DEATHLOOP (25 page)

Zack shot a look at Tracy who jumped in.

“My client has given you all the information you need.”

“No he hasn’t,” said Brian, dismissively, “what did Russell Garrity say to you that night, and why the venue?”

“I think he might have got me mixed up with someone else.”

Tracy sighed. Zack knew he was clutching at straws here but he also knew that he couldn’t come out with the real reason because no one in their right mind would believe him.

“Who?”

“Well I don’t know, but…”

“So what
did
you talk about? The weather?” asked Brian, unusually upbeat for once.

“Did you fight with Russell Garrity on that bridge?” asked Malcolm.

“No of course not,” said Zack.

“Did you push him in the river?”

“Why would I do that? I’d only just met him, what reason would I have?”

“How long did you remain on the bridge with Mr Garrity?”

“Ten minutes at the most.”

“How did the conversation end?”

“He just turned away, caught his foot and fell.”

Zack was well aware how lame this sounded but it was almost the truth.

“So let’s just recap shall we,” said Brian. “Who arrived at the bridge first?”

“He did, he was waiting for me as I walked along the path and up the narrow stone steps. In fact I was nervous about getting onto the bridge at all, it didn’t look safe, and there were signs there telling people to keep off.”

“And what was Mr Garrity’s reason for asking you there, there of all places?”

“He… he seemed to think he should meet me over water for some reason,” said Zack, hoping this would put an end to the questions about the bridge, but of course it didn’t.

“Why?” said Brian.

“I’ve just said, I don’t know, I don’t know about all this stuff, no doubt another spiritualist could tell you, but I can’t.”

“Standing over water protects you from evil spirits,” said Malcolm quietly. This comment came down like a guillotine. Brian looked at Malcolm, then back at Zack. “That’s how I understand it, anyway,” he said with a shrug.

Zack’s mind raced. What the hell did that mean? He glanced at Tracy hoping she would ask for a break but she was busy writing.

“Why did you go to the church in the first place...” asked Brian, “you don’t strike me as the spiritualist type.”

“I’m not.”

“So why go?”

“My girlfriend wanted to go,” and as soon as Zack had said this he realised it was a mistake. This was new information and everyone’s ears pricked up. Tracy looked across at him with a frown.

“So Russell Garrity kicked her out as well?” said Brian.

“No, not really… she went to the chapel alone, then I had second thoughts about that, and followed her there.”

“Did she go with you to the bridge?”

“No.”

“And what did she say when you told her that Russell Garrity had drowned?”

“I didn’t tell her,” said Zack, after a hesitation.

Everyone was looking at him, Tracy included.

“Why not?” said Brian.

“I didn’t want to upset her.”

Josiah shifted his weight causing his chair to creak, it was the only sound in the sudden silence.

“Really?” said Brian. “So she is still unaware of Russell Garrity’s death?”

“No, she is aware of it now. She overheard someone mention it in a shop.”

“So you told her what happened since?”

“No.”

“I think we need a break,” said Tracy.

“Not yet,” said Brian, keen to plough on. “Why was that?”

“No comment,” said Zack, after a hesitation, sounding defeated.

“We need her name, Mr Fortune, and contact details.”

“I’d rather she wasn’t involved.”

“But she is involved isn’t she?”

“Don’t tell her about the other matter, please, I’d rather you didn’t” said Zack, looking across at Tracy.

“That goes without saying,” said Tracy, pointedly to Brian Smith, “can we have your agreement on that?”

Zack was warned about contacting Veronica personally or by phone, and Tracy emphasised the need for him to keep away from her as they left the station and stepped outside into brilliant sunshine. Tracy suggested a coffee, and Zack, keen to straighten a few things out, agreed. They slumped near the window of a greasy spoon, Zack feeling like he’d just made an unsuccessful attempt on Ben Nevis.

“It didn’t go well, did it?” said Zack, aware as he said it of the understatement.

“There are positives…” said Tracy, vaguely, looking as though she would have to scrape the barrel to find them. “You didn’t know this guy, you had no reason to push him into the river, plus there’s no one who can say you did.”

“They’ll be looking for that though.”

“Oh sure, they’ll be trawling for witnesses and motives but when they come up with zilch they’ll realise they’re wasting their time.”

Zack didn’t look convinced. It seemed like Tracy accepted his story, but she was no fool, and Zack found himself wondering if she really believed him or if she, like the cops thought that there was more to Russell’s death than he had chosen to tell them.

“I didn’t tell you about Veronica, I’m sorry about that.”

“Yes, another mistake,” said Tracy, with a smile.

How different Zack thought to her reaction to his going AWOL in Derbyshire but a few days ago.

“She’ll corroborate your story?”

“I hope so.”

“It’s serious with this girl, is it?” said Tracy, out of the blue.

“Well it
was,
” said Zack, resigned, “they won’t tell her about Susan will they?

“They’ll be for the high jump if they do.”

“Have you dealt with our Brian before?”

“Once or twice…”

“I can’t stand the man.”

“No one can,” said Tracy.

On her way back to the office, Tracy found herself wondering about Ms Veronica French. She decided that the name conjured up someone exotic and capricious, but with a serious streak. Deep down Tracy longed for Veronica to go ballistic when she discovered Zack had involved her in a murder enquiry and disappear back to Italy with the sculptor. She could but hope.

Zack could only imagine Veronica’s alarm as she was hailed to the police station for questioning. He wanted to warn her, but most of all he wanted to apologize, but he couldn’t do that, he just had to sit it out until she contacted him and deal with it then. The call came sooner than he thought. He let it go to voice mail then called her back.

“Veronica…”

“What the hell is going on, Zack?”

“Come round, we’ll talk.”

An hour later Zack sat across from Veronica looking extremely nervous.

“You’re not a very good liar.”

“Really? And I always thought I was,” said Zack, with a little smile.

“Well you’re not, and now I’m involved in all this, hauled up to the police station like a common thief.”

“I thought maybe you’d think I’d done away with the bloke, but I didn’t Veronica, it was an accident. It was like standing in a hammock on that bridge, bloody lethal.”

“Just tell me what happened, every single thing.”

“I went back to the church, found Russell’s number and called, asking him for an explanation obviously…”

“And did he give you one?”

“No, but he agreed on a meet and suggested this wilderness miles outside town. He insisted we met over water and so there we were blown about in the storm on this damn bridge.”

“So what did he say?”

“Nothing, he talked in riddles. I lost my temper, and yelled at him, and I did grab him at one point, but I didn’t hit him. He barged off and caught his foot…”

“Caught his foot?”

“The bridge was littered with branches, he fell hard against the rail and that was it.”

“But that sounds… almost cartoon like.”

“I know it does, believe me it sounded no better when I told the cops, but truth being stranger than fiction that is exactly what happened.”

“So why didn’t you try and help him or something?”

“I did, I jumped in after him and I thought I’d got him too, but I couldn’t hold on. I saw him about half a mile later, stuck between these rocks. I did what I could.”

“And what else… there’s something else.”

There was nothing for it, Veronica was not prepared to be fobbed off any more and he couldn’t blame her. If he wasn’t to lose all credibility he had to come clean.

“You’ve heard me talk of Sam and Clarissa…” said Zack, cautiously.

“Yes, of course.”

“Clarissa has been training as a regression therapist… past life stuff…” Veronica looked up with a frown, she wasn’t expecting this at all. “A couple of days before we met, I was her guinea pig and it didn’t go too well, it was horrific in fact, so I broke out of the hypnosis to bring an end to it. Apparently you are not meant to do that. Since then I’ve been, well… I’ve been plagued by… dying people… and believe me I know how mad that sounds.”

“
What
?”

“Okay, look, people call out to me to help them, then they die… complete strangers and they always call out to me by name, as though they know me, as though they’ve been waiting for me to turn up.”

“So who are they, these people?”

“The first was a suicide, a girl who jumped off a roof, then an old guy in the club the night we met, then just before we left for Derbyshire there was a child, then a boy in an alleyway…”

“So they all know you but you don’t know them?”

“Russell knew what had been going on because when we met on the bridge he brought it up… and he blamed me, he said it was my fault for taking part in the regression in the first place. The irony is it was the last thing I wanted to do. I just did it for Sam… for Clarissa… but most of all for Sam.”

“So what you’re saying is… Russell knew about the regression, or sensed it as soon as he saw you? Is that it?”

“Well yes, I think he did.”

“But you didn’t…”

“No, I didn’t push him in the river,” said Zack anticipating, “I’ve never pushed anyone in a river,” he said truthfully, after all, he pushed Richard into a lake. “He’d insisted we meet at that idiotic place in those terrible conditions, yet he didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know.”

“He must have said something.”

“He said I had information which I should not have and that’s about it.”

“So where did you get this information?”

“The regression I presume, although I’ve been over the vision or whatever it was a thousand times and I don’t know what information he’s talking about,” Zack ran out of steam for a moment, then he pressed on. “Look it’s all tripe this stuff, I don’t believe one word of it, I’m just telling you what he said.”

“And Clarissa, can she help at all?”

“The word from Clarissa is that I shouldn’t have broken out of the hypnosis myself, because now my psychic memory is confused, whatever the hell that is. All she can suggest is doing the whole thing again to try and reverse it, but there’s no way I’d do that. She thinks there’s a possibility that these people might be from previous lives, so although in this life I don’t recognize them, I did once. That’s the best she can come up with.”

“So what’s your explanation? What do you think it is?”

“Sam thinks it’s a throwback to all the drugs,” said Zack, dodging the question for a moment, “triggered by the hypnosis maybe, but he thinks it’s
within
me rather than an external event or phenomena. Just freaky visions… bad trips…”

“And is that what you think too?”

“That’s what I’d like to think, I mean, I can understand why Sam thinks that…”

“But?”

“I’m a bastard to people,” said Zack with the air of someone at long last coming clean.

“You and a million others…”

“Although I used to help people once… law centres and stuff and I enjoyed it.”

“So why stop?”

“I suppose I decided I wanted more from life, I wanted the trappings of success, status, material wealth.”

“But it hasn’t made you happy, has it?”

“No it hasn’t, not one bit. I was a bastard then too of course but at least I paid lip service to being the good guy but I don’t even do that anymore.”

“So it’s some kind of… punishment, is that what you are saying?”

“Listen, I’m guessing, like everyone else is guessing.”

“And have you tried to find out whether the deaths actually happened?”

“They happened all right. I went back to The Mango Tree and the police were there investigating the old boy’s death, so we know they’re not entirely imaginary.”

“So, okay, next question: if the deaths did actually happen, and we discount the past life connection, how do these people know you?”

“First of all Sam suggested that the deaths
might
be real, but that for reasons of my own I’m presuming a more personal involvement than there really is.”

“As a reaction to the trauma you mean?”

“Possibly, it’s interesting that they always ask me for help, and as I’ve just pointed out, I don’t help anyone anymore, but whichever way you look at it it’s very strange - suddenly four people dying right in front of me.”

“So these people ask you for help, then what?”

“Then they die, and I leave them. Generally by that time other people are there looking after them and I’m not needed.”

“And do you speak to these other people?”

“No, there’s a sense that… hard to explain, but it’s like I shouldn’t be there and yet I should, I feel like a voyeur almost, and it’s as though I’m denying the accepted order of things. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s overwhelming and I just have to get away.”

Veronica told Zack that on balance she agreed with Sam. She found it difficult to accept Russell’s theory or Clarissa’s, and certainly not Zack’s. He wasn’t Hitler she pointed out, and in comparison to the population at large, probably no more of a bastard than anyone else.

Zack had wanted to say that she didn’t know the half of it, but he couldn’t, because that would mean owning up to everything. The murder of Richard, the things he did to all the other boyfriends, and his mother, his abandonment of so many women and one in particular, the list went on and on. He had begun to hate himself for all this, but that was who he was and he wasn’t convinced that he wouldn’t behave just as badly again.