No Help For The Dying

Chapter 40

Palmer barely heard the first noise from the inside of the house. Then came footsteps, heavy and obviously running — too heavy for Riley — followed by the crash of breaking glass. He swore fluently and set off at a sprint, abandoning caution. If it was Riley, the noise she had just made would have been heard in the next county. Seconds later he skidded along the back of the house and found the smashed window, but there was no sign of Riley apart from a set of muddy footprints across the carpet inside.

Instinct and training made him stop and hold his breath. One of his first instructors had had a mantra which said: two seconds of listening is worth thirty seconds of useless action. More importantly, he recalled the man saying, it might also save a careless Redcap from having his head bashed in. Palmer took a deep breath and stepped across the study and out into a corridor, trying to get his bearings. The house was a warren.

He heard a faint scuff of noise from upstairs. Footsteps? Then what could have been a shuddering moan which stirred the hairs on the back of his neck. He pushed through a half-open door and found himself in the large room where he had last seen de Haan. He noted the chair in the centre, and recognised its purpose. A door to his right was open, and the room beyond looked familiar. The reception area. The main stairway. He ran through the door and heard a creaking of floorboards from above his head. Taking the stairs at a run, he reached the landing with a main corridor leading off either side. He hesitated. Left or right?

More sounds, the clatter of something hard hitting the floor. Then a scrabble of movement, fast and violent.

‘Riley!’ he yelled.

‘Palmer!’ Riley’s voice, shrill, from somewhere down to his right. He sprinted along the corridoruntil he saw an open door. He stopped, taking in a snapshot of the scene beyond.

Riley. Kneeling on bare floorboards by a single bed. She was hunched over, her hair hanging down over her face. A glass decanter lay on he floor close by. Other than a single bed and bedside cabinet, the room was bare, little more than a prison cell. He took in the bed, with a huddled shape dressed in pyjamas, the material soiled and crumpled.

‘Riley?’

She didn’t respond. She was breathing heavily, holding herself across the middle, her shoulders shuddering as if in pain. Hurt or winded? Her mobile lay nearby, the back of the casing several inches away. Palmer tried to make sense of it as he stepped through the door. Had she fallen? Tripped? Was the decanter on the floor significant? Then another shape floated into view and stood before him, dark and still, and his questions were answered.

Quine.

Palmer breathed softly, allowing the tension to ease away. Whatever was about to happen here required concentration and fluidity. There was a click and Palmer saw the glint of a knife in Quine’s hand. Bugger. This man was a whole different box of tricks from the youth in the alley near Waterloo. He was fitter, looked far stronger and had the added motivation of needing to get past Palmer without stopping.

Quine seemed to do an odd shuffle dance on the bare boards, a deadly Astaire caught in the sunlight through the window, the knife blade flicking back and forth like a lizard’s tongue. He still wore his long black coat and rimless glasses, and his soft boots seemed to move a millimetre above the floor, a deadly figure almost without substance.

Palmer stepped towards him, making the man shuffle backwards, light as a drift of smoke. He glanced down at the blade to see if there was any blood on it. Riley’s blood. But it looked clean. He shook his head. He needed to stay focussed. Instead, he edged sideways, putting himself between Quine and Riley. Whatever happened now, Quine wouldn’t get past. Not unless he was very, very good.

Then Palmer realised Quine had engineered the move, planning on Palmer’s protective instincts to out-manoeuvre him. With a brief smile, the man stepped over to the door, the knife held at head level in front of him, daring Palmer to approach.

‘Sorry, Palmer.’ Quine’s voice held a note almost of regret, and Palmer was surprised by how soft it was. There was none of the aggression he had expected, no taunting, no vicious undertone. Except for the knife, he could have just stepped out of a pulpit or a radio studio. ‘I’d stay and chat, but I have an appointment.’ He flicked his eyes over to Riley on the floor. ‘She’s not hurt… well, nothing but her pride, anyway.’

‘Why? Are you saying you don’t kill women?’ said Palmer. ‘Or is it just girls?’

Quine’s face gave nothing away. On the other hand, who was going to prove he had killed anybody? If the man was as clinical in his habits as he was in his dress and manner, then he would have covered his tracks very carefully. To have killed Riley here and now would have been too open. Too obvious.

‘Who’s that on the bed?’ said Palmer. He would feel a lot happier about Riley when he saw for himself how she was. He stepped towards Quine, closing the space between them. But Quine mirrored the movement and stepped into the doorway. His way was now clear to flee.

‘A nobody,’ said Quine. ‘Don’t worry about him. I doubt he’s going to be as lucky.’

‘Henry Pearcy.’

‘You got it.’ Quine looked at the knife and his hand seemed to drop as though suddenly tired. ‘I should have slotted him at the outset.’ He smiled, his thin face creasing like a mask. ‘I bet you know that word, don’t you, with your background? Poor old Henry gets slotted for — what? Straying beyond the lines of his responsibilities, shall we say? Not the loyal trooper we thought he was, I’m afraid. Just can’t get the staff these days. It wasn’t me who did him, though.’ His eyes glittered behind the lenses and Palmer decided the statement wasn’t as casual as it might have sounded. Quine evidently wasn’t stupid enough to go for the classic stand-off confession. He knew better. Things could always go wrong. The laws of inevitability.

It made him wonder about Quine’s background. Slotted was a military term, slang for dead. Killed. Shot. It figured. It would have taken someone with a military sense of duty to have performed the tasks Quine and his colleague, Meaker, had undertaken. A clean-up squad with a perverted distortion of the old military credo: if it moves, salute it; if it doesn’t, paint it. For ‘moves’, read ‘slot’.

A phone trilled somewhere close by. Quine looked down at his pocket and shrugged. ‘Oops. Sorry — business calls. Things to do, places to be.’

‘Why Friedman? He get in your way too often?’

‘Who? Never heard of him.’ Quine chuckled. Then, like a phantom, he was gone, and all Palmer could hear was his footsteps jogging unhurriedly along the corridor and down the stairs.

He turned and hurried over to Riley, ignoring the figure on the bed. From what Quine had said, Pearcy was most likely beyond help. He placed a gentle hand on Riley’s arm, and felt a weight shift from his shoulders when her head moved and she looked up at him. One eye was badly bruised and the skin of her cheek was grazed. She was still short of breath but looked fine.

‘What bloody… kept you, Palmer?’ she muttered between gasps. ‘Christ, I’m going to have to sign up someone younger and fitter. You’re over the hill.’

He looked down at her and pulled a face, feeling suddenly more cheerful. Riley on the offensive was a good sign. Better than good. ‘Can you run, dear?’ he murmured pithily. ‘Or are you going to sit here bleating all day?’

She shook her head and tried to get up, clutching her stomach. The movement seemed to bring about a burst of pain and she grimaced. ‘Bastard,’ she murmured. ‘It’s all right — I’m winded, that’s all. You go. I’ll follow in a minute.’

‘I’m not leaving you here alone.’

Riley forced herself upright and looked towards the bed. ‘Forget it, Sir Galahad. I’m fine. I promise I’ll lock the door behind you. Anyway, I’ve got him to look after. Go on… you can’t let them get away. Go!’

Palmer left.