Inside the front door was a locked alarm panel. He put Parker’s file on a shelf, opened the panel, and checked the exterior camera on the small embedded screen; there was no one nearby. He nodded at the woman, and she opened the door while he activated the alarm. There was a ten-second delay once it began to beep, which was sometimes barely sufficient for him to get out and lock the door, but on this occasion he managed with a second or two to spare.
He winced as they crossed the street to his car.
‘Your hip?’ she said.
‘Those basement stairs,’ he said. ‘They kill me.’
‘You should have let me go down.’
‘What do you know about fuses?’
‘More than you.’
Which was true, even if he chose not to admit it.
‘Well, I needed—’
He swore. He’d left Parker’s file on the shelf beside the alarm panel.
‘– the file,’ he finished. He lifted his empty hands to her, and she rolled her eyes.
‘I’ll go back,’ she said. ‘You stay here.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, and leaned against the car.
She looked at him with concern. ‘Are you sure that it’s nothing more serious?’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine. Just a little tired.’
But she knew otherwise. He had no secrets from her: not about the Collector, not about Parker, not about anything. He was worried. She could tell.
‘Let’s go for dinner,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk about it.’
‘The Blue Ox?’
‘Where else?’
‘My treat, then.’
‘You don’t pay me enough for it to be mine.’
Which was both true and untrue: he paid her a lot, but he could never pay her enough.
She waited until a car passed, then walked back to the office, her fingers fumbling in her huge purse for her keys. Eldritch looked around. So empty the streets tonight; barely a soul in sight except for themselves. His skin prickled. A man was approaching, his hands buried deep in the folds of a parka jacket, his head down. Eldritch gripped the key fob of his car, the index finger of his left hand poised over the alarm button while his right drifted to the pocket of his overcoat that contained the small derringer. He thought that the man might have glanced at him as he went by, but, if so, it was the slightest shift of his eyes, nothing more, and his head barely moved. Then he was gone, and he did not look back.
Eldritch relaxed. The Collector had made him so wary that he occasionally tipped over into paranoia: justifiable paranoia, perhaps, but paranoia nonetheless. By now his secretary had opened the office door. He heard the alarm beep for a time before going silent as she briefly deactivated it. He could not see her in the gloom of the hallway.
There was movement to his right. The man in the parka had stopped at the corner and was staring back at him. Eldritch thought that he might have shouted something, but whatever he said was lost in the sound of the explosion that blew out the windows of Eldritch’s building, deafening him even as it sent plumes of fire and smoke shooting through the gaps, showering him with glass that ripped into his face and body, the wave of heat lifting him up and throwing him to the ground. Nobody came to help him. The man in the parka was already gone.
Eldritch crawled to his knees. He was temporarily deaf, and he hurt all over. For a moment he thought that he was hallucinating as a figure appeared in the doorway of the building, silhouetted against smoke and fire. Slowly the woman walked out, and even from this distance Eldritch could see the dazed look on her face. Her hair was smoldering. She put her hand to the top of her head and patted out the smoke. She stumbled slightly on the curb but kept walking, and she seemed to smile at him as she saw that he was safe, and he found himself smiling back at her in relief.
Then she turned round to take in the sight of the burning building, and he saw that the back of her head was devoid of hair, a deep, terrible wound gleaming wetly in her exposed skull. Her spine showed red and white through her ruined back, and he glimpsed the muscles exposed in her thighs and calves through the shreds of her dress.
She stayed upright just a moment longer before collapsing facedown upon the road, her body unmoving. By then Eldritch was on his feet, running and weeping, but he could not reach her in time to say goodbye.