The Gilded Madonna, Garrick Jones [best fiction novels txt] 📗

should have been him leading that squad of soldiers, not Johnny. It should have been him lying dead in the dust riddled with baubles, not the man who was supposed to come home to save me.”

“How do you know that?” Mark asked. I stared at him, hoping he’d lead the questioning. I had to know for myself.

“Because I visited their commanding officer, who told me he replaced Smith at the last minute and sent Johnny instead. He said your mate wasn’t fit for the job.”

“He couldn’t have said he wasn’t fit for the job, Dennis, because Clyde had dysentery and had been in the sick tent—he couldn’t have gone on a mission into the desert because he’d have held everyone up having a shit every two minutes. It was nothing to do with him. It’s the C.O. you should be punishing, not Clyde.”

Kemeny leaped up and squatted over my shoulder blades, his knees on either bicep. He grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled my head back. “You fucking liar, Smith. He said you were unfit. Coward! Telling everyone you were sick—”

“Billy Tancred showed me Johnny’s service record,” Mark said. “It wasn’t Clyde making it up, it’s the truth. I read the words on the page. I remember it. It didn’t say he was ‘unfit’, the actual words said ‘he wasn’t medically fit’. He had dysentery. Christ, Dennis, he was shitting his pants! You can’t kill him because of someone else’s decision. Go and kill the fucking commanding officer if you really want revenge, or better still kill yourself, you loser! Think of the men you’ve slaughtered because you thought Clyde—”

Dennis Kemeny roared, cutting off what Mark was about to say, and pulled at my hair even harder, stretching my head back until I felt it pressing into his stomach. My chin was tilted in the air, throat strained and fully exposed and then, without warning, his other hand whipped around, his razor clutched in his hand. He placed the blunt side against my throat and then turned it slowly, scraping the stubble, and almost purring as he spoke.

“I’ve dreamed of this moment, Smith. Give me one good reason to let you live and I’ll disappear and you’ll never find me again. I’ll phone the police in a few hours and tell them where you are. Come on, there’s the boy. Just one good reason, that’s all I ask …”

Although he sounded calm and teasing, his body told me he was anything but. The blade of the razor quivered, grazing the skin just above my Adam’s apple. His knees trembled on my upper arms. I was petrified he’d lose balance and slice my throat.

“Don’t kill him, please. For my sake!” Mark said. I couldn’t turn my head to look at him, but I could hear the agony in his voice.

“What?”

“Don’t kill him! Don’t you understand, Dennis? You can’t kill him for something that’s not his fault. Please, listen to me. This man saved me.”

“Saved you from what?” His angry, outraged reply rang around the room.

“He saved me from a man who abused me every single day of my life from the age of six. You know what it’s like, I’m sure you do. Just because the man who promised he would come back to save you didn’t, please don’t take the man who saved me. Don’t you understand, Dennis? Clyde is my Johnny, don’t do this to me.”

Despite the fear of imminent possible death I couldn’t believe my ears. Clyde is my Johnny …?

I felt the shock run through Kemeny’s body. For a moment he hesitated and then I felt a slight release in the tension of his knees and a relaxation of his arse on my shoulders. I could have sworn he’d started to cry. But then he sat back on his haunches, pulling at my hair harder, growling, as if enraged. The sound grew in intensity until he roared and then suddenly moved his hand, as if about to slash my throat.

I howled with frustration, ignoring my precarious situation, and then clenched my teeth, screaming with impotent rage, my head pulled back and immobilised.

For a moment, time stood still, and then, without warning, a torrent of hot liquid sprayed over my head and shoulders and ran into my eyes.

“No!” Mark yelled. “No!”

Kemeny’s body fell on top of mine. He’d slashed his own throat. His body trembled for a while and jerked a few times, before finally falling still.

After my initial revulsion, it was odd how little his action had either shocked me or distressed me. Except for stabbing Rinaldo Tocacci in the heart a year ago, it had been years since I’d been used to death so physically close to my body. During my days with the partisans in Italy, I’d had no end of blood spilled over me, but that was now a distant memory. Shaking my head, I laughed—black laughter we’d called it back then—spitting his blood from my lips as I did so.

“Clyde?”

I shook my head and closed my eyes, pressing my cheek into the sodden sheet and mattress.

“Clyde?”

My eyes flew open. Mark reached over and touched my face with the fingers of his injured arm.

“Clyde?” He slapped my cheek gently.

“Yes, Mark?”

“Are you all right? Why are you laughing?”

“I’m alive,” I said and then turned my head to look at him. Kemeny’s blood had sprayed over his face and his torso—he looked like something from a dreadful Bela Lugosi horror movie, except that it was in living Technicolor and smelled of death. “We both are, Mark. We’re fucking alive!”

He smiled. “Clyde? Pull yourself together, mate. The key, I watched him put it into his jacket pocket, roll him onto me.”

I heaved my arse into the air and Kemeny’s body fell off my back and onto the bed next to me. The bedding was soaked with blood, as was the wall behind the bed. “Oh, Jesus,” Mark said. He turned his head and vomited. He wiped his mouth with the back of his free hand,