In the Evil Day

85

…WALES…

He came into the dim room, bent over and picked up the machine-pistol lying near Niemand’s head.

Anselm stood up. ‘Jesus, Michael,’ he said. ‘What the fuck is this? What exactly the fuck is this?’

O’Malley had the magazine out, looking into it. He dropped it on the floor and took another one out of his coat pocket. It made a precise snick as it locked in.

‘What the fuck is this, John?’ echoed O’Malley, looking around the room like a real estate agent being asked to sell something nasty. ‘Why do rich people crave this sort of thing? A croft in the Welsh wilderness, wind never stops howling, natives slathered in sheepshit and woad, incomprehensible tongue, nasty secessionist tendencies.’

O’Malley walked over to the shotgun tied to the chair, ran a hand over the trigger guard, pulled at something. It caught the lamplight and Anselm saw that it was nylon fishing line that ran to the leg of an armchair.

‘A booby trap so cheap, so primitive, so old. And here lies dead of it a killer with the most expensive and sophisticated training the modern world can provide.’

He tested the triggers with a black-gloved finger. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Knew how to make this work, did your Mr Niemand. Breathe hard on the buggers and Bang.’

‘Michael, what?’ said Anselm. ‘Tell me. It’s late, I’m tired and sober and I’ve got a knife wound nine inches long. What?’

O’Malley had the Heckler amp; Koch in his left hand. He transferred it to his right.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Sorry about this too.’ He ran a hand over his curly head. ‘Truly, I wish it were another way.’

It came to Anselm, as it had come to him in Beirut, that something had ended, something was over and gone. A still moment, the highest point of the pendulum’s swing, the end of momentum, the dead point.

‘Kaskis,’ he said.

O’Malley was looking at Caroline. She was frozen, hands at her sides, holding herself like a Guardsman on parade, waiting for the Queen.

‘I saved you, John,’ said O’Malley. ‘You and Riccardi. They wanted to kill all three of you, I talked them out of it. I said it wasn’t necessary, you knew nothing, the idiot Riccardi less. I’ve given you eight good years. Well, eight years. Think of it that way. And I told you you weren’t a journalist anymore. I tried to warn you off.’

Anselm thought that he had never seen this look on O’Malley’s face. His handsome poet’s face was sad. He was going to kill both of them and he was sad that he had to do it.

O’Malley raised the weapon, held it on its side, weighed it in his hand, bounced it.

‘This is awkward,’ he said. ‘I would really rather not. But. Necessitas non habet legum. Know the expression, boyo?’

Anselm nodded. He felt nothing. No panic this time.

‘Yes, well…’ O’Malley raised the weapon and pointed it at Caroline.

‘Sorry, darling’ he said. ‘But think what you did to that poor old bugger Brechan on behalf of MI5.’

Grunts, not loud, several quick grunts.

O’Malley’s face below the high cheekbone blew apart, his face seemed to break in two, divide, an aerosol spray of red in the air around his head, a piece of scarlet veil floating.

They stood.

The woman came in, went to Niemand, put her head down to his head, seemed to kiss him.

She jerked her head up.

‘He’s alive,’ she said. ‘For fuck’s sake do something.’

Anselm looked at Caroline. She was grey-white, the colour of cemetery gravel. She shook her head and put her hand in a coat pocket and took out a cellphone.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Right.’

And then Caroline, holding the tiny device towards the light to see the keys, she moved her head, her long hair moved, she looked up and said to Jess in her upper-class voice:

‘I don’t suppose, I don’t suppose you know where the film is?’