The Third Person

‘Just get over there.’ A tired gesture with the gun. I picked the towel off the chair and tossed it to him. ‘I guess you can sit on that if you’re worried about your furniture.’

The old man did as he was told, leaving the body and returning to his armchair. Once there, he leant forward, elbows on knees and face in hands, and simply wept. I found the whole thing suddenly revolting on every conceivable level.

A brandy sounded like a good idea, and so I retrieved a second glass and poured myself a good measure from the decanter. My hands were shaking slightly, but doing something as normal as this made me feel more in control. Not that I usually pour brandy out of anything fancier than a bottle, but the point stands: here was Hughes, in pieces, sobbing like a girl; and then here I was, acting as though nothing had happened, and pouring myself a goddamn drink. Like I killed people every day and sometimes – when the mood took me – more than one.

The brandy tasted good.

‘Come on, Hughes. Get yourself together.’

He looked up.

‘You’re a dead man for this, Klein. You realise that, don’t you?’

‘That’s more like it,’ I said. ‘Keep up the image.’

I sat down in the chair opposite, keeping tight hold of the gun even though I could probably have beaten him to death with one hand behind my back.

‘You won’t get away with this.’ He shook his head and looked over at Paul’s corpse. At least he’d stopped crying: he was more in control of himself. ‘You won’t get away with what you’ve done here.’

I glanced over at the body, figuring that Hughes was probably right.

‘How did you meet Claire Warner?’ I said.

‘I told you. She was a whore.’

‘What?’ I was surprised. ‘You mean literally?’

Hughes nodded, looking at me with what – to a business rival – was probably an intimidating stare. It didn’t work so well because he’d been crying, but still made me feel like the passenger here, rather than the pilot.

‘Yes. Literally.’ He sounded disgusted. ‘She was recommended to me by an acquaintance. However… well, we didn’t get on.’

I tried to picture Claire as a prostitute and didn’t know whether I could. She was a very sexual person, certainly, and I was sure she wouldn’t have had a moral objection to it. I’d just never anticipated it as a career path she would have chosen, or been forced into. But I supposed I didn’t know her that well, really. A lot could have changed since I met her in Schio.

‘What happened?’ I said. ‘What does that mean, you “didn’t get on”?’

‘As I said before, she was very wilful. And that element of her character was entirely at odds with some of the things I wished her to do.’ He looked slightly downcast. ‘To my discredit, I reacted badly. To her discredit, though, she retaliated by stealing a disk from me on her way out of my property. The disk which you now have in your possession.’

Well, not quite – but there was no need for Walter Hughes to know that. My guess was that Claire had destroyed the disk when she found out what was on it and then dropped out of circulation for a while. But first, she’d saved a copy on the server in Asiago and given me the password to find it. Just in case.

And what had been on the disk to scare her so badly? pale blue blouse

‘Where did you get the text from?’

‘I know people who know people.’

‘Let’s start with the people you know, then.’ I gestured with the gun. ‘And from them, I can work my way along.’

Hughes nodded over at his bodyguard’s dead body.

‘Paul arranged the contacts. He also picked up the package. I have no idea of the names, addresses or availability of the men he obtained it from, and they had no knowledge of me.’

‘Bullshit!’ I said, standing up and moving over to Paul’s corpse.

‘No, it’s true.’ Hughes stood up and moved after me, stick in hand. I turned around and pointed the gun at him, suddenly panicked by his speed and closeness. The intent in his eyes.

He was raising the cane as though to strike me. I saw the end third had slipped off to reveal a glinting blade. I had about a second.

‘Jesus!’

I fumbled the gun out in front of me, and – bang – the air between us filled with smoke, just as he swung the sword-stick. He missed, and went down hard: it was as though a trapdoor had opened in the floor. I saw his clenched face whipping down, and then he was on the carpet, curled around his own stomach. The front of his shirt was blackened and steaming; the back of his suit was damp and tattered. Blood had blown out of him all over the armchair. His stick had been knocked all the way to the other side of the room.

‘Jesus,’ I said again, falling to my knees.

He was twitching spasmodically, but it was obvious that he was dead. I could smell the wound burning.

‘Jesus.’

That morning, I’d been anticipating killing a man – a paedophile and rapist – and reassuring myself that I could. Now I’d killed three.

You won’t get away with this, Klein.

And I thought: no – I won’t.

Inside or out.