“Jason. . ?”
“Andy, what the hell's been happening here?” Devlin interrupted.
“Oh, Jesus. You don't want to know, Devlin. You don't want to know. It looks like some sicko ripped the lad apart from the insides out.”
“Jesus,” Devlin didn't know what else to say. He felt the tiny tremble of shocks running through Kristy's shoulders.
“I wish to God that was the worst of it, but the lad looks so Goddamned peaceful, like he was stoned or something and he actually enjoyed being carved up like some bastard’s Sunday roast.”
“Who found him?”
“Nurse coming around with his daily dose. She's screwed up pretty badly. One of the doc's gave her a sedative about twenty minutes ago. I've got Viv talking to her, not that she's likely to have anything to tell.”
“Any witnesses?”
Andy McKenna just looked at him.
“I know, silly question.”
“You got it right there.”
“Right, mind if I take a look?”
“In there? Be my guest, but we're all out of sick bags.”
“I guess I'll just have to take my chances then.”
“Rather you than me. What about. . ?” The Hexham man nodded Kristy's way.
“Take care of her would you. I don't think I want her to see this. He was a friend.”
“Ah, for the love of all things holy.”
Some dim and distant part of Kristy was aware of the two men talking about her, but the miasmic slough clouding her senses effectively drowned them, and every one and thing else, out with it. Tears of pain, sadness, anger and horror rolled down her cheeks unchecked. She couldn't so much as blink them away. She felt as if she was going to faint. Felt someone take her by the shoulder to guide her, but ducked and shrugged them off.
“Come on, and we'll get you a good strong cup of something, love,” she heard someone say, the words dopplering down as if the batteries powering the playback tape had run dry midway through the sentence. The effect dizzying.
“Jason. Oh, God, Jason. No. Jason. No. God. Jason. . .” The litany faded to silence, undermined by the gutted hollowness taking hold. She was on the edge, and staring down into the barren, loathsome landscape below. Madness. Dazed, a guttural sound, cry, sob, began in her throat, taking control of everything beyond the miasma.
The hands tried to steer her away again, but she shook them off a third time, not wanting any of their well intended mothering.
She felt strange. Like nothing at all.
A thought began to take shape in the purple mist, fine details solidifying around the central core. She had to see inside the room. Had to see Jason. Cold to the bone, worms of doubt burrowed in at the base of her skull. She was crying, she realised suddenly, in defeat. Her tears solved nothing. Brent Richards had put the ball high into the stands, and now there was nothing left for her to resume the chase with. The metaphor struck as hideous; the home run to end all home runs.
“I want to see,” she told Devlin, swallowing hard against her heaving stomach.
He didn't look happy, but neither did he argue. He stepped aside to let her past.
The walls, running with blood dried to rust, brought her back from the edge for just a second. The pathologist and two of his assistants were going over the room with their own form of fine toothcombs, but Kristy's eyes failed to take on board anyone but Jason's presence. The picture coming through tuned down to the microcosm, her highly strung senses adapting to focus on the minute details that combined to breed the carnage. The rusting blood splashes on the wilting flowers. The smeared handprint of gore on the locker door. Too much blood for Jason's body, surely.
And his face. Placid. Eyes empty. Beatific. Hands behind his head, grip twisted. No sign of the pain he must have suffered in his vacant expression.
Calum Salmund had taken the time to turn the ventilator off, and therefore at least saved Kristy from that effect. He was bagging a coarse grade bone saw, which looked, to all intents and purposes, like a shark's wide grin grafted onto a metal pole.
“Cut through his spine in five seconds, this thing would,” the shabbily outfitted Scotsman marvelled as he recognised Devlin.
Devlin was too busy looking at the blood border, too similar to the interior decorating job done on Kristy's flat for it to have been a coincidence, to notice the perverse twinkle of respect there in the Home Office Pathologist's eye.
“Mean son of a bitch,” Salmund continued, talking pretty much to himself. “Knew exactly what he was doing, right down to the little sex-change operation on the trolley. Thought we had him with the surgical gloves he'd left, but that's a none starter. Filled them up with giblets and red wine sauce, so I suppose he saw that episode of Columbo, too.”
“Sick, Calum. Just plain sick.”
“I'll not be arguing with you there, but damned efficient, if you think about it. He had maybe five minutes to get in and out before someone came by. Certainly not long enough to enjoy his handiwork. I mean, for Christ’s sake, he even tied off the femoral artery after he'd finished playing God. Just so Jigsaw Man here wouldn't bleed to death before he was ready for him to.”
“Oh, Jesus. . . that's horrible.”
“Yep, but it makes you wonder. Think about it, will you. He had the knowledge, and the skills, to tidy up as he went. He tied off what could have been fatal wounds. That could just be force of habit, not some extraordinary perversion. I'd not be sticking my neck out if I said this one knew exactly what he was doing. My guess is someone in the trade, and I'll take any odds you're offering.”
Someone in the trade.
Kristy had moved to the head of the bed and was looking into Jason's flat eyes. Just for a second, she thought she saw a glimmer of fear trapped back there, but the dazzle reflecting back from the milky conjunctiva made it impossible to tell for sure.
“Oh, Jason. . .”
She pressed her thumbs onto his eyelids and closed his eyes.
- 43 -
Mike Shelton found himself knocking back another bottle.
The oily air tasted thickly of butane and Embassy Regal's, and pressed onto him, restricting his world to sluggish swallows and hacking coughs. Mark Knopfler grated distantly in his ears, urging him to remember things the alcohol insisted were better left forgotten: Spanish city; the waltzer, ghost train, shooting galleries and, of course, the tunnel of love; his girls.
Time slipped by, marked by the pain behind his eyes and the steadily deepening alcohol fuelled torpor. The liquor was warm without hitting the spot. Crumpled cans of Exhibition and empty bottles of Newcastle Brown and Double Maxim were scattered across the caravan's tiny floor. The glass bottle of Lamb's Navy Rum was cool and smooth in his greasy hand, its ridged neck inviting his lips to kiss and drown in its charms. He tipped the bottle. The last of the rum trickled into his mouth and down his throat, spreading its soothing warmth through his stomach. The big wheel kept on turning through the tinny speakers.
Looking out of the window didn't help. It was a dull, overcast grey outside, neither night nor day. It was probably the alcohol giving his system a good working over, but everything out there looked foggy and insubstantial under a fine gauzy mist that wasn't quite rain, up to the trees, which bordered on a bleak hole where reality faded into a bleary smudge of greyness.
Mike let the useless bottle slip through his twitching fingers to join the rest on the floor, and curled up into a ball on the unmade bed, rucking the blankets up around his cold feet. The faded patterns on the glue stained and cracked plates suddenly striking him as hilarious. Mike jumped up on to the unsteady mattress, the horizon reeling wildly as the springs undermined his already precarious balance, and grabbed at the two nearest plates.
Giggling uncontrollably, he hurled them clumsily at the sun-bleached door of the wardrobe. Nothing made any sense. He thought he could hear voices under the jangling guitar, muttering darkly. He didn't know, and he didn't care.
It just made him laugh that bit
harder. It wasn't long until Mark Knopfler was singing in a language so unlike English Mike only managed to pick out every eighth word or so, which also struck him as being ridiculously funny.
He was hugging his knees, howling with laughter, crying and fumbling desperately for another bottle all at once.
Two were thrown at the wardrobe door, already empty, before his fingers closed around an unopened bottle of Chekov vodka, and he found his lips parting around the welcoming coolness of the new bottle. In a second he was swallowing mouthfuls of clear, cool amnesia.
This one didn't burn at all, and before long there was nothing left to drink. No cool glass bottles of liquid relief, no bottled memory thieves only too eager to roll a blanket over the bad times. Only clear, empty ones. Mike took the empty bottle of Chekov and hurled it at the window.
He missed, the bottle smashing on the wall with a sound not unlike the shrill tinkling of a thousand fairy bells.
His temper, reined in taut already, snapped.
“'IT SHOULD BE RAINING!” Mike shrieked, punching the wall in his frustration. His knuckles came away bloodied, a deep blue-black bruise flaring almost immediately. He closed his eyes, grinning vacantly.
When he opened them again, panting and drenched with sweat, he knew, at last, what he wanted to do. He made his way carefully over to the portable stereo, and started thumbing through the small rack of CDs until he found the old Elton John compilation which had always been one of Hannah's favourites. Without thinking, he slipped the Dire Straits CD back into its case, and replaced it with Elton, skipping on to the start of Goodbye Yellow brick Road, before moving on into the kitchen area in what seemed like slow motion. The floor felt tacky under his feet. A small slug of poorly buried grief detonated in the pit of his stomach, and he understood only too well why.
An imperfect tear fell from the tap as he rooted through the cutlery draw, splashing into the trough with a hollow thock. Without thinking, he reached out for one of the glasses racked up along the compact drainer, and filled it from the cold tap. A wad of warm cotton wool threatened to blot out his newly discovered resolve. He was remembering again, as he did so often, that bitterly cold day in the month of December. It was Friday, and the sun was shining; the kind of fresh, enervating sunshine only winter frosts can conjure. The wind was whistling and whining while snow piled deeper on the tree-tops and fields beyond the windows of the garage, bending the branches to breaking. The tight, switchback curves of the Spine Road were the coils of a tarmac snake, breaking the monotony as they traversed the endless sheets of white. Yesterday's fall, already packed hard, dazzled under the glorious sun. The air still swam with the white helicopters, dying flakes of the spent shower. A little way across the fields, a knot of children spanning all ages padded and rolled in the snow, dragging sledges and carving out the lines of a bulbous statue with a bright carrot nose, potato eyes and button smile, between flurries of misdirected snowballs.
He could see Holly laughing as she stuffed packed snow down one of the boys' backs. Above her, fat white clouds floated by. Hannah was pottering around downstairs, doing whatever she did to stir up the old culinary magic. His whole body reeked a potent cocktail of unleaded, diesel and premium. He could see the shiny tracks cut by the leaking overflow; a large pipe projecting out of the tangle of pumping machinery. He watched the glinting progress of the petrol puddle with mild disinterest, making a note to swab up the spill and shut off the clutch-hose. In a dream, unable to move, he heard Hannah calling “HOLLY!” from the stoop, and saw his daughter’s shoulders slump as she turned to trudge dejectedly back home, so much of the girl her mother's daughter.
Dinner passed with its usual outbursts, and he heard himself making up some reason to excuse himself as he headed off along the line of least resistance between where he was, and where he wanted to be. He remembered the touch of the breeze pressing softly on his cheek, and the warm, soothing sensation of the Swift Half he had promised himself as he changed the filters and refilled the pumps.
This time around every instinct inside him screamed out against that habitual "One for the road" he felt duty bound to claim from Jim Beckett, but claim it he did.
And where else did he have to go then, except home?
He was out past the arches when the sickening, fever-pitched shrieking noise began its battering assault on his ears. Then, every nerve-ending clenching spastically, he turned . . . in time to see the red blur of a sports car, barely in control, mount the snow covered verge like some kind of mechanical cannonball, and judder wildly back on to the blacktop, churning slush and gravel.
And still he seemed to be floating, floating in the clutch of a dream, he would never reach the garage, only run and run and get nowhere. Crazy.
Mike watched for a moment, paralysed with sick fascination, as the wildly slewing car hurtled madly on. There was a dim clang, and then something silver and dented clattered past him. He placed one hand against the rough wood of a railing to steady himself, and then started to run.
I can get there! I know what's going to happen! I can get there this time! I can!
But something inside his body didn't seem to want him to make it this time either. He felt the first touch of fear then, as he scrambled out of the weight of the snow. His legs dragged like lead. The hellish chorus of shrieking tyres wailed dangerously around another corner.
Hair flying back from his forehead, a terrified grimace pasted to his face, the wind roaring in his ears, Mike rushed for home, his feet slipping under him as he careened crazily down the ice-polished road. Knowing, and sick for it. The garage was closer, white walls reflecting the icy dazzle of the winter landscape, the island of pumps dappled with a fine powder of snow, and that shrieking. . .
His own screams started then.
He was full of moaning, desperate panic, and the day seemed blindingly bright. Mike scrambled forwards, craning his neck to send his gaze over a row of wild hedges even as he began to run again, straight down the widening asphalt road, back towards the entrance onto the Hexham road. His breath tearing in and out of his lungs like stabbing blades.
He heard the crack-boomph loud as thunder.
In that frozen second before the out of control car slewed into the pump island, Mike screamed soundlessly. In the dream, he imagined he saw the rictus-locked face of the runaway's driver, grinning like the corpse it already was.
The pump blew with a huge whummpff. The first flames were blue, and spread out rapidly, fanned by the wind. Mike felt the immense, sucking pressure of the explosion in his ear-drums and against his eyes as the air around him changed. Cold-withered hedges writhed under the sudden slap of the heat-wind, their leaves fluttering frantically like match pennants on a windy day.
He was close enough now, to see the kind of corona that held the first pump and the twisted wreck of the red sports car at its centre. Burning pieces of the wreckage started to rain down on the wide gravel lot, twisted and blackened beyond easy recognition.
They clattered with the clanging ring of steel bells, rivets still hanging out of some of the chunks of metal.
Whuummmpfff.
Black smoke billowed from the pump, thick with lead, clawing up through the scorched air to an amazing height, without rafting away. Black and red met like a canopy in the sky. The second and third pumps blew together, the ferocious, searing heat of the detonations shrivelling his skin, making his eyes water and his throat burn. And still the screaming blaze grew. The fire was encasing the living area now, the sweet stench of petrol filling the air, hot wind ripping at his clothes.
Then, Wwwhuuuuuummmmmmmmpffff! As the underground storage tanks caught with a fury that dazzled even his brightest dreams.
The garage was an inferno, wind fanning flames that in turn conjured new winds and brighter flames. He ran towards it anyway, his eyes streaming as the black smoke bit at them, only knowing that the girls were somewhere inside the firestorm, and he had to reach them soon otherwise it would be too late to do anything other tha
n grieve.
On every side the flames had hold.
Only the workshop wasn't blazing, and the veering wind would soon carry the flames in its direction. The battering heat of the inferno was almost unbearable. It bludgeoned him from every side, cooking his thoughts to a crisp, incoherent babble. Tears were pouring from his smoke-stung eyes, and he could barely focus on the ground he was stumbling across. Above, an indistinct flurry of movement within the heart of the conflagration, at the window of Holly's playroom, caught his eye.
The world was alive with fire.
And in that moment, he watched his daughter burn, her tiny fingers clawing uselessly at the glass window. Rather than draw a lung choking breath to scream, Mike hurled himself into the blaze.
She was bloodied and blackened, terrified and almost surely dead, but perhaps, if he moved quickly enough, life could be pumped back into her. The ground ahead was littered with fire savaged debris and burning wreckage. As hard as he looked, there was no way through the fire sheet. He was forced to watch helplessly, the glassy mirrors reflecting the flames. His view of the window clogged behind a pall of thick black smoke.
Whuuuuummmmppfff!
A fresh torrent of heat washed over Mike then, and his legs gave out beneath him.
Distantly, he heard the sound of breaking glass, cutting deeply into his bitter memories with brutal effectiveness. The shock of that familiar sound dragged him back from that bleak December day with frightening immediacy.
The glass had broken in his hand, water and blood mingling with the fragments of glass digging into his palm.
That familiar ache was back inside.
There was a kitchen knife in his good hand when he moved back through to the living area.
A part of him was vaguely aware of Elton mourning how wonderful life was when they were in his world. He undressed slowly, laying his clothes out neatly, and then sat down cross-legged on the rumpled bed, contemplating the gleaming edge of the knife balanced between his fingers. The only edge in his life that still looked good and keen.
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