by Guy Adams
‘Ah,’ he sighed, ‘fuck it.’
It was only water, he’d just have to hope his suit jacket had dried by the morning, he’d only brought the one.
Christ but it was hammering it down!
He flung the stub of the cigarette away and hung close to the trunk of a large tree, getting some small cover from a fat branch directly over his head.
He looked back towards the house and thought he saw someone walking through the sculpture park. Just a shadow. One of the others caught out in the bloody rain, he thought.
There was the snap of dry twigs behind him and, instinctively, he spun around, reaching for the gun in his holster. You could take the man out of the hot zone but you’d never really change him, wasn’t that the story of his life?
There was no sign of anyone. He listened hard but it was difficult over the sound of the rain hitting the carpet of dead leaves all around him.
Was it worth investigating? Probably just a fox or badger.
He turned back towards the Hall and gave a short cry at the sight of the woman stood only a couple of feet away. The embarrassment of this coursed through him. The idea of her sneaking up on him was one thing, crying out like a girl as a result was beyond mortifying.
‘All right love?’ he asked. ‘Not a good night to be out, eh?’
The moon reflected off the white dress she was wearing and she looked soaked to the skin. He should probably offer her his jacket, he thought, then decided it was so sodden it was hardly likely to help.
He tried to place who she might be. It didn’t help that he couldn’t see her face, her black hair covering it like a hood.
‘You one of the kitchen lot?’ he asked, walking up to her. ‘Should be tucked up, yeah? Don’t you know there’s a buzz on? Shouldn’t be wandering around out here, could get yourself shot at.’
She didn’t speak. She didn’t move.
As he drew close, the stink of the rotten leaves around them seemed to multiply. Either that or he was catching a whiff of some bit of wildlife that had died out here.
‘Speak up, girl,’ he said. ‘It’s not a good idea creeping up on people tonight.’
She inclined her head slightly but he still couldn’t see her face. It was pissing him off as much as the rain. Did these civilians not know a bloody thing?
‘Let’s have a look at you,’ he said, reaching out to pull the hair away from her face.
Bateman had thought it was impossible to put a scare on him. Sometimes a man sees so much that the part of him that feels fear just falls away like a vestigial limb. What he revealed, pulling the clammy hair to one side, proved him wrong.
He ran, purely on instinct, not fully processing the face – or, more accurately, lack of one – he had seen, just leaping into fight or flight mode.
The rain continued to pelt down as he ran out into the open. His feet slid out from underneath him and he spun on the wet grass as he heard a deafening crack. Not thunder this time, he knew, this was closer and sharper. He kept trying to get to his feet but the rain-soaked grass fought back, and he slid like he was oiled.
Instead of fighting it, he rolled, sliding across the ground, only just aware of the crashing sound from behind him where one of the trees on the edge of the woods had somehow come down, landing in the spot where he had fallen. It had missed him by inches.
He finally got a grip on the wet ground and got to his feet, running more carefully this time. He thought about firing his gun, just to get a bit of help out here but then it occurred to him that he wouldn’t have the first idea how to express what it was he was running from.
He turned then, running backwards as his rational mind rose up and began to question. The woman was no longer there. Had she ever been? Yes. Of course she had. He wasn’t the sort of man who imagined things. She must have vanished into the woods, though how she could have walked anywhere when she didn’t have any …
He turned back towards the house, just in time to spot the stone bench and table he had been about to run into. Stupid! Look where you’re bloody going, man!
He collided with the bench and fell to the ground, his body hitting one of the lose plinths that held up the solid stone top of the table. It wobbled above him and he shifted away, just managing to avoid its heavy edge landing on his head. It rolled along the grass for a few feet, like a wheel come loose from a prehistoric car and he got to his feet, not quite able to believe how narrowly he had managed to avoid being brained by the thing as it fell. He needed to stop this useless panicking, that was twice now that he had nearly blundered into something that could have killed him.
He looked around, there was still no sign of the girl. He shouldn’t be running. He needed to walk back to the Hall, check in with the guardhouse and see if anything had triggered the alarms and then play it from there.
He entered the sculpture park, trying to rub away some of the rainwater from his face. The path through the exhibits was lined with stone edging. As he brushed water from his head he stepped awkwardly, his left foot tripping on a loose stone in the path border. He cried out as he fell to the ground. What was wrong with him? He was a bloody disaster area! Could he not keep his feet for two bloody minutes?
He pushed himself up and found himself face-to-face with the girl again. She gave a dry cough and he tasted the stench of rot in his mouth.
Panicking again, he turned and ran. He pulled his gun from his holster, turned and shot a couple of rounds at the girl. There was no discernible effect bar the fact that, for those few seconds he was running blind. When he turned around it was to suddenly register the see-saw sculpture in front of him. The sharpened end of the pole punched right into his belly, the other end of the pole dipping down towards the ground, hitting it and then bouncing back to embed itself into his gut another half-inch or so.
‘Ah fuck,’ he coughed, ‘fucking thing.’
He grabbed at the pole, hoping he hadn’t done himself mortal damage. He still had his gun in his hand and, thinking only of the bit of ironwork sticking out of himself, he dropped it to free up both hands.
The gun hit the stone edge of the path. All modern pistols are designed to weather such treatment. They contain drop-safety features, firing pin blocks that are there to prevent accidental discharge. Even if such a thing should fail, the impact strength needed to cause a misfire is considerable. Add to that the odds against the gun being pointed at anything when dropped. Yes, Bateman would have had to be exceptionally unlucky for it to be a problem.
The gun fired, the 9mm bullet entering Bateman’s mouth and exiting from the top of his head. He slumped forward, his weight against the pole slowly working it deeper into the stomach wound.
When he was found, two minutes later, by a couple of men who had been alerted by the shots, he presented quite the work of art.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE FAIR
a) Lufford Hall, Alcester, Warwickshire
Toby was shaken awake by Shining. The old man was standing in the faint light of the corridor.
‘Room service?’ Toby asked.
‘Morning news,’ Shining replied. ‘One of Rowlands’ men was found dead in the sculpture park last night. He was soaked to the skin, impaled on a piece of modern art, having accidentally shot himself in the face.’
Toby groaned and rubbed at his tired face.
‘Personally,’ Shining continued, ‘I’m inclined to suggest death by supernatural means. Naturally, after last night’s excitement the usual cynicism seems surprisingly absent. In further news: the perimeter alarm was triggered by someone leaving the property.’
‘Which way?’
‘Through the woods, naturally, so the cameras show us nothing. All we have to go on is a blip on a computer display.’
‘And your candle?’
‘Not triggered.’
‘Which means?’
‘Well, that was open to cynicism from the others I’m afraid, purely because they don’t want to believe the possible implications. They think that our ass
assin made a break for it in the night, killing the officer en route. They think that means we’re safe again. At least for now.’
‘Whereas you think that’s just what someone wants us to believe?’
‘Precisely.’
Toby swung his legs out of the bed. ‘What time is it?’
‘Half past eight. I let you sleep in.’
‘You’re very kind.’
‘No I’m not. Today is going to be hard and I need you sharp. I need to pop out, do a little research, but I’ll be back in an hour and a half or so. Until then, Section 37 is all yours. Maybe it would be worth your hunting down Chun-hee and seeing if you could get him to be a bit more forward.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Alcester. It’s only twenty minutes’ walk over the fields. I need to think.’
‘Good luck.’
b) Alcester, Warwickshire
The walk to Alcester gave Shining exactly the space he needed.
As much as he enjoyed the fact that Section 37 was no longer the one-man band it had been for so many years, the habit of spending all that time alone was hard to break. Over the decades, he had become used to a singular life. Now, effectively trapped in a building crammed full of people, all pulling in different directions, he found himself suffocated. As much as he had tried to preach the positive to Toby, the fact that he was relegated to a dark basement room didn’t help either. He just wasn’t used to being so confined, so restricted.
Being out in the open, buffeted with the winter air, he could feel the oppressive atmosphere of the last twenty-four hours fall away. It was like rinsing off grime beneath an aggressive shower.
Soon he would stroll the quaint streets of what he was sure would be a lovely little market town, the sort of place that had become filled with charity shops, designer pottery outlets and pubs draped in so many hanging baskets they looked like they were growing mould. There would be black and white Tudor buildings and the kind of ancient church that Dennis Wheatley would have had his villains sacrifice virgins and livestock in. It would all be a perfect change of environment that would allow his head to chatter away, processing what it knew and then positing new ideas and plans. Perhaps there would even be an estate agents or three so that he could look in the window, as all British people must when in a strange town.
By the time he reached the outskirts of Alcester, his idyllic plans were already beginning to look fragile. The traffic was heavy and the pavements filled with people.
Instead of the quiet of a winter morning far away from the city’s assault on the senses, he found the streets were filled with dance music, the whoop and holler of fairground rides and a constant undercurrent hum of countless electric generators.
As he walked along the high street, he watched as a giant metal octopus, covered in pulsing light bulbs and filled with screaming children, spun its way between Georgian buildings. A ghost train screamed and cackled through crunchy speakers. Dodgems fizzed and crashed in front of the old church. The air dripped with fried onions and burned sugar.
‘Well,’ he said, to nobody in particular, ‘the quaint English countryside has changed since I last clapped eyes on it.’
‘Mop Fair, innit?’ said a woman trying to force a pushchair through the crowd. ‘Does your head in.’
‘Mop fair?’ he asked, but she’d already gone, fighting her way past the crowds, one bruised ankle at a time.
He looked around, trying to get his bearings. This was hard to do when someone had seen fit to dump a fairground into the mix.
A man was struggling to herd a group of children whose faces were buried in clouds of pink candyfloss.
‘Hope your bloody teeth rot,’ he muttered as he tried to keep them moving.
‘Excuse me?’ Shining asked him. ‘Could you point me towards the Swan Hotel?’
The man sighed as if this really was the last straw, then gestured towards the end of the street. ‘End of the road there. Have a large one for me, would you? I bloody need it.’
‘Bit early for me,’ Shining admitted and began to negotiate his way through the crowds and noise.
By the time he was stood outside the hotel he had ‘accidentally’ found himself in complete ownership of a couple of toffee apples and was trying to get into one of them without showering the pavement with tooth fragments. This was proving beyond him. He was sure that good times lay ahead between him and the treat but in these initial, awkward stages, it was rather like trying to bite a chunk out of a bedpost. He decided to give up for now, promising himself that he would sneak up on it later; hopefully, if he could just catch the damn thing unawares, he might be able to grab an edible chunk. If all else failed, he was fairly sure there was a toolkit in the boot of the car.
The Swan Hotel was a large pub with a couple of rooms to let. Shining walked up to the bar where a jaded-looking woman was trying to make it look like she was wiping the beer pumps. In reality, Shining suspected she was holding on to them to stop the pub spinning too quickly.
‘Busy night?’ he asked.
She looked at him as if he was the first human being she had ever seen. ‘Mad,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know why we do it. Pinot Grigio and Waltzers just don’t mix.’
‘Yes, I noticed someone appears to have opened a carnival in your high street.’
‘Mop Fair,’ she said. ‘Happens every year.’
‘And the mops are?’
‘No idea. Never understood it. Years ago it used to be a market for hiring staff. Now we celebrate that glorious tradition with rollercoasters and burgers in polystyrene boxes. World’s gone mad. I’ve got a ghost train outside my bedroom window. A tatty skeleton stares at me while I undress.’
‘Charming. I’d draw the curtains if I were you.’
‘Doesn’t help, the damn thing’s lit up like it’s on fire. I’m hoping it’ll get quiet this afternoon so I can have a kip on the pool table.’
‘Here’s hoping.’
‘Get you a drink?’
‘I’ll have a tomato juice, if I may. I’m actually here to see one of your guests.’
‘No problem, the rooms are up the stairs that way,’ she gestured towards a pair of double doors in the far corner. ‘Just don’t let the landlord see you, he gets funny about visitors.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing like that,’ he assured her.
‘Nah,’ she chuckled, handing him his drink, ‘that’s not what I meant. He charges per person, that’s all, always thinks people are going to ram themselves in his poky little rooms without paying.’
‘Oh no, I won’t be staying long.’
‘Don’t blame you. If I hear that ghost train scream once more, I’ll give them some real dead people to worry about. There’s two rooms and only one’s occupied, you can’t go wrong.’
He paid her for the tomato juice and headed upstairs.
The two rooms faced one another across a wide landing. The door to one was wide open so he knocked on the door of the other. After a moment it opened.
‘Is you,’ said Tamar, stepping aside to let him in. ‘I am thinking you send me to wrong town.’
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been playing on the hoopla, I won’t believe you.’
‘Hoopla? What is a hoopla?’
‘A peculiarly English method of distributing cuddly toys, don’t worry about it. Here,’ he reached into his pocket, ‘I bought you a toffee apple.’
She unwrapped it and sniffed at it. ‘It is like a club made of sugar.’
‘Precisely, you lucky thing. Have you brought the netbook?’
She nodded to where it sat on the bedside table. ‘Is fully charged.’
‘That’s splendid. Sorry to be rude but bear with me while I check my emails, would you?’
Tamar shrugged. ‘I will eat my sugar club for breakfast.’
‘Good-o.’ He logged on to his mail client and scanned through the inbox. There was one from Cassandra:
Hello Charles!
Who isn’t even called Cha
rles but never mind. I think your name is probably Algernon, I don’t know why, you just look like one. An Algernon that is. Don’t tell me if I’m right or not because I won’t even believe you, whatever you say, BECAUSE YOU ARE FULL OF LIES!! But in a really nice way:-)
So, anyway, to business! How is Timothy Who Is Not Timothy? (I think he is called Gary because I once knew a Gary that looked just like him). Has he been talking about me all the time? I bet he has. Poor love. I feel bad for him but he’ll get over me. Until then …
(There followed a gif of a sad-looking kitten.)
August, distracted by a sudden crashing sound, looked up to see Tamar was beating the toffee apple with the butt of her pistol.
‘Do try not to blow your head off for the sake of sweets, old thing,’ he said. ‘I know a man who had a rotten accident with an accidental discharge last night.’
She held up the gun to show she had removed the cartridge. There was a pleasing crack followed by a soft squishing sound. ‘I’ve won your challenge of rock fruits,’ she said with a smile, popping a piece of splintered red toffee into her mouth.
‘Good for you,’ he said, returning his attention to the email. ‘I’ll let you have a pop at mine in a minute, it was quite beyond me.’
In other news!
The email continued.
Guess who’s the cleverest girl you know? No! Not her! Me! I’ve found a likely candidate for your curse. It sounds like The Rain-Soaked Bride (cool name for a band, when I finally get this guitar to behave I may use it). It’s Japanese, like all the really fruity stuff. I’ve scanned the relevant pages from a book I found containing the legend (it’s an English translation, don’t worry!). It’s attached. Go and read it now, I’ll still be here when you get back. :P
August opened the attachment, a slightly yellow scan of old pages, and began to read:
Many years ago in the Shinano Province there lived Kōsaka, a girl of great beauty. Her skin was like snow and her hair like woven night with the light from the stars put aside for her eyes. It shone whenever she smiled and all who saw her fell in love.