Death is a Welcome Guest: Plague Times Trilogy 2

by Louise Welsh

  Magnus stopped the truck short of its usual parking place. ‘You put him in the what?’

  Father Wingate said, ‘Tanqueray House really is quite ancient and my ancestors were rather dreadful. They used to put their enemies down there and throw away the key.’ His voice grew anxious. ‘I don’t think we should do that.’

  Will nodded. ‘We are civilised people. We want justice, not revenge. Taking a life is a grave responsibility. It was one Jacob shouldered when he saved you both and it is one that I am willing to shoulder in turn.’

  Magnus shook his head in disbelief. ‘Raisha and Belle won’t agree.’

  Will’s smile was modest, a director announcing a star casting. ‘Belle helped me.’

  ‘And Raisha?’

  Will nodded. ‘She agreed.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ Magnus whispered. ‘All of you.’

  ‘My son …’ Father Wingate squeezed his shoulder.

  Will said, ‘We’re alive and we intend staying alive, even if that means defending ourselves. This man is nothing to you. Go and find your family.’

  Magnus closed his eyes. ‘When I find my family I want to be able to look them in the eye.’

  Thirty-Two

  Jeb was a long way down in the dank and the dark. He said, ‘I thought you’d be in Jockland by now.’

  ‘You and me both.’ Magnus had envisaged a cell more rustic than the one they had shared in Pentonville, but of the same basic design. Instead he was lying flat on his belly in a damp basement, looking through a metal grille set into the ceiling of the cellar below. It was hard to make out Jeb’s features in the gloom, but Magnus recognised the hang of his head, the slump of his shoulders. ‘I thought I’d stick around and try and save you from the gallows.’

  Jeb was sitting on the ground, his good leg bent beneath him, his broken one stretched out straight. He looked up, his face a spot of white in the darkness.

  ‘Is that how they’re planning on doing it?’

  Magnus shook his head. ‘I don’t think they have a plan yet. How did they get you down there?’

  Jeb grimaced. ‘The element of surprise. Belle unlocked my door. I should have realised when I saw her. She was wearing a beret and combat trousers, like a member of the fucking Angry Brigade. I thought she’d come to let me out, but she drew a gun on me. I could have handled that, I actually laughed when I saw it. I didn’t reckon on that ugly twat being right behind her. He put Jacob’s gun against my head, ordered me into a rusty wheelchair that probably last saw service in World War One and shoved me through the house in it.’

  The palms of Magnus’s hands were damp and gritty against the cold flagstones, his flesh chilled beneath his jeans and T-shirt. He shifted a little. ‘Was Raisha with them?’

  ‘No, she went her own sweet way as usual. The old priest was there, flapping on about how they weren’t going to hurt me. But he led the way to the dungeon sure enough.’

  ‘How did they get you down the stairs?’

  ‘A gun is a great motivator.’ Jeb rubbed the plaster encasing his broken leg. ‘I don’t suppose you have one to spare?’

  ‘Will searched me before he let me in here.’

  ‘What’s the chance of you laying your hands on one?’

  ‘Slim to non-existent. He’s on my back like a shadow.’

  Jeb’s voice was insistent. ‘So fuck him up. Stick a knife in his guts, trip him down the stairs, poison him or suffocate him in his sleep. He’s not the man Jacob was. You could take him.’

  Magnus was not sure that he would be up to the job, but it made no difference. ‘Will made a point of telling me he’s hidden the key to the dungeon. He’s the only one who knows where it is.’

  The grille was too small for a grown man to pass through. Magnus put his face close to its bars, but he could not make out the interior of the cell below.

  ‘What’s the door like?’

  ‘Fucking impregnable.’ Jeb lowered his head. ‘You may as well get going. I’m finished.’

  ‘Not necessarily …’ Magnus could no longer see the other man in the dim light of the dungeon. It was like speaking to the dead. He said, ‘They want justice. If I can prove someone else shot Jacob, they’ll let you go.’

  Jeb’s voice came soft and flat, out of the blackness. ‘Do you know how often we solved a murder when I was in the police?’ He did not bother to wait for an answer. ‘Generally when the killer confessed, or we found them standing by the body holding the murder weapon. This isn’t Murder She Wrote and you’re not Nancy Drew.’

  ‘Jessica Fletcher.’

  ‘Miss Marple, Perry Mason, fucking Columbo: you’re not any of them. If you want to get me out of here, get a weapon and take Will out when he’s got the key on him.’

  There had been too much killing for Magnus to embrace another death. He said, ‘There are only four people to choose from: Will, Belle, Raisha and Father Wingate.’ In his mind Magnus rejected the notion that Raisha might be the murderer. ‘If I can work out who wanted Jacob dead, I’ll have found the killer.’

  ‘Just like that.’ Jeb’s laugh sounded hollow from the shadows below. ‘What if it’s a motiveless crime?’

  Newspapers used to carry headlines of senseless violence. A stranger knifed in the anonymity of rush hour, a dog walker raped in a quiet beauty spot, a child abducted on its way home from school.

  Magnus said, ‘Even anonymous crimes have a motive, usually power. Jacob and Will locked horns. Now Will’s in charge. Maybe I should start with him.’

  ‘No.’ Jeb’s voice was low as if he were worried someone might be listening, and Magnus had to strain to hear him. ‘Always begin an investigation with the victim. Give Will the slip and search Jacob’s room. Look for anything that seems out of place and see where it takes you.’

  ‘And if I find nothing?’

  ‘Raisha’s your next stop.’

  Magnus shifted his body again, feeling the cellar flagstones rough and damp through his cotton T-shirt. ‘She’s not the killer.’

  ‘Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t, but you’re sleeping with her. She likes you and that means she’ll be more inclined to talk.’

  Magnus wondered how Jeb had known about the two of them. He said, ‘I’m not you. I don’t sleep with women in order to spy on them.’

  ‘I’m sure your heart is pure.’ Jeb’s laugh turned into a cough. The sound echoed dimly against the stone walls of his cell. ‘But from down here your honour seems a small price for my life.’

  Thirty-Three

  Magnus had expected Jacob’s room to be in military order, but the bed was unmade, its sheets a tangle that spoke of sleepless nights and bad dreams. There was a Bible on the bedside table next to a half-empty glass of whisky. Magnus opened it and a photograph fell to the floor. He picked it up and saw a smiling woman sitting next to two little girls in summer dresses. Magnus had imagined Jacob’s wife Annie as a frail brunette in need of protection, but the woman in the photograph was a voluptuous blonde; sexy and capable.

  Belle was standing in the doorway. ‘Can I see?’

  Magnus handed the picture to her.

  Belle glanced at the photograph of Jacob’s wife and gave a small snort of amusement. ‘That’s how Marilyn Monroe would have looked if she’d eaten all the pies.’

  Magnus took the picture back. He felt a need to defend the dead woman. ‘She looks nice.’

  Belle shrugged. ‘You mean she looks like she could fuck and cook. I guess that’s all men will want now.’

  The girl had been sarcastic and skittish since Jacob’s death. Magnus resisted asking if she was thinking about leaving the group in case she mistook the question for an invitation. He opened the drawer of the bedside cabinet and pawed through its contents: a tube of Savlon, a box of matches, a dead battery. He slid his fingers above and below the drawer, checking its hidden surfaces the way he had seen spies in movies do, but nothing was taped there. He thought Belle would ask what he was looking for, but instead she said, ‘How’s Jeb?’ />
  ‘Locked in a dungeon, but otherwise on top of the world.’

  ‘Perhaps I should visit him.’

  Magnus lifted Jacob’s pillow. He turned to look at the girl. ‘Would Will give you the key?’

  Belle said, ‘Will thinks he’s the big man now Jacob’s gone. And you know how keen big men are on keys.’

  ‘Would you be willing to ask him for it?’

  She paused, considering his question. ‘Probably not.’

  Magnus dropped the pillow back on the bed and pulled the covers down. There was a stain on the sheet, stiff and familiar. He felt a quick stab of shame and drew the bedclothes over it.‘Because Jeb insulted you?’

  ‘Because he killed Jacob.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘How sure are you that he didn’t?’

  ‘Pretty sure.’ Magnus lifted the mattress. The slats below were empty. He had built a bed like it once, a flat-pack from Ikea he had assembled and then christened with a girl he had gone out with in college. He let the mattress flop back down again and sat on it. ‘Why didn’t you come to the funeral?’

  ‘I couldn’t face it.’ Belle ran a finger through the dust on a chest of drawers by the window, leaving a wavy line on its surface, a river or a swimming snake. ‘Jacob focused on survival so much it’s ironic he’s dead.’ She dragged a hand through her hair. A wisp came away. Belle looked at it and then let it fall to the floor. ‘He wouldn’t have let you leave, you know. He’d decided you were crucial to the community.’ She stressed the words. ‘I thought about leaving after Melody died.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘But where would I go?’

  It was Magnus’s cue to invite her to join him. He asked, ‘How did you end up here?’

  ‘It’s not much of a story.’ Belle boosted herself up on to the chest of drawers. ‘I was working in the King’s Cross Starbucks when the sweats started. My dad had a thing about his children learning to fend for themselves.’ She swung her legs, watching her feet scissor to and fro. Belle had lost more weight and her limbs looked long and insect-like. ‘They were at our holiday home in Portugal when the sweats got them. I should have been there too, but I’d had another row with my dad about money; a big one.’ Her eyes met Magnus’s. ‘He was pretty tight, my dad, but he usually came round in the end. I thought staying in London might make him miss me.’ She drew a circle in the dust beside her and dotted her finger into its centre, a glaring eyeball. ‘Imagine if I had gone with them. I’d be all alone now in a country where I don’t speak the language.’

  ‘Are you certain they didn’t make it?’

  Belle stared at the surface of the chest of drawers and painted more patterns in the dust. ‘Dad telephoned to tell me that Mum was ill. I could tell he was worried, but he didn’t sound frantic. I thought she would be okay. He phoned back a day later. She had died and my sister was in hospital.’ Belle added another swirl to her dustscape. ‘I thought grief had made his voice hoarse, but later I realised it was the sickness. I phoned him back, phoned all of that day, into the night, through the next day and the next, but that was the last time I spoke to him.’ Her voice was flat, as if none of it mattered. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do so I phoned my aunt in Shropshire. We decided I should go and stay with her, but just as I was about to get on the train she called to say that she was unwell. I think she would have liked me to come anyway, but much as I was fond of my aunt, I wasn’t willing to die for her.

  ‘The girls I was sharing a flat with both went home. I had nowhere to go, so I stayed on, watching television and emailing and texting friends. One by one they stopped replying.’ She gave a small, sad smile. ‘I used to have some good friends.’ Her eyes were slightly glazed, her voice far away. ‘I ran out of food, but the Internet and television were trending riots and curfews and I was scared to go outside. I think I was ill for a few days, it’s all a bit hazy, but I do remember hearing a woman screaming in the street outside, as if she were being murdered, and hiding under my bedclothes praying for her to shut up. Then the Internet went off. So did the water and electricity. I saw a rat in the toilet. I wasn’t sure if it was real or if I was hallucinating, but somehow after that the flat didn’t seem safe any more. I knew that if I was going to survive I had to get out of London.’

  Magnus remembered his own flight from the city. The smashed shops, abandoned cars and dead bodies lying forsaken in the streets. ‘That couldn’t have been easy.’

  Belle’s eyes met his. ‘There were gangs rounding up women, did you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I saw one. Men armed with rifles guarding half a dozen women who were handcuffed to a chain. One of them was only a girl, a tiny little thing with big eyes. Another was ancient, a pensioner. It didn’t seem to matter what age they were or what they looked like, as long as they were female. A couple of the women were bruised and staggering, as if they’d been beaten up. I hid in a shop and watched the men force them into a van. After that I got myself a knife and only ever travelled at night.’ Belle had lowered her head as she spoke; now she raised her eyes to his. ‘I get so scared. I’ve thought about leaving ever since Melody hanged herself. But what if I met men like that?’

  ‘You trusted Jacob.’

  ‘Not straight away. I met Melody first. She was on a foraging trip. I followed her back here. She told me later that she knew I was there, but didn’t want to scare me away. That was what Melody was like, gentle. She persuaded me to stay the night and introduced me to Jacob. I thought the priest’s collar was probably a con. But by that time I was in bad shape. Melody and Raisha were living here and they seemed okay. I needed to be with other people and so I took a chance.’

  ‘Jacob thought Melody and Henry had been murdered.’

  Belle shrugged. ‘Jacob wanted to live more than any of us. I think his lust for life embarrassed him, but he couldn’t help it. The idea that survivors would kill themselves offended him.’ She gave Magnus an apologetic look, as if the strength of her own opinion had surprised her. ‘That’s what I think, for what it’s worth.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right, but Jacob was definitely murdered.’ Magnus kept his voice gentle. ‘Do you know why he died?’

  Belle gave a frightened giggle. ‘He died because someone shot his head off.’ She slid off the chest of drawers. ‘I don’t know why you’re so keen on getting Jeb out. Even if he didn’t shoot Jacob he killed that woman and her child. Either way he deserves to be locked up.’

  ‘If he didn’t kill Jacob then someone else did. Doesn’t that bother you?’

  ‘It bothers me.’

  Magnus touched her arm. ‘Do you know the reason Jacob died?’

  Belle gave him a brilliant smile, an underweight chorus girl whose grin could shine all the way to the back row. ‘I think he must have really pissed someone off.’

  Thirty-Four

  Magnus spent the next hour searching Jacob’s room, but there was no diary, no letter beginning In the event of my death … The closest he came was a scrap of paper tucked into the pocket of a pair of trousers.

  Motives

  Love

  Money

  Power

  The priest had scored a line through money, leaving love and power, like words waiting to be tattooed on the knuckles of someone’s hands. Jeb and Belle had made love, but there was none lost between them now. Will had taken charge of the group, but he was not a natural leader and Magnus thought he might secretly be grateful if someone came along to relieve him of that power.

  ‘Love and power,’ he whispered under his breath. One of the puppies wandered into the room and nudged his leg. Magnus scrunched its ears and the dog, satisfied that all was well, jumped on to the half-made bed. Magnus stared out of the window, beyond the garden where Jacob had died and into the darkening evening. Killing was the execution of power and love could also be mercy. There was power in love too, he supposed. Father Wingate’s all-powerful God killed for the love of humanity, or so the old man insisted.

  ‘Love
and power.’

  The dog on the bed shifted in its sleep. A flock of birds swooped over the vegetable beds, into the woods beyond. He would go down to the lower basement and speak to Jeb through the grille before it got too dark to see.

  He was about to turn away from the window when a slight figure dressed in a dark tracksuit darted across the garden. Raisha had pulled the jacket’s hood up, hiding her features, but Magnus did not need to see her face to know that it was her. He left Jacob’s room, hurried down the stairs, through the kitchen and out into the dusk. The garden was empty. He jogged past the vegetable beds, past the spot where Jacob had died, in the direction Raisha had taken. There was no sign of her. Magnus skirted the wall until he saw a wrought-iron gate he had not noticed before. He pulled and pushed it, but the gate was locked.

  ‘Raisha?’ He hissed her name. There was no reply, only the sound of the breeze lifting the trees. The air was heavy with a presentiment of rain. ‘Raisha?’

  Something caught his eye. He looked back at the house and saw the paraffin lamps glow into life on the kitchen windowsills, casting oblongs of light on to the lawn. Inside Father Wingate, dressed in a baggy jumper, crossed the kitchen and disappeared from Magnus’s sightline.

  Magnus found a foothold on the rough stone wall, and boosted himself upward with the help of the gate’s wrought-iron curlicues. The first time he lost his grip and fell on to the damp grass. But the second time he made it on to the top of the wall. He sat there for a moment hoping to spot Raisha, but the belt of trees restricted his view, nodding and bobbing in the twilight. Magnus dropped down on to the other side. There was slim chance of finding anyone in the woods, but he might catch a glimpse of her in the open fields beyond.

  Magnus jogged into the knotty pine scent of the wood and went from gloaming into night. There was a path of sorts, but the men who had husbanded the trees were all dead, no one had cleared it for a while and it was littered with twigs and fallen branches. Magnus slowed his pace, careful not to trip. His death might be waiting here, far from the sea, in a foreign landscape of tree trunks and waving branches, but there was no anticipating death, not unless you took the path his cousin Hugh had followed. ‘The road less travelled,’ Jacob had said, after he shot the driver of the yellow Audi.