by Tim Weaver
Dum. Dum.
I moved towards the woman.
He’d left her there to come and take care of me, and I felt a swell of anger at the way she’d been cast aside. There was no life in her, her suffering over, but what remained had been afforded no respect; she’d been dumped against the house like a bag of rubbish. The closer I got to her, the more water fanned out from my feet and went back through to the house. The hole next to her made a gurgling sound, like somebody being choked.
Dum. Dum.
I stood over her, pausing for a moment. This was a crime scene. If I moved her, if I rolled her back towards me, I was interfering with it. But then I realized it was too late for that: she’d been moved from wherever she’d originally been kept. Cornell had carried her up from the boat and then discarded her when he’d seen me. So I bent down, touched her arm – as rigid as concrete now – and turned her over.
It was Katie Francis.
‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ a voice said behind me.
I turned.
Colin Rocastle was pointing a gun at my face.
62
Rocastle led me back towards the house, his gun pressed against the back of my head. ‘You’re working for Cornell?’ I said to him, but he didn’t reply. We passed the boat again, off to my left. The narrow deckhouse door had blown open, stairs leading down into a half-lit interior, and I could see at least one other body, wrapped in the same tarpaulin, a single, blood-flecked arm escaping the covers. If they’d brought Francis here, they’d brought the security guard as well – and they’d brought Carter Graham.
As I re-entered the house, Cornell looked up from the floor, that same expression on his face. He’d given in because he’d known he wasn’t alone. Rocastle forced me to my knees behind Cornell, one hand on my shoulder, one pushing the gun in harder against the dome of my skull. ‘Untie him,’ he said.
I started loosening the knot.
Outside, the sea was relentless: it boomed against the rocks, emerged from the cracks and fissures of the house, before drawing all the way back out again. And then it would come again, metronomic, a dam breaking and draining, over and over.
I kept my head still and scanned the room, trying to figure out where I went next. I had a gun to my head and was cut off from the mainland. I didn’t have any options. If I made a break for it, if I even got as far as doing that, I would hit a dead end, whichever direction I headed. I couldn’t take Cornell’s boat because I didn’t have the key. I couldn’t go back for the dinghy because, as soon as I got out into the water, they’d pick me off.
‘Faster,’ Rocastle said, jabbing me with the gun.
Half an inch of water, maybe more, was remaining inside the house at all times now. It was freezing. Before long, I couldn’t feel my skin any more, only the pressure of my kneecap against the floor, spongy and rotten and bending to my weight. Next to me were the skirting board and the wall panel. As I pulled the knot away, finally freeing Cornell, water began running past me, out from under the boards, escaping into the room.
Dum. Dum.
Rocastle grabbed me by the collar and hauled me to my feet, then shoved me out into the centre of the house. He went to help Cornell, help unravel the rest of the rope, but Cornell pushed him away, eyes fixed on me. He used one of the counters to pull himself up and then ran a hand through his hair, straightening it. In that moment, I saw everything he was: all the destruction and violence, all the lives he’d ruined.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said, an empty smile opening out across his face. ‘This is an unexpected surprise.’ He looked at Rocastle, a flash of anger in his face. ‘Isn’t it, Detective Rocastle?’ I looked between them, unsure of what was going on. Then his anger instantly vanished, and all that was left behind was that smile.
But the smile was just a lie, a piece of tracing paper I could see right through; and as he stood there, he tilted his head and looked at me, eyes darting from one point of my body to the next, like a butcher sizing up a carcass. He wriggled his fingers, stretching the muscles, and then looked around the room. He was searching for the chains he’d had on his wrists. When I’d tied him up, I’d tossed them across the room, towards the extension.
I turned to Rocastle. ‘Why?’
A minor shrug.
‘Was the money worth it?’
This time he gave me nothing.
‘All the money in the world can’t be worth this.’
Behind him, Cornell put a finger to his lips. ‘Ssshhhhh.’
Water began running into the house, under his feet, between his legs, out to where Rocastle was standing. Cornell didn’t notice, his eyes on me. Rocastle glanced down at the water, watching it approach him, then looked up at me again. His face was an utter blank. No emotion, just a glazed-over stare. The gun was gripped in his hand at his side.
Dum. Dum.
The noise came every time water entered the house.
Dum. Dum.
And every time it drained back out again.
Cornell moved away from the edge of the counter, limping. He took a couple of steps, then stopped. ‘What, I wonder, was the point of all this?’ he said. I remembered his voice now: low, sharp, an indistinct accent that was difficult to place. As I watched him take another step towards me, I felt the same sense of recognition I’d had earlier; as if I’d seen him before, somewhere else.
Not just Vegas.
He tilted his head as he looked at me. ‘Was the family worth it?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Were they worth dying for?’
‘I haven’t found them yet, so I couldn’t say for sure.’
Cornell picked up on something in my voice; a tiny tonal shift, a moment when my reply had betrayed everything I was feeling. ‘Why do they even matter?’ he asked.
‘Everyone matters.’
The corners of his mouth turned up again. ‘I’ve known men like you before.’ He took another step towards me. ‘Do you think you’ve got some attachment to the family?’
I didn’t respond.
‘You think you understand them?’
I flicked a look at Rocastle. He just stared at me.
Cornell’s lips peeled back into another smile. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? They’re the replacement for …’ He paused, ring finger rubbing against his thumb as he tried to recall her name. ‘Derryn. Are they your pretend family now she’s rotting in the earth?’
I gave him nothing.
He nodded, then ran a hand through his hair, ensuring his parting was as straight as possible. ‘The Lings are all just bones now too – you do know that, right?’
‘They deserve a proper burial.’
‘We gave them a burial.’
‘I doubt that.’
‘Sure we did,’ he said, limping towards me, stopping six inches from my face. Rocastle moved around to my left, lifted the gun and placed it against my temple. My heart shifted in my chest. ‘Where’s the photograph?’ Cornell said.
‘What photograph?’
‘Where’s the photograph?’ Cornell said again, as if he hadn’t heard me.
‘I don’t know what photograph you mean.’
I could smell him now: hair oil and lotion, and the faint trace of cigarette smoke. When he got no response from me, he leaned forward, his mouth stopping an inch from my ear. ‘You know,’ he said, hot breath against my face, ‘it doesn’t really matter. If you tell me where it is, that’s great – that saves me a problem. If you don’t, I’ll just go on looking for that picture after you’re dead. And I’ll find it. Because that’s what I do.’
‘Why do you even care about it?’
He blinked; said nothing.
‘Kalb’s already dead. Everyone who might have even been vaguely connected to him is dead. What can the photograph possibly have in it that matters any more?’
He seemed faintly amused, as if he were listening to the reasoning of a child, then his eyes stopped at my stomach. ‘Tell me, how did it feel when you were dying
?’
I ignored him and glanced at Rocastle. ‘What about you?’ Something flickered in his face. ‘Do you even know why you’re killing?’
‘I’ve always wondered what it must be like,’ Cornell said.
I turned back to face him.
‘What it must be like when the light goes out.’
‘Maybe one day you’ll find out.’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But not today.’ There was a sudden kind of stillness to him. In any other man it would have looked like mourning for all the misery he’d wrought. But not this man. ‘You of all people should understand what we’re doing.’
I smirked. ‘Is that a joke?’
An expression formed, as if he was genuinely surprised. ‘Why else have you been running around for all these years, being shot at, being stabbed, trying to rescue hopeless cases like your idiot friend Healy?’ I glanced at Rocastle: because of him Cornell knew everything about me. Every detail. ‘Why? Because, like me, you have a cause.’
‘Daniel Kalb isn’t a cause.’
‘You don’t know anything about him.’
‘Graham, Schiltz and Muire knew him – and look where it got them.’
‘They only knew a part of him; a version of his history. But, ultimately, that was enough.’ He shrugged. ‘The pictures they had, what they knew about him, what Ray saw at Farnmoor, we couldn’t let that go. Ray had started to suspect Katie might be involved in something too, which is why he went to the police instead of her. He liked a drink or three, but he was still sharp enough. We had to do some repair work on that.’
I frowned. But then it slipped into place, and I turned to Rocastle. ‘You doctored the interviews you did with Muire.’
‘He made some adjustments,’ Cornell said.
‘You mean Muire’s suspicions about Katie Francis?’
Cornell drew in a long, deep breath, hands back at his sides. ‘That, and Muire telling the world how clearly he saw your precious Paul and Carrie.’
Another memory: standing over Prouse at the Ley and then, before that, speaking to Martha Muire, and her telling me about the missing photograph. Did you ever worry the combination of the drink and his eyesight might be a problem? I’d asked.
We’re old, Mr Raker, but not that old.
She’d meant his eyesight. News that he was half blind had come as a surprise to her. And then, a day later, Prouse was saying the same thing to me: He could see just fine.
I looked at Rocastle. ‘Muire’s diagnosis was a sham.’ Instantly, I could see in his face that I was right. ‘You never went to see a doctor. You faked the diagnosis. That’s why both his interviews go totally off the rails – because you altered them.’
Cornell broke out into a smile. ‘Bravo.’
I ignored him, fixing my gaze on Rocastle, replaying what Cornell had said: Muire only knew a version of Kalb’s history. And if Muire didn’t know the full story, neither did Schiltz or Graham. Neither did Rocastle. ‘Do you even know who Kalb is?’
A movement in his eyes.
‘This is a man who killed two hundred and fifty–’
Cornell punched me in the throat.
It was so sudden, so fierce, it felt like my body had shut down. I staggered back, grasping at my windpipe, trying to force air up and out of my body. My vision blurred. And then I hit a wall, felt it bend against my weight, dust showering me from above, water running out from somewhere unseen – against my legs, my ankles, my feet.
Cornell took a couple of steps in my direction, leg dragging through the water like an anchor. Rocastle remained behind him, almost cast into darkness. My throat was on fire, acid burning at the top of my chest, and I could feel swells of nausea. I closed my eyes for a second, trying to clear my sight. When I opened them again, Cornell was closer: he’d moved again, this time in silence. The only thing that spoke of his approach was the wake fanning out from his shoes. ‘Where’s the photograph?’ he said.
This time it was my turn to smile.
I saw the anger in his eyes. ‘Where’s the photograph?’
‘Gone,’ I replied, my voice hoarse.
‘Gone where?’
‘Tell me where the Lings are buried.’
He grabbed me by the throat again, teeth gritted, hands like the jaws of a shark. I could feel myself blacking out. ‘Tell me where the fucking photograph is!’
His face blinked in and out.
And then, finally, everything went dark.
When I woke again, Cornell was looking down at me. Rocastle was next to him, gun in the belt of his trousers. As I tried to tune back in, Rocastle reached down and hauled me up. I rocked back against the wall, using its sodden bones for support.
‘You know,’ Cornell said, calmer now, ‘this is exactly how that little bitch tried to play me. Carrie. When she told me there was another copy of the photograph floating around, she tried to use it as a bargaining chip. “I’ll tell you where the photograph is, if you let me and my family go.” ’ He lowered his voice. ‘She was pretty strong. Pretty resistant. But eventually she gave in: it was in the laptop. So I thanked her, and then I had Prouse walk them both to the barn.’
But she didn’t tell him which laptop.
Even at the end. Even as she suffered unspeakable torment.
‘So why are you still looking for it?’
No response. No emotion. ‘When you’ve got as much money as me, you can solve all sorts of problems. So I put those two girls on a jet to the States, while Mum and Dad were already feeding worms.’ He stopped, eyeing me. He was trying to use the girls to get a reaction out of me. ‘They landed at Henderson Airport, got waved through by a man I’d handed a suitcase full of money to, and their trail – boom – just disappeared. You can take your time when they’re off the grid, really get the answers you need.’
‘Why take them to the States?’
Cornell just shrugged. ‘All you need to know is after they gave me what I wanted, I drove them up into the hills, cut them both into pieces and buried them in the desert.’
A tremor passed through me. ‘You fucking prick.’
‘Oooooh,’ he mocked. ‘Are you angry?’
He was three feet from me.
‘Are you upset that your new family got–’
I grabbed him by the throat, clamping my hand on to his windpipe, squeezing so hard I felt cartilage pop against my fingers. An anger burned in me I’d never felt before. As he started to choke, I shoved him away. He stumbled, his leg locking up, and then I went at him again, hitting him harder than I’d ever hit anything in my life. It felt like I broke every bone in my hand – but I didn’t care, didn’t even react to it. This time it sent him crashing back into the counter, the whole thing reverberating, part of it coming loose and falling to the floor, into the water. He tried to sidestep away from me, his back to the wall panel, but I grabbed his hair – a handful of it, as much as I could get – and drove him head first into it. He made a soft grunt as the wall panel erupted into a puff of plaster, a shiver passing through the house.
And then it felt like my head exploded.
I lurched sideways, slumping against the ground. Out of the corner of my eye, through the fuzzy haze of semi-consciousness, I realized Rocastle had pistol-whipped me. He came around, placed a foot either side of me and pointed the gun at my head. Next to him, Cornell pulled himself free of the wall, water running out past him, over his legs. He wiped his wrist across his face and then looked at me. He was burning with rage. Blood ran from his nose, from the corners of his mouth, my hand clearly printed on his throat. He looked across at Rocastle. ‘Were you enjoying the show, you fucking maggot?’
‘I took care of him.’
‘After he put me through the fucking wall!’
Cornell got to his feet, dusted himself down.
And then I saw them.
In the cavity wall behind the panel.
Two bodies, one on top of the other.
They were wrapped in black plastic bin liners, secured with
brown packing tape. I couldn’t see their faces, couldn’t see any flesh, any indication of who was who. But it had to be them. And as water poured into the house again – from across the garden, through the spaces in the exterior, and then in through the cavity wall – the bodies moved on the waves, gently knocking against the interior wall.
Dum. Dum.
‘Time for you to join them,’ Cornell said.
Rocastle reached further down, placing the tip of the barrel against my forehead. And in that moment, my thoughts didn’t echo back to the time I’d been left to die by a killer just like Cornell; they returned to something Healy had said to me as he’d left my parents’ house for the final time.
See you on the other side.
My muscles tensed. My heart accelerated.
But then, as Cornell took another step closer, eyes widening at the thought of my death, Rocastle straightened, swivelled to face him – and shot him through the head.
63
Ten seconds later, the house was silent. Cornell was on the floor, one leg buckled under him, water lapping at his body. Rocastle had collapsed against the edge of the wall panel, the bodies barely feet from his head, wind whistling quietly through the splintered building. His knees were up at his chest, his arms resting on them. He still held the gun.
‘Rocastle?’
Nothing.
I clambered to my feet, heading across the room to the wall – but then his eyes pinged to me and he raised the gun up off his knee. ‘Where the hell are you going?’
I nodded to the bodies. ‘Where do you think?’
He shook his head. ‘Sit down.’
‘We need to–’
‘We don’t need to do anything,’ he said. He gestured to Cornell, blood floating off across the surface of the water. ‘That wasn’t for you. It was for me. I needed to be free of him.’ Then his eyes darkened. ‘I haven’t decided what to do with you yet.’
‘But Paul and Carrie–’
‘Sit down.’
I paused there – him sitting, me standing – letting him know that it was the wrong decision. Then I did as he asked. He followed my every movement before slowly drifting back out of the conversation, eyes becoming distant, body sinking in on itself.