The God of the Hive - Laurie R. King [50]
Gunderson started around the room with a handkerchief, wiping down surfaces. West joined him, taking care to cover the same places Gunderson had treated, on the off chance the man might think to set him up. At the end, they went through Brothers’ valises, transferring several items into a worn rucksack.
When it was fully dark, Gunderson left, taking the rucksack with him. West watched him closely, then shut the door, satisfied: Gunderson had avoided meeting his eyes whenever possible. The lesson of fear had got through.
He climbed the stairs to open a window on the back of the house, returning to sit in the chair opposite the dead man. The room was quite cosy now.
“Once the flies get inside, I’m afraid there won’t be much left of you,” he told the would-be god. “It’s a shabby way to treat a friend, Brothers, but I’ve no doubt you would have done the same to me, had it proved necessary.”
The two men sat together for another hour, one man cooling while the other grew uncomfortably warm. The warm man spoke from time to time. He found the dead restful: They never argued, rarely raised any objection to one’s actions, and encouraged the sort of calm reflection that was difficult around the living. At the end of their conversation, both agreed how appropriate it was that the archaic madness that had driven Brothers would help unseat the dinosaur of Intelligence, and free it to become a piece of modern machinery.
Eventually, Peter James West buttoned his overcoat and took his leave of the man who had, all unknowing, been so useful to him. He turned the gas down a fraction, switched off the lights, and locked the door.
On the way to the train station, West paused to slip the house’s key into a storm drain.
Just in case.
Chapter 26
The train reached King’s Cross shortly after ten-thirty Tuesday night. West was one of the last to disembark, and he walked past the left luggage office where Gunderson would have stored the rucksack. He would send another to retrieve it.
Just in case.
He had the taxi take him to the office, deserted but for the night staff. There he checked his mail, made a few notes for his secretary, and read the reports that had come in since the afternoon. Among them was one concerning the disappearance of Mycroft Holmes.
When his desk was clear, he walked on to his more private office in the shadow of Westminster Cathedral, where he read with greater interest the unofficial reports from the British and European ports. He then sent three coded telegrams and placed a long telephone call to Buckner, giving him the change in the next day’s orders.
Back on the street, a light drizzle had begun to fall. He lit a cigarette in the portico of the building, then set off on foot in the direction of the river.
He was damp through by the time he unlocked the door of the quiet modern apartment in its deceptive warehouse. He hung his coat and hat to dry, and stuffed newspaper in the toes of his shoes before adding them to the airing cupboard.
He bathed, and ate. It was one o’clock Wednesday morning before he took up his god-like post at the window, drink in one hand and cigar in the other.
It was not that West enjoyed killing. During the War, of course, it had been part of the job—although it was hard to compare that hellish cacophony with the calm execution he had performed hours earlier in St Albans. Still, he had to confess (to himself, in that quiet room, alone) that on the few occasions when he had been required to end a life, the exercise of ultimate power had brought him a certain frisson of satisfaction. And without a doubt, death was a process that held considerable fascination for a thoughtful individual