times. That’s why they were given the, ah, goose’s foot to wear. To symbolize and epitomize their malformation.’
‘Why? Why do they have webbed fingers and toes?’
‘Genetics. They are a mountain people, inbred! Deformities like this are common in isolated communities with smaller gene pools. They don’t get bred out. Fascinating right?’
‘Sure.’ Tomasky went quiet. Then he added. ‘And you’re saying our victims…are Cagots then. Someone is killing the Cag…ots?’
‘Seems that way, Andrew. We don’t know why, but we know that some of them are Cagots, and the ones who are Cagot and deformed get tortured. And the killings are happening all over. France, Britain, Canada.’ He paused. ‘And some of them are old, and they were in Occupied France during the war, maybe in this camp called Gurs. Maybe that’s what links them as well. And some of them have lots of money…’ Simon wanted to laugh at the bewildering evidence, but at least it was evidence. ‘I need to speak to Bob Sanderson. He needs to know this.’
‘Sure. I’m on it. I’ll tell the DCI as soon as I see him.’
‘Excellent. Thanks, Andrew.’
Simon rang off. He set down the mobile and stared out of the window. For half an hour he exulted in his discovery. Then his hymn of happiness was joined by the chime of the doorbell. The journalist breezed down the hall and opened the door. Behind it was Andrew Tomasky. Surprising.
‘Hello, DS. I thought –’
The policeman pushed through the door and kicked it shut behind. Simon stood back.
Tomasky had a knife.
26
Tomasky growled with anger as his first stab of the knife missed Simon’s neck – by an inch.
The journalist gasped as he sensed another slashing cut, and he swerved, again, batting away the blade – but Tomasky came at him for a third time, jumping forward, and this time he got a hand on his victim’s throat and the knife was aimed directly at an eye.
Choking and spitting, Simon caught the stabbing arm at the last moment. The knife was poised just millimetres from the pupil, shaking with the violence of their struggle.
Tomasky was thrusting down, his victim was holding the wrist and grinding the hand upwards. They were on the floor. The knife was too close to see, it was just a menacing silver blur in his vision: a looming greyness. The knifepoint came closer, the journalist shuddered – he was going to be blinded, then killed. Drilled into the brain through the optical bone.
His eye was blinking reflexively, shedding tears. Loud noises rumbled behind. The bladepoint trembled with the strength of two men opposed. Simon screamed and made a final effort to force the blade away, but he was losing the battle. He shut his eyes and waited for the steel to sink into the softness, popping open the eyeball, then crunching into his brain.
Then his face was covered with splattering wetness, like he’d been slapped with heavy blancmange: and suddenly Tomasky was just a body, dead weight, sagging down, and he forced the dead policeman off his chest and he stared upwards.
Sanderson.
DCI Sanderson was standing in the door; next to him was a policeman with chest armour. The door had been kicked open. The chest-armoured cop had a gun.
‘Shot, Richman.’
‘Sir.’
Sanderson reached a hand down and pulled the journalist to his feet. But when he stood up he felt his knees go, trembling and buckling with the fear and the shock; he crumpled to the floor again. He was staring at Tomasky’s body. The head had been blown apart, by a sidelong shot, at close range. The skull was in pieces. Actual pieces scattered across the hallway.
Then he sensed the wetness on his face. Smeary wetness. He had Tomasky’s blood and maybe his brains on his face. His throat tightened with nausea as he stood; without a word to the policemen he hurled himself upstairs to the bathroom, where he averted himself from the mirror: he didn’t want to see himself covered with brains and blood. Splashing water and more water on his face, he used a box of tissues, and half a bottle of handsoap, and finally he rinsed and nearly gagged, and rinsed again.
Now he checked the mirror. His face was clean. But there was something stuck in his cheek, lodged in its own little wound. Like a small piece of glass, burrowed in his flesh. Leaning close to the mirror he plucked the thing from his cheek.