52
I took it all in as soon as I stepped from the airplane: Liat, lying against a tree, her left arm hanging uselessly by her side, her face pale; and Angel and Louis in the clearing below, separated by about twenty feet, their weapons raised and aiming at the rise above that stinking pool of black water.
There, partly hidden by a tree trunk, stood the Collector, the wind causing the tails of his coat to extend behind him like wings but hardly troubling the greased lines of his hair. He appeared to have dressed no differently for an excursion into the wilderness than he would have for a walk in the park: dark pants, worn shoes, a stained white shirt buttoned to the neck and a black suit jacket and coat.
Jackie Garner knelt before him. There was a strange coil of metal around his neck, and silver objects along its length glittered in the dying sunlight. It was only as I drew nearer that their form became clearer. The coil was threaded with razor blades and fish hooks: any movement by Jackie or the man behind him would tear his flesh. Jackie’s body blocked a clear shot at what little of the Collector was exposed: just one half of his face, and his right arm, the muzzle of a gun pressed against the top of Jackie’s head while the Collector’s eyes moved from Angel to Louis and back again. When I appeared, his eyes fixed on me, but even at this distance I could see that they were different. In the past, their bleakness and hostility had been leavened by a kind of dry amusement at the world and its ways, and the manner in which it had forced him to assume the onerous duty of executioner. It was a facet of his madness, but it gave him a humanity that he would otherwise have lacked. Without it, his eyes were windows into an empty, unforgiving universe, a vacuum in which all things were either dead or dying. Here was the Reaper made incarnate, an entity entirely without mercy.
‘Let him go,’ I said.
Slowly, I shifted the leather satchel from my shoulder and raised it for him to see.
‘Isn’t this what you came for? Isn’t this what you want?’
Liat shook her head, imploring me not to hand the list over to this man, but he said only, ‘Is it? If it is, then it is not all that I want.’
He looked at the bodies of Malphas and the woman with the burned face.
‘Your work?’ he said.
‘No, their own. Malphas killed the woman, and the boy with her killed Malphas in reprisal.’
‘Boy?’
‘He has a goiter, here.’ I pointed to my neck with my free hand.
‘Brightwell,’ said the Collector. ‘So it’s true: he has come back. Where is he?’
‘He ran into the forest. We were about to go after him when you appeared.’
‘You should fear him. After all, you killed him once. As grievances go, that one’s hard to beat. The other two, though, you don’t have to concern yourself about. They won’t be coming back, maybe not ever.’
‘Why?’
‘Angels die only at the hands of angels. All gone now. No return, no new forms. Poof!’
I considered what he had just told me. Brightwell had once died at my hand, but Brightwell had come back. If what the Collector was saying was true—
But he was ahead of me. He smiled, and his voice was filled with mockery.
‘Why? Did you believe that you might be a fallen angel, a shard of the Divine discarded for your disloyalty? You’re nothing: you’re just an anomaly, a virus in the system. Soon you’ll be expunged, and it will be as if you had never existed. Your life is being measured now in minutes – not hours or days, not months or years. You’re very close to dying here, because I am very close to killing you.’
I saw Louis and Angel tense, their bodies preparing for the gunfire to come. In response, the Collector jerked on the coil, and Jackie screamed in pain. Lines of blood began to flow down from his neck.
‘No!’ I said. ‘Lower your weapons. Do it!’
Angel and Louis did as I said, but their fingers stayed on their triggers, and their eyes did not leave the Collector.
‘And why am I to die: because my name is on that list you received?’
This time, the Collector actually laughed. ‘The list? Those names were nothing. They were bait, footsoldiers to be sacrificed. They knew the Kelly woman was faltering. They knew she would betray them. She had never been privy to their deepest secrets, and all she had were the names of those she herself had corrupted. Brightwell may have added your name when your paths first crossed, but others ensured that it ended up on Barbara Kelly’s list. It was their hope that its presence on it would convince your own friends to turn against you, that they would cast you out, or kill you. The real list, the important list, is in your hands. It’s older, and it’s the product of many hands. That list has power.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘I tortured it from a woman named Becky Phipps before I put her to death. She went hard. By the end, she was confessing in droplets.’
‘Who wanted my name to be put on that list?’
‘The Phipps woman died before I could get that information from her, but she spoke of Backers, all wealthy and influential men and women, but one of them more important than the rest. It was simple human psychology. They knew Kelly was turning, and they planted your name in her head. They told her it was significant information, that their enemies would place particular value on it, and she used it, just as they knew she would. They’ve been watching you for a long time, and they were as curious about you as I was, but pragmatism eventually outweighed any interest in your deeper nature. Now, like me, it seems that they’d prefer a world without you in it. So this is my deal, and there will be no bargaining: you give yourself to me, and the woman lives. So too do your belligerent friends down there. One life for many. Consider yourself a martyr to your cause. Otherwise, I’ll hunt you all down, and I won’t rest until you and everyone you love is dead.’
He tightened the noose around Jackie’s neck once again, twisting it as he did so, and Jackie screamed briefly before the constriction reduced it to a pained gurgle.
‘You haven’t answered my question,’ I said. ‘Why you, and why now?’
The Collector ground the muzzle of his gun into Jackie’s skull.
‘No, it’s my turn for questions now, and I have only one: why did you send him? Why did you do it?’
I had no idea what he was talking about, and I told him. The Collector pressed his knee into Jackie’s back, contorting his body.
‘This one!’ said the Collector. ‘Why did you send him after my – after Eldritch? To destroy his records? To kill him? To kill me? Why? I want to know. Tell me!’
And then I understood. ‘The explosion? I had nothing to do with it.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I did not do it. On my life.’
‘It is on your life. It is on all your lives.’
I looked at Jackie. He was trying to talk.
‘Let him speak,’ I said. The Collector eased the pressure on the noose, and it hung from Jackie’s flesh by its hooks.
‘I didn’t know,’ said Jackie, so softly that we could barely hear him. ‘I swear, I didn’t know.’
‘Oh, Jackie,’ I said. ‘Jackie, what have you done?’
‘They told me there would be nobody in the building. They told me that nobody would get hurt.’
He spoke in a monotone. He was not pleading. He was confessing.
‘Who, Jackie? Who told you?’
‘It was a phone call. They knew about my mother. They knew that she was sick, and I didn’t have the money to help her. So I got a call offering me a job, and I was given a down payment in cash, a lot of cash, with the promise of more to come. All I had to do was cause an explosion. I didn’t ask any questions; I just took the money, and did the job. But I wanted to be sure that there was going to be nobody in the building when it happened, so I didn’t set a timer. I used a cell phone to detonate it instead. I made the call when I saw that the old man and the woman had left the office, but then the woman went back. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
Nobody spoke for a moment. There was nothing to say.
‘It seems that I misjudged you, Mr Parker,’ said the Collector, ‘although I must admit that I’m disappointed. I thought that I’d finally found an excuse to be rid of you.’
‘Don’t hurt him,’ I said at last. ‘There must be a way out of this.’
‘What will you do?’ asked the Collector. ‘Will you take his place? Will you hand him over to the law? You’re a hypocrite, Mr Parker. You’ve done bad things. You’ve used the ends to justify the means. There have even been times when I’ve considered you for my collection. Have you felt the urge to unburden yourself to the police, to tell them of bodies in swamps, of dead men in bus station restrooms? I do not trust you. I do not trust any of you.’
‘I’ll trade you,’ I said. ‘My friend for the list.’
‘The list? I have enough names in my head to last me a hundred lifetimes. If I killed one every hour it would still be no more than an echo of the greater reckoning to come. Your crusade is not mine. What I want is vengeance. What I want is blood, and I will have it. But take your friend, then. I release him. See?’
He lifted the end of the noose, and let it fall from his hand. Staying low, and still using Jackie as a shield, he began to retreat into the forest, his blackness becoming a part of the greater dark, until only his voice remained.
‘I warned you, Mr Parker. I told you that all those who stood by you would die. It has already begun. It continues now.’
There was the sound of a shot, and Jackie Garner’s chest spat a cloud of blood. Angel and Louis both began to move, but a second shot came, then a third, both exploding inches from my feet.
‘Stop!’ said the Collector. ‘Stop, or the girl is next.’
Liat was closer to him than any of us, but she couldn’t hear anything that he was saying. She was afraid to move, afraid of what might happen if she did.
So we stood, and we watched Jackie Garner die.
‘I can kill her now,’ came the shout from the forest. ‘I have her in my sights. Now walk toward me, Mr Parker, and throw the satchel up. No tricks, no short throws. I get the list, and you all live.’
I held the satchel high by its strap, and threw it hard, but not in the direction of the forest. Instead, I launched it into the dark pool. It seemed to rest on the black, viscous water for too long before disappearing soundlessly into its depths. I saw Liat’s eyes widen, and she stretched out her good hand as though somehow hoping to draw the bag back to her by sheer force of will.
I stood and waited for the final shot to come, but there was only that voice, fainter now as the Collector moved deeper into the forest. I heard a noise above my head, and saw a single raven separate itself from the crows and fly north.
‘That was a mistake,’ it said. ‘You know, Mr Parker, I don’t think that you and I are going to be friends any more . . .’