TWENTY-NINE

THE OASIS MOTEL, SAN DIEGO. 25 JUNE 2011. 7 P.M.

‘I want to tell you a story.’

Lying on his bed, Kyle groaned and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

With his takeout order came a bottle of Johnny Walker Red and Coca Cola so cold it burned his tongue. He planned to eat his burger, drink as much of the whisky as possible, then fall asleep while Max and Jed kept watch. Tonight, he was going to be the ‘talent’, and felt as hard done by, and put out, and irritable as the talent usually did on a shoot. The American Airlines sleeping mask would see some action too; three portable lights Max brought with him from England had turned the motel room into the desert at midday.

The sight of three beds in the room had irritated Kyle on arrival. Another sign of Max’s confidence that Kyle would agree to all the little man wanted, eventually. But here he was: exhausted, nervous, frightened, out of his depth, but somehow still a player. Nothing had changed. The other two beds were piled high with the other men’s gear, as if they had no intention of using them for their true purpose. The room must have been designed for a family, groups of young travellers, or an FBI detail on stakeout. Max and Jed had saved the bed by the window for him. On which he immediately slumped.

Kyle surreptitiously eye-balled Jed again. Innately self-assured and hearty, dressed in the innocuous uniform of a portly tourist, Jed had met him in Arrivals and introduced himself with a handshake that caused pain. Jed then drove him to the motel in silence, where a somewhat revitalized Max waited to show off a big grin of satisfaction. The executive producer’s ear was still a muff of gauze, and the scratches on his cheek were now entirely concealed with tape and cotton-wool pads. It made him look like a plastic-surgery victim.

After a round of insincere greetings from the executive producer, there followed a second embellished introduction to Jed, who even referred to himself as ‘Maximillian’s special forces’, before Max and Jed resumed their seats on the chairs beside a small table under the wall-mounted television. Back to business and you don’t need to join us, seemed to be the tone.

Max thought highly of Jed. Jed had found the children of the mine. Jed had put Chet’s mansion under surveillance for three months. Jed had tracked down everyone Kyle and Dan interviewed in the States. Jed got things done and Jed had guns. But Jed made Kyle nervous.

On his way into the room, Kyle had only glanced at the table the two men had been using. It was covered in aerial photos of Chet Regal’s mansion, a draughtsman’s blueprint, a street map, and three black handles poking out of holsters that he didn’t want in the same building as himself, let alone in his tomorrow. Whatever criminal actions these signs of preparation suggested, he refused to think about: desperate acts he was going to have to assist, perform, or film, the following day with one total stranger, and one virtual stranger he didn’t trust at all. Nor did he want his thoughts to confront what had taken Dan, and nearly killed Kyle himself the last time it was dark outside. There would be time enough for terror tomorrow, because whatever he’d brushed against in London was going to be much worse inside Sister Katherine’s mansion. Nothing was going to convince him otherwise. Merciful sleep needed to take him away from this room and the unnatural light blazing inside it.

At San Diego International, a stewardess had woken him while doing her best to soften the mask of distaste that was her face, at the sight of him, unshaven for weeks and unwashed for days, sprawled out in a recliner in first class. He slept straight through the last seven hours of the ten-hour flight, without dreaming. To emerge, with a headache from what felt like a coma, in California; arriving with one change of clothes in a rucksack and a brand-new camera. But the moment his back touched the bed in the motel room, he wanted to sleep again. For a week. At the thought of a monologue from Max, Kyle said, ‘Not now, Max. I just want to get messed up enough to fall asleep.’

Max smiled. ‘Tonight, my friends, I think we are in need of some context. Quite naturally, your reason may still persist in rejecting what we will be forced to confront and endure tomorrow. And I would be worried about you, had you merely accepted my word as the truth, in the matter of what Chet Regal has been a host to, for most of his life. So on the eve of battle, I do believe Katherine’s endgame requires embellishment.’

‘I’m done, Max. I’m sorry. Just done.’ Kyle covered his face against the harsh light emitting from one of Max’s portable lamps, situated on the nightstand between the end and middle beds. ‘There’s only a few hours until sun-up.’ It amazed him that one of the others wasn’t already shoring up his strength with a nap.

‘Go on, Max,’ Jed said, and winked at Kyle. ‘I’ll listen. I could listen to you all night. Spielberg will come round.’

‘Spielberg?’

Jed laughed. Kyle glared.

Max bowed his head. Held up two small hands for silence. ‘I want to take you back to the Soviet Union on July 1st, 1941. A night when Molotov and the political elite of Soviet Russia literally trembled, and not from the winter cold, as they walked to Stalin’s Dacha.

‘An incongruous story you may think? But perhaps it is not. You see, the Soviet elite were on their way to deliver terrible news to their leader. News of the German invasion of Russia. They believed the receipt of this information would be the end of them. It hardly seemed possible for their country to survive the German war machine, now that it was active upon Mother Russia’s soil. And as messengers, there was now the additional matter of surviving Stalin’s wrath.

‘You see, Stalin had made a terrible error of judgement. He trusted Hitler, and signed a non-aggression pact with the Führer in 1938. To avoid war with Germany. And to serve his desire for greater power through an alliance with the Nazis.

‘Stalin’s sadistic tyranny had already blighted the country for twelve years. By the night of 1 July 1941, his collectivism had been responsible for the death of nine million peasants. Another ten million men and women sent to prisons and labour camps for political reasons had also died. By the time Stalin expired in 1953, his final death toll is estimated at around the twenty million mark.

‘Inconceivable. An amount that is beyond our imagination. It is so great, it is stupefying to even try and comprehend the industrial scale of his destruction of humanity. And no one died easily. Not one of the twenty million. Their suffering was monumental. So when Russia was betrayed by Hitler, Stalin assumed his political elite were visiting his Dacha as an execution party.

‘If only it had been. But even Stalin had underestimated the terror he had successfully instilled with his pathological behaviour, inside each and every Russian. He misunderstood the intentions of Molotov. Like abused children, they’d normalized abuse. They were incapable of resistance. Incapable. His dominance of them was total.

‘And, Jed, let me tell you, they missed one of the twentieth century’s most important opportunities. Instead, they helped him gather his wits to regroup their country’s defences. They encouraged him to actually lead them, for once, in something other than the maelstrom of his revolting paranoia, his inhumanity, and his indecency. That never stopped, of course, but he took this opportunity. The opportunity, ultimately, for his own survival and longevity.

‘As a devil, he was immaculate. Immaculately Satanic. And tomorrow, we too will face a will as indomitably Satanic. But unlike Molotov in 1941, we must choose a different course of action. In the forefront of our minds, we must think of the consequences of our not acting.’

Jed was frowning, looking down at his hands. ‘But what about Hitler, Max? Without the Russian mobilization, Hitler would have won the war.’

Max smiled. ‘Really? Or overextended his war effort. Not even Germany could have held such a front. And Hitler’s mania, and that of his sycophantic elite, was at that very moment destroying him and all he had dreamed of. You could say his ambitions had already passed into the realm of fantasy. His day of reckoning began when he invaded Russia. Even if Russia had fallen quickly, his reckoning would merely have been postponed, until another inevitable opportunity for self-destruction.

‘But I am glad you mention this more, how will I put it, analyzed sociopath. Because Hitler was Stalin’s great evil peer. And like Stalin in his Dacha in 1941, opportunities to kill Hitler were also missed. Twentieth-century history would have been different if we’d had more luck in assassinating our tyrants. Two men and their wills, and the wills of their amoral favourites, we can say at the last count, were responsible for the deaths of fifty-six million people within that seven-year conflict. Not forgetting the irreparable devastation to the lives of those who survived the respective legacies of these tyrants. Can it be sanely argued that men such as they should not have been executed earlier?’

Jed winked at Kyle, who watched Max through two parted fingers on his right hand. Max caught the wink, smiled, and chuckled to himself. ‘Am I being disingenuous again, boys? Talking in grand platitudes about Stalin and Hitler?’

Kyle felt too weary, too shocked, too appalled, by what had happened in his own life, to grasp the greater meaning behind any more monsters.

‘My point, my dear boys, is that there is something demoniac in human nature that we are unable to stop revering. Unable to stop ourselves serving. This is our greatest tragedy. A tragedy because it is universal, and it is timeless, as all true tragedies are. And we cannot learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of our forefathers. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot are the macrocosm. Add Napoleon, perhaps Caesar, even Alexander? These great historical figures we admire for their conquests, their drive, their ambition, and the progress they are said to have been responsible for. But would we have not been better off as a species without them?’

Jed knocked back a glass of whisky. ‘There would have been others. It makes no difference.’

Max clapped his small hands with excitement. ‘Which makes our tragedy all the greater through its inevitability. We seem incapable of being led by any but the monstrous. The malignant narcissist. And there are many willing to take the place of a deposed tyrant, to ape them. And the rest of us, down here, cannot discriminate in the choice of our leaders, even if we have anything resembling a real choice. We cannot lead ourselves rationally or humanely or fairly, so we choose the most unscrupulous and egotistical to lead us. Into one war and one holocaust after another.

‘It was why I began The Last Gathering. To create one small pocket of cooperation and decency. Of humility and grace. And look what happened. We were hijacked by a psychopath who would not have flinched at becoming a Hitler or a Stalin if the opportunity presented itself to her. We are here, my friends, to correct a very grave mistake I made in 1967.’

Max stood up and walked to his bed. Sat down, then reclined his upper body. An informal gesture that seemed inappropriate for their boss; his thin legs dangled above the floor and its banal carpet. He was wearing odd-coloured socks: one red, one brown. ‘I am an old hippy. Who believed in peace and love. Sharing and fairness and compassion. I was a young fool and now I am an old fool. But I once believed The Last Gathering was a hope. An example for a better way of living. Of understanding myself and other people.’

‘Sure didn’t turn out that way,’ Jed said, smiling.

Max sighed. ‘We worshipped a devil instead. Asked it to lead us. To manipulate and divide us. To disinvest us of our livelihoods, our freedom, our dignity, and even our lives, in the service of itself.’

‘We all make mistakes, Max. But that was a big one. Though not as big as Molotov’s in forty-one.’ Jed laughed until it petered out into a sound of gas escaping from his big red face. He sounded drunk.

Max spoke as if to himself. ‘I could have stopped her in London. There were enough of us who saw what was happening. And we did nothing but hope. It’s our vain hope that is their fuel.’ Max dropped his hands over his face.

‘Hey Max,’ Jed said. ‘Take a hit off Mr Jack Daniels.’

‘I think I might.’ Max sat up and gracefully accepted the whisky bottle in Jed’s outstretched hand.

Jed smiled at Kyle. ‘So, what we’re dealing with, Max, is some pissant Hitler or Stalin. One of them. And we sure don’t need another one hanging on for too much longer, ain’t that right, Spielberg?’

Max winced through the afterburn following a huge gulp of bourbon. ‘One of them. Precisely. And I extend this to so many of our corporate leaders. I ask you to draw your eye down to our glorious professional leaders in the commercial arena, in this most material of ages. How many of them should be in charge of anything, let alone other people?’

‘Amen to that,’ Jed said, before gulping at his own whisky. ‘Would have been happy to take a few of my old bosses out of the game. But don’t they get shit done?’

‘Mere public relations.’

Against his will, Kyle felt himself smile. Jed grinned.

‘They’ve been selling us that line since we walked out of the primordial surf, Jed. That we need them. That they are the talent. Born leaders, and we must rely upon their leadership qualities. We must be led by them, or they will go elsewhere. Well go, I say.’

‘I’d drive them to the airport myself, Max. Hell yeah!’

Max chuckled. ‘And you have hit upon a very prescient line of enquiry, Jed. I believe the vulpine greed of the corporate world is cut from the very same cloth as the tyrant of history. Different worlds, different means, same intention. Empowerment, enrichment, self-interest, at the expense of all but itself. Their strength is their suppression of conscience. But is there another way? This is the question we should ask. I would—’

Right around then, Kyle fitted his airline ear plugs and fell asleep.

And awoke in darkness with a whimper. From a dream hectic with thin figures he could see little of amongst the rafters of a dark ceiling, before the memory of them was gone. He tried to remember where he had been in the dream, but the noise inside the lightless motel room snatched his attention. Guttural barks interspersed with avian screams poured past the one earplug still in place. He’d heard similar before. Urgent sounds of alarm, or excitement, clotted by a bronchial wheeze.

There was light. He turned his head. On the far side of the room a door was ajar. The bathroom. Emitting a thin blast of silvery light so sharp it hurt his eyes. Sitting up, he called out for Max, for Jed, but in his terror and disorientation could only manage a low voice from a dry throat.

He could hear the other men. They talked in raised voices to be heard by each other in the din beyond the door haloed in white light.

Kyle scrabbled for the dawn-light simulator lamp beside his bed. It was gone. Yanked at the cord for the reading light above his head. Nothing. Stood up fast and fell forward in the darkness and onto the next bed. From which he thrashed upwards again. He had no balance. His blood didn’t appear to be in his head or legs; he stumbled sideways and hit the wall. Righted himself with a shove. Fell backwards. Sat down hard on his bed. He felt stupid, absurd in his fear.

Anger rushed inside him. He kicked out. Slapped about himself. Got to his feet and staggered across to where he thought the table might be. Wiped his hands across maps and shiny photographic paper, but could not find the holstered pistols.

From behind the bathroom door, he heard Max’s voice. He was speaking in French. A name he recognized was spoken twice, the last syllable raised questioningly. ‘Katherine? Katherine?’ But Max’s voice was drowned out again by a torrent of liquescent rasps.

‘Max! Max!’ Kyle called out at the bathroom door he was too afraid to go through. No answer. Kyle pushed the door open. White light exploded outwards and turned the hotel room behind him silver-blue.

‘Oh, God,’ he said. A stench of decomposition hit him hot in the face. As if the doorway offered respite, or even salvation, to the origin of torment that issued from inside the bathroom, the rattle and hiss of these last breaths amplified.

And for a few moments, he wasn’t sure what Jed or Max were doing. They were engrossed in an activity their bodies obscured. Jed’s broad back in the blue polo shirt was patterned with sweat under the arms and between his big shoulders. Max stood half behind Jed. His face in profile was twisted with revulsion at what he looked at in the bathtub. At who he attempted to question.

Jed turned his head to the side and barked, ‘Shut the door for chrissakes!’

Max looked at Kyle as if he didn’t recognize him. Then frowned. ‘Get in! Now!’

Kyle stepped into the bathroom and pushed the door closed behind him. It wouldn’t close. A black electrical cable ran outside to a multi-board from which three portable lamps were powered. Which meant Max had taken the lamps into the bathroom as Kyle slept. Had left him outside. Alone and without protection.

Max stepped aside and seized Kyle’s arm under the shoulder, like he was a child. Pulled him out from behind Jed’s back. ‘We caught one!’ he said with such inappropriate excitement, Kyle stared at him and was again convinced the old man was insane.

Kyle coughed to clear his lungs of the sewer gas and rot. Thought he might be sick. Peered into the bath. Then looked away. Covered his mouth and nose with a hand. ‘Oh, God.’ Again, he took in the vision that demanded he run now from this room and not stop until he reached the airport. ‘No.’

Brown acrid smoke, or steam, drifted off the thin figure within the bathtub. There was a pitiful sniffing at life, and its whimpers filled the small space it slowly expired within. It appeared that an unnatural imposition had been made upon the world through a motel bathroom.

Jed had it trapped by the throat. A metal loop was tight about the shrivelled neck. The wire noose was attached to the pole Jed clutched in his meaty hands. Holding the pole took all of the strength in his thick hairy arms, to keep the captive in place at the far end of the bathtub, where it burned alive in the light from three lamps.

Kyle swooned. His vision juddered like he’d been clouted across the skull. He burped fragments of burger and whisky into his mouth.

At the sight of him, in what was left of the black eyes, a savage energy animated the cadaverous face under the bath taps into a sudden roar, that made all three of them step backwards. Emaciated legs kicked at them. The hideous strength in the intruder seemed to have gathered again. Subduing it forced a pop of sweat beads over Jed’s entire strawberry skull. But Jed didn’t flinch, just said, ‘It ain’t got no tongue.’

It had no language then. Just a lipless maw and a cluster of broken teeth set at chaotic angles about the blackened gums. At that point, Kyle realized he was chanting, ‘Kill it. Get rid of it. Kill it.’

The UV lights continued their slow incineration. Above the bath, the ceiling was tar-black and sticky where it had come through. Incongruously, on the counter beside the wash basin, a large silver salt-shaker stood beside a silver hip-flask.

‘Look, it’s going.’ The crack of bony heels and hands on the enamel diminished in force. The cries softened to mewls that pierced Kyle’s heart. The chest and prominent ribcage appeared translucent in patches. Visible bones were covered by a membrane, reminiscent of that surrounding a vast tadpole or larvae. Black and shrunken eyes deflated into papery creases within dark sockets.

Max grabbed the flask; his hands shook. Gingerly, he turned the flask over the shrunken face of the thing in the bath. A thin stream of dark liquid trickled out of the flask and splashed across the head of the captive. Where the liquid spilled onto the white porcelain it was bright red and syrupy. Blood.

Jed renewed his efforts with the pole. Pressed it down hard. Sweat ran in milky rivulets off his chin. Kyle looked from one man to the other, dizzy with shock and confusion. Until he was distracted by the mottled head in the bath. It bumped about horribly. Twisted its throat inside the wire noose and rubbed a dry mouth against the smears of blood. It gave the impression of trying to lick the porcelain without a tongue. And vigour had returned to the activity of the brown bones inside the bath. A receptacle it had discoloured; tainted with soot and something that glistened like a trail left on a window facing an overgrown garden.

Again, in French, Max hurriedly spoke to it. But the thing was too keen on the blood splattered about it, and too enraptured by its suffering.

‘Hell with this, Max,’ Jed said. ‘Let’s off it.’

Max sighed with disappointment, then nodded. He placed the flask down on the side and picked up the salt-shaker.

‘Quick, Max,’ Jed said. ‘Only takes a drop.’ His voice died into a grunt of exertion as he leaned into the pole to keep the reinvigorated thrashing of the figure inside the bathtub. Max uncapped the shaker and poured the contents over the snatching face. Kyle thought he heard something crackle, like crystals exposed to water. Carefully, holding it high, Max manoeuvred a dawn lamp over the tub, then lowered it slowly.

A mephitic cloud of dark steam made them all cry out with revulsion. An acidic burn across their eyes made them tear up. The shrieks cracked ice inside their ears, then descended into a drawn-out gargle that became a gasp, before a blessed silence thickened inside the room.

The figure lost its angularity and definition; it appeared to be quickly reabsorbed by the stains it had inflicted upon the base and sides of the bath. Kyle looked away. Leaned against the door. When he looked into the bath again, all he could see was a clutter of jet bones and a thin skull inside a bath so dirty it looked as if a fire had been lit inside it. He staggered out of the bathroom, coughing as he fled.

Behind him, he heard Jed say, ‘You weren’t much help, Spielberg. They ain’t easy to catch. Least you could’ve done was film it.’

‘You unscrewed the bulbs?’ Kyle looked about himself, aghast, as Jed continued to nonchalantly fit the light bulbs back into the lamps at the top of each bed. The ceiling light socket gaped. ‘To draw them in here?’ Incredulous, he shook his head. Max seemed bored with him, and sat at the table studying the map.

‘For intel. Vital before an operation,’ Jed said. He looked pleased with himself. ‘Ever heard the saying, offence is the best defence?’

Kyle was too angry to speak. He looked from Jed to Max, from Max to Jed. When he found his voice it had a shriek inside it that he loathed to hear. ‘You never thought of involving me in this plan? Or was I the bait? Asleep in the friggin’ dark!’

‘You wouldn’t have agreed and we don’t have time for lengthy debates every time something needs to be done.’ Max didn’t even look up.

‘Amen to that,’ Jed said.

‘Why am I here, Max? Why?’

‘Tryin’ to figure out the same thing myself,’ Jed said with a grin Kyle dearly wanted to smash from the portly man’s ruddy face.

‘You and Colombo don’t seem too bothered that I am. Or have you something else planned I’m not aware of yet? That will get me killed tomorrow?’

Max sighed and rubbed his eyes. Beyond the anecdotes and camaraderie with Jed, the man was shattered. Under the abrasive lights his sallow skin sagged around his mouth and throat. His thin arms were slack with exhaustion inside the tailored shirt and his tremulous fingers constantly played with a bottle of painkillers.

Max must know best, he’d told himself on his way over to California; Max had to know what was the right thing to do in this impossible situation. But fear engulfed him again. Because of his involvement in what amounted to murder in the eyes of the world. He had not wanted to face the truth of the matter until morning, but the bathroom ambush had suddenly brought the issue forward. They planned to kill, to execute, a sick actor. Max was quite mad; he could see it clearly now. A mad old tyrant. If someone had killed Max in 1967, none of this would be happening now. How about that, Herodotus?

How was it possible that he was back here? Back in America, with a camera in a room full of handguns and two men he hardly knew, with whom he planned to trespass, break into private property, then assassinate a sick man allegedly possessed by the body of a dead female cult leader. Preposterous: his life. A bit of sleep and the attempted interrogation of a Blood Friend had returned reason to his burned-out mind. What had he been thinking?

He thought of the thin figure raking about inside his unlit flat while he hung from the window sill. The film. The film. Remember the film. Was that why he was here? He couldn’t fully recall now. He’d unwrapped the camera in the ruin that was his flat and quickly shot his postscript and uploaded it; the screen of his monitor was cracked, but the PC had still worked. The rough cuts were already uploaded. Finger Mouse would be ten hours into the edit by now. But Max should never have mentioned the idea about a final scene. It had burned into his mind. Kyle wanted to save himself too. And the child. Avenge Dan. Dan. Don’t think of Dan. But he could not deny, even now, that he’d been transported by the idea that the greatest climax to any documentary in the history of film-making was in danger of being missed.

After what he’d just witnessed in the bathroom, it offered no consolation. The familiar spin cycle of doubt, recrimination, guilt and terror began to whirl. Back in London he’d wondered if he’d die if he just stayed home. And how would he know when next they’d come? Because the Blood Friends would visit again and again; or find him wherever he hid, until he was too tired to take one more step. Like Martha Lake and Bridgette Clover; run to ground. Isn’t that what he had told himself in the taxi to Heathrow, and in his seat in first class before he fell dead to sleep? But now he was here, the very idea of destroying a human connection to the inconceivable turned his bones into warm milk. ‘Oh, Jesus.’ Kyle slumped on his bed, face in hands. ‘I’m done. I’m so done with this. I don’t think I can . . .’

Max eyed Kyle. ‘And you’d let us deal with this alone? Come, come, there is no one else, Kyle. No one left. Just you, me, and Jed. And there is strength in numbers. Don’t you agree?’

‘You better start getting your shit real tight, Spielberg. You choke in there and I won’t flinch. I want you to remember that.’

The room moved around his head, then shuddered still. ‘Max, you hearing this? Who is this fucking clown—’

But he never managed another word. Nor did he get his hands out fast enough to block Jed’s attack. He was thrown backwards, onto the bed, with a thumb bent so painfully into the palm of one hand he yelped like a dog. A great sweaty paw, calloused on the palm, pressed his head into the mattress. A knee, with all of the man’s weight behind it, compressed his solar plexus to the point of ribs going snap, crackle and pop.

Above the pain, he made out Jed’s smile, and a pair of eyes that lacked any trace of humour. They glared in a sadistic delight behind innocuous oval spectacle lenses. ‘Listen up, Spielberg. I ain’t carrying you in there tomorrow.’

‘Jed. Jed, please.’ It was Max, from over by the table, though he didn’t bother to stand up while Jed tortured him. Because that is what it was: torture.

‘Time to step up, Spielberg. You hear? Man-up, you whiney bitch. You done nothing but shit your pants and fuss since you got here. We goin’ head first into some serious shit tomorrow, so you better get with the programme real fast. We’re gonna whack that fuck while the light of Jesus Christ Almighty shines in our eyes. And we’re gonna send those pieces of shit back into hell, you get me? You’re gonna point your camera and do whatever Max says. Period. You don’t even have to pull a trigger. But if I think for one minute you are endangering me, or Max, or this operation, I’ll clip your candy ass and not lose a second’s sleep over it. You hear me?’

Kyle stayed quiet.

Jed’s face came down closer. ‘Do you hear me?’

‘Fuck you,’ Kyle managed in a kind of wheeze without consonants.

The new pain that came to the place where his thumb joined his hand made him pass out for a few seconds. When he came around, he was still being held down on the bed and trying not to be sick. Max implored Jed, ‘Enough! Jed! He heard you. Enough. Please.’

The pressure gradually eased from Kyle’s chest and hand, but not his face. Jed’s fingers stank of the thing they’d burned out of existence inside the bathroom.

Max stood beside the bed. ‘Jed. His friend, they took him. He’s seen more of this than most could bear. We’re all tired. Wound up. So let’s just cool it. We need to trust each other. We have to. So please, enough of this bickering.’

Bickering?

Jed stepped away from the bed. Smiled at Kyle. ‘Just needed to clear the air, Max. Ain’t that right, Spielberg?’

Kyle held the man’s stare. Cradled his thumb against his belly. Tears blurred his vision. Wretchedness dampened his heart. So this is how it is. And in a damning moment of clarity, brought to his mind by the aftershocks of pain, he came to believe he was not supposed to come out of the mansion the following day. His purpose had been reconnaissance from the start. Expendable. Like Dan and Gabriel. They were all expendable, as long as little Max survived. Had Jed even been given instructions to ‘clip’ him once Chet was dead and the connection between the Blood Friends and this world was finally broken? Or was he bait, to be flung like a piece of meat to distract hungry lions? He thought he might throw up all over the white duvet.

Max frowned at him. He seemed to read Kyle’s thoughts. ‘My dear boy, we must have the final scene filmed. Cameras don’t lie. You know that better than anyone. How else are we to cover ourselves? Premeditated murder carries the life sentence in California. If we are caught fleeing the scene, we must be able to defend the necessity of our actions, with proof. So before we leave in a few hours, I suggest you familiarize yourself with your equipment, and make sure you have an ample power supply. Without poor Dan, I’m afraid there is, well, there is only you, dear boy.’

Jed placed a tumbler of Johnny Walker Red next to Kyle’s face, and winked at him. ‘Got my eye on you, Spielberg. All the time.’

Kyle held the glass with his good hand. Knocked the whisky back, and felt like he’d swallowed the last of his free will.

Five a.m. Face in his hands, Kyle sat on the lowered toilet seat. The bathroom door was locked. Beside him the stench of dead burned things wafted up from the bath. Most of the bones had crumbled and left a layer of dust upon the scorch marks. He could barely breathe, but not because of the smell. Panic had risen through his chest and cut off his air supply. Outside, Max and Jed spoke to each other; seated at the table, they pored over the blueprints and surveillance photographs.

He entertained schemes involving his sudden flight from the motel. Jed wouldn’t gun him down in the street. But he might come after you later. The man was a wacko, with guns. His thumb throbbed. After that special-forces move Jed pulled, Kyle knew he would toe any line Jed drew around him, and hated himself for it. His say in anything had been scrubbed out. Max would sanction any action that abetted his own longevity. Maybe there was a subtext in his Stalin monologue.

The police? But what would he tell them?

Finger Mouse uploaded the following night. Went live. He’d sent Kyle a message to say he’d have a watchable first assembly done by then. Kyle grinned like a mad thing. If he never came back from this, and couldn’t be traced, more weight would be added to the broadcast until Max’s lawyers or the police forced its removal. But once that footage was out of the box, it wouldn’t be going back in. It was all in his final narration to camera: the intended destruction of terminally ill Chet, the incarnation of Katherine inside an adopted child. Few would believe it, but it put Max at the scene of whatever crimes were about to be committed. And it appeared to be a long list. Your PR better be good, Max. Should he use this as blackmail now, to renegotiate his position? He lit another cigarette and thought on it.

‘Hope you ain’t smoking in there, Spielberg. I already told you, this room ain’t a smoker.’

‘Jed. Leave him.’

Kyle held his middle finger up at the door, then lowered it, because it made him feel as impotent as a petulant teenager within the confines of a bedroom. His phone rang. Kyle tugged it from the pocket of his leather jacket.

‘That’s his phone. He’s on the phone.’ It was Jed from outside. Followed by the sound of a chair pushed back from the table.

Max. ‘Leave it.’

‘Who’s he talkin’ to?’

Max, now with a note of concern in his voice, approached the bathroom door. ‘Kyle?’

Kyle couldn’t speak, because the name of the caller on his phone screen read DAN. Impossible. Dan’s parents then, looking for their missing son, or one of Dan’s mates? Must be. Putting in a call to Dan’s best friend after a police search of the trashed flat. But how had they come by Dan’s phone to get his number? Kyle accepted the call. ‘Hello?’

‘Kyle?’ It was a woman’s voice.

He swallowed. ‘Yes.’

He knew Jed and Max were listening outside. The door would come in on one wrong word.

‘Oh good. My name is Jenna. I’m a nurse at The Royal Free Hospital in Belsize Park. I’m calling on behalf of your friend, Daniel Harvey.’

Kyle closed his eyes and held his breath. They’d found his body. He couldn’t, just could not deal with this. ‘Mmm . . .’

‘Dan asked me to call you.’

‘Dan!’

‘Yes, he’ll be moving to Outpatients tomorrow morning. Your friend was attacked and he was injured. Quite a few stitches I’m afraid, and a tetanus jab for the bites.’

‘What? He’s alive . . . I mean he’s OK?’

‘Yes. But his jaw is also broken, so he can’t speak to you. The doctors think he’s fine to go home tomorrow. Can you pick him up?’

Kyle eyed the door. ‘No. I’m in America. Working. On the film. Tell him I’m still working on the film.’

‘OK. He’s written a note. He wants me to read it to you. And he wants you to know that “he believes you now”. That’s what the note says. And he has written a question. He wants to know “Will they come back for me?” It’s not my place, but I can’t help wondering if this is something you should be telling the police, Kyle.’

‘No. No. It’s not about that. It’s about this film. He’s asking me about the film we’re working on—’

Someone tried the bathroom door handle. A rapid knocking followed. It was Max. ‘Kyle? Kyle? Who are you talking to?’

Kyle covered the phone receiver with his hand. ‘Dan! Now piss off!’

Max went silent on the other side of the door for a few seconds, then began to speak with Jed, though Kyle couldn’t hear their conversation. He returned his attention to the phone. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry. Tell Dan that I’m in America to stop that happening. Tell him I went back with Max. I can’t explain now. Oh, tell him to go to Finger Mouse. When he gets out. Yes, yes, Finger Mouse. He knows who that is.’ Kyle dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘It’s really important that he goes to Finger Mouse.’ Kyle rang off and opened the bathroom door.

Max and Jed stood outside. Max raised the one eyebrow he could still move. Jed smiled and held a handgun.

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