Colleen McCullough - Naked Cruelty

She was petrified, understanding that this was her only chance at winning. From the moment when he had stood forth in all the glory of his alter ego, he had cast her into paroxysms of fear. Cold and dark as outer space, he was a creature inhabiting a lightless human body, obsessed with the spectacle of terror and the ecstasy of someone else’s suffering.

But her fear was not for her own torture and death. It was terror that she might fail. She couldn’t fail, she couldn’t!

“Do you take the rests so that you can get it up again?” she asked, interrupting his concentration.

He looked up, startled, and, as she had hoped, didn’t notice how far she had moved.

“Even you cannot inspire me to frenzy,” he said, sneering.

“Have you ever achieved orgasm?”

A look of horrified prudery came over his face. “Disgusting! You are disgusting! Things like that are not your business!”

“What utter crap! Do you come, Kurt?”

Now he was really angry, past noticing that she was moving.

“Immoral! You are immoral!”

A few more inches. Nearly there, nearly there…

He rose from the white velvet chair and stormed toward the bed, face contorted in fury; it was then that Helen saw the silenced.22 on the bedside table next to him. But it was her advantage. Even as she twisted her body up to a sitting position while he, astounded, gaped at her, Helen’s hand came up holding her gun, safety off, round in the chamber. She shot him in the right chest. He leaped backward to sprawl on the fluffy white floor, staring up at her as the pink bubbles gathered on his lips.

“You’re going to be as dead as a dodo, Kurt,” she said, swinging her legs on to the carpet well clear of the growing, wet red stain. “Can you still speak?”

He tried, but coughed instead; his hands flailed.

“Afraid of dying, Kurt?”

That provoked extreme agitation. “This is an excellent apartment, quite sound-proof,” she said in a relaxed, chatty voice. “No one will hear my gun as anything except far-off backfires. I will call the police, of course. When I feel like it. I’m going to make you suffer first. A gut shot. My, it will hurt!”

The squat, ugly muzzle came up; the pistol roared.

Kurt screamed, a thin, fluid sound.

“I don’t think that hit a major artery,” she said, “but you can always hope it did. No, no artery! Just liver and gut.”

His screams were dwindling, the pink foam spilling from his mouth, the blood from the gut shot dark and venous.

She kept talking to him, though whether at the end he heard her, Helen didn’t know.

Only after the last life died from his eyes did she shoot him in the heart. “Show’s over,” she said, looking at her naked body. “No way any cops are going to see this.” She went to her dressing room and slipped on a silk robe, then went to her study and picked up the phone.

“Captain Delmonico? This is Helen MacIntosh. I’ve killed the Dodo in my new apartment at Busquash Inlet. It belonged to Amanda Warburton. Will you organize things, please?”

When Carmine arrived with Delia, she was sitting on the far side of the bed from Kurt von Fahlendorf’s body, composed and displaying no symptoms of shock.

“What happened? The full story,” he said, standing where he could see her, but not too close.

She told him lucidly and plainly; it was, he thought, the most exemplary narration by a killer that he had ever heard; she had learned her lessons well.

“The Commissioner was right not to switch to these cuffs, Captain. Kurt saw them in my study and used them-lucky for me! I did a Houdini while he read his book. My hands are much smaller than yours. I knew how to work them so the ratchet didn’t move.”

“Irony in operation,” Carmine said.

“You knew he was the Dodo,” she accused.

“After reading your journals, yes. That can be your first examination, next Monday morning. Go through them and find out what gave Kurt away. It’s all there.”

“The paperweight?”

“Yes. The little colored glass trails going in all directions look like the tracks of sub-atomic particles. I saw it because I read science magazines.”

“And I saw it because Kurt had shown me photos, but then I forgot until tonight. My memory needs honing.” She looked disapproving. “Why didn’t you arrest him, Captain?”

“It had better be Carmine from now on, Helen. There was no tangible evidence. My big mistake was in thinking he’d never put you on his victims list. You didn’t fit the stereotype in so far as he had one. For example, you were too aggressive. You were a source of information-he read your journals until I saw the light and locked them up. My last mistake,” Carmine said, “was in underestimating the depth of his madness.”

“What about girls who did fit the stereotype, Carmine?” Delia asked. “We had so much trouble finding them.”

“That was because we never managed to refine our list of qualities that appealed to him,” Carmine said. “You and Helen exhausted yourselves looking, but always in something of a fog. Even now, do we really know all the qualities?”

“No,” said Helen. “He gave himself away to me over dinner tonight. I don’t know if he intended to, or not. It also came as a shock to him that I’d left Talisman Towers, moved out of Carew. Living in Carew is a definite, I believe now.”

This little madam is as tough as old army boots, thought Delia as she listened. Oh, she’ll undergo a reaction later on tonight, but nothing a battle-hardened veteran wouldn’t. She is going to be one of those cops around whom criminals steer a wide berth. Dainty and deadly, that’s Helen. I’m glad I like her, but I understand why none of our male detectives do.

“You’re a crack shot, Helen,” Delia said suddenly. “Why didn’t you go for his head?”

“I was so awkwardly positioned,” Helen said, a falter creeping into her voice. “He and I were on almost the same plane, it was like standing sideways to a target. The second shot went into his belly because right at the moment I squeezed the trigger, he leaped in the air. Finally he was right-that was the heart shot.”

“You won’t go to trial, but there will be an internal police enquiry,” Carmine said. “Just tell them that, and don’t lose any sleep. When an officer lethally discharges a firearm, it’s inevitable.”

Her eyes filled with tears, she shivered. “I know all that! Don’t forget that I’ve been a police officer for three years.”

Ah! Signs of tension at last. Thank God for that. Carmine had begun to wonder at her self-control, forgetting she was M.M.’s daughter. Much steel there. “Kurt’s house can wait,” he said.

“I won’t be able to participate?” Helen asked.

“No. The Commissioner hasn’t taken your badge and gun. You can work anything except the Dodo- as a trainee . However, by the end of January I think you can start looking for a proper job.”

Her face lit up. “Captain! Carmine! That’s wonderful.”

“Take comfort from the fact that I’ll never have another trainee half as good. Which makes me doubly sorry for this shooting.”

“You mean there’s no vacancy for me here, sir?”

“I’m afraid not, Helen. We still have a pool of eligible men to wade through. Where would you like to go from here?”

“I’ll have to think about that.”

“You do pick odd moments to dispense earth-shaking news,” Delia said as they put their coats on in the hall.

“She’s not nearly as composed as she looks,” Carmine said. “She needed a boost, and her fate is decided.”

“I offered to stay, but she wouldn’t hear of it,” Delia said. “She announced that she’ll sleep on a living room couch-apparently she hasn’t furnished the other bedrooms yet. Knowing she’s still in the throes of decorating makes me hope she does take my one piece of good advice.”