Mark Mills - House of the Hanged

Face down on the mattress, his head turned to the wall, Tom knew he was at a serious disadvantage. The only thing in his favour was that the intruder seemed set on drawing closer, levelling the odds with every step, bringing himself within range.

It was the familiar, sweet-smelling odour that spurred Tom into action. He exploded from the mattress, twisting and hurling himself at the figure looming beside the bed. Caught off guard, the man was sent crashing to the floor with Tom on top of him, gripping his wrists.

Stay close in, but keep his hands where you can see them. Then finish him off.

He drove his forehead into the man’s face. Twice. He was going for a third when the man bellowed and twisted away, slipping Tom’s clutches, not big, but surprisingly strong, and with the natural agility of youth on his side. Tom was after him in an instant. He wasn’t expecting the leg to lash out, catching him in the midriff, upending him.

Winded, he just managed to suck in a lungful of air before the chloroform-drenched rag was clamped over his nose and mouth. The man held him tight in an embrace from behind, wrapping his legs around him, locking his ankles. Tom knew he only had a matter of moments before the world went black, and he reached back and dug his thumbs deep into his assailant’s eyes, threatening to scoop them out of their sockets.

It was an old lesson, long-forgotten, but it came back easily enough. It also worked.

The man screamed, and as he released his grip Tom rolled to his right, instinct telling him he needed a weapon.

Springing to his feet, he seized the African carving from the chest of drawers. The naïf wooden figure of a woman had cost him a small fortune from a dealer in Paris, and it now saved his life.

Spinning back, he swung her blindly like a club just as the man was bringing a pistol to bear on him. The carving broke off at the knees and the gun skittered across the floor, beneath the bed. Strangely, Tom found himself thinking that it was a clean break, and could be repaired seamlessly enough by the right restorer.

This momentary loss of concentration bought the man enough time to pull a knife from his pocket. Tom hurled himself at his young adversary. Welded together, they landed briefly on the mattress before crashing to the floor, jammed in between the bed and the wall.

It wasn’t a knife. It was a syringe, and its slender needle glistened in the moonlight as they fought for possession of it.

Tom was dimly aware of the blood from the other man’s shattered nose splashing his face, then he found the purchase he was looking for and broke the man’s wrist with an audible crack.

The syringe clattered to the floor.

Tom lunged for it.

The man didn’t. He took the opportunity to flee.

Tom groped frantically beneath the bed for the gun, but his scuttling fingers turned up nothing. No time to search further. The man was already gone, out through the bedroom door. If he didn’t follow now, it would be too late.

He breasted the main staircase in time to see the shadowy figure throw the latch on the front door and disappear into the night. Trusting to instinct, Tom took the stone steps three at a time in the darkness, trying to narrow the lead.

Barefoot, bare-chested, and with his pyjama bottoms flapping about his legs, he burst outside into the moonlight. His moonlight. It served the hunter, not the hunted.

The man had made straight for the shadows, eschewing the driveway for the thick vegetation on the right. Tom glimpsed him just as the trees swallowed him up.

He set off in pursuit, immune to the sharp gravel tearing at the soles of his feet.

The man was fast, faster than Tom, and he had obviously done his homework. He knew the pathways criss-crossing the gardens and he knew not to head south towards the sea, where he ran the risk of being cornered. Thankfully, he was less sure of himself the further they travelled from the house. As they skirted the head of the gulley his sense of direction seemed to abandon him completely.

Rather than sticking to the path, which would have seen him safely away, he bore left up the slope, into the trees, crashing through the underbrush. It was a bad mistake, and Tom seized the opportunity to bring the foot chase to an abrupt and brutal conclusion. Something had to happen soon. His legs were all but spent, his bare feet scratched and bleeding.

Suddenly, there was silence ahead of him. The man had gone to ground. Tom dropped into a crouch, falling utterly still.

He won the waiting game. After a few minutes, he heard movement. He crept to his right as noiselessly as possible until he judged himself to be directly down the slope from the man.

Knowing that his adversary was young as well as wounded, he was banking on him being scared.

With a wild scream, Tom burst from his hiding place and charged up the slope.

The man broke cover ahead of him, turning tail and weaving blindly through the trees. He gave a surprised gasp as the ground disappeared beneath his feet, and a second or two later, Tom heard a dull thud.

He hurried to the edge of the railway cutting and peered down into the void.

He couldn’t make out much in the darkness, but he heard the sounds of a badly wounded beast below. The man was still alive. He had feared the fall might kill him.

It took him a while to work his way round to a point where he could safely drop on to the tracks. He approached cautiously, stepping from sleeper to sleeper to spare his bare feet, brandishing a branch he’d snapped from a tree.

He needn’t have worried; the man lay like a heap of rags where he’d fallen. One leg was grotesquely twisted beneath him.

Tom came and stood over him. ‘Where’s my dog?’

‘ Per piacere . . . ’ implored the man weakly, raising a hand.

‘Where’s my dog?’ Tom repeated in the same flat tone, switching to Italian.

‘The well . . .’

‘Where? In the well?’

‘Buried nearby.’

He only just resisted the urge to swing the branch and administer the coup de grâce.

‘Are you alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who sent you?’ he asked.

‘Alfiero.’

‘Who’s Alfiero?’

‘I can’t move my legs. Am I dying?’

‘Maybe.’

The young man emitted a deep sob. ‘I don’t want to die.’

‘Nobody wants to die.’

Tom struggled to feel any sympathy. The pathetic, broken figure before him had killed Hector, his companion, and only minutes earlier had tried to send him the same way.

‘Tell my mother I love her,’ pleaded the man pathetically.

Tom crouched so that they were almost face-to-face.

‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to find your mother and I’m going to kill her very, very slowly . . . unless you tell me who Alfiero is.’

The young man struck out at him weakly. ‘Don’t you touch my mother . . .’

Tom batted the arm aside and seized him by the throat, throttling him. ‘You obviously don’t know who I am,’ he hissed, ‘or you’d answer the question.’

He allowed time for the words to sink in before releasing his grip. ‘Who’s Alfiero?’

‘Alfiero is . . . Alfiero.’

The man wasn’t being evasive; he was teetering on the brink of unconsciousness now, not thinking straight. Tom slapped his face to bring him around.

‘Why does he want me dead?’

‘I don’t know. He never tells me why.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Rome . . . Viterbo . . . Pescara. He moves around . . .’

The words trailed off, replaced by a deep and tremulous groan, unlike anything Tom had ever heard before.

‘What’s his surname?’

The man started to slip away. Tom slapped his face again to bring him back. ‘What’s his surname?’