Peter James - A Twist of the Knife

Beneath was a curious-looking altar, a white cross rising above what looked like a white two-metre-long beer barrel.

As she stared at it, there was a noise that made her jump. A sudden, terrifying sound. A mechanical grinding, roaring, vibrating bellow of heavy machinery. The barrel began to rise, the white cross with it, the floor trembling beneath her. As it rose higher, behind it a bolt of grey silk slowly unfurled. Then a coffin rose into view. Janet stood, mesmerized. The grinding, roaring sound filled the galleried room.

Then the sound stopped as abruptly as it had started.

There was a moment of total silence.

The coffin lid began to rise.

Janet screamed.

Then she saw Hans’s smiling face.

He pushed the lid aside and it fell to the floor with an echoing bang, and he began to haul himself out, grinning from ear to ear, hot and sweaty, wearing nothing but a boiler suit over his naked skin and black work boots.

She stood and stared at him for a moment, in total wonder and joy. He looked even more amazing than she remembered. More handsome, more masculine, more raw.

He stood up, and he was taller than she remembered, too.

‘My most beautiful angel in all the world,’ he said. ‘You are here! You came! You really came!’

‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’

‘My brave angel,’ he said. ‘My brave English angel.’ Then he scooped her in his strong arms, pulled her tightly to him, so tightly she could feel the contour of his body beneath the thin blue cotton, and kissed her. His breath smelled sweet, and was tinged with cigarette smoke, garlic and beer, the manly smells and taste she remembered. She kissed him back, wildly, deeply, feeling his tongue, holding it for a second, losing it, then finding it again.

Finally, breathless with excitement, their lips separated. They stood still, staring at each other, his eyes so close to hers they were just a warm blur.

‘So,’ he said. ‘We have work to do, ja ?’

She pushed her hands down inside the front of his trousers and gripped him gently. ‘We do,’ she smiled.

He drew breath sharply and exhaled, grinning. ‘First we must work.’

‘First we make love,’ she replied.

‘You are a very naughty little girl,’ he teased.

‘Are you going to punish me?’

‘That will depend, yes? On how naughty you have been. Have you been very naughty?’

She nodded solemnly, stood back a pace, and put her finger in her mouth like a little child. ‘Very,’ she said.

‘Tell me?’

‘I can show you.’

He smiled. ‘Go and fetch the car, I will be prepared.’

Five minutes later, Janet reversed the Passat up to the side entrance of the crematorium, where there was a green elevator door. As she halted the car and climbed out, the metal door slid open and Hans stood there, with a coffin on a trolley. There was a strange expression on his face and he was looking at her in a way that made her, suddenly, deeply uncomfortable.

Her eyes shot to the coffin, then back to his face.

Then to the coffin.

Had she made a terrible mistake? To be alone, here, with all her bridges burned, her trail carefully covered. Had she walked into a trap?

No one at home in Eastbourne knew where she was. No one in the world. Only Hans. And she was alone with him at the crematorium, in the falling darkness, and he was standing, looking at her, beside an open coffin.

She felt suddenly as if her insides had turned to ice. She wanted to be home, back home, where it was safe. Dull but safe. With Trevor.

But none of that was an option any longer.

Then he smiled. His normal, big, warm Hans smile. And the ice inside her melted in an instant, as if it had flash-thawed. ‘In the trunk?’ he questioned.

Nodding, she popped open the boot of the car, and then they both stood and stared for some moments at the black plastic sheeting, and the curved shape inside it.

‘No problem?’ he asked her, putting his arm around her and nibbling her ear tenderly.

‘He was good as gold,’ she said, wriggling with the excitement of his touch. ‘Went out like a lamb after I swapped his insulin for sugared water. But he was heavy. I nearly didn’t have the strength to get him into the boot.’

Where there’s a will, there’s a way, Trevor was fond of saying. And, of course, what was particularly sweet was that Trevor had written a will a long time ago, leaving everything to her, naturally.

‘It is good he is so thin,’ Hans said, unwrapping him. ‘I have two cadavers waiting for the burners and one is very thin. I have the death certificates from the doctor’s; we are all set. He will fit nicely into the coffin with the thin one. No one will know a thing.’

Down in the basement, as they wheeled the coffin out of the elevator, Janet recognized the beige metal casings, the instruments, the dials. The word ‘Ruppmann’ was printed above them, and on other machines in the room, and on top of wiring diagrams. Opposite them, two coffins sat, one with the lid open.

A few minutes passed and the thin occupant of the open coffin now had a companion, squashed tightly against him, as Hans screwed the lid down.

Then Hans smiled. A totally wicked smile.

A few minutes later, after he had pressed a number of buttons and the mechanical doors had closed, and the roar of the burners of the two huge furnaces rose to a crescendo, they could see, through the observation window, flames licking along the lengths of the two coffins.

Janet felt Hans’s arms around her waist. Slowly, shedding their clothes, they sank to the floor.

Smoke rose from the chimney into the night sky. They made love while the burners rose to their optimum temperature, and their own body heat rose at the same time.

In the morning, Hans raked the remaining pieces of bone into the cremulator, then ground them to a powder that mingled with the ashes. Then they stepped through the crematorium doors, arm in arm. Outside, in the early, pre-dawn light, the world seemed an altogether brighter place. Birds were starting to sing.

Hans slipped an arm around her, then whispered into her ear, ‘You know, my English angel, I will never let you go.’

And for an instant he sounded just like Trevor. She kissed him, then whispered back into his ear, ‘Don’t push your luck.’

‘What is that meaning?’ he asked.

She smiled.

The first time they came to Venice, Johnny had told his wife he was on an important case; Joy had told her husband she was going to see her Italian relatives.

In the large, dingy hotel room with its window overlooking the Grand Canal, they tore off each other’s clothes before they had even unpacked, and made love to the sound of lapping water and water taxis blattering past outside. She was insatiable; they both were. They made love morning, noon and night, only venturing out for food to stoke their energy. On that trip they barely even took time out to see the sights of the city. They had eyes only for each other. Horny eyes, each greedy for the other’s naked body. They were aware that they had precious little time.

Johnny whispered to her that Woody Allen, whose movies they both loved, was once asked if he thought that sex was dirty, and Woody had replied, ‘Only if you are doing it right.’

So they did it right. Over and over again. And in between they laughed a lot. Johnny told Joy she was the sexiest creature in the world. She told him no, he was.

One time, when he was deep inside her, she whispered into Johnny’s ear, ‘Let’s promise each other to come back and make love here in this room every year, for ever.’

‘Even after we’re dead?’ he said.

‘Why not? You’re stiff when you’re dead, aren’t you? Stiff as a gondolier’s oar!’