Ivoria, Tanith Lee [popular ebook readers .TXT] 📗

had been shot - a memory of pain and then of nothingness. And then a terrific blow to the chest and the deer, moon-silvered, stinking and magnificent, leaping free of him, as horrified, it had seemed, as he was at its life-giving social gaff. “Herne the Hunter,” he had said, “lord of the forests.”

Laurence, cowed by his experiences, and in awe of what might have been the intervention of gods or fate or epic coincidence - the historico-mythological viewpoint of a commercially-minded archaeologist - was obedient under the treatment he received in a private Secops clinic. He was also more than vengefully eager to provide the vital witness and testifier they required.

Their problem in the past had always been that no one who ever dealt with The Man would agree to describe or identify him. Let alone inform against him. This despite many sophisticated methods of persuasion. Their fear of, their respect for The Man ruled betrayal out. Some died, too, of being fruitlessly persuaded. Additionally there was currently a kind of moratorium on all such activities. It was not even really worth trying to bug suspect accomplices to listen in. Dictates of the EU, it seemed, would be likely to scupper not only any evidence so gained, but all follow-up plans based on it. In the end, Secops had let The Man’s adjuncts roam free. In turn keeping close watch on them.

The peculiar Pond was now one of these. Himself so keen on a flat-footed imitation of the police, and so pedantically law-abiding in all else, Pond was immaculately comfortable in his private detective role, and almost casual in his recourse to hired murder. Pond and The Man went back, they found, quite some way. Three or four deaths were already, probably, attributable to The Man’s enlistment by Pond. But all unprovable.

Until Laurence.

Crang had expressed confidence in Laurence. On a light medication, and no longer at immediate risk of further heart episodes, Laurence did his exercises, worked out, and limited his drinking to half a bottle of red wine per day. He said he had lost his taste for vodka. It reminded him, he said, of being driven up a fucking hill like a ram to the slaughter. And he wanted, he said, to live to see that cunt brought to justice. Crang had agreed, with a suitable grim smile. He did not enlighten Laurence on the nature of the justice in question. Instead he rewarded Laurence by the firm promise of a new life and identity - how fitting for one returned from death - a luxuriant life-long income, and the imminent visit of Laurence’s Number One Lover, Kitra Andrezou, aka about five other names.

They had already checked her out, of course. She seemed to be a minor psychopath, and with the looks and allure that often attended such creatures. Crang she gave the creeps, but then he would not be the one bedding down with her. Laurence and she, meanwhile, had already been intending to fly the coup. Now they could do it in even better style. In any case, Kitra was rich. That she was already priming the old man, Laurence’s father, on the private island, did not interest them. That was her business. The Man was theirs.

Crang did wonder what Kitra would think when she met Laurence again.

He was by now fairly strong and fit, as Crang emphasised to her during the calls to Greece. But Laurence had been changed rather more than a little. His hair was going grey, and he was letting it grow very long, in the mode of some of the ancient warriors and kings he had assisted in digging up from the ground… or of some old hippies, of course. Perhaps oddly, the look suited him, though it aged him. As did the slight droop remaining at the outer corner of his right eye, and the slight limp he had now, sometimes, in the right leg. He dressed more eccentrically. Black jeans and long loose black shirts, boots. He disdained wrist watches and rings. As well, since the original clothing and accessories he had worn to the park had, necessarily, to go elsewhere. In the 21st Century, the state of London’s poverty-stricken underclasses provided a corpse soon enough. Approximately of matched height, weight and colouring. Decay, and damage due to the feral animals which populated any greenish space, quickly rendered the corpse sufficiently unrecognisable. Ready-clad in the transposed garments, (also damaged and emptied of money) plus the platinum ring, this carcass was easy to pass off - even to the hysterically homicidal Mrs Lewis - as the dead Laurence.

Additionally, a secret if not quite unheard-of deal was struck with the attending coroner’s office. The replacement cadaver had died of malnourishment and general neglect. Hardly fitting a celebrity lifestyle. Laurence’s mother, however, the once famous Claudia Martin, had died of an aneurysm. It was an inspired take therefore to link Laurence’s purported end through heredity to hers.

There was one other matter. Secops obtained a non-publicised injunction that kept most of the press corps off Pond, despite his association with Laurence’s wife. And later, aside from the drama of the mystery stabbing, off Nick Lewis, for by then Secops themselves were watching him. No journalist had a clue what went on there, nor did even newspaper nobility. They were given false but more appealing targets, or other worries, that took them out of the picture. As for Kitra, she was well protected. Laurence wanted her.

Laurence was looking forward to seeing Kitra. When Crang told him he would not have long to wait, Laurence’s speech still, and perhaps forever now, not fully recovered from the physical trauma, broke down. He cried. Generally he had become over-emotional. And there was too a slight but recurrent patchiness to his memory, which would undoubtedly become worse with time. He went now and then into fits of rage, also without warning. These would leave him dazed, and forgetful of the objects he had smashed or the punch