Ritual (27 page)

Extraordinarily
– and terribly – he was still conscious.

Charlie said,
‘Bob? Bob, can you hear me?’

Bob nodded, and
his eyeball turned and glistened.

‘I’m going for
an ambulance, Bob. You’ll just have to stay where you are for a minute or two.’

Bob tried to
say something but his mouth had been too badly mutilated for him to do anything
but grunt and gargle.

Charlie
clambered back up the rocks to the road. Robyn was still sitting there,
white-faced and tearful. ‘I couldn’t hold it,’ she sobbed. ‘I tried so hard,
but I couldn’t.’

‘We have to
call an ambulance,’ said Charlie. He felt weak at the knees and almost on the
point of collapse. The day seemed to crowd in on him as if the clouds were
determined to press him down into the ground and the trees all around him were
trying to entangle him and choke him.

‘Is Bob badly
hurt?’ asked Robyn.

‘As bad as
anybody I’ve ever seen.’

‘It looks like
there, might be a house down there,’ said Robyn, pointing further downhill.
Charlie peered through the trees and he thought that he could make out the
angular grey gable of a house or a barn.

‘I guess it’s
worth a try,’ he told her. ‘Why don’t you stay here, just in case somebody
drives past, and you can flag them down?’

‘What if that
truck comes back?’

Charlie wiped
the chilly sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘I don’t know. He
was deliberately trying to run us off the road, wasn’t he?’

Robyn held his
arm. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll duck down and hide if I see it. You go call
that ambulance.’

Charlie began
to jog down the hill. He had only gone about a couple of hundred feet however,
when he heard a bursting, crackling roar from the hollow where the Cobra had
crashed. He turned around and saw an orange fireball roll up from the trees and
vanish like a conjuring trick.

The car was
already blazing from end to end.

He ran
slopewise through the whiplashing bushes and the drifts of dried leaves. By the
time he reached the car it was too late for him to do anything at all. The
flames were so fierce that he couldn’t get within twenty feet. He couldn’t see
Bob at all.

Robyn came
running down the hill to stand beside him. They stood together, helplessly
watching the fire gradually die down, leaving a hulk of an automobile burned
brown and rainbow mottled. Bob’s body still lay on the hood, but it had charred
and shrunk into a little black figure no larger than a nine-year-old child.
Charlie could see white bones gleaming through charcoal flesh. He could see
something else, too, although he didn’t mention it to Robyn. The metallic shine
of a cigarette lighter, tightly clasped in Bob’s burned-up hand. He must have
ignited the car’s leaking gasoline himself.

‘We’d better
get out of here,’ said Charlie. ‘There’s nothing we can do now.’

‘We can tell
the police, can’t we?’

‘I’m not so
sure that’s a good idea.’

‘But we can’t
just walk away!’ Robyn protested.

‘I think we
can,’ said Charlie. ‘In fact, I don’t think we have any other alternative. Not
if we want to stay alive ourselves. That truck was waiting for us. I told you
what the sheriff and Mr Haxalt told me: M. Musette doesn’t suffer trespassers gladly.’
|

‘I have to get
to a phone,’ said Robyn.
j

‘What?
To call your office?
Come on, Robyn, think about it. If the
Celestines have as much of a hold on the media as j they appear to, then the
best thing we can do is disappear for
a
I while, try
to work this out undercover.’

‘Do you really
think they were trying to kill us? Maybe that truck just had brake failure.’

‘
Brake
failure my rear end. They want us dead. And they’ve
succeeded with Bob, haven’t they?
A poor uncomplicated guy
who was only trying to help me out.’

Robyn was
shaking. They were both so shocked by what had happened that neither of them
really knew what they were talking about. At least bickering seemed to be real.

‘We can cut
across country,’ said Robyn. ‘If we keep on going downhill, we’ll get to the
Quassapaug River. Then we can follow it all the way down to Alien’s Corners.
That way, nobody will see us.’

Charlie took
her arm. ‘Let’s go. As soon as they find out that we’re still alive, they’ll go
straight to Mrs Kemp’s, and then I’m going to be in really serious trouble.’

‘I don’t
understand.’

‘They killed
Mrs Kemp, too. That dwarf did it – the one they call David. Before he attacked
me last night, he broke into her bedroom and chopped her up.’

‘Are you
serious?’ Robyn demanded, staring at Charlie in disbelief. ‘Why didn’t you tell
me this morning?’

‘I didn’t want
to scare you out of driving for me.’

‘God, I wish
you had . . . Did you report Mrs Kemp’s murder to the sheriff?’

‘Are you
kidding?’ Charlie retorted.

They made their
way along beside the Quassapaug River for almost a mile. It was quite narrow
here, splashing busily down between the rocks, sometimes disappearing under
layers of russet-brown ferns. Occasionally, they heard a police siren wailing
along the road from Alien’s Corners; and once they saw a police helicopter
heading at top speed for Bethlehem, or maybe towards
Le Reposoir
. Charlie had to assume that Sheriff Podmore was looking
for them now; and just in case the police brought in tracker dogs he made sure
that they crossed and recrossed the Quassapaug whenever it was shallow enough
for them to take off their shoes and wade. The clear-rippling water was
intensely cold, but after each crossing they rubbed their feet with Robyn’s
pale blue sweater to dry them and warm them up.

It was almost
two o’clock in the afternoon by the time they reached the outskirts of Alien’s
Corners. The small community was almost completely deserted, but Charlie took
the precaution of approaching Mrs Kemp’s along the narrow alleyway which ran
along behind the back yards of most of the houses on Naugatuck Street. David
must have used this alleyway when he had come to visit Martin during the night;
and escaped along it, too.

All the yards
were empty and silent. Robyn stayed close behind Charlie, but she was growing
increasingly nervous, and kept glancing over her shoulder. ‘What are we doing
here?’ she asked.

‘First of all I
want to find out if they’ve discovered Mrs Kemp’s body yet. If they have, then
I’m going to be wanted for questioning – if not for actually doing it, if I’ve
learned anything about M. Musette. Second of all, we need Mrs Kemp’s car. We’ll
never make it anywhere on foot, not if they get dogs out. She keeps her car
keys in the hutch in the kitchen.’

They reached the
back of Mrs Kemp’s house, and Charlie eased open the gate. There was nobody to
be seen in any of the other yards, except for a woman hanging washing about
eight houses away, and there was no sign of police – not even barriers or
warning notices or seals on the door to protect the evidence inside.

‘They haven’t
found her yet,’ Charlie whispered; but Robyn said, ‘LookV and pointed up to the
back bedroom window.

At first, the
window simply appeared to be dark. But then a faint wash of early-afternoon
sunlight came out, and Charlie could see a dull blue light reflected from it,
as if the glass were tinted. But it was only when the blue light began to
ripple and swirl that he understood what he was looking at. Inside the bedroom,
blowflies were swarming, thousands of them, and scores of them had settled on
the window. The dull blue light was the shiny colour of their bodies catching
the sun.

Charlie said
nothing, but ushered Robyn up to the back of the house. He tried the kitchen
door and it was locked; but he picked up an edging-stone from Mrs Kemp’s
flower-198

V bed and used
it to crack open one of the panes of glass. The key was still in the door, so
he reached in and turned it.

‘God,’ he said,
as they stepped cautiously into the kitchen. ‘You can smell it even down here!’

‘Do I have to
come in?’ Robyn asked.

‘No, you wait
there,’ said Charlie. ‘But keep your eyes peeled, okay? And don’t let anybody
see you.’

Charlie crossed
the kitchen, trying not to breathe in too much of the cloying, sweetish smell
which now permeated the entire house. He opened up the hutch, and found Mrs
Kemp’s car keys straight away. Underneath her keys was a roadmap of Litchfield
County, two bank books, a spare pair of spectacles, and a half-finished
embroidery sampler with the message ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is’. That’s
ironic, thought Charlie.
Not only the heart, but the lungs,
the spleen, the liver, and the stomach, not to mention twenty-eight feet of
intestine.
He was about to close the drawer, however, when his attention
was caught by two leaflets which had been stuffed into the back of it. He
coaxed them out, and unfolded them, and held them up to the light so that he
could read them.

One was
cyclostyled on yellowish paper, and bore a drawing of Christ crucified. Beneath
it, Charlie could make out the words L’Eglise des Pauvres, Societe des
Gourmands, Acadia, LA.

There was a
lengthy text underneath in that curious Cajun mixture of French and English.
Most of it seemed to be an exhortation to love God avec votre esprit
et
avec votre corps and to serve him avec all your heart,

The other
leaflet was almost incomprehensible, but seemed to be something to do with
Le Recreation
. There was a New Orleans
address at the bottom of it: 1112 Elegance Street. But it was what was
pencilled on the back of the leaflet that interested Charlie the most.
Norman, for information.

Mrs Kemp must
have taken both of these leaflets out of Sheriff Podmore’s office when she
vandalized it yesterday. She had crammed them into the drawer along with her
car keys when she came home and locked herself in the kitchen. Charlie frowned
at them again. They were definitely something to do with the Celestines, but
right now he couldn’t work out what. Maybe L’Eglise des Pauvres was another
‘dining society’ like
Le Reposoir
.

And maybe the
‘M’ who had signed that note to Sheriff Podmore was Edouard Musette; or even
his wife.

Robyn called,
‘Charlie? Did you get those keys? I’m feeling distinctly nervous out here.’

‘I’ve got
them,’ said Charlie, ‘and something else besides.’

He handed Robyn
the leaflets. She glanced through them quickly, and then shrugged. ‘I’ll have
to sit down with a French dictionary. I’ve forgotten everything I learned at
school.’

Charlie tucked
the leaflets into his pocket. Then he led Robyn around to the garage at the
front of the house. The street was deserted. There wasn’t even a dog in sight.
Charlie eased open the garage doors, and together they climbed into Mrs Kemp’s
old Buick station wagon. ‘It smells like lavender,’ said Robyn.

Charlie started
up the engine. It raided and coughed, and produced a thick black cloud of
smoke. ‘Not exactly the ideal vehicle for a discreet getaway,’ Charlie
remarked.

‘Where are we
going?’ Robyn asked him. ‘We’re not on the run, are we?’

‘You could say
that. I mean – the justice around here may be corrupt, but we’re fugitives from
it.’

They backed out
of the driveway, and then headed for the ring road which would take them around
by the supermarket and out of Alien’s Corners by the railroad depot and the
warehouses, where they were less likely to be spotted by sheriff’s deputies or
over-enthusiastic disciples of
Le
Reposoir
. Charlie said, ‘Once we make it out of Connecticut, we have a fair
chance of getting away clean.’

Robyn looked at
him narrowly. ‘You know where you’re going, don’t you? You’re not running away
from anything; you’re running to something.’

Charlie said,
‘I’m trying to save my boy, that’s all.’

‘Trying to play
Rambo didn’t work,’ Robyn commented.

‘Does it ever?
You can never solve anything with a sweat-band and a gun. It was my fault, I
didn’t think it out properly and it was totally amateurish. I’m just grieving
that Bob was killed.’

‘So what are
you planning on doing now?’ asked Robyn. She touched his shoulder, a small
affectionate gesture of communication; a signal that no matter what he wanted
to do, she would help him.

‘You see these
leaflets?
All in Cajun French.
Well – that’s where
this cannibalism started, among an isolated sect of the Cajun French. Sheriff
Podmore told me it began in New Orleans, and if that’s where we have to go to
find out more about the Celestines, then that’s where we’ll go.

Leastways,
that’s where Fm going. You’re not obliged.’

‘Do you
seriously think that I’ll allow you to leave me behind?’ Robyn told him. ‘And besides,
you need somebody to take turns with the driving.’

‘Do you want to
drop off home and pick up some clothes?’ Charlie asked her. ‘We should be
reasonably safe until the police find Mrs Kemp. Then it’s going to be like all
hell was let out for the weekend.’

Robyn shivered,
partly out of cold, partly out of anticipation. ‘When you called the Litchfield
Sentinel?
she
said, ‘my life changed for ever.’

Charlie steered
the Buick out towards Waterbury. ‘Don’t start blaming me. You could have said
no. You can say no now, if you want to. You can see how dangerous these people
are.’

‘Wild horses
couldn’t stop me coming with you.’ Charlie reached over and switched on the
station wagon’s radio. ‘Wild horses I’m not worried about. It’s these
Goddamned
cannibals.’

T
hey crossed the state line into New York shortly after four
o’clock. There was no sign of any police pursuit, and Charlie crossed his
fingers and hoped that they had gotten away. Now he settled himself down for
nearly 400 miles of driving, all the way through eight states to Louisiana, and
to New Orleans. He estimated that if they kept going, taking turns at the
wheel, they could reach the Mississippi delta in thirty-six hours. That was if
Mrs Kemp’s oil-burning Buick behaved itself; and if they weren’t stopped
anywhere along the way by the police.