Death by the Book (27 page)

The detective reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack. He snapped the lighter. ‘That’s it, Mother,’ he said in his oily voice. ‘Just relax.’

Annabelle smoked. ‘Did he get you a ring?’

Louisa smiled and held up the back of her left hand.

‘It’s not very big.’ Annabelle dropped her cigarette to the floor, letting it burn. ‘I warned you about cheap men.’

Peterson gave her a dirty look and stepped on the cigarette. His back was still to Louisa and Jack on the couch. He did not see his fiancée wink at Annabelle.

Jack did. His eyes widened and the muscles in his body contracted. He watched her stand up. For a moment he felt sorry for Peterson. Then the moment passed.

She fired three times. The detective arched his back and then his legs gave way. He fell. No last look at his love. No shocked eyes. No terrible realisation. Nothing.

24

A
NNABELLE
K
ASPROWICZ STRETCHED OUT
her foot and pressed Peterson’s arm.

‘Think we should call an ambulance?’ said Jack.

She ignored him, crouched down beside the body and reached into the jacket for the white envelope.

The detective’s right trouser leg had come up a little. Jack could see the edge of a black leather holster strapped to his ankle.

‘Let’s go, baby,’ said Annabelle. ‘Quickly.’

‘Can I get a ride?’

‘I don’t think so, Jack.’

‘No? We could stop for coffee somewhere on the way, chat, have a laugh. Maybe some chocolate cake? My shout.’

‘Always the funny man.’

‘Better than psycho woman.’

Annabelle took the gun from Louisa. ‘I don’t want to kill you, Jack,’ she said. ‘That’s for Ziggy to worry about. But maybe you don’t need two nuts.’ She pointed the gun at his crotch. Her lips pressed together into a hard line.

Jack had never seen this woman before. ‘I thought you liked my nuts?’

‘I like balls, Jack.’

‘That’s good. You’ll get plenty in the women’s penitentiary.’

Louisa walked over and peered through the curtained window. ‘Shouldn’t we tie him up or something?’

‘We’ll lock him in the bathroom, there’s —’

‘Mum! I think I just saw someone out there!’

‘Get away from the window!’

There was the sound of a crash, of smashed glass and splitting timber.

Detective Sergeant Keith Glendenning ran in through the back door. ‘Put the weapon on the ground! Now!’

Instead, Annabelle fired. Glendenning’s shoulder snapped back, his body spinning around to follow it. Before hitting the ground his gun fired once: all the bullet did was put a small hole in a lot of air.

Jack dived to the floor, grabbed at Peterson’s trouser leg. Then somebody started yelling from outside. More guns opened up, shattering the front windows of the house. He pulled the gun free of the holster.

There was blood on the sleeves of his suede coat. If only Peterson had grabbed the goddamn black denim jacket …

He held the gun up, lying across the detective’s body.
Annabelle saw him and fired. Jack fired too, squeezing the trigger three times. One of the bullets found Louisa over by the window.

‘Louisa! Louisa!’ Annabelle ran to her daughter.

Shit.
Jack sprang to his feet and dived onto the linoleum of the kitchen floor. Glendenning was not there anymore. And the gun had slipped out of his cuffed hands, nowhere to be seen.
Fuck.

He pressed himself up against the kitchen cupboards. He stuck his head out, looked across the room and saw Annabelle crouched over her daughter. After a moment she stood up, turned her head and locked her eyes onto his like a homing missile. Then she advanced on him, right arm stretched out before her, police-issue Glock in hand. The red flashes from the barrel did not correspond with the sound, like the discrepancy between lightning and thunder. A bullet hit the cupboard just above Jack’s head.
Fuck.

He dived through the back door. He landed in a lot of wetness. Fantastic. Now his two-hundred-dollar pants were ruined, too.

25

J
ACK RAN ACROSS THE STEEP BACKYARD
, weaving between a clothesline, a brick barbecue and a small shed. He slipped into the trees edging the property. The rain was heavy, almost gelatinous, and already poured down the hill in rivulets. Jack splashed through, trying to keep his balance, but it was hard to run handcuffed. A bullet whizzed overhead.

The slope of the hill forced a diagonal path down: before he knew it, Jack was out of the trees and running across a bare hill-flank of sodden grass that dropped down quickly to the coastline and then vanished into a grey mist of rain blowing off the ocean. There was nowhere else to go. Not without a helicopter. Or a hang-glider.

Another gunshot. He heard the bullet smack into the soggy ground somewhere nearby.
Fuck
. He ran down the slope.

Three seconds later, over he went. He hit the ground, rolled like an unfurling carpet, then began to slide. The ground split open beneath him, he fell, but the ground came back again and he hit it hard with his hip, and slid some more on his side, like a human luge. His mouth was open but it did not help slow him down. Then something caught the handcuffs and nearly ripped his arms off.

Jack’s wrists were torn with pain. He closed his eyes, tried to rein in his breathing. In a few moments he got it down to a steady
shit … shit … shit
. He could feel cold air blowing up from beneath his feet. He could hear waves crashing. He understood that he was dangling precariously somewhere. At least the rain had stopped.

It did not take Annabelle long to get there. She looked down at Jack hanging by his handcuffs and did not say a word. And there it was. The nobody-home eyes. Ziggy’s seven veils look, just like he had warned Jack all that time ago.

‘Hey, listen,’ he called out. ‘What do you say we get married? Right now? We could kidnap a priest and bring him back.’

Annabelle pointed the gun at him, fired a couple of times, missed because of the acute angle. She kept the gun pointed. When Glendenning called out she did not hear him, not even when he fired into the air. She took a step, down the slope leading into the ravine, tried to angle the gun. Fired again. Took another step: but this time found nothing beneath her foot. Her scream lifted all the birds
in the trees. They flew across the sky like a torn black curtain.

Jack ducked his head, braced. Annabelle’s body thudded into him, mostly catching his right shoulder. The handcuffs held. Her body flipped over his back. Jack stretched his head around and caught a glimpse of the silver lightning strike on the side of one of her shoes. Then nothing. Darkness. She had fallen off the end of the earth.

26

I
T WAS COLD INSIDE
S
USKO
B
OOKS
. Jack’s bandaged wrists ached. He kept his overcoat on while the heaters cranked up. Eventually they would stain a little of the damp air around them with thin electric warmth. With a bit of luck, in a couple of hours he might be able to loosen his scarf.

Wednesday. Glendenning had suggested Jack take the whole week off; but, bruised and tired as he was, hanging around home in fleecy clothing reading the paper had never been his style. The police had also offered him the services of a counsellor — to help him
process
what had happened. He told them he had Lois, and they nodded and said it was good that he had somebody he could talk to.

Jack sipped his long black. Lois had not been interested. Even the bit about Annabelle Kasprowicz being in with Ziggy Brandt from the beginning, about how they both wanted her father gone, had not sparked her interest. Or the bit about how Annabelle had set Jack up, at Ziggy’s suggestion, by recommending him to her father, by letting it slip that she had heard of a good bookseller, then waiting for Hammond to call Jack and put their plan in motion. Lois yawned. He told her about the corrupt cop, the sad cousin, the lonely poet, the sex, the money, the body count, about how Ziggy had got away with everything because nobody could find Kasprowicz’s body.
Whatever
, Lois had said.
Get over it
.

And to think that some people out there had to pay for good advice.