I dragged myself over to the window and peered out between the curtains. I knew what I was going to see, but I'd been hoping not to see it, just the same.
Parked just across the street was a battered Cortina. The windows were steamed up, but it didn't take a genius to work out who was inside.
'Oh God,' I groaned, collapsing back on to the sofa.
Duncan looked up sharply from his post-dismemberment cigarette. 'What's up?'
Now was the time to tell him about Grauman. But I held back. Once Duncan knew that part of the story, I might not appear quite so innocent in his eyes. In fact, my involvement with Andreas might smack of conspiracy. As though we'd meant for this to happen.
'Feeling any better?' asked Duncan. 'How's the finger?'
He was looking quite concerned about me, almost fraternal. That did it. We were partners in crime now, and I wasn't about to spoil it by telling him things he didn't need to know. With my right hand, I smoked a cigarette, wondering all the time if it was going to be my last.
Duncan sat and stared into space until I told him to take a shower and put on clean clothes. When he looked halfway presentable, I made him pour strong black coffee down his throat until his eyes lit up like a pinball machine. I needed him to drive the car.
It was while he was getting changed that I had my brilliant idea. It was so blindingly obvious I couldn't understand why I hadn't thought of it earlier. Pain had obviously dulled my intellect. Under my breath, I recited a phrase which had popped into my head: 'It is important for all the pieces to be disposed of separately.'
It was then I remembered my Greek mythology.
It was two in the morning when we piled into the car with our baggage. We drove round in circles for about twenty minutes before I summoned the nerve to dispose of the first bag, the one containing the head. I nipped out and dropped it into some roadworks at the junction of Ladbroke Grove and Holland Park Avenue; not a crossroads, but near enough. There was no singing as I let it fall. Her battery must have finally run down.
As we drove off again, I saw the Cortina draw up at the kerb. We left it behind us, but not for long. Duncan caught me looking round. 'What's happening? Don't tell me we're being followed.'
'I think it's an unmarked police car,' I said. 'Try shaking it off.' Duncan threw a sharp left, and the Cortina carried on up the road.
Bag Number Two contained the torso. I weighted it with stones and heaved it into the canal. It sank out of sight immediately, leaving a few sluggish bubbles to float up to the surface and burst.
The Cortina rolled up again as we pulled out. Duncan was looking in the opposite direction and didn't see it, but I allowed myself to relax slightly. The water of the canal was murky and brown; Grauman would be forced to wade in and grope around. It could be hours before he struck lucky. This time, we had gained ourselves an unassailable head-start.
The West End was surprisingly busy, so we headed south to Kennington and left Bag Number Three in a communal rubbish container outside a block of council flats. Bag Number Four went into roadworks on Clapham Common. In Battersea, Duncan managed to pry open a manhole; Bag Number Five went down there.
I was still jumpy. I thought I glimpsed the Cortina again, but a long way behind us, so I made Duncan take a roundabout route into Fulham — all around the back roads and over Hammersmith Bridge. We buried Bag Number Six beneath some bushes in a small churchyard. As we scrabbled in the dirt with our makeshift spades (me one-handed with an empty yogurt carton, Duncan with a piece of broken slate), an east wind blew up and riffled the tops of some nearby poplars. I thought I saw the bag move as it lay in the hole we had made, waiting to be covered with dirt, but by now I was desperate for sleep and there was a slight rippling at the edges of my vision.
In Shepherd's Bush, while we were stopped at a red light, I stumbled out of the car and stuffed Bags Number Seven and Eight into some cartons of rubbish awaiting collection outside an Indian restaurant. Bag Number Nine went behind a pile of rubble on a small patch of wasteland in White City; by that stage we were too tired even to dig a hole. Relief washed over me as we drove away. Grauman would have his work cut out. He would be too busy to think about having us tortured and mutilated. And he'd be wet.
Violet was history. Not even her Hatman could put her back together again now.
Neither of us wanted to go back to Duncan's that night. And, although I knew he hadn't been keeping count, I had no intention of letting him spend the rest of that night with me. I wanted to get home with Bag Number Ten before he found out it was still in my possession.
I tapped him for cash, left him on the sofa at Matt's place, and staggered to the nearest mini-cab office. In the car, on the way, I dozed off. At Camden Town, the driver woke me, and leered suggestively, and said I looked as though I'd enjoyed the party, and maybe I'd like to go to another one. Then he saw the bloodstained teatowel and asked if I'd hurt my hand. I said yes, I'd hurt it punching a mini-cab driver in the face.
I let myself info my room and collapsed into bed. My hand was still throbbing, but I gulped down a couple of Valium and slept for nine solid hours. There were nightmares, strange shadows which moved through the deepest parts of the forest, but by the time I woke up, the details had faded. I made myself a cup of tea, and then I spread an old newspaper over my bed and opened Bag Number Ten. For a long time, I gazed at the wizened, waxy object which looked like something you might find suspended from a hook in the window of a Chinese restaurant. The crimson nail varnish was chipped and messy, though not as messy as the scraps of muscle and ligament at the wrist. I peeled the teatowel away from my own left hand and compared them. Mine was bigger, but I thought it every bit as elegant as Violet's. My nails were better shaped, even though at that moment they were caked with blood and dirt. A good bath and an even better buffing would see them right. But there wasn't much I could do about the little finger. That really spoiled things.
Later that day, I dropped into the out-patient department of my local hospital. I told them I'd been chopping paper the night before, and had caught my finger in the guillotine. They ticked me off for not having rushed to them immediately with the missing joint — they could have sewn that back on, they said — but they cleaned up the gooey mess that was left, gave me some antibiotics to clear the infection that had set in, and dressed it without asking too many awkward questions about why the guillotine had left me with a chewed-up stump instead of a nice clean slice.
For the next few days, I carried Matt's Teddy boy flick-knife around with me, just in case. I did a lot of looking over my shoulder, but after a while I started to believe we really had got away with it. We really had rubbed her out. Grauman didn't come after us, though I dreamt once or twice that he did. I phoned his hotel and was told he had checked out. He hadn't left a forwarding address, the receptionist said, but she remembered him ordering a taxi to Heathrow. She remembered his departure because there had been a lot of luggage, and he'd been in an enormous hurry, but he'd been generous with his tips.
I went into college and acted as if nothing had happened, though Ruth kept giving me funny looks, and once or twice provided me with free drugs and hinted I could confide in her any time I wanted. I didn't want, of course. She was curious about the big dressing on my little finger, and even more curious when at last it was taken off and she saw the joint was missing. I told her I had shut it in a car door, and she seemed to accept that, although on several occasions afterwards I caught her staring at the stump with a sort of thrilled fascination.