The Inheritance (24 page)

Silas’s mind was racing as he calculated the odds. Upstairs Ritter definitely had one gun in his room, maybe more. But Silas didn’t know where they were kept, and he couldn’t face the idea of the big man finding him in there while he was looking. Escape was still the better option. If he could just get the Rolls started before Ritter found him, he could easily beat the sergeant’s old car in a race on the open road.

With Ritter busy in the kitchen, the best way was back through the study. There was no point in taking Sasha if she didn’t want to come. She’d only slow him down, and besides Ritter’s quarrel was not with her. They had a deal, and Silas still had the book. He looked at her one last time, realising it was his obsession with her that had brought all this down on their heads. The events of the afternoon had temporarily freed him of his inhibitions, and he leant forward and kissed her on the lips. But she didn’t respond, and he couldn’t read the expression in her dark eyes. He left her where she was.

In the study Silas softly opened the french windows and looked out, but there was no sign of Ritter. He must still be in the kitchen. Crouching low, and clutching the codex in his hand, Silas ran across the courtyard to the Rolls and opened the door. His hands were trembling, and he had difficulty fitting the key in the ignition, but at last it was there. He turned it, waiting for the roar of the engine, but instead he heard nothing. Just a dull click. Again and again the car didn’t respond, until finally he gave up, falling back against the seat in despair.

Opening his eyes after a moment, Silas looked out the window, wondering whether to make a run for the main gate, and that’s when he saw Ritter, standing at the front door, laughing. He was holding the distributor cap in his hands, and there was no sign of his wife.

Silas had no time to think. It was pure instinct that got him out of the car and through the open french windows of the study. Then, picking up speed, he ran down the corridor past Sasha and up the stairs. At the top, he stopped to catch his breath and hesitated for the first time, looking to his left, down toward the closed door of Ritter’s room. But a moment later he’d made his decision, and he went on into the manuscript gallery in front of him. There was a hiding place there, although he hadn’t been in it since he was a child. It used to be the best one in the whole house, behind the tallest bookshelf in the corner. Ritter wouldn’t find him there. All he needed was to buy a little time before the police arrived.

Downstairs, Ritter felt a strange contentment. It was like he was floating on air, watching everything and everyone from a distance. He knew what he was going to do. He’d known it ever since he’d taken his wife out of that underground station in London. But Silas’s running around like a frightened cat had increased the pleasure. The little creep couldn’t get away. Let him wait instead, shaking and sweating in some upstairs closet until Ritter found him. The sergeant rubbed his hands around the distributor cap, imagining the feel of Silas’s neck between his fingers. He’d shoot him first, and then strangle him afterward. Strangulation was an art. There was nothing more intimate in the whole world.

But there were other things to do first. Abruptly Ritter went back into the hall and bent down over the body of his wife. She had collapsed again after her
brief revival in the kitchen, and now Ritter put her over his shoulder and carried her up the same staircase that Silas had just climbed. In his room he slung her down on the bed and then went over to a cabinet in the corner and unlocked one of the drawers. When he turned back to the bed, he had a gun in his hand.

“Wake up, you bitch,” he shouted at his wife. “You can sleep forever in a minute, but first of all you’re going to hear what I’ve got to say.”

Above and below, Silas and Sasha could hear everything. But neither of them moved. They were both frozen in a sort of terrible complicity.

On the bed, Jeanne was only half-conscious. Her husband was shouting something, but she didn’t understand what it was. She wished he would go away and leave her alone, so that she could be back with her father again, as he leant over her little white bed to look at her in the early half-dark morning before he went to work. He didn’t think she was awake, but she was. She just had her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep.

“Stop fucking pretending,” shouted Ritter, throwing another cup of water at her that he had just got from the sink in the corner.

She opened her eyes and saw the gun, and she screamed. Again and again. But no one came. Not her father or her mother or anyone.

“Don’t kill me, Reg,” she whimpered. “Please don’t.” She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t supposed to be this way, that it wasn’t what her papa had told her would happen when she grew up and the right man came along. Another postman, perhaps, like her father, or somebody with a shop. Somebody to look after her when he was gone. But she couldn’t find the words, and Reg was shouting again.

“This is where you fucked him, isn’t it, you bitch? This is the place. Tell me, you slut. Tell me.”

And suddenly Jeanne had had enough. Life was too hard, and she was too tired. Everything hurt too much. In the end it was always easier to give Reg what he wanted. There was no point in resisting him.

“Yes,” she said. And he shot her.

The sound of the gunshot reverberated round the house, and in the silence that followed, Silas knew that Jeanne was dead. Leaning over, he retched into a corner of the narrow hiding place, but it was just a momentary
relief from the fear that was gripping his stomach. He wished now that he had run off into the trees instead of going back into the house. Maybe he wouldn’t have made it to the gate with Ritter coming after him in his car, but at least he would have been outside, moving. Here he could do nothing but just stand and shiver and wait for Ritter to find him. He remembered the feel of the sergeant’s pudgy hands when they squeezed him in his father’s study all those years ago. The fear paralysed him, and Silas realised with a terrible shame that he would probably die without putting up a fight.

The sound he was dreading began. Footsteps walking in the aisle. Just a few feet away. Then silence. Ritter was close. Silas could feel him. Standing, listening, weighing the air.

“You’re near, aren’t you, Silence,” he said softly. “Hiding somewhere. Trying not to breathe. I can feel you, Silence. I can feel how frightened you are. Because you know I’ll kill you, don’t you? Just like I killed Jeanne a minute ago. You can’t stop it, Silence. You can’t stay quiet forever. You know that, don’t you?”

Silas’s back and legs hurt terribly from standing so still. He had only a few seconds left before he had to adjust his position, but when he did, it didn’t matter. Ritter was no longer listening. A car had pulled up in the courtyard outside, and Silas could hear the sound of voices down below. It had to be the police. Sasha would tell them what had happened, and then it would be Ritter’s turn to be hunted down.

The footsteps receded. Ritter must be looking out the window, thought Silas, deciding what to do. A minute or two more, and he would be safe.

Downstairs, Trave had left Sasha with Clayton. Now he forced himself to go up the stairs. He was breaking every rule in the book. He knew that. Ritter was armed and desperate, and Trave had no gun. He should be waiting for the police reinforcements to arrive, but by that time everyone might be dead. Sasha was sure that she had only heard one shot.

At the top, Trave turned to his left and tiptoed down the corridor toward Ritter’s bedroom. He had no clear plan, except to run in and jump on the man before he could fire. Surprise was the only weapon he possessed. But when he crashed through the half-closed door, Trave found no sign of Ritter. Just his wife laid out on the bed, killed with a single bullet. She looked quite peaceful,
and perhaps she was better off, Trave thought, as he bent down instinctively to close her eyes. He couldn’t at that moment imagine a fate worse than being married to Reg Ritter.

But there was no time to think. Over toward the centre of the house, Ritter was firing his gun. Five shots, and then a pause while he reloaded. Trave looked round the room madly. Ritter had to have got his gun from somewhere, and here was the obvious place. Trave noticed the cabinet in the corner just as the sound of the shooting began again. In the open drawer at the top was the rest of the sergeant’s private arsenal—a pistol, rounds of ammunition. Trave took the pistol and loaded it as he ran.

In the gallery, Ritter was firing indiscriminately into the shelves of books. One came through into the hiding place, ricocheting off the wall just above where Silas was standing. He had to get out. It was a physical necessity. He forced himself to wait until the sound of the shooting was farthest away and then pushed the bookcase just far enough back to enable him to squeeze out. He left the codex behind. It was the best place for it.

Ritter was nowhere in sight and the gallery was suddenly quiet, except for the ticking of the gold clock above the entrance. Had Ritter stopped shooting because he had heard the shelf move? There was no way of knowing.

Silas crossed quickly to an archway leading to the main aisle. On either side tall leather books climbed to the ceiling, with labels on the shelves written in his father’s careful script. It was almost too dark to read them now, and, on the other side of the gallery, beyond the opposite archway, the light from Sasha’s reading lamp was a luminous green pool in the gathering gloom.

Silas could hear voices again, talking down below. If he could only get to them, he’d be safe. They were so close. Just a few yards to run to the door at the far end of the gallery, and then down the stairs to safety. It was now or never. Silas stepped out into the main aisle. And Ritter fired.

Lying facedown on the polished wooden floor, listening to the heavy footsteps approach, it took Silas a moment or two to realise that he wasn’t hurt. It must have been the shock of the gunshot that had caused him to stumble and fall. He could have made it if his legs had carried him, but they hadn’t. And now he was going to die. For what? For nothing. For a little lust that had left him even more lonely than he was before. It didn’t seem possible that he
would end. He couldn’t accept it, that he would never be again. Silas’s mouth filled with his own vomit, and he could hardly get out the words to beg Ritter for his life.

“Please,” he said. “I’ll do anything.”

“All right,” said Ritter, standing over him with an expression on his face that seemed almost like happiness. “All right, Silence, you can do something. You can crawl.”

On his hands and knees, Silas edged toward the half-open door. Perhaps he would escape after all. Miracles happened all the time. But behind him Ritter laughed.

“You’re a snake, Silas,” he said, “and you know what we do with snakes, don’t you? We shoot them.”

The bullet went straight through Silas’s left foot and lodged in the wooden floor below. The pain was unbearable. He screamed, and somewhere inside he could hear himself screaming, could feel his lungs uselessly contract and expand, as he watched Ritter reloading his gun. He looked up into the barrel and saw his own extinction, and then, just as he closed his eyes, the room exploded again, and Ritter fell down almost on top of him. Trave had aimed for the sergeant’s chest and had ended up shooting him in the head. Ritter was dead before he hit the ground.

Trave felt shocked—shocked to his core. The obvious necessity for his action didn’t change its significance. He felt a great emptiness inside; he felt Ritter’s weight on his soul.

But for now he didn’t have to think. He pushed Ritter’s big body away and leant down over Silas, removing the remains of his shoe and sock. The foot was a mess, and Trave tied his handkerchief around the wound to try and stop the bleeding. He couldn’t think of anything else he could do.

“Is he dead?” Silas asked. His voice was very faint.

“Yes.” Trave was sure of it. He’d turned on the lights in the gallery, and he could see Ritter’s eyes gazing sightlessly up at the ceiling. They hadn’t moved at all.

“Thank you,” Silas whispered, and Trave felt oddly touched. He had saved Silas’s life. It didn’t matter that Silas had probably killed his father.

“Stay quiet,” he said. “The ambulance’ll be here soon.”

But Silas had something else he needed to say. Something that wouldn’t wait.

“I didn’t tell the truth,” he said. “About when my father was killed. I was with Sasha. I didn’t want to say before. But now it’s different.”

“Why?” Trave was shaken, unprepared for what Silas was saying.

“Because of Jeanne. She was jealous. That’s why she said those things in court.”

Silas’s voice trailed away and he closed his eyes. Trave wanted to shake him, wake him up, cross-examine him about this new story, because he didn’t believe it. Not for a moment. It was too damn convenient.

Trave forgot the poignancy of Ritter’s death and Silas’s survival. He was a policeman again, with a mission to ferret out the lies and extract the truth. But at the last moment he pulled back his hand, knowing he had to let Silas be. Nothing he said now could be used in evidence. A statement could wait until after the doctors had done their work. Silas wasn’t going anywhere.

On the floor, the wounded man was no longer conscious of the policeman leaning over him or the dead man behind his head. The pain in his foot was still there, but it seemed to belong to someone else. Not just the gallery, but the whole house was full of bright blue water. His arms were strong, and he swam through the rooms like an arrow. Upstairs and downstairs, he could go where he pleased. Until the ambulancemen bent down to put him on a stretcher, and he came rushing back up to the surface and remembered who he was and how much everything hurt.