Friday finally dawns. I spend the morning rehearsing, mentally putting myself through my paces, trying to ensure the margin of error is as narrow as possible. I dismantle the gun then put it back together, as I have done several times since retrieving it from Nelke’s car. I’m also packing a hunting knife in case the gun misfires.
I haven’t heard from Andeanna since Wednesday — the Turk or one of his men must have been with her last night. I want to call her to make sure everything’s OK, but that would be foolish. I have to trust that the dinner party is going ahead and that the Turk will be alone afterwards. Except, of course, for Andeanna.
I’d rather she wasn’t present. We discussed it. She could have spent the night with one of her friends, or gone to visit Greygo — he’s on tour in the Midlands. But the Turk likes to have his wife by his side at business functions. It might have seemed suspicious if she’d cried off. Andeanna suggested I slug her unconscious and make it look like she walked in on the killer. The trouble is, assassins don’t knock out people who get in their way. They kill them.
We’ve settled on alcohol. Andeanna occasionally overindulges and blacks out. The Turk’s crew know this and won’t link it with his murder. We hope.
Six o’clock passes. Seven. Eight. Dash should be sitting in the Purple Platypus now, patient as the Sphinx. This could be his last night of freedom, perhaps his last of life, but I feel nothing for him. Nine. Ten.
Time to move.
I drive north and park close to the gates of the mansion. Lights off. Head down. No nerves now. Totally focused on the job. A killing machine, all doubts and fears forgotten.
The first guests leave shortly after eleven, early birds. Then nobody until half twelve, when the rest trickle out.
I wait an hour after the last car, to be absolutely sure. The Turk normally sends the caterers home before the meal starts (he likes to serve up the food himself), but sometimes they stay to clean. I don’t want to run into them if they’re still there.
Two o’clock. No signs of life. Sliding out of the car, I cross the street, hop the wall and hurry towards the mansion, avoiding the driveway, ready to drop to the ground at the slightest hint of human life.
I circle the house. No unexpected cars or vans. I glance nervously at the CCTV cameras. Andeanna was supposed to disable the system earlier, while the caterers were setting up. If she did her job, Bond Gardiner and the others will assume that someone on the team was in league with the assassin, maybe even that one of the members of staff was the killer in disguise. But if she forgot about it, or made a mistake, I’m screwed.
I slip up to the back door and slam it open. Andeanna suggested leaving it unlocked, but it will look better if it’s been forced. The Turk usually doesn’t think to set the alarm after a party — he gets careless when he’s had a few drinks. If he’s broken with habit, our plan is dead in the water.
No siren. The plan lives on.
I advance through the dark rooms into the main hall, then pad up the stairs. I pause on the landing and check the gun. Ready to shoot. All I need is a target.
A door opens. I drop and swivel, raising the gun automatically. I almost fire, but catch myself in time. Thank God I do — it’s Andeanna, a bottle of vodka clutched in her hands, looking wretched.
‘We mustn’t do it,’ she groans, staggering towards me. I clutch her before she topples down the stairs. ‘He’s my . . . they’ll know . . . we can’t . . . ’
I silence her with a kiss, tasting vodka on her lips. She’s sobbing when we part, but doesn’t repeat her plea for clemency.
‘You’re supposed to be unconscious,’ I chide her.
‘I soon will be,’ she sniffs, shaking the bottle. ‘I drank all through dinner. Mikis sent me to my room in disgrace. I’ll have hell to face tomorrow. He’ll . . . ’ She stops. ‘Oh. I forgot. There won’t be a tomorrow for Mikis.’
‘But there will be for us,’ I smile, kissing her again. ‘Did you remember to disable the CCTV?’
‘Of course.’
I kiss her a third and final time. ‘In that case we’re sweet. Go back to your room. Finish your bottle. Sleep.’
‘Maybe I should come . . . ’ She trails off even before I start shaking my head.
‘Let’s stick to the plan. The less you see or know, the better.’
‘Will I phone you in the morning?’
‘No!’ I’m angry now. ‘No contact. Play the part of the grieving widow and play it damn well. I’ll catch the Eurostar to Paris on Tuesday. You stay here, bury Mikis, tend to the formalities, then follow me in a few months. We’ll meet, fall in love, everyone will say how romantic it is and no one will ever suspect.’
She forces a smile. ‘I knew all that. It’s the vodka. I never could handle hard liquor. I get weepy.’
‘That’s OK. I understand. Now — bed.’
She nods and kisses my cheek, a fleeting brush of her lips, then slides back into her room and closes the door softly. Clicking back into killer mode, I clear my thoughts of Andeanna and Paris, and focus on the present, the Turk and the gun.
I push on.
I know where Mikis’s room is — Andeanna included it in the tour the last time I roamed the corridors of this house. I halt at the door and press an ear to the wood. I hear light snoring. I turn the handle and enter.
It’s a shrine to masculinity. Photographs of beautiful women adorn the walls, every one a romantic conquest. Shots of Mikis fill the space between his lovers, most from when he was a young man in his prime, in the Turkish football strip, stooping from a polo horse with a mallet, clinging to the side of a mountain, in a gym with his bare chest glistening as he hoists weights high above his head.
And there, on the bed, is the legend himself, the lady-killer, the wife-beater, Mikis Menderes, aka the Turk.
I should shoot him while he sleeps. But I can’t. If it was business, sure. But this is personal. It wouldn’t feel right.
I position myself at the foot of the bed, grab his ankle through the covers and tug sharply. The Turk comes awake with a startled grunt. He spots me. Confusion floods his expression, then anger, but not panic. He glares at me, and I know he knows that he’s finished.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asks.
‘Call me Ed.’
‘Who sent you?’
I don’t answer.
‘You gonna kill me?’
I don’t answer.
‘Fucking dummy. Can I light a cigarette?’
‘No.’
‘Aw, c’mon, surely you won’t deny a –’
‘It’s for Andeanna.’
His expression crumples, and I realize that this is what I want, this is why I woke him. I need to see guilt wash over the bastard’s face. I want him to know that he’s paying for the way he abused his wife.
‘Andeanna?’ he croaks. ‘What the fuck does she have to do with –’
My finger jerks. The gun kicks once, twice, a third time. Mikis Menderes’s face evaporates. The wall behind the bed blossoms with the bloody remains of his thoughts, memories and personality. His body shudders grotesquely, then goes still for ever.
I lower the gun and study the havoc of my making. There can be no doubt that he’s dead, but I start forward to check all the same. Then I stop, thinking of blood on the carpet, and footprints. I turn towards the door and hurry from the room.
I’m at the top of the stairs before I remember the laces.
Grimacing, I retrace my steps and look for shoes. I find a closet full of them, and extract a pair. I tie the laces on the right shoe, leave those on the left undone, then lay them on the floor by the bed. The police will think they were put there by the Turk. They’ll leave them as they are, along with the other items in the room. They won’t notice the laces, but the Turk’s henchmen will.
Dash’s signature successfully forged, I make my exit. The plan has a long way yet to run. Things could still unravel spectacularly. But I’ve got a feeling they won’t. The hit went perfectly. I’m certai
n that fate is on our side. I could whistle as I trot down the stairs, out via the kitchen, through the trees, over the wall and back to the car. But I don’t. It wouldn’t be professional.
THIRTEEN
Sleep is an impossibility, so I don’t even try, and instead of returning to the Royal Munster to brood, I spend the night driving around London, listening to the radio, flicking between stations, humming along to corny ballads, listening with interest to people who phone in with their problems, love stories or tales of the city night.
In the early hours, I park close to a bagel shop on Brick Lane. I wolf down a salmon and cream-cheese bagel, then order another, which I munch slowly. When I’ve washed down the last of the crumbs with coffee, I make for the restroom and check my appearance in the mirror. A little wild about the eyes, but that’s the only sign that all isn’t well.
I return to the hotel, shower, bag my clothes for incineration and pull on fresh jeans, a shirt and a sweater. It’s too early to hit Heathrow, so I sit on the end of the bed and flick through a magazine. But the words mean nothing. My thoughts return to the Turk’s room, how he collapsed when I killed him, the last look on his face, how the gun kicked in my hand.
I catch the Tube to the airport in the morning rush. It’s full of surly commuters. A pregnant woman boards at Acton Town. Nobody offers her a seat. I want to give her mine but I dare not do anything that might attract attention.
Axel Nelke’s car is even colder than before. I get in and stick the gun under the seat. I take the keys and lock the door this time when I leave, so if I have to break in a few weeks from now, I won’t be smashing the window of an unlocked vehicle.
Back in central London, I go for a stroll by the Thames and find a quiet spot on a bridge, where I drop the car keys and my gloves into the river. The true and final end of the unfortunate Axel Nelke. After that I head to the Royal Munster and bed.
The murder of Mikis Menderes is major news. He was well known to the media, and they pick over his bones with predictable zeal. I ignore the hoopla, not bothering with the newspaper articles, catching only a couple of items on TV. The police have no firm suspects but are ‘pursuing definite lines of enquiry’, which means they haven’t a clue who killed him. No sign of Andeanna, which is good, although there are clips of a pale-faced Greygo pushing through the hordes of reporters outside their house and blanking questions.
I’m tempted to call Andeanna, to check that she’s OK. But it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie and look ahead to Paris. It will be months before she can slip away and be with me. I’ll have to get used to the loneliness.
I’ve made arrangements to check out of the hotel on Tuesday. I plan to work on Spirit of the Fire in Paris. I call Jonathan to inform him of my change of address. He’s alarmed when I tell him I haven’t started writing, but relaxes when I state my intention to complete the book within a few months.
Monday passes with surprising speed. I’m so busy packing clothes, organizing my notes and checking my travel plans that before I know it I’m undressing for bed and falling asleep to dream of Paris, Andeanna and our new life together.
Hotel account paid in full. Bags in order. Nothing left in the room. Train ticket tucked securely into my money belt, along with my passport and credit cards. A spare pair of socks and a toothbrush in my travel bag in case I get delayed. A book. A map of Paris. The name and address of my new hotel.
Adieu!
I’m catching the Eurostar from St Pancras. Rather than drag all three of my bags with me, I send the pair filled with notes and books as registered baggage — they’ll follow on after I’ve travelled, which means another trip to the train station in Paris to collect them, but I’m going to have plenty of time on my hands over there, so I don’t mind.
Before checking in and passing through security, I stroll around the shops, but nothing catches my interest. There’s still almost an hour before I board — not having been on the Eurostar before, I allowed plenty of time. To distract myself, I buy a newspaper and scan it while sipping a cup of coffee. The front page reveals some kind of royal scoop and the next six are devoted to the same story. Bored, I flick ahead. A few pages further on, I find an article devoted to the Mikis Menderes murder.
It’s trashily written, but that’s what I’m in the mood for. Having skimmed the first couple of lurid paragraphs, I settle back, intending to take my time chuckling wryly through the rest of it. But something has unsettled me. It’s one of the pictures, a black-and-white photo of the Turk and Andeanna. They’re seated at a large table, smiling for the camera. The Turk holds a fat cigar. Andeanna is sporting a tiara, which has slipped slightly.
Why am I disturbed by the photo? There’s nothing glaringly unusual about it. The Turk looks smug, as he did in most photos that he posed for. Andeanna is smiling in a sad way, which was often the case. It’s only when I read the caption that I focus in on what I’d subconsciously clocked first time round. It says simply, Mikis Menderes and his late wife.
I blink dumbly and read it again, then a third time.
Late?
Hands trembling, I speed through the rest of the article until I find it, eight paragraphs down.
While it’s hard to muster any sympathy for Mikis Menderes, he does seem to have genuinely suffered when his young wife perished in a car crash. His beautiful bride burnt to death and the grief-stricken gangster vowed never to remarry. True to his word, he never took another wife, although he has been linked with many glamorous women over the years.
I read the sickening paragraph again and again, unable to tear my eyes away. My train is called, but I don’t respond. I’m rooted to the chair, the paper glued to my hands, eyes sliding from the photo to the words to the photo to the words to . . .
More calls for my train, but I pay them no heed. I’m off in a world of my own. A world of love and promises. Of Andeanna and the Turk. Of contradictory truths and looming madness. A world of shades.
PART FOUR
FOURTEEN
Eventually life returns to my limbs. Paper grasped in one sweaty hand, I stumble through the station to the taxi rank and tell a cabbie to drive me back to the Royal Munster. They’re surprised to see me return, but not half as surprised as I am. I mumble a story about a friend being taken seriously ill. The receptionist is genuinely concerned. When she realizes I’ve returned without my bags, she says she’ll arrange for their retrieval. I mutter a subdued thank-you.
In my new room, I sink on to the bed and stare at the photograph in the paper. Burnt to death. I clutch it close the entire night, even as I drift in and out of sleep over the course of the long, dark, crazy hours. The ghosts revel in my sickening bewilderment. They wrap themselves around me and coil and uncoil like snakes whenever my eyes flicker open.
In the morning, I order breakfast and eat mechanically, forcing down the food. After that I phone Andeanna, even though it’s dangerous, hoping the call will clear up the confusion. But the number has been disconnected. I want to try the house, but if the paper got it wrong (it must have) and Andeanna is alive and well (she must be), then ringing the mansion could be the biggest mistake of my life.
I pace the room to get the blood flowing to my brain. There has to be a logical explanation. The journalist might have been misinformed. Perhaps the article was a huge screw-up. I need to check other sources.
If it’s not a mistake, maybe it’s a smokescreen. Andeanna might not have wanted to face the press. Perhaps she faked a rumour that she died years ago, so reporters wouldn’t come bothering her.
No. No matter how hysterical I might be, I can see that I’m clutching at straws with that one. You can’t turn around, pretend to be dead and expect the press to buy it.
What if Andeanna was the Turk’s second wife? Maybe he was married before, and the paper mixed up the photographs. Or what if she was never married to him in the first place?
I pause in the middle of my pacing. Maybe Andeanna was only a mistress. I scan the photo again. It looks like the wom
an I know, but the similarity might be what drew Menderes to her.
I whip out my pad and pen and jot down Deleena Emerson. That could be her true name. Maybe the woman I initially fell for was the real deal, and Andeanna Menderes is the fake.
Relief floods my system. For a mad, unhinged period, I thought I’d fallen in love with a ghost. I knew it was lunacy, but I couldn’t see any other explanation. Now I know better. Andeanna/Deleena is flesh and blood, like anybody else, but with some hidden, twisted agenda of her own. I hope she truly loves me, that she wasn’t acting just to trick me into killing the Turk. I could forgive her anything if she loves me. But whatever her motives, she’s real, she exists, she’s alive.
And I’m going to find her.
By the weekend, I don’t know what to think. Was she real, a ghost, an impostor, a figment of my imagination? I can’t even hazard a guess.
I’ve spent the last three days in the library. It hasn’t been easy, especially with the ghosts continually taunting me, seeking to distract and further disorient me, but I forced myself to focus. First I worked through this week’s papers and magazines, reading every published article about Mikis Menderes. I learnt more about the man than I ever cared to. There was plenty about Andeanna, too. She was born to a decent family. Her father was a successful accountant, her mother – Deleena Moore, née Emerson – a housewife and amateur actress. Andeanna was a bright student with a promising future, but fell in love with Menderes and married him shortly after her eighteenth birthday, against the wishes of her parents. She was a dutiful wife who raised their son and had nothing to do with the Turk’s business affairs. She died one month short of her twenty-seventh birthday.