“Why aren’t you questioning them then?” asked Jake.
“Because unless they’re killing people at random from my address book, it seems a tad unlikely they’re behind it.”
“What’s Raymond’s book about? asked Clay. “Maybe that’s something to do with it.”
Jake coughed and looked at Flower; his concern was reflected back at him. “He only wanted a few people to know.”
“But that hardly matters now,” said Toby. “Surely, unless it’s a ghost story, he’s not going to come back and voice his disapproval; if it is, something like that could help.”
Jake took a deep breath. “It’s about some modern day witches and how they become powerful.”
“Why didn’t Raymond want anyone to know about that?” asked Clay.
“There were reasons but they were fucking nuts.”
“It’s about the occult,” said Flower. “And the whole subject spooked him.”
“How do they become powerful?” asked Belinda.
Jake grimaced. “Oh, it’s nonsense. I told him this, but he never fucking listened. They murder someone, that’s how they become powerful. It’s well written and it’s scary and it’s sexy, but I have to say it’s mumbo-jumbo. But Raymond freaked out a bit, said a lot of crazy things, things that weren’t true – I know that now. He told nuts stories, had strange theories for what was in his book. But I didn’t believe them, neither of us fucking believed them.”
Clay stared at him baffled. “Why was he so scared of his own book?”
“Because he thought some of it was real!” Jake’s voice was filled with exasperation – not for them, but for a hundred earlier conversations with Raymond. “That’s part of the Nick Turnkey thing. Nick told him some stuff he put in his book, but then Raymond decided that Nick was too flaky to be trusted and so avoided him. He really didn’t want what was in the book to get out among his friends, he didn’t want it to affect his real life.”
Clay stared to the window, his thoughts speeding. What had Nick told Raymond? What did Nick know? Abigail?
“Look,” said Jake, “Raymond’s marriage was trekking in ill-fitting shoes through a rough patch, his old support group of friends had gone – he wasn’t totally on top of things, he wasn’t tap-dancing through life. And then there was this book as well. So he had all these pressures and they made him a little paranoid and he ended up believing things. He spouted off sometimes, but we both never fucking believed any of it.”
Toby crinkled his brow. “He never said anything to me.”
“That’s because you’ve got a big fucking mouth!” said Jake. “Look, he liked you and trusted you, but we all know that sometimes we can tell you things and you’ll flap your lip all over the place.”
Toby’s brow looked like it might never be smooth again.
“Honestly, Toby,” said Flower. “It doesn’t matter. When Raymond was in one of his moods his words were nothing more than sounds on the breeze, they were swiftly gone and if you turned your head you’d have missed them altogether. Please, he was just being self-indulgent and he probably knew that.”
“What was the book called?” asked Clay.
“It’s called Covent Garden Coven.”
“Covent Garden Coven?”
“It wasn’t a title he liked,” said Jake. “The publishers made him take it.”
“What name did he write it under?”
“Carl Chainsaw.”
Toby laughed. “Covent Garden Coven by Carl Chainsaw? That’s a little excessive on the alliteration front isn’t it?”
Jake shrugged. “Again it was the work of some genius in the marketing department. Apparently Carl is one of those names that suggests intelligence – Carl Jung, Carl Sagan. While Chainsaw of course implies violence and destruction. He reckoned the girl who came up with it almost pissed herself in excitement. He was more indifferent to it, but then there was a mortgage to pay.”
“Well, thank you for that,” said Toby. “I’ll pick up my copy on the way home.”
“Me too,” smiled Belinda. “I look forward to reading it.”
Jake nodded once.
“Look, this is all good,” said Clay, “but it’s not getting us nearer to what’s going on. We need to find out why someone would kill both Raymond and Nick. I don’t know. Could Bunny tell us anything?”
“Bunny?” asked Belinda.
“She’s right,” said Jake. “Bunny didn’t know them that well.”
“Let’s be honest,” said Toby. “Bunny doesn’t really know anyone or anything beyond his own sequin-tinged fantasies.”
“What about Charles West?” asked Clay.
Jake shrugged. “Who the fuck knows how close that idiot was to Nick? I know that Raymond never trusted him as far as he could spit him.”
“I’m glad to see there was an outside of that loop whose exclusivity wasn’t just reserved for me,” said Toby.
“He liked you more than he liked Charles,” said Flower.
“Thank God for that.”
“What about Raymond’s wife?” asked Clay.
“She’s been in Portugal,” said Jake. “She’s coming back tonight.”
“Can I speak to her?”
“Sure. If she wants to speak to you.”
They’d run out of names. Jake sat emotionally wrought, Flower held him with her serene calmness. Toby looked edgy, scared by the day or maybe just needing a cigarette. Belinda held Clay’s hand with a gentleness that was almost forceful.
“Come on.” Belinda eyed Clay. “We should go. It’s a hot day and I think we’re both exhausted.”
“You sure?” asked Jake.
Clay felt Belinda’s soothing touch and knew that he couldn’t be without it. If she wanted to go, he was going with her.
“What about you, Toby?” asked Jake. “You joining this charge out of town, or do you want to stay for another?”
“I might actually have another,” said Toby. “If no one minds.”
“No, no,” said Flower. “It’ll be good to hang out and just be calm.”
They gave their goodbyes to Belinda. Jake kissed her on the cheek – Belinda lingered on it. Flower and Belinda managed to peck farewell with a thespian degree of pleasantness.
“It’s a truly wonderful place, Jake,” said Belinda. “It must be so marvellous to live here.”
“It has its moments,” said Jake.
“What do you mean? What could possibly be wrong with it?”
“Oh, we just have this trustafarian bastard downstairs. He spends his nights getting smashed and rattles in at the early hours making all kinds of noise. It pisses you off after awhile.”
“But beyond that, it’s quite, quite perfect,” said Flower.
Jake grabbed Clay’s hand and told him not to be a stranger, to come back again. Flower hugged him. She told him it was great to see him and he was always welcome. She let go slowly, with a show of actorly regret.
Belinda led him downstairs. They didn’t speak, walking in silence through the grand hallway. At the bottom she fell into his arms, tears already breaching her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I’m sorry for making you leave,” she said. “It’s just all that talk of murder – it got me scared, Clay, frightened. I didn’t know what to say. I was just listening to it with my stomach moving like it was a choppy sea, my mind spinning round. I couldn’t take it any more. I’m an actress, so I have experience of tragedy, but not like this. This is horrible. Please hold me, Clay. I feel safer when I’m just with you. I know you won’t hurt me.”
“I love you, Belinda.”
“And you’ll never let me down again, will you?”
“No, I won’t.”
“You’re always mine. You will always be mine won’t you?”
It was the first time he’d heard her say those words, and he shuddered – but then held her tighter.
“Yeah,” he said. “I promise.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
/> In the sunlight Belinda surprised him: she suggested they walk.
Normally she never walked, believing that the bland exercise of walking was somehow beneath her. She was one of those ladies who would just hop in a taxi and demand that it take her anywhere. (She rarely had the funds for such extravagance, but reality in relation to her money was not something she often considered.) Today, however, she insisted they walk. She took Clay’s hand and led him back to her apartment.
Usually, Belinda hated sunlight as much as the wet and cold. She had red hair and pale skin, so after a day uncovered in the hot sun, she claimed her face looked like nuclear fallout. (It wasn’t a look she’d had since she was six years old on holiday in Tunisia, and it wasn’t one she ever intended to have again.) She avoided the sun because she liked to look pale and cool, especially when everybody else was hot and sweaty. She avoided the rain because she liked to be dry and in control, when everybody else was wet and bedraggled. She avoided the cold, because who likes to be shivering and cold? Generally, she only walked on a treadmill in her gym. Walking outside was for the suckers and the plebs; most of them – she supposed – couldn’t even afford a gym.
Today, she held his hand as they strolled through the bright reflected sunlight of Central London. Their fingers were entwined and Clay’s mood brightened. The dreams had all but vanished. He knew he’d had them, but had lost the specific details. It’s understandable to feel haunted when you have the image of a man’s last breath locked in your mind, when you can see the final imploring look in his eyes. Once that fades – once those images sink back to the brain-junk level that all other dreams exist on – it’s easy to regard it as just another distant and vague memory.
He knew he’d had a dream in which Raymond Jones had died, he knew he’d had a dream where Nick Turnkey had died – but that afternoon he couldn’t recall a picture from either. He knew they’d happened, but now wondered if – in his shock and startlement this morning – he’d bent the fantasy of his dreams to fit reality. Had he really seen each flat burn down? He couldn’t remember. Had he really noticed that red door at Nick’s building? Or had he seen the red door and superimposed it into his dream? He didn’t know. It was a sunny afternoon and he was holding the hand of the woman he loved and he didn’t feel sleepy and he didn’t feel scared. He just felt so happy, and even though he knew he’d seen terrible things, he couldn’t remember what these terrible things were any more.
But then, even as he smiled, there was a little corner of his mind harbouring thoughts of Abigail, sudden fears of Abigail. Nick had said he knew something about Abigail. Nick had told Raymond something so spooky it had freaked Raymond out. What if he’d told Raymond all he knew about Abigail? What if she was involved somehow?
Belinda let go of his hand and abruptly clutched his arse and steered him into a bookshop. They started to scan the horror section.
He held her tight in case she was frightened by the covers. He watched her face as she confronted this legion of blood splattered prose. There was a mix of curiosity, amazement, revulsion. Curiosity since she’d never been so close to horror novels before. Amazement at their garish, dark colours – night time crossed with blood. Revulsion at the more lurid covers – the ones that spread their blood thick and gruesome. She stared at them with open eyes, a crinkled nose, her two front teeth bit nervously into her bottom lip. He should have helped her hunt, but was too absorbed in looking at her, touching her.
“There it is!” she said and jumped from his grasp. It jarred him, suddenly not to have her in his arms, and he staggered back a step. She didn’t notice, too busy bending down to pull out a tome with Covent Garden Coven printed in shaded silver letters. Below it, a signature supposedly scrawled in blood – ‘Carl Chainsaw’. Compared to some of the covers, it was restrained. It pictured a young voluptuous woman in bikini and veil, holding a blood-stained knife – and around her was only darkness.
There was a smirk on Belinda’s face as she flicked through. “Would you have picked this out as Raymond’s?” she asked. “All those years of education, all those pretentious words, all those quotes from the ‘Classics’ he spewed out – and this is how he gets his work in print? No wonder he didn’t tell anyone.”
He cleared his throat once. “You haven’t read it yet.”
She turned and clearly realised the effect of letting go had on him. Wrapping her arms around his waist she kissed him.
He was instantly rejuvenated.
“You’re right, honey. I haven’t, so I shouldn’t judge,” she said. “I’m looking forward to it though. I’m looking forward to finding out just what he’s written.” Her tongue slipped into his mouth again.
She led him to the checkout, where they were served by a dopey fat girl, who wore too much mascara and held the book by her fingertips as if scared of contamination. Belinda paid cash and smiled a big Thank You, then walked out with a bag in one hand and a man in the other.
London was fantastic in the sunshine. The monuments glowed, the offices gleamed, the shops shone, the trees ripened. There were crowds of course, a throng of marching bodies with arms, legs and bellies on display. There were fifty different languages and a hundred different accents, and they zigzagged their way through it all. From outer space it would have looked like snakes slithering and crawling over each other. But in the midst of it – with the sun beating down – everybody was capable of grinning and wishing the best to their fellow men. Even though you had to mutter “excuse me” at every minute and turn your shoulders to squeeze past an impromptu meeting of Germans and Brazilians, and duck the tall and clumsy and hop over the small and clumsy and weave and turn and pirouette through it all – it was still enjoyable, still fun, still worthwhile being there. The mob was one happy party that had congregated spontaneously and was having a wonderful time, and if some great god of fun had been minded he would have piped down music and everybody would have danced and laughed and forgotten where they were going and why their lives were so important.
Belinda Bondurant and John Clay walked the streets in love. They kept hold of each other, even when it seemed impossible. But their arms were so tight around each other’s waists that it appeared unlikely they’d ever be prised apart again. And if they did have to wait – at some pedestrian crossing on the way – then they just filled the moment with kissing each other deeply, his heart exploding with fireworks.
Except, still floating around, were thoughts of Abigail. He loved Belinda so much, but what about Abigail? She had tried to seduce him this morning. Phenomenal in her underwear, she had offered herself to him. But why? She’d never liked him, never wanted him, rarely glanced at him with anything but disapproval before. Why had she done that? Why had she suddenly wanted to spend the whole day shagging him?
Maybe it was to stop him going out. Maybe it was to keep him there, hold him captive to lust. The walls of that flat were thin, so without even trying she must have heard something of his and Belinda’s argument through them. She could have heard about the dream. Maybe she tried to seduce him so he didn’t go out to see Nick, so he didn’t find out what Nick told Raymond to make him so paranoid. So he didn’t find out about Abigail.
They reached Soho, where the streets were quieter and they could actually own the pavement. They were so blatantly and obviously in love – it would have been clear to even the most short-sighted, self-absorbed misanthrope. They laughed together at nothing at all, their eyes rarely parted and they didn’t care about any other random pedestrian. Her hair was lighter in the sunlight, almost strawberry blonde rather than cherry redhead. Her lips were full and her eyes wide and she looked so pretty in her glasses. But, he couldn’t stop his thoughts creeping to Abigail.
She was waiting in the flat just around the corner. What was she going to say? What was she going to do? Maybe he was just more attractive to her than he’d ever realised, maybe she just wanted a shag and the first man who came along would have done. It didn’t make any sense for her to be involved. What
could Nick really have known? What could he really have said? What was wrong with Raymond that he’d have listened to anything Nick ever said? It didn’t make any sense about Abigail. She was Belinda’s flatmate and underneath her bitchy veneer she was a good person. But still his thoughts floated there, still he felt apprehensive about what she was going to say as they walked in.
But then, he kissed Belinda and the apprehension vanished. Nothing could be said that would hurt him and Belinda. And they held each other and laughed and turned the corner to her flat and there – parked right outside – was a police car.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A shudder, an electric jolt, carried from his toes to his hair and then jerked back again. All sunlight and good times and love just vanished. He was a man cowering.
It was a four by four – the stripes and sirens in place – parked ominously at the kerb outside the flat’s front door.
Belinda hid behind him and pulled him back into the alleyway. She was trying to duck around the corner, to hide from it, pretend that their reality was still blue skies and love and happiness – that such things as busy policemen didn’t exist. Despite her touch, despite the sunshine, despite love – the dark thoughts swept back to engulf him.
He couldn’t remember the details – but he knew he’d dreamt of the murders of Raymond and Nick, and now each of them was a charred corpse lying in a refrigerated drawer. He closed his eyes and staggered, sick in his throat, oblivious to Belinda’s silent pleading.
She yanked at his hand, wrenched his arm, desperate to get him out of sight. She clutched both her hands around his, but that big muscularity she’d always adored meant he couldn’t be moved unless he wanted to. She pulled hard, but nothing happened – he budged not an inch even though tears appeared in her eyes. She gave a silent scream of frustration and let go. It had the right effect. Even though he’d seemed oblivious to her touch, the loss of it upset his equilibrium. He stumbled backwards. She grabbed him and swung him around the corner, where his frightened eyes couldn’t see the police and they couldn’t see him.
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