by Graham Marks
To Jane
And with many thanks to Alix, René and Carolina at the Royal Ground Coffee House
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
An extract from Flesh and Blood
Copyright
Chapter One
‘Dope will get you through a time of no money better than money will get you through a time of no dope.’ Gabe had read that in one of his dad’s old underground, hippy comic books, he didn’t remember which one. That was before his dad sold all his comics and his vinyl record collection and old-school stereo system. Before he lost his job and things started to get shitty.
That really wasn’t so long ago, although it seemed like they’d been in a Time Of No Money forever. Everything had changed, and none of it for the better. Not one single damn bit.
Gabe sat on the street bench, his bike propped up next to him, watching the late-afternoon traffic go by on Ventura. Thousands of people, all with a destination, a purpose. All with money in their wallets and purses, driving on to the next stage in their sweet lives, or their neat homes, or their great jobs. None of which applied to him, his mom, dad or little sister, Remy. They were all stuck in a house he knew for a fact was worth way less than what was owed on it, and with, so far as he could see, no chance of putting that to rights.
His mom cut coupons to save money at the supermarket like it was her religion, and everything they ate was either ‘no brand’, or had about ten seconds left on the ‘eat by’ date, or both. His dad tried to keep a brave face, but didn’t always succeed, and only his sister appeared not to have a care in the world. But then Remy was nine years old. Gabe remembered being that age – when the future was always a cartoon-bright tomorrow and your life was a game. He looked down at his scuffed, frayed sneakers; it was a lot harder to think like that when you were sixteen and tomorrow did not look like it was going to be promising anything any time soon.
He stood up, stretching. He could feel the tension building in his muscles, the frustration at his total inability to figure out a way in which he could solve his family’s problems; even fixing something would be better than doing nothing.
“Maybe…” Gabe muttered to himself, grabbing his backpack, then getting on his bike. “It’ll have to be the dope.”
He was about to move off when his phone chirruped: his mom’s ringtone. He let the call go to voicemail, not ready to listen to whatever it was she had to say in her often tired-to-the-bone voice; it was hardly likely to be good news. No, he was not going to go home just yet, to the wired undercurrent of resentment that there was between him and his dad these days.
Gabe watched for a suitable gap in the unending stream of cars and slipped neatly into place. He had nowhere to go, but at least he might shift the dark cloud that seemed to be sitting right on top of him if he rode until it hurt. And while he rode he could think about Benny’s offer.
What took him off Ventura and up towards the canyon Gabe didn’t know. He’d been there before, any number of times. Generally either with friends, to get a beer buzz on, or with a girlfriend, when he had a girlfriend, for some time alone. Right now, though, with the sun beginning to set, the canyon – empty, serene, somewhere completely elsewhere – felt like the perfect place to be.
He had hybrid Nutrak tyres on the bike, old now, though still with a few more miles left in them yet. Best of both worlds, good on and off the road, the salesman had said, back when Gabe had had spare cash to splash, and the man hadn’t been bullshitting. He took to the pathway, well beaten by dog walkers and hikers, and rode into this small piece of wilderness, surrounded by the endless sprawl of LA.
He knew exactly where he wanted to be, and some ten minutes later he was up on top of a huge, smooth rock, his bike left at its graffiti-covered base. Lying down, using his backpack for a pillow, he felt the warmth the rock had soaked up during the day and was now giving off as the temperature began to drop. He was tired; tired of worrying and tired of thinking too hard about how bad things were. And they had to be bad for him to even consider working for dope-dealing Benny as an option.
Gabe closed his eyes, shutting out the world, and let the quiet chatter, hum and drone of the canyon wash over him…
He didn’t know what had woken him; probably it had been the chill in the air, because he was only wearing a T-shirt and jeans. The sky, dark as it ever got in LA, had no moon yet and only a scattering of stars. Gabe sat up, scrambled around in his backpack and found his phone: 7.23. He’d slept for ages, out for the count too, as there was another missed call from his mom. It was late, so she’d no doubt be worried, and he was hungry now – hungry enough not to care about the mood round the dinner table. Time to go home.
Gabe slid down the rock, now cooler to the touch, most of its heat given back to the night, and got his bike. Standing for a moment he debated what to do, finally admitting there was no way it would be a good idea to ride out. He was going to have to walk the twisting path, which clung like ivy to the steep hillsides.
As he set off, Gabe thought about calling his mom, but decided not to. She’d only ask what he was doing, who he was with and where he was. “Well, Ma, I just woke up, alone in the canyon,” wasn’t what she’d want to hear. He’d figure out a better story by the time he got home.
And, kind of like the way life often is, everything went fine until it didn’t.
Even when you’re trying hard to be careful, if nothing goes wrong for long enough you get cocky and the lazy part of your brain stops paying as much attention as it should. That was how Gabe failed to notice how unstable the pathway was. The next step he took, the ground unexpectedly gave way, he lost his balance and, arms flailing, he fell.
It wasn’t all bad. The drop turned out to be not so steep or so very far down, and also he let go of his bike and it didn’t come tumbling after him. Gabe, who was fit enough and good enough to be in the school athletic team, managed the fall pretty well, skidding down the side of the narrow arroyo, arms and legs held close in. He came to a stop, slightly winded, a bit bruised but with nothing broken, in a bed of dried-up mud.
There’d been a short, sharp late-summer storm, a pretty spectacular one, the previous week. The sky had turned coal-tar black in the middle of the day, there was thunder and it seemed like a ton of water per square metre had fallen in about
two minutes flat. Drains had blocked, gutters overflowed, dogs went crazy, traffic snarled up and then, as quick as it had started, it was over. All that water had had to go somewhere, and in the canyon a deluge hurtled downwards, finding any exit it could; it ripped out small trees and dislodged rocks and earth from the arroyo – brick-dry from the long, hot summer – as it raced towards the San Fernando valley.
Picking himself up, Gabe found he was in a two-maybe three-metre deep, four-metre wide cut that wouldn’t have been there before the storm. As he looked around for the best way to get back up to his bike, the moon peeked over the ragged treeline behind him. Its soft, monochrome light made it seem like he was standing in an old grainy photographic negative; it gave everything a weird, spooky look.
A metre or so away from him it also picked out the distinctive shape of a human skull.
Chapter Two
It was a moment straight out of one of those CSI-type TV shows his dad loved to watch, and Gabe couldn’t stop himself from going closer. He bent down, reaching out and gently brushing some dried mud off the cheekbone, as you would if someone had dirt on their face, then he pulled his hand back like he’d been burned – if this was a crime scene, a murder, he’d better not touch anything. He’d watched enough of those shows himself to know that.
Gabe stood up, staring at the skull; it lay kind of sideways, poking out of the earth, an empty eye socket staring sightlessly off to his right. Now he looked more carefully, he thought he could make out the shape of a shoulder bone, and further down what had to be a ribcage, next to it possibly also part of a hand. His licked his lips nervously, telling himself there was no way finding the remains of a skeleton wasn’t weird.
There didn’t seem to be any flesh, only bone.
So this wasn’t a recent burial, more like what the cop shows called a cold case. No flesh: that made Gabe feel a lot less queasy. Then he saw a pale, yellowy glint in the moonlight. Something metallic? He knelt down and carefully scraped away a bit of earth with the tip of his finger, then some more until the curve of what could be a bracelet inset with small, light blue stones was revealed.
“Gold?” he whispered, a tight shiver crawling down his spine.
Rooted to the spot, the night air pressing in on him heavy as lead, it dawned on Gabe that the canyon, buzzing with all kinds of activity when he’d arrived, had fallen quiet. As quiet as a grave, said the unwanted commentator in his head.
Gabe stared into the gloom.
It was like the place was watching him, waiting to see what he did next. The silence hissed and throbbed in his ears. His chest felt like a steel belt had tightened around him, until he realized he was holding his breath. He sucked in air and shook his head. Stupid, he thought, who’d be hiding out here? And the moment that thought occurred he wished it hadn’t. Any kind of crazy person could be here; this was LA, the place was full of them.
Gabe shivered again as the momentary hot sweat he’d broken out into cooled, his clammy T-shirt sticking to his back. He looked more carefully at what he’d found, wondering if it could really be gold. It did look kind of antique, which often meant more valuable, right? It was ethnic-looking too, and that could maybe make it worth even more. This was what he needed: a big, big piece of good luck!
Hands shaking slightly from excitement, he worked the earth out from around the bracelet, pushing away the thought that he was tampering with evidence as he teased it loose from a cluster of small wrist bones. Damn the law. If this could help fix things at home, even in just a small way, he had to do it.
In the palm of his hand the bracelet seemed quite small, but it weighed a lot more than he’d expected it would and looked beautiful in the moonlight. It sat there in the palm of his hand, this innocent thing he had just found, and it felt like he was watching someone else’s hand. There was something about it he couldn’t put into words, a feeling that this was more than just precious metal.
Kneeling there, in the chapel-like silence of the night, Gabe found himself closing his eyes and hoping more than he’d ever hoped in his life that this might be the start of things going right. A new beginning. That was what he wanted more than anything.
“Please…” he whispered, fingers gently closing round the bracelet. “Please be worth something, be special … please make a difference…”
As he spoke, Gabe felt a change in the cold metal in his hand. It was getting warmer, almost hot, like it was absorbing his body heat, and his hand tingled. He opened his eyes and looked down. The bracelet seemed to be glowing. Not simply reflecting light, but radiating it.
Gabe slowly opened his fist and frowned. As he looked at the bracelet the light faded until it was just glinting in the moonlight. He shrugged off his backpack and quickly tucked it in one of the side pockets. His mom always said he had an overactive imagination.
Picturing his mom reminded him of how late he was and he started to clamber back up to the path, then stopped. Think straight, he told himself. If this find was valuable and there was more stuff here to be dug up, he should make sure no one else stumbled on his discovery. He bent down and began trying to cover up any evidence of what he’d found.
Five minutes later, Gabe had made as good a job as he could of hiding the bones from view, and got himself back up on to the pathway. He used his house key to make a mark he figured no one else would take any notice of on a nearby tree, so he’d know exactly where to come back to. He was about to pick up his bike when he thought he heard a whisper, although maybe it was more like a sigh. He whirled round, searching for who was there, fear knotting his stomach as he prepared to run for it. Then he saw the owl.
It was perched, silent and still, on a branch near where the skeleton lay hidden. Hunched, eyes unblinking and head low, it stared back at him. Accusingly, Gabe thought, there was no other way to describe it.
“What?” he said, the question escaping, like a dog slipping its leash.
The owl didn’t move
“Got to get out of here…” Gabe whispered, looking away as he grabbed his bike, “…else I’m gonna drive myself nuts.”
He felt jittery all the way down the canyon until it finally began to level out and he could see the street that led back down to Ventura. He was about to get on his bike and start riding when the owl appeared out of nowhere. It flew over him, its huge wings outstretched, so quiet it was like someone had turned the sound right down. The bird dipped right in front of him, almost close enough to touch, then banked, turned and landed on a nearby tree. There it sat, still stooped, angry and forbidding, watching him.
Gabe had never heard of an owl attacking a person, but even so he couldn’t help being spooked. The bird was making him feel guilty about what he’d done. His mom always said that a guilty conscience didn’t need an accuser, as it’d do the job fine by itself. True enough, it seemed, but the bird was not helping. Gabe started riding, going as fast as he could and trying to ignore being so closely observed. Then he saw what he first took to be a couple of silver-grey dogs. They slunk out of the shadows and sat underneath the owl, staring right at him.
It took Gabe a split second to realize they weren’t dogs. They were coyotes. And coyotes, unlike owls, did attack humans. He sped up, half expecting at any moment to see the animals come for him, but his last glance backwards as he made the tarmac showed neither the coyotes nor the owl had moved a centimetre.
Twenty minutes hard riding later, Gabe turned off on to his street. He’d be home in a couple of minutes. He’d got a story ready to tell his mom – that he’d been studying at his friend Anton’s, with his phone still on silent from school, and had lost track of time – which should work if he didn’t overdo it. And, as he’d been riding, he’d hatched a plan. He knew what to do with the bracelet he’d found. There was this place he’d seen, down towards Studio City, which sold antiques and had a sign in the window that said they did valuations. Which was exactly what he needed: a valuation.
What was this piece actually worth, if anything?
The owl.
Mouth instantly as dry as a packet of cheese crackers, Gabe braked and skidded to a halt, frowning as he searched the dusty orange night sky. Was his mind playing tricks on him? It must be. Had to be. And then he got that feeling, as if something was gently pressing at the back of his head, and knew he was being watched. He slowly turned and glanced over his shoulder.
The owl was right behind him.
Like a two-dimensional cardboard cut-out it was perched on a postbox that was leaning at a slightly drunken angle, away from the one next to it. The bird sat, silent and unmoving, the glint in its big round eyes the only thing that showed it was real.
The rational side of Gabe’s nature tried to calm him down – why was he so freaked by a damn owl? It was a bird, just a bird, probably not even the one he’d seen in the canyon, right?
Wrong. It had followed him. Gabe frantically searched the shadows for any evidence the coyotes were there as well. No sign. Not yet, at least.
Get a grip. Get a grip. Get a grip… As the mantra in his head spun round and round, Gabe regained control, turned away from the owl and powered down the street, the bike’s back wheel spinning to find traction.
At the gate to the side passage that led to the kitchen, he stopped to look back the way he’d come. There was nothing there. First opportunity tomorrow, straight after school, he was going to get to that place in Studio City, take whatever money he was offered for the damn bracelet and split. As he leant his bike up against the house, some way off he was sure he heard a faint hooting. Seconds later, the distant bay of a dog. Or a coyote.
He swallowed hard, telling himself not to be so stupid, but only just managed not to run for the welcoming light spilling out from the kitchen window.