Death by the Book - Lenny Bartulin [44]
‘Hello? Dad?’
Jack walked in behind her. The place was dark: green curtains on two windows were drawn, filtering a weak, four-o’clock light into the room. A lamp in the corner glowed dimly and the ceiling light drizzled down at about twenty-five watts. Two large, dark green lounge chairs with wide armrests and wood-grain edging kept each other company. The room was crowded with furniture and bookshelves and the walls were covered in pictures.
‘Dad?’
Jack looked around. Without thinking, he sniffed the air: something strong, sulphurous. Something wrong. Instinctively, he took a step backwards, as if any second he might have to make a run for it. The whole room seemed to grow darker, and smaller, seemed to shrink in around him like a child’s fairytale nightmare.
Celia slipped off her coat. ‘Is anybody here?’
There was a noise, like something being knocked over. Jack and Celia turned towards the doorway opposite. Ian Durst walked into the room. There was blood on his white shirt, patchy streaks where a hand had gripped or pulled or wiped itself. And he was holding a gun. The way his shoulder drooped down a little told Jack that it was not made out of plastic.
14
CELIA MITTEN EVENTUALLY STOPPED SCREAMING. She was now sitting in one of the lounge chairs, right up on the cushion’s edge, legs clamped together and to the side, every part of her shaking, all in different directions. Durst had given her a whisky that she had not yet tasted. At least it gave her something to stare at. Shock had shut her down for the moment.
Jack went into the kitchen, where Celia had just been. Durst followed him.
Edward Kass was bent forward over the kitchen table. His head rested on an open notebook and a few loose pages spread out before him. A couple of pens were there too, a cheap blue Bic and a fancy black fountain, as well as a pencil lying next to a sharpener and a small, dirty cube of rubber. His arms were crossed over his lap, hands resting palm up on each thigh. Kass looked as though he had fallen asleep — almost childlike, innocent and oblivious. Maybe he had dozed off while grinding a gear or two over the final wording of a sentence. Painful as that might have been, Jack doubted it was the cause of the hole in the side of his head.
He stepped closer to the body. Just in front of the dead man, covered in blood, a piece of paper with a line that had survived the bullet’s aftermath. It read: the waters rise around me.
On the kitchen floor lay another body. Jack recognised that one, too. The thin man was lying on his stomach, arms tucked in under his chest, and his legs splayed a little, one leg bent awkwardly with the foot in against the knee of the other. His head was turned to the side, eyes open, blank, staring across the floor at the wall opposite: or at the void he had not long before fallen into. A bullet had darkened his back with blood that seemed as black as sump oil. It had seeped out around him and circled the top half of his body: a halo of thick, paint-like blood, rich and red against the off-white linoleum patterned with curlicues of gold and silver covering the floor. Jack had been looking forward to catching up with the guy again, telling him that attacking people with knives in their place of business was not a very nice thing to do. That playing with sharp objects and starting fires would ultimately only get him into trouble. But it looked like he already knew.
If Ian Durst remembered Jack from the other Friday, when he had thrown a fist and some BMW keys into Jack’s stomach, he did not let on. He stood at the entrance to the kitchen, heavy-shouldered like he was suffering a hangover, pointing out details with one hand, while the gun hung limply in the other. That was where he had seen the intruder. That was where they had struggled, there where the chair lay knocked over. That was where the gun had fallen and then slid up against the sink cupboards for him to grab. He said how the guy had tried to knee him