But your family, lass–
Mary laughing, coming down the slide. You have to go, for yourself. You have to stay, for them.
Martyn sat beside her; the table creaked and shifted. “Dear God. Worn me out, she has.”
“Happens when you get old.”
“Bog off. Watch out the witches don’t get you, Mary!”
Mary laughed.
“There aren’t any.”
“Eh?”
“Witches, round here.”
“Why call it Witchbrook then?”
“Dunwich Brook. Ran all the way down to Dunwich Road until they built the estate over it. Good place to get water for you or your horses.”
“The bloody hell’s Dunwich, anyroad?”
“Used to be a city on the Suffolk coast. The Dace family up here married into a shipping family down there after the Norman Conquest.”
“Get you, Miss Smartypants.”
“Buzz off. Then Dunwich started falling into the sea – all gone, now – and the harbour silted up. The Daces’ in-laws moved to Ipswich instead, but the name stuck.”
“Well, you learn summat new everyday.” Martyn looked around. “Where’s Mary?”
The slide was empty. The roundabout turned slowly and a swing rocked gently back and forth. Anna stood, a cold hand in her stomach, long spiny fingers coiling around her guts. The wind keened. “Mary?”
“Mary!” Martyn shouted. He blundered into the thicket, the thin black tree-trunks looked like prison bars.
Anna started across the playground. The hand in her guts clenched. Not Mary. She’d never forgive herself. Nor would Martyn – either of them, him or her. God, no, anything but this. “Mary!” Her own voice sounded shrill to her, almost hysterical. No. Mary. No.
She saw the future, what would come. The fruitless hunt; the call to the police. The lines of bobbies marching down the hill, beating bushes, dredging pools. Fishing some bedraggled, weed-tangled manikin out of the water.
Or in the gorse bushes on the moors, or the winter-withered buddleja in a vacant lot in Kempforth, they’d find torn bloody clothing and some cold white remnant. Martyn wouldn’t be able to identify the body; it’d fall to her. As always. Your family, lass. What family, after that? Neither she nor Martyn would survive the loss. Nan would die soon after. Their family would be gone.
“Mary!” she shouted again. Focus. The moment. The future hasn’t happened yet, that’s why it’s the future.
“Mary!” Martyn blundered out of the thicket. Their eyes met. “No sign,” he said. Anna stumbled further downhill. The combe shallowed out ahead, blending back into the hillside. The stream wove down into thick, brittle, winter-killed undergrowth, almost as high as–
“There!” Mary stood in the bushes by the stream, the undergrowth almost to her shoulders. “There!”
She ran, Martyn outpacing her easily – over short bursts he’d always been the faster. Mary stood unmoving, staring across the hillside, even when Martyn crashed to his knees beside her, flinging his arms about her. Staring across the hillside. What at? What at? So Anna looked.
Ten yards away a hillock was limned against the pale winter sky, black in silhouette like the long narrow shape atop it. The wind keened; long black tatters flapped about the figure. A black cloak, in tatters. Her stomach clenched anew. No. It couldn’t be. Anna stumbled to a halt. She couldn’t look away. It wasn’t all black, she saw; there was a pale blur of a face, which turned from Mary towards her.
From this range, in this light, she couldn’t see it clearly, but something was wrong with the face, she was sure of that. The eyes were dark, unblinking. It stood watching, motionless. The wind moaned. The tattered cape crackled and flapped around a thin – spindly – body.
First the school; now here. No – first Roydtwistle, ten years ago, then the school, then here. Coming back, out of her nightmares, her madness – but for Mary, not for her.
“Martyn.” Her voice was now a thick, dull croak. “Martyn.” He stayed hunched over Mary, oblivious. Sod him, then. She’d fight it herself, if he wouldn’t. She almost hoped he didn’t hear her. She’d had enough of being afraid. “Martyn,” she said again, and pointed.
Martyn looked. The Spindly Man didn’t move. Oh god, he’d say nothing was there. She was mad, then. But wasn’t that a relief? Wasn’t that worth the price, if Mary was safe? Then his face tightened and he was on his feet, releasing Mary, brushing her hands away. “Look after her. Call the police.”
“Martyn–”
“Daddy–” But Martyn was already moving upslope, gathering pace as he fought and mastered the gradient.
“You, you bastard!”
The Spindly Man turned to face him. Anna caught hold of Mary as she tried to go after her father.
“Daddy!” Mary struggled, kicked, but Anna didn’t let go. She couldn’t look away either. The Spindly Man didn’t move, just waited for Martyn to close with it, and that was the worst thing of all. It didn’t fear him. It would kill him – just reach out one long thin arm and wrench Martyn’s head from his shoulders. And Mary would see it. Anna had to cover the child’s eyes, stop her seeing–
“Daddy, don’t!” But then the Spindly Man turned, darted away, so fast it was as if it’d only ever been a black cloak which now blew away, flapping in the wind. Martyn broke into a run after it.
“Fucking paedo bastard–”
Mary was crying. “Daddy.”
Anna kept hold of her. Mary’s face in her shoulder; Mary’s tears hot on her neck. Martyn shouted again, muffled with distance.
Below, a footpath wound downhill to the Dunwich. The Spindly Man was a black, wriggling blob slithering down it, Martyn a narrow black mark weaving after him. They veered off the path and down one of half a dozen terraced streets; tin sheets glinted where the houses’ doors and windows had been. The council had bought the streets by compulsory purchase for an abortive new development a few years back; they were still waiting on the wrecking ball. Anna fumbled her mobile from her shoulder-bag. What were the streets called? The police would want to know. The Polar, that was it. They were all named after explorers. Scott, Amundsen, Peary, Nansen, Franklin, and... who else? Yes, Shackleton.
“Daddy, don’t... make him come back, Aunty Anna, make him come back.”
Anna half-rose. Mary grabbed her sleeve. “Don’t go.” Her voice was cracking. “Please. Don’t leave me alone.”
“Hush now. I won’t. I won’t.” Kissing the top of Mary’s head, her forehead, her cheeks.
“Don’t leave me alone, Aunty.”
“I won’t, sweetheart. You know I won’t.”
She held Mary close, and dialled.
CHAPTER NINE
MARTYN CHASED THE paedo down the hillside, smiling.
Why? Because he could deal with this. The endless, fruitless jobhunting, the depression, his marriage’s slow collapse, Eva’s death – they’d all been like sinking into liquid mud. You had to fight it but couldn’t win – couldn’t mark or break it, only wear yourself down and sink. But this fucker, here–
At the hill’s foot, the Spindly Man hit the main road, heading into the Dunwich. Fuck. Stop thinking; get doing. Even on the Dunwich they’d care more about catching one of the Spindlies than clobbering Martyn for cash he’d not got.
Might even get his picture in the papers, if he caught the swine. Shouldn’t think like that; it wasn’t right, somehow. Christ sake, fucker’d been after Mary. Least he’d not laid hands on her. Not that he’d seen. Christ. Better not have. Get the sod. If he took a tumble Martyn wouldn’t complain; coppers probably wouldn’t either.
They might find the missing kids. They might even be OK. Alive anyway. Never be OK again if some bastard kiddie-fiddler’d got hold of you. Better than death, though. If you were alive there was a way back.
Yeah, right. Like there was a way back from losing Eva. There wasn’t. If he was honest he knew that. She’d been the core, the centre, what he’d loved most.
Don’t t
hink of that. Get this bastard. Coming near your kid like that.
But that was it, wasn’t it? If he were honest. Nothing he could give Mary compared to the part of him Eva owned. He knew that and it shamed him. It wasn’t supposed to be that way; your kids were meant to give you reason to go on even if your wife was gone. But it wasn’t like that. Not for him.
He blinked, snapped out of it, focused on the chase again. That was the beauty of it, why he smiled: none of that mattered here. Life was simple again. Like being on the rugger pitch and your job’s to stop the other wanker getting by you. Focus.
The Spindly veered off the main road and towards the Polar. Martyn followed, picking up pace. Easy to lose the bugger here.
The Polar was a grid of parallel streets; Peary, Scott and Shackleton ran north to south; Amundsen, Nansen and Franklin cut across them, east to west. Lots of corners to dodge round, and lots of cobbled ginnels running behind the rows. And all empty, on top of that; all condemned. Martyn kept on the road; it was cracked and potholed, but the pavement was a minefield of loose, cracked slabs.
Some of the tin shutters over the door and window-frames were gone, or hanging loose. Squatters, homeless, druggies. Or more of the Spindly Men; cunts could’ve been hiding out here all along, where no-one’d hear the screams. He could end up facing the bastard lot of them.
The Spindly glancing back at him from the corner of Franklin Street. A white dead face, eyes like holes. Well, what else would their eyes look like? The fuckers snatched kids. Summat wrong with that face though. Summat really fucking wrong.
The Spindly ran round the corner. Martyn reached it seconds later; the terraces loomed up each side. For a second he was afraid the Spindly would be gone; but no, there he was, skirting a burnt-out car and nearing the junction with Peary Street. He hovered at the corner, looking back at Martyn, then darted round it.
Martyn let out a roar and shot after him, but by the time he turned onto Peary Street the Spindly had widened the gap between them from ten to twenty yards. It was a long road, but Amundsen and Nansen Streets both cut across it; the Spindly Man could vanish down either.
Martyn’s chest was starting to burn. Too many cigarettes, too many takeaways, not enough exercise. He was starting to flag. The terraces wheeled about him. Where the tin sheets had been pulled away the doors gaped: hungry mouths. The windows: eyes. Staring down – black, empty, dead. He thought he saw movement in an upstairs window. Looked away. Kids maybe. Homeless. Crackheads. Smackheads. Or Spindlies. Was that it? Was this one gonna turn around and a dozen more like him come racing out of the abandoned houses like so many cockroaches out from under the sink, the hunter suddenly the prey?
Watch him. Watch the git. Vision blurring. Focus. Focus on him. Fucking focus. Not losing him. Not now.
Amundsen Street. The Spindly feinted right, then broke left. After him. Tripping on a cracked paving-slab; blundering forward, arms windmilling. Don’t fall. He didn’t. Bastard was practically flying over the road surface now; couldn’t see the bugger’s legs for the tattered cape. Like chasing a stick on wheels, that bloody Dracula cape flapping about it and that head on top. Bastard had been holding back before if anything, a fucking athlete – nearly at the next corner already.
Which street was this now? Couldn’t tell; vision was blurred. The Spindly had stopped, looking back at him. Again. That face. What was it about that face? Couldn’t make it out properly. Christ. Felt like a bastard heart attack. Fucker’s going to get away. But something about that face, something not quite right.
The Spindly raised his hand for a second, like a wave, and then he was gone round the corner in a flicker of black. Bastard! Martyn staggered to the corner. The road ahead was empty.
Martyn stumbled sideways, caught hold of a lamppost, gulped breath. Chest burning; throbbing from his heels up into his belly. Heart thundering. It’d burst. What you get for being an idle sod. Bastard’s got away.
Martyn pushed clear of the lamppost, stumbled into the middle of the street. Now he heard them: sirens, wailing. He swung this way and that. Think straight: shithead can’t have run far.
Scalp and neck prickling. Some fucker was watching. But where? He scanned the terraces. Everywhere and nowhere.
The adrenaline rush was fading. Dread coiled tight in his belly. Fists clenching. Not afraid of you cunts. Threaten my kid. I’ll fucking have you. If he said it often enough, he might convince himself.
Another breath. His lungs still burned, but less now. The blood-thunder in his ears had faded. The sirens were wailing, getting closer.
Listen hard. Best chance of finding the bastard now: listening. He was in one of these houses. Listen hard and you might hear him moving about. Have to be clever now. Should’ve brought Anna along, then. No. Don’t knock yourself. You might not be book smart but you’re not fucking thick.
Which road was this? He looked up, saw the old street sign clinging to the wall. Shackleton Street. He walked down the middle of the road, listening. His foot caught something. He looked down. Something black. He reached down, picked it up. A black cloth cap. It was cold and greasy, and he didn’t like holding it. He threw it aside and wiped his hands on his trousers.
He knew that cap, or one like it; wasn’t so thick as not to recognise it. Spindly bastard’d been wearing it. And now he’d dropped it. Must’ve been more rattled than he’d let on. Martyn looked down at the road, the pavement.
Something else; it was pale, pinkish-coloured. The hell was it? No idea, but it was on the pavement outside a house where the front door was a gaping hole. Only the front door though; the big front window was still tinned up. Well, you’d want that, if there was stuff going on in there you didn’t want folk seeing. He went closer to it, saw it, was still.
Half a face looked up at him. A forehead, an eyebrow, a near-black eye; a nose, most of a cheek. He nudged it with his toe and it moved with a tinny, scraping sound. That was a relief of sorts – at least it wasn’t real – but he still wasn’t touching the bastard thing. He somehow knew it would have the same cold, greasy feel as the cap.
No wonder the fucker’s face’d looked like there was something wrong with it. There bloody was. Must be deformed or summat.
Martyn reached into his pocket, found his key ring. Eva had given him a little key ring torch for his birthday last year. If it still worked–
He clicked the switch. A pale beam fingered at the dark. The sirens were louder still. Nearly here. Better get a shift on, you want to be a have-a-go hero.
Shining the torch ahead, he risked a step in through the door. The torchlight picked out peeling walls; bricks and lathwork showed through the gaps. There was a table with a bucket on it in the middle of the floor. He pointed the beam down at the floor. The boards were still there, at least; they hadn’t been ripped up for firewood. That was about all you could say for them though; they were pitted and rotten. Would they bear his weight? One way to find out. Best foot forward, lad.
A faint, brittle sound. He flashed the torch at the kitchen door. Was that a flicker of motion? No. There was nothing there. Nothing.
He stepped forward, shone the torch around the room as the first police car screeched to a halt outside, and a horde of white, mangled faces swarmed out of the room’s back wall. And all of them were screaming.
THE TESTAMENT OF PRIVATE LEONARD BLOOR CONCLUDED and nothings changed has anything changed and drinking drinking to blot it out and stump of left thigh failed to heal properly and became infected septicaemia set in resulting in and lying in bed at home speckled with fagash and vomit and crying crying crying for all the things now gone and burning with fever heat and running with sweat and floating and seeing visions the old men will see visions and the young men will dream dreams and saw my comrades my friends the battlefields ruined plain spread out before me and the eyeless bloodless limbless faceless dead dying maimed crippled wounded disfigured scarred in endless procession across it british french german turkish italian austro hungarian russian belgian s
erb who are they who are we what does it matter all torn meat and churned mud linked solely by the capacity to suffer kyrie eleison and delirum coma and death from septicaemia and into thy hands o lord but there are no hands were no hands to receive me only darkness and the howling void and no justice done no leg restored no restitution recompense or peace
GUEULES CASSÉES
‘C’ BLOCK
Flakes of paint lie like brittle leaves on the cracked floor tiles. The exposed brickwork is fretted and crumbling. A peeling wooden door with a pane of safety glass stands ajar. Beyond it, decaying, eyeless faces stare emptily from the wall.
CHAPTER TEN
STAKOWSKI SAW TWO cars in the car park by Witchbrook when he pulled in: a white Nissan Micra and a police Land Rover, back doors open. A girl – nine or ten – sat on the running board, wailing in the arms of a thin blonde woman beside her. Two uniforms, both young, hovered nearby.
“Jesus Christ, they’ve just left her like that?”
“They’re green, ma’am.”
“Bloody will be when I’m done with them.”
“Flu outbreak. We’re short on experienced officers.”
“Ask me if I give a toss.” They got out. “They catch anyone?”
“Said they had a bloke in custody, but he says he’s the kid’s dad.”
“Who’s on scene?”
Stakowski central-locked the car. “Tranter and Wayland.”
“Thank god. Was worried it might be Janson. Can you go supervise?”
“Aye. Just let’s get a description of the dad first.”
“OK.”
The blonde woman wore minimal makeup and dressed like a maiden aunt; be pretty if she gave herself the chance, though. He knew her from somewhere, but couldn’t place it yet. Mist drifted down the hillside. The woman’s teeth chattered, but she still held the sobbing child close, stroked her hair.
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