Shredder (26 page)

Karakurt was a surprisingly fastidious eater who never spoke with his mouth full, but soon his spoon was scraping the bottom of the bowl. Dean was less enthusiastic; I saw him pushing aside the mushrooms and onions to pick out the lamb, as if he was only eating to oblige his boss and piss me off.

“Talking of hospitality…,” said Karakurt. He pushed his chair back, stood, then went to the doorway to the cowshed, pushing aside the curtain we
had hung there as a door. He checked out our rumpled bed and nodded approvingly, then turned to Zoe. “In,” he said.

She didn't look at me, and she said nothing, and she didn't move.

“Or we can do it in here,” said Karakurt. “On this table. This is your home, so it's your choice.”

I tried to push my own chair back, only to feel a surge of pain from my smashed knee that made my head swim.

Karakurt looked at me and grinned. “Relax, Crusher,” he said. “You don't have to watch. But when I am done with her it will be Dean's turn.
Then
you will watch.”

Zoe's face remained impassive, but I saw her clench her fists as she walked round behind Dean, who sat there slurping gravy, and entered the bedroom.

Karakurt dropped the curtain behind her and leered at me at he slipped off his leather jacket. “How does she like it, your girlfriend? Actually, forget I asked, I don't care how she likes it. I like it rough. I like it when they put up a fight. And I bet this one will defend her virtue like a wildcat—the little virtue she has left. Hey, you think I can take her? Come on, I trained in your gym. You want to lay a bet?”

“I bet she walks out of there and you don't,” I said.

The Turk snorted. “Sit back, relax,” he said. “I am going to make this last.”

“I'd get a move on if I were you,” I said. “You'll be dead very soon.”

“Please,” snorted Karakurt as he unbuckled his leather belt and pulled it free. “You are the one bleeding to death. And now you are trying to delay the inevitable, to irritate me with silly threats.” He wound the belt round his fist with the buckle outwards. “If he tries to move again,” he said to Dean, “shoot him in the other leg.” He pushed the curtain aside and followed Zoe into our bedroom.

Dean grinned at me, wiped gravy off his chin and shoved the bowl aside.

“Whoever fixed your teeth that time,” I said, “they were rubbish. You dribble like an old man taking a piss.”

I needed to talk, and to get him to talk, to cover the noise of what was happening next door. The heavy curtain muffled nothing; I could already hear blows and whimpers.

“How's your knee?” said Dean. “Hurts, doesn't it? I've been looking forward to that all year. Come on, have a go—I'd love to give you a matching set.” He pulled the pistol from his belt and laid it on the
table, resting his hand on it, daring me to make a move.

I folded my right leg back under my chair, kept my left relaxed. The pain from my shattered knee was now a constant burning throb, which made it easier to push aside. But I was losing blood, and I didn't know how much time I had before I'd be too weak to act.

“And when I've done the other knee,” Dean was saying, “I'll do your ankles and your elbows. Then we'll start on your teeth.” Reaching inside his jacket, he pulled out a pair of pliers and brandished them at me. “Kemal gave me a few tips. You think my teeth are bad? Just wait till I'm finished with yours.”

“Oh yeah, Kemal,” I said. “I heard they had to pick him up with a street sweeper.”

Dean grimaced as if he'd eaten too quickly. His chair creaked as he leaned back; it didn't quite drown out an animal groaning from next door, but Dean seemed not to notice.

“How much is the Turk paying you?” I said. “Can't be as much as you'd make turning him in.” I dropped my hands into my lap and felt for the frame of the table.

“It's not about the money,” said Dean. “Working
with him I get to do shit like this to big annoying jackasses like you.” A thought occurred to him, very slowly, like treacle dripping. “You know what? I think I'll do your girlfriend's teeth before I do yours. You can sit there and listen. I've only tried it once before—I'll probably break a few, but practice makes…perfect.” He was sweating, I noticed, and pallid, and the hand holding the pliers trembled. “ 'Cos if she doesn't have any teeth, she won't be able to bite me when I stick my—”

He dropped the pliers with a clatter on the table and clutched his stomach. Then he stared at me, and started to gag, and suddenly he knew what I'd done, and his right hand reached for his gun, but he was too late. Taking all my weight on my right leg I stood up, gripping the edge of the table and heaving it up with the last dregs of my strength, flipping it over to land on top of him. It knocked Dean out of his chair, bouncing the back of his head hard off the rough stone wall, and I hurled myself across the upset table to grab him. My lame injured leg sent jagged shards of pain ripping up my spine, but I let my hate and my fury overwhelm it and one hand closed around Dean's throat while the other pinned his wrist to the ground.

He was full of fury too, and he thrashed and writhed under my grip, but the rat poison burning into his stomach was sapping his strength. His fingers clutched at my face and tried to gouge my eyes, and his dying desperation drove his fingernails into my face, scoring my skin, but I screwed my eyes up and kept my grip hard round his throat, and held it there, and finally his fingers flexed and relaxed and fell, and his whole body sagged. When I opened my eyes again Dean was staring upwards and white foam was bubbling from his mouth, running through his crooked teeth and down his chin onto my hand.

I snatched my hand away and wiped it on his shirt; strychnine can be absorbed through skin contact. It works faster if it's eaten, but it's too bitter to be used as poison in food, unless you mask the taste with something more bitter still—like green peppers thrown in at the last second.

It is not enough to kill a man,
the Turk had told me.
You must first enter his house, eat his food, defile his wife
…. We were lucky he'd tried to do it in that order.

I sat back, panting, and listened; there was no sound from the bedroom. Hauling myself upright
using the leg of the upturned table as a prop, I limped to the bedroom doorway and dragged the curtain aside.

The Turk was dead. His eyes were staring, his back was arched, and both his arms were thrown back in an absurd pose, as if he was diving out of a window. I knew strychnine could do that, but I'd never seen it; I'd never wished that agonizing death on anything, even a rat, until today. Zoe had helped things along, I could see; I recognized the handle of the knife protruding from the Turk's belly, pointing upwards into his heart—it was the razor-sharp kitchen knife I'd used to prepare the stew.

“You all right?” I said. It didn't sound like a stupid question till I heard myself ask it.

Zoe, still in my oversized red T-shirt, sat on the edge of the bed, her face pale, her eyes closed. “I wasn't sure if you'd done the poison,” she said. “I hid the knife in here before I came out to you.”

“That was smart,” I said, limping round to hold her.

“No, it wasn't,” she said, and rising to meet me, she swayed a little. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. I noticed she was clutching her side, just under her ribs. When she lifted her hand away there was a
spreading stain, a darker crimson soaking the red cotton. “He fought back,” she said.

“Oh Christ,” I said. “Lie back, lie still, I'll get help.”

“No, no, not in here. Not with him. Take me outside.”

Somehow we carried each other out of the bedroom, through the kitchen, back into the afternoon sunshine, although I could feel her growing weaker with every step. Outside the front door she finally sagged and I let her sit down for a moment on the stone bench under the almond tree.

“Can you make it to the car? I'll take you into town,” I said. “Get you help.”

“Finn, you can't drive,” she said. Her voice was growing softer. “With this car you'll need to change gears.”

I'd been so worried about her I'd forgotten my smashed knee, and when I looked at it now I saw the struggle with Dean had opened it up further; the strips of towel were soaked in red, and the left leg of my jeans was glistening with fresh blood.

I fumbled for the mobile phone in my pocket and found a contact.

“Txaparro? Finn. We're hurt….
Gaude—zauritu?
Help…
lagundu. Bai…bai
…” He'd already hung up.

“He's coming,” I said.

“I still can't believe you can speak Basque,” she giggled.

“Don't go to sleep,” I said. “Stay with me.”

“I just want to rest for a bit,” she said. “It's so beautiful here.” She laid her head on my shoulder.

“Wait till you see it in the summer.”

“I'd love to. But I don't think I can.”

“No, Zoe, stay with me—”

“I love being here with you, Finn. I never want to leave.”

“Then don't. Stay with me, OK? Please. I love you.”

She smiled. “Must be bad. You never told me that before.”

“I'm sorry. I hoped I didn't have to, I hoped you knew.”

“I knew. But it's nice to hear you say it.”

“Stay awake, Zoe. Stay with me.”

“Love you too,” she whispered.

I took Zoe back to England six weeks later. She'd loved the farmhouse and so did I, but I couldn't stay there without her, even when the place had been hosed down and the bodies carted away. That had taken a while: first two Guardia Civil turned up,
then a hundred; they'd taped off the farm while their forensics people had scoured it for evidence, trying to piece together what had happened. After them came an army of suits in unmarked cars from unnamed security agencies eager to confirm that this time Karakurt actually was dead. Txaparro, the local IT geek, had told me all about it when he visited me in the hospital in Barcelona where they'd been rebuilding my knee.

It was Txaparro who'd come roaring up the track in his battered old Subaru twenty minutes after I'd called him. He'd carried Zoe to the backseat, then helped me limp over to get in with her and rest her head on my lap as he drove us to the nearest emergency unit. I remembered clutching her hand and talking to her as the car jumped and jolted down the track; I didn't remember much about the later part of that journey, because I had lost so much blood I was semiconscious by the time we arrived. Everything that had happened afterwards seemed like fragments of a dream: being heaved onto a gurney, lights gleaming in my eyes, frantic doctors and nurses cutting my clothes off, barking orders and readings to each other in lightning-fast Spanish. I didn't recall asking about Zoe, but I must have, because I remembered
someone telling me, “We are doing all we can do. Relax now, let us help you.”

When I came round twelve hours later they told me they might be able to save my knee, but they were sorry, because they hadn't been able to save Zoe.

The spring we had seen reborn in Spain was stillborn here in England. Gaudy daffodils under bare birch trees shivered in the bitter east wind, and glowering gray clouds rolled overhead. Reaching down, I grasped a handful of heavy crumbling clay from the heap and tossed it into the grave; it burst with a rattle across the lid of the glossy wooden coffin. I hadn't wanted to bury Zoe on the farm in Spain; when I'd gone back there it seemed to me the whole place smelled of death. But weeks later in England, as I stood in that freezing breeze and felt rain spit on my face, I realized it was me—that I smelled of death, and that I'd never be able to escape it.

I'd arranged for Zoe to be interred in the same plot as her mother and father. I knew how little love there'd been between them towards the end, but what did that matter now that they were all dead? I wasn't going to perpetuate their family quarrels. They must all have loved each other once, if only
briefly, and that was as much as any of us could hope for.

Besides, having the funeral here in London gave Zoe's friends and what was left of her family a chance to say goodbye. There were a few fellow pupils from her girls' school, but most of the mourners were students and tutors who'd come down from York. From the stories Zoe had told me of her time at uni I knew how much she'd liked it. I'd never admitted it, but I'd envied her the fun she'd had there, and I'd never understood why she'd chosen to spend so much time with me instead. None of them had ever put her in danger the way I had—except Patrick maybe, but he'd had the decency to run. When Zoe's other friends queued up to shake my hand and tell me how sorry they were I nodded and mumbled my thanks and I hated myself for being a hypocrite. They pitied me, and I didn't deserve any of it.

Zoe was dead because I'd loved her. I would never make that mistake again.

A few of her relatives had turned up too, but more out of duty than affection. That heavyset man with the nervy, stick-thin wife—he must be an uncle, on her father's side, I guessed. I'd seen those heavy jowls before, and those stubbly cheeks red with broken veins. He didn't come over, but merely gave
me a nod from the far side of the grave before he turned and stumped away after his wispy wife, who didn't seem able to get out of there quickly enough. Two distant cousins of hers had come down from the Midlands. In their midtwenties, they had some of Zoe's beauty—the bright green eyes, the flawless skin—but none of her fire; where she'd looked sulky and sultry, they looked sullen. As soon as the service ended they were wandering through the graveyard texting on their smartphones. I wondered if they were going to catch a West End show while they were in town.

Of Zoe's aunt, the one who owned the mews cottage on Richmond Hill, there was no sign, but I had heard from her, or from her solicitors anyway. They'd written to tell me I was being sued for the damage caused to the house when the cops kicked the door down and turned the place over. Also for the rent we hadn't paid. It had taken me half a morning to decode the legal jargon, and half a second to screw the letter up and throw it in the trash.