Soul

Another jolt of intense pain shot through the Colonel, pulling him back into his skin. The floor rippled and buckled beneath him like an angry sea, while the hanging masks transformed into all his childhood fears. His mother’s cloying features loomed from the shadows, her lips and nose extending like fingers. The face of his father’s corpse suddenly bolted across the floor like a skinned rat. A boy he had tortured at preparatory school leered at him from the mirror; and the dead Russian soldier gazed blindly at him, his clouded eyes as beautiful as a whore’s.

Where was the sense of omnipotence he had experienced before? He felt no power; only terror.

The doors to his cabinet flew open and his collection of skulls lunged at him, jaws snapping, each bite another agonising cramp.

And who was this luminous figure that stood a hundred feet high above him? Tantalisingly she receded then reappeared. Struggling, he tried to remember who she was and why she was there. Was she his salvation? Gripped by a convulsion, his body thrashed against the wooden floor.

To Lavinia, he looked less like a man than an animal. The ochre had smeared a rainbow on the parquet floor, and excrement coated his thighs and buttocks. He will die soon, she thought, and he will be with his goddess. She could not afford to acknowledge his agony; it was as if a deeper impulse had hijacked her. Just die, she prayed, finish it now, quickly. Death, the grotesque banality of matter, of all human frailty, finally transforming into the jerking end-pantomime she’d always suspected it to be.

Clawing at the mask, the Colonel tried to stop himself from choking on his own vomit. As he stared out at the whirling world, the goddess of death, Calounger, appeared. Her eyes were fiery pits reflecting the end of all the men he’d seen die, the last of whom was himself.

And then, as a massive seizure lifted him off the ground, the image of his lover appeared, reaching out from one of the goddess’s huge eyes that now filled his sight. Hamish’s long muscled arms picked him up off the ground and pulled him into a sweet embrace. Finally, the pain ceased.

The stench of faeces and vomit was overpowering. James’s body lay twisted on the floor, his skin rapidly greying into the ashen complexion of the dead.

Lavinia, breathing heavily, leaned against a wall. Shock rapidly distanced her, taking her back to the moment before she had entered the study, wiping her involvement from her memory in a feat of self-deception and self-preservation.

I am not responsible for the man on the floor. I do not know him. These white arms that extend out so innocently from mauve satin sleeves, these hands stained with the rusty powder of death, are not mine.

Trembling, she sank to the ground while the reconstruction of events flew about her like a flock of whirling ravens. When she was sure of her story, she pulled the servant’s bell.

69

Los Angeles, 2002

GABRIEL STARED THROUGH THE LENS of the microscope at the sample Julia had given him. It indicated heightened activity for ANG–1, but there was something odd about the sample itself, something he couldn’t quite place.

Remembering a reference in a file that might help him, he went into Julia’s office and started rummaging around in the filing cabinet set against the wall behind her desk. As he flicked through the files at the back of the cabinet his eye fell on a large envelope marked Defence Department: Strictly Confidential hidden in the Z section. He hesitated then convinced himself it was his moral duty to read the document. Carefully he pulled out the envelope in a manner he would be able to re-seal it without detection. The report inside was entitled: 3.10.2002. Afghanistan: Ambush involving Lt. L. Jones, Sgt Z. Nathan and civilian Professor J. Huntington.

Sitting down, Gabriel began reading.

Carla swung around from her laptop. ‘I don’t think you should go. Or at least consider meeting somewhere neutral, like a restaurant.’

Klaus dropped a script down on the desk beside her.

‘What kind of message does that give Julia? She’s agreed to talk about the house sale, she’s congratulated us on the pregnancy—I really think she’s moved on.’

‘I’d still feel happier if you changed the location.’

He kissed the top of her head. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be okay.’

Reassured, Carla reached up to meet his lips.

Chopping the peppers and folding the saffron into the rice felt like a ritual. It was comforting, this precise series of gestures. It took Julia out of her body; an unequivocal dance, the choreography predetermined.

After finishing the food preparations, she slipped candles into the candelabra. She wanted to create a sense of occasion; it seemed only fitting.

Their best cutlery—old-fashioned German silver, sent from Belgium, solid, puritanical in its lack of ornamentation—lay on either side of Wedgwood bone-china plates. The white linen tablecloth had been another wedding gift; the crystal wine glasses she’d purchased to celebrate her appointment five years before.

The whole table was a glossary of memory: a coda for their marriage. A perverse last supper, Julia observed, speculating about who the guests could be to make up the necessary thirteen: Carla, Naomi, Gabriel, her mother, her Belgian mother-in-law—all the spectators of their relationship, some participants, some not.

A bottle of Margaux 1990 stood breathing on the sideboard. Julia glanced at her watch. Klaus would be punctual; he always was.

She disconnected the doorbell, switched her cell phone off and pulled the phone connection from the wall, then stood in front of the hall mirror to check her appearance. She was wearing the dress she had bought for their last anniversary, a purple long-sleeved evening gown with a low back. She was thinner now and her ribs undulated up towards her collarbone, which curved out like a pale archery bow. She touched it; its skeletal nature brought her own mortality to mind. She would be the high priestess tonight. She would be Justice, impenetrable, powerful.

She returned to the dining room and slid open the sideboard drawer. The gun lay on top of the cutlery. Picking it up, she checked the chamber; the four bullets lay nestled snugly against the steel, waiting. She looked at her watch; it was exactly eight o’clock. She then stood by the window poised; as she had predicted, he was on time.

70