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“You don’t want to go up to the house,” Bellecourt said.
“Why?”
“You might get in his way.”
“What has the girl been looking for?”
“The same thing we all are. Something that will prove we were here.”
Hazel grabbed her under the armpit and spun her around. “I’m going to have three different shrinks testifying to your fitness. You can get as kooky as you want, Bellecourt.” She let go of her. “Walk in front of me.”
Bellecourt began to move up the street, leaning forward as if magnetised to something. “Now call him,” Hazel said to her as they approached number 175. “If he’s so sensitive, surely he’ll hear you out in the street.”
Bochko muscled her out of the house Carl Duffy had lived in. Carl Duffy was dead, and Bochko was in a hurry now. She wasn’t sure if he’d pla
“You are going to die, Bochko,” she said.
He spun her around on the landing and crashed the back of her head against the wall. He pressed his kneecap into her pubis and she roared in pain. In her front jeans pocket, he roughly dug the passport out. Pi
He slapped her with the passport. She was surprised how much it hurt, like the end of a bullwhip. “I gave you what you wanted, Larysa Kirilenko. Now I will get what I want. I’ll give this back to you when I have it.”
“Even when you have it, it will not be yours.”
His mouth widened into a bright, cheerful smile. “Come and see what I am.” He let her step away from the wall, and she went down the stairs in front of him.
She felt the first threads of the cool evening as he led her down and out of the back of the house, and the air through the door carried the scent of the unseen lake behind the house. Under it all was the fragrance of lavender. A perfect August night. He took a handful of cloth between her shoulderblades and shoved her forward into Duffy’s car, a white Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet. She fell into the passenger seat with a heavy thud and he walked around to the driver’s side. The car smelled of leather and tobacco. Bochko slid his huge, sleek body in, like a knife into its sheath.
He put the car in gear. She lay back against the seat as if resigned and exhausted, her empty left hand hanging down with its palm up beside the gear shift.
He powered the Porsche toward the road and turned left onto it, hard, in the direction of town. The blood was shoving through her head and then he stopped suddenly and her face struck the dash above the glove compartment. A flare of orange burst behind her eyes. She smelled dried blood, cold steel, ocean. “Look at this,” he said.
She raised her head to see two cops walking slowly toward the car. The one in back had her gun out, pointed straight at them.
“The door is open,” he said to her. “Why don’t you run?”
She heard her name being spoken loudly by both women – one calling her Kitty, the other Larysa.
Bochko rolled down the window. “Hello, Lydia,” he said. Now there were cars closing into the space behind the women, moving slowly into position.
“Get out of the car, Travers,” called the woman behind, and she fired a warning shot into the air. “I’m Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef.”
“We’ve met,” he called back. “You’re just in time for the wedding.” He levelled the gun against the bottom of the windowframe and fired a single shot, which lifted Bellecourt off her feet and threw her backwards, her right arm flying lifelessly up behind her. He pushed the accelerator down and Larysa allowed her right hand to slip into her back pocket where the knife was hidden. The steel was warm from lying against her body and she closed it in her fist and jammed her hand against her thigh. The car bucked and squealed: he was making a sharp right onto another road. Now there were more gunshots behind and the car began to go even faster. She stole a look at the speedometer. It said 130 kilometres per hour. Some kind of centrifugal force was keeping her pressed hard against the back of her seat. The road was a hardpack of dirt and a plume of dust enclosed the car, but inside it was silent. There was a loud, thrumming sound in her skull, though: the sound was electrical, atomic, seismic, a hum like a huge machine powering up, and the skin against her cranium had tightened like a glove on a fist. The car jostled right and then spun and turned left, and out of her window, she saw a second phalanx of squad cars coming toward them. Larysa saw, however briefly, that the one in front had another woman in it bearing down over the steering wheel. It seemed fitting to her that she would die now surrounded by women. Bochko wrenched the wheel again and now they began to pound over the ruts in an empty field, heading toward distant trees. Larysa released the catch on the knife handle and felt the blade spring open in her hand and lock into place.
“You better put your seatbelt on, Kitty,” he said.
She shouted, “Mena zvut’ Larysa!” and swung her arm up in front of his eyes. The blade – a gleaming comet, a natural force – arced before her as she plunged it into the middle of his chest. He sucked air violently as she sank it and tried to turn it, one of her hands on the handle and the other reaching under it. His own hands had gone instinctively to the knife, releasing the steering wheel, and Larysa grabbed it and dialled it down like she was closing a safe. The car leapt into the air and then there was silence for what felt like a long period, the two of them suspended as the field spun counterclockwise in the windshield. Then it vanished above her head and they were inside a small bubble of silence, airborne, and she kept her other fist clenched around the knife handle to brace herself, the blade buried to the hilt under his ribs. Then the car landed upright and charged across the field jumping and alighting, twisting and crashing.
And then they stopped and she was alive in the clenched steel. And he was alive as well, clattering in his skin, slamming himself back and forth in the three pi
She grabbed the gun from the front of his pants and left the knife buried in his breastbone. She could end it for him, but she didn’t want to. He could suffer and die or suffer and live, it didn’t matter now. He’d be dead or in prison forever. She kicked the passenger door open and reached back to grab Bochko’s jacket lapel. She yanked him toward her, pulling his face down over the gearshift. He grunted in pain, his animal eyes full of hate, and blood frothed in front of his teeth. “Give me my passport now, Bochko.” He said nothing and she put her hand on the knife handle again, and pulled it slowly down, like a lever. “Just look with your eyes what pocket it is in.” He was begi