Warhol's Prophecy (42 page)

Simmons was momentarily taken aback by his tone. He looked into the other man’s eyes and saw nothing.

No emotion. Nothing . . .

Just a cool detachment that raised the hairs on the back of the doctor’s neck.

‘I’ll stay with him,’ said Adam quietly, returning his attention to his father. ‘This is what he would have wanted. He never wanted to die in a hospital. He always said that.’

Simmons hesitated.

‘Please go, Doctor,’ Adam insisted.

He heard the door close as Simmons left.

The only sound now seemed to be the ticking of the clock.

‘You’re going to die,’ he said softly to the wizened form in the bed before him.

Philip Walker made a low gurgling sound in his throat.

‘And I’m going to watch you,’ Adam said, leaning closer.

For fleeting seconds his father’s eyes opened, and Adam found himself gazing into those watery orbs. He saw something there, didn’t he?

Was it a final moment of clarity?

Was it pain?

Or fear?

His father reached out a hand, gnarled fingers scratching across the sheet towards Adam, who sat motionless.

Still he gazed into his father’s open eyes.

‘You’re going to your God,’ Adam whispered. ‘You should be pleased – or perhaps not. How are you going to explain to Him some of the things you did to me?’

His father’s eyes closed again, but his hand continued to flex as if seeking contact with his son.

Adam looked down at the hand.

‘Don’t touch me,’ he said scathingly. ‘You’re never going to touch me again.’

Again the eyes opened. Wider this time.

‘Just die,’ Adam said, his words barely audible.

In the silence of the room the clock continued its somnolent ticking.

Each second a fragment of life.

Adam sat back in the chair and looked on.

A
T FIRST SHE’D
been terrified.

Becky had looked up at her father’s face and recoiled from the sight that greeted her. The patchwork of cuts and bruises: some still vivid purple, others yellowed and black at the edges.

But, within a matter of minutes, she had run to him and embraced him.

Hailey had carried his holdall as they’d walked to the car, happy to see that Becky had chosen to hold his hand.

On the way home she and Rob had chatted in the car, while Hailey drove in virtual silence. Now, as they pulled into their driveway, Hailey hurried around to help Rob out.

‘I can manage,’ he said sharply, pulling himself out of the car, but wincing as he felt the pain from his still-healing ribs. He paused a moment, sucking in lungfuls of air, as if the effort of clambering out of the Astra was too great. He straightened up, then made his way slowly towards the front door, Becky close by.

Once inside, Becky hurried off to play in her room. Rob wandered into the sitting room and slumped in an armchair.

‘Do you want a coffee, or something stronger?’ Hailey asked.

He sat in silence for long moments, gazing around the room as if he’d never seen it before.

‘Coffee, please,’ he told her. ‘Whisky doesn’t mix too well with the painkillers they gave me.’

‘Do you want anything to eat?’

He shook his head.

‘Can I get you the paper?’ Hailey persisted.

‘Stop treating me like a fucking invalid, Hailey,’ he snapped. ‘I’m not a cripple.’

‘I’m just trying to help,’ she protested.

‘Then let me do things on my own.
You
might not always be around.’

She pushed the sitting-room door shut. ‘Meaning what?’ she demanded.

‘You might not be here if there’s something I want,’ he repeated. ‘I’ve got to learn how to manage. Besides, it’s only two cracked ribs I’ve got, not a broken spine.’

‘The doctors said you had to take it easy for a week or so,’ she reminded him.

‘I can’t afford to take it easy for a week or so,’ he told her. ‘I’m going in to work as soon as I can.’

‘Rob, for Christ’s sake!’

‘What do you
want
me to do? Sit around here in an empty house every day feeling sorry for myself? Thinking about how lucky I am to be alive? Thinking about the bastard who did this to me? Thinking about
other
things, too?’

She knew what he meant.

‘I’m not going to
keep
telling you, Rob,’ Hailey said wearily. ‘Nothing happened between Walker and me.’

In fact, Adam had asked if there was anything he could do to help.

Rob didn’t answer.

She crossed to his chair and sat on the arm.

‘What have I got to do to convince you?’ she wanted to know.

He could only shake his head.

‘What about that coffee?’ he asked finally.

She reached out a hand and gently touched one of the yellowish bruises on his left cheek.

‘If I knew who’d done this to you,’ she said softly, ‘I’d kill them.’

Rob met her gaze. ‘Am I supposed to say thanks?’

‘Don’t make it any more difficult than it has to be, Rob.’ Hailey got to her feet.

‘If it’s any consolation, I now know what
you
felt like – when you found out about me and Sandy.’

‘No, Rob,’ she told him, one hand on the door, ‘it
isn’t
any consolation.’

S
ANDY
B
ENNETT TURNED
the key in the lock, then twisted the handle once or twice to check it was secure. Satisfied, she made her way towards the lift and jabbed the
CALL
button.

She rode it to the ground floor, then strode out into the cool night air.

She paused for fleeting seconds, looking up at the darkening sky, searching the heavens for signs that it was going to rain or turn colder. She wondered about returning for a heavier jacket, but finally decided she’d be fine in what she wore already.

The black trouser suit was made of wool; it should be absolutely fine.

She selected her car keys from her pocket and wandered over towards the Nova. It was, she realized, the first time she’d been out socially since she was sacked from her job at BG Trucks. A friend of hers she’d known since college had called and asked her out for a drink. Sandy had hesitated, then finally decided that she couldn’t spend the rest of her life living like a hermit, so had accepted the invitation.

She was looking forward to it now. It would give her a chance to forget about Rob.

The bastard!

She was angry with herself for even thinking about him. Where would he be now? At home playing happy families with his wife and kid?

Forget about him.

She opened the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel.

Her brother was out for the night, and she didn’t even dare to imagine what
he
might be up to.

Sandy was wondering how much longer she could let him stay with her. How long before he became a burden? She knew all the clichés about family and blood being thicker than water, but all the same he couldn’t stay with her indefinitely, could he?

She twisted the key in the ignition.

Nothing.

No spark. No sound.

She tried again, glancing at the dashboard.

Flat battery?

‘Shit,’ she murmured. Typical! Her first night out for Christ knows how long, and the car’s playing up.

She turned the ignition key again.

Still the car didn’t react. Not even the splutter of an engine
trying
to start.

Sandy banged the wheel irritably, and swung herself out.

She had two choices now: either ring the RAC and stand around waiting, or call a taxi and deal with the car tomorrow.

Sandy looked at her watch. She wasn’t due to meet her friend until 8.30.

Taxi or RAC?

She slammed the door and headed back towards her flat, where she dialled a cab.

He’d be there in five minutes, he told her. Still slightly irritated, she made her way back outside again.

The Nova stood there defiantly.

Try it once more. If it works, you can always cancel the cab.

She crossed to the car and slid behind the steering wheel again.

Sandy pushed the key into the ignition and turned it.

This time the Nova started immediately.

‘Yes!’ said Sandy, fists clenched in triumph.

It was then that she noticed the condensation on the windscreen.

It was on the
inside.

As if someone had been breathing on the glass.

Someone inside?

Someone . . .

She heard a grunt behind her, then came a terrifyingly powerful impact just below her left ear.

Sandy felt agonizing pain, but she couldn’t scream.

Not even when she realized that the knife had been rammed into the angle between her jawbone and skull, so powerfully it practically shattered the lower mandible. Blood erupted from the wound and spattered noisily against the side window.

She felt her head flopping backwards. Felt a strong hand grabbing her hair, slamming her back against the headrest.

Then she felt the freezing blade against her throat. Felt the grazing as its serrations rasped against her flesh.

Then the knife was drawn across her throat with incredible force.

The gash it opened spread from one ear to the other, her riven throat yawning like the gills of a fish. Blood exploded from the massive wound, arteries and veins spewing their crimson load onto the windscreen.

She felt consciousness slipping from her.

By the time the knife was driven into her face for the third time, she was already close to death. Slumped in her seat, the life draining from her.

Even when the tip of the blade sliced one of her eyeballs in two, and sent vitreous fluid spilling down her chest to mingle with the thick viscosity of her blood, she didn’t move.

And she knew nothing of the ten wounds that followed.

T
HE RAIN BEAT
out a steady tattoo on Adam Walker’s umbrella but he barely noticed it.

He stood gazing at the grave, every now and then drawing in a deep breath.

The smell of wet earth and grass was strong in his nostrils. Piled high on either side of the deep hole, the clods of dirt were turning to brownish-yellow mud under the downpour.

Raindrops battered the cellophane-wrapped flowers around the grave, the crackling sound mingling with the beating of rain against his black umbrella, and he glanced up at the sky, wondering when the dark clouds would pass. Great solid banks of them hovered there. All they offered was the promise of more rain – more misery.

All the mourners had left.

He’d been surprised at how many people had turned up to see his father laid to rest. Some staff – even some patients – from Bayfield House. Even a few of the old man’s ex-parishioners. Other people he didn’t recognize.

He’d accepted their condolences and their apologetic handshakes, then thanked them for coming. Expressed his gratitude for their floral tributes.

All these tasks he’d performed like some kind of automaton. And most of the time he’d looked right through them, in the direction of the grave itself. As if afraid that his father wasn’t actually dead. Perhaps the old man was going to clamber up from that six-foot-deep hole and announce his own resurrection. Just as he’d spent his time as a vicar preaching about the resurrection of Christ.

Perhaps, Adam told himself, that was why he had stayed so close to the grave for so long. Maybe he had to be sure that his father was gone for good. He wondered if that realization would only come when the hole was filled in with earth. When the headstone finally stood there. When the floral tributes had died and rotted away.

The vicar performing the short ceremony had babbled on about his father going to a better place, then he’d shaken hands with Walker and told him not to worry about his father any more. That he was at peace now.

Walker had nodded slowly.

A peace the old man didn’t deserve.

He had looked into the eyes of the vicar, then at his dog-collar, and he had felt anger. Whether it had showed or not, he neither knew nor cared.

And what words would the headstone bear?

‘Beloved Father. Sadly missed.’

‘At Peace.’

‘
Rot in Hell
’?

Walker gripped the umbrella more tightly, and prepared to turn away from the grave at last.