The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 21

If only he’d known at the time, Graves kept telling himself in retrospect. But once the boulder had been set in motion down the mountainside, no force on earth could stop it from crashing all the way to the bottom.

Things had happened quickly after his call to Angelique. Minutes later, Graves’ phone had rung and he’d found himself speaking with the gruff-sounding Serb whom he would only ever know by his first name, Dragan. Dragan said little as Graves nervously outlined the situation to him and described what he needed to be done. ‘Nobody is to be hurt in any way,’ he’d repeated several times. ‘There must be no violence involved, whatsoever.’

‘Nobody will get hurt,’ Dragan had assured him. ‘Me and my crew, we are professionals.’

‘Can you give me your absolute guarantee on that? I cannot impress upon you how important that part of the deal is. Nobody must be hurt, in any way.’

‘Chill out, my friend. We are not animals, hey?’

From there, the horrible events had unfolded out of Graves’ control. The rendezvous spot he was driving to now, the morning after the awful deed, was the secluded Piddington Wood, a forty-acre patch of forest in north-east Oxfordshire, between Thame and Bicester. As Graves drove the Bentley deep into the trees along a bumpy, rutted track dappled by sunlight, he saw the plain white Transit van already waiting there for him, its doors open.

His heart gave a lurch as he saw Angelique standing by the van, looking serious and dressed as he’d never seen her before in jeans and a leather jacket. She was accompanied by three large, muscular, tough-looking men. The biggest of the three bore a slight facial resemblance to her that his coarse features, shaven head and blue spiderweb tattoos on both sides of his thick neck couldn’t quite disguise. That would be Dragan, Graves supposed. The big man’s arms were folded and he was eyeing the approaching Bentley with something between a smirk and a scowl.

Alone in the woods with a bunch of hardened criminals who had just, to his certain knowledge, murdered someone, Graves should have been intimidated and terrified, but at this moment he was too furious for either. He got out of the car and marched towards them. ‘You promised!’ he yelled. ‘You told me nobody would be hurt! You killed him, didn’t you? Why did you do that?’

Dragan uncrossed his arms and leaned back against the side of the van, taking out his cigarettes. ‘He saw our faces.’

With that simple statement, all of Graves’ worst fears became stark, inescapable reality.

‘Why weren’t you wearing masks or something? I thought you people were professionals at this! And you didn’t have to… My God, this is so awful. Don’t you realise what you’ve done?’

‘Hey, cool it, professor man,’ Dragan said. ‘Shit happens.’ He puffed smoke, then turned and reached into the open door of the van. He came out with a sports bag, zippered it open and produced from inside a large padded envelope which he held up for Graves to see, but didn’t give it to him. ‘You got what you wanted, right? So forget about this piece of govno.’

Graves was sweating, still palpitating with rage. But he couldn’t forget what he was here for. His own survival depended on what was inside that envelope. ‘Give it to me. You have no idea how valuable it is.’

Dragan looked pensively at the envelope. ‘This weird writing is music, right? Just a bunch of old shit some dead guy wrote hundreds of years ago. How can this garbage be worth money?’

‘Believe me, it’s worth plenty. Please, be very careful with it.’

‘Speaking of money, you forgetting something, professor man?’

Graves stepped back to the car and took out his own Jiffy bag he’d brought. ‘Five thousand, as agreed,’ he said, tossing it to Dragan. ‘The other five, you’ll have as soon as I sell the item. It shouldn’t take more than a few days.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘You have my word,’ Graves said. ‘Some people keep their promises.’

Dragan frowned, making the flesh on his brow corrugate into rubbery folds. He cracked a predator’s smile and waved the manuscript at Graves, still not letting him have it. ‘If it’s worth so much, then why should I let you have it for ten thousand? Maybe I hold onto it, hmm? See what we can get for it ourselves.’

Graves stared at him, then at Angelique, who was looking back at him with a coldness in her eyes that stabbed his heart. ‘You can’t do that. We had an agreement.’

‘Do not tell me what I can and cannot do, mister pervert. Here is a deal. You give me fifty thousand for this piece of shit paper. On top of the hundred thousand you already owe me.’

‘What?’

‘A hundred and fifty thousand. For that you get the music, the photographs, and we let you walk free. Okay?’

At which point Graves realised, in a moment of utter horror that almost caused his bowels to let go, that he’d been set up from the start. ‘You bitch, you planned this whole thing!’ he yelled at Angelique, or whatever her real name was. All he got back from her was an icy stare.

‘The rich guy doesn’t like to spend his money,’ said one of Dragan’s guys.

‘On some things, he has no problem spending it,’ Dragan said. ‘Like my sister.’

‘I never touched her.’

‘Oh, we know all about what you did. You are one sick little creep, my pervert friend. Now you pay. And remember, creep, we know where you live. We can come for you any time.’

Graves reeled with shock. He was in free fall now, plummeting headlong into the abyss. As bad as the prospect of exposure and humiliation, divorce, scandal had seemed to him, now he not only faced responsibility for murder but personal harm at the hands of these mindless thugs.

‘I’ll pay,’ he croaked.

‘Sure you will, professor pervert. You have three days to get the money.’

Graves knew it was useless to protest. ‘I’ll do what I can. Give me the manuscript.’

Dragan shook his head. ‘You think I am fucking stupid?’

‘I can’t get the money without it.’

‘That is your tough shit. Use your imagination. You say you have no money, then get it from your bitch of a wife that you love so much. What the fuck do I care? Just get it.’

‘Are you insane? I can’t possibly tell her anything about this.’

‘Three days,’ Dragan said. ‘Or we will come visit you and tell her ourselves. And break your motherfucking legs.’

Graves stood there limp, breathing hard. He looked at Angelique and his eyes filled. ‘I loved you.’ It was all he had left to say.

Her expression was full of nothing but derision and contempt for him. ‘Go fuck yourself. You don’t love nobody.’

‘Tell me your real name. Do that one thing for me. Please.’

But she just snorted and got back into the van. The negotiations were over. Dragan and his two guys climbed in after her. ‘Three days,’ Dragan repeated through the window as he started the engine. The van took off, spewing dirt from its tyres.

Graves went wobbling back to his car and drove home as though in a trance. His life, as he’d known it, had just come to a sudden and jerking halt. With nothing to trade, how was he supposed to raise a hundred and fifty thousand in three days?

Home again, he stumbled in through the front door and left it open behind him, not caring. The big house was empty and very quiet. He vaguely recalled Clarissa saying she would be spending the morning with friends.

Graves dragged his feet upstairs to the study. He dumped his car keys on the desk and fell into the leather chair. The finality of the situation had become clearer to him with every mile towards home. No way out. He was done.

He reached for his wallet, took out the Atreus Club business card with Angelique’s name and mobile number on the back and sat gazing at it for a long time. Suddenly, he wanted to talk to her again one last time. Tell her once more that he loved her. Let her voice be the last human voice he ever heard before—

He took out his mobile phone and dialled the number from the back of the business card. As it began to ring, he quickly killed the call.

What was there to say? She hated him. She’d only used him.

What a fool he’d been.

Despair enveloped him like a thick, black blanket. He took a sheet of paper from the desk drawer, a fountain pen from the leather holder on the desktop, and in his scratchy handwriting composed his brief goodbye note. It was the sum total of everything he was feeling at this moment. All he could think of or bring himself to express.

I’m so sorry.

Sorry for his stupidity in falling for a girl who despised him. Sorry for betraying Clarissa. Sorry for causing the death of poor Nicholas Hawthorne. A decent man, a highly talented musician. Snuffed out for money, for no good reason at all.

He didn’t even have the energy to sign his name at the bottom of the brief note, so he just scrawled his initials: AG.

Eleven letters. The final statement of Adrian Graves.

From another drawer of the desk he took a ring with two keys. He slowly rose from his chair and stepped over to the grandfather clock by the bookcase. He unlocked the hidden gun cabinet that the clock case concealed, quite numb and detached as he considered his options. As well as his legally-held guns, the safe contained a few items that his father had left him. The pistols were strictly prohibited, but he’d kept them fondly all these years, never imagining there would come a moment when he’d contemplate using one. Least of all for this purpose.

A pistol would be easier for the job he had in mind. Under the chin, or against the temple. But there was less of a guarantee with a pistol. What if something went wrong and he only brain-damaged himself? No. If it must be done, let it be done as thoroughly as possible. One squeeze, and oblivion.

He reached inside the cabinet for the twelve-bore. Took a single cartridge from the safe’s ammo compartment, loaded it and returned to the desk to sit in the chair with the gun’s butt resting between his feet and the barrels pointing upwards. Then he pressed the cold steel muzzles against the fleshy underside of his jaw, reaching down to make sure the tang safety catch was off. It was awkward doing it this way. But he wouldn’t be the first to make it work. He put his thumb through the trigger guard and felt the curve of the slender trigger. Now all he had to do was apply a light downward pressure, and the nightmare would be over for him.

It hadn’t been a bad life, really. If it hadn’t been for one terrible, terrible error of judgement, it could have gone on a bit longer.

Oh, well.

Graves pushed down with his thumb and his world disintegrated in a white flash.