House of the Hanged

He saw the way the skin hung loose on her thighs and around her neck, and he wasn’t entirely lying when he said, ‘Knowing that is enough for me.’

‘Well, it’s not enough for me.’

Chapter Four

Tom was familiar with the sound. Lying in bed at night, the creak of the big old vine that coiled its way up the front of the villa would often carry through the open French windows into his room when the wind was up.

But there wasn’t any wind tonight, not a breath of it.

He rarely slept the sleep of the innocent, lost to the world, and he shrugged off his liminal state in an instant, alert now, ears straining.

Maybe he’d been mistaken. All he could hear was the beat of the waves on the rocks below the villa, the ocean’s blind purpose to make all things sea.

No. There it was again. And a faint rustle of leaves.

Someone was climbing the vine, and there was only one reason why they would be doing that: in order to reach the large terrace which served the master bedroom where he slept.

He cursed himself for his complacency. He hadn’t slept with his gun to hand for almost a year. The old Beretta 418 was locked away in a drawer in the study, a symbol of a time when his life had been ruled by fear and suspicion. He prided himself on having finally mastered that debilitating state of mind. As if in affirmation of this, a harmless explanation came to him quite suddenly, taking the edge off his building panic.

Barnaby.

Barnaby wasn’t due until tomorrow evening, but he was quite capable of changing his plans on a whim, especially if he’d landed himself in trouble while motoring down through France, which was quite probable. Trouble and Barnaby had always gone together, and Tom could picture him having to flee some tricky situation entirely of his own making. Turning up un announced in the middle of night and then pouncing on Tom while he slept was exactly the sort of infantile prank that would appeal to Barnaby’s sense of humour.

The moonlight flooding through the French windows and painting the wall beside the bed would allow Tom to see the shadow-play of anyone entering from the terrace. Well, he would turn the tables on Barnaby, waiting until the last moment before scaring the living daylights out of him.

Then again, maybe he was stretching the realms of possibility, even by the preposterous standards of his old friend. Maybe it wasn’t Barnaby, but a burglar. A small band of Spaniards, professional housebreakers from Barcelona, had passed this way two summers back. Some were still serving time in Toulon prison.

Whoever it was, the person had now cleared the stone balustrade and was creeping across the terrace. Their soft footfalls ceased, replaced by another sound. It was hard to make out, but it sounded like someone un screwing the cap of a bottle.

Tom exaggerated his breathing to convey the impression of someone deep in slumber, and moments later the visitor slipped silently into the bedroom.

He knew immediately that it wasn’t Barnaby, not unless he had shrunk by half a head since April. Everything about the shadow on the wall was wrong. Most worryingly, it moved with a professional stealth, confident, unhurried. It was definitely a man, and as he stole towards the bed it became clear that he was carrying something in his hand, not a weapon – not a gun or a knife or even a cudgel – but something else.

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.