so bad now it was impossible to detect.
The other man leaned forward suddenly, half-turning his head to squint across the desk. He was looking at the open book that lay upon it, and for a moment Killian thought he had seen right through him. “What are you reading these days?” he asked. But didn’t wait for an answer, reading instead from the page heading. The Life of the Mosquito, Part 4. He looked up at Killian, and his incomprehension was patent, etched in the lines that wrinkled his nose and radiated from around his eyes. “Of course. You’re interested in insects, aren’t you?”
“It’s been a passion of mine for years.”
“Can’t say I have anything other than a healthy dislike for them myself. Noisy, stinging, biting little bastards!” And he chuckled as if he had said something amusing.
Killian smiled indulgently.
“Well, I suppose we’d better get on with it.” The visitor leaned over to lift his bag from the floor and suddenly slapped at his forearm with his free hand. When he lifted his palm away, there was the tiniest smear of blood there, and for one dreadful moment Killian thought he had actually killed the culex. “Damn! Missed him.”
Killian lowered his eyes and saw it just as it lighted on the pages of the open book. Such a fragile, delicate creature, with its dark-scaled proboscis and golden head, abdomen swollen now from its last meal. “There she is.”
His visitor frowned. “She?”
“It’s only the female of the species that bites.”
“Hah! Like most women, not to be trusted.” The visitor peered with annoyance at the tiny creature that had just fed on him.
“She needs the blood to feed her babies. Or, to be more accurate, to develop fertile eggs. Mosquitoes of both sexes actually feed on sugar. Plant nectar. Blood meals are reserved for egg production only.”
The other man raised his eyebrow again, this time in concert with a curl of his lip to demonstrate his distaste. “As far as I’m concerned, the only good mosquito’s a dead one.”
“Yes,” Killian agreed. And very carefully he slipped two fingers beneath one half of the book, and quickly, deftly flipped it shut. His visitor watched, with something like fascination, as Killian opened it again to reveal the creature perfectly squashed, its final meal now staining the paper of the facing pages. A small, crimson stain in The Life of the Mosquito, Part 4.
Killian smiled with satisfaction and looked up to meet the eye of his visitor. “Gotcha!” he said.
Six weeks later
Killian closed the door of his study and climbed the narrow staircase in the dark. When he reached the little attic bedroom, he turned on the light and saw a stooped and putty-faced old man staring back at him from the mirror of the dressing table opposite. It was with something of a shock that he realised that the old man was himself. Most of the thick, silver hair that had so characterised his later years, was gone. There were deep, penumbrous shadows beneath his eyes, skin hanging grey and loose around his neck and jowls. He walked with the stooped gait of the elderly, and he wondered what had happened to the young man who had arrived with so much hope in his heart all those years before on the shores of England’s green and pleasant land.
All that filled his heart now was fear. Not fear of death, for that was inevitable. But fear of not finishing what he had begun. That, in the end, his tormentor would get away with it. He had misplaced his trust in another and realised too late the mistake. He glanced from the window toward the house, across a lawn mired in shadow. There were no lights beyond the pale, colourless, illumination of the moon. And for a moment, he wondered if he saw movement among the trees. A figure flitting from shadow to shadow. He stood straining to see for nearly a minute before deciding it was just his imagination.
Turning away from the window he hobbled across the room, supported on his walking stick, a stout piece of hazel with an owl’s head carved as a handle, the curve of it fitting neatly now in the palm of his hand. The bed gave beneath him as he sat on its edge, and he laid the stick beside him before picking up the phone. If only Peter had been at home, he would have told him everything. He cursed himself for not doing so sooner.
The phone, ringing shrill and metallic in a distant land, sounded in his ear, until he heard the familiar cadences of a young woman’s voice. “Hello?” And he wished he could lay his head on her breast and weep, curling up like a fetus, returning to the safety of the womb.
Instead he said, “Jane, it’s Papa. Don’t speak, just listen.”
The alarm in her voice was clear. “Papa, what’s wrong?”
“You’re not listening to me, Jane.” He was trying to stay calm. “I need you to do something for me, and I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding.” He paused and was greeted by silence from the other end. Almost. He could hear her short, shallow breathing. “Good.” He had her attention. “I know that Peter won’t be back from Africa until next month. If I’m still around, I’ll speak to him myself. But if I’m not-if something has happened to me- then I want you to tell him to come straight here.”
“For God’s sake, Papa, what could happen to you? Have you taken a turn for the worse?”
“Jane!” His admonition was almost brutal, and he heard her stop midbreath. “If for any reason I am not around any longer, he’s to come to the house. I’ve left a message for him. He’ll find it in my study. But, Jane… if he’s still not back, I need you to make sure that no one moves or removes anything in the room. I need you to promise me that.”
“But, Papa-”
“Promise me, Jane!”
He heard the frustration now in her voice. “I promise. But, Papa, what kind of message?”
“Nothing that anyone else will make sense of, Jane. But Peter will know straight away.” He had absolute confidence that his son would understand. And with understanding would come illumination. “It’s just ironic that it’s the son who will finish the job.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
How could he tell her that it was too great a responsibility for a mere daughter-in-law? That he couldn’t trust her with something so important. He tried to soften it. “It’s too much to place on the shoulders of a young woman, Jane. Peter will know what to do.”
“Papa…”
But he wasn’t listening any more. A dull thud from somewhere deep in the building reverberated faintly through the bed. He felt it more than heard it. And as he got do his feet, he let the receiver fall back in its cradle. He lifted his walking stick, this time to use as a weapon rather than as an aid to walking, and shuffled toward the door.
The light from the bedroom spilled down the stairs to the tiny hall below, casting his shadow before him as he made his way slowly, step by step, down to the door of his study. It stood slightly ajar, but he remembered that he had closed it. Fear tightened around his heart like a clenched fist. Using his stick, he pushed it wide and saw the light that pooled on the green leather below his desk lamp, throwing his desk diary into sharp, clear focus. Beyond its ring of light, the rest of the room lay shadowed in semidarkness. The door to the little kitchen stood fully open. He knew, too, that he had left it closed. He tried to listen, but the ringing in his ears obliterated all else.
He stepped into the room, and almost immediately was aware of a movement in his peripheral vision. He swivelled around as the intruder stepped into the light, the pistol in his hand raised and pointed at Killian’s chest. His face was set and grim, and Killian thought he saw fear in his eyes. “I figured it would be you,” Killian said. “I knew it was a mistake to tell you. I could see it in your eyes.”
“Could you?”
“I saw all this, probably before you did.”
“Then you’ll know how it ends.”
“Yes.” He was resigned to it now.
“I couldn’t let you tell anyone.” It was almost as if he were pleading for understanding.
“No. You couldn’t.”
The three shots from the pistol reverberated with deafening intensity in the stillness of the night. Propelled by the first of them back against the wall, Killian was dead before the other bullets left the gun.
The distant echo of gunshot was followed by the sound of a phone ringing in the bedroom upstairs. Frozen momentarily by the act of murder, the killer seemed startled by it and then moved to sudden action. He had no idea how much time he might have. But it was imperative that he find and destroy the evidence.
