by Paul Cleave
Praise for Paul Cleave’s previous international bestseller
The Laughterhouse
“An intense adrenaline rush from start to finish, I read The Laughterhouse in one sitting. It’ll have you up all night. Fantastic!”
—S. J. Watson, New York Times bestselling author of Before I Go to Sleep
“This dark, gripping thriller, the latest in the Tate saga, is as hard-boiled as it gets. The surprise ending suspends all disbelief. Like a TV series that ends its season on a cliff-hanger, you won’t want to wait until next year. This will leave the reader clamoring for the next book in the series.”
—Suspense Magazine
“Piano wire–taut plotting, Tate’s heart-wrenching losses and forlorn hopes, and Cleave’s unusually perceptive gaze into the maw of a killer’s madness make this a standout chapter in his detective’s rocky road to redemption.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“In Cleave’s third psycho-thriller, Theodore Tate is the quintessential flawed hero, a damaged soul hunting deviants in a forest of moral quandaries. . . . The novel is less a character study than a dissection of the need for, and cost of, revenge. . . . Cleave’s horrific narrative takes no prisoners, with the bloody action relentlessly ricocheting around Christchurch at a pace that leaves the detectives near collapse. . . . An intense and bloody noir thriller, one often descending into a violent abyss reminiscent of Thomas Harris, creator of Hannibal Lecter.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A wonderful book . . . The final effect is that tingling in the neck hairs that tells us an artist is at work.”
—Booklist (starred)
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To Joe—who got the ball rolling
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
Blue fingernails.
They’re what have me out here, standing in the cold wind, shivering. The blue fingernails aren’t mine, but attached to somebody else—some dead guy I’ve never met before. The Christchurch sun that was burning my skin earlier this afternoon has gone. It’s the sort of inconsistent weather I’m used to. An hour ago I was sweating. An hour ago I wanted to take the day off and head down to the beach. Now I’m glad I didn’t. My own fingernails are probably turning blue, but I don’t dare look.
I’m here because of a dead guy. Not the one in the ground in front of me, but one still down at the morgue. He’s acting as casual as a guy can whose body has been snipped open and stitched back together like a rag doll. Casual for a guy who died from arsenic poisoning.
I tighten my coat, but it doesn’t help against the cold wind. I should have worn more clothes. Should have looked at the bright sun an hour ago and figured where the day was heading.
The cemetery lawn is long in some places, especially around the trees where the lawn mower doesn’t hit, and it ripples out from me in all directions as though I’m the epicenter of a storm. In other places where foot traffic is heavy it’s short and brown where the sun has burned all the moisture away. The nearby trees are thick oaks that creak loudly and drop acorns around the gravestones. They hit the cement markers, sounding like bones of the dead tapping out an SOS. The air is cold and clammy like a morgue.
I see the first drops of rain on the windshield of the digger before I feel them on my face. I turn my eyes to the horizon where gravestones covered in mold roll into the distance toward the city, death tallying up and heading into town. The wind picks up, the leaves of the oaks rustle as the branches let go of more acorns, and I flinch as one hits me in the neck. I reach up and grab it from my collar.
The digger engine revs loudly as the driver, an overweight guy whose frame bulges at the door, moves into place. He looks about as excited to be here as I am. He is pushing and pulling at an assortment of levers, his face rigid with concentration. The engine hiccups as he positions the digger next to the gravesite, then shudders and strains as the scoop bites into the hardened earth. It changes position, coming up and under, and fills with dirt. The cabin rotates and the dirt is piled onto a nearby tarpaulin. The cemetery caretaker is watching closely. He’s a young guy struggling to light a cigarette against the strengthening wind, his hands shaking almost as much as his shoulders. The digger drops two more piles of dirt before the caretaker tucks the cigarettes back into his pocket, giving up. He gives me a look I can’t quite identify, probably because he only manages to make eye contact for a split second before looking away. I’m hoping he doesn’t come over to complain about evicting somebody from their final resting place, but he doesn’t—just goes back to staring at the hollowed ground.
The vibrations of the digger force their way through my feet and into my body, making my legs tingle. The tree behind me can feel them too, because it fires more acorns into my neck. I step out of the shade and into the drizzle, nearly twisting my ankle on a few of the ropey roots from the oak that have pushed through the ground. There is a small lake only about fifteen meters away, about the size of an Olympic swimming pool. It’s completely enclosed by the cemetery grounds, fed by an underground stream. It makes this cemetery a popular spot for death, but not for recreation. Some of the gravesites are close to it, and I wonder if the coffins are affected by moisture. I hope we’re not about to dig up a box full of water.
The driver pauses to wipe his hand across his forehead, as if operating all of those levers is hot work in these cold conditions. His glove leaves a greasy mark on his skin. He looks out at the oak trees and areas of lush lawn, the still lake, and he’s probably planning on being buried out here one day. Everybody thinks that when they see this spot. Nice place to be buried. Nice and scenic. Restful. Like it makes a difference. Like you’re going to know if somebody comes along and chops down all the trees. Still, I guess if you have to be buried somewhere, this place beats out a lot of others I’ve seen.
A second flatbed truck sweeps its way between the gravestones. It has been pimped out with a wraparound red stripe and fluffy dice in the window, but it hasn’t been cleaned in months and the rust spots around the edges of the doors and bumper have been ignored. It pulls up next to the gravesite. A bald guy in gray overalls climbs out from behind the steering wheel and tucks his hands into his pockets and watches the show. A younger guy climbs out the other side and starts playing with his cell phone. There isn’t much more they can do while the pile of dirt grows higher and higher. I can see the raindrops plinking into the lake, tiny droplets jumping toward the heavens. I make my way over to its edge. Anything is better than watching the digger doing its job. I can still feel the vibrations. Small pieces of dirt are rolling down the bank of the lake and splashing into the water. Flax bushes and ferns and a few poplar trees are scattered around the lakeside. Tall reeds stick up near the banks, reaching for the sky. Broken branches and leaves have become waterlogged and jammed against the bank.
I turn back to the digger when I hear the scoop scrape across the coffin lid. It sounds like fingers running down a blackboard, and it makes me shiver more than the cold. The caretaker is shaking pretty hard now. He looks cold and pissed off. Until the moment the digger arrived, I thought he was going to chain himself to the gravestone to prevent the uprooting of one of his tenants. He had plenty to say about the moral implications of what we were doing. He acted as though we were digging up the coffin to put him inside.
The digger operator and the two guys from the flatbed pull on face masks that cover their noses an
d mouths, then drop into the grave. The overweight guy from the digger moves with the ease of somebody who has rehearsed this moment over and over. All three disappear from view, as if they have found a hidden entrance into another world. They spend some time hunched down, apparently figuring out the mechanics to get the chain attached between the coffin and digger. When the chain is secure the driver climbs back into place and the others climb out of the grave. He wipes his forehead again. Raising the dead is sweaty work.
The engine lurches as it takes the weight of the coffin. The flatbed truck starts up and backs a little closer. With the two machines violently shuddering, more dirt spills from the bank and slides into the water.
About five meters out into the lake, I see some bubbles rising to the surface, then a patch of mud. But there is something else there too. Something dark that looks like an oil patch.
There is a thud as the coffin is lowered onto the back of the truck. The springs grind downward from the weight. I can hear the three men talking quickly among themselves, having to nearly shout to be heard over the engines. The rain is getting heavier. The dark patch rising beneath the water breaks the surface. It looks like a giant black balloon. I’ve seen these giant black balloons before. You hope they’re one thing, but they’re always another.
“Hey, buddy, you might want to take a look at this,” one of the men calls out.
But I’m too busy looking at something else.
“Hey? You listening?” The voice is closer now. “We’ve got something here you need to look at.”
I glance up at the digger operator as he walks over to me. The caretaker is starting to walk over too. Both men look into the water and say nothing.
The black bubble isn’t really a bubble, but the back of a jacket. It hangs in the water, and connected to it is a soccer ball–sized object. It has hair. And before I can answer, another shape bubbles to the surface, and then another, as the lake releases its hold on the past.
CHAPTER TWO
The case never made the news because it was never a case. It was a slice of life that happens every day, no matter how hard you try to prevent it. It made the back pages where the obituaries are listed, along with the John Smiths of this world who are beloved parents and grandparents and who will be sorely missed. It was a simple story of man-gets-old-and-dies. Read all about it.
It happened two years ago. Some people wake up every morning and read the obits while downing scrambled eggs and orange juice, looking for a name that jumps out from their past. It’s a crazy way to kill a few minutes. It’s like a morbid lottery, seeing whose number has come up, and I don’t know whether these people find relief when they get to the end and don’t find anybody they know or relief when they do. They’re looking for a reason; they’re looking for somebody, wanting to make a connection and to feel their own mortality.
Henry Martins. I pulled those stories from the newspaper database this morning just like I did two years ago, and read what people had to say about him when he died, which wasn’t much. Then again, it’s hard to sum up a person’s life in five lines of six-point text. It’s hard to say how much you’re going to miss them. There were eleven entries for Henry over three days from family and friends. Nobody made my job easier by throwing a Glad you’re dead in with their woeful sorrows, but each obituary read like the others: boring, emotionless. At least that’s the way they come across when you don’t know the guy.
Henry Martins’s daughter came into the station a week after the old man was buried. She sat down in my office and told me her dad was murdered. I told her he wasn’t. If he had been, the medical examiner would have stumbled across it. MEs are like that. It was easy to see she already had both feet firmly on the road of suspicion, and I told her I’d look into it. I did some checking. Henry Martins was a bank manager who left behind a lot of family and a lot of clients, but his occupation wasn’t an opportunity for him to line his pockets with other people’s money. I looked into his life as much as I could in the small amount of time I could allot for his daughter’s “hunch,” but nothing stood out as odd.
Two years later, and Henry Martins’s coffin is behind me on chains as the wind increases in strength. And Henry Martins’s wife is trying to avoid anybody with a badge now that her second husband has died, his blue fingernails the first indication that he was poisoned. Henry’s daughter hasn’t spoken to me because I’m no longer in the same position I was two years ago. It’s easy to let my mind wander and think of things that might have been. I could have done more back then. I could have solved a murder, if that’s what happened. Could have stopped another man from dying. The jury is still out on whether Mrs. Martins had bad luck or bad judgment when it came to men.
The rain gets heavier, creating a thousand tiny ripples on the surface of the water. The caretaker is backing away, keeping his eyes on the water. Slowly the elements seem to disappear—so do the voices, and the vibrations. All that is left are the three corpses floating ahead of me, each one a victim of something—a victim of age, foul play, bad luck, or maybe a victim of a cemetery’s lack of real estate.
The three workers have all come over beside me. Their excited bursts of started but stilted observations have ended. We’re standing, the four of us, in front of the water; three people are in it: it’s like we’re all pairing up for a social, but with one person left over. The occasion demands quiet, each of us unwilling to say anything to break the silence building between us. More dirt slides into and mixes with the water, turning it cloudy brown. One of the bodies sinks back out of view and disappears. The other two are drifting toward us, swimming without movement. I’m not about to jump in and pull them out. I’d do it, no doubt there, if the bodies were flailing about. But they’re not. They’re dead, have been for maybe a long time. The situation may seem urgent, but in reality it isn’t. Both are face down, and both appear to be dressed, and not badly dressed either. They look as though they could be on their way to an event. A funeral or a wedding. Except for the ropes. There are pieces of green rope attached to the bodies.
The digger driver keeps squinting at the two corpses, as if his eyes are tricking him. The truck driver is standing with his mouth wide open and his hands on his hips, while his assistant keeps glancing at his watch as if this whole thing might push him into overtime.
“We need to haul them in,” I say, even though both bodies are nudging against the bank now.
I had planned on staying dry today. I had planned on seeing one dead body. Now everything is up in the air.
“Why? They’re not exactly going to go anywhere,” the truck driver says.
“They might sink like the other one,” I point out.
“What are we going to grab them with?”
“I don’t know. Something,” I say. “A branch, maybe. Or your hands.”
“I’m not stopping you from using your hands,” he says, and the other two nod quickly in agreement.
“Well, what about rope?” I ask. “You gotta have some of that, right?”
“That one there,” the truck driver says, looking at the corpse closest to us, “already has some rope.”
“Looks rotten. You gotta have something newer in the truck, right?” I ask, and we all look over at the truck just as we hear it start.
The caretaker is sitting in the cab.
“What the hell?” the driver asks. He starts to run over to it, but he isn’t quick enough. The caretaker gets it into gear and pulls away fast. The coffin isn’t secure. It starts to slide. It makes a grating sound, like heavy sandpaper dragged slowly against a floorboard. It hits the edge and starts to slide over it, then for a moment it looks like it’s going to hang there, that it’s going to defy gravity, but then momentum and physics kick in as the tipping point is reached and a moment later it goes crashing into the ground.
The driver keeps running after the truck even though the distance is growing. “Hey, come back here, come back here!”
“Where’s he going?” the digger operator
asks me, and I assume he means the caretaker and not the guy chasing him.
“Anywhere but here is my guess,” I say, which is both extremely vague and extremely accurate. I pull my cell phone from my pocket. “You got some rope in the digger?”
“Yeah, hang on.”
He wanders over to the digger. I phone the police station and get transferred to a detective I used to know. I tell him the situation. He tells me to sober up. Tells me of course there are going to be bodies out here in the cemetery. It takes a minute to persuade him the bodies are coming up from the depths of the lake. And another minute to convince him I’m not joking.
“And bring some divers,” I say, before hanging up.
The digger operator has made it back. He hands me the rope. The truck driver is back too; he’s swearing as his partner uses a cell phone to call their boss for someone to come and get them. I tie an arm-length branch around the end of the rope and make my way down the gently sloping bank, intending to throw the branch just past the nearest corpse to bring it closer, but it turns out the slippery grass beneath my feet has other ideas. One moment I’m on the bank. The next I’m in the water.
My feet are submerged in mud, the water up to my knees. Something grabs my ankle and I lever forward, my arms slapping the surface next to the corpse before I start sinking. I pull my legs from the mud, but there is nothing to stand on. This lake is a Goddamn death trap, and now I know why it’s full of corpses. These people came to grieve for the dead and ended up joining them. The water is ice cold, locking up my chest and stomach and cramping my muscles. My eyes are open and the water is burning them. There is only darkness around me, compounded by the silence, and I can sense hands of the dead reaching to pull me deeper, wanting me to join them, wanting fresh blood.
Then suddenly I’m racing back to the surface, my hand tight around the rope that is pulling me up. I kick with my feet. Point my body upward. And a second later I’m right next to a bloated woman in a long white dress. It looks like a wedding dress. I push away from her, and the three men help me onto the bank. I sit down, gasping for air. Both my shoes are missing.
