The Sad Man (10 page)

‘MUM!’

At the last second she jerked the wheel and stabbed at the brake. There was an impact, a sickening thud and the car spun – on two wheels. My stomach churned, a prayer issued from my mouth unbidden, we were in the air… my ears full of screaming. I didn’t want to die… we crashed back to earth, back on four wheels. We slid for a second and then came to a stop. The air still full of my scream.

‘George. Shut up.’ My mother slapped me, hard. I think she enjoyed it. She turned her head to look through the back window. She saw the deer we had hit, half on the road, half in a ditch. She hoped it was dead, I did too… but then it kicked out and bellowed in pain.

‘Oh fuck. Oh fuck.’

She turned the key – the engine started.

‘Mum.’

‘Quiet, George.’

She slowly reversed. I could see the legs kicking, saw the blood on its front hoof. She aimed the car and … we could feel the body beneath the wheels, heard
the limbs crack and the skull pop. She drove twenty yards past, then we both looked back. We could see the broken deer, unmoving. Dead. I began to sob.

‘Give it a fucking rest, George.’

My mother lit herself a cigarette as we sat there, the engine idling. She greedily smoked it down to the butt and then rolled the window down and threw it out.

‘Let’s go.’ She said and slowly pushed her foot down. We were almost at the motorway, it lay below us, under the exit ramp which wound down like a corkscrew. She took it slowly, her hands shaking a little. At the bottom of the winding path we could see for miles and miles, farmland stretched out before us, brown and wet and ugly. She pulled the car onto the motorway and…

‘Mum!’

‘Oh Jesus.’

Ground zero, and then it had been my mother’s turn to scream. I looked ahead and could see what had happened – what I had done. A car sat in the centre of the motorway – glass sprayed from it like salt scattered on a table.
Clunk-click, clunk-click you should have clunk-clicked. You should have …
ran through my head.
You should …
And if she had, I thought, her body would not have been thrown through the windscreen.

I opened my door and slid out into the cold, my breath streamed before me. I looked to the roof of our car. At one end the rope was still tied securely, but its cargo had flown. The rope on the other side was frayed and whipped uselessly in the wind, unhitched. My eyes moved from our car to the second car, maybe fifty yards ahead. I
could see the deep reds and purples of our rug, still rolled tight, embedded deep in the passenger seat like an arrow. It had speared through the windscreen, shattering the glass and… she lay in the road, halfway between the pierced car and me.

I began to walk towards her. I felt like I was wading through treacle, I was so scared, so scared about what I would find. Until finally I was level with her and…

‘Oh God.’ She was beautiful, so beautiful. Her skin was flawless, white like porcelain. Her hair was silver and curled above her like a halo. She looked, to me, like an angel. The windscreen of her car was shattered but I could see no cuts on her. Her eyes were open and… golden. She was perfection. It was a miracle, I thought, she was alive and unhurt. I think in that second I fell in love with her. I moved close and dropped to my knee, by her head. I could see her mouth was moving slightly, slowly almost like a fish, gasping, out of the water. I bent down to her, and she lifted her head fractionally. I put my hand lightly onto her chest – she was wearing a long white mackintosh – it looked Italian and expensive. My hand pushed into it and – oh Jesus… blood flowed. Her blood. It had been trapped in the coat but it began to flow out from her, pooling around her body. I jumped back – seeing the blood pulse and flow… it was beautiful; looked as if she were an angel slowly spreading her wings, about to take flight. Wings of blood. I tugged at the white plastic belt around her waist, the coat opened and I see the deep trench of the bloody gash in her stomach. Her skirt had been slashed open, her legs were perfect – and the small panties … Her mouth moved again. I leaned forward, my ear close to her mouth.

‘Scared.’ She said.

I put my arms around her. In that desolate place – I held her, as her lifeblood flowed away. I knelt in her blood – it lapped at my legs like the tide coming in. I could feel her breasts against me, her legs against me and… I was aroused. She moaned, softly, sweetly like a lover … and her last breath gathered itself in her chest and readied itself to leave. ‘Love me.’ She said and the dove of her last breath fluttered away. I felt that shudder – the spirit flying from her… then her body was just flesh, un-animated for the first time. I was in rapture.

Tom closes the book. He is tired and his head throbs – he has read enough. He shuts his eyes and the blackness slips in once again.

Wednesday 19 October 1999

Tom Bevans dreams. She is always just ahead of him as he runs – her hand is stretched out to his, she is desperate for him to reach her and pull her out of the darkness.
Daniiiii
, he screams. Her dark hair whipped by the wind as she hurtles away from him. There is no sound but he sees her mouth:
Tom, Tom, help me. Save me!
Just as he gets to her – as their fingers are about to touch – she speeds further away. The road stretches out and out and … she is gone. Gone. Then he sees the crashed car. The shattered glass, the rug – like a spear through the windscreen. He marvels at the sight; it is so colourful in the terrible greyness of the dying day. Her body lies alone, a long way from the car. She is beautiful – so unlike Dani. Silver hair that glows, even in the gloom. Curvaceous, ripe – her mouth full, large eyes like pools of honey. She looks to the sky as if a sister angel will drop to Earth to raise her up. Tom hears the scream, not the girl – the mother. George is suddenly there beside him, he walks forward, kneels down and touches her – the blood pools around her on the road …

on the road

on the road

On The Road

He opens his eyes. He knows where George Larkshead is.

Patterson drives, it is a long way. All through the journey he keeps quiet. Tom sits beside him feeling every single knock or pothole in the road. Each one makes him wince, the hole in his belly yells at him to go back to bed. The doctors insisted he stay – a week at least, they said – but he discharged himself anyway. No one was going to make this arrest but him. At five-thirty that morning he had been at the station, collecting something from the evidence store. The local police were alerted at six a.m and they quickly pinpointed the cabin that had been built eight years before – close to the old slip road that used to lead down to the motorway. Close to where a poorly tied rug sailed off the roof of a car and crashed through the windscreen of another, killing a beautiful young woman. None of the local police had ever heard of the accident. It was twenty-eight years – a lifetime ago, before any of them were born.

They finally arrive at the local police station at 2 p.m. As soon as the car pulls in, it is swamped by the local police and volunteers, all keen to be involved in a real manhunt. Tom introduces himself and makes it clear he only needs half-a-dozen men, the best men. He chooses the four professional officers and two of the less crazy-looking volunteers. Then they all squeeze into two cars and head out. As soon as they leave the station Tom swears he hears the men in the second car start to sing the words to ‘The Self-Preservation Society’.

Tom watches the vista of browns and greys smudge into one as they drive the final twenty minutes. He feels sick to his stomach with the anticipation. The blood is roller-coasting around in his head. He has seen killers before. In court mostly. He has never been in on the kill – not like this. His stomach burns. He looks down and pulls up his shirt, there is a red discharge in the dressing, a rusty ooze of blood. Damn, no time to change it.

Tom turns – painfully – and talks to the two local men on the back seat. Both look like little more than kids wearing policeman dress-up. ‘Tell me just before we get to visual range of the cabin. We need to go in quick and quiet. Okay.’

‘Sir, yes sir.’ They say simultaneously – which is unnerving.

Ten minutes later one of them says, ‘Just around the next bend and we can see it. There’s a half-mile dirt road leading to it. We can drive it or walk.’

‘If we walk, we’ll be sitting ducks if he starts shooting. Is there any cover close to the cabin?’

‘There’s a woodshed about twenty yards from the main building. Quite big,’ one of the locals tells him. They round the corner and Patterson slows to a stop. They can see the cabin and …

‘Smoke, there’s some smoke, look he’s in there.’ One of the policemen does a little jig on the backseat – like a toddler needing to pee.

‘This is serious.’ Tom tells him – though it doesn’t feel real. He understands why soldiers in war pretend it’s a game, safer to think you can just regenerate if you get hurt. But the pain that has started to build in his stomach wound is the antidote to that. Wincing, Tom gets out of the car and walks to the second, parked just behind them.

‘On my signal we are going to get to the cabin as fast as we can. If nothing happens – we head straight there and go in as a team. If he fires on us, then there is an outbuilding we head to and regroup. Okay?’ They nod.

Tom gets back into the lead car, next to Paterson. ‘Drive like the wind.’ Patterson floors the accelerator and they squeal forward. Tom imagines he hears ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ swelling around them. His head is filled with:
Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit …

… a shot explodes the windscreen of the second car.

‘Jesus!’ Patterson shouts.

‘The wood shed,’ yells Tom through the side window.

No one needs to be told a second time. Patterson swerves into cover behind it and the second car crashes into the back of them. ‘Fucking morons!’ Patterson screams.

‘On the radio you two,’ Tom yells to the backseat. ‘Call in a swat team, now.’ Tom gets out and walks to the edge of the shed and looks at the cabin. His skin covered in a sheen of sweat, his stomach is killing him.

‘This is exciting, isn’t it?’ Dani-in-his-head says.

‘No,’ Tom tells her – but he lies. It really is.

‘Swat team won’t be here for at least an hour,’ one of the locals tells him.

Tom looks at the sky. Clouds skirmish above them, it is almost impossible to see where heaven and earth meet. It is all just grey and ugly. He sighs, the afternoon is already ebbing away; it will be dark long before anyone else gets here. George will escape, he knows it. Shit. He slips out of his jacket, then his jumper and shirt until he is topless. It reminds him of something from a long time ago when he last entered into the lair of a criminal to make a deal with the devil.

‘No, Guv,’ Patterson spits.

‘Christ, it’s cold.’ He whispers to himself and then holds
On The Road
up as high as he can, and he walks out from behind the shed – towards the cabin.

He shouts loud as he can. ‘George. George Larkshead, I have something you want. The book and the photo of Jennifer. Let me come in alone. I’m unarmed. Look, you can see.’
You can see the dressing where you stabbed me. Have another go
, Tom thinks.

‘Fuck, Guv!’ shouts Patterson.

‘Don’t be stupid, Tom. Please don’t get hurt,’ Dani-in-his head pleads.

There is no reply from the cabin but Tom walks slowly towards it, holding the book aloft. When he gets close, the front door opens.

A voice from inside calls out. ‘Throw the book inside and then run back to your boys in blue.’

‘No.’ Tom calls back – his voice level. ‘I have questions. Let me come in.’

‘Questions?’ George laughs ruefully. Nothing more is said and Tom continues to walk until he gets to the door. He immediately smells the petrol; it stops him dead. He should run, hell is inside this cabin. This is death.

‘Tom. I love you. Please don’t go inside.’

‘Quiet, Dani,’ he tells her. Then he draws a big breath into his lungs and steps through the doorway.

It is dark, low-ceilinged with only one small shuttered window. It takes a second or two for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. His lungs are starting to strain so he breathes again.

‘Oh fuck.’ He whispers – the fumes make him queasy. He wants to vomit.

The cabin is pretty bare – a sofa, single chair and table are all he can see, and that is only in outline. Then something moves. He can make out the figure of George, sitting at the table, his rifle propped up against it. Tom walks forward and … ‘Christ!’ The sofa, chair and table are doused in petrol – they are dripping with it. Then George leans forward, into a thin strip of light from the door and Tom sees that he has poured the rest of the can over his own head.

‘Welcome, DI Bevans. You look upset.’

‘That’s just my face, I always look like this. Miserable.’ Tom tries to smile.

George nods. ‘Where is my photograph?’ He reaches out a hand, his sleeve is soaked with petrol that drips over the table. The smell makes Tom retch, luckily there is nothing in there to come out. He reaches his arm out to full stretch, and Larkshead takes
On the Road
from him. He opens it and removes the picture. He kisses it. ‘Oh, this is yours.’ He flicks something up in the air. Tom catches it – the
ban the bomb
badge he had stabbed George’s hand with – his good-luck charm. It had saved his life.

‘Thanks. It has sentimental value too.’

‘I gave you that,’ Dani whispers.

Tom slips the badge in his pocket. ‘I spoke to Maarten Meyer.’

‘Huh.’ George does not look up at Tom, instead his eyes are focused on the image of Jennifer Brindley. ‘I thought he’d be dead by now.’

‘He made you a doll.’

‘He made me Jennifer.’ His eyes mist over and he is somewhere else, trapped in the amber of the past – remembering how she felt that first time he kissed her.

‘You showed him the body of a girl you killed?’

George looks up, tears stream down his face. Tom has no idea if they are for the poor girl whose life he ended or for the damn doll.