Maxim glanced over his shoulder.
Elena wasn’t even getting worked up, and that was strange. She was just sitting on the leather sofa in front of the huge Panasonic TV and talking, almost as if she meant everything she said.
Was this what she really thought?
That he had a whole host of mistresses? That he’d saved that girl because she had a good figure, not because of those bullets that were whistling through the air? That they had a bad life, a wretched life? When three years ago they’d bought a lovely apartment, furnished it so well and gone to France for Christmas?
His wife’s voice sounded confident. It was full of accusation. And it was full of pain.
Maxim flicked his cigarette off the balcony and looked out into the night.
The Dark, the Dark was advancing.
Back there in the restaurant lavatory he’d killed a Dark Magician. One of the most repulsive manifestations of universal Evil. A man who was a carrier of malice and fear. Who extracted energy from the people around him and subjugated other people’s souls, transforming white into black, love into hate. Maxim knew he was alone against the world, the way he always had been.
But nothing like this had ever happened before, he’d never run into the spawn of the devil two days in a row. Either they’d all come crawling out of their foul, stinking burrows, or his vision was becoming keener.
Like right now.
As Maxim looked out from the tenth floor he didn’t see the scattered lights of a city by night. That was for other people. For the blind and the feeble. He saw a small, dense cloud of darkness hanging above the ground. Not very high, maybe ten or twelve floors up.
Maxim was seeing yet another manifestation of the Dark.
The usual way. The same way as ever. But why so often now? Why one after another? This was the third! The third time in twenty-four hours!
The Dark glimmered and swayed and shifted. The Dark was alive.
And behind him Elena went on reciting his sins in a weary, miserable, hurt voice. She got up and came across to the door of the balcony, as if she wanted to make sure Maxim was listening. Okay, that was fine. At least she wouldn’t wake the kids – if they were sleeping anyway. Somehow Maxim doubted it.
If only he believed in God. Genuinely believed. But there was almost nothing left now of the weak faith that had once consoled Maxim after every act of purification. God could not exist in a world where Evil flourished.
But if only He did, or if there was any real faith left in Maxim’s soul, Maxim would have gone down on his knees right there, on the dusty, crumbling concrete, and held his hands up towards the dark night sky, the sky where even the stars shone quietly and sadly. And he would have cried out: ‘Why me? Why me, Lord? This is too much, this is more than I can bear. Take this burden from me, I beg you, take it away! I’m not the one You need! I’m too weak.’
But what was the point in crying out? He hadn’t taken this burden on himself. It wasn’t for him to abandon it. Over there the black flame was glowing brighter and brighter. A new tentacle of the Dark.
‘I’m sorry, Elena,’ he said, moving his wife to one side and stepping into the room. ‘I have to go out.’
She stopped speaking in mid-sentence, and the eyes that had been full of irritation and resentment suddenly looked scared.
‘I’ll be back.’ He started walking towards the door quickly, hoping to avoid any questions.
‘Maxim! Maxim, wait!’
The transition from abuse to entreaty was instant. Elena dashed after him, grabbed him by the arm and looked into his face – crumpled, desperate.
‘I’m sorry, forgive me, I was so frightened! I’m sorry for saying all those horrid things, Maxim!’
He looked at his wife – suddenly deflated, all her aggression spent. She’d give anything now to stop her stupid, depraved, lousy husband leaving the apartment. Could Elena have seen something in his face – something that had frightened her even more than the gangland shoot-out they’d got mixed up in?
‘I won’t let you go! I won’t let you go anywhere! Not at this time of night!’
‘Nothing’s going to happen to me,’ Maxim said gently. ‘Quiet, you’ll wake the kids. I’ll be back soon.’
‘If you won’t think about yourself, then at least think about the children! Think about me!’ said Elena, changing tack. ‘What if they remembered the number of the car? What if they turn up here looking for that bitch? Then what will I do?’
‘Nobody’s going to turn up here.’ Somehow Maxim knew that was true. ‘And even if they do, it’s a strong door. And you know who to call. Elena, let me past.’
His wife froze in the middle of the doorway with her arms flung out wide and her head thrown back. Her eyes were screwed up as if she was expecting him to hit her.
Maxim kissed her gently on the cheek and moved her out of the way. She looked totally confused as she watched him go out into the hall. She could hear terrible, noisy music coming from her daughter’s room. She wasn’t sleeping, she’d turned on her stereo to drown out their angry voices, Elena’s voice.
‘Don’t!’ his wife whispered imploringly.
He slipped on his jacket, checking quickly to make sure everything was in place in the inside pocket.
‘You don’t think about us at all!’ Elena told him in a choking voice, speaking purely out of inertia, no longer hoping for anything. The music volume increased in her daughter’s room.
‘That’s not true,’ Maxim said calmly. ‘It’s you that I am thinking about now. I’m taking care of you.’
He didn’t want to wait for the lift. He’d already walked down one flight of steps when his wife’s last shout came. It was unexpected – she didn’t like to wash their dirty linen in public and she never quarrelled outside the apartment.
‘I wish you’d love us, not just take care of us!’
Maxim shrugged and started walking faster.
This was where I’d stood in the winter.
It was all just the same: the lonely alley, the noise of the cars on the road behind me, the pale light from the streetlamps. Only it had been much colder. And everything had seemed so simple and clear, I was like a fresh, young American cop going out on my first patrol.
Enforce the law. Hunt down Evil. Protect the innocent.
How wonderful it would be if everything could always be as clear and simple as it used to be when you were twelve years old, or twenty. If there really were only two colours in the world: black and white. But even the most honest, conscientious cop, raised on the resounding ideals of the Stars and Stripes, has to understand sooner or later that there’s more than just Dark and Light out on the streets. There are understandings, concessions, agreements. Informers, traps, provocations. Sooner or later the time comes when you have to betray your own side, plant bags of heroin and hit people in the kidneys – carefully, so as to leave no marks behind.
And all for the sake of those simple rules.
Enforce the law. Hunt down Evil. Protect the innocent.
I’d had to come to terms with all this too.
I walked to the end of the narrow brick alley and scuffed a sheet of newsprint with my foot. This was where the unfortunate vampire had been reduced to ashes. He really had been unfortunate, the only thing he’d done wrong was to fall in love. Not with a girl vampire, not with a human, but with his victim, his food.
This was where I’d splashed the vodka out of the bottle and scalded the face of the woman who’d been handed over to feed the vampires by us, the Night Watch.
How fond the Dark Ones were of repeating the word ‘Freedom!’. How often we explained to ourselves that freedom has its limits.