Revelation

36 Brass Bands

Keys on hall table, marked by Saab logo; front door, heavy pine, already open. Pitman and the other man have run ahead of them, vanishing into the dark. Freezing air and snow, billowing into the hall.

Say nothing. Don't stop. Don't look behind.

Outside, the snow is already a foot deep. Romella hastily steers the dazed woman ahead of her. The Saab is a mound of white. Findhorn waves his arms frantically over it, brushing snow off door and windscreen, while Romella bundles the woman into the back of the car. They jump in. He fumbles with the key, the engine starts and he quickly puts the automatic gearbox into reverse. There is a single loud bang from the direction of the chalet.

Romella opens the car door and jumps out, sliding and falling. Findhorn stands on the brake and the car starts to crab sideways. The rear mirror shows only snow and blackness. He knows he is close to horrendous precipices. Romella disappears into the black, crouched and running.

The door of the chalet swings open. The Korean's squat frame is silhouetted against the hall light. He is clutching Drindle's carbine. Findhorn says 'Christ,' spins the steering wheel. The car spins but he is now utterly disoriented.

Something punches the car's windscreen and half of it disappears. Findhorn is sprayed with little squares of safety glass. He ducks his head and feels the car spin some more; he takes his foot off the accelerator but there is a heavy thump, the car tilts on its side. He thinks he is going over the edge. Airbags explode into the passenger compartment, enveloping him. Throughout this, the woman in the back makes not a sound. Findhorn thinks she might be praying.

The car is on its side. The driver's door is below him, compressed snow pushed up against his side window. He is coccooned in safety belt and airbags. He unbuckles, fights his way in panic through the enveloping bags, scrambling up towards the passenger door. He stands on the steering wheel, thrusts the door up against its own weight and clambers half out of the car. The door thumps down on his back. The pain is excruciating and for some awful moments he cannot move his legs. The Korean is now about thirty yards away, ploughing heavily through knee-deep snow. Findhorn scrambles over the side of the car, falls head first into the snow, picks himself up and finds himself staring at the carbine.

The Korean's face is distorted with rage; he is a man almost out of control.

Findhorn hopes it will be quick.

And then the Korean is performing a sort of pirhouette, like a ballet-dancing gorilla, the gun flying from his grasp and disappearing into the deep snow. He says 'Oof!' and falls onto his knees, clutching his thigh.

Romella is bounding down the driveway with a rifle, her strides lengthening. She falls face first and snow-ploughs down the slope, pushing up a mound of snow ahead of her. The Korean is on all fours, frantically scrabbling like a dog searching for a mouse.

'Get the gun!' Romella yells, her face snow-covered.

Findhorn scrambles clumsily forwards, almost falling. Within yards of the Korean he sees the long hole in the snow where the carbine has disappeared. The Korean sees it too and lunges towards it. Findhorn reaches it first, snatches the weapon up by the barrel, falls backwards, picks himself up. Romella is on her feet, her face and hair covered in white. 'Kill him!' she shouts.

''What?' Findhorn shakes his head dumbly as Romella's instruction sinks in.

'Kill him! If you let him live he'll come after you. He'll find you, torture you for the secret, and kill you. Is that what you want? To go the way of Captain Hansen? To spend the rest of your life listening for sounds in the dark?'

'What about the police?' he calls out.

'For God's sake, Fred! Get real!'

The Korean is limping into the darkness, holding his leg.

'I can't.'

'Fred! You have to!'

The Korean vanishes behind a curtain of snow, limping swiftly down the road. Findhorn takes off, following the man's tracks. He catches up with him within fifty yards. The man is wondering whether to run off the road. The lights of a village, far below, come and go through dark patches. He turns and faces Findhorn. His head and arms are thick with snow and he is no longer clutching his leg. Findhorn raises the gun and points it at the Korean's heaving chest. The man shakes his head. Findhorn fires once; snowflakes around him are briefly illuminated yellow in the flash from the gun. He has never fired a gun before and his shoulder is snapped painfully back by the recoil. The Korean pitches backwards, face up, on the edge of a precipitous drop. Findhorn approaches, stands over the man. The Korean's face can just be discerned in the light scattered from the snow, and it is distorted with pain and fear. A dark stain is spreading over his right sleeve. He raises a hand protectively, says, 'Please. I leave you alone.'

This time Findhorn holds the carbine firmly with both hands. Blood and bone spurt from the Korean's chest. Findhorn is aghast, not by the sight but by the elation which surges through his body at the moment the Korean dies.

He stands at the edge of the precipice and looks down into a blizzard-filled cauldron. He glimpses house lights far below. Then he sits down in the deep snow and heaves at the Korean's body with both feet. The man is surprisingly heavy. Findhorn keeps pushing and edging forwards until the body slides down a few feet, gathering speed like a sledge, and then disappears noiselessly over the edge in a flurry of snow. Then he tosses the carbine into the black void and ploughs back towards the chalet. His mind is empty and he keeps it that way.

The Saab is in a ditch. Its headlights are pointing up at the snow-filled sky, wipers rubbing roughly over the remaining windscreen. Its engine is still running, little wisps of steam drifting up from the hot exhaust. Romella has opened the back door and is looking in. Findhorn joins her: the woman's body is crouched in a corner, her head barely attached to the rest of it. He thinks about her two children but is unable to speak.

Romella turns and plods back into the house. She re-emerges with keys.

In the Merc, Findhorn manages to fasten his belt, but the heating controls are beyond him; his mind and trembling hands cannot cope. The snow is now about two feet deep. Romella takes the car onto the narrow track. Soon it is nose-down and Romella is starting to negotiate hairpin bends. He thinks it would be dumb to go over the edge after a night like this.

Then they are in the village and passing houses with Christmas trees glittering in their windows and deep snow on their roofs. Somebody is shovelling snow from the front of his house. He pauses to wave and Findhorn waves back.

They are about halfway down to Brig before he is able to speak. His mouth is dry. 'What happened in there?'

Romella is still breathing heavily. 'The Korean took the back of Drindle's head off and then came after you with the carbine. When he left the chalet I slipped into it. I got the Swiss rifle and reloaded the magazine.'

'Why did you go back?'

'I anticipated him. You saw his face. He saw his chance of a fortune slipping away. He didn't intend to kill you, Fred, not until he had squeezed the secret out of you. Don't worry, the trembling will go away.'

Findhorn is silent awhile. They are below the cloud level now, and Brig is spread out below them like an illuminated map. Then he said, 'A massacre.'

'For the greater good.'

'I keep thinking about that woman's kids.'

'Don't. We did our best.'

'Do we go to the police?'

'Fred, switch on again. You killed a man tonight.'

'Romella, I enjoyed killing that man. It was a glorious experience.'

She is taking the car at a snail's pace round a hairpin bend but still it is skidding. The headlights point into black space. 'A natural reaction. You were getting rid of a threat. We all have crocodilian brain stems.' She has negotiated the bend.

'I should have run away.'

'For the rest of your life? And what if he caught up with you some day, forced you to talk? You'd risk evaporating the planet so that you could feel cosy and legal?'

'The police —'

Romella's voice is pained. 'You'd re-open the whole can of worms.'

'I wonder what the law says. I kill a man in cold blood, knowing that if I don't the consequences could be horrendous. Some day I'll ask my old man about that.'

'Fred, stop torturing yourself. The situation transcended legalities. There was nothing else you could do.'

After twenty minutes the road finally levels out, and they turn into Brig. The trembling has now extended to Findhorn's whole body and he marvels that Romella is capable of driving. The main road has already been cleared of snow, although a slippery, compacted layer remains and heavy flakes are still falling. Romella follows a ski-loaded Volkswagen, full of teenagers, through the town. Brig is a blaze of light, defying the brooding mountains around it, Christmas lights festooning the streets, which are bustling with late-evening shoppers. A band of snowmen is pounding out 'Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer'. The conductor is dressed like Santa Claus and mulled wine is being passed around the orchestra.

Romella cruises past, and then they are clearing the town, the range of the car's headlights steadily decreasing as the snow gets heavier. She takes it past Ried-Brig on a broad, climbing highway.

'The Simplon Pass?' he asks.

'Yes. We must get out of Switzerland before Frau Housekeeper turns up.'

But the Simplon Pass is Geschlossen. A young soldier with a Cossack hat and a rifle on his shoulder looks at them curiously, and then turns them back to Brig.

Romella says, 'I expect the Grimsel will be closed too. We'll head west for Geneva, drive through the night.'

'Surely we'll never be connected with the massacre?'

'Dear Fred. He thinks traffic cameras are for traffic control.' She glances at Findhorn's baffled face and shakes her head. 'You need a babysitter.'