Steven Dunne - The Disciple

‘Who’s doing this?’ he muttered to himself. He said it again, only louder, lifting his head to project to a nearby listener. His voice bounced around the bare room without receiving an answer. ‘Sorenson’s dead!’ he shouted this time.

He picked up the picture frame and examined it more closely. The picture was a photocopy. The necklace with its silver hearts still winked at him, but Brook was able to draw comfort from the artifice. He pulled the picture from the frame and slid it into his pocket, then listened to the house exhale around him. The pulse of the rap music throbbed faintly outside. He looked at his watch again. Ten past one. Fifty minutes to wait for The Reaper. He wasn’t coming, Brook knew that. Sorenson was dead — he’d seen it with his own eyes. But someone was pretending to be Sorenson, someone was tugging at Brook’s memories of the Maples case, and he was determined to put a stop to it. He bent down to blow out the candle and sat behind the door to wait in the dark.

The man felt the heat from the blaze in the oil drum. He looked at the teenage boys slumped on the old sofas, all four bodies contorted and unmoving. Empty cans, paper plates and glass bottles were strewn at their feet, cigarette ends littered the ground. He turned to the old car on bricks, the portable CD player on the roof, its display drawing his eye.

The man listened to the music. It was soft and beautiful, guaranteed to soothe. He wanted to close his eyes and let his mind drift, but he knew he had to stay focused. He returned to the sofas and crouched down to examine his dark shoes and black trousers by the light from the fire. They were flecked with the stains of drying blood. He stood slowly and prepared to leave.

He glanced at the blood-smeared scalpel on the ground and picked it up as carefully as he could manage with his gloved hand. He placed it on the arm of the sofa next to Jason Wallis, watching where he placed his feet to avoid brushing through more blood.

As he prepared to move away, he noticed something in the boy’s hand. He hesitated, then slid the mobile phone from Jason’s blood-spattered grasp before moving the boy’s hand to rest over the scalpel, pleased with this sudden inspiration. He squinted at the phone in the poor light. It wasn’t a model he was familiar with and it looked complicated. He thumbed at a number but his hands were clumsy in the thick black gloves so he peeled one off and dialled again.

At first the man said nothing when the voice at the other end of the line answered. He hadn’t thought what he might say. He glanced around at the four bodies, clothes saturated with blood, massive wounds deforming the throats which had once carried oxygen to now inert lungs — all except the Wallis boy, whose injuries weren’t immediately visible.

When prompted again on the phone, he answered briefly through the material of his balaclava, then threw the mobile onto Jason’s lap, deciding he had stayed longer than he should. He started to walk away but as he did so he heard a groan behind him. The man froze and turned slowly around. Jason Wallis was stirring.

The boy opened his drunken, drug-addled eyes and gawked at the man, without really taking in what he was seeing. He tried to speak but couldn’t. For a second the man fancied he saw the boy smile. He opened his mouth to try again.

‘I’m ready,’ breathed Jason and attempted to lift himself. Instead he slumped back onto the sofa, his eyes closing as he returned to the depths, oblivious to the spouts of darkening blood from his friends dotting his face and hair and soaking into his clothes.

Brook woke with a start. He looked at his watch. Two o’clock. It was time. He stood to stretch his aching legs as quietly as he could, listening for any sound from downstairs. He remembered the rap music and wondered why it was no longer pulsing, so he walked over to the window. The large piece of board covering the window had a couple of improvised catches holding it in place. He loosened the bent nails to allow the board to fall into his arms and put it down before leaning out of the glass-free window to look out over the quadrangle of high fences at the back of the block of houses.

He heard the music clearly now but it had changed; it was soft and melodic. He searched his memory banks and peered into the night. There was a bonfire in an old oil drum, two or three doors away. Brook could see the glow of the dying embers crackling and fizzing in the soft breeze. To his surprise he could also see a car and what looked like a couple of old sofas positioned around the improvised brazier. He fancied he could see the heads of several people on the sofas, their feet stretched out towards the heat.

He could even see the display of a CD player as it played, could see the lights through the fog, rising and falling with each note. He listened for a second to the soft tinkling of the piano. ‘Clair de Lune’, of course. Debussy. Something beautiful. Something …

Brook stiffened. His face set he turned and walked purposefully down the stairs and out of the house.

Sorenson led the two agents towards the cabin, his hands gripped resolutely behind his back. On nearing the house, he gestured towards a covered patio which had a large glass-topped table supported by a heavy wrought-iron base in the shape of a quartet of nymphs. On the thick glass sat a chrome-plated coffee pot and three cups and saucers.

As they approached, Drexler could hear music, opera in fact, and narrowed his eyes to try and place it. He knew it, he was sure. His mother had been a major Pavarotti fan before her illness and that was the voice that he recognised. At the table, Sorenson gestured at a pair of wicker chairs towards which the agents moved.

A book lay open on the table and Drexler took the long way round to his chair to get a glance at the title. It was a slim paperback volume of The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. Drexler smiled faintly. Their host was a philosopher.

Sorenson saw him looking but said nothing. Without asking, he poured coffee into the two empty cups and pushed them towards the two agents before freshening up his own cup. ‘Please help yourself to milk or sugar. I’m sorry I don’t have any cream. I know how you Americans jump at any opportunity to increase your weight.’ Sorenson beamed at the two agents to dissipate the insult.

McQuarry emitted a mirthless laugh. ‘Don’t worry, sir. I’m sure we can locate a box of Krispy Kremes when we’re done.’

Sorenson smiled at her response.

The music was clearer now and Drexler saw it was coming from an open pair of French windows behind them. He remembered it now. He’d heard it in a movie, The Untouchables. Robert de Niro was AI Capone, sobbing his brutal heart out at a performance of Pagliacci. The climax of the piece, when the clown has to face up to his wife’s infidelities.

‘This is nice,’ he said. ‘Vesti la giubba , isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is. How gratifying. A man of culture. So hard to find away from the East Coast.’ Drexler looked over to his partner as she narrowed her eyes at Sorenson. McQuarry was a straightforward person who spoke her mind, yet believed in good manners and only attempted humour with people she knew. Sorenson’s blend of intellectual vanity and restrained taunting would not be familiar to her.

But most of the Brits Drexler knew from college interacted in a very similar way to Sorenson — constantly on the offensive, probing for a weakness to deride. Though it was not the norm for a Californian, Drexler had sought out their company and had learned to appreciate their mocking.

Sorenson turned to fix Drexler with his coal-black eyes. ‘Please sit.’ Drexler obeyed on reflex, suddenly unsure whether he should have mentioned the opera. He’d given Sorenson a free piece of information about himself and received nothing in return. Their usual working method was to let the suspect do the running and underplay their own hand.