The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [179]
One was for a British citizen named Jonas Algier; the other was for the same person, but included his young daughter Estelle.
The distaste on Holmes' face matched my own; when he laid the passports to one side, his fingers surreptitiously wiped themselves on his trouser-leg before he reached out to shake his son's shoulder.
“Damian,” he said forcefully. “I need you sensible. Can you talk?”
“Where's Estelle?” came the reply, slurred but coherent.
“She's fine,” I assured him. “Sleeping.”
“God, what the hell happened?”
“Brothers tried to kill you.”
“Don't be 'diculous.”
“He shot you.”
“That's what…? Ah. Hurts like the devil.”
“You shot him back, if it makes you feel any better. He's dead.”
“Dead? I killed Hayden? Oh Christ—”
“Damian!” Holmes said sharply, and waited for his son's eyes to focus on his. “We need to get you away from here, now. Can you move?”
“Hayden's dead. Can't just walk away from a dead man. The police'll be after us.”
“The police are already after us.”
“Why?”
Holmes looked at me, then returned his gaze to his son. “Yolanda was killed. Scotland Yard—”
“No,” Damian said. “Not possible. She's on one of her religious adventures.”
“Your wife died,” Holmes said gently. “Two weeks ago, at the Wilmington Giant. I saw her, Damian. The Sunday after you left me, three days before you and Hayden left London, I saw her. In a morgue. She'd been drugged, as you were, and then sacrificed, as you would have been. She felt nothing.”
“No,” Damian repeated. “There was a letter. Hayden—Brothers, he changed his name—left me a message on how to meet him.”
By way of answer, Holmes took something from his pocket and pressed it into Damian's palm.
Damian opened his hand and stared at the gold band we had found in Brothers' safe. Still, he kept talking, low and fast, as if words might push back the testimony of his eyes. “We met at Piccadilly Circus, and he gave me a letter she'd written. On the Friday. That's why I came away. I wrote to you, to tell you what I was doing. I did write to you.”
“We received it,” Holmes said. “What did Yolanda's letter say?”
“It was just one of Yolanda's …” But with the voicing of her name, the truth hit him. He clenched his hand around the ring. “She was always going on about spiritual experiments, always wanting to drag me in on them. And I did. I never minded, it kept her happy. She was always so happy, those times. Oh, God. So when she wrote that she had a really vital adventure—that's what she called them, adventures— and that she knew it was asking a lot of me, but that she wanted me to go with Hayden and Estelle for a few days while she was getting ready, and then Hayden would bring us together and this would be the very last one.” He was weeping now, choking on his words. “She said that it would be a lot of bother for me, and that she was sorry, but that it would be worth it and if I wanted her never to do it again, she wouldn't, after this one.”
He couldn't talk any more, just dropped his head back against the wall and wept. Holmes eased him gently onto the cushions, then pulled me out into the hotel bar.
By the trickle of lamp-light from the half-open door, Holmes searched around behind the smoke-covered bar. He found a bottle, threw the first glass down his throat and poured a second; I took a generous swallow of mine.
“The boat will be there until the tide changes in the morning,” he said.
“The trip might kill him.”
“And it might not.”
“Holmes, it's four miles to Stromness. It would take the both of us to carry him, and what would we do with the child?”
“We could drape her on top of him.”
“And when she wakes up from this drug, in a dark place, cold air, strange movement? You think she'll be silent?”
“What about a motor-car—there must be one here?”
“An old lorry, yes. And there's a cart, if we want to borrow a horse from the paddock across the