Read Down Cemetery Road Online

Authors: Mick Herron

Tags: #Suspense

Down Cemetery Road (22 page)

BOOK: Down Cemetery Road
8.78Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Dear Sarah

I suppose what I should have remembered is, we all have to exorcize our own demons. Who am I to tell you to stop looking? No matter what it is you’re looking for. So this little girl, since she’s so important to you, I hope you find her, though I still think we went barking up a wrong tree yesterday. I shouldn’t have got angry, though. I told you I’d help: I should just help. Even if that means driving to Surrey on a fools’ errand. Better, I think, to start with the obvious. I enclose a copy of a letter I’ve sent to the Ministry of Defence. According to their press release, Thomas Singleton died four years ago, so how come he died again so recently? Perhaps they know nothing about it. If not, better they join in asking the questions, don’t you think? They’re much more likely to find the answers.

And wherever the answer to Singleton’s death lies, I think you’ll find his daughter there also. And if they
do
know all about it, they’ll understand that a few discreet answers now might save them a lot of press coverage later. They are great pragmatists these days, Sarah, the men in suits. All they need do is give a little, right? Save you causing more trouble.

I get the feeling you could cause a lot of trouble if you tried.

I’ll be in touch. Joe

The enclosed letter was as he said it was: a formal
Dear Sir
laying out the bare facts of Thomas Singleton’s death and his daughter’s disappearance; all neatly typed; every spelling in place. He’d even put his own reference number down. This, too, Sarah reflected, had been removed from his office files. Or Zoë would have found it; Sarah had the feeling
that
woman would find pretty much everything she put her mind to.

On a sudden impulse, the kind best acted upon immediately, she picked up the phone and called Directory Enquiries, or whatever they were called these days, and after a very short wait was given the phone number to go with the address Joe had sent the letter to. She wrote it on the letter itself in big red marker pen, the only kind near to hand. Maybe she would call. Not now, obviously. Other impulses were best slept upon; they had to be given time to go away. That was as far as she’d thought things through when she heard the rapping on the door – on the back door.

Which led nowhere. Which led to the back garden, and it was true you could squeeze past the hedgerow at the far end and reach the street behind through the side passage of the house they backed on to, but nobody did this, not even burglars. Sarah didn’t know the neighbours in that direction; wasn’t even sure the word ‘neighbours’ applied. All of which suggested an unwelcome presence, but unwelcome presences didn’t knock, and there was no getting round the fact that what she had to do now was stir herself, walk through to the kitchen, see who it was. It was Rufus.

Her reluctance mingled with relief, she let him in. The time it took her to reach the door, a number of horrors had ripped through her mind; none specific, but each shaded red, the colour of Joe’s shirt afterwards. Even Rufus was an improvement. She let him in, closing the glass-paned door behind him and turning its key once more.

‘Hello, Rufus.’

‘Sarah.’

‘Why the back way?’

He shrugged.

Even arriving alone, Rufus had the air of somebody tagging along. It bordered on spooky.

‘Wigwam said you needed company.’

‘I’m all right. Really.’

‘’Sno bother.’

He wandered through the kitchen, into the sitting room. It should not have been surprising that at a time like this Sarah should feel she didn’t know Rufus, because she didn’t. Times she’d made the effort to draw him out had been for Wigwam’s sake, and wholly unsuccessful. Mostly because Rufus wasn’t interested in anything. For all the impact he made, he might have remained in that limbo where all the people you’ve never met live.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked.

‘Cheers.’

So now she had to make him a cup of tea.

She put the kettle on, rinsed a cup, thought about it, rinsed another. The idea of food still made her gag, but she had to get something inside her. Meanwhile Rufus called from the sitting room, ‘It’s started. I heard earlier.’

‘Started?’

‘The War.’

Thee
not
thuh
. And
War
not
war
. There’d have been a glint in Rufus’s eye, too: war did that to boys. Last time, they’d played in sandpits on the TV news.

But she had nothing to say. Nothing to offer. They’d be striking each other dead in the East right now – more charred corpses soldered to their tanks – and she wanted to know nothing of it, an ignorance as easy to achieve as turning off a radio. They’d yet to pass a law demanding you were well informed. During wartime, that was the last law they’d pass.

The kettle boiled. She made the tea. She passed a cup to Rufus, who had come through from the sitting room, and who took it by the base, apparently not noticing how hot it was. He cleared a small space for it on top of the crowded fridge, then dragged his warm fingers through his hair, a gesture that recalled him pulling his mask off. But that had been when he was Stan Laurel, and now he was only Rufus.

‘She talks about you, you know. All the time.’

‘Wigwam?’

‘Before, it was how
nice
you are. Sarah says this. Sarah lent me that. These days, it’s Poor Sarah. All the time. Poor Sarah.’

‘She’s a good friend.’

‘She’s a soft touch. I can’t really imagine you two being pally.’

‘You don’t have to imagine it,’ she snapped. ‘It already happens.’

He grinned, pleased about scraping a nerve. And there was the malice she’d glimpsed when he’d frightened her in town: if he hated her so bloody much, why was he here anyway? Because Wigwam asked him? All he’d had to say was No.

He plucked a magnet from the door of the fridge, examined it and put it back. ‘Been resting up then, have you? After your bother with the cops.’

‘I don’t really want to talk about it.’

‘Suit yourself. What’s to talk about anyway? You’re scoring dope, you got caught. End of story.’

Sods’ Law, this, that now she
really
wanted him to blend into the wallpaper, he’d discovered he’d got a tongue.

‘Rufus –’

‘It’s okay. We’ve all been there.’

‘Look, Rufus, it’s kind of you to come round. But it’s really no problem. Mark’ll be back soon and I don’t want –’

‘No worries. All I’m saying is, that should have been it. You know? You’ve got the cops leaning in one direction, you’ve got your nice cosy life in the other. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out when it’s time to quit.’

She rubbed her temple. There was a sharp pain buried there, and if it ever got out it would make a noise like a banshee. It was about now she’d be taking a blue pill, if she was ever going to take one again. The thought came to her unbidden that a whole stretch of her life had just come to a close, and it wasn’t the absence of the pill that rang down the curtain.

‘So what you doing still writing letters, Sarah? Your jewboy’s dead. Can you not take a hint?’

Nothing changed. The ground beneath her feet crumbled and gave, but that was all. And the only things she could think of to say were the hackneyed, the clichéd, the grim:


What did you say?


You can’t be serious!


You don’t mean you –

So she said nothing.

But Rufus said, ‘He to protect you, was he? Big strong man like him? Case you ran into any
bad guys?

‘It was you. You were late turning up that night the bomb went off.’

‘Mmm hmm.’

‘Only nobody took any notice. Because even when you’re there, you’re hardly there.’

He grinned and hid his face behind his hands. ‘Peep-oh!’

‘Who are you?’

‘Call me Rufus.’

‘Who are you?’

‘But my real name’s Axel. Hey, what do you think that fat bastard would make of
that
?’ He twisted his face into a pompous mask: not at all a bad Gerard, actually. ‘That’s not a
name
. That’s an
abomination
.’ Then untwisted, and was Rufus/Axel once more. ‘Course, under fresh circumstances, I’d wipe the fucking floor with him.’


Who are you?

‘I’m your bad dream, Sarah,’ he said. ‘I’m the stair that creaks when there’s nobody home. I’m the light that goes off without warning.’ He produced, from behind his back, her copy of Joe’s letter; the red marker pen bawling out her intentions for the world to see. ‘I mean, what the fuck
is
this? Your friend is dead, Sarah. Not to mention well stitched-up. And you’ve got coppers wondering when you’ll start shopping for a new freelance chemist. You were
supposed
to give it up.’

‘I did give up. I have.’

‘So why the letter? Why the phone number? Why couldn’t you just let it
be
?’

She looked behind her, at the back door. The key had gone. When she looked round, Rufus held it. He smiled, and dropped it in his cup of tea. ‘Won’t be needing
that
.’

‘You killed Joe. You planted the coke.’

‘And you just had to get back on the bus, didn’t you? What is it with you, is it the kid? Is it still the kid? She’s a
little girl
, Sarah. There are fucking
hundreds
of them.’

‘Where is she?’

‘That doesn’t matter any more.’

‘Is she alive?’

‘Do I care?’

‘What are you going to do?’ she whispered. Her voice barely staining the quiet air.

‘I’m going to kill you,’ he said patiently. ‘What did you think I was going to do?’

‘But they’ll know, Wigwam’ll
know
, she’ll tell –’

‘Christ. Sarah, do I care? I’d have been out of here weeks ago already, if it weren’t for you. Six months I spent married to that poor cow.’ He reached something down from the fridge: she couldn’t see what it was. ‘And just between you and me, I’d have had more fun sticking my dick down a rabbit hole. Ill of the dead and all that, but –’


No!

‘Oh yes.’

‘No. You can’t have. You mustn’t –’

‘Sarah. Listen to me. You stuck your nose in something bigger than you know. And me, well, my job’s to go round cleaning up other people’s mess. It’s a filthy business, but guess what? I love it. I mean, I
really
get off on it. Which was bad news for the missus, but hey, them’s the breaks. And as for you –’

But he couldn’t have killed Wigwam he couldn’t have killed Wigwam he couldn’t have killed – He put his hands together, then pulled them apart. A thin cord appeared between them; he did it again. Now it was a double strand.

‘As for you, I get the feeling you’d be a wet one.’

And again. It was dental floss, Sarah realized with a curious absence of shock. He was unreeling yards of dental floss, and folding it into a loose rope.

‘Sadly, I’ll have to make do with the foreplay.’

He snapped the cord and let its plastic box drop to the floor; then, with a quick twist of his hands, took a firm grip on the ends of his rope. It looked laughable, somehow. It was also quite enough to kill her.

‘Shocking area. Do you know, they had two murders round here last year? Some mastermind put away his wife. The other one, they never caught him. Robbery gone wrong, they said.’

‘Was that you?’ she whispered.

‘Course not. You’ve got it upside down. Nobody’s gunna think
I
did
that
. They’re gunna think whoever did that did you.’ He experimented with his noose, giving it slack, then pulling it taut. Something in the process satisfied him.

The only way out was the front way, through him, and to get through him she’d need a weapon. This was the kitchen, the most dangerous room, but the knives hung in a rack by the fridge, well out of reach. She threw her tea instead, and he hardly noticed. Still hot, it splashed into his face, and he laughed. The cup glanced off a shoulder and bounced to the floor. Sarah rushed him. She didn’t make it.

Somehow he was behind her; he had her in his arms and the dental rope looped round her neck was already strangling. She kicked, stamped, and thought she connected, but his grip did not weaken and he gave no hint of pain. When she tried again, he had moved. And he was right, he was her bad dream; one in which all her struggling left her more securely knotted in its grasp. Her throat was on fire now, and her tongue too big for her mouth. Strange pictures rushed to and fro in her mind as her frantic brain searched for a solution; meanwhile her body thrashed in panic, her hands grabbing at anything in reach. She pulled on the fridge door, which opened with a jolt. A carton of milk leaped out and burst on the floor. The white puddle spread out before her eyes just as a black pool opened behind them. She could feel herself falling into one or other: black, white, it didn’t matter. No use crying over . . . Her hand closed round something. It felt absurdly like an asthma inhaler.

And this was Joe, come back from the dead to save her. The rape alarm he’d given her fitted like a grenade in her palm.

She raised her hand above her head, to
Rufus’s
head, and depressed the trigger. And there was her banshee, wailing into the world just as the pain in her head exploded: an explosion that came like a gush of air as he released his grip while the noise bust his ears; came with light too, as the black pool vanished, and familiar objects swam back into view. There was no time to cherish them now. She struggled free of his grasp, dropped the alarm; its scream whipped once round the room and died. Sarah had sunk to her knees.

She tried to stand, but slipped in the milk and fell headlong to the floor. Behind her Rufus cursed, something insane and biblical, before reaching down; intending to beat her to death with his fists. Which was not how she wanted to die. But the slick floor defeated her attempts to flee, and her throat hurt, and there was not enough air in the room to feed her lungs . . .

The back door splintered open. It was like watching a glass firework. And Sarah saw hair and teeth and a man in a crouch, his arms outstretched to make a point that was ugly, black and useful. It coughed twice. Above her Rufus bloomed red, his throat a holy mess of blood. And then, leaving a fine pink spray behind him, he was down, forever out of view, while she lay in a mess on the floor, wondering if she’d faint.

BOOK: Down Cemetery Road
8.78Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

My Old Confederate Home by Rusty Williams
Skin Deep by Blu, Katie
Manwhore +1 by Katy Evans
The Night Villa by Carol Goodman