The Twelfth Tablet - Ebook (3 page)

‘Are you ever tempted to sell?’ Paul asked.

Stroehlein shook his head. ‘The tablet promises immortality. Who can put a price on that?’

‘If you ever do, let me know.’ And then, clumsily: ‘I know someone who might be interested.’

‘Are you making me an offer?’ Stroehlein’s banking antennae didn’t miss the subtext. He closed the case; the golden light disappeared.

‘Why are you here, exactly?’

Paul felt the guilt flooding his face and couldn’t stop it. ‘The insurance. The exhibition.’ He glanced at Vincent, who was fiddling with something in his camera bag. ‘Anyway, we’re finished.’

‘Does the curator know you are here?’ Stroehlein took his phone out of his pocket and began searching for a number. ‘Or is this, what you are doing, freelance work? An insurance claim that nobody has made. Papers I have already signed.
What are you doing?
’

Everything after that happened in the wrong order. Paul had begun to speak, when he realised Stroehlein’s last sentence had been shouted over his shoulder. He looked back and saw Vincent standing by the piano, a pistol extended in his hand. He heard a bang, though Vincent hadn’t moved. He turned again, just in time to see Stroehlein falling backwards into the fireplace. His head snapped forward as it hit the edge of the grate, but he didn’t scream. Blood welled from a small round hole punched through his forehead.

Chapter 3

Sight, sound and time came together again – though slower than before. Paul stood by the sofa, numb with horror. Vincent didn’t hesitate. He crossed the room, stood over Stroehlein’s body and aimed the pistol at his skull.

‘No,’ Paul mouthed.

He closed his eyes. The bang seemed to shake him apart. When he looked again, there was more blood, and Vincent picking up the cigarette case where it had fallen on the floor.

‘We must go,’ said Vincent.

Some dislocated corner of Paul’s mind noticed it was the first thing he’d heard Vincent say. He still didn’t move. Vincent shoved the cigarette case in his jeans, grabbed Paul and dragged him down the corridor.

He’s a murderer. I’m being kidnapped by a murderer.
But he needed to escape, and Vincent was taking him in the right direction. They were at the front door. Vincent yanked the handle and–

–nothing happened. The door wouldn’t open. Vincent pulled hard enough to fell a tree; he kicked and rattled it in its frame. But the reinforced door didn’t move.

Below the handle, a brass keyhole pouted out of the door. Vincent made a slow turn, scanning the walls and furniture.

‘
Puta
,’ he swore.

He ran back to the library. Framed by the end of the corridor, Paul saw him crouch by the fireplace and rummage through Stroehlein’s pockets.

Now’s your chance
. It was a big house – there must be somewhere he could hide, call the police and wait it out until Vincent had gone.

And what will you tell the police?
the voice in his head asked.
You made the appointment. You brought Vincent here. You’re an accomplice.

In the library, Vincent stood. His face said he hadn’t found the key. He started back towards the door…

Too late to run
, thought Paul.

...then stopped. His head jerked round, up towards the first floor gallery that was out of Paul’s sight. He lifted his pistol.

Again, the picture and the sound disconnected. The shot came, but Vincent hadn’t fired. He staggered backwards as though he’d slipped on something. More shots followed – two or three, Paul couldn’t tell – much louder than the one that had killed Stroehlein. Feathers billowed out of a sofa cushion where one of the bullets had missed Vincent, or maybe gone right through him. They fluttered down, settling on his body like snow on a log.

A pair of feet appeared on the library stairs. Then a torso, cradling what looked like some sort of assault rifle.

Switzerland’s one of the most heavily armed countries in the world
, Paul remembered.
You do your military service, and then you keep your gun
.

The butler descended. Or perhaps the word was
bodyguard
. He saw Paul at the end of the corridor and pointed the rifle at him – unsteadily. The hand that gripped the barrel trembled; the muzzle wavered. Paul couldn’t take his eyes off it.

Because he couldn’t think of anything better to do, Paul raised his hands. Even that movement made the gun jab up aggressively. Paul almost fainted.

‘What have you done?’ the butler shouted, a hysterical voice verging on a scream. ‘What have you done?’

Not a bodyguard
, Paul decided. He hadn’t expected to use the rifle – certainly not to kill. He was improvising.

That didn’t reassure him.

The butler stopped about three feet away. Way too close for comfort, but too far for Paul to even think about trying to grab the gun. His senses had parted company again: his eyes saw everything with a hyper-real clarity, while his ears couldn’t make out a thing. The butler’s shouts came through like a tape being played at double speed. All he caught was ‘
mörder
’ – murderer, repeated over and over – and also ‘
polizei
’.

And then the voice stopped – drowned out by a torrent of noise that came instantly and from nowhere. An explosion; a roar like a jet engine; a klaxon shriek that ripped through his bones. Something hit him in the chest. He threw himself to the floor. Had he been shot?

His face was wet – soaked. Not with blood but with water, still spraying down on him from a sprinkler head in the ceiling. The butler had had it worse – the high-pressure spray must have caught him right in the eyes. He reeled back, clutching his face with one hand while the other swung the rifle wildly.

Perhaps it was instinct – or the release of something that had been building ever since Vincent pulled out his gun. All Paul wanted was the rifle to point away from him. He got off the floor and lunged for it.

The butler glimpsed him coming, but Paul already had his hands on the rifle. Water made it slick; he was surprised how heavy it was. For a moment they wrestled it between them like children. Then – whether his hand slipped, or whether desperation made Paul strong – the butler let go. Paul tore the rifle out of his grip.

Almost before he had it, he felt the gun hit something hard. It shuddered. The butler suddenly stopped fighting and dropped to the floor.

The rifle
. Paul looked at the thin line of blood dribbling down the butler’s temple, then at the gun in his hands.

Did I do that?
The stock must have clubbed the side of his head.

The fire alarm was still going: smoke from the gunshots must have triggered it. Paul couldn’t think: he just wanted to get out. Dazed, he reached out for the door handle again. It opened. It must have unlocked automatically with the alarm.

He stumbled out. For a moment, the cool quiet was a blessing; then he started shivering uncontrollably. The sprinkler had soaked through his suit. He staggered to the car and hauled open the door. Valerie was still sitting in the back, her knees drawn up to her chest on the vast seat.

Valerie gasped as she saw the assault rifle in his arms. ‘What happened?’ she mouthed.

The ringing alarm and the ringing in his ears left him deaf. He started to say something, gave up.

He opened the driver’s door and slid the rifle across onto the passenger seat. The keys were in the ignition, thank God. He couldn’t hear sirens – couldn’t hear much of anything – but he knew they must be coming. If the butler hadn’t called the police, the fire alarm would have tipped them off.

Valerie leaned forward between the seats. She had to shout in his ear. ‘What are you doing?’

‘The police.’ Paul had already started the engine. He wasted precious seconds searching for the clutch with his foot, before he noticed the automatic gear shifter sticking out of the console. He put it into drive.

‘What about the tablet?’

‘Shut the door,’ he told her.

‘Ari will kill us if we don’t have it.’

I’ll kill Ari if I see him
. He glanced at the rifle in the footwell.
I could really do it.
In other circumstances, the thought would have horrified him.

Valerie reached through and pushed the gear-shift back into Park. The engine jolted so hard he half expected it to drop out of the car.

He stared at Valerie. The rifle loomed large in the corner of his eye. Black mascara tears ran down her cheek, but her voice was clearer than he’d ever heard it before.

‘Get the tablet. Otherwise, there’s no chance.’

The moment he got out of the car, he heard sirens. In the distance, but getting closer. He tried to run, but his legs had gone soft. He staggered across the gravel like a drunk. The noise of the sirens seemed to slow him down.

The butler still lay in the front hall; Vincent was in the library. Getting the tablet out of his pocket was harder than he’d thought: he had to roll the man over, a big dead weight that fought him all the way. He prised the cigarette case out of his pocket. He didn’t bother to check for a pulse. He managed not to vomit.

Rising sirens chased him back to the car. He kept staring at the gate, waiting for a pair of flashing lights to screech through and block the Mercedes. Maybe part of him wanted it – an ending, no more choices.

The gates gaped wide apart. The same alarm mechanism that had unlocked the front door must have opened them too. He got in the car, selected Drive. The moment he touched the accelerator, the big engine responded like a rocket. The car bounded through the front gates, almost broadsiding a minivan coming down the main road. Horns blared, rubber squealed: Paul lurched the car around and onto the outbound carriageway.

Blue lights wobbled in the mirror, a way back but coming quickly. He was so busy looking at them he almost drove straight into the car in front. Brakes, more horns, more angry flashing lights.  When he checked the mirror again, the blue lights had gone. They must have reached the house.

‘Take the next left,’ Valerie said from the back seat. For everything that had happened, her voice remained as soft as ever. In the hotel yesterday, it had opened a thousand possibilities. Now, it was the still, perfect centre of the storm that was blowing him apart. The one thing he could hold on to.

He took the turn, through the rising suburbs that crowded the hillside above the lake. He tried to obey the speed limit, until the houses gave out and the slope steepened. He checked the mirror and saw nothing. The trees were so thick the police could have been a hundred yards back and he wouldn’t have seen them.

‘Turn here.’

A dirt track led off into the forest. He almost saw it too late, but the big car’s brakes were strong enough to cope. He veered onto the track and ploughed about a hundred yards into the forest.

He turned off the lights. He turned off the engine. He sat there, stupefied by the silence.

Valerie got out and walked round to the passenger seat. The rifle had slid against the door: it toppled over when she opened it and banged on the sill. For an unspeakable second, he thought it would fire straight into her.

Valerie lifted the gun – it was heavy for her – and let it fall on the ground. She climbed in, slammed the door. They sat side by side in silence, like a married couple who couldn’t be bothered to fight any more but weren’t ready to forgive. She reached across the centre console and took his hand.

‘Tell me what happened,’ she said.

The experience had been so overwhelming, it was hard to remember she hadn’t seen any of it. Harder still to explain to someone who hadn’t been there. He told her in a few flat phrases, absurdly inadequate. ‘Didn’t you know?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then why did Ari ask you to come?’

The words came out heavy with implication. She tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her go. ‘
Why?
’

‘Because I wanted to see you.’

He let go her hand. ‘Why?’

‘I was afraid for you. You didn’t know what you were getting into.’

‘I thought you didn’t either.’

‘I know Ari.’

Ari
. His thoughts spiralled away, anger and revenge and terror and helplessness, until she brought him back with a bump.

‘What are you going to do?’

The question sideswiped him. Ever since he’d got in the car, he’d had no choices to make. The few things he’d done – hitting the butler, taking the car, hiding in the forest – had been desperate instinct. Now he had to choose.

What are you going to do?
He had to answer. Everything depended on it.

‘I should go to the police.

‘They’ll be looking for you. They must know this car from the video.’

‘What video?’

‘Security cameras.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s a Swiss banker.’

‘
Fuck
.’ Paul thought about it. He hadn’t seen any cameras, but that didn’t mean anything. And what if they were inside, as well as out? He imagined the police around a monitor taking notes, watching Paul when Vincent shot Stroehlein. Watching the scene where he brained the butler with the butt of a gun – then came back for the tablet.

And even if there were no cameras, he’d left his business card.
Such a nice touch.

He gripped the wheel to stop his hands shaking.

‘I’ll tell them everything.’

‘You mean Ari?’ she said. Paul nodded. ‘He left the country this morning.’

‘The car…’

‘Vincent bought it with cash.’

‘What about yesterday? Someone at the hotel must have seen us together.’

‘Ari will say that you approached him offering to sell the Orphic tablet because you know his father is a collector. He will be shocked at what you have done – he would never have imagined it.’

‘But what about you?’ A flash of hope. ‘You can tell them everything. You know I had no idea what was happening.’

A sad look. For the first time, he noticed her scent in the car.

‘I can’t.’

‘You have to.’ He thumped the wheel; irrationally, he thought of the rifle lying among the leaves. ‘They’ll send me to prison. You have to tell the truth.’