He climbed the steps. And ran. He didn't know why, but he wanted the door at the end. Eight doors along the sides, and one at the end. He ran, knowing it was a bad idea. His feet thudded on the mirrored floor hard enough that he knew he wouldn't hear a door open behind him, might not even hear the shot that killed him. He reached the end door and threw it wide, stepped inside with his gun aimed ahead, and stuck his back to the wall. Threw a glance back, but nobody was in the corridor.
He was in the other extension. He was on a metal landing atop a spiral staircase. He looked down into a workroom. Bench, tools, metal cupboards on the walls. Detritus everywhere. And as with the other extension, the games room, there was nowhere to hide.
So that left the eight rooms along the corridor. Somewhere in one of those were Einar and Hartbauer. Time to do this.
The doors all opened inwards and to the left, so Jimmy chose the first one on his right, so he could enter the room without having to move past the door. He noted a thin spattering of dust on the handle and threw the door open a foot and slipped in, sure that this room hadn't been used in a while.
It was a bedroom with en-suite shower and bathroom. The floor was mirrored again. Plain, functional. There was a vanity desk with a chair made of clear plastic. Against one wall was a small treadmill. A walk-in closet with accordion doors wide open and empty coat hangers, nowhere to hide. Nobody under the bed. Jimmy checked out the window, just to make sure Einar hadn't gone into the garden. Then he left the room, first making sure the corridor was empty. He crossed to the room opposite. He was getting concerned. It didn't seem like Einar to sit and wait for an enemy to come to him. Something else was going on.
***
Einar lay on his back, like a man submerged in a shallow swimming pool, except for the lack of water. The effect seemed similar, though. He stared through the "surface" and up into the office. He was grinning. Hartbauer had struck him as a people watcher, but this was going to the extreme. One-way mirrors on the floor, the ultimate voyeur's tool. Some kind of film used in the glass to filter the light from above, leaving Einar shrouded in darkness and able to view anyone above without been visible himself. Hartbauer must have spent a fortune on this prop.
The carpet beneath his back was thick but worn by passage. Hartbauer must have been down here many times when he had female guests. Probably told them not to disturb him in the office for a while and left them to do their thing, while he crawled around like a snake just below them, staring up skirts.
The crawlspace was like a squat version of the house, because it followed the same plan. Walls continued through it from the ground to the roof, so there were oblong doorways, albeit without doors. Einar turned onto his front and crawled to the doorway beneath Hartbauer's office door. He went under the door, which was another strange sensation. To his left a short way was a blank wall where the upper floor ended at the staircase, but to his right the corridor ran away. The ceiling lights made the whole place bright and he had to remind himself more than once that he could not be seen down here, despite the fact that he could see everything above in high definition. The walls here were plain brick, but they had been clumsily painted green, perhaps so Hartbauer could forget he was in a crawlspace. Ahead he could see all the doors, and the little oblong doorways below them. The submerged notion hit him again. It was almost as if the upper floor began where he lay, and there was three feet of water flooding it. With a frozen surface, ha ha.
Einar almost let out a gasp as the light above him shifted and he turned his head and a foot drove towards his face from above. Then Jimmy passed overhead, running. Einar aimed his Bersa and almost fired. He stopped himself in time and watched Marsh sprinting down the corridor away from him. He couldn't fire at such a sharp angle, because the bullet would never go through the floor. It would just ricochet off. He would have to get right below Marsh, fire directly upwards. Einar imagined Marsh dropping dead right above him, face pressed against the floor, dead eyes just inches from Einar's.
Marsh made the end of the corridor and burst through a door there. Einar crawled towards him. Marsh then re-emerged and went through the furthest door on Einar's left. Einar crawled onwards. He was halfway along the corridor when Marsh appeared and crossed to the opposite door. Einar stopped and turned around and rolled onto his back. He lay in the centre of the corridor, gun on his chest, aimed upwards, feet facing towards Marsh's position.
No need to stalk the man. Marsh was checking all the rooms one-by-one, moving down the corridor. Einar adjusted his position so he was at the centre of a box created by four doors. If Marsh was checking each room, soon he would pass right over the spot where Einar lay. And when he did...
***
The next bedroom was the same, including the treadmill. Same clear plastic bath, same reflective floor, same strange transparent chair before the vanity table. A carbon copy of the previous room, except for one detail: there was a door in the wall that he figured led into the next bedroom door. It did. This bedroom, same as the last. Bizarre textures aside, this place was beginning to look more like a country house hotel than some rich businessman's house.
Jimmy moved across this room and into the next. Exactly the same. Last room of the row, so no door in the far wall this time. He opened the single door and peeked left and right into the corridor. Next, the four rooms on the other side.
***
Einar threw his head back as he heard the muffled sound of a door opening. Behind him! He rolled onto his front and watched as Marsh, only a few metres ahead, poked his head out of the room Einar had fired into the garden from.
Then Marsh vanished back inside the room and shut the door.
Einar realised there must be doors between some of the rooms, because Marsh had gotten past him. He calmed his growing impatience. He would get the man soon.
Thirty seconds later, he heard another door. Back at the other end. Marsh exited from the first room he'd entered, rushed across the corridor, and into the room opposite.
So, Marsh was going to check the rooms on the right, but starting at that end. That put Hartbauer's office last. And it gave Einar a plan.
There was no door between the office and the room next to it. So once there, Marsh would have to exit into the corridor before obtaining the office. Einar was right by that room. He shifted his position so his feet were under the door, aimed up at where he thought Marsh's chest would be when that door opened in about a minute's time, and waited. When he blasted through the floor, hopefully Marsh would topple forwards like a felled tree, towards Einar. Their faces would be inches apart, and both men would see in close-up the final, horrified look in Marsh's eyes.
***
Two more rooms like the others, and then a surprise. In the third room he found a spiral staircase descending through a hole in the thick floor. The walls were lined with shelves containing books and ornaments, a mediocre attempt and installing some character to the upper floor. Jimmy peered down the staircase and saw that it led to a thin, bare room. He fed his gun arm down first, swinging the weapon this way and that, seeking an enemy who wasn't there.
He moved down the stairs quickly, not caring about the clang his feet made on the steps. That was when he realised where he was. The inner wall did not reach the end walls. There was a thirty inch gap each end. He slipped through one and found himself in the living room. The wall was no such thing, but was a long bookcase that reached the ceiling. He had been in this room already, but had not looked at the bookcase long enough to realise that there was a thirty inch gap each side. He had assumed it was a wall. This house was getting stranger.
He needed to reassess his plan. Einar wasn't moving, which meant he was waiting. That meant an ambush. Jimmy had to come up with something else. He couldn't just keep opening doors, because he was apt to walk right into whatever trap the contract killer had set for him.
He moved towards the kitchen door, planning to head back outside and rethink. And that was when his mobile phone, on silent, vibrated in
his pocket. He didn't recognise the number, but a gut feeling told him he should answer it.
"You're not very good at hide-and-seek, are you?" said Einar.
***
Einar laid the phone on his neck so he could talk into it hands-free. He had his head raised, and could see the gun against his chest illuminated in the light from the phone's screen. He had manoeuvred again so his feet were facing the stairs at the end of the corridor, while by his feet was the door to the room with the spiral stairs, in case Marsh came back up that way. He heard had Marsh clump down the stairs. Puzzled, he had looked into the room through the opening under the door and had seen a tubular section here in the crawlspace, which he'd realised must allow a set of spiral stairs to bore downwards. The man had gotten lucky again. But he wouldn't again.
"You love games a little too much, Einar," said Marsh's voice, low. Einar had turned down the sound. "But I'm not here to play."
"Are you here to kill me, Marsh? Chopper. And Victor Hartbauer? You can have him. Come get him. We're both upstairs, while you're wasting your time downstairs. You were so close a minute ago, until you went down that spiral staircase."
He let that sink in. What would Marsh think of the fact that Einar knew his movements? There were no cameras in the house - with a viewing room under the entire upper floor, they weren't needed - so this would spin Marsh's mind.
"This ends today, Einar."
"Then come end it, Marsh. Foreplay over. I'm upstairs, in the one room didn't check. One to go. Here I am. Come on back up the spiral staircase and carry on your search."
"Maybe I'll just get on out of here and phone the police, Einar. And watch them arrest you."
"Good plan. But I'll be alive, Marsh. And even if you watch me carted away in a prison van, you'll never know, will you? Where I am, what I'm planning. You'll go grey with worry in a month. Maybe I'll send people after you. Maybe you'll read about my escape one day, and then you'll be on the run again. So why don't you come on up and finish this? Make it so I'm never a problem again."
There was no reply. And a few moments later Einar saw why. Marsh was trying not to give himself away with his voice, because he was coming back up the stairs. The main flight, this time. Of course he wasn't going to climb back up the spiral stairs. A few metres away, Einar watched as first a gun, then arms, then a head and body rose up seemingly out of the floor from the end of the corridor. Marsh held the gun one-handed, phone to his ear. So the man was planning to search the rooms after all, but from the other end this time.
Einar decided not to move. He would wait where he was, and Marsh would come to him, and there would be no chance of Marsh slipping past him this time. He would approach the office cautiously, because all other hiding places had been checked and discarded. He would make that final approach slowly, eyes searching all around, left and right and forwards and backwards, and maybe even upwards - but not down. Not where the threat was. Einar had already given Marsh the line, his catchphrase, but it counted for nothing given all the failures he had had since. He needed that line to be given again, his final line, the last thing Marsh heard on this planet. And he was fated to do so, because Marsh had his phone to his ear in the hope Einar would say something that would betray his position and offer Marsh a sliver of help in a battle he must know he couldn't possibly win.
"Getting closer," Einar whispered into the phone. He watched Marsh freeze at the top of the stairs, swinging his gun all around him. Then he moved on towards the door to Hartbauer's office. Einar smiled. Just feet away. He could take the shot now. But he decided to let Marsh enter the office and take out Hartbauer and save Einar a job. And when Marsh exited again, Einar would kill him.
He saw Marsh's hand hit the handle, and said, "Careful, I might be right behind that door."
Marsh froze, the handle-half turned. That was when the door flew open, making Marsh jerk back. And out flew Hartbauer like a man possessed. He was screaming that he was sorry. He ran towards Einar, lumbering, head low, hands in the air, fearing a shot in the back.
Marsh stuck out a foot. Hartbauer tripped and landed hard just a yard away from Einar's feet. He lay on his back, hands over his face as Marsh moved towards him, gun aimed right at him, head moving about, checking left and right and behind, ever cautious of a surprise attack. He stopped before the big man, and Einar aimed right at him. Six feet, but he needed the man closer. The angle through the glass could still throw the bullet off, and Einar was still breathing because of just such an occurrence.
"Where's Einar?" he heard the man say.
"So close you won't believe it," Einar said quietly into his phone. He saw Marsh's fist tighten hard around the phone by his ear. Hartbauer turned onto his hands and knees, still moaning, and started to crawl. He went right over Einar, then stopped. Marsh took a step towards him.
"Where are you, you bastard?" Hartbauer screamed, slapping his meaty palm into the floor. "Kill him, kill him."
Marsh took another step, and Einar's gun tracked him, moving towards the vertical, creating the angle he needed through the glass. One more step, and it would be all over.
But Marsh stopped, and Einar felt a chill as he saw the realisation wash over his enemy's face. But it was too late for him. They were mere inches apart, yet Marsh was blind and Einar could see everything. He touched the barrel of the gun to the glass.
"Your life countdown just reached zero," he whispered into the phone on his neck.
***
Jimmy pictured the transparent chairs. That was what did it. Not the reflective floor, or Hartbauer slamming his hand onto it, screaming into it. They paved the path, set the foundations, pushed the rolling stone over the precipice. But it was the chairs that provided the momentum, the gravity that hauled him towards realisation. Transparent chairs.
His hand flicked out, towards the wall. His finger hit the light switch and plunged the corridor into blackness.
And there, there on the floor, or in the floor: a little pale light, just a dot, blurry like something illuminated under water. That light bloomed into a starburst as he was yanking his gun down, forcing it down, like a man chopping with an axe. He felt glass erupt over him, and heard one of the lights in the ceiling burst. But by then he was already falling back, and firing his own gun at where that little light had been a star before it went nova. One, two, three shots, and then he was on his ass on the floor, seeing starbursts in his vision now. All faded to black again, and silence.
Then he heard Hartbauer laughing.
***
Hartbauer didn't laugh for long. Jimmy found the switch and lit up the corridor again. Hartbauer saw him and all the mirth in his life was gone, maybe forever. Jimmy was staring at him, aiming the gun. But Hartbauer was staring at the floor, fingers tracing four small holes surrounded by spiderweb cracks in the glass.
"All the money you could want," Hartbauer said. The other man said nothing, just stepped forward and yanked Hartbauer to his feet.
He forced the man down the corridor, and down the stairs. In the big living room, Hartbauer looked at the ceiling, where there were three bullet holes, two of them leaking blood in a steady drip onto a coffee table. Hartbauer saw the blood and knew for sure he had lost. He had held on to a sliver of hope that Einar would still end this the right way. That sliver was gone.
"I can make you and your family rich," he said. The other man cracked him in the head with the gun and forced him towards the door.
Hartbauer was forced outside, into the back garden. His mind was racing. He saw a car, one of the ones he'd bought for his bodyguards, kissing his garden shed, but his mind was in too much turmoil to even wonder what had happened here. They trekked towards it, Marsh following behind with the gun.
"Millions, Marsh. Don't be an idiot."
At the car, Marsh opened the boot, told him to get in.
Hartbauer lay in the dark for what seemed like hours, but the glow on his watch face told him it was just over seventy minutes. So he had given up shouting for hel
p sixty-five minutes ago. The car hadn't moved, and Marsh had gone. Someone would find him soon, and then he would be free. And if Marsh thought this was all over, he was going to be -
Noises. Voices. He banged on the boot lid, shouting for help. More than one voice, which meant it wasn't Marsh returning to finish him off. He heard a door open and then the engine start up. He rapped on the lid again, fearing that they hadn't heard him.
"Jesus, thank God," Hartbauer moaned when the boot flipped open and light flooded in, glorious daylight. He saw two faces above him, grinning down. Both black, both young. He didn't know these men, but he was going to reward them. He tried to sit up, but one of the men pushed him back down, hard. The fear returned.
"Alfo Pitchford's brother-in-law would like to meet you," said the other man, and slammed the lid again.
***
Maria was on a swing in the park behind the inn, watching Louise on the roundabout again, when she felt something behind her. Just some sense that someone was there. She turned, and there was Jimmy, striding towards her. She didn't move, because she couldn't read the story on his face. But then she got up and ran to him, because he was breathing and walking, and that had to be good, right?
They hugged, and he said nothing, and she said nothing. For a time there was silence, apart from the creaking of the roundabout. Then that stopped. Maria and Jimmy didn't hear Louise's approach, knew nothing of it until she forced them apart, shouting, "Daaaaaady's back, daaady's back."
He hauled her into the air and hugged her. Stared right over her at Maria, who mouthed a question: is it over?
He didn't answer her, just lavished kisses on his daughter.
"Daddy, bored here. Wanna play rounbot?"
Now Jimmy looked at Maria, but spoke to his daughter. "Roundabout? Well, how about we go home instead?"
THE END
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