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Authors: Mick Herron

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Down Cemetery Road (24 page)

BOOK: Down Cemetery Road
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She left the train at Malvern. There were no whistles, no alarms; and neither sight nor sound of Michael Downey, though she waited until the train pulled away before leaving the platform. Seeing it depart was watching an escape route close before her eyes. She had barely a fistful of money; she wore jeans, a T-shirt, a thin cotton top. And she had never been to Malvern, though first impressions coloured it neat, well-kept and dark. The platform lighting fell in tight pools lapped by shifting shadows. It was the wind nudging hanging baskets, from which trailed fuschias and ferns.

It came as no great surprise to find herself abandoned. Compared to recent events, it was a small betrayal: Downey was a stranger; he had saved her life and owed her nothing. That he had left her stranded hours from home was a detail. She could easily picture him, miles from here: hurrying across a field, the lights of labourers’ cottages winking in the distance. A little bit of pastoral, there. But probably he had just changed trains, and was now heading into the city. Any city.

From somewhere the other side of the shadows came thumping, heaving and laughter; sounds Sarah took for porters, larking with the mails. A dim sense of self-preservation reasserted itself. Whatever happened next had best happen elsewhere: somewhere better lit, more crowded; also warmer. A sudden shiver shook her head to toe. It was the thought of that noose tightening on her throat. It was the cold and the dark and the fear, and the being alone.

Her shoes clattered on the station concourse. Everything sounds louder in the dark. Outside there was a car park and a hill to climb, and a bigger hill in the distance, and Sarah couldn’t have felt further from home if she’d been E.T. Her cheeks stung where her tears for Wigwam had dried. Soon, she knew, she’d be crying again, but before that happened she needed shelter. Because once she started crying, she’d likely never stop.

A lout stepped from an alcove. ‘Tucker.’


Jesus!

‘Where were you?’

He had cut his hair on the train, and this oddness distracted her from fright for a second. And then it poured through her again, riding her blood like a surfer on a wave, and it didn’t at first occur to her that it was relief as much as anger that made her coarse. ‘You shit you frightened me half to
death
.’

‘Who else round here knows your name?’

‘That’s hardly the –’

‘We can’t stay here. Come on.’

Like I’m a bloody dog, she thought. But followed anyway, like a bloody dog, up the road towards the town centre.

Downey moved naturally among the shadows, as if they were his element after years spent pretending to be dead. Sarah was forced to trot to match his pace; to stretch her legs after weeks without exercise. The blood pounded through her and her skin began to tingle. Sensations indicating that she too was coming back to life.

Coming back to it and giving it some thought. That she was here, now, was a given. That she was blindly following a man she’d seen kill without hesitation would perhaps bear examination. What it suggested was not attractive, not to the Sarah emerging from tranquillized stupor; the same inner core of selfhood that had responded to Zoë Boehm rebelled against relying on a man for instruction. Mark’s betrayal was only just sinking in. Not the kiss on the railway platform, but the whole of the last few weeks: the tame doctor wheeled out to pop pills; the sex visited on her as if it were a form of therapy. Even Simon Smith had acknowledged she had some degree of autonomy, though he’d tempered it with the unstated view that she’d be better off not exercising it. Mark thought rape and drugs would see her through. Yet here she was, having run from them all, tagging after a proven killer like a confirmed victim, lost without a source of punishment.

But that wasn’t it. She knew that wasn’t it. The reason she was following Michael Downey was that he’d faked death four years ago, and that lay at the heart of recent events. Joe would not be coming back to life. Her own would never be the same. And somewhere underneath all this was the shadow of Dinah Singleton, surely as unknowing a player in the game as Sarah herself . . . She could admit now that the child had been little more than an excuse. She would have traced a treasure map with as much concern. It was what Gerard Inchon had called BHS; the urge to do something – anything – to relieve the terrible boredom.

The boredom had been relieved.

And now that the damage was done, the long days when the worst she had to worry about was what to fix for supper had a prelapsarian glow; it was like those first few seconds after breaking a tooth, when you’re immediately cross with yourself for not having taken advantage of all the lovely moments without a broken tooth. But there was no cosmic dentist available, and no advantage in looking back. The best she could do was arrange her own agenda. Soon they would come looking for her: the police for sure; whoever sent Rufus, possibly. The choice was to go to earth or to start back at the beginning, and not give up. To find Dinah. It had nothing to do with revenge, or even reconciliation. It was simply a matter of finishing what she had started. And that meant knowing what Downey knew.

Their location, for a start. ‘What are we looking for?’

‘Hotel,’ he said, without breaking stride.

‘We’ve passed three.’

‘Too near the station.’

Because of the noise was her first, ridiculous thought. Though what he meant was, hotels by the station were the first places they’d come looking.

Whoever they were.

He came to a stop at a corner, just out of the reach of a streetlight, and looked both ways, like a man checking out enemy terrain. Sarah caught up, and stood in the light. ‘Who are you? Really?’

‘Not here.’

‘Where then? I’m not coming without answers.’

‘I’m the guy who shot the guy who tried to kill you. Happy?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’d have killed him anyway.’

‘Your name’s Downey. You’re supposed to be dead.’

He didn’t answer.

‘You were Singleton’s friend.’

‘I told
you
that.’

‘And you were both killed in a helicopter crash.’

Before he could react to this, he reacted to something else: footsteps over the road, chopping little pieces off the quiet. Downey pulled Sarah into the dark and she tensed at this unexpected contact. The smell of sweat and loose clippings of hair. He hadn’t shaved, just hacked at the beard with a pair of scissors. From a distance, he could have been riding the fashion. Up close he looked like an accident in a garden shed.

The footsteps stopped. ‘Who’s there?’ It was a querulous tremor, an old woman’s voice, attached in this instance to an old man. ‘I heard you over there. I’m not afraid.’

They stood in their doorway, a chemist’s shop doorway, huddled like startled lovers. But he couldn’t see them, and they made no further noise.

‘Winston? Come on, Winston.’

And the dog wheezed after its ancient owner: a boxer with a clumsy punch-drunk waddle, as if four legs were too many, or not enough. The tapping of the footsteps resumed, only to falter a few yards later while their maker hawked noisily into the gutter; possibly a gesture of contempt, or maybe just a symptom of the condition that had him wandering the streets at this godforsaken hour.

‘See?’

‘What?’ she snapped.

‘We can’t hang about. There’s a place up ahead.’

Which was the last one Sarah would have chosen. She’d have thought he’d go for a backstreet boarding house; the kind of refuge where the arrival of a bedraggled couple in the early hours simply meant another marriage had hit the deck. But the hotel ahead bore the same relation to a travelling reps’ dive that a cruiser does a tug; an imposing stone building which looked like it had graced the town since time out of mind, and only begrudgingly hosted untitled members of the public. ‘You’ve made reservations?’

‘Think they’ll turn away cash? Not on your life.’

He fumbled in his canvas bag again, and this time pulled out a folded stack of currency held by a rubber band.

‘Not on your life,’ he repeated.

This time, Sarah believed him.

II

Seven in the morning – three hours’ sleep – and Amos Crane was back at his desk, back at his screen, hacking his way through railway timetables: an obvious place to start. Maybe Michael Downey used a car. Well, if so, Crane would just have to wait until he broke surface, but in the meantime here he was, chasing trains a pair of fugitives might have hopped in the small hours.

They might have split up, too, but he doubted that.

So he made a list of all possible departures, allowing a generous window of ninety minutes, then cut the London trains, because that’s what he’d have done: only amateurs think you can get lost in the big city. And then cut the north train too, because the only point in heading north was putting down distance, and Downey wouldn’t spend three-four hours on a train if he was expecting pursuit. Not if it meant making it as far as Durham to find a squad car waiting . . .

. . . and it occurred to him he was playing the game by trying to think like Downey; maybe he should be zeroing on the woman instead . . .

. . . but no, it was too early for that: the state she’d be in, the best you could hope was she’d follow instructions without too much fuss. But Downey would keep her for the moment, at least until he’d found out what she knew. Which wasn’t anything, which was
fuck all
, but that was the beauty of the information game: you never knew how ignorant you were without going over everything twice. Downey needed to hear her story. Which meant he’d want to hole up as soon as possible, get the debriefing under way . . .

Crane sat back, and drank coffee from a takeaway cup. He was thinking: if it had been him, he’d have bought two sets of tickets; putting down a false trail was standard. And the second pair, the
real
pair, wouldn’t have been identical: he’d have bought two tickets on the same line, but for different stations. But Downey was hampered. That time of night, relatively few people about, he couldn’t have risked going to the window twice: the ticket clerk might have recognized him. So he’d have sent the woman. And one person buying tickets for two different stations, that was memorable too. So Crane had to assume Downey was missing a trick. Two sets of tickets, right, but each an identical pair.

In the old days this was the point at which flatfeet wandered from booth to ticket-booth, photograph in hand, hoping to get lucky. For Crane, it was a finger-hop and skip – technically illegal, he reminded himself, but that was what the word ‘technically’ was for. He didn’t come up with many pairs. Late evening, it was mostly businessmen singles. With luck, he’d pinpoint them.

He took another gulp of coffee. Miles away, Sarah woke up.

She had slept fitfully, wakened at three by aeroplanes exploding overhead, a noise which resolved into thunder once conscious- ness set in. But the rain that followed soothed her, its rhythmic drumming against the wide windows washing her mind clean, for a while, of the horrors, and when she woke next the sun pouring through the gaps in the curtains evidenced a morning so perfect, there was probably a patent pending on it.

Michael sat on the end of the bed.

He had spent the night in the armchair, and sometime early had finished the job he’d started on the train, and shaved. Revealed was a thin, dark face; not much older than her own, but more travelled. A harsh crease on his chin suggested a healed scar. His brown eyes, neither friendly nor threatening, were distinctly matter-of-fact. ‘You’ve lost weight,’ he said. He didn’t look well himself.

She cleared her throat. ‘Thanks.’

‘Are you a junkie?’

Oh, God. She closed her eyes. ‘What makes you ask?’

‘Because it’ll save a lot of pain if you say so now.’

‘No. I’m not a junkie.’

She opened them again, and looked round the room. A large room, big windows, a king-size double bed. En-suite bathroom. Trouser press. A TV she knew would get cable. Everything you looked for in a hotel room, really, down to the emergency instructions on the back of the door, and the aura of mild depression hanging over it all: the inescapable conclusion that you were here on a temporary basis. As if she needed reminding of that.

Her clothes clung to her uncomfortably. She had slept fully dressed.

She sat up, rubbed her face in her hands. She was in a strange room with a strange man: it scared her. On the other hand, he had saved her life last night, and subsequently slept in the armchair.

Afterwards, Sarah looked back on this day as a series of snapshots, small moments that became shuffled in her mind. But this was always the first of them: waking and finding him sitting on the end of the bed. The hand that pulled the trigger rubbing an unfamiliar chin.

When Howard came in, saw Crane sitting at his desk, he said, ‘God, Amos, should you be here? Shouldn’t you be . . .’

‘I be what?’

‘Well, mourning.’

‘I am mourning, Howard. I’m also looking for the fucker
put
me in mourning. Which is why I’m at my desk, yes.’

Howard wisely didn’t pursue this. ‘And last night? Um, did you sort out the, er, husband?’

‘Mark Trafford. Did you know he was dirty?’

‘Dirty how?’

Crane rubbed his fingers together.

‘So we can expect little fuss from him, then?’

‘Unless he’s keen on seeing how the other half live. What about you?’

‘The woman?’ Howard shrugged. ‘About what you’d expect.’

Crane didn’t let relief show on his face, but that’s what he felt. Three hours’ sleep, and he’d woken thinking about the woman – Axel’s ‘wife’, or, he supposed, ‘Rufus”s wife. Depending on how you looked at it. Either way, he’d woken wondering if he’d been wrong the previous evening, and Axel really had gone into meltdown. In which case Howard wouldn’t have found a wife, he’d have found another body. There were kids too. It might have been messy.

‘But did she buy it?’

Distaste flitted over Howard’s face. He really didn’t like this part. It made Amos wonder how he’d got here in the first place, let alone being nominally in charge. ‘She’s not the type,’ Howard said at last, ‘to disbelieve anything. Not when it’s backed up with a police presence.’

BOOK: Down Cemetery Road
6.16Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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