elan a DCI could bring to the process. Senior officer’s prerogative.
She approached Kellaway. He stood hunched over, teetering, bent double. His club dangled from his fingertips, almost too heavy for him to lift any more. He peered up at her. One eye was closed, the upper lid hanging in slivers like a broken Venetian blind. The tip of his nose was absent, revealing a strawberry of cartilage. An ear had been split in two. There was no faulting her colleagues’ craftsmanship.
“Sir,” she said softly so that only he could hear, “I can finish this for you right now. One blow and it’s all over. Just give the word.”
Blood bubbled at his lips. “No,” he managed to say. “It wouldn’t be right. I must go on.”
“You’ve suffered enough. No one would blame you if you wanted it ended. Please let me.”
Kellaway tried to hoist his club to strike at her. He brushed her shin feebly with its tip.
Sorrowfully, Mal raked her club across his collarbone, opening up a long thin streak of red. The chief super moaned.
“Then listen,” she said. “I have him. I have the Conquistador. I know who he is.”
“How?” Kellaway gasped.
“Vision quest.”
“Not… Not admissible as grounds for an arrest.”
“I know, but still. It means the search is over and it’s just a question of time now. Either the Conquistador slips up or I get what I need to haul him in, it doesn’t matter which. He’s done. I have him by the balls. He’s going down.”
Kellaway attempted a smile — a skewed, hangdog thing. His one visible eye regained some of its old lustre.
“Not lying about this? To make a doomed man feel better?”
“Not at all, sir. Gospel truth. And when I do get him, it’ll be for you, in your name.”
The chief super feinted with his club, or at least offered the vague appearance of doing so. Mal duly nicked him on the shoulder.
“Good Jaguar, you are, Vaughn,” he said. “Good copper. Glad I never had to execute you. You’ll go far.”
She gave him a few further little cuts, to show willing. Then she retreated and let the other three have their way with him once more. She could barely bring herself to watch as they reduced the rest of Kellaway’s skin to shreds. How he was able to stay on his feet, she had no idea, but some inhuman determination kept him upright long past the stage where most men would have collapsed. It was love, she though. Kellaway loved being a Jaguar. Loved it even unto death.
The sky darkened, thunder rumbled, rain fell. It was a warm rain, but hard, drops so powerful and heavy they could have been hail. Many of the civilians scurried off to find shelter, but all of the Jaguar Warriors in attendance stayed put, while up on the ziggurat the striping continued unabated. Kellaway had sunk to his knees, but refused to lie down. There seemed to be not one square inch of his body that wasn’t marked, lacerated, ragged. He was a living effigy of Xipe Totec. It was as though the Flayed One had been brought to earth, reincarnated. A god in all his exposed raw flesh.
The rain puddled around Kellaway’s knees, mingling with his blood. Lightning and thunder splintered overhead. Mal raised her face to the pummelling force of the storm, letting it pound her head, her brain, her mind, until she felt empty within, battered into submission, numb.
When, finally, she looked down again, Kellaway was dead and the acolyte was stepping forward to hack out his heart.
That night, no surprise, Mal went out and got steaming drunk. She wound up in some man’s bedroom — she had no clear recollection how she got there — on all fours, letting herself be fucked soundly up the arse and relishing every brutal, piercing thrust of it. At the crucial moment the man withdrew and showered her back with semen. Mal then shat herself and passed out.
She came to in an alleyway some time later, filthy, rain-sodden, no knickers. She hobbled home and sat in a tepid bath while the water slowly turned pink around her. Then she crawled into bed. Hugging her knees to her chest, she waited for sleep to come. Her last thought before she drifted away from herself was: Fuck procedure. Fuck protocol. Nab him anyway.
And in the dark, in pain, she smiled.
NINE
11 Crocodile 1 Monkey 1 House
(Sunday 2nd December 2012)
Stuart was ten miles into a twelve-mile run when he became aware of someone keeping pace with him a few yards behind.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that it was a woman. A second glance confirmed her identity: the Jaguar Warrior detective, Vaughn.
He wasn’t surprised. For the past twenty-four hours he’d had a feeling he was being watched. Someone was always lurking just at the limits of his vision, a presence more sensed than seen. He would have put it down to imagination, if not for his bruising encounter with Vaughn at the office. It was possible she had been tailing him ever since, and now she was making her move, coming out of the shadows into the light.
Stuart upped his speed, tapping his reserves of energy. He’d done a twelve-miler yesterday as well, along this very same route, and his lungs were aching and his legs were leaden with tiredness, but he could grit his teeth and bludgeon through the discomfort. Only another ten or so minutes to home.
Vaughn matched his acceleration and added a further turn of speed, gradually narrowing the gap between them. Stuart lengthened his stride, but Vaughn was fresher than him. She’d been going for minutes, not an hour plus. Soon she pulled alongside him.
Stuart offered her an ironic salute and focused on his running. There were hundreds of promenaders meandering about on the south bank today, few of them looking where they were going. To steer a safe course through them demanded concentration.
To these passers-by, Stuart and Vaughn looked like a fitness-fanatic couple jogging side by side, enjoying a spot of aerobic exercise together. No one could have guessed, by their appearance, that they were enemies on opposite sides of a moral divide — upholder of the law and flouter of it. Just a man and woman in sportswear, husband and wife maybe, keeping in trim.
They thudded eastbound along the embankment, passing under Waterloo Bridge, then Blackfriars. The stonework on both structures was wreathed with lianas and vines. Cracks and crevices played host to colonies of bats which, come twilight, would emerge from their roosts in black swarms.
Stuart waited for the chief inspector to breach the silence. As they neared Southwark Bridge, she did.
“There’s two ways we can do this, Mr Reston.”
“Don’t tell me. Easy or hard.”
“I was going to go with clean or messy, but whatever. You can come in quietly and anonymously with me, or publicly, noisily, melodramatically, surrounded by a bunch of Jaguars in full uniform. It’s up to you.”
“Why would I do either?” Stuart asked.
“Why isn’t open to debate, only how.”
“But where’s the proof? What grounds do you have for arrest?”
“I’ve decided I don’t need any. I know you’re the Conquistador. That’s all I need. The rest is academic.”
“Even in a police state — and let’s face it, this is one — due process of law has to be observed. Seen to be observed, at any rate. I’d like to see an arrest warrant, please.”
“That can be arranged,” said Vaughn. “I can’t promise when one will appear, but it will. Probably after I’ve had a good nose round your flat and unearthed a suit of reproduction Spanish armour hidden somewhere there.”
“I’ll claim it was planted. Or rather, my hideously expensive lawyer will.”
“Lawyers aren’t much help to people who are being held downstairs at the Yard. Often they can’t get in to
