Филип Керр - The Second Angel

He walked toward the building, already adjusting the volume of the Mozart playing in his right ear. Don Giovanni. An opera for night and violence if ever there was one. Presenting himself at the gatehouse door, Rimmer paused as it was unlocked and then stepped inside. The guard stayed behind his desk.

‘Rawnsley,’ Rimmer said coolly. ‘Mrs. Dallas is expecting me.’ He was hardly concerned that the man might remember his face and offer a description to the police. That was the thing about scanning cameras. It made human beings lazy, stopped them from paying attention. The guard hardly looked at him, anxious to get back to the game he was watching on the holo-TV in front of him.

‘Elevator’s over there,’ said the guard.

‘Thanks,’ said Rimmer and stepped inside the car, humming along with the music. As Donna Anna began her first aria, the elevator delivered him onto the penthouse floor and Rimmer stepped into the short hallway that led straight up to the only front door.

Demea’s chemically repressed gunshot hardly sounded loud enough to scare a cat, let alone blow a fist-sized hole in a man’s sternum. At first he’d thought it was someone clapping their hands before rubbing them together for warmth. But when Tanaka dropped to the ground like a felled ox, Dallas realized with a shock that his friend had been shot. It was another second before he realized that the gunfire had come from the tall, red-haired woman now running away.

Fumbling at the catch of his shoulder holster, Dallas drew his own gun, a Colt Autograph .45. Even as the electronic chip embedded in the rubberized grip received an identifying signal from the transponder on his watch strap, he fired. And missed.

The extreme cold meant that there were only a few people on the street. From somewhere, Dallas drew on reserves of stamina that found him more than equal to the pursuit he now took up and he quickly gained on the red-haired woman until, with no more than twenty to thirty yards between them, she stopped and fired back at him. Dallas heard something whiz over his head — like the sound of a Coke can being opened. Instinctively he ducked and fired back, and this time he thought he must have hit her because the woman staggered for a moment, swayed precariously, and then hit the ground. Cautiously, Dallas ran toward her, prepared to fire again, but as he grew nearer he saw that she had dropped her weapon. Then he noticed how her legs were jerking spasmodically. And not just her legs, her whole body looked as if it was in the grip of an unseen current.

Dallas thumbed the switch on the gun grip to activate the onboard flashlight, and then shone the powerful beam onto the woman’s outstretched hands to check for another weapon. There was none. Nor was there any sign of blood, and it was only when he moved the light onto her face that Dallas finally understood what was happening. A face so cyanic and blue it looked as though there might have been an invisible noose around her neck, or a plastic bag pulled tight over her head. She was asphyxiating from lack of oxygen, not just in her lungs but in her whole body as its hemoglobin entered a critically deoxygenated state. He watched, horrified and yet fascinated. So sheltered was the life Dallas had enjoyed that he’d never actually seen someone dying of the P2 virus. And it was every bit as ghastly as he’d read. This was a very prolonged death, like slow strangulation. Dallas even considered administering a coup de grace, shooting her through the head. But the memory of Tanaka’s undeserved and ignominious death, as well as the hope that in her death throes she might gasp some monosyllabic explanation for what she had done, stayed his hand. For what seemed like the eternity that now beckoned to her, the woman writhed and choked and drooled and gasped, until finally, after more than twenty minutes, she grew still. And for the first time, Dallas understood the full horror of the virus.

‘Blessed Are the Pure in Blood,’ he muttered with more meaning and gratitude than he had ever known before.

When Dallas was quite sure that the woman was dead, he searched her pockets for some clue as to her identity and motive, but found only a trading card and a Clean Bill of Health, which he pocketed, intending to give it to the police later. Then he collected her gun and her sunglasses and walked quickly back toward the Huxley Hotel.

The disquiet he felt crowded into his still-intoxicated mind, leaving him so ill at ease that even his own clothes seemed alien to him. It was another minute before he made the discovery that this feeling was partly due to the fact he was wearing Tanaka’s smaller fur coat. In their slightly inebriated state, they had swapped coats without realizing it. The question this discovery begged was pushed to one side by a more mundane one, which was why the dead woman should have thought sunglasses would provide her with a sufficient disguise — if that was indeed the reason she had been wearing them when she shot Tanaka through the heart. Experimentally, Dallas put the glasses on.

A small crowd of people had gathered around Tanaka’s dead body. They drew back as Dallas approached, for he was now carrying a gun in each hand. Right away Dallas saw the infrared marker on his own coat lapel. With this disclosure came the revelation that the bullet had surely been meant for him.

Dallas’s next thoughts were not for himself, but for Aria and Caro. Moving quickly away from the crowd now spilling out of the Huxley, he unfolded a matchbook phone in the palm of his hand and told the tiny computer to connect him with his apartment. When no one replied, not even the maid, Dallas began walking quickly, then running, in the direction of the park and the exclusive building where his apartment was located.

Rimmer shot the maid in the face as soon as she opened the door. The woman died on her feet, with no more sound than the automatic that killed her — at least until she and the tray of glasses she had been carrying hit the parquet floor. Kicking the door shut behind him, Rimmer glanced quickly around the huge apartment. He hadn’t counted on the size of the place. He’d hoped to surprise Aria Dallas at rather closer quarters — to shoot the maid, proving that he meant business, and then to put the gun to Aria’s head to persuade her to cooperate. But there was no sign of her. Just as he was thinking she might not have heard the crash of glasses, Rimmer saw a door close quietly. He moved quickly toward it, intent on keeping her from using a phone or pressing some kind of alarm. It never occurred to him that she would find a gun and start shooting at him. But for a loud clang, as her first bullet hit a brass light fitting, he might never have known he was being shot at. The second bullet from the silenced gun nearly caught him in the shoulder.

Rimmer threw himself behind a cream-colored sofa just as Aria’s third bullet, amid a burst of wooden splinters, hit the lime-oak-paneled wall immediately behind the spot where he’d just been standing.

‘Shit,’ he yelled and snatched the Mozart from his ear. It was clear this wasn’t going to be half as easy as he’d supposed. He was going to need both ears.

‘Your name’s not Rawnsley,’ yelled Aria. ‘It’s Rimmer, you bastard.’

‘I’m flattered you remember me, Mrs. Dallas. Look, can we talk about this?’

‘What’s to talk about? You shot my maid.’

‘Your maid was an industrial spy, working for a competing company. She’d have killed me if I hadn’t shot her first. She’s been spying on your husband for quite a while.’

‘Oh yes? What was her name?’

‘Her real name? Ludmilla Antonovna.’ Rimmer realized that all of this might have sounded a little more convincing if he hadn’t started laughing.