Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa(113)
“But I trust you to manage my accounts. I don’t know Mister Winkle.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Loans are not my jurisdiction.”
“We’re talking a considerable sum.”
“Even so.” Miss Starkwell gave the man an apologetic look.
“Then I’ll take my business elsewhere.”
Jack had no idea from whence all this rubbish was sprouting, but it had the desired effect — the girl appeared to be mildly alarmed, although it was hard to tell how this complete stranger really felt.
“There’s no need to do that,” she said, as if it mattered. “I’ll talk to Mister Winkle right away, explain the situation — I’m sure I can sit in on the meeting, if that would make you more comfortable?”
“It would. Thank you.”
Without thinking, Jack stretched out his left hand and placed it on Miss Starkwell’s right shoulder. She stiffened, but said nothing. He noticed her lips lost their colour.
“Is there somewhere we could go? To wait for Mister Winkle, I mean?”
“Certainly, sir.”
She scrutinized Jack’s hand, a clear message he should remove it. Once he did so, Miss Starkwell turned around, and the Equalizer studied a glorious pair of shoulder blades he’d once held and caressed naked.
“Please follow me.” Her voice icy now, akin to the one he’d heard her throw at her boss Henry Holland.
Jack followed around the staff receptacles, through a swinging butler’s door. He could smell perfume lingering behind her, peppermint mixed with strawberries and a vague scent of disinfectant.
The slightly dipping corridor diminished into the distance, with dozens of doors to either side, composed of different shapes, sizes and colours. As they walked, Jack had to step over a two-headed brown snake coiled on the carpet. He frowned, glancing back. Meanwhile, Miss Starkwell had finally stopped, took out a set of keys to unlock a door — a white one, number 4, with ‘BOPS GO HOME!’ stencilled across the surface and this slogan surrounded by yellow roses shaped into a wagon wheel.
They entered a shadowy cubbyhole with wood-panelling on the walls, a small, tidy pine desk, a two-tone green mohair channel-backed chair with a throw pillow on top. Jack picked up the pillow to test it — feather stuffing — and then he very quietly closed the door.
Miss Starkwell had stopped moving.
She was in the centre of this small room, staring fixedly at the desk. “Did you know,” she murmured, in a soft voice Jack barely made out, “that the pine tree symbolizes creativity, life, longevity and immortality?”
“No. I didn’t.”
Jack went up close behind the girl, pressed against the shoulders. He brought his left arm around her waist and with the right hand pushed the pillow to her face, so that her mouth and nose were covered. She didn’t struggle, though he felt her body tense up. After a couple of minutes, her limbs relaxed and Jack noted she’d ceased to breathe.
He placed the pillow back on the sofa-chair while gently easing Louise onto it.
Her lips were slightly apart, the eyes closed.
Jack sat on the arm of the chair, looking down at her face, her hair, her neck, her arms, her hands. Almost choked on the wails he repressed, and buried these deep down inside. No need for that nonsense here. Not now. Later.
That was when he woke up.
Louise was asleep in the hospital bed beside him. A long slumber from which she’d never awake. Kept alive by the ventilator, with its awful sound of artificial breathing. In-out. In-out. In-out.
Still, it was evening, and even here in the Intensive Care unit of Heropa City General Hospital — up on the fifth floor — he could hear the additional noise of cicadas. Was it supposed to be late summer in Heropa? There were no trees nearby and they were deep inside a modern structure of concrete and glass. The sound settled him, somehow buttered up his pain.
Jack rose from the chair, wiped a film of sweat from his brow, stared in the half-light at Louise’s peaceful face. No. There had to be another way. This place wasn’t real — why did they have to stoop to real-world answers? Surely there was another way.
Jack grabbed his jacket, along with a single crutch, and left the room.
Decided to go for a hobble to find those cicadas.
He took a lift to the ground floor, went out through automatic doors, crossed a sizeable carpark, and emerged into a main street that was reasonably quiet for nine-thirty.
There was a small park a block from the hospital, only twenty square metres. About the same size as his flat in Melbourne. Three trees, elms, dominated the place above a sandbox and a slide. Jack sat down on the wooden edge of the sandbox, listening to the cicadas’ chorus from the branches above.