Shout in the Dark (44 page)

He phoned Erich in Düsseldorf again, to
find out when he would be arriving in Paris. Then he thought of
something stimulating he could do, although Herr Kessel would not
have approved of spending more of the ADR's money on a woman. The
old
Narr
had been
fussy enough in Rome. A picture of the Italian woman in the silver
Alfa kept coming to his mind. Late twenties and far more attractive
than older women. He should have found her apartment in Rome a few
days ago. What would it be like to run his big hands over her soft
flesh while she tried to fight him off? An inner urging needed to
be satisfied. Killing the Italian had given him an enormous sexual
appetite.

He had the pink card from the phone booth
with the address of Zeta the masseuse, and the dead Italian's map
to show the way into the city. This could jeopardize the whole
mission, but the craving for sex had become too great to resist. He
would visit Zeta and dump the Makarov automatic on the way there.
The two Italians weren't likely to come back yet.

The ride on the old man's moped took only
fifteen minutes. Once there, the whole activity took even less
time.

Back outside the hotel in La Porte de la
Chapelle he felt inside his jacket pocket. The brief moment of sex,
paid for in advance, must have coincided with the few seconds the
pimp needed to remove his money and replace it with strips of
paper. But he still had Herr Kessel's credit card, and the list of
names and phone numbers was safe in the pocket of his black jeans.
With the map he could easily find Zeta's brightly lit doorway in
the red light district again. Taking his feelings out on the noisy
moped he headed back to the city, the engine screaming at high
revs. When the whore and her keeper saw the knife they would
quickly return his money!

Stopping to check the way in the wide
boulevard Magenta, he opened the map he had taken from the Italian
and rested it on the handlebars to check the way. An area on the
map had been circled in black pen: a patch of green labeled
Cimetière de
Montmartre
. The map
looked brand new, so whatever the
Cimetière
was, the Italians had marked it recently. Maybe
they were there now.

There were far more important things in
life than threatening some stupid French pimp -- though it would
have been fun to hear the tart squeal. Surely the dead Italian's
map held the key to the mystery. He found Montmartre easily. Then
he noticed the silver Alfa on Roma plates parked in the main street
called the rue Caulaincourt, within the circle drawn on the
map.

He could feel a light drizzle in the air,
so he would shelter in a doorway and wait for the Italians to come
back to their car. It felt unbelievably cold for mid summer,
especially after the intense heat of that mad Italian city. He
regretted not bringing warmer clothes from the stolen Opel. Even if
he had time to get it from the car now, the
gendarmes
might be there watching. He'd seen films
where that sort of thing happened.

Sartini and that woman had to be nearby,
probably scared out of their minds. Well, wherever they were, they
would have to come back for their Alfa. He slid the Göring dagger
into a gap between the stones on the doorstep and slowly bent the
blade at the narrow section until it looked straight. It bent back
surprisingly easily, so the damage couldn't be too serious. The
drizzle was getting heavier and the dark streets felt
depressing.

He spent the
night in a state of restless sleep. At
eight-thirty the next morning he was sitting like some homeless
drunk in a shop doorway when he heard the Alfa doors slam. As the
engine started he leapt to his feet, jumped onto the moped and
pedaled furiously.

The Alfa only went a couple of hundred
yards. He followed it across the wide bridge and down into a narrow
street. The
Cimetière
was a
creepy graveyard with rows of stone buildings no larger than garden
sheds. What a place to be coming to at this time of the morning. He
parked the bike under a tree and followed the Italians through the
high gates into the weird burial ground. He had never seen anything
like this world of the dead. What the hell did Sartini and the
woman want with this place?

The main street ran overhead on a wide,
noisy bridge of iron girders. The graves directly beneath the
bridge, almost lost in the darkness, seemed even more eerie. The
Italians stopped at a notice board just inside the large green
gates.

He stood and watched the young priest point
past the bridge to where the graves ran away out of sight. A large
cat stalked past, black, with the appearance of Satan himself. It
stopped, turning slowly, staring with unblinking eyes.

For a moment he felt his heartbeat quicken,
excitement rising in his throat. This must be an omen. There was to
be death, violent death in this garden of the dead. He felt for the
Göring dagger. His favorite weapon would be the instrument, the
sacrificial knife.

The cat was joined by its mate, an even
larger beast with a bent and torn ear. The cats were studying his
every move. He stared back, sensing an attempt at communication,
some message he was unable to interpret. This was a beautiful
place. A thrill ran through his body. He would dispose of the woman
first.

MARCO TURNED again and listened. The
cemetery had been open for over half-an-hour, but so far they had
seen no other visitors. With luck the
zoticone
would still be outside the hotel in La Porte de la
Chapelle. Laura had complained all the way here about the noise in
the hotel during the night. Guests kept banging doors until the
garbage collectors took over the task of keeping everyone awake at
five-thirty. But because they had got so little sleep in the hotel
on the noisy
autostrada
the
previous night, he and Laura had stupidly dropped off to sleep
again and not woken until well after eight.

As they made their way through the maze of
tombs, Marco caught hold of Laura's hand. Touching Laura,
his
amica
, gave him
comfort. He could see that the graves ran in avenues, with a grid
reference to each one listed on the board by the entrance. It took
them nearly five minutes to find the name Georges, the French name
of the Giorgio family.

Very few families appeared to visit these
ornamental sepulchers.

Caring relatives had once filled the insides
with vases and religious artifacts, but it seemed many of them had
now left everything to become overgrown and encrusted with dirt. An
object could be concealed in one of these places for years without
attracting attention.

Laura began to count the rows. "It must be
that one."

The builders had tried to distinguish the
Georges' tomb from its immediate neighbors by decorating the
outside with blue tiles and polished stone panels. Through the iron
grill that served as a doorway Marco stared into the gloomy
interior. There was just enough room for a person to sit, should
they be brave enough to do so. The family vault would be deep
below.

As his eyes adjusted he could make out a
shelf with a corroded metal cross and two stone vases, all thick
with dirt. Wind-blown paper and sweet wrappers littered the
floor.

Then, half hidden in the darkness, out of
reach on a low shelf, he could make out the outline of a human
head.

The heavy iron grill to the small chamber
was firmly locked.

KARL TURNED FROM his communion with the
cats,
suddenly knowing
for certain that the bronze head was here, and it had to be
purchased with a sacrifice of blood.

From their excited voices the couple must
have found the relic already. Their blood, spilt in this dwelling
place of the dead would open the door to a future of absolute
power: a perfection of power. He drew the Göring dagger from his
pocket. The spilling of blood was essential to complete the
consecration.

The crazy priest was pulling noisily at the
grill and would soon attract attention. Karl moved closer, watched
only by the large black cats on the stone steps, their tails waving
rapidly from side to side in anticipation.

As he reached the grave he rushed forward
and smashed the edge of his hand across the back of the priest's
neck. The woman screamed and started to run. He reached out,
grabbed her coat and slammed the dagger into her back. The blade
went in effortlessly, the handle twisting in his hand as it did
so.

The woman fell forwards against a high
stone cross, both hands scrabbling for a hold. Her head hit the
stone with a sharp smack. Without a sound, she slipped to the
ground. He raised the precious dagger to administer the sacrificial
blow to the young priest as he lay against the tomb. But his hand
held an empty handle. The blade must be stuck in the woman who lay
motionless beneath the cross. The final use of the knife had been
beautiful.

He moved forward and pulled her up. Through
her clothing, he could feel the softness of her breasts. It was an
attractive body, and yesterday he would have had her. But last
night he had seen enough of women for a few days, and unresponsive
female flesh held no attraction to a real man. He draped the body
over the arms of the cross and stood back, laughing at the
sight.

Near the floor, in the darkness behind the
grill, he could see the object that had caused the raised voices.
It might be metal or marble for all he knew, but it was a head,
white like the one in Herr Kessel's old photograph -- and it was
what the Italians had come to get. He wrenched at the grill but it
was immovable.

He started to panic, desperate not to
leave here without the key to his future. Without the relic he was
in deep trouble with the leadership. Fighting to control his
anxiety he guessed there would be a wheel brace in the woman's
Alfa. He could easily prize the grill from the wall.

Breathing deeply and deliberately, fighting
back his panic, he ran towards the high green gates.

An attendant stood just inside, talking to
two French
gendarmes
, while
pointing over the crowded graves. They must know something. Perhaps
they'd come to search the cemetery. If so, they would soon find the
Italians.

Standing close to the wall he tried to
stay cool. His training, he must remember his training. The woman
was dead, but the
Priester
could
still be alive. There had been no chance to use the knife on him.
Hell. The man would be a witness. One of the
gendarmes
called him over.

Chapter
39

MARCO HAD AN extraordinary feeling of
being surrounded by ... death. His soul was arriving in heaven. He
had not imagined there would be so much pain in heaven.

Opening his eyes he could see Mary standing
in a haze, beckoning for him to come forward to the foot of the
cross. This was no vision: this was reality. Reality in a spiritual
world. So this was what it was like to pass through death to
eternal life.

Mary moved her hand slowly. In the morning
light of heaven this experience made the troubles of life seem as
nothing. Except for the pain.

"
Marco
,"
she called.

The vision ended as Laura raised her arm
and slid heavily to the ground. "
For God's sake, Marco, help
me!
"

As Marco became fully conscious, the pain
in his neck seemed too intense to bear. By crawling he might be
able to reach Laura. "Keep still. I'm coming over."

"
There's something in my back, Marco. I think it's a
knife."

He put a hand on Laura's jacket and
withdrew it instantly as he touched the cold, broken metal. "Stay
where you are."

"
I've hit my head ... I can't get up."

"
I'll get help."

"
No, don't leave me. I'm scared of dying."

"
Laura, you're not going to die." He reached out to touch
the end of the knife again. The metal felt jagged. "I have to get
help."

"
It feels more comfortable now."

He knew that d
eep knife wounds often felt like minor injuries.
He'd say nothing. Laura's life could be slipping away.

Reaching round to her back. Laura began to
pull at her jacket. The blade came away in her hands.

"
No, Laura, don't!
"

"
It wasn't in me. It was stuck in my coat."

The pain pounded through Marco's head. He
had to act fast to save them both from another attack. The prospect
of a deep wound was difficult to face. "Let me ... let me
see."

The blade had broken just below the handle
as it entered Laura
's
jacket. Her skin was bleeding but the wound looked shallow. The
large swelling on her forehead was serious. "We've failed,
Laura."

"
Was it the skinhead?"

He tried to look around but the severe
pain paralyzed his neck. This graveyard was certainly not heaven.
"We know the
zoticone
is in
Paris. He killed Riccardo."