Laurence O’Bryan - The Manhattan Puzzle

‘It’s #89*99,’ he shouted. ‘Please! Stop!’

Bidoner keyed the password into his phone and pressed send.

‘I hope you’re not lying,’ said Xena. ‘I want all this to have a happy ending.’

She squeezed his thigh with her hand, then stroked it.

Tears streamed from under his blindfold. His cheeks were red. It was good he couldn’t see the weals on his body, because he would know immediately that he wouldn’t be able to explain any of them to his wife.

‘Please, let me go. I promise not to tell anyone. I swear, on my children’s lives.’

Lord Bidoner’s mobile beeped as an incoming message came in. He nodded at Xena. The code had worked.

‘I believe you,’ she said. ‘But there is one more thing I must do for you.’

She put the Turboflame down and went to the fridge. She took out a six-inch-long serrated knife, honed with care to a perfect blade, from the freezer section.

She held it in the air, admiring its cold edge.

‘Now you will find release,’ she said.

The man’s body went still. His toes, which had scrunched up, half straightened. The only sound was his pain-filled whimpering.

The panic room in the apartment on Fifth Avenue, overlooking the skyscrapers of Manhattan, was soundproof. It was why they used the room.

Xena flicked the blade across the man’s pale skin, once, then twice, fascinated by how quickly blood gushed, how fast it flowed from a few simple cuts.

‘This is for my brothers,’ she said.

‘Don’t,’ he whimpered. Fear trembled in his voice. ‘I have two children, a wife.’

She growled, psyching herself up.

‘ Prima quattuor invocare unum ,’ she said, as she grabbed him, jerking him upwards and castrating him with one swinging motion.

She held the bloody remains up in the air.

His screams of terror and pain vibrated through the room as blood spurted two feet high. A foul smell followed and the man’s words became a babbling.

Lord Bidoner held his nose. He’d seen enough. He went out to the main room of the apartment, with its view towards the glittering Jazz-era spire of the Empire State Building.

‘You did good, my dear. The first offering has been done correctly,’ he said, when Xena joined him.

She was panting.

‘Come here.’

He pushed her up against the inch-thick glass of the window, as Manhattan glittered behind them.

Afterwards, he handed her a balloon glass containing a large shot of Asbach 21. She sipped the brandy, then downed it in one gulp.

Then she lay down on the sleek oak coffee table that dominated the room. The canyon of lights stretching into the velvet Manhattan night reflected all the way along the length of the table and onto her ebony skin.

He reached down and stroked her shoulder. It was trembling.

‘Three more before the moon rises again. That is what the book says. That is what we will do.’

She smiled up at him. Her white teeth shone as she leaned her head back and stretched.

A creak rang out against the muffled noise of night-time London.

‘Sean?’ Isabel’s voice echoed. Her head was off the pillow. Was that a shadow moving? The moment of deep pleasure at sensing his return was replaced in a second by fear, as no response came.

She slid out of bed. Alek, who was now four, was in the next room. If that was Sean out there, playing some game, she was going to make him pay. Big time. She’d just finished one of the most demanding projects she had worked on during her time as an IT security consultant, and her brain had been fried to mush. She needed sleep.

She stood in the doorway.

There was no one on the landing.

She peered downstairs. The house felt deserted. The heating had been off for hours. She went into Alek’s room, checked his breathing and tucked him in.

Was this going to be a replay of that night a few weeks ago when he didn’t come home? The thought made her shudder. In all the time she’d known him he’d never done anything like what he’d done that night.

She remembered the creak that had woken her. What had that been about?

Had she imagined it? Her dreams had been strange recently. Images from Istanbul and Jerusalem came too often. Maybe that was what had roused her.

She went downstairs and turned on all the lights. Nothing was out of place, though there was an odd smell. A lemony tang, as if a cleaner had passed through. She stood near the front door. This was all Sean’s fault. She picked up the telephone and pressed redial. The call went to voicemail, again.

She slammed the phone down.

Bastard.

Stop it. He’ll be home soon.

She turned out the lights, headed back to bed, and tried to sleep. The icy wind buffeting the window didn’t help. Neither did the cold space where Sean’s freckled body should have been.

The matchbook-thin Bang & Olufsen docking system said it was five past three. How many years do you get these days if you murder your husband?

She lay there, seething, angry not only with Sean, but with the idiots at BXH too. And with whoever had decided to hold their stupid celebration the night before. It was bad enough that they demanded he work long hours, couldn’t they at least let him come home?

When she woke again after a disturbed sleep, London rumbled even louder. It was ten to eight. Her first thought was that he’d come back, and had already gotten up. He usually woke before she did. He could be down in the kitchen making toast with that new poppyseed bread.

He’d stick his jaw out when she asked him what time he’d come in, then run a hand through his thick brown hair and give her that blue-eyed innocent look, his secret weapon ever since she’d met him in Istanbul.

She turned.

His side of the bed was unruffled. A prickling sensation ran over her skin.

She picked up her phone, pressed his number. He’d better have a good explanation. A very good explanation.

The call went to voicemail. She wasn’t going to leave another message.

Her stomach tightened. She felt sick. Where was he?

Her life was not supposed to be like this. She was too young for all this crap. They’d gone through a lot when they’d first met, that watery tunnel in Istanbul, that hellhole in Israel, but all that was long behind them. Their life was peaceful now, family oriented.

So what about that last time he hadn’t come home?

It hadn’t been that long ago. Three weeks, to be precise. That had been a Thursday night too. He’d come home for breakfast, pleading for forgiveness, with that elaborate excuse on his lips. What had it been? Oh yes, a planning meeting that had gone on too long.

Did he think the bank’s mega-merger finally being completed would be enough to placate her? How could a celebration dinner, drinks, explain this? He wasn’t even a full-time employee there, he was a consultant, working for the Institute of Applied Research on a project that had already eaten up a year of his life.

She breathed in, told herself to calm down.

Someone would have called her if anything had happened.

He was late. That was it. That was all.

The same as last time. And she would make him pay properly this time. She listened for the soft click of the front door opening. He wasn’t going to let her down. Sean didn’t do things like that. They were going to Paris later that day. They were going to be soaping each other in a pink marble bath at the Franklin Roosevelt Hotel, just off the Champs-Élysées, before midnight.

That was his plan.

Everything was ready.

Since his uncle and aunt had invited them to stay in the hotel with them while they were visiting Paris, she’d been counting the days. And Sean knew it.