she felt. ‘He’s just another guest of Her Majesty, thanks to us. He tried every trick in the book and a few others besides at the trial, and we still managed to convince a jury that was predisposed to love him. He’s not going to get past three law lords.’ Nelson protested as her fingers dug too deeply into his flesh.

‘I’d like to think so. But I’ve always had a bad feeling about Vance.’

‘Enough of that. I’ll head straight out to the airport tomorrow as soon as the brief arrives and get a flight to Edinburgh. I can pick up a hire car there. I’ll call you when I have a better idea of my ETA.’

‘OK. You’re … you’re welcome to stay at my place,’ he said. Over the phone, it was hard to sift diffidence from reluctance.

Much as she wanted to see where two years apart would have brought them, Carol knew it made sense to leave herself a back door. ‘Thanks, but I’m putting you to enough trouble. Book me in at a local hotel, or a bed and breakfast place. Whatever’s most convenient.’

There was a short pause. Then he said, ‘I’ve heard good reports of a couple of places. I’ll sort it out in the morning. But if you change your mind …’

‘I’ll let you know.’ It was an empty promise; the impetus would have to come from him.

‘I’m really looking forward to seeing you, Carol.’

‘Me too. It’s been too long.’

She heard a soft chuckle. ‘Probably not. It’s probably been just about right. Till tomorrow, then.’

‘Good night, Tony. And thanks.’

‘Least I can do. Bye, Carol.’

She heard the click of the line going dead and cut off her own handset, letting it fall to the rug. Scooping Nelson up in her arms, she walked across to the wall of windows that looked out across the old stone church, incongruously preserved in the heart of the modern concrete complex that had become home. Only this morning, she’d looked across the piazza with a sense of elegiac farewell, imagining herself packing up and moving to Den Haag to take up her post as a brand-new ELO. It had all seemed very clear, a visualization that held the power to bring itself into being. Now, it was hard to picture what her future would hold beyond sleep and breakfast.

The Wilhelmina Rosen had passed Arnhem and moored for the night. The wharf he always used when they tied up on the Nederrijn was popular with the two crewmen he employed; there was a village with an excellent bar and restaurant less than five minutes’ walk away. They’d done their chores in record time and left him alone on the big barge within half an hour of tying up. They hadn’t bothered asking if he wanted to accompany them; in all the years they’d been working together, he’d only once joined them on a night’s drinking, when Manfred’s wife had given birth. The engineer had insisted that their captain should wet the baby’s head with him and Gunther. He remembered it with loathing. They’d been down near Regensburg, drinking in a series of bars that were familiar with the needs of boatmen. Too much beer, too much schnapps, too much noise, too many sluts taunting him with their bodies.

Much better to stay on board, where he could savour his secrets without fear of interruption. Besides, there was always work to be done, maintaining the old Rhineship in peak condition. He had to keep the brasswork gleaming, the paint smart and unblistered. The old mahogany of the wheelhouse and his cabin shone with the lustre of years of polishing, his hands following a tradition passed down the generations. He’d inherited the boat from his grandfather, the one good thing the bastard had done for him.

He’d never forget the liberation of the old man’s accident. None of them had even known about it till morning. His grandfather had gone ashore to spend the evening in a bar, as he did from time to time. He never drank with the crew, always preferring to take himself off to a quiet corner in some bier keller far away from the other bargees. He acted as if he was too good for the rest of them, though his grandson thought it was probably more likely that he’d pissed off every other skipper on the river with his bloodyminded self-righteousness.

In the morning, there had been no sign of the old man on board. That in itself was remarkable, for his regularity of habit was unshakeable. No illness had ever been permitted to fell him, no self-indulgence to keep him in his berth a minute after six. Winter and summer, the old man was washed, shaved and dressed by six twenty, the cover of the engines open as he inspected them suspiciously to make sure nothing evil had befallen them in the night. But that morning, silence hung ominous over the barge.

He’d kept his head down, busying himself in the bilges, stripping down a pump. It occupied his hands, avoiding any possibility of showing nervousness that might be remarked on later if anyone had become suspicious. But all the while, he’d been lit up by the inner glow that came from having taken his future into his own hands. At last, he was going to be the master of his own destiny. Millions of people wanted to liberate themselves as he had done, but only a handful ever had the courage to do anything about it. He was, he realized with a rare burst of pride, more special than anyone had ever given him credit for, especially the old man.

Gunther, busy cooking breakfast in the galley, had noticed nothing amiss. His routine was, perforce, as regular as his skipper’s. It had been Manfred, the engineer, who had raised the alarm. Concerned at the old man’s silence, he’d dared to crack open the door to his cabin. The bed was empty, the covers so tightly tucked in that a five-mark piece would have trampolined to the ceiling off them. Anxiously, he’d made his way out on deck and begun to search. The hold was empty, awaiting that morning’s load of roadstone. Manfred rolled back a corner of the tarpaulin and climbed down the ladder to check it from stem to stern, worried that the old man might have decided to make one of his periodic late-night tours of the barge and either fallen or been taken ill. But the hold was empty.

Manfred had started to have a very bad feeling. Back up on deck, he edged his way round the perimeter, staring down into the water. Up near the bows, he saw what he was afraid of. Jammed between the hull and the pilings of the wharf, the old man floated face down.

The inference was obvious. The old man had had too much to drink and tripped over one of the hawsers that held the barge fast against the wharf. According to the postmortem, he’d banged his head on the way down, probably knocking himself unconscious in the process. Even if he’d only been stunned, the combination of alcohol and concussion had combined to make drowning a foregone conclusion. The official finding had been accidental death. Nobody doubted it for a minute.

Just as he’d planned it. He’d sweated it till the verdict was in, but it had all turned out the way he’d dreamed it. He’d been bewildered to discover what joy felt like.

It was his first taste of power, and it felt as luxurious as silk against his skin, as warming as brandy in the throat. He’d finally found a tiny flicker of strength that his grandfather’s constant and brutal humiliations had failed to extinguish, and he’d fed it the kindling of fantasy, then more of the hot-burning fuel of hatred and self-loathing until it flared bright enough to fire him into action. He’d finally shown the sadistic old bastard who the real man was.

He’d felt no remorse, neither in the immediate aftermath nor later, when attention had turned away from his grandfather’s death to the latest gossip of the rivermen. Thinking about what he’d done filled him with a lightness he’d never known before. The craving for more of it burned fierce inside him, but he had no idea how to satisfy it.

Improbably, the answer had come at the funeral, a gratifyingly small gathering. The old man had been a bargee all his adult life, but he had never had any talent for friendship. Nobody cared enough to give up a cargo to pay their last respects at the crematorium service. The new master of the Wilhelmina Rosen recognized most of the mourners as retired deckhands and skippers who had nothing better to do with their days.

But as they filed out at the end of the impersonal service, an elderly man he’d never seen before plucked at his sleeve. ‘I knew your grandfather,’ he said. ‘I’d like to buy you a drink.’

He didn’t know what people said to get out of social obligations they didn’t want. He’d so seldom been invited anywhere, he’d never had to learn. ‘All right,’ he’d said, and followed the man from the austere funeral suite.

‘Do you have a car?’ the elderly man said. ‘I came in a taxi.’

He nodded, and led the way to his grandfather’s old Ford. That was something he planned to change, just as soon as the lawyers gave him the go-ahead to start spending the old man’s money. In the car, his passenger directed him away from the city and out into the countryside. They ended up at an inn that sat at a crossroads. The elderly man bought a couple of beers and pointed him to the beer garden.

They’d sat down in a sheltered corner, the watery spring sunshine barely warm enough for outside drinking. ‘I’m Heinrich Holtz.’ The introduction came with a quizzical look. ‘Did he ever mention me? Heini?’

He shook his head. ‘No, never.’

Holtz exhaled slowly. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised. What we shared, it wasn’t something any of us like to talk about.’ He sipped his beer with the fastidiousness of the occasional drinker.

Whoever Holtz was, he clearly wasn’t from the world of commercial barge traffic. He was a small, shrivelled man, his narrow shoulders hunched in on themselves as if he found himself perpetually in a cold wind. His watery grey eyes peered out from nests of wrinkles, his look sidelong rather than direct.

‘How did you know my grandfather?’ he asked.

The answer, and the story that came with it, changed his life. Finally, he understood why his childhood had been made hell. But it was rage that welled up inside him, not forgiveness. At last, he could see where the light was. At last, he had a mission that would shatter the glacial grip of fear that had paralysed him for so long and stripped him of everything that other people took for granted.

That night in Heidelberg had simply been the next stage in that project. He’d planned scrupulously, and since he was still at liberty, he’d clearly made no mistakes that mattered. But he’d learned a lot from that first execution, and there were a couple of things he’d do differently in future.

He was planning a long future.

He powered up the small crane that lifted his shiny Volkswagen Golf from the rear deck of the Wilhelmina Rosen on to the dock. Then he checked that everything was in his bag as it should be: notepad, pen, scalpel, spare blades, adhesive tape, thin cord and a funnel. The small jar containing formalin, tightly screwed shut. All present and correct. He checked his watch. Plenty of time to get to Leiden for his appointment. He tucked his cellphone into his jacket pocket and began to attach the car to the crane.