Last Line (22 page)

Then he fell out into the porch, merely human, bleeding and sick from the agony in his head. Quin caught him and began to go through his pockets. “What…what are you doing?”

“Where’s your phone? I’ll get John. I’ll get an ambulance, the fire brigade—”

“Left my phone behind.”

“Where the hell’s mine?”

Quin scrabbled frantically in the pockets of his jeans and the scruffy parka. Michael wanted to tell him that, if Anzhel had taken it from him, he’d never find it and never remember the theft, but he couldn’t speak. The pain surged unbearably, and he struggled out of Quin’s grasp, retching. “Get away from me. Go!”

“I’m not gonna leave you.” With distant surprise, Michael felt the boy take hold of him. He was awkward, a scared kid suddenly forced to deal with a sick grownup, but he was there—squeamish Quin, who recoiled from human illness like a cat. “What do I do?”

“Just…go. Find John and get out of the city. Go far away.”

“Mike, you’re not gonna do this.” Quin’s voice shook with an edge of crazy laughter. “You’re not gonna bloody well nuke London. I won’t let you.”

Michael threw up. There was hardly anything left inside him, and his throat burned with acid. “Can’t stop me,” he rasped. “I’ll hurt you if you try. Sorry, Quin. I can’t fight it anymore.”

And it worked. Despite winning the point—despite his relief at being obeyed—Michael felt pure desolation as Quin’s grip vanished and the church door banged shut. He curled up, pressing his brow to his knees. Maybe Oriel had overplayed the game with him—maybe the strain of resistance would disable him in time, keep him here on his knees till fire burst through the doors of the porch and consumed him.

A short fierce roar. Michael flinched and looked up. How much time had passed? If this was the end, he was glad. He couldn’t so much as stand up, let alone run away from it to go and unleash hell on the city. He was so tired. And his soul wouldn’t bear the weight of any more sin—all those lives in the bleak Zemel forest and John’s life too, tearing apart in his hands. He wished he could have seen him, that was all. Spoken to him long enough to tell him what a prisoner Michael had been, what a slave, since he had entered the Acton church and seen Piotr Milosz. To tell him he loved him.

Quin burst back into the porch. He threw open the door so hard that it jammed. Beyond it Michael saw the street, the ordinary night somehow unfolding still. He saw a little VW Golf, pulled right up on the pavement and purring, its headlights ablaze. “Get up!” Quin yelled, grabbing him and starting to pull. He had about a quarter of his brother’s heft but all his determination. “Get the fuck up, Mike. We’re going!”

“No. No car. I’ll take us into range and use this thing.”

“Yeah, if you were driving.” Quin ducked under Michael’s arm, draped it round his shoulder, and lurched up. “Come on. I’m taking you home.”

“Quin, I’ve got a gun.”

“You won’t use it on me.”

The boy dragged him out. He pulled open the car door and dumped Michael into the passenger seat, then ran round the front and got behind the wheel. The car was bumping onto the road before Michael could get air enough into his lungs to protest. “Stop. You can’t drive.”

“Oh, you reckon?” Quin’s jaw was set and grim. He crunched gears and made the Golf roar like a rally car, but indicated properly before pulling out into the traffic. “Posh schools mean posh friends. Weekends in their country homes and miles of countryside to tank around in with Daddy’s spare Range Rover.”

The Rovers must have come equipped with hand brake warnings. Unclenching one hand, Michael reached across and took the straining VW’s off. Quin gasped as she shot forward. Then he caught up and eased off the gas. He wasn’t bad, Michael thought through a fresh surge of pain. “Quin,
stop
! Where have you got a car from? What have you done?”

“Broke into the priest’s house and stole his keys.” Signs for the M3 westbound appeared on their right. Quin lurched across two lanes and a small traffic island to make the turn. “Don’t say anything. You’re the one running errands for the bastard who murdered him.”

The words hit Michael like whiplash. But Quin was right. He did have an errand—a mission, if you wanted a more dignified word for it. Thinking about its accomplishment brought the pain down to a level he could almost see through, breathe through. He put a hand beside Quin’s on the steering wheel. “This way.”

“No. That’s east, like…like Oriel said.”

“Do as you’re told, damn it!” Michael yanked the wheel, sending the car off in a squeal of rubber down the next left turn. It took them into an alleyway. Good. This would connect to the main route back into London, and no witnesses for whatever he was about to do to this impossible brat who had come between him and his destiny.

Quin veered up onto the pavement, narrowly missed a parked lorry, and jammed the brakes on. “No!” he yelled as they jounced to a halt. “I’m not letting you do it!”

Michael uncoiled out of the car. For the first time, he could feel what a lovely night it was. Even in the city’s outskirts, scents of rural summer made it through on evenings like this—an occasional breath of distant fields, of soil gently cooling in the dusk. The Tor would be beautiful tonight, rising numinous and vast from the mist. His nose was bleeding still, but it was letting up, and at last his head was clear. He took a deep breath of the good air, strode round the front of the car, and hauled Quin out of the driver’s seat. So skinny and light—like lifting a cat out of the way. Michael could snap him into pieces. Common sense dictated that he do so. Break his neck and dump him. “Get in the passenger seat and shut up.” Quin twisted to look at him. His face was a blank of incomprehension, tears sticking his eyelashes together. Michael repeated the command, loud and harsh. “Do it now!”

“Mike, if you’re going to bark orders at me…do it in English, will you?”

Michael swallowed. That
had
been English, hadn’t it? His tongue knew no other words. There was no other language in his brain. Afraid to try again, he took Quin by the shoulder and the scruff of his neck and marched him round the car’s bonnet. Getting in behind the wheel, he put the Golf into gear. Eastbound, eastbound. Michael breathed and felt the clearness in his head, the sweet light. He had fought—one way or another, he had fought—for three years. It was over.

He drove through Isleworth and stopped on the edge of Syon Park. He wanted to see trees and open spaces while he was doing this. Quin watched in silence, huddled against the door, while Mike extracted from his pocket the heavy little device. He could hear himself sobbing, which was odd, because other than relief at this final surrender, he felt nothing. He was glad he had Anzhel’s gun with him, though. He was sure it had one more round left in the clip. Once he was done here, he could go.

Quin said faintly, “I was trying to take you home, you know. Not to your flat—to Glastonbury.”

Michael turned the detonator over in his hands. It was so tiny. He could hardly believe in its potential. Maybe it had none—maybe Oriel was testing him, checking the strength of his strings. He could hear the boy speaking, but the sound was distant, a transmission through static from his old lost life.

“You’re different there. I am too. I stop wanting to run away, and I stop hating John for not wanting me to live with him. He’s different too. He stops thinking about his car and his clothes and the job. I feel like I
know
him.”

Michael nodded. There were joggers running through the park, women pushing buggies on the pavement. There were seven million people within thirty miles of him. Maybe the device was a dud. “Yes,” he said. “We’re all different there. Better.”

“Look, I don’t think I’m the language type of idiot savant. I don’t understand.”

Michael made a huge effort. He’d never had trouble learning languages, but the rediscovery of his English now felt like an anguished rewiring of his brain. Blood ran down the back of his throat. Pain began to sledgehammer into his skull. He put the detonator back into his pocket. “Quin, can you take me there? Can you take me home?”

Chapter Fifteen

Out on the dual carriageway, the Jaguar coasting at ninety, John pressed the Hands-free button and sat back. Silence fell in the car. Inside his head, he knew he would hear forever the voice of his boss, informing him coldly that his partner and Anzhel Mattvei had failed to report in. That they were missing and a church in West London was burning to the ground.

Unthinking, John went through the moves to get past the next lorry. The old man had wanted him to come back to town. He should. It made sense. If he had ditched out on Michael, abandoned and lost him, he had to trace him sensibly, to work from the point last seen, even if that trail led to a charred corpse in a church. He would turn back, leave the motorway at the next junction.

The phone buzzed again. John saw Quin’s name appear on the screen and almost burst into laughter. Trust the little sod to turn up now, when John’s hands and heart were too full for him to give a damn about him.

But that wasn’t true anymore. Relief swept through John, and he punched the Pickup button. “Quin. You all right?” Not his usual first line of inquiry on these occasions, he remembered with shame. He usually opened with
Where the hell are you
and
What have you done.

“No! John, help me!”

“What?” John got the Jag out of the fast lane and steadied her against his own astonishment. Quin would sooner die in a homemade forest shelter than ask for his help. “I will. I will, okay? What’s the matter?”

“It’s Mike.” A pause, as if Quin couldn’t think of a way to express the enormity of his situation. John listened to the background sounds. They were very like his own—the roar of an engine being pushed hard, the swish of overtaking traffic. “I’m with Mike. He’s… I don’t think he’s well.”

John drew a breath against the surging thud of his heart. Not well and inexplicably with Quin…but alive. “Okay. Get him to pull over and talk to me.”

“He’s not driving. I am.”

“You’re kidding me. Bloody well stop!”

“I can’t. I’ve got to take him back to Glastonbury. We found that man, that Russian you were looking for. He gave Mike a box—a thing, a detonator. There’s a bomb in London. If I don’t get Mike home, he’s going to set it off.”

“Who is? You found Oriel?”

“Yeah. He made Mike different. Made him do stuff. And Mike’s gonna use this bloody detonator if I don’t get him away!”

“All right. Calm down. Give the phone to Mike.”

“I don’t think he can talk. He’s bleeding, John. And his head hurts, and he’s speaking Russian.”

Well, that’s never a good sign.

John set aside flashing memories of his last night in the Glastonbury farmhouse and struggled to concentrate. His kid brother was driving. Mike was in the grip of whatever hellish programming Oriel had laid into him, and there was a… “Quin. What sort of bomb?”

“A bad one. Nuclear. It’s in the city.”

“Christ almighty. Can you get the detonator away from him?” John envisaged the attempt and shook his head. “Second thoughts, don’t try that. Where are you now?”

“I dunno. Been on the road about an hour, and I left London from Hounslow, so…”

“You’re on the M3? I’m near you. I’m near you, okay? I’m coming in from the south, but I can find you if you just pull over and wait.”

“I don’t dare. He’s in too much pain, John. He can’t hold on unless I get him home. He’ll—”

Quin’s frightened voice broke off. John braced for the sound of crunching metal, but a moment later Michael spoke, fractured by distance and static. John could have cried with joy to hear him, but he wasn’t getting a word. “Mike,” he interrupted him. “Mike! If you’re buggering about the country with my kid brother in tow, don’t tell me about it in Russian. All right?”

A silence. It was somehow raw, tense with struggle. Then Michael said clearly, “Call backup. Get them to the house. If I can’t fight this, they can’t let me leave. Not alive. Do you understand?”

“Mike, no.”

“You have to. I’m losing. Oh, John—if it comes down to it, don’t let it be some half-assed police marksman who takes me out. Let it be one of our own people, or…”

“Yes. I’ll take care of you.” Tearing down the motorway, his soul going ice-cold inside him, John made the impossible commitment. “Comes to that, I’ll take you down myself.”

“All…all the way?”

“You know it. But it’s not gonna happen like that, sunbeam. We’re going to live. I’m on my—”

The line cut out. John hit Callback but got dead air. He kept his fingertips pressed to the phone, steering blind and deft with his free hand. “I’m on my way. I’m on my way.”

* * *

Michael stood alone in the farmhouse kitchen. He hadn’t put the lights on—didn’t want to dismiss the ghosts he could see without them. He remembered so much now. There was his mother, slender and beautiful, struggling to cook for her boy and her father-in-law in an antiquated English kitchen. She was always busy. Always watchful too. She paused often to glance out of the windows. She flinched and held Michael close to her when the outer door clicked, but it was only the old man. He came in stiffly, the sheepdog Alice by his side. He grunted at Michael’s mother’s kiss and made a gesture of warding her off. It was for form’s sake only, Michael knew. He’d soon learned to love her affectionate ways and had wept like a child on that day when Michael, fugued out by shock, had only been able to sit on the bedroom floor and stare.

He went to fetch the kettle. It was a prosaic gesture in this dreamworld, but real life went on, and he no longer wished to thrust a divide between the two. Quin had driven him all the way home, swearing his head off when they first hit the narrow Somerset lanes, then lapsing into a grim silence. He would be exhausted, wanting a cup of tea. Michael filled the kettle, set it to boil, then leaned over the sink and carefully washed the blood off his face. He smiled as he did so. Always such a bloody pantomime when John tried to fix tea or coffee for either of them. His fingertips were permanently scarred from all the electric shocks. Michael would have given anything to hold his wrist and kiss the little marks, one by one. To explore his body and love it inch by inch, as he should have done. They had started at the wrong end, at passion’s far extreme. John had said—Michael remembered now, with painful acuity—
this gonna be it, then? Here in the kitchen
? And Michael had closed his heart to the grief in the question, shoved him down and screwed him over the table, as if he had been a one-nighter, a fling. Had done so much worse to him here in this house that he wanted to die of shame.