the earth, but what had appeared to be just another part of the upper fuselage was revealed, on closer examination, to be a canvas sheet fixed to the metal. It had probably allowed Malphas to enter and leave the plane easily, if he chose to do so.
‘Charlie?’ It was Louis’s voice. ‘I think you need to come out here.’
‘On my way,’ I said.
‘Now would be good.’
Another voice spoke, one that I knew well.
‘And if you have a gun, Mr Parker, I’d advise you to throw it out ahead of you. I want to see your hands raised as you emerge. If you appear with a weapon there will be blood.’
I did as I was ordered. I emerged from the plane with my hands above my head, the satchel on my left shoulder, and prepared to confront the Collector.
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