The Third Antichrist (33 page)

The man struck Lemma with his fist. Then he turned his full attention on Radu. Radu tried to push himself up from where he was caught between the groundsheet and the side of the tent. The man lashed backward with his heel and caught Radu high up on the thigh, deadening the entire leg.

Radu knew that he and Lemma were going to die. There was something primeval about this man. He moved like a cat. He struck without compunction. His only motive was to disable and incapacitate.

Radu raised both hands to ward off the blows that were raining down on him. He could no longer see out of his left eye. He almost wanted the man to kill him. That way he would not have to face the humiliation of knowing that he had been unable to protect the honour of his wife.

The man grabbed Radu by the collar and threw him down beside Lemma. Radu could feel himself swimming in and out of consciousness. The first scything blow with the man’s elbow had done the damage. Radu could barely raise his arms to protect himself anymore.

Andrassy’s punch had caught Lemma on the side of the head, throwing her violently to one side. Now she hunched up in a ball to protect her baby. She was scared that the man would kick her, and that the bag protecting her baby would burst, drowning him. She felt rather than saw Radu being thrown down beside her.

Lemma knew for a certainty that the man with the clipboard had killed her husband. Now that Radu was no longer there to protect her, he would turn his attention to her and her child. She had a sudden vision of the tent aflame, and the man walking away into the dusk. No one would ever know what had happened to them. There would be no burial. Her mother would never see her grandchild.

The man started on Radu again with his fists. Was Radu, then, still alive? Lemma wriggled away from the pair of them, her knees buffeting her swollen breasts. She kept her cooking implements in the far corner of the tent, behind the bed she and Radu shared. She stretched out her hand and reached for the string bag. The man came after her.

It was dark in the tent. Lemma grasped the handle of the first thing she could feel and swept around with it in an arc, until she was holding it straight ahead of her with both hands. It was the fish scaler she had inherited from her grandmother. The blade entered Andrassy’s descending hand and immediately broke off. Andrassy screamed. Lemma struck at him again with the shattered haft.

Andrassy backed away and glared at her. She could feel the intensity of his gaze in the half-darkness of the tent. Lemma raised the broken scaler high above her head like a sacrificial celt. Radu lay in a heap behind Andrassy. He wasn’t moving. For a moment Lemma was tempted to use the broken haft of the scaler to cut her own throat. Heaven alone knew what the man would do to her now Radu could no longer protect her.

‘Put it down, or I shall kick you to death.’

Lemma shook her head.

‘Look what you’ve done to me.’ Andrassy pulled the broken blade of the scaler from his hand. As he did so he fixed Lemma with his eyes and howled.

Lemma could feel her bladder evacuating. Then she realized that it was her waters that had broken. The shock of the attack had brought on parturition. She moaned. ‘Please leave me. My baby is going to come.’

Andrassy laughed. ‘No, it isn’t.’ He flicked the blanket off the bed beside him, covering Lemma from head to toe, like a magician preparing for a conjuring trick. Then he threw his full weight across her.

Radu had regained consciousness sufficiently to hear both Lemma’s plea and Andrassy’s response to it. A vast sense of outrage suffused him. Lemma was carrying his first child. She was his wife. She looked to him for protection and comfort. And he had let her down.

Radu struggled to his knees. He swayed in place for a moment and then lurched forwards. He grabbed Andrassy around the throat and threw himself backwards, pulling Andrassy over with him, so that Andrassy lay on top of him, but with his back parallel to the ground. As he did so, Radu scissored Andrassy’s body with his legs and held him as in a vice. Andrassy tried to free his arms from the nutcracker grip of Radu’s legs, but he could obtain no leverage.

Lemma was struggling out from beneath the blanket.

‘Kill him, Lemma. Kill him. He cannot move. I cannot hold him like this for long.’

Lemma began searching for the broken fish scaler in the half darkness.

‘Quickly, Lemma. Quickly.’

Andrassy roared and thrashed. He threw himself first to one side and then the other. Each move was agony for Radu, but still he held on like the Old Man of the Sea had held on to Sinbad in the stories his grandmother had told him as a child. Slowly – inevitably – he felt one of Andrassy’s arms beginning to come adrift. ‘Quickly, Lemma. I am losing him’

Lemma had found the broken fish scaler. She held it against her chest. She was weeping uncontrollably.

‘Strike him!’

Lemma shook her head.

‘Lemma, strike him. I order you. I am your husband.’ It was the only thing Radu could think of to say. It was clear that Lemma was frozen in place with fear.

Andrassy threw his head back, barely missing Radu’s nose and mouth. He used Radu’s loss of concentration to free one of his arms completely. Fortunately for Radu it was the one that Lemma had speared with the fish scaler – the hand lacked strength, and functioned like a sluggardly sort of fin.

Andrassy struck backwards with the arm. His damaged hand bounced off the top of Radu’s skull. Andrassy shrieked in pain.

‘He is getting free. Lemma. Please.’

Lemma leaned forward and poked Andrassy with the broken fish scaler. The shattered blade did not even pierce his flesh. Andrassy yelled and threw himself to one side, oversetting Radu and subtly altering the balance of power.

Radu could feel his legs weakening. He swung round on top of Andrassy and reached for the scaler. ‘Quickly. Give it to me.’

Lemma handed him the scaler.

Radu pulled Andrassy’s head back by the hair and plunged the shattered scaler into the area above his carotid artery, just as he would do to a deer before bleeding it. The fractured blade, however, was no longer fit for purpose. It pierced Andrassy’s skin, but stopped just short of the carotid sheath.

Radu levered the blade back and forth while Andrassy bucked beneath him like a rodeo bull. Andrassy was moaning now – a sort of involuntary rictus, half human, half animal. It sounded like the echoes to the entrance to hell.

Then the moaning stopped.

Radu shook his head. The silence in the tent was deafening. ‘What did you do, Lemma?’

Lemma eased herself backwards so that she was sitting on her heels. She held her bloodied hands up in front of her face and stared at them. ‘I found the carving knife.’

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Between them, they hauled and dragged Andrassy’s carcass to the house. Lemma stopped every now and then to clutch at her stomach, but it was beyond Radu’s power to spare her the discomfort. What they were doing was brutally necessary, and he did not have the strength to manage the job alone. Each time Lemma moaned, it cut his heart to the quick.

They settled Andrassy in a corner of the ruined entrance hall. Radu went through Andrassy’s pockets and put the contents to one side. Then he covered Andrassy with stones, broken furniture, and pieces of fallen masonry – it wouldn’t hide him forever, but it would fool the casual observer.

Radu kneeled down and sifted through Andrassy’s things. ‘Look. We’re in luck. Car keys.’ Radu held up the keys and stared at them. Then he lit a match and looked closer. ‘It says Simca. And a number.’ He pocketed Andrassy’s wallet, cell phone, and a penknife, and covered the remaining articles with a brick.

‘What is Simca?’

Lemma was sheet pale and her expression was strained. Her face seemed smaller to Radu, as if he were looking at her through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. She had a livid bruise on one cheek, and there was dried blood by the side of her mouth. Radu cupped her face in one hand and rubbed the blood off with a moistened finger. ‘Simca is a kind of car. They haven’t made them for years. It will be easy enough to spot.’

‘How so?’

‘There is only one usable road out of here when there is snow. This man will have parked up near the highway – somewhere it is easy to get out again – and then walked on in. That is what I would have done in his place.’

‘But I cannot walk, Radu. Back there. In the tent. My waters broke.’

‘What? Why did you not tell me?’

‘How could I? The man was trying to kill us. And then you needed my help dragging him. It would not have been right to burden you.’

Radu dropped his face into his hands. He took a few deep breaths and then looked up at his wife. He held out one hand and Lemma crept into the circle of his arms. ‘I am sorry, Luludja. Sorry that I have brought you into this. Sorry that you have had to help me kill and bury this man.’

Lemma looked up. ‘I am not sorry. You are my husband. I will follow you anywhere. I will do anything. You have only to ask me.’

Radu crushed her to him and kissed her many times on the forehead. ‘We must collect all we can from the tent. Then we must walk as far as this man’s car. We can manage it. Sometimes the waters break before labour, do they not? If there has been a shock. Or an emergency. There may be much time before the baby comes.’

Lemma braved a laugh. ‘Radu, are you now an expert in pregnancy? Where did you learn this art? Have you been married before and you are not telling me?’

Radu covered his eyes with his forearm, as a man will do who has been caught out cheating. He walked as far as the door of the house and looked out. ‘I have watched. I have seen. I am the child of women too, you know.’ He was pleased that Lemma was teasing him. Pleased that she had forgotten, even if only for a little while, about what had gone before. He needed to keep her focused on the issue at hand, and away from what was happening in her womb. ‘But we have no time. Someone knows this man was here. They know what he was trying to do. They will send after him. When they find him, as they will eventually do, they will come after us. Maybe the police too. So we cannot think to cross borders.’

‘What?’

‘First we must go to the others. Warn them. Tell them of this.’

‘But look at you. One eye is closed. You have bruises and blood all over your face. If anyone sees you, they will remember you. Later, it will be obvious to all that it was we who murdered this man.’

‘I will cross that river when I come to it. Can you walk?’

Lemma’s face changed. ‘I can walk.’

Radu tried to smile, but his damaged eye gave him a grotesque appearance.

‘Radu, you look like a gargoyle. I must see to your eye. We can pack it with snow.’

‘I tell you we have no time.’ He led her by the hand back towards their tent. ‘Dress yourself in layers of your own and Yola’s clothes. As many as you can fit on. And take the heaviest shoes you have. Also clothes for the children. Then pack food into the rucksack. Anything you can think of that keeps. I shall fetch the sleeping bags and some extra clothes for the men.’

‘The men have warm clothes already. The others too. I saw them leave this morning. You will not be able to carry everything, Radu. We should only take what is vital.’

Radu nodded. Lemma, like all Gypsy women, was easily the most practical of the two of them. ‘Then we will take just the sleeping bags and the food.’

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