(16) The Day the Sun Came Out [Conclusion]

"A fine view," said Wallace.

He and Gerard stood looking out across the vale, a thousand feet below the edge of the trail. A mile away the bogs and waving grass met the green serrated slopes of the neighboring cairn.

Behind them the ground rose in a gradual incline of crowded heather. Granite rocks topped the rise. Gerard cast nervous glances over his shoulder at the boulders and the lesser outcrops of yellowish grey quartz.

He stepped away from his hiking partner.

"Going somewhere?" said Wallace, turning to him, straightening up and grasping his walking stick in a fair imitation of Moses. "We'll just stand here a bit. I don't fancy going any farther. You know, Gerry, I would never have thought you the type to set aside your calm discretion and act the inquisitor. It disturbs me because your position is not one that can conceal such an anomaly. I can't have you doing the Mr Hyde routine whenever your demon gets an itch."

Gerard looked astonished. "What are you talking about, sir?"

Wallace was amused by what he saw as an attempt at feigned innocence. He gave a soft snort of appreciation for the good try.

"To keep it simple, Gerry," he said, "your involvement in the Tanya Wild evaluation, in the Lusk, an activity and location that was not supposed to be known to you. You must have enlisted Tony D'Arc."

"You're talking nonsense, Wally! It was Thomas Ingols who 'evaluated' Miss Wilde, or the devil knows who she was, if not her or Valentina. I knew nothing about a secret facility until Mr Ingols told me of it last night. You can't blame me for the woman's escape, or for the brutality she was put through."

Wallace stared at him blankly. "Ingols? The inquisitor? But Tony was--"

"Tony is a damned hoodlum on the payroll of the Napolitanos. Ingols runs this show of yours, Wally, and you've found that out too late."

Wallace smiled. It was an ugly, sinisterly desperate look, born of a burgeoning fear. He dropped his stick and slipped his right hand in his windbreaker jacket.

"I don't doubt that Ingols pulls all the strings he can get his bloody hands on," he said in a tense voice, his smile cracking into an angry grimace. "But since you are breathing your last breaths, you shouldn't bother lecturing me with them."

He saw a strangely satisfied expression blossom on the wind-chapped face of Gerard, and he was suddenly in doubt, a doubt that struck him like a volt of electricity.

He drew his hand from his jacket pocket and made to-- what? Push the man, shake him, punch him? Gerard was not to know the intention. For at that moment Wallace Lusk Breckenridge stumbled sideways and went over the cliff.

"My God!" gasped Gerard.

He stood paralyzed from a dreadful feeling of guilt. Then he began shaking, trembling in every joint, as a terrible remorse seized him. He fought against an impulse to leave the scene at once. But he had been warned not to leave, or to call the emergency number, for one hour. He must stand there for one hideous hour before doing anything other than suffer.

A gunshot echoed out over the vale.

Gerard dropped to the ground, cowering against the foot of the slope, his hands over his weeping face. His mind froze in a blackness that had one dim light of reasoning in it: Who had fired that shot and at whom?

The young woman lay sprawled on her back behind the granite outcrop. There was a hole in her right temple that oozed a trickle of blood.

Sanguineus set the Ruger Magnum against a rock. With his gloved hands he placed the Mauser pistol, still smoking, on the ground near the woman's feet.

She herself was not wearing gloves. He remedied this by taking a pair of small-size gloves from a back pocket of his jeans and putting them on the woman's surprisingly soft hands, a difficult chore, the fingers utterly lax and uncooperative.

When he finished he stood back and looked at her.

Scotland Yard would be satisfied with putting this down as a murder suicide, once they realized that a very embarrassing scandal might erupt if they chose a more intrepid path of investigation.

Sanguineus started back down the western face of the hill, a ten minute walk to the meandering string of white rocks. From there he could see the blue Peugeot parked off the dirt road, a little beyond the willow where the Dart stood in the brooding pall.

The dark clouds rumbled. A sheet of rain carried by the wind swept over the mountain, obligingly rinsing away the man scent that led away from the slowly stiffening corpse.

Then the clouds tore at themselves, their ragged edges afire from the imprisoned sun.

Sanguineus walked the last fifty yards down to the willow and stood by the backseat door of the retro '65 Dart. He looked steadily at the woman seated at the wheel of the Peugeot.

She got out and began walking toward him.

At sight of her Sanguineus felt a strong sense of familiarity. She did look very much like the woman lying on the mountain. Same hair, same fashion, but not quite the same walk. This is the woman he had met in Central Park and had taken to dinner. He had not seen her again until now, he felt sure. But feelings weren't proof.

She stopped several feet in front of him, just outside the willow's strips of shade, now that the sun was splendid and the sky silent with a sheep flock of clouds.

"Come and have a soda," Sanguineus said.

Her smile was a puzzled one, but this was not the time for her to question or criticize. He had opened the backseat door, and was lifting off the lid of a styrofoam ice chest. So she went over to him, feeling his body heat and smelling the musky manliness that she would not ever forget.

She chose a Coke.

At that Sanguineus breathed a sigh of relief. He put an arm around her and pulled her up tight against him. She laughed.

"Goddamn you, Tanya," he said.