farther over the edge.
He waited till Jay was preparing to slide farther up; while he was unbalanced, Reeve rolled onto his side, shrugging Jay off and at the same time lashing out at him with his feet. For an instant they were side by side, the way they had been that final night in Argentina, their faces so close Reeve could feel Jay’s breath against his cheek.
“Well,” Jay panted, trying to grin, “isn’t this cozy? Just the two of us, like it was always meant to be.”
“You should have died back in Rio Grande,” Reeve spat.
“If we’d stayed in that damned trench, we’d have died,” Jay hissed. “You owe me, Philosopher!”
“Owe you?” Reeve was clawing at the ground with the fingers of his left hand, feeling pain shoot through his shoulder. When he had a good handhold he started to ease the dagger out of the ground.
“Yes, owe me,” Jay was saying, readying to pull them both over the edge and onto the rocks below.
Reeve raised the dagger and plunged it into Jay’s neck. Blood gurgled from Jay’s mouth, his eyes wide in amazement as one hand went to the wound. He lost all grip and started to slide over the edge.
Reeve watched him go, the head disappearing last of all, eyes still wide open. He didn’t hear the body hit the ground. Reeve let out a roar which echoed down the chasm walls and up into the sky. Not a roar of pain or even of victory.
Just a roar.
“All debts repaid,” Reeve said, digging the dagger back into the ground, and for some reason he saw Jim in his mind, content.
Then he started slowly, carefully, to climb back up the treacherous slope, not relaxing until he was at the top, his head and trunk hanging over the crest of the rise. He closed his eyes then and wept, not feeling the pain in his shoulder or the chill damp ground robbing him of his core temperature, degree by willful degree.
TWENTY-SIX
THERE WAS A LOT OF MESS still to be cleared up: Gordon Reeve knew that. The police might or might not accept his story. It sounded pretty farfetched when he thought about it. But he had Jim’s computer file, and soon he’d have the documents to go with it, as soon as he could arrange a trip to Tisbury.
As for CWC itself and Kosigin… he didn’t know what would happen. He only knew that
He made his way back home and staggered indoors. He knew he should clean his wounds, make fresh dressings, call a doctor. But he sat at the kitchen table instead. He wanted to phone Joan, wanted to tell her it was all right now, that Allan and she could come home. He wanted that most of all.
He wasn’t sure what they’d do after that. Go back to the old routine? Maybe. Or maybe he’d dig up some of their land, turn it into a vegetable garden… go organic, and worry less that way. He didn’t think so, though.
He started to laugh, resting his head on his forearms.
“I’m one of Nietzsche’s gentlemen,” he told himself. “I’ll think of something.”
Ian Rankin is the #1 bestselling mystery writer in the United Kingdom. He is the winner of an Edgar Award for
About Ian Rankin
Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982, and then spent three years writing novels when he was supposed to be working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature. His first Rebus novel was published in 1987, and the Rebus books are now translated into twenty-two languages and are bestsellers on several continents.
Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and is also a past winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award, as well as receiving two Dagger Awards for the year's best short story and the Gold Dagger for Fiction. Ian Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay, St Andrews and Edinburgh.
A contributor to BBC2's 'Newsnight Review', he also presented his own TV series, 'Ian Rankin's Evil Thoughts', on Channel 4 in 2002. He recently received the OBE for services to literature, opting to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.
