Rufus knows he is in a bad way. He feels sick and dizzy and there is a strange scratching sound inside his head, as if crustaceans were suddenly unfolding themselves and scuttling around on the underside of his skull. He tries to open his eyes. Sees carpet. The leg of the dresser. Sees blood.
‘… can’t wait any longer. You have to say your goodbyes. You choose life or stay with the dead. There’s a future out there. You’ve created something truly sublime. Let it be now. Believe in yourself. You have such reserves of strength. You can begin again. Be somebody new. He won’t wait forever and I won’t be here much longer. I don’t think we’ll talk again.’
Rufus hears something in the old man’s voice: a slight insinuation of emotion; of tears. He is saying goodbye to the child he raised. Rufus becomes aware of a sour, smouldering anger in his belly. There is a tingling in his fingers, as if blood were rushing back into a dead limb. He forces himself to swallow the blood that pools in his mouth. Slowly, his movements almost glacial, he raises his head. Through the haze of his vision he sees Wilson Iveson standing by the window, staring out into the watery blue sky. The bloodied oxygen cylinder is behind him on the floor. In his left hand, he holds the framed picture of Procne: baby Griffin on her belly.
Rufus forces down the wave of dizziness that crashes into him: a great fist pummelling the side of his head. He focuses on the small, wiry, straight-backed man in front of him. He needs to get the phone from him. It will contain the number that Griffin Cox is using. Neilsen will be able to trace it. They can find where he has been burrowed in since faking his death and abandoning Annabeth to whatever fate decreed …
Annabeth.
Rufus grinds his teeth. He knows that to recover Cox is to ensure that Annabeth’s past will be exposed. The thought pains him. And then he thinks of the photographs. The missing teenagers, taken, killed, transformed into some grotesque vision of beauty by a killer intent on preserving the sublime.
‘… I think he’s still breathing, but I need to recover my strength before I finish him. My hands are shaking. Talk to me. Tell me how they look. How they feel? Is it like flesh, or damp stone? Can you still see the lines of the muscle? What happens to their eyes, Griffin – are they dark holes, or pieces of coal? Do you remember the snowmen? Your mother would always …’
Wilson doesn’t finish the sentence. Rufus lunges forward, head spinning, half-blind with pain and rage. Sees his own hands rising, the sudden change in colours as his vision fills with the old man, and then the crushing impact of the two of them smacking into the windowsill; the unmistakable sound of glass shattering as his hand closes on the old man’s face and pushes it against the first hard surface he can find …
On his back now, face wet, blood on his hands, on his front, dripping down the collar of his shirt.
Footsteps. Bangs. Raised voices. The bang-bang-bang of fists on a closed door …
He looks down. The little telephone is still illuminated: a square of neon light on the embroidered rug. Beyond, a slippered foot, a patch of hairless shin; a body still as death.
Rufus closes his hand around the phone. Lifts it to his ear and feels it smear the hot, dark blood against his cheek.
‘Magister,’ comes the voice. ‘Magister, what’s happening? Did you do it? Is his head open? Can you see inside? What’s in there? Touch it. Tell me how it feels against your fingers …’
From the recesses of his mind, Rufus registers the Latin word. It means ‘teacher’. Suddenly he feels no anger. No pain. He’s cold, and everything looks soft at the edges, and a beautiful perfect blackness seems to be filling the room, as if he were bathing in treacle, or oil, or …
‘Ink,’ he says, and smiles to himself, pleased at the neatness of the word. ‘Bathing in ink.’
He briefly registers the sound of violence somewhere nearby. Skin on skin. A fist against wood. The crash and screech of pain and impact. He doesn’t have the energy to decipher it all. Just wants to rest. To let go.
In his ear, a voice. ‘Rufus? Rufus is that you …?’
He can’t place the voice. It isn’t Griffin any more. It’s beyond his reach: a voice at once familiar and indefinite.
As he gives himself over to whatever comes next, his final thought is of his wife. He registers a vestige of surprise. A feeling of warmth, and need, and comfort.
Fuck, he thinks, as he fades. Fuck, I love Shonagh. I really fucking love her …
And Rufus Orton comes to an end.
THIRTY-SEVEN
During his prison psychotherapy sessions, Griffin Cox used to relish the opportunity to fabricate memories. There was something delightful about watching the well-meaning psychologists try to comprehend a person who never truly existed. In their company he has been a victim of abuse; a foundling child taken in by rich relatives who made him feel like the cuckoo in the nest; a solitary carer for an unhinged parent – a spitting ball of repressed rage made manifest in one solitary act of uncharacteristic impulse. He takes pleasure in knowing that he remains a mystery, and that as of a few days ago, he always will. Nobody will ever poke around inside his brain again. Nobody will get the chance. For
