Sufferer's Song
Author: Steve Savile
Date: 2010-08-15 08:08:50+00:00
Description: Kristy French is obsessed with trying to find whatever it is that links the disappearance of Jude Kenyon, a hiker, Frank Rogan, a local farmer, and the suicide of Monk Sanders, the 'enforcer' for a disgraced scientist. Once she starts digging she stumbles into a Frankensteinian nightmare in the wilds of Northumberland. But who is the monster?
Publisher: Crossroad Press

THE SUFFERER'S SONG

by Steven Savile

Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital Edition

Copyright 2010 by Steve Savile &Macabre Ink Digital Publications

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Part One

The Fools that Live on the Hill

- 1 -

Jude Kenyon sat on the rotten stump of dead oak, her legs crossed and arms folded, watching the sun fade and the sky redden around the snow-dusted rooftops below. She sat that way, ignoring the cold seeping through her skin and numbing her bones, dwelling on all the things that were wrong with the world she was so eager to run away from, hungry, sore and cold.

Moses Hill was quiet, save for the occasional whisper of sounds; the rush of the stream nearby, the flit of bird's wings, and her own shallow breathing.

Jude cupped her hands around her mouth to form a wind tunnel of warmer air and breathed, thawing her nose and the skin around and underneath her eyes. So far from home. A self-obsessed, self-destructive part of her half-wished that she might never go back – that home and work and Nick weren't the sole ingredients of her every day.

Nick, a man whose only genuine talents seemed to be failing to catch the waiter's eye in the local Trattoria, and standing on the curb and getting soaked down one side as the cars aquaplaned through the gutters of puddles. Sometimes he stretched himself and wrote mind-numbingly dull poems under the auspices of social conscience. Jude had had two weeks of splendid isolation in the Northumbrian moors to get away from her eclectic Mister Wonderful and already they had slipped into three and were threatening a fourth. Time aplenty to cast a cold - lucid - eye over the remnants of what was a rather anaemic infatuation. She balked at actually calling it a mistake; they had been young when they first got together, and she couldn't deny they had shared a few good times between them, but those good times seemed to be getting fewer and further between. Now he buried his heart in blissful ignorance and continued to offer up that sickly, claustrophobic, smother-love that made every new day they spent together another gentle delirium to be endured rather than enjoyed.

She stared down the hill, looking for some small consolation in its rolling blanket of whites and greys, but saw only man and dog racing up the tricky slope, dog -a black and tan Doberman- bounding, man semaphoring his difficulties as he struggled to keep his balance.

Jude didn't hear the footsteps moving up behind her.

“Don't scream,” the man’s accent was thick and difficult to follow. “And I won't hurt you.”

Then his hand was across her mouth, reeking of stale cigarettes, and his laughter was in her ear, slow, maniacal. Any doubts that may have lingered were suffocated beneath those stinking hands.

She couldn't stop her heart from scrambling; couldn't stop her lungs from constricting; couldn’t stop the fear from reaching down into her stomach. She saw him out of the corner of her left eye; his vague outline crouched down to form an evil cradling cup around her back. Her right eye fixed on the stranger racing up the hill and the black and tan flurry at his side.

Jude felt two fingers trace almost gentle lines across her cheekbone before they clenched, bitten-down nails digging into the tender skin, drawing blood.

“He'll break your heart,” her attacker goaded, breaking the long seconds of dark-sliding silence to grab a handful of Jude's hair and force her head back until she had no choice but to look at him: at his short-cropped hair, peppered with the white of falling snow, at his simian brow and his predatory eyes of ice and fire, at his face, so close to hers. “Because he ain't no White Knight, believe me.”

She felt him kneading at her breast; tasted his sour breath in the back of her throat. The barking of the Doberman subsided into familiarity.

He spat in her face, and when she tried to wipe it away casually back-handed her across the cheek, hawked and spat again. She tried to scream as he forced her head down so far she thought she was going to choke on her own breastbone. Then he yanked it again, demanding she watch as the running man slowed to a more sedate jog, then, twenty feet away, a walk. “Man, you started without me,” he called, shaking his head.

The hand covering Jude's mouth withdrew. “Nobody's going to hear you scream,” her attacker goaded, and punched her in the throat, hard.

Both men knelt over her while she clawed at her throat and choked on the damage the punch had done.

The last feeling Jude suffered before she lost consciousness was of her mouth being pried open and some kind of fabric being stuffed inside. Small mercy that it was, Jude Kenyon was saved from the real hurts of the violation that followed.

- 2 -

Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto fairly rolled out of the recessed speakers, the sounds swelling, sweeping and swooning while Brent Richards hummed his own gentle parody of notes.

The crane fly on the desk blotter ceased to be an amusing distraction and became another component of his bleak mood. Recapping the lid of his tortoiseshell pen Richards walked his fingers in behind the fly’s back and with a deft swoop pinned one leg to the inky paper. The suddenly higher, more frantic, pitching of the wings amused him while he amused himself. He pinched the chitinous wings between the tips of his thumb and forefinger, felt them vibrate, desperate for flight, and rolled them, crippling the fly before he plucked the whisper-thin wings free. Playing God and destroyer.

“If thine wings do offend thee, then pluck them off,” he told the dying insect. “Do you hear the silence as an absence of sound or as a complete swamping of sounds so full, so intense, that they drown out everything, even your wing beats?” It was something to hide himself in instead of facing the ugly truth that was written so plainly in his journal. Kappa was suffering some form of retrograde devolution. It was disturbing. She was shrivelling into a husk, but why? All of the indicators, alpha and theta waves included, were positive. By rights Kappa ought to have been growing her own metaphorical wings. Not . . . not – he could barely bring himself to think it – dying.

With the pad of his thumb, Richards pressed the fly into the weave of the blotting paper, careful to preserve the illusion of a miniature man made by the dead fly. Uncapping the pen again, he wrote on the pristine white of the blotting paper, very neatly, very precisely: Evolution Hurts. Then framed the whole macabre joke as if it were some caption cartoon by Schultz – his own social comment – in a web of black ink around the letters N.E.S.T..

Neurological Emotional Stimuli Trigger.

He knew what he wanted to write now. He reached across for his journal, thumbing through the pages until he found the demarcation Imperfect Evolution, and began transcribing his doubts about the E-Motion enzyme and its anomalous retrogressive effect, inserting the Greek Kappa in place of the name Kenyon.

‘April 11th:

‘The viral based manipulation mechanism ought to be nothing more than a natural extrapolation of the NEST PROJECT but test case Kappa remains an anomaly. Like the other Pilgrims she persists with dangerously high levels of endorphin addiction to the extent of mirroring the effects of delirium tremens. Kappa is no more than an addict; there is no other way to explain it. For every one step forward she makes mentally her body weakens threefold. How much more can she take?

‘The infiltration of the host nuclei has worked thus far to produce a tandem Foundation-Slave relationship. Isolated NEST cultures show the prevalent E-Motion suppressant enzyme, which in turn stamps its trace identity onto the Foundation – host – cell and proceeds to habituate the host as a pariah, sapping everything it has to give. The process is similar to that of a wandering hermit crab although in Kappa’s case the drain is dangerously close to being lethal in terms of cytotoxicity and rejection of the hermit spores.

‘After the short-lived downtime during which the enzyme gestates, the Slave antigen triggers a rapid acceleration of the host’s metabolism, accounting for much of the physical weight loss and energy drain. Epinephrine works in some ways to stimulate a transferral of Kappa’s emotional condition. Sexual urges appear to heighten markedly after exposure to the Epinephrine. Kappa has taken to throwing herself bodily about the cell, beating her face, tearing hanks of hair from her scalp and abusing her body in any manner we cannot prevent. She has gone wild. Appetites are best described as insatiable, and again I would diagnose this to be an effect of the accelerated metabolic rate. But there are so many things I do not understand. Why is she withering to a husk despite the rapid escalation of her appetites? Why is she driven to masochistic extremis? No matter how desperately I might wish it otherwise, it seems we cannot simply rush headlong into Hell’s fires. No, softly, softly, catchy monkey as they say. The dimensions, the implications of NEST beggar comprehension. It could be the beginning of the human revolution if only we can isolate the rogue element.’

Richards found himself wanting to say so much more, but words had to descend into formulae and formulae in turn needs must descend into the murky realms of biofeedback, genetics and supposition. DNA. It was like a fingerprint smeared across his cornea; a blueprint for Homo Superior. Man plus. A man capable of turning on or tuning out emotion, tuning out pain and hurt, but with the flipside capability of exploding hatefully when he needed something more. Something that cold. Something that cynical. The latent talent to turn on or off the whole gamut of emotions and fine tune the blend when the situation demanded something infinitely more complex from him. A man to react as the new world warranted. The perfect man for all seasons. Lover, Warrior, Friend.

It was close. So very, very close. Yet so impossibly far away.

Kappa was just the beginning. A Pilgrim making a long journey towards her God. Perfect could not be rushed. So, she had her sweats, her addictions, but these were nothing more than a wrinkle to be ironed out. Something in the dosage of the enzyme, perhaps? Something as sublime as their storage techniques, maybe? Something to think about definitely, like the enzyme itself, something to build a foundation upon.

That first step on the road towards Oz for its not-so-wonderful wizard. Only the rapidly degenerating wreck of a human being that had been Jude Kenyon stood between the foundation and laying the first solid bricks.

Objectively, Richards held out little hope of her surviving the coming night. After that, well then Kappa was just one more corpse in a shallow grave. Another brick undermining his wall.

Outside, an alarm sounded.

The cries were taken up inside.

“Oh, dear God, what is it now?”

The office door opened before he was halfway out of his seat.

“Dead,” a face as white as the lab coat beneath it blurted even before it was in the room. “Two of them. Dead.”

“What are you talking about, man?” Richards demanded. Calm. Clinical. Already thinking in terms of damage limitation. “Slowly. Tell me slowly. What happened?”

The lab assistant swallowed a huge lungful of air and tried to moderate his frantic breathing. “I found them in the N.E.S.T. lab. Graeme and Hobart. Ripped apart,” he seemed to be caught up in the last vestiges of the nightmare. “Their eyes had been clawed out.” It was almost an afterthought. “It was horrible. There was blood everywhere. The lock on the cell door had been shattered. How could they hold so much blood?”

Richards had stopped listening. His was trying to think like Kappa. Where would she go? Back to the hills where she had been kidnapped? It made a sick kind of sense. “I want three teams combing the compound. Two outside. Damn. Send Sanders and Dickinson into the wilds, and have Duncan and Sawyer head towards the village. Find them. Bring them back.”

- 3 –

The tap was dripping again; the slow, monotonous splash of each tear breaking in the porcelain cup enough to rouse Frank Rogan from his meandering daydream and set his teeth on edge.

One minute closer to death, the tears seemed to be mocking in their whispering, watery voices.

One minute closer…

“And just what the hell d’you know about it anyway?” Frank accused the tears, angry with himself for letting Billy's forgetfulness get under his skin.

He looked up at the window, aware that the soft keening of the wind had stopped and a deep, heavy silence had gathered within the woods outside; the night brooding over the summer and slowly shattering dreams. It was too dark even to see the twisted branches of Hangman's Oak in the yard.

A quiver of something akin to dread trembled through his heavy bones. Frank stretched, his shoulder joint popping like a broomstick, and stood up.

Reflected in the glass he saw a square face formed around deep-set, morose eyes; a tight web crow’s feet and worry lines, hair shot through with silver. Rogan had never been a handsome man, but in that moment, as another watery drop escaped the tap's mouth, Frank recognised the mirror-man as a smaller, tormented caricature of his long gone youth. Compared with the sketchy portrait of an unreliable memory, the face caught in the glass seemed the cruellest trick of time itself.

There was something else, too; something else that had shifted within the face of the reflection. Frank couldn't put his finger on it, but whatever it was, it left him feeling decidedly uneasy.

Moving cautiously, careful to step over the lifted floorboard in the centre of the room, he reached the sink, his eyes drawing level with those of his ghostly doppelganger, pressed his palms against the glass, and strained to peer out into the darkness behind the mirror-window.

Everything out there was shadows and smears.

With the main Hexham to Carlisle road more than three miles away to the north, the world was silent. Standing blind at the window, Rogan was hard pushed to suppress the shudder he felt from rising.

“What choice have I got?” he asked himself bitterly. He thought of the girl in the photograph lying on the kitchen table and knew that the answer was no choice at all.

Rogan took a step back and turned stepping over the shallow hole that had been left by a missing floorboard. He reached across to dim the light, picked up his lukewarm mug of coffee from the kitchen table, put it down and picked up a photograph in its place. Rogan saw the accusation in her blackened eyes. He crumpled the photo and threw it at the back wall. “No choice,” he said again as he went through to the hall and made the call.

And still that sense of wrongness, so hard to explain, so impossible to ignore, continued to fester inside Frank Rogan. The cold voice of instinct whispered in his ear: death was one minute closer,

And someone – something – was out there, in the darkness.

Watching him.

- 4 -

Spring had been late this year, its light, childish touch not chasing away the damp, grey days and frost-bitten nights of March until it had felt like the snow would never thaw.

Even in spring there had been the bad weeks of course, just as there had been good ones. Too many were passed waiting for twilight seep the colours out of the houses and trees, taking long walks through the small lakeside park or along the jetty. Watching the children on the swings and roundabouts, laughing and giggling, swinging high and racing round, bubbling so full of life whilst Ben Shelton wallowed in what-might-have-beens.

Every once in a while, as a giggling child was lifted down from the swings, a parent would catch a glimpse of the small plaque on the seat and read his worn farewell: For Hannah and Holly, my two girls, who had so much fun here so long ago.

They would hug their children that little bit harder then, and those that knew would remember his story and his sadness, which wasn't such a bad thing.

Done with walking, Ben came home to Wit's End to stare at the blank computer screen. Okay, Benjamin, what say we exercise the old fingers before they start growing leaves?

Ben slipped the work-in-progress flash drive into the USB slot, and tapped out the commands to take him through the directories until SUFFERER1 -- May 11,’ appeared in the corner of the screen.

He tapped out a few keys – the same ones he had hit, in the same combination maybe a hundred times before.

- THE SUFFERER'S SONG –

BY

Benjamin Shelton

The words appeared within the pristine white sheet of the screen.

Then he sat there, shifting his attention to the row of books on the bookcase beside the idling computer. It wasn't a handsome bookcase, but it served the purpose. The bottom two shelves were taken up with a series of volumes on fairy tales, legends and strange phenomena. The two shelves above were filled with a mixture of fiction and fact on that same subject; Charles Beaumont's The Hunger and Other Stories jostled for place with a countless array of stock-in-trade King, Koontz and Herbert paperbacks. Older stuff too, M.R. James, Henry James, Lovecraft, Nolan, Matheson, Blackwood, Shelley and Stoker. The last but one shelf housed more modern epics again, Eddings’ Belgariad, Martin’s Ice and Fire, Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen, Donaldson's Covenant, and Stephen Lawhead's Song of Albion trilogy, while Anderson's fairy tales lay one on top of the other with the Grimm Brother's own disturbing visions in a pile on the floor.

On the top shelf –though there were others – one book dominated the row. Its pale blue dust jacket drew the eye: The Swords of Scorn.

Ben took the collection of twelve stories down, looking at it curiously before opening the back page on the black and white photograph of himself as he had been, youthful, arrogant, with a few less puffy circles beneath the eyes. He scanned the brief biography, seeing again how perfectly that one line summed up his present state of futility: he is currently working on his first, much anticipated, novel.

A first novel that had been over three years in coming, only to go down with about as much grace as a lead balloon. And now he faced a second failure, this one two years overdue. There was a certain amount of inevitability to the treadmill; the way each fresh crop of talent trampled over his still-born literary corpse year after year until it was lost in the dim background of the book graveyard, with the new book itself unwritten, and seemingly unwriteable.

Ben sighed and put The Swords of Scorn back on the shelf without looking at the stories, sliding it into its niche beside Uneasy Streets, and turning his wandering attention back to the desk, the mug of tepid coffee and eventually, the keyboard.

He knew full well how it was going to go. He was going to sit here for fifteen minutes or maybe half an hour, or however long it took to realise he was wasting his time filling the pixelated wastebasket with the half-pages of disjointed jottings.

Scooby, his old black Labrador, lay in front of the family room's open hearth, his head resting on his paws, nose sniffing occasionally as the logs burning in the grate popped sporadically, showering sparks. The guttering fire lent the room a warm, mellow light; it served as an inner adversary to the growing darkness outside. Amber shadows stretched lazily over the sharp angles of the furniture.

Downstairs was laid out without the hindrance of walls, each room leading directly to the next in an open, airy floor plan. Everything in the workroom not wrapped in firelight was touched by the screen's harsh white tint.

Around eleven o'clock he began to type.

There was no natural flow to the words, no staccato rattle of letters racing to tell the story in his head. His fingers tapped out individual clicks that were followed by long silences, but little by little the spaces in between began to shorten.

Ben scowled at the screen.

With the fire dwindling, Scooby tired of his nest, raised himself slowly and took to prowling in his curious, bumbling gait, back and forth between the picture window in the family room and the benches marking the beginning of the breakfast area. The weight of his backside and the heavy sway of his belly bowed Scooby’s back legs, causing him to move with a clownish waddle.

Ben looked at Scooby with sadness so deep and distressing it surprised him. The moment was broken by the sound of Scooby's skittering claws on the kitchen's linoleum floor and a full-throated bark.

“What is it big fella?” Ben called through to the kitchen, expecting a knock at the back door any second. The noise continued unabated. Ben shifted uneasily in his seat. There was an element of savagery to the Labrador’s barking that suggested more than just the usual scary monsters playing up on a dark night.

“Scoob!”

The dog emerged from the dimness of the breakfast room's benches into the flickering orange of the family room. He was putting on a show for Ben, ears pricked, head erect, and chest sucked in, a sound in his throat that wasn't quite a growl, and constantly turning back to the darkness of the kitchen.

“Come on, Scoob. Here!” Scooby whined, but wouldn't move. “Come on, what's wrong, champ?” Ben murmured reassuringly as he slapped his thigh for the old Labrador to come. Reluctantly, Scooby sidled up to him, resting his head on Ben's knee, waiting patiently to be scratched.

Ben put his hands around Scooby’s jaw, felt the dog's rigidity for a second, then felt him collapse softly against him. For several seconds his body seemed to shake with small aftershocks.

“Okay champ, what is it?” Ben soothed as he stroked Scooby’s neck, calming him until he felt the tremors pass. “One of the ladies out there waiting for you?”

Scooby, knowing what was expected of him, wagged his scraggy stub of a tail and barked; a different sound altogether from the one a moment ago.

“Well I guess that's okay then, but only this once, okay? Right, now scoot.”

Scooby obediently picked up his head and shuffled back over to the fire, his backside swaggering, tail wagging back and forth with all the whip of a puppy's, and settled down on the rug.

After a minute or so Ben followed him back through.

Scooby was snuggled up by the fire, enjoying the little warmth it still gave off.

Ben went through to the bathroom to ease the pressure in his bladder, then moved through to the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee and snack on a couple of chocolate cookies, pausing on the way to switch on the stereo. Robert Cray's distinctive vocal was a still hot smoking gun by the time he had settled down in front of the file again, drawn back to the title page and the book that would not be written.

Ben fired up the browser and started sifting through the junk on the internet, ego-surfing mainly, though occasionally he stared at the road wrecks that were message boards dedicated to books and films and celebrity gossip and just about every sexual deviation he could imagine - without absorbing, or caring about any of it. The clock on the wall chimed the arrival of midnight.

Scooby shuffled through from the family room and hunkered down beside Ben's feet, wriggling around until he found a comfortable pocket of warmth to settle over, happy just to doze.

- 5 -

Frank Rogan didn't switch on the torch as he moved out to join the darkness. By keeping the light out he hoped to slip from the farmhouse into the undergrowth unseen. Behind him, the lounge window flickered to the dance of the television set.

The night was as quiet out as it was in, the air muggy. There was no one on the gravel drive between the house and the barn. Ghostly, purplish clouds swelled to fill the blue-black sky above the stacks of Longrigg Papermill lit up like a carnival at the bottom of Moses Hill. Only the very edges of the old farmhouse chafed against the blackness, the rest of the walls were gone. In the centre of the driveway the twisted shape of Hangman's Oak lived up to its name. So then, cautiously, Frank turned on the torch and played the beam across the dark spaces around him. Again he saw nothing out of place. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Straining, he listened for any out of place sounds instead; footsteps; raspy breathing; hushed voices in the darkness. Nothing.

Assuming his instinct unreliable and that there was no midnight prowler after all, Frank turned, about to go back inside when he caught a sudden flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye: a swift black smudge, indistinguishable from the countless others, darting from behind a stand of weather-worn planking to the deeper darkness of the barn, where it ducked out of sight again.

“Is someone there?” he called out. He didn't expect an answer, and wasn't disappointed.

The gash left by the open barn door was filled with a burnt-out black that swallowed the torch’s faint light. Frank swallowed hard and headed for the barn. Thirty feet from the open door nausea filled his belly. He had to stop and tell himself to slow down. The torch beam picked out the shape of a tarpaulin draped tractor.

“Is that you, Billy?” he asked the darkness. The familiar scents of wet hay and mice clung to the air. Squinting toward the hayloft, Frank ran the beam over as much of the barn as he could without stepping inside. When nothing moved, he stepped quietly into the barn and reached for the night-light switch. Three low-wattage bulbs winked on. They were barely bright enough to throw a dim film of illumination over the interior and failed to lift any of the heavier shadows that had gathered in the angles and crannies.

Frank was about to call out again when he heard something. Something, a gut feeling, pulled his eyes towards a ladder rising between the empty stalls.

“Is that you, Billy? Come on son, enough's enough,” Frank called out, the slight echo of his own voice dissipating to nothing.

An unused feeding trough ran close to the rough boards of the loft's eaves, its shadowy side untouched by the weak light. Frank's growing uneasiness had him kneeling to run the torchlight under the trough. Hard packed dirt was covered by rotten straw. Nothing moved, though rats, or any other vermin escaped from the woodpile might have been a blessing right then.

The steps leading to loft were nailed to a supporting beam. Frank hesitated. One rung at a time, he climbed up.

In the centre of the loft a more conventional set of stairs went up again, into the cupola of the main barn. These steps were covered with clusters of mouse droppings and more rotten straw.

“Billy? Billy? If you're up here boy, I'll bloody well have your hide. It’s not funny…” Frank felt his voice trailing away as he ran the light across the loft's half-formed gallery of ghosts. Apart from bales of rotting hay, decaying cobwebs and dust, it was empty. “Billy, you fuckin' ree-tard!” The old man snapped suddenly, “If it is you, you'll wish to God it wasn’t by the time I've finished with you, lad. You hear me? You'll be wishin' to God you were buried back there with your Ma.”

With the torch jammed under his arm, Frank started back down the ladder. The erratic light picked out something carved into one of the support beams, old and yellowed by the passing of years. Frank stopped four rungs down, and ran his thumbnail through the carved letters: F. R. LUVS  R. S. In a heart, with an arrow through. And that simple carving from one forgotten yesterday was enough to thaw him for a flicker. “And I never stopped,” Frank mumbled, his thumbnail lingering on the two letters of his Rosie's name. The tears came again, as they always did, when thoughts of her crept up on him sideways.

He took the last few rungs slowly, watching his footing. At bottom he danced the beam across the interior one last time, lingering on the support beam, then turned his back on it - and Rosie’s ghost - allowing the familiar weight of emptiness regain a foothold in his thoughts.

Frank lifted a corner of the plastic tarpaulin to expose the half-assembled machinery of the tractor underneath. He shone the light into the darkness beneath the rusted chassis. There was nothing but a crushed Lemonade can and the crust of a half-eaten sandwich under there.

Behind him, in the darkness, something moved.

Frank wheeled around, the arms of panic opening to engulf him with that single, grating sound: a footstep.

“Who’s there?”

Only the trailing edge of his own echo answered his cry, but when that faded he caught the quiet sound of breathing. Light beam roving wildly, Frank held his breath and waited. He had almost succeeded in convincing himself that the distant footstep was down to his imagination when it came again; a soft, sliding footstep.

“It's not funny anymore, Billy,” Frank called uncertainly. The dragging footstep came again, a little closer. “Oh, Jesus… Come on Billy, enough's enough. I didn't mean it. I don't want to hit you no more, I promise… On Mamma’s grave.”

Behind him, a clink as something struck metal.

He spun around.

There was no one there.

“Oh, Jesus… Billy, you're scaring me, Billy…”

Beyond the barn doors, a low, feral snarl broke the night’s silence.

Frank made no attempt to imagine who or what was there. Driven purely by fear, he blundered out through the doors. He heard a peculiar whimpering. It took him a moment to realise that he was hearing the sounds of his own, terrified voice.

“Holy Jesus,” he managed, seeing someone standing in the farmhouse doorway waiting for him. Though the stranger was directly in front of him, Frank couldn't see his face. The strange touch of the parlour light made him look tall: a statue of shadow. No matter what monster Frank considered his son, he couldn't mate the two together. The silhouette in the doorway moved, stepping out from the porch.

A hot, urgent growl had him turning again as another shape lurched out from beneath the branches of Hangman's Oak, dragging its feet across the loose gravel as it robbed Frank of a second way out of the triangle. For a second, it seemed to stumble but then it was up again, bringing itself forward on all fours with a curious, near lupine, swiftness.

Behind him, Frank heard the gravel scraping footsteps of a third man.

His heart was like a rock pounding against his breastbone. Something settled in Frank Rogan's stomach. He knew he was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it. The cold certainty of that knowledge clamped a hand around his throat, refusing him even one last breath.

“Ple-”

The one at his back took him down. The suddenness of its attack sent him sprawling face first to the floor. Frank felt a weight settle on his back and pin him down. Then all three shapes were swarming over him. Pulling. Tearing. They pressed his face hard against the gravel. Loose cinders bit into his cheek. Frank thrashed and kicked and flailed uselessly, trying to dislodge the burden from his back. A foot came in, catching Frank under the eye. He felt the cartilage in his nose rupture and tasted coppery wetness in his sinuses even before it reached his tongue. A second kick fractured the bone in his cheek. The foot came in again, taking him under the jaw this time. He gagged and choked, coughing up a mouthful of blood. The strength of the blow ripped something inside his throat. Blood welled in his mouth, suffocating him.

Frank could see nothing now, the weight of his attacker keeping his face pressed hard against the drive.

He tried to twist his head. Immediately the thing on his back jerked it backwards. He felt the inflamed skin of his cheek rip as it was dragged across the gravel. The foot came in again, this time crunching into the side of his neck. Pain exploded in his spinal column and fanned out through his skull. The kick sent a kaleidoscope of black dots swimming across his vision. Through the haze Frank saw the wild, feral eyes of a lunatic staring at him hungrily. Suppurating sores clustered around the lunatic’s mouth.

For a timeless second, the two of them stared at each other, eyes locked in a twisted parody of a lover’s farewell. Frank heard fabric tearing. Heard snarling, shouting, panting, as if his attackers were excited by his helplessness. Felt the hot touch of rough hands clawing at his skin. Nails raking along his back, opening him up like some textbook of anatomy.

With their hands inside him, Frank Rogan’s world came to an end.

- 6 -

Snakes of rain slithered down the windscreen as Monk Sanders swung the Land Rover around hard and started up Moses Hill.

The wheels juddered over the fingers of a weather-beaten cattle-grid. A sheet of newspaper skittered across the track, the wind whipping it up and tossing it over the Land Rover's roof, carrying it higher, until it tangled with an overhanging branch where it whipped and wriggled like somebody’s lost laundry. In the passenger seat, Richie Dickinson gazed out across the dark countryside. Neither man spoke, preferring the solitude of silence to any strained camaraderie they might have shared.

The track gradually steepened. The slick sound of mud parting under the wheels joined with the rhythm of the rain beating on the windscreen, the squeal of the wipers, and the intermittent hiss of static from the radio.

On either side of the Land Rover, the woods thickened. The leaf laden tunnel of branches swept lower, scraping the Land Rover's roof as it jounced and juddered over the muddy ruts, stone and rubble that sprouted from the weed-covered track.

The darkness outside was almost complete. Their dipped headlights left the swelling night to be captured within the tunnel of shadows and trees. The trees themselves were nothing more substantial than outlines of leaves rustling and branches swaying to the rhythm of the night. Richie scanned the rows of eerie wardens. The higher they climbed the more intense the darkness became. Ranks of gnarled, twisted trees stretched back all the way into the heart of who knew where.

“Monk,” Rob Duncan reported over the radio, “No sign of them in the Village. Looks like they're headed your way. Over.”

Sanders reached out for the radio with his free hand. “Thanks for the heads up, Rob. Over,” his usually flat Marylander's accent sounded oddly alive.

“Hey, that's what we're here for, Big Guy. Out.”

The rain, thinned to fine gauze by the leaves above, drizzled down the windscreen. Up ahead, he saw a single patch of damp, yellow light come to life in the window of an old caravan parked at the roadside. The caravan stood amid a sea of weeds and strangled grass. The insipid yellow light leaking through its small window cast a sickly pall over the dirt path leading to its door. A plastic milk crate smothered by weeds acted as a makeshift step. As they neared, Richie saw someone looking out through the window, obviously drawn by the sounds of their approach.

Two haunted eyes dominated the watcher's pale, too narrow face.

Monk twisted the headlights onto full beam. The watcher flinched away from the window.

“Gotcha, you fucker,” Monk smiled his satisfaction. Within that smile Richie Dickinson saw something innocent and almost childlike die as the look began to spread across Monk's suddenly predatory features. The sheer speed of the transition chilled him to the core. The combination of ice and fire exploding behind Monk's eyes was hypnotic. Something was happening here. Something he didn't like.

The headlights swept across the undergrowth, picking out an old corrugated iron shed. Flakes of jaded paint were peeling back to expose a tarnished underbelly of rust.

Three-inch high rain soldiers marched across the track's thick, spreading puddles. The rain was loud, spattering the windscreen, drumming on the roof, smacking the cinders, pattering through the leaves and the trees behind them. Richie could just about make out the faint outline of a solitary tree straight ahead, its trunk and spindly limbs twisted into a macabre gallows and the swinging body of a hanging man.

Trapped in the glare of the headlights honeysuckle, climbing roses and clematis crawled over the front of a farmhouse.

“They’re here,” Monk said softly as he swung the Land Rover into the driveway and stood on the brake. They stopped a handful of feet from the twisted trunk of an oak that had been scarred by fire or lightning, or possibly both. The bark had been ripped open and a jagged cleft exposed the rotten interior. But Richie wasn’t looking at the tree. His eyes were fixed on the head that had been wedged like a Christmas bauble in the cleft.

- 7 -

Alex Slater felt like death warmed through when he arrived at the Tanner’s house on Brewer Street. It was just before ten-thirty, and Brewer Street was bathed in darkness as thick as pitch. He counted the cars lined up against the curb as he walked. At the corner of Brewer Street and Dipton Walk he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. When he tried to focus on it though, it was gone. A shadow swallowed by hungrier shadows. But the afterimage remained, impossible to shake off: someone, no more than a dark smudge, really, crouched amongst the roadside trees. Perfectly still. Watching. A sickle moon ghosted occasionally through the low lying cloudbank, and irregular flashes of lightning highlighted the grim doorways and blind windows of the old Kingsbridge School across the street. Someone had set a six stick bonfire burning in the yard. The rain was busy dousing it. Street lights puddled amber on the pavement. The dark was swirling, spitting rain that broke and ran on the glass.

Beth was standing at the window, steam corkscrewing from her mug.

Alex waved as he opened the garden gate but she didn’t seem to see him. He had had nineteen years to get used to the fact that he was no giant. Grinning, he remembered a full week he’d wasted one summer dangling by his feet from the dizzy heights of Dipton Wood, trying to stretch another inch or two out of his body.

He tapped on the door and waited. Beth was holding a towel when she opened the door. Shaking himself off like a wet terrier, Alex reached to wrap his arms around her but Beth shrugged off the closeness and left him holding the towel. Closing the door behind him, Alex followed her into the house. He stopped in front of the hallway mirror to towel his hair dry and wrap a makeshift turban around his head. When Alex finally followed her into the lounge he had most of his hair tucked in beneath the towel. A runic cross dangled from his left ear, catching the white light of the television as it slithered over the room. The cross glinted like some half-glimpsed sunken treasure.

“What say we go upstairs?” Alex asked Beth with a smirk.

Beth was sat cross-legged on the floor, hunched over a half-played hand of solitaire. The index finger of her right hand twitched slightly every now and again, tapping a rhythm in time with her thoughts. She snorted; an abrupt, derisive sound, as she flipped over the King of Hearts. “What say we don't,” she said, moving the King to open a new row.

“Fine by me, I guess.” Alex shrugged. “You want to do it on the floor then? Down here in front of the fire? Nice and toastie, like?”

Beth laughed. Sitting back against the couch, she ran a lazy hand through her cherry-blossom hair. “No, I don't think so,” she said finally. Her voice was heavy, pronouncing a verdict that said guilty all the way.

Alex sighed. Condemned by his own forgetfulness. “Look, I already said I'm sorry about forgetting the rubbers, but that doesn't mean we can't, you know, fool around a bit.”

“Don't worry about it; we aren't going to be needing condoms in a hurry.”

“I don't get it, Beth. One minute you’re all over me, the next, well Jesus…What’s the matter with you?”

Beth rubbed at her eyes. They felt tacky with mascara. She looked up at him and all she could think was God, how pathetic. My own little dwarf biker from Hell. She had to bite her tongue to keep from getting the giggles. The thought was so damned silly. She didn't want to laugh at Alex. Not tonight.

He mustered a weak smile and cleared his throat nervously. Beth leaned back to look him up and down.

“Just go home,” she said wearily. “Please, Alex.”

“I don't understand, Beth. What did I do?” Alex could feel his ears and cheeks burning, and was half aware that the look on his face must have turned sickly. His hands felt clammy. His stomach turned over and his shoulders slumped. He pulled the towel from his hair and started scrunching the dampness out of it.

In the kitchen, the kettle began to squeal.

“Saved by the whistle,” he joked lamely.

“Not this time,” Beth muttered absently as she pushed herself up. She padded through to the kitchen, her bare feet slapping loudly on the cold linoleum. The kitchen smelled thickly of the fish and chip supper she’d shared with her two sisters, Ellen and Sarah. Beth crossed to the small gas hob and lifted the kettle from one of the rings.

Alex hovered uncertainly in the doorway. His face ran the gamut of emotions as he tried to fathom out what was happening between them. “Look, whatever I've done, I'm sorry,” he offered.

Beth looked up from pouring out a mug of instant coffee. She shook her head again. It was all she could do. She didn't want to cry. She really didn't want to cry. She could feel the tightness building in her throat, as if it was crammed with rubber. She could feel the tears rising, unbidden, in her eyes, reducing the kitchen to a swimming blur of colour. She wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

“No,” she said in a voice far from steady. “You don't know, do you?”

“I just thought –“

“Well, you know what thought thought, don't you,” Beth raised the mug to her lips. She desperately wanted to smoke a cigarette. For one thing, a smoke would kill the lousy taste in her throat, and for another, it would give her something to do with the hand that wasn't holding the mug.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” she replied, and that was the truth of it. The wind rustling through the neat lines of trees on Brewer Street was coming from the bleak north, from the midnight blue of the North Sea off beyond Moses Hill. The thought of the tiny life growing molecule by molecule in that secret place inside her was more frightening than anything she had ever thought about. For the first time in her life, Beth Tanner had a glimpse of the real meaning of the word lonely. “I’m not okay, Alex. I’m pregnant.”

“Pregnant?” he repeated stupidly.

“You can say it. Your prick won’t drop off, you know.”

There was an awkward moment of nothingness between them. Then Alex leaned forward slightly and slipped his arms around her waist. He tried to kiss Beth, to let her know everything was going to be alright but she pulled back as if he’d tried to put a hot coal to her lips.

“You’re not… mad?” she said, managing a thin sunless smile.

“Mad? Jesus, no… shocked I guess, but not mad… What are we going to do?”

“What do you want to do? One chance, Alex. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” he looked like a gradually waking sleepwalker: dazed, blinking and confused.

She drew a deep breath. “Let’s see if I can help you out. I’ve had more time to get used to the idea of being a parent. Not just nappies and three a.m. feeds. We’ve got three options as I see it. We can get married and keep the baby. Not get married and still keep the baby, or –“

“Beth!”

“ –Or  I could get an abortion.”

He was sinking. Drowning. “I think I can scrape up some cash for an abortion, but not enough…”

Beth laughed. A bitter laugh. “Wrong answer. I’m not ashamed and I’m not a whore. I want to keep it, Alex.”

He stared at her stupidly. “Christ, I need a fag,” he said, fumbling for the golden packet of Benson’s he’d picked up from The Railway House on the way over. “You want one?” he offered.

“No. They’re bad for the baby.”

“God, yeah, sorry,” Alex said, striking the match. “Don’t suppose this is much good either. Oh man, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know any more than you do. We aren’t born with some genetic code that says we know how to handle this kind of stuff. I’m just as scared as you are, only I have to learn real quick whether I want to or not.”

She was pleased to see that her words were having some kind of effect; the anxious confused look was fading a little from his face but his eyes were still wide. Shell-shock, she thought and had to stamp hard on the glow it lit inside her.

He laughed. Only it wasn’t really a laugh. “Okay… let’s get married. We can do this.”

“No,” Beth said as gently as she could. “I don’t want to marry you, Alex.”

He tried to put on a brave face, but it was as if that face was made of Playdoh ™, his features sagging as her words sank in. “Why not?” was all he could say.

“Why not?” she mimicked. Tears sparkled in her eyes. “You’re priceless, Alex. I don’t want anything from you. Not now. Not ever.” Instinctively, her hand rested on her stomach. Her gaze shifted to the windowsill. A perfect ring of white had settled at the bottom of the ClearBlue test tube.  “You’ve done more than enough, believe me.”

- 8 -

There were three of them huddled beneath the branches of Hangman’s Oak. Smeared with blood and grit a blackened figure looked up at Monk Sanders. It was the face of a woman, alabaster pale and distorted by a pained leer. Her left eye was swollen shut, the other was dilated so much it appeared irisless. She brought a gnarled, arthritic hand up to screen her from the lights of the Land rover and the driving rain. The woman's mouth gaped open, her lips curling back on sharp teeth that were blood-washed and clogged with strings of meat. Saliva hung in a string from her chin. The skin around her mouth was covered in pustules and weeping sores. Patches of flaking skin showed where her hair had come out in ragged clumps. The headlights bathed the driveway in light.

“Oh, sweet Jesus God alive…” Richie moaned. He couldn’t take his eyes off the head of the old man wedged in the cleft of the old tree. The eye sockets gaped emptily, like twin moons in a Martian sky, torn ligaments rashers of bloody red cloud. “Oh no… oh no… Oh no, no, no.”

Monk was smiling broadly. The warm rain had matted his short-cropped hair flat to his scalp. He looked – almost – like a childish drawing, a comic book hero come to life. The image would have been funny if it wasn't for the blankness behind Monk's eyes.

Monk walked around to the back of the Land Rover. The rain ran down his face and neck but he didn’t make a move to pull up the collar of his thick goose-down jacket. The hatchback door opened onto a second one of high tensile steel. The back of the Land Rover had been turned into a detention cage.

As a jag of lightning lanced through the dark storm, Richie saw a second skinny figure staring at him. A naked man. His face was raw with burns and tatters of clothing clung to the runny sores on his chest. And a child. No more than eleven or twelve.

“Come on,” Monk yelled, rounding on the huddled figures. “Or you'll miss all the fun.” His lips twisted as if he were whispering something to the nearest one. He pulled a taser from beneath his jacket and levelled it at the woman.

“Bahd, Bahd, Bahd,” she lisped, saliva flecks spat from her ruined lips. The sounds came out slow and dragging, not words at all. They matched the hallucinatory slow motion drawl of the whole nightmarish scene. The woman slapped herself a stinging blow across the face. One of the sores above her left eye burst, releasing a viscous fluid that trickled like yellow lava down her cheek. It was all Richie could do to stare as she tangled the skeletal fingers of her hand within her hair and started wrenching it until a handful of bloodied roots tugged free. She tilted her head to the storm. Both mouth and breath filled with rain. Clutching a switch of her own bloodied hair in her hand, she started thrashing and slapping at herself again, only this time as she slapped, she shrieked and clawed at her face as well, dragging fingernails down her cheeks, gouging out bloody runnels.

Monk lashed out with his booted foot.

His kick caught the woman under the chin. The blow snapped her head back and lifted her bodily. Her mouth sprayed blood and spittle as she came down on her back, arms and legs akimbo in a whorish sprawl. The tattered rags of her skirt were kinked up around her knees.

The woman gave vent to a feverish howl.

With a final bellow of rage Monk Sanders lashed out with the taser. A jolt of electricity lanced the woman's breast with a bolt that burned and blackened the grimy fabric of her drenched blouse. She doubled-over, dragging her legs in under her chest. Thunder roared.

Caught in the headlights, the other hideous monstrosities were backing off, scrabbling and pawing at the rain-soaked cinders. Richie moved forward, stepping on something soft. With the cloying sickness of fear in his stomach, he took a deep breath and looked down. He wished they’d killed the Land Rover's headlights. Instead, he saw the eyeball that was smeared across the toe of his boot like a squashed oyster. Richie turned and vomited into the undergrowth beneath the oak.

“COME ON, KID!” Monk yelled over the storm. “YOU GONNA GIVE ME A HAND OR NOT?” The roar of the rain drowned the rest of his words. Monk rounded on the skinny man who was on his knees, cowering from the taser. He lunged forward, hitting the skinny man hard with the plastic handle of the taser and spinning him away. The skinny man tilted his head back and opened his mouth to cry out but he couldn’t make a sound. Desperately, he tried to hit Monk with his bare fist, but the Marylander anticipated the telegraphed swing and side-stepped the wild punch easily. He slammed his knee up into the man's face.

Monk stepped back and let him slump to the floor. He wrapped his fingers in a clump of singed hair, yanked the skinny man’s head back and jammed it down again with a wet smack, forcing the miserable wretch to eat a mouthful of mud.

Grunting his satisfaction, Monk straddled the naked man and pulled his arms up hard behind his back. He snapped a pair of metal cuffs around the skinny man’s wrists and then dragged him kicking and struggling to the Land Rover's detention cage.

The woman was out of commission, semi-conscious and moaning on the floor. The child had backed off and was keeping out of the way, his head jerking back and forth wildly. Suddenly, he pressed his hands to his temples and bayed. A second later the woman copied him. The skinny man jerked convulsively against the cuffs but couldn't get his hands up and screamed harder than both of them for it.

Around them, the ever present hissing and spattering of the rain was like the breath of the storm itself.

Richie stared at the head lodged in the tree trunk while Monk dragged the screaming woman into the darkness beyond the Landover's headlights. He heard the ratcheting of the bolt being shot into place, loud like the crack of a rifle shot slicing through the summer's tears. He grimaced, turning his back on the severed head, and joined Monk by the tailgate.

Monk looked up. “Take care of the kid.” He said, gesturing towards the boy hunkered down in the no-man's land between the oak and the barn, and headed toward the open door of the farmhouse. Monk Sanders paused on the fringe of the Land Rover's lights, and turned to look back. They illuminated his face from below, and by a trick of light caused his eyes to look both ancient and mad. His expression did not change in the few seconds that passed. His smiling face continued to be distorted by the light, flickering between the mask of a withered demon, and the face of a middle aged drill sergeant. Then he turned away as if uninterested by what he saw, breaking the eye contact and shattering the illusion.

Slowly, watching Monk's retreating back, Richie pulled the collar of his leather jacket tight around his throat and breathed: “No use standing here like an idiot.”

The child, with his peculiar lopsided grin and the crop of raw pimples on his chin, looked almost normal. Rain that might have been tears ran down his inflamed cheeks. His shirt was soaked and clinging to his body. His ribcage heaved as he sucked in ragged gasps of air. He looked up as Richie approached.

“Nice and easy little fella,” Richie soothed.

The child was rocking back on his haunches. When Richie was close enough to reach out and touch, the boy lunged, lashing a clawed hand out at his face. Richie tried to duck under it, but took a handful of raking nails across his cheek. The boy’s head rammed him in his stomach, but instead of knocking him down, sent him staggering backwards.

Unbalanced, Richie lashed out with the taser; the plastic handle slapped against the child's face, a jolt of electricity crackling uselessly between the points. The boy staggered, lurching from side to side, and then flung both hands up to defend his face as Richie thrust with the taser again. He sprawled awkwardly onto his backside, fingers pawing pathetically at the dirt. In a heartbeat the boy was shivering uncontrollably. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees. Lifted his head and saw Richie in front of him.

Before he could wriggle away Richie grabbed a handful of his hair and dragged the boy, on his knees, back to the rear of the Land Rover. In the back of the Land Rover, the woman looked up. Sweat ran in rivulets down her forehead. She was pressed back into the corner of the cage, her legs drawn up, flattening her breasts. The skinny man was curled up at her feet, chin pressed down against his emaciated ribcage, arms up, shielding his head. He made sobbing, whining noises. Richie grabbed the still groggy boy under both arms and hauled him up bodily.

Whimpers and grunts snuffled from inside the cage.

The boy twisted and jerked, teeth biting wildly, as Richie bundled him into the back, then slammed the tailgate down, trapping all three of them in the detention cage.

Walking away from the Land Rover, Richie realised that held been holding his breath all through the struggle. He inhaled. The air was warm and muggy and hard to swallow. Near the farmhouse door he passed a steel drum filled with stagnant rain water. It smelled rank and buzzed with skaters and flies.

The farmhouse door was open.

Walking inside, Richie found himself in a long, narrow kitchen. Cupboards lined one of the stone walls, a pot-bellied iron stove, breakfast bench and boiler, another. A stainless steel drainer and sink stood under the room's only window. Drying dishes were racked up on the drainer. There was no refrigerator. A flex and bare bulb hung suspended from the ceiling, and a gas lamp rested atop one of the cupboards. There was a hole in the floor where a bare board had been pried loose. The floorboard leaned against one of the walls. A long refectory table stood in the centre of the room. There were a few chairs scattered about, straight-back oaks without cushions.

Monk was sat at the table, looking at something.

“Get a load of this.” He said without looking up. He was spreading out a fan of Polaroids and yellowed newspaper clippings. His fingers traced out occasional headlines until they settled over one of the photographs and stopped. Something about it seemed familiar. It took Richie a moment to realise what it was. There were two people in the frame. The face of the one nearest the camera was obscured by the slanted bar of sunlight falling across it, but the other was plain enough. It was a woman. Her midnight blue eyes were blackened by bruises, and dulled by a mixture of Dopamine and shock. She was being led by the arm through the main doors of Pilgrim’s Hall.

She bore little resemblance to the woman with the swollen irisless eyes locked in the Land Rover.

“Recognise her?” Monk asked, sliding a yellowed clipping out from the fan.

“Yeah.” Richie nodded.

The three week old headline read: 'FELLWALKER MISSING'.

Beneath the headline was a blurred photograph of Jude Kenyon. The face, though fuzzy and distorted by printing and old paper, mirrored that of the woman being led through the doors of Pilgrim’s Hall.

The woman in the Land Rover.

“Jesus…” Richie offered quietly.

“Oh, I think it's bypassed Jesus and gone all the way to the Big Guy.” Monk said, standing. The legs of chair scraped across the wooden floor as he pushed it back. He gathered the photographs and clippings together, and stuffed them into the pocket of his coat.

“What the fuck are we going to do, Monk? Think we should show the photos to Richards?” Richie palmed a film of rainwater from his face. “What about… the head?”

He shook his head. “What's it they say? Ignorance is bliss. Shouldn't take long, just dig a shallow pit under the tree, and no one's any the wiser. After that, I say we get the boys and girls and go home, fix ourselves a stiff drink and hit the sack.”

- 9 -

At quarter to two on Thursday morning, Mike Shelton popped the tab on his sixth can of Exhibition and drank deeply. The beer was warm and pleasantly smooth going down, spreading a soothing heat through his stomach. An expression of grim determination was stamped on his careworn face. He was sat on the edge of his unmade bed, blankets rumpled up behind his back. The previous five cans stood stacked in a rickety pyramid on the caravan's narrow table, dribbles of muddy brown ale staining warm, wet circles on the teak surface beside the aluminium foil of an empty lasagne tray. Mark Knopfler's distinctive lead guitar sang through the tinny speakers of the portable stereo sat on the bench, its discordant voice jarringly loud in the cramped lounge-come-sleeping area.

He took another deep swig, and added the still half-full can to the growing pyramid, then settled back on the bed, kicking off his boots.  His dove-grey eyes couldn't help but fasten on their twins reflected in the network of metallic strips running the length of the ceiling, before looking away, unable to hold the intensity of their own troubled gaze.

He fumbled for the crumpled packet of Embassy Regal's on the bedside shelf, peered inside and saw two little coffin nails, side by side. He stuck one of the cigarettes in his mouth then leaned over to light it with a taper from the gas stove. He inhaled once, deeply, savouring the gritty, aromatic taste before crushing the smoke out on the lid of an empty beer can.

He pulled a pillow under his neck and dragged the blankets over his body, and waited for sleep to come.

Six months had made him familiar with every pattern on every plate propped on the shelf running above the windows. Most had been broken at sometime in the past, runnels of dried glue sealing their rough-edged cracks.

Moonlight seeped through the chinks in the curtains, painting a staggered slash across the wardrobe.

In the fields outside, the rain was dying, the strength of the storm spent. Drizzle still spattered on the glass, but it was all but washed out.

He stretched and pulled the blankets up over his head to close out the rest of the world, and drifted into thoughts of Hannah and little Holly. . .

*   *   *   *   *

The plaintive cry of a car engine disappearing down the hill dragged him from a soupy state that wasn't really sleep but a kind of dream-haunted, alcohol induced, doze.

The pillow beneath his head was damp with sweat.

He didn't sleep much these days, but when he did, he dreamed of the girls. Waking up to his own hoarse cries no longer surprised him much. He supposed it would pass, someday, but wasn't prepared to bank on it.

The ragged tail of a dream bobbed in his mind, something about the garage and the fire, but even that was fading, and the rest was already gone. Not that he needed the subconscious reminder it threatened. It was enough to know that Hannah and Holly were in Swallowship Hill Cemetery without having it rammed down his throat whenever he closed his eyes.

He opened his eyes, but there was precious little to see. They felt gummy with sleep, and his mouth tasted like something that had been left in a cat’s litter-tray overnight. His whole body was horribly stiff, especially the areas across his shoulders and at the base of his neck, as if he had slept for a long time with his head propped up on an uncomfortable angle.

He lay motionless inside his own sweaty outline on the sheet, letting the shakes subside and his eyes adjust to the dim light, then pushed himself up. The ache was both hot and cold, rooted deep in his skull, as if someone was pushing blunt needles into the backs of his eyeballs.

He groaned, realising that he had fallen asleep still dressed in his oil smeared overalls, and swung his legs around, hitting the squat table and toppling the pyramid of cans with a clatter.

Pre-crack of dawn light was peeking through the thin curtains, throwing its own peculiar perspective over the room.

Mike felt his way carefully across to the stove, stepping over the clutter of cans on the floor, pulled back the small curtain above the sink unit, filled the kettle and put it on the burner.

He let out his breath in a long, tortured sigh that made a fog-flower on the window.

His hands slowly balled themselves into fists.

Things were bad and getting worse. He was drinking too much, smoking too much and not sleeping enough. Sure signs of depression in anyone's book. Understandable, the guilt loving Jiminy Cricket of his interior voice returned, but something had joined with its familiar tone of guilt. It sounded plaintive, almost lost. Mike found himself feeling pity for that voice, not self-pity, because the voice had never sounded so unlike his own as it did at that moment.

He opened the refrigerator door, lifted out a small Tupperware dish filled with nameless leftovers, and a carton of milk which he opened with his teeth as he nudged the door of the fridge closed with his hip. He took a drink of milk then opened the door on the morning.

Whether it was understandable or not wasn't the question. The question was, what was he going to do about it?

The answer was simple: he didn't know.

- 10 -

“It’s the middle of the night, Richie. I don’t appreciate being woken at four in the morning.”

“I know sir, I’m sorry, but I needed to talk to you.”

“What’s the matter? Can’t you sleep?”

“No sir. I think we may have a problem.”

“Yes?”

“Someone was killed, sir.”

A pause, then: “Why wasn’t I informed immediately?”

“Monk suggested that what you didn’t know wouldn’t hurt you.”

That pause again on the other end of the line. Thoughts ticking over. “And you went along with this?”

“Yes…”

“Please tell me appropriate steps were taken to clean up the mess.”

“Yes sir.”

“Well, that’s something, at least.”

“There’s more, I’m afraid.”

“Go on.”

“The dead man had collected a handful of newspaper cuttings and Polaroids linking Pilgrim’s Hall with Jude Kenyon.”

“And where are these Polaroids now?”

“Monk has them, sir.”

“Was he planning on sharing them with me?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Well, thank you, Richie. I appreciate your call. I think I will have to have words with our Mr. Sanders in the morning. Help him see the error of his ways.”

“Yes sir.”

“And Richie?”

“Yes sir?”

“Get some sleep. You sound exhausted.”

- 11 -

The scratchy whisperings of an old clock radio dragged Kristy French from the comfort of her lazy hazy doze. The day’s already bleak headlines rolled out for as long as it took her to fumble the snooze button down. The regained silence was soothing. Comfortable. She savoured both it and the snug warmth trapped between the bedding and her skin.

Fresh off the North Sea, a cold early morning wind rattled the sash windows of the Tyneside Flats along both sides of the street and blew the tattered pages of yesterday’s news along the gutters.

When the alarm chorused again ten minutes deeper into the day, Kristy swung her legs around and clambered out of bed. Heat from the cast-iron radiator wasted itself on filming condensation on the window.

In the bathroom, she splashed her face with icy water and instantly regretted it. Blinking water out of her eyes, she groped around for a towel and began filling the basin.

Kristy stared at her face in the mirror. Panda-eyes of slept-in make-up frowned back blearily. Her hair, the colour and texture of straw cut in a long bob, looked as if she’d spent the night wrestling gorillas in her sleep. Back-combing wet fingers through it she teased out some of the tatted knots. Closing her eyes, Kristy watched cool blue spots dance in the false darkness.

The throaty grumbles of a rubbish truck moved through the world outside. Birds chit-chatted lazily, welcoming the morning sun. Kristy felt the warmth of the sun on her back as she washed; its heat was a confident, lingering caress.

Next-door’s terrier started yapping while Kristy was rooting through her wardrobe for something to wear, its insistent little yammers sounded like a squeaky toy by the time they had been filtered by the thick dividing walls. She settled on a pair of close-cut grey trousers and a heavy cowl-necked olive sweater. Plain hiking socks and a pair of beige Neubuck Cats completed the outfit.

The tantalising aroma of cooking crept into the bedroom from somewhere else. The savoury odours of a full fry-up. Next door again. Her own breakfast never ran to much more than a couple of slices of toast slathered with butter.

To say that life was good at the moment was an understatement; after a string of dead-end jobs she was finally doing something she loved, in a town she already liked a whole lot more than her native Liverpool. Newcastle. One of the old hacks at The Gazette had told Kristy on her first day that she’d walked into a town with more secrets stashed away amid its dirty streets than the average Cabinet minister had lurking in his closet. After six months with The Gazette she was beginning to understand what he meant, despite the fact that those six months had been filled with school reviews, subbing on the fashion page, interviewing a couple of local authors, covering the Battle of The Bands and a suicide from the Tyne Bridge. Watching the bread brown beneath the grill, she smiled to herself: it was safe to say she was still looking for her niche. Still, she enjoyed the hunt, the challenge. There was a buzz about The Gazette that promised pay dirt, the big break into Fleet Street before she was too old to enjoy the rat-race. Not that Fleet Street was in Fleet Street anymore, but it was still difficult to think of Wapping and Canary Wharf as the hubs of journalistic England. Fleet Street had something about it – an indefinable quality, an air of history – and for that reason Kristy kept on dreaming of a Big Time that still involved The Street.

Still, she was living in a flat she had recently started decorating herself, not that she was Picasso by any stretch of the imagination. Her artistic temperament hadn’t pushed her much beyond a coat of emulsion and a floral border in two rooms.

What more, she wondered idly, could a girl ask for?

- 12 -

Kristy walked to work, as she did most mornings, to avoid the claustrophobic crush of the underground system. The familiar craggy faced tramps with their greasy hair, baggy layers of worn-out coats and toeless pumps shuffled aimlessly through the familiar reeks of the city; the fresh perfumes of Stowell Street’s ginger and soy vendors, sweat, urine, petrol and dirt. Market traders were hard at work in the pay-and-display parking lot, cuffing together the tubular frames of their stalls and fighting the wind to drape them beneath plastic tarpaulins.

A flock of starlings banked overhead, cutting a black swathe through the rich azure sky.

Kristy dug her hands deeper into her pockets as she cut into the back-alley beside Rosie’s Bar. The rotating mechanical heads behind the bar turned to follow her. The effect, fake people, fake faces, tending bar still gave her the creeps.

Across the street workmen picked their way through the burned out frame of an old Victorian shopping arcade. A hundred metres away the spangled mirrors of the new Eldon Garden Bridge dazzled with all the beauty of the rising sun. Tubercular busses passed by in both directions, exhausts coughing out great grey plumes. People were ducking in and out of the huge shopping centre. Students comfortable with their designer jumble sale chic black and denim, trudged along sleepily, heads down, toward the sprawl of the university campus.

The Gazette’s staff entrance was down a side-street that housed a row of lockup garages and five cut-price Italian restaurants. There was an overflowing skip up against the wall of one of the restaurants, filled with junk, slabs of masonry and metal oddments. The eyeless head of a plastic doll stared blindly through the jumble of bric-a-brac.

Kristy shouldered the narrow door open and went into a dingy concrete-floored lobby, through a set of fire doors and on up a concrete stairwell. A second set of smoke doors opened onto the warren of cubicles that was the newsroom. Most of the cubes were already occupied. The newsroom buzzed with the twin senses of vibrancy and urgency, those ever-presents of the early morning chaos. The newsroom was an over-wound spring set to slowly unwind during the day as each of the five editions went to the presses.

The sun was barred from the room by slatted blinds. The soft flutter of keys replaced the need for conversation. The news reporters were in and mumbling to themselves over their copy. The sub-editors were clustered in conversation around the Pictures Desk, arguing over the cover shot for the noon issue. Only a few years ago threads of cigarette smoke would have curled from too many mouths, blue-grey wisps rising until they curled around the light fittings and wrapped in with the low-lying smog, but now they were working in the healthy modern office. The smokers had to stand outside, huddling up in the pouring rain as they chain-smoked through their addiction.

Kristy nodded to Jack Bray, one of the News Editor’s lackeys, as she bustled past the literary-come-theatre-come-TV reviewer’s desk stacked waist-high with a jumble of hardbacks, videos and Styrofoam cups. Jennie Stephenson sat two desks down from Kristy. She was typing to her own two-fingered rhythm and chewing on her bottom lip.

Kristy sank down into her chair; her own personal gateway into Hell. First things first, she called up the overnight files and scanned the headlines come fresh down the wire, skimming them for stories within The Gazette’s catchment area, the city of Newcastle and its surrounds: TWO KILLED IN FIREBOMB ATTACK ON WEARSIDE ESTATE; VICAR FACES SEX CHARGES, DRUGS SWOOP ON TYNESIDE PUBS, INJURY WORRIES FOR UNITED STAR.

She hadn’t been specifically assigned a story so it was down to her to scare up something worth covering; free rein as long as she could sell the idea to Spencer Abel, The Gazette’s News Editor.

She tapped an uncapped biro on the desk, looking for something even vaguely interesting to occupy herself with. She was still scanning the headlines when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Abel walking toward her holding a glossy sheet of fax paper. Abel was a quietly intense man in his late forties recovering from a drink problem that had almost killed him. He had the pronounced slouch so typical of long time journalists, from the permanent tension and the countless hours hunched over a keyboard. His hair was pulled back in one of those trendy mini-ponytails. He answered to two names beside his own; both with a suitable biblical twist. Orson, accompanied by the inevitable string of “Mork Calling…” jokes and Kane, both lifted from Welles’ seminal slice of cinematic history.

“Morning, kiddo,” Abel said cheerfully. Kristy smiled up at him. “Looks like we might have something for you this morning. Could be something or nothing. Still, check it out.”

“Spill.”

“Jude Kenyon. The missing fellwalker.”

He handed Kristy the fax and grinned his best attempt at a crooked charmer. She read the short printout:

PHONE REPORT: 8:10 p.m., April 11. Source: Rogan, Frank. Moses Hill Farm, Westbrooke. Possible sighting of walker plus abductors. Wants to talk tomorrow a.m..

Kristy blew the loose strands of fringe out of her eyes. “Abductors? Seriously?”

“Hell, don’t shoot the messenger. I didn’t take the call, Jennie did. Said he mentioned pictures but you’re right, he’s probably some lonely old man looking to get his name in the papers. Still, pull all the stories on Kenyon’s disappearance. Take Kelso along. Get some photos. Who knows, eh?”

- 13 -

With the VW’s window cranked down and Clapton’s full-tilt blues solo on the radio, Ben Shelton drove through the suburbs as they gently stirred into life.

The sky was full of wheeling birds, banks of gulls flying tip to tip whilst the climbing sun warmed their wings. Westbrooke had given way to the slopes of moorland with its broken dry stone walls laying like grey necklaces criss-crossing the hills. The moors in turn surrendered to the waking streets. Terraced houses and Tyneside Flats with gardens of no size at all; some of them well kept, others, with the detritus of the city cluttering their patch.

On a street where the flagstones were still clogged with the residue of last night’s rain, Ben saw a small woman in a head scarf lurching herself and her straining shopping bags toward the corner. Her face lit up red as she puffed on the butt of the short cigarette stuck in the corner of her mouth.

Seeing things like a writer again, are we?

Ben slowed to let her cross the street.

From the other direction, a lorry chugged around the corner and turned into the mouth of a tight alley, and headed for a builders yard. The spindly fingers of its iron gates clawed at the cobalt sky.

On the radio, Eric Clapton kicked in with another freewheeling riff.

At the bottom of Grainger Street, he lost sight of the wheeling flock behind the city's rooftops.

The market traders along the Bigg Market side of the street were busy slotting their pitches together along the sloping pavement; the sounds of the steel cylinders clattering on the damp cobbles like Caribbean drums designed solely to accompany Clapton on his journey through the Blues.

All signs of the waking beast. Signs that together worked their own special kind of magic.

Whistling tunelessly along to Wonderful Tonight, Ben guided the Beetle between the broad granite pillars that stood guardian to the University’s entrance. In his hut the gateman waved him through. The gesture spoke of a thousand mornings of similar hellos. Ben answered with a wave of his own. He tucked the VW neatly into a space between a red Sierra and a white Subaru and cut the engine. He got out and headed off across the wide tarmac sea, past the music block where a lone cello sang mournfully to itself, and up a short flight of concrete steps that linked the car park with the Quadrangle. The campus was one of the largest in the country, with its bleak industrial landscape of red brick, glass and steel. Corroded sea horses stood watch from the bell tower, casting their disparaging gaze over the growing hub-bub below.

The English faculty was in an old redbrick mansion set away from the modern monstrosities of the library and the Student Union building. Ben pushed open the huge oak door and stepped into the coolness within to join a sudden swell of slow moving students as they drifted toward the lecture hall. He looked at his watch: 8:45 a.m..

On the glass, some helpful soul had taped up a piece of paper with "2nd Year Creative Writing" written on it in the thick letters of a red marker pen. For his benefit, no doubt.

The mumbled conversations hushed as fifteen rows of nearly one hundred and fifty faces stared curiously at him. He perched on the corner of the central table. “All right ladies and gents, let’s settle down shall we?” A blonde in the front row gave him a vacuous little smile and rested her chin on the knuckles of her bridged hands. “Come on, hush. I thought we’d go over some of the basics this morning, by way of introduction to the mechanics of the creative writing. Nothing too fancy. Just the nuts and bolts. After all we need to know how it’s supposed to work if we are going to unlock the secret code and take that first step on our path to millions,” he paused, waiting for the inevitable groans to subside before moving over to the whiteboard.

“Opening line,” he said, chalking the words: "The waitress was talking politics, while the business man slowly exploded!" on the board. “So, the abuse of poor old Billy Joel aside, dazzle me. . .”

The remainder of the hour passed surprisingly painlessly -- if slowly -- with Ben flying in the face of the usual Thursday morning blues. He was at once easy going and relaxed with his captive audience, cautioning them to observe the basics, even those as obvious as spelling (Jesus was condomed to death by the Jews), gently introducing his Would-Be's to the delights of craftsmanship, sweat and blood, offering his own thoughts on the metaphor that placed the writer in a helicopter hovering above the whole story, and focusing on the problems of perspective during the course of a longer narrative.

A few students dutifully wrote down his every word whilst others made a few brief notes, and others studiously ignored him.

*   *   *   *   *

As the buzzer sounded the hour, the students yawned, gathered their papers and files together and filed out of the room and into the corridor, immersed in their tight huddles, their conversations growing in volume with each step towards freedom.

One of the stragglers, a non-descript youth with the thin shadow of two-days growth peppering his chin and not much hair on his head, edged closer to the tutor's desk.

“Mr Shelton, sir?”

“Yes?”

“Joe Morris, sir. We met in the Green Room when you gave that reading from The Swords of Scorn last year,” he spoke slowly and in a low, uncertain tone, swallowing between words as if constantly needing to strangle the urge to cough.  He was clutching a manila envelope under one arm.

“Yes, I remember now. . .” Ben said, although he didn't, it was just one of those lies you told people. “What can I do for you Joe?”

“Oh. . . Well, I know that you're busy working on your own stuff, but I was kind of hoping that you might have a look at some of my stories. . .  Tell me what you think, maybe how I could make them better. . .”  His accent was softly southern, as if displaced by more than his two and a half terms in Newcastle.

“I'm not sure,” Ben began, and cursed himself for sounding so utterly unenthusiastic.

“Oh, I understand, it was only that I loved just about every story in The Swords of Scorn, and I thought Uneasy Streets was incredible. . . and after hearing you talk I thought. . . God I feel stupid. . . I'm sorry for wasting your time. . .”

Ben shook his head softly and tried to hide the smile he felt forming. “No, Joe. Sorry. Look, that's not what I meant at all. I'd be delighted to read some of your stuff, really. I'm flattered that you thought to ask me when there are so many better writers out there. . . Have you noticed how we all call it "stuff"?'

“You'd really like to read it?” he sounded dubious, as if Ben's answer had surprised him. “You're not just saying that are you? I'll understand. . .”

“I'm not, honestly,” said Ben, reaching out for the envelope.

“Thank you. . . I don't know what to say.”

“Then don't say anything.”

Joe smiled and shrugged. He had the sort of face that was made to smile, big, wide eyes and just the hint of dimples beneath the exaggerated five o'clock shadow. “I seem to have been having so much bad luck recently, but maybe it’s going to break at last?”

“Maybe,” Ben agreed, finding Joe's smile infectious.  “Bad luck doesn't last forever,” and neither does good luck, he thought.

“No, I don't suppose it does, but it's sure felt that way some times.”

“Don't I know it?”

“Well, I've sold a few stories since I talked to you about writing seriously. In Darkness, We Sleep – my favourite – was taken up by one of the glossy horror magazines, but that went bust about a month before it came out.”

“Ah, happens to the best of us. Still you’ve got your first war story.”

“Yeah, I guess I found that out the hard way. Still, it's good news about the other sales,” Ben went on. “I suppose. . . Three of them sold to one of those small press magazines that only come out once in a blue moon. It's getting so the guys think I'm bullshitting all the time. I don't think any of them believe anything I say anymore,” he said, wearily, stuffing his now empty hands into his pockets, obviously unsure what to do with them.

“I know how you feel,” Ben sympathised, sliding the bulky envelope into his briefcase and snapping the catches closed. “When I started out some of the people I always thought were my closest friends found it hard to accept the fact that I wanted to be anything other than good old Ben. Certainly no one took the idea seriously. I was just good old Ben, nothing more, nothing less. You know how it is. More than anything though, I wanted to be a writer, and I needed them to believe in me. . .The best advice I can give you is to try and put everyone else out of your mind. Don't write for them, write for you. Do what you want to do. If you've got what it takes, go for it. Ignore the knock-backs and ignore the praise. It's a job just like all the others and if you get to believing what they say about you, well, you may as well hang-up your computer after all.”

An awkward silence fell between them then, counter-pointed by the racket of the growing rabble gathering in the narrow corridor beyond the glass doors.

“Okay, sermon over,” Ben laughed a little self-consciously, and lifted his hands to the sides of his head, massaging his temples gently with the tips of his fingers. “I can't promise anything, but I'll certainly read the scripts and if there is anything I can do to help, I will. Deal?” Ben held out his hand and Joe Morris, smiling his good-humoured smile again, took it without hesitation.

“Deal.”

- 14 -

Brent Richards opened the door.

From the outside the building retained its countrified stable facade but inside was a different matter entirely. Behind the door a passageway was cordoned off by a series of airlock-type doors that kept what was inside locked firmly inside and what was outside, outside.

Richards stepped over a crate of rotting vegetables. A full-scale laboratory had been assembled within the old stable. Two polished steel operating tables. Oscillating neurological monitors and cardio-vascular regulators. Each thing in its place. A row of detention cages dominated the furthest wall, inch-thick steel bars caging Jude Kenyon and the other test cases. Richards had little patience with this part of the job. The endless rounds of tests. It was the calm before the storm whereas he craved the thunder and the lightning, the explosive release of nature.

Kenyon herself was pressed up against the gate of her cage, one skinny arm groping through the bars in search of something solid she might be able to drag back into Hell with her.

“Anything for me, Stephanie?”

Stephanie Nolan looked up from the E-motion culture she’d been studying to switch slides on the microscope.  She shook her head. “Nothing, Brent. Absolutely nothing. The culture appears to self-perpetuate during Down-Times but there is nothing particularly disconcerting about that, after we anticipated something similar was going to be the case. This though?” she gestured at the wretched shape huddled up in the corner of Jude Kenyon’s cell. “I’m beginning to think that the regression might be of a psychological rather than physiological nature but I am at a loss as to where to go from there.”

The pattern of alpha waves on one of the wall mounted monitors went into the familiar pattern of lows they had come to call Down-Time. It was similar in nature to the R.E.M. phase of sleep. A regeneration process perhaps?

“Wake the boy up, Stephanie.” Richards demanded. “Let’s see what happens when the cultivation period is interrupted.”

A single jolt of electrical current applied through the metal floor of the cage brought the boy awake screaming and bucking as the charge circuited through his withered frame. Horrors no-one else could see replayed behind his glassy eyes, his brain re-inventing the worst moments of his short life for the boy to live through again. To him these pseudo-images passed beyond vivid. They were real.

On the wall monitor the alpha-waves peaked in rhythm with the nightmares then troughed dramatically as a second pulse, one none of them had seen before, sparked across the low-points.

“There it is,” Richards smiled as he said it.

“But what is it?”

“I have no idea, Stephanie. But I will find out. That single line, my dear, is the nigger in the woodpile.”

The boy threw himself against the steel bars, slamming his fists into the metal with a rage so pure, so undiluted, Richards was sure he’d continue beating the bars until his hands were bloodied, splinters of bone jutting out through the raw wounds if no-one stopped him. The emotion had arisen from something as insubstantial as vapour. A whisper. Memory. He saw it in the boy’s eyes and smiled to himself.

They had faces, now, his demons, and he hated them for making him remember…

- 15 -

Kristy thumbed through the rack of CDs as Jason Kelso, junior of The Gazette’s three staff photographers, guided the small Citroen through a series of increasingly tighter switchbacks. Gravel chips and a mulch of muddy slake sprayed out from beneath the car’s tires. Both front windows were rolled down and Kelso was driving with one arm resting on the ledge, the wind ruffling his dark hair like some affectionate grandmother.

Kristy’s fingers dawdled over several unfamiliar names, Dave Matthews Band, Hootie and the Blowfish, Marcy’s Playground, The Verve Pipe, Ben Christophers and Ben Folds Five before settling on one from her college days. In seconds Message in a Bottle was filling the car with its distinctive early Eighties sound.

Kelso was talking about something but somewhere along the way she’d tuned him out. Instead she gave her attention over to the rolling greens, the custard fields of rape and the outcroppings of sandstone that spotted the fields like blood stains on a handkerchief. Birds perched in the trees, talking to anyone prepared to listen. It was all so very different from the streets of Newcastle with their metallic outcroppings of rusted shopping trolleys and twisted wire baskets. Byker Wall, the closest man had ever come to building Hell on Earth; nothing to see in either direction but red brick walls thick with graffiti rising higher and higher in claustrophobic steps. Pavements cluttered with spilled garbage sacks. Tower blocks, ominous sentinels, standing guard over the compound. And this, unbroken countryside with real farms, real animals in the fields, and that almost tangibly relaxed pace of life. Even through the protective layer of steel it was contagious. She found herself imagining the land as a witch, an old crone luring her deeper and deeper into her folds with proffered charms and offers of sweets for the sweet.

Kelso’s camera cases were on the backseat, anchored down by his battered leather reefer jacket.

Manipulating the pedals, he changed down for a tight turn, grating the gears loudly.

“Hey, if you can’t find it, grind it.” He joked, forcing the stick shift home against all of its protests.

Up ahead two brooding oaks reached across the road, branches weaving into a thick welcoming arch. A weather-beaten sign said:

WELCOME TO WESTBROOKE

PLEASE DRIVE CAREFULLY THROUGH OUR VILLAGE

Only some local wag had crossed out the ‘drive’ with green spray paint and replaced it with ‘joyride’.

Steep-sided hills cupped the small cluster of houses, as if shielding them from the worst the world had to offer.

The road forked and cut away sharply on the far side of the leafy arch, one branch dropping down toward the village proper, the other disappearing into the gloom of roadside trees and curving on up the hill. Kristy spotted the overgrown marker for Rogan’s farm as they passed it. Beneath the sign a large blackbird searched the dirt for worms.

Kelso backed the car up ten feet and made the turn onto the steep gravel climb. Odd spots of sunlight dappled the track like so many coins scattered here and there. The sudden gloom was positively oppressive. Coming around a blind bend something at the roadside caught Kristy’s eye. She cried: “Stop!” with such vehemence that Kelso stamped down too hard and too fast on the breaks and the car slewed sideways in a rubber-melting skid. The front of the Citroen dipped as one of the front wheels rocked out into a shallow roadside ditch, still spinning. Thick foliage crumpled back from the bonnet, a hundred tiny impacts merging into a single Hellish cackle. The seatbelt bit angrily into Kristy’s shoulder as she was thrown forward. The camera cases slid off the back seat.

The engine spluttered and stalled.

“Christ,” Kelso was breathing hard. “You okay?” his voice came across as heavily slurred, as if the words were wading through thick molasses to reach her. The outside world of snapped back branches and spinning wheels settled. “Are you okay?” Kelso repeated. He leaned in close, giving her a quick once over. “No blood, at least.” He muttered, patting her knee with a reassuring hand but it was as if she was seeing right through him. Her gaze was fixed on something outside the window. Kelso tried to follow it. Flies buzzed thickly around the carcass of a deer. “Oh Jesus, it’s horrible,” he breathed, watching the black congregation pick its way through the torn flesh. Instinctively he reached into the back for a camera and then was out of the car, slamming the door.

After a minute, Kristy followed him. It stank. She tried breathing through her mouth, but the reek was inescapable. The stench of violent death. Ugly. It clung to the air.

Kelso was on his knees, snapping close-ups of the dead animal’s sliced stomach walls.

Without thinking, Kristy reached into her pocket for the mini-cassette recorder she kept there, and began describing all that she saw:

“The embankment, thick with tall grass is heavily spattered with blood. The deer, most of it, is on the grass at the roadside. Two of its forelegs are lying about three feet away from the mutilated torso. One of the hind legs is stretched out impossibly in an inverted 'v'. The wounds look wrong. No sign that the animal was hit by a car… and poachers wouldn’t do this… I can’t see the head,” she broke off.

“Up there,” Kelso whispered, firing off another shot, this time of an overhanging branch. The animal’s head was impaled on one of the thickest branches. There were bloody holes where the eyes should have been. “What kind of sick fuck would take the eyes…”

“There’s blood everywhere. The eyes are gone. It doesn’t make any sense to me. It looks as if five or six strong men have torn the deer to pieces with their bare hands. None of the cuts look clean enough to have been done with a knife.”

Most of the animal’s stomach had slid out through the tear in its belly and was resting in a pool of congealing blood.

“Come on then, let’s get out of here,” Kelso said, closing up the camera case again. Looking at the three legs she could see, and the savage wounds all over the carcass, it did indeed look as if several strong men had ripped the animal apart. “Write it up as WILD BEAST STALKS LOCAL WILDLIFE. Might even make Northern Life. Local interest piece. TV kiddo. TV.”

She was glad to turn her back on the free anatomy lesson spread across the road and climb back into the car. The trees were just a fraction too tall and too close for her to see Rogan’s Farm at the top of the hill.

“Come on then, let’s go see what Mr. Rogan has to say for himself.”

- 16 -

Billy Rogan rolled over and cracked open an eyelid. The room was familiar. A grime-splashed window. The sharp angles of pallets and fertiliser bags stacked against the back wall. Shovels. Spades. Rusty attachments of an old lawnmower. Bundles of old newspapers. Shelves lined with jars filled with dark liquids. Canvas straps for lowering coffins into the dirt. His cot was directly under the window.

“Musta dozed off,” he yawned, rubbing his gritty eyes. His mouth tasted sour. He reached out for the Coke bottle he knew was by the side of the cot. It was empty. “Ahhh flippin’ fairies.”

Everything ached. He should have been back at the farm last night. The old man would like as not beat seven shades out of him when he found him. Stupid, Stupid. He’d probably yell at him and call him a “Fuckin’ Reetard” again just because he fell asleep in the tool shed. Most likely cleanse him too, beat that hateful streak out of him with the belt strap and the brush until his idiot son had learned his lesson.

Billy flexed his toes, trying to coax some kind of circulation to flow through his feet before he stood on them. His grubby work shirt was draped over the mower’s seat. Scooping it up, Billy caught a whiff of the unpleasant odour drifting up from his armpits. “Need a wash,” he mumbled to himself as he struggled into his shirt. Checking to make sure no one was coming down Chapel Lane; he unzipped and peed against the wall of the shed. “Ahhh better,” he sighed, putting himself away.

The gates of Swallowship Hill Cemetery were standing open. A McDonald's box flipped down the cinder track. Confetti hearts lay on the floor, markers to another love affair waiting to fall apart. Thousands of midges danced in the shadow of the willows. Five hundred tall headstones cast their own lunchtime shadows, here and there a cherub poking through the mass of grey stone.

Picking up his shovel, Billy walked down the grass lane that bisected the rows of standing stones. Flowers, wilted and dead, were set in jam jars at the foot of some of the graves. Gifts from the loved ones left behind.

Billy stopped by his mother’s grave and whispered “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild, please look after my mummy, your little child,” just as the old man had taught him. He crossed himself and headed over toward the plot marked out for today’s new arrival.

A rabbit bolted out from behind a weathered headstone and into the waiting hedge.

Across the rows of graves, Billy saw a familiar figure kneeling over a grave, the folds of his coat whipping in the wind. Maybe he felt the lingering touch of Billy’s gaze, maybe he didn’t, but at that moment Mike Shelton looked up. Even across the cemetery, the grief in his eyes was plain to see. Billy couldn’t help but shiver a little. He turned away to leave Mike to mourn his dead in peace.

Fresh sods had already been cut from the plot and green plastic sheets laid out along the edge. Hefting the shovel, he began digging. After fifteen minutes Billy planted the shovel in the damp earth and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Poor man…” Billy whispered, watching Mike walk away. “Poor, poor man…”

- 17 -

The outbuildings were deserted.

From up here Kristy could see the twin chimneys of the paper mill below. By some trick of the angle it looked almost as if the sun were drawing steam from the trees themselves, and not some industrial eyesore.

Kelso was already out of the car running off a series of angles around one of the ugliest trees she had ever seen. The oak was rotten through and obviously dead. Struck by lightning or fire. The way its jagged branches beckoned was creepy. It almost looked like a screaming man, so peculiarly human was its deformity. Kelso tapped on the window. She rolled it down.

“Do you want to go look for Rogan while I take a few more atmosphere shots?”

“Sure.”

Out of the car, the wind had an unexpected stiffness. It was almost cold.

The outbuildings were a mixture of wood and stone in equal measure; barn, stable, garage and farmhouse, and off down the hill, a disused building with wire mesh covering up its windows, clematis and other climbers covering up its walls.

Near the farmhouse door a steel drum was filled to overflowing with stagnant rainwater and dead leaves. The porch door was open.

Kristy knocked once. “Hello? Anybody home?” she called, loudly enough to be heard by anyone upstairs. She went inside without waiting for an answer and found herself in a long narrow kitchen with a single window. Dishes long since air-dried racked up on a steel drainer. A naked bulb burned dimly. Strangest of all though, was the hole in the floor where one of the bare boards had been pried free. The board rested against a wall.

Dirty footprints scuffed the untreated timber, clustered around the long rectory table. A cash box was open and empty on the table.

Kelso stepped up behind her.

“No one home?”

“Looks that way.”

“Hmm… there’s a car in the garage and the TV’s still on in the lounge.”

“Curiouser and Curiouser. You want to take a look upstairs while I check out down here?”

“Sure thing.”

The cash box didn’t look as if it had been forced.

Kristy felt like Goldilocks creeping about. She half expected to hear a disgruntled Frank Rogan demanding to know who’d been sleeping in his bed and eating his porridge.

The place was a clutter of bric-a-brac. The television set in the lounge was an old valve style black and white. The rooms were all coated with a layer of grime. The carpets worn threadbare. Everything shared the same musty smell of neglect. Slippers nestled beneath the coffee table in the lounge and a half-eaten plate of mashed potatoes and sausage was clotted in cold gravy. She left the room without switching the television off. To do so would have somehow disturbed the perfect sense of nostalgia preserved by its presence.

Back in the kitchen, Kristy started poking around, not sure what she was really looking for. She searched through the cupboards but only found a few tins. She tried the hole in the floor, groping blindly in the shallow cavity without any joy.

She heard Kelso coming down the stairs.

“We ought to call the police about the deer,” she called.

“Chuck us your mobile,” he said, sticking his head through the door. She threw it to him. “You carry on rooting around,” he called back.

She listened to him make the call, her gaze playing up and down the cold stone and plaster walls. The building creaked, sighing with the wind. Something ran across the floor, light, scampering. A mouse or a rat. Then: snap and silence.

A tiny grey mouse with a long question mark of a tail. The back of its head had been split by the metal spring of the trap. A thumb-sized chunk of mouldering cheese lay on the floor a few inches away. Besides that, slipping out of the shadow cast by the table’s edge, something else stood out, white and oddly clean.

On her hands and knees, Kristy crawled beneath the table. She tried hard not to think about the unlucky mouse as she did so.

“Found something?” Kelso wanted to know.

“Hold on and we’ll find out,” Kristy said, easing herself out with her find firmly in hand. What she held up, to her surprise, was a dusty Polaroid that must have slipped down the back of the table when Rogan last looked at his family album.

“Well well…” she mused, seeing the unmistakably familiar face of Jude Kenyon caught clearly by the photographer.

“Looks drugged up to the eyeballs,” Kelso commented, looking at the picture over her shoulder.

“She does, doesn’t she?” Kristy agreed. “The bruises around her eyes don’t look too promising either.” Jude Kenyon wasn’t alone in the photograph. A thickset Rambo-type was supporting her weight. “And he,” she offered, shaking her head slowly, “looks like the Action Man from Hell.” The two of them were walking across a neatly trimmed croquet lawn bordered on three sides by colourful blooms. The road weary wing of a Land Rover was caught in one corner of the frame and in the background, too small to read, a wrought iron gateway held the name and the answer they were looking for.

“Can you do anything to enlarge this?” she asked, tapping the arch above the gate.

“Depends. I can certainly give it a shot. Come on. Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

- 18 -

“Just want to run off a contact sheet of this morning’s shots before Abel gets his paws on them,” Kelso said by way of justification. They had turned off the A69 one junction short of the city and were weaving through row after row of uncomfortably similar looking streets like expertly trained lab rats picking the shortest path to the cheese. Kelso took another anonymous corner, this time using a broken-windowed phone box as his cue to turn. Kids of ten and eleven were kicking a ball about for want of something better to do. Perhaps the strangest sight offered by this inner-city Mecca waited on the next corner, where a three-legged dog was pissing against a lamppost, its lower body twisted to raise the phantom leg as if the dog had yet to realise it was missing.

They skirted an area of allotments, body shops and scrap metal yards the locals still called Paradise despite its rapid fall from grace.

Kelso took them around one last corner before he pulled in behind a bricked up Ford Cortina.

His two-up-two-down terrace butted onto a strip of Paradise, the view from his concrete yard dominated by the old tobacco warehouse on the banks of the Tyne. The owners of the house next-door had added a creative mural of the castle at the end of the rainbow to their side wall; a marked improvement on the anti-this and anti-that slogans that seemed to occupy every other wall.

As to the house itself, a mountain bike with half of the mountain still clinging to its black frame blocked the hall. Tripods served as coat racks. Kristy picked her way through the war zone only to find that the lounge was no better. Photography journals littered the room’s three tables. Starkly contrasting black and white prints decorated each wall. One, of a raincoated walker passing through an arch might have been a window onto some whole new monochrome world. And, wherever there was space for it, technology peered through the debris. A Gateway PC with a rack of shoot ‘em ups and 3D blow ‘em aways took up most of the self-assembly desk. Under the window a sprawling home cinema kit of speakers and blu-ray player, and Playstation 3 was hooked up into a giant widescreen television. The whole room was indicative of Kelso’s chosen lifestyle.

Kristy was thumbing through a sheaf of glossy contact sheets when Kelso came through carrying coffees.

“Just being nosy,” she said, laying the series of stills down.

“No problem.”

More than half were slick glamour shots of a trim looking redhead, some nude, a few too raw to be termed tasteful.

“She’s got a good body,” Kristy offered.

“Fair,” Kelso agreed. “You want to come through?”

Kristy followed him, coffee cup in hand to a backroom that had been converted into a darkroom. He switched on a low-wattage red light as she closed the door and set about checking the temperatures of the processing chemicals and topping up the tray of developing fluid. Then he dimmed the lights. She could only guess at what he was doing in the dark, sounds suggesting movement: opening the back of the camera, lifting out the roll of film, breaking open the metal cassette’s top and drawing out the length of film itself.

In the darkness she remembered vividly the blowflies making a meal of the deer.

More sounds. Scissors and liquid being agitated.

Then the lights came back on.

“Okay, you want to hand me that Polaroid?”

She handed him the photograph, not at all sure how he was going to unlock its secrets but certainly not expecting his next move.

“Well in about thirty seconds she’ll be singing like a birdie,” Kelso reached down for a wall switch and some piece of machinery she couldn’t see stirred itself into life with a throaty hum.  He pulled a dustcover off what Kristy had assumed to be a table but was actually an expensive looking colour copier. “Picked it up at an auction last month. Hundred and eighty large. Not a bad little investment.” He said by way of explanation as he selected the correct scale for the enlargement. “She can pull out a times five enlargement without losing so much as a grain of resolution to smoke. It’s all down to the quality of the original. So cross your fingers.” He placed the photograph face down on the glass plate and covered it with a sheet of bromide paper to shield it from the sudden flare of light as the rod moved over the Polaroid.

The enlargement wasn’t grainy or distorted in the slightest. The shrubbery was picked out in perfect detail. The couple themselves picked out starkly against the hues of grass and flower. She could almost see the blood in the bruises around Jude Kenyon’s eyes.

Behind her, in the filigreed detail of the iron arch the letters ENEDNEVAH were wrapped up in the intricacies of angels and demons.

Kristy’s mouth opened and closed slowly as she translated the mirror-writing.

“Havendene,” she said aloud. “Now where the hell have I heard that before?”

“Only one way to find out. We better go ask the Oracle.”

– 19 –

Kristy mentally kicked herself along two of the three miles between Paradise and the newsroom.

Havendene.

Havendene..

Havendene…

No good. The mental foot-in-the-brain wasn’t stirring up any miraculous memories.

Bridges spanned the river, cars and brightly painted trains lumbering over them. An Intercity slipped eelishly between the grey station arches and out of sight. Babel-like insurance towers guarded the road into the city, blocking out the old Castle Keep’s walls; spotlights burned pointlessly. This side of the city was a haven of bars, restaurants and kebab shops. A twenty metre tall Ronald McDonald reminded Kristy that lunch had come and gone an hour ago. The personality of the streets outside had changed dramatically over the last half-mile. Here, walking pace was half a step too fast, ties a notch too tight to be comfortable. Taxi’s lined the kerbs.

“Wonder Doc.” She said to herself, realising where she’d seen the name Havendene before. “Kick me,” she told Kelso as they climbed out of the car.

“What for?”

“My excuse is it was snowing in February.”

“Excuse me? I think we’ve missed out a vital stage in the explaining here.”

“I’ve been there. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It’s some fancy health farm now, run by one of those wonder doctors who can cure fat simply by staring at people. Come on.”

They ran into the building. An unanswered phone rang to itself in the lobby. Kristy took the stairs three at a time. Through a door labelled ‘Archives’. The Oracle was a small grey nobody who buried himself in books and articles. He looked up, his face set in a studied lack of expression that was an expression in itself.

The room was eerily quiet compared to the hubbub of the newsroom. Rows of dummy terminals and microfiche readers lined the longest of the room’s walls. Skylights flooded the room with sunlight without banishing the lovingly musty air of old paper. A reading room was screened off by glass partitions. A handful of people were in there taking notes.

“Can I help you?” The Oracle asked, pushing himself slowly to his large flat feet and coming around the desk.

“February,” she said.

“February it is,” he said with a gentle smile. “Do you have any particular favourite or shall we just plough through every one of those great grey beasts?”

“Mid-month, this year. 20th maybe. Give me a week or so either side to be safe.”

“Let’s see what we can do then, shall we?” the Oracle said as his pudgy fingers picked an expert path through a maze of index cards. “Here we are,” he said triumphantly, lifting out fiche slides for the days between February 13th and 27th. “If you want anything else, just whistle.”

Kristy began her search with the February 13th edition. On a machine beside her Kelso worked backwards from the 27th. They both scanned the rows of paragraphs as they jerked by. By the 17th she was beginning to doubt she’d ever set foot in Havendene after all. Then Kelso whistled. The paper from Saturday 22nd. A sidebar tucked away on page 14 next to an article of a church bazaar.

RICHARDS’ HAVEN

HEXAMSHIRE GENERAL’S MOST RECENT VISITING PHYSICIAN, DR. BRENT RICHARDS CLAIMS TO HAVE FOUND TO HAVE FOUND A CURE TO EXECUTIVE STRESS IN THE TRANQUILLITY OF THE NORTHUMBRIAN MOORS, WRITES KRISTY FRENCH.

A YEAR AGO HAVENDENE, SITUATED A MILE OUTSIDE OF HEXHAM, WAS WAITING FOR THE BULLDOZERS TO ROLL IN UNTIL AN OVERSEAS CONSORTIUM HEADED BY RICHARDS STEPPED FORWARD WITH AN AMBITIOUS RESCUE PLAN THAT HAS PUT THE OLD MANOR HOUSE VERY FIRMLY BACK ON THE MAP.

“THE AIM OF OUR LITTLE HAVEN,” EXPLAINS RICHARDS IN HIS BUSINESS-LIKE DRAWL, “IS TO OFFER THE BUSINESS MAN A RETREAT. SOMEWHERE TO TURN WHEN THE PRESSURES HE FACES DAY IN, DAY OUT, GET TOO MUCH. RELAXATION IS OUR WATCHWORD. WE AREN’T TRYING TO DIAGNOSE SOME TENUOUS PROBLEM OR OFFER ANY NEW AGE MUMBO JUMBO TO SOOTHE WHAT IS A VERY REAL ONE. WE LIKE TO THINK OF WHAT WE ARE DOING AT HAVENDENE AS STRESS MANAGEMENT. THE CLINIC IS BASICALLY A PRESSURE VALVE AND THAT HAS TO BE HEALTHY.”

HEALTH CONSCIOUS THE HAVENDENE INSTITUTE CERTAINLY IS. RICHARDS HAS BROUGHT WITH HIM A TROUPE OF PHYSICAL FITNESS INSTRUCTORS FROM THE STATES AND NO EXPENSES HAVE BEEN SPARED FITTING OUT THE MANOR’S THREE GYMNASIUMS, TWO SAUNAS, LIBRARY, GUESTROOMS AND RESTAURANTS.

BUT AT £250 A NIGHT AND £380 FOR A COMPLETE WEEKEND, THIS IDYLLIC HAVEN MAY BE A LITTLE ON THE RICH SIDE FOR MOST OF THE REGIONS HIGHLY STRUNG EXECUTIVES.

The piece was accompanied by a grainy black and white photograph of Richards with his hands wide, as if offering the old manor behind him, or possibly himself, for worship. The way the camera caught him left his oleaginous smile looking almost as sincere as a used car salesman’s.

Kristy read the article again, disappointed more than anything else, with what it didn’t say. She pressed the copy button on the fiche.

“Well, here it is in black and white… There’s got to be a connection.” She folded the page and put the copy in her pocket.

“Got to be,” Kelso echoed, “but what? That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? What ties Rogan, Kenyon and Richards?”

“Who the hell knows? I’d say the best thing we can do is ask Dr. Brent Richards that exact same question. But first I want to ask the Oracle to scour his records for everything we have on the good doctor.”

– 20 –

The lazy background whisper of saxophone drew a fresh breath, swelling to rise above the irregular crack of pool balls.

Alex Slater sat in the backroom of The Railway House nursing an empty glass of beer. Sighing, he looked at his watch for the third time in ten minutes: ten to nine. There was nothing worse than sitting alone in a bar watching other people have a good time. He lit himself a cigarette in sympathy.

A fly fizzled and died on the phosphorescent bar above the quiz machine as money chunked out into the metal try; another village Mastermind cashing in on too many hours spent in front of the TV. He exhaled smoke.

Half a dozen leather-clad bikers with the same demonic ‘Satan’s Slaves’ logo airbrushed in reds and blacks on their backs gathered around the pool table. A ragtag bunch of beatniks clustered around the snug’s only other table, their conversation full of politics and street corner philosophy. One of them seemed preoccupied with the idea that bedrooms didn’t have enough corners. Every time he made whatever he considered a telling point he would jab the tip of his finger at one of the listeners, as if to say ‘point proved’.

At the far end of the snug the green plastic ‘fire exit’ sign above the double doors had been modified to include bright red flames eating the stick man alive.

One of Satan’s lank-haired Slaves returned from the bar balancing four pints in his massive hands.

Alex looked at his watch again: eight minutes to nine.

Still no sign of Beth Tanner. He knew she wasn’t coming. He felt uncomfortable, surrounded by people he didn’t know, waiting for someone who didn’t want to know him.

The distressed leather of his thrift-store aviator jacket didn’t give him the casual renegade-come-freedom-fighter look he was after. The battered brown leather left him looking like an oversized orphan out of his depth even in a safe little country pub like this.

Last night, with his head still full and reeling from the sheer shock of hearing the word ‘father’ linked with his name, Alex had made the long walk home, counting the cars lined up against the kerb and the lights burning like electrical insomniacs in row after row of houses. A normal walk. A comfortable walk. Routine. Until the corner of Dipton Walk and Juniper. Something, a blacker shadow crouched within the shadows of the roadside trees, the smudge of an urban ghost maybe, had snagged in the corner of his eye but as soon as he tried to focus on it, it was gone, swallowed by the deeper, hungrier shadows.

The feeling of watching eyes followed him all the way home.

The phosphorescent strip light sizzled as another fly went to meet its maker in fly heaven.

Alex drained the last of his lager and stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. One of the Slaves moved out of his way to let him through to the toilets.

The floor beneath the basins was splashed with puddles of water, the overflowing sinks stuffed with wads of paper. The single small window into the alley was veined with a spider’s web of cracks. Of the two cubicles, one had no paper and the other hadn’t been flushed in a long time. He opted for the porcelain trough.

The door opened behind him causing Alex to check who had followed him in. His heart sank; the reflexive clamp of his hand enough to stem the yellow river abruptly. A Slave stepped up beside him and unzipped.

“Nothing like a good piss is there?” the Slave sighed.

“Yeah,” Alex agreed as the dam broke for a second time.

“Christ but I needed that. Could you imagine what it would be like if someone told you you couldn’t ever piss again?”

Alex didn’t want to think about it. This kind of prick-in-hand intimate toilet conversation made him squirm. He didn’t want to think about anything except getting out of the toilets and into the dubious anonymity of numbers offered by the snug.

When he got back to the bar the music had changed. An old Simon & Garfunkel number. He didn’t know what it was called but it was pretty catchy. Alex was leaning against the bar waiting for Jim Beckett to pour him a refill when Johnny Lisker walked in. Eddie McMahon and Dave Lockley came in behind him.

“Three bottles, amigo,” Johnny told the barman, laying a crumpled up tenner on the counter. He was dressed in his usual uniform, torn jeans and a plain red tee-shirt, and, in his left ear, a runic cross – identical to the one dangling from Alex’s ear. Johnny took a swig from the bottle of bitter ale as soon as Beckett placed it on the counter and pocketed his change. McMahon and Lockley took their beers to the bench seat over by the pool table and put their feet up.

There was something about Johnny Lisker. He burned danger as naturally as fire burned heat, and as often as not, equally spectacularly.

“Oh man, oh man,” Lisker whistled to himself. “Something in here sure smells bad. Could even say it stinks of shit, eh Alex?” He rubbed at the rash of stubble sprouting on his chin with stubby fingers and smirked. The fingers of Lisker’s right hand ended with shrivelled nails, the fingers themselves cut short just above the tip of the first phalanx. He swilled a mouthful of beer and locked horns with the biggest, ugliest Slave he could see. Without a word, Lisker pushed away from the bar and sauntered over to the pool table.

“You got a problem, pal?” The Slave wanted to know. He sat on the edge of the pool table, waiting for an answer.

“Yeah, now that you come to mention it, I do.” Johnny almost whispered, his voice gloved in that terrible certainty of violence.

The Slave sighed and looked over his shoulder at his audience of leather-clad disciples. “Seems like Fingers here has got himself a problem.”

“Yeah? Ask the freak if he wants help solving it, Butch.” The piss-lover from the toilets said. He had picked up one of the pool cues and seemed to be weighing it in his hands as he walked around the table.

“Fuckin’ prick,” McMahon muttered, sniffing as if there was a bad smell under his nose. “Stinks of shit in here. You crapped yourself, biker boy?” he started to stand but the Slave brought the fat end of the pool cue down on the top of his head before he was even halfway out of his seat. The sheer weight of the overhead blow sent McMahon’s face slamming into the table. A sunburst of thick viscous crimson flowered from a crack hidden by his hairline. The blood trickled down his slack face like melting butter.

Someone screamed. One of the beatnik philosophers scrambling to get out of the snug before it exploded into a free-for-all.

As Pool Cue toed Eddie McMahon’s face for signs of life, Johnny Lisker launched himself at a distracted Butch. The Slave dropped his shoulder and threw an overweight right fist but Lisker slipped beneath it easily and butted his head up into the biker’s face. Butch’s eyes glazed over blankly as Lisker stepped back. The Slave’s nose was a mess of blood and cartilage smeared across his cheeks. He staggered, clattered into a stool and went sprawling. Before anyone could react Johnny Lisker hurled himself forward, something flashing silver in his hand as he slammed a fist into the Slave’s stomach.

The sound of breaking glass. Dave Lockley was lashing out with the stem of a broken bottle, slashing at the Slave’s trying to pin him. Keeping them at bay.

Pool Cue stared into Alex’s face. The Slave’s eyes were empty. It was the most frightening moment Alex had ever experienced. There was nothing in there. The lights were on but there was definitely nobody at home. His swing was wild, the butt-end of the cue sailing over Alex’s head. Alex shaped himself for a volley and hammered a booted foot into Pool Cue’s groin. The biker dropped like a stone.

By the pool table Lisker was knelt over the fallen body of Butch, stabbing his fist into the Slave’s face over and over. The blood was streaming from his mouth and nose and pooling in his blackened eye sockets. Snot bubbled from his flaring nostrils as the life was literally being beaten out of him.

Alex heard someone yelling for someone to call the police: Jim Beckett. Then the landlord was in the thick of it. He grabbed Dave Lockley by the throat and slammed him into the wall. Beckett slammed his fist into Lockley’s gut. Behind him, some of the mill workers were piling into the fight.

Alex didn’t wait. He crashed into the fire doors at full tilt, slamming the quick-release bar and pitching them open and then he was sprinting over cobbles so black they could have been made from charcoal. Johnny was right behind him. It was the survival instinct.

He could hear shouts behind them, but they were getting further away with every step. Arms pumping, Johnny passed him before they reached the main road.

The signpost for the High Street dripped with shadows. The sluggish breeze couldn’t match their speed as they charged down the dark street. Around them, windows of shops blinked blindly. Before them, the night looked as black and dark as a pit, the High Street losing itself to the night long before it was reborn as The Spine Road on the far side of the village. A dog barked somewhere. Alex didn’t have the energy to spare a look either left or right as he ran the length of Brewer Street and into the heart of the lower village with its pocket-sized gardens and neatly trimmed hedges. The humidity burned raw in his throat. It was all he could do just to run.

Halfway down the street Johnny threw himself over a low hedge and lay on his back, panting.

A police siren cut through the darkness but it was streets away, heading back the way they had come.

Struggling to catch his breath, Alex ran on. Johnny was three houses away, standing behind the hedge with his head down. As he got closer, Alex could see why.

A thin sheen of blood, oddly colourless in the streetlight, filmed the three-inch blade of his open knife. The colourless blood splashed halfway up Lisker’s arms and across the front of his red tee-shirt.

Alex’s brain refused to make sense of what he was seeing, but eventually it had to admit defeat. For the second time in two days Alex Slater’s comfortable world was pulled out from under his feet. And again he found himself asking: “What are we going to do?” He had no idea how he had managed to get himself into the middle of this mess.

– 21 –

Barney Doyle threw the disposable needle and its wrappings away and closed the draw on the insulin bottle for another day. He’d been living with the diabetes for forty-seven years. Longer than he’d been living with Evie. And still the three-times-a-day injections made him feel like he was no better than a common junkie.

The black and white curse of being a Police Sergeant. Drugs were drugs were drugs by any name.

Motes of dust drifted lazily in the shaft of streetlight that had somehow squirmed between the slats of the blinds. The only real noise in the room was the creak of his chair as he shifted his weight in it. Lever-Arch files and report pads lined one wall, like his personal Scheherazade telling the stories of a thousand and one crimes. The worst of which, still, after eight years, told the story of Hannah and Holly Shelton in photographs. Hannah facedown, hands and feet tied behind her back with surgical tape, the back of her dress slit with a knife, panties pulled aside, blood between her legs and down her back from the fifty-seven knife wounds cutting a frenzied swath from the neck down, and Holly, in her own bed, eyes, lips and tongue gone, mouth forced open with bottom of a broken wine bottle. He didn’t know how Ben Shelton could get up in the mornings. Not a day went by when he didn’t find himself imagining how it must feel, how he would feel, coming home to find Evie like that. He could only ever see himself curling up and waiting for death because without Evie there would be nothing worth living for.

Barney was alone in the stationhouse, rereading a battered Morris West paperback when the phone rang.

“Doyle,” Barney grunted into the receiver. Shadows drifted through from the waiting room. He plucked a strand of white hair and rolled it between his fingers.

“Barney, its Jim Beckett. There’s been a fight. I think Lisker’s killed someone.”

“What the hell? Slow down, Jim. What happened?”

A pause on the other end of the line as Jim Beckett drew a steeling breath, and:

“Some stupid fight got out of hand. Lisker’s knifed some kid and Eddie McMahon’s in a bad way. Maybe fractured his skull.”

“Ambulance is on its way. I’ll have Sam and Charlie with you in two minutes, so just sit tight.”

– 22 –

Mike Shelton put the letter back in the plain white envelope.

The simplicity of the gesture had an air of finality about it.

Three short lines from the bank saying that they were taking away all that he had left. Taking away the walls that contained every one of his memories of Hannah and Holly. Foreclosing on the loan. Taking back the garage. The place would be going up for auction in twelve weeks.

He put the letter on the table and went upstairs, dark thoughts swallowing him as he climbed. There was a door up here he never opened because to do so opened a wound so wide and so deep it might never heal. Holly’s playroom. He opened the door and went inside for the first time in almost eight years.

Nothing had changed. Nothing had moved. Over time the room had taken on the stale musty air of a shrine. Now it was a haunt for spiders and for his personal ghosts. At the foot of the bed, unopened, were Holly's Christmas presents. Mike stood there looking at his daughter's old rocking horse with its one good eye, until he couldn't stand it anymore. The horse had been carved by his father as a gift to his only grandchild. He had started carving the horse's head the day Mike had told him Hannah was pregnant.

He almost backed out, unwilling to stay in this time capsule of hurt. He knew too well the stories each and every object in the room had to tell. The china-faced dolls and the Victorian pram she used to take them for walks in. The posters on the wall worshipping pop stars whose careers were as dead as his little girl. The air was thick with silence; the sort of silence he could imagine drowning in. For a second he remembered the horse rocking gently, Holly sat astride it and giggling. It was a cruel illusion.

Mike sank to his knees. Pieces of red and yellow Lego were piled in a mountain before him, the beginnings of the wall Holly had been making still in place. He started putting some of the plastic bricks together, building another row of her wall.

"I thought you might want to play," he whispered to the ghosts in the room, "before they take you away from me." Mike threw the Lego brick he was holding at the rocking horse in frustration. "Angel," he pleaded. "Please come and play with daddy… I'm so lonely without you… and there's all of these toys for you to open… new toys, see?" He looked at the wooden horse, desperate to see it rocking. A faint mewling sound clogged in his throat. "Why won't you come back and play with me? Why? I loved you so much… I'm so lonely… I don't want it anymore. I don't want to be alone. I hurt so bad, angel. I hurt everywhere. I'm coming apart without you and mummy."

– 22 –

Later.

Alex Slater was about to speak when he realised where Johnny had led him. A wide avenue, tree-lined and poorly lit. They skirted the garden and headed around the back. The big house on Mulberry Lane was completely dark. A narrow fenced off passage wriggled between it and its neighbour, leading to a bolted gate.

Johnny was still grinning. His mouth reminded Alex of a dog's: all teeth.

The bolt was halfway down the gate's back but Johnny boosted himself up and over with ease. He slipped the bolt and let Alex in.

"Home sweet fucking home." Johnny joked.

Alex felt like a ghost creeping towards a long abandoned haunt. They used to play fight in this backyard. Along a rubbish strewn wall which opened onto an empty coal shed and an outside toilet there were plenty of signs to suggest a new game was being played out here. The faded labels on a scatter of discarded glue pots and the few crinkled 2-mil syringe wrappers mingled with lemon zest and orange rinds, cigarette filter tips and crushed fruit flesh. Sweet wrappers and crisp packets did their best to mask the nature of the game in progress but enough of the horror showed through.

Johnny Lisker was developing into a new breed of monster. One that became more lethal with each new mutation.

Johnny's house was the shabbiest along the lane. The backyard was overgrown. The long grass smothered the seat of a rusted slide. Days old washing hung limply from the line crossing the yard, still waiting for a breeze to come by.

The key was under an upturned flowerpot.

"I'm not sure this is a good idea," Alex began but by then the door was open and Johnny was on his way inside. Alex followed him, like a moth drawn to his flame. Following even though he knew sometimes the moths get burned.

The bare bulb in the kitchen shared the ceiling with cobwebs and dust. Half-washed crockery piled up in the sink and along the drainer. Someone's breakfast festered on the bench. The mugs and plates were a mismatch of patterns. Underwear and jeans were draped over the radiators. Against one wall a tall cupboard stood open, its only contents were the gas and electricity meters. Both of the seals had been broken and the meters reset. On the kitchen table an open carton of butter had a knife buried in its yellow heart.

Irrationally, Alex started to hear the peal of a bell – a phone or a plague-walker ringing out its final call for the damned to be thrown out in the street. "We're fucked," he said to himself. The phone wasn't ringing and there was no deathly figure patrolling the streets. "What are we doing here?"

"Sleeping bags. If we're gonna be sleeping rough we need the bags or we'll freeze our tits off mate. Pick up some food from the pantry; I'll meet you outside, okay?" Whilst Johnny went upstairs for the bags Alex got down on his hands and knees and started rummaging through the contents of the pantry, stuffing unbranded tins, packets of soup and other goodies into a carrier bag. Then he stole the tin opener and a box of matches.

"Fuck," he heard Johnny mutter.

Then another voice. "Barney's been looking for you, lad. Reckons you're in some big shit but I told him I ain't seen you in days. You wanna tell me what it's all about?"

"You look like shit."

"All them police sirens your doing lad?"

"Nah, course not. The pigs are just making a stink over nothing, that's all."

"That right?"

"That's what I said. Christ, you stink. You know that?"

"Where are you gonna go?"

"Just gonna lay low for a couple of days. If anyone asks you ain't seen us, right?"

"Suit yourself." Johnny's old man muttered.

Johnny came down the stairs carrying two sleeping bags and a purple rucksack. He threw the sack to Alex. "Hey, don't look so glum. We're having fun, right?"

"Yeah," Alex mumbled, emptying the contents of the carrier bag into the rucksack.

"Just like the old days. Nothing changes much does it?"

Alex thought about the trash filling the backyard, the syringe wrappers and the fruit rinds. Some things changed all right.

"No, I don't suppose it does," he lied.

Johnny grinned that grin of his. "Come on, we've got a secret hideout to reclaim."

– 23 –

Daniel Tanner wished the world had listened to Chicken Licken. When the radio began with another one of those mindlessly cheerful pop songs it definitely felt as if the sky was falling down.

Groaning, he rolled over and stabbed the snooze button, buying a few more minutes of catchy-chorus free sleep.

Katie was stretched out beside him, her face burrowed into a pocket of warmth between pillow and duvet. He smiled softly. This was his guilty pleasure, looking at his wife asleep, wondering just what he’d done to deserve this porcelain miracle walked fresh into his life. Heart-shaped face, oceanic eyes, a swan’s neck and long slim legs. She shifted slightly, lips parting in a gentle sigh.

“Love you,” he whispered.

“Me too,” she mumbled without opening her eyes.

Ellen, their youngest, stood in the doorway with Comfortable Dog draped over one arm. His baleful button-face looked sadder than usual with a finger-length of stuffing leaking out through his torn ear. Ellen’s hair was red like her mother’s. She rubbed at her eyes with a scrunched up fist.

“What is it, sweetie?” Daniel asked.

“Thir-steee…” Ellen croaked. The sight of her thin almost boyish body of ribs, elbows and knees pulled at his heart. She looked so innocent and vulnerable it hurt. She was so small and fragile he didn’t think he could stand to watch her grow up and away from him, fall in love and leave him behind. Time enough for that, he told himself. “Get yourself washed and I’ll be down to sort out breakfast in a minute, okay?”

“’Kay. But it’s got to be museli and stuff, ‘member?” she said solemnly, closing the door on her way out.

“What was all that about?” Katie asked around a yawn.

“She saw a film about Bosnia at school so now she’s saving her normal food to send over for the children out there.”

“Sweet kid.”

“Yeah, just like her mum.”

“Why thank you kind sir.”

“Better get up, I suppose.”

“And spoil the moment?”

“Lying here thinking about it won’t make it go away.”

“I know…but still.”

Daniel got up, stretched the ache of sleep out of his spine and slipped into his loose robe. He opened the window. The warm morning breeze ruffled through his hair. It looked like another beautiful morning outside. The sky was clear and pale and blue. Not a single cloud up there. He could hear the hum and buzz of insects and the birdsong so full of joy for the morning. A butterfly dipped past the window, flitting along with the snap of the breeze.

Behind him he heard Katie padding out of the room and down the hall, the bathroom door close and the toilet flush. Habits. Taps splashed water against the basin and then knocking on Beth’s door, trying to raise the dead.

“Mornin’ daddy,” Sarah called on her way down to the kitchen. His girls. He didn’t see much of himself in any of their growing personalities. He didn’t know if that made him happy or sad. A bit of both, really.

Breakfast was scrambled eggs and black pepper, fried bread, tomatoes and two medallions of bacon washed down with thick black coffee, European style. Daniel didn’t hurry down for it. The morning was too beautiful to spoil so willingly.

Through the floor he could hear the girls fighting again, same as every other morning. One teasing another – their voices were muffled and distorted but it was easy enough to get the gist of what was going on. Sarah was teasing Ellen with the greasy strips of bacon. He could all but see the older girl taking a bite out of the meat and then mouthing a big fat yummy face.

Daniel turned away from the window with its garden full of snapdragons and blue bells, and went downstairs.

At the table, Ellen was stirring her milk-drowned museli without much enthusiasm. Across the table Sarah was lip-smacking her way through a mouthful of bacon and egg. Beth, on the other hand, was quiet. Brooding over something. Probably that damned Slater boy. Sometime soon Daniel was going to have to sit down with young Mr. Slater and have a serious man-to-man chat about the dos-and-don’ts of dating one of his daughters.

“Hi, dad.”

“Hey, honey.”

“You going to be sacking anyone today?” Sarah, like Ellen, was small, pale-skinned and delicate but she shared his dark hair.

“Sarah!”

“Come on, mum. I was only asking.”

“No honey, I’m not going to be sacking anyone today. I leave that sort of stuff to the boss.”

“Shame,” Sarah said thoughtfully. “So, what are you going to be doing then?”

“A bit of this, bit of that, you know.”

“Daddy’s going to be making toilet paper, stupid.” Ellen chimed happily.

“All right you two, that’s more than enough.”

“Well, she’s so stupid sometimes.”

“Ellen Tanner!”

“Okay, who wants to hear a joke,” Daniel cut in, heading them off at the pass.

“Oh God, one of dad’s jokes.”

“Better be good, else you’ll have to pay a fine.”

“Trust me,” Daniel said in his most serious voice. “I make toilet paper for a living. How can I be anything but funny? A pound says you laugh.”

“Okay.” Sarah said sceptically.

“Right. What’s green and goes up and down?”

“Come on dad, that’s so ancient.”

“Like me, huh?”

Ellen laughed and tried to hide it behind her hand.

“A gooseberry in a lift.”

“Dad!”

“Okay, okay…”

“Can we pick up Annie?” It was the first thing Beth had said all morning.

“Sure, sweetheart.” Daniel said, just glad to hear her say something. This blue funk she’d slipped into over the last few days was really beginning to worry him. Still, it was all about taking baby steps, wasn’t it? A few words here, a few there, and gradually she’d find a way back to being herself.

“Can we walk to school through the woods?” Ellen piped up.

“No way, young lady.” Katie scotched the idea.

“But-“

“No buts. If you go to Annie’s you walk back to school along the main road. Promise?”

“Okay…” Ellen conceded grudgingly.

“I mean it.”

– 24 –

Daniel Tanner’s old green Subaru grubbed through Westbrooke’s country lanes like a snail. The woods bordering Dipton Walk were thick, the trees outnumbering the houses fifty-to-one. They passed a telephone box at the junction. One of the panes of glass had been broken and lay in fragments. Amid the shards a blackbird pecked away at a small furry carcass. The bird hopped back as the car passed.

In the backseat Ellen hummed a nonsense tune.

Beth gazed out of the window, her thoughts a million miles away whilst Sarah was reading a teeny-bopper magazine.

Daniel slipped a cd into the stereo. Declan Shea’s piano solo was mating with Clarence Clemens’ saxophone.

Beth lost herself in the thick creamy puffballs of smoke that billowed out of the paper mill's twin chimneys, letting her thoughts swell into one vast lumpy sheet of candyfloss in the sky. It was one way of losing herself. She needed that. Needed to be lost because every time she found herself she found Alex and their baby as well. Everything was changing too quickly. She needed an anchor to cling on to. Someone to talk to.

Along the street, house windows were cataracted with ice-white reflections of the sun. The shadows cast by the houses, the trees, hedges and lampposts were stark and spiky and edged like razorblades in comparison.

Beth watched the people as they walked along the pavements alive with summer colours. A girl Ellen’s age stopped to watch a grey squirrel leap from bough to bough in a towering sycamore her delighted face turned golden brown by the sun. She envied the girl her innocence. One day she’d wake up and everything would be fucked up because of a boy. It always happened. It was a fact of life that they forgot to teach you at school.

They parked outside Annie Lockewood’s house. Ellen was out of the car and skipping up the path before Beth had unclipped her seatbelt. She swatted at one of the pink helicopters of blossom drifting lazily to the grass and then she was ringing the doorbell.

Jenny Lockewood opened the door in her bathrobe. Day-in-day-out Jenny helped Maggie Carlise keep track of things in her second-hand bookstore. Beth loved that place with its old books and their yellow edges. There were so many worlds in there where she could hide herself away and not think about Alex Slater. With her expensively streaked hair and manicured fingernails Jenny looked anything but bookish. A silver ankh hung down between her breasts, its tail obscured by the gown.

“Beth’s here,” she called over her shoulder, hands fluttering like wings always flapping on the neurotic side of flustered.

“Can I leave them with you?” Daniel called from the front seat.

“Course you can,” she called back as Sarah and Ellen disappeared inside. Beth closed the car door and leaned in to give Daniel a goodbye kiss.

“You know you can talk to me when you’re ready, love.”

“I know, dad,” she said softly.

Annie was in the kitchen brewing a pot of coffee. Paganini’s Grand Sonata in A rolled over them in a tumble of bright music. Annie, a full head taller than Beth, had her sleeves rolled up and hands in the sink, washing out a pair of coffee mugs.

“Do you have something a little bleaker?” Beth asked her friend, pulling up a chair. “I’m in a positively Wagnerian mood right now.”

“Oh, you little heartbreaker, spill,” Annie joked, drying her hands off.

“I told Alex he’s going to be a father, biologically at least.”

– ANNIE’S FALL –

They talked, best friend to best friend. Talked in a way that Beth could never talk with her parents. She unloaded. Every pain, every fear, every hurt and doubt, and Annie listened and said nothing. No judgements.

"And now you feel like a bitch, am I right?"

"Yeah, I guess. I mean he didn't deserve that."

"Worried he's going to hate you?"

"Worried I've ruined his life."

"Ah, hell, he'll get over you."

They were cutting down the same forested slope that they had been cutting down for the last six years. Kicking up the same mulched leaves and crunching the same deadfall. It was routine. Familiar. Safe. Sarah and Ellen ran ahead, giggling and laughing, the threat of being the 'Hairy Princess' making them run even faster between the trees.

"Do you love him?" Annie pressed.

"No," Beth admitted.

"So what's the problem?" Annie said, ducking under a dragging branch. One of her shoes fetched up against something hard and despite her pinwheeling arms she went tumbling. A bramble raked across her cheek, thorns drawing blood. "Shit!" she cried, much to Ellen's horror and Sarah's obvious amusement. Overhead, a jay scolded her.

Beth helped her up. "Nice going."

Annie rubbed her cheek and saw blood on her palm and fingers. She looked around to see what had tripped her. An outcropping of tree roots clawed like crone's fingers in the brown mud. Witches fingers clutching at the last breath of life as it suffocated away.

"You okay?"

"Yeah." She touched her cheek again, feeling out the extent of the damage.

Three inches of root had clawed its way out of the tightly packed earth. Annie walked up to it and kicked it. If not for that last shoulder-shrug of arrogance they might have made it to school none-the-wiser, but she couldn't resist. In the trees the sunlight fell unevenly, straining through the sieve of summer leaves and dotting the floor like the scatter of golden coins. For a second she saw nothing but the dark tree shapes and the slivers of daylight. Then her eyes began to focus. Found something. In one patch of light the golden coins jigged fitfully over a hanging thing.

School and summer, boyfriends and babies, seemed a million miles away all of a sudden.

Annie stumbled forward a step, her legs dragging her towards the hanging shape even as she recognised it for what it was. She felt her insides heave and her knees give way. Annie fell onto her knees, retching.

The body of a man, stripped naked and crawling with black flies dangled from a bough not twenty feet to the left of the tripping root, spinning slowly in the air.

She screamed.

Part Two

Littletown Dreams

- 25 -

Doyle wasn't prepared to admit it, not yet, but faced with the milky-white corpse turning hypnotically against the noose and last night's set-to in The Railway House something was definitely happening in Westbrooke and the only thing he could think of doing was sliding way down under the covers and hoping whatever it was it would pass by with the night.

Facts were facts though: Eddie McMahon was in hospital with a fractured skull and Brian 'Butch' Miller – the leather jacketed slave of Satan – with multiple stab wounds, and now the hanged man.

"Anyone we know?" Sam Ash wanted to know.

Doyle caught sight of a bright flare of light through the trees. Had he been inclined to read Sam's thoughts Doyle would have applauded their analytical ratcheting as they clicked down through the mental cogs but he was lost in thoughts of his own. The men were quiet in the presence of this unnamed death. It wasn't the flawless silence of graveyards, or even the antiseptic silence of the mortuary – they were voids that sucked up sounds. This was merely a solemn hush; a respect for the nameless deceased coupled with uncertainty. How did it happen? Why?

Elspeth Packer, one of Hexham's three Scene of Crime Officers, was busy snapping photographs with her compact Nikon. Charlie Adams sucked smoke from his roll-up, warming his lungs as he combed the grove for the missing suicide note. Doyle didn't expect the constable to find one.

"I honestly don't know. He looks vaguely familiar but he's not a local. It's hard to tell, you know."

Doyle checked his watch, angling it towards one of the chinks of light. Not for the first time that morning he told himself there had to be better ways of making a living.

Elspeth finished with shooting the ligature around the corpse's bruised neck and the bough's taut knot and turned her Nikon on the neatly folded and stacked clothes sat on the mound of heaped earth beside the slowly spinning cadaver's feet.

Doyle had seen enough to know the world wouldn't stop spinning until they cut the dead man down.

"Okay boys, that's me done," Elspeth called. "You want to cut him down while you wait for the Doc? Or are you going to leave him hanging?"

Doyle stubbed out his own cigarette on the carapace encrusted log he'd made into a stool. "Hanging. You finished with the clothes, too?"

"Yep."

"Great. Charlie, look for his wallet. You never know, we might get lucky and give this fella a name."

"Right-o, Sarge."

Doyle turned his attention back to the petite forensics girl. Her dress was simple, slim fitting faded jeans, white trainers dusted with dirt and a loose cotton blouse. Her cornflower blonde hair was cinched back in a fox-like tail that accentuated the flat planes of her cheeks and the narrowness of her chin. She swapped the compact Nikon for a wide-angled Ricoh fitted with an infinity lens and fired off some general scene shots. Occasionally she homed in on some individual point of reference, narrowing the focus as if seeking out some sharper definition beyond the magnification of the camera's lens. Details, Doyle knew, it was all about details. Seeing the flaws where her ears had been pierced in the dim and distant past, the old policeman smiled to himself. Details.

Birds sang in the branches overhead, their chirping rising as they tuned up for the morning courtships. When Doyle looked up it seemed as though the overhanging branches had twined together to create a fretted vault above the grove. Between the two, the vault and the song, the place had the air of something almost sacred about it apart from the fact that scratchy police radio messages cut through the sanctum sanctorum.

Charlie Adams was going through the folded clothes, searching the pockets.

Stepping back from the Scene of Examination, Doyle spoke into his radio: "Delta One. Situation Report. Okay, Brenda, it appears to be a suicide by hanging. I'll need the Super over in Hexham informed as soon as possible. Over." His voice  was too loud for this place. Too matter-of-fact. Behind him, he heard the beginnings of a low grumbling: engines labouring down the steep forest track. Engines meant ambulance, meant paramedics and pathologist and eventually S.E.P.: Someone Else's Problem.

"Got something Barney," Charlie Adams called. He was thumbing through the contents of the dead man's wallet. "Here we go," Charlie said, reading the details off the dead man's driving license. "Monk Sanders.  Address: 36, Stonecroft Bridge. Age: forty-one."

The birds had stopped singing and the engine's grumble had quietened to a respectful silence, leaving mortality's hush to take possession of the grove once more.

Doyle turned in time to see three men lumbering shoulder to shoulder down the sloping incline of the grassy bank.

They carried a fibreglass coffin between them.

- 26 -

Doyle couldn't help but laugh, not so much at the joke as at the sight of two men perched on top of a fibreglass coffin eating corned beef sandwiches and telling jokes whilst the pathologist worked his way over the hanging man. Doc Herber, a bespectacled man, wiry with a face twenty years older than his body, came across with an aura of shabby intellect.

"Definitely dead," he pronounced, probing at the ligature with the rusted blade of his penknife.

"We'd worked that one out for ourselves, Doc. You know how it is, find a fella hanging by his neck in the woods, looks like he's been hanging there for most of the night and you think: 'Hey now, he sure looks dead to me.'"

"Very good, Officer Doyle." Herber continued, the sarcasm lost on him. The cause of death appears to be asphyxiation. The time, I'd estimate to be around three this morning, give or take. I'll need to open him up to be more precise."

"Suicide?"

"Now who's asking the stupid questions, Doyle? I take it you haven't found a note?"

"Not so far. Sam, Charlie, I want you to round up the girls who found our man. Get statements. Usual procedure, bring in the parents or legal guardians. Charlie, while you're at it, call in an updated Sit. Rep.. Andy, you two," Doyle said, waving for the two comedians to come over. "I guess it's time we earned our money. You want to drag the box across whilst I cut him down?"

"Sure."

"Elspeth, you might want to take a couple of shots of the body after we've cut it down."

"No problem."

Doyle looked at Monk Sanders’s suspended body.

"Bit squeamish are we?" Doc Herber asked. The pathologist prodded the body so that it revolved in a lazy circle at the end of the taut rope.

"A bit," Doyle admitted. "But I guess it comes with the territory." He traced the line of the rope up from the noose around Monk's neck to where it looped around a high limb. A limb too high to reach. He worked the edge of his knife against the rope, cutting above the knot to preserve the ligature.

The dead man's legs buckled and his body pitched forward face first into the dirt.

Doyle knelt down beside the corpse.

"Herber?"

The wiry man crouched down on the other side of the corpse. "Yes?"

"Want to give me a hand lifting our friend here into the coffin? Get hold of his legs, there's a good man. Elspeth, you want to take those pictures now?"

"Will do, Sarge."

Humming Whistle While You Work the S.O.C.O. fired off three shots as they lifted the body. The dead man's head lolled back on its torn neck muscles, his mouth gaping wide. The whites of his eyes stared out from blood-leeched sockets. Something dredged the lower regions of Doyle's stomach. Then the body was up and being man-handled into the fibreglass casket.

It took them twenty minutes to haul the heavy casket back to the waiting meat wagon. No one ever mentioned how incredibly heavy dead meat was.

- 27 -

Ben Shelton was dragged awake by the scrappy feel of Scooby's rough tongue and hoary old breath tickling his face. Disturbing images fluttered through his groggy mind like ash puffing up off an autumn bonfire. His sleep had been deep without being restful, plagued instead by murky dreams which, once awake, he could not recall. He sat up slowly, knuckling his gummy eyes and shaking himself like a dog. Scooby skittered back, his forelegs trembling on the unsteady mattress. The old dog looked tired as he padded forward again and nuzzled Ben's hand. He waited to be patted.

Ben stroked Scooby's head absently. “Yeah, you're a good dog, Scoob, the best. Go check on the mail while I take a wee, will you?” Scooby bounced off the bed and trotted across the bedroom floor, nosing open the door before disappearing through it.

His bed sheets were crumpled and twisted around him, moulding to the shape of his body. Ben pushed them away, feeling hemmed in by their closeness. His room smelled; the pungent aroma of nightmares still clinging to the muggy air. Wriggling out of the blankets’ restrictive clutch, he slipped out of bed and padded over to the open window. The air breezing in was so thick it felt as if he could mold it between his fingers like silly-putty. Below his window birds bickered listlessly over a few scraps on the bird table, the rising sun sapping their energies. Ben yawned and stretched. Ignoring his dressing gown, he went along the landing to the bathroom.

As always he groaned at his reflection. Every morning it was the same. His skin seemed so colourless as to be transparent, allowing the night's growth to show through blackly. Gloomily, he urinated, washed his hands, then lathered up for the ritual of the morning shave, scooping warm water onto his face before working the shaving stick into a foam. When he raised his head and looked in the bathroom mirror again he could barely make out his reflection beyond the outline of an amorphous pink smear through the clinging film of condensation that clouded the glass.

Back in his room, Ben switched off the radio-alarm. It wasn't due to go off for another fifteen minutes, but he didn't feel like getting back into the sack. Instead, he pottered around the bedroom, pulling out a fresh cotton shirt and a pair of black chino's for the day ahead, and then went downstairs for breakfast.

The kitchen was large and light, the view from its long window as blandly cheerful as a picture postcard. As Ben poured milk onto his shallow bowl of muesli, he heard bumps and snuffles and padded pawsteps on the linoleum behind him. Scooby sidled up to him, brushing his fur against his bare legs to collect an absent scratch behind the ears as he dropped the mail on the floor. The dog waddled slowly down the kitchen, presumably to see if there were any scrapings he had overlooked in his yellow bowl.

Ben picked up the mail, wiping it with a dry cloth. A catalogue from Innovations - they were plugging an orthopaedic stool this month - and the sickly green-tinged envelope of his monthly credit card bill. He tossed both, unopened, onto the bench, and, carrying his muesli, went through to the breakfast area.

Out of habit, he took a detour to switch on the stereo, bringing the volume down a peg as he remembered his brother Mike was asleep upstairs. Joe Morris’ innocuous manila envelope sat on the unit, beside the small CD rack and a paperback copy of some bloated heroic fantasy.

'What the hell, huh Scoob?' Ben muttered. Using the old Labrador as an excuse for talking to himself was rapidly becoming second nature. He picked up the envelope and went back through to the breakfast area. Eating muesli with one hand and leafing through sheets of bonded A4 with the other, he immersed himself in the darkly humorous world of Joe Morris’ Spin Dizzy Angel. He read slowly, every now and then massaging one or both temples with his fingertips. It took him twenty minutes to read it all, and when he finished he looked up uncertainly, aware that eyes were watching him through the stereo's perfect swell of Bluesy music.

Across the room, Scooby mirrored the look. Mike Shelton shuffled through from the family room.

“Sleep well?”

“Like one of the damned, little brother. Oh, for the comfort of a bed like that every night.”

“Glad to oblige, weren't we Scoob?” On cue, the Labrador barked his agreement, his stump of a tail wagging.

“Now that's what I call a good dog,” Mike said soothingly. He squatted on his haunches, shuffled forward and took Scooby's head into his big hands, stroking him for a minute or more. “Any good?” Mike asked, meaning the fifteen or so white sheets of paper on the bench.

“Surprisingly so,” Ben brought his hands to the sides of his head again and started massaging his temples slowly, thinking about the nuts and bolts behind the story he had just read. A headache was building and the day hadn't come close to beginning yet.  A juvenile car thief walking through the darkened streets of a bleak, lonely cityscape, teased and taunted by childish voices he can't place, until he finds himself under a dry bridge, face to face gunslinger fashion with a dark man. Only the dark man leaches light from the world around him until he seemingly scintillates with its vibrancy, and the car thief is confronted by a horrible white faced thing that mimics and then kills him, melding into his mirror image. There was the hint of an allegory masquerading in the story's clothing. Of course, it had the flaws of a lot of juvenile work, the heavy-handedness of youth, but it was good. Better than good. There was a black humour buried in its narrative heart that made it pleasantly readable.

Ben stood up. “So, what have you got planned for today?”

“Nothing special.”

“Thought any more about what I said last night?”

“A bit,” Mike said, noncommittally.

“No rush, I'll see you tonight, until then: Me casa es su casa and all that.”

Ben went upstairs, dressed and pulled his things together, then hurried out to the Bug. He shouted goodbye to Mike and Scooby, then hopped inside, gunned the engine and started off for the university. He was going to be ridiculously early, but that was better than bumming around the kitchen for another twenty five minutes wondering how to talk about money with Mike.

With the windows rolled down and the radio playing Snow Patrol quietly, he reversed out of the drive and took the series of turns out onto the High Street. He could feel the air clearing out the cobwebs inside his head.

Reaching into the glove compartment, he pulled out an old pair of polarised sunglasses; the sun was hovering brightly on an angle that caught every ray on the windscreen, refracting them into a bleeding rainbow of blinding glares.

All at once Ben stopped, standing on the Bug's brakes. Across the street, where the trailing edge of Dipton Wood mingled with the old houses, not far from the Arches, Westbrooke's twin tree guardians, he saw the opening of the forest track that curved up to Garrets farm. Staring at the gritted road suddenly brought back at least one of last night's dreams with startling clarity.

He had been locked in a bare attic room, and through the window's grime he could see a man hanging from the twisted limbs of an old oak.

Of course, now he remembered, and it was as if a door had been opened inside his head and it all came flooding back.

*   *   *   *   *

After a fruitless hour spent lecturing to a handful of reprobates, Ben decided it was time to call it a day. He ducked into the faculty office, making the necessary arrangements to have his 4 O'clock seminar covered by a stand-in, then, answering the call of his stomach, headed off in the direction of the refectory for a late lunch.

A few classes were still in session and Lipman Hall possessed appalling acoustics that seemed to amplify every little sound, especially on the stairwells, so he climbed down with excessive caution, quietly humming The Twilight Zone's theme tune. The off-key notes echoed eerily in the cramped stairway, bouncing off the whitewashed walls. The air was dusty but pleasantly cool.

Beneath him, he heard a chorus of giggles and the wheeze of a fire door's hydraulic arm opening and closing, leaving him alone again.

Back outside, in the suntrap of the quadrangle he took his usual perch on the redbrick wall that encircled the broad trunk of some nameless tree (of knowledge, he had always supposed) and tried to read. He was distracted by a couple of skateboarding freshers and a low-flying Frisbee clattering into the sacred tree, inches above his head. Both pastimes deserved to be consigned back into the hell that was the 1980s, he thought to himself, watching the boards skid along the rim of bars. Everyone seemed to be taking full advantage of the mini heat-wave. A squirrel munched on an acorn, reminding him of his resolution. A couple of shorts and t-shirt clad girls walked hand in hand up the library steps. Finally, he slipped the unopened book back into his case, and headed off towards the stifling heat of the refectory. A city starling called, flitting from eave to dusty eave in an attempt to avoid the uncomfortable touch of the sun.

The refectory's entrance was on the first floor of the Student Union building. He pulled open one of the row of glass doors, then stepped aside to allow slowly departing students to drift out. Inside, he managed a smile for Sarah Fletcher, who was heading his way with a tray of salad, coffee and cold meat.

Ben picked up a tepid bowl of vegetable soup, a couple of crispy rolls and a cup of coffee with the consistency of treacle, paying for them at the tills, and then wandered through to the dining area. It was all but empty, the heat having tempted even the most faint-hearted and pale-skinned of the student fraternity out into the great (concrete) wide open. A couple of scruffy looking kids still battled away on the bank of video machines, clocking up consecutive high scores at games that were almost as old as they were.

He spotted Joe Morris out of the corner of his eye. He was hunched over a table, pulling and twisting at a bacon sandwich. Pasty skin showed through a gaping hole in the shoulder of his grey sweatshirt. The sweatshirt itself, with the university's crest fading on its chest, looked as if he had been wearing it for a month; sleeping in it too. The young student seemed oblivious to Ben’s approach. Morris was probing at the bun and reading the cover of a folded newspaper when he arrived at his table.

“Mind if I join you?”

The youth looked up, a startled expression stamped onto his face. Ben watched, suppressing his smile, as it melted into one of recognition.

“No problem, Sir,” Morris said, scooping up his newspaper and brushing a space clear for Ben's soup bowl.

“Ben, please. Now, scolding time; I don't remember seeing you this morning. Something you want to tell me?”

“Uh, no. Sorry, teach. I slept in,” he mumbled self-consciously.

“Well, that’s mildly better than the dog eating your homework, I suppose, as long as you weren’t alone. Sleeping in alone kind of defeats the whole object of being a student, if you ask me. Okay, so I've read Spin Dizzy Angel and I have to say I think it's pretty close to being saleable. There are a couple of places the pacing could be tightened up, but on the whole - nine out of ten and come to the top of the class.”

“Really?”

Ben nodded. “Now, like I said, I can't promise anything, but I've got a couple of ideas.”

“I’m all ears,” Joe said, grinning broadly.

“Well, I'm working on a new piece myself.”

“The novel, right?”

“Yeah, the novel, that's right. Anyway, I wouldn't mind a sounding board for some of the ideas, and I could probably squeeze in a new proof reader, if you're interested, that is?”

“Me? Really?”

Ben nodded again.

“I don't know –”

“-what to say?” Ben finished the sentence for him. “Everyone seems to be saying that these days, must be something in the air. How about “Hell yeah, that'd be awesome." Or words to that effect?”

Joe nodded, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

“Great, now for the other idea. If you don't mind, I'd like to show Spin Dizzy Angel to my agent next time I see her.”

“Mind? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I can't promise anything, but you never know.  It might be a start.”

“I don't know what –”

“I know, save it. Just keep turning out the magic and I'll be one happy teacher because you make me look good.”

*   *   *   *   *

The growing crowd hooted its uproarious approval as the comic-faced street clown kicked his heel and tumbled, sprawling on the pavement. Shaking his carrot-wigged head, he looked up almost furtively. The red and black make-up circlets puffed around his sad eyes like swollen tears. Passing a chalking pavement artist, Ben slowed his walk to watch the display. Behind him the overhanging redbrick of the bank's walls dominated the street's skyline.

Overhead, a tumultuous gathering of wings, starlings, sparrows and pigeons, banked away sharply, gravitating towards the circling throng hovering above the distant pillar of Grey's Monument.

The clown was up assaying a sketchy bow to sputters of mirth from the children in the crowd. No one seemed to care that the kids should have been in school.  A ten piece Hillbilly-Blues band had feet tapping and bodies bouncing in time with their hollering horns and heavy, rhythmic bass strumming. Two dungaree clad girls with short cropped hair, flower necklaces and stark blue-black make-up, swung each other by linked arms, their momentum taking them round faster and faster.

The crowd clapped and hooted while the gambolling clown joined in the jig, hopping from one foot to another, flapping and waving his arms outrageously. After another drum-rattling tumble, he waddled over to his padded bag of tricks.

Pulling a silver baton out from its depths, he raised his eyebrows in mock puzzlement, turning first to look at the dancing girls, who grinned between swirls, and then to some of the youngsters in the crowd, who smirked and whispered behind their small hands.

Some of the parents laughed while others clapped their encouragement. The clown turned slightly, so as to play the crowd more thoroughly. Two more charcoal tipped batons appeared while he slapped at the baggy pockets of his patchwork costume, looking, evidently, for a light.

One of the watching band members ambled over, waving a brass Zippo. The rest of the band stopped playing and made a show of elbowing their companions in the ribs as the batons caught with flame.

“Oh boy,” the clown joked loudly, knocking his undersized hat askew as he started, slowly, to juggle with fire. “Anybody got a unicycle? Someone stole the front wheel off mine last week. Bah dum tish.”

Young and old alike laughed as he ducked under one of the twirling batons, allowing it to clatter to the floor. “Didn't see that, did you?”

The band struck up a fresh tune full of trumpets and the rich strumming of double bass, which reminded Ben of the opening scene in the old Bond film Live and Let Die. He leaned against a bakery wall with the sun in his face and the cool stone against his back.

The street carnival was proving to be good distraction. The clown said something he didn't catch, causing one of the girls to stick out her tongue. The kids thought the whole thing was hilarious. It was a shame to leave when it felt so good just standing there watching everybody gladly making fools out of themselves.

But despite the distraction, he didn't want to stay, he wanted to get back behind the Bug's wheel and leave the city behind for another weekend. Too often these days he found himself confronted by one of the growing sub-human horde of glue-sniffing kids who haunted the back alleys, armed with imbecilic grins, tubes of Uhu, and switchblades. Given a few years, Newcastle might catch up with the Capital, but he doubted it and he didn't want to be around if it ever did. His hate-love-hate affair with London had started a long time ago with three skinheads pissing in his face after a terrifying chase through Camden Town. Later the punks had taken to knocking seven shades of the proverbial out of him and grabbing his wallet for their troubles. These days he avoided trips south whenever he possibly could.

He shook his head, thinking instead about Mike.

That at least was a problem he could help with.

- 28 -

“For pity's sake, Kristy. What the hell do you think you're playing at? Face value doesn't count for shit here. That means no taking things on faith, no matter how strong the hunch you think you’ve got. I like you, girl. I do. Honestly. I think you've got something. We're not some bloody scandal rag. One fuck up and we all get burned.”

“So you're telling me to drop it?”

“On what planet did I say that? I'm telling you to bring me the proof. And I want it concrete. No wishy-washy maybes. Unshakeable facts. Pin this guy to the wall and crucify him.”

“If there's a God watching this world, that's a promise.”

“Just be careful.”

“Careful is my middle name.”

“Along with persistent, incisive, dedicated, resourceful and pig-headed, I seem to remember.”

“That's me. Kristy Persistent Incisive Dedicated Resourceful Pig-headed French.”

“Christ your parents must have had some sense of humour.”

Kristy let the tape run on for a few minutes more before giving up on it. She didn't remember having left the mini-cassette running after discovering the deer, and likewise, she had no recollection of recording last night's brief tete-a-tete with Spencer Abel, but the words were on the tape, and, as ever, the advice was sound.

Breakfast had been an omelette and a mug of strong black coffee, and that had been over an hour ago now. Listening to a tape recording of someone else being talked at by Spencer was probably the best way of holding any sort of dialogue with the news editor, she reflected, sinking back into the sofa's bucket seat.

Her story on the wild beast had made three inches in last night's final edition, not that it was particularly fascinating reading, but Abel had offered it in exchange for a twenty four hour hold on the stop press insert, so she took it. And Jason had been right, thirty seconds at the beginning of News at Ten's second half, including one of his less graphic pictures and a warning to the squeamish from the presenter had kept the phone ringing for an hour. It had been followed by a piece that had seen a child psychologist arguing against the current sorry state of television and the revelation that children reaching the age of twelve see somewhere in the region of fifteen thousand murders portrayed on the small screen. There was an irony to the juxtaposition of Jason’s image and the clinical revelation that gave her a warm glow inside.

She had turned off after that, happy to listen to Branford Marsallis loving his saxophone.

She checked the clock on the DVD player again. Jason was late, a habit he'd picked up along the way that was becoming annoyingly usual. She read a couple of pages from a battered Toujours Provence, but put it back on the shelf dissatisfied and unable to concentrate on Mayle's world. She settled for five minutes with Frank Zappa and ten with Little Steven and the rest of the E-Street Band while she flicked through the ten page dossier spanning Brent Richards' apparently brilliant thirty year career.

Reviews for books on the Mind, the Collective Conscious and the Psyche took up the majority of space, though there were a few articles on the illustrious doctor, Kristy's own piece on Havendene the most recent. A Photostat of his three-line entry in the Who's Who had been stapled to the inside cover of the manila folder; not that it gave anything away, either.

RICHARDS, BRENT STEPHEN (DR): BORN 1/4/49: DISTINGUISHED MEMBER OF

THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF MEDICINE: GRADUATED FROM YALE MEDICAL SCHOOL 1961: FOUNDED HAVENDENE INSTITUTE FOR PURPOSES OF MIND RESEARCH (1987): AUTHOR OF SEVERAL KEY TEXTS EXAMINING THE CONSCIOUS MIND, INCLUDING "THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUS" (1989) and "THE PSYCHE" (1993).

Laying the file to one side, she reached for the phone and called directory enquiries. She gave the name and address and waited, jotting down Richards' number as the mechanical voice spoon-fed it back to her. Gone were the days of a nice chat with the operator. Of course on any other day she would have simply powered up the laptop and checked it up on the web, removing any pretence at human interaction. It was a weird world they were moving toward, she thought.

Number in hand, Kristy called the good doctor himself, getting as far as the receptionist.

“Good Morning. Havendene. How may I help you?” the words tumbled out as a single invitation, almost tripping over themselves in their eagerness to please.

“Ah, good morning. I wonder if you can help me. I'm calling from the Newcastle Gazette. We did a piece on your opening back in February. The thing is, if you are agreeable, we would quite like to do a follow up piece on the clinic. An interview with Dr Richards or something like that.”

“One moment, 'I'll put you through to Dr Richards.”

Kristy said “Thank you,” but the receptionist was gone.

She listened to the dialling cycle twice before a brusque throaty baritone answered:

“Richards speaking.”

“Dr Richards, Kristy French from the Newcastle Gazette here.”

“Ah, yes, the delightful Mizz French. What can I do for you?”

“You might recall I covered the clinic's opening back in February?”

“Indeed I do.”

“Well, my editor has suggested a follow up article, six months on so to speak.”

“And you would like to come and have a look around our modest success story?”

“Basically. Yes.”

“Well that was rather painless. I don't see a problem. Unfortunately, I myself am leaving for Vienna tonight so I will have to leave you in the capable hands of my partner, Dr Nolan. Shall we say Monday, around ten?”

“That would be fine.”

“Then Monday at ten it is. I'm sorry I shall miss you Mizz French, but I'm sure Jennifer will be an infinitely superior guide in any case. Now, if you will excuse my ill manners, I must bid you Au Revior, Mizz French, and hope that we shall meet again.”

“Monday at ten; I look forward to it,' she finished the sentence talking to dead line. Kristy wrote the appointment up in her diary and made a note to cancel her trip to the Roman Forum while she waited for Jason. She checked herself in the mirror, smudging out the slight circles of electric blue she had used to emphasize her eyes. Then she padded barefoot into the kitchen to strain off a third cup of filter coffee and turn off the low burner.

Knowing full well the deceptive cold that blustered around Rogan's farm, Kristy had opted for the practicality of a heavy knit sweater, jeans and sneakers, though the sweater was slung over the back of the sofa in favour of anything more sophisticated.

Jason finally pulled up as she laced her sneakers, and then she only knew it was him because the sound of the horn drew her to the window. He didn't make a move to get out of the car, but looked up and waved cheerfully at Kristy just the same.

She grabbed her things together, pulled on the sweater and locked up behind herself as she skipped downstairs.

“See the news last night?” he asked before she had even sat down.

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“They were calling it the Hexham Hell Hound on the radio this morning. Citizen Kane's had telex's coming out of his ears all morning. Everyone wants a piece of it. What did I tell you?”

“Not exactly Pulitzer material though, is it.”

“Who cares?”

“Good Question. So how come I got lumbered with you again this morning?”

“Special orders from the higher-ups. They want me to keep an eye on you. Make sure you don't get up to mischief.”

“You're kidding?”

“Yep.”

*   *   *   *   *

Frank Rogan wasn't home, and there was little to suggest he had been back since yesterday morning.

Blowflies crawled through the plate of chips and gravy on the living room table. The television was still offering pasty black and white entertainment to anyone willing to watch. But this time Kristy was seriously spooked by the room's mausoleum quality.

Now she looked, all the signs she cared to see pointed to an unplanned and hasty departure, and not simple slovenliness as she had put it down to yesterday.

Jason turned the television off.

“May as well save the old guy's electricity bill.”

She actually heard the clock on the wall stop ticking then, its absence a sound in itself. If Rogan had ever owned anything of value he had long since bartered it for the tacky picture of the Virgin Mary and the plastic crucifix above the mantle of the open hearth. The furniture was old enough to have gone out of fashion twice since its purchase, while the carpets, where there were any carpets, were threadbare and fit for little other than a bonfire.

She picked her way back through the warren of pokey, dimly lit rooms to the kitchen, searching for some sign of Frank Rogan. The air was thick with the pervasive smells of must, dust and rot creeping out of the woodwork.

The fruits of her search were equally dispiriting.

“Might as well face it, Kris, he's not here.”

“Doesn't mean I have to like it.”

“Let’s take a look around outside. The poor old sod might have had a heart attack in one of the barns or something.”

“And on that morbid note, let’s go look.”

Birds, some black, some a riot of clashing colours, flocked around a power pylon off past the barns, their raucous chirruping almost coming across the distance as words.

That more than one species of bird had joined the gathering throng didn't strike Kristy as peculiar until something Jason said much later.

Both barns were empty, though the light in the bigger of the two had been left to burn all day and all of the previous night. A tarpaulin had been half pulled back on an old tractor, the dry straw scuffed up by shuffling feet.

“Not in here,” she called to Jason, who had gone off down the hill, having volunteered to check out the weather-beaten rust-bucket of a caravan. He waved a hand to say he had heard, then turned to half walk, half bounce down the track.

Halfway between the outbuildings and the second, creeper smothered farmhouse a bolting rabbit had her as jumpy as a cat in a dog run.

Sheets of newspaper had been tacked over the insides of the windows, making an ineffectual screen from the high sun, at best.

The porch door was swinging slightly in the wind, reminding Kristy of all the clichéd horror movies Jason liked so much. On any of the many times she had seen that particular cinematic trick it was always left looking laughable rather than scary; unfortunately there was nothing funny about the crumbling building or the circumstances that had combined to bring her to its slowly swinging door.

Kristy held the porch door steady as she went through. There was no dim blue light inside, though there were sounds aplenty; scratchy, scrabbly sounds. Mice? She wouldn't have been surprised by an army of Mutant Killer Rats right now.

She moved forward, gripped the door handle, turned it and pushed. Shafts of daylight pierced the newspaper curtains here and there, alleviating the intense darkness of what lay beyond.

A bicycle lamp dangled from an overhead timber, waiting to shed its own light on the mystery. The rank odour of caged up birds clung to the air, the air itself not circulating this side of the door.

Kristy snapped on the light, causing several birds to stir. The walls were occupied by forty or fifty wooden stalls, in each a pigeon. The feeder trays in front of most were empty. Bags of mix rested beneath the workbench.

Her intrusion had the birds pacing agitatedly about their coops.

There was no positive sign of Frank Rogan, only another marker for his absence.

On an impulse she wouldn't have cared to justify, Kristy tipped one of the bags of feed, upending a great heap of mix onto the centre of the floor, then shot the restraining bolts that caged the hungry birds and backed out of the pigeon shed before the crush made it impossible.

She left the birds to fend for themselves. Down the track she could see Jason peering in through the old van's windows.

Feeling flat, she drove down to meet him halfway.

“No sign?”

“It's like the bloody Twilight Zone 'round here,” Jason quipped, buckling up. “Turn your back and every bugger's gone before you know it.”

“In which case, I think it's time we called in the cavalry. Unless you've got any better ideas?”

“Fresh out of ideas, I'm afraid.”

*   *   *   *   *

When the Citroen crawled into the village proper, Kristy wondered if Jason wasn't right, and somehow they hadn’t wandered into the set of a Sixties horror story.

Westbrooke was in chaos. All five hundred yards of it, end to end. A white police squad car was parked outside the single story block of an infant school. The windows of the old school were boarded up; the nailed shut door had been forced open recently.

One man and his dog were out for a quiet stroll along the front street. Seeing the police stationed across the street they pulled up behind the police car. No one was going to get a quiet day today, by the looks of things. An ambulance and two other marked cars were parked ten yards further on. Glaziers were fitting a new window in one of the pub's doors.

A group of people, some in uniform, were gathered around the open door of the ambulance, their conversation obviously animated, their voices, however, not carrying.

“Back in a second,” she told Jason, cranking the door open. She clambered out, straightened her sweater and walked over to the argument. She thought about showing her press card, but decided to keep that little aspect of her interest under wraps.

The man doing most of the talking was in the simple shirt sleeves of his police uniform, rolled up on blacksmith's forearms.

He was sucking heavily on a roll-up, his face curled up into an owlish scowl that threatened to either suck in or set light to anyone foolish enough to argue the point right now.

“Now or never,” Kristy muttered, and butted in. “We need to talk.”

“And just who in the holy hell are you when you're at home?”

Now you've gone and done it, she thought, and taking that line, she said: “Kristy French. We spoke yesterday about the dead deer.”

It was a guess, but even if he hadn't answered Jason's call himself someone should have told him about it at least.

“Well, very nice to meet you Miss French, but if you will excuse me I've got rather more pressing matters to attend to than a dead animal.”

He turned back to the interrupted argument, flicking the still smouldering butt of his cigarette over the low wall behind him.

“I know. That's what I am here to talk to you about. Frank Rogan's disappeared.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ. You have got to be kidding me, lady? I don’t . . . What the hell's happening here? Sam, you finish up. Charlie start clearing out the youth block, I figure we're gonna need all the space we can get our hands on. And you, young lady, come with me.

*   *   *   *   *

“Now, do you want to start from the beginning?”

They were in Barney Doyle's office. The old sergeant had rolled another smoke and was leaning across the desk. His thick moustache was as snowy as the hair on his head, and his face as gnarled as a winter tree that had seen hard times aplenty and was buckling under the sure and certain knowledge there was worse to come.

Kristy couldn't help but like the solidity this hulk of a policeman promised, with his looks that put him halfway between Santa Claus and a favourite grandfather.

Against her better judgement she put her press card on the table between them and shrugged as if to say, “Sorry.”

“Oh, that's just great. Who the hell have I upset for all this to come down on me?”

“Probably no one,” she assured him. “But life's a bitch and that's everything out in the open. It should save us a lot of time asking and dodging needless questions.”

“Doesn't do you justice, Miss French,” Barney commented, passing the card back for her to slip in her wallet. “Now we’ve got the pleasantries aside, do you want to tell me what you know about what's happening around here?”

“I’m not sure what I know, but what I am thinking is going to sound pretty strange.”

“Try me.”

“You read about the missing fellwalker?” Barney nodded. “The day before yesterday our news desk got a call claiming a positive sighting, so I was sent to follow it up. That was the morning after, when we called in the dead deer. Frank Rogan made the call, but he wasn't around come morning. He'd left his dinner half eaten. The television was on. The door open. I would have reported it yesterday but I just assumed he was already out and about on the farm somewhere and thought nothing of it. We did find a photograph though, and that was plenty interesting all by itself.”

“I don’t suppose you have this photograph handy?”

“Somewhere. I expect you've guessed who it's of already.”

“Call me psychic but I have a feeling you are about to tell me it is the missing fellwalker?”

“Right first time. With the magic of technology Jason, the guy out in the car, managed to tie it in with a place called Havendene.”

“That health place where Frank does the gardens?”

“One and the same. It would seem our missing lady made an unscheduled stopover sometime. Ah, here it is,” Kristy muttered, fishing the folded blow-up of the Polaroid out of her bag.

There was a knock and Sam Ash stuck his head around the door.

“Sorry to interrupt, but it’s bad news Barn. Anthony Mason just died.”

“Oh, Jesus. . . Thanks Sam. Better start treating it as a murder enquiry as of now. Contact Hexham and bring in Newcastle. Start setting up an incident room over the road as soon as Charlie's cleared out enough space. Maps of the area and that sort of stuff, and bring in Lisker's old man. Start rounding up witnesses. Jim Beckett saw most of it. Have him point the way for now. Shit, I don't need any of this.”

It was Sam, standing over Kristy's shoulder, who saw the Photostat first. “What the hell's going on, Barn?”

“I wish to God I knew.”

“Monk Sanders. . .” Sam said, tapping the blurred image of the man's face.

“You know him?” Kristy wanted to know.

“You could say that. He's the fella in the ambulance outside. Killed himself in the woods this morning. Bad crack, Barn.”

“Jesus.”

“That's about the size of it.”

“Let me see that. . .”

Kristy passed Doyle the photograph.

“Christ almighty. . . I think we need to have a chat with who's who at Havendene because this thing stinks to high heaven.”

“Mind if I tag along? I'd appreciate getting the news first hand on this one.”

“Suit yourself, young lady. But I want you to fill me in on everything you know.”

She did.

*   *   *   *   *

“Zee plot stinkens,” Jason mimicked, doing his very best to sound like Hercule Poirot. He still managed to come across as a stuffed up Inspector Cleuseau.

The white squad car bobbed on the horizon, ducking beneath an approaching rise, Doyle obviously in a hurry to get to where he was going before any other nasty little surprises came looking to ruin his already miserable day.

Kristy drove quietly, looking no further than the road ahead while she reached for the handle to take her from: RITUAL DEER MURDER to SUICIDE, DISAPPEARANCE and MURDER IN LOCAL VILLAGE.  It was a bad, hot week. She wanted more facts. Some facts. Any facts. And maybe, just maybe, the next hour would offer up enough to go around.

- 28 -

Coming around one of the last bends in the Spine Road, Ben Shelton saw the familiar outline of Mike's service station ahead. He checked his watch, which had stopped just before one, and reckoned on it being around two-thirty, closer to three.

The rusty old sign with the legend PETROL revolved part a ways around, catching on a jagged splinter of reddish metal, before swinging lazily back on itself. The husk of a clapped out Rover V8, wheels long since gone, stood bricked up by the roll-down door of the workshop, surrounded by a dozen empty steel drums.

He slowed down and swung off the narrowing road, taking the gravel slipway to the garage's island of three pumps, one diesel, the others petrol. He rolled the Bug to a stop beside the last pump and killed the idling engine. The Estate Agents’  ‘FOR SALE’ sign was nailed to the whitewashed corner that lead round to the car wash. Beneath the clapboard sign Mike had painted the words: KRYPTON TUNING DONE HERE, taking the spelling from Superman's home planet. Ben smiled a wry little smile, half-remembering snippits from a handful of the many times he had tried to get his brother to correct the spelling.

The door to the office was open, though no light shone within.

Mike's dusty four-wheel pick-up was parked in front of the small shop-come-office window, blocking his view of inside.

Pausing halfway across the forecourt, Ben glanced up at the row of first floor windows. A crow swept across his sight in a parabolic arc, diving for some roadside morsel. Something caused Ben's attention to shift to the window he knew opened onto what had been Holly's playroom. He couldn't be sure what he had seen, or whether indeed he had seen anything - or anyone - but he instinctively felt that he had seen a quick movement, almost furtive, as though someone watching from above had let the curtain drop and fall back into place. Only the playroom had no curtain to drop; it, like the other windows, was shuttered with slats of weathered timber. Only a sooty smear beneath the window frame, where the fire had taken hold and the painters hadn't thought to cover over, peeked through.

Ben walked around the pick-up and into the office. The sign on the glass door was turned to show: CLOSED. He walked inside anyway, calling out his brother's name. He took a Pepsi from the standing cooler, popping the tab and swallowing deeply. The office was filled with a clutter of cardboard boxes and tea-chests.

The clock on the wall above the till confirmed his second guess of two-thirty with its own estimate of two-forty.

One of the walls held a rack of shadowy shapes that he knew to be car parts, spark plugs, fan belts, spare wiper blades, that sort of stuff, while another was lined by the counter and a long confectionary tray. The doorway through to the upstairs flat was behind the counter.

Hearing the muffled sounds of footsteps above him, Ben called out again.

Again, there was no answering shout from Mike.

“Mike? It's me, Ben,” he called, ducking under the counter. The door through to the stairway was already open, the stockroom beyond in a darkness more complete than the office for the shutters drawn over its windows. The black and white chessboard linoleum stopped just before the door, giving way to bare boards. Some had been replaced after the fire, showing now like teeth in the stairway's gap-toothed grin.

He walked quickly to the staircase and began to climb, the gloom swallowing him as he walked carefully up the flight of wooden stairs. Much of the upper flat had been emptied, becoming little more than a haunt for spiders, the odd family of bats and an occasional owl and there was that musty, closed up smell Ben knew well enough.

He bridged the landing and went through to the lounge, the floorboards creaking theatrically as he crossed the room, threading his way through boxes of forgotten debris. Dust and cobwebs had reclaimed their territory here at least, but the unpacked items were still easily identifiable as nick-nacks running to just before Christmas of last year. Ben had spent most of the Christmas break cleaning and boxing away the contents of this room, and knew only too well the sad end to the stories each and every object had to tell.

No sign of Mike, he back-tracked along the hallway, stopping before the closed door of Holly's playroom, unwilling to barge in on his brother's private grief.

No light snaked under the foot of the door, though undeniable sounds of movement came from within.

He opened the door.

The air was filled with a thick, heavy silence, the sort of silence in which film directors put drowning men, mouthing words the audience cannot hear or understand. The room was dark and still and stiflingly warm. For a moment only, Ben found himself expecting to find Holly sat astride her rocking horse. Reaching out a hand, he flicked on the light switch, dispelling the unwanted illusion.

Mike was sat in the centre of the floor, cross-legged, Holly's Christmas presents around him like a circle of plastic standing stones, wrapping paper torn and tossed aside. Ben recognized some of his niece's older toys as well; faceless dolls, their hair singed and shrivelled, faces burned away by the blistering heat of the conflagration, the doll's pram, the blind rocking horse, paint blistered and charred.

Mike was putting together a wall of red and yellow Lego. Pieces of plastic lay scattered in a pool between his legs. A box of melted wax crayons had been opened, spilling around an empty bottle of Vermouth and four empty Brown Ale bottles.

Though the room had been repainted in an attempt to take away the blackened memories of one cold December night, the contents left behind looked like survivors of some nuclear catastrophe, melted and burned in many cases beyond recognition.

Slants of gradually reddening light made it through the uneven chinks in the window boards, casting diagonal bars of illumination across the floor.

Ben stayed in the doorway.

“I thought she might want to play,” he heard Mike whisper aloud, slowly turning. Tears filled his puffy eyes. “But she won't talk to me anymore. . .” He dropped the Lego, kicking out in frustration. The bottle of Vermouth went skittering across the wooden floor, its neck shattering against the wall. “Angel,” he called. 'Please come and play with daddy. . . Daddy's ever so lonely without you, and he has lots of new toys for you. . . See?” He looked at Ben, a faint mewling sound clogging in his throat. He swallowed. “Why won't she come and talk to me?” He almost screamed this last, clutching at the sides of his head painfully. 'WHY BEN? WHY?”

Ben sank to his knees, wrapping his arms around his crying brother, soothing his shudders. “I don't know,” he said softly.

“I loved her so much. . .”

“I know.”

“I'm so lonely,” Mike said, blinking away his tears. “I don't want to live like this. . . I don't want it anymore, Ben. I want to curl up and die.”

“Please don't talk like that.”

“I want to die, little brother. I want to die.”

“Please don't,” Ben repeated, his voice thick with anguish. “We can beat this thing together. I know we can. I've got some money, we can start to clean this place up a bit, it won't look so bleak then, I promise.”

“No,” Mike said simply.

“I want to help.”

“I know you do, but I don’t want to be helped, Ben. I hurt so much. I hurt everywhere. I'm coming apart.”

“We can beat it,” Ben persisted, not knowing what else to do or say.

“No, we can't. I don't want to play the game anymore. I give in. Happy now?”

“Mike.”

“Just leave me, please. . .”

Ben hovered, uncertainly. “I'll see you back at the house, then?”

“Please. . .”

- 29 -

“Pull up short of the gates will you?” Jason said, leaning back in his seat to stretch an aching shoulder. “I want to stretch my legs while you folks talk to the deadly doctor.”

Kristy said nothing, but slowed, changing down.

Thick undergrowth, trees bushes and wild marram crowded either side of the road, the few gaps in its almost subterranean clutch almost tenebrous in their gloom. The place had an eerie feeling of perpetual dusk about it that wasn't shifting with the hanging sun.

The gates had to come soon, the high, old-stone wall, though it looked to have grown with the trees themselves as another natural part of the forest, could not go on forever. Twisted branches from trees on the right loomed over both road and wall, reaching down like gnarled fingers to snag unwary ramblers - or fell walkers, he added for his own benefit.

The squad car disappeared through an opening in the near distance, the forest closing over it protectively thereafter.

“Right here,” he told Kristy, unbuckling his harness. He was out before the car had fully finished rolling, skipping along in pace. “Quarter of an hour, back here, okay?”

“I'll be here.”

He didn't wait to watch her drive away. The wall was virtually smothered by shoots of organic life. “Strangest kind of Polyfilla I've ever seen,” he muttered to himself, testing his hold on a medium-thick branch that would give him enough height, hopefully, to snag the top of the twelve foot wall with more than just fingertips.

He hauled himself up, feet running in the air as he made the lift. He had his chest on the strut, then his waist, and then he was struggling to twist around into the sitting position.

Thankfully, the trees carried on at least part of the way into the grounds of Pilgrim's Hall. He could, however, see the top of the wall, No barbed wire and as far as he could tell, no broken glass to worry about. That didn't discount the possibility of an electronic warning system of some sort, but that was going to be a bridge he'd have to cross if and when he came to it. Right now, he had all the cover between the road and house any would-be intruder could ask for, and less than fifteen minutes to make it pay for him.

The top of the wall was four feet higher than his perch, three feet further away, making it an easy enough stretch. He scrambled over the wall, lowering himself as far as his arms would allow, and then dropped the last four jarring feet to the floor. As an afterthought, he hoped to God there weren't any dogs.

*   *   *   *   *

The rusted iron gates, no less impregnable than the forest itself, were cranking back for Doyle's squad car when she finally caught up.

As she knew they would, the letters worked into the wrought-iron arch above the gates declared: HAVENDENE.

She slowed to a stop behind the policeman's car.

Tall, weathered columns hinged the massive gates, decayed stone creatures mounted on both, their blank eyes glaring down at the cars, their lichen-frothing mouths wide with sharks teeth and soundless snarls. And there was the gates themselves, where the body of the deftly crafted pilgrim was being stretched into a painful star, corner to corner, hands and feet. Two hundred years in the latticework had more than adequately oxidized the unfortunate soul.

The gateman took both sides back until they jammed against shallow banks, grating an arc through the uneven surface of shale, and then stood to one side as they drove on through. He closed the gates once more behind them. The trees carried on in a self contained forest as dense as any Kristy had been in before.

“A regular little fortress,” she found herself thinking as she followed the squad car out of the trees.  A good twenty acres of forest must have been felled at some time, for no other reason than to make way for the grounds, fountains and hedges.

A second, less grand gateway, this one fenced in by tall hedgerows, opened on to the wide expanse of the croquet lawn. This one confirmed the building ahead as:  HAVENDENE. A rolling slope of grass and then a placid blue lake stood off to the right, a sparsely wooded fringe and island pagoda framing it. But Kristy's attention was fairly dragged back to the building itself, an irregular hodge-podge of styles that were principally Tudor but eccentrically castellated and plastered in Roman cement, though they had apparently been added to over the years with little consideration for aesthetics.

Pilgrim's Hall was nevertheless hugely impressive as it was.

She drew the car to a halt down from the stone steps that climbed ten feet to the porch and the main door, trying to tally her recollection of the picture with the reality as it was before her.

It was difficult. Rogan must have taken the photograph from over by the pagoda, which would explain her screwed up depth perception. She swivelled to look back over her shoulder at the second gate with its backward declaration: ENEDNEVAH, just as it was in the photograph.

Brent Richards was standing on the steps, obviously waiting for them. He was as impeccably tailored as Kristy remembered him. He was the kind of skeletally thin man jokers generally called ‘Bones’ while laughing at their own hilarity. He wore conventional dark-rimmed glasses and shaved halfway up his ears. He began to descend the stairs, summoning a tight-lipped smile to join his empty look of professionalism.

He met Doyle halfway, offering a hand in an economical gesture straight out of the medical How to Win Patients And influence people manual.

Kristy wasn't impressed.

*   *   *   *   *

Jason hunkered down, trying to peer in every direction at once, his imagination turning the dark tree trunks caught out of the corner of his eye into loping dogs.

He waited, listening; sure more than once he heard someone approaching.

C'mon Kelso, get a grip, he thought, scolding himself for even thinking the low bushes nearby were anything like animals crouched in waiting.

At the edge of the trees he stopped again, dropping as before into a low crouch. He scanned the low slopes that obscured much of the house's lower storeys, looking for any sign of movement, studying one spot for three heartbeats before moving on, his eyes going back to it on a second sweep to see if anything had altered.

He ran the fifty yards to the crest of the slope in a low stumbling crouch that did little for his speed but, he hoped, kept his head beneath the line of sight. At the crest he dropped flat to his belly. The slope cut away sharply for twenty feet then less so for a further ten until it ran into the blue of the heat shimmering lake. Light slowly rolled across its surface, the ripples shifted by a mild breeze. The glare of the sun made it impossible for him to judge the depth of the water without going down to check it out close up.

An island, off centre in the lake, offered its own secluded quietness, with a pagoda style suntrap on top and a cavern entrance to what Jason assumed to be the boathouse, below.

From where he was the slope ran away to the left and right, the left taking him around to the front of the house, the right, the back. Rather than risk the dash between where he was and the shelter of the pagoda, he ducked low and scrambled along the ridge. He covered the perimeter running low and fast, darting from hiding place to hiding place until he hit a stand of spruce level with the back of the complex.

What he saw was an even more confused jumble of styles than those of the front; outhouses, kitchens and stable blocks cluttering the yard in an open horseshoe. It struck him then that these odd looking additions had been stuck here, out of the way, simply because they were that. Out of the way. Necessity yes, but an eyesore nonetheless. In their favour though, they did provide him with good cover for most of the run up to the house itself.

He gave himself time for one last check both ways before scrambling to his feet in a flat out dash.

Even if someone had seen him then there was no way he could have stopped himself. So he ran and he prayed between pumping gasps to the God of whoever looked after would-be cat burglars and Peeping Toms, and didn't stop doing either until he was twenty feet from the back of one of the outbuildings. Even then, he hit the wall hard enough to jar what little breath he had left out of his burning lungs. Hands on knees, Jason struggled to catch his breath.

He checked his watch. He had about seven minutes before he had to meet Kristy, and that left precious little time to dig around, less for pictures.

At the corner, he slipped the little Cybershot out of his pocket and snapped off two quick shots of the courtyard interior of the complex.

He tried the nearest door handle, one of the stable doors. It was locked. He didn't waste time trying it again. He edged along the wall. The windows were shuttered, giving nothing away.

He fired off a single shot of the stable, crouching to get both window and door in the frame. A series of high bins lined the kitchen wall.

The bins smelled of over-ripe fruit and something else. He didn't much fancy rooting around in someone else's rubbish, but that was exactly what he did. The first was filled almost to overflowing with squashed fruit and the sludge of uneaten meals congealed into a gloopy soup. He slipped down and boosted himself up for a look in the second bin. What he saw had him reaching for the camera and retching.

Small fur-matted bodies piled among the fruit slices and chicken gravy. A dozen or more. Rats.

Jason snapped off another still, and then slipped his camera back into his pocket.

Someone had done a thorough job on the rats all right. He poked one to confirm his suspicions. Each one had had its back broken before it died. Some were scarred. Others had had their fur shaved away in places, more than half with monkish skull caps where the razor had been.

“WHAT THE HELL?” someone yelled, the shout followed by the clatter of footsteps.

Jason felt the beginnings of an odd sort of relief, but then the fist slammed into the small of his back. His face mashed into the metal drum. He lost his grip and balance at the same time as a second punch jammed into his solar plexus. His legs buckled.

Gagging, he stumbled and almost fell.

Dizziness swam in the sunburst of white behind his eyes.

He felt hands on him, lashed out blindly with his arm. He felt his elbow ram into his attacker's face. That brought him a precious second.

Jason span.

The man had his hand to his face; His nose was bleeding through his fingers. He didn't think about anything in that second. The frantic panic in the back of his head a distant fear. He threw himself at the man, slamming a fist into his face and again into his stomach, face again. Again.

Panting hard he pummelled his erstwhile attacker with a series of rabbit punches in the gut until he doubled up. The heat inside his head had grown to a fever. He wanted to laugh, it felt so good.

Grabbing a tangle of hair, Jason rammed his knee into the man's face, relaxed his grip and backed off a step. He slumped face first into the dirt. Jason toed his face enough to get a plain sighting, and then backed off quickly. He stopped at the corner and looked back long enough to satisfy himself he was clear, squeezed off a rapid-fire succession of shots to take in his attacker, bins and all, and then ran for all he was worth.

*   *   *   *   *

“Welcome to Havendene,” Richards proclaimed rather pompously as he took to leading them through the white-washed halls. Metal tap-ins on his shoes clinked dully on the tiled floor. Ahead of him the slim figure of a girl walked out from a doorway marked G13.

“Jenny,” Richards called, then to everyone else: “I'd like you to meet our resident dietician, Jennifer Nolan. Sergeant Doyle. And? I'm sorry; I don't recall your name Miss?”

“French, Kristy French. We spoke this morning.”

“Ah, yes. Mizz French, the reporter. A pleasant surprise.”

Jennifer Nolan's hair was a tidy auburn, pulled up into a practical bun and bobby-pinned to compliment her look of absorbed concentration.

“Hi folks, you'll excuse me if I dash, but the old slave driver's here and it doesn't do to be seen slacking.”

Doyle chuckled. “Pleased to meet you anyway ma'am. More's the pity it wasn't a happier time, but such is life.”

Nolan's frown asked the question to which Richards supplied the words.

“Is there some sort of problem, officer? Perhaps we should discuss this in my office?”

“I suppose there's no nice way of saying this,” Doyle said as Richards closed the door behind them. “Do you have a Monk Sanders working for you here, doctor?”

“Monk? Why yes, though he has not turned in for work this morning. He usually helps with the physical fitness program.”

“I wonder if you would be so kind as to accompany me to the hospital, sir. We need someone to identify a body we believe to be Mr Sanders.”

“Oh. . . a body? Dear God, you mean he’s dead? But how?”

“That we don't know yet, but rest assured we will soon enough. Did Mr Sanders have any family? Someone we might contact?”

“A sister, in America, I think. Do you want me to come now?”

“If you would, please.”

“Of course, of course. I will just fetch myself a coat first. You've got me all at sixes and sevens I'm afraid, officer. I don't know, it's terrible. . . Such a shock, you understand. I would say I felt numb, if there was anything to feel. . .”

“Were you and Mr Sanders close?” Kristy asked from the window, without turning.

“Close?” the doctor mused. “Yes I suppose we were at that.”

As she stood watching, a fox loped across the lawn, its movements capturing that curious lupine fluidity of all such hunters, and stopped to stare at the house. Its stillness lent it perfection; its eyes, catching the sun, gleamed like oiled marbles, its ears pricked. It paused a moment only, sensing danger on the wind, before turning tail and bolting for the cover of the undergrowth.

And then the dogs went berserk.

*   *   *   *   *

The racket of the dogs hounded him, venom and anger hot in their voices snapping at his heels.

Jason looked back just once to see the black and tan flurry of fur and muscle racing his way, then stumbled on across the fifty yards of no man's land between the pagoda and the forest skirts; not that they offered any more protection than the open ground.

Fear and adrenalin hit him like a breaker. Fear of nothing more powerful than the fear itself had his legs stumbling and churning at the ground. The air burned painfully in his lungs. His head was dangerously light as dizziness swooned. The baying of the dogs ate up the ground between them. Fifty yards became twenty five. Twenty yards from the trees he thought he was a dead man. The intensity of their fury burned the skin from the back of his neck with all the physical presence of a blowtorch. He stumbled, tripped. Pushed himself back to his feet without breaking his stride. Breath rasped in his throat. And still he ran waiting for the tackle to take him down from behind.

Ten yards and his vision swam out of focus. His throat burned, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, lips like sandpaper - and he couldn't swallow. The muscles in his legs hit the cramps.

Fever-fear burned in his veins. He was slowing while the world accelerated around him. The suddenness of the cramps tied him up almost as if the blood itself had thickened to molasses and his feet were staggering through drying cement.

Got to run. . . Got to. . .

His legs had him veering in a crazy zigzag that stole precious feet.

Run!

Ten feet and the darkness of the trees - The full force of the impact punched Jason off his feet. The Doberman catapulted squarely into his back, jaws impossibly clamping around his upper arm. Tearing. He hit the ground like a sack, the dog's momentum carrying it clear with a bloody mouthful of sinew from Jason's arm.

His face buried into the ragged wound as he brought his arms up to protect himself from the fall, the pain of it yet to slam home.

The weight of the second dog on his back was inconsequential against the sudden agony from his right ankle.

In the second before it broke clean, his trainer turned upwards, his foot twisting too far with his ankle taking the full weight of him, the dog, and the fall until it broke with an audible crack! That lanced a flaming brand the length of his leg.

Pain roared through his skull.

And all the while the screams were ripped from his clenched teeth by the muzzles tearing at his body.

*   *   *   *   *

Of the three of them, Kristy reacted first, and despite the fear clutching at her gut, she ran all-out.

Her eyes were riveted on the grizzly tableau resolving itself on the edge of the woods. A man she didn't recognize was standing ten feet from two dogs, and Kristy suddenly realized how close she was to witnessing a massacre.

“FOR GOD'S SAKE!”

Jason was on the floor. The dogs were everywhere, at his legs, at his chest, tearing at him. And this other man was standing still, watching.

“Jesus,” Doyle gasped between gulps of sorely needed air.

The dogs were berserk, tearing at Jason with all the fury they could muster.

“Call them off, Robert,” Richards shouted, still twenty yards back.

“Stand! Saul! Stand! Duke!”

Despite the intensity of their attack both dogs reluctantly relinquished their victim on the single command. They fell back a pace, hackles up, ears flat, eyes locked firmly on the body on the floor.

Jason was a mess. His shirt was ripped and torn in a dozen places, where skin was exposed, blood thickened. His trainer had soaked through red with blood from his shattered ankle. Bite marks chewed a path up his legs to his blood soaked groin. The flesh of his bicep had been bitten through. Blood pumped through his clutching fingers onto the grass. It was a miracle he wasn't dead, though from the glazed look in his eyes death wasn't all that far away.

“Keep them back,” Kristy said, meaning the dogs, as she pushed through to his side. “Hang in there, Jace,” she whispered as she crouched. “We need to get him to a hospital now, Doyle, or he's dead.”

“Bring him back to the house,” Richards said. He spoke as if he expected to be obeyed. “We have facilities there. Robert, help sergeant Doyle carry him.” The man seemed completely unfazed by the sudden twist in events.

Saul and Duke, the two dogs, still circled them ready to renew the assault should the word be given. Saul bit down on a streak of sinew that had caught between his incisors, and then sucked it back.

“And then, perhaps, Mizz French, you would do me the kindness of explaining what this young man was doing prowling around my grounds in the first place? As it seems you obviously knew he was out here.”

“His pulse is very weak, doctor,” The dog-handler Richards had called Robert said matter-of-factly.

“Fuck that. I'm calling for an ambulance and we're getting him out of here.”

“He's bleeding to death, young lady. And an ambulance will take time to get here. Time he hasn't got.”

“We'll take our chances on that one thank you, doctor. Doyle, will you help me get him into my car?”

Jason moaned once as they lifted him into the sitting position and hooked him into a carry, and then despite the obvious intensity of his pain, it was the only sound he made all the way back to the cars.

Kristy mopped sweat from his brow. “C'mon. Tough it out, kiddo. Not long now.”

While Doyle and the dog-handler propped up Jason in the back of the car, Kristy raced to the boot for the travelling blanket.  Jason had slumped to his side, curled up weakly. Kristy leaned into the car and spread the blanket over him.

Doyle had clambered into the police car and fired up both the engine and the siren. Richards sat next to him, no longer able to intimidate. She caught a strange flicker of something in his eyes, like the shadow of a bird flying between them, and then it was gone and he seemed annoyingly pleased with himself. He gave her a small, precise wave. She slammed her own door and gunned the engine, revving hard. The dogs stood at the steps.

“Hold on tight back there, this is going to be the quickest trip to Hexham in the history of man. Enjoy.”

*   *   *   *   *

Kristy sat in the waiting room alone, waiting for the news that Jason was dead.

The hospital fairly hummed with a life all of its own. Down the corridor to what she guessed was the Children's Ward she could hear the brash notes of the Flintstone's theme tune.

She wanted to be up and pacing. Wanted to do something with her hands. Most of all, she wanted to know. A cluster of noisy, squalling seagulls had descended, picking aggressively at the scraps put out by the cook. A door opened behind her. She continued to watch the primitive dance of the gulls, drawn by their naked display of savagery.

The nurse who came in had a cup of coffee in one hand and sachets of milk and sugar in the other. “Savage little buggers, aren't they?” she commented, seeing the birds over Kristy's shoulder. Kristy turned to take the proffered cup with quiet thanks. “Kitchen's closed, I'm afraid, but if you want anything else, petal, it won't be a bother.”

Kristy shook her head. “No thanks, I'm fine. . .”

The pudgy faced nurse wore her show of compassion comfortably, a look she had no doubt offered others on countless occasions. That said, she felt the better for it right now. “I'm sure your friend will be fine. Dr Boreman's one of the best.”

The nurse could be sure of no such thing, Kristy knew, but she appreciated the sentiment and the words for what they were.

When she was alone again she turned back to the window.

Jason could be dead right now.

She hated being here, having come this far, and not knowing. He had been unconscious by the time they reached casualty.

He'll be all right, she told herself. He has to be.

She saw herself crying through her reflection in the glass.

She stood like that for a long while, watching the redness gradually steel over the landscape, and waiting. The crash cart clattered by. The tunes on the television changed and changed again before the view from the window lost its appeal, and then she sat in one of the leather look loungers, fidgeting uncomfortably as the sticky upholstery picked at her clothes. Rogue thoughts tripped and stumbled through her mind like blind runners charging towards the finishing tape. Regains Consciousness will be. . .  All right. . . Will be. . . Can't die. . . My Fault, all my. . . Damn Richards. . . Stinking clinic. . . To Hell. . . Jason. . . Please. . .

Kristy lurched to her feet as the waiting room door swung open. The pudgy faced nurse came in bearing a second cup of coffee.

“Is he?” Kristy closed her eyes, numbness steeling over her.

“No one's been in to see you?”

She shook her head.

The nurse looked surprised. “He's been out of surgery an hour now. Dr Boreman's had him moved to ICU. He was sleeping when I last looked in.”

Dead?

No, not dead. Please God not dead. Her heart was thumping like a bird trapped in a cage. “Sleeping?”

“Like a baby, love. All be it a poorly one. He's a strong one that man of yours.”

Thankyou,thankyou,thankyou,thankyou,thankyou. . . Kristy's mind swirled until it latched onto a single need.

“Can I see him?”

“In the morning lovey. He's had a hard day. Why don't you go home and get yourself some sleep. You look like you need a good night's sleep as much as your friend does.”

Kristy nodded. “Yeah,” she mumbled.

The awful tightness that had clutched her stomach from those first sounds of barking seemed to be melting, ice going soft as the warmth flowed through her body, soothing. Making her weak.

She was tired.

Exhausted.

He's going to be all right. . .

“Will he be. . ?”

The nurse must have known what she was going to ask, because she shushed her with a: “Good as new, lovey. Given time.”

And for a few hours, at least, her words made everything better.

- 30 -

Sometime early that evening, Ellen Tanner's father came upstairs to talk to her. She was lying on her bed, listening to the shouts and catcalls of older children playing in the schoolyard across the street. Comfortable dog flopped on her chest, legs splayed every which way, his baggy face looking sadder than sad.

The happy noises sounded a million miles away.

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

“Okay,” Ellen mumbled into the dog's mouth.

“Sarah is having some dinner. Sure you aren't hungry?”

“I'm sure.”

Daniel cleared his throat, coughing awkwardly, and perched on the corner of his daughter's low bed, stroking her forehead with a soothing finger. Ellen was lying on her back, her hands supporting her head, fingers woven through strands of her rich cherry-blossom curls, staring at the tiny cracks in the ceiling's artex whorls. She felt the bedsprings shift under her dad's weight as he settled down next to her. The only noises were outside noises, birds, cars, the playing children. The evening air was heavy, thick with humidity, threatening rain.

“That was Sergeant Doyle again,” he said. His voice sounded almost hoarse, strained. “He said to tell you he thought you were very brave, honey. And that he wants you to try not to worry. You've got to try your best to get a good night's sleep for him, and for me,” Daniel swallowed. “I'm so sorry you had to find him, baby.”

Ellen flinched back just ever so slightly as he touched her cheek, concentrating on trying to find some smaller pattern within the plaster galaxy splashed across her ceiling.

“Why daddy?” She asked at last. It was the kind of question he could not possibly answer. “Why did he do that?”

“Because he's worried about you, honey. He's a nice man.”

“Not the policeman,” Ellen said, as if she were talking to a three year old. “The man in the woods.”

The man in the woods. . .

Daniel sighed and shook his head wearily. He didn't have all the answers, no matter how much he wanted to. “I don't know, baby, but I think he must have been very sad.”

“Didn't he have any friends?”

“No, I guess he didn't.”

“I'd have been his friend if he'd asked,” Ellen mumbled, fingering one of Comfortable Dog's stitched on button eyes.

“I know you would have, honey. I know it's hard, but try not to think about it too much.”

“Has he gone to heaven now?”

“Yes, baby. He's gone to heaven to live with the angels,” Daniel did his best to explain.

“That would be nice, living with the angels. . . Will they be his friends now?”

“The best friends he could ask for.”

“Emma Radcliffe says that God doesn't love people who kill themselves. She says it's a sin and sinners have to live with the Devil.”

Daniel sighed. “Emma's a very silly girl, sweetheart. You don't want to believe everything she says.”

“But what if God doesn't want him? Will he have to come back and be a ghost?”

“There aren't any ghosts, baby,” he assured her, smoothing back an errant curl.

“Where would he haunt?”

“Nowhere, Ellen because Emma's wrong. God loves everyone, no matter what they've done. I don't think he'd send someone back because they killed themselves, do you?”

“No,” she admitted, chewing nervously on her bottom lip as she listened to him.

Like mother, like daughter, Daniel thought fondly.

“But I still think God is horrible,” Ellen sniffed. 'Making that man so sad and lonely that he had to kill himself to get some friends.”

“Don't say that, angel. I bet God is very sad about it. Now you get some sleep and I'll see you in the morning, bright and shiny, okay?”

“Okay. Night night, daddy.”

“Night night, sweetheart,” he smiled, touching his lips to her forehead, and went downstairs.

Ellen lay awake, thinking for a long time. She must have dozed off for a while, because when she opened her eyes again her bedroom was doused with the grey of the failing light; the children's cries were gone too, replaced by grasshoppers and lonesome birds and other night sounds. The rain had come while she was asleep, like the gush of an open tap. God's tears. It sounded like fingers tapping on her window, slowly. . . Water gurgled through the gutters and down the pipes, rain pattered on the leaves and slapped off the tarmac driveway.

The breeze filtering into her room seemed almost chilly now, causing Ellen to shiver just ever so slightly and draw the covers up to her shoulders as she imagined Brewer Street outside, wet and dark and full of night.

She drew her feet in under the trailing edge of the blankets, curling into a tight, foetal ball, and closed her eyes, only to toss and turn uncomfortably for five minutes. She may have been awake or asleep, her mind roaming the dreamy grey landscape, but her ears didn't fail to pick out the noises slithering through from the dark side of her thoughts. Noises that were coming from the other side of her wardrobe door. . . Footsteps? Slow, dragging sounds. Bare feet. Coming her way.

She imagined the blue skinned man with the noose around his neck, stumbling through her clothes. . .

When she opened her eyes again, it was to see that the wardrobe door had opened a crack.

Ellen felt safe in bed, but the problem lingered. Cocooned in the warmth of her blankets she couldn't reach the door, but she couldn't sleep and leave it open. . .She knew there was only one way out of this problem, so, sucking in a deep unsteady breath, she pushed herself out of the roll of bedclothes and rushed over to the wardrobe door. She pushed it closed, listening for the tell-tale click that said the lock had snicked into place, only as she pushed it felt as if something on the inside was pushing to get out. . .

Ellen threw all of her weight against the bulging door, struggling to stop its slow opening. A five inch crack showed through to darkness. The door edged open another inch as her bare feet slid on the carpet.

“DADDY!” she shrieked, forcing the door back a couple of inches. She could hear breathing on the other side of the door. He was coming to get her. She was puffing and gasping with the exertion, her little fingers scrabbling for purchase on the smooth wood.

The door opened another two inches, letting a chilled breeze whisper into the room, bringing with it the cloying reek of the meat locker.

“DADDY!” she screamed again, “HELP! DADDY! DAAADDDYYYY!”

She couldn't hold the door, she knew, so looking frantically about the room; her eyes sought some small haven... and stopped on the looming shadows of her bed.

Letting go of the door seemed to take forever, her movements all slow and jerky; dreamlike. She leapt for the small island of safety. The wardrobe door crashed open, slamming into the corner of her dresser, toppling her My Little Pony nightlight. The bulb shattered as it hit the floor, showering slithers of glass across the carpet. An icy blast of air whipped out through the gulf of blackness the hanging door exposed, lashing at her bare legs as they pedalled furiously against the air.

Ellen hit the mattress with a whump!

She heard something coming out of the wardrobe.

“DADDY!” she screamed, scrabbling at the mound of rucked up blankets, not daring to look back over her shoulder for fear of what she might see.

She was struggling for breath, tears biting at her eyes.

“Ellen?” she heard her father's voice, but continued clawing at the heavy layer of blankets. “Ellen, it's all right. . . It's all right. . . I'm here now. It was just a dream baby, just a bad dream,” he soothed, lifting her into his arms and holding her close. She knew if she opened her mouth she would just end up gabbling, so she nuzzled into the warmth and safety of his neck, drawing comfort from his closeness. Barely holding back more tears, she looked about the darkened room. She could barely make out the lines of the wardrobe, but knew it was closed. The light was in its place, but the room was still dreadfully cold against her bare legs.

“Are you okay now, sweetheart?” Daniel soothed, lowering her back down to the bed. The mattress felt clammy against her back where her nightie clung to her skin.

“He. . . was. . . in the wardrobe. . .” she managed to squeeze the words between sucking breaths.

Daniel went over to the wardrobe and opened it wide. “Nothing in here, see? Just clothes. You want to sleep in with me and mummy tonight?”

Ellen nodded.

'I think we can manage that. Now come here and give me a big cuddle.” Ellen bounced across the bed and into his arms like a trampolining acrobat, tugging heavily on his neck. There was little or no strength left in her arms. He sighed deeply. “You'll be all right, honey. I promise.”

Even after what the girls had witnessed in the woods that morning, and the nightmares of a moment ago, Daniel felt safe in his promise. Ellen clung to him, her breathing steady with the rhythms of sleep.

It'll all be like a bad dream in a couple of days, he thought.

Ellen felt comfortable in her father's embrace, close to sleep. She was weak and tired. With one last, weary, lingering look back at the closed wardrobe door she allowed herself to be carried through to her parents’ room.

“Love you, daddy,” she whispered sleepily.

“Love you too, petal,” he answered, laying her down.

- 31 -

A very frightened Billy Rogan huddled under the weather-beaten timbers of the Devil's Jetty, hugging his knees and staring down blankly at the lapping white-tipped curls of the water as they broke on the rough shore. The short slope down to the water’s edge was littered with crumpled beer cans, fast food cartons, water-logged crisp packets and cigarette packets, but it was dry, sheltered against the wind and safe from the bad dreams, like good Happy Places should be.

The lights of the village backed up behind him without actually sneaking into his hideout. The stone arch of the support was cold against his back. Billy yawned and looked up from the brackish waters. The air seemed to be almost smudged with soot, so thick was the black clinging to it. Across the lake he could see the framework of shadows, chairs and tables, cluttering the patio of Evie Doyle's Watersedge Restaurant.

Billy couldn't tell the time, but it had to be pretty late because there were only three cars in the car park, and one was Evie's Fiat.

It wasn't as late as midnight, because that was when Evie put out the lights and went home, and the lights were still on.

Billy had come to the jetty right after leaving Swallowship Hill, hoping some of the local school kids would trip-trap along it. . . Playing 'Trip Trap Troll' was one of his favourite games, and the kids seemed to think it was pretty funny, too. No one seemed to mind, he'd heard some of the parents call him “Harmless Old Billy,” and liked the way the words sounded.

“Harmless Old Billy. . .” he whispered aloud.

Only thing was, now he was here, going home meant walking through some dark streets and then up through the woods. And that was almost as frightening as not going home at all. Apart from the old farmhouse, his Happy Place was the only safe place he knew.

“There's trout in there, Pops,” he whispered to himself, looking back down at the ripples of black water as another eddy of silver slithered by beneath the surface. “Lots of 'em. We'll go fishin' when all these shenanigans blown over, hey Pops?”

A finger of chilly wind squirmed down the length of his back.

Something bad was happening. He didn't know what it was, and all he could think to do was hide and hope it passed him by.

*   *   *   *   *

The last sliver of grey light starkly outlined the sleeping hills, casting a feverish glow over the town, trees and rooftops slick with marching rain-soldiers. The dark pool spreading out before his feet gaped like a hungry giant's yawning mouth. Overhead, the whipping winds cut down through the circle of peaks and scree slopes to the north shredding the paper mill's vapour clouds to rags, revealing the black night sky and a smattering of shiny silver stars. The lights from the Watersedge Restaurant were out.

Billy shook his head, trying not to think about the panic that was twisting coils around and about inside his belly like horrible worms. He rubbed one large, dirt-smeared hand through his thinning hair.

The water reflected the sky back like a ghost's shimmer. The wind whipped, whistled and howled as it licked at the frothy white-caps surging up and breaking around his feet.

Billy shivered beneath his thick shirt.

He'd been unable to sink back into the arms of sleep since waking nearly an hour ago. Each time he closed his eyes feral, nightmarish images were there, waiting to pounce. Even now, he couldn't recall what was so very frightening about the dream, only that he couldn't leave his Happy Place - or they would get him.

His hands clamped tightly about his knees, drawing his legs in.

He rocked slowly between the breakers. He shuddered. Pops had been in the dream. . .

The thought came to him out of the air. . . Pops had been in the dream, talking to him like a ventriloquist's dummy. . . Only he couldn't hear any of his words and Pops' hair was on fire. . . Like the little girl's. . .

Billy looked instinctively towards the restaurant's low white walls again, but of course, he could see nothing. He felt himself trembling, and hunched up against the stone wall of the jetty's supporting arch to better duck out of the wind and the rain.

“Best not go back home now,” Billy shivered involuntarily as a finger and thumb of ice squirmed through the buttons of his thick plaid lumberjack shirt, sketching a line down his chest. Raindrops ran like tears down his cheek. He sniffed. Vapid light from the distant street lights fused drearily with the shadows beneath the jetty so there was an oddness to the culvert, a lack of depth to its darkened contours. He looked out at the unwelcoming night.

“We'll just stay here, nice and cosy. See Pops in the mornin' we will. Yeah, see Pops in the mornin'.”

- 32 -

The stale smoke of cigarettes poisoned the slowly circulating air, a waspish tip flaring amber as Johnny Lisker inhaled. He stubbed out the last half-inch of the cigarette on the rough stone floor, and peeled the nicotine-yellow stained filter free from the charred paper. Putting it beside his half-eaten can of cold baked beans and a packet of digestives, he reached for the vodka bottle with the stunted fingers of his right hand. The level of the colourless liquor was well below the halfway mark. He pulled at the red cotton of his t-shirt, peeling the clinging fabric away from his clammy skin. Despite the coldness of the previous rainy night, the air trapped within the stone walls was still warm enough to be pleasantly cool. Inside, it was all but impossible to guess what the time was in the real world. He had extinguished the Primus stove sometime earlier and since then darkness, and her handmaiden shadow, filled every nook and cranny.

The room, if room it could be called, was a hollow chamber less than twice Johnny's height, though maybe as many as fifteen times as wide as he was tall. The two sleeping bags were laid out side by side, the rucksack between them, while the stove squatted in a corner, ten feet away, cupped in a natural basin of stone.

He could hear Alex Slater shuffling about blindly, and in a second or two heard the rough rasp of his lighter and saw a flare of blue-tinged flame as the light caught the tip of the cigarette dangling from his mouth. The phosphorescent firefly illuminated the soft angles of his boyish face, a thin veil of smoke rafting up and across his pin-prick pupils.

Johnny sighed, and fumbled for the rubber-handled flashlight he had had enough sense to grab before they left the house. The wash of light was dazzling with its intensity. Black cords (like snake skin) of darkness flaked away from its roving eye. The light darted effortlessly around the dark chamber, resting finally on a line of wall-paintings behind Alex's head. They seemed almost pre-historic in their stark simplicity, lending the cave the feel of some Neanderthal grotto. The light seemed to give the basic daubs of colour a thousand diverse hues, where in fact they had a sparse spectrum of reds, browns and blacks.

One of the paintings showed two disproportionate swordsmen squaring up to each other. The image brought back another; of lying back on damp grass during a seemingly endless, lazy, hazy summer afternoon, wooden sword in hand, Alex (the years stripped from his grinning face) straddling him, commanding his surrender.

“Good days,” he said reverently, the torch beam lingering on the two swordsmen. They had found the cave, in the peaks beyond Moses Hill, during the heady days of the summer of '03, when they divided their time between listening to classic punk like Sham 69 and the Ramones, reading Stephen King and Lord of The Rings, and playing Devil May Cry on Alex's PS2. “The best.”

“What are we going to do, Johnny?” he heard Alex ask again, and wanted to snap, to lash out, but didn't. He leaned back against the rough wall, enjoying the momentary chill of the stone through his shirt. His headache was getting gradually worse. He had awoken with a faint, nagging thrum behind his eyes. Now it felt as if someone, hidden by the darkness, had slipped two burning pokers through the base of his spine, and was busy dragging them, slowly, up and down both sides, grinding against the jagged vertebrae. The 'cramps' would be coming soon. Cramps? He wanted to laugh; they were more like fucking seizures. Things were beginning to ache already. His gums felt as if their teeth were working free, slipping the roots to grind on his nerves. Even his hair ached for Christ’s sake!

Johnny bit on his anger. Alex was really beginning to irritate him, and right now, with his stomach churning like a tumble-dryer; emotions, anger, frustration, hurt and hatred churning around on themselves, winding him up to the point of snapping; he could do without all of his fucking whinging!

Music! He thought, that's what I need, and laughed out loud at the sheer wonder of the idea. His voice bounced around the close walls, conveying his glee to a bewildered Alex.

Shining the torch's beam into the mouth of the sack, Johnny hunkered down and started rooting through its contents until he found the small orange transistor radio. A brief flare of joy sparked somewhere deep inside as his trembling hand closed around the cheap plastic casing: Music!  Then the scalding needles began jabbing at his jelly-like limbs, stabbing at his eyes, ears, fingers, tongue, bladder. . . He groaned aloud, swore and snarled with frustration, and started rooting deeper inside the rucksack, fumbling for the emergency stash he knew was hidden in the secret flap-compartment.

He lifted the radio out, and then pushed it away, feeling sick. He wanted to cry at the sheer pain as the first 'cramp' seized at his stomach fiercely enough to double him up. His mouth felt and tasted like the sand at the bottom of a cat's litter tray, after the cat had pissed in it, raw and scratchy and full of phlegm; his nose like the chimneys of a foundry furnace. There wasn't a single inch of skin around his body that didn't scream its discomfort; even his eye sockets seemed to be giving out under the weight of his eyeballs. He sneezed, the braying echoed back to him by the wailing walls. Johnny groaned. He felt truly fucking awful, no mistake. He grimaced at the ribbon of snot that was trailing down over his upper lip. Wiping the mucus with the back of one hand, he finally touched on the cellophane shrink wrap of a fresh syringe. He pulled it out, putting it down beside the cigarette filter, and then resumed the hunt afresh. In a minute or so he had built a small pile of essentials by his feet: Syringe, needle, filter, swab, spoon, lighter, Jiff lemon juice squeezer and the foil sweet wrapper containing his hit.

Taking off his sneaker and rolling down his sock, he heard Alex grunt something and start shuffling about the cave. He kept the torch fixed on his stack of goodies, ignoring Alex's bleating and attempts to kick up non-existent dust. Even this slight disturbance rankled him so badly he wanted to scream with rage at

Alex's lack of consideration.

“Fuck off out of here,” he spat, and then regretted it immediately as the barbs raked at the back of his raw throat. Johnny leaned back and closed his eyes, swallowing down the phlegm that scored his throat.

Mixing a small portion of lemon juice and heroin in the spoon, he started to warm it through gently with the softest flame his lighter would allow. His hand was shaking badly, but desperation prevented him from spilling any of the precious liquid concoction.

Satisfied, he dipped the cigarette filter into the reservoir, and then pierced the gummy filter with the minute needle and started drawing the hit up into the body of the two-mil syringe.

He knew he was grinning all over his face, but what the fuck, he deserved it, right?

Deftly, he swabbed down the patch of skin above the bluish vein in his ankle, and steadied his hand to deliver the injection. The needle point was hovering less than an inch above the criss-cross network of old puncture wounds, when an itch at the back of his nose became a loud sneeze. His arm jerked, scratching the needle along the skin just deeply enough to draw a bead of blood where it rested.

All of a sudden he felt sure that the hundreds of tons of rock balanced above his head were going to come raining down on top of him if he moved so much as a muscle. He desperately wanted to draw the syringe back the inch and a half it had slipped, but fear prevented him. Another cramp twisted his stomach. He knew he was crying, but his sudden fear of falling rock was winning its battle against desperation. Inside he was writhing and squirming. Relief was less than two inches away, but two inches was too far because if he so much as moved. . .

Finally desperation won out. Cold sweat peppering his brow and matting his lank hair, Johnny edged his hand back, oh so very slowly, until the needle once again hovered over the criss-cross of puncture wounds. He flexed his fingers. The fingers of his right hand. His right hand that had swollen to the size of a balloon when his 'scoring vein' caved in on itself. The fingers that he had all but lost to gangrene because of the rings he had habitually worn like a jagged line of knuckle dusters. And, pushing fear out of his mind, clipped the needle into his ankle and eased the plunger down, squeezing the heroin out into his blood stream.

His body was a different matter almost instantly. His hands ceased their spastic jerking, and everywhere the aches simply drifted away to nothing. He rolled up his sock and slipped his sneaker back on.

Where was Alex? Dumb jerk must have gone wandering off again Johnny thought wryly, and then noticed the small orange shell of the transistor radio on his sleeping bag. Grinning, he turned it on in time to catch the tail end of Always the Sun by The Stranglers as it faded into Grimly Fiendish.

Munching on a digestive, Johnny decided to go and look for Alex before he got himself into any more trouble.

A well-like opening in the cave's uneven floor served as a door. It opened onto a slender, dark funnel that twisted downwards steeply towards a glimmer of light some twenty feet below. Johnny sat on the ledge, dangling his feet over the lip, and lowered himself into the shaft. He used his feet to brace his back against the wall, and in that manner all but walked his way down to the light. The climb down was difficult but not as impossible as it might have looked from below. The wall was smooth enough to allow him to ease his way down gingerly, without scratching like claws against his back.

Slowly, he pushed and stepped and braced, time after muscle clenching time until his feet stepped into the gap of yellow light that painted a bright swathe on the fissure's floor. As Johnny dropped the final few feet to the floor, he felt the razor-blade sharpness of the building daylight scour at his eyes. He screwed up his face, shielding his light-sensitive eyes with a hand until they adjusted to the glare, and stepped out of the waist-high fissure in the face of the stone.

He saw Alex immediately, hunkered down over a hillside rivulet, mopping at his face with his red and white bandanna. His runic earring was a twinkling pinpoint of brightness in the rising morning light.

The sun felt good on his skin, warming, soothing.

His place before the entrance to the camp provided a wonderful vantage point for surveying the surrounding countryside. He looked out across rain-damp unkempt grass and purplish heathers that rushed away down the declivity separating him from the lesser heights of Moses Hill and Dipton Wood. Gorse bushes and clusters of boulders rolled away down the slope. To the left and right glowered the last slopes of the mountain range which surrounded the valley. The village itself was hidden beneath and behind the tree-line.

Johnny sauntered across to the bubbling river and sank down beside his friend. He felt really good about life for the first time in ages, the strength and freshness of the hit beating down the insistent voices that had plagued his night, providing him now with buckets full of energy. From the way he could see his cheeks out of the bottom of his eyes, he knew he was grinning broadly.

Alex turned, and for a moment looked uncertainly at him, then he too was touched by Johnny's infectious mood, and his own face broke behind an enigmatic smile.

“What the fuck are we going to do now?”

“Uncle Johnny's on the case, no need to worry,” he said soothingly, dipping his cupped hands into the miniature white caps as they splashed on down the hill. “We had some good times up here didn't we?”

“The best,” Alex agreed.

“Christ but I love this place. We ought to call it something you know, like the Bat Cave.”

Alex was contemplating his distorted reflection in the glassy surface of running water.

“Alex? Alex?” Johnny called softly, tapping his knuckles on the top of his friend's head. “Are you in there?”

“Fuck off,” Alex snapped, throwing his saturated bandanna up into Johnny's grinning face.

Johnny rocked back, too late to avoid the wet cloth, his feet slipping out from under him, and sat back on his arse, laughing as if he found the whole thing outrageously funny. “What's the matter?” He managed between splutters.

“You might have killed that guy.”

“Nah, it was just a scratch. Something for him to tell his girlfriend about,” he seemed to think about something for a moment before going on. “Anyway, so what if I had, arsehole deserved it, right?”

“You're fucking off it, pal, you know that?”

“Yeah. So you keep telling me,” Johnny agreed, still smirking as he pushed himself back to his feet. “A place like this still needs a name though.”

Alex pondered this for a moment. “Okay, how about the Judas Hole?” He suggested finally, but the irony was lost on Johnny.

“Fuckin' sound, mate. The Judas Hole it is,” Johnny proclaimed grandly.

- 33 -

There was a coldness about Billy's Happy Place that had only a small part to do with the early hour. There was a dampness to the air. A chill.  It surfaced as he blinked his rheumy eyes open, a singing shock of memory that snapped him bolt upright and away from the cold stone, shaking and all fizzy inside before he was even half awake.

His grubby work shirt clung clammily to his broad back. The soreness had eased enough for it not to hurt when he leaned against the wall. The air seemed close and sharp, clawing down the back of his throat like a hand, and laced with an odoriferous reek Billy thought of as fear. His hands were sticky. He stared down at them in horror, but of course it was sweat, not blood, that glistened slickly on the palms.

Another bad dream. . . awful figures stalking through his sleep, leering faces stooping down over him, whispering voices, horrible. . . had haunted him, this one slipping into the safety of his Happy Place, leaving only shapeless shadows of fear behind.

The forecourt of the Watersedge Restaurant was empty, though showing some faint signs of stirring, early morning life. For some time Billy sat among the driftwood and water-logged crisp packets, scanning the lake's other banks. The park trees were laced with teary dew drops like pearls and diamonds peppering their verdant boughs. The grass and tall weeds beneath them rustling in the wind. Airborne fairies spiralled and swirled like pale spirits that had fled a haunt with the coming of daybreak.

An unpleasantly cold chill was seeping through his skin and numbing his bones, but he ignored it as best he could.

He might have been the very last man alive. . .

The sun was low in the sky, a red orb, its’ rays scintillating over the stippled water, touching the horizon and melting into it. The vibrant light lifted swiftly from bloody red to a soothing, sunburst orange. From the east a wall of light was toppling the frail grip of darkness. Everywhere was quiet, except for the occasional lap of water against the shoreline, and the silky rush of wings flitting from branch to branch.

He yawned and stretched, still desperately tired despite his few hours rest.

He checked right and left.

Satisfied that nothing had slipped through from his nightmare, he moved down the shale and slipped out from under the jetty, placing his feet carefully on slick, treacherous pebbles that scrunched and scraped under his boots.

Billy heard the sound of out of tune whistling even before he reached the street, and immediately his mouth went dry. No, no, no. . . leave me alone. . . He thought desperately, and peered up over the edge of the jetty.

Ben Shelton, the younger of the two brothers, the one with the nice big old dog, was out for a morning stroll. His dog was padding along at his side, stubby tail wagging flamboyantly, eyes roving across the thousand sights around him.

He relaxed, and hauled himself up to the street.

“Mornin' Mr Shelton,” he called, ever-so slightly breathlessly as he scrambled to his feet.

“Morning Billy. Up nice and early,” Ben said pleasantly.

Billy looked at his dog and smiled broadly, hunkering down and taking his sloppy head in both his hands. “There's a smashin' fella,” he laughed, blowing a wet raspberry on Scooby's moist nose. “Got to scoot,” he said to Ben, adding, “Feed the birds,” by way of explanation.

Across the narrow street, Mr Barney the policeman shouted hello. He was talking to Daniel Tanner and his little girl. Now she was nice. A really cute little button.

Where had everyone come from?

Shaking his head, Billy waved to Barney, said goodbye to Ben, and shuffled off in the direction of Garrets Lane. Despite the sun, the air had grown down-right cold.

*   *   *   *   *

The low mood gathered strength as he walked, hitting him hardest as he cut over the gravel and grit track that wound around to Cotters Ledge.

Billy's list of friends was short enough to have Pops up at the top and Alfie Meecham at the bottom with no one in between.

Having someone to talk to would help, but Pops would want to cleanse him with the strap more than he would want to listen, so Billy took the cut and went looking for Alfie.

He was kicking his feet along the railway embankment soon enough, and tutting at himself for having let the grass grow long enough to cover his boots. He could see pretty well every which way he chose to look. Trees, like a big green blanket that had been dropped on the hill, made it most of the way up to the farm and the brown hills above, likewise back aways to Swallowship Hill and the cemetery. Best of all though, he could see the white walls and two chimneys of the paper mill close up. Lorries and high-backed trailers waited in the yard, canvas sides pulled back on flatbeds and boxes. Some of the most amazing toilet rolls, five times his height and three times as wide, sheltered under the canopy, waiting to be broken down and recycled for pulp.

Billy walked and watched and scuffed his heels, but there was little to see. He soon got bored with trading glances with the lorry drivers and their mates.

He was thinking about the beating Pops was bound to give him for forgetting his chores, when he first caught the smell of smoke, faint but definitely wood smoke. The aroma drifted around him, sometimes tinged with the flavour of cooking meat.

His stomach grumbled.

He was on top of the ledge, with only the slide down between him and the Bus Graveyard below. The Watersedge Restaurant was little more than a long smudge on the horizon. The smoke was coming from a patch between two overturned single-decker buses. Billy skidded and scrambled down the thirty foot slope, whooping and hollering and waving his arms in the air like a madman possessed. Puffballs of dust scudded up around his feet. Twice he ended up on his backside, laughing.

The Bus Graveyard was actually a disused blast quarry that had, over the years, seen a local bus company dump its handful of castoffs. Sandstone walls cosseted the six rusting vehicles, and several smaller burnt out husks and black sacks. The dogs were mooching about through the detritus, sniffing and nosing at the morning's windfalls.

“Alfie?” Billy called out. He dusted himself off and stuffed his hands deep into his pockets. “ALLLLFEEE?”

One of the dogs started barking. Hopper, Billy recognised him by his limp.

“Shush, and what's your noise 'bout then, Hopper?” Billy heard Alfie mutter, but still couldn't see him.

He kicked an open can back at a spilled sack. Nosey and Nipper were playing an aggressive game of tag between the standing double-deckers.

“Alfie, it's me,” he called again.

“Don't want none of it, we don't,” the old man called back without making himself known. “Jus' gan on yer way an' leave us be affore we set the mutts on yer. Hear?”

Drawing a deep breath, Billy started toward the source of the smoke. Peering through the line of grubby windows shielding the fire from the wind, a lean, sun-browned man had one of the dogs by the scruff of the neck and was watching his cautious approach.

Alfie was the strangest fellow Billy had ever seen. For one thing, his clothes looked like they could stand up and walk around without him in them for much of the time, and even his boots had big enough holes in them for his grubby toes to peek through some of the way. His coat was back over by the fire, drying out.

Gathered at the back of his neck with a bitten-off bootlace, his greying brown hair hung down his back to his waist. A thick beard sprouted and fuzzed across half his face and a good part of his chest. A long knife, with a hand-carved handle of wood, was slipped between loops in his rope belt.

Billy waved at him through the glass.

The old tramp seemed to peer forward, squinting for a better look. Knitted brows furrowed to give him the wild-eyed look of a rusted fret-saw. He had pulled a couple of doors up to make a barricade between his home and the rest of the quarry.

“Billy? That you lad?”

“Yep,” Billy called back, climbing over the doors.

“Thought you was one of them buggers come t'burn summink. Like as not one o'me dogs.”

A skinned rabbit was cooking on a fire of six sticks and a skewer. It was roasted brown from the bottom and dripping a fair amount of juice that hissed in the flames. A pot of stew broiled on a second cook fire. The smell of it, so close, made his mouth water.

“You hungry, lad?”

Billy nodded.

“Maybe I fix yer summink t'munch then, eh?”

Billy nodded again.

“Speak up, lad, or's the cat got yer tongue?”

“No cat's got my tongue,” Billy smiled. “Look, see,” he said sticking it out for proof.

“Good. Good. Don't do no good 'aving a cat get yer tongue, it don't. Jus' makes it a bugger t'talk's all.”

Billy looked around for a crate to pull up. He spied an orange milk crate and went over to fetch it, but the thing wriggled something rotten under his backside when he sat himself down.

Nipper and Nosey had given up chasing each other and had slunk up to lie near his feet. Alfie was stripping the rabbit on to a sauce pan lid.

“Done starin', Billy? Wanna call the posse in for grub?”

“Sure,” he stood himself on his crate and started to whistle like he'd heard Alfie do, and sure enough Hopper started limping his way towards the fire.

Rosie and Felix were the next to appear, bounding effortlessly through the rubbish heaps with Nuke coming on their tails. Nuke was a big white shaggy thing that dwarfed the other mongrels.

Alfie always called them Heinzers, and laughed whenever Billy asked why?

“Where's Sasha?”

“Got 'erself killed by them bloody kids. Planned on fixin' 'em good. Stick 'em wi'me knife an' see how's they like that. Near as et 'er they did.”

“Stop saying it Alfie, that's horrible. Where is she really?”

“I tol' you, she's gone. Dead gone. Et by them kids that burn t'cars.”

Billy felt kind of sick inside as he said: “Really?”

“Yep so. Now  are yer gonna come 'ere an' tuck in while t'grub's hot, or are yer gonna stand up thur like a tree?”

“Did you bury her then, Alfie?”

“Course I buried 'er lad. Didn't wanna 'ave 'er stinkin' up me yard none.”

“Where is she?”

“Ower thur, by me bus t'keep 'er in close like.”

“Can I go and have a look?” Billy's cheek twitched as he spoke. It was a nervous tick Pops had cleansed him of more than once simply because it refused to go away.

“Aye, if'n yer careful not t'wake 'er up,” Alfie said between taking mouthfuls of rabbit.

Alfie had buried her nice and simple, using string and two bits of wood to make a headpiece. He'd carved her name into the crosspiece. SASHA. Billy traced the letters with a shaky finger. SASHA. The ground had been cleared away around the cross, the dust and soil freshly turned.

He crossed himself and muttered the few words of the Lord's Prayer he knew. “Our Father, which art in heaven,” he sniffed and turned back for the fire. “You've done it really nice,” he told Alfie, sitting himself down again.

“Aye. Diggin' that rock out were a bugger though. Made fer breakin' me back more 'an once I can tell yer. Still, ole dog done me good so's it were the least I could dee for 'er. Like as not she wouldna cared one whit 'bout it if'n she'd ended up in a placky sack wi' the rest o' the rubbish.”

The greasy meat had him licking his fingers.

Nuke stepped up to the old man, shaggy, waist-high with jaws that could break a man's leg in three. As if Alfie wasn't there, he pawed the rabbit's remains off the saucepan lid and chowed down heartily.

Nosey, so called because of the lighter patch of grey around his snout, lay nearly touching Billy's feet. The dogs seemed to be happy enough to ignore Billy so long as he let them eat their fill. Not that one scrawny rabbit was going to go far. Tongues lolled out of loose jowls, they waited at ease.

“Did you stick any of the fire kids?” Billy asked faintly, and almost hopefully, too.

Alfie snorted. “You thinkin' I'd be 'ere if'n me old knife 'ad stuck one o'them snufflin' buggers? No, I dain't stick one, did I Nuke?” The big shaggy dog turned his head to look up at him.

Billy marvelled at the way his friend talked to the dogs. Alfie had explained it once. Said it was feeling the words. Putting them into the dog's heads so they could see what he wanted them to see, hear what he said as he wanted them hear it. Billy didn't understand it, but that didn't mean it wasn't wonderful to watch. Alfie always looked as if he were drifting off on the flow of some memory, like as not he was daydreaming most of it up just to keep Billy amused, and it did that no end. Rosie seemed to grin his way.

“Been a bit twitchy, ain't we girl. Barkin' at shadows all night since poor ol' Sasha. Jumpy as a virgin's dick. You okay, Billy?”

Billy avoided looking at him.

Alfie chuckled. “C'mon, spit it out. The old fella been at yer with 'is strap again, eh?”

“How. . ?”

“No mystery, lad. You been itchin' around like a flea since you sat down t'eat.”

“Oh.”

“Why don'tcha stay 'ere with us? Let the ol' bugger shit on it a bit?” Alfie offered, picking a bit of rabbit out from under a nail.

“I don't know, Alfie. Pops would be real mad an' all.”

“As yer want it, lad. Maybe 'e'll forget 'bout yer alt'gether, an' yer can live with old Alfie an' his friends, eh? That'd be mighty fine, eh?”

“Maybe.”

“Y'wanna drink? Got some fizzy back in the bus. Yer can 'elp yerself.”

Billy knew the bus he meant without having to ask. The red and grey single-decker. The doors had no air left in their hydraulics. Alfie had left one side cracked open as a way into his house. Blankets and bedroll had been spread out over the long backseat, bundled rags for a pillow, while most of the other seats had been ripped free and used to line the metal walls, creating a misleading effect of space. Straw and newspaper made beds for the dogs. Between two such seats he found the old fridge Alfie had rescued from the dump. Without electricity the cooler was little better than a cupboard. Billy took himself a couple of mouthfuls from the plastic bottle of lemonade, recapped it and closed the fridge up. Alfie's place was warm with the sun heating the walls like a cooking pot. A whole passel of odds and sods cluttered the bus. Clothes, a spare pair of boots, a thick shirt worn at the collar, cuffs and elbows, and a bundle of heavy overcoats were piled on the rucked up blankets for extra warmth come night.

The dogs were picking over the few rabbits bones when he got back to the fire.

“Best be off,” he said to Alfie.

“Aye, s'pose yer had be at that. If'n the old fella gets ruff, get yersel' back 'ere an' we'll look after yer, lad. Now yer best get runnin'.”

Billy hesitated, and then turned slowly, his hands gripped in his pockets tightly. Lying with one of his shoulders propped on a log, Felix nuzzled down. His eyes flicked up to Billy, held, and then darted on as if they had found something they didn't like in his look. Felix bristled. Rosie and Nuke looked up from their pickings. Nosey and Nipper backed off. Tiny aftershocks shuddered through their scraggy fur. Nuke growled low in his throat, lips back.

“Shush up, boy,” Alfie scolded the big white dog. There was a quiet intensity in that low growl that had Billy scrambling away as fast as his feet would allow.

He heard more growls. Angry sounds. He only looked back the once, but couldn't read Alfie's expression. His friend had a hand buried in the ruff of Nuke's neck, holding him back.

He didn't know rightly what he'd done to upset the posse. Alfie said they'd been jumpy since Sasha died. Surely they did not think he had hurt her?

“I dain't hurt her, no. . .” he mumbled, scrambling up the dirt bank.

At the top, he turned to wave. Alfie was still holding Nuke back.

Billy sniffed.

“Not gonna cry,” he promised himself, then went ahead and broke that promise.

“It weren't me. . .”

Alfie didn't wave.

*   *   *   *   *

The turn off into Garrett's Lane lay just before the Arches. To Billy its gloomy opening looked more like a big, dark tunnel than a road, as it crawled sluggishly up the side of Moses Hill to home.

Still snuffling, he stepped inside and immediately the sun was gone. Chilly breezes cut down the slope.  Above and behind him the trees swayed to the rhythms of winds rushing through empty spaces, their wiry shadows twisting and cavorting like headless clowns, fingers of charcoal nipping out to rat-at-tap-tap around his feet.

Billy didn't like the tunnel. It scared him sometimes.

He liked it when there was sunshine and he liked happy places where the grass was green and long and sky was blue all over.

The tunnel leeched the colours away, as if someone had taken the lid off the sky and let them all escape.

He started whistling, tunelessly at first just, to break the quiet, until he stumbled over the first few notes of Zippety-do-dah! He ran his fingers through his thinning hair and patted the rolled up bulk of the comic in his back pocket. Unseen birds twittered cheerily, their lilting, Chinese sounding voices a stark contrast to the cheerless gloom.

Trudging along, whistling and kicking up gravel chips as he went, an icy feeling started to settle in his stomach. A slow, sinking feeling, like a smooth-sided pebble plopping down to the bottom of a deep, stagnant lake. A funny feeling. Not funny ha-ha. Funny strange. Funny scary. . .

Billy didn't like it one little bit.

The feeling churned, flattening and solidifying his other fizzy feeling. He was worried about Pops and the way the posse had turned on him like he was some stranger. He always worried about Pops a little bit, but this wasn't a little worry. . . This hurt.

He continued on up the hill, picking up his pace slightly without knowing why.

His feet crunched across loose chips, scuffing and scraping stones together.

Chinese birds whispered secrets.

He shivered.

“Just someone walkin' over me grave,” he said softly, feeling silly but suddenly hoping there was no one to hear his whisper.

The eerie canopy provided by the trees started to thin and then broke, letting the sun back in.

Up ahead, finally, he saw Mike Shelton's caravan, and up a ways beyond it, the farmhouse and the twisted outline of Hangman's Oak. From here the house looked really quiet.

He peered in at the empty caravan as he passed, feeling cold, not just on the outside, but on the inside, too, and light headed, almost like standing in a winter wind and drinking a thick ice creamy milkshake. His eyes were barely focused. In front of him the tree was blurred and seemed to be surrounded by a halo of fuzzy light.

Still shook up some, he thought, blinking. When that didn't work, he screwed his eyes up and gently massaged the lids. When he opened them again, the halo was gone, though the ancient oak was still blurred; its bleary edged silhouette looking like the crooked man dragging his way over his crooked stile.

Billy's stomach clenched up like a powerful fist clamping down as a great big jolter slapped him out of his stride, jerking his legs out from under him so suddenly it seemed he was no longer seated inside his own body, looking out. For a second only he was seeing things from two different perspectives, his perception jack-knifed out from behind his eyes to a point somewhere in front of him. It came from behind the tree (or out of the house?) and whooshed into him, hammering into his stomach, doubling him over in a fierce coughing fit. Inside, he felt the most painful cleansing of his life lash through his system, and heard something that sounded like a long strip of Velcro being torn apart. His heart felt huge inside his heaving chest, pounding so heavily he could hardly catch even a ragged breath. The feeling only lasted for an instant before he felt his second, altered perception snapping back inside his body. Tiny shockwaves charged through his body, as if his hand had closed on a live wire, muscles clenching. He gulped for a breath, his chest tight, cramped, and blinked his eyes closed until the fist clenched around his stomach melted.

And then it was gone, leaving a funny tingle in his bones. Not funny ha-ha. Funny scary. . . a sense of foreboding shivering through him.

Behind him, the wind murmured through the trees. Above, the sky looked like the ruins of a burnt out building, smouldering ash and glowing embers. Leftover rain made the grass look wet and soggy, the gravel drive darker than usual, almost black around the foot of Hangman's Oak. In the few puddles he could see the blue sky again, reflected like a face in a mirror.

He stumbled forward, past the tree, splashing through the gathered puddles like a child at the beach. A blue light flickered through a downstairs window, dancing a waspish dance under the directions of the unseen television. The windows were blank glass, cold and empty. He pressed his forehead against the window, peering in at the darkness. Judy Finnigan and Richard Madeley were on the black and white tube, but, other than his coffee mug and discarded dinner plate with its ring of chips and dried gravy, there was no sign of Pops to be seen.

Then, pushing away from the window, he noticed the porch door hanging open, drifting an inch or so against its hinges under the weight of the slight, gusting breeze creeping up the porch steps.

Oh boy. . .

“Pops?” he called out, then more desperately, “POPS?”

- 34 -

The quality of the light filtering through the work room's half open window had changed while he worked, grown brighter. For all its earlier redness, it looked closer to being noonlight now. He checked his watch. Six forty-five. Barely even morning. He could hear Scooby pottering about in the family room. On the stereo, Geddy Lee was plucking a mean bass line and urging people to believe in the freedom of music. A chilly breeze was sneaking in through the open window.

Ben read through the final sentence again.

When you get around to burning him, Crohak, throw a few logs on for me. Green ones, still oozing sap if you can find any. They don't burn so fast.

Pleasantly surprised, he scrolled upward to the start of the chapter, noting with some satisfaction that the bold typeface proclaimed the magic number -- Six -- and started reading back through the long night's work.

Shivers crawled up each individual vertebrae of his back.

It wasn't just good, it was. . . right.

Grinning, he shook his head.

In the family room the song had moved on and the singer was busy telling him, in that distinctive, high pitched voice of his, that all the fear and suffering was all a big mistake.

Ben spent another hour working on The Sufferers Song, closing Chapter Six. The writing itself wasn't hard, but his mind refused to focus on the task for any length of time, allowing his thoughts to wander here, there and everywhere. They slipped from the story, torturing him with miserable thoughts of Mike alone with the Demon Drink in that awful caravan.

With alarming frequency he found his gaze slipping from the computer screen to the red and black spine of Uneasy Streets' dust cover. Reaching for the book, Ben felt that odd, cold, yet strangely familiar sensation congealing within the watery pit of his stomach. Rob Sammelin's photographic illustration of Hammerthal, the clockwork clown, and the puppet master's wooden hands, still looked wonderfully fresh. It was a pity the same couldn't be said for the story behind it.

He sighed and shook his head.

And now he was seventy-seven pages into putting himself through it all over again.

At ten to eight, he decided to call it a day. He saved the work in progress, backing it up on the USB flash drive, and went on upstairs to take a shower.

He undressed and dumped his clothes in the overflowing laundry basket, fishing around for a fresh towel. Soaps and shampoo gathered on the side of the bathtub. The tub itself was set into a recess and mirrored on all three sides. Ben watched himself in one of the huge, full length mirrors over the bath, seeing three smiling Shelton's reflected in the angle as he stooped to collect shampoo and conditioner. A second wall of mirrors dominated the wall around the hand basin, so wherever he stood in the spacious room, he could see at least two of himself quite plainly.

Bass heavy music drifted up from downstairs.

Ben twisted on the mixer taps and in moments steam was drifting out from the shower, steamy air wrapping around him, and misting over the large mirrors. He stepped into the shower, testing the spray with a tentative hand before slipping under the hot rush.

The water felt wonderful splashing down over him, matting his hair and spraying his face, running stingingly hot down his body; stomach, buttocks, back and thighs. He turned slowly, letting the spray gently massage his neck and stiff shoulders, savouring the languor it seeped into his bones.

Finally, he forced himself to work the shampoo suds into his heat-tingling scalp, rinsing them out again under the hot spray. Suds- scaled streams cascaded down over his chest as he lathered soap into his skin, clearing his ears with popping fingers. The sound of the fine spray drumming on the plastic floor rushed through the shower. Wrapped in the water's heat, he felt tranquil, lazy, but the water raining down through his matted hair cooled only too rapidly, until its touch stung like iced needles stabbing into his scalp.

Out of the shower, he shook himself vigorously, like a dog slicking the surface water out of its coat, and started towelling himself down. He dressed in a pair of faded jeans and pulled on a sloppy red-fleece sweatshirt before going downstairs for breakfast.

In the kitchen, he poured himself a cool glass of milk, and put a couple of rounds of bread under the grill, then added cheese. He took them, along with his drink, through to the family room.

Scooby, hunkered down on his fireside rug, shifted to watch him settle, his large, saucer brown eyes regarding Ben for a moment before returning to their quiet contemplation of the logs spitting in the grate.

Ben glanced around the room, as if expecting it to have somehow changed while he showered. Deep-grained hardwood floorboards, which would need polishing again pretty soon, walls lined with shabby looking bookcases and dog-eared paperbacks, a mismatch of garage sale furniture, picture window, and the huge fireplace with its ancient hand-carved facade. He brushed back an errant strand of hair, and chewed on his slice of cheese on toast. The fairies hadn't been in to rearrange it for him. Early morning sun, the colour of honey, poured in through the picture window, throwing one large, unbroken sheet of light across the wooden floor.

“Come on, Scoob,” he said, finishing his toast and washing it down with a last swallow of milk. He stuffed his feet into a battered pair of red and white Reebok baseball boots, and picked up an apple on the way out of the front door. A few seconds later was strolling down towards the park, enjoying Saturday morning first hand. The sky was a perfect cloudless blue, though the air itself held a crisp chill.

Munching on the apple, Ben reached the High Street, Scooby padding alongside him, unwilling to make the fifty yard dashes of his youth. The streets on the far side began to slope gently away towards the lake. A few minutes later, they reached the disused railway track that led around to Cotters Ledge, and turned west to walk along it. The tracks were long gone, though the odd sleeper was still lying around here and there, overgrown with scrub and weeds. Scooby ambled a little way into the lead, mincing from one overgrown stand to another, stub of a tail high in the air.

The track, unused for nigh on thirty seven years, was a spur of the main Newcastle to Carlisle line. Ben stopped to fasten a dragging lace.

Up ahead, Scooby had stopped and was waiting patiently for him to keep pace.

Rather than follow the track around to the embankment, they headed off, down into the upper reaches of the park.

Then they reached the bridge.

As a boy, the bridge had been one of the few really scary places he visited with Mike. Back then, they both knew a malignant presence hid in dark beneath its steps. He walked purposefully over the bridge. Not so long ago he had shared the secret rules of The Crossing with Mike. No looking down, or back, no speaking, no running, and most importantly, no stopping halfway. But that, as they say, was then. Rickety steps led the way down to a path which curved through thick foliage, which had, seemingly, melted into a single, breathing mass. Soon though, they left the trees behind.

The grasslands stretched out in front of them, bordered on one side by water, the other by houses. In the distance he could just make out the sign above the Watersedge, the boathouse down the shore from there and the thunderheads of a storm brewing, above.

He was whistling out of habit by the time he reached the road.

Across the street Barney Doyle was talking to Daniel Tanner and the younger of his two girls.

“Mornin' Mr Shelton,” Billy Rogan called breathlessly, emerging from somewhere beneath the street level.

“Morning Billy. Up nice and early.”

Scooby waddled up to the big man, and Ben had to smile when Billy squatted down and blew a wet sounding raspberry on the old dog's nose. “There's a smashin' fella. Got to scoot. Feed the birds.”

“Okay Billy, good to see you. Give my best to your dad when you see him.”

“Will do, Mr Shelton. Bye bye doggy,” Billy said, grinning as he scratched behind one of Scooby's cauliflower ears.

From across the street, Barney called hello.

“That'll teach you,” Ben said, seeing Scooby pawing at his wet nose. Leaving Billy, they walked across to join the others.

“How's it going, Barney?”

The sergeant gave him a little head shake of exasperation that said it all.

In the two days since Ben had last seen him to say hello to, the man had aged perhaps five years. White and grey hairs were mixed in his sideburns. Some made it as far as his eyebrows, only seeming to make the man's owlish expression that shade more turbulent. Barney squinted against the sun, and drew a shallow suck on the thin cigarette dangling between his lips.

“It's been better,” he admitted.

“Morning Ben,” Daniel said.

“How so?” Ben wanted to know.

Doyle pinched the bridge of his nose, absently drawing on the dwindling Woodbine. His lips creased upwards wryly as he pulled a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket to wipe his heavily lined brow.

Ellen was fussing over Scooby. The old Labrador, knowing what was expected of him, sighed indulgently and rubbed up against her legs.

“Well, I suppose you'll hear about it on the jungle line soon enough,” Doyle muttered, rubbing his hands together briskly. “The kid Johnny Lisker stabbed on Thursday died yesterday.”

“Oh, boy. . .”

“It gets worse, believe me. A stabbing on Thursday night, followed by a suicide on Friday morning. Frank Rogan's gone AWOL and some doctor, doctor for Christ’s sakes, sics his dogs on a guy when I'm out asking him to I.D. our man in the woods. It stinks.”

And I don't even want to think what's going to happen next, seemed to be the silent inference, as he drew his inadequate collar tightly around his neck.

The wind coming in off Devil's Water picked up, belligerently slapping at the sergeant's loose fitting civvies. It seemed to want to make sport of him, as if playing a spiteful game of tag.

Ben looked him over. Shade under sixty, reasonably well dressed. Subtle aftershave. He didn't exactly look like a shuffling village copper. Then again, he wasn't exactly fresh from Starsky & Hutch either.

Ben frowned, trying to dredge up some unidentifiable pearl of wisdom from his memory.

“I just saw Billy,” he offered.

“What about Lisker?” Daniel wanted to know.

“The shitheel's disappeared right up his mother's own crotch. Sorry Ellen,” he added, seeing the youngster's wide eyed face jerk up to look disapprovingly at him.  “No one's seen hide nor hair of him since Thursday night, but when I get my hands on him. . .” Doyle let the sentence trail, but his meaning was perfectly plain. As of an hour ago he was hitting the War Path and heaven help anyone stupid enough to get in his way.

He gazed out across the lake, mopping at his forehead with the handkerchief again. He seemed to be scanning the shoreline for something. Finally, he waved in the direction of the lakeside diner. Ben and Daniel exchanged a look that spoke volumes, as the Long Arm of the Law sighed, face to the wind.

“What a fucking mess.”

- 35 -

The woman next door spent most of the night making enough noise to wake the dead. With all her tossing and turning, Kristy didn't get to sleep too well either. The only silver lining was as of sun-up it was the weekend and she didn't have to worry about filing a story for two whole days. Small consolation that it was.

She called the hospital at six, and then again at eight. All they had to say was that there was no change. Jason was sleeping. His condition was described as comfortable. He was in no immediate danger.

That should have made her feel better, but it didn't, so she was up and dressed before half of the birds were awake themselves, and on the road to Hexham pretty soon after. She drove with the music cranked up loud and the window down low. Jim Kerr and Simple Minds were the order of the day; good loud rocking to take her mind off yesterday.

The roads were quiet for a summer Saturday when most people would be making their way to the coast. She made good time, dropping off the dual carriageway just shy of the market town. Hexham looked like so many rooftops of red and blue Lego. The beginnings of a storm fermented above the tiers of Lego, rising in various shades of grey to black. Following the curious weave of the old roads, they led her in a virtual circle to the hospital.

Kristy parked the car and then just stood still in the strained serenity of the grounds, not sure within herself whether she wanted to make the lonely walk to Jason's bedside. Some equally strange thoughts refused to go away. There was something very peculiar about Dr Richards' little piece of heaven, like why the hell did they need dogs trained to attack? And they were well trained. The way they stood off even after being bloodied would have needed a hell of a lot of discipline on their part. Someone had put a lot of work in on Saul and Duke. But why?

Who did they want to keep out?

And again, why?

What had Jason seen, if anything?

Questions. Only answered by more questions.

An ambulance pulled in behind her, the paramedic clambering out of the back doors almost before it had stopped rolling. There was an almost instantaneous bustle of life as the blanket covered unfortunate was transferred onto a hospital gurney and wheeled away inside with the minimum of fuss. Standing back, the paramedic's face twisted with a look Kristy knew well enough. A look that said he was at his own personal boundaries and he'd left his training way off behind. It was a look Kristy associated with the victims. A look that said death had come to pay a too-close-for-comfort call. It wasn't a look she expected to see on the face of a healer, and it did little to boost her flagging confidence.

No point in putting it off, she prodded herself.

Out of the way of the wind the sky was like an axe waiting to fall, heavy with the threat of rain. It seemed to dampen the morning sunlight and hold her surroundings so still she could see everything clearly. A vandalized window in the low frame of a portacabin. A paint-splashed branch of a sapling overhanging the far corner of the car park. The remains of a cigarette smouldering as the breeze sent it tumbling across the tarmac.

She had to hope that talking with Jason was going to help. She double-checked the doors before heading off towards the entrance marked 'B' Block.

A hospital porter smiled as he guided a free-wheeling gurney around Kristy. The corridor she turned onto smelled thickly; detergents, bleach, antiseptic, and some unidentifiable other.

It didn't feel anywhere like the thirteen hours it was since Kristy had ran every red light between Pilgrim's Hall and the hospital with Jason Kelso out cold on the backseat.

Her footsteps echoed with a clangy, mechanical precision that mated well with the institute's drab walls and linoleum floors. She wondered if the uniformity of the surroundings was meant to aid the healing process in some way she couldn't fathom. The walk to Jason's room was a short one; left, then left again to the elevators. Up two floors. Right at the end of the first corridor, under the sign for I.C.U., the third door down, on the right. The door was open, a slim blue-eyed nurse talking back into the room as she straightened the lie of her skirt. Seeing her coming, the nurse smiled, and said:

“Someone to see you.”

She heard Jason laugh.

“A sexy blonde?”

“Sure is.”

“Looks like my prayers have been answered. C'mon in Kris.”

The room was as plain as the corridor. Fresh flowers and three cards hid the top of the bedside cabinet. An old chair stood in the corner furthest from the bed. A metal locker style wardrobe in another. Other than that, the room was empty.

“Be gentle with him,” was the nurse's parting comment.

“Kid gloves,” Kristy assured with a grin. She didn't know what to expect until she saw him propped up in bed. His leg was up in traction, thick bandages wrapped around his upper arm. “How come you never let on you were such a hit with the animals,” she joked, pulling up a chair. She felt all tight and knotted inside.

Jason was ashen. A line of black stitches ran through a deep purplish bruise, from just below his ear to half an inch above his swollen eye. A second line of stitches held his lip and cheek together. Blue-black swellings puffed around a mesh of bite marks that came from below the neckline of his gown and climbed a fretwork of ladders to his hairline.

“Jesus, Jason. You look like shit.”

“Yeah? You should see the other guy,” he winced at the pain that small chuckle cost him.

“How are you feeling?” It was a silly question, but she didn't know what else she was expected to say.

“Better than I look, I hope. The Doc reckons I'm a lucky bloke, but right now I hurt just about everywhere I can hurt. If that's what he means by lucky then I suppose I am,” Jason half-smiled. That half-smile twisted into something closer to a grimace, as the hot teeth of pain bit hard into the ruined tendons of his right arm. Cramps dug into his chest with ice picks as he shifted. Fingers ran razor-blades beneath the plaster cast on his right leg.

Nothing he did seemed to ease any of the burning ache-stings that snapped across his body.

Instead of sitting, Kristy read the cards. One was from Spencer Abel, another from the News Room staff, the last a comic effort from the staff photographers.

“Looks like you're quite the celebrity.”

“Not by choice, let me tell you. Right now there's nothing I'd like better than to be waking up in my own bed next to a beautiful blonde, any offers?” Kristy couldn't help but laugh at his lascivious wink.

“You should see yourself, pal.”

“I think I'll pass on that one. Nurse Blue-eyes and long legs promised to come back later to give me a blanket bath. Now that should be something.”

“And I thought you were going to die. Will you listen to yourself, Jason? I was up half the night sick with worry, and all you can think about is getting a blanket bath from your blue-eyed beauty.”

Jason went all serious on her then, lifting himself onto his good elbow and wincing for his pains. “Kris, up until about three hours ago I thought I was dead. I couldn't understand why I wasn't. Then I woke up, and the only person I wanted to see in the world was you. Don't spoil it. Please.”

She couldn't tell if he was serious, and if he was, just how serious he was, but she suddenly felt quiet light, almost giddy, inside. “Come here, you big lug,” she said, holding him gingerly.

She half expected him to say something about not breaking.

He kissed her instead. A brush of his lips on her nose.

“Go and get my coat,” he told her, touching her chin.

Jason's few belongings were hung and stacked neatly in the metal locker. Jacket, shirt, jeans and sneakers. Blood had dried up to the colour and consistency of rust around many of the rips. The same arm of both jacket and shirt had been bitten out by savage teeth. Rust had inked into the fabric of the shirt and hardened. Much the same had happened to the jacket, but Jason wanted it, so she fetched it back to the bed.

“In the pocket,” he said before she was halfway.

Kristy patted the jacket down until she felt out whatever it was he meant her to find. His compact Cybershot. She took it out to give to him. “Pull the photos off it, Kris. We've got that bastard nailed.”

She slipped the camera into her own pocket and sank down into the seat again. “We've got to talk, Jason. There's a whole heap of stuff I want to know, not least being why the hell they set the dogs on you like that.”

“Long story, kiddo. And not a pleasant one.”

“I've got the time,” Kristy assured him.

“Okay, then. You're not going to like this, but I'm pretty sure the health farm story's a cover for some sort of research lab.”

“How so?”

”I couldn't get in anywhere, but I found some rats dumped in the rubbish bins. Maybe twenty of the little critters. They'd all had their backs broken. Some of them had had their scalps shaved, and the last time I saw anything like that was when I covered an animal rights raid on a lab in Stockton. The research animals had had their scalps shaved so the electrodes could be attached.”

“What the fuck is Richards playing at?”

“I don't know, Kris, but I'm going to be banged up in here for the duration, so it looks like you're on your own from here on in.”

“Richards won't know what hit him.”

“Just be careful. This fella doesn't fight fair, believe me.”

“Like I told Spencer, careful's my middle name.”

“Glad to hear it. One of us in here's one too many for my liking. Now, get those photographs uploaded, and if they're any good, use them. I know a girl at the University, she's hooked up with God knows how many dodgy-but-politically-correct groups. She'll be able to put you in touch with some useful people if you need to put the frighteners on Doctor Frankenstein.”

“I hope it won't come to that.”

“But if it does, promise me you will call her. As far as cavalry goes she’s one of the best.”

“Okay,' Kristy agreed, grudgingly, “but only if I have to. What's her name?”

“Robin Stone. She's a final year Politics student. Her number's in my wallet.”

The wallet was in the back pocket of his jeans, her number on a card inside. Kristy read the number before slipping the card into her own back pocket.

“Now you do something for me.”

“You name it?”

“Stay in here, enjoy that blanket bath and concentrate on getting better.”

“Oh, you've got a cruel mind, Kristy French. But I don't care if you take it out on me. After all, what position am I in to argue?”

“None,” she smoothed down his rumpled bedding, plumped up his pillows and kissed his forehead. “We're all worrying about you, Jason. You don't need me to tell you that. Now, do you want me to fetch anything in for you? Maybe a book or something?”

“My T.V. and PS3 wouldn't go a miss. Kicking the crap out of some helpless zombie death squads would buck me up a bit. Other than that,” he huffed out a breath and shrugged, “A good sized crate of Guinness?”

“We'll see,” was as far as she would go on that.

*   *   *   *   *

“A penny for them?”

“What? Sorry. I was a million miles away,” Kristy said, looking up from wherever her thoughts had taken her. She turned the cup twice around its saucer, watching the last traces of sugar dissolve away to nothing, then looked at her watch.

“Wishing your life away?”

“Something like that.”

“You want anything else, love?' You look like you need cheering up.”

“It's that obvious, is it?”

“Only to a trained professional, love. Do you want to talk about it?” The waitress smiled. She was a huge roly-poly woman with a bosom ample enough to satisfy two page three girls. Dark hair was clipped up in a loose bun beneath her cap. She had a ruddy almost rustic complexion and a definite country smile that was reassuringly homely in its friendliness.

“Pull up a seat,” Kristy offered, downing a mouthful of the coffee she'd allowed to cool.

“Don't mind if I do. It's not as if we're busy this morning.”

And that was the truth of it. Kristy had retreated to the first friendly sign this side of the photography shop, to wait out the hour for the prints because it was quicker than trekking back for the laptop and transferring them digitally. Mrs Miggins' World Famous Coffee Shoppe; the sign said, that put her in mind of the pie shop in Blackadder, and made her smile. She had pretended to examine the window display of a second-hand bookseller's while she tried to think ahead to her next plan of attack, but when nothing useful came to mind opted for a sit down and a mug of coffee.

So they talked to pass the time, but Kristy's mind was off to that elsewhere again. Down the line she had no idea what they had spent forty minutes talking about, but forty minutes had slipped by, and by rights the prints ought to be just about ready for her to collect. She put on a smile to show she'd cheered up some, paid for her coffee and promised to come back and finish the chat sometime soon.

Fingers, toes and just about everything else crossed, she went back to the photography shop. The windows were cluttered with signs advertising Pentax, Cannon, Ricoh, and others warning: KEEP OUT, BEWARE THE DOG, NO CREDIT, NO SMOKING, and THIEVES WILL ALWAYS BE PROSECUTED. She went in. A bell tinkled overhead. She handed her chitty over and found herself feeling obliged to say something witty to at least try to neutralize the poison in the assistants' look as he handed the envelope containing Jason's prints over. “I'm doing a piece on the rubbish bins of the rich and famous.”

That didn't seem to go down especially well. She was opening her mouth, and trying to think of something less disastrous to say, when the assistant said: “Three-forty. I suppose you think you're quite hilarious, miss, but in future I would appreciate you taking your grotesqueries elsewhere to be developed. That is to say your business isn't welcome.”

As soon as she was out of the shop, Kristy turned to flip her index finger at the officious little prick behind the counter.

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Tonto.”

Letting it out felt perversely satisfying, so much so she did it again.

Halfway down the Hallstile Bank the first few tentative splashes came down. She walked the rest of the way back to the Citroen in the rain, grinning. Most of the people she met returned her grin as they bustled and ducked into doorways for shelter.

The cobbles might just as well have been icy for all the purchase they offered.

The rain felt wonderfully cool on her face. Invigorating. Two school girls skipped by, hand in hand, their hair matted flat to their round heads by the sudden flurry of rain. They giggled when she smiled at them.

By the time Kristy started the car she'd seen the photos and was grinning because they were everything Jason had tentatively promised her they would be. She indicated left and eased out to join the traffic, sparse as it was.

She drove as far as the Railway Station before an impulse she couldn't pin down had her stopping to use the phone. Three public phone boxes and a portaloo were propping up a dry stone wall that seemed to be cultivating its own form of vegetation; crisp packets, sweet wrappers, gold and silver foils from cigarette packets, and the offending butt-ends of the coffin-nails themselves peeked out between the chinks. Instead of throwing a blanket of grey over everywhere the rain delighted in conjuring a rainbow that might very well have climbed high enough to reach all the way back to Newcastle city itself. The Lego rooftops slicked off their own rivulets of rainbow, spilling colour down the gutters. Some people had umbrellas up, but most appeared content to get wet. Wiping a wet curl of yellow out of her eyes, Kristy fed the payphone with a handful of silver, watching the total tot up on the digital L.C.D. screen, and then dialled directory enquiries for Richards' number at Havendene.

Listening to the cycle of the dialling tone, Kristy thumbed through the photographs until she found the two she was after, and propped them up against the back wall of the phone box and the top of the phone.

“Havendene, can I-”

“I want to speak with Richards. Now,” Kristy interrupted. She had that lightheaded feeling that comes hand in hand with digging a trench to bury yourself in by the time the flustered receptionist had started to ask who was calling. “Kristy French. Newcastle Evening Gazette. I am quite sure he will be expecting my call.”

“I'm sorry, but Dr Richards isn't-m”

“I'm sure he isn't. Just tell him who I am. He'll want to take the call, believe me.”

“I don't think you understand-”

“I understand perfectly,” Kristy snapped. “God was good like that, he gave me half a brain. Now, tell him from me if he isn't on the other end of this line in sixty seconds he'll be seeing his face and his precious fucking dogs all over the front page of the Gazette before today is out. The time starts now. One. . . Two. . . Three. . . Four. . .”  A sea-shell hollowness smothered the line as the receptionist cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. “Five. .  . Six.  .  . Seven.  .  . Eight.  .  . Nine.  .  . Ten.  .  . Eleve-”

”Ah, Mizz French,” Richards murmured smoothly, “you seem to have upset my receptionist somewhat. I trust you feel your cause suitably justifies your rather crude means.”

“Just shut up and listen, doc,” she cut across him. “Who knows, you might learn something.”

“In which case, my dear, I am delighted to say I am all ears.”

“Fine. Now let’s talk rats.”

She had time to watch the swollen rain splashes break and run down the glass doors while the silence, no longer muffled, stretched into the static hum of the cross-country connection. Then, finally:

“I am not at all sure I am the sort of doctor you need to be talking with, Mizz French. Rats are a trifle out of my field, if you will excuse the unintentional pun.”

“Don't put yourself down, doc. My guess is your field is plenty big enough for the kind of conversation I've got in mind.”

“Go on.”

“Let’s take a hypothetical line for a moment. Shaved scalps. Why?”

“I believe it is considered the fashion in some quarters,” Richards answered glibly.

“Rats don't follow fashion, doc. My guess is that their heads have been shaved for fitting electrodes.”

“That is conceivable, I suppose.”

“And wouldn't you say that was also a trifle out of your field, doc?” Kristy mimicked in a passable parody of Richards’ mincing tones.

A lorry thundered by, spraying water up in a wave that drenched the glass wall, a car advertising a local driving school tight on its tail.

“If you will excuse me, I believe we are just about through here.”

“Tell me one more thing, doc,” Kristy pressed. “Why do you need to break their backs? That bit I don't understand.”

“I am sorry, but you are sadly mistaken, Mizz French. I do not take kindly to allegations of any sort, especially ones with no foundation in reality. Now, if you will excuse me, this conversation is going nowhere and I am a very busy man. Goodbye, Mizz French.”

Then the dead-end click as he slammed the receiver into place.

Kristy was left holding open a dead line.

So much for the subtle approach.

She slammed her own handset home, too hard.

Hit the wall with the side of her fist.

Kicked it.

Hit the plastic covered poster of area codes.

She didn't see her one man audience until she was coming out of the phone box.

“Problems?” The ticket collector wanted to know.

To which Kristy replied:

“Bloody machine stole my pound.”

- 36 -

Pops had gone, of course; long ago.

Billy wandered aimlessly through the old farmhouse, searching amongst the bric-a-brac cluttered store rooms, lounge and pantry, hoping he'd left some sort of message behind. He hadn't. The minutes ticked by. He sat in the back room watching the bright images on the television parade by, trying hard to rein in his rambling thoughts.

The house was quiet, which was worrying.

His first coherent thought had been that Pops was mad at him because he'd forgotten to come home like he promised. That must be it, he told himself. Billy called out his father's name, half expecting to hear the old man roar: “Billy, you fuckin' ree-tard! Where in Hell's name have you been?”

There was no response.

One of the bare hardwood floorboards in the kitchen was up, propped up against the whitewashed wall, and Pops' money box was open and empty on the long table beside it.

He waited several seconds, listening closely, before he repeated the call: “POPS?”

He went through to the hallway, calling again, and then went upstairs.

His father's bedroom door was closed.

“Pops?” he said, knocking lightly on the door and getting no response. “Are you in there?” he asked, barely whispering.

But, of course, he wasn't.

Billy pushed the door open.

The air in the room was so leaden it made drawing each breath a real chore. He had the vague sensation, like a spider crawling across the nape of his neck, of something moving on the landing behind him. He turned, imagining sets of scurrying rats lining up to play judge and jury on the floor. There was no one there. In the room itself, a matching chest of drawers and Victoriana wardrobe with brass lion-headed handles, several chairs and a large bed covered by a knitted patchwork quilt (made up from every colour available from the local wool shop) gathered dust. The windows were grimy, and the stained lace curtains did little other than clog the light. A vague puddle of honey coloured light pooled on the room's threadbare carpet, looking very much like a damp patch of cat's piss. Clothes were piled up on the old rocking chair in the corner, waiting for washday, and several odd shoes littered nooks and crannies. Tarnished silver-framed photographs of his mother lined up on the mantle, these too dusted with their share of everyday grime. The mirror over the dresser glinted with a pearl-grey glimmer. Everything about the room was wrapped in the same musty smell of disuse.

Of the old man there was no sign.

Billy walked over to the window, lifting aside the decaying curtain, braced his thick hands against the wood panelling, and started to explore, his fingernails feeling out the crevices and creases in the wainscoting, stroking through the runnels in the wood's rough grain, picking at the flakes of rot. The honey textured light reflected in his eyes as if they were marbles shaped from oily glass.

The rain clouds and the sea-sick sky went to work on the window while the world slipped away down Moses Hill, towards his Happy Place and the stippled lake. Through the rain, he could just make out the twin steam belching chimneys that made the paper mill look as if it were permanently on fire. Closer to home, the old farmhouse and the caravan. It looked as if Mike Shelton was home. A light was on, at least.

“Got to feed the birds,” he muttered without much enthusiasm for the game right then.

Letting the lace slip through his fingers, he sat back on the bed, thinking just to close his eyes for a few moments. Exhausted by the long, cold night and the day before, and all they had brought with them, Billy slept the day through in the front bedroom, catching up on bad dreams, while outside, the wind got up, gusting through the old farmhouse complex, rattling at the panes of glass in the window frames.

- 37 -

Johnny Lisker was seriously fucked up, all right.

No doubts on that score.

The kid was off his box.

And dangerous as Hell backed into a corner like some chump-challenger on the ropes. Alex didn't want to even begin thinking about what was going to happen when his small stash of “happy thoughts” ran dry. Johnny's moods were already taking enough ups and downs to make him look like an emotional Yo-Yo. What would happen when there was no heroin lifeline to pull him out of the next trough?

What then?

The smell of spaghetti hoops being warmed came to him with the listless indoor breeze. Alex tried to remember whether he had eaten that day, or not. His stomach twisted with shadow-pangs of hunger, so he guessed not. The gas-blue flames of the Primus cast silly-putty rectangles on the cave floor and set shadow dancers across Johnny's engrossed face. The rest was black.

The scrape of the spoon on the bottom of the pan continued to echo in the lightless cavern. It sounded as if an army of ten thousand maniacs were out sharpening their knives.

Alex was cold, again. His burgundy shirt, last years’ birthday present from Beth, was all but useless against the obsessive chill, but he pulled it closer nevertheless. A habitual and ineffectual reaction to the cold. His sensory deprivation was such that the whisper-thin silk might have been the very stuff of the darkness itself, or the fabric of his imagination, for all the warmth it offered the line was impossible to draw.

It's a long way from hanging yourself up by the feet because you're fed up of being five-foot-six. Still afraid of the dark? Now that wasn't the sort of question he wanted to think about. Things were black enough as it was. Johnny's first needle-point yesterday morning he'd been somehow swept along with the adventure. But then there was the big-bang and a whole new universe of problems (fears) sprung to life, intent to orbit Johnny's slumped shoulders.

Johnny divided his time in almost equal measure; whistling in place of the dead transistor radio; cooking on the camping stove; and fighting the shivers and cramps of withdrawal. The upswings in his moods were becoming noticeably fewer, and increasingly further between. He was whistling now. Distracted. Hollow. Without light it might have meant anything. Alex chose to hear it as Johnny whistling a happy tune as best he could.

He had three cancer-sticks left in his golden cardboard packet. Benchmarks for his systems' need and the passage of hours in this limbo.

What now?

He didn't know, so he lit up one of the three, and sucked back the smoke. Two days ago his biggest worry had been laying his hands on a packet of safes so he could lay his hands on Beth come lights out in the Tanner household. The smoke tasted lousy in his lungs. He couldn't understand how a nice, comfortable world like his own could fall apart so completely, so fucking quickly. The last two days beggared belief. Here he was, a prospective father with a lover who didn't want to so much as know him, holed up in a cave with a fucking junkie-schizo playing out the last few scenes of Butch & Sundance.

Somehow (he didn't want to think about the how's and why's of it) things had gotten way, way out of hand.

Johnny used his knife to saw off a hunk of stale bread – the same knife he used on the Slave – for each of them. Alex took his. He chewed slowly and without enthusiasm, tasting phantom traces of something almost metallic in the dough. Like iron, he thought picturing the biker's blood on his friend's hands. Johnny, on the other hand, had no such qualms about feeding his face. He ate like an animal snatching a last meal while eyes without pity looked on, shovelling the hoops of pasta into his mouth faster than he could swallow them. Thin tomato sauce drooled from between his lips only to be licked back by his tongue.

Alex felt sick.

Confusion and an element of dislocation wiped out anything approaching rational, constructive thought. The eating itself was a mechanical reflex. He only ate because the ache in his stomach made him. He was completely sure of just one thing, and that was that he was way out of his depth and drowning. Right now, he was being swept up Shit Creek without so much as a log to hang onto, let alone the proverbial paddle. The inexorable pull of the currents would drag him under, sooner or later.

It was only a matter of time before people started looking for them, if they hadn't already. And when they found them, then what?

No answers came.

The wind gusted up the funnel-mouthed chute that kept the real world outside. If the wind could find them so easily what was to stop others from sniffing them out?

What now? He asked again. Any interior voices he might have imagined leaping to his aid decided to keep schtum. The image that sprung to mind was like some weird mental eclipse. Johnny was doing his familiar better-to-burn-out-than-fade-away routine, Alex on his knees feeding the flames.

He knew perfectly well what he was doing was clutching at yellow straws. He was becoming very familiar with that particular feeling. But Johnny was the sun. He had to think about him that way for now. And putting the sun out offered at least a temporary reprieve from his fears.

That in itself was a way out of the Losers Club.

*   *   *   *   *

“Fuck it, I've had enough. I'm getting out of here before I flip,” he told Johnny later. And that was exactly how he felt. Johnny seemed content to just sit tight for however long it took, but he was going stir-crazy. Two days (not even two whole days at that) had him climbing the walls. What would two weeks do to him? Or three? Four?

Alex knuckled the stiffness in the nape of his neck, rolling his shoulders. He sensed it was the onset of claustrophobia that brought on the dizziness, but the impending sense of terror (it was terror, he decided). . . the sure knowledge that the only way out led straight to Hell's front door, that he had to put out the sun, was calling for his undivided attention. From the moment he framed the first conscious thought that housed the words “Kill” and “Johnny” together the terror found its footing. Irrationally, he found himself thinking Johnny somehow knew his secret, knew what he was intending, probably better than he himself did, but Johnny wasn't psychic or telepathic or any other extra-sensitive. He was just Johnny Lisker. Mad, bad and fucking dangerous, yes, but just Johnny Lisker all the same.

In what might have been as little as an hour, Alex found himself on the threshold of cracking up. His thoughts were a babble of nonsense. That was when he decided he had to get out of the cave before his head exploded. He lied to himself by pretending revulsion at having to watch Johnny shoot-up again, and took his opportunity to grab some air to think with.

Outside was dark, but against the unrelieved gloom of the Judas Hole (an irony Alex no longer appreciated) appeared as light as morning. He limbered up for a few minutes, stretching to loosen angst-taut tendons. He didn't care that it was raining, nor that his ponytail had matted into nine straggly rats tails.

The moon on the river claimed his attention between stiff-muscled stretches. Its reflection, fragmented into thirty pieces of silver, seemed to blaze with an intensity that could have only been a sign of God's, or the Devil's affirmation.

One way or another, the sun (Johnny Lisker) had to be doused.

Alex pushed out three sharp punches, breathing deep and expelling it with a hiss; one, two, three. . . The combination flashed by in a tenth of a second, but in that one-tenth Alex Slater's disconnected musing took a backseat to his anger and frustration. He was angry enough to kill, but not desperate, or stupid enough to. Not yet.

He worked his anger out in a series of gruelling kata's, pushing all thoughts of anything other than the burn out of his head. After twenty minutes sweeping, punching and kicking out at shadow opponents, feinting and dodging imaginary attacks, Alex took to foraging.

He came back with two shanks of deadfall, both just over five feet long and thick enough to grip easily. He hefted them together and swung, testing the weight and balance of his practice weapons.

Neither was particularly well balanced, but they would do just fine for the few routines he had in mind.

He circled, feigned an attack with the left only to lunge at the dark shadow of a cloud with the right. Suddenly the wind dropped to almost nothing, a sussurant whisper, and the sounds of the rain seemed very loud. The cloud died to the sounds of Johnny's applause.

“Toss us one,” Johnny hollered, pushing himself off his rocky perch. Alex had been too busy with his workout to see him slip out of the cave mouth, but he wasn't surprised that he had. Johnny caught the cudgel easily and dropped into a relaxed crouch, passing the weapon from hand to hand. “I'll be Skywalker,” he declared, whipping the stick out for Alex to parry. Wood thunked dully. Alex launched a lazy riposte that had Johnny back-peddling.

He smiled in spite of himself.

“So. . . You want to be. . . A fuckin’ Jedi?” he mimicked, sweeping his branch across Johnny's ribs. Johnny was too slow in dodging, and only just succeeded in bringing his own wooden sword up in time to catch the blow before it cracked into his chest.

They circled warily, both looking for the obvious break.

Rain blurred everything they saw.

Johnny came at him.

“Just like old times,” he gasped, grinning again. The most frightening thing about that grin was the way Johnny changed in its company. The way the lights went out behind his eyes. In the warmth of the rain, Alex found himself hating that idiotic grin.

He wanted to wipe it off Johnny's face, with his wooden sword if he had to. He lashed out again, feinting a telegraphed headshot, only to drop to one knee at the last minute and cut low for Johnny's ankles.

Johnny saw this play quicker and skipped over the whipping arc without much difficulty. He came down awkwardly though, his leading foot twisting on the edge of a fist-sized stone that flipped out from under him. He stumbled, throwing his hands out to steady himself, without success.

Now, Alex thought, the adrenal surge hammering through his head in an endorphin rush. It’s over. One shot to stun. One to disable. One to finish the job. He pulled back in a two-handed lift, aiming to ram the butt end of the branch in Johnny's face while he flapped helplessly.

Go on. . . Whack him now. No one to see. . .

But he threw it aside instead. Rain and his sweat mingled like lovers. Johnny was laughing like his collapse was the funniest thing in the world right then.

Alex looked up at the moon and hated God and the Devil in equal measure. In his mind he gave the Old Men of the Stars and The Pit the finger, the most obscene gesture he knew.

He sat down hard, out of breath, hearing nothing but the sigh-thump of his own blood in his ears.

Alex had no answers.

- 38 –

Until then, Kristy had never thought of fat old Oliver Hardy as the Voice of The Prophet of Doom, but starring another fine mess square in the face it was hard to see how the parallel had eluded her for so long. What was the line from that song: “You've got to throw the stone to get the pool to ripple”?

Looking at it that way, her impromptu conversation with Brent Richards had more in common with a boulder than any pebble she'd come across. She harboured few illusions, that spur of the moment phone call to Havendene had made one hell of a splash. From now on in it was just a case of sitting tight and seeing what the shockwaves stirred up.

*   *   *   *   *

Kristy spent much of the afternoon trying to hunt down an old solo album by Daryl Hall without any great success, and ended up trading plastic for a peculiarly titled CD, Funk O' Metal Carpet Ride, on the strength of the one single she thought she remembered from her Uni days. The remainder was plagued by drunken Newcastle United supporters celebrating Sunderland's relegation at the feet of every team in the Premiership. Shopping worked on her like an amnesiac, buying a black lycra mini skirt that wasn't so much mini as micro, stopping off to get her shoes heeled at a while-u-wait cobbler's and picking up a paperback of Ben Shelton’s Uneasy Streets served to help make Saturday more normal. Admittedly, the lycra skirt would probably never find its way out of either bag or wardrobe, but that wasn't why she bought it.

The waiting went against the grain. Every instinct said she ought to be up and at Richards playing the terrier, not sitting out the gloomy afternoon in a cheap cobbler's booth. Kristy dropped in on Jessie Stevenson, hoping to call in a favour she wasn't even sure she was owed. Her plan was simple enough. Get Jessie to cover for her on Monday and Tuesday, slip something by Spencer Abel under her by-line, so she had three more days to dig the dirt on the deadly doc. The only drawback was plain in Jessie's face; she was less than delighted with the prospect of two days worth of extra work, so Kristy found herself going cap (and photographs) in hand to Spencer.

She decided it was probably best to play this one straight down the line. To keep it that way, she even made the effort to cross her legs secretary-style over her preferred scholarly ankle-cross which, for some reason she could never quite fathom, riled a good many higher-up's in the newspaper world.

Spencer greeted her with his habitually laconic smile. He had given up on the ponytail, so his hair fairly flopped over the tortoise-shell rims of his reading glasses. She wasn't at all surprised to see his woollen sports jacket hung on the back of his chair, nor that it now looked six-days slept in.

“Surprised to see me?”

“You, of all people, never fail to surprise me, kiddo. I don't suppose this is in the way of a social call?”

“Afraid not. I think those winged pigs we were talking about just touched down about ten miles from here.”

She could see by the puzzled expression stamped on his ruddy features he hadn't the vaguest idea what pigs she was talking about.

“You've lost me,” he admitted. He toyed with an ivory black artist’s pencil, rolling it between thumb and forefinger while she sketched in the details of yesterday and today, the pencil's arc becoming tighter and less controlled as she talked about Jason's tangle with the animal kingdom. Twice it skittered across the table and onto the floor.

She showed him the pictures. The one he looked at longest was one of the two she herself had picked out as she badgered Richards’ receptionist. Looking at it was like glimpsing the other side of the mirror and seeing your worst nightmare. The photograph showed the round metal drum of an industrial sized rubbish bin, angled so the camera caught the contents, which happened to be broken-backed, shaven-headed laboratory rats, cabbage leaves and potato peelings. He looked at that photo with its bold and glaring condemnation, then flicked back through the run of shots Jason had run off to establish some sort of continuity.

“Can't say I share his taste in munchies,” Spencer said by way of a wisecrack, and then, more seriously: “So what do you want to do with these?”

“Jason said to use them, but I want more.”

“Glad to see you're thinking. As far as I can see it, we've got some photos of badly treated rats and a badly beaten bloke on his back. Not much of a case all told. Certainly not damning evidence on its’ own, but it all adds up. Now, we could run something on Kelso being savaged by Richards’ dogs, and make a few veiled hints at why he was there in the first place. Some of the stuff we might want to sit on for a while, though. See where it takes us. There’s a hell of a lot of coincidences here, kiddo, and I've never been one for believing in coincidence. Put them in a line. Judith Kenyon goes missing. The gardener photographs her and a heavy going into the health farm, then he goes missing and the local police find the heavy swinging from the trees. Add that little lot to the animal laboratory and the assault on Kelso and you've got a pretty nasty set of circumstances.”

“We could go to the police,” she suggested, knowing he wouldn't accept that option. Abel was old school. You cracked it open before you handed it over. That was the golden rule.

“And let them go blundering in? Nope. Not on this one. If the local plod can't make the necessary connections, I don't think it's up to us to point him in the right direction, do you?”

“Maybe not,” Kristy agreed, and then pressed her advantage while the ball was still in her court. 'So give me time. Let me roll with this one.”

“And if I do, Kristy, do you think you can handle it any better than the others out there? What makes you think this fella's yours to crack? I'm interested. Tell me.”

“The truth? Okay. I want him. It's as simple as that. I want to crucify him.”

“What about simple things like the truth?”

Kristy half-smiled. “That, Spencer, is what's going to crucify him.”

*   *   *   *   *

Uncollected mail lay stacked up against the door, brightly coloured envelopes left to drift on the coarse welcome mat; junk mail mostly, unwanted by the block's other tenants. Kristy flicked through the envelopes to satisfy herself none of the backlog was her responsibility, then went on up.

The obtrusive odour of a fry-up hung heavily. Vivaldi was playing in one of the other flats; Spring Danza Pastorale: Allegro. The powerful violin put her in mind of Nigel Kennedy's popular virtuoso. The gritty nail-on-glass sounds of the rain had come up with her, and a bluster had the hall window rattling. It was a lonesome sound. A little creepy, too.

The door to her flat wasn't locked, which was wrong.

Very wrong.

She tried to remember her going out that morning. Had she been so preoccupied with Jason's well-being that she'd forgotten to set the snick or double-lock the deadlocking mortise? It was no good, the best she could come up with was maybe she had, maybe she hadn't.

Vivaldi slipped into the tamped sounds of Summer, setting next door's terrier off with its yapping.

Kristy was shaking, and for no other reason than maybe she had locked the door after all. She didn't want to go in but she did at the same time. She wanted to prove to herself that she had simply forgotten to lock the door on the way out; and she didn't want to open the door for fear of what she might find behind it.

It didn't matter that she told herself she was just being stupid and that she couldn't very well stand there all day, something inside said she didn't dare open the door to her own home.

In the end, she just pushed the door open and expected to see the worst; drawers yanked open, paper strewn everywhere, clothes torn, even shit smeared across the walls.

There was that, and more.

What looked like blood had been smeared to make a border three fingers thick that started and ended back at the front door. The bookcases had been overturned, the books thrown about in a jumbled scatter of personal things. The television screen had had a foot kicked through it. Someone had even taken the time to drop their trousers and take a dump in the bucket seat of her sofa, and then smear the faeces over the leather like a child’s finger-painting.

Kristy felt sick. Violated. And this wasn't the worst of it, by far. In the kitchen, every pot and every pan, plate, knife and fork had been pulled out of the cupboards and draws and tipped onto the floor. The blinds had been yanked out of the roller.

She could smell burning.

The chip pan was on the back burner, fat crackling and spitting. She really wished she hadn't seen what was being crisp-baked in there, but she had.

Three rats.

Where it hadn't been shaved, the fur shrivelled back in greasy clumps of golden-brown wire. Clots of yellow fat baked solid into the sockets where their eyes had burst during the slow cooking.

Bones, from the shattered spines, protruded through split skin and the few knots of grease.

Kristy threw up into the sink and set the tap running.

In the bedroom, the covers had been thrown back for another shit-sketch to be dumped on the mattress. Five rats had been nailed to the room's walls; two above the headboard, one above the door, two above the window; the blood-border circling their small bodies twice in a grotesque emphasis.

In the bathroom, the sink and bathtub were both overflowing with red tainted water and eviscerated rats floating belly-up. The blood-border thinned and ran in streaks over the ceramic tiles, but the warning it spelled out was clear enough:

I SEE YOU, CUNT!

She had the “more” she'd asked for; a whole shitload of it waiting to explode in her face just as soon as she wanted to pull the pin.

- 39 -

When the music stopped, there was only the sound of screaming.

The screams were carried to his ears by each breath and gust of wind, then whiplashed away into the sucking vacuum, leaving Billy's face red and smarting with the sting of tears and shock.

He stopped to listen. The odour of animals clung to his nose. He was sweating. Cold beads of perspiration. Another breath shook a few more leaves into the gutters and eaves.

Then he heard the scream again.

A shrill, piercing cry of terror that cut through the colourless twilight with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. The climbers on the coop walls trembled in the persistent wind, the only movement in the otherwise still panorama.

Forgot to feed the birds, his conscience prodded at the sight of the tattered sheets of newspaper tacked up at the windows like curtains. Broken glass rattled in one frame.

“I'm coming,” he shouted, catching his breath. One of his bootlaces was undone and trailing under his feet. The old farmhouse, daunting, dark and neglected for too long. Through the tattered flaps of old news he could see into the blackness of its heart. It was okay to go in during the day, when it was light, but in the dark it was scary. The paper curtains fluttered again, like broken wings trying to kick up and fly.

There was a snap-crack inside, then another scream.

“I'm coming,” he said again, more in the way of a whisper this time. Slowly, fearfully, he pushed open the rotting door and stepped over the rusting ploughshare that had fallen across to block the doorway and through the arc into the black. The air in here was thicker, cloying, clogging, with the reek of rotting feed and stronger, the smell of urine.

There was another smell and that one made Billy want to lose control and wet himself all over again.

Danger.

They were in here.

The thought of them being this close set his heart pounding.

He reached out for the bicycle lamp hanging down from a rafter and turned on the dusty light.

There were pigeons everywhere. Every ledge, every flat surface. They lined up with heads down, feathers preened, a carpet of feathered bodies. Stairs climbed between the cages, the risers carpeted by agitated birds jostling for position. They all seemed to be intently peering up at Billy, sharing the same frightening mixture of excitement and curiosity smouldering behind their black eyes. The din and furore around and about him was making Billy's head reel.

He took a shuffling step forward, careful not to lift either foot from the floor, just in case he brought it down on the back of one of his birds.

The world tilted crazily out of focus again, but this time his vision didn't snap back into place.

A pigeon was pecking viciously at his ankle.

Billy lifted his foot to kick out at the hungry bird and saw the bloody clots of feathers sticking to the soles of his heavy work boots. The ghost of the tiny bones breaking and crunching was still echoing. He stared, horrified, at the flat carpet of carcasses trailing in his wake.

“Nooo. . .”

He hadn't said that. The denial belonged to a young boy. A frightened young boy who had left his pet birds to starve; eat or be eaten, it was the law. Only the strong get to survive. The word had come down from the third deeper blackness of above.

It made his skin creep.

He heard another sound while he hesitated, not unlike laughter, then the snap-crack whip of K'tuttch.

A whimper cut short by a shuffle of feet and a thud.

Billy rushed up the stairs, not thinking about the birds being crushed by his stamping feet anymore.

“Please no. . . Won't do it again. . . Please no. . . Won't.”

Billy didn't need a light to see the boy, no older than seven, on his knees, or the stripped welts across his bare back.

“Please, Pops!” The voice turned into a strangled coughing choke that either of them might have made.

A grunt from the man standing over him.

Another sharp K'tuttch as he brought the belt down on the boy's back.

That scream fading into a whimper.

“This hurts me son, this hurts me,” he heard and remembered hearing Pops say as he belted him again.

“Pops, please don't,” Billy begged for the coughing boy. Part of his mind, the scared young boy of seven part, tried to warn him that getting involved was probably a mistake, but it never got the chance. He caught the stink of his own fear. Dizziness and sickness filled his head. He couldn't understand why he couldn't see Pops’ face. There were no shadows to hide it.

For a moment there was complete silence.

Billy froze, his heart thumping, petrified as Pops turned on him. He recognized the belt by its buckle. It was Pops’ cleansing strap. Billy couldn't shake the feeling of dislocation.

“Billy you fuckin' ree-tard,” Pops lisped in a slow, dragging, gritty voice.

He shambled forwards, wrapping the cleansing leather around a bloated hand that had been flayed and planted with pigeon feathers. His eyes were slits of black, nose and mouth stuffed with feathers.

Billy backed off; tripped and fell backwards. Pops glared at him with the eyes of hungry pigeons. He rolled and scrambled to his feet again, back-pedaling. He stumbled again, feeling the crunch of a pigeon under his boot. He felt downy hands wrap around his throat.

Pops’ face seemed to be made out of melting pigeons. An inch wide chasm of nothing between head and shoulders. Billy struggled. Jerked back. Twisted. Squirmed. Batting at the hands crushing the bones in his neck. He rolled and struggled to his feet, trying to tear free of his father's grip.

He lashed out, his hands jamming into a wound that split Pops’ body from pubic bone to throat. The abdominal walls closed on his fist, spewing a steaming, glossy, blood-slicked tangle of half-consumed guts.

Billy tugged, yelling, trashing, trying to yank his hand free of the muscular vice. Birds broke and flew in a wild flurry of wings. The air filled with their cries. They came out of the cuffs of his work clothes, from the slash in his chest, his head. Downy feathers clotted with blood.

Pops started to collapse in on himself.

Crumble.

Something tickled Billy's face.

Licked across his eye.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” he screamed and begged from somewhere between the borderlands of panic and insanity.

- BILLY'S FALL -

Again the dream woke him, and he lay in the dark while gusts bellowed at the windows. He had dreamed he was there to watch Pops cleanse a seven year old boy who had forgotten to feed his birds, and in that fragment of a memory was a truth that hurt far worse than his old man's belt.

He sat up, shivering against the goose-pimpled chill, and realised he had not been lying on his own mattress at all, but on the big old bed in Pops’ room. He stood up, his body cold and sticky with Night Terrors sweat, and walked to the high windows that overlooked his own little piece of Northumberland, down Moses Hill to the water. The wind was raging beyond the glass, rain striking the window and running through his face while he peered from one darkness into another.

Billy was scared.

He wanted to hide under the table, or in the wardrobe, anywhere that might mean that they wouldn't find him.

*   *   *   *   *

His bedroom was a treasure-trove of useless oddments. Everything that went missing around the farm ended up - eventually - in one of his junk boxes. Comic books; Batman, Captain Planet, Metamorpho and Lobo along with other D.C. Heroes on the slippery slope down from Superdom filled five cardboard boxes. A collection of marbles in a mason jar. Clothes scattered randomly. X-ray and 3D glasses. Plastic miniatures of Star Wars figures, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca and Princess Leia stood on shelves that stretched on for miles and miles.

Billy huddled up against the wall, the bed to one side, the corner of another wall to the other, waiting for either the light or the bad things to come, by no means sure which of the two would get to him first.

Pops wouldn't get out of his head with his strap and his feathers.

He knew he'd had that dream again, it had been so vivid. The memory of it was up there in the front of his mind, but receding at some speed, the way dreams do.

The feeling it left behind was the same, familiar fear.

Billy was scared.

He pulled his big Sloppy-Joe off the wicker chair and slipped it on over his head without ever actually covering his eyes.

The actual memory of it was blurred, and probably nothing at all like the nightmare, but it was frightening. He relived it in his sleep night after night - and then relieved it while he was awake every time Pops hit the bottle. He remembered forgetting to feed the pigeons and Pops going on, over and over, how much it hurt him to do it, but Billy had to be cleansed, else he would never get cured of his evil ways. The same old story. . .

He snapped his head up off his chest sometime later and realised he must have dozed off. It couldn't have been for long because there was still night in the window. An owl was hooting out there now, sounding more comfortable with the dark than Billy felt.

He shifted his position slightly and had to grit his teeth at the pins and needles that started jabbing as soon as he moved. He had been huddled there for so long he was still asleep from the waist down.

The rain at the window had eased off to a splatter.

Feeling the seconds crawl past, Billy's mind kept folding in on itself to the wings of the birdman and his leather strap. The aftershock of shivers he felt then set cramps tugging at his belly; he was starving. A reaction to coming down off six months of bad dreams. In another hour, the sun would be coming up. A clump of something yellow blew cold against the glass, bounced and tumbled away to skitter on its way to somewhere else. The night was old and rotten, but the prospect of facing down day one of the next six months was even worse. He tried to make it better by thinking of the sun and the water and the children in the park for Sunday play, but it was still dark and it would be dark again later, and dark was their time, not his. Pops kept on coming back with his belt.

A drainpipe, loosened by summers of sun and a winter's frost hard on its heels one time too many, banged against the wall by his window with a dull, repetitive dunk-dunk-dunk that could have been someone climbing up to get at his window.

He waited for the tap-tap-tap of the vampire's fingernails that didn't come, and then had to go and see why. The farm had that fresh-washed quality that left everywhere looking clean and alive and eager for everything to get underway one more time, but because everything was dark-on-dark, he couldn't make out any details.

He ran a hand through his fine, thinning hair. He felt like crawling back into the corner and just sitting it out until dawn, and then he remembered the birds. Suddenly he was very cold.

Forgot to feed the birds.

Pops would be madder than a fly on a shit heap if he found out, and he knew what that meant only too well.

*   *   *   *   *

He checked in on Pops again, but the old man's bed was still empty. The idea that he was punishing Billy for forgetting his chores wouldn't go away.

Downstairs, he could smell the rain dripping through the fresh cut grass outside without opening any of the doors. In the kitchen, he spelled out his name in the wet and steamed up glass, slowly and deliberately forming each letter. He smiled at his face: B.I.L.L.Y.

“That's me,” he agreed. “And I gotta go outside now. See you later.”

The rain had all but wrung itself out by the time Billy reached the old farmhouse-coop. His Sloppy-Joe kept out the worst of the cold, but some of the early morning chill still managed to find its way through.

Sunday morning was by no means glorious, but it was a long way from being a wash out. By the time most folks were up and out of their sacks it would probably be a lovely sunny afternoon.

He swiped at the drops falling from the guttering, splashing his hand one time in every three passes, but right then nothing he did had any of that special magic he needed to make him laugh.

At least the breeze had helped clear out the cobwebs. His head felt clearer than it had for days. He put it down to knowing Pops would be coming home pretty soon now, his drinking binges never lasted much more than forty-eight hours, and everything was going to work out just fine after all.

With that comforting thought lodged firmly in mind, Billy pushed open the door to the coop. He didn't know what he expected to see, but he certainly didn't expect to be ducking back from the first flush of a feather-guided cyclone. Birds winged past his head in a bluster of furious activity, arrowing for the sky in a riotous flock.

Before he had the presence of mind enough to close the door, the last of the stragglers was out and away, flying for the twin peaked chimneys in the valley below, and by then it was a bit like closing the gate after the horse has bolted. His birds were up with the gulls from the muddy banks of the Tyne and the black and white magpies, sparrows and starlings of the city, his belief in Pops’ sudden return up there with them.

Billy felt sick and frightened and a hundred and one other things he couldn't pin down to any names.

A sackful of mix had been tipped out onto the floor, though there was precious little of the feed left to say so. The restraining bolts holding back the cage gates had been pulled to let the pigeons get at the feed, so at least they hadn't gone hungry for too long.

He thought of Pops, but the old man would never have pulled the bolts. He hated the birds enough to let them sit and rot indefinitely, as he had done once before when Billy was just turning seven. So if not Pops, then who?

No one came up to the farm to visit anymore. Not since Ma had gone her way in '97. People didn't enjoy being friends with Pops after then, and those that did he scared off soon enough. Everyone kept themselves pretty much to themselves where he was concerned these days, even the Doctor and those folks he worked for at the health farm.

Billy didn't go so far as to worry about who had stopped by to do the neighbourly thing as far as his pigeons went. With his whole world of friends disappearing over the false horizon of the woods he had more pressing worries. But, by the time he had gathered himself together enough to set out in pursuit, the pigeons were literally specks on the horizon.

An old sheet of yellowed newspaper wrapped itself around his legs until he kicked it off. It wheeled away along the weed choked flowerbed on a collision course with the wall.

Looking at the freedom of the freewheeling pigeons something came over Billy and he found himself suddenly thinking it would be good to chase about barefoot. Without stopping to think about what he was doing, he threw his boots and balled up socks through the open doorway of the empty coop and began to run, feeling whole and free and relaxed.  All at once he was bubbling with the sheer exuberance of the chase.

Halfway across the grass he started to call out their names and wave his arms in a windmill above his head without ever realising that his capering was more likely to scare the pigeons off than it was to lure them back.

Billy didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He wasn't used to the peculiar mix of emotions fermenting inside him. Soon, he was doing both.

It was a weird combination of circumstance and coincidence that brought him up short, no more than ten yards from the trees and almost directly in line with the open porch door. Nuke, Nosey and Felix stood there in a line, halfway in, half out of the woods, watching him with runny grey eyes made black as winter by the shadow. Billy's head came up just as his barefoot came down on a splinter of broken glass that sliced through the soft tissue between his big and next toes. He cried out, jerked and pulled up, holding his leg and hopping. Fighting the sudden flare of pain, he hobbled on an awkward pace. His face crumbled a step behind his legs, a flicker of surprise giving way to agony as he lurched and collapsed to his knees.

The splinter had broken into three shards, none of them very big on their own, but they had sunk into the flesh and their saw-teeth edges were holding on like the barbs on a fishing hook. He took a hold of the piece that had broken off in the ball of his left foot and pulled, wriggling it back and forth until the splinter worked itself loose. Blood flowed in a slow, neat trickle down his grass-stained foot.

The dogs paced, alert, waiting.

Next came the piece that had buried itself in his big toe. Billy's fingers were shaking from fear as much as from pain as he tugged on the glass spelk. Bits of fatty flesh clung to its jagged edge.

The final piece, the one that had sliced between his toes, was by far and away the largest of the three at nearly half an inch. It had pierced the deepest, too. Billy teased it for nearly a full minute, teeth clamped, eyes watering, before he worked it free. He threw the piece across the field, feeling sick.

He could hardly bear to stand again, impossible as it was to put any weight on his left leg with the burning needles chiselling away at his raw nerves.

Nuke padded up beside him, seemingly impatient with waiting. The others circled slowly, almost as if they were hurrying Billy into coming along with them. He limped along two steps before giving in to the heat slicing up to his brain. It was like walking barefoot on a carpet of razorblades. Just about everything down there screamed. Billy flopped down gracelessly and started massaging the pad of his bloody-green foot with both thumbs, but the small contingent of Alfie's posse weren't about to have any more waiting than they had to.

Nosey and Felix started bumping Billy, the first couple of times only nudging at him, then when that didn't work virtually walking head down into his back. Nuke loped off into the russeting shades of the trees, only to re-emerge a moment later with one of Billy's precious birds clamped between his jaws. He dumped the dead pigeon at Billy's feet, as if making an offering to Billy the grinning Buddha of Garrett's Farm.

Seeing the bird, which, in spite of its injuries, he recognised as Tempest, one of his prize racers, Billy's thoughts folded in again to become a house without any doors or windows. Bricked up within the origami prison inside his head he chased down, trapped and isolated the root cause of just about every nightmare he could remember ever having. The solitary terror from which every nightmare, every fear, stemmed.

And it all came back to Pops.

The notion itself was almost a revelation, and certainly as unexpected.

He sat there, looking around as if he didn't know where he was or what month of what year he had woken up in. Blank and bewildered, eyes wide and bemused.

But Pops?

Shaking his head, Billy eased himself into a crouch and then to his feet, gingerly testing his left side for any sudden flares of pain. To his surprise, he found that walking on his heel didn’t hurt nearly half as bad as walking properly did. So, he half stumped, half walked behind the posse as they loped between the trees and away. The whupp whupp of wings filtered down through the canopy of leaves. The slowly warming air felt wonderfully cool to the point of purging his lungs. The loosely packed mulch of damp soil and wet grasses solid under his feet.

Everything seemed somehow sharper and clearer against his enlightened face as he emptied his head of all but the birds by standing himself on the other side of the paper wall and Pops. Clearing the fence at the meadow's skirt took some doing with just the one good foot to stand on, but he made it over by almost folding double and swinging his good leg over first. Tiny specks of colour proved the posse were still insight, though well ahead and nearly disappearing into the dense foliage.

Not wanting to lose them, Billy pushed himself on, deeper into the woods. Dizzy-headed adrenaline swam through his system, spurring him on into putting a gradually thickening wall of tree-trunks between his back and the shadows of the farm.

Billy stumped on, disorientated by the occasional silver scrawls and charcoal lines put down by the dwindling moon. More than once the uneven ground threatened to bring him down as twigs and branches and stones snapped and cracked and dug into his bare feet.

Ten yards ahead, Nuke barked raucously, the sound grating out of his throat like a fistful of chalk being powdered between the big dog's canines.  His huge head bathed in the splendour of the leaf filtered moon. Nosey and Felix continued to steer Billy's path, nudging him on to their find. The sounds of the forest round about came across as muzzy, Billy's ears – concentrated on the hectic trampling of the dogs as they were – missed all but the loudest. A breeze washed over his face as a pigeon swooped by closely enough for his nose to smell over the forest full of other aromas.

The clearing they stopped at might have been a sacred grove to Mother Nature. The altar dominating its heart stood tall in the body of a vast and ancient oak, the virtual twin of the old Hangman's tree on the farm back home. Silvered light, the texture and thickness of mercury suffused it, picking out the intricacies time had taken to carve into the oak's thick-skinned bark. Seen like that, the tree looked closer to being a watching angel than it did a screaming man.

In places, Billy saw, the oak's roots had forced their way up through the churned soil.

He sucked in a deep breath.

Felt suddenly cold bone deep inside.

It took him that long to recognise what it was he saw clawing out between the bare roots at his feet.

A hand.

A blue-grey hand reaching up, fingers broken and twisted, scraps of bone peeking through. A bracelet of ragged polythene cupped it around the wrist in a ruffle, and disappeared under the dirt.

A bloated worm slithered out from a fold in the sinew.

Silver glinted on gold, and Billy recognised Pops' wedding ring on its third finger.

- PART THREE -

- WALKING UNEASY STREETS -

- 40 -

“. . . Miss?” Someone was saying. Kristy didn't feel all that much like opening her eyes to find out who. Keeping them closed was by far and away preferable; not seeing the bloodlines on the wall, not seeing the mummified rat decorations and the shit on the sofa; especially not that. She sighed heavily, wanted to curl up behind the bag of laundry at the back of the wardrobe and wait for them to finish violating her. Stretched to ease cramping muscles. Shook her head sharply, trying to come back to herself.

“What? Sorry?”

She felt very much as if, in some fundamental way, she had been raped. Chewed up and spat out by some zitty, nihilistic bastard out looking for kicks.

A thick raven's crop of fly away hair tumbled across the gaze of the clear, blue eyes looking down at her.

“I said, do you have any idea who might want to do such a thing, miss?” The officer repeated, slowly, his voice husky enough to call gravelly. Added to that, the words came over with a measured deliberation that might just as easily have been confused for some difficulty phrasing the thoughts behind them. As out of things as she was, Kristy could see the lie in those eyes.

Todd Devlin had dangerous eyes. Eyes that only hinted at the immensity and intensity of rage bottled up within the wiry Detective Superintendent.

“No. . . Yes. . .” Kristy mumbled, knuckling her eyes, trying to knead alertness back into herself. Something had gone, but she couldn't think what.

“Which is it?”

She sighed again, shaking her head loosely, as much to clear the soupy, slept-in feeling that had thrown its blanket over her head, as if to back up the negative. 'No.' Kristy felt strange, curiously dislocated from the present, as if she were only now coming around from a long, deep slumber.

“You don't sound convinced,” Devlin pressed.

No flies on you, she felt like saying, but somehow reined her mouth in and came out with an excuse about being tired and confused. Chewed up and spat out.

Devlin seemed prepared to let it go at that, for the moment.

No one had thought to clean the brown smears off the sofa.

Another officer, out of uniform, came over to talk to Devlin.

Kristy couldn't hear any of what was said, but saw enough suspicion in the way Devlin's beguiling smile dropped down  a few notches, to carry all the weight the words did not. Around them, Scene of Crime officers were running off pictures of the mess from just about every angle conceivable.

“Been upsetting the Animal Rights lobby?” She couldn't read the implication in the way Devlin said it, but was sure it was there.

“Not recently, why? Is "I see you, cunt!" their standard threat these days?”

“You tell me?”

“And how the hell should I know?”

“You're saying this is the first threat you have received from these people? No phone calls? No letters with the words cut from old newspapers? They just break into your flat and smear most of their insides over the walls? It doesn't sound very likely, even given the circumstances. Not if you ask me.”

Kristy stared at him.

“Jesus Christ! What the hell do you want me to say? Oh, Sorry. I felt like wasting a bit of Police time so I raided a laboratory, and nailed some rats to my bedroom wall after taking a crap on my new sofa?”

“Well, did you?”

“Don't be so FUCKING stupid!” That had the attention of everyone in the room. Devlin humoured her with a condescending smile. “And you can stop being so fucking patronizing while you’re at it.”

“Look lady, I'm just doing my job.”

“Christ, that's lame. I'm just doing my job. I’m sure you would have made a stellar Brown Coat.”

“If that's the way you feel, perhaps-”

“Jesus H. Christ on a fucking crutch. You're un-fucking-believable. I've had a bloody shitter of a day and come home to find some pervert’s broken into my flat to take a crap on my sofa, and you come out with something as fucking banal as “Just doing my job!” Un-fucking-believable, do you know that? Next thing, you'll be telling me to put the kettle on so you and your parasites can have a cuppa. You make me want to puke, you really do.”

“I'm sorry you feel that way, Miss. It is Miss, I take it?”

“Not that it's any business of yours.”

“Okay, Miss. Point noted. You've been frank with me. It's the least I can do to be as equally frank in return. In the main, burglaries are spur of the moment things. Opportunist attacks. An open window taken advantage of when the lights are out and no one is home. There aren't any three-storey men on my patch that carry rats in their swag bags. Can you see where I'm going with this, Miss?” Kristy didn't give him the satisfaction of seeing her mental nod. “Okay. You don't strike me as being stupid, so I'll assume you can. Nothing, so far as we can tell, has been stolen. Not the television, not the Hi-fi. I'd feel a hell of a lot happier if it had. But still, as you say, who the hell writes “I see you, cunt!” on the bathroom mirror, unless they're trying to scare the living crap out of someone?” Devlin let that sink in for a moment. “I think you are lying. I think you know, or you're pretty damned near sure, who did this. And until you open your mouth and tell me, the best you're going to get is “I'm just doing my job.” Now, do you want to start from the beginning?”

“I would,” the plain clothes detective behind Devlin, put in. “He can get very nasty.”

“Thanks, Jack.”

“No prob, Skip,” He winked at Kristy, and it was just about the most normal thing she had seen all day. She did her best to summon a smile. “That's better, love. Now, do you want to make that cuppa you mentioned? Joke, it's a joke,” he put in hastily.

The Scene of Crime boys were starting to wind things up, dusting the last few flat surfaces for any sort of decent fingerprint, taking samples from bloodlines of finger-painting and the excrement on the settee, and neatly bagging each. A WPC came back from questioning the block's other residents, told Devlin she had turned up nothing of use. Varying descriptions placing the intruder between 5'5" and 6'5", his clothing equally diverse in style and colour. She offered to help start tidying things up a bit. Devlin accepted on Kristy's behalf, suggesting that she might start with, “The mess on the bathroom mirror.”

Kristy was angry with herself for getting cranky with Devlin. Of all the people she had tangled with in the last few days, Devlin was the last one she wanted on her back, with or without an axe to grind. She nodded, managing a barely perceptible twitch of a smile for the young WPC, and then wiped a weary hand across her mouth - wiping the smile from her face before she had to start thinking about filling Devlin in on the nitty-gritty.

She could see Devlin was waiting, but for the life of her she couldn't bring herself to talk while she could see he was looking at her. And it wasn't down to the peculiar chemistry she felt fermenting between them, nor that her imagination had him undressing her with those humourless eyes of his.

Don't flatter yourself, girl. That's one man who hasn't got the time for anyone but his right hand, nine nights out of ten.

She went over to the window, hoping Devlin wouldn't get it into his head to follow. He didn't. She drummed out a mixture of Morse Code and frustration on the wooden sill, trying to marshal her thoughts into some sort of presentable order, while her mind was on the lookout for any viable distraction the night and the city had to offer her.

Kristy could see across the street into the backyard of a family of undertakers. An old hearse dominated a good part of the yard, collapsed on its rusted chassis. Weeds pushed up through the cement floor, wrapping and twining and smothering the drive-shaft and the rest of the underside. Seeing that old bricked up chariot left her feeling oddly sad. It looked strange, squatting on teetering half-bricks. A little shabby, almost forlorn, but more than anything else, a little sinister. Eerie was the word she was fumbling for. It captured the whole street in five letters.

The next two houses down were derelict, boarded up and left to moulder. The telephone box on the corner had been gutted. Glass chunks still peppered the pavement here and there. The street itself certainly wasn't beautiful, or magical. That was something Kristy was just coming to understand. The city she had hooked herself up with was no paradise. No utopia. Very like her beloved Liverpool, it had an underside that stank to high heaven more times than not. Devlin was just a man walking on a Chinese wall. Take away his badge and, no doubt, he'd be out on those shadowy avenues plying a completely new and ever more dangerous stock in trade. She saw and read all of that, and started to gauge the implications of her second sight, in the few seconds Devlin allowed her to hold his gaze. And for all of it, she wished to God she had looked away, just this once. Better ignorance to cynicism in the face of a would-be saviour.

But was Todd Devlin something as straight forward as a saviour?

He was calm, collected, strong-shouldered and stiff-backed, and could obviously weather a storm if he so chose, but complete with that hint of danger those five qualities alone didn't set him up for an indiscriminate confessional. Was he anything more than a man with a badge, or was he like Richards, a hook looking to haul her into deeper waters?

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Devlin, close to her ear, say: “Do you know him?” and tap the glass. He had come up behind her without her realizing, and was looking out past Lafferty's Funeral Parlour to a man and a dog.

The man was wearing a 49'ers baseball cap, so she couldn't see anything of his face, but the dog stood arrogantly under the sodium light.

And the Doberman it was she recognized. Duke. Richards’ guard dog.

Either sensing, or more simply realizing he had been seen, the man sprinted between the adjoining yards of the derelict properties, the Doberman loping easily at his side.

“It never rains, but it pours,” Kristy muttered to herself, the first glimmerings of something beginning to click. “I.C.U. CUNT!” not “I see you. . .” Christ, Devlin. You've got to do something!”

*   *   *   *   *

Rain and pain. Two constants. They were the world according to Jack Kemp. Rain. Pain. In that order. An uncomfortable stitch made its presence felt, jabbing at his kidneys with its own brand of pain.

Coming up on the funeral parlour's cobbled together fence, Kemp was breathing hard and pumping his arms for that little bit more.

He wasn't stupid and he had been around the block enough times to know there was no point in kidding himself. He didn't have so much as a cat in hell’s chance of catching up with the joker in the 49’ers cap, unless he wanted to be caught. Devlin had called him across in time to catch the back of his head and clean heels.

Take off the cap and he was just about as recognisable as Sunderland's latest bargain-basement striker. Still, Devlin had said jump, more than likely to impress the lady, Jack knew, and he was left to play role of barking dog to Devlin's tragi-comic, put- upon copper.

The streets in this part of Jesmond were a deserted warren of intersecting by-ways come the closing time curfew, only the sirens of the last Metro's to add sound to the night. A gaudy polystyrene burger box kicked its way through the gutter wash. Cars lined the curbsides, slick with the gloss of rain and sodium vapour light.

Treacherously dark smears puddled on both road and pavement. A window was open; three flights up, playing something loud. Metallica? Megadeth? Or whoever the latest heavy craze were. That sort of sound always sounded pretty much of a muchness coming through a fly window thirty feet away. Muffled down to two constants, bassline and drums.

Kemp's Shakespeare Street brogues weren't meant for running anywhere in the wet. Twice already, between Kristy's flat and the alley way less than two hundred yards away, he had come close to kissing the pavement face first.

A train thundered by, somewhere, its forlorn cry adding the ice to the already eerie panorama. No cars, he realized, not moving. The rain and the dark made it all but impossible to see more than a few feet. The shoulder-wide alley between the boarded-up tenements was all but invisible.

It was only the gutted call box that said he had missed it. Overshot by twenty yards. He backed up to the light, looking for the hole in the wall. Waited, expecting at any moment to hear the bray of the car engine coming from off to the left somewhere close by, but it didn't happen like that.

No heroics, Kemp told himself as he finally got a sighting on the gateway between buildings. Heroes always end up dead. And with that pleasant thought in mind, walked-ran into the tight alley.

The houses themselves were joined on the second level like Siamese twins, forming a tunnel inside which the acoustics were weird. The night was dead enough for the two house tunnel to be a sound trap plenty loud enough to announce his presence three streets down. Someone's dustbin had been turned over halfway through, and the rubbish turned out by scavengers. A cracked video cassette unravelled armfuls of magnetic tape. Magazines had been torn up, newspapers shredded around a bundle of rags. Broken glass from a beer bottle. A streetlamp offered the weakest of lights at the other end of the tunnel. Kemp kicked a labelless can out of the way as he picked his way through the litter. The clatter bounced back and forth between the walls like a roll of steel drums.

He was three steps further on when he saw the bundle of rags shift slightly; fidgeting.

“Gorra pund, Marra?” came from somewhere, a grubby hand pawing at Jack Kemp's chest as the derelict lurched to his unsteady feet. Alcohol oozed through his words, carried by foul breath. “Jussa pund, man. A havenna eaten in days.”

“Sorry, pal.'”Kemp said, patting his pockets with a shrug. “No change.”

“Too bad,” the tramp slurred, staggering back into the wall and slumping into a heap of worn-out coats and shit-stained blankets.

“Christ,” Kemp muttered, going back to help the man. “Here you go mate. Get yourself a bacon sarnie or something. Just don't waste it on booze, promise.”

He pressed a creased fiver into the tramp's filthy palm and closed his hand around it. The old wino lifted his head slowly, hawking to clear the phlegm from his throat, to peer up from the shadows. Kemp met the dark, washed out eyes with another shrug. Sallow skin, ridges and hollows of grey stubble, long lank hair, matted and filthy. The wino coughed and spat, watching the ground between his feet.

“Divint gan doon thur,” the wino mumbled, as he leaned forward and spat a wad of yellow phlegm between Kemp's feet, and that was all. He rooted around in his pockets, muttering something about his baccy tin, no time left for his generous Samaritan.

It wasn't until he turned that Kemp understood the wino's warning. By then though it was too late to do anything but walk on into the jaws of Cerberus.

A man blocked the alley, backlit and impossible to distinguish beyond the block of black and shadow, a jemmy hanging by his side, Doberman straining on its rope leash. Not for the first time in his life, Jack Kemp wished the British Police had guns issued as standard. The wish swiftly followed by regret.

“Hey, pal,” he called out, angry with himself for letting his fear show. “I don't want any trouble. Okay?”

“Too bad,” the shadow without a face said, hefting the jemmy. '”Coz you sure got yourself plenty.”

“Look, you really don't want to do this, believe me, mate.”

The shadow chewed his silence, slapped the metal crowbar against the flat of his hand once, for effect, before he stepped forward, the Doberman instantly at his heel.

Kemp swallowed down the fear and glared grimly at the aggressor. It didn't take a genius to understand just how close to fatal the situation really was. Say something wrong, make one move an inch too fast for the other guy's liking, and he'd have the insides of his head welded to the floor for his pains. He held up his hands defensively, backing off a step.

The alley contracted around Kemp. The sudden cold seemed to leech sight out of him as it did warmth. The palsy in his muscles threatened to unman him once and for ever. Traces of saliva leaked through his lips instead of words. His eyes flicked rapidly across the shadows, always centering on the hand wielding the jemmy.

“That depends on whether that fuckin' reporter knows when it's fuckin' well time to quit, don't it?” the guy with the jemmy said, and smiled. Actually smiled.

Kemp stared at him as if he could see roots of madness eating away at his mind. Clenching his jaw so hard it made his head throb he goaded, “Why the fuck don't you finish it then, pal. Come on. You've got that fucking tire iron. What have I got, huh? What the hell have I got?”

“Not a fuckin' thing,” the voice was soft, but pitched to reach him. The shadow's eyes glittered with a frightening intensity the darkness couldn't hide.

“Then go for it. Come on, why don't you? Otherwise get the fuck out of my way before I lose my temper. I wasn't looking for you, and I've never seen you before. It's up to you. How do you want to play it?”

“Do you have a death-wish?” he asked Kemp sardonically. “Or do you enjoy making people want to beat the crap out of you?”

“A bit of both,” Kemp replied, doing his utmost to sound as cocky and casually dangerous as he could, as he looked about for a potential weapon of some sort.

“Is that right? Then I guess you'll be wanting me to put you out of your misery pretty quick then?”

Kemp's eye caught on a length of wood that might have been a cut-off from a curtain pole, peeking out through the jumble of junk.

Please God, don't let him see what I'm doing, he prayed, hoping such a simple plea was enough.

“If you put it like that, I'm practically dead already. Hardly worth killing,” he was saying practically anything that came into his head. The words came from inside him, from what he was thinking and from what he feared most.

The dog growled low in its throat, bristling as the shadow moved to undo its leash.

“Woah, take it easy, pal. No need for that. If it's money you want, I've got it. Here, take my wallet, credit cards, cash.”

The other man laughed. “Sounds like you've lost your nerve, fuckface. That it, huh? Bottle gone?”

Kemp shuffled an uncertain step forward and to the right, keeping his hands up, palms out flat. “I guess.”

“Too fuckin' bad, shithead. ‘Coz you're dog meat now. Take him, Duke!”

The Doberman catapulted toward him, its bunched muscles and powerful stride eating the short gap in a split second. Instinctively, Kemp threw himself forward and into a crouch to present the smallest target possible.

The length of wood was tantalizingly close, but Duke's incredible, snarling pounce didn't give him the option of making a lunge for it. The Doberman took him high, punching into his head and shoulder like a jack-knifing lorry, the dog's momentum carrying it on another five skittering strides.

The shadow laughed again, low and menacing, and applauded sarcastically.

Kemp didn't waste time taking a bow. He lunged forward, groping for the short stave, while the Doberman wheeled around for its second charge.

He had just about enough time to bring the wood to bear before the vice-like jaws champed down on his throat. Kemp rolled clumsily, jamming the stave out as the dog bit again. Saliva foamed from its slack jowls as the teeth came down, snapping at his face. Duke's eyes burned redly with a hunger that matched the intensity of its handler, his breath a foul, sour attar that had Kemp's eyes weeping so as the alleyway melted into damp tar.

The incisors came sweeping down again, full force, black eyes pin-points of unleashed fury.

“Wha-“

The question-scream stuck in his throat. Kemp threw up a hand instinctively to ward off the fangs, got a glimpse of black and tan claws raking at his face, and a jaundiced backsplash of the street lights stabbing as the Doberman darted in for the kill.

It happened in the fraction of a second it took to blink an eye. In that captured instant time in the Jesmond alley slowed and stretched out. The long syllable of Kemp's cry elongated, dopplering down as if the tape playing back the sounds had been slowed to a speed below hearing.

Duke's fangs raked a shallow gouge through his forearm. In front of his eyes, barely three inches away, those dreadful black claws were knifing in towards his chest. Kemp ducked his shoulder, throwing his weight behind the evasive manoeuvre as he brought the stave up to parry the slash.

He slammed the cut-off rod around for the dog's skull, cracking it hard enough to hear the bones in its jaw splinter, but even that didn't stop it completely. An impossibly high-pitched whimper hissed through Duke's flared jowls. Blood drooled, some his, most the dog's. A prong of jawbone had broken away to pierce the dog's fur, like a new, vampiric, fang.

At that moment there was an electric frission trapped within three square feet of the alley's confines, and within that area of effect anything was suddenly possible, even likely.

Kemp saw his advantage, and went for it with both hands, the sludge of the adjusted time sloughing off his shoulders as he reacted lightning-fast. The curtain rod snaked out a second time, thundering up from under Duke's bloody jaw. The Doberman's head snapped back, its forelegs giving way for it to slump while the rear legs remained locked and standing. Kemp slammed the stave down across the centre of Duke's skull, splitting the bone above the eye line.

The Doberman spasmed and collapsed under the weight of its dying convulsions. A mixture of goo, like blood, burger relish and egg mayonnaise dribbling through its ears, puddling on the floor around its head.

Kemp pushed himself to his feet, sucking in great whumps of air as he scanned the tenebrous gloom for the dog's master, his heartbeat a loud boom, faster boomboom double beat in his ears.

“YOU WANT TO HAVE A GO?” He screamed, “YOU WANT TO HAVE A GO? COME ON THEN! COME ON AND I'LL STOVE YOUR FUCKING SKULL IN!”

His white-knuckled grip on the length of curtain rod was so fierce cramps had begun to shockwave up through his forearm, but he wasn't about to allow his hold to loosen any more than it already had, not now he had the man behind the shadow in his sights.

Just inside the mouth of the alley, caught like a rabbit in that crazy second when the car's headlights lock on its face and root it to the spot.

“COME ON THEN YOU SHEEPFUCKER!” Kemp bellowed, closing the gap between them. Staring him down.

The man balked, tearing away out through the alley's maw and away through the warren of nameless streets and side streets on the other side.

Kemp watched with grim satisfaction as the jemmy clattered to the ground ten yards on, his nerves juddering as the shivers hit, the roller-coaster tying loops in his stomach with the residue of the sudden adrenaline hit.

Bent double, Jack Kemp vomited into the dead weeds along the side wall.

*   *   *   *   *

Kemp wiped his mouth, and then wiped his hands on his trousers.

The dosser had backed off out of the alley, but was back and making himself interested in the contents of the overturned bin. Beyond his three-coat stooped shoulders the shadows were lengthening and darkening, coiling thickly around on each other as a deeper darkness overtook the night.

The pounding of the bass-heavy music had returned, slower than before, but no less muffled. Already, moths and flies were settling on the Doberman's carcass.

A hedgehog walked out from one shadow, stopped to fix its panicked gaze on Kemp, then sauntered on into another ball of shadow, continuing its nocturnal rounds.

Kemp took a second to catch his breath, taking a deep breath to fill his heaving lungs, and letting it seep out again, drawing air once, twice, and then a third time, deliberately trying to suffocate the adrenaline high with mouthfuls of oxygen.

“Three-Seven to Control,” he said, talking into his radio.

Crisp static.

“Control. Go ahead, Three-Seven,” the controller's voice sprayed out of the tiny two-way speaker. Another hiss, then a small, almost burst, of a connection.

“In pursuit of suspect. Six-one, six-two. Baseball cap. Denims. Fleeing north along,” Kemp paused, looking for the small wall-side plaque with the street name. “Ferndale Avenue, on foot. Request assistance.”

“Roger, Three-Seven.”

A vehicle roared into life somewhere in the night, though not too far distant for Kemp to miss the screech of wheels spinning.

“Negative, Control. Suspect has acquired wheels.”

“Identification of vehicle, Three-Seven? Make, Model and Year?”

“Negative, Control. The bird has shot the coop,” and to himself, “What a waste of fucking time that was.”

He had to take his frustration out on something, and right at that moment the wall fit the bill just fine and dandy. He slammed the heel of his hand into the wall beside his head. Twice. It was a trick Kemp had picked up relatively early on during his apprenticeship with Todd Devlin. Walls made good pressure valves, and as Devlin liked to joke, who had ever heard of a wall filing assault charges?

Taking his handkerchief, he wrapped it twice around his hand like a bandage-cum-glove, and picked up the jemmy. The wino seemed intent on keeping his distance as Kemp walked by on his way back to Kristy French's flat.

“Take this, will you,” he asked one of the Scene of Crime boys. “There's a Doberman in the alley about a hundred yards down and on the left. You want to send someone out to take care of it. Don't worry, it's dead.”

“Okay, sir.”

The gash in his arm was beginning to sting now, an angry redness matching the swelling on both sides. “It'd be just my luck if the bugger had rabies,” he commented to one of the WPC's.

“It's going to need a tetanus shot,” she agreed, seeing him roll up his shirt sleeve.

“Where's Devlin?”

“He took off with Miss French about five minutes ago. He's had us trying to get through to Hexham General Hospital since then, but the lines have been jammed solid.”

“I.C.U.” Kemp muttered, shaking his head. “Have you tried going through the switchboard?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Better get to it, then. If anyone wants me, I've gone to the RVI for a jab. You folks can clean this place up while I'm gone. It'll be a nice surprise for the lady. Okay?”

- 41 -

Two things.

Dettol and Ammonia.

Shellagh Cramer busied herself with the drugs trolley, laying out the swabs and syringes and measuring out the ward's medication by the pill. Green curtains were drawn around six of the eight beds, keeping a whole host of secrets under wraps. Her body’s sensory adaptability never ceased to amaze Shellagh. Two months ago, the heady blend of disinfectant and ammoniacs would have had her light-headed and feeling sick, but not so now. Things change. People change. An introduction to Violent Delights has a way of goading those changes out of a person. Getting under the skin and worming all the way up into the brain like a cancer.

Bren had called the basement club an addiction all in itself, and Shellagh was coming around to his way of thinking. But nothing about it was so simple, clean or clinical. Mistakes get made along the line and people fall in with the strangest bedfellows. Enter Violent Delights.

Bren also said stuff about how it came down to faces and acceptability. She liked the way he had of looking at things like addiction and abuse, describing them from the inside out, so to speak. It had a topsy-turvy logic she enjoyed wrestling with, and through it all, he showed her such violent delights, and for no reason beyond the pleasure of satisfying appetites she had never known she possessed.

And it all stemmed from the goings on behind a door between two bike shops in the West End of the city. Taking her there for the first time, Bren had assuaged her doubts by promising to show her intimately what dreams (what love) were made of. He presented the basement club like a free anatomy class on the dissection of the human psyche. And, of course, there was the picture of the fallen angel beneath the bank of monitors, with its face that looked a lot like her own.

Shellagh the fallen angel. That was about as apt a name tag as nurse or put-upon crisis handler. Shellagh the fallen angel had come crashing down with her halo around her knees, and all for Bren. It wasn't a question of whether it was worth it, people fell by the wayside every day. It all came back to making the most of it. Savouring the extremes offered by the many-fold delights, violent or otherwise.

She went through the process of pill distribution on automatic pilot, humming a remembered snatch of Pound cake while her attention wandered back to the run up of hours before her shift had started.

Violent Delights took up so much of her life outside nursing.

The people there enjoyed her being around, and she enjoyed being around them. They were all so alive. So physical in everything they did. Their desires. Their needs. They gave themselves over to living with powerful abandon.

The crowd was the usual bunch with some notable new faces; a police chief someone or other, a nightclub owner from south of the river, and a voice she recognised immediately as an ex-radio jock.

Cuban prime, grade 'A' white was on offer, a service provided for gratis by the management. The same went for other cuts. The dip dishes along the bar kept the good feelings flowing. The bank of monitors showed a blonde police woman masturbating with a truncheon. The girl who had done the modelling for the loop was in the corner with three Rambo clones, slowly getting stoned while they felt their way around the merchandise.

The music was a loud acid house mess, the violently strobing lights pulsing rapidly enough to offset the feeling of a bad trip without inducing epilepsy-style fits from either the dancers, or the girls.

Impure, but desperately hot notes swamped the cramped confines, massaging the gathering of sweaty bodies. The musks of sweat and drink fused around the scents of sex and desire. Need. Everything about the dance floor was carnal. The movements. Expressions.

Bodies moved close, touching, hands exploring. And further.

The loop going through on the monitors changed, the police woman giving way to a two-girl close up with a grotesquely erotic ice-prick dildo holding the camera.

Shellagh watched, savouring the frission the girls generated, her own heat rising with their increased tempo.

Laughter.

Lights.

Music.

Pretty soon the ex-radio jock had made his way over to where she was. He looked ten feet out of his depth, a minnow swimming with the barracudas, but to give him his due, he wasn't colouring and the girls had certainly hooked his attention. He'd be back.

Maybe not tomorrow, but soon. That was how the addiction began, like the old smack advert everyone took the piss out of for so long: So, I do a bit of Violent Delights? So, I can handle it, can't I?

Like hell. This place was contagious. Once it got its hooks in you that was it and the angels were falling from every little piece of heaven. It should have its own thirty second advert: Violent Delights screws you up!

Bren was late, but that didn't matter. Shellagh had come in uniform. It was surprising how many of the old boys liked to see her come as a nurse. It really was true what they said. She had made her own loop in her work clothes, enjoying the attentions of four men handpicked for the twenty minute set.

Shellagh got a double take from the jock when her own film came up on the screens, as well as a roar of applause from back by the bar as she took care of Rick Rocket or Rodger Ramrod or whatever his name was. She could see the jock didn't know how to take it, so, goaded on by the little devil on her left shoulder, she wandered across to pour salt on the wounds.

“How're you doing?” She asked lightly, leaning in close enough to taste the splashes of his designer cologne on the back of her throat.

The jock sort of half shrugged without actually taking his eyes off the screen. 'Jeezuss. . .' was about the sum of his contribution.

“You like?” Shellagh asked playfully. “I can do private shows if you're interested?”

It made her laugh to think back at just how corny she must have sounded. God, next time she'd be coming out with something trite like “Why don't you come up to my place, big boy?” or some such drivel.

He'd bitten, nevertheless. Shellagh got the impression he was a little bit more than just shell-shocked by the whole kit and caboodle. She had been the same way herself, that first time when Bren had bullied her into working baby oil into one of the dancer's stiffening pricks. But that sort of innocence soon wears off, like the plating on a nugget of fool’s gold, as it had with Shellagh herself, and when it does the thirst for more Violent Delights becomes intolerable.

By the time the live act was getting underway she had the ex-radio jock on his knees and eating out of the palm of her hand, literally. He seemed to think subservience was part of the deal, which was fine by her. Anything for kicks.

When Bren finally showed his face, Shellagh had booked her pet personality for lead role in a threesome and was struggling to come up with a good enough excuse to phone in sick with. He scotched that with four brutal words.

“You make me sick.”

That was rich, coming from him. Dr-fucking-Kildare himself. She made him sick. All Shellagh could come up with in return was, “But you made me this way, Bren.” And he had at that, by dragging her down into the pit and feeding her addiction with his own special form of nose candy.

“And now I don't need you anymore. Say goodbye, Shellagh. I have a feeling our paths won't be crossing again.”

So, when she saw him coming up the corridor from Intensive Care and the High Dependency Unit, her first and immediate thought was that Bren had come looking for her. Come to say sorry and that they could work things out between them if they tried.

She smiled tentatively, palming three pills, two co proximal and a phenobarb, for the patient in bed number six.

He didn't even spare her the curiosity of a look as he breezed by.

Well fuck you, Dr Frankenfucker, she thought, suddenly deflated by his unthinking rebuff. You made the fucking monster, not me. I didn't ask for any of this shit. “Bren?” she called after him, hating herself for being weak.

“What?” he snapped, obviously irritated by her calling him back.

“I just thought we could talk-” she said, knowing even as she said it she sounded quite pathetic. She was going to cry. She knew she was, but that didn't mean she could stop herself from doing it regardless.

“I said all I had to say last night. You were a good enough fuck, Shellagh. What else do you want me to say? That I loved you? Oh please, don't make me laugh at you. Not here. People are suffering and they manage to retain their dignity, so why do you find it so difficult?”

She didn't know what to say to that. She was shaking.

He looked at her hands.

Her arm.

“I don't much care for addicts of any variety, no matter what their merits may be, between the sheets or otherwise.”

That hurt.

“Why? Tell me why. . ?” Shellagh whined piteously, not caring that the two of them had subverted a ward's worth of attention from the early morning re-run of yesterday's Australian soap. Right then she hated him for his calm, reassured poise and his sugary east-coast American drawl.

“It's no great riddle, Shellagh. You entertained me, but I seem to have lost the urge to sample any more of the manner of entertainment you offer. I don't need a whore.”

She stood for a second, mouth open, unable to comprehend what her ears were telling her.

“You bastard,” Shellagh spat, shocked and angry and more than anything else, betrayed. This is where it gets you, girl she heard an echo of her mother say, smug and self righteous as ever. A tidal swell of anger fumed as the Shellagh that was everything her precious Bren had strived to create warred for control of the gutted girl’s limbs, and won out. She slapped him across the face.

“Feel better now?” he asked after a moment, massaging the sting out of his cheek.

Something deep inside Shellagh snapped then, severing all ties with the innocence of yesterday. She back handed Bren across the face a second time, hawked and spat into his eyes.

“Bitch,” he hissed, wiping the phlegm away. She didn't feel any better for goading a reaction out of him. She still wanted to cry, but as of now she wouldn't allow herself the luxury. Tears were a part of the past. Instead, she found herself smiling. Maybe, if she really was a hard-arsed bitch, she could get through this whole thing in one piece.

The geriatric in bed seven clapped then, offering her his encouragement to firm her resolve.

“That's right,” she hissed, moving around so the trolley was no longer between them. “I'm a bitch and you're a fucking manipulative bastard, so who gives a fuck what you think anyway? No me, that's for sure. Another minute looking at your ugly mush is a minute more than I can stand, buster. Now get the fuck out of my face before I get the orderlies to stand on you.”

Bren held up his hands defensively, rusty circlets ringing both wrists. Shellagh laughed, a giggly laugh that was more a release of tension than any humour. Weak man. All mouth and no trousers. Everything was turned on its head. She was weak; but if she was weak, he was weaker. The new, galvanized Shellagh grabbed him by the lapels of his pristine doctor’s smock, shaking him like she would a banana-daiquiri. 'Got a problem with your ears?'

He seemed about to say something, and then thought better of it. After extricating himself from Shellagh's clumsy grasp, he backed off, shaking his head, not wanting to stay any longer than was absolutely necessary in a ward where too many eyes were watching him and taking in every last detail.

“Go on,” she bellowed in a laugh at his back. “Do what you're so fucking good at. Run away.”

*   *   *   *   *

Dettol and ammonia and something else.

The new odour clung to the more abrasive chemical reeks, out of place in the sterilized confines of the wards, and yet, paradoxically at home in them, too.

She had finished up on the ward and headed back to the staff canteen for a piping hot cup of frothy chocolate from the machine, feeling sick, empty. Sipping from the plastic beaker she had reached a decision, but that is not to say any other addict could have come to a different decision given the same set of circumstances. Come clocking off time for the swing shift, she would head on over to the club and see if she could hitch up with the ex-radio jock. He hadn't looked so bad, and from the way he had distorted his slacks, he had evidently felt the same way about her.

It didn't matter that she was simply fanning the flames of her latest addiction, only that she was doing something positive to get over Dr Brent so-bloody-perfect Richards.

Jimmy, one of the hospital porters, flashed her a mischievous wink as she pushed her school style plastic chair back on its two back legs. He was busy puzzling out a not so difficult Spot the Difference in the morning's News of the World, the sound coming from his iPod headphones barely recognisable as the Rolling Stones.

Shellagh crumpled the beige cup and stuffed it into one of the overflowing bins beside the green double doors, then went on through.

She checked her watch as a moment ticked by, then another moment, her life measured in the slow, steady passage of moments. Tomorrow would be different, she promised herself. Day one in a life without Dr Too Good to Be True.

She was rostered for High Dependency Unit in quarter of an hour, so she wandered down the corridor and took the service lift to the second floor.

Her soft-soled footsteps echoed, but without the clangy metallic precision of heels. The corridor divided at a T-junction, right under the sign for I.C.U., left under maternity. Shellagh went right.

The first two doors were open, the third and forth closed. The computerised bleep music of the life-givers, muffled through the closed doors, haunted the passageway. A bare gurney stood up against one wall.

Shellagh's head was filled to overflowing with a crazy jumble of thoughts and ideas that rolled and splashed around a core of numbness. Inside the numbness was a nascent fear. She shambled toward the line of open plan offices like a reluctant prodigal.

Within a few minutes, Shellagh had checked the medication lists off against the list on the clipboard and started making up the morning's batch of pills.

Two fresh-faced interns breezed in, full of gossip and good cheer, made themselves coffees and waited for the rounds to begin again at four.

The small part of Shellagh's mind that had any volition left tried to bludgeon the rest into thinking, but the old grey matter refused to cooperate. She felt suffocated. Angry. Sad. Her thoughts stayed mercifully dark. The glazed smile took hold of her face again. She watched her hands move. Felt them fumble with the medication.

But something was wrong and wouldn't leave her alone.

Something about Bren. Bumping into him like that. Coincidence?

It didn't feel right, but the more she tried to figure it out the further it receded: like the riddle of the Chinese finger puzzles of her childhood. She stopped trying and told herself it would come back eventually.

Jason Kelso was down for 50 mg of Pethidine and 900 mg Fenbufen, standard post-surgery pain killers and anti-inflammatories. Nothing to tax her more than was absolutely necessary. Familiarity with the routines had her hands running on automatic yet again, measuring the dosages almost as much by instinct as by any well worked methodology.

The drone of the staff television was down to almost nothing, but that didn't prevent Shellagh's attention from wandering that way.

A fire. At the big shopping complex south of the river.

Her heart skipped a beat, but the sky was black, even without the smoke pall. Night. No one would be shopping. No crisis. Let the fire services deal with it, if they haven't all been streamlined to a virtual close down by the bloody Government.

The young doctors were still chatting away, wasting time.

Shellagh felt strange. Dislocated. As if she were falling asleep on her feet. The image on the television faded into the face of the coloured presenter, her lips moving out of sync with the words in Shellagh's ears.

“Are you all right?” The smaller of the two interns asked from somewhere.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. Shrugged it off.

“Fine,” she mouthed, not hearing her own pat words. “Overworked, underpaid, and four hours to go, but otherwise just fine. Thank you for asking.”

The intern chuckled and sat back down.

The parents of a young girl stood in the doorway one down from Kelso, the dad, a thickset sheet metal worker, clutched a battered brown teddy bear, too close to the edge of breaking down not to slip the rest of the way. His wife, a pretty slip of a thing dwarfed by his brute physique, looked to be faring little better.

Viral Meningitis, Shellagh remembered, putting a name to the girl in room five. Partially blind and stone deaf, but arrested, another little girl walking in death's footsteps. Sometimes she wasn't sure if medical science was such a good thing after all.

One look at the harrowing sadness in the bear-clutching father's eyes sent her faith in miracles down another notch.

Shellagh tried to muster a smile for them as she wheeled the drugs trolley past. She wanted to say something, but the only thing that would come to mind was, “Less said, better mended.” And that was so wildly inappropriate she kept her peace, taking the solid ground and avoiding any misunderstood fireworks.

She knocked twice on Jason's door, called through, “Hope you're decent,” and went on in.

Part of Jason Kelso was stretched out on the bed, his plaster cast leg up on the winch still, his hands twisted up behind his head to clutch at the bedhead, almost as if they were tied to the metal struts in a parody of one violent delight she had never yet come close to satisfying her appetite for. His mid-section, from the waist up, was simply missing. Cut away. Blood soaked into the sheets, already thickened to a crisp patina. Shellagh Cramer stood frozen in the doorway, taking in the carnage, although what she was seeing didn't actually register.

The expression on Jason's face was a placid, flat calm, even thoughtful. The eyes, blank, hadn't rolled up to white, but stared now, blindly. The lights on, nobody home. His head was contorted to the right, flecks of blood sprayed around the thin, emotionless lips, and looking below, his neck was grotesquely severed, rough edges of striated tendon and ligament cut away like an uncooked Sunday joint fresh from defrosting on the drainer. Still hooked up to the ventilator, the suck-hiss of oxygen pumped through the truncated windpipe, flaring the severed muscles in regular waves.

A jag of bone splintered through the clustered tubing, a white javelin snapped off short of the point.

The lucid part of Shellagh's mind was horribly aware of all the minute details; the blood on the flower petals and on the fine hairs on his lip, the water rose red in the jug on the table, the two day old lacerations across his face and scalp, the shards of bone showing through, the dark sky coming through to the ambient glow of shepherd's warning, the organs laid out on the wheeled table, itself under the window, and the surgical gloves balled up beside a sliced kidney.

There was too much blood for just one body, surely. Compulsion moved her feet two hesitant paces into the room, the scream stillborn in her throat. A small, neatly stacked pound of flesh had been cut away from between his legs; only the bell-ended glans recognisable as part of his penis. The length had been peeled away like a banana with the aid of a surgical scalpel, so only the urethra remained attached to the mushroom.

His torso had been rolled onto the floor at the foot of the bed and lay in a puddle of congealed blood, the cavity between his ribs hollowed out, the muscular bag of his stomach ripped open.

Shellagh could see the part digested remains of yesterday's meal through the torn walls, mixed to a pulp. Slippery ropes of grey tubing unravelled in slinky loops. Something that might have been corn on the cob lay alone, a neat slice running through its seeds to part the layers of the defunct organ in wafer thin pages.

Whoever had taken the knife to Jason had also put his hands in the then steaming entrails and painted a border around part of the wall. Thrown handfuls of the stuff at the pristine paint.

Shellagh hovered there a moment more, her gaze matching the dead photographer's glassy stare for sheer emptiness, while the previously muted scream gathered strength in her throat and the sheer hell of it all hit her dulled brain with its full, terrible force.

Then she screamed.

And couldn't stop screaming, even when her throat had burned away raw and her voice had cracked away to nothing.

The sound of it stayed inside, haunting her head.

- 42 -

They drove and talked, Devlin behind the wheel, Kristy carrying the weight of the conversation for him.

Devlin wanted everything she had, without exception, and that meant putting together two-and-two's of half-formed suspicions and intuitive suppositions rattling around inside her head. Oddly, the simple act of repetition dulled the madness enough for it to almost make sense, and everything seemed to lose its edge of urgency. They had called ahead, and a response unit was probably already at Jason's bedside laughing along with his bad line in jokes.

Devlin said very little outside the occasional prod for her to carry on, the only exception being when they dropped away from the A69 beyond Corbridge.

“Bleak, isn't it? Especially at this hour. It always reminds me of Tolkien. The dead marshes. You can almost see the thousand lights of the dead souls on the moor, can't you?”

The grey-hued desolation was certainly breathtaking. Bleak and lonely moorland that disappeared into never with its black soil and moss-coated boulders furred with lichens, cemetery teeth eroded by the harsh winters into hard stumps. The vista was hauntingly beautiful in its barren eeriness.

The sky was filling with gradually diluting purple as morning rose into red.

She wasn't surprised that Devlin read, or that he collected barren images. Nothing about the C.I.D. man came as any surprise. Dangerous men were unpredictable, but that very unpredictability put her on the lookout for the unexpected, effectively cancelling out the element of surprise.

A huge Pantechnican thundered by in the fast lane. The only other traffic they had seen were Lorries destined for one of either the chemical plant in Hexham or the Longrigg paper mill in Westbrooke itself. Smoke and steam stacks rose from both, making clouds, but the rest of the county town was content to sleep.

Devlin followed the Pantechnican off the slipway into Hexham proper. On the hill, the Abbey and rings of surrounding houses provided the Minas Tirith to the dead marshes, in a spectacular protrusion of stained glass and Norman architecture. The dissipating purple swells lent the backdrop a suitably fantastic, holy aura. They followed the left around the Wentworth playing fields, within touching distance of the railway station and its assembly line of portaloos and payphones. Someone had sprayed: CAITLIN YOU'RE A DREAM THIEF on the wall next to BASH A PIG FOR A POUND OF GRAPES.

Devlin didn't ask the obvious question until they crawled over the sleeping policeman guarding the entrance to the hospital.

Neither of them was surprised by the line of police cars by the entrance to Accident. “But why kidnap the girl? How does that fit in?”

“I wish to God I knew. Nothing about any of this makes any sense after you scratch the surface,” Kristy admitted.

“I don't know, I don't know. Something's wrong. Doesn't fit. The kidnapping, suicide and murder, then the break-in at your place and the threats. I'd say you were definitely upsetting someone. It's like the bogland we skirted coming in. The more you think about it, the more you thrash about, the further down you sink until you're in over your head and choking on mud.”

“Nicely put.”

“Thank you. And if you are right, Richards is the only strip of solid ground for miles.”

“I'm right.”

“Of course, we are assuming these aren't just a set of coincidences,” Devlin noted, backing into a vacant space.

“As my editor loves to say, no such thing as plain old coincidence, meaningful or otherwise. It's Richards, all right. He's up to something so dirty it stinks all the way back to town. We've just got to find out whatever the hell it is, tie the rats, the missing gardener, Monk Sanders and Judith Kenyon in together and pull the plug on the doc's strange little game once and for all.”

“Why, you make it sound almost easy,” Devlin commented wryly.

“I get it from a friend. Believe him and absolutely nothing's impossible, moving mountains, parting the sea and pretty much run of the mill stuff like that. Break it down into component parts and it never looks half so bad.”

“I'll remember that.”

“You do that.”

They clambered out of Devlin's patrol car, and headed for the line of marked cars back by Accident and Casualty. For pre-5 a.m. the hospital car-park was surprisingly full. One car Devlin definitely recognised, the Home Office Pathologist's black Mercedes 500 SEL. Odd, Calum Salmund being up and about before the birds. That particular canny Scotsman liked his bed far too much to give it up for anything of less than biblical proportions, and even then it would take two sticks of dynamite behind the push, for leverage. No call for paranoia, he cautioned himself, but got the uneasy feeling that the part of his mind behind the warning was trying to lull him into an unpleasantly false sense of security. Devlin wasn't about to have anyone (not even himself) pull the wool over his eyes.

Something was going down, and for Calum Salmund to be out of his pit before the crack of dawn, it had to be something damned near explosive. There was nothing he could do about it standing around outside.

The radio cars had been abandoned in a hurry, the way they were parked variously skewed did nothing for his confidence. Kristy did not seem to notice, or if she did, she didn't let on.

Devlin's eyes flicked uneasily, scouting ahead. “No one home,” his attempt at a joke wasn't a great success and he knew it. Fingers of apprehension tickled up his spine. He moved up the steps, concealing the twist of alarm in his stomach with a cock-eyed smile. Kristy wasn't unduly surprised at just how deceptively light Devlin was on his feet. She put it down as another one of those things to be taped and stored for sometime never.

She had been unnerved by the stillness and the pervading atmosphere of apprehension, tension, but Devlin seemed unconcerned. Kristy took that as a form of reassurance, after all, this was Devlin's territory, not hers and therefore she let him guide her by the hand though the would-be minefield.

They both felt the oppressively deep sense of foreboding wrongness as they walked through the low key casualty area. The air had that certain something Kristy picked up on odd occasions - very often when the story she was covering turned bad. Devlin recognised it as a crossbreed of bad news and the shit hitting the fan.

The feeling that had dwindled to a mild buzz of apprehension between seeing Duke and the dog handler through her lounge window, and reaching the hospital gained a good three notches when Kristy saw the uniformed officer guarding the lift access.

Something was most definitely wrong, all right. Her heart pumped hard in her chest, like a turbine flooding with water.

Blood made noises in her ears. All wrong.

He couldn't have been more than eighteen, and covered in zits to prove it. Every ounce of colour had drained from his crater pitted face, the scars of his acne unflattering blue-grey putty. Devlin noticed an errant top button beneath the blue clip-on tie, but gauged it wise not to make an issue of it. Something had taken the wind right out of the kid's sails – pounded him in the gut and doubled him over, more like – and he had a horribly good idea what it was, at that.

“Sorry Sir, but this part of the hospital has been closed off.”

The foetid breath of antiseptic was strong. Devlin reached into his back pocket for his wallet, and flipped it open for the youngster to see his I.D.

“Sorry Sir, I didn't recognise you right off.”

“No need to be sorry, Constable. I didn't recognise you either, but that uniform of yours is a bit of a giveaway. What say we call it quits and you let me in on what's going on here?”

A trace of revulsion lingered on the young patrolman's face as his glance flicked to Kristy. “Nasty piece of business, Sir. Up in the Intensive Care. D.S. McKenna's taken charge, but it’s still one bloody shitload of a mess, if you'll pardon me saying.”

Two words slapped a tight grip on the panic handles inside Kristy's brain, the voice at the helm no more than an insidious vibration through her bones that she didn't so much hear as she did feel. Intensive Care meant one thing.

They were too late for Jason.

There wasn't an ounce of warmth left to be had from the hospital corridor. The anaemic strip lights thrummed, their buzz muted by the treacle-like sludge that had descended to swamp Kristy's senses.

“For the love of God, Devlin,” She was back in the bathroom, staring at the bloody scrawl; I.C.U. CUNT! “Come on.”

Devlin was already pressing at the lift's call buttons, jabbing none stop, but the floor indicator lights had stuck on two. “Stairs?”

“That door there, Sir. If you don't mind me saying, Sir, maybe the lady wouldn't thank you for seeing what's up there, Sir. It really is a Godawful mess, take my word for that.”

Kristy, ignoring the young patrolman's good intentions, was already tugging at the fire door and disappearing into the concrete stairwell. The sound of her footfalls swelled to fill the cold, clammy shaft, booming as they echoed back down to the ground. The stairway was a breezeblock throwback to the Spartan stairwell of The Gazette, basic, functional, icy even in the heat of summer.

She could hear Devlin coming up behind her, three steps at a time.

“God, I hate these places,” he said, out of breath as he caught up with Kristy on the top landing. Ate these places. . . Ate these places. . . Came back to him, but she was already yanking the smoke door open to be on her way.

Two plain clothes officers were talking in emphatic whispers, their conversation as oddly mundane as the day before's Cup Final.

Devlin had to show his I.D. again. A band of yellow tape marked POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS blocked off the turn down to Intensive Care and the private rooms of the High Dependency Unit. They looked at him, and then let him pass.

People were milling, ashen faced and unsure, around the third door down, on the right. Jason Kelso's door. Sickness reeked strong in the foetid air, no breeze to stir it along. All the strength went out of her legs, “Oh, Christ, Jason,” she swallowed the first sob as it caught in her throat. Tears ran down her cheeks.

There was a sick purpose to the bustle.

“Sorry, Ma'am, can't let you through. The Pathologist's in there chalking up.”

Kristy felt herself gag, the cold, smooth-sided stone of despair sinking down through her suddenly queasy stomach. Felt Devlin reach out to steady her.

“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 than 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.

Mike rested the blade lightly against his groin, and then pulled the knife gently, but with enough pressure to draw a thin line of blood. It stung, but that in itself was no bad thing. Tiny teeth rasped against his taut skin, bringing beads of bright red blood to the surface.

Then he pressed that bit harder, the edge of the blade parting the tendons deeply enough to open the stark blue line that encased his femoral artery. The effect was like slicing through a high-pressure jet-spray; blood fountained.

“No. . . No. . . Didn't tell Ben,” he moaned, clasping his fingers over the gushing wound, desperately struggling to hold back the big sleep he felt charging up behind him.

So cold. . .

Blood leaked out through his fingers as he pinched the loose flaps of skin together. It felt like clammy, blue-tinged pastry beneath his fingers.

The caravan was dreadfully chilly. . . like that night. . . and there was so much blood on his hands. . .  so much. . .  the pain ebbed, clamped stomach muscles unclenched. . . a wave of emptiness broke over his heart. . . dizzy. . .

He slumped back onto the mattress.

So cold. . .  so very, very cold. . .  the misty shape up ahead wasn't heaven. . .  so much blood on his hands. . .  the caravan's ceiling, fogged. . . didn't tell Ben. . . didn’t say goodbye. . . it should be rain-

But, by then he was already dead, another victim of the sufferer’s song.

- 44 -

Everything about the last twelve hours was so horribly unreal.

Devlin had wanted to take Kristy home, sure the worst of the mess back there would have been cleared up by now, and one of the interns, sweet and well meaning enough for it, had wanted to pump her full of sedatives to dull the shock. She had put both of them off by saying that she wanted to spend some time alone, in the chapel, to get her head together. They seemed to understand, which was strange because she did not.

The night, and now this. A horrible nightmare. Horrible. Bloody horrible. Her worst at that. Jason, fun loving, always on the go, duff film buff, Jason dead. It was unbelievable. She half expected him to come barrelling in through the chapel doors large as life and twice as boisterous, laughing at the way he had pulled one over on her this time. . . One minute they were clowning about with ideas for follow-ups on the Hexham Hell Hound and the next he was dead. Gone. And even though she recognised it for what it was, denial, Kristy simply couldn't bring herself to admit that he wouldn't be there to drive her half-demented tomorrow.

Her first experience of anything like this, and it was so dreadfully final. She didn't feel sad so much as angry. Robbed.  Kristy had a couple of phone calls to make, but didn't feel nearly up to making them. She was alone in the small chapel. Alone to think things through. To justify them, and pray. No matter that she had all but forgotten how to put her hands together for God. The musk of the red beakered votive candles was heavy in the air, the fumes barely dispersing amid the dust, its familiarity comforting despite the distance in real time since the good catholic girl's faith had lapsed. It was all so crazy.

Unbelievable. The chapel offered itself as a life-raft while everything she touched turned to leaden despair. Just this once she had decided to take the crutch and cling to it for all she was worth.

Well, that, at least, had been the rationale behind her coming down here in the first place, but if pressed she wouldn't have denied the possibility of a hidden agenda. Practice was always something so unhealthily different. Sat at one of the five rows of pews, Kristy couldn't see a single good reason for praying. There wasn't a great deal to thank God for, and even now she harboured a gut-loathing toward hypocrites of any and all varieties.

She honestly did not know if she was expecting to find answers in the small recess to God, or a miracle from the alabaster Jesus with his hard-faced, cynical look and chipped ceramic crown of thorns. A down-at-heel saviour to watch over the few sheep that came beneath his wing. The statue reinforced the impression that the chapel was only a temporary loan from the fabric of the hospital, its true face hidden away for the moment.

The light through the only window, imitation stained glass fragments shaped like the crucifixion cross, threw a many-coloured sword across the line of pews. Celtic legend had Cuchullain as the son of Lugh, God of Light, and here, in this sanctuary to a younger God, was his sword in the spirit of his father. The many hues scintillated, merging through the colours, red, angry, to blue, calm.

It was the closest she came to seeing a miracle that morning.

*   *   *   *   *

So she sat, and she thought, her resolve hardening despite the cavity that had opened since leaving the chapel, despite the growing ill feeling that festered there.

Madness or not, Jason had promised first class cavalry waiting at the other end of a phone call, and it was painfully obvious to her that she should be thinking about cashing it in.

Kristy had come across Robin Stone's number again sifting through her pockets for ten pence to feed the slot while she tried to hold one end of an empty conversation with Spencer Abel. She hadn't given much thought to actually calling up the student world's equivalent to the Light Brigade until she finished listening to Abel's platitudes.

“You're not thinking of doing anything stupid are you, Kristy love?” he asked before hanging up, his concern obvious.

“No,” Kristy assured the editor, lying through her teeth. “That would be too damned easy. Just thank God this isn't America, Spencer, otherwise I'd be going down for life.”

“What are you talking about?” A quaver?

“Gun law, Spencer. But this isn't America so I've got to call in all the Aces I've got, staring with you.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Run the obit. For Jason, but come as close to naming names and sticking the tail on the donkey as we dare. Fuck it, go one further. We both know who it was, Jesus, even the police know, and for pity's sake Spencer, he cut Jason up. Print it all. Every last word we've got. Tell them Jason was close to cracking the Judith Kenyon thing before he was savaged by Richards’ pet Doberman’s, and now, two days later, the pathologist is playing join the dots with what's left of his body. Let Joe Public make their own decisions. For once let’s not treat them as if they are all stupid. Shit, I know this sounds stupid, but I almost forgot. The bastard broke into my place last night. Same M.O., shit all over the sofa, blood on the walls. Even left some of his sticking rats as presents.”

“Christ girl, be careful.”

“You know me. Just run the obit. In 3D, okay.”

“Consider it done, even if it will mean I'm stuck in here all bloody day. We'll give Jason a send off Fleet Street would have been proud of.” Abel was quiet, thoughtful for a moment. “You want me to run it under your by-line?” He sounded more at ease now, back on the firmer ground of home territory, but the offer still surprised her. Kristy recovered well.

“Whatever you think’s best. Just take some of your own advice and be careful Spencer, please. I don't think this fella’s read the rules. I'm going to meet up with Devlin in Westbrooke, see if the local plod have had any luck bringing Richards in. While we’re on, you might want to send Jessie down to cover Jason's autopsy. She might be able to get something out of the nurse by then, if she's come down. I'll tell you this for nothing; this place is getting me down now. I've got to get some air.”

“Don't go knocking yourself out, Kris. At the end of the day it's just a job.”

“You sound just like Jason.”

*   *   *   *   *

“Hi, Robin Stone please?”

“No problem. I'll just go fetch her.”

An extrapolated pause, then: “Sorry about this, she's in the bathroom trying to make herself pretty. Too much of the Good Stuff last night. Shall I get her to call you back when she’s fit?”

“No, I'll wait.”

“Hey, look lady, she could be all day before she's finished heaving.”

“Then I'll wait all fucking day if I have to, but I'm going to talk to her before I put this phone down. Okay?”

“That's cool. Yeah, okay. I'll just go and give her another shout. You hang on there.”

The buzz glumnk as more money was fed into the slot. A fuzzy voice. “Yeah? Who is it?”

“Robin Stone?”

“That's me. Who's you?”

“Kristy French. I work with Jason Kelso at the Gazette.” Worked with, Kris. . .

“So? What do you want me to do about it?”

“We have to talk.”

“I thought that's what we were doing now.”

“Okay, if that's the way you want it. Jason's been killed, I think I'm next, and Jason said you were grade A cavalry material. Now, are we going to talk, or are you going to carry on pissing me off, because I haven't got the time to waste on tight arsed dykes.”

A pause, then: “You've been put up to this, right? Game for a laugh, right? Who put you up to this, Jason?”

“Don't be so bloody stupid. I've got ten pence left in the box, and I need to know if you're going to help me or not. Which is it?”

“You're serious?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck.”

Another pause, the longest yet.

“Can you meet me?” The voice no longer fuzzy. Sharp. Thinking. “Where and when?”

“The Union bar, no, shit, that'll be closed 'til tomorrow. Leazes Park, by the pond for four.”

“I'll be there,” and to herself, “I hope.”

- 45 -

Billy came round an hour after breakfast.

Don't wanna die, that was his first thought.

He pressed a weak hand against his chest and felt the tightness there. The words clanged strangely, sounding hollow in his head, their echo confusing him into thinking he'd spoken them aloud, which, of course, he hadn't.

Billy lay hunched under the mouldy-smelling covers of Pops’ crocheted quilt, staring up at the ceiling and trying desperately to swallow down the hot-sick burning hand that was reaching up his throat. The collar of his work shirt was spotted with clots of phlegm. His chin felt crusty with sores. Bad day, Billy. Bad day.

The ceiling above him was angled slightly down towards the window at the foot of the bed, and decorated with sheets of cheap woodchip paper that had been painted over so many times the stippled effect of the woodchips was lost under the yellowed coats of emulsion. Directly above his head a spreading patch of dampness cultivated black-green spores. Bad. Bad.

Billy remembered screaming. He remembered pigeons, but trying to dredge up other by now dulled trace memories from the fever-wracked turmoil of his mind was like listening to the playback of a blank CD: Nothing broken by the occasional burst of static escaping from the speakers.

He knew he was sick. He'd woken up with a terrible headache and a desperate thirst that four glasses of water couldn't quench. He was sweating buckets, and if he put a hand to his forehead it felt as if he was resting it on the cooker's hot-plate. Billy Rogan was burning up from the inside out, all right. The acid indigestion he'd felt when the screams finally dried up had hardened into a serious case of heartburn, and every now and again the woodchip ceiling would swim in and out of focus with the roll of his blurring vision. Gritting his teeth against a sudden flare of pain, Billy swabbed the perspiration out of his bloodshot eyes with a wadded Kleenex.

He closed his eyes, trying to think, to force his numb brain out of reverse and up through the gears. He was aware, vaguely, of the rhythmic dub-dub! Of blood pumping through his ears. His mind didn't want to respond. His eyes were watering, and his nose was running. He wiped the sopping Kleenex across it, trying to wipe away the thin streamers of mucus dribbling from his nose.

Don't wanna die, he whispered, or somewhere inside his head, imagined he did.

Billy sneezed and sniffed, drawing the watery streamers back into his nose. The sudden shock of the sneeze drove a spike deep into his foggy brain (BILLLLY! YOU FUCKIN' REEE-TARD!), and Billy struggled to sit up. The sheets were tangled around his dry mud plastered legs like restraining straps, anchoring him to the sweat-damp mattress.

He'd fallen asleep and left the television on downstairs.

The irrational thought-come-memory virtually popped into his head, a hand clawing up through the turgid depths, struggling to snag on to any available lifeline.

(BILLLLY! YOU FUCKIN' REEE-TARD!!! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU???)

That's me, he tried to say.

What he heard was the raspy, choking hack of a very sick man, but that one line gave him something to cling on to as the next wave of delirium washed over him.

There's trout in. . . .

Harmless. . .

Big Bad. . .

Don't wanna die! ! !

*   *   *   *   *

Ten minutes later he was propped up on his elbows, fighting an almost overwhelming urge to sink back into the black haze where his mind whispered terrible things. During those seconds a fire would light inside his bladder, pushing molten runners through the length of his stiffening penis, but later, when he shucked off the haze, the voice of delirium and the whispers would fade, leaving him with a rapidly dwindling erection tenting out the front of his grubby jeans.

Physically, he was stretched to a point way beyond his limits. He was starved and he was dehydrated to the point of emaciation.

How long had he been sick?

He didn't know.

There was a clock on the dresser, but he couldn't tell what the lights meant any more than he could explain the unquenchable fire burning in his throat.

The light seeping in through the lace curtains cast dull, sepia tinged circles over the doors of the old wardrobe and the threadbare carpet at its foot.

He knew he ought to try and move, but the vacuum swirling around inside had left him so weak. He desperately needed to drink something. Water. Billy clung to the thought of the stuff.

His clothes were stiff with thick dried-on mud cakes. He wasn't wearing anything on his feet; Billy was racked by a series of small but uncontrollable shivers that seemed to corkscrew up from somewhere past his aching feet and into his skull.

When they subsided, he tried to stand.

His legs folded under him, and he collapsed into a disjointed sprawl on the carpet. The aching fire scalded his throat, dragging nails through the raw, arid flesh. He crawled as best he could manage, thinking about the water in the bathroom taps. He dragged himself forward, clawing an inch by precious inch, his legs kicking out feebly. Billy used them like flippers, squirming them around to push his weight one step further.

The real light in the room was dim, but the lack of light on the landing made it darker still, almost to the winter night black of the bad place.

At the head of the stairs he tried to call out, but the croak that came out of his cracked lips was no more than the feeble whisper he had managed when he claimed his name -- How long ago?

It was impossible to tell.

Using his left hand, Billy clawed at a piece of skirting breaking away from the wall, and pulled himself forward another  precious inch. The room spun crazily, then settled, looking horribly bleached of colour. He drew his trembling, weak legs in under him and placed his heavy hands on the floor to push himself up, but didn't have the strength left to stand. Trying to force his muscles to work simply made him dizzy. With what little strength he had left, Billy continued to crawl, pushing himself forward weakly with his legs, again.

Every few seconds a lancing pain would shoot up his spasming left arm, into his shoulder. His legs might have been made of lead with jelly bones for all the good they were. He felt none of the sensations coming up from them, but forced himself on, because the only alternative was to lie down and die.

Somewhere between the landing and the sink he descended into the blackest of hazes.

*   *   *   *   *

Pain trickled into Billy's darkness.

He shied away from it, frightened of the returning life it threatened.

Light grey followed the haze.

He coughed feebly, his whole body wracked by a fresh wave of agony. He struggled to open his eyes, expecting nothing, but curious to see the angel that had woken him. They fluttered open, lashes gummy with sleep, seeing only a meaningless wash of colour.

He was lying on his back, the strength fled at last from his body.

Don't wanna die, he thought reasonably as the darkness rose up to reclaim him.

*   *   *   *   *

Awareness returned, an unwelcome guest.

Slowly, the images began to gain substance. He was lying on the bathroom floor, a puppet with his strings cut out from above his head by a vengeful knife.

The side panel of the bath tub squeaked piteously against the weight of his back; like the twittering of mice. Billy felt the once strong muscles of his arm quivering like jelly, twitching as he strained to force movement out of the limb. He saw the chrome of the taps above the begrimed enamel of the bath, out of reach above his head. Might as well be in Africa, his mind taunted. He bit down on his lip, perspiration running down into the shallow valleys formed by his sunken eyes. He tried to move, fingers lifting up to an agonizing inch from the faucet before flopping back to the floor like five pounds of dead fish, and gave in to screaming.

*   *   *   *   *

He sobbed, gritting his teeth until the pain ebbed again.

Billy flexed his fingers.   He was crying, sweat and tears mingling freely on his cheeks.  He wiped his eyes; crying wasn't going to get him out of this. He needed Pops.  A bead of sweat trickled down from his hairline, and ran, stinging, into the corner of his eye. Pops would know what to do. Pops would know what was wrong with him and how to put it right. Better fixed with a kiss than a plaster, like he said.

Billy wriggled around until he felt his back brace against the cold hard enamel of the tub, and started to push against it. The angel of pain continued to scour his system.  One second he was burning up, the next the Hell let loose in his blood was freezing over.  Billy was tired, so very, very tired.  Part of him wanted desperately to sink back into the murky haze, and sleep.

He needed Pops to make him get well.

Summoning one last, supreme effort, Billy pushed against the enduring pain, trying to rise by first reaching his knees. His jelly legs were still trembling from the effort of propelling him across the landing, but that pain was nothing compared to the fire burning inside his head. He braced his hands against the side of the bath and tensed to push those last few inches, but his willpower simply evaporated. He crouched there thinking that someday, someone was going to find a pile of bones where he was now. Billy the Skeleton. Billy the bag of bones. Bone man Billy, that's who they're gonna find Mr Barney and his policemen.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

He pushed upwards.

The withered muscles in his shoulders shrieked with the fury that lanced pain, his right elbow threatened to give way, but as he felt himself start to topple. Billy reached out and snagged his good hand around the handle set into the side of the tub. Kicked out, somehow jack-knifing himself backwards. The sores on his chin puckered as his face tightened into a mask of raw determination; a swollen blister, peppered with hair from his top lip, broke with a wet, popping sound, streaming fluid into his mouth.

Billy sucked on it greedily, chasing the tang and the moisture. He arched his back and twisted, pushing again. Dizzy and breathing heavily, he greyed out into the haze.

*   *   *   *   *

He swam, slowly, back to reality, hearing the dim, goading voice of his father in his head: “Billy, you fuckin' reee-tard! I can't be-leeve you just pissed your pants! For fuck's sake boy! Thirty-Three an' you still piss in yer pants like a bairn. Christ, boy, what am I ganna do with you?”

The front of his mind seemed dimly aware of the pain, thirst and hunger eating at his insides, while somewhere way down low in the back, primal instincts were taking over. Thoughts. A chain. Not him and paradoxically all of his own. He saw the world from quite a different angle, the ceiling having been replaced by the shallow trough of the tub, scaled with lime and hard water. Blood was rushing to his head. He twisted, only to see the side of the bath come level with his face.

Upsides down, Billy-boy, upsides down's all.

Reflexively, Billy arched his back, wind-milling his arms wildly to try and hold himself up long enough to peer out of the trough. In the brief freeze-framed second the move allowed, Billy saw his legs still set firmly on the floor, while his body had folded double around the pivot of his waist.

He let himself slouch, slumped forward into the beckoning tub, face under the mouth of the mixer-tap, his own mouth open, burning with thirst. He wriggled farther in spite of the pain it caused, dragging his legs in until he was lying flat on his back, feet hanging out of the back of the bath tub, cracked lips open under the taps, tantalized by their promise.

Reaching up brought a fresh surge of pain and heat. When his fingers closed around the cold aluminium, he could do little more than gasp and wheeze like an asthmatic, his head thrown back, mouth wide in anticipation of the water to come raining down so soon.

Lying there like that, head back, face glossy with the sheen of sweat, hair plastered in clumps to his forehead, Billy looked like a cranky old scarecrow laid out in an enamel sarcophagus and just waiting to drown.

It took an agonizing, endless, five minutes of sweat running into his blinking eyes and gentle, weakening pressure to bring the faucet around. Water came gushing, splashing over his face and into his open mouth. There was so little left of him to burn.  He was physically empty. A husk. Mentally spent. Cracked lips parted further, trembling under the spray of lukewarm water; he coughed feebly, choking, his whole body shuddering under fresh waves of agony as more liquid tumbled in to fill his dehydrated mouth.

Billy swallowed involuntarily, his sandpaper-raw throat hacking, hungry to absorb the moisture. For a while, with the water level rising around his shoulders, Billy was quite sure he was going to puke, but mercifully, that boiled sickness passed.

Water lapped into his mouth from the side. Only then did he think to move to unblock the plughole before the water level rose so high another blackout promised more than just the possibility of drowning.

The fierce heat in his stomach subsided, quenched by mouthfuls of lukewarm water, leaving him hollow and hungry. He drank by tilting his head to the side and slurping. His clothes clung to him in places, saturated, and flapped like unsecured tents in others, full of air.

Billy closed his eyes and lay back, soothed by the slight warmth of the quarter-full tub, feeling the strength seep back into his bones each time he swallowed, listening to the water gurgling hungrily in the plughole as it drained away.

Finally, moving with all of the co-ordination of a jelly sack stuffed with chicken-bones, Billy struggled out of the bath and made his unsteady way downstairs, pausing in front of the full-length dressing mirror in the hall to gawp at his unfamiliarly slack features.

This illness of his had stolen away his open, earthy looks. The skin no longer fitted his face. It hung slackly, like water-logged towels on a wind-starved washing line. A cluster of ragged, blistering sores had sprouted up around his mouth and chin. A few had burst at some time during the onset of the first haze and his arrival at the mirror. His profile looked like a jumble of badly put together bones beneath a loosely fitting sheet of skin; all elbows and knees and ribs. His eyes, however, glittered, clear and yellow like marbles of polished topaz.

Scarecrows eyes, that's what these are, scarecrows eyes.

Billy could hear the sounds of the television coming from the living-room.

From nothing a black rage built in him. He wanted to shriek and hack and lash out at the face looking back through the mirror. It wasn't him, whoever he was. It wasn't him.

It's Billy-boy, that's who it is. . . Billy-boy the Scarecrow Man. . .

The fire lit inside his stiffening penis as his bladder evacuated itself. Hot urine trickled lazily down the inside of his leg. Still dribbling, he staggered through to the lounge. The rage subsided as quickly as it had risen, leaving him deflated.

Confused.

Through the window he could see the barn and the lightning split trunk of Hangman's Oak, the screaming man, in the courtyard. There were trees in the near distance (and the bad place), and hills the other way, but a fine, gauzy mist that wasn't quite rain bleached the world of any sharpness or definition.

It was hotter in here, stiflingly so. Hotter than it had been upstairs. He breathed in the sour-sweat reek of turned meat.

He turned away from the window. By the hearth, in a high-backed armchair, someone he knew he ought to recognize sat, watching the bright images conjured by the television. He was in his late sixties, blue and bloated, and several days dead by the looks of him. His silver-grey hair was plastered flat to his scalp, while vacant eye sockets, ragged with dead tendons and nerve endings pondered the delights displayed by the black and white television set.

Blow flies were gorging themselves all over the old man, squirming through the limp striated flaps of muscle where his ribcage had been torn open to expose grey, fat-flecked and crusty tubes of intestines. Dirt had gotten into the wounds.

Slippers had been jammed on the old man's feet, and his fingers positioned so they clawed at the chair's armrests, just like Captain Kirk's did on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Billy had put them like that. One hand was stripped down to the bone. The old man looked as if a spasm of agony had taken him moments before Shylock turned up looking for his pound of flesh.

He studied the dead man in his favourite chair a moment longer, confused by it all, and then turned away, heeding the growing rumbles of his stomach. Death didn't look all that mysterious laid out so openly, just messy.

He went through to the kitchen, looking for something to eat.

His clothes clung uncomfortably as he moved, the water soaked into them getting uncomfortably cold.

Cupboards lined one wall, breakfast bench and boiler another. A stainless steel drainer and sink unit stood under the room's only window. Mismatched dishes were racked up on the drainer, waiting to be put away. The plastic bin liner that had come wrapped around Pops' head was balled up in the sink, covered with rosy splashes of blood and rain water. First things first, he hefted the floorboard and slotted it back into place, closing the hole in the floor. Then he turned to the plain, meagrely stocked cupboards.

One was part filled with tins of soup and beans and other labelless non-perishables from the store. He took down a can of beans, and then rifled the drawers for a tin opener. As an afterthought, he went on through to the pantry. The old round-edged Frigidaire refrigerator was purring quietly.

Like the cupboards, the fridge belonged to the Old Mother Hubbard School of housekeeping. The best Billy could rustle up was a plate on which two defrosted steaks swam in their own rich blood. It was that or sour milk and blue stripped mould-cultivating cheddar.

Billy wandered back through to the living-room, plonking himself down in a seat next to the old man in his armchair without so much as a second thought.

Meaningless images from a tea-time soap danced across the screen, blue-white light slithering out across the room, shaping furniture and bodies in it like lumps of Playdoh .

Billy didn't waste his concentration on the small screen. With a nod in deference to the dead man, he began greedily spooning cold beans from the tin. He hadn't realized how painfully hungry he was until the first mouthful settled in his shrivelled stomach.

He slurped tomato juice from the spoon, coughed, a raspy, croupy wheeze, and sneezed, a clot of runny mucus bubbling in his nose, splashing flecks of snot over the plate of steaks. He wiped one of the pieces of meat clean.

Licked his lips, savouring the moment of anticipation.

Blood dripped back onto the plate as he lifted it to his hungry mouth.

He looked at it, curiously, for a moment, wondering what to do with the pound of prime cut, and then tore a chunk off with his teeth.

“Good stuff,” he said appreciatively, backing it up with a wet smack of his lips. He chewed, the animal's blood, already the colour of rust, dribbling down his chin.

- 46 -

Barney Doyle was glad to turn his back on the sudden swamp of chaos descending on his up until now peaceable stationhouse, even if it was only for half an hour.

Across the street, Sam Ash was busy helping Andy McKenna, some city hotshot who called himself D.S. Devlin, and his fresh-faced contingent over from Newcastle CID to take over the old youth block building. The High Street, a ribbon running no more than five hundred yards end to end had mutated into a single lane car-park.

Sixty officers had landed with Devlin, and while the hunt for Johnny Lisker had suddenly elevated itself into the big leagues, Barney felt as if he and his boys had been shut out and left somewhere in the minors.

The youth block resembled nothing more than it did a squat explosion of lime stone dumped carelessly in the middle of the picturesque street; a horse shoe knitted over with ivy climbers (an attempt at false dignity, he'd always thought) that clung to the porch and arched over the long windows as if they were making a home out of a magic cottage and not a playground for increasingly cocksure kids. The date stone set into the lintel above the door dated it as 1889.

Until as recently as yesterday the windows had been boarded and the porch door nailed shut. Now, a portable incident caravan filled one side of the playground, and a motley assortment of Fords, Vauxhalls, Skodas and white vans were slotted in wherever they could fit. The second contingent of the ever-multiplying convoy had descended on the village just after dawn, some of the drivers squeezing their vehicles into the block's playground, others, most, filing up to park in an uneven line that ran the fifty yard length of the youth block's low slung stone wall.

Barney sighed wearily.

Devlin's lackeys were in there now, probably trying to drag blood from the stones that were Old Man Lisker and Dave Lockley, not that Barney fancied their chances. Jeff Lisker was, more than likely, still well out of his head, and as of Thursday night, young Lockley seemed to have lost the power of speech altogether.

He'd had everyone out grinding their arses to the bone – poor old Charlie Adams had wasted most of yesterday commuting between Eddie McMahon's bedside and the handful of witnesses that had come forward, and as yet they had nothing concrete to show for it.

The playground itself was acting as a harbour for the milling bodies, locals and policemen alike. A uniformed officer was standing guard by the half-open porch door; a large man with what Barney would have described as “a face even his mother couldn't love.” He had his hands clasped around a steam wreathed mug, and seemed to be contemplating some secret within the chipped porcelain. Among the villagers, Barney noted several shocked faces and wide eyes, and heard the almost constant undercurrent of muted chatter, which, strangely, put him in mind of the hush normally associated with a Chapel of Rest.

Heading off down the bank, in the general direction of Evie's restaurant, he found himself, and not for the first time, pondering the bleak workings ticking away behind Johnny Lisker's state of mind. According to the handful of witnesses he'd spoken to personally, the stabbing had been pretty much a heat of the moment thing. A clash of personalities that had escalated all too quickly into violence. That Lisker carried a knife was no surprise. The boy was a menace and everyone knew it. That fact that he used it, however, was.

This was Northumberland, not New York for God's sake.

But that morning Barney Doyle had woken up with a new resolution in mind. From now on in nothing, no matter how extreme or unlikely, was going to surprise him anymore. Let precious bloody Todd Devlin be surprised by Brent Richards' stone-walling.

Gone to Brussels? Bollocks.

Barney breathed deeply, tasting the tang to the summer air, the freshness of the countryside, and that somehow indefinable quality that marked the richness of the season, all in one.

He clanged down the short flight of iron steps and onto the Waters edge's broad terrace, skipping through the maze of wooden picnic benches. The main part of Evie's restaurant faced out onto the lake, the half-glazed partition wall giving the diners an unbroken view of the eddying water. The black, hand lettered sign over the door had been his idea.

He was struck by the aromas of baking and spices almost as soon as he pushed the patio door open.

“Morning, pet,” Barney called through.

Its days as a working boathouse were long gone; Evie had inherited the four walls from her Pa more than twenty years ago, and against all the well meaning advice neighbours offered at the time, had sunk every last bean into converting it over.

The dining area was empty, but it was still early for the lunch crowd.

Evie looked up from wiping down the big kitchen table as he came through the swing door. She was a comfortable looking woman, happy with her lot. Large, friendly eyes and an ever ready smile.

Seeing the baleful expression pasted over Barney's usually cheerful face, she stopped swabbing at the immaculate table, throwing the dish rag in the direction of the double sink unit, and switched on the Cona machine. Bubbles rose slowly, gurgling. It made him think of the old coffee advert when the woman hid in the kitchen, making silly noises. He watched Evie, but her lips weren't moving so it wasn't a put on.  The extractor fans hummed loudly, a swarm of angry bees, fighting for attention over the gurgling percolator.

The kitchen was white-tiled and excessively bright; fluorescent strip lights and carefully angled spot lights chasing away every inch of dark. There was a large oven set into the far wall, and a line of gas burners beside it. Evie looked as if she was about to say something, but the oven timer buzzed and she bustled over to attend to the pastries first. Barney pulled up a spare seat and sat himself down at the empty table, content to watch his wife at work. Barney never tired of watching her cook. It was akin to standing in the epicentre of a tightly reined in hurricane.

Controlled chaos, but only just.  He dug around in his coat pocket, taking out his cigarette roller and liquorice papers. This once he didn’t care about any no-smoking laws.

“Quiet for a Sunday breakfast,” he observed, running the roller through his fingers.

“Come on, Sherlock, how many times do I have to tell you?” Evie scolded lightly and without shifting her attention from the steaming tray of pastries.

“How about calling it a special occasion?”

“You know the score. There's a place out on the terrace for special occasions. Not in the kitchen.”

“Okay,” he shrugged, letting out a practiced and long-suffering sigh, slipped the roller and papers back into his pocket. “I get the message. Smoking's bad for my health.”

“Certainly is if you try it in here,” Evie agreed sweetly. The kitchen was cold, despite the radiators and the ripening warmth of outside. “Anyway, and to what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked, pouring two mugs of coffee and joining him at the table.

“I needed a break from the circus. This hotshot city fella, Devlin's just about taken over the youth block, and every bugger else seems to be hanging on his every word. This whole thing’s bigger than our missing kids.” He gave a sharp laugh that contained precious little humour in it. “And it's pretty plain they don't want an old sod like me getting under their feet while they play detective.”

“Aw, it can't be that bad, surely?”

“Believe me, Evie pet, it sure as hell can.”

“You worry too much is all.”

“'Yeah, sometimes, maybe. But I don't like it, Evie. I can't seem to scratch the itch that says this thing's turning into a damned nightmare. I can't seem to forget about that fella in the woods. And now I get the feelin' they're squeezing me out this side, too.”

“Trust me, Sherlock, it’s just that fertile imagination of yours playing tricks. You wait and see.” Evie moved to pour a second mug of coffee, wiping her flour-dusted hands on her apron as she did so. Barney couldn't help but smile when he saw the sparkle behind her eyes slip into humour when she saw he was watching. “And don't even think about trying to sneak a cigarette while my back’s turned.”

“Wouldn't dream of it, pet.”

“See you don't.”

*   *   *   *   *

Jack Kemp, sat in the cobbled together interview room two doors down from the already buzzing incident room, was, as yet, unaware of Barney's sudden attack of the Big Brother's. He had problems of his own. One, not least of which was facing him over the oblong table.

Andy McKenna, the unofficial head-honcho as of dawn today, entered the room just as Kemp was switching on the tape recorder and informing Jeff Lisker that he was obliged to aid their enquiries in any way he could. Andy closed the door as quietly as the oil-hungry hinges would allow. Not wanting to disturb the questioning before it had a chance to get underway, he ignored the spare seat at the table, and instead went over to the room's only window and perched on its deep-tiled sill. The gentle susurrations of the morning's mild breeze curled lazily through the half open fly-window.

Even without the 1889 date stone for a giveaway, it wouldn't have been too difficult to guess when the Dickensian schoolhouse had been built. The doors were solid timber, with small glass observation panels at head height, and the thick plaster covered walls worked wonders for the air-conditioning.

Andy settled himself on the sill. Beyond the window lay another piss ant country village, with its single street of shops and a population of less than six hundred. On this side of the window, however, the scene was much more his particular kettle of vermin.

The interview room resembled everything he hated from his school days; Parquet floors, plastic backed chairs and wooden desks stacked up against the back wall, lacklustre walls, bare bulb and blackboard. Despite its more recent incarnation as a youth club, the air still held that unforgettable odour Andy put down to a century of semolina and school dinners.

Ring files full of procedure notes were stacked on the table, next to which the tape recorder rolled, Kemp's fingers drummed, and his cigarette dwindled.

Besides the cold semolina and school dinners, the damp, sour smell of disuse lingered.

Andy considered going back through to get himself a coffee, but seeing Kemp set his own aside, decided against it.

“I think you know why you're here,” Kemp spoke slowly and plainly, making sure every word was easily understood by the shabby character across the table. His tousled, sandy mop of hair gave Kemp a mussed, boyish appearance that was only enhanced by his wide, beguiling grin. Andy was struck with the sudden and glaring perception that he was watching a shark polish off the last minnow in the pool. “I want you to tell me everything you told Constable Adams on Thursday night. Take your time, start from the beginning and don't leave anything out. Let me be the judge of what is, and isn't, important. If anything pops into your head, don't be afraid to speak up. It'll be better for everyone concerned if we can get this sorted out quickly.”

It would also be a miracle, especially after the butcher's job in the General, Andy added for his own benefit.

Johnny's father had managed to shave and run a comb through his hair since Thursday, but didn't look any better for it. He blinked, nodding his pudgy, round-face, his sickly eyes darting everywhere. He sniffed, shoulders slumped as if the weight of the world was stacked on them, and when he spoke, there was a slight tremor in his mumbling voice.

Kemp had to ask him to speak up, and did well not to wrinkle his nose at the sour cocktail of sweat, cigarettes and stale beer emanating from his body. Lisker leaned forward on his elbows, figuring he was talking to an idiot.

“Look, like I tol' Charlie, even if'n I knew where the mongrel was, I wouldn't be tellin' no one and certainly not no cop.”

Something close to pride glimmered in the man's sickly eyes. “You can't make me shop me own boy.”

Kemp just shrugged.

“True,” he conceded. He frowned, glanced at Andy, and then continued. “That's up to you, and I'm sorry if you think you're being treated unfairly, Mr Lisker. Please believe me when I say I'm only trying to do what I think is best. You're a grown man, I'm sure you can appreciate my position here. I've got one lad dead and another on the critical list, and a handful of eye witnesses who can place Johnny at the scene, with the knife in his hand. Now, on top of that there's been a vicious attack this morning and your son's not been accounted for. So, I'll ask you once again, have you any idea where Johnny might be?”

Lisker shook his head and sniffed. “Like I says before, no I ain't! He don't tell me where he's goin' no more. He's big enough an' ugly enough to take care o' himself, see.”

“And you're certain your son's not been back home since then?” Kemp pressed, resting the tips of his fingers together, circling his thumbs hypnotically. He didn't believe one word of it, and made sure everyone in the room knew as much with the solitary shake of the head as he finished speaking.

“Like I said.”

“Of course, like you said. Okay, what say you tell us something about Johnny. Give me a dad's eye view, if you like. Who does he knock about with? Where does he hang out? That sort of stuff.”'

Jeff Lisker looked uncomfortable for a moment, the cogs slowly ratchetting over as he reassessed his position and straightened up in his chair. “Ain't much to tell. I'm sure you know pretty much everythin' anyway, so I can't see what you got to gain from me tellin' you that sort of stuff. . .” He seemed immensely pleased with his manoeuvring. One point scored, the moral victory his.

“Point noted, Mr Lisker, but, as I said, let me be the judge. Thursday night, Johnny went, with friends, to The Railway House on the High Street, yes?”

“If'n you say so.”

“You're not being very helpful, Mr Lisker. Take it from me, Thursday night, your son was in The Railway House with some of his friends.' Jack checked the list of names off against those in his notes. 'Dave Lockley, Alex Slater and Eddie McMahon. No one's seen hide nor hair of either Johnny or Alex since then, and as you already know, Eddie is still in intensive care. Now, rather than ask you a lot of questions you've probably been asked a dozen times over, let me offer a you few suggestions and we'll see where we go from there. Okay?”

“Yeah. . . well, whatever you say.”

“Okay, then, Mr Lisker,” Kemp said neutrally. “According to your original statement, your son, Johnny, left the house just after eight, to meet some of his friends for a drink, and you haven't seen him since then?”

“Yeah, that's what I said.”

Kemp sighed wearily, as though unconvinced. “Look, Jeff, I'll be straight with you. I've met some very good liars in my time but you're not one of them. Now, either you tell me where your son is, or I'll have you charged with withholding evidence, complicity to murder, harbouring a wanted criminal, and whatever else I can think up.” He sat back, and, smiling slowly, spread his arms wide. “Your choice?”

Lisker stared at him, opening and closing his mouth, lost and looking very much like a befuddled goldfish at the same time. Sweat was beading on his brow like a rash of pimples, but he looked too dazed to wipe it away.

On the window ledge, Andy tensed and leaned forward, enjoying the battle of wills taking place across the table. Score one for the good guys.

Finally, Lisker mumbled, “All right, all right. Yeah, he did come home. About four o’clock Friday morning. But he ain’t been back since an’ I don't know where he’s gone,” he shook his head, his face assuming a number of conflicting emotions. “Satisfied?”

Jack Kemp gave him a slight smile of encouragement.

“You want to tell me about it?”

Lisker managed a watery smile. He closed his eyes; licked his cracked lips. At last, and in a halting voice, he said, “It was after Charlie came round, so I weren’t lyin’ to ‘im. I hadn't seen Johnny for a couple of days, when he comes in lookin’ mighty pleased with ‘imself. I told ‘'im Charlie’d been round seekin’ ‘im, but he reckoned it were jus’ the Pigs makin’ a fuss o'er nothin’.” Jeff Lisker put his fingertips to his temples, massaging the spot lightly and still wincing, as if merely recounting the events surrounding his last, brief encounter with his wayward son had given him the makings of an excruciating headache.

Something cold, implacable, had surfaced in Kemp’s clear, blue eyes. Doodling disconcertingly on the top sheet of a yellow reporter's note pad, as if his attention was only half on the confession, he said, “Much better. Now, I don't think your son has gone far, and I'm not convinced that you don't know where he is. What I want to know is this, are you still holding out on me, Jeff? Because I swear to God if you are, your life won't be worth the price of a piss when I've finished with you. Understand me?”

Lisker bowed his head and covered his eyes with his hand.  “Yes,” he whispered.

“So, you don't have any idea where he might be hiding?” Kemp asked again.

From somewhere within his own private darkness, Jeff Lisker seemed to dredge up the words of a memory. “I don't. . . He took off with the sleepin' bags. . . said somethin’ t’Alex about layin’ low someplace where they used to play. . .”

“Go on.”

“If’n he were ‘ere, I'd ‘ave said for you to ask Alex. Him’n Johnny were always gettin’ into trouble together, even when they were nippers. Terrible twins, y’know.”

“He's not here though, is he?”

“Nope, I guess he ain’t.”

“And you have no idea where this place might be?” Kemp pressed.

“Nope. They used to hang round down by the lake, y’know, playin’ footie in the park, like most kids their age. Used to knock about up by the peaks in summer, too.”

“The peaks?”

“Just up past the Hill,” Lisker pointed away in what he assumed was the direction of Moses Hill. “Can't miss ‘em. Like a big wall surroundin’ the village. Natural amphitheatre's what they call it, I think. Y’know, like a bowl shape.”

“Thank you, Mr Lisker.” Kemp concluded, noting down both of the areas as possibles for the grid search.

This peaks idea sounded promising. Plenty of places to lose yourself up there, that was for sure.

“He's not a bad lad, y'know. Not really.”

“I'm afraid I'll have to take your word for that,” Jack Kemp commented, recapping the biro he had been twiddling with throughout the interview.

“He's just been a bit messed up since he had that fall out with his lass before Christmas.”

“Girlfriend?” Andy put in, speaking for the first time. He and Kemp exchanged a look that seemed to say: Okay, how come nobody thought to mention this little gem before? A tic in Kemp's right cheek made half his face twitch. His blue eyes looked hard and cool. Steel blue, nearer to grey. The muscles in his jaw clenched and unclenched. The cords of muscle in his neck were stretched taut. He looked like he wanted to break something in half. Anything. Andy was struck by a second, weirder insight; if Kemp had been a Warner Brothers cartoon character, steam would have been pouring from his ears. He didn't laugh.

“Yeah,” Lisker repeated. 'What was her name again? Allie somethin’ or other, I think, but I wouldn't like ‘'put me life on it.”

“You wouldn't still have her address at home would you?” AndyMcKenna prompted, coming down off his perch.

“Not do you much good even if’n I had, seein’ as how she got herself killed in a car crash just after her an’ our Johnny's fall out. Don't think he's ever forgiven himself. . . Still, the way he treated that lass it was a wonder she didn't walk out sooner. Most of ‘em young ‘uns wouldn't have put up with his schemin’ shenanigans all the time. . .”

*   *   *   *   *

“Send the helicopter up first. Cover the area here, between Devils Water and the peaks. I want to get that grid search co-ordinated and off the ground next.”

“Search and cordon the area around Moses Hill?”

“Yep. Get the local boys to round up a posse from the willing residents. Let them feel like they're doing something useful.”

“No problem, Skip.”

“Good, because if those two are anywhere, they're up there.”

“Two needles in one enormous fucking haystack though, Skip.”

“I prefer to think of those two as rats on a shit heap, Jack.”

“Same difference. Speaking of rats, where's Devlin?”

“The PNC's number crunching came up with a Corbridge townhouse after the balls up at the health farm.”

“If Richards has gone to Brussels my arse is a monkey's knob rest.”

“Quite. Devlin's pulled two units of Specials.”

“Going for overkill, huh?”

“That's the way he wants to play it, so who am I to argue. In the meantime he's in serious danger of chasing the doctor up his own dark and slimy orifice.”

“What the hell do you make of all this, Skip?”

“I haven't got a sodding clue, Jack lad. But keep that to yourself.”

- 47 -

No lights on and no signs of anyone being at home.

Surprise, surprise.

Devlin checked his watch, counting off seven seconds. The three marksmen were in place and had been for six minutes now, two out front, their scopes aiming down from perches above the home bakery and the family butchers two doors down, the other out back, in place in a now vacated child's nursery. Probably hunkered down between mobiles of Thomas The Bloody Tank Engine and cutesie Care Bears.

Three snipers and seventeen Special Patrolmen for one screwed up head doctor who, by the looks of things, wasn't even home.

A mouth ulcer Devlin didn't remember having when he woke up twenty seven hours ago, had inflamed and finally ruptured in the last twenty minutes and was now stinging like antiseptic being splashed copiously on an open wound every time saliva got anywhere near the weeping blister.

He would have felt a whole lot happier if Kristy had let him take her back to her flat, rather than fussed about having to spend time alone in the Chapel. Sure it was one hell of a shock, seeing a friend laid out like a slab of meat on a butchers block, but even so, Kristy French was one headstrong lady he definitely wouldn't have put down as a religious fruitcake, but each to his or her own particular brand of poison.

He was busy biting the ulcer out of his cheek when a radio crackled. Someone answered. Devlin checked the points of access and escape off mentally: Two ground floor windows front, three back, none to either side, and two doors, one front and one back.

All points covered by at least one gun. No retreat, no surrender. He gave the word, echoed on the ring of radios, counted to five before dropping into a loose crouch and following the two men at his side, forward. Fire axes slammed into the solid oak door, splitting first the centre panel, then the brass bedding holding the lock. Two officers shoulder charged through.

Break in, three seconds.

They fanned off to right and left, the rearguard taking the stairs three and four at a time.

The downstairs fairly reeked with the astringent smells of disinfectant and other cleaning agents.

Officers shouldered open the back door. The kitchen, empty. Lounge, empty. Devlin dropped his shoulder and kicked open the study door, a move no academy had taught him, but virtually every cops and robbers movie on the box had drummed in for all their sins.

Shelves full of imposing manuals. Desk, neatly segregated, Pen, capped and in the centre of the deer hide blotter. A photo, between diplomas, of an inanely grinning property developer and Brent Richards drooling over the then run down Pilgrim's Hall.

Sounds of a scuffle upstairs, heavy feet, floorboards complaining. A door slamming.

Another photograph mounted on the wall, Richards and an army sergeant Devlin recognised from the folders of case notes as Monk Sanders, the woodland suicide. Now there was one nasty looking bugger. Mean. Hard.

Muffled voices. Another door slammed followed by footsteps on the stairs.

Devlin backed out of the study to see Sam Ash frog-marching Richards down the stairs. The smile had slipped. He looked stunned. Shell-shocked. Behind him, two officers shoved a naked Mediterranean kid of seventeen, tops, down the stairs. Richards looked like shit. He hadn't shaved, dark circles ringed his eyes. Hair dishevelled. Skin greasy and sallow. He looked unhealthily like a corpse. The kid spat at the back of his head, muttered a curse in Portuguese, and got a cuffing around his own head for his pleasure. Richards stumbled on the step, and to his credit, Sam didn't let him fall.

The door at the top of the stairs opened again.

“No. . . No. . . .” Richards was mewling, over and over.

Scott Jordan, the youngest of the squad to come out with Devlin, came down the stairs holding a child, naked, ribs heaving, to his chest. Scott was crying, stroking the bairn's head with his big, solid hand. Comforting. Telling her everything was going to be all right. She didn't look any older than six.

Devlin felt sick.

- 48-

Ben Shelton folded back the paper on the tragic story of Samira, the little girl from Rwanda with big brown eyes and a ponytail. Born in 1998, the doctor's report, reprinted in the two page article, detailed her difficulty urinating and defecating alongside the one line that said she had been sexually violated.

When the girl's mother found her, she was unconscious, foaming at the mouth, her underwear missing and blood streaming from between her legs.

The bare bones report was simply more horrible than any vein Ben's recent oasis of creativity could hope to tap. After three hours spent toying with the affections of an embittered, elemental lover Ben had opted out of page one hundred and nine's almost obligatory sex scene, choosing instead to take Joe Cruze, his luckless hero into a poker game, one step further from the arms and eyes they would adore given half the chance. Poker gave somebody's Mr Wrong a flawless alibi for a murder that no matter how graphically he chose to portray it could never live alongside the real life horrors of that poor little girl in Rwanda.

In the family room, Mick Jagger and The Stones were singing the most inappropriate record Ben had in his collection: Daddy, you're a fool to cry.

The page indicator in the top left of the amber screen was ticking over with alarming regularity, one hundred and fifteen pages in just shy of eight days; admittedly they were all sleepless ones, and right now Ben wanted nothing more luxurious than to crash out on the sofa and forget all about his week-old angels and demons. He checked back through the last three screens for signs of tiredness taking over from typing. The sense of urban decay was there, and strong; an arrow through the heart of his memories of Elswick, Byker, Benwell, and Paradise, inner city areas with escalating inner city problems. Places that needed his angels to combat their very real demons. Places where dreams held close seemed to go up in smoke more times than not.

He so much wanted The Sufferers Song to be more than just a parable of bad come good in the face of good gone alarmingly wrong. He wanted it to be worthwhile. Wanted it to have something to say on just about every level the reader cared to explore. Life is horrible. Bad things happen, just open the paper. Ask Samira.

Early on, he'd found the hook to take his world apart. The thread of suffering that touches the everyday. The song to end all songs. The heart breaker. Joe Cruze was the embodiment of everything Ben hated about this place. Joe was blind, no matter than he could see in twenty-twenty, because what he did see wasn't worth the effort of looking for. Joe was his pariah with a heart of glass. He touched lives and left the visceral scars of pleasure to mark his passing, as well as the more common scars of pain.

Nothing about Joe Cruze was straightforward. That made him fun for Ben and dangerous for the inhabitants of Ben's paper and ink world. Joe Cruze was a combination of the worst elements of everyone he knew. And there, Ben knew, he was playing with fire. Getting close to the edge.

But that was the whole point. The paradox. These places he was trying to recreate were genuinely seedy. Places where people waited in groups for the streetlights to change colour and the red man to go green, needing the comfort of numbers. Places where roofs burnt through to timbers, cars to husks of dead metal. Where weeds grew slower than the spray-can spawned graffiti and artists prostituted themselves for the price of a cardboard burger. These streets weren't clean and pure. They weren't places where dads could sit and watch their children play at pirates on the roundabout. And it was that feeling of uneasy friction, the two rubbing dangerously together, that he wanted to capture.

Fuzzy radio reports were beginning to filter through about some sort of trouble in Hexham through the night, the flip-side of the coin where reality came dangerously close to superseding fiction.

Scooby, in his familiar sprawl beneath both desk and feet, was flat out and snoring, his breathing like a wet valve on a compressed air cylinder. These days the old Labrador's breathing shifted between that of a croupy baby and the wet valve, rarely sounding healthy.

After backing up three separate Work-In-Progress flash drives this time, Ben finally relented and gave in to the Pied Piper of Tiredness and logged out of the system, promising himself the luxury of five hours uninterrupted sleep between know and the next session at the keyboard.

On the way through, he turned the stereo off, halfway through the whoops of Sympathy for the Devil, poured himself a cold glass of fresh orange, and checked the back door for a second time, to make sure it was firmly closed and locked.

Ben made a note to get in touch with Taryn Heyward, to check if she was interested in seeing the first one hundred plus pages before she got back to his publishers, and stuck it to the fridge door with a gnome magnet.

Upstairs, he undressed and slipped in between the unmade sheets, pulling the blankets halfway up his chest. He was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, and dreaming just after.

*   *   *   *   *

Something was wrong.

Heavy under the dream calliope pipes of the funland. Initially, Ben tried to incorporate the drumming sounds into his dream, shaping the plasticine world with his sleeping, but still peculiarly lucid thoughts, but eventually the banging became too heavy. Too insistent.

He woke at ten, with someone banging fit to break down his front door.

Groggily, Ben swung his legs around, pulled on a pair of boxers and went to answer whoever it was.

“Hold your horses,” he called down. Scooby was still curled up and sleeping, somehow. Through the glass panel, Ben could see the policeman's outline, stippled to the point of virtual anonymity by the safety glass. “I'm coming, I'm coming.”

Coming down the stairs, Ben's first instinct was not to open the door; that way the trouble, whatever it was, could not get to him through the glass. That in itself wasn't enough to prevent him from opening the door to Barney Doyle.

Barney was standing awkwardly in the doorway, wringing his hands for want of a hat to take his anxiety out on, mouth twitching like a jumpy rabbit. “Sorry to be getting you up, Ben. Didn't figure on you still being asleep though.”

“That's okay, Barn. Come on in. Take the weight off your feet. You want a coffee? You look like you could do with one, if you don't mind me saying.”

“Please. Just fill the mug with caffeine. No need to worry about the water.”

“Sounds ominous. Better come through and tell me what I can do.”

Ben pottered, scooping up a tee shirt from the back of the sofa and pulling it on, lifting down the decaffeinated Alta Rica and clean mugs, filling the kettle from the mixer taps and setting it to boil, while Barney explained, obviously feeling uncomfortable with his role of chief confessor. He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, loosened his tie, and asked Ben if he minded, indicating his tobacco roller.

“No problem, There's an ashtray on the windowsill.”

“Evie won't have the stuff near her,” Barney confided. “Makes everything smell like week-dead ferrets, she says.”

“Now there's a pleasant thought, perhaps-”

“You already agreed, I'm afraid. Anyhow, I'm here because I need to ask a favour, Ben. Now I know we haven't always seen eye to eye on things, but I don't see eye to eye with most folks, truth be told. Perk of the job, I suppose. The thing is, you're a decent enough bloke, and you're smart. Reckon you need to be pretty observant doing all that writing malarkey, right?”

“Where's this going, Barn?”

Doyle licked the edge down on his licorice paper roll-up, put it between tight lips and lit it before he went on.

“Doubtless you've heard about the nonsense in the pub last week. Come to think on, I've seen you since to talk about it, yes?”

Ben poured out the coffees, and then perched on the breakfast counter to listen.

“Edward McMahon? That was the lad Johnny stabbed, he died in the General, and all things considered things have started getting mighty strange around here since.”

“I've seen the caravans.”

“Yep. We’re talking full scale invasion. The thing is, McMahon's not the only problem. We pulled a suicide out of Dipton Wood Friday morning and it turns out Frank Rogan's been missing just about as long, if not longer. It's all hooked up with some funny stuff, and that's why the big boys have come in guns blazing. Listen to me would you, going around in circles again. Hellfire, I'll just spit it out straight for once. Some very nasty things have been happening and everyone on my side of the job-fence wants to get his hands on Johnny Lisker and his pal, quick-smart. Now, you being an observant sort of chap, I was thinking, you might want to join us. An extra pair of eyes. Thought of maybe asking your brother, too. We're getting some folks together to join the teams, help spread the legwork out better.”

Ben was smiling wryly. Haven't always seen eye to eye?  For the literal translation see came to blows once, and only once mind you, when Ben had been in his early twenties and tanked up with enough of the brown stuff to float a navy. The two of them had been firm friends virtually from the moment Barney's club of a fist flattened Ben into becoming a pacifist. Funny thing was, since the runaway success of The Swords of Scorn every time Barney wanted to ask anything he ended up getting his tongue tied around his tonsils.

“If you're asking me to join the search party, just give me time to grab some clothes. If you're asking me to do anything else, you'd better run through that explanation again, this time in English.”

“Good job I'm not asking you for money or we'd be here all day.”

“All week, more like,” Ben joked.

“Hell, depends how much it was and how quickly I needed it,” Barney agreed, drawing deeply on his roll-up, his words wreathed in sickly sweet smoke.

“When do you need me?”

“What is it now, ten past ten? Fifty minutes too soon?”

“No sweat.”

“Get yourself wrapped up; you've just drawn the short straw. Forty of us are joining the Special's from Newcastle in a methodical grid search of the peaks around Moses Hill.”

“And what will you be doing when all this is going on, or shouldn't I ask?”

“Taking another twenty folks down to the riverside, through the park and that way. Should be back home in time for tea.”

“With any luck.”

“Evie always says I'm lucky. Well, I've got to press-gang the rest of the able bodied men.”

“They won't know what smooth talking devil hit them.”

“Funny, Benjamin.”

“One thing.”

“Only one?”

“I'd appreciate it if you steered clear of Mike, he's feeling pretty low right now.”

“Oh Christ alight, of course. It would have been Hannah's fortieth, when? Yesterday?”

Ben hadn't even thought about it. May 17th. “Today.”

“God, with all this going on I hadn't even thought.”

“Tell me about it, and I haven't even got a decent excuse for forgetting.”

“Look, how about I get Evie to sort something together and we drag Mike out to take his mind off it. Won't be nothing flash mind. The pair of you have been as good as kids to me and Evie for longer than I care to think back. I can't believe I forgot something like this.”

“Thanks, Barn. You're a bloody good man, and don't let none of those city hotshots tell you otherwise.”

“Me? Let a bunch of those snotty-nosed kids get me down? Now who's being stupid?”

*   *   *   *   *

There was an air of purpose to the Chaos inside the converted youth block. Things that had to be done were getting done, no matter that the methods behind the execution were more often than not less than straightforward. Tasks and details fractured down like the spines on an enlarging Mandelbrotset.

Someone had Radio One on and was listening to Simon Bates’ Our Tune. Another sob story without a happy ending. The villagers had taken to congregating in the cloakroom area, out of the way as best as possible, and were in the process of electing Ben and Daniel Tanner as spokesmen should any speaking need to be done, which suited both men just fine.

Coffees and teas were being organized in rotas, Charlie Adams’ well thought out addition to the havoc. Plastic beakers spawning to fill every unoccupied flat surface.

One of the old classrooms had been taken over as a centralised communications setup for the rapidly growing network. Both Johnny Lisker’s and Alex Slater's physical descriptions and current photographs had been circulated by Telex to every force, port and customs team in the country. Andy McKenna and Todd Devlin had naturally taken control of the whole show; McKenna governing the logistics of the localised search, Devlin otherwise occupied with Dr Brent Richards, building what he hoped to God was a watertight, airtight and any other form of tight case that would effectively finish the paedophile. Kristy French, unfettered by chains of office and Civil Rights had already phoned in her own damning indictment following a traumatic five minutes with Scott Jordan. Without actually naming names, but saying enough to give any game the reader cared to scratch the surface for away, Kristy nailed the doctor’s first wrist firmly to the cross.

As Ben had expected, the conversations clung fragilely to one of two topics; yesterday's poor showing in the football, and the more excitable buzz of the murder hunt – because that was what it had become, after all. The rumours were growing while he listened, hearsay moulding itself into indisputable fact with a simple nod and an: “I heard it from so-and-so,” wink.

He wondered what sort of opinions were filtering outside to the press of cameras, micro recorders and notepads in the sweaty palms of the journalists locked out in the playground.

The sooner the show hit the road, the better for all concerned.

Rubber handled torches and plastic doggy bags were dished out along with the third round of coffees. Ben saw Sam Ash twice, the local man was walking with a man on his back, or a monkey, or another fistful-cum-headful of hate. Ben recognised the look in Sam's eyes. He'd seen it in Mike's not so long ago. Maybe suffering was a plague. Hang around people who suffer out of habit and you pick up that habit, bad that it is. Ben wanted to ask what the monkey-man was, if he could help with the burden, but he was sure the rumours would filter through to him eventually. That fact was probably more reliable than wildfire catching in the Australian Bush. Besides, Ben wasn't so sure he was in a position to help himself let alone anyone else if it came down to it. A paranoid neurotic dressed up as a hopelessly indecisive writer “chappy”, to quote Barney Doyle’s way of thinking. Ben tended to agree, if not whole-heartedly, at least shamelessly. Most of the time.

So they exchanged nods, neither paying much attention to anything outside their own thoughts.

It seemed to Ben that the whole thing was taking rather a long time. Certainly not the slick, fluid operations of Hawaii Five-O and The Professionals. Paperwork was being checked and double checked. He'd seen archaeologists move quicker when they thought someone had unearthed an ancient treasure without thinking to seek their permission before hand, but then, archaeologists were something else and in the main a rule unto their own.

And there was at least one journalist, he noted wryly, who had made it through the cordon. Trust that little band of bloodhounds to get a sniff come the scent of blood. Mind you, if he hadn't heard her phoning in a brief stop gap piece on some local doctor, he would have placed the slender, shaggy haired blonde with tired eyes and slumped, burdened shoulders, as a worn out athlete, maybe one of the Shire's aerobics instructors. Barney Doyle put him straight on that score, too.

“That girl? She's like a strange attractor for disaster. I mean, when they get around to burying her, I'll lay odds black flowers will grow out of the ground thereabouts.”

“You saying she's a jinx?”

“Nope, just that she's got into the bad habit of sticking her nose into exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.”

“And you'd know all about that, right?”

“Put it this way, Ben son, and this goes no further. People around her have an alarming habit of getting themselves killed.”

“No kidding?”

“God's honest, lad. That's what all this fuss is about,” Barney checked both ways for people in earshot, then whispered: “Found her photographer friend ripped apart in the General this morning.”

“I didn't hear that on the news.”

“And you're not going to either.”

Warming to the subject, Ben asked, “And who else?”

“How the hell should I know? But since she turned up I ain't had me a decent night's sleep. Ain't that enough?”

“She sounds like a regular little Jonah.”

Jack Kemp and Andy McKenna came into the cloakroom then, clapping their hands for a bit of quiet and attention. The desired hush fell.

*   *   *   *   *

“Two teams of twenty. When I read your name out go through to the hall area with Officer Kemp. Okay, Daniel Tanner, Terry Matthews, Seth Lawson, Jim Becket,” Ben heard his own name four men down the line and joined the procession winding through to the central hall.

There, they were split into two divisions of ten, Jack Kemp taking charge of one, and an officer he introduced as Greg Stafford, the other. Both Daniel and Ben found themselves lining up with Kemp, the Jonah girl and a handful of others made up of PC's and villagers. They all had that same look in their eye.

Ben was put in mind of the opening line from The Swords of Scorn, “Drink to me with thine eyes alone.”

No adoration here though.

Something similar to bloodlust as the pack ordered itself into ranks of strength and priority. Something primitive was happening here, an adaptation of the Survival law. Both Daniel and Ben ended up bringing up the rear, neither taken with the unhealthy fascination that seemed to be gripping many of the locals. Seth Lawson, for God's sake, had turned up in his Suzuki 4x4 with a shotgun in the trailer.

Ben almost felt sorry for Johnny Lisker and Alex Slater. Things were in serious danger of getting out of hand, like the classic nightmare of the blood-thirsty pack in the movie remake of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. Villagers gone bad. It was something about the pack mentality that bred and brought out the worst sorts of hungers.

Technology was taking over the old hall, a hive of terminals, the digital interactive incident board, faxes, printers and keyboards. Snakes of cable and wire hooking Westbrooke and the incident room up with the Police National Computer network and the rest of the real world out there.

More going on here than meets the eye, Ben thought, digging around in the pockets of his wax jacket for the half eaten tube of extra strong mints he thought he remembered leaving there.

“All a bit gung-ho,” he commented to Daniel Tanner.

“Too right, pal. Some way to spend a Sunday.” Daniel let out a long, weary sigh. “I'd promised the girls a picnic down by the lake, but I suppose we'll have to do that tomorrow now. Hope the weather holds; otherwise my life won't be worth living.”

Jack Kemp took his team aside to explain the rudiments of their search technique. “Basically, we are going to make a long line, arms stretched fingertip to fingertip, and fan out over the countryside up and around the cauldron area behind Moses Hill.”

“Why up there?” Seth Lawson wanted to know; the middle aged sheep farmer obviously wasn't about to take anything the outsiders said as gospel.

“We've had a tip off that Lisker's still in the area, most likely hiding in one of two places. The lake or the hills. We drew the shorter of the two straws.”

“How're we getting up there? We walking?”

“Not unless you want to. We've got transit vans outside. The way I see it, we drive out along the Spine Road, circle back on ourselves and come at the hills that way. That sound okay to everybody?”

A few nods.

Andy McKenna came in then, pulled Kemp to one side, his words a vigorous whisper that didn't carry. Kemp wandered back over, looking nonplussed.

“Just going to be a minute folks. Why don't you go out to the van and I'll catch up with you out there. Kristy, can I have a word for a second, please.”

The Jonah girl, McKenna and Kemp disappeared through the double doors, talking in an animated huddle.

*   *   *   *   *

Todd Devlin was in the corridor. Like Kristy, he hadn't slept since Friday night. Unlike Kristy, it was not some form of revenge retribution kick that kept him awake and functioning. The fever was adrenaline pure and simple. High octane hype pumping into his veins.

One thing, he knew. Brent Richards could not keep it up. He had waived his right to counsel. Made his one telephone call, watched by Devlin. He remembered the doctor's words clearly, unable to read any sense into the layer of depths hidden in them.

“Give me Jenifer. . . Jenifer, the manila folder on my desk. Yes. . . Have Robert and Richie continue to clean up the paperhouse. . . No. . . No. Definitely out of the question. . . No, they have not charged me with anything. So don't go worrying yourself. I shall see you in the morning. Sleep well, Jenifer.”

What the hell was cleaning up the paperhouse supposed to mean?

Should have had the bloody line tapped so they could hear the conversation from both sides. It might have made more sense that way.

Even then, he had a strong hunch that Brent Richards would have sounded as if he were talking gobbledegook. And that bugged Devlin. Richards was trying to pull the wool over his eyes, no doubt about that. And no doubt either, that Richards considered himself a big stakes player in his own little league game, but

Todd Devlin had the weight of the entire constabulary behind him, and a suspicion forming that might just blow the hatch off this whole sordid mess.

He decided it was time to put both to the test.

Walking back into the converted classroom, Devlin closed the door and faced down the physician with one question that voiced the essence of his suspicion. Deliberately, he didn't bother to set the tape recorder playing. This one was for his ears alone.

“Tell me, doc. Why did you kill Monk Sanders?”

He saw the glimmer behind Richards’ eyes. Fear. Shock. Quickly masked. Bingo.

*   *   *   *   *

Out in the hills, Johnny watched them coming in their droves.

He wondered how they would have felt if they knew he was ready for them? Shit scared, probably. No good this lot. They made him want to puke.

He didn't feel good. He'd had it with Alex. Fucking wimp. Whinge, whinge, whinge. Its too cold. . . I'm hungry. .  What're we going to do. . ? Fucking wimp.

Johnny had had to chase him out of the Judas Hole before he ended up putting his fist through his face.

Fucking wimp.

And now they were coming looking for him. Well, he'd be damned if they were going to find him, and was sure as hell they weren't going to be taking him back down with them when they went.

Not unless they were willing to die trying, that was.

“I'm hungry, Alex,” he shouted up the chimney flue. “Put some fuckin’ dinner on, will ya.”

No sense in worrying about it.

*   *   *   *   *

Kemp and Kristy French joined up with the convoy as it set up to move out.

There was an appetite to the whole scenario that Kristy found particularly ugly. Like Ben Shelton before her, she was put in mind of the village witch hunt at the end of Hammer Films interpretation of Frankenstein. The atmosphere really was unhealthily similar.

She clambered into the back of the transit, squashing up onto the wooden benchseat opposite a row of hungry faces she didn't recognise from Adam.

Kemp drove, preoccupied with Devlin's intuitive leap. Logic put Brent Richards somewhere near the centre of this endless knot, but he could not for the life of him see the threads that pulled it all together.

There had to be something he was missing.

“Won't miss a trick,” someone assured him, grinning.

They're treating this like a school bloody outing, he realised, suddenly aware of the frisson building steadily between the hunters.

How did it come to this?

- 49 -

They came to a halt beneath the ragged spire of the old chapel, a mile and a half out along the Hexham Road.

“What is this place?”

“Old chapel. The church sold it off years ago. The paper mill bought it to use as a warehouse.”

“Creepy.”

“You should see it in the dark, lad.”

Gratefully, the air of expectancy, hunger even, to the hunt seemed to be dissipating. Common sense and the cold getting to them, Ben thought wryly. “The country air sure doesn't breed Bolshevik rebels like it used to,” he joked to Daniel Tanner, keeping his voice down to keep the gag private. Not that he thought the posse would understand let alone appreciate his attempt at humour. He just didn't want to have to try and explain himself out of a needlessly messy corner.

Greg Stafford brought the second van to a halt ten feet from theirs, grinding the stick shift down through the gears noisily. Black fumes coughed out of the exhaust pipe, polluting the summer afternoon with their own peculiarly airless scent.

“So how come it was built all the way out here in the first place?” Kristy French asked, joining the conversation between Seth Lawson and Jack Kemp. “A bit remote, isn't it?”

“Aye, but it weren't always. Dates back to the old religions. Always used to be a holy place this. With them druids and their pagan magics,” Seth said, winking at Jack so neither he, nor Kristy could tell just how big a pinch of salt his history lesson needed to be taken with.

“And now it's a bog roll warehouse.”

“Bit of a climb down,” Kristy agreed, her smirk showing she was not to be outdone.

“No soul, you city folk. Can't you feel the old magic in the air?”

“Stop taking the piss out of 'em, Seth you old bugger,” Jim Becket warned, warmly enough as he slapped the sheep farmer on the back. “Nowt like giving this old sod an audience. He'll keep spouting rubbish all day if someone'll listen.”

“Hadaway with you, Jimmy lad.”

All good friends, Kristy surmised, in good company. It's all lost on them. But that wasn't strictly true, or fair. There was the guy in the wax jacket, probably five or six years her senior, she'd heard joking about Bolsheviks. He, at least, didn't look comfortable among the clan gathering of witch hunters.  She decided to go and introduce herself.

Twelve fifteen. That gave her three and three quarter hours. She wasn't sure why she had come up here with the searchers. Trying to make herself feel useful to someone while she twiddled her thumbs waiting for Robin Stone. Kristy was a long way from sure what she was going to say to Robin when they met up at four.

She hoped the Animal Rights girl would have some, if not all, of the right answers. Until then, anything she could do to take her mind off Jason, seeing him on the floor, split open and empty, she would do. With gusto. Relish even.

“Hi,” she said. “Mind if I join you two?”

Ben and Daniel exchanged a look Kristy couldn't read, but guessed passed for being the all-exclusive men's room glance of an easy pick-up. Maybe she'd judged the guy in the wax jacket wrong after all.

“Feel free. I'm Dan, and this here is Ben.”

“Hi, Ben.”

“Hi,” Ben returned. He was wearing a badly disguised “I'd-Rather-Be-Anywhere-Else-Than-Here” look she usually associated with the poorer class of politician. Maybe she hadn't been so wrong about him after all. Kristy offered a tentative smile.

“You're a reporter, right?” he said then. They were coming around the back of the old chapel house. The rest of their team already over the wooden stile and on their way up through the sparse tree line.

“So that's why.”

“Pardon?”

“Why you are looking at me like something the cat dragged in.”

“'Oh God, I'm sorry. I didn't realise it was that obvious. Occupational hazard, I guess,” Ben shrugged sheepishly.

Daniel laughed. “Just naturally suspicious is our Ben. He's been a bit of a recluse since he made the big time.”

“Really?” Kristy found herself asking, unable to resist rising to the bait.

“Straight up,” Daniel assured her. “Ben's a hotshot author.”

“You wouldn't have heard of me,” Ben put in, embarrassed by Daniel's glowing testimony. “Not many people have.”

“Oh, come on. Try me.”

This was where it usually ended up getting awkward, either one or both of them left feeling embarrassed. More often than not it went one of two ways, she'd say she loved the book, was his biggest fan and could she have his autograph followed by a minutes awkward silence while he explained that he never carried a pen, or she would end up getting all apologetic because she had never so much as heard of Ben Shelton, writer of the famous Geordie Bomber, let alone read anything by him. Either way, it was a sure fire end to a promising conversation. So, for the ritual cop-out: “Ah, sorry, but modesty prevents-”

“Bollocks to that lark, Benjamin Shelton. Modesty prevents nothing, not even blushes.”

“Thanks, Daniel. I love you too.”

“Pleasure.”

Ben offered a hand to help Kristy up and over the stile. Any minute now she was going to say: “Didn't you write. . .”

The police helicopter whumped by fifty feet overheard, the wind-spray off its rotors sheeting by as a burgeoning gale.

Being up here was deceptive. Okay, logic said the village had to be down aways and to the left, in the bowl of the amphitheatre, but with the road in and out of Westbrooke obscured by the thick green skirts of Dipton Wood, there was nothing to suggest there had to be a village anywhere near. Civilization might have been a hundred miles away from this remote slice of Northumbria instead of just over the hill. It would have been the perfect illusion, if not for the gradually coalescing clouds of steam that formed the marshmallow haloes around the three peaks equidistant to Longrigg Papermill.

Ben tried a weak smile. Kristy hadn't let on whether she recognised his name or not. Not, he supposed, judging her reticence as its own indictment.

A few minutes later she went one better, taking the new paperback she had bought the other day out of her deep pocket, much to Daniel’s delight. “This is a set up, right? You’re behind this aren’t you, Tanner?”

“Not my doing, Benny boy. Wish I’d thought of it, your face was priceless. Seems you’ve got a genuine fan.”

“Hah! I wouldn’t go that far,” Kristy said, grinning as she pocketed the book again.

Bristly ranks of mass-planted and quick growing conifers fanned out before the reassembling team.

“Merrishields Hill,” Kemp explained, not that he really needed to. “Backs onto Moses Hill and swings on around to join Swallowship Hill. We want to do the whole thing in a series of sweeps. There aren't enough of us to comb every inch, so keep your eyes open and your wits about you. See anything even vaguely out of the ordinary and holler, understood?”

Heads nodded. A few vague mutters.

“What kind of fools do you take us for, lad?” Seth Lawson grumbled. Kemp either didn't hear or chose to ignore the farmer.

“Daniel, it is Daniel, yeah?” Kemp said, vague on the names. Too many of them and too many strange faces for him to be expected to keep everyone happy by remembering. Daniel Tanner nodded. “All right, Daniel. You, Kristy and your friend swing over the top and take the village side of the first arc. Jim, Seth and you, yeah, sorry, forgot your name. You take the outside of the hills. The rest of you come with me. We're doing the peaks.”

A groan from someone.

“Not taking this altogether seriously, are they,” Ben commented for want of something to say.

Kristy snorted. “Can you blame them? A couple of kids they've known for every day of their lives go AWOL after a bit of youthful high jinks. It’s only to be expected, I mean, holy Christ, I'm surprised someone isn't playing the theme tune from The Deliverance in the background, right now.”

Ben laughed hard, and it felt good. Slapped Daniel on the back. “Small town,” he agreed. “But thankfully not that small. We aren’t quite marrying our sisters. Yet.”

“Good to know.”

“Would someone mind explaining?” Daniel shrugged, smiling ruefully. “I guess it's my turn to play the dope for a change.”

“Guess so,” Ben agreed without letting Daniel in on the back-handed reference to the dreadful inbreeding in the classic Bronson movie, but offering instead a ten second banjo-twanging solo that had the three of them in stitches.

It was the closest Kristy had come to feeling good about anything since she had walked into her flat last night and seen the rats nailed to the walls. Here, at ease in the company of these two comparative strangers, it was impossible not to black out the worst of the events that had happened since then.

The hillside was quiet, cowed as though the insects and animals were deliberately lying low, apprehensive of coming out to find their burrows trampled under heavy boots. Mud clung in patches, slaking the rough hewn grass with a sticky gloss. Part of Kristy said it was not her problem, not now. The stakes were too high. She should just go home, take a shower and curl up and hope it would all go away. Another part said Jason had been a friend, the first decent guy she had met in her new city, with dreams much the same as her own. Dreams as dead now as he was. That part of her mind was rapidly becoming obsessed with a single purpose: Vengeance.

Kristy's eyes filled up. Thick, intense, black anger welled up in thunderheads. Boiling point dreadfully close. The blackness fermenting as the one focal point. Brent Richards. She had to clamp down on it, hard. Bury it way down, deep inside. Her hands tightened into white knuckles, nerves frayed to bare wires.

“Are you okay?” Ben asked. Against the bleakness of the hillside’s gorse and heather, Kristy looked small and alone and without hope.

“I think,” she said slowly, looking down at her hands. “I'm having a nervous breakdown.”

*   *   *   *   *

Johnny watched them for twenty minutes more, getting jumpier with the passing of each and every one.

Alex, where the hell was Alex?

Gone to grass him up? Gone to squeal to the pigs? Because if he had. . . Nah, not Alex. Alex wouldn't do a thing like that. Not Alex. They were mates. Then what the hell are they doing so close?

Got to get back to the sack. Set the Primus going.

Getting cold. Be shivering soon.

Johnny was feeling rough. He looked like shit, his eyes screws countersunk into a plank of sun-bleached pine. The cramps reached a hand into his gut, wrenched at his intestines. Fuckin' cramps.  Jesus. . .

He needed a fag or a fix. Not much of either left. Get back to the rucksack. Send Alex to the house on Mulberry Street. God, what are they doing so close. . ?

What was that?

Dogs?

They've brought fuckin' dogs!

Johnny gnawed at the stumped knuckles of his right hand.

Oh, man. . . Dog's are sure to smell us. . .

He scrabbled back towards the chute. Alex would know what to do. Alex was smart.

Please God, let Alex know what to do.

*   *   *   *   *

Alex didn't have enough faith left to waste any believing in a benign deity, not after all of the shit that had been happening with Beth, and with Johnny for that matter.

The batteries in the torch had run dry. They were all but out of tinned food. Johnny's stash was down to one last hit of happy thoughts. The situation was desperate. From now on in Alex was on his own and fighting Johnny as well as everyone from God down, while Johnny took himself on a long trip through withdrawal city on the neurosis express.

That was one journey Alex didn't want to buy a ticket for. So he had two choices. First, turn himself in, or turn Johnny in, or both. Second, make a break for it when Johnny was out for the count. Some set of choices. That they were all but out of food meant they couldn’t stay here forever like this, in the dark.

“DOGS!” Johnny shouted, coming up the chimney flue. “They've only gone and brought fuckin’ dogs, man.” He heard Johnny scuttle across the floor, his feet scraping, echoing wall to wall in the high ceilinged cavern, a scared and scary sound he hated.

“Oh, Jesus,” that was the world according to Alex Slater.

He heard Johnny rifle through his backpack, guessed what it was his feverish fingers were hunting down. Alex couldn't even make out the extra bulk of his shadow in the pitch black, but he didn’t need or desire to see the frantic scrabbling. Just sounds in the dark. Breathing. Faint. Scared.

“Light the fuckin’ stove, man,” Johnny barked. “QUICK.”

Alex did as he was told.

He turned his back on Johnny not wanting to watch while he fixed to score.

Just how the hell am I going to get out of this mess?

Oh, Jesus indeed.

*   *   *   *   *

“I wasn't lying, I wasn't,” Jeff Lisker pleaded for belief as Devlin turned on him.

“Then where the fuck are they?” Low, menacing. A very definite threat. “And no more pissing me about.”

“I don't know. I don't know. I told you everything I remember.” Pathetic.

“Not good enough old man.”

Devlin got up and left, slamming the classroom door behind him.  He stood in the corridor, working the stiffness out of his neck and shoulders and thinking about the two people who remained beyond his tenuous grasp but who had to be apprehended for any of several reasons, not least of which being their potential as light bearers. Johnny Lisker, Alex Slater. A frightening rage seethed under the surface of his turbulent thoughts, and he was perceptive enough to tag this one as something quite different from any anger he had thus far birthed.

The thrill of it was a dark intensity that shivered through him, the bliss akin to sexual urgency of the most sadistic nature. With nowhere to go, that longing was building up into an acute metamorphosis of feelings; fear and bewilderment, anger and rage.

Every synapse, every impulse and every nerve ending seemed to carry that inevitable last. Rage.

To Andy McKenna: “He'll talk. The old bastard is nearly pissing himself.”

A nod from McKenna, who seemed caught up within his eyes for a moment too long to dismiss. So close to the Good Cop, Bad Cop routine it left him wanting to scream all of the frustration and anger out as one hell-wrenching bellow. “Now give me five minutes alone with Richards and I'll have him confessing to everything from the IRA bombings to 9/11.”

McKenna called the two officers out of the interview room, ushered Devlin in and turned his back because he didn't want to know.

Hearing it would be bad enough.

*   *   *   *   *

Alone with Richards, Devlin laid out his biro on the legal notepad, and then draped his jacket over the back of the school chair.

“Now, you were explaining,” he prompted, rolling his shirt sleeves up and removing his wedding ring. “Why you killed Monk Sanders.”

“I was doing no such thing,” Richards protested, sounding weak, but not as yet beaten.

“Okay, doc. Fine,” he managed the thinnest of smiles, the shimmer of emotion confined to his lips, never so much as threatening to reach his troubled eyes. And no matter what Brent Richards’ stance, however much he wheedled and pleaded, Devlin was content to beat him until the doctor was prepared to share his soul, never mind his secrets. He stood up, walked around the desk. He hauled Richards up with his left hand, grabbing his shirt at the throat. “Maybe this will help jog your memory.”

He rammed his fist into Richards’ ribs. Hard. “Should leave a nice bruise. Been getting careless again, doc?”

Richards bit down on his lip. Eyes puffing up red.

“Have it your way. Plenty of others just waiting to come in and take a pop, doc. No one likes a fella who gets his kicks by messing with kids.”

Devlin rammed his fist in again.

*   *   *   *   *

The sun was high and shining hot enough to dry out the hills.

They had passed above the tree line before any of them spotted the third van gliding into the chapel car-park. The fact that Devlin had fallen back on six tracker dogs was something none of them had anticipated, despite in Kristy's case, her determination not to be surprised. Mentally, Kristy added a new tag to her rapidly assimilating case folder marked with Todd Devlin's name: Not afraid to utilise any means at his disposal. Since he'd pushed things this far, by bringing in the sniffer dogs, she was half expecting to see the local fox hunters come galloping through as Devlin’s newest addition to his tracking arsenal.

This whole search idea was hopeless at best. They couldn't hope to cover everywhere; they would need three or four hundred bodies, easily, to have any chance of searching the peaks anywhere near as thoroughly as they needed to. And she still felt annoyed with herself, as well as silly, for owning up to Ben Shelton just how messed up she was feeling about everything. Crying on a stranger’s shoulder wasn’t what Kristy liked to think of as her usual style.

“I’m surprised you managed to find a copy. I thought I had bought up all the remaindered copies. I usually hold midnight book burning sessions in the back garden. I sacrifice a copy at least once a week, to keep the fella's in the Secret Story Shop off my back.”

“Could be a story in that,” Daniel offered. “Book Burning Satanist Author In Blood Orgy Sacrifice To Heathen Cult. How's that sound?”

“Prime Pulitzer stuff,” Kristy assured him, a smile spreading itself like strawberry jam across her face.

The fact they were up nearly eight hundred feet, combing the hillside for a murder suspect and his erstwhile accomplice never quite made it to the back of any of their minds, but almost consciously, they made an effort to jolly the conversation along as naturally as was possible. There was something altogether odd about that in itself. Something almost peculiarly English.

Kristy checked her watch. Two hours left before her rendezvous in the park with Robin Stone, and it was going to take her very nearly an hour to get off the mountain and drive back to town.

“I'm going to have to call it a day pretty soon. Got to get back to see someone for four.”

“No problem,” Daniel assured her. “Ten minutes down the hill and you're in the village. Can't get lost, just follow the steam clouds.”

“I'll do my best to remember that when they've got the helicopter out looking for me come tea time, thanks.”

The greens of the spruce and the Scots pine and all the others were just so incredibly verdant against the contrast of the patchwork sky with its vapour trails, blue sheets and steamy froth. Quite breathtaking. The view ran down to the sheep fields and across to the custard fields before eventually running into the stark, elegaic beauty of Swallowship Hill and its archaic cemetery. Nothing false, or man made in sight either way, until Hexham. Even the supposed main roads were masked by the crest of the ridgeline after the Spine Road petered out. It was hard to imagine a better place to stand on top of the world and look down, though it wasn't so difficult to come up with a better time or set of circumstances.

The foundations of the feudal manor house were probably around here someplace, and then she thought of Pilgrim's Hall just over the hill. So maybe the village had moved over the years, retreating from what was now Richards' evil haven into the cup of the hills?

If it had, she couldn't find it in herself to apportion any blame. It was all so naturally Northumberland, laid out beneath her feet in a quilt of greens and gradually russetting browns.

Across on the other side random grey-brown stones settled around the cotton wool bodied sheep. The sun was so bright now, so suggestive of real warmth; the predominantly Easterly wind's bite was deceptively harsh. Ben was grateful for his thick cable knit sweater and wax jacket, even if, together, they made him look like a poor imitation of a young Conservative farmer out for a Sunday ramble.

With the dogs barking behind them, Kristy said dryly, “Well, they'll know where coming by now.”

Ben sucked on his lips thoughtfully before nodding. “If they're here at all.”

“Oh, they're here all right,” Kristy assured him, feeling the eyes lingering there on the nape of her neck.

*   *   *   *   *

They watched the dogs gradually work their way closer, always straining at their leashes like slavering bloodhounds, only to drift away without ever picking up the scent. Must be too old, Johnny thought, not altogether sure that a scent could get too old for a trained hunter, but hopeful.

It didn't solve the problem, other than to throw up a temporary stop-gap solution.

“What're they doing?” Johnny hissed.

“Just looking. They haven't got a clue.”

“So, who the fuck told them we were up here in the first place?” Johnny had his back pressed against the stone, needed its reassurance. One thing Alex had noticed already, in the troughs, Johnny was as good as agoraphobic. In the cave, he'd scuttle off into the furthest corner and pull the sleeping bag up over his head. Sometimes, he'd stay like that for ages. For him to even be out now was a sign of just how desperate things were becoming.

Cocky, confident Johnny Lisker, knuckle-headed arsehole with a death wish, was already looking for a way out of the mess he had sunk them into.

But even for Johnny, home wasn't an option.

Not as yet, at least.

Of the three other searchers he could see, Alex recognised Daniel Tanner, and the writer Ben Whatshisface. But not the girl. Mind, she was little more than a quarter inch blot back up the hill a good four hundred yards.

He couldn't believe no one had seen them as yet, but didn't expect their luck to hold out. Sooner or later someone would stumble their way, it was inevitable and it all came back to how serious they were about finding them. If Johnny had killed that biker in The Railway House, and watching the hunters Alex was rapidly becoming certain he had, then they going to be bloody serious about it, all right.

Christ, what a mess.

The best thing he had to say for himself was that he was still alive, might as well have been alone for all the use Johnny was proving to be, and frightened.

Needles from the overhanging Scots Pine had been wind-shed and were matting haphazardly to provide a carpet of insulation from the dirt. Sweet smelling branches interwoven above, behind and all around, sunlight only trickling through. The small stand of evergreens was the best shelter close enough for them to scramble to from the crack up to the Judas Hole. Dense enough to give some protection from the watching eyes if either of them stood up - not that Alex expected Johnny to stand now or sometime soon. He pushed aside the prickly blanket, picking at the bits that were tangled in his hair, and then crawled on his hands and knees back to the edge of the copse where he lay, studying the incline between his perch and the procession of sniffing hounds, scratching where the needles scratched him.

The cutting wind of the helicopter had faded into a silent breeze. The helicopter itself, circling over the cemetery, far enough away not to present a problem.

Johnny came up behind him.

Christ, he felt jumpy. Jumpy, that was a laugh. He was too bloody scared to feel jumpy, with or without the circulation cutting off in his hands. Alex had to flex them and then rub them together briskly to force the blood to flow. Ran them through his hair. If Johnny's unkempt mane was any sort of yardstick, Alex reasoned, he must look like a cross between the Wild Man of Borneo and Piltdown Man. He smelled as bad as both.

The stubble on his chin was rough, not yet long enough, or soft enough to be called a beard, but getting that way. Alex hated the feel of it intensely.

Next to him, Johnny sank to his knees, moving with obvious difficulty, his cheeks burning red, face alive and alert to the one overriding need – the hit that was almost too late in coming.

He took a stone and tossed it in a shallow curve, aiming for but missing the hill stream.

“Don't be so fucking stupid,” Alex hissed, shocked by the conflicting emotions in Johnny's torn face. There were tears in his eyes, that ever-present grin and a sad look of blankness underlying it all. Johnny wasn't even there, not with him. He was away somewhere completely unreachable.

He snapped a dry twig between his hands.

A sudden flight of pigeons took to the sky, loud in the still air. Loud enough to draw the seekers attention to their stand of trees, should have drawn them like flies. Drawing a shaky breath, Alex saw them consciously ignore the most blatant of nature's signposts.

Maybe they don't want to be the ones to find us, Alex reasoned, looking again at the blonde woman with her raggy shoulder-length bob, down to her legs, the curve of her buttocks. Nice piece of tit and arse, that. She seemed to be saying her goodbyes. Maybe they were giving up looking, after all.

Johnny was looking at her as well. Staring. Touching himself, oblivious to Alex. Alex was torn two ways, he wanted to haul Johnny up and pummel his fist into his forever smiling face, and he wanted to get up and stalk off. It was a close run thing.

He couldn't go on living like this, on the outside all of the time. And, after all, what had he done? I wasn't the one with the knife, was I? He thought to himself.  I wasn't the one with the knife. Good God, no! He had made a mistake, panicked and run and as of now, was paying the price with every minute he had to spend with Johnny in this Godforsaken strip of Hell.

And there was the tightness in his lungs to worry about.

Damned asthma. A couple of quick blasts on the Ventolin should sort it. Alex fumbled for the inhaler, forgetting it was back in the cave. Not smart, kiddo, he berated himself, trying consciously to relax his breathing. Told himself it was psychosomatic, like Eddie Spaghetti in the Stephen King film, puffing water and all the time thinking it was the magic medicine. The tightness was still there, ever present since Beth's verbal knife in the heart. Not to be outdone by his throat, his lungs felt as if they were filling up with water, drowning out the air available for Alex to breathe with. He was on his feet and in fresh air, and yet he really did feel as if he were drowning.

The murmur of voices, feet and dogs drifted along the slope. A haunted and haunting sound that matched Alex's current nightmare with frightening synchronicity. The dogs sniffing, trying to catch the whiff of the fox's scent on the breeze. And the woman coming their way.

Coming his way.

Peering through a clamp of thorny weeds, Alex saw her, not a local, not a pig, no badge of authority to the way she walked, picking her way down the slope and moving easily, it had to be said. Alex made a downward motion, hoping Johnny would read his meaning, and a moment later flattened himself to the ground.

Johnny flopped back onto his belly, still grinning inanely but, and a small mercy it was, no longer playing with himself.

East and west, the land was the same verdant green, rolling grassland and wide scattered thickets. Sweat trickled down Alex's face. She was heading for them, all right. Unless something or someone drew her away, she was going to come by less than ten feet from where they lay. Shaking, he mopped his brow, counting to stay calm. He tried to speak, to warn Johnny, but his mouth, painfully dry, wasn't about to have any of that. After a minute he managed to work up some saliva, enough to whisper: “Stay down,” and as an afterthought, “And pray she doesn't decide she needs a pee.”

That nearly made him laugh, thinking about it, caught because the woman needed a piss and chose their thicket. Just as long as the Golden Shower doesn't rain on my head. . .

*   *   *   *   *

Kristy couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched, as understandable as it was, coming down off the hill with the knife-happy yokel equivalent of Norman Bates hiding out nearby.  Certainly not a comforting thought.

She was starting to wish she had never come up here.

It was too isolated for her liking all of a sudden. Too open. Too much space. She turned to wave at Ben and Daniel, tipped a finger to her temple in a rough salute, and turned back to the barely trodden track Daniel had assured her led back down to Westbrooke. Here and there, dotted about on the slope, stands of Scots pine, sycamore, gorse and birch acted as pathfinder markers, keeping her straight. Not so long ago this sort of downhill jaunt would had her whistling Dixie or The Bare Necessities or some other happy tune, but as of halfway through last night her love of nonsense songs and music had died, laid open on the hospital floor with a good friend for company.

Kristy thought of Jason, thought of Richards and his get-away-from-it-all, the Messiah pose in his press release. She wondered if the fear, the guilt and sadness would ever simply dissolve, or if it would remain, haunting her forever with the photographically sharp recollection of Jason's disembodied hands gripping the bed posts, rigid.

And what was worse, ostensibly, the nightmare was still only just beginning.

No, whistling now would have left her feeling too much akin to the Pied Piper, courting trouble she could well do without.

She shivered, a goose treading on her grave, somewhere, sometime, and started to run, the tears for Jason in her eyes and on her cheeks.

*   *   *   *   *

Johnny's eyes, never warm but now chillingly grey, icy, seemed to flay at the flesh and bone to get at his soul beneath. Those eyes scared the hell out of Alex. He turned quickly away, pretending to be interested in the thorny spines scraping at the skin of his neck, plucking at the shoots, doing anything not to have to look at those eyes. It was almost as if he was seeing Johnny's eyes, eyes he had faced down every day from childhood through to now, for the first time. Now Johnny's face was sallow, gaunt and. . . well, haunted.

Johnny had more than his share of demons to shake from his back and all Alex wanted to do was go home. But not Johnny, nothing so simple for Johnny. Sweat had broken out on Alex's forehead. He was chewing his lip. The woman forgotten, the overwhelming sense of excitement promised by those eyes shaming him.

“It’s over, Johnny,” Alex wasn't sure that he had said it in words. The words were inside his head, a promise of freedom, of going home and things being normal again except they'd never be normal, not with Beth, not with Johnny, not with anyone. It was fucked. He was fucked. . . but had they made it as far as his tongue?

That ghastly smile that wasn't so much a smile as it was a calculated threat, flickered and froze on Johnny's blank face.  Was that fear there in his eyes?

“Say again,” Johnny demanded, hissed, obviously some tamped down faculty inside him still mindful of the risks involved with shouting out here, with the hunters as close as they were. “Say that again, say it,” Johnny pushed himself up level with Alex, pressed his face to Alex's, sour breath escaping through clenched teeth. “Come on, say it. Fuckin' say it!”

Hands clenching and unclenching. A brittle twig snapped clean in two. Johnny spat into the dirt, over Alex’s shoulder. Never stopped looking, intimidating. Shades of colour swam through his pale blue eyes in a kaleidoscope of pain, anger, hate and betrayal. Eyes darted, always on the move, looking, searching for something or someone.

“It's over, Johnny. Time to go home,” Alex said as calmly as he could.

“No fuckin' way, pal. No way. Unh-hunh. No way. You stay right here or I'll rip your fuckin' bollocks off, pal.”

The quality of light filtering through shrank back as a cloud passed over the sun, the crazy leaf-shadow patterns merging to throw a dusky cloak over Johnny’s washed out, hate ravaged features. Nature’s effect was frighteningly chameleonic, the ease with which he melted into the foliage, right up to the fringe of invisibility.

“No, Johnny.”

“Fuck you, mate,” Johnny spat, back-handing Alex across the face with enough of the fury he felt burning him up from the inside out to leave angry red indentations in the shape of his stunted fingers.

Alex took it without flinching.

“Enough, Johnny. Come on, before we can't ever go back down there. We can't live like this. Not like animals.”

“Fuck you, man. . . Fuck you. I ain't no animal. No. . . No. I'm not going back there. You can't make me. No one can make me doing anything. Not if I don't want to. No way. They just want to get me. They don't care. They set me up. Beckett, that fuckin’ bastard son of a bitch. He finished the kid off then told the pigs it was me. Bastard’s set me up. Fuckin’ bastard wants to see me hang. You want to see me hang, huh? You want that? Well, YOU WANT THAT?” Johnny had him by the scruff of the neck and was shaking Alex as if he really and truly thought he could make the words he wanted to hear rattle out between Alex's clenched teeth.

The woman had stopped and was looking about as if she’d heard Johnny’s outburst, but then she was on her way again, satisfied the words she must have thought she heard were nothing more dangerous or revealing than the multitude of sins carried with the sighs of the wind.

“You know I don't, Johnny. We were friends once, weren't we? I can still remember the good times we had mucking about up here, but I just can't carry on like this. They've sent dogs for Christ sake. They're serious about finding us. They aren't just gonna forget we came up here. And we haven't got anywhere to run that’s going to be any better, or safer, than here.”

“We can stay here, Alex,” Johnny protested, a nervous twitch to his lip betraying his own desperate need to believe his own assurances. 'Then when it cools down a bit we can head up the coast. Whitley, Blyth, maybe even Seaton Sluice. We can work the caravan parks and the amusements. It'll be fuckin' sound, just the two of us, yeah?”

Alex couldn't have explained, even to himself, why he lied, but lie he did, as much to himself as to Johnny, and as much for his own benefit. “Yeah, maybe we could.”

Johnny grasped his half-hearted maybe with both hands. “Yeah, yeah. It'd be fuckin’ wild, man. Just you and me, sword brothers. We could cruise the beaches for pretty birds to pluck. . . Fuck it, we could share ‘em. You and me, nothing's too good for us, man. Shit, now you're in I'll show you my magic watch. Still got it, kept it ever since we were kids. Remember. We both had them, but yours didn't work so you threw it away. I've still got mine, and it works,” he said it like he was letting Alex in on some great secret, which, to some closed off part of his heroin-addled psyche, was exactly what he was doing.

Alex didn't have the faintest idea what Johnny was trying to let him in on. He couldn't remember ever throwing a real watch away, not after how long it took to convince his folks to buy him his first plain-faced Timex.

Johnny stared at him, willing Alex to remember, but when he wouldn’t, made as if to tap out the special input code on his wrist watch, where the keypad would have been. Still drawing a blank, he said: “The Omega Man?”

The Omega Man?

The Omega Man? What the hell. . ?

Ben Murphy, he remembered the name vaguely. Jesus Christ, Alex realized suddenly, he's still got the plastic watch and he thinks he can make himself invisible. . .

“'Where is it?”

“In my pack,” Johnny smiled indulgently. “Want me to fetch it?”

Alex looked down the slope, to the ever-diminishing outline of Kristy French, and then up again at Ben Shelton and Daniel Tanner, knowing that he had no realistic choice other than to tell Johnny to go and fetch the plastic toy from the cave, turn Judas himself, and do a runner while Johnny was away.

“Yeah,” he said, already picking a covered path for his flight between tree and scree, boulders and bracken, to the farm buildings and down to face the music.

*   *   *   *   *

Righteous fire burned, engulfing Todd Devlin. A headache, already a dull nagging sensation extending from the top of his skull down to the tip of his chin and all across his face, chipped away at him.

It wasn't an unpleasant burning this holy fire, but it made him remember or think of chocolate men, he couldn’t reason which; put them in the microwave and they melt, as he was, from the inside out. He was disorientated, dizzy. Some part of him, dislocated from the black hole that was his essence, his rage, was aware of his fists sledge-hammering into Brent Richards’ face, and his bloodied knuckles reshaping the doctors bone structure as easily and effectively as if it were constructed from sausages of plasticise beneath a Papier Mache mask.

And it was done in silence on his side.

Richards, doubled up, sank to his knees, coughing blood. Devlin hammered a punch into his face, mashing the cartilage beneath his nose. Blood was streaming from gashes above and below his eyes, and where Devlin's fists had ripped the flesh off the inside of his lips against his salesman's tombstone teeth.

The rage was on him, undeniable, irresistible, backing his clenched fists up with the steel of vengeance and madness. And all he could see, eyes open or closed, was that child bleeding between her legs as Scott Jordan carried her down the stairs from Richards’ bedroom.

He grabbed Richards by the hair, dragged him forward off his knees and started cracking his head off against the corner of the desk again and again.

“Can't. . . I can't. . .” Richards blubbered, a whimper.

Devlin yanked him back, tugged him around and bounced his head off the wall. For the first three cracks the bones sounded hard and solid.

On the forth, it started to soften, wetness seeping into the cracks.

*   *   *   *   *

“. . . SEE!”

*   *   *   *   *

Devlin staggered away from the wall, breathing hard and exhilarated, passing Andy McKenna and giving him a wide berth.

McKenna searched his face, his own looking vaguely green in the jaundiced indoor light. Devlin ignored the Detective Sergeant and kept on walking, through the doors and through the cloakroom.

“Devlin!” McKenna yelled after him, rushing to catch up. “What the hell did you do to him?”

“Nothing he didn't deserve,” Devlin assured him.

“Nothing?”

“Absolutely.”

“Jesus. . . What did he say?”

“You don't want to know.”

“Tell me.”

“Okay. He likes fucking little girls. They're tight enough for his pencil dick to do the business,” Devlin replied, off hand and. dismissing McKenna, he strode out into the playground ignoring the press of photographers and journalists and their barrage of unintelligible questions.

He was hot, burning up and frightened. The frenzy, once he had understood it for what it was, was surprisingly cool, focused and directed on something as damned near to defenceless as he had ever crossed. Done with a clear head and now he needed a drink, badly.

- 49 -

Robin Stone was an anomaly. Five foot five, a red head in well cut Levi's and a plain black polo neck that accentuated as well as it complimented her slight frame so she appeared most definitely feminine. Certainly not the run of the mill student activist in sexually ambiguous dungarees and braided, greasy hair. Her eye make-up had run into a damp watercolour collage of grey-black kohl where she had been crying.

She sat alone, wrapped in a shawl of solitude and loneliness that persisted despite the proximity of children and parents at play. Broken up bread chunks scattered in loose circles around her feet, being studiously ignored by the shuffling parade of ducks, had succeeded in drawing the unwanted attentions of a scraggy mongrel. The mutt was all stuck out ribs and sunken hollows of malnutrition. They made a poignant picture, the sad girl in the park and the starving dog at her feet, fleeting that it was.  With a cock of its hind leg the mongrel showed exactly what it thought of starch and pre-digested wheat germ.

“Jason. . ?” Robin asked, already knowing the worst but looking to Kristy for a denial she knew wasn't coming. She wasn't looking at Kristy when she spoke. Two little girls ran by, racing, screaming their excitement, their screams like sweet music weighed down by the sombre atmosphere immediately present between the two women and radiating out across the water in waves. One of the girls broke away from the chase to steal a few chunks of bread to force-feed the ducks, everything becoming a pantomime to keep Robin’s eyes busy and give her the excuse she needed not to look Kristy’s way.

Oblivious, boys were dancing and splashing, full of the joys of summer. The water in Leazes Lake was so beautiful, deep blue glitter sprinkled with the sun.

“He was killed this morning.”

A wino, gaudy in his Hawaiian palm-print shirt, shuffled their way, and then on, leaving the air momentarily tainted with his unpleasantly rancid tang.

“Oh. . .” It was little more than a shaky exhalation, but that in itself said more than words in a situation where words would so obviously only dilute the full and overpowering essence of emotion behind them. Still, and irrationally, it left Kristy feeling angry all the same.

“I realise this must be a shock, but I haven't got the time for the preliminaries. We need to talk. Can we go somewhere?”

Robin Stone shook her head, massaging her right temple then squeezing the bridge of her nose. “Why not here? Is it something you'd rather not risk too many people hearing by accident? Is that it?”

Kristy, her eyes still stinging from tears and her already tenuous composure smarting from the girl’s quick, all be it shrewd judgement, flicked a glance to left and right and then straight ahead, trying to see everywhere there was to see all at once and not really seeing anywhere. The park was full of groups, families, friends, the occasional couple, and the few wandering souls inevitably drawn to the powerful, almost magnetic, attractor of those groups at play together, and though they were still very much alone, they appeared content to be so. And she took a guess: “For one thing, I can see three of your friends doing their damnedest to play inconspicuous, and I wouldn't bet against there being others who aren't quite so terrible at mingling,” Kristy looked hard at Robin, biting her bottom lip thoughtfully before adding, “at least I hope they are your friends.”

Robin raised an eyebrow.

“Okay. C'mon then, lady. Let’s go back to my place. We can talk on the way.”

*   *   *   *   *

So they walked, and they talked. Down past the towering spotlights and terraces of St James Park and into the sordid no man’s land between the West End and the North Side where the university had converted row upon row of three-story terraces into halls for the more affluent members of its student body.

Robin rented out a room in the end terrace overlooking the back of the football ground. Kristy was getting used to taking part in one sided conversations of late, first Devlin and now Robin. The young Animal Rights girl wanted to know everything there was to know, and she wanted to know it yesterday. To that extent she was very much like Todd Devlin, but second time around Kristy was wise to a few more of the rules that went along with the game.  Certain things she kept to herself, waiting for what she hoped would be the right moment to give voice to her worst and most natural fears. And they were not as alone as Kristy had hoped. Two men, both young, and possibly twins, both with the same look of bookish academia to their just-showered ringlets, pale complexions and tinted John Lennon glasses, hunched over cups of something hot and talking quietly, smiled at her when Robin finished her brief, muttered introduction but didn't move to leave them as Kristy half hoped they would.

A strange collection of pictures and posters made up for the damp and peeling wallpaper, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Jesus Jones, The Cure, Debbie Harry, and the ever-present Pink Floyd's The Wall and Dark Side Of The Moon that Kristy remembered well from her own days as a student, overlapping Ban Vivisection, Ban Animal Testing Now and One World, One Colour posters.

Robin offered her a coffee, or something stronger. She took the offered bottle of Pils and then took a seat amongst the clutter of old newspapers, set text books and magazines, drinking deeply.

Kristy stared down at the bottle, her face not hiding her anxiety. The peculiar combination of good spirits and anger entirely gone.   Responsibilities and duties she didn't fully understand weighed heavily on her, the emotional baggage of self-doubt and uncertainty fracturing the mask of calm optimism she had told herself she was going to wear for this meeting.

“God, give me strength,” she murmured.

Robin turned to look at her. “I think we're getting a little bit out of God's depth here, sister.”

Kristy almost smiled at that, the thought of the Old Man with his white beard drowning in a vat of quickening tar, coming to mind from nowhere. “And the Devil's for that matter,” she amended.

Settling herself down on the arm of the couch, Robin nodded her agreement, and offered a second nod of encouragement for Kristy to finish re-capping the few actual (and undisputable) facts she knew about Brent Richards, assuring her that Nev and Gary, the two brothers still engrossed in their stream wreathing mugs, had every right as much to hear what Kristy had to say as she herself had.

Kristy was less than sure, but couldn't see what else she could do under the circumstances. She picked up talking about the photographs, fanning them out on the table, picking out the one shot of the laboratory rats with their razored scalps and shattered spines piled in the bin.

“Bastard,” Robin growled, her brow furrowing angrily. She pushed the offending photograph away. Nev leaned in on elbows, attentive. A four-inch scar sliced out a 'V' down his right cheek, a blush of harsher pink where the scar tissue hadn't healed fully. A bottle, Kristy surmised, looking at the wound and the way it stretched down from his temple and curved into his mouth. It made his already intense smile rise up the side of his face, strange beneath his blue shades.

“It certainly looks like this guy is dabbling in things better left alone, and I see where we could come in. But why get involved lady?” The last, the question, was put mildly enough, but Kristy had no illusions. It was as much a trick as the rest of it. The wrong answer now and it would all be for nothing; Jason, Judith Kenyon, Frank Rogan, Monk Sanders and the others she didn't know about. The roll call was growing at an alarming rate. And what for?

It wasn't something she had consciously been thinking about, more a germ that had spent the last fifteen hours festering at the back of her mind.

She leaned forward, her fingers interlocking, thumbs wanting to turn circles on each other, but kept them in check. “Because,” and here Kristy paused, not sure she should go on after all. Not sure she should give voice to the darker side of her imaginings. But she said the worst, regardless. “With or without you, I'm going to kill him.”

There was a heartbeat where the tick of the clock was all, then:

“I think you're crazy, lady.” From Nev. Cracking his knuckles one by one, he shook his head. Kristy couldn't read the intent of his slowly spreading knife-slice smile.

Robin nodded her agreement. Gary frowned, considering. Immersed in dark, mazy thoughts, his smile was a pained one. Even without the benefit of his brother's scar, it seemed somehow grim. Forbidding. Kristy shrugged wearily. Her face equally grave. ”And there's the truth to it. Now I suppose you'll be calling the police. No, maybe not them. The men in the white jackets to take me away?”

Nev smiled with three-quarters of his face. Spread his hands wide, almost as if he were bearing some special, inner sanctity. Making an exception on her behalf and trying to convince her it was against the norm. “Not just yet. But maybe later.” Something else was there in his smile; something she had seen before, and recently; something that set her to thinking about Todd Devlin. Dangerous eyes. “Right now I think we need to get you a pen and paper. You've got some drawing to do if we are going to pay a visit to this health farm of yours.”

*   *   *   *   *

She drew two very rough maps with the stub of a pencil Robin had found jammed down between the cushions of the settee; one of the roads leading to the grounds of Havendene, pin-pointing the gateways, the lake and the pagoda; the other an amalgam of memory and guess work giving a very general guide to the layout of the clinic itself. Where Richards' office was in relation to the main doors. Where Jason had found the rats in the bin around the back, and the few other details she thought she could remember.

She wasn't happy with either, but supposed they would be enough to get someone there, sooner or later, and she wasn't entirely sure she could do any better, even given the luxury of more time, so they would have to suffice.

There was undeniable electricity in the air. A buzz. Robin and Gary were suddenly taking her seriously. Kristy couldn't pin down the moment when their attitudes had changed, only that they had, and that the shift had been dramatic. Suddenly both of them were treating Jason’s photographs and her confused testimony as the opening brief for their hastily convened Council of War.

There was a strange moment when Nev asked if Kirsty had a light and all she could think of was Jason's favourite gag; when he'd pull a car-lighter from his pocket and say, “Sure, if you've got a car,” but even that passed.

Telephone calls were made, one to Claude Gibb Halls across the city, aimed at bringing in the Student Activist’s equivalent of the Securitate, another aimed at summoning reinforcements from the local Hunt Saboteurs; and maybe in that way it was becoming a Council of War, demarcation lines being drawn out.

Kristy was shocked to see just how organised the operation was, picking up from scratch, and just how quickly and efficiently they set the wheels in motion. She didn’t know how the next night was going to pan out, and to her surprise, she found that she didn’t care. They were doing something positive, she was doing something positive.

When Nev mentioned the need for “tooling up” she grinned ferociously -- desperately -- back, her clenched teeth a razor-slash of pearl that bit down hard to conceal the scream. Striking back, she told herself and wondered if you were meant to feel sick to the core when you struck back.

- 50 -

As Alex watched Johnny's back scamper a retreat back up the hill towards the Judas Hole, he couldn't help but imagine the blood and the knife into his trembling hand. The knife with which he was as good as stabbing it. He sniffed, chewing nervously at his lower lip.

Around the hill itself, the few hunters that remained seemed to have lost their appetite for the kill.  Alex hung back. Ran fingers through his knotted hair. Fingered his earring, counting to fifteen beneath the shallow tides of his breath. Now, or never. He pushed himself to his feet. Scuttled forward, pushing back the thorny branches, checked both ways, waiting for one of the uniformed dog handlers to crest the hill, and then bolted for the relative safety of the next stand of trees thick enough to offer any sort of cover, thirty metres down.

Halfway there and he was breathing hard, cursing the tightness in his lungs, and labouring. Alex ducked down into a loose crouch while he caught his breath, then up again and running. At the trees, Alex virtually staggered to a halt, needing the strength of the tree trunk for support, gasping hard.

Rogan's farm was still a long and difficult descent away, much of that descent scrabbling over loose shale without so much as the odd boulder set firm for support.

The thinner air up here, as marginal as the difference truly was, was making breathing far more difficult than he might have hoped.

Alex looked about once, and then pushed off again, ducking down low and skidding to a halt twenty metres on; on the fringe of the scree slope. He shrunk himself as small as possible. Threw a glance back the way he had come, unable to resist, and then plunged on, sliding and stumbling down the slope, hands out for balance and being scraped and cut away into ribbons by the sharp edges of rock slicing away beneath them. His feet skidded, scraped and dragged, scuffing up dust and shale and making such a godawful rolling racket as if he had kicked up a small landslide on all sides. Without the sweeping wind funnels, the noise might have carried half a mile.

With the wind, there was no way of telling whether it carried ten feet or ten miles.

The peculiar thing being that despite the bleakness of a moment before, despite the isolation he had felt -- and the self loathing -- betraying Johnny, the rapid, stumbling slide into the unknown was exhilarating. There was a real adrenal buzz to tackling it head on, wind in his hair, sun on his face and at his back.

Coming to the fence, Alex stopped his stumbling run, shading his eyes with a hand. Even this far away, the outbuildings appeared eerily still; it wasn't so much the way they looked. The few fine hairs bristling at nape of Alex's neck (and the skin beneath) crawled, tasting the isolation coming in on the drafts of air funnelling through from the barns and brick-clad houses; they felt abandoned.

The sun was a copper globe hanging halfway in the sky, its flat bottom dragging above the bony spines of the ruined oak, the hideous branches clawing at the underside of the fiery ball, trying to wrench it back to the blazing noonday vertical. There, trapped by the sheer magnetism of Hangman's Oak, the sun offered no panacea to sooth the barrenness surrounding Frank Rogan's farm. No cold comfort.

Alex stumbled forward, climbing the fence. The grass was longer on this side. The roots still clogged with the dewy moisture of the last rainfall sucked at his dragging feet.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea, he thought to himself, and then banished the doubting voice to one of the dim and dusty recesses at the back of his mind. It had to end here, that much he knew. He had to stop stumbling blindly from one disaster to the next without so much as a second's thought. He wasn't some mindless puppet blundering along the course of his master's damned horoscope. Okay, he thought reasonably. That means taking over the controls. Going home. Facing the music from all fronts. And hoping for more than just a little slice of luck along the way, he felt like adding but checked himself before he could.

There was no one to be seen, but still Alex's advance grew ever more cautious as the cluster of buildings neared.

Somewhere a crow cawed raucously, shredding the little that was left of his composure. He edged on. Close to, the buildings were still, and – perhaps surprisingly – quiet. There were no signs of activity, however small. No signs of anyone having been around for quite some time, in fact. Alex dismissed the most direct route, through the forecourt and down the slope to the trees, in favour of skirting the farm itself by going around the side of the connecting barns and keeping away to join the gravel road further on down.

Alex ran on, slower now, casting the occasional look back the way he had come.

Within spitting distance of the old caravan, he stopped running altogether. Someone had put one of the windows out. Broken glass fanned out to create a dangerous carpet beneath the empty frame.

And something was banging. No, Alex realized, picking his way slowly closer, banging was the wrong word. It sounded as if something was jammed and chunking over and over as it tried to wriggle its way out of whatever predicament held it in this eternal chunking loop. There were other sounds, too. Lurking below the chutter-clunk. A low and droning spiral that fractured into a multitude of ever diminishing, erratic whines.

The caravan's door was shut, the curtains pulled across from the inside. Alex walked up to the door, twisted the handle and pushed tentatively, already cursing his curiosity for dragging him this close.

“Fuck,' he cursed aloud, pushing the door all the way open. It was too dark to make out anything beyond the threshold, beyond the odd shape and outline where the shadows were just slightly darker, that shade more substantial.

There was no breeze in the caravan to shift the hot, heavy air. And the flies had started to come. That accounted for one of the two distinctly separate sounds he could hear. The swell of their buzzing intensified as they went about worrying the shadows. From where he stood at the door, they looked to be congregating on the rucked up bundle of pillows, sheets and blankets heaped high on the mattress, so he went over to the window and pulled back the polythene curtains. Sunlight streamed in, swamping the room with its cheerful grin. Alex turned back to the crumpled blankets and the put-you-up bed and had to reach out to steady himself.

The pallid montage of body, blanket and blood refused to register. Suddenly, the air inside the cramped caravan was thick and uncomfortably cloying, as if the ethereal hands that had toyed with his lungs and throat all the way down the long scramble were squeezing, and squeezing hard.

Alex's grip tightened on the doorframe as his legs sagged under the combined weight of his body and the shock of the ghastly find, threatening to dump him unceremoniously amid the clutter of beer cans and dirty clothes. Sickness clogged in his throat. It wasn't a candy floss sickness, he could tell that much immediately, because it wasn't dissolving to the more pleasant sickliness of sugar. The tightness was like a wad of cotton wool being jammed down to block his windpipe.

Gasping each increasingly more difficult to catch breath, Alex lurched away from the door. It wasn't a step that carried him towards the curiously slumped body on the blankets. A muscle cramped through the length of his right thigh in a repulsive shiver. His fingers uncurled, curled again, this time missing the crutch-like support of the doorframe. The clunking he had heard outside was louder, harsh and intensely repetitive.

Mike Shelton -- at least he presumed it was Mike, even though he couldn't see the face -- was slumped forward from the sitting position, his forehead touching his crossed ankles, the knife protruding from between his legs like some gross, distended metal erection. Without the brittle crust of rust hardening around the corpse, it might have been possible for Alex to convince himself that Mike was either sleeping or locked in some deep, meditative trance with his work clothes neatly folded on the bed beside him.

Alex couldn't breathe. Couldn't force the air down into his lungs. Dizzy sickness lurched up his throat, vomiting back the shallow mouthful of air he had half-succeeded in hacking into his heaving lungs.

Desperately, he fumbled for his inhaler, finding only keys and coins in his pocket. No blessed puff from the magic wand of the great wizard Ventolin.

Got to relax. Got to get calm. . Stay calm, breathe. Got to. Got to. A drink. . . Get a drink. Water. Yes. . .

Alex staggered forward the two steps, stumbling and almost falling in his need to do something, sucking at the air without actually breathing any of it in. Asthma attack. Gonna have an asthma attack. Got to calm down and breathe.  Got to breathe. . .

He hooked his hands over the sink and hauled himself up, his gasping giving way to something nearer hyperventilation. He gulped down a glass of water, almost choking in his desperation to swallow. Tremors coursed through his body, starting in his hands, working methodically through to his feet. His head and shoulders never moved. A second glass full of cool blue, this one splashed over his face and down his tee-shirt, took the edge off Alex's panic.

He started trying to hold his breath for longer, and then longer still, sucking in fresh air in ever widening gulps. He remained leaning against the sink unit a moment longer, gaze drawn back up the hill, the first of the farm outbuildings creeping into the periphery of his otherwise blank stare. Like that, caught like a ghost itself, Frank Rogan’s decaying farm was transformed into a place for phantoms. Anything rather than turn to look at the collapsed Buddha on the put-you-up.

But he could not postpone the inevitable forever. Steeling himself, Alex turned, slowly, to look, and stepped a grudging step closer. Seeing Mike's body for the second time diluted some of the shock, but none of the horror. Needing to be distracted by anything, he sought the source of the incessant clunking. Far too quickly for his own piece of mind, Alex saw the cassette recorder with its tape jammed and the automatic shut-off constantly trying to do just that. He walked over to it and thumbed down the stop button.

Without the clunking to work as a counter-balance, the buzzing of the flies seemed impossibly loud.

The body hadn't stood up and crept out -- as Alex had more than half hoped it would -- while his back was turned. Not realizing he was even doing it, Alex reached out to touch the corpse, felt the icy shock of cold charge through the nerves in his fingertips in the half second before his touch upset its delicate balance, and it slumped to one side in a stiff-jointed heap.

Alex could see it was Mike now, though his face had discoloured to a purplish blue where the blood had drained away to pool in the back of his brain.

Mike's eyes weren't the empty marbles he had become conditioned to by the big and small screens and their glamorised re-enactments of death. The last tormented glimmer (itself too fleeting to fade completely) burned across his face was so utterly desperate it shattered any illusions Alex might have harboured concerning death and glory.

It was so painfully apparent that Mike Shelton had suffered -- and tricked by rigor mortis, his body at least, was suffering still.

Blood was on his lips and between his teeth from where, taking that final, shuddering gasp, he had bitten through his tongue.

The sideways slump had dislodged the knife, so it lay now half covered by Mike's discoloured thigh.

Alex stooped to pull it free, compelled by a sick mixture of fascination and curiosity. The knife felt oddly heavy in his hand, as if by plunging into Mike Shelton's lifeblood it had somehow sucked the very essence of the man into its grey blade.

He turned the knife over in his hand, fascinated by the sheen and the separating blood-streamers beading down the blade.

Alex shook himself then, like a dog emerging from the depths of Devil's Water to the sun, dislodging the soupy sense of unreality and detachment that had his mind away in some far off hidey hole.

He let the knife slip through his fingers.

Staggered clumsily back and away, through the flies to the door and out beyond. And then he was running for all he was worth, and then some. Though he didn't know it, tears were streaming down his cheeks.

*   *   *   *   *

He ran until he thought his heart would burst, and only then did he realise his panic was chasing him back up Moses Hill. By then Alex was close enough to the farmhouse for the silhouetted claws of Hangman's Oak to snare his feet in their shadows.

A phone wire hung overhead, a gentle arc from pillar to post to the farmhouse itself, disappearing into the wall just below the guttering. He still hadn't stopped running, merely slowed to a jog, his eyes darting frantically every which way, searching out the phantoms in their hiding places.

The phone line offered a link back down to civilization. A way to re-establish a foothold in reality. Alex couldn't stop seeing Mike Shelton's face. Couldn't stop seeing that look of defeat in his eyes.  The look that was already his personal phantom. The ghost he was going to carry with him for today, for tomorrow and maybe for a whole lot longer besides. Any chance of shutting it out, he was going to take, no matter how slim. Any chance at all. He slowed to a walk short of the door. The wind that before hadn't so much as bothered him left him so cold now. Even his goosebumps had goosebumps. But maybe it wasn't all the winds’ doing. The clustered outbuildings had an atmosphere all of their own, noticeably colder than the hillside. As if a huge and rolling cloud had taken to blocking out every last warming ray from the sun above, and was itself chilling the fields below.

The porch door was closed. Alex knocked, and waited but no one came to answer. He tried the handle, giving the door a slight push. It opened.

Inside was dark, hot and stuffy. He could feel the waves of heat churning in on themselves as the sudden rush of fresh air surged in from behind him. The smell of the place was rank and stifling.

None of the lights were on, and in the two windows Alex could see, the curtains had been pulled across to keep it as dark as was possible.

“Anyone home?” he yelled, moving through the Spartan kitchen to the hall. Things were scattered everywhere. Knives, forks, spoons and every other household utensil where the drawers had been up-ended and turned out across the wooden floor. Here again, the light was kept down to a minimum. He tried the switch but nothing happened. The phone was on a stand in the hall, at least. No need for him to go rooting through the dark looking for it. “I'm just going to use your phone, and then I'll be on my way. Okay?”

Still no one answered, so he picked up the handset and tapped out nine-nine-nine. Listening to the dialling tone spiral, he realised, more likely than not, he wasn't alone in the house after all. The muted sounds of a television set were coming under the living room door.

Alex hung up just as the telephonist was asking which service he required.

All the while, the rotten smell grew stronger, accompanied now by a strange, peppery odour, musty and cloyingly astringent. Alex stood and listened and shuddered. The sounds of daytime television creeping through, suddenly and strangely threatening beside the damp stillness this side of the divide.

The sludge sloshing about inside his stomach walls was going to need more than a glass of Alka Seltzer to settle. Alex held there a second, hand set on the door handle, waiting for a flush of dizziness to pass, then snatched and pushed it open forcefully enough to slam the door into the wall before the hinges could pull it back. His head pounded. The back of Alex's neck had burning needles jabbing into the base of his brain with each step as he moved into the living room.

Billy was sat on the floor, his back to Alex, his attention given over to the array of knives fanned out around him, as if he was in the process of counting out an eenie meanie selection with a variety of blades for players.

Billy did not look up, as Alex expected, to see who it was that had walked in on him counting out his knives like the nursery rhyme king in his counting house.

All of a sudden, Alex felt as if he had just stepped out of an elevator only to have the floor fall away from under his feet and his body free fall into Hell.

Again in here, the curtains had been drawn across the windows to keep the light out -- or the darkness in, Alex found himself thinking crazily. Occasional slivers of yellow made strong enough inroads on the plains of darkness for it to look as if fingers of light were trying to reclaim this room from the clutches of the dark.

The rush of reeks this side of the door were overpowering; meat and dirt. The meat turned and attracting the attention of flies, as the body of Mike Shelton had been; the dirt bringing back all the sense-memories of the Judas Hole, so recently abandoned.

Dampness, sweat and the chilled, peppery taint of below ground.

In the living room's only high-backed chair Frank Rogan sat watching the grey antics of the chat show on the box. Blue and bloated and several days on the wrong side of an impending demise, Frank was the feasting dish for an army of blowflies. Clusters of eggs hung in minute sacks, in his nose and the rusty sockets where his eyes should have been.

Looking at the shrunken, sallow-faced old man the words “Frying pan” and “Fire” sparked across his mind. The blowflies were crawling all over the old gardener. Lichen had started to fur the grey-white protrusions of bone where dirt had been worked into the many wounds; noticeably the vertical slice from throat to groin.

Bizarrely though, the first things Alex noticed were the slippers jammed onto the corpse's feet, left slipper on right foot and vice versa.

“Oh, sweet Jesus  God almighty. . .” The words came out at little more than a whisper, but that very hushed quality doubled, tripled, their conviction and jerked Billy Rogan's eyes away from his shiny fan of knives. He shinnied back, eyes darting, feral, his few scraps of hair stuck in wild tufts. Blisters cropped the whole patch of skin from below his nose and around his mouth, a good many raw and weeping. Alex saw a scarecrow in second-hand and discarded clothes, and then he saw an animal -- a cornered wolf -- and only then did he see the frightened man shinnying away from him. And that was in a glimmer, the veil hastily pulled back as Billy sprung into the attack.

Alex had never seen anything move quite so fast. Billy covered the gap between them quicker still than he could suck in a breath, a knife flashing silver in his hand, and ploughed into him with all the force of a careening juggernaut punching him off his feet and into the chair already occupied by Frank.

Alex shrieked. Both feet snagged. Frank's fly covered arms jerked up to clamp onto him. Suck him in. Billy's hand came up, slammed down into the side of his head.

- 51 -

A placid, humourless smile curdled on Devlin's lips.

“No,” he whispered, far too softly to be heard above the techno pop pounding out through the banks of speakers and the shouted conversations of the Sunday night revellers. “I don't know where you can score, and I don't fancy a fuck either, lady. Now piss off and leave me alone to have a drink will you.”

The woman, unfazed by his brutal reaction, tossed a withering look his way, fluttered her mascara-clogged eyelashes and curled up dark red painted lips. Todd Devlin saw the lips as a slash of red across a plain of white, where a knife had worked its evil on an otherwise plain face. She picked up her bag and walked away, quickly swallowed by the hungry crowd. No doubt, Devlin thought sadly, she would find exactly what she was looking for somewhere, and without having to look all that hard for it. The Bigg Market had a way of providing for needs like hers; drugs, sex and loud music.

He was getting drunk on the Happy Hour liquor, and he knew it.

Too many people were shouting to be heard above the dozens of others pressed up against the bar. Leaning in, Devlin snapped his fingers and gestured for service. The behind-the-bar reaction could have been an out-take from Happy Days, Devlin acting out Henry Winkler's role as “The Fonz”.

“What'll it be, mister?”

“Whiskey,” he answered, again hardly raising his voice. The barman, in his bow-tie and sleeveless striped shirt, had no trouble understanding him, even with the whooping, the laughter and the general mayhem on all sides to contend with.

He took the offered drink, swirling the chunks of ice around the sides of the tumbler so they clittered against the glass, and knocked it back in one mouthful. The liquor was lukewarm going down, despite the ice, but its fire spread a pleasant, soothing warmth through his stomach. And even that did not last.

For the last hour Devlin had not been able to shift the feeling that every eye in the place was turned on him, watching, seeing and recognizing his self-loathing for what it was. He could not bring himself to look back at those accusing eyes, and somehow trapped himself in a crossfire of disgust, fear and paranoia.

He had to get out of there, and fast.

The tumbler slipped through his trembling fingers and smashed on the tiled floor. Some wit started clapping, others whistled, increasing his discomfort and the overall sense of claustrophobia.

Devlin pushed through the press of people, parting the bodies with his hands where they wouldn't make way for him.

The early evening was refreshingly cool on his face.

He was hungry, thought about stopping off for a kebab, but decided against taking the risk when Burger King and McDonalds were only a couple of minutes walk away, and both on the way to the underground Haymarket N.C.P and his car.

Even this early kids were lining up, queuing to get in to the already packed out pubs along the Bigg Market's cobbled square. the longest queues forming outside Presidents, The Blackie Boy, Bambra's and The Gaslight. Most of the girls lining up at the meat factory doors were so painfully, and so obviously jail-bait Devlin half-seriously thought about putting the fear of God into them by showing his I.D. and hauling one of them off in the direction of the Police Station on Pilgrim Street. It was not overly hard to resist the temptation.

He kept on walking to the junction, turning right and heading into the centre of the town. Behind him, whooping laughter ran down the street as a clutch of Hen party revellers collided with a pair of unfortunates coming the other way.

Starlings made perches out of every flat surface around Grey's Monument, their settling down for the night noises sounding like nothing more than a pack of high-rise rats roaming the rooftops unchecked. Devlin stopped walking in front of the huge plate windows of a chain-electrical store, resting his hands flat on the metal roller-shutters.

The photo-face he saw captured on a dozen television sets was unmistakably his. No words made it out through the window. Devlin jerked away from the glass as if it were electrified, and blundered away up Northumberland Street, weaving from side to side an idiot gawp of shocked panic pasted across his face, the tears fresh from his own televised damnation rolling down his cheeks.

No matter what he did now, how he reacted, for Todd Devlin it was as good as over.

No one would listen.

- 52 -

“Three. . . Two. . . One. . . And, go Gayle. . .”

“Good evening, this is Gayle Oldfield with the BBC local news. And the headlines at six-thirty tonight. . .Opposing factions clashed last night on the city's troubled Meadowell Estate. Newcastle's Chief Constable, Sir Bryon Younger, praised the swift reactions of the local police officers who were first to arrive on the scene, successfully diffusing a potentially explosive recurrence of the riots that rocked the North East last year. He has called for the local people to help set up community projects aimed at keeping youths off the streets of this notorious trouble spot, and will be approaching central government with his plans for a Community Youth Project. . .

“Photo-journalist, Jason Kelso, was this morning found murdered in the High Dependency Unit at Hexham General. Local Police are appealing for witnesses to what is described as a sick, mindless killing of a popular, talented young man.

“Vandals wreaked havoc this morning, pulling down the overhead power-cables on the Tyneside Metro system between the West Jesmond and Ilford Road stops, causing delays for commuters of up to one and a half hours. . .

“The government has unveiled plans to sell off and close some unprofitable coal pits. . .

“And American wonder doctor, Brent Richards, founder of the Havendene Institute is tonight recovering in Hexham General Hospital after a brutal assault which left him blinded. His condition is reported to be critical. Police have yet to issue any descriptions of the assailants. . .”

“Cut to picture of Richards. . . Great. . .”

“First, to this afternoon's vicious attack on American Doctor, Brent Richards. We have news just coming in. The word I'm getting is that Richards may well have been in Police custody when the attack happened. Over to our man on the scene, Paul Sheridan. . . Paul what's going on over there. . ?”

“Cue Paul.”

“Everything's very tight-lipped here, as you would expect, but there's a buzz going around here that seems to indicate that Brent Richards was attacked while in the custody of the Newcastle C.I.D., for allegedly abusing a minor. . . It's impossible to judge this thing one way or another, but my guess is that an unnamed officer has done what we would all like to think we would do, as parents, brothers and sisters confronted with the same situation, and now the Police are trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted. . . Hold on. . . Hold on. . . Something's happening up front. . . Two uniformed Police officers are coming down the steps to address the crowd. . .”

“Can we turn the mic's up so we can get this live. . ?”

The Policeman's voice came over distant and crackly, then suddenly very loud as the sound balance shifted to compensate for the distance between the boom mic and the policeman.

“Regrettably, it is my duty to confirm what many of you may have already surmised. Earlier today, Doctor Brent Richards was the victim of a vicious and cold blooded attack which has left him blinded. Dr Richards was, at the time of the assault, in the custody of Detective Superintendent Todd Devlin of the Newcastle Criminal Investigations Division. . .”

There was more, but they stopped listening. Within the minute, the backroom boys at the television studio had come up with a still of Devlin, cropped out the two people with him, and had a blurred reproduction up on the screen in time for him to see it as he shambled up Northumberland Street.

- 53 -

Cross-legged and hunched forward on the floor, Billy Rogan stared at his reflection in each of the shiny blades fanned out in front of him.

His mouth was hanging open.

It was hard for him to close it with the blisters having crept onto his gums and tongue already. Hunger gnawed at his insides, setting rumbles to gurgle through his stomach like the undercurrents of a rainstorm searching out a guttering to whirlpool away through. It had him feeling dizzy and disorientated. At least he had stopped sweating. It was not so hot in here now that he had pulled all of the curtains closed.

The smell, at least, had stopped sticking in his throat since he had watered Pops. Though, in truth, it wasn't the three glasses of water poured over the old man's head that had finally doused the reek, only that he had been submerged in it for so long now Billy no longer noticed it. His sense of smell mercifully dead to the bitter cocktail of tangs rising from the body in the armchair.

Only the thinnest sliver of gradually reddening sunlight made it through the chink in the curtains, throwing its knife-slash 'V' through the center of the living room and its heart of darkness. Caught at the foot of that slash, Alex Slater lay unconscious, bundled and tied with lengths of nylon washing line. Billy had stuffed his mouth with the socks he had had on his feet, and taped them in place with a strip of masking tape.

Livid purple bruises were coming up on the side of Alex’s head, only half-obscured by his long hair.

Billy had pulled his runic sword earring out through the flesh of his lobe and was busy twirling it through his bony fingers, mesmerized by the occasional sharp reflection of the dying light.

He dropped the earring so as it fell into the anonymity of the fan of metal laid out in front of him.

It clattered onto the blade of a wooden-handled carving knife, and nestled down between the blade and the carpet.

Billy Rogan made his choice by closing his trembling hand on the wooden-handled knife and raising it to his lips. He kissed it like he had seen someone on the television do, then lurched awkwardly to his feet.

Billy was holding the knife slackly at his side as he wandered through the house looking for something to shield his eyes from the last flush of daylight outside.

He found a pair of blue plastic sunglasses with black lenses in his treasure trove upstairs, hooked them into place behind his ears, and stumped back downstairs, muttering to himself and shaking his head every step of the way.

Pops kept his clapped out old Zephyr in Number Two barn, covered beneath bales of rotten, mulching hay left over from last harvest. The keys were in the drawer under the telephone stand with the other junk the Rogan's collected daily.

Billy took them, not worrying whether the ancient Zephyr had a full tank of petrol or not, or even if it had enough petrol to get him down the hill and into the village proper. Never having driven a car – new or old – before, Billy was too busy wondering where he was meant to put the key, and what he did after that to make it drive for him just like it did for Pops.

*   *   *   *   *

Hard graft had never been a problem before, bending his back and getting his hands dirty had always been a part of what kept Billy Rogan alive. But not now.

White hot spots danced on the backs of his eyelids whenever he closed his eyes now, and across whatever he was looking at when he kept them open.

Billy wasn't just sweating now, pulling the decayed hay bales off of the old car, he was damned near to burning up and he could not understand why. There was nothing overly strenuous about the lifting and carrying; nothing he hadn't done fifty times over, and then some. But this time it was as if every single bend and lift was sapping some essential reservoir inside of him.

Dusting his hands off on the legs of his overall, Billy stood back to admire his handiwork, looking out through the velvety darkness forced upon the already shadowed insides of the barn by his toy sunglasses. Bits of straw still clung to the metal here and there, wrapped around the windscreen wipers and jammed in the door seals or just worked loose from a bundle and fallen on the long dipping bonnet, but nowhere near enough to prevent him climbing in behind the wheel.

The seats were waxed to a red leather shine, big and almost too comfortable, mainly because the springs had long since given up being springy. The big old steering wheel felt good in his hands, though he wasn't so sure about the three prongs sticking out of it like metal horns. He pushed his feet down on the pedals, making grumbling engine sounds.

Nothing happened. The old Zephyr didn't suddenly roar into life and start taking him out through the barn doors. Not so much as a rumble from under the bonnet.

Billy sat back, running his calloused hands down the sides of his cheeks while he thought about it, and started looking around the veneered dashboard for a key-shaped hole.

He found it at the base of the steering column, and slipped the key he'd taken from the telephone stand in, giving it a sharp twist for good luck.

The engine coughed once, turned over, spluttered worryingly, and died.

Billy punched the centre of the steering wheel, having to take his sudden fury out on something. The blackness was there again, hovering back there just out of reach, but pushing, always pushing. Caught helplessly in the tides of it, he groaned, hissed, gagged, whimpered, and just once laughed softly in the back of his throat. Hot tears flooded up through his eyes, and as if being drained to make those tears, the saliva dried in his mouth.

Sweating, being burned alive by the fire seething within him, Billy was nevertheless very, very cold. Icy cold in his heart. He squirmed against the leather seat, needing to curl up and hug himself and rock, but too cramped to do any of them. Snatches of words phased in and out of his head, carrying their own hungers, the appetites driving them desperate to be sated.

Billy was in no fit state to hold on to any of them for more than a second or two, and those few that he succeeded in snaring were no more words than they were basic, driving instincts. Hunger. The need to feed. That stayed with him; the need.

He twisted the key again, stamping on one of the pedals as well this time. The Zephyr rocked forward in a juddering bunny-hop. The engine died again.

“FUCKIN' REE-TARD, CAR!” Billy screeched, pummelling the wheel and stamping on the pedals. Instead of shorting-out this time, the blackness descended in waves, crashing down and sparking the equivalent of mental lightning where his nervous system was slammed into overload.

Billy thrashed wildly, tearing at his scalp, slapping and clawing at his face, dangerously close to gouging his own eyes out with his fingernails, and this time he did not stop. He kept on clawing at his cheeks, gouging out bloody runnels beneath his eyes so it looked as if he were crying tears of blood, slapping his knuckles raw up against his yielding face. He kept on, and he kept on, arteries pounding furiously in his neck and temples, blood singing in his ears until all heard was suffering.

And, through it all, he felt nothing.

*   *   *   *   *

If Billy had been a cartoon caricature steam would have been leaking out through his ears.

He shook his head, couldn't stop mewling, hot tears at home in his eyes. Patted the long handled cook's knife, looking for reassurance there. When he continued to strain against the black, a more intense, throbbing heat filled his head, rippling from crown to temples in a burning circuit that lanced across the bridge of his nose; round and round. Round and round. He had to grit his teeth, hands pressed firmly against his temples, to endure even two seconds of it.

The need wouldn't leave him alone.

With it, hand in glove, came the increasingly potent surge of anger.

Billy pushed himself back away from the steering wheel, into the leather bucket-seat as a scintillant stab of pain shot across his forehead. For a moment then he was in such horrendous agony he couldn't move, cry out, breathe or scream as he so desperately needed to scream.

When at last he sucked in a breath, it whooshed back out of his heaving lungs in a scream; for a moment he was exhilarated, carried along on the ephemeral tide of his turbulent emotions, and then his tattered thoughts shifted to the familiar and he was afraid all over again. A child in a coop of caged up pigeons, neglected and starved eventually to death. And there was Pops with his whip-crack strap stood in the doorway.

No, he did not want to believe that.

Not Pops. Pops was in his chair and dead to the world. His birds long gone in their own way, over the trees, over the hills and far, far away. Carried off by the breeze. Tossed and torn and tumbled, but safe now, out of harms’ way.

The Zephyr started for the fifth time of asking, the engine catching long enough to idle and somehow Billy kept it going, manipulating his feet at random, turning the wheel and twisting, pulling and pushing each and every lever until it stuck somewhere other than neutral. The car bunny-hopped forward again, jerking back abruptly. Billy slammed his right foot down hard and was thrown back bodily as the Zephyr shot forward, smashing the wing mirror off against the side of the door-post in a loud splinter of glass and metal. He turned the wheel sharply, scraping the side of the old car up against the other door-post, and then he was out in the open and veering crazily left and right as he over compensated both ways, yanking the steering wheel around as good as at random.

*   *   *   *   *

The crow perched among the brittle bones of Hangman's Oak, blacker than black through the treacle-tinted lenses of his sunglasses, didn't so much as cock its' head or turn a curious eye on the pale cream Zephyr weaving dangerously beneath its elevated perch.

It took flight though, as the horn blared, Billy holding it down long enough for the sound to falter and fail suddenly.

Billy giggled, winding down the window to shout, “FUCKIN' REE-TARD BIRD!”' after it, ruffle its’ feathers and send it flapping into the sky. He found it easier to keep the car heading in a straightish line if he didn't push it into moving any faster than a crawl, and kept to hugging the grass bank like a grubbing snail. It took him nearly as long to drive down Moses Hill to the junction with the Spine Road as it did for him to walk up yesterday, but he got there in the end, mud caked all over the wheels and hub caps and halfway up the door panels.

“Nice and slow,” he mumbled to himself, turning the corner back towards Westbrooke at the bottom. Even with the minimal daylight of six-thirty all but gone, the view through the window was still painfully bright for his changing eyes to cope with unprotected, so the glasses stayed firmly in place and he felt like a star from the films.

Here and there, as he grubbed slowly into town, puddles of damp sodium mottled the pavement, where streetlights were still there to cast their own shine.

Mr Barney was standing on the corner by his old school, scowling at someone Billy didn't recognize. They were surrounded by cars, so maybe that was what they were arguing about. Mr Barney waved distractedly, too intent on his own argument to wonder at Billy driving Frank Rogan's clapped out old banger.

And Billy saw others; faces he knew as well, almost, as his own. Few of them thought even enough to offer a small wave. Billy didn't wave back. On the point of screaming, he stuffed the knuckles of his left hand into his mouth and bit down hard as the need trampled over his mind with the grace of concrete clad feet. Fragments of hunger, images and language that between them lacerated and sliced he saw her face laid bare by the silver relief of the sister moon staking her claim on the day's spoils. Sat alone on the steps of the old stone church, cold and angry with it. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her legs, chin resting firmly in the hollow 'V' between her knees. Already, in the tilt of her face as she gazed listlessly out across the somnolent village street at her feet, Billy could see beyond the rash of goosepimples and the set of her jaw; Annie Lockewood, looking young and lost.

The presence that had been growing in substance ever since he had stumbled over Pops' hand buried in the dirt of Dipton Wood, fairly howled its delight at finding one so young, so ripe, to sate its burning need . . .

He shook his head, feeling the coldness of the claw settling around his heart, sensing the tidal flow of images welling, breaking through the straining mental dam and finally rolling over his personality.

Cold sweat peppered his hairline.

He reached across to the passenger seat, snatching the cook’s knife, hand closing so tightly around it his bitten down nails drew blood from the calloused heel.

Listen to ussss, the presence cajoled, no pleading or wheedling now as the sheer weight of it swamped his thoughts and suffocated his personality; a fire-blanket thrown over the beginnings of a blaze.

“Out! Get out of my head!” Billy howled, slapping at the sides of his head again, knife still in hand but spearing up and out safely. Instead of abandoning his head, the presence forced a startlingly vivid vision in front of his mind's eye, and held it there while he kicked and screamed for it to be taken away.

Annie Lockewood, the girl on the cold stone steps, was down by the jetty at Devil's Water, with her butter-wouldn't-melt friends, playing hooky. Billy huddled up under the wooden jetty, was crying his heart out. Forget the waves lapping at the water’s edge, all Billy could hear was Annie's mocking laughter. Then the girls were throwing stones down at Big Bad Troll's bald head, and harmless old Billy was hurting. . .

Billy managed to sit up straight long enough to guide the Zephyr to a stop a few feet down from the church steps. To clench his right hand on the steering wheel. To offer a weak smile to the girl coming down those steps. To lean across to open the passenger door and gesture her to climb in. To stop being Billy the harmless old troll everyone loved like a second son. To start being Billy The Scarecrow.

To start being Billy, The Giver of Pain.

“Hiya, Billy,” Annie chirped, squirming on the seat as she slammed the car door.

Billy nodded, the need spiking his emotions until they were so exaggerated he didn't dare risk opening his mouth for fear of what might come out.

Annie looked at him then, closely. Saw the sores around his mouth, saw the hollow sockets around his eyes, saw his pinched, painfully thin face, and very nearly panicked.

“Are you sick, Billy?” she asked. Her voice had a soft, sad, end-of-summer quality to it.

Sorry Pops. . . Sorry. . . Sorry Pops. . . Sorry. . . The stones were raining down on his head. . . Hurting. . . Billy was hurting. . . Blood trickled through his fingers. . . Into his eyes. . .   “M'Okay,” he nodded, offering Annie a sickly, scarecrow’s smile. “You looked cold, so I thought I'd stop and drive you home if you wanted.”

She shrugged. He could tell she was a little unsure of him but that didn't matter.

She had been tempted this far, and now, steering the car away from the kerb, he knew just how badly he needed her. And just how much he wanted to satisfy that need - even if that meant losing his mind and his soul to the Devil, in the process.

- 54 -

Some parts of Spencer Abel's job really plumbed the depths, and stayed down there long enough for him to feel as if he were drowning in the curdled milk of human kindness; writing up stories on kiddies killed in the name of love; stories on families burned to death by Mum or Dad's careless cigarette; stories on the homeless living in their cardboard boxes because they've nowhere to go and the Government don't care one way or the other; stories on kids and drug overdoses; stories on “joy riders” wrecking families for the thrill of a 90mph chase with the new Police helicopter; stories on pensioners being mugged by gangs of thirteen year olds for two quid in loose change; stories on rape and child abuse; and worse, if there could ever be anything worse than the theft of innocence. . . but so far (and he would never have thought himself capable of saying it, even as recently as yesterday) nothing came close to writing up a friend’s obituary this late on a Sunday night.

And nothing can when the lad dies – correction, gets cut to pieces and left to drip-dry in a hospital room -- chasing a story I've assigned him to cover without so much as a second thought for the danger that lad was getting into.

Spencer tabbed down three spaces, saved the file and sent it down to the presses with a single keystroke; first saying goodbye to, and then burying Jason Kelso in his own editorial way.

Right now, Spencer didn't have a single good word to be said for Investigative Journalism; with or without the capital letters. It was all crap. He had a headache and he wanted a drink. Spencer tried to tell himself he only wanted to give the lad a proper send off, but that didn't wash anymore than the public's right to know did. He needed a drink, and it was nothing to do with any misguided sense of guilt or duty.

He finished off, booting out of the system, picked up his jacket and wandered down the stairs and out through the side doors in search of a shot of forgetting water.

The Printers Pie was the closest pub, even if it was a working home-from-home for every hack-journalist and printer in Newcastle. He nodded a polite hello to two men climbing out of a mud-splashed Land rover, then pushed the glass-tinted doors open on the smoky taproom and walked in, tasting the fumes on the back of his throat before he stepped so much as a foot inside. Some tune, very definitely Cajun in origin, was playing too loudly. There were enough people drinking for him to get lost, and that, after all, was why he was here.

He recognised most of the faces on both sides of the bar but didn't feel like joining any of the drinking parties, all of which were already very much into the swing of things. So he ordered a double whiskey with ice, then slumped down on a stool for closeness, rolling the glass absently between long thin fingers. He thought about drinking it, and he thought harder about leaving it untouched and just walking out and going home.

One of the men Spencer had passed outside had taken up the spare stool beside him and ordered a pint of Beamish, which he was toying with now, his look of distaste suggesting it were a rat with two heads rather than a decent stout. His pal was leaning on the bar rail, making a show of drawing a face in the thick, creamy head of his Guinness.

“Happy or sad?” he leaned across to ask Spencer, before tracing in the exaggerated curve of a frown.

Losing the battle, Spencer tipped his glass in a silent salute to Jason and chugged his whiskey down in a single swallow, wincing as it went down. It had been that long in coming, he had forgotten just how sharp a decent whiskey was. By the time he remembered, the line they drummed into him and other sufferers at every A.A. meeting he could recall, was there to ruin the sensation: No matter how long you're dry, you're only ever one drink away from becoming an alcoholic all over again. Never forget that, but learn to live with it before it kills you. . .

He caught the barman's eye and ordered a second double, as with the one before, Spencer chose the suicide path, downing it in a single swallow. Right now he didn't care about living enough to let the pat A.A. lines bother him enough to stop drinking.

“Bad day?” One of the lads from the Land rover asked, setting his condensation peppered glass down on the bar.

Spencer thought about ignoring him, and then shrugged. “You could say that,” he agreed in the end, trying to catch the barman's eye for a third time, and this time without success.

That didn't appear to worry the newcomer. He took out his wallet, making a show of thumbing through the wad of notes before pulling out a cash point crisp five pound note. Smiled across at Spencer. “Let me get this one in, why don't you? Richie, what do you want?”

“Just a Coke for me.”

“No problem, and what's yours? Don't tell me, a whiskey, right?”

Spencer looked mildly embarrassed, and he knew it. Even his muddy reflection in the mirror behind the bar looked uncomfortable with the stranger's show of generosity. “You don't have to,” he assured him, only half-hoping the man would withdraw his offer. He didn't, of course, but conceded some ground.

“You can get the next one in, deal?”

“Okay.”

Dishing the drinks out, he introduced them both. “I’m Rob, this is Richie.”

Richie smiled, and Spencer was struck by just how uncomfortable the younger man looked, sat in a strange pub, drinking with a complete stranger. He knew all too well just how he felt, and misreading the situation, decided it best to drink up and start building a few rickety bridges to span the gulf between them.

After all, it didn't do to get lost alone. Even Hansel had the comfort of Gretel's hand when the woods were at their darkest.

*   *   *   *   *

Spencer Abel did not just fall from the wagon, he swan-dived face first into the road, literally.

Between them, Rob Duncan and Richie Dickinson plied him with enough whiskey, gin and mixtures there in, to sink his proverbial battleship three times over. And still he kept knocking them back just as steadily as Rob and Richie could put the full glasses down in front of him. The music had gone full circle, from Cajun through to Prince and his electronic imitators, and as the night wound on back to steel drums and reed flutes.

“C'mon fellas,” he shouted, pushing himself to his feet. “Know a good club. . . We can getta drink. . .”

He nearly fell then, but for Richie's hand snaking out to steady him he would have, and taken two of the three bar stools down with him.

The fact that he was drunk didn't hit him until he staggered out into the car park, supported by Rob and Richie, and the cold night slapped him across the face. Suddenly he needed the toilet desperately, could feel his testicles starting to shrivel and his bladder burn and didn't think he could control it even if he wanted to. He thought, for one giddy moment, that he was actually going to piss himself in the street.

He tried to turn, slurring a sentence even he couldn't follow. A sharp stabbing pain flowered in his kidneys. And suddenly he was losing his balance and this time no one was trying to hold him up. The tarmac rushed up as Spencer Abel's face ploughed into it.

Giggling as he pushed his hands beneath him, Spencer struggled to rise, felt the weight on his back, holding him down.

Weakness, cool like the whiskey before, flowed through him and he slumped onto the ground. . . The smells of petrol, sickly sweet and burned rubber, acrid, smothered his senses. . . Heard a shout and an engine gun and roar. . .

*   *   *   *   *

“Hold that bastard down,” Rob yelled, jumping into the Land Rover.

Richie pressed down hard on the Gazette editor's shoulders, pinning him to the ground. The fight had evaporated almost as soon as his face hit the tarmac, but that didn't mean that Richie was about to loosen his hold, no matter how sick the thought of what they were doing made him feel.

He pressed his knee down between Abel's shoulder blades, keeping him pinned.

He wished to God he had had more to drink than the one pint of Guinness and a few Cokes. He wasn't so sure he had the stomach necessary for the next thirty seconds –

The Land Rover's engine gunned and roared, Rob standing on the accelerator to get the revs going, and then it was creeping forward, the front wheel twelve inches from the editor's head.

Richie looked about quickly, scanning the dark street for unwanted observers. As far as he could see, they were alone and unwatched, but that didn't mean a thing. The menagerie of dim shadows might have been hiding a thousand eyes, the way the layers of shadow within deeper shadow overlapped and accentuated the backstreet chiaroscuro, and Richie wouldn't have known any better.

He hoped to Christ his three kicks to Abel's head had knocked the poor sod out. He tried to tell himself that was why he wasn't struggling, and thought he was going to throw up anyway.

He held his breath, doing his best to swallow it down. Richie said a silent prayer for Spencer, and another one for himself as the front wheel started to roll over Abel's skull. The Land Rover riding it as if it were no more of an obstruction to be negotiated than a rock to be climbed.

He closed his eyes, feeling almost feverishly sick. Heard the bones start cracking. Heard Abel's gut-wrenching screams. Opened his eyes in time to see the scalp peel slowly back from the skull to leave the plate of Abel's forehead exposed – then closed them again as the bones gave in to the remorseless, crushing weight of the Land Rover. One of Abel's eyes bulged like a water-filled balloon in the tightening clamp of a vice. The dome distorted under the irresistible, creeping pressure. His ear ripped away, gristle and blood pumping into the ragged hole in the side of his head. One second Spencer's screams were terrible, the next they were less, even, than whimpers.

Richie was on the point of running, his eyes locked on the frosted glass doors of the pub, expecting them to slam open, when finally, with the full weight of Land Rover bearing down on the pressure points of temple and jaw, Abel's skull caved in.

The blood-spattered remains of Abel's corpse spasmed violently under a shock of convulsions, the electricity of death shocking its system, then, as if it were only just beginning to understand the horrendous extent of the damage, seized up, clutching at the tarmac, and died.

Blood was running away down the camber and into a drain.

Richie was shaking badly. Scared and out of his depth, and it just kept getting worse. He pushed himself to his feet, collapsed onto his knees and vomited, and was still heaving when there was nothing to bring up except his stomach lining.

Crimson fluid was splattered over everything, darkened to a wet oily black on the road, as if an irate artist had taken it upon himself to hurl pots of red paint here, there and everywhere. A sticky amalgam of blood, bone shards and the pulpy matter of the brain itself, smeared around the shoulders of Abel's headless body.

He tried again, but could not stand. A second later he started screaming hysterically.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Rob yelled down at him. He jumped down out of the Land rover, planting his feet in the pulverized remains of Spencer Abel's head, grabbed Richie by the scruff, and hauled him to his feet and into the Land Rover's cab. Richie stumbled, slumped into the wing of the Land rover, one shaking hand leaving a bloody print on the metal panel, then he was in and Rob was slamming the door to keep him there. Screaming or not.

Behind the wheel again, Rob leaned across, hooked his fingers in the collar of Richie's shirt and pulled him closer, until there was less than six inches between them; Richie was screaming into his mouth. Rob slapped him across the face, shook him, and back-handed him again. “I know kid,” he hissed, “but if you don't fucking well shut up I'm going to dump you here and to Hell with you. Now shut the fuck up and let me concentrate.”

- 55 -

Night lay heavy over the Northumbrian hills, its' darkness denied even the welcoming silver of moonglow. A few stars peeked through the thick rolls of cloud. There was a storm in the air, but the coming rain was the very least of Kristy's worries.

Hunkered down beside her, Robin Stone was going through a few very restrained stretching exercises, working the tension out of her shoulders, kneading it out of her calves and thighs. She was kitted up like a Green Beret in an army surplus camouflage jacket, black jeans and eighteen-hole Doc Martin’s; her face blacked out roughly with smears of boot polish, eyes masked by dark glasses. A carbon copy of Kristy and the others.

She checked left and right, and was just able to make out Nev and Gary through the filter of bracken and branches. Without the moon they were all but invisible, even from as close as twenty feet. All she could see of Nev -- and that because the boot polish had refused to take to the slice of healed tissue -- the scar that cut an extra wide smile across his face all the way up to his temple. To Kristy he looked uncomfortably like the Cheshire Cat, and even managed to disappear when he turned his head away to contemplate the wall rising in front of them.

They all knew, and only too well, about Jason's mauling by the dogs. Nev had assured her he could handle them easily enough when the time came, and all she could do, she knew, was trust him. That didn't lie any easier than the memories of the Dobermans going to work on Jason, but she was in no fit state to argue.

The grass was wet beneath her fingers, the night's humidity drawing out the dew. The air smelled of summer, and Kristy thought she had never smelled anything so rich or fine in a long, long time. Rubbing the sleepiness out of her eyes, she wondered if the real reasons behind the summer's sudden blossoming were no more mysterious than where they were and what they were doing, and thought that maybe they were the reasons after all.

An owl hooted somewhere above, a lonely sound that drew five sets of eyes Kristy's way; at least two pairs accusing her of crying out for attention. That rankled. She had to tell herself to let it slide.

Like Nev, Kristy turned her attention to the wall looming up out of the darkness before them. Squinting through the unhealthy dark, her eyes conjured their own trace memories of Havendene and began picking out and painting in outlines of the massive hall, towering even above the security wall. In her mind, the windows were shielded by thick net curtains. Behind the gauze, as if through a bank of fog, chandeliers burned. She was painfully aware of the spotlights bathing the front steps and stone lions of the hall in yellow light. That meant spending precious time looking for the back way in, and for that they were going to have to rely on Jason's series of photographs and Kristy's vague memories.

Jason had said the stable doors were barred from the inside, so logic said that was where they wanted to be. Even then, she reasoned, the other doors would be alarmed.

They couldn't break in without alerting everyone inside, within earshot, and, most likely, everyone in the nearest Police station. Worry about that when you get there, she told herself. She glanced over at the two faces she didn't know. Blacked up, she couldn't tell one from the other, though she remembered their names, Iain and Shaun, and that they were both Scottish, guessed from their strong accents; Iain's quite definitely Glaswegian in origin, Shaun’s less rough and more obviously from the East coast for its smoother edges. They hadn’t exchanged conversation outside of the few pleasantries when Robin introduced them, and even a simpleton could see neither of them looked too pleased at prospect of having Kristy with them once they were over the wall. A liability, she had heard one of them mutter on the way over.

Well stuff you, Kristy thought defiantly. And hanging round here’s not going to help anyone. . .

“Why aren't we going in?” she whispered to Robin, not bothering to mask her exasperation. Robin held a finger to her lips. There was a harsh chuckle from someone. Nev? As if to some silent signal the five of them were scuttling forward, leaving Kristy five steps back and looking at their backs as they ran at the wall. Gary fairly danced up the pitted surface of the wall and was already folding himself double over the top. He stuck a hand out for one of the others to pass him the rucksack full of tools, hauled it up and over and dropped it with a clatter of saws, nails, chisels and hammers over onto the grass at the other side.

The second sack he handled with a much greater respect, hooking it over an overhanging branch while he swung his legs up and over, dropping out of sight.

Nev perched awkwardly on the ledge and leaned down to offer Kristy a hand, which she took gratefully. Her feet scrambled, the toe-caps of her boots scuffing against the wall as they peddled the air looking desperately for some sort of purchase. Then she was up and hanging in space. Nev hauled her legs round and over the wall, and then let her go. She dropped the nine feet to the grass, landing awkwardly but with her knees bent sufficiently to absorb some of the bone jarring impact. She felt the suddenness of the landing jolt around her waist.

Nev snagged the second sack from its dangling perch and passed it down to Gary.

Kristy rubbed her sweat-damp hands on the front of her camouflage jacket. Well kid, now you're here there isn't any going back.

Nev dropped comfortably to the ground beside her. Again, she was struck by his similarity to Todd Devlin; the way he uncoiled, moving with deceptively loose-jointed grace. They even shared the same beguiling smile. The only readily apparent difference, the side of the criminal fence they walked – and Kristy's first impression of Devlin had marked him as a man who would be equally at home on both sides – so maybe they weren't even that different after all, just two men championing her cause who, on another day, might equally be responsible for casting the shadows for her to jump at when things started going bump in the night.

“Come on,” Nev whispered, tugging at her sleeve.

Robin and the others were creeping forward, keeping their heads down, moving through the shadows towards Havendene; the massive bulk of the old hall towering over the quartet, old stone, leering gargoyles and glass.

Nev tugged at her sleeve again, then crouched and scrambled away, his actions readily translating into: Come on if you're coming, girl, otherwise go home and leave it to the big boys.

She hawked and spat into the dirt beside her, and followed.

They skirted the boat house pagoda, hugging the contours of the slope and taking an almost identical path to the one rapidly trodden by Jason a few days earlier. Every step of the way Kristy found herself expecting to hear that first gruff bark to signal the arrival of Richards’ dogs.

If before, picking their way through the undergrowth on the way to the perimeter wall, they were quiet, crossing the wide open strip of killing ground between the skirt of trees and the wall of the stable they were church mice.

The surface of the picture lake rippled with the tension of the moonless shadow, shifting with the weight of the slight breeze.

Kristy covered the distance running low and fast, a litany of Please God, don't let anyone be home's tripping off her tongue.  Even the night could not hide the mishmash of styles clustered in close to make the horseshoe of outbuildings. Nev darted around her flank and disappeared in through the mouth of the horseshoe. She heard him grunt and curse, and guessed he had found the stable door barred. Coming around the corner, she saw him hammering his fists against the cold brick of the wall in frustration. A shadow that could all too easily have been blood trickled between his knuckles. The windows on both sides were shuttered, not giving away any of their secrets.

Huge industrial bins lined the kitchen wall. Kristy swallowed a deep breath, crouched low and scrambled forward beneath the height of the windows. She reached the short flight of steps leading up to the kitchen door. Saw the sliver of light creeping out from under the door. Listened hard, straining to pick out any obvious sounds of movement inside, and was answered by the quiet and unpredictable sighing of the night winds through the circle of trees surrounding Havendene. No sounds coming from inside, or at least none she could distinguish from the breeze, and that was good enough for now.

Kristy drew two deep breaths.

She was glad Robin had insisted on her wearing the camouflage jacket. With it on it was still chilly, but – and thank Christ for that – it wasn't so cold her teeth were chattering like penguins scudding about on an ice floe. She smiled, remembering Jason’s confusion as to which furry little beasties lived at which pole, and for the life of her couldn't think which pole it was penguins did their scudding at these days.

“Must be contagious,” she muttered under her breath, and looked back to check on the others. They were all preoccupied with their own individual tasks; Iain going to work on the stable door with a crow bar, Shaun acting as surgeon's mate to Nev and Gary who were trying out a variety of tools on the barred windows, Robin Stone playing lookout back at the horseshoe's mouth.

The kitchen door was a half-dozen-stair climb away, sheltered by a narrow-roofed porch that ran two feet either side of the door itself and was braced against the wall with weather-stained timber struts.

She crept up the six steps, and leaned out on tip-toes, having to hang on to the timber strut and crane her neck in order to peer in through the window. The kitchen was surprisingly modern. Stainless steel drainers and naturally wooden work surfaces. There was an abundance of cupboard space, units lining all but one wall, two rows deep, a refrigerator and industrial dishwasher the other. As best as she could tell, there was only the one door out of the kitchen area, and that was pulled to so she couldn't see where it led.

Behind her, Robin hissed: “What the hell do you think you're doing?” It had to be Robin, because besides Kristy she was the only other female in the group, and the voice most definitely belonged to a full-time member of the fairer sex.

Kristy rocked back from the window and turned to face the young student. She had her hands planted on her hips and a pout on her lips any self respecting Bimbo would have killed for. Reaching out a hand and groping blindly behind her back for a moment, Kristy found the handle, tried the door and felt it give. She flashed a grin and whispered: “Keep an eye out, but if I'm not back in two minutes get the hell out of here, okay?” Then eased the door open and, moving backwards carefully, stepped through and continued to back off.

“Don't you. . . Oh, you fucking, fucking moron-” the look on Robin's face was one of utter disbelief, as if the last thing she had expected was Kristy suddenly striking out on own when they had come this far together; that she could betray them by leaving them high and dry like this.

She couldn't let herself think about it that way.

She had to think about it as doing what was necessary. Right here and right now getting inside was necessary. Getting at Brent Richards. She knew she had no real choice in the matter because inside, in her heart, there was a sliver of ice with Jason Kelso’s name carved deep into it, and that sliver was working like a slow poison in her blood, killing her softly.

The next moment in time was broken down into fragments, like a mirror shattering under the blow of a hammer; dissonant thoughts fractured to such an extent it was impossible ever imagining them living comfortably in the same mind; a sense of endlessness, of time hanging in the balance, and the paradox of that endlessness ending far too soon, with the kitchen door closing and turning her back on Robin Stone. She coasted through the actual motions as if she were dreaming, buoyed by nothing outside the clutches of dread. Her heart was beating hard against her breastbone, and that was the only reason she knew that she was still alive, because of it there, beating its rhythmic reminder.

Then she was alone, and she was inside, barely moving while time was moving all too quickly again.

She didn't give herself the time to think she might be making a mistake.

Difficult as it was to do so, Kristy forced herself into motion.

Nervous perspiration beaded her forehead. She could feel her armpits, uncomfortably clammy and already beginning to cling to her blouse.

“Come on, Kris! Think girl! Think!”

She couldn't kid herself it was a simple case of life’s a bitch and then, if you’re lucky, you die. No matter how she felt about it, there was a chance -- and no matter how slim that chance actually was – there was a chance that Judith Kenyon was in here, somewhere – and Frank Rogan for that matter – and needing help. The last real proof anyone had of Judith Kenyon's whereabouts was a not-so-high quality Polaroid taken by Frank Rogan on the lawn outside of Havendene.

And now both of them are missing. . .

That was enough to get her to the door.

She had to tread softly, and still three paces from the door, offered another silent thank you to God, this one for the fact that the floor was stone and not linoleum. On stone, at least, her Doc Martin's weren't about to squeak like a budgerigar chorus. She opened the door.

It all looked very different from this perspective, although she knew she had to be moving in roughly the right direction. The offices would be down and off to the right, along with the library if her memory was anything to go by; the restaurant, gymnasiums and sauna's off to the left of the main staircase; the guest rooms upstairs. She wanted the offices, and one in particular.

At the kitchen's threshold the stone flooring gave way to Romanesque ceramic tiles. Kristy eased the door closed behind herself and walked cautiously along the whitewashed hall, pausing to listen and check the line of three closed doors. Heard nothing untoward, and moved on.

Not surprisingly, it was not completely dark. Dimmed auxiliary lights relieved some, if not all, of the darkest recesses and in the process created their fair share of stark shadows. Candle effect torches burned in sconces two deep as the passageway opened out into the high-vaulted foyer where a massive crystal chandelier cast out the darkness. The toc-toc-toc of footsteps echoed down from the floor above. Kristy stepped back into the slice of shadow thrown over the passageway by the angle of the grand chandelier, and holding her breath, she listened to them move away to wherever they were heading.

Edging back out into the open, she cast an anxious glance upwards, half-suspecting that her ears had deliberately lied and whoever it was she had heard moving about upstairs was still there and hovering on the landing. Of course, no one was leaning over the balcony looking for her; nevertheless she felt her heartbeat quicken and quickened her pace accordingly.

Kristy crossed the lobby at a trot, a concession to the urge that wanted her out of there as quickly as possible: nothing, she knew, attracts the eye like sudden movement. So she loped across the lobby as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to be doing, every step of the way expecting to hear someone cry out an alert or sound an alarm. Ducking right, she headed for the corridor lined either side with offices.

This area, at least was familiar ground. Richards’ office was the second door down and on the left, its huge picture window offering an unobstructed view of the grounds that took in a sweep as diverse as the wrought iron gate arch and the lake-bound pagoda.

She checked her watch. It was almost 4:00 am.

Kristy had ridden her luck this far. She didn't want to push it any further than it was prepared to go. The door was open. She realised then, feeling the handle turn as easily as it did, that she hadn’t so much as considered the possibility of it being anything other than open. She chalked another one up for luck, and went on though, again closing the door behind her.

She didn't risk turning on the main overhead light, but trusted lady luck to hold out on collecting her overdue debts long enough for her to get away with the anglepoise on Richards’ desk. The room was austere and uninviting, more soulless than she remembered it being in her last visit. The desk was clear, pens neatly aligned on the leather blotter, the blotting paper spotlessly clean. A heavy brass inkstand. A telephone. Shelves of medical textbooks, case studies and research papers. The beaten-leather swivel chair pushed back from the big desk, its back to the window, outside of which night had claimed the lake and lawns. A long black leather sofa against one wall. A fax machine and filing cabinet stood beside a second, smaller computer desk. Photographs. Richards and President Clinton shaking hands at a function. Richards and the actor Tom Cruise, taken at a luncheon. Richards posing at a press launch for his last book, Psyche. All of the pictures seemed at least ten years old, most closer to twenty.

The whole office gave off a uniquely palpable air. Having been immersed in it for less than thirty seconds, Kristy neatly pigeon-holed the atmosphere she picked up as one of waiting. It jarred heavily with her own sense of urgency.

Quickly, she began opening desk drawers at random. Found a desk diary, a jotter, a tray of paperclips and boxes of cheap biros. She tried the filing cabinet, found thick ring binders wedged into the drawers and a sheaf of manila folders. She pulled out a handful, carried them back to the desk and flipped through them, reading off the magi-marker stencilled titles. One folder, marked up with the legend N.E.S.T ., stood out among the confidential client case files. She flipped the folder open, shaking her head as she ran her finger down the index listings:

--   EMOTION, MOOD & MEMORY TRIGGERS,

--   NEURO-TRANSMITTERS,

--   PROTEIN CONSTRUCTION,

--   BIOFEEDBACK,

--   PAIN RECEPTORS,

--   THE FRANKENSTEIN SYNDROME,

--   NEUROSIS EFFECT,

Until it arrived at:

--   JUDITH KENYON PHENOMENON.

She read the top paragraph of the sheet to herself before slipping the file inside her camouflage jacket. It made Shelley's own worst case scenario read like a bedtime story.

She checked her watch again. 4:02.

There's time yet, she told herself, deliberately contradicting the growing sense of vulnerability that had her blood running cold. She scanned the room a second time, looking for anything she might have missed.

A lockable CD box sat beside the computer terminal, none of the labels on the disks inside legible through the tinted lid. She searched the desktop for a key, but like Richards’ other desks, it was remarkably free of clutter. She needed a cigarette, never mind that she didn't smoke.

Kristy thought about breaking into the box. One option would be smashing the lid, but that idea let her down on two fronts. One, too noisy. And two, not enough time to go sifting through the debris trying to make sense of what she found. Her only other idea was picking the lock. Again there was the time factor, along with the double-negative, she had no idea how to go about picking even an elementary lock, like the one stopping her getting into the CD box.

Kristy decided to cut her losses and get out of there before lady luck decided it was time to cash her chips in on one nosy journalist. She grabbed the diskbox, didn't waste time going back to douse the anglepoise, and ran back along the corridor to the kitchen.

She heard footsteps again, but wasn't about to wait around to see who they belonged to, or what they wanted. Someone screamed.

Halfway down the whitewashed passageway an intruder alarm sounded. Kristy threw her weight against the flimsy door blocking her way, flung it open and dashed through and out, kicked down the steps and into the courtyard in time to see Nev, feet planted firmly, a milk bottle with a smouldering rag stuffed into its neck in their necks in each hand, rocking back to lob them up one at a time onto the stable roof. The flames caught almost as soon as the bottles smashed, licking at the tiles and tar-paper beneath.

“Calling card!” Nev yelled, seeing Kristy racing towards him. His eyes flashed with danger, exhilaration, and no little humour. “Give the bastards something to worry about besides us.”

Kristy didn't slow to look back. She hit the shingle flat out, almost losing her footing as she vaulted down from the steps, but more by luck than anything else, she kept herself on her feet and running hard; one arm pumping hard, the other tucked up and clutching the diskbox, both legs working hard, her breathing limited to sharp intakes snatched between each thumping stride. All the way imagining the heat of the flames on her back.

Nev was legging it behind her, breathing down her neck, pushing her all the way to the tree line. She didn't want to look at him. Equally, she didn't want to look back to see the bruised flames consolidating their toe-hold on the stable roof, fanning out across the tar-paper, choking out thick black smoke, but the same sick curiosity that forces passersby to gather round and gawp at the twisted wreckage of a bad car crash took over the controls to her limbs; bringing her up short of the trees, twisting, walking backwards, straining her eyes to make out the few hazy details.

The sky wasn't awash with flame. People were up on the stable roof already, picked out against the coming dawn, spraying the dying flames with foam from a fire extinguisher and water from an ordinary garden hosepipe. They looked to have the blaze under control. Looking at it, Kristy couldn't bring herself to care one way or another whether they succeeded or the whole place went up in one great big ball of smoke and fire.

She gave herself another minute to catch her breath, before she turned and jogged off through the trees. Dead wood had been wedged up against the perimeter wall to make a walkable ramp; the others were already in the transit van. Their conversation died down to nothing almost as soon as she laid her hand on the door. Kristy scooted along the narrow bench, into a seat opposite Shaun, shifting the file under her jacket until she was as comfortable as she was going to get squashed in the back of an old transit van. She kept the CD box on her lap.

Shaun hawked and spat at the floor between his feet.

“I just hope you're satisfied, lady,” he said, looking her straight in the eye for the first time she could think of.

Kristy didn't even think about it. She leaned in close enough to breathe into his mouth, clenched her fist and punched him in the face hard enough to bring a red snake's trail from his nose. Shaun looked as if he was set to lash out in retaliation, but shaking his head, Gary laid a restraining hand over his bunched knuckles and told him to grow up.

“Fuck you, man!”

“Come on,” Gary called through to Nev. “Let’s get the hell out of here before things start getting really stupid.” He winked at Kristy, and mouthed something she couldn't decipher. She shrugged and forced herself to smile back, annoyed that the young Scotsman had looked at her, seen a woman and immediately thought she needed protecting.

“I'm having a bad week,” she muttered, her look challenging any of them to utter the words pre-menstrual tension.

They made the long drive back to Newcastle in silence.

- 56 -

Alex Slater came round with the arrival of the dawn chorus. He was lying on his side, face mashed up hard against the fabric of the settee. His hands were trussed up behind his back with a length of nylon washing line looped around his wrists four times then pulled down and wrapped around his ankles to bind his feet together.

Goosebumps crawled up and down his skin.

Disorientated, Alex's first real effort at thought conjured up the single sensation, putting words to it later, when he had the right words to hand: Between them, Johnny and this place'll be the death of me. It's bloody freezing. . .

He was right on all three counts, although the place he was thinking about was a hole in the hillside not quarter of a mile from Rogan’s Farm.

Where he was, and how he got there, came back to him all too quickly when he finally opened his eyes.

The inside of his head felt as if an entire elephant chorus had been dress-rehearsing the Nutcracker Suite in there, while at the same time Doc Terror had been pushing blunt needles into the backs of his eyes, just for kicks. The bare skin around his wrists was chaffed where the nylon line had started burning. Muscles in his shoulders and thighs were locked solid with cramps so close to rigor mortis Alex didn't honestly believe he'd be able to stand, let alone walk away from Frank Rogan's mausoleum, when he finally slipped his shackles.

The room was still in darkness, despite a brightening sliver of daylight that sliced through the black like frost. A fan of knives were laid out like an offering, their blades catching the light like pieces of silver. Alex wriggled and twisted, arching his back until his questing fingers snagged the first of Billy's knots, felt his head reel and the world shift about above him; the living room tilted to resemble the inside of a funhouse, the window set to rocking in its pane as if the farmhouse had somehow set sail while he was unconscious.

The place reeked like a butcherhouse, the smell stronger and more sickening than when he had first stepped foot in the room. How long had it taken to fester into this?

Alex squeezed his eyes shut, doing everything he could to keep his concentration on the knot his fingers were frantically picking away at. He could still hear the hum of blowflies picking away at the wax dummy in the chair, and finally he opened them again when the dancing sparks convinced his stomach it was time to abandon ship.

Frank Rogan was still in his chair, and still very much dead.

His white teeth were bared where his fleshy lips had been stripped away in a permanent smile, one of two. The second bone-white smile where his head and shoulders joined, the vertebrae flashing white, like teeth while the head above tilted away at an unnatural angle.

Alex shuffled around until his back was to Rogan, thinking that maybe, if he couldn't see the old man sat there like some bloody sentinel in his armchair, he could forget he was even there for just about long enough to work himself free, and not lose his mind in the process. And then, maybe, he could turn himself over to the Police. Maybe even go back and find Johnny so the pair of them could hit the road like Johnny wanted after all. Spend some time down the coast, hang out at the amusement arcades. Have a good time for this one summer at least. Maybe worry about giving himself up come winter, if the Police were still looking for him then.

But what use were all these maybes if he didn't get out of here before that fucking psycho Billy came back from wherever he'd fucked off to? Maybe then there would be no dream answers couched in memories of Spanish City? Or worse, maybe, Billy would bring along his own answers and Alex wouldn't be left with a whole lot of choice in the matter.

He had to get out of here long before then.

He set to the knot again, worming his index finger into the small bit of slack he had managed to work loose already. The sweat on his hands made it a bit easier. Alex massaged it into his wrists, greasing them up enough for him to work at. The cramp in his side gave a deep pinch like a finger corkscrewing up and under his ribs.

Alex braced his knees against the base of the settee and used his legs to help pull against his right arm as he pulled upwards, against the nylon line. The moment he felt the rope bite deep Alex was sickeningly sure he wasn't going to be able to worm his way out of this mess anywhere near quickly enough to beat Billy’s homecoming, and that only made him pull harder, heedless of the damage he was doing to his wrist.

The nylon gave an extra millimetre but remained stubbornly stuck beneath the first knuckle of his thumb. Pulling against the knots was getting him nowhere fast. There was a sensation of warming growing at the back of his wrist, a hot electrical tingle, as if someone were smearing Deep Heat into the wounds opening up back there. The burning quickly spread all the way around his wrist in a bracelet as the skin began to tear under the pressure of his pulling.

Alex screamed, yanked at the nylon line again, kicking out in frustrated rage, suddenly angry beyond all reason. Let Billy come back, he thought crazily. Let the bastard come back and I’ll rip his fucking head off his shoulders and swap it with his old man’s. . . It was like a premonition being forced into his mind. The old man with his head gone, Billy on the floor at his feet, blood pumping through the stump of his neck into a puddle spreading across the floor. . . He pistoned his arm up, through the rapidly fading mist of pain, the rope tearing the skin back across the heel of his hand. Alex pulled harder, ripping his hand free. The top layer of skin came away as if it were a glove, lined with blood.

Alex was screaming. The voices in his head were screaming. Billy, on the floor in his premonition was screaming.

And none of them felt the pain.

Realising that, and thinking that somehow his body had short circuited or somehow overloaded and his senses melted down, Alex was suddenly sure he was about to die right there on the on farmhouse floor and to hell with Billy, Johnny and all the rest. That surety lasted for a full minute before it started to waiver.

His hand was bleeding quite heavily and already he could feel himself beginning to get that familiar light-headedness. With the steady loss of blood showing no signs of slowing, Alex quickly tugged his other hand free and saw to unleashing his legs. Using his good hand to support him, he lurched clumsily to his feet. He was forced to move very slowly, and very, very carefully.

Alex staggered to the door, stumbling and catching the frame to stop himself pitching flat on to his face. The insides of his stomach seemed to be swelling. Parts of his skull felt as if the bones holding them together were already on the point of bursting apart. He groaned and staggered into the hall, his bleeding hand clamped under his armpit. The blood was seeping down through the burgundy silk of his dress shirt in a perspiration-ring that was already a handspan across. Alex forced himself to stop and look at his reflection in the hall's full body mirror, and was stunned and horrified equally by the face and body he saw looking back from the silvered depths.

His skin was too pale white to be healthy. His freckles reduced to a sick shade of grey. His bloodshot eyes sunk into dark, ringed sockets. The skin around his cheeks and jaw seemed to have shrunk so that his jaw thrust out prominently while his cheeks had caved in. Worst of all were the sporadic red blotches peppering his chin and around his mouth. He touched the red areas tentatively, feeling out the sores beneath the skin. Remembered Billy's face, and the weeping sores ringing his mouth.

“You bastard. . . Oh, you bastard,” he moaned, reaching out to steady himself. His voice was weak and sounded all wrong, like the Death’s Head he was staring at in the mirror looked all wrong. The body beneath looked little better.

To look at him, Alex thought, suddenly very scared of whatever it was that was happening to him, you would have thought he was the junkie, not Johnny.

The shirt hung on him like a tent. His shoulders had either grown while he was unconscious, or his ribcage and stomach had withered so badly he looked to have sprouted shoulder pads, it was difficult to tell which. The way his jeans had gone baggy in some places made him think that his legs had withered along with his stomach. The man in the mirror looked to be standing on sticks, his eyes as scared as Alex felt looking into them.

Alex reeled away from his reflection, unable to wrench his morbid fascination from the mirror man, raised his bloody hand to his face and pressed at the temples; trying to hold it all together. Christ, it just didn't look like him.  At least not the him that had come in here looking for the phone last night, and that was the only version of himself Alex had ever known.

Got to get out of here, something inside screamed just when Alex himself seemed to be on the point of surrendering to mirror man by sitting down and waiting to die, and that something carried enough strength behind it to force Alex into action. He lumbered into the kitchen, leaving bloody handprints behind where he had had to use the wall and table for support.

At the sink, he drank three mugs full of water, and then rinsed his hand under the cold tap. He clenched his teeth and swallowed back the bile he felt rising, expecting fireworks as he soaked his raw palm. The water ran red. Alex felt nothing, the nerves stripped of skin numbed and insensitive, and took to cleaning out the wound as thoroughly as his queasy stomach would allow. Thinking about it, Alex realized that he could not actually feel the water splashing off his hand at all.

His lack of feeling didn't bear thinking about for too long.

Done, he pulled off his shirt, tearing off the sleeve to make a makeshift bandage, bound his hand up and pulled the shirt back on over the top.

He's coming back Alex. . . I'm coming home. . . That voice again, only now it seemed like more than one mouth -- or mind -- was behind it. Alex didn't know how it knew Billy was coming home, if he really was coming home and it wasn't just another symptom of Alex's mind having gone mad, or why the voice had suddenly changed slant and claimed that it was coming home, and he didn't care.

Sharing his head with voices, Alex staggered outside. He had no thoughts of his own beyond heading for the hills.

*   *   *   *   *

His feet took him away, and kept him moving even when he thought he was sure to drop.

His legs had no strength in them to argue.

A smile ghosted across Alex's face, dying almost as soon as the voice returned. Got to feel good, Alex. . . Need to feel good. . . He didn't know what it meant by that, but had a feeling he was going to find out for himself pretty soon. Whether he wanted to or not. He was moving as fast as he had the strength to push his body into going, but that was still too slow for the voice, it wanted more, and it wanted it faster than he could gather it to give. It seemed to take an age to get back to the Judas Hole.

The sun was clear of Moses Hill and climbing the ladder across the sky by the time Alex scrambled up the narrow chimney into the cave.

Johnny had the stove burning for light, or warmth. The cave was a good ten degrees colder than the morning outside, and that put it close to freezing. The cold didn't seem to be bothering Johnny, he had his shirt off and draped across his knees. His sweat gleamed bluish in the gas light. He looked bad. His skin was washed out and sallow, his hair knotted and stuck together in greasy clumps, his eyes haunted by his body's own desperate need.

It was hard to tell which of them looked worse. Alex thought he had been crying.

“I thought you weren't coming back,” Johnny said, no hint of accusation in his voice as he said it. He had a tattoo of a snake growing out of his stomach, curling around his side, up his back and over his shoulder, fangs bared to bite on his nipple.

Alex felt himself start to slip, his legs suddenly having no more strength to support him than water. Bizarrely, it felt almost exactly as if he were melting. He pitched forward, managing to bring hand up to protect his face, then crashed face first onto the floor.

Johnny scuttled over to where he lay, knelt there for a moment, just looking, and then lay down beside his friend. He cradled his body around Alex’s for warmth and for comfort, to let Alex know that he was there, that he would always be there, if they ever woke up from this nightmare.

Johnny lay like that for as long as he could keep his eyes from closing, stroking Alex's long dark brown hair behind his ear. Saw the torn skin where Billy had yanked the runic sword from his lobe rather than unfasten the clip.

He kissed Alex’s bloody ear lightly, and breathed into it.

“What happened to your sword, little soldier?”

- 57 -

Ben finished off the passage and set the printer to running off a copy of "The Sufferer's Song" while he went through to the kitchen for a well deserved caffeine injection.

He turned the radio on and was singing along to The Eagles as he wandered through to the breakfast bar.

Scooby was pottering around, busy looking for something to do with himself. Watching the old Labrador with one eye, the other trying to concentrate on yesterday's paper, Ben was struck by the wryly ironic image of Scooby sat inside on a wet Sunday afternoon looking to cause trouble like any normal ten year old. Boredom, it seemed, had made it as far as the canine world.

Scooby took to wandering between the family room and the breakfast bar, sniffing at his bowl, padding over to where Ben was sat reading, rubbing himself up against his legs, and generally making a show of his hunger pangs.

Ben got the message, spooned out some tinned dog food and refilled his water bowl.

“Come on then, Scoob.”

The old Labrador didn't need a second invitation to tuck in. Scooby sorted out, Ben went upstairs for a shower and a shave, thought about snatching forty minutes sleep while the printer ran off the first one hundred and forty pages of the manuscript, but decided against it, knowing he would only be worse for it later. He had things he wanted to do today besides sleep, the first of which was opening the windows to let some air in before he suffocated.

Instead of sleeping, he pulled out a clean pair of jeans and his favourite patchwork rugby shirt. He'd been given the shirt by Mike and Hannah as a Christmas present a couple of years ago. The shirt was put together with the flags of six nations, Canada, USA, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the UK. He wore it at least once a fortnight. On the last wash he managed to die it partially pink by putting it in with a new pair of red hiking socks, but that wasn’t going to stop him from wearing it until the seams gave out and it fell off his back. It wasn't just that it was comfortable, by some form of osmosis the rugby shirt had somehow become part of him and what he was. That he felt comfortable in it was an added bonus.

He padded downstairs barefoot, looking for a pair of trainers.

The only pair he could find were a pair of battered baseball boots and they were split between two rooms; one shoe buried beneath the pile of coats in the family room, the other lost in the detritus of the hall. By the time he had got himself scrubbed up, dressed and found something suitable to wear on his feet, an hour had wandered by and the printer was all but done with his first draft.

He gave it a very cursory skim read through the first and last ten pages, checking the spellchecker had been doing its job while he did his, then pulled out an A4 envelope, scribbled a one line note to Taryn Heyward saying nothing more than, “Here it is, hope you like. Very Best, Ben,” and put the two inside, binding up the envelope with sellotape to make sure it didn't burst open on its way down to London. Then he copied Taryn's address across and put the envelope on the desk to deal with later.

And then he was at a loss for what to do for the next four hours. His day was mapped out from twelve onwards, when he needed to be making his way into the university for his first seminar. He felt like writing, but knew if he started he would never get around to doing anything else and it would be another morning lost to the big black hole that was rapidly swallowing up his life. He turned the television on, and then back off again almost as quickly when he saw the garbage they were trying to pass off as breakfast entertainment.

In the end, Ben decided he was going to have to get out of the house before he went stir-crazy staring at the same four walls. He pushed himself up out of the chair and went looking for Scooby.

He didn't have to look far. Scooby had hunkered down behind the settee and was snoozing away quite contentedly. Ben didn’t have the heart to wake him just because he wanted some company. He picked up a jacket, checked he had his keys, and collected the envelope on the way out. When he opened the door the mid-summer warmth settled comfortably around him. He leaned back inside and dumped his coat on the stairs.

The flowers in the garden were dusted with dew, the cobwebs on the wall turned to webs of spun glass. It was as if nature had played her trump hand and made the summer itself visible for anyone who cared to see. He felt unexpectedly vulnerable as he walked away from the familiarity of the house.

He walked down through the park and along past the jetty before going back into the village to post the letter. Ben had fallen in love with the countryside around Westbrooke when his folks had first moved into the village in 1974, some things about it were given constants; the sun, Devil's Water, the trees and the park; but some things were new, and he fervently hoped, transitory, like the Constabulary Convoy that was still very much in evidence, parked along both sides of the High Street for nigh on its entire length, and the trouble that seemed to be hanging over the village like a heavy shroud.

Daniel Tanner had phoned him last night, on the off chance that he might have seen Graeme Lockewood's girl, Annie.

Ben said he hadn't, which was true, but it set him to thinking anyway, tallying up the troubles that had been racking up to the village's name since Johnny Lisker had stabbed the biker in The Railway House and Daniel's girls had found the body in the woods.

He came up with a long list. About the only good thing he could come up with to balance it had been meeting Kristy French, and even that had been tempered by the unpleasant circumstances. He didn't suppose he would ever see her again.

Just ships that pass on a manhunt? Very poetic.

The sun, one of the few constants Ben felt safe relying upon, was up and shining unnaturally brightly for the time of morning, picking out the vegetation and giving it an extra lease of life, the colours shining so richly the metallic sheen of the rocky slopes seemed dulled and deadened by comparison.

He was coming up to the Arches at the base of Moses Hill before he realized where he was heading. Give Mike a surprise, he thought, picking up his pace. When he reached the leafy tunnel of Garretts Lane he stopped to listen to the silence. No cars, no trains, no children or adults bickering. Nothing to spoil the silence. As he set out up the gravel road he found he was instinctively trying to make as little noise as possible. He had only taken a few steps and already he felt as if he were deep in the heart of the wood, the trees cutting off even the sounds of the wind, a refuge from the noise and the wind and the summer heat.

He could see why Mike had wanted to come back here; it was so perfectly at peace with itself. He walked on, letting the world recede in his wake, walking steadily faster and faster until he was running up the hill, certain that if he slowed the world would catch him by the heels and drag him back down to earth with an almighty crash.

And then he was out of the trees and slowing, his legs tying themselves in knots as he came into sight of the caravan.

The next half-minute was the longest of his life. He knew something was wrong immediately. He didn't need to see the broken window or the door open and banging in the breeze. The second part of his mind, where all of the story telling came into being, had already latched on to the fact that something was very wrong and was screaming it loudly inside his head.

He sprinted, his heart thumping madly and threatening to burst, and staggered into the caravan. The reek was incredible. All he could hear were the flies. All he could see, Mike toppled onto his side, the pool of dried rust, the knife on the floor between the beer cans and the vodka bottles. His dark pupils shrank against the light, and struggled to focus on his brother's body.

“Mike. . .” he moaned, kneeling down beside his brother, pressing on his chest, trying to force him into coming back. Blood bubbled deep in his throat. Ben pumped the area over Mike’s heart, and then felt to see if the heart was beating. It wasn’t. Touched his cheek and snatched his hand back, scared by the chill he felt there.

“Mike!” Ben screamed, a cold, numb terror spreading through him as paralysis settled over him. He didn't want to be kneeling here, holding Mike. Not Mike. Not dead. Not like this. It couldn't be happening! It couldn't be real! He kept telling himself it couldn't be real, even though it couldn't be anything other, kept telling himself it was nightmare, that he had fallen asleep over the computer and he was going to wake up any moment; all he had to do was keep Mike warm and they would both wake up together. Both wake up and laugh about his stupid imagination.

So he sat there, helplessly massaging Mike’s hands, crying and waiting for him to wake up, the certainty that waking up wasn't an honest answer growing with that chilly paralysis. After that breathing took all the strength he had to give it.

In his head, if not his heart, Ben knew he couldn't breathe life into Mike; knew by looking at him that even if he could, the four-minute deadline for brain damage had passed by hours ago, probably while he was preoccupied with his bloody book instead of being here with his brother when he needed him to be here, when he needed his strength; but that grim knowledge didn't stop Ben from leaning over, breathing into Mike's mouth and trying to force the life back into his brother whether he wanted it or not.

He pushed on his chest, massaged his heart, finding a rhythm and keeping it going for maybe a full minute before he broke, pounding his clenched fists into Mike's chest again and again, crying and screaming and hating himself more than he had ever hated anyone in his life.

“YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME! YOU CAN'T BE DEAD! YOU CAN'T BE DEAD!  YOU CAN'T BE DEAD! I WON'T LET YOU BE DEAD!”

He couldn't see through the tears. Everything inside the caravan was a blur. Ben pushed himself to his feet, pulled Mike up, lifting him into his arms as if he weighed less than a child, and lumbered outside.

Tears streaming down his cheeks, Ben carried his brother’s body down through the trees of Moses Hill and all the way back into the village, not knowing why, only that he couldn’t leave him up there alone.

When he reached the door to the police house he was shuddering, and he couldn’t stop.

- 58 -

Daniel Tanner had taken the day off work and cancelled school for Ellen and Sarah, not wanting to let them out of his sight if he could help it. He had spent most of the night driving the streets of Westbrooke and the surrounding countryside in the old Subaru, looking for Annie and all the while hoping he wasn't going to be the one who found her if she was lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

Graeme, Barney Doyle and two young Police Constables had done much the same on foot, walking over the same paths again and again, in case they had missed something the first time. It had been gone four when they finally decided to call it a day.

He had stopped by to see how Jenny was holding up, and found her sat on the floor wiping her tears on an old teddy bear. Dim light drifting in through the curtains. He had sat for the good part of an hour comforting her, all the while switching the nightmare around in his head until he was confronted with his own worst case scenario: it being Ellen who was out there alone and maybe lying in a ditch. Just imagining it had his insides churning with anguish. Daniel had left Jenny at getting on for five in the morning, when Graeme still hadn't come home, and gone looking for him.

He found Graeme at the school gates across the street from his own house, holding onto the railings, breaking his heart. Together they stared at the hulking edifice with its dark windows, talking about the good times. Talking about their little girls. Graeme had asked Daniel to do one thing for him. Daniel promised, and stood there then, looking up at Ellen's window, not knowing what to do but making a thousand resolutions to place Kathleen, Ellen and Sarah above everything else in his life, and keep them there for as long as he was in a position to love them and look after them.

“Listen to your kids, Dan. Spend time with Ellen and Sarah. Get to know them before they grow up and it’s too late. . .” Underneath that thought was another “too late”. Reading between the lines, Daniel knew he was watching his friend steeling himself for the worst, and crushed his heart with grief to see it.

He made one more promise to Graeme, helping him back into the car. It was a promise he had no real hopes of keeping, he knew that much even as he made it, but he made it, and he believed it just the same.

“We'll find her, Graeme. I promise. I'll take you home, Jenny needs you. I'll stay out here and carry on looking until I find Annie.”

Graeme gave no indication that he had heard. In the passenger seat, his arms wrapped around his stomach, he sat watching the sun come, trying to keep himself from coming apart.

Daniel had done just that, pausing twice outside his own house to look up the girls’ windows, feeling achingly empty, only to carry on looking.

Carry on chasing ghosts.

- ELLEN'S FALL -

Daniel and Kathleen walked hand in hand, Ellen and Sarah, carrying the hamper and picnic blanket between them, ten paces in front.

The one good thing about the summer, Daniel mused, kicking a stone along the kerb, was the lake. People paid a small fortune to the tourist industry for a week in Amble, Grassmere, Windermere or Thirlmere, to enjoy what they had on their doorstep. It would be impossible to keep this little fragment of Eden to themselves indefinitely. Unfortunately, the tourists would begin arriving in their droves, and Westbrooke's little secret would be out. He had agreed with Kathleen that, until they knew about Annie one way or another, it was probably best not to let on to Ellen or Sarah.  No point in upsetting them unnecessarily. But that didn't mean that he could think about anything else, because he couldn't. Every time he stopped talking he started thinking about the hell Graeme and Jenny must be going through.

Being a Monday, they had no problem finding a spot close to the water’s edge. By the time they caught up the girls had already spread the blanket and were busy emptying the hamper of cheese and onion and meat-paste sandwiches, Hula Hoops, cold sausages, oranges, apples and bottles of Coke.

Kathleen had bought a copy of More! Magazine for something to read while the kids played with the Frisbee. Daniel, being Daniel, couldn’t resist joining in, throwing the Frisbee outrageously high and running and diving crazily as it came back like a boomerang, arrowing almost every time for his neck. Sitting with her chin on her knees, she sat and watched them play and wished she could force herself to join in, make a real family thing of it, but she couldn’t bring herself to do anything more energetic than stare out at the water and think about reading her magazine.

The Frisbee came her way, crash landing in plate of meat-paste sandwiches. Daniel came loping up and rolled onto his back.

“Christ, I'm knackered.”

”Having fun?”

“Oh, yes. Now pass me that Frisbee before the girls decide to start chucking poor old dad about instead.”

He hurled the Frisbee into the air above Ellen's head and watched her back-peddle, struggling to pick it out for the sun.

“Drop it and you have to buy the ice creams!”

He fully expected Ellen to miss it by miles, but she didn't. Tripping over her heels, she crashed onto her backside and caught the Frisbee above her head. She was laughing so hard she was very nearly in tears. Daniel wanted to run over and hug her so tightly she split in two, and had to force himself to stand still and laugh as he would have laughed on any other day when Ellen took it upon herself to play the clown.

After that he left them to it, settling down beside Kathleen with one of the bottles of Coke to quench his worked up thirst.

“That pair have got too much energy for me,” Daniel said, watching Ellen tag Sarah and go dashing off, lapping it up like a loon.

“A Duracell battery’s got more energy than you,” Kathleen said, lying back on the blanket.

“Thanks. I just can't stop thinking about what Graeme and Jenny must be going through. I don't know, Kathy, I just feel. . .”

“I know, scoot over here and give me a cuddle.”

They had run out of words and were lying back on the blankets with their eyes closed, enjoying the sunshine, when Ellen came back to ask if it was okay to go for a paddle.

“I don't see why not, as long as you don't go too deep,” Daniel agreed, watching a couple of gulls circle low over the restaurant along the shoreline. Evie's place was as good as a baited trap for those scavengers. “I might come in and join you in a bit. A splash sounds like fun.”

“Last one in the water's a fish-face,” Ellen squealed, pulling her pumps and socks off and starting to roll the legs of her jeans up before Sarah had had time to catch her breath from running back to the blanket.

Ellen didn't even hesitate at the water’s edge; she plunged straight in, splashing and giggling, oblivious to the water soaking up through her jeans as high already as her waistband.

Sarah wasn't exactly right behind her. The older girl took her time getting ready for the deep, penetrating cold of the water compared with the air and the day. Daniel smiled to himself, remembering exactly what he was like at Sarah's age, always playing it cool and disinterested.

Good looks and style must run in the genes.

“Come on, slowpoke!” Ellen coaxed, splashing around. “It’s dead warm in here!”

“Don't go too far,” Kathleen called after Ellen, watching her, ten yards in, sculling along on her back as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She came close then to envying her daughter’s innocence as she clowned about spraying water and splashing.

Ellen swarm a few more yards, kicking her legs to agitate the water into stormy ripples, then kicked back and waited, treading water, then struck out for the water around the jetty, Sarah swimming hard to catch up.

Daniel closed his eyes again and let them get on with it. He couldn’t sleep because he couldn't turn his mind off, but he wasn’t about to give up that easily. Starting with his toes and working his way up, Daniel consciously relaxed different parts of his body, not moving on from one spot until he felt it unwind; trying to lull his mind into forgetfulness and trick it into sleep that way.

He could hear the gulls circling overhead, taking a big interest in something down below. Probably an open rubbish bag, he thought lazily, enjoying the feel of the sun on his face and the wind in his hair.

*   *   *   *   *

“Daaad! DAAAAAAAAADDD!”

Daniel sat up and opened his eyes, blinking out the twenty minutes worth of sleep. Since he had dozed off, the sky looked as if it had been bleached by a manic housewife determined to get the colour out of just about everything. Colour wise, everything looked slightly off kilter. His heart was hammering in his chest, his first thought: Oh, God help me. Something's happening to my girls!

He pushed himself to his feet, looking around frantically for either Ellen or Sarah.

It was Sarah, running up the grass, yelling. He couldn't see Ellen anywhere. What's happened to Ellen? Oh Christ, where is she? He shaded his eyes to look out across the lake. No sign of Ellen.

Oh, dear God, where is she?  The wind cut right through the cotton of his shirtsleeves, chilling him more than it ought to. He didn’t wait for Sarah to reach him. He ran to meet her halfway; running to meet his own worst nightmare head on.

Sarah's face was red with tears and exhaustion. She was gasping for breath, trying to force words out of her mouth but her tongue felt as if it had bloated and swollen to the size of her throat. She couldn't speak and she couldn't breathe. Daniel couldn't help himself. He grabbed her by the arms and started shaking her.

“What's happened, honey? Where's Ellen? Is she okay?” There was an edge to his voice he hated, but he couldn't shift it, and it refused to be watered down. It was infused with his own rising panic. “WHERE'S ELLEN?”

Sarah pointed towards the jetty, swallowing and trying to talk at the same time and not managing to do either. Daniel spun away, panic taking over. Stumbling and screaming, he sprinted toward the jetty scared of what he would find there, scared he wouldn't find anything at all, and that was worse.

“ELLEN! ELLEN! ELLLLLLENNN!”

Then he saw her.

She was stood out in the turbulence beneath the main body of the jetty, her little legs planted firmly in the silt. She was hanging on to something that bobbed in the turbid water like a buoy, stopping it from getting away from her. The twisted set of her face said she was screaming. No sound was making it past her lips. Daniel ran on, pushing through the longer grasses, ignoring their sting as they whipped back at his legs. Drift wood made the slope down to the water as treacherous as any Daniel had ever run, pebbles shifting under his feet as they skidded on yet more pebbles.

The amount of junk beneath the jetty was amazing; newspapers, cans, cigarette wrappers, crisp packets, bottles and all sorts of everything else. Up near the top, where the wooden jetty met the road, blankets had been laid out to make a den. Amid all of the rubbish, a kid had transformed the underside of the jetty into a good, secret place. It had the isolation and the aura of mystery so that seeing it now was like hearing a long and forgotten friend calling to let Daniel know he hadn't forgotten him after all these years, even if Daniel had forgotten that friend long ago.

Ellen was trying to help someone swim, or stop them from drowning, he realized suddenly.

“HANG ON BABY! I'M COMING! DADDY'S COMING! JUST HANG ON THERE!”

Ellen staggered back against the swell, not letting go of the swimmer for a second, though she must have been tiring. How long had she been struggling to keep the body afloat?

The body was face down in the water, hair fanned out like the tail of a peacock on the water's surface, wearing jeans and a white checked blouse, the weight of the sodden denim holding her down. She had no shoes on her feet. The weight of the undertow was pulling Ellen deeper, against her efforts to cling on to the swimmer's body as it was lifted and dragged by the swells of Devil's Water.

Daniel splashed straight in, refusing to recognise the sodden denim and the white checked blouse even though he had spent all of last night looking for them.

“Come on, Hon. I'm here,” he stopped waist deep in the freezing water, taking a hold of the swimmer's legs. Gripping the saturated denim he started hauling the body back to the shore. His foot slid and slipped into the muddy bed of the lake as he waded through the water, part of his mind screaming that he was dragging a dead girl – his best friend's little girl, the girl that he had been up all night looking for, the girl that he had rashly promised to find – through the water.

- PART FOUR –

- A VILLAGE IN SHOCK -

- 59 -

Ben hadn't thought he would ever see her again, but there she was, Wednesday morning, waiting patiently by the lychgate, watching across the old gravestones as Mike Shelton was laid to rest in the same plot as his wife and daughter. The tiny hillside churchyard was exposed and bitterly cold, a fine, gauzy drizzle raining on the funeral service. The bushy canopy of overhanging willow kept the worst of the steady downpour off.

He was wearing a long black raincoat that absorbed whatever rain made it past the willow's siphon. His clothes hung on him as if they were three sizes too big. His skin was a washed-out grey. His eyes were empty. Wisps of rain drifted across his blank stare, diffusing into the air like ephemeral ghosts.

There were only three mourners at the graveside, Ben and Barney and Evie Doyle. To Kristy, over the rows of lacklustre headstones, Ben didn't look so much dignified as he did broken, kneeling to drop a white rose on the coffin lid. The vicar took a handful of dirt and let it scatter between his fingers. The sound of the dirt hitting the lid carried all the way to Kristy at the gate. Beside Ben, Barney and Evie were saying their own silent prayers.

The rain mingling with the tears on her cheeks, Evie gave Ben a fierce hug then stepped back and moved away. Barney scooped up a handful of dirt and let it filter through his clenched fist before backing away to join his wife for the walk back to their car.

Kristy waited while Ben thanked the vicar.

“I don't know what to say to him,” she admitted as Barney and Evie walked past her.

“Who does?” Barney said, shrugging. The big man was red-eyed, hurting, and trying not to let it show.

“Typical man. Just give him a hug, dear,” Evie offered, patting Kristy’s hand. She too was red-eyed and hurting, but dealing with the emotions in her own way.

“Thanks,” Kristy smiled. “I'll do that.”

When Ben finally wandered away from the graveside that was exactly what she did. She wrapped her arms around his back and held him close. He didn’t appear to recognise her, but that was okay. She had set out this morning looking for an ally, heard about Mike from Andy McKenna and decided to stick around and offer herself as a shoulder should Ben feel like crying. Slowly, like a man learning to walk all over again, Ben allowed himself to be led back to his car.

Mike had been dead for two days when Ben found him in that caravan of his halfway up the hill. He had carried his brother all the way back down into the village, to Barney in the police house, tears streaming down his cheeks. To hear Andy McKenna speak, it had been a touching, and a harrowing sight. She could picture it and from the image in her mind's eye wouldn't have argued, even with his choice of words. She imagined Ben straining under Mike’s weight, stumbling, falling and picking himself up again. Touching and harrowing seemed to fit it just right.

Calum Salmund had carried out the inquest in tandem with young Annie Lockewood, in a converted classroom in the old youth block. Alex Slater's fingerprints had been found on the doorframe and the knife. Under the circumstances, with the broken window and the smashed bottles all over the floor, he had no choice but to offer an open verdict.

Annie Lockewood was another matter entirely. The findings made by the Underwater Search Unit backed up Barney's worst fears. There were signs of sexual assault, and enough evidence to suggest that penetration had occurred; even that small mercy was denied Annie's parents. No illusions left unscarred. The water in her lungs matched samples taken from fifteen feet beneath the surface. Rocks, bundled up to act as makeshift weights, were found in line of sight with the jetty, at a depth of fifteen feet, tying in with the samples.

The back of her skull had been caved in by a claw hammer.

Jessie Stevenson had run a piece in the Gazette – Northumbrian village in shock after latest tragedy – and made a couple of columns out of it on a day when the headlines revolved around the brutal murder of Spencer Abel, the Gazette's news editor – Mown down in a city centre car park. Death was all around her. Someone’s pain. Someone else's suffering, yes, but all around her. Rotating on her axis, her pivot. Kristy suddenly felt as if she was the centrifuge spinning wildly out of control, the hurt her fault. She understood easily enough that her mind was laying a massive guilt trip on her, but that didn't help dislodge the burden it strapped to her back.

Add to that the fact that Todd Devlin was still out there, public enemy number one according to Paul Sheridan, the BBC local news man. Kristy was probably the only person in the whole of the North East who wanted to shake Devlin by the hand. Honest to God, and herself, she hoped Brent Richards would never wake up.

All three stories attracted prime time on the local television news roundups, running consecutively for three nights out of four, but didn't catch the imagination of the outside world. Westbrooke was just another small town with its small time problems.

“Are you feeling hungry?” Kristy asked.

“I haven't got any food in the house.”

“That's not what I asked. Let’s try again. Here's your starter for ten: Are you feeling hungry?”

Ben thought about it for a moment, his eyes and his thoughts plainly a million miles away from the mundane necessities of food.

“No. Not really.”

“Fine. Do you want to come with me while I go and get something to eat? I thought I might try that place down by the lake. Is it any good, do you know?”

Ben ignored her. He sat staring out into space while the length of silence between them widened. “I'm sorry”' he said, finally. “I don't feel a lot like talking. Maybe this isn't such a good idea.”

“I'm willing to run the risk if you are?”

*   *   *   *   *

It looked as if the entire village had closed down for Annie's funeral that afternoon, and every one of them had come to stand by the graveside as Connor Chapman, the vicar of St Mary's on the Mount, voiced all of their farewell's in his short, emotional eulogy.

Ranks of children, from Annie's class at school, and the years above and below, had turned out en masse, fidgeting and looking uncomfortable this close to mortality. A full complement of teachers accompanied them, supposedly to keep the youngsters in check. Today, they weren't needed. The children's usual high spirits were very definitely subdued.

No one seemed to be talking, another miracle all in itself.  The rain hadn't eased any. The grass was like a mulch beneath their feet.

Two dozen employees from the paper mill had turned up to offer Graeme their condolences and pay their respects to little Annie.

Barney Doyle and Charlie Adams stood slightly away from the graveside, Barney feeling awkward and not sure what to do with himself, Charlie sniffing a lot and shuffling from foot to foot. Knowing what Evie would have been like, Barney had tried to make her promise to stay away, eliciting a compromise which suited him down to the ground; Evie had told him she was going out and not to wait up, which roughly translated to: I'm going down to the restaurant to knead some dough and pretend it's your head, thank you very much.

Barney took the licorice papers from his coat pocket and rolled himself a smoke, despite Charlie's frown.

“God'll forgive me.”

“He might, but other folk won't,” Charlie said, reproachfully. The truth be told, Barney was only rolling the smoke for something to do with his hands, he hadn't even thought how it might look to others. He ground the unlit cigarette into the soft grass.

Daniel Tanner stood beside Graeme and Jenny, his own thoughts very much on his wife and his girls back home. The doctor had given Ellen something to help her sleep. God only knew what had been going through her head since she had found Annie face down in the water. He had tried to talk to her but it was like talking to a Zombie. At her age picnics were supposed to be fun, things to be looked forward to on wet, windy afternoons. Not the scripts for nightmares. In the space of a week, Ellen had found the body of a stranger hanging in the woods, and then her best friend floating in the water. Not, by any stretch of the imagination, the best foundations for a healthy childhood to be built upon. If the doctor was to be believed kids were resilient and Ellen would be bouncing back in no time. Daniel wished to God he could be so positive, but he simply couldn't.

Few people looked at Billy Rogan as he leaned against the trunk of the weeping willow, and those few that did turned away quickly rather than look the scarecrow in the eye.

Billy was intensely proud of the way things had turned out. He had been so sick he couldn't move from the driver's seat of the Zephyr for two days, parked in the barn with a blanket pulled over his head, Annie's shoes clutched firmly in his hands, his body tormented by the shakes and the sweats. The few tufts of hair he had left had fallen out yesterday morning, leaving raw patches on his scalp that wept like the sores around his mouth. He had had to drag himself into the house for water and food then, or die. His body had made the choice for him by refusing to die painlessly; it was something else he couldn't fathom, how he felt nothing, not even numb for days on the trot, and then it hurt like buggery just twisting around in the seat of Pops' old car to open the door.

He didn't hurt now, but if he put his fingers up to his temples he could feel out the swelling beneath the skin where his bones seemed to be slowly forcing their way apart. His head was the only part of his body that did not seem to be withering and dying. He felt as if a new person was gestating inside him, waiting to be born. His head was the egg then, the shell beginning to crack as this new hybrid Billy forced its way out into the world.

His legs and arms were like sticks, the fat burned off by his hyper-active metabolism. Two days in the Zephyr had allowed his body to start feeding on the sinew and muscle, stripping both from Billy’s limbs before he could start building them up with a fresh intake of protein and carbohydrate. One thing he understood now, better than anything else, he had to eat almost constantly unless he wanted to slip back into the sweats and feel himself being eaten away by the strange, cold anger taking over his body.

Connor Chapman waited for Annie Lockewood's coffin to be lowered into the earth before he continued with the few lines from the Holy Bible set aside for burying children and sending departed souls on their way to the good Lord. Death sickened Chapman. He couldn't bring himself to view it as dispassionately as did many of his brethren. With death, Connor was as near atheism as his faith would allow. The doctrine that Connor preached from his Sunday pulpit offered comfort with four words, eternal life in heaven, for the sinner or the saint without discrimination of race, creed or colour. Which was all to the good but Connor couldn't believe in a God who claimed innocence for the evil of another anymore than he could believe in heaven as a place, Noah as a man, or the immaculate conception of Jesus Christ as a given.

Leading the funeral service for a girl he had seen every week since her christening eleven years ago, Connor wanted to tear the hair from his head and scream the truth at the sky, and be damned with his eternal soul and the emotional baggage that went along with that way of thinking.

He was uncomfortable with these dark thoughts inside his head.

He felt so low, so cold, beneath it all, so very, very angry.

Connor Chapman recited verse and word from memory, the Bible in his hand held open on the wrong page, his voice flat and toneless, going through the motions. Connor felt like nothing more than a fraud, pushing a credo he had no faith left to believe in.

Offering hope where there was only sorrow and suffering to be had, no better than a snake oil man pushing his own form of miracle elixir down the throats of these people.

Connor stepped back from the plot when Billy Rogan moved in to start refilling the grave, circumstance forcing him to act like a polling day politician, pressing palms and offering condolences of his own as the mourners came looking for God to say it was all right for them to hurt and carrying on hurting just as much as they needed to, and for just as long as their own self-revolving universes would allow them to dance to the piper's melancholy song. There was desperation in each and every face. He lied and they were happy to believe him.

Billy did his share of handshaking and accepting pats on the back from the adults and then from the children mimicking their parents and teachers, a good many of them shying away from him when they saw the infection spreading across his face. If Pops had been there to see the way they reacted he would have knocked some manners into the young ones, and bashed a few of the older one’s heads together for not knowing better. But Pops wasn't there, and that was one of the problems Billy the Scarecrow had to adjust to.

Billy sank as much of his anger as he dared into shovelling the top soil into the hole and on top of Annie Lockewood. The tears were streaming down his cheeks as he dug. He could feel himself starting to hurt again, and that feeling scared him badly.

Daniel Tanner wandered back to the graveside.

“You holding up okay, Billy?”

Billy looked up from shovelling and nodded, wiping his eyes.

Daniel was an amorphous blur through his teary eyes. “Doin' okay, Mr Daniel,” he managed.

Daniel smiled sadly, mistaking Billy's tears for the same grief he was struggling to keep bottled up and failing to cope with even as he cheated himself into believing he had it under control.

“There's no shame in crying, son. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“I won't,” Billy promised earnestly, this time wiping his dirty hands on the legs of his overall, the fresh smears lost in with the accumulated camouflage of grime and grass stains already ground into the legs.

Billy watched Daniel Tanner walk away toward the lychgate, deep in conversation with Barney Doyle and Charlie Ash. He didn't need to hear what they were saying to know that they were talking about him. Pops was right, they all made fun of him when they thought he wasn't looking. Even Mr Barney, and he said he was Billy's friend.

Filled with the energy of anger, Billy set about the dwindling heap of soil, shovelling three and then four spadefuls into the hole in the time it took him to think Billy the scarecrow twice over in his head.

Soon the heap was down to nothing and the hole was a levelled off rectangle of dark soil clogging up with rain.

The cries would begin soon enough, screams of horror the like of which Billy struggled to imagine, even with the aid of the constantly expanding presence within his mind, carried along with cries of disbelief as their undercurrents of pain. When they began they would be so very, very sweet to hear.

Billy heard a dog braying. Its howling sent tiny electric shivers of anticipation coursing through him.

*   *   *   *   *

Rain streamed down the glass of the windscreen. Beneath the wheels every puddle sounded like a sheet of blotting paper being torn up into smaller and smaller pieces.

In the small rectangle of the sun visor's mirror Ben's face looked haunted by the thoughts living behind it; dark circles beneath and around his eyes betraying the string of sleepless nights he had spent retreating to the fictional Wild West of J.T. Edison and listening to whatever the radio had to offer the silent hours.

The lines deepening on his forehead and around his mouth might have been cut by the headless grief cannoning about in there. The lines and circles were etched deeply enough to read the truth, or one version of it:

Ben Shelton was dying on the inside and the transformation was as rapid as it was shocking.

Last week, scouring the hills around Westbrooke for Johnny Lisker and Alex Slater, Kristy had met a Thirty-something man who seemed comfortable with himself, easy-going and unhurried and seemed likely to be unfazed by any of life's great curve balls. She had judged him content with his lot as one of life's nearly men.

Now she was driving through subdued streets with an empty husk in the passenger seat. For the five minutes between the cemetery and the restaurant Kristy chatted non-stop, half the time not even giving Ben the opportunity to mumble a non-committal response for fear of getting nothing at all.

She swung off the High Street, over wet cobbles and into the car-park of The Watersedge Restaurant. Apart from Evie's Fiat, they shared the car park with a pair of squabbling seagulls fighting over scraps and a whirlpool of fallen leaves twisting and skipping on the rutted gravel. Ben stared through the window at the naked display of savagery; one mouth greedily ripping food from another. On another day he might have appreciated the ironic allegory. Today though he was unable to pull his eyes away from the primitive dance of the gulls.

“Why?” Ben asked simply. He could have been asking a thousand questions with that one word. Kristy wished she had an answer for just one of them.

*   *   *   *   *

The restaurant was submerged in darkness. Kristy pressed her face against the glass and peered inside, trying to make sense of the collage of crowded shadow-shapes behind the glass.

“I can't see anyone,” she said finally, giving up. The rain had stopped but the sun was still refusing to come out of hiding.

“If I know Evie, she's probably in the kitchen taking it out on a tray of pastries.”

The way he said it, it didn't sound like a joke. Kristy opted to read it as one regardless.

“Then that's where we start.”

They walked across the rain-damp patio and around the side of the old boathouse, stopping to check each successive window for signs of life inside until they reached the kitchen door. The door was closed, but the small glass panel was lit from the inside. It swung open with the softest push from his fingertips. Evie was inside, as he'd guessed, juggling with a tray of piping hot pastries fresh from the oven and humming along with a radio he couldn't hear from the door.

Ben knocked quietly and stuck his head around the door. “Mind if we sneak in the back way, Evie?” He called more to let her know they were there than to ask permission to come inside.

Evie slid the hot tray down on the metal work surface and offered a wan little smile that looked dreadfully old on her usually bubbly face. Her hands, he could see, were trembling. The oven gloves defied Evie for a second, refusing to slip off her hands. Ben couldn't recall ever having seen her look so old. The effect of the mask slipping down over her face was uncanny. For once she had no banter to lure them into her parlour, only a tired out twitch of her lips.

Evie shook her head, held on to the oven gloves for their scant comfort. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. She made no attempt to wipe them away, nor to stifle the sobs that shook her.

Ben stepped across the gulf between them and took her into his arms, holding her tight, his own grief unlocked and free of embarrassment. He surprised himself by not feeling clumsy or awkward with first open show of affection in a long, long time.

“It's going to be all right. Shush. .  . Come on, Evie. . . It’s going to be all right,” and maybe, just maybe, it was.

Kristy stood back, hovering awkwardly, not sure whether to slip away quietly or to take the five steps across the paraquet floor and hug them both. She did neither, not at first. She stayed back, feeling painfully remote from them both now, cut off from them by more than the five steps between where they embraced and where she stood. The exclusion hurt more than it really ought to have.

“Anyone for a coffee?” Kristy offered, and then went across to pour three cups when no one answered.

The percolator was on the work surface, beside the tray of pastries Evie had been rescuing from the oven when they walked in. They smelled heavenly. Sweet aromas, cinnamon and caramelized sugar and other unearthly delights.

“Help yourself, flower. Best had hot,” Evie grinned, catching Kristy red handed with her fingers in the pudding pot. Her smile had more strength to it now; one ghost exorcised now that she had one of the brothers' to hold on to. Her eyes were still bloodshot and red-rimmed, and she looked as if one misplaced straw would crack her spine in two, but the sobs had ceased and that in itself was something to be thankful for.

“Thanks,” Kristy went for a double-folded lattice of glazed pastry topped with finely chopped pistachios and swirls of flaked chocolate and caramelized sugar. As hot as it was, the pastry tasted even better than it looked. After the first mouthful Kristy found herself smacking her lips and trying to lick the sweet smears off her lips even as she took another bite. “Good,” she mimed theatrically, licking her fingers.

“Plenty more if you're hungry, love. I've made enough to feed a pig farm. You take yourself outside and enjoy the sun while it's out. I'll bring you something out in a minute.”

“It's no problem, really,” Kristy protested weakly, wondering if the old woman even knew that it had been pouring all morning.

“Nonsense, I'd be offended if you didn't have at least seconds. Get yourself out and I'll hear nothing of it. Now, go on, scoot before I have to shoo you out with a broom.”

Kristy did as she was told, pulling up a garden chair and gazing up at the cloudbank forming above her head. Growing up in Liverpool, Kristy had lain in the grass of Anfield Park for every summer she cared to remember, some days reading a book, some listening to tapes of Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Madness, others playing out her own Rorschach tests with the clouds as her blotter pictures on cards of blue sky, searching out shapes and faces in them. The cloud gathering above the Watersedge looked like a kindly, watchful guardian angel.

Too late, she wanted to say, but stamped on the bitterness that fuelled the thought.

“What do you see up there?” she asked Ben when he emerged from the kitchen bearing a tray over-balanced with two plates of French salad and thickly buttered bread sticks.

Placing the tray on the table, he pulled up a seat and sat back to look up at the sky. Kristy watched his forehead crease up with concentration as he actively studied the shifting puffs of cumulo-nimbus and siro-stratus, looking for something she couldn't see.

“Clouds,” Ben said at last, and shrugged. He wasn't going to tell her he saw a body on the floor with a knife between its legs.

“Let me tell you what I see, okay? I see a face. A big smiley face, like those yellow badges the kids used to wear a couple of years ago. Big eyes and a big kindly smile. The restaurant’s very own Guardian Angel. You try.”

”Okay. I see life up there, I suppose. I see clouds. And I can’t make sense out of either of them. Happy?”

*   *   *   *   *

Ben found himself craving a cigarette even though he hadn't smoked for a long, long time. He was doing everything he could not to let himself start thinking back to happier times when Westbrooke had been a village of size and wonder for two lads growing up in the early eighties, a time when everything was possible and nothing was taboo and Dad was nothing worse than a no-good and a drunk who picked fights with his kids and slapped his wife when she tried to intervene.

Only now he was grown up and the world had played its trump call, turning his life up on its end just when things threatened to be evening out once and for ever.

He knew he was sitting bolt upright, even though he had his eyes squeezed tightly shut, his hands clutching at the edge of the table as if his very life depended upon it.

“Ben?” he heard her ask tentatively, and wished she didn't sound so scared. Without opening his eyes, Ben asked in a low, urgent, voice even he couldn't understand: “Has it gone?”

He knew he meant the cloud with Mike's body lying in it, but how could she know that was what had frightened him so badly if he didn’t tell her?

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes. It's gone.”

Ben opened his eyes and looked at her. The rain was holding off but the sky was heavy with the threat of a return to the morning’s damp, miserable conditions. “Did you see it?” He said, before he thought about what he was saying, and then he wanted to kick himself. Of course she hadn't seen it. It had been in his mind, nowhere else.

The silence that slipped down like a fence between them reeked of uncertainty. It felt like a shard of shrapnel working its way methodically out of her neck and upwards. Kristy thought about it. At last she said, “I don't think so. . . What was I supposed to be looking for?”

“It doesn't matter, I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault.”

“No. I know. Your salad's getting cold.”

Evie stuck her head around the door to check on them, smiled sadly at Kristy sensing the silence between them, and called Ben through to give her a hand. Ben excused himself with a shrug and a “What Can I Do?” gesture of hand and shoulder. Kristy sat back, interlacing her fingers behind her head and stretching the tension out of her shoulders with small rolling motions. The sunlight fell short of their table, staining the veranda between the table and the toy wall like luminous paint. Beyond the wall the glitter of Devil's Water puddled, catching rainbows from the sky and throwing them out in hypnotic, ever decreasing circles of shifting colour.

She picked at the salad. “Nice lass,” she heard Evie telling Ben. “Not plastered with makeup an' all that malarkey. Good plain girl. Not that she's plain mind. Very pretty. You could do a lot worse than her.”

”Thanks mum.”

“Get off with you, Benjamin Shelton before I tan you hide for your cheek.”

“I'm gone.”

“Thought you would be.”

Kristy smiled to herself when Ben came back outside.

“You heard, I take it?” he asked, sheepishly.

“I heard,” she admitted, enjoying watching him squirm this once.

“Sorry about that. Evie's not content unless she's trying to pair someone off. That's how Mike and Hannah got together in the first place. The Odd Couple, those two. I never gave them more than a month, but I misjudged Evie.”

“Fatal mistake, I take it?”

“Cardinal sin's closer to the truth.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“No point. You don't want to listen to me running off at the mouth all afternoon. It won't be very interesting, I can promise you.”

She smiled and raised her eyebrows sceptically. “I'll take my chances.”

“You can't say you weren't warned.”

“Cross my heart and hope to –”

“Don't say that. No one hopes to die.”

*   *   *   *   *

He talked for the entire afternoon and well into the evening, disregarding the chill that set into the air and the faint drizzle that threatened to become a downpour around five.

Releasing the words unlocked a deeper, more primitive vault of memories; the cellar of dreams and tragedies buried so far deep down Ben had half-convinced himself he had lost or thrown away the key. He had done neither, of course.

While he talked, Kristy watched him for the obvious signals, but early into the afternoon she came to realize that Ben Shelton was harder to read than one of his cute modern day fairy stories.

She stopped listening to him and started bending her concentration to fathoming what it was about him that succeeded in getting beneath her skin quite so easily. Something that she couldn't pin down or put her finger on was incredibly attractive without being forced or deliberately seductive. Innocence touched the reality closest. Listening to him carve a path through a very troubled childhood, beatings from a drunkard father, bullying at school and the other more familiar childhood terrors to the day he first decided real work wasn't for him and he made the break by starting to tell lies for a living, she found herself wishing time would stop so she could listen to him talk forever without worrying about Brent Richards, Havendene, N.E.S.T. or what was going to happen tomorrow.

And then she found she hated herself for that selfishness. It was painfully obvious just how much it hurt him to dredge up some of the memories. He described himself as a one-man runaway train disaster movie kept on the rails by a big brother who acted before he thought about what he was doing and ran his whole life that way, looking out for his little brother and engaging his fists before his brain every time the old man came looking for trouble. She knew he wanted reassurance. Knew he wanted to hear her say someone was going to be around to pick him up and dust him down just exactly as Mike had done for years. That she couldn't promise, even though she wanted to.

Kristy took him home in her car. His house was near the cavalcade of police cars and campers, on one side of a wide street with big old country houses. Scooby met them at the door with a practiced toss of the head and disinterested turn. The old Labrador padded into the family room and hunkered down on his rug beside the fire. It was obvious Ben lived alone and had done for a long time. Indeed, she was hard pressed to see signs of his having lived any other way. His books were the one overpowering presence, rows and rows of them, on shelves and piled high on the floor, hard backs, soft backs, old, new, leather bound, cloth bound, collector’s editions and comic books. Just about any and every form of the written word she could bring to mind was represented somewhere in his library. She ran her fingers along the spines of thirty modern fairy tales, looking for a Ben Shelton original.

“In the office,” Ben directed her search, when she finally admitted what it was she was looking for.

The office was everything she had ever imagined a writer’s paradise would be. Books lined every wall in cheap looking bookcases that looked as if one good nudge would send the whole lot toppling. Again books were stacked in every available space.

Wires snaked across the floor, running from the wall to his compact computer and printer set up on the desk. A sheaf of printed pages lay face down beside the keyboard. She couldn't resist a peek, and then felt incredibly guilty and turned the manuscript face down again without reading a word. She could just imagine him sitting in the chair, fingers tapping out the words of some dream or nightmare, Scooby curled up at his feet. Did he smoke a pipe while he worked, or was he like Hemmingway, addicted to brown-skinned cigars?

Uneasy Streets was on the bookshelf above the desk, as were a dozen or more copies of The Swords of Scorn. She lifted down one and leafed through the pages, reading a few words from each on the way to the author's photograph on the back of the dust jacket. The Ben Shelton in the photograph wasn't the same one she had left in the family room. In the photograph he looked younger, fresh-faced and ready to wrestle with all comers. She slipped the book back onto the shelf and returned to the main room where Ben was sat with his head in his hands, caving in on himself like the little pig’s house of sticks.

She sat down beside him, reached out to cup his hands in hers. He flinched and shied away as if she had struck him, then started to shake. Kristy drew herself closer to him, began to stroke his hair with one hand and then gently to knead tight muscles in his neck and shoulders, working them, forcing them to relax.

Neither of them was ready for what happened, neither of them expected it but even as it was beginning Kristy recognised it for what it was. Sex and death. Death and sex. The intrinsic co-existence of the two, irrevocably joined, life's Siamese twins. Death, a constant handmaiden this last week. Sex the penultimate surrender; it's comfort proving life in the ultimate act of the body. A potent brew of opposites that was just about undeniable.

Whether it was something in her subconscious looking for that bit more out of the contact-frisson already there between them, or whether it was Ben, drunk with the demands of grief, seeking sanctuary in the nearness of her body and its heady mix of poisons she would have been hard pressed to say, one way or the other. She couldn't even have said exactly how it happened, only that they moved from the fierceness of kissing to hurried fumbling and tugging at garments very, very quickly. There was the urgency of an avalanche now, the momentum bullying them past the point of no return.

And although she was well aware of what she was doing, and the numerous reasons that she shouldn't be doing it, not now, not with this man, and certainly not like this, Kristy didn't do a thing to stop it. More the reverse, she rode the moment as if she were suddenly cast adrift amid white water, taking the rapids in a coracle. Minutes later they were both half-undressed, Kristy kneeling, pulling Ben down, hungry for him, eating every inch of his body with eyes and hands and mouth, savouring him.

And still, between them, Ben's was the overpowering hunger. The strongest need. His hand moved across her breast, kneading it against the roughness of his palm. The nipple a deep, husky brown around the puckered areola. She felt a delicious shiver arc through her spine, from between her legs right through her breasts and up into her brain, as Ben took first one then the other into his mouth. Her hands sought out his belt, struggling and tugging with the waistband of his trousers, then inside the cotton of his shorts to his very essence.

*   *   *   *   *

They writhed and rolled across the fireside rug, their cries, too close to pain, driving Scooby out of the room.

The rug burned their slick, sweating bodies; entwined like rambling thorns, hips pistoning frantically, they rutted like animals. The muscles in their bonded bodies stood proud, corded against the strain of the effort pushing the momentum gradually higher.

Gasping, then whimpers; a final screamlike sound.

Then release.

*   *   *   *   *

It wasn't just good. It was incredible.

Frightening.

*   *   *   *   *

The banked up coals crackled and spat in the grate, the flickering glow the only illumination to speak of. Neither of them had said a word since they had sunk back to let exhaustion stake its claim on their respective bodies.

Ben shifted, the arc of his shoulder beaded with the fragrant sweat-cologne of sex.

“What now?” He asked, breaking the silence. He ran his fingers through the thick tangle of his sweat-matted hair, savouring the warmth of the crackling fire on his skin. Taking the poker from beside the grate, he turned his back on her, prodding the coals and watching them shift under his careful inspection. “We can't leave it like this.”

Kristy made no effort to cover herself up. A slow, thoughtful, breath leaked through her pursed lips. “I know. Now we get dressed and one of us makes like nothing's happened,” she said, pushing herself into a sitting position. “Life goes on without me, to quote the song.”

He looked at her then. “Is that what you want?”

“Not a fair question, Ben,” she said quietly. “You know I can't answer it.”

“Why not? Tell me because I can't see one good reason why. Not for the life of me.” Ben shifted casually, the movement once again putting his back between Kristy and the flames.

“Because,” she began, and shrugged, defeated, “I don't know what I want or what I need right now. I can't trust myself to make a decision.”

“Okay, just suppose I said I didn't want that. I didn’t want us to get dressed and go our separate ways like characters in a second rate TV show. What then?”

She was shaking her head. To Ben she looked beautiful, fragile, vulnerable and suddenly and hopelessly out of her depth and floundering. Another aspect; day through to night was conjuring a shadow-play against the backdrop of the woman, acting out the person inside for its one man audience, and he in turn was hopelessly addicted, for his sins.

“Then we'd have to think about things, and I'm still not sure we could do anything other than shake hands and say goodbye.”

“I don't know if I'm up to any thinking at all, but, hand on heart, I honestly don't believe that I'm up to saying goodbye either.”

“Then I'd say we've got problems, wouldn't you?”

“We've got problems,” Ben agreed sagely. His smile was wide and guileless; a long way from the hurt of the morning; but that lasted for less than the second it took for the shadow to pass over his eyes and the hurt to creep back in.

“I suppose I asked for that.”

“You did,” he agreed, then lapsed into another long bout of introverted silence, wrestling with a phantom she couldn't see and couldn't help him fight.

They made love twice more that night, retreating to slow, gentle touches feeling each other's bodies as if they were maps embossed in Braille. They sought out every inch with lips, tongues and fingertips, so softly, so gently either of them could have closed their eyes and imagined butterflies settling on their skin, tasted the delicious tang of pleasure the butterfly kisses gave the other, and in turn given themselves over to the sensations once and forever.

*   *   *   *   *

But talking had to be done, serious talking, and no matter how much she may have wanted to, Kristy couldn't just lay back and let the sensations claim her forever. Over a breakfast of French toast and fresh orange she broached a very difficult subject, tackling it the only way she was comfortable with, head on. Now, if Kristy had been cursed with a gambling streak in that Liverpudlian blood of hers, hand on heart she would have been able to swear that even the odds offered on this year's rank outsider at Aintree would have been hard pressed to tempt her into parting with any of her hard-earned gelt. In every conceivable scenario she ran through her head Kristy saw herself burning too many already shaky bridges to the ground; she wasn't a gambler. She just said what had to be said and expected to be damned for it.

“I need you, Ben,” she began, and liked the way he smiled at her in misunderstanding. “And it's not fair. I didn't come here because I wanted to see you. I came here because I needed to see you. You were the only friendly face I could think of. I came looking for allies,” his smile had slipped just slightly. He looked up at her and seemed about to interrupt but she forestalled him with a slight shake of the head. “Let me go on, please. I'm in trouble,” and at that she laughed. Short and abrasive. “Shit, I'm in more than trouble. I'm in it up to here,” she pointed at the side profile of her nose, above the nostrils. “And going under. You remember how we met?”

“How could I forget,” he said lightly enough. His eyes, however betrayed his obvious unease, even though his voice succeeded in staying level.

“Right. Now this is going to sound bloody strange, I know that. All I can do is ask you to listen with an open mind. Think about what you saw, what you've been seeing around you for the last ten days or so. Okay?”

“Open mind,” he agreed, munching on a slice of eggy toast. Scooby had taken up residence between their two stools, his head artfully angled to show off his doleful puppy-dog eyes to their best aspect and thus maximise handouts from above.

“Friday, May 15th, some local kids found a suicide in the woods not far from their school.”

“I heard,” Ben nodded, giving nothing away.

“Two days before he was found, Frank Rogan phoned the Gazette’s news desk claiming to have information we might want to pay for. I ought to say right now there are an awful lot of coincidences in all of this and I'm not going to apologise for any of them.”

“Shame I don't believe in coincidences then.”

“Well, that, at least, I'm glad to hear. Now stay put for a second while I nip out to the car, there’s stuff I'm going to need if you're going to believe even the half of what I've got to say.”

When she returned to the breakfast bar he'd finished the toast and juice for both of them and was smiling sheepishly. “Okay, here we go. The information Rogan had for us was about Judith Kenyon, one of three fellwalkers who have gone missing on the Northumbrian Moors in the last year alone. God alone knows just how long this goes back. I don't even want to think about it. Only thing is I never found Rogan to get his information off him, other than this little snap of Candid Camera.” She handed Ben the original Polaroid, watched his face while he studied the few details. She didn't expect him to recognise either of the two faces in the photograph, but she didn't need him to recognise them either, only to look and see and put two and two together.

“Judith Kenyon, right?” He offered.

“In one,” she followed it up with Jason's enlargement, laying it out flat on the breakfast bar between them. “Recognise anything unusual or out of the ordinary?”

Ben studied the enlargement for a few seconds, looking for its secrets. “Two things. First, her eyes. I've seen that look more times than I ought to own up to. Drugged?”

“That would be my guess. Second?”

“Second, the name over the gate. Havendene,” he said, as if the name in itself was explanation enough.

“What about it?”

Ben looked into his empty glass, then into Kristy's eyes. “Well it isn't, is it. Havendene, that's new. It even looks new.”

“Ten out of ten, teacher. Want to take it one step further while you're thinking about it?”

“The man?”

“The man. One and the same. Monk Sanders. His body was found hanging from the yard arm Friday morning.”

“Where we came in.”

“Exactly where we came in,” Kristy agreed, shuffling her prompts into a logical order.

“I see what you mean about coincidences.”

“You haven't heard the half of it. Since then Frank Rogan’s gone walkabouts. No one's seen him since before he placed the telephone call through to our news desk. You've got that stabbing in Westbrooke as well, remember. We can't discount anything right now. Jason, the photographer working on the story with me, was savaged by dogs whilst he was trying to get out of Havendene’s grounds,” she pushed more photographs Ben's way; laboratory rats in the garbage and industrial bins.

“Taken inside?”

“About two minutes before the dogs got him,” she wasn't thinking about what she was saying and didn't have the wherewithal to thank whoever for the latent instincts just sat there waiting for her to fall back on. Each word came out crisp and businesslike, no time for crazy stuff like emotion to get in the way with what she had to say.

“Jesus Christ.” Then: “How is he?”

A while longer.

“He's dead.”

Ben felt as if he had just put both feet in his mouth and hit the evacuate brain cells alarm with both fists.

“Aww, Christ, I'm sorry, I didn't think. . .”

“It's okay. The dogs didn't kill him. He stumbled onto someone's dirty secret and got himself killed while he was in hospital. Coincidently, it was pretty well the same time someone was busy breaking into my flat and smearing dead rats all over the walls.”

“Are you sure? I mean, have you got proof. . ?”

“All I need to be sure for myself, and probably enough to take Richards to the police. I don't know. I challenged him over the rats and came home to find a dozen of the critters nailed to the walls of my flat and more of them cooking in the chip pan.”

Then the question he didn't dare ask but knew he had to: “And you think Mike's death is tied in with this somewhere?”

She shrugged widely. 'I don't know. I'm beginning to think I'm paranoid. Everywhere I turn I see Brent Richards and start jumping at his shadow. Maybe he had nothing to do with your brother’s death, it's possible things happen around here without his hand whipping up the agitator rod, but then why were Alex Slater’s fingerprints on the knife? Everything points to Alex being an unlucky kid mixed up with a bad sort, and in that case why weren’t Johnny Lisker’s fingerprints all over the shop as well? That one doesn’t make any more sense than the others.”

He didn't answer.

“But, I'm not prepared to discount any eventuality just yet. I'm steeling myself for the worst so I won't be disappointed when it happens, and I don't think it's all that far away from happening. Listen,” she flipped open the folder she had taken from Richards' office, continuing until she reached the sub-heading marked Judith Kenyon Phenomenon. She began reading Richards’ notes back to Ben verbatim: “Despite setbacks the Project has continued on several fronts, each area of investigation proving to be thrilling, each landmark more terrifying for its revelations. On a positive front, Jenifer has the virus-distillery up and running, and her time now is given over to the analysis of the E-motion foundation virus.

“FEBRUARY 18th: Neither patients nor self sleeping well. Can't seem to relax these days. More and more, I am finding the compulsion to occupy my mind with the Project irresistible. Begin computer collaboration of all data and begin protein and bio-feedback experiments. What mechanism liberates the patient from the inhibitions of appetite? And from there, to the root, what price emotion? It seems a natural extrapolation to seek out a viral-based manipulation mechanism.

“Once that step is accomplished, what price emotion then?

“FEBRUARY 19th:  EEG scan of patient's alpha waves showing a dramatic down turn, by evening have gone into what appears to be REM state. Reaction to the levelling out of endorphin addiction? Possible, but unlikely. Cytotoxicity, then? Such a rapid and universal infiltration of host cell nuclei must have side effects. Now monitoring isolated cultures for trace of emotio-suppressant enzyme. Too early for diagnosis, but from initial recordings am estimating a 92.9% infection after exposure to host virus, viral compound cloning in target in two to twelve hours, conservative.”

Ben shook his head, struggling to soak her words up, no matter that they were crazier than a Vonnegut novel.  “By March 15th he's identified the E-motion virus enzyme and a phenomenon he labels the Foundation-Slave relationship, and tagged it for cloning. Some sort of passenger-hermit antigen that is resident in the original viral compound tags on to the identity of the cell nuclei; I think he’s driving at the genetic fingerprint idea, but it's far from plain. Most of what he’s got to say is laid out in equations and scientific jargon that might as well be Dutch for the amount of sense it makes. Reading between the lines, the E-motion virus stamps its own trace identity on to the foundation of the cell and lives inside it rather like a hermit crab, which would be my guess for where the name comes from. Once it makes that connection it goes through a gestation period of between two and twelve hours before what Richards calls the Down Time.  He lists a whole host of side effects present in primary exposure to the Foundation virus, all of which kick in during the Down Time. Accelerated metabolism of fat, carbohydrate and water, wildly fluctuating body temperatures and genital functions, outbreaking of sores around chin and mouth.

“Judith Kenyon suffered a forty eight pound weight loss in an observation period of seven hours. She came out of this Down Time a changed woman. Appetites radically increased, Richards claims her hunger increased triple-fold after emerging from the pupae stage, her sexual drives insatiable. Check it for yourself; don't take my word for it. Every word of it is there in black and white.

“March 20th,” he says “Injected epinephrine to stimulate emotional states. Quote, I felt as if I were afraid. . . Introduce cold emotion. Does subject need something on which to attach their feelings?

“Then on March 23rd: Emotion test cases - pass off emotion through association with stooges. Patient exhibited signs of extreme anger contaminating entire group with feelings of anger. All three reported feelings of rage.”

Shuffling back through the pages to Emotion, Mood and Memory Triggers Kristy hurried on. “Emotional responses of animals remain intact even when higher systems of the brain are missing. Pin point Primitive Emotions – found in limbic system of old brain. Stimulating certain areas of the brain causes subjects to relive experiences (cv. Wilder Penfield research). Can invoke fear and rage through stimulation of hypothalamus with electricity.

“They studied her for two months, with three reported escapes, the last being March 13th.”

“The night Frank Rogan disappeared?” Ben said, feeling suddenly sick. The glimmerings of a horrible pattern were beginning to intertwine with threads of supposition inside his head. He could see where Kristy was going, or at least he thought he could.

“One and the same. Richards spends a long time discussing the nature of the changes taking place within Judith, the hyper-parabolic alpha waves, her eyes going into REM even though they were open and she was wide awake. He speculates about the validity of lucid dreaming, but later on dismisses the idea in favour of vivid recollections crossed with an L.S.D. style hallucinatory effect, producing tangibly real memories with the ability to invoke fear, terror and anger in the extremes of emotional response. He even goes so far as to identify “The hypothalamus as the nerve centre that acts as controller of sympathetic and parody-empathetic nervous systems, and call it the seat of primitive physical and emotional behaviour. Foundation stage of virus modifies cell structure of human body’s pain receptors, producing a signal which is capable of jumping synaptic gap or blocking out effects of normal autonomic nervous system. I've read this stuff ten times, a hundred and ten times, and a lot of it doesn’t make sense. I don’t know just how far Richards took some of his ideas, or how much of what's written here is a mix of supposition and wishful thinking on his behalf, but if he has developed something which dredges up the very worst of someone’s nightmares, induces all of the fear, loathing and anger associated with them, and then turns around and blocks out the normal conscience reins. . . They've got no control and they're living in their very worst nightmares. . . It doesn’t bear thinking about. I just can't imagine it. . . He’s creating berserkers; capable of inflicting Christ knows how much damage without feeling any of the sensations of pain or guilt in return. Without the intrinsic knowledge of what's right and what's wrong, and a fully functioning conscience to stop them doing what they know to be wrong. . . we’re in real trouble. If they can survive the punishment of accelerating their metabolic rates and the sudden weight loss what is there left to stop them?”

Ben sat back, trying to take it all in and make sense of the suddenly senseless nature of the world around him. Why would anyone want to create a plague that triggered off the worst sorts of emotional trauma? What was there to be gained from it besides a torture drug that might have proved useful in Saigon, or Sobibor or Belsen or somewhere equally horrible?

He closed his eyes, shutting out the suddenly mundane breakfast room in his suddenly too damned neat and tidy life, giving himself over to the riddle Kristy had spent the last quarter of an hour spelling out.

If you couldn't feel anything, and yet you were compelled to seek out bigger and bigger thrills, hungering after the hit of adrenalin -- the endorphin rush as Richards called it, though surely endorphin was the chemical released by the brain as the body died – what happened then? Nothing good, that he could see, even without opening his eyes to look.

- AND WE ALL FALL -

These feeling-sound-thoughts shifting veils of fear, slurred with too much pain and sickness already. Half-formed memory-hallucinations shredded, only to be reconstructed by this unmistakable salt-and-rotting-seaweed darkness. . .

Who are we. . ? One question, one hundred and fifty-two voices behind it.

The sickness biting hard. . .

Yes. . . Yes. . . Here. . . Here. . . Bad. . . Feel Bad. . . Hurt. . . Hungry. . . Need. . . Need. . .

Already the first black fingers of panic were clawing out like offshoots from a ragged rose bush, thorns peeling away the layers of the waking awareness as if they were the skins of a nectarine, only for the black fingers to sink into the pulpy fruit. . .

From one hundred and fifty-two careening mind-voices the same scream of pain. Not an echo. A single searing cry scoring white-hot through this strangest of darks. . .

IT HURTS!

And through the scream, blazing with the white-fire intensity of pure undiluted hate, bad memories:

A boy and a girl together, the girl playing cards, the boy hungry for the friction of sex. . . Wants to be needed. . . Needs to be wanted. . . Then she's laughing at him and the world is collapsing with one word. . . Pregnant. . . Swearing. . . She's screaming at him. . . Bitch!  Fucking Bitch!

Words and pictures, fragments of the whole:

A body spinning in the trees. . .

Teacher at the front of the class, throwing the chalk-board rubber at a head three rows back. . .

Spitting in the face. . .

Bastard didn't pay me for that. . .

Fire. . . Need. . . Fire!

Son of a bitch, fucking cow screwing around behind my. . .

Hand squashing a tomato until the flesh bursts over and through the fingers, dripping red. . .

Watching a girl. . . His girl, driving her car too fast. . . Running away from him. . . Bitch. . . Fuckin' Bitch!  The back end of the car slewing around a corner then a huge detonation as the nail-spiked log he'd lain in the road trips through the rubber tires. . . Screeching then a collision and a massive whumpff as the pumps blow. . .

Pops slapping him across the face. . .

Daddy. . . No. . . Please. . . No. . . NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I'll kill the little shi. . .

Crying. . . Tears. . .

Lowering a coffin into the dirt. . .

My baby!

A man, out of breath, running, pushing himself desperately hard. . . A face at the window. . . A woman beating at the glass in a strange stumbling drumbeat-dance, burning as if she had been dipped in wax. . .

Followed hard by another incandescence. More than one voice:

Panting. . . Gasping. . . Free! Free! Trees. . . Up ahead, a house. . .  An old man staggering toward the barn. . . Calling out. . . Scare him!  Want to scare him. . . Sneak close enough to taste him in the air. . . Feed. . . Yes. . . Yes. . .

Flabby white buttocks pistoning up and down between mother’s milk-white thighs. . .

Only wanted a drink. . . A fuckin’ drink man. . . Bastard had it coming to him. . . Fingers!  Who the fuck does he think. . .

God. . . Oh, God. . . Dogs. . . They've got dogs. . . Blood on my hands. . . Can't get blood off. . . Need a hit. . . Need to score. . . Hurt. . . Oh, God. . . It hurts! Old man turned me in. . .

Bastard barman. . . God it hurts!

GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

Getting hard. . . Feel it. . . Want. . . Need. . . Fuck. . . Yes. . .

A baby girl at the door. . .

A punch. . . The other kids in a circle. . . Clapping. . . Laughing. . . Lash out!

Clutching Comfortable Dog. . .

The sun out burning fiercely. . . Skin warm. . . Walking. . .

Then hurts. . . Hurts. . . Needles make it hazy. . . In a wagon, juddering over rough ground. . . Being led. . . Where. . ? Cages. . . White coats banging cages. . . Pain-rods. . . Hurt-rods. . . Scared of rods. . . Not bad. . . No. . . Be good. . . Be good. . .

Coalescing into a single voice to shriek:

HATE!

Need. . . Need it. . . Cold. . . So cold. . . Where is he. . ? Where. . ? Too cold in here. . . Need light. . . Music. . . Yes, music!  Cold again. . . Dogs. . . Fuckers’ve got dogs!

WHERE IS HE. . ?

Little Soldier. . .

Coffins, row upon row of wooden caskets. . . Faces melting in with the wood. . . Friends. . . Covered with dirt. . . HATE GOD! HATE DIRT! HATE!

And it all gets back to that, needing and hating.

- PART FIVE -

- AND THE LIGHTS BURNED OUT -

- 60 -

Charlie Adams staggered out into the drizzle of Northumbrian-fine mist; his head alight with the incessant voltage of power. His thoughts fairly crackled with the obsession:

Power, power. . .

And it was an obsession. He remembered little of the day gone before, nothing concrete beyond Annie Lockewood's burial, a few fever snippits conjured from the depths of delirium. Charlie had suffered for his sins. He knew about people who heard voices, they were as good as crazy. Being crazy terrified the policeman in Charlie. But things had been happening, eight hours had seen the hollows between his ribs emaciate beneath his frightened fingers, and he could hear the voices for Christ's sake. On top of everything else he was wasting away. The sweats were fearsome, stripping away the fat like turpentine on still wet emulsion. He dozed fitfully, all the while dreaming of power and burning. The burning was on the inside, a furnace – white-hot – a conflagration primed and set at melting his soul. Needles of pain rained upon his flesh, all the nerve-endings torn from their roots for hours before being replanted with a vengance. His sleep-talking screams of torment pierced his own nightmares as he suffered the physical pain of the transformation.

Now this, piddling bloody drizzle getting in his eyes and making his head spin. He hadn't realized just how weak his legs were. Strangely, stripped down to the minimum tendon and muscle, they weren't numb; dead described best how they felt, as he shambled into the garden, the voice in his head impatient with his chrysalising body.

Destruction surged through the blackness of Charlie's sudden fury. Power, the voices sent, and with it a vision, startlingly clear for all of its confusion, of iron golems striding across a landscape in negative, cables hooking from pylon arm to pylon arm, crackling with the intensity of electricity.

Charlie knew then what he had to do.

“Knowledge is power,” he told himself, and laughed aloud at his attempt at a funny.

All of a sudden the garden was filled with unearthly delights. Things he had seen time and again for days without end were suddenly vital and filled with lustrous vitality. Next-door’s cat, a mangy ginger tom, padded across Charlie’s path. Charlie had always hated that cat. It had eyes that looked down into his soul, and sneered at the sins that were staining it. The ginger tom didn’t hang around for Charlie’s boot of condemnation; it was off and away down the street before the muzzy-headed policeman had even thought of giving it a parting kick up the backside.

Kneeling in the drizzle-sodden grass Charlie started unhooking the single metal chain link and diamond fence and coiling the slack over his shoulder like so much spiky cable.

Rainwater was streaming into his blinking eyes, but it didn’t matter to Charlie; he was seeing with an instinctive sense that was distinctly primitive by comparison. Emotions that he thought had died during the change flooded through him, spurred on by tiny voices. There was horror and hate, fear and spite and malice, all strange and unwelcome feelings before this morning. He felt ugly. Felt the nasty tang of lust on his taste buds, felt the frustration of unslaked revenge.

All of a sudden Charlie had needs to fulfill, to indulge. Urges that might once have seemed wild, to satisfy.

The voices crowded his head like tiny demons, competing with him for control over himself, and winning. These small voices bound for darkness.

Charged with all the zeal of a lion bounding out to greet the Christians, Charlie Adams strode through the streets of raintown spitting curses at himself and at the heavy sky, and slapping the links of chain coiled over his shoulder like they were a best friend getting an encouraging pat on the back when times were hard. Something about the loosely coiled metal was horrifically comforting.

There was purpose to every step. He knew where he was going, and he knew what he was going to do when he got there. It couldn’t scare Charlie if he couldn't think about it, and the voices inside his head weren't leaving him any room to think. Charlie was burning up despite the rain. Flash-images of hunger sent shivers the length of his spine. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs Charlie found himself salivating at the sight of food, even if that sight was nothing more than a picture inside his screaming head.

Charlie ducked into an alley running along the side of The Railway House. Shielded from the rain he looked up to the sky for the lines to follow. The nearest pylon was rooted in the middle of the fallow field out back. Power lines cut the black velvet, the rain sizzling and evaporating against the heat they carried.

Grinning, Charlie walked out into the open space. His cheeks smarted from the sting of the wind, the rash of sensations supercharged by his replanted nerves. In the middle of the field Charlie stopped walking, shucked the weight of the chain from his aching shoulder and planted his feet squarely in the dirt.

There wasn't room for him to be frightened. Charlie’s stomach fluttered with excitement, the growing knot in his throat his last weak chance of denying the voices. They weren't to be denied.

Stooping, Charlie wrapped one end of the length of chain around his left hand, and then straightened up, holding the other end like a lasso. He swung it in a quickening circle, letting go and whipping it out in a parabolic arc that sailed over power line.

Too late, a spark blossomed and lit inside Charlie's mind. He realized then what he was doing; had done.

Horrified, Charlie watched the chain fold itself over the pylon’s lowest artery, unable to shake this end's anchoring grip from his left hand. Twelve thousand volts of electricty arced and chased down the short circuit to earth provided by the chain and Charlie’s rooted body. His voice locked on a glass shattering scream that filled the night five times over, the signal they had been waiting for.

The lights of the village burned out, disappearing as if a huge black blanket had been thrown over the rooftops by an angry God.

Only the ghosts of sounds and Charlie's weakening shriek clung to the night.

Then, incredibly, Charlie was engulfed and rapidly devoured by flame that appeared to erupt from within his own body, a living ball of fire rooted to the spot, dripping flame on the wet grass.

His skin crackled and spat, blistering and almost instantaneously charring, pustules bursting and spitting out small flaring missiles like fireworks, and still the electricity wouldn’t release his locked muscles to flail and thrash, but kept him fixed rigidly to the spot, roasting alive.

The air fed the flames, redoubling their intensity. Remnants of clothes, black and smoking, grafted themselves to Charlie's torso.

His eyes, the first things to go, burst with the heat and dribbled down the bared bone of Charlie's cheeks, his last tears as his body finally realized what his mind had known from the very first moment it started hearing those tiny voices: He was dead, and nothing was going to help him now.

- 61 -

Johnny and Alex woke together, the dying lights dragging them out of their virtual comas and shaking them into groggy consciousness.

The effects of the transfiguration on Johnny were startling. He came out of the coma a gaunt skeleton with twig-bones for arms and legs, eyes sunken back into a skull where the skin appeared to have shrunk back from the bone like melting polythene, ablaze with the madness his addiction had always threatened.

Johnny smiled vacantly, his head cocked on a peculiar angle, as if he were listening to some tiny internal voices only he could hear.

Alex looked at Johnny for a hard moment, until it became clear what was happening. Then he stared at his own emaciated hands, stunned by the wasting sickness that had worked this evil magic on his body while he slept. His thirst was like an unquenchable fire burning inside his throat. He clasped his hands together, frightened by whatever it was that was happening to both him and Johnny, and as that fear reared its ugly head his face froze as the clamor surged into each and every space there was inside his mind.

After half a minute, Alex heard the hunger in the tiny voices invading his head, the need, and found himself responding to it. He knew he was smiling, mimicking Johnny's idiot grin, but that only pushed him into smiling all the harder.

“Come on,” he said to his friend, the fear of a moment before quelled by the comforting power of the words in his mind. He saw the lights of Westbrooke fail a second time, in his mind’s eye. Saw Charlie Adams' charred and still smoking corpse bucking under the torrent of electricity raining down the chain link and diamond rope.

Felt dead, but good for it. Felt as if there were fishing weights hanging from his fingers. Felt as if the world had been breaking his back and as of now he was the one who had the power in his hands. Not Beth McCusker. It hit him then, hard -

Beth playing cards, ignoring him. . . Alex hungry for the friction of sex. . . Only wants to be needed. . . Needs to be wanted. . . She's laughing at him now and pulling the world down across his back. . . Pregnant, he hears her sneer. . . Screaming at him. . . Bitch. . . The fucking bitch!

- and he had to get out of the Judas Hole before he went crazy.

That much he knew. There were changes taking place inside him that ran far deeper than just the shedding of a few pounds. There was a starkness, a blackness, to his every thought now. He couldn’t bring back the good times. The only memories he had access to were waking nightmares that he would have done literally anything to avoid dredging up.

Alex had never hated anyone like this in his life, he wanted to bury his hand in her chest, pull her heart out and crush it in his fist like an overripe tomato.

Johnny smiled at him as if he had shared his every thought and shared the same dark desires, and Alex thought that maybe he did at that.

Together, they crept down from the cauldron of hills into the village of the damned below, their own brand of black hunger in their hearts, Johnny whistling as he walked.

- 62 -

Daniel Tanner had a sledgehammer pounding away at the headache he’d brought home from Annie's funeral when he finally roused himself. That headache blazing through his skull and a substantial way down into his face, had fear surging through him, purer than any fear he known in his life. That fear backed up a compulsion he couldn’t put words to. That compulsion made him laugh, his laugh harsh and cold, a broken sound that quickly turned into a series of wrenching sobs. His entire face was filled with pain now – even his lips stung – the thin, high-pitched keening sound coming out of him was, in that one quavering note, a symphony of fear and suffering.

Kathleen stirred groggily, making a placating murmur as she rolled away from his discomfort. Daniel slipped out of bed and lurched into the bathroom, colliding first with the door jamb, and then bumping into the sink. He tugged the cord for the strip light. His headache became rapidly more severe, the fluorescent lights burning white fire into his brain.

He vaguely recalled feeling sick when he arrived back after the funeral, and retreating to the warmth and comfort of bed earlier than usual.  He had no memory of anything after that, only an irritating trace-thought that kept generating the whispering voices that wouldn’t let him sleep.

Daniel splashed water over his face, wincing at the shock of it cascading over the fresh sores breaking the skin around his mouth and chin. He fingered one curiously, the blister rupturing under the slight pressure to weep watery pus. He stared at himself in the mirror, leaning in closer before shying away from the sight of himself, terrified by what he saw looking back through the glass.

Every thought was fuzzy at the edges, his memory clouded.

His face still dripping with water, Daniel staggered back into the bedroom and dressed as quietly as he was able. The curtains were drawn and there was a middle-of-the-night quietness to everything. His felt as if a thousand nails had been driven into different parts of his body. Every inch of his skin fairly throbbed with the numbness of the plague even as he lurched down the stairs and out into the fresh, rain-filled, air of the back garden.

Sweat ran down his forehead, indistinguishable from the drizzle plastering his hair flat to his scalp. He was shaking. He staggered away from the doorstep, stumbled the three steps to the shed and fell to his knees as the cramps and nausea rolled over him. Daniel vomited into the weeds cracking up through the fragmented cement, crawled backwards, battered by torrents of rain as the heavens finally opened, dropped to his elbows and continued to heave until the only thing he brought up was that sickening noise. After a moment he dropped onto his side and hugged himself, sure he was going to die.

The thought of death flickered only briefly through his mind and then was gone, battered down by the rasp of distant voices and images echoing through his skull, driving him to the verge of insanity:

GET OUT OF MY HEAD!  He screamed, clutching at his temples. The voices hushed for a moment, supplanted by a vision and a sound that answered the needs of the compulsion that had been with him since first opening his eyes.

He got to his knees, and then his feet, using the shed wall for support. He hadn’t realized just how much this fever had weakened him. His leg bones felt like gelatin. Daniel wasn't sure he could stand without the wall to keep him from pitching forward onto his face, and didn’t want to let go in case he found out he couldn’t and ended up in a heap on the floor anyway. For a moment he was lost, confused, and directionless. He leaned there, shoulders slumped, head hung low, until the weird, eerie burning in his flesh was supplemented by a new sensation: hunger. His stomach grumbled, and almost as soon as he had put a name to it, his entire body started to shake with hunger.

He began to work his mouth, chewing and swallowing continuously, involuntarily. His hard swallows physically hurt as if his body were demanding to be fed.

Summoning every ounce of courage and obstinacy, Daniel thought through the objections, reasons he couldn't be hearing, feeling, what it was he was feeling (the presence in his head, the need) but almost as soon as he started putting words and pictures to those thoughts, more words and more thoughts seemed to slide into place in Daniel's brain.

The sweat of need poured from his pores. He knew something then. Knew rabid hunger, out of control, painful, tearing at him. His thoughts clouded, funneling down toward one overriding sensation: The Need. . .

Far back in the distant tunnel of his mind he was away from this place, Kathleen and his girls’ safe with him; on a beach somewhere permanently hot where the sun always shines and bad things don't come true. He watched in sickened disbelief as his arms pushed him away from the wall, his right hand slowly working the lock of the shed door, the whole scene only a pale blur as the earth and brick walls seemed to spin around him. Repelled by his loss of control but too much at the mercy of the need to worry about it, frightened but so so hungry.

His metabolism was running wild, like a great foundry furnace out of control, raging fire.

The noise of the rain grew louder until the hard slap-patter of it on the concrete throbbed in his ears. The invasion came with a sharp suddenness that made Daniel cry out in pain. For a second he felt dizzy again, confused. He wanted to scream over and over. He was trembling violently, his mouth moving silently over a litany of words he didn't own, something inside pushed, slackened his resistance, broke it, and then nothing mattered outside pleasing the string of voices cluttering his head.

There were no burning lights now, no sense of elevation. Daniel felt soiled and dirty and beaten. Back down that distant tunnel, the real Daniel Tanner who had escaped with wife and family intact, was blissfully ignorant, deluding himself, knowing he was weaponless against the evil in his other, unable to stir for fear of being silenced while he rummaged through the clutter of garden tools and household junk with what amounted to manic glee, taking a strangely intense pleasure pulling aside spades and growbags and step ladders until he could get through to the back shelf and claim his prize, a petrol driven power-saw, from the debris. The dusk and shed-shadow threw its uncharitable light over his pale flesh, accentuating the sores around his mouth and nose, which looked ready to burst in the sickly light. Viscous juice ran from the broken skin. He emerged from the shed holding the power-saw high like a distended trophy. He breathed deeply, dizzied by the blood-smell in the air, and was surprised by the deceptive strength in his arms.

The wind that had come with the rain, or borne it, dropped to nothing. Daniel had always been leery of the big Black and Decker power-saw, but in his hands now it felt like a natural extension of his limbs, not some dangerous but necessary tool that might run off at a bloody tangent if it wasn't handled with the respect it was due. The shifting perspective both delighted and frightened Daniel Tanner.

“Things to be done,” he mumbled to himself, hurrying out of the garden and into the street. Daniel saw an image of himself in his mind’s eye: Engulfed in a righteous flame, like an angel, he was bringing down the twin pillars of the welcoming arch, venting his fury and frustration, carving into the wood with the blade of the power-saw, forcing it upward like a blade through a ripe young belly, tearing it open, bringing it down. He let out a shrill howl of eagerness, running to reach the street. He would fell the arches and then he would come back, slip up on them from behind and slit their bellies. With guidance he realized he had the cunning to do it; needed to do it, ram the knife in deep into Kathleen’s belly, yank it free, plunge it into that flat plane, tear her open. Cut her, cut her. . . and when she dropped with the kitchen knife still in her, he would go at her with his bare hands, no, something heavy to smash her bones to splinters, break her arms and legs.

By the time he reached the end of the High Street and the start of the Spine Road, Daniel was shrieking the worst fuck-curses he could think of at the moon and the trees and the streets and houses behind him and just about anyone who would listen, spittle flying from his lips. Having surrendered to the collective consciousness behind that primeval, cold and calculating fury, his head was wrapped in the cottonwool-ecstacy of the one surprise he had feared even more than the loss of control, from even before he opened his eyes: it felt good.

By the interwoven trees he took a fighting stance, bracing himself for the kick of the saw as he powered it up with a yank of its ignition cord. Even with him braced the thing bucked in his hands like it wanted to be away and doing the cutting for itself. Daniel smiled a sharp smile as he reined it in, feeling the power there in his hands, the cutting power. He placed the first incision flat; three feet from the base of the trunk, the second on a diagonal forty-five degrees from the horizontal brought the tree crashing down across the road. The interlaced branches cracked and snapped but some wouldn’t let up on the pretense of being an arch and refused to yield their hold so the welcoming arch looked more like a flat line and a taut catapult string ready to unload Greek fire on the village two hundred yards down the lane. Daniel listened to the power-saw as it started talking to him, then moved to the other side of the road.  Identical cuts felled the second side of the botanical arch.

He stepped back to look at his handiwork, a handkerchief over his mouth and nose because it was difficult to breathe out here. The two trunks lay across the road, forming a natural barrier that would take some negotiating with anything other than feet.

There was no natural path around the felled trees, the sawn-off ends were both buried deep in the hedgerows either side of the road.

He turned and walked away from the downed trees, treading the first and last steps on a path he never imagined for himself. He believed – honestly believed – that within the four walls of his house on Brewer Street lay his own exorcism. A belief that was fanned by the tiny demons resident in his consciousness.

He walked back slowly, cutting, cutting. . . while damnation walked down the road towards him in the shape of Billy Rogan, Pops’ old shotgun broken and lain over his left forearm.

Billy walked past him in a daze, mumbling what sounded like: “Scarecrow, scarecrow,” under his breath as he clambered up the barrier of the old welcoming arch to man the barricades. He healed the breach in the shotgun, dropping two cartridges into the barrel-mouths and locking the barrels off, his body alive with jitters and ticks, anticipation gleaming in his sickly eyes.

Daniel tore his own eyes from the boy-man perched on the tangle of dead trees and displaced rookeries, and turned his thoughts to home, sweet home.

- 63 -

Bogged down by the ridiculousness of the last day, Ben Shelton did the only thing he could in the circumstances, he walked through to the kitchen, rifled the refrigerator for a cold Snickers and set the kettle boiling for a fresh round of coffees.

Watching the steam evaporate as it drifted out of the kettle’s spout, he let his thoughts meander to the woman sat waiting for him in the breakfast room. He couldn't think about Kristy as his lover; they weren’t lovers, they didn't behave like lovers or treat each other like lovers. If she had asked, being clinical – or cynical – about it, Ben would have described the afternoon as honestly as he knew how; energetic, with some of the best sex he had in this or any other life (though there wasn't a vast back catalogue of previous earth-moving experiences available for off-the-cuff comparisons), but being blasé about sex was all too easy. Something different had been there with them in the family room, it wasn’t just sex, and he understood that much about the blistering frisson that was there between them. According to Mike, sex was something other people suffered – there he was again, damn it – Okay, so maybe they weren't lovers yet but surely they weren’t that far away.

“Mind if I put some music on?” she called through then, catching him off guard and away in la-la land.

“Help yourself, I'm sure something in there'll fit,” he called back, then wished he'd spared the funny because he couldn’t see her face to see whether it went down like a pork pie at a bar-mitzvah, as his jokes usually did. It must have been a symptom of this early stage of the relationship, because normally bad jokes and the idea of restraint never collided in the same thought.

To his pleasant surprise she picked out one of his old Stones albums, the rough, jangly sound of “19th Nervous Breakdown” coming through to the kitchen with her when she had finished raiding his record collection.

“Good choice,” he said, passing Kristy her coffee as the lights and music both died suddenly, Jagger cut off in his prime by what Ben assumed was a blown fuse. When he looked out of the kitchen window he saw otherwise, the entire sweep of the hills were black, no backsplash of light from Westbrooke. “Don't worry; we've got candles around here somewhere.”

“I guess power cuts go with the territory?”

Ben couldn't help himself: “Yuck, yuck,” he agreed, slipping into his Jed Clampet voice. “Living out in the sticks we get used to ‘em an’ scratching ‘round in the dark. No worries little missy, ain’t nothing out they're's gonna hurt ya none wif big butch me round to scare ‘em off like,” it took him a second to realise she was laughing at him, and another to realize it felt good having someone there to laugh at his line in crummy impersonations and even crummier jokes, even if she was only laughing because they were that bad.

Moving hand over hand in the darkness, Ben edged his way carefully around to the drainer and the drawer beneath it where he kept all of the odds and sods he couldn't work out what to do with; keep or throw away. First time, he found the box of candles, getting them lit, however, was no mean feat in itself.

He so much wanted to say something just right then, doing his hey presto act with candles and matches, to get her laughing again and hear the sound of her enjoying his company, but his mind was a complete and utter blank. “Just like me,” he muttered instead, which earned a puzzled:

“Pardon?” from Kristy.

“Well, damn it, I can't think of anything witty to say when I need to,” Ben said with a weak smile and a half-hearted shrug that said he felt just about as stupid for his admission as he did for his failure to come up with a halfway decent icebreaker; his honesty won a wider smile and a gentle laugh from Kristy anyway so he didn't have to feel so bad about being an idiot.

He couldn't pretend he wasn't shaken by their conversation, he would have been an even bigger idiot to try and pass it off as something and nothing to worry about both at the same time; it beggared comprehension, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t stew over it, worry. One of these freaks had gotten to Mike, Kristy had said as much when he’d pressed her over it; admittedly, she had only ever implied that Judith Kenyon or one of her ilk had murdered Mike, but it was a pretty damned heavy implication when all was said and done; and he trusted her, which surprised him more than any strange and fanciful thing she had to say about how Mike had died or what went on behind the local health farm’s closed doors.

“What was that?” Kristy said then, her face troubled, concerned by whatever it was she thought she had heard.

Ben heard it too, but he wasn’t about to tell her what he thought it was; people just didn’t go around using chain-saw’s in the middle of a blackout, even this far into the country; but the longer he listened to the distant, insistent whine-purr, the surer he became. Someone was out there, using a chain-saw in the dark and the pouring rain.

Holding a candle by the base, Ben walked through to the family room. “It's okay, boy,” he soothed, seeing Scooby up, standing with two paws on the picture window’s sill. Still trying to calm Scooby, he heard one almighty crash, then another, a full minute later.

“Stay here,” Ben said, grabbing his wax jacket off the back of the armchair. The order was meant for Scooby, but Kristy heard it and misunderstood his meaning entirely.

“The hell I will,” she said, ducking past him to the door. Ben stared at her back as she dashed out into the storm, as if she were the last enigma left in the world. There was little else he could do, so he followed her into the rain, calling for her to wait while he caught up. Her grin, when he finally did, was infectious.

She looked a picture, rain streaming down her cheeks, her hair already wet, starting to frizz. Maybe it won't be so hard to fall in love with this girl, he thought, falling into step beside her, his own idiot grin starting to take over his mouth.

- 64 -

An entire world was out there waiting for a young man like him to come and shake it by the roots, or so his mother kept telling him.

Ever since last Sunday, carrying that poor wee bairn down the stairs, Scott Jordan had started having doubts about the old girl's wisdom. Tonight, for instance, the night seemed as cold and empty as a dead girl's heart.

The emptiness was something Scott felt rather than saw. The night was brimming over, as ever, with the chaos of life and nature’s creation. His own heart was the only hollow, dead thing in this night. Fine and then gradually thickening rain slanted through the headlight beams, but the storm wasn’t going to fill the void, either. He wondered if anything ever would.

The dark swirling rain broke and ran on the glass, no street lights to break or relieve it. Hunched forward over the steering wheel, squinting through the smeared windscreen, past the waterlogged wipers, Scott sighed softly. He glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror and tried to smile. It was a weak, pale effort. A ghost of the real thing. Barren, tired, melancholy. His mind was anywhere but on the stretch of road leveling out in front of him. The grim, grey stone arches of the old Kingsbridge School house had all but been devoured by the storm. Scott gently applied the brakes, cutting his speed slightly as he eased down through the gears for the turn out onto the High Street. It was like driving blind.

He almost didn't see the little girl with rain drenched hair and bicycle in time. She was standing in the middle of the road and looking straight at him through the headlights and the slanting knives of rain, her bicycle turned sideways as if its thin metal tube frame was enough to shield her from the impact of Scott's Ford. Slamming the breaks on full, and wrenching the steering wheel around hard onto opposite lock, Scott tried to take the skid around the girl, but as the brakes locked the wheels started to aquaplane over the slick asphalt. With a deep, rising horror Scott felt sickeningly sure he was going to slide all the way into the girl’s bicycle, and the girl was going to go up over bonnet and through the windscreen.

The girl was frowning at him through the rain, a disconcerting, pained and distant look that had nothing to do with fear of being run down, today or any other day. The smooth, greasy feeling of the Ford sliding out of control was like the transition between scenes in a nightmare.

Scott was screaming; he knew there were more things he could do to avoid hitting her, things he’d been trained to do, but couldn't for the life of him (or her) remember what they were; all he could manage was to stand on the brakes again, willing them to bring the Ford up short, yank the wheel back into the direction the slide wanted to take him, hope the slide didn't become a fatal spin, and start praying, as if prayer and willpower might work where brake pads alone could not.

And maybe God was listening, because as he felt the rear end of the Ford start to go behind him and started hearing the dreadful sounds of death; first the bicycle crumpling beneath the impact of the Ford, then the girl’s bones, the tires caught their grip. He slid to a halt less than a foot from the girl's bicycle, still screaming, his fingers locked so fiercely on the wheel it would have taken the jaws of life to pry them free. He had never experienced such an intense feeling of relief as he did then, seeing the little girl still standing directly in front of his slewed and stalled Ford.

Close up, the girl couldn't have been any older than six. Ignoring Scott, she wheeled her bicycle forward and then rested it up against the Ford's radiator grille, before stepping back into the rain-suffused darkness outside of the headlight's beam.

In what by rights should have been the silence after the crash, Scott’s heart was the only thing he couldn’t hear.

The car was suddenly rocking on its suspension as kids swarmed out of the darkness to swamp it with their small, angry bodies, pounding the bodywork with bare fists and feet, and anything else that came to hand. An aluminum baseball bat and a cricket bat wielded like an axe slammed into the driver’s side window.

An idiot-grinning face loomed right up at him from the side of the car, then another, mashed flat up against the glass. Scott gave an involuntary cry and jerked back into the bucket seat, wrenching his super-glued hands from the wheel. He jerked his head crazily upward at the sound of the baseball bat coming down hard on the roof. Vacuous eyes stared at him silently, caught up in a curiously morbid fascination.

One of the faces had a rash of wart-like swellings around the mouth and chin, a slick dribble of saliva running from the corner of its mouth. The kid pressed its bulbous nose flat against the window.

More kids crowded around the car, eerily quiet as they climbed over the bones and onto the roof. Suddenly petrified, Scott started the engine and threw the Ford into reverse. It barely moved three feet. A hand smashed through the glass of the side window, groping at his hair, tugging, then jerked free as the cricket bat smashed into the beveled plane of the windscreen, cobwebbing it into ten thousand imperfect shards of glass that somehow held together until the bat smashed into it a second time. The shattered glass sprayed into Scott’s eyes in a blinding hail that fell like knives.

Riven by fear, Scott’s breath came in short gasps. He swung his eyes around, past the press of juvenile bodies, trying to find an avenue of escape; even if it meant shoving the door open and taking his chances by making a run for it. I could die here, the thought suddenly lanced through his shock-frozen mind.

One of the kids on the bonnet leaned in through the wound left by the shattered windscreen, reaching for him, pawing at him, his eyes alight with hunger.

Scott slammed his hand down in the centre of the steering wheel and the horn suddenly blared, shattering the blackness. The kid reaching in through the window laughed loud idiot laughter into his face. Others took up the laughing cry. Soon the street echoed with idiot threatening laughter.

Around him, the Ford started to rock with a violent rhythm as the kids rolled it from side to side on its shocks, pushing it up on the springs and then letting it crash back down again. They were trying to roll the car over, Scott realized, still paralyzed by the brutal, sudden, frightening intensity of their attack.

The baseball bat slammed into the side window by his head, there was barely a pause before it swung again, fast and vicious.

More kids swarmed over the bonnet, too many hands to avoid reaching in through the cavity. Only when they started to drag him out of his seat did Scott break the paralysis and begin struggling to save his own life. He bucked and jerked in their small hands, twisting and thrashing as he tried to pull away from the laughing mob of children.

The metal club went up again, hammering in savagely. The blow left a crater the size of an apple in the side of Scott’s head. The first of the kids on the bonnet was first through the windscreen and into the car, snarling like some feral animal scenting the cloying hot blood in the air. He sunk his teeth into Scott’s cheek, tearing out a mouthful and chewing on it as he unfastened the seatbelt holding his body in the driving seat.

Small hands hauled the body out through the window, dragging it into the middle of the road where they tore his throat out and opened his chest with glass shards to get at the wet meat inside. Sharp nails tore Scott Jordan into steaming streamers.

Still the rain came down, the only element of the village’s life not to have changed in the last twenty four hours.

The young girl walked back to her bicycle and wheeled it away from the front of the empty car. Balancing it on its pedal, she propped it up against the kerb and walked back to the car.

Opening the door, she brushed the glass off the driver’s seat and slid in behind the wheel. She had to concentrate on what they were saying. She was blissfully ignorant of the knowledge that the strange sickly sweet smell slowly filtering into the car was petrol.

She reached out for the gear stick and tugged until the car slid into neutral before twisting the ignition key. She had to stretch to tip-toes to reach the first pedal like they wanted her to, but she knew it was important she did everything right first time, so she stretched. Despite its sorry state, the Ford started first time.

Standing on the accelerator she watched the revs arc rapidly upwards, then concentrated on steering.

As one, the Kid Pack looked up from Scott’s corpse, their eyes moving to focus on his flame red Ford as it ploughed into the telephone junction box at the end of the street. The explosive mix of chemical death trapped under the bonnet reacted violently. The first kiss of the fireball blew out the windows of two houses less than ten feet from the crashed car. The second, when the petrol tank went up, buckled the bonnet before ripping it free and sending it spinning and bouncing the length of the junction between the High Street and Brewer Street, taking the phone lines and the last link to the outside world with it. The oil in the Ford’s sump was the next to join the conflagration, its ignition cracking the engine block.

The fire stripped the car as efficiently as the Kid Pack stripped Scott Jordan, plucking sheets of thin aluminum loose and tossing them high into the air, eating the soft outer skins of the upholstered seats until nothing but the thinnest metal skeleton survived.

Within seconds the brilliant red blaze was lighting up the eager faces of the Kid Pack twenty feet away on Brewer Street, dancing shadows of blood across their rabid faces.

Inside the sarcophagus, the little girl was already being consumed.

- 65 -

Ben held Kristy back – there was nothing either of them could do except watch the car go up in a series of fireballs – but even before the third explosion had shattered the front end of the red Ford she had wriggled out from under his restraining hand and was running straight for the wreck. Ben cursed under his breath and forced himself to chase after her. He pulled up just short of the entry onto Brewer Street. Twenty, maybe as many as thirty kids were staring straight at Kristy as she ran across their line of sight; hunkered down in the middle of the road, they looked like a pack ready to pounce. Eerie laughter ran with the breeze, just carrying over the sounds of the rain and the lessening detonations of the blazing car fire. There was something about these kids that instinctively scared Ben. He felt it instantly, no matter the distance between them. The wrongness rolled off them like a shockwave.

One fluid movement seemed to take the kids from the ground and into chase. More than half were wielding makeshift weapons. He saw at least one form of bat swing up over a kid’s head and didn’t hesitate; he screamed for Kristy to keep on running, past the car, past the fire, and as soon as his own legs recovered from the shock of running head on into a pack with violence and death on its mind, charged right across the danger ahead; the car going up in flames on one side, kids racing hell for leather and his skin on the other. Taking his own advice very seriously, Ben ignored the cold rain striking his face, the fire beating at his back and burning in his lungs, swallowed deeper, harsher gasps and forced himself to keep going even when his legs wanted to buckle.

Coming up on The Railway House, he started to turn when a full bottle of milk sailed inches over his head, shattering on the road in front of him, spraying white liquid and glass in a wide treacherous arc. He heard Kristy’s voice a few feet behind him, but didn’t have the breath to tell her to save hers. He wanted desperately to believe that the headlights trapping them like rabbits belonged to the cavalry, but the car behind them wasn’t slowing down.

- 66 -

Todd Devlin was a mess and he knew it. That only made it worse for him. He checked the needle on the fuel gauge; down below a quarter of the tank and almost into the red line. He’d made it as far as Nottingham, then spent an uncomfortable night sweating the fever out in a layby on the Motorway unable to sleep because his body wouldn’t let go.

For an hour, when the moon was dwarfed by cloud and the night was as close to true black as it ever gets, he’d half-succeeded in convincing himself that he might actually make it to wherever it was he was running to – but the hour proved precious short time when the lights of a patrol car slowed and a fresh-faced officer gave a rap on his window and a nod that said, “I’m being good to you, so move on, pal, while I am still feeling good.”

Devlin climbed out of the car, taunting the young officer to recognize him, and when the constable made a move for his radio, savaged him, tearing strips out of his face, slamming his head off the bonnet of his patrol car again and again. He left both body and car to be found on the hard shoulder.

He drove in circles for the remainder of the night, thinking about a farmhouse in a Welsh valley and the one summer he’d spent there before joining the force. It was as far away as Nirvana now.

Before dawn, having slept for less than an hour, Devlin came to a decision. Fat raindrops rattled against the windscreen, falling with such insistency he could hear them splashing down through the trees lining the roadside. The wind pressed belligerently against the car, whispering with a thousand tiny voices that made up a select part of his memory. At the next junction he came off the slipway, drove over the flyover and rejoined the northbound traffic, turning his back on Wales.

The clock on the dashboard said it was a quarter to six in the morning, but he doubted its accuracy; his own watch placed it at ten past five.

A would-be hitch hiker was hopefully holding a piece of cardboard with the word ‘Newcastle’ written across it in thick crayon. The hitcher looked well used to rebuffs, so Devlin didn’t slow down. He was, however, hungry, and the car wasn’t going to make it back to Westbrooke without petrol, so, come the first sign for a ‘Welcome Break’ service station, he found himself leaving the motorway a second time.

He pulled up as close to the forecourt’s dripping canopy as was possible, then got out of the car and stood still in the rain. He didn’t lock the car.

He hesitated at the glass doors, watching himself shrivel in the glass; objectively fascinated with the way he appeared to be anyone but himself; as if he were watching a complete stranger, a down-at-heel, hard-luck case weighing himself up. He didn’t like what he saw, but he wasn’t a man preoccupied with the need to like himself. A few scabs were sprouting where the stubble was coming through greyly.

“Excuse me, but I wonder if you could help me?” A girl of about nineteen or twenty asked, taking him completely off guard.

More aggressively than he wanted to sound, Devlin let out a short cynical laugh. “I doubt that very much,” he said, not waiting for her next line. He pushed through the glass doors into a quadrant of more glass and a long white concourse; the shop on the left was in darkness behind rolled down metal shutters, a cafeteria on the right, overhead idiot-signs with telephone, toilet and arcade pictures pointed off down different shoots of the quadrant. Devlin wandered through to the cafeteria, his footsteps echoing in the emptiness as he crossed the marbled floor, and bought himself a lukewarm and tasteless latte.

He sat in a booth beside one of the long gallery windows overlooking the motorway and watched for dawn, to see if he really had it in him to make the long drive back to Hades.

Two hours later he was back in the driver’s seat, tank full and heading north.

*   *   *   *   *

Five miles from Westbrooke the yammering inside his skull transcended incessant and unbearable. He pulled over.

“Just tired,” he told himself, not believing himself for a minute. He could almost close his eyes and see the babble of words on the inside of his lids. Darker clouds had begun to plate up the sky. If anything the rain was harder now than it had been that morning. He rested there an hour with no let up before moving on.

He came into town with the dying day – in time to see the first of the explosions.

He took the bend a shade too quickly, re-adjusted in time to see headlights fall upon the barrier of what had been The Arches. He stood on the brake, stopping fifty yards back from the trees. Mopping the sweat from his brow he took the cigarettes he’d bought from the booth in the service station from his coat pocket while he stared hard at the grinning figure of Billy Rogan, the shotgun resting easily over his knees.

Things went from bad to very much worse in that one, crazy, timeless second. He fumbled a cigarette out before realizing he hadn’t bought anything to light it with. He dropped both cigarette and full box bar one onto the floor of the car, and then killed the lights. He knocked the switch for the overhead door-light off.

His temper was on a one-second fuse, burning rapidly toward explosion point, which was why when all he wanted to do was run away, he opened the car door and eased himself out into the teaming rain. He didn’t risk the noise of closing the door behind him, even though he was ninety-nine point nine percent sure Billy knew he was there. Billy had had plenty of opportunity already to both see and hear his approach – one door slamming was going to make precious little difference. Even so, he left it hanging open, not wanting to antagonize Lady Luck any more than he already had.

Devlin could see the forest as only a darker black, bristling mass vaguely silhouetted against the slowly rising moon and the marginally paler sky. He crouched low and scuttled for the slight shelter of the tree line, looking for a way into the woods that would take him around the felled barricades before Billy looked up and saw him.

He heard no one behind him, and didn’t waste precious seconds checking back into the darkness. He kept low and moved fast, grateful for the rain as he pushed through the foliage onto a worn strip of deer track. Everything around him now was as black as a shroud, and as eerily quiet as the funeral service itself. Devlin stretched, knuckling his back. He guessed he was still twenty yards the wrong side of the barrier.

Head down, he crept on, watching where he put his feet and trying to look everywhere else at the same time, conscious of every little sound despite the fact that the light fingered patter he could hear above him was nothing like the sound of the rain out on the road.

Devlin had covered another ten yards through the trees when he pulled up short; he could hear laughing. Not normal laughter. There was no genuine humour behind the sound filtering through the trees. It was the sort of insane idiot laughter he mentally associated with the asylum. An explosion followed by a scream ripped the darkness, further away, a sound like a man dying under the slash of sharp knives. He didn’t stand still long enough to dwell upon it.

Ducking low enough for his head to clear the low hanging branches, Devlin took a breath and ran headlong into the darkness in front of him.

Billy would have to catch him; and shotgun or no shotgun if he caught him maybe it would turn out to be Billy’s bad luck, not his. Stranger things had happened already.

- 67 -

Jenny Lockewood was in the kitchen making herbal tea, peeling potatoes for chips and listening to Paganini's Grand Sonata in A. The last time she had listened to these sweet swelling melodies Annie had been upstairs getting ready to go to school. Not today.

She set the fat to boiling in the deep fryer.

Only faces can show real pain, loneliness, fear, hunger, she thought, catching her reflection in the convex bowl of the pan. Her eyes had become hollow, dark and, ironically large and lifeless at the same time. She tried not to be too scathing with her appraisal, but all she saw was a slack mouth and tight skin. There was no movement in her face. It was as motionless as stone, but not stone because she could see the outlines of her skull pushing through from beneath. Unlike stone, there was a brain inside the confines of that skull. Again unlike stone there was a scream taking shape in that brain – silent, endless and deafening.

For a second, just a second, she had thought, no, it was ridiculous . . . but with the doubt sown it was impossible for her to ignore it. Her own husband, Annie’s father? How could he even think of doing something so . . . so . . . horrific? And to his own flesh and blood?

Her hands rattled through the potatoes, chopping them into quarter inch slivers, the blade scoring deeper into the work surface with each successive slice.

Jenny was seeing rats in her mind’s eye; rats will eat anything and everything available, and their digestive systems are more than capable of handling the very worst crap they can chew and keep down. Sneaky critters, rats. Always sniffing around things they shouldn’t.

She knew why she was drawn to thinking about rats; she’d married the king of the scavengers when she was still innocent enough not to know otherwise, and he was upstairs now, trying to shake off whatever bug it was he’d picked up sticking his snout into trash cans. Couldn’t keep yourself happy just killing our little girl? At that moment she hated him more than anything else in the world. She wanted to go upstairs, press her thumbs up against both sides of his windpipe and keep pressing until he quit gargling and choking and the bones caved in.

She slid the chips back into the sink’s muddy water, moved over to the chip pan and turned up the heat, watching the yellow oil slowly begin to crackle and spit as the heat worked through it; watched it cook until the boiling fat sizzled and spat and the reek became so thick and unbearably cloying in the kitchen she had to get out or choke. She took the pan off the heat and carried it two-handed as she tip-toed up the stairs to the King Rat’s hidey-hole.

Graeme stretched out across the mattress, a cold flannel laid over his eyes. He didn’t move. She assumed he was still out for the count; probably dreaming about what he did to Annie. It felt good to be doing something positive to redress the balance. The rats had ruled the roost for too long in this house. She giggled at the thought of herself as a Rentokil girl, but that was exactly what she was, pest control getting rid of the vermin that had plagued her family for too long.

Taking one hand from the chip pan’s handle, Jenny reached out and whipped back the duvet cover from her husband’s feverish body. He moaned groggily, caught up in his own nightmare. Jenny glared down at her husband’s body with genuine hatred. No way was she about to let him sleep through it.

Gently, so she wouldn’t cause his heart to rupture with the shock of it, she poured a trickle of the boiling fat into the hollow of his navel. Watching him buck suddenly into repugnant, scared, painful wakefulness Jenny thought it was her that had gone insane, not that bastard on the bed that had raped and murdered her baby, then the rage welled up out of the blackness in her heart where her Annie had lived and she upturned the contents of the pan on Graeme Lockewood’s naked body and watched him burn, content that thanks to her there was one less rat in the world. One less rapist. One less murderer.

His screams were terrible to hear, and they lasted for a surprisingly long time, considering how long it took him to die.

- 68 -

Johnny Lisker swaggered back into the village of the damned amid a fanfare of fireworks, screams and explosions that left his ears ringing.

He couldn’t deny the strange, sudden rush of excitement he felt walking back into the battleground of his hometown. He laughed, knew he was grinning, knew then just how much Alex hated that grin, and didn’t care that Alex had gone off looking for Beth. Johnny had his own fish to fry.

Jim Beckett, the first of the paybacks Johnny was hungry to make good, was busy pulling the bolts on the Railway House doors. Johnny walked in behind the rioting kids, picking his way through the debris strewn across the High Street. He kicked aside the twisted, still smoking shank of an exhaust pipe, sending it skittering into the gutter across the street where Scott Jordan’s Ford was an unrecognizable smoldering husk.

Headlights speared the night.

Johnny didn’t wait to see who they belonged to. He ducked into the recessed mouth of the alleyway running up the side of Beckett’s pub. Out on the street, bricks and bottles were being hurled back and forth like insults; for a full twenty seconds all Johnny could hear were the sounds of breaking glass and kids on the rampage. Then one of the police caravans in the youth block playground went up in an almighty whummpff as a meths bottle with a lit soaked rag stuffed in its neck went spinning through its window. Johnny gazed at the peaks of the flames with morbid fascination, counting off the different colors he saw trapped within the blaze.

How does it feel to burn? He wondered. Had he actually said it aloud? Or was it one of those others sharing his head now?

Sirens went up. Shouts.

Amid the chaos out there hovering on the fringe of touching distance, Johnny was a controlled ocean of calm, waiting to explode. He felt the successive impulses deep in the pleasure centers of his brain, shuddering with the perfection of the street carnival ripping up the village. He watched the police swarm out of their hive and into the inferno, wind fanning the flames that threatened to undo them all. He heard and savored the screams of flesh. Johnny stayed where he was, hidden in the over-shadowed recess. His eyes streamed as the smoke bit at them. He had no need of protection from the heat. None of them did.

Innocents began staggering out of their homes, into the street, stunned and confused. Johnny smirked.

Moving quickly along the side of the public house where the rain drizzled off the guttering with a sound indistinguishable from the fire across the street, Johnny peered through a frosted fly-window into the gloomy interior of the unlit ladies toilet. He didn’t have any sort of weapon to hand, so, waiting for the right sort of background noise, he clenched his fist and put it through the glass transom. The sound of it shattering was almost unnoticeable amid the screaming, laughing and shouting of the riot all around him. He used the heel of his hand to tap out the broken fragments still left in the frame, and then picked out the splinters embedded in his fist.

Johnny reached in through the window and popped the arm lock of the half-window beneath the fly. He perched himself on the sill, swung his legs around, eased himself down and to the floor inside The Railway House.

The toilet was lit by the fireworks of the carnival. He stood for almost a minute, listening intently.

He heard signs of life outside; nothing he could say for sure originating from the inside. The pub was eerily quiet; a vacuum where the sounds from outside were sucked up and swallowed.

He wiped the rain out of his face, ran half-knuckled fingers through his hair, brushing it out of his eyes.

When he moved his trainers made wet squelching sounds. He kicked them off, then peeled off his socks and walked barefoot into the snug.

A light shone through the small window of the gents toilet. Seeing it, Johnny’s smile burned with such intensity the flickering fire-shadow paled against it. By the sounds coming from outside more of the caravans had gone up. Johnny could feel the sudden change in temperature as fresh explosions ripped through the pub.

A Molotov cocktail of petrol and methylated spirits mixed in a thin Becks Beer bottle smashed through the window of the main lounge, igniting the carpet, the veering wind funneling in through the gaping window, fanning and carrying the flames toward the optics behind the bar. The flames took hold with dizzying speed. The heat was nearly unbearable, beating at Johnny’s back as he moved confidently toward the gents toilet, cooking his skin through the flimsy cotton of his tee-shirt. With one cock-eyed glance back over his shoulder, he pushed through the heavy smoke door and walked in, throwing more oxygen into the inferno behind him. Small fires followed him.

Jim Beckett was standing up against the porcelain trough, trying to put a stop to the steady stream of piss splashing his shoes. He appeared to be reading the latest line of graffiti, but Johnny knew he was too busy listening to the pandemonium outside and pissing himself. That made Johnny feel superior to scum like Beckett. He wasn’t pissing himself at the first sign of trouble.

“Well, well,” Johnny said flatly. He thought he sounded casual, dangerous. He liked the idea of sounding dangerous. Enjoyed the buzz it gave him. The rush of the hit.

Beckett had his hand clamped on his testicles, trying vainly to clamp the flow of urine that way. It wasn’t working. The pungent yellow liquid was dribbling out through his fingers.

“Jesus Christ,” his eyes were open impossibly wide, his pupils dilated. The barman was struggling not to look terrified. Instead, he looked like he was in the grip of a massive coronary.

Johnny walked up behind him, a silent stalker with his bare feet on the warming tiles. He took a hold of a hank of hair, tangling it around his fist and whispered in his ear: “You really shouldn’t have fucked with me, Beckett.”

“Oh God, I didn’t,” Beckett shrieked, letting go of his testicles. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

Johnny yanked his hand back and slammed Jim Beckett’s head into the same line of writing Jim had been occupying himself with, yanked it back and slammed it into the wall again, bursting the barman’s nose with a sound like nothing else. The cartilage ruptured, the bone driven back into his brain. Laughing softly, Johnny Lisker took the weight as Beckett slumped, and slammed his head into the wall again, lower down this time but still above the porcelain trough, and then again. He let Beckett slump, then kicked at his head over and over again. He did not let up until it had molded into the shape of the bowl at the base of the urinal and the heat from the fire in the adjacent room was unbearable even through the smoke doors.

Johnny checked for a way out back the way he had come, but the snug was rapidly being devoured by the blaze. Bench seats and seat pads on the wooden chairs were ablaze. The carpet was burning, lines of fire shooting across the floor like burning sulphur. It was another world through those doors. Johnny watched, frozen to the spot by burning curiosity, as large velvet curtains came crashing down and the bar erupted into a roaring furnace, bottles shooting corks, imploding, spraying alcohol in golden and clear rain-fireworks.

Johnny was mesmerized by the inferno behind the glass, privileged to have this first hand glimpse of Hell. But both curiosity and mesmerism burned out when the glass porthole shattered, showering his face and neck with molten fragments of fire.

Then it became a question of getting out before the conflagration added him to its growing list of victims.

The gents had a small window, much the same as the ladies, jammed shut by over-painting. Johnny hammered it out, using the heel of his bloody hand to knock out the jagged pieces of glass around the edge of the frame. With the blaze ripping through the Formica surfaces of the cubicles Johnny crawled through to find himself in the dim passageway that led to the car-park. There was smoke pouring from all sides of the building as he swaggered barefoot across the cindered car-park.

Chemicals buzzed through his system, and all Johnny could think was: this shit’s hotter than H.

And that wry little observation kept him laughing all the way to the big house on Mulberry Lane.

- 69 -

Ben Shelton’s legs tied up on him. He heard the Kid Pack roaring on his heels, the explosions going up on all sides as Molotov cocktails detonated; thought fleetingly of the woman called Kristy who, although she was standing beside him, he was never going to see again . . . and waited for the impact of the car as it punched into him.

The irony that he had hoped a similar scene with a young girl in his place would relaunch his writing career wasn’t lost on him. For one terrible moment, Ben thought he was going to die cursing God’s lack of humor, and then impossibly, the car stopped. Its rear end fish-tailed dangerously on the slick road.

He stood there like an idiot, realizing he was wrong, God did have a sense of humor, and right now he was about to prove it by snatching his death from the jaws of salvation.

“Either get in the car or get out of the way!” Barney Doyle yelled, gunning the engine to keep it turning over. Ben didn’t need telling twice. He started to run for the side door. A cocktail of oil and fire exploded between him and the car. Doyle slammed the car into reverse and backed up ten feet, yelling: “For the love of God, come on!” as he shouldered the passenger door open for him.

Ben threw himself into the passenger seat, slamming the door hard. Kristy was still fifteen feet away. He popped the button and cranked the handle to open the rear door, while Doyle threw the white squad car into first and floored the accelerator. They were already bulleting forward in a rubber-burning wheelspin as Kristy clung onto the doorframe and dived in.

She expected to see Jason in the driving seat. Not this time.

Doyle was wheezing, sucking air with high, whiny gasps. He stood hard on the accelerator, harrowing for the centre of the rearing pack of kids. He hammered the horn, but they weren’t about to give up their quarry that easily. He kept seeing Evie, down at the restaurant by herself when the bastards arrived, and that in turn kept his foot hard on the gas.

The kid with the baseball bat did not try to dodge like the others, he met the police car head on, swinging the bat straight overhead with both hands as if he thought one good swing could stop the car in its tracks. It slammed into the bonnet, and then his legs crumpled as the momentum of the car flipped him up head first into the windscreen. The impact smashed his forehead. Teeth and blood as well as part of his tongue broke from his screaming mouth. Hungry eyes stared in at them, and then the body was up and over the roof.

It hit the floor, neck broken, but still somehow managed to drag itself to unsteady feet, head lolling.

Ben watched the kid, a boy he recognized now from a house across on the other side of his own street, lurch three steps with the baseball bat held high before his broken limbs succumbed and he collapsed in a broken jointed sprawl. Then the pack fell on him too, fingers shredding through the few layers to get at his skin.

“What the hell’s happening, Ben?” Doyle hissed, having to wrench his eyes from the sickening display of savagery through the rearview mirror before he ended up putting the police car into a wall.

“What the hell’s happening here?”

- 70 -

“Holy fucking Christ,” Andy McKenna yelled into the turmoil of the Operations Room – suddenly all he could see was the writing on the wall; the map of Westbrooke gridded down to scales for the hillside search, the circle of faces, Lisker, Slater, Sanders, Kenyon, Richards, Kelso and back around to Lisker. The sparks of fire scribbled across the ceiling insulation. That last image was in his head but he could not convince himself that it wasn’t going to happen just the way he imagined it.

The computers had gone down with the first lights out. He’d lost his grip on things as soon as the lights died. Everything was coming down around his ears. He felt okay until he tried to move against the flow. People were doing what he would have bid them, without him having to tell them, which made it easier. He stood at the epicenter of the police hut-cum-headquarters ushering his men and women into Christ alone knew what. Sandy Peterson had appeared clutching his face, the skin burned and blistering, still alight as the cocktail of white spirit and snowflake detergent was absorbed into his flesh, almost as soon as he’d pushed through the door into the playground. The caravans out there were all blazing wrecks. Jack Kemp had carried him through to the interview room trying to calm him. Mckenna didn’t have a clue what had happened to either of them. Kemp could quite easily have been out there facing down the hurled bottles, flaming cocktails, stones and bricks.

If he stood still it didn’t hurt too much; he could handle it if he didn’t move. It felt as if he’d been bound up with barbed wire. Each slight movement tore him up.

McKenna exhaled slowly into the dark, his heart hammering.

So he stood there, listening to his men doing his job while he stared at the spot where his own hands ought to be, imagining he saw the heads of one hundred back ants crawling through the skin of his palms. If there was one thing Mckenna hated more than any other, it was black ants.

“Shield!” someone yelled above the chaos.

McKenna snatched onto something that made sense: “Get the shields! Don’t go out there without visors.”

From behind him, “We’ve got the generator going, Skip.”

“Generator, great. Give me some lights will you?”

The lights flicked, threatened not to make it back, and then blossomed. A ragged cheer came from a few of the men, but most were preoccupied strapping their visors and riot shields on.

“Power to the terminals. We’re back online!”

“Are the radios working?”

“Charging up now,” the constable replied.

“I want a message out to Hexham and Newcastle: riot, full Status Code 1. Got that?”

“Sir.”

“Oh, Jesus,” someone moaned.

Now the lights were back Andy McKenna felt more than a little foolish about his panic attack, and against all of his better judgment excited in a way that he hadn’t been since joining the Force.

“He’s not going to help us any more than Buddha or Mahatma. Now give me a shield.”

That was what they needed, to see him take the initiative away from them. Confidence is a strange beast at the best of times. “We’re going to go outside, and we’re going to use anything we have to teach these kids some respect.”

- 71 -

Alfie Meecham made himself a comfortable nest amid the heaps of worn-out coats and dirty blankets he had dragged out onto the footboard of his favorite single-decker bus.

The storm was kicking up mighty fierce, scaring the worms up out of the ground.

A host of winged scavengers had taken shelter up on the banks of the Bus Graveyard. Alfie could make out their little black bodies coming down off the banks as the critters made their occasional forays into the muddy pan of the quarry.

He scraped a spoon around the inside of his battered cooking pot, slopping up one last spoonful of cold beans to chew over. The beans ended up being spat into the dirt at his feet. His small fire was struggling against the rain, but it hadn’t died. The old man snuffled in a noseful of air, hawked, then spat again. The wad of phlegm sat yellow against the mud beside the guttering fire.

The posse was playing silly buggers, and Alfie had just about had enough. Nosy was living the exact opposite of his name, curled up and quivering in the mound of blankets beside Alfie. Nipper, Felix and Rosie were pacing the perimeter of the Graveyard. Nuke and Hopper, though, were behaving strangest of all; in the last few hours, the big shaggy white dog had taken to standing guard over Sasha’s cross, posturing and protecting both at once. Twice now shivers had wracked Hopper, like tiny aftershocks starting way down in his hind legs, pumping up and out in the form of sickness. Alfie was plenty worried about his little gang of Heinzers. The old man tried to listen to whatever it was the mutts were trying to tell him but today he was just as deaf as any other day. Their barking was a mystery of sounds.

He was scared. That was hard to admit after living for so long with nothing left to hurt him.

Nuke loped away from the wooden cross. The dog reached the base of the banks, turned there at the edge of the junkyard and started howling into the sky, hackles high. The first of the explosions detonated less than a mile away.

“Jesus mother Mary of Christ,” the old man muttered, not caring what kind of familial relationship he had just created for the Savior. He wanted out of this place and he wanted out now. “Nuke! Nuke! Get back here you sonovabastard buggerin’ dog! Nuke!”

But Nuke wasn’t about to stop. His powerful legs took him bounding up the slope in an eighth of the time it would have taken Alfie to follow. The sound of the shaggy white crossbreed’s flight was awful to hear. Nuke bayed one low lingering syllable after another. Alfie watched as the pack leader disappeared into the darkness beyond the rise of the Graveyard wall, knowing it was only a matter of seconds before the rest of his peculiar family abandoned him for the excitement of the blaze.

All except Nosy, who matched Nuke with his own low keening cry without leaving the cocoon of blanket and coat he had nested down in.

Alfie took a shallow swig from his bottle of cheap wine and then hurled the still half full bottle into the small fire. His own explosion of shattered glass and flame flared as the fire was fuelled by the alcohol in the wine.

Cursing, tears streaming down his cheeks, Alfie Meecham gathered a few coats together and wriggled into them. He kicked out the last remnants of the fire, scuffing dirt over the twigs.

Cradling Nosy in his arms he started climbing the slope Nuke had so easily negotiated minutes before. It was hard work for the old man. “Someone’s gotta bring the mutts back home,” he muttered into Nosy’s flat ear. A plume of fire lanced heavenward like a rocket on Guy Fawkes night.

- 72 -

Daniel Tanner pushed his way through the screaming children, strong, immune to their fury, untouched as windows in the houses along the street shattered and new fires started. A lot of screaming was down to the police. He turned on the spot, and threw his hands in the air. A passerby might have seen a man offering benediction, but Daniel was firing himself up on the raw electricity, fire, of the night around him. He charged himself up with all of the anger, the hatred, and the hunger out there on the streets already. He was strong. It surged through his blood.

Back on the corner of Brewer Street and the High Street, children – three of whom he recognized distantly from his daughter Ellen’s class at school – brought down the tall figure of a screaming policeman. The small bodies swelled forward wildly. He felt their hunger. He felt the policeman’s fear. He fed off both.

Daniel turned his back on the children’s feast. Whistling the old Marvin Gaye tune, he headed home. Kathleen had pulled the curtains. He walked up the path to the front door. He pressed his face up to the glass peephole. Through it he could see the bulk of the settee wedged across the door. He crouched down. “Not going to keep daddy out in the rain are you, sweetie?” he called through the letter box.

Daniel gave them until he counted to twenty-five, ample time for them to come to their senses and stop playing Little Pig. When they didn’t answer, he put his foot to the door, balanced himself, and kicked hard. Kicked hard again. Three times more, driving each kick hard, shattering the lockbed in the frame. The door gave six inches. “Open the fucking door, baby girl!” he screamed through the crack. “Before I kick the fucking thing off its hinges! One! Two! I’m waiting! Three! Suit your fucking self then, sweetie, but I am coming in if it means killing all of you to do it! You’re pissing me off, woman, now open the fucking door!” Daniel made it halfway through a count of ten.

He backed up three steps and then hurled himself shoulder first into the door. The impact forced the crack another twelve inches wider.

“You had your chance, baby girl, now it is my turn!”

He shouldered in through the gap he had made. The house smelled too damned clean, like aspic burning at his nostrils. The curtains made everything seem twice as dark as he remembered it. Darkness offered more places to hide. It didn’t matter to him, he wanted them to hide. He wanted to draw it out. To make it hurt the mind as much as the body. He pushed the settee back, jamming it up against the foot of the stairs. Kicking the lounge door open he reached inside and turned the light on. Nothing happened. “Nowhere to hide kiddies. Daddy’s going to find you, and when he does he’s gonna make it hurt. I promise you that. Daddy’s gonna make it hurt so much!”

The pleasure centres in his brain soaked up the good feeling all of his shouting generated; an overload, almost, of pleasure. Images of good times raced through his mind, downed out by the shouting, arguing and fighting that had marred the last fifteen years. They all had voices, Kathy, Ellen, Sarah. They wouldn’t let him rest. They never left him alone. Always arguing, bickering. Making him angry, all the time making him so damn mad it hurt.

Daniel punched the walls with the full force of his fists. “Where the hell are you?”

He chased what he thought was a giggle into the kitchen. Laughing at him. One of the little bitches was laughing at him. He’d teach her. Just let him get his hands around her scrawny neck and he’d pluck every fucking hair from her happy giggling little body. See if she is laughing then, see if screaming makes her happy!

The kitchen was empty. Really? He contradicted himself, pulling open a drawer full of cutlery. He emptied it onto the floor. Moonlight glinted off a huge variety of blades. Daniel crouched, taking time over his choice. He pulled a meat cleaver from the clatter of knives. He weighed it in his hand.

He rifled other drawers, tipping them out onto the floor and kicking through the contents until he found the whetstone. The sounds of him sharpening the cleaver’s edge filled the whole house: schee-scraaaw, scheee-scaaaaaw. He pulled the cleaver blade in precise figure eights, before testing the edge on his thumb. It was sharp enough. The press of steel was cool against his thumb, the sting of it slicing through the pad of his thumb hurt less than a pin’s prick.

Daniel stopped midway through a figure eight and looked up, deep into Kathleen’s eyes with an intensity of hatred that frightened him almost as badly as it did her.

His voice came back to him. He was meant to be here. He had things to do here. She was the intruder. His face took on an expression of calm insanity. His grin twisted.

She shuffled back a step. Daniel shook his head. He inspected the cutting edge of the cleaver. He tapped it against his bleeding thumb. He pushed himself to his feet. The kitchen was suddenly tiny, the space between them nothing. She wouldn’t make it out of the house unless he wanted her to.

She was terrified. The fear came off her in waves. She took another step backwards, sweat tricking into her blinking eyes.

Daniel laughed, a deep, belly sound. Kathleen was stuck in the sludge of slow motion. He could feel her mind calculating the risks.

“Go for it,” he rasped.

Kathleen bolted for the front door.

He watched her fling the door open wide and charge out into the rain-filled blackness on the other side, making it as far as five again in that count of ten before giving chase.

He caught a whiff of her in the air. This new attribute left him reeling. He turned, and turned, sniffing at the air. The bitch is trying to double back on me. One sound, just give me one sound. And there it was, the bolt of the garden gate sliding back.

This was what he wanted, the exhilaration of the chase. He could hear her whimpering now, bleating like a little lamb. “You can’t run far, baby girl. You know that I’ll catch you. I promise you I will make it hurt.”

The rain felt wonderful on his face. He barreled around the corner. Hit the gate at a run, one foot level with the latch as though he were trying to run straight over it. He used his momentum to carry him easily up the height of the gate, grasped the top and swung himself up and over. He dropped down to the ground as gracefully as a stalking cat. Gave up shouting. She couldn’t be far. “Where are you, Kathy?”

The foliage made it hard to distinguish any definite lines. If she was smart she would stay under cover. He started walking toward the shadow of the weeping willow in the centre of the lawn.

Kathleen came bolting out of the night like startled game, straight into the path of her hunter. Daniel caught hold of her, letting her beat at his face and chest while he pulled her tight. He could see the confusion in her eyes, the need to love and trust him, the fleeting belief that it was going to be all right, that he was simply going to kiss her and she was going to wake up from the nightmare.

She was still locked in the embrace of that misconception when he pushed her back and took the cleaver to the side of her skull, slamming the blade into the bone, twisting it free and slamming it home again, hilt deep into her shoulder.

It took him six swings to hack through her neck.

Daniel jogged back around to the front of the house, Kathy’s head swinging loosely by the hair in his grip. He stood in the doorway, sniffing. Sniffing out flesh. The reek of blood was strong in the air. Too strong, overpowering his newfound talent.

He ran straight up the stairs. Five doors faced him on the landing. They were all closed. He opened Ellen’s door, and stood in the doorway, sniffing. Nothing. He opened Sarah’s door, and likewise there was nothing. He ignored his own room and tried the bathroom door. It was locked.

“Open up, angel,” he said, pressing his face up against the door. He pushed the lower half of the door with his knee and felt something bracing the door. “Let me in.”

“Not by the hair on my chinny, chin, chin,” Daniel cackled. He stepped back and hurled himself at the door. Each time he hit it the flimsy wood bowed. Only the bracing effect of his daughter’s back stopped it from giving way completely, ripping out the latch and flying open.

Daniel hit the door again. This time he met no resistance. The door burst open. He almost fell across the threshold but caught his balance. He stayed in the doorway and reached for the light cord, snapping it out of habit. His only reward was a click in the darkness. “You in the bath, darling? Come to daddy, I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

Sarah, the eldest of his two girls, was huddled with her knees drawn up against her chest in the bathtub. Daniel kept the cleaver out of sight behind his back. “Come on, darling, come give daddy a hug. It’s all right.”

She looked at him as though he were all of her worst nightmares made flesh and so horribly real.

Daniel offered her his rictus smile and a hand out of the tub. She shook her head. He crouched down beside her. “Come on, darling. Daddy’s only doing what’s best. Come out of the bath. We’ve got to get you and Ellen out of here before something bad happens.”

“What’s happening outside?” Sarah managed, her head still shaking. She stared at his offered hand as though it were a rattlesnake.

“People are fighting,” he said, truthfully. “People are setting fire to some of the houses.”

“Oh, daddy . . .”

“I know, baby, I know. But you can’t hide from it in the bathtub. We’ve got to get out of here before someone sets fire to our house.”

She took his hand, needing the support to get out of the bathtub. Daniel used it to pull her off balance. Sarah fell, tripping over the side of the tub. She screamed. Daniel cut it short with a powerful downward swing of the cleaver, driving it into the back of Sarah’s neck as she twisted to see his face.

“Don’t make a sound, baby girl. They might hear us. Don’t make a sound.”

*   *   *   *   *

Ellen, hidden under the bed in her room, heard it all. She was too scared to move so much as a breath. She had been terrified, hearing him arrive screaming at her door, but that white-hot terror couldn’t last. Gradually it subsided to a low fever of fear that left her feeling as though she were in the first stages of flu.

Ellen gripped her sister’s butterfly deodorant spray can to her chest, drawing some small comfort from the handy-sized can.

“Where are you, angel? Come to daddy,” her father called from the landing.

Ellen shuddered, clutched the metal canister.

She had to bite her tongue. It was almost impossible not to think of him as her dad. It was impossible not to crawl out and surrender with a tight hug and an “I love you, daddy,” as though he had caught her out in a game of hide and seek.

- 73 -

Sam Ash had his own phobias. He had always hated the rain. Under normal circumstances he would never have ventured outside but these were not normal circumstances by any stretch of the imagination. He hadn’t had a choice about staying inside or going out, the world was falling down around his knees and Sam was trying to use the image of Trudi Packer’s hard-sweet face as a wil’o the wisp to bully him out of hiding. Self preservation had very different ideas about leaving the shadows. He had been caught out in the thick of things when Scott Jordan’s red Ford went up in flames, and for once in his life Sam ignored the panicked voice of self preservation and ran out into the nightmare. He kept his eyes on the street, expecting to see the rioters come screaming and charging into sight with their bricks and petrol bombs.

Sam dashed out from his hiding place behind a hedge in Dipton Walk. Against every instinct, he stopped on the white line, his head turning left and right as he prayed he would make the right choice.

Which way to go?

He looked to the sky for inspiration – which was not as stupid as it might have been. Flames rose on two sides, back in the direction of the High Street and the way down into the estate and the railway embankment. Sam had a fifty-fifty chance of picking the wrong route and running into bricks and petrol bombs. He looked at the blood that was still bright on the white line of Dipton Walk.

“Hey! Hey you!”

His heart lurched. Time had run out on him, cheating him of his last gamble. He had prayed into a vacuum. Only it wasn’t a rioter come sniffing out blood. It was a man, well into his retirement, in blue striped pyjamas with an overcoat on over the top and a flat cap on his head. The old man waved a hand at Sam and shouted again.

Sam made frantic gestures to try and tell the old man to keep his racket down but no matter what sign language he tried, the old man only shouted louder. Soon, the wrong ears were bound to hear him. Sam didn’t want to be stranded in no man’s land when they did.

“Oh to hell with it,” he told himself, and ran toward the old fool with the big mouth, checking over his shoulder for the first telltale missile as he ran.

And still the old fool just stood there waving his arms and shouting, “Hey! You!”

It wasn’t until Sam was up next to him that Sam realized that the old man wasn’t shouting at him. He was shouting for anyone that might come. His eyes were glazed over with the cataracts of glaucoma. Blind, Sam realized, very nearly cannoning into the old man. His perspective lurched rapidly: what the hell is he doing out here alone?

He clutched at ignorance, but knew instinctively that there was no simple answer as to why the old man was out there shouting. “Hey! You!” the old timer called out again. Sam laid a hand on his arm and said, “I’m here,” and started leading him out of the road.

Now, out of the corner of his eye, Sam caught sight of a naked, blood smeared figure crouching by the roadside hedge. It was no one he recognized from the village.

“Come on, granddad,” he said, and began pulling him into one of the many recessed doorways along the street. The creature – that was how he thought of it – had seen him and had crawled out from its sanctuary.

Sam lost it.

A flicker of fear crossed his face. Even though the old man was in no position to be affected one way or another, Sam forced himself to stand that bit straighter and keep his face and voice calm. The sounds of the riot were nearing, which suggested their observer had reported back and summoned reinforcements. The lunacy of the night scared the crap out of him. Same wasn’t going to let it show. He latched on to one thought: people are going to come looking for me to help them.

“Back here, granddad, we’re going to get you the hell out of here. Think you can make it back to the main road?”

“I may look like a cripple, sonny, but I ain’t.”

Sam had to be patient with the slow pace the old man set. Keeping to the shadows they moved cautiously from tree to tree, trying to avoid making any sort of sound that would carry to the wrong ears. He didn’t think they would be heard, as long as they didn’t run out into plain sight and start hollering up a storm again.

He needed time to think, and wanted to be out of the cold hard rain. Without taking to the hills, which was impossible in this weather, there was only one way out of Westbrooke and that meant risking the High Street and running out along the Spine Road. It wasn’t exactly sensible but neither was staying around with a war going on on all sides.

The safest place had to be outside of town while he waited for the police to quell the continuing eruptions. And that meant the High Street whether he liked it or not. The decision gave him no comfort.

The next moment, he felt an icy air against his face. He knew well enough the sour stench it carried. It was the smell of this nightmare – burning. At the first opportunity Sam left Dipton Walk, run-walking onto Juniper Close. The sight that greeted him left him sick with joy: people, normal people, no bricks or homemade bombs, milling dazedly in the street as lost the old man had been.

Someone saw Sam. There was a scream then scared silence as they waited to see what latest trick the night had in store. Sam expected knives or clubs to suddenly materialize if he stepped closer, while the crowd – which wasn’t much of a crowd when he looked again, a dozen people, no more – weren’t sure what ghost was going to come back to fight them if they dared believe there was a way out of their nightmare.

As it was, Sam took a second huge risk. He walked toward the crowd of people, one hand pulling the old man along and the other at his side, unsure whether to wave or hold it up to show he meant no harm. The air brought goose-pimples to his arms. Eleven people, he counted. That made thirteen of them. Sam decided then and there that he wasn’t a superstitious man.

“Sam?”

Sam turned to see who knew him – but in a village this size the answer was everyone. It was a small woman with distinctly oriental features. In her hand she held a breadknife. Her scrutiny of him was both lengthy and unapologetic. “I’m clean,” he said, holding out both hands now for inspection. It was a line he had seen time and again on TV shows and it seemed appropriate for the situation. She seemed to understand well enough what he meant.

“What are we going to do?” Someone asked, their voice full of self-pity.

“I’m not telling you to come with me, mate. What I am saying is that the smart people will be the ones who get out of this place and leave it to the professionals to sort the shit out. I’m getting out of here and anyone who wants to follow is welcome to follow but no one is being forced.”

“Easy as pie,” the dissenter said mockingly.

The old man surprised Sam by saying, “Fine, go your own way, lad. It’s your funeral, not his, not mine, and not anyone else who comes with us.”

The dissenter looked across at Sam, his face suddenly haggard. The life had gone from his eyes. Sam saw that look, recognized it and shook his head. “I don’t have the answers, I’m sorry. You’ve got to make up your own mind.”

“Listen to me,” the dissenter said, pushing forward. “They’re killing people back there. Why should they let us walk out? Because you say so, Sam? Your uniform doesn’t mean crap anymore.”

Sirens began cutting through the noise in the street.

Suddenly another explosion, a long slim blue flame hissed out halfway across the street – their street – as a gas pipe blew out into a dragon’s tongue of fire. The explosion sent debris raining into the road. As Sam turned his head looking for the perpetrator, the dissenter said, “Fuck it, let’s just get out of here and argue about it later.”

It felt strange watching the fire from a safe distance, but who could say just how long safe was going to remain that way? Not Sam, not the dissenter in the crowd, not the old man, none of them.

These people were putting their trust in him. He was responsible for them now. He couldn’t pretend to be delighted with the arrangement. Sam shook his head wildly. What the hell am I doing here?

“Come on, and keep the noise down. We don’t need the wrong people hearing.”

They came to the junction with the High Street, out of the centre of the village itself, close in fact to where the High Street became the Spine Road. Sam looked east, back toward the village where so many houses wore the rainbow halo of fire. He turned his back on it.

The night chill had deepened during the time it had taken to come this far. The rain was no less insistent.

It was impossible to read the geography of the riot from this distance. He had to content himself with the knowledge that the Kid Pack weren’t streaming out of the rain on his heels. He couldn’t see a soul.

“It’s okay folks, just around the corner and we hit the Spine Road, then the motorway, and we’re out of here.”

Sam knew he was stating the obvious; most of his escape party had lived in Westbrooke for more years than he had been alive. It was the relief speaking, lightheaded and dizzying that it was. Knowing that they weren’t going to have to fight their way out through an angry mob made anything else waiting along the country road seem like some blessed relief.

He felt his heart settle into a steady rhythm. His thought processes cooled. They were going to make it out of Hell.

Sam managed to keep that positive frame of mind for three hundred yards before alarm bells began ringing inside his head. Two felled trees blocked the road. Billy Rogan was sat on top of the barricade, a 12-guage shotgun resting not-so nonchalantly on the brace of his left forearm and thigh. There was no more than twenty-five feet between them.

“Hiya, Mister Sam,” Billy called, scratching at his scalp with his free hand.

“What are you doing there, Billy?” Sam asked, slowing his walk to a standstill. Behind him someone moaned. He didn’t dare lift his gaze from the shotgun on Billy’s lap. All of a sudden he was very, very cold and all he could think was: this is where being a hero gets you, Sam.

“Waitin’ for Pops,” Billy said easily. His free hand went back to resting on the stock of the shotgun. “I’m gonna teach him not to cleanse me no more.”

“That’s fine, Billy. You going to let me and these people go by?”

“Nope, Mister Sam,” Billy said, shaking his head.

“Don’t be silly,” Sam started to say but the dissenter had snatched up a branch and charged at Billy. Billy brought the gun up. “Billy, give me the gun, son,” Sam said, trying to keep his voice calm.

Billy Rogan took aim, but his arms were not strong enough; the barrel wavered in the air, not enough for him to miss when he pulled the trigger on the dissenter. He shot half of the man’s head along with his face, neck and shoulders.

The few refugees that had made it this far scattered.

Two barrels, Sam realized, seeing Billy’s finger hook around the second hair-trigger. Billy brought the gun around to aim at him. Chaos ruled on all sides around him while Sam remained rooted to the spot, hypnotized by the eye of the gun.

“Don’t do it, Billy, lad. I can help you. Give me the gun. Come on, come down from there, lad.”

Keep talking, just keep finding words and keep the voice calm. Keep him distracted and hope to god someone does something before –

“Got to say bye-bye, Mister Sam. Got to wait for Pops to come. Got to teach Pops a lesson.”

Billy pulled the trigger back no more than a fraction. In the breath between the shot and the pain Sam tried to hurl himself out of the line of fire.

The shot ripped through Sam’s right hand side, shredding his arm and most of his side from the pectoral down to the knee. Part of it punctured his right lung, ripping a hole out of his back. The sheer force of the blast spun him around like a rag doll.

Whether any of his hapless band of refugees made it as far as the motorway was down to them now; he had done his part getting them this far, Sam thought, falling to his knees. He pitched sideways, sprawling across the road. His blood leaked into the puddle around his side.

- 74 -

Doyle slammed the brakes on, slewing the squad car ninety degrees as its wheels locked on the gravel. The restaurant wasn’t in complete darkness, dim flickers of candlelight danced in the windows. Too many windows, too exposed, Doyle kicked himself for ever having agreed to those patio doors on the verandah. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t have known, he was a policeman, this was his town, he should have known and that was all there was to it. He slammed the car door and sprinted through the rain to the door of his wife’s restaurant.

Ben came around the car and gave Kristy a tight hug. “Didn’t think we were going to make it back there,” he shuddered at the too- recent memory.

“Thank god for the man in the white car, eh?” she said, taking him by the hand and leading him after Doyle. For now, at least, the urgency had evaporated. They walked through the rain. The sounds of the riot weren’t far away but as of now they were far enough away.

There were eight cars in the car-park, one of which was Evie’s little Fiat.

“Come on,” Doyle shouted from the shelter of the porch. Ben couldn’t tell whether his anger was directed at them for dawdling, or at Evie for being slow about opening up, or at the village for turning on him. He suspected it had more than a little to do with the sudden and powerful surge of relief at finding Evie unharmed. They hurried up the steps and ducked in through the door.

He’d been right about the candles. The diners were still at their tables, though none were eating. Obviously the worst of the noise hadn’t made it over the Muzak. Did they even know what was happening out there? It wasn’t that far away, surely? Shaking the rain out of his hair, Ben did a quick head count: twenty, including Doyle, Kristy and himself. Not an army by any means.

“Holy god,” someone blurted.

“We’ve got to lock the damn doors!” Doyle shouted above the piped Pavarotti. “Evie! Evie! Where are you, woman? Ben, that table and those chairs, make a barricade! Quickly!”

That kick-started Ben’s adrenalin. Not caring what the diners thought, he dragged the table over to the door, whipped the cloth and the cutlery off in one go and upended it as the first line of the barricade. Next, he wedged the chairs up under the table. “We’re going to need more,” he told Doyle. Doyle was already taking care of it.

“Barney Doyle, just what the hell do you think you are playing at?”

“Up, come on, up!” he yelled, ousting a couple and dragging their table across to the blocked door. He upended it without bothering to clear the crockery. He used it to shore up the chairs. “That’s the best we can do in the circumstances. It’ll hold for a while at any rate. Kristy, try and raise someone out there, let them know where we are.”

He handed her his police radio. She took it without question.

Doyle saw the panic spreading through the group like a scrub fire on a windy day. A woman – no more than a girl really, he amended mentally – began to sob.

“Everyone just stay calm,” Evie said. “We’ll be all right, won’t we, Barney?” she looked at her husband.

“Okay folks, listen up good,” Doyle said, fighting his own fear to take up the cue left by Evie. “We’ve got a problem outside, but I reckon you guessed that much for yourselves already. The power’s out, so are the phones. Half of the village is on fire. There are kids running riot on the streets. Best thing we can do is batten down the hatches and sit tight, but if you want to go, go now. I won’t stop you,” his announcement ended in shock silence.

Just don’t let anyone talking about dying or getting overrun.

Kristy on the other hand was beginning to wonder just how long it would be before her mind decided it was time to take refuge from this insanity. She saw everything she needed to in those paled faces at the tables. No one seemed willing to move.

“I don’t understand any of this,” someone said into the air.

“Analyze it all tomorrow, fella. Do now. Help me. We might not have that long before the fighting makes it this far.”

“Uh hunh. I’ve got two girls at home. I’m not sticking around here. Sorry.”

“Do what you need to. I still need a hand.”

“What do you want me to do?” The speaker sounded glad of a chance to work the paralysis out of his system.

“Check the windows. Make sure every way into this place is secure. I don’t want any surprises.”

The diner did so, his body buzzing with gratitude. Doyle felt safe relying on this one at least. The windows would be as secure as he could make them and that was all any of them could ask.

Ben was moving between the tables, offering quiet words. Should have been a bloody priest, Doyle thought, watching him.

Breaking every one of Evie’s rules, Doyle sat back against the barricade and rolled himself a smoke.

For once his wife didn’t complain. She kept herself busy following Ben, checking if people wanted a drink, something to calm the nerves. He smiled, his heart swelling with love at the sight of her.

*   *   *   *   *

Kristy lifted her eyes to look across the room at Ben. She thought back to an hour ago, making love in front of the open fire in the family room, the clichéd romanticism of the memory left her wanting to giggle but now more so than ever she didn’t dare risk the slippy road into hysteria. Maybe in time she could convince herself to fall in love with him – it wasn’t out of the question, but it would need time for the normal experiences of lovers, not this hot-housing of emotion.

She hefted the police radio and thumbed down the black button on the side. Another faint static hiss sprayed out. “Watersedge Restaurant calling Westbrooke Police Headquarters, come in, over,” she said quietly. Someone out there had to be tuned in. Had to be listening. “Is there anybody there?” she whispered, feeling stupid for coming out with a line more suited to a séance. More suited? And this isn’t like trying to raise the dead? “Watersedge to anyone. Can anyone hear me out there? Over.”

There was another crackle of static hiss, then a small burb of the connection being made.

“Can you hear me?” came a faint voice broken as much by pain as by static. Kristy looked around quickly, but the voice wasn’t loud enough to have been heard by anyone else. She could barely hear it herself without having the set right up against her ear.

“Thank god, Yes! Yes I hear you.”

“He’s got a gun,” the tiny voice gasped, biting back so much pain.

Kristy yelled for Doyle across the dining area.

*   *   *   *   *

Ben reached her first, in time to hear the next line from the radio.

“Been hit. I think I am gonna… oh god it hurts.”

He recognized the voice. Sam Ash. Ben snatched the radio from Kristy. “Where are you?”

“Spine Road, down by . . . Arches. Billy’s got a gun.”

“I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes,” Ben said. He handed the radio back to Kristy.

“Do you want to die?” she rasped, pushing herself up so she didn’t have to look up at him.

“No and I don’t suppose he does either,” Ben said, pointing at the radio in her hand.

People were staring at him. Let them, he thought brutally. Maybe Kristy wasn’t so wrong, maybe he did have a death wish. Maybe he owed that one to his brother, Mike. Ben wasn’t about to own up to thinking thoughts that black. Not to anyone.

He dodged through the tables.

In the thirty feet between Kristy and the door Ben Shelton’s life whittled down to one maxim: do unto them before they do unto thee, twice as bad. He had become almost some kind of mirror, his thoughts reflected back off the glass so even he couldn’t see the driving wheels behind them.

He ignored Doyle’s protestations and started pulling back the barricade so he could get through the door.

Doyle did everything he could to stop him, short of outright violence. There had been enough of that already. He came after Ben, grasping ahold of his arm.

“Ben, lad, listen to me. You can’t go back out there, son.”

“Let go of me, Barney. He’s dying out there for pity’s sake. We can’t just leave him . . . them.”

“Let him go,” Kristy said, suprising him. Her voice ached with anguish. She thought she knew now why Ben was pushing himself so hard. If she was right, she wasn’t going to be the one to stand in his way.

Doyle shook his head. Looking at both of them as if they had each grown extra heads, and all of them had gone mad, Doyle backed off, letting go of Ben.

- 75 -

Alex hammered on Beth McCusker’s door.

“I know you’re in there, come on open up! We can have some fucking fun! You owe me a shag, you bitch!”

He teetered backward, craning his neck to look up at the upstairs window. There was nothing to give away whether the biggest bitch in his world was home or not. All the banging in the world wasn’t going to open the door for him. Still he beat the heavy wood again and again before he backed off and turned his attention to finding another way in. The most obvious was a downstairs window but they were made from that toughened UPVC stuff that wouldn’t break. The ones out front were locked. He decided to try around the back. There had to be a chink somewhere waiting to be exploited.

The only pounding now was inside his head where the fever was burning fiercely. He rubbed his brow, felt the waxen quality of his skin. He told himself he would have killed for an Anadin and then belly laughed at his own dumb joke.

The shed door was cracked open. Alex ignored it. He walked into the centre of the back yard and stood there staring at each dark window as though by looking hard enough he might suddenly see her, hidden or not. Then he raised his voice and called: “Beth you cow, I know you are in there! I’ll huff and I’ll puff and then I’ll tear that fucking bastard out of your cunt with my teeth! You hear me, you bitch? Now open that bloody door!”

Like a lot of houses in the area the McCusker place was designed for show not security. The smart new UPVC windows of the front weren’t repeated around the back where no one could see them. Old paint-stripped frames held single panes of glass. Alex wrapped the body of his leather jacket around his fist and broke through the glass pane in the back door. He reached through and unlocked it, but for a moment did not open it. He walked back to the shed and opened that door wide instead.  The darkness inside was almost complete, but some thoughtful soul had hung a rubber-handled torch on a hook on the back of the door. It worked.

He used the torch to search through the junk piled high inside the shed until he found what he was looking for: a clear plastic bottle, three quarters full of transparent liquid. Alex pulled the cap off and doused his head and shoulders with the thick smelling turpentine, letting it stream down over his body and soak in. He felt his skin contract on contact. Its reek was dangerously dizzying. Alex needed the constant flow of rain to keep from puking.

He stumbled back to the door, breathing in the heady vapors.

“Coming, Bethany, ready or not!”

Ready or not, yes, yes, I am ready! This time I am ready. You’ll not catch me twice. Not have Alex Slater walking out with his prick limp between his legs twice. Slut. Bitch. Whore.

The hunger inside Alex was nothing compared to the sunburst of anger he’d felt the last time he had faced Beth. A different house. A different Alex. The hunger in him was barking at the moon hunger, rattling the windows hunger, tearing out chunks of her cheating heart hunger. This time she was going to pay.

He would take everything she had.

To Alex that included the precious fucking embryo in her gut. Let the bitch suffer. Let her hurt.

Stepping into the house, he found that he knew instantly that he wasn’t alone downstairs. He felt her presence seconds before he saw her. It was like a butterfly churning in his gut. His eyelids were sticky with the sludge of turpentine. He turned his head just in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of someone – something – hurtling at his head.

Alex threw a hand up instinctively to protect his face, taking the blow from the fire poker right across his forearm.

The bone shattered painlessly.

Beth came at him out of the darkness, hissing like a cat. She sank her nails into his cheek, tore gouges out of his face. One of her fingernails broke off inside a bloody runnel and stayed sticking obscenely out of his weeping cheek.

The initial onslaught had Alex recoiling, one hand up, the other useless at his side, but the sheer ferocity of it could not last. He came back at her twofold, slammed a clenched fist into her jaw.

The blow sent her straight back as if whiplashed, crashing into the staircase. She came down on all fours, hacking over something stuck in her throat. Gagging.

He kicked her in the side of her ribs. As she doubled up, he grabbed ahold of the shoulders of her blouse and tried to rip it clean off her back. Buttons ripped through buttonholes, but the shirt only tore back far enough to bare one strapless shoulder. He punched her in the sternum with enough force to crush one of his knucklebones. He sank his teeth into the flesh of her shoulder, and tore out a chunk.

The blood tasted like an elixir.

“Gonna show you just how fuckin’ good it is, bitch. I’m going to fuck you up and then I am going to fuck you until you scream and then I am going to keep on fucking you until you wish you could scream. When I am done putting it in you I’m going to bury my hand in you and rip that bastard right out of your gut,” Alex screamed every word at her, fumbling with his belt, trying to release his aching erection.

Beyond screams, Beth twisted around beneath him, struggling to break free of his press. Her hand scrabbled out. The poker was inches away from her fingers. She twisted, snagged it with the pad of a fingertip, rolled it closer, caught it in her hand and swung it around hard, not looking to aim, into Alex Slater’s temple.

Pain or no pain, the blow nearly blinded him.

Shrieking, his good hand flew up to the side of his head, clutching at his skull, the blinding fire lancing from his head to his heart in a pulse.

Vengeance swam tantalizingly close, then elusively distant. He felt himself shrivel. His legs gave away, everything about him suddenly clumsy –

“Bitch,” he wailed. “You fucking bitch.”

And toppled forward onto his knees, hanging there suspended before plowing face first into the carpet.

*   *   *   *   *

Sobbing, Beth McCusker crawled away from him, backing up, her eyes trying to trick her into thinking he was out as well as down. She knew better.

She wiped a sleeve across her face. She straightened her shirt and pulled it shut. Half of the buttons from the neck down were gone. With shaky hands and equally unsteady legs she tried to stand and had to use the wall to keep herself from falling. Amid the torment, the anger, the reviling and utter disbelief that little piece of reality didn’t escape her. There was a lapse here; a monumental breach of faith. Alex had always been one of the good guys – a prick some of the time, sure, but a fundamentally good prick. Not savage. Not like this. He had tried to rape her. She backed away from him as though he were a serpent laying there, a snake in her boyfriends clothing. She took a run and leapt over his prone body, hitting the space where the back door was open to the rain at a flat out sprint, and not stopping to look back.

*   *   *   *   *

Alex rolled onto his back, idiot grin pasted across his face, a huge angry swelling already pushing through the hair around his temple. He watched her go. She couldn’t go far. Nowhere was far enough – not when he could smell her fear on the wind. No matter how far she ran she was his.

Alex felt himself hardening again, almost at will now.

The bitch had broken his arm, and he couldn’t see worth shit through his right eye. He was completely useless down one side.

Walking was awkward at first, judging distances with one eye not making it any easier, but he made it onto the road. Rioters tore up the street, some screaming and shouting with one raucous voice, rolling cars and putting out windows with bricks. Glass invited to be broken. Bricks went through house windows and green houses as well as the windows of abandoned cars.

More came in behind them, a second wave bringing fire. They set alight anything in their way. Cars burned like beacons, explosions joining the furore as a string of petrol tanks ignited.

Alex limped down the centre of the street, casting anxious looks left and right. He had been a fool to think he could sniff her out amid all of this filth and contamination. The streets reeked of piss and blood and cleansing fire. He felt it cloying in his throat.

Kids were setting kindling to one of the big houses along from Kingsbridge School, pouring petrol siphoned from standing cars onto the blaze to get it going with the gusto they demanded from their new found element. The thunder of the streets battered him from all sides. Cars burning. Houses ablaze. His knees were anything but steady under the barrage. He couldn’t see her. He span left to right, twisting his head, trying to focus through the heat fogs and the smoke and the night – but he could not see her.

Where would she run?

Where would she hide?

He put his good hand out to steady himself. He had to catch his breath. It was difficult to swallow. Alex knew it was his asthma playing up with all of the smoke clogging his airways. It struck him as absurd that something as petty as asthma should still be capable of ruling his life when everything had changed so much.

Not everything, he amended. She still hates me. She hates me with every ounce of her body.

But what should it matter that Beth McCusker hated him? She was like gelatin waiting to be reshaped. She would love him again. The way Alex saw it, she had no choice but to.

His walking slowed as he scoured the streets.

No, she didn’t love him.

The rain had all but died down to a drizzle and with the lights all gone down Alex listened to the wind crying out. He listened for any sign of her but heard only the angry cackling of the fire and the rabid hoots of the Kid Pack. A black wind swirled within him, carrying its own storm. His body was betraying all of the desperation he had thought lost forever. Flashes of recollection threatened to unbalance him; a body in a caravan, a knife, pain, Beth, but mostly pain.

He clenched his good hand until he could feel the bones on the verge of cracking. Not even that could make him cry out. Alex was empty. Like the night was empty. Forget the fires, the people; they were all transitory, nothing more than flickers. The night was black-violet. A colour. Colour an empty frequency. No sounds. No life.

Kids battered him on all sides, rushing to wherever they had to be. He could taste the fire on their minds. He caught one and yelled into the boy’s face: “Where is she?” It earned him a laugh. He let the boy go.

There was blood and broken glass at his feet. A twisted torso hanging half-in, half-out of the driver’s door.

The bitch hates me.

He lumbered closer, but got too close. Alex was holding the main driver’s head up to get a look at his empty eyes when a homemade cocktail fell short of its target. The bottle broke on the road, showering the side of the car with petrol. The flame caught and roared, a blue streak that raced up the side of the car. A tongue flicked out, bridging the gap between Alex and the car, caught the vapors of the turpentine soaked deeply into the weave of his trousers.

Alex ignited in a staggering ball of bluish fire. The spirit seemed to suck the flame into him. Alex flapped and staggered, trying desperately to put himself out but his skin was already charring. His nostrils burned, raw with the reek of his own tainted flesh. His hair suddenly exploded into a halo of fiery light. A wave of raw pain crashed over him.

He tried to scream, knocked back by the horrible animalistic wailing tumbling out of his throat. It was impossible to see through the conflagration; his eyes would go soon, the heat taunted him, scarred him. It refused to burn out.

“Beth! Beth! Where are you?” Alex shrieked, flailing around desperately. He staggered forward, clutching someone unlucky enough to be too close to him in an embrace of fire. The woman in his hands began screaming, struggling desperately to be free of his hold.

She failed.

The blazing couple began a strange stumbling dance across the road, locked together like lovers lost in the shadows of another world; ghosts burning up the streets. They were burning as though they had been dipped in a vat of wax, Alex not letting his prize slip through his fingers this late in the day.

He looked at her through burned eyes. “Do you love me?”

Lines of fire shot out from Alex, wrapping themselves like serpents around his blazing beloved.

“Do . . .  you love. . . me?”

Her face began to blacken. Blinded by fire and panic she screamed, and tried to break free from the roaring furnace.

“DO YOU LOVE ME?”

Her body hitched and contorted as she struggled for a breath, and she gave up, her blistered hands clawing tightly at Alex Slater’s face. He squeezed back. Her eyes burned but not with love or devotion.

No, she did not love him, and as the fire consumed them, he knew it was too late to make her.

*   *   *   *   *

Hunkered down in a gateway, Jack Kemp witnessed the fire bringer burnout in a far from glorious blaze.

All the prayers in the world weren’t going to be enough to stop someone finding him sooner or later if he didn’t get himself moving. He tried to remember the layout of the village. He’d seen a payphone on the High Street, and one further along the Spine Road, maybe one of those would be working. Surely every phone in the village wasn’t linked up to the same damned junction box. Then there was the service station out along the road on the way back to the motorway. It wasn’t in use. The FOR SALE boards gave that much away. That didn’t mean he couldn’t hide there.

But for now he had to move on.

- 76 -

Ben didn’t risk heading back through the village. There were other ways to skin this particular cat. He raced along the tree line and the banks of the chalk hills, taking his guide from the fires in the sky and the moonlight when it at last breached the cloud. Its wan radiance did little to lighten the way ahead. He had to slow down to a trot, then a walk, picking his way carefully as the worn out path petered out.

It was only a matter of time before he had no choice other than to head back to the roads, he could move faster, and if he was careful with it there was a good chance he could avoid the trouble spots altogether. He picked his way up through the deforested slopes of the park, probably the strangest midnight rambler the old grounds had laid themselves open to in a long time.

The night reflected the sound with too much clarity.

Ben took to the streets, moving like a wraith from recess to enclave, enclave to doorway and back to recess, clinging to the anonymity of the shadows. The fear of the run was like nothing he’d ever felt before. It was exhilarating, primal, too much like having fun. It was intoxicating. He came close to running afoul of several clusters of rioting kids, and more adults shrived of their humanity. They moved with a vindictive purpose. Watching them, Ben was left with in no doubt that although they all appeared to be moving alone there was some joint purpose to their actions – it was as though they were all dancing to the same piper’s tune.

They appeared to be segregating Westbrooke into quadrants without getting into each other’s way.

He didn’t stop to think about the implications of the fallen arches. Slowing to a walk, Ben picked his way through the litter of bodies strewn across the road. It was like living in some bleak nightmare world, picking a path through the dead. Worse, though, because in this nightmare he recognized every face. He had grown up with some, been scolded by others. He stopped looking after he saw an old man with half his head missing. There was no sign of the monster behind the carnage.

There was a wind; the trees nodded heavily on their trunks, their clutch of scaly leaves slippery with sulphurous light from the village fires.

Sam Ash had dragged himself away from the slaughter, and was lying in a pool of his own blood. His side was riddled with maggot-like wounds caused by the spray of the shot. Mercifully, he was unconscious.

Ben felt sick and angry. He shrugged off his wax jacket, draping it over Sam’s body, checking he was still alive. It was like action-replay time for Ben, only this time he wasn’t about to fall apart. This was his chance at getting it right and he was going to grab it with both hands. He had a weal pulse and he was breathing. There was nothing else Ben could have asked for.

Though he wanted to do anything but, Ben forced himself to walk back through the bodies looking for survivors. There were two others, both had been shot and were in a bad way.

He did what he could to make them comfortable, and then went back to Sam. Thinking on his feet, Ben used the policeman’s radio to contact Barney back at the restaurant.

“Barney,” he said into the mouthpiece. A crackle of static, that burp of a connection he had heard before, and then Barney Doyle saying:

“Ben? Ben, lad, is that you?”

“It’s me. It’s pretty bad out here, Barn. Five dead, three wounded. No sign of the man pulling the trigger. We need medics or else we’re going to be adding three more to the fatalities. I’m heading back.”

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to say this lad, but you might want to stay out there a while longer. That new girl of yours is just as bloody stubborn as you are. She’s gone looking for someone to help. She wouldn’t be stopped, and I couldn’t very well force her when she played the dangerous club for boys’ card. If it’s good for you to go gallivanting, it is good for her. She commandeered one of the window keys and snuck out. I’m sorry son.”

“Nothing you could do,” he assured Doyle. He needed to think logically and keep a grip on a whole stirred up set of emotions he didn’t understand. He stared around wildly as though she might have been sneaking up on him while his back was turned – but this wasn’t some kid’s game of hide and go seek. He tried to stifle the panic rising as he ran back toward the village. He had to fight every urge that had him wanting to scream her name at the top of his lungs. The next twenty minutes of his life were lost in a frantic house to house search for a woman he had met less than a week ago and was already lost to.

It was hell.

- 77 -

Search lights from the police helicopter stabbed the countryside, surveying the damage.

“It’s like some localized war zone,” the pilot commented, banking for a closer look at the pockets of fire and violence. Cars were alight down the length of the main street and most of its subsidiaries, housing blazing like bonfires here, there and everywhere in a patchwork of fire, smoke and ash, and bodies; though from their perch in the helicopter they looked less like bodies and more like dolls.

He wanted to keep them that way as well, at arm's length, impersonal.

“The rioters are starting to congregate out towards the park.”

“It’s the only place open enough. You want to take us in for a closer look?”

“Will do,” he said, pulling sharply on the stick. The helicopter veered off to the right, arrowing in on the riot. “Hang on to your stomach.”

- 78 -

Doyle looked at the clock on the wall. Ben Shelton was taking his time. The longer he took the less likely it was he’d make it back through the streets in one piece.

“Oh, great, just flippin’ great.”

He tried to raise him again on the police radio, but he wasn’t answering. Doyle had visions of him breaking down the doors of every house he passed, screaming her name into the darkness. He knew Ben; he didn’t think he was that far off the mark.

He turned back to his window vigil, only this time there was something to see. Two figures were coming at each other across the expanse of car-park. Both had things in their hands, one was easy to identify: a shotgun. It sent a terrible shiver the length of Doyle’s spine. The other he had to strain to make out, but it looked like . . . a dog.

The shotgun came up, aimed at the dog carrier’s face.

“Jesus God Almighty,” Doyle moaned. He couldn’t bear to watch. Beside him, Evie turned her back; this kind of horror she didn’t need to see, it was more than enough that it happened. “This idiot hero stuff must be contagious,” Doyle muttered and pushed his way through to the kitchen. “I know I’m too damned old to be playing cops and robbers, but I just can’t stand around and watch.”

He scanned the work surfaces for something heavy, something he could use. He discounted the knives, choosing instead the wooden block they were set in. He had no intention of killing anyone. He went back through to the window, weighing the block of wood in his clenched fist. He had no idea what he was going to do with it but he knew he couldn’t stand around and watch cold-blooded murder. That’s what it was, or would be if he didn’t intervene. These streets were his protectorate. If he didn’t try to help the dog carrier, no one else would.

Like a freeze-frame on a video, they didn’t appear to have moved. The shotgun wavered between the dog carrier’s face and his chest. Of course, that was a lie; the balance of the confrontation was changing. It had become a curious sort of stand-off. A pack of mangy dogs were circling the pair. Of the two, Doyle reckoned the guy with the gun (was it Billy Rogan out there?) looked the more spooked.

He started pulling back the upended table barricades, “Someone give me a hand with these.”

The diner he had set to checking the windows hurried forward to lend a hand. “Thanks, fella. Now, I want you to do as I say. Lock the door behind me. Keep all of the doors and windows locked, and most importantly of all, do not let anybody in here.”

“No one in,” the diner nodded.

“I’m serious. No one. Christ, I am getting too old for this kind of shit.”

- 79 -

“Put the gun down, Billy son- Yer dain’t wanna shoot ol’ Alfie fulla holes now do yer?”

“Been waiting for Pops, Alfie. Been lookin’ for him because I’ve got summink real important to teach him, see. Have you seen him?”

“No, son. I ain’t seen that piece of shit fer a long time. But I have seen yer policeman friend. I can see ‘im now, creepin’ down the stairs. Don’t turn around lad, and no one will get hurt.”

“Keep the mutts back, Alfie. Keep ‘em back or so help me, I’ll shoot you like I shot the others back there.”

“I’ll keep em back son, don’t you fret. I don’t wanna be filled with lead no more’n you wanna fill me with it by the looks of yer.”

“They hate me now.”

“No one hates you, son.”

“They do, Alfie. Where’s Pops? Got to find Pops. Got to teach him good,” Billy sounded rattled, uncertain. Scared.

“Take it easy, Billy lad. Take it real easy. Why don’t you put the gun down ‘n give ol’ Nosy a pet, eh? Nosy don’t hate yer no more’n I do.”

“Got to find Pops. You don’t understand. You don’t. I’ve got to find him so I can teach him. I’ve got to –”

- 80 -

Just one more step, lad. One more. Don’t look around. Don’t look –

Doyle brought the full weight of the kinife block down on the back of Billy’s head, knocking him out cold. The wooden block hit him above the ear. The impact snapped his head sideways. His grip on the shotgun loosened and the gun fell from his hands, both barrels discharging in to the floor as Billy crumpled.

“Did yer kill him?” Alfie asked, rubbing at his thick grey beard.

Doyle shook his head. “Just knocked him out.”

“Thanks. I mean . . . that weren’t Billy. Not really. He ain’t a bad lad.”

“Half the damn town’s gone Night of the Living Dead on us,” Doyle grumbled sourly. He knew that when the numbness dissolved he was going to start hurting but with all of the dignity he could muster he hoisted Billy Rogan’s unconscious body and walked stiffly across the car-park and up the stairs into the restaurant. All of a sudden his life had become much more simplified: “I need belts or something else to tie him up.”

- 81 -

He was waiting.

Standing in the doorway, back lit in the dark. It didn’t look as though he had moved since he had last called her name and gone banging around the house. Nearly ten minutes ago.

He just stood there in the doorway, waiting.

Ellen desperately needed to pee, but she wasn’t moving from her hiding place under the bed. She held the spray can in her right hand, up at her chest, her forefinger on top of the nozzle.

“Ellen, baby, I know you are in there,” he called to her, but she lay still, biting on her lower lip. “It’s okay angel. It’s okay. It’s only daddy. Daddy’s back. The bad man has gone away now. Daddy’s back. Everything’s going to be okay now.”

And she almost believed him. She thought she heard a hint of despair in his voice when he said her name. If she had, good.

He started to move then, walking slowly over to the bed. He sat down. “Come out from under there, baby girl. Daddy’s getting lonely out here.”

She shifted the spray can behind her back a second before her father leaned under the bed. His face wasn’t warped with the same rage that had been blocking his throat when he yelled. He looked upside-down normal, blood rushing to his head. She could see the difference in his eyes, the strange urgency about the way he looked at her, the hunger in them. Yes, the hunger. That was what was wrong. Daddy was frantic with hunger.

“Come on, baby girl.”

He reached under the bed for her impatiently. Too rough, the way he pawed at her hurt. Ellen allowed him to shimmy her out from under the bed. She tried to look small, frightened, as he hoisted her up in a too tight bear hug.  He held her back at arm's length, devouring her with his hungry eyes.

As he went to shift his grip on her hair, Ellen wriggled around against his one-handed hold and whipped her hand up, spraying deodorant into his eyes from less than a foot away. Even as he shrieked, suddenly blinded, she bucked and squirmed out from his forgotten grip and bolted out of the door and down the stairs.

She could still hear his pained screams of “Blind! The little bitch blinded me!” as she ducked out of the front door and started racing down the street as fast as her legs would carry her – any way they wanted to take her.

- 82 -

Kristy French knew she had twisted her words but she hadn’t exactly promised to stay put with Barney and the others at the restaurant. She felt like a deserter wandering the streets all the same.

Guilt quickly swept away from her mind, the empty cackle of a crazy woman driving it as she shrieked past Kristy’s hiding place. The sound was animalistic. A rioter dodged the crazy woman’s outstretched arms and scrambled against the flow of bodies with surprising agility. Kristy changed her mind immediately – it wasn’t a rioter she was watching dodge back against the tidal press of bodies, it was a little girl. She clumsily scrambled after her.

The girl managed to wriggle out of the clutches of a brute of a man. His feral face distorted with snarling. She was wriggling and squirming like a demon, dodging people as she jogged along the side of the pavement, doing her best to keep pace with the girl. She gasped as someone struck her shoulder. Kristy span around but the tide of flesh had already carried the culprit away down the street. The jolt brought her back to her senses.

The girl was probably running on rapidly burning out adrenaline; it couldn’t be strength keeping her going, and it couldn’t last. She was little more than a waif.

A charging rioter sent the girl sprawling into the gutter.

Mercifully the press gang didn’t allow him to follow up for the kill. The girl didn’t get up straight away. Running feet trampled her.

Kristy wanted to run to her then, but held back, willing the rioters away. They weren’t all rioters, she realized suddenly. Unaffected people charged about like headless chickens, doing more damage in some cases than the targeted attacks of the pack.

The rotor blades of a helicopter sweeping low churned up a localized gale as it veered off and away to the right, angling toward the water. The helicopter might have been mute for the difference in noise its departure made.

Kristy took advantage of the confusion it provided to force herself a path through the crowd. She ignored their rabid expressions and garishly twisted mouths. She threw back shrieks of her own when hands reached out to snare her –

And made it through to the rising girl’s side.

Kristy reached out a hand of support. The girl turned and screamed in her face.

“Shush, it’s okay honey. It’s okay. I’m one of the good guys. Let’s get out of her, though. You okay?”

“Yeah,” the girl said, knuckling the muck and tears out of her bleary eyes. She wasn’t aware of the hurt, only falling. People trampling over her back, standing on her, and the sensation of being lifted, twisted, kicked.

Kristy held her close, hugging her. “What’s your name, honey?” she was saying, lifting her up to carry her out of the gutter.

That was when it started to hurt – all down one side of her body felt as though she had been used as a football. She tried to touch out some of the sorer spots, but didn’t dare.

“Ellen Tanner,” Ellen sniffed.

“Ellen Tanner, that’s a pretty damned fine name, I’d say. I think I’ve met your dad, Ellen.” Kristy felt the youngster stiffen at the mention of her father, calmed her and let it go. She couldn’t help wondering what nightmare had forced this little one out into the street; but she was sure it had involved her father.

They walked back through the streets, Ellen slipping into a sort of shocked trance. Kristy kept up a constant stream of chatter. Ellen didn’t respond to anything she had to say. At every corner, she stopped and checked both ways, thinking, calculating.

She watched the flames rearing high above the ridge of rooftops and scanned the broken streets for signs of Ben. She didn’t expect to see him, yet she couldn’t bury the hope.

In terms of the future what was one more casualty in the pocked mess of this fortnight? She started at her reflection in the shard of rain-streaked glass lying at her feet, ground it into powder with her heel, heart sinking. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Ellen silent in tow, Kristy retraced her steps with growing despair. Her skin had begun to itch. There was a restlessness in her stomach. She tried not to think too hard about what it signified; lost love was worse for smothering the light than the night, darkness and coaxing sleep. The air was thick with smoke and vapor trails but the streets were empty. They had been since she found Ellen.

Where is he?

She knew she was tearing herself apart over an if, but she couldn’t help herself: what if he were dead? Or what if he were out there lying in a ditch somewhere dying of gunshot wounds or worse.

When Jack Kemp staggered out of the smoke and fire of the house blazing across the T junction, handkerchief clamped over his face, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She had felt so sure it was Ben. Then she saw the figure beyond him. The fire had taken its toll on Ben Shelton, but he was alive.

“Uncle Ben!” Ellen squealed, tugging free of Kristy’s grip. She ran across the street but fell short of throwing herself into his arms. Tears poured from his smoke stung eyes. He could barely focus on the ground he stumbled across, but he spared an affectionate smile for his friend’s little girl.

It wasn’t until Kristy was in hugging range that she saw the forlorn little bundle in his arms; she had simply assumed that the smoke and the dust had worked into his lungs and he was having trouble breathing. It was not so.

“A baby?” she breathed, making the statement sound like a question.

He nodded. “I heard her crying when I was in the house. Her parents are both dead. Downstairs was already on fire when I got there,” he shrugged not knowing what else there was to say.

- 83 -

Johnny cornered his old man sitting in the dark, rocking slightly in his chair, zonked out to the world. The old git didn’t even wake up when there was a fucking riot going on outside.

Un-fucking-believeable, man.

He reeked with the stink of fags and booze. He’d thrown up on the front of his dressing gown and half wiped it off before it began congealing.

Johnny’s head was reeling with disorientating thoughts. The voices kept on pushing, pushing him. What a fucking trip. It took everything he had to keep his hated focused on the slumbering drunk.

Johnny hooked his fingers around the support strut of the chair and hauled it up, yanking it out from under his drunken father. He put a kick in at his temple, then crouched on top of the old man, his knee pressed hard down on his neck while he cast about looking for something to use.

“You reek of shit, you dirty old bastard.”

There was a small grade screwdriver in the jar on top of the television.

“Just the trick. Now come on, wakey wakey, daddy dearest.”

He slapped Jeff Lisker across the face. He spat in his eyes. The old man came around groggily, his hand going to his head before his eyes opened.

“Wha?”

“Just wanted you conscious enough to enjoy it, cunthole.”

Johnny rammed the blade of the screwdriver into his father’s ear, forcing it in deeper until the entire length of the steel spike was buried. Then he brought it back out and wiped it on the leg of his tatty jeans.

Jeff Lisker spasmed and gagged, choking like a fish wrenched out of the water and left to drown in the air by a sadist.

Johnny went through to the kitchen and washed the crap off his hands as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

When Devlin watched him walk away from the old house in Mulberry Lane he was laughing and talking quietly to himself.

- 84 -

Fire joined like a blanket in the sky, stretching from horizon to horizon, the helicopter fanning a blanket of flames.

“A dozen,” his passenger said, voicing the number he’d visualized. A dozen uniforms dead and wounded the length of the main street alone. “The vans are going to be delayed by the roadblock, best radio McKenna and let him know.”

One hundred and fifty men coming in.

He thanked God they were in the air, above it all.

- 85 -

Doyle walked into the restroom where Ben was washing the gunk off his face with handfuls of icy water. He left Ellen and the baby with Evie while he came in to freshen up.

Bracing himself on the sink unit Ben stared at himself in the big mirror, grateful for the lack of light. He knew he looked haggard, sad and a little frantic all at the same time. He pressed out the soft flesh beneath his eyes. The only good thing about all of this mess was that it stopped him from thinking, from dwelling on things. Hell of a length to go to to forget something.

“Yeah, I’d agree.”

“Agree to what, lad?” Doyle asked, letting the hydraulic arm close on the door behind him.

“Just talking to myself, Barn. Nothing to worry about. What’s happening out there?”

“Reckon there’s over seventy of them now, and more coming from the direction of Longrigg. Christ knows what they’re waiting for. Reckon they’re either going to smoke us out or storm us.”

“Pleasant summary, Officer Doyle.”

“You didn’t say anything about roses, lad. And the truth’s pretty black stuff.”

“Come on, then. I suppose we ought to be getting back out there before anyone starts worrying where we’ve got to.”

“She’s a nice lass, Ben,” Barney Doyle said, and shrugged, smiling.

“I think so too,” he agreed matching the smile, as the doors of the restroom crashed open. Evie looked stricken.

“Barney, it’s Billy. You better come see.”

Billy Rogan was strapped into a chair with a series of leather belts. He was bucking and thrashing, twisting his head and fighting to break free from his bonds. He looked crazy enough to claw his own eyes out.

Doyle closed his fist, kissed his knuckles, said: “Sorry, Billy lad, but you’re gonna do yourself or somebody else a mischief and I ain’t gonna let that happen,” and punched him with enough force to snap his head back into a blackout.

Alfie Meecham hadn’t left the window since he’d come inside. Occasional yelps from outside told him one more of his mutts had run afoul of the mob. He’d never felt so impotent. Watching. Listening to it happen. How would they have felt if it was their children out there? No, none of them could answer that question, could they?

- 86 -

The attack, when it came, was brutally direct and so very, very quick.

They threw bodies at the door, hoping to force their way in through the sheer weight of numbers.

There was no strategy to the assault.

That bought the defenders precious time.

- 87 -

“Noooooo!”

Both Ben and Doyle spun around to see what had triggered Ellen’s scream. Kristy was closest to the window she was pointing at. She went over to check it out, show Ellen there was nothing to be scared of –

Just as Daniel Tanner’s wild, screaming face slammed up against the glass.

Kristy recoiled in shock; Ellen shrieked again. The others watched in horror as Daniel beat his fists against the glass screaming: “Let me in! Let me in for Christ’s sake! They’re going to kill me!”

As hard as it was, Ben shook his head. “No. No,” he stared wildly at his friend, and tried to convince himself that it wasn’t his friend, not really, and focused on Ellen’s sketchy description of what he had done to Sarah and Kathleen, and looked back at the doors again in horror as a crowd of outsiders hit it in a charge.

Doyle was saying a litany of Hail Mary’s as he ran to shore up the doors. The first to squeeze through was a skinny woman clutching a wooden axe. One of the diners (Doyle recognized him as Steve Fry, one of the teachers from the local comp) jammed a steak knife into her throat.

“Oh God, oh God.”

Suddenly everyone in the dining area seemed to be at the doors. A kid charged the door with his head. An arm reached in. Ben hurled himself across the gap, slammed the door on the grasping arm, snapped it back, pulled the owner through while Doyle and Steve strengthened the door. While they got it closed and locked, Ben pulled a screwdriver from his waistband and wedged it up under the kid’s ribs.

Ben recognized him; that was the worst part. Simon, one of the older kids who used to help Mike down at the garage. He knew then, if he hadn’t known before, that this wasn’t pretend. This was as horribly real as it got.

Lives were being thrown away.

And what was he doing?

He looked at Simon’s body at his feet. What had he done to deserve a screwdriver up through his ribs?

What was his crime?

- 88 -

“They’ve got trouble,” the radio operator told Andy McKenna, wiping an anxious hand across his mouth as he spoke. “Someone’s laid roadblocks at the Arches. They can’t get the vans in. Fourteen units are coming in on foot. One staying back to clear the way for the fire brigade and the ambulances coming in behind. The reports I am picking up from the helicopter suggest the rioters are regrouping by the lake, and are currently beseiging Doyle’s restaurant down there. I think we’re pretty much at the mercy of the mob ‘til the men get through, sir.”

McKenna was trying not to think about what would happen between now and the reinforcements getting through. Not thinking was the one universal skill that could be applied as a survival skill. McKenna closed his eyes. Just do what you have to do, he told himself.

“Issue warnings to the brigade concerning the possibility of volatile chemicals in the paper mill and spillage from the surrounding areas. Casualty count?”

“Twenty seven men not responding to their radios at the last roll call, sir. That’s not including any walking wounded.”

“Jesus,” McKenna put his hands together in the universal gesture of prayer, a habit he had developed when he was thinking things through that would have been best left forgotten. He squashed the thought. “Have the remaining men regroup. I want to co-ordinate confinement measures with the men coming in. Raise their officer in charge.”

- 89 -

It wasn’t the darkness that scared him, not with one hundred and forty friends at his side, but the elemental dance of death cavorting along the same night time street duty had him walking.

God alone knew what deceits were lined up amid the burning hulks. What traps had been laid? He thought of all the bad Vietnam movies he’d ever seen where mantraps came fizzing out of the forest – the darkness – to impale the unfortunate taking point, and sincerely wished he hadn’t.

He could hear the others talking, low-grade stuff, what they’d lined up for the night, girls they wished would, stuff they had planned for tomorrow and the next day. A lot of it was talk of the future, people reassuring themselves that no matter what happened on the other side of those felled trees, there would be tomorrow’s to live out those plans, meet those girls that maybe would . . .

The wind wailed with the banshee voice of the dead; that was how it sounded in his ears. Smoke, dust and ashes marked the mouth of the village. A cascade of junk, shattered television sets and stereo equipment, the tangled and melted plastics of ghetto-blasters and radios, rags of clothes. And everywhere there were more smashed cars and bodies buried in the wreckage, and parts of bodies, arms and legs protruding from the debris as stiffly as the limbs of department store dummies.

The fires extended all the way along what had been the High Street, in all directions, glowing like bloody rubies behind veils of smoke, dust and ashes. The height and heat of the conflagration blazed brightest from the shell of the old school building to the east. The panorama of destruction was incomprehensibly horrific and numbing because of it. His mind reached the limit of its ability to soak up, accept and process the visual messages it was receiving, generating the shock factor and began churning out inanities like what color his wife’s hair was and what her favorite food was and how much she hated cricket; little things, fragments to pull sanity out of the wreckage.

- 90 -

A woman’s head shattered the window.

The hands behind her let go, letting her collapse over the windowsill. Her arms flapped like ineffectual wings that couldn’t slow the speed of descent. Blades of glass still embedded in the frame tore into her throat. Her screams didn’t die until she did.

Arms wrapped around her, pulled her out into the rain and the screams of the lunatic crowd. Fresh bodies followed blindly.

Ben was the first to see the breach and ran toward the window. He stopped abruptly when he saw that the doors were starting to buckle in on the few defenders struggling to hold them. He flinched at the sound of a gunshot.

The restaurant was suddenly a madhouse, everyone inside the asylum reaching the same level of dreadful understanding of their predicament. Slaughter was beating down the doors to get at them, and there was nothing they could do to distance themselves.

Billy Rogan came round with a scream that couldn’t have been worse if the Devil had been reclaiming his soul for the damned. He thrashed and bucked, twisted, fighting against the belts anchoring him into the dining chair; jerked his head violently enough to snap one of the leather restraints.

Ellen wouldn’t be pacified. Evie picked her up onto her knee and petted her, then let her stand. She led Ellen and carried the baby over to her husband and the others in the no-man’s land between the doors and the windows.

Kristy came up to stand beside Ben, slipping her hand into his. “This is it, then.”

“Not exactly where I would have chosen to die,” Ben said, trying to make it sound relaxed if not resigned. He turned to the window. A pair of painfully thin arms began reaching through, pulling an emaciated body behind them.

“Who said anything about dying, Benjamin Shelton,” Kristy said, racing to bridge the gap between them and the window. She used one of the carver’s Evie had distributed earlier to slash at the hands, the ferocity of her attack driving the would-be intruder back through the opening. “Now you’ve seen how well I can handle a difficult man, you do realize we have to get married, don’t you?” She called back breathlessly.

It was a stupid thing to say. Ben knew exactly what she was doing, and he could have kissed her for it. Coming back from the doors, Jack Kemp offered a smile. He was carrying Billy’s confiscated shotgun casually, but Ben had no doubts about whether if called up he could use it. “I would say congratulations, but I plan on saving them until we get out of this place,” Jack said with a wink.

“I would accept,” Ben responded. “But I am not so sure I deserve them.”

Doyle laughed, needing the distraction. He ruffled Ellen’s hair. And then, seriously: “How long are the doors going to hold?”

“Five minutes? Ten? One? Your guess is as good as mine, but they will give.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Evie said.

“Amen to that, but I don’t fancy taking my chances out there, do you?”

“Not if I don’t have to.”

And then one of the two porch doors tore free from the other in an explosion of shattered wood and gushing clouds of rain. The door hit the barricade, punching a hole straight through their last line of defense. For a long second it seemed to hang there unsupported. Ben heard Kristy cry out “Jesus Christ,” neither in prayer nor blasphemy the way it came out of her mouth. A statement made vocal by her terror.

Everyone seemed to be in front of the doors.

The lunatics were already in, the terrifying sub-human rabble throwing themselves through the breach, onto the few diners that had stayed to fight, faces black with dirt, smoke and ashes and yet alight with madness, trampling those who refused to flow underfoot.

“Can both of you swim?” he didn’t have time to wait for them to answer. A homemade petrol bomb exploded in the middle of the restaurant. Snowflakes, Ben realized sickly. The detergent had been used to convert the already lethal cocktail into homemade napalm. He grabbed up a chair, bracing the backseat against his midriff, charged, shrieking  at the huge plate glass of the patio doors.

The flames clung to everything they touched. Diners and rioters alike began to writhe. The air was ripped into shreds with screams and shouts and cries. Clothes were being torn from bloody victims. Bodies were being hacked, slashed, and killed again and again. A head ducked down, following a knife slash to gorge itself on streaming entrails like a dog, even as a second blade lanced in, stabbing the ducking head in the furrow between neck and shoulders. No one saw Billy Rogan shift his balance enough to send his prison chair crashing and start using the floor as a brace to struggle against his bonds.

Jack Kemp saw immediately what Ben was trying, thought: it can’t work, but threw himself into motion behind him, to add his own momentum to Ben’s barrel-charge, simply because he didn’t want to die here, not like this. Barney Doyle caught on in time for the three of them hit the window – the chair’s four legs the only true points of contact – and keep on going through the explosive hail into the blessed sting of the rain out on the veranda, gasping, not caring that the slivers of glass made ribbons of their skin.

Behind them the slaughter raged, the jabbering of the throng intensified. All of them trying to get away from the restaurant’s main doors. The fire had spread. Bottles of alcohol were detonating in mini-explosions. The surfaces of the tables warped and bubbled. The fabric of the seat covers and the curtains ignited like tapers.

“Fire!” but that was one of the lunatics screaming – it had to be.

“Come on,” Kristy yelled to Evie, grabbing up Ellen. The girl had no resistance left in her small body. Someone snagged out a hand to try and slow her, almost succeeding in tripping her but somehow she kept her footing and made it to the shattered patio door, risking a look back.

The desperate hand snagged out again, snaring Evie’s ankle. The old woman went over heavily, her head cracking off the corner of a table with a horrifying impact. Her body fell protectively over the bundle in her arms.

Kristy stood paralyzed in the doorway and the filthy drizzle as Billy Rogan surged out from under a half-toppled table and swarmed over Evie, covering her body with his.

“Noooooo!” Barney Doyle wailed desperately, behind her, too far away to stop Billy from feverishly tearing Evie’s body apart.

Ben seized Kristy, pulling her away. He buried Ellen’s sobbing face in his chest. “Don’t look. Oh, sweet Jesus, don’t look.”

Ben could see Evie’s face, see it crumple as the life was shorn from her chest, the blood drain away to spill down Billy’s burrowing hands. His wickedly spindly fingers dug at her throat. Moved. He pulled something out of her chest, held it to his mouth.

Doyle’s eyes were fixed on Billy too, and they flamed hot midnight. No smile in the world could have softened the flood of fury, the rage pouring out of them as his wail hardened into a moan, into a cry of despair and finally grief made solid in a howl of madness.

“No!” he roared again. No fear  hampered him as he hurled himself at Rogan, slamming his huge fists into Billy’s face over and over and over again, screaming, wrestling with Billy, forcing him into a bear-hug, catching Billy as he tried to squirm out of the hold, around the neck, bringing the massive strength of the venom seething in his blood to bear on the simple man’s neck, snapping it clean.

Ben scanned the crowd quickly, and between the milling bloodshed he saw old Daniel Tanner reloading a shotgun in a swamp of thrashing bodies, his head down as he jammed cartridges into the chamber.

Christ, no, he didn’t want to go for Daniel, not a friend, and risk riddling his own skin with perforations in the process, but if he didn’t Doyle was going to take the lead spray in the back of the head.

So maybe he was damned.

Jack Kemp saw Daniel too, and raised his own shotgun to aim it, but could not get a clear sighting on him because of the bodies cutting across his line of sight. He almost risked it anyway. His finger tightened on the trigger guard but there was no way he could get a shot off without half of it spraying into Doyle. He started to move, but Ben was quicker.

Ellen shrieked.

Ben went for it. He shoved Kristy out of his way and started to run. He saw the shotgun come up and blow a hole in his stomach even before he had passed Doyle on the floor – but that was in his head and he didn’t have room for those kind of thoughts. If he reached Daniel before he could fire maybe he could take him down –

Ben hurdled a fallen body, landed awkwardly turning his ankle, but kept his balance even as it lanced its own firebrand of pain the length of his leg.

Daniel Tanner was still too far away. He snapped the split barrel together, locked it off and brought it up to shoot in one smooth movement.

People were screaming.

Someone slammed into his side. Ben grabbed at them, pulled them across his body. Hugged them against him.

The detonation crashed.

And the gun bucked and blasted yellow through the blue-black air.

“Ben!”

Felt the gravel like quality of the shot tear into the side of his face. The lunatic he’d used as a shield spasmed violently as the shot smacked into his chest and shoulders, the shot tearing a cavity out of his chest. It punched holes in the flesh of his arms, gouging his sides. Ben didn’t let him fall. The full force of Daniel’s second shot was taken by the corpse in Ben’s arms. Ben felt it like a runaway train punching into his stomach, trying to drive him off his feet. The shot twisted the body of the lunatic out of his hands. Ben didn’t try to hang on to him.

Disconnected from his senses, Ben saw the blood on his shirt, the spray of ragged perforations in the sleeve, but gritted his teeth and threw himself at his friend. Even as Ben was launching himself the recoil of the blast rammed the shotgun up and back in Daniel’s grasp, jerking its stock from his grip. The recoil snapped his index finger inside the trigger guard, then Ben ploughed into him. He tackled him low, ducking under the arc of the gun, the tackle’s momentum sending the pair of them sprawling backwards.

Daniel gasped, Ben knew he’d hurt him, at least a little, and that made Ellen’s father suddenly vulnerable. Daniel tried to bring the gun up and around to club at Ben’s skull.

“Ben!”

He brought his arm up to block it, slammed his elbow into his friend’s teeth, made a grab for the shotgun. Daniel bucked, thrashed, dislodged Ben, twisted him onto his back. The fall cracked the back of his head against the floor.

Footsteps off to the side, and heavy, rasping breathing.

Screaming.

Daniel jabbed the shotgun barrels into Ben’s face, pulled the triggers on dead cartridges. Howling, he threw the gun aside and raised his hands up. He pummeled Ben’s face.

Ben failed to ward off the punches raining down on his face. The chicken bones in Daniel’s hands were cracking and breaking as his punches landed with more weight behind them than his body could stand to take, but they effectively blinded Ben.

He didn’t see the specter of Barney Doyle loom over Daniel’s shoulder, nor did he see either of the two things in his hands. Evie’s bundle was one, an axe he’d scavenged from the carnage the other.

Jack Kemp was at his side, shotgun aimed into the throng of fire, crackling, burning skin and bodies.

The axe went up, flashed down, a mysterious sliver of light as it embedded itself in the back of Daniel’s skull.

Daniel Tanner’s scrawny body jolted as if barraged with a shocking assault of electricity, then collapsed across Ben, his forehead smacking off the floor beside Ben’s head.

Doyle stood over them, looking down with dead eyes. No tears. Grief was for somewhere else.

He reached out with his free hand to help Ben to his feet, then breathing hard, supported him for the walk out into the air, Jack guarding their path back to Kristy and a hysterical Ellen on the verandah with Billy’s shotgun.

Across the room a lunatic tugged the axe out of Daniel’s head, charged, holding the axe high overhead like a tomahawk. Blood streaked the crazy’s face like war paint. Jack waited until he was sure he couldn’t miss and then unloaded both barrels into him.

He backed out into the rainy night.

- 91 -

As Johnny’s body began to flake away, so too did his mind. He opened his mouth to the rain, and tasted something mild, coppery, like blood and it made him crave blood – but that was what he meant by flaking  away. The murmur of the voices refused to die. He sang when he walked, loud and out of tune. Anything he could think of. AC/DC, Guns ‘n Roses, Faith No More, anything he could shout along to.

Three times on the way up through the tunnel of trees that was Moses Hill the cramps had him doubling up and puking into the verge. Coming down was like burning out; a blitzkrieg of sensations. Nausea, cramps – those same fucking cramps, like everything had to revolve around his fucking stomach all the time – the pain scouring the backs of his eyes was worse than the nails being driven into his scalp. The voices of withdrawal kept on whispering his needs, insinuating, flat out telling him the cure to all of his ills, but he couldn’t believe them. Wouldn’t.

Meat.

He could smell meat dogging his footsteps. The sick, rancid aroma coming to him with the slight breeze. Kept looking back, and thought that he did see someone back there sometimes.

For the beast.

And that scared the shit out of Johnny. It was as though everything were coming home to roost.

If he had been able to think straight Johnny Lisker might have appreciated the irony of the situation, as it was he was surprised to discover that he felt no satisfaction, no anything, at the meat following him. Even his massive hunger seemed to have abated. Groggily he pushed himself on. He was soaked, his trainers felt like lumps of squelching newspaper wrapped around his feet. The wind howled down the funnel. Feeling dizzy and sick and terribly cold, Johnny shambled on.

His vision drifted slowly in and out of focus. He felt his body burning up. His metabolism accelerated wildly. He felt his body withering beneath the onslaught of the searing fire.

Johnny was frightened. He didn’t have the moisture for tears. Gasping, he dragged himself past the old hillside caravan. Hangman’s Oak waited like the Pain Man on the hill, arms outstretched to bring home the burden of sorrow, its lure undeniable. Johnny had thoughts for one place, the Judas Hole. The smell of meat was repugnant and compelling, driving him on.

Johnny started to run.

Looking back over his shoulder, he couldn’t decide if he could see anyone chasing him but he didn’t dare stop. His feet dragged.

The stench of meat.

Johnny’s anger swelled and boiled out of nothing. Meat. Johnny whirled away from the path, cart wheeling head over heels into the longer grasses. Johnny was drunk on his anger and starting to feel good again, the horrors offered by the voices anaesthetized by the black hate. Madness was only seconds away. He pushed himself to his feet, in a crouch, ripping the palm of his hand open on a rusty nail left sticking out of a plank discarded in the grasses.

He felt nothing. Raising the cut to his lips, he tongued blood out of the gash. There was a hint of amusement in the mocking gurgle of voices as the scrabbling inside his head reached a frenzy.

With peripheral images whirling around his mind, for an instant there was a blinding shaft of startling clarity; he might return to the hills and hide in his hole or he might raise the rusty nail to his throat and draw it viciously across his veins. But there was a third retreat. Committing himself to the lilting, sweet-haunted song in his blood. He put his fingers in his ears, but still heard the mesh of wailing laughter like roses and thorns enmeshed on the same vine; heard someone whimpering, someone else saying calmly, “Come to us, be with us . . .”

With the whispering, scrabbling sounds of undead voices in his head, Johnny pushed himself into a run, struggling along, his feet and face turning bitterly cold, over fallen brambles and outcrops of stone, and didn’t look back until he was hauling himself up the ruined limbs of Hangman’s Oak.

The scent of the meat had followed him.

Johnny bided his time, waited it out.

Dropped like a stone.

- DEVLIN’S FALL -

Utterly mesmerized, Devlin could only stare at those bottomless, hell-hole eyes. He couldn’t move for the scream echoing in his head. When he had come to a stop beneath the arms of the dead oak, he raised his head, and was frozen by a menacing sickness staring down at him.

Johnny swung down hand over hand between the branches with the nimble agility of a gibbon, swinging his legs out, snaring Devlin around the head. Devlin tried to fight back then, snapped out of the mesmeric trance by the entanglement constricting around his neck. He sunk his fingers into Johnny’s thighs, aching to prize them apart and slacken the pressure blocking his air passages. Part his flesh. Taste it, tainted, salted jerky.

Devlin’s fingers sank in to the bone, paring the flesh like a knife, but Johnny’s sick determination and strength was awesome.

Johnny kicked back, releasing one hand from the branches to rake down at Devlin’s eyes; sunk his fingers into the orbs; used the ridges of his eye sockets for leverage as he yanked Devlin’s head back.

The only sounds were Devlin’s screams and the crackle of bones slowly breaking. Sounds which swiftly diminished. Johnny hung there between heaven and hell with something approaching a profound sadness, longing and loss. The tiny demons inside his mind recognized that sadness, built on it, began to emit a solitary hissing roar that had Johnny clapping both hands to his temples, falling out of the tree – into hell – feeling no transforming heat, but afraid of the intensity of the fire in his system.

So very afraid. But in that dwindling, in that shrinking of his essence, which was reflected in a massive escalation in fear and horror, Johnny recognized a kindred spirit trapped between his legs. Like a sailor lost on the fickle seas of fate he thrashed for that illusive something that had reared then plunged downwards, waves crashing over his head. A face swam up to meet his own. And another, and another.

In that static, timeless, instant Johnny recognized them, seized them to him in a desperate clutching embrace. His eyes were lost, their eyes were lost, glazed. But theirs were the way. Johnny felt a spark of something other than fear and horror – hope. Flimsy and insubstantial, but more honest than the rage fuelling his body, dragging him downwards.

And with hope came another sharp stab of feeling.

With all of this, the constellations, the birds, trees, moon and night, the body of Todd Devlin at his feet in the dirt, Johnny Lisker was desperately lonely.

He missed his little soldier.

- PART SIX –

- CLEANING OUT THE NEST -

- 92 -

Andy McKenna spent much of the following morning working liaison between the Home Office experts and his own local police; a job he hated from both sides of the coin.

They had been forced to covert two rooms of the old youth block into temporary morgues, and a third into a quarantine area for thirty seven bodies they had recovered from the carnage of The Watersedge Restaurant. McKenna didn’t pretend to understand what they meant with their fancy jargon. The bodies weren’t dead; though vital signs were at a minimum they were very much there. They were comatose and in some form of gestation or metamorphic transformation.

They were dying in handfuls by the hour, their weakened hearts unable to withstand the abuse being dispensed by their accelerated metabolisms.

Someone had said they were going through some form of induced hibernation, which was all the explanation Andy needed. They weren’t going anywhere. He had other things on his mind.

His stomach felt like a circus ring full of tumbling performers, belly acrobats and trapeze artists. His mouth was painfully raw, the chewing gum he had been ruminating for the past hour dried up. He couldn’t very well get rid of it now.

He took his seat at the long table beside two of the Home Office authorities and the local environmental big wig; McKenna knew all about this one particular publicity seeking mongrel but just this once was happy to let the politician steal the limelight, fielding the press’ barrage of still unanswerable questions.

“Paul Sheridan, BBC Local News. For the benefit of everyone, would someone care to explain exactly what happened here last night?”

“And could it happen again?” someone else shouted.

McKenna felt the burn of the camera lights in his eyes. He very nearly pitied the politician – but then he saw the smug smile, the hands part and heard the pat answer trip off the weasel’s tongue.

By the end of the briefing he was feeling sorry for the vultures.

- 93 -

Todd Devlin’s body was found shortly after sunrise, suspended from Hangman’s Oak. His head had been jammed between the two lightning-split staves.

A cavity had been hollowed out of his stomach and much of his insides were missing.

- 94 -

Jack Kemp led a second raid on Havendene, arresting Jennifer Nolan and the rest of Richards’s employees. Ben Richards’ files were raided; his own notes on the N.E.S.T. virus and antitoxins confiscated along with evidence found to back up Kristy’s claim that Judith Kenyon had indeed been held on the premises against her will. Though no one was prepared to admit that any one of the three wrecks of humanity that they found beyond the security doors on the old stable was her, they each had their own ideas.

Jack filled his report, stating that: on discovering a modern research lab, they were confronted with three cages each containing a living thing. The three creatures were put down humanely by lethal injection administered by a Home Office veterinarian, though it is my belief that the creatures were in fact missing fell walkers Judith Kenyon, David Gilanders and his son Colin. We are awaiting DNA substantiation.

- 95 -

Frank Rogan was found by two officers, dead in his chair inside the old farmhouse.

Neither officer reported in for work the next day.

As a precautionary measure both families were brought in to quarantine for observation. Within twenty four hours three of them, the two officers and one child were showing early symptoms of what Richards had christened the E-motion virus.

These three were isolated and their blood tested for toxins and antibodies.

A second child proved to be diabetic.

At no time did she exhibit symptoms of the Foundation-Slave viral strain. Data from the girl was cross referenced with data in the files provided by Kristy French and subsequent tests on Barney Doyle, another diabetic who had resisted the contagion.

A vaccine that worked on the Ketone principle was tested – when glucose intake is low proteins and carbohydrates are broken down to make more glucose. However, because all of the body’s reserves of protein would quickly dwindle away, many tissues switch over to using the products of fat breakdown as an alternative source of fuel – flushing acid waste through the patient’s body by breaking down the fatty tissue into fatty acids to stimulate ketone formation. The ketones are produced and transported into the circulation to be used as energy by the muscles, heart and brain.

The effects of the Ketone vaccine were both immediate and radical. The progress of the N.E.S.T. virus was arrested in its incubation period and all three showed signs of recovery.

- 96 -

Cleaning up the streets lasted nearly a week, removing the burnt out husks of dead cars, cleaning out the rubble and shoring up fire-wrecked houses. More than one hundred and fifty people were rendered homeless, though each and every one of them refused to take even temporary residence in houses left empty by dead and dying rioters.

The air, soil and water supply was tested for trace levels of Richards’ virus. After the clean-up and removal of bodies, the area was considered safe to inhabit.

- 97 -

Evie’s death affected Barney Doyle profoundly. He put the boathouse restaurant on the market, with no real hope of attracting a buyer and tendered his resignation from the Police force. He was offered instead the opportunity to take up early retirement on full pension.

He stayed in the old house, living in the dark spiritually and physically, waiting to die.

- 98 -

After evacuating the survivors the Home Office authorities instructed the military to seal off all adjoining land and sent in audio-visual units to record the devastation.

When the cremation fires had finished and the corpses littering the streets had all been collected, examined and sent to the fires, a press release was formulated in which it was stated: on the night of Wednesday 16th May 2007 violence erupted in the rural Northumbrian village of Westbrooke which resulted in large-scale damage to property and the loss of life.

A full scale investigation headed by Lord Chief Justice Beckman Q.C. was later announced.

- 99 -

Kristy French walked out of her final interview with the authorities, sat behind the wheel of her Citroen and drove from Westbrooke into the old market town of Hexham, parking in a bay outside the General Hospital. She sat behind the wheel and counted slowly to ten and back down to zero before getting out of the car.

She had to stop at the reception desk to ask where his room was. Fittingly, she thought, waiting for the lift, he hadn’t been moved from the High Dependency Unit. The sound of her footsteps echoed as she walked, clipped, precise and angry. A ward nurse she half-recognized walked by, offering a tight smile of professional courtesy as she went.

Kristy took the turn into the HDU passing the small reception area with busy orderlies and a chattering sister ruling her own little roost with a rod of iron. Kristy walked with her borrowed confidence, and no one challenged her right to be there. She had no idea what she would have done if they had; pleaded a close friendship or an urgent need to see the doctor?

Where others had flowers and glazed vases beside their bed, a gaunt saline drip played guardian angel for a comatose Brent Richards. Around it, smaller, squat bulks of white chrome cherubs hovered, shapeless boxes covered with unmarked screens and crisply labeled switches – life givers linked by wires and cables, struggling to keep midnight from collecting its dues. She told herself he was living on borrowed time anyway.

Gauze pads and bandages covered Richards’ blind eyes so Kristy had no way of knowing whether he was awake or asleep. For what she had to do asleep was better.

She walked to the bank of plugs on the far wall, bent down and tripped the power switch, effectively killing Brent Richards by starving his life support of electricity.

Kristy walked back to the bedside and sat in a green plastic chair.

“For Jason,” she whispered into his ear. She hoped there was enough left working inside the doctor for him to understand exactly why he was dying. She owed Jason that much.

Kristy waited until she was sure he was dead, powered the machines up so they hit the flatline and triggered the alarms, then strode confidently back to her car, not once looking back at the crisis she had left in her wake.

- JOHNNY’S FALL -

Ben Shelton walked away from the old school house, turning to stare down the slope, his gaze drawn fatalistically to the rooftop of the restaurant at the watersedge. Looking at it, he felt a little out of touch, a little insane.

He couldn’t think about it. It was behind him, and what could he tell anyone? It was a virus and normal, everyday Joe’s like me that wiped out this sleepy little village in the Tyne Valley. No, the inner city rioters had got the situation pretty well covered. No one was going to believe him – this was being firmly laid at the feet of listless unemployed youth gone wild. It was sickening enough to kick start the Short Sharp Shock lobby for another few months, keep Joe Public in the bureaucrats’ pockets where they didn’t need to think too much.

He turned away from the old building, disgusted with himself for going along with it – but he couldn’t see any way for one man to fight against it. He cannoned into Jack Kemp as he ran hellbent for his squad car. Jack was another one finding it increasingly difficult to bite his tongue.

“Where’s the fire?”

“I wish it was a good old fashioned fire, mate,” Jack said, unlocking the black and white’s door. “Johnny Lisker’s been sighted entering the paper mill. Lucky old me, I’ve drawn the short straw. That jumped up little Hitler from the Home Office has assigned a Tactical Fire Unit for fuck’s sake. Lisker doesn’t stand a chance.”

- 100 -

Johnny was scared and it was probably the most intense emotion he had ever suffered.

One by one he’d been forced to listen to the tiny demons dying inside him while he’d wandered the gauntlet seeking out his little soldier.

He looked at his reflection in the barrel of a pipe and even distorted he didn’t need a genius to tell him he was wasting away. There were no links left. No demons. No Little Soldier. And Johnny was alone. He hadn’t fallen. Hadn’t succumbed to the plague in his veins.

He was in the tunnels, both mentally and physically. Burrowing into the darkness of Longrigg, looking for new hope between the gantries and the rails, wood, scaffolding and piping. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his body exhausted. There was very little of Johnny Lisker left, even in terms of skin and bone.

He ran on, a blind and deaf man, deeper into the tunnels, looking for the light, shouting for the demons. For the voices.

Johnny wasn’t going to start writing himself off yet, but he was haunted by the very unreal sense of falling; his clothing was soaked and heavy, every step a trial, his mind forcing his legs into stumbling, not allowing the luxury of rest. His eyes were open, stinging as he blinked. But he kept on going, up like an angel.

- 101 -

Ben watched them take up positions, their black uniforms and grim expressions making them look like ghosts of Nazi stormtroopers gathering in the dusk, and he watched Johnny swing arm over arm up through the gantries, his eyes feverish, face scarred. Tears streamed down the boy’s face, but his teeth were clenched with something near hate.

Ben refused to be party to murder. He broke away from the line of armed police and started to climb up the gantry behind Johnny, his weight causing the platform to swing dangerously. He heard Jack yell at him to stop being a fool, but shook his head and kept on climbing. Let them shoot me as well, if they’re going to.

Ben scaled the scaffolding gantry behind Johnny, keeping his neck craned upwards so he physically couldn’t look down the forty foot fall to the floor.

“Johnny, Johnny son, come on. Come down. Nothing’s going to happen to you. We’ve got stuff in the village that will kill the infection in your blood. You’ll be fine in a couple of days. Come on.”

Johnny swung dangerously, only holding on by the fingers of his one good hand.

“Are you an angel?” he asked, in all seriousness. Ben shook his head. “Are you a devil then?”

“No, lad. I’m just a man. I can’t fly and I think I’m scared of heights. Let’s go back down, please.”

Johnny’s fretful glance down to the ground told Ben he wasn’t going to trust anyone he didn’t have to.

“You won’t . . . you won’t let them hurt me?”

The rational fool in him wanted to say “No, Johnny, they won’t hurt you,” but he felt out of control, and he couldn’t promise anything of the sort when he knew full well they were ready to take the kill shot. Ben reached out a hand for Johnny to take. Johnny looked like a little boy now, the menace taken away.

The sound of the shot came just as Johnny reached down to grasp his hand. The bullet took him in the side of the head. For a moment, Johnny seemed to hover in mid-air, only his feet touching the gantry. Then he was gone, torn away by the wind.

Three screams echoed each other. Ben Shelton’s, Jack Kemp’s and worst of all, Johnny Lisker’s, torn from dead lips by the speed of the fall.

- EPILOGUE -

- CATCH YOU FALL -

MEET THE AUTHOR: KRISTINE FRENCH WILL BE HERE ON SATURDAY AUGUST 21 AT 1:30 TO SIGN COPIES OF HER NOVEL DEEP WHISPERS, SWEET DECEITS.

Ben limped across the area known as Grey’s Monument, steering little Evie’s buggy through the congregations of pigeons, shoppers and street corner preachers. Different snapshots of Kristy’s face occupied much of the huge plate glass window of the bookstore. In all of them she was wearing her serious journalist’s part frown part thoughtful expression. What the camera didn’t show was Ellen hovering behind the photographer’s shoulder pulling faces and doing everything she could possibly dream up to make Kristy laugh.

Ben knew he looked like any normal father treating his little girl to a shopping spree while she slept. Any normal father, he amended for his own benefit, who won’t sleep in the dark, who still walks with a limp after fifteen months and whose entire left hand side is an angry criss-cross mesh of scar tissue. Any normal father who lives day to day because he lacks the faith in the everyday to think about the future.

Last night Ellen had woken crying hoarsely at nothing more sinister than the residue of a bad dream. Ben had his own nightmare. It involved his best friend and a gun and had two divergent endings. He hated both of them with a passion.

A fair crowd was congregating at the door to the bookstore and around the entrance down into the Metro, the buzz of voices dissecting the idiosyncrasies of Krity’s debut novel. He joined the queue. When he looked into the plate glass he saw two things, neither of them the display: he saw a man that single drink away from alcoholism and behind that, he saw the inner conflict and demons driving him there, hard.

At the door, Ben balked and decided he couldn’t face going inside. Going through the rigmarole of shaking hands and being introduced as Mr. Kristy French, washed out has-been of a writer and resigned college lecturer. He told the girl acting as usherette to let Kristy know he’d gone for a latte and a bagel at Café Noir and he would see her when she was done receiving the day’s praise and plaudits.

Wheeling Evie’s buggy around, he said: “One writer in the family is enough,” and couldn’t tell if he was joking. He walked away.

Blackett Street and Old Eldon Square were both busy with the Saturday crowds and the new generation’s offering to the Spirit of the Hippy Movement. The noise made him uncomfortable. The bus fumes and the press of bodies, nauseous. He walked holding his breath. He knew he was doing it, but couldn’t help himself. He watched the faces, stared at the eyes of the crowd jostling by. Felt his grip on the buggy tighten, the cold, familiar terror inside. A trick of the light, surely? But the look in that boy’s eyes, the madness, its shadow, it had been there. It had. Ben forced himself to walk on by.

One day, maybe, the mental wounds would heal over with their own criss-crossing mesh of emotional scars, and he would sleep whole nights through, but until then it was one day at a time. Little steps.

The first had been moving into the University loaned doctoral apartment in Castle Leazes, the second taking responsibility for Ellen and Evie, and the third, equally important in its own way, leaving the words of The Sufferer’s Song to burn away with the inferno at Wit’s End.

He ordered a coffee and a salmon bagel, and took a seat looking out at the street. He watched the buses come and go, the people pass by, and watched himself: Peter Pan hiding behind his dark glasses, too frightened to look forward to tomorrow because of what it might hold in store, too weary to look back on yesterday because of what it meant to do so, and he knew it had to stop.

He took the napkin from the table and the pen from his pocket and wrote the first thing that came into his mind: My name is Declan Shea and it is all I have left. It wasn’t true, and he knew it but that didn’t alter the fact that he wrote it. He didn’t know what it meant or what it would lead to, but it was a start.

He left his drink untouched and went looking for Kristy. He went to ask for time to start putting the pieces of his life back together. He listened to the preacher on the steps of the Monument. He listened to his message of God and tomorrow. He looked at the bookstore, with its maroon sunshade and photographs of one possible tomorrow.

He looked at the sky.

For the first time Ben could remember there were no bodies in the clouds.

THE END

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Table of Contents

- Part One
- Part Two
- - PART THREE -
- - PART FOUR –
- - PART FIVE -
- - PART SIX –
- - EPILOGUE -