Darkroom (22 page)

‘So … how are you feeling, Mr Rook?'

‘Better. Sore throat. But at least I can talk.'

‘They tell me you did a great job back there. Saved a lot of lives.'

Jim coughed and shook his head. ‘I should have saved all of them.'

‘I know how you feel. But you did everything you could. When it's somebody's day to die, even the Lord God Himself can't help them.'

Jim reached for a plastic cup and drank three mouthfuls of warm water. ‘Did you talk to any witnesses yet?'

‘Seven or eight so far. But we'll be interviewing everybody who was there. The CSU and the fire department investigators are checking the wreckage even as we speak.'

‘Did any of the witnesses tell you that they saw a very bright flash of light?'

Lieutenant Harris nodded. ‘Yep. They
all
did. That's one of the theories. A freak lightning strike. Happens on golf courses sometimes.'

‘Nobody saw … any kind of a figure?'

Lieutenant Harris licked his thumb and leafed through his notebook. ‘Nope. Nothing like that.' He paused, and then he said, ‘Why? Did you?'

‘I saw something, yes. Something which makes me sure that this wasn't lightning.'

‘Oh, yeah? What was it?'

‘I think it's connected with Bobby Tubbs and Sara Miller, the way they died.'

Lieutenant Harris looked at him suspiciously. ‘We're not talking about spontaneous human combustion again, are we? I looked into that real thorough, and there are
no
genuine cases of people bursting into flame spontaneously. The only time that people have burned to ashes is when their clothes have caught fire because they're drunk, and they've been sitting too close to a naked flame. The clothes have acted like a wick, and their body fat has acted as a candle.'

Jim said, ‘This wasn't anything like that. This was a single blast of intense heat and light, like the magnesium-powder flashguns that old-time photographers used to use.'

Lieutenant Harris sat and waited, as if he expected him to say more.

‘That's it,' said Jim.

‘That's it? It was an old-time photographic flashgun? Set off by whom, exactly?'

‘Somebody who wanted to show me who was boss.'

‘Can you give me a name? Can you explain how he did it? Can you tell me
why
he did it?'

Jim coughed, and cleared his throat. ‘I don't think it would help. In fact, I think it would make things worse. I just wanted you to know that I'm ninety-nine per cent sure how it happened, and who did it. I'm also ninety-nine per cent sure how Bobby Tubbs and Sara Miller were murdered, and why, and who killed them.'

Lieutenant Harris opened and closed his mouth, like a goldfish. ‘You're not trying to tell me that it wasn't Brad Moorcock?'

‘No. no. It
was
Brad Moorcock, in a way. But in another way, it wasn't. But you'd be better off keeping him locked up, if only for his own safety.'

‘I see,' said Lieutenant Harris, although he patently didn't. ‘But you're trying to say that these two cases could be connected? The bus today, and Bobby and Sara last week?'

‘Connected, yes. But not the same perpetrator, no.'

Lieutenant Harris mopped his face again, and then the back of his neck. ‘Is that all you're going to tell me?'

‘For now, yes. I still have to make sense of it myself.'

Lieutenant Harris stood up. ‘Listen, Mr Rook. Most of my colleagues think that I'm off to the races, talking to you. They don't believe in the world beyond, and they certainly don't believe that there's any way of getting in touch with people who are dead and buried. Me, I keep an open mind about that. But I do think that you have some kind of rare ability and I'm willing to play along with you if it means that I get to the bottom of things.

‘However, if I find that you know something that could materially affect my investigations, and that you're holding out on me for reasons best known to yourself, then I'm going to throw your ass in jail and I'm going to make sure that you stay there for a very, very long time, with nothing to eat but stale Saltines, and nothing to drink but flat root beer.
Comprendo?
'

All Jim could do was cough and nod.

Early that evening, when Jim returned to his apartment, the sun was shining on the wall above the fireplace, and on the portrait of Robert H. Vane. It lit the brushstrokes in lurid orange, as if the painting were on fire.

Jim stood and looked at it. Tibbles came in from the kitchen, still licking her whiskers from finishing off her bowl of mashed sardines. She climbed up on her hind legs, holding on to the knee of his black funeral pants with her claws.

‘Are you satisfied?' Jim challenged Robert H. Vane.

Beneath his black cloth, Robert H. Vane remained silent. Jim couldn't even catch him breathing.

‘Pinky and David, what did they ever do to you?' he demanded. ‘Pinky believed in Paradise and David believed in God, and what did you do? You destroyed them, and you destroyed their beliefs, and all for what? To show me that I couldn't get rid of you? To show me that you can come sneaking out of that picture whenever you feel like it, day or night, and ruin people's lives, and that there's nothing I can do to stop you?'

He stepped right up to the painting, with his feet in the fireplace. ‘Are you trying to make me feel weak and helpless? Well, congratulations, I do! I feel utterly useless, if you must know! But I'm going to get my revenge for what you did today, believe me, and you're going to come down from that wall, and I'm going to make sure you never hang up here again.'

He was still standing in front of the painting when there was a cautious rapping at the door, and Eleanor stepped into the room. She was wearing a long black gauzy dress, with nothing underneath, and very high black sandals with criss-cross straps.

‘Mr Mariti? Oh, it's you, Jim! Sorry … the door was open. I thought you were moving out.'

‘I've changed my mind. I have a score to settle first.'

‘Score?'

‘Didn't you see the news today? A bus caught fire at the Rolling Hills cemetery, with over a dozen college students on it.
My
students. Two of them were burned to death.'

‘Oh my God,' said Eleanor. She came up to him and took hold of his hand. ‘Oh my God, that's terrible! You must be devastated.'

Jim didn't take his eyes off the painting. Eleanor looked up at it, too. ‘You don't think that …'

‘I don't
think
, Eleanor. I
know
. I can
see
, remember, and I saw him there. Robert H. Vane. Nobody else saw him, but that doesn't matter. You can't arrest an evil spirit. You can't arraign a painting for homicide. I don't like to admit it, but you were right. The only person who can bring him to justice is me.'

‘What are you going to do?'

‘I'm going to have to find out how Raymond Boschetto kept him trapped inside the painting. Whatever he did, it only worked so long as Raymond was alive. I'll have to go a stage further and work out how to keep him in there forever … or how to destroy the painting so that it can't come back.'

‘Raymond didn't even give me the slightest hint. He said the less I knew about Robert H. Vane, the safer I would be.'

‘Well,' said Jim, ‘I have all of Raymond's books here, and all of his notes. It looks like I've got some homework to do.'

‘Have you eaten?' asked Eleanor. ‘I have some chicken and basil casserole, if you'd like some.'

‘Why not?' said Jim. ‘I'll open a bottle of wine, too.' He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. They were still sore from the smoke. ‘I don't think I could sleep tonight, anyhow.'

Eleanor gently touched his cheek with her fingertips, almost as if she were intrigued to discover that he was real. ‘I'll stay up with you.'

‘OK then,' he said. The last of the sunlight faded from the painting. ‘Let's see if we can trap this monster before the sun comes up again.'

T
hey cleared a space on the dining-room table, and ate their supper with Raymond Boschetto's books and diaries stacked all around them. Jim found over thirty books on early photography, as well as books on precious metals, and how silver had been used since the times of the Ancient Greeks for magic rituals and mysticism.

‘Silver is a moon metal, associated with the occult, with darkness, and the unconscious. It is in opposition to the gold of the sun, which is symbolic of light and life. The purity of silver and its connection to the moon made it the perfect metal for the making of talismans and amulets, and Mohammed himself forbade the use of any other substance.'

Jim reached across the table and took hold of the medallion that Eleanor wore around her neck. ‘Is this silver?'

She nodded. ‘The Benandanti gave it to me when I agreed to move in here. It warns me if evil is approaching. It tingles, that's the best way I can describe it.'

‘Does it work?'

‘It goes crazy whenever I get close to that portrait.
Fizzes
, almost. So yes, I guess it does. You see that face on it? That's a fool. Fools are supposed to be highly sensitive to evil, like dogs and cats.'

‘I see. I guess that explains why I'm so sensitive to evil.'

Eleanor took hold of his hand. ‘You're not a fool, Jim. You're incredibly brave. You put other people first.'

‘Oh, well. Maybe you're right. As Blake said, “if a fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.”' He poured them both another glass of Barolo. ‘But don't get me wrong; I'm not doing this because I want to, believe me. I'm only doing it because nobody else can.'

Eleanor cleared the dishes and stacked them in the dishwasher, while Jim started to read Raymond Boschetto's diaries. There were forty-one of them altogether, bound in brown leather. Jim had to put on his reading glasses, because Raymond's writing was tiny and crabbed, and he had crammed every single square inch of every page, even if it meant writing vertically up the margin.

Most of the diaries were nothing but a daily record of what Raymond had eaten (fresh figs and prosciutto with
scamorza
cheese) or the books he had read (
The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, Discourse of the Damned Arts, Faustbuch
). But in some passages, he ranted on furiously about the Benandanti and Robert H. Vane and how his whole life was being taken up by this ‘impossible and dangerous commission.'

Little by little, however, Jim began to understand why the painting of Robert H. Vane was hanging here, in this apartment, and why the Benandanti had been unable to get rid of it. Raymond used the words ‘shadow-self' to describe the dark side of Robert H. Vane's personality.