The survivor

Friday
Fifty-Six

Edward Rundell’s house was worth more than most people made in their lifetime. Situated on the West Vancouver bluff, it overlooked the forked waterways and dotted isles that populated Bachelor Bay. The best view was from the master bedroom, which was set high above the water’s edge, out on the precipice. The drop was straight down. Two hundred feet to jagged rock and angry frothing foam. Dangerous, and beautiful.

And the Man with the Bamboo Spine took little notice of it.

He stood in the centre of the master bedroom: a room with a vaulted ceiling, three skylights, two overhead fans, and a heated floor made from alternating stripes of white oak and black walnut wood.

The Man with the Bamboo Spine looked out the window, at the heavy darkness beyond, and he lit up a cigarette. An unfil-tered Marlboro. Strong for this country, weak compared to the ones back home in Macau. The smoke tasted good on his lips, and the smell overpowered everything else. Even the stink of the blood.

‘Huh… hu… hu… hu…’ Edward Rundell made a series of soft sounds on the bloodstained bed, barely audible.

The Man with the Bamboo Spine ignored them as he finished his cigarette. As always, his eyes were dark and steady. Like black marbles. Without emotion.

In his left hand was an industrial cheese-grater, almost twelve inches long. The steel was slick now, growing sticky from the brown-black blood. The holes were clogged with red chunks of meaty tissue. Most of it had come from Edward Rundell’s back and the outer parts of his limbs — areas away from the major arteries. Precision was critical for this kind of work.

If Edward died too fast, his employers would not be happy. Extreme, disproportionate levels of violence was their calling card.

It fostered fear and was a tool of prevention.

The questioning had lasted for well over four hours. Edward laid prone on the bed, his thin, pale body stripped of skin and muscle, and glistening with redness. He twitched involuntarily — in the beginning this had been from the pain; now it was all shock-related — and once again let out a series of uneven, raspy breaths.

‘Huh… hu… hu… hu… hu…’

And then the sound stopped and he became still.

The Man with the Bamboo Spine saw this, and he nodded absently. The job was complete. He finished his cigarette, dropped the stub in a plastic bag and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Then he stepped around a pool of congealing blood on the hardwood floor and moved up to the side of the bed. He checked Edward Rundell for a pulse.

Found none.

The cheese-grater made a loud clunking sound when the Man with the Bamboo Spine dropped it. He moved into the adjoining ensuite and washed the blood off his hands — for he never wore gloves — then he walked down the hall to the front door, where he exchanged his bloodied black sneakers for a new pair of clean ones, also black. He drove away from the house in darkness, in the black Mercedes he’d been provided with, never once looking back.

Target One — the connection that linked them to the modified Honda — was down. His employers would be content.

Target Two remained unclear.