Ghost Song (63 page)

She lay against him when it was over, her hair tumbling round her shoulders. She was soft and sweet, and Toby could not imagine what he would do if he had to lose her. He told her this, and saw the delight in her eyes.

‘They tell you about the hurting part,' she said a few moments later. ‘I think that's to put you off behaving—um—immodestly. But no one ever tells you what's after that bit of hurt.' She turned on her side so that she could look at him. ‘Does it get even better than that?'

Toby looked at her. Her eyes, seen so close, had tiny flecks of gold in them. ‘Let's find out, shall we?' he said, and began to kiss her all over again.

Sonja eventually left him shortly before ten o'clock.

‘If I stay any later I might be seen,' she said. ‘They'll be coming out of the theatre quite soon. I'll just mingle with the crowds and seem to be part of the audience.'

‘Come back tomorrow? Please, Sonja.'

‘Yes, please.' She stood up, pinning her hair back into place. ‘I'll have to lock the cellar door again. I'll hate doing it, but I'll give the key back to Rinaldi and he'll come down to let you out.'

‘You do know you've chased away all the nightmares of this place, don't you?'

‘Have I? I think you've chased a few away for me as well,' she said. ‘I told you I didn't believe in outmoded conventions, but—'

‘But you did believe in some of them?'

‘Just the one that nice girls don't do this before marriage,' she said, and again there was the fearful look in her eyes.

‘Marriage might redress the balance, though,' said Toby. ‘But I'm damned if I'm proposing in this place. I shall insist on the moonlight and all the other things for that.' He saw the light return to her eyes, and said, ‘Let's just think about the present. How will you get back to the hotel? Will you be all right?'

‘Rinaldi will get me a cab in Burbage Street. In any case it's quite early by the standards of London streets. I'll be perfectly all right.'

Toby listened to her go up the steps, and heard the lock turning in the door. He disliked the prospect of another hour down here by himself, but it would soon pass. He tried to return to
Pygmalion
, but could not. Instead he lay back on the chair and watched the shadows made by the flickering candles, and thought about Sonja, and wondered if they really would get out of all this and how, and where they would go. The thought of spending the rest of his life with her was so deeply satisfying he refused to contemplate the alarming obstacles that reared up to gibber at him. There would be a way.

When he looked at his watch again it was a little after eleven. Rinaldi would appear at any moment. Toby listened, hoping to hear the cellar door being unlocked, but nothing happened. It was completely silent overhead; everyone would have gone home by now, or along to the Linkman or the Pickled Lobster Pot. Something must have delayed Rinaldi; it was not like the old boy to be late for anything; he was very particular about punctuality. It was the politeness of kings, he sometimes said. And it was now twenty minutes past eleven. Toby put down Shaw and went up the stone steps to make sure the door at the top really was locked. It was just possible Rinaldi had unlocked it without him hearing, assuming he would go out of his own accord. But the door was firmly locked. Toby considered shouting, but then it occurred to him that despite the apparent silence, there might still be people around and that was the reason for Rinaldi's absence. He would give it a little longer.

His watch was showing ten minutes after midnight and he was becoming concerned, when he finally heard the door being opened. Toby was about to call out, asking where on earth Rinaldi had been, when there was a second sound. The cellar door was being locked again, this time from the inside. Whoever had come into the cellar had locked himself in with Toby. A beat of apprehension started up in his mind, but before he could think what might be going on, there was the sound of someone descending the steps. Someone whose footsteps were nothing like Rinaldi's quick brisk steps.

There was no time to turn down the wick of the lantern, but acting on instinct Toby snuffed out the two remaining candles. As quickly as possible, he snatched up the empty beer bottle as a weapon, and darted across the cellar to stand behind the grave trap's frame.

The cellar was almost completely dark except for the dull glow from the lantern, and in this sullen light a shadow appeared on the stair wall, red-tinged and menacing. It came down the last few steps and was in the cellar with him.

Anton Reznik. And in his hand was a gun.

He stood at the foot of the steps, looking round, and Toby knew that despite the dimness Anton had seen him. In the smeary light Anton smiled and Toby flinched because it was a smile so utterly devoid of sanity and of any kind of humanity, it was as if something sharp and cold had skewered between his ribs. But he remained where he was, hoping that if Anton did fire at him, the grave trap's frame might provide a form of shield. He entertained a fleeting hope that the gun might not be real, but he was too familiar with stage props to believe for more than a couple of seconds that this was a prop. This was small, black and wicked, and unquestionably genuine.

‘Well, Toby,' said Anton softly, ‘so I was right when I thought you would run for home and your safe little nest.'

‘What do you want?'

‘To kill you. To execute you in your own theatre. You should have been executed by the British government as a spy—a conspirator in the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand. That was what I planned for. A public shaming. In this country you would have been hanged; in Bosnia or Germany they would have shot you, which is what I shall do tonight. And when Sir Hal and your mother find your body, they will understand.'

Toby said furiously, ‘You know damn well I had nothing to do with the assassination. Those statements you and Ilena made were flat-out lies. It was your stupid melodramatic revenge for something that happened thirty years ago, wasn't it? What happened that night, Anton? I know your brother died that night and I'm sorry for it. But did my mother reject you? Did my father fight you and dent your dignity? Or humiliate you? Have you brooded over it all these years?' I'll keep him talking, he thought. Because surely Rinaldi will come in soon. Or will he? Anton must have got the key from him and he's locked the door.

‘Your mother—also your father—were responsible for my brother's death,' Anton Reznik said, moving nearer. ‘Did your father tell you how we were imprisoned in this place without light or water?' said Anton. ‘How we were shut in the pitch darkness for nearly three days? Stefan could not bear it—he was always afraid of the dark, from a small child. He died in agony and terror.' He took a step nearer. ‘And on that night I told your father that although your justice system would not punish him, one day I would do so. That I would destroy him for Stefan's death. And that is what I am doing now—I am destroying Hal Chance through you. It is not as good as the punishment I originally planned, but it is nearly so.'

‘Did you set up Tranz just to destroy my father?' said Toby, trying to assess whether he could dive forward and wrest the gun from Anton before he fired it. ‘Was that all Tranz was?'

‘Tranz was perfectly genuine and its aim was the death of one more of that imperialistic blood-sucking Habsburg line,' said Anton. ‘We always intended the Archduke to die that morning. But I also intended that you would die, Toby—that you would be caught and charged and found guilty of a political murder.' A spasm of fury twisted his features. ‘You should be in prison now, awaiting trial,' he said. ‘You would have been found guilty and executed—I would have made sure of it. There would have been other statements, other eye-witness accounts.'

‘But I gave you the slip,' said Toby. ‘How infuriating for you. Purely out of curiosity, Anton, how did you get in here?'

‘By attending tonight's performance, of course. There was a slight risk that if your father or mother were present they would recognize me, but it's thirty years since we met and in the event, they weren't here. When everyone was leaving, I slipped into the gentlemen's lavatory in the foyer and hid there. When I was sure the audience had all gone—and that your doorkeeper had done his rounds—I came out.'

‘How did you know I was here in the first place?'

‘Oh Toby,' said Anton, ‘I watched your family, of course. Your parents and your closest friends. I watched this theatre as well. I had done that before you even came to Tranz, of course, so I knew what you did and where you went and who your friends were. Did you never sense you were being watched all those weeks ago?'

‘Yes,' said Toby after a moment, remembering the night he had first attended Tranz's meeting with Alicia. He had been sure someone had been watching him that night—first in the theatre itself, then later in Platt's Alley. ‘Yes, I did.'

‘For the past week I have again watched this theatre, and I saw how, at certain times of the evening, occasionally the afternoon, a furtive figure in a dark cloak stole along Platt's Alley and let itself in through the stage door.'

‘The ghost legend,' said Toby, half to himself. ‘So it didn't work.'

‘Probably most people were fooled, but I was watching too closely. Ghosts don't sometimes appear tall and broad-shouldered, and sometimes small and slender. Nor do ghosts need keys to unlock doors.'

‘How did you unlock the cellar door?' He's relaxing his guard a bit, thought Toby. He's liking telling me all this, showing me how clever he's been. Dare I make a move now?

‘I got the key from Rinaldi,' said Anton. ‘I had to knock him out, of course. He's not dead, only unconscious. I shut him in the doorkeeper's room.'

‘That was a bit risky,' said Toby at once. ‘It's not like you to leave potentially damning evidence. Rinaldi will certainly inform the police what you did, and if he doesn't, I will.'

‘By the time it comes to that, I will be on the other side of an ocean,' said Anton. ‘Canada. I have good friends who will help me leave this country. But you won't be able to inform anyone of anything, because you will shortly be dead. If your police and your government won't execute you, then I will. And I will do it now.'

He moved forward, and Toby knew he had left it too late. Anton was going to shoot him. But even as this thought formed, something over his head stirred, and there was a faint creaking. Both Toby and Anton looked involuntarily upwards, and Anton let out a cry of horror.

The floor of the grave trap—the floor that had been flush with the stage above them—was being slowly winched down.

Toby saw at once that the sound and the sight of the moving mechanism was reviving some deep and terrible memory for Anton, and he saw as well that there might never be a better moment. He bounded forward, knocking Anton to the ground, managing to pinion the hand that held the gun. Anton fought like a wildcat, and although Toby raised the beer bottle to bring it smashing down on the other man's head, Anton managed to reach up and knock it away. It rolled out of reach and broke in a corner of the cellar.

As the two men grappled, the trap came lower, the pulley wheels, stiff with disuse, screeched protestingly. Toby managed to knock the gun from Anton's hand and grab his wrists and hold them tightly together. He risked glancing behind him and saw there was someone on the floor of the trap, although he could not see who.

‘Who's there?' he shouted, but before there was any response Anton had seized his opportunity. He pushed Toby aside and sprang to his feet, snatching up the gun. As he levelled it, Toby instinctively threw himself flat on the ground, expecting a shot to go zinging through the cellar. But Anton did not fire. The mechanism of the trap had come to rest on the ground, and a figure leapt from it and hurled itself at Anton. A figure that was tousled, bruised and had blood seeping from one cheek.

Rinaldi. His eyes blazed with fury and Toby leapt to his feet and shouted, ‘Be careful—he's got a gun!' but Rinaldi did not hesitate. He knocked Anton to the ground, beating at his face with angry clenched fists.

‘You evil bastard!' screamed Rinaldi. ‘You devil!' The Italian accent, normally hardly noticeable, was strongly apparent.

‘You think you have a score to settle with this family!' shouted Rinaldi. ‘I know what you have done to Mr Toby these last weeks! I know the evil plans you make! But we know about scores and reckonings in my country, and I shall settle all the scores tonight! Tonight you will not get away, you rapist! You will die now, as you should have died thirty years ago! I shall kill you and lock your body away down here. And this time, Signor Anton, this time when I turn the key in the cellar door, no one will rescue you as they did thirty years ago!'