The Love of the Dead

by Craig Saunders

  “Come on. I’ll put the kettle on. Go through to the kitchen.”

  Coleridge took the other man outside—within the circle of light—and spoke to him for a while. Giving orders, she didn’t doubt.

  She made tea. She’d worry about the dead deer when she had time. For tonight she needed to sleep, and these men could watch over her just as well as Coleridge. Maybe better. She had nothing vested in them, but Coleridge was the only person aside from her who had any idea what was going on.

  Coleridge called her to the door.

  “Anything, anything at all. Call me straight away.”

  “You’ve got other things to worry about tonight. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’m sure you will,” he said, but she was a bullshitter herself. The lie was sweet, just the same.

  “I’m sorry, Beth. I hate this.”

  He looked genuinely torn up. Like he was about to blow off his job to stay with her.

  She was afraid. Terrified, even. But she wasn’t going to do that to him. He had a job to do, and so did she. In the morning. She saw what she had to do now, and he couldn’t help her with it.

  Maybe they’d find this man, this Gregory Sawyer, and it would all go away. But as she stood by the front door, Coleridge before her, solid and reassuring, a mutilated deer on the doorstep, she knew it wouldn’t end like that. There was something more going on. Something supernatural. It wasn’t for Coleridge to fix. He might believe, but he’d never feel it. He’d never feel the cold of the dead or see the wounds they carried on as spirits. He’d never know what it felt like to have his head cut off. She prayed he never would, because she realized right then that she liked him.

  It was better that he was gone until she’d done what she needed to do.

  She didn’t know why, but she tiptoed up and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Come back, OK? Whatever happens, make sure you come back.”

  He blushed, which was cute in a way that lit his face up, even with another murder on his mind.

  He looked like he was going to say something, but he just nodded. Then he turned around and got in his car.

  Beth watched for a minute and shut the door quietly, reluctantly, behind him.

  Part Four

  The Hanged Man

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Monday 17th November

  Coleridge got in the car and checked the clock. It rolled ’round to midnight and a new day.

  He started the car, shifted into the most comfortable position he could, and swung around toward Norwich. He hadn’t made it a hundred yards down the road before his phone rang. He pulled to the shoulder and took the call.

  “Coleridge.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to kill your wife,” said the man on the other end.

  “You’re welcome to her,” Coleridge said, but his blood ran cold. He was very aware of his heart, struggling to pump blood through clogged arteries. His heart beat harder, and he felt his face flushing, but he kept his voice even. “Didn’t like her when we were married, and that’s not changed since the divorce. Maybe I like her a little better now, but not by much.”

  “You think that’ll work?”

  “What?”

  “Being clever.”

  “I ain’t never been called clever, but I bet you get called a cunt. A lot.”

  “I’m going to take her head.”

  “Just out of morbid curiosity, what are you doing with all these heads? Bowling?”

  “I’m going to kill you after I kill your wife.”

  “I’m about overdue, I’d say. How about we try a different game?”

  “The next time you see me, I’ll be using your head as a puppet. I think I’ll make you lick Elizabeth’s cunt. How’d you like that?”

  “To be honest, I wouldn’t mind. She might, though. I don’t like to presume, you know. But still, as I’m guessing you’re not the type to hand yourself in, you might be dead by then. You threaten my wife, I don’t care much. Me? I’m not so especially smart I’d miss my head. But Beth? Fuck you.”

  “Fuck me?” The man laughed, and Coleridge’s spine turned to ice. But he didn’t back off. You couldn’t. Get hold of a bastard like this in a fight, the last thing you wanted to do was let him go. That’s when they hit you with something hard.

  “Yeah. Fuck you. Tell you what, I’ll meet you. Why don’t you tell me where you are? I’ll come right over. We’ll settle it like men.”

  “You make me laugh, Coleridge. I haven’t laughed for...a long time. Maybe I’ll just cut off your feet.”

  “Keep ’em with all the heads? I hope you’ve got plenty of pegs.”

  “I’m impressed. You keep coming. Keep on, Coleridge. Keep on driving. Drive away. Take some time to live. Until tonight. I’ll come back. Say your goodbyes.”

  “You’re sweet. A psycho. But sweet.”

  “Tonight, Coleridge, I’m going to take your feet. Then I’m going to take your head from your neck and make you watch me fuck Elizabeth’s heart while it still beats in her chest.”

  “That’s good, that is. I haven’t heard that one before. I tell you what. I’ll meet you there. Tonight. I guess I know where, right?”

  The man laughed one more time before he hung up.

  Coleridge didn’t see anything funny. He put the phone back in his jacket with shaking hands. He put them on the wheel and breathed hard until the dancing stars faded away. Then he put the car into gear and drove.

  He had the day. After that, maybe he’d be dead. But while he had the day he was fucked if he was going to waste it blubbing like a baby.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Coleridge checked his watch. Five minutes past twelve in the morning. When did “tonight” officially start? Daylight didn’t count. He had until dark. Fucking lunatic. Could have given him a time, something to work toward. As it was he had until dark. That was all he could be sure of.

  Middle of November? Dark about 4:30, maybe 5:00. Maybe it counted as dark if there were heavy clouds. 4 PM. Be sure. Back to Beth’s by then. Bring an armed response unit?

  He toyed with the idea for a while, but then he thought about what Beth had said. He wasn’t a man but someone who could walk with ghosts.

  “Walk with ghosts, Coleridge?”

  He was going loony himself.

  He drove silently, thinking. There wasn’t anyone to talk to anyway, and he wasn’t the best of company.

  He wasn’t really sure what he was thinking about. It was kind of like sleeping while his brain went for a walk.

  No point in guns. No point in handcuffs.

  Was he thinking about trying to take him in?

  No. Hard as it was, and he’d never had to make that kind of decision, but no. No way.

  So was he thinking of killing him?

  That was harder. A direct question he didn’t want to answer. But if he wasn’t thinking of taking him in, what was the alternative? If he was a man, some kind of serial killer, maybe he would’ve done the right thing. Brought in some back up. Some hard young cops with rifles and no conscience.

  Was there any chance the killer was a man?

  Gregory Sawyer?

  Seemed like it was a night for hard questions. The kind of questions where there weren’t any right answers, only wrong ones, and those’d have to do.

  The only way he could answer that was if he believed Beth. Believed her totally. He was considering not trying to arrest a man who’d killed seven civilians and one policeman. A policeman he knew, even if it was only in passing.

  Did he believe Beth? Believe enough to take a man’s life, because that was what he was thinking, wasn’t it?

  He didn’t think straight with an empty stomach. It was a big question, and it needed some energy behind it to find an answer.

  But the phone rang before he could find something to eat, and the answer found him.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  The phone rang again. Coleridge didn’t want to stop driving, because he
was hungry, and every minute he spent driving burned more energy, so he picked up and wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder, on his way to the local station.

  “Coleridge.”

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Mooney asked.

  “Beth’s.”

  “Everyone in the world’s been trying to get hold of you and you’ve been sniffing around some piece of ass? The boss is baying for your blood.”

  “No reception. No telephone. What am I supposed to do?”

  He swerved ’round a corner and dropped the phone. He could hear Mooney whining from the floor. A light rain had started. The roads were slick and it was stupid to be talking on the phone and trying to drive on the black country pavement.

  Coleridge pulled over and heaved himself to one side so he could reach the phone in the passenger’s foot well.

  “Mooney, stop bitching, for God’s sake. What’s going on?”

  Mooney swore under his breath.

  “Sawyer?”

  “Yeah. We got him. Fucking charnel house.”

  “Charnel? That’s a hell of a word, just past midnight.”

  “You can have it. Use it next time you’re playing scrabble with Beth.”

  “Is he our man?”

  He could hear Mooney’s hand going over the phone. Muffling it. Like he was talking behind his hand and trying for some privacy. Privacy was in short supply at the station.

  “Everyone’s thrilled, you know?”

  “But?”

  “It don’t feel right. You know?”

  “What’s he say?”

  “Who?”

  “Who the fuck do you think? Sawyer!”

  “Not much. He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “You deaf?”

  “Dead?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Coleridge tapped the wheel with his spare hand while he was thinking. His stomach rumbled at him. Rain spattered the windscreen, small drops, then fat drops. He thought hard. Kept the phone to his ear.

  “That’s funny.”

  “Don’t see why.”

  “What time did he die?”

  “Don’t know exactly, but he died in a corridor on the way to ICU.”

  “What was he doing on the way to ICU? He put up a fight?”

  “He weren’t in much of a state to put up a fight.”

  What the hell was going on? Something, alright, and it wasn’t something Coleridge liked much.

  “That’s funny, because I spoke to him tonight, about twelve o’clock.”

  “Bullshit. He was dead by then, and if even if he wasn’t, he was in no state to be calling anyone. You need to see it. It can’t have been him.”

  “Then that begs the question, doesn’t it?”

  “It does. This stinks. You sure it was him?”

  “Maybe not Sawyer. But our killer. Without a doubt.

  “You need to see it,” said Mooney.

  “You find the heads?”

  “You need to see it.”

  “They bagged anything up yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Give me the address. I’ve got to stop on the way, but I’ll be there in an hour. Two, tops.”

  Mooney gave him an address. Coleridge tucked it away in his head.

  “Don’t fuck about. You know how it is. Before you get there the place’ll be stripped and the case’ll be closed.”

  “I know. Make some bullshit up. I’ll be there. I’ve got to make a couple of calls. Mooney?”

  “Yep?”

  “Thanks. I owe you one.”

  “You owe me about fifty by my reckoning.”

  “I’m checking my pockets, but...”

  “Yeah, yeah. Hurry up.”

  “Hurrying,” he said, and hung up. He swung back onto the road and drove as fast as he could the next ten miles. Stopped at the station he’d been working out of. A couple more calls to make. Calls he couldn’t put off. Lifesavers, maybe, and Sawyer was dead. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  It began to rain just as Beth got into her bedroom. Her window faced out to the sea. There was no hint of it tonight. Just blackness, and rain, running down the window. She left the hall light and the policemen in the kitchen.

  She stripped off, right down to nothing. Her scalp was sore, her arm red and angry. Things still seemed hazy through her injured eye, but it didn’t seem to be anything she couldn’t handle. Whatever damage had been done, she wasn’t going anywhere soon. No hospital. Just bed.

  She slid under her duvet onto the cold sheet. Even though she pulled the covers right up to her chin she shook.

  For the last hour or so she’d answered questions about the deer, made tea, made nice.

  Now there was just the quiet, and the dark.

  Just her, alone in her bed where she’d always felt safe, even on the rare nights when Miles snuck into bed with her.

  She wished Coleridge was in the next room. She wished she could hear his rasping snore. His snore was so powerful it was almost like having company even when he was asleep. It had a personality of its own.

  She’d never realized how much she missed human contact. There was always Peter, but with Peter there was always the guilt. The guilt, eating away at her, every time she spoke to him. Every time she thought of him.

  Her whole relationship with him was tainted by their son’s death. She knew Peter would always love her, always look out for her, no matter what. But death threw a pale shadow over everything it touched.

  Coleridge was different. He was hard, brusque. But he wasn’t all business. He had a heart, and there wasn’t any guilt.

  She felt a weight settle in beside her.

  “Night, Miles,” she said.

  “I’m going to kill you tonight,” a man said, and ran a finger along her jaw.

  She screamed and leaped from the bed. There was no one there. Nothing. She ran to the wall and flicked on the light as the policemen came running into her room. They charged her bedroom door and it smashed back against her wall.

  There she was, nothing on, shaking all over, staring at her bed with nothing on it.

  No. Not nothing. There was a dent on the other side of the bed. A dent where a man had lain.

  She moaned, low in her throat. That was all she knew until morning, because she fainted dead away.

  ***

  The policeman caught her and put her back into bed. He didn’t look at her naked, but drew the covers up over her. His partner looked away, too. He flicked his head at his partner. They both left, walking quietly like a parent might, not because they didn’t want to wake their children, but because they didn’t want to deal with their children being awake.

  Neither noticed the bed dip lower beside Beth, or heard the rustle of the sheets as they closed the door.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  A single sergeant manned the desk on nightshift. Coleridge nodded to him, considered pointing out the soup stains in his gray beard, didn’t, and walked through the back in the hope of finding something to eat.

  Even though it wasn’t his station, he’d been working out of the back room for long enough to know where the grub was.

  There was a tiny kitchen. He didn’t hold out much hope, but he checked anyway to see if anyone had forgotten their sandwiches or left a cup-a-soup lying around. A Tupperware container of dry spaghetti with some kind of congealed cream sauce on it sat in the smelly fridge. That would do for starters.

  He ate while he rifled through the sparse cupboards above a grubby kettle and an old microwave. Not much going on, but there was half a packet of biscuits, which he pilfered.

  He made himself a cup of tea while he finished off the pasta, thinking all the while.

  Thinking about a man called Gregory Sawyer and a charnel house. What he was going to see tonight. Thinking about loose ends and about messy cases with complicated motives, but kind of hoping this was a case with a simple explanation for strange circumstance. Someti
mes it happened that way. Neat and tidy, everyone could sleep after, no bad dreams. Not many, at least.

  But then he got to thinking about a dead deer outside Beth’s door late at night, when Mooney reckoned Sawyer was already dead. He didn’t know the timing of it, but Sawyer sure as hell wasn’t hiding in the dark at Beth’s and dying in a house in Norwich at the same time.

  He ate pasta, washed it down with tea. The pasta was disgusting. Like worms might be, should he ever be hungry enough to eat worms. He ate and thought. Thinking was hungry work.

  It could just as easily be two men working together, but it didn’t feel right, and it didn’t stop him thinking about putting a woman’s word over his duty. Trusting Beth enough to forget his obligations as a police detective. He didn’t take his job lightly. He might take a bung from time to time, but never when it mattered. He’d never turned his back in a pinch. He’d never let anyone walk he shouldn’t have.

  Could he trust Beth’s word on this? A woman’s word wasn’t always the best, he figured. He’d trusted his wife, when she said until death do us part...

  “Fuck.”

  He forgot his tea and rushed into the tattered office at the back of the station. He dialed a number by heart.

  Someone groggy picked up and mumbled into the phone.

  “The boss there?” he said.

  “Coleridge?” Finch’s missus. She’d had a few late night calls over the years. Shit, early morning. Two o’clock now. Where the hell had the time gone?

  He’s going to be pissed. More so than usual.

  “Yeah, it’s Coleridge. It’s urgent.”

  “He’s sleeping. He didn’t get home ’til late.”

  “What about if I talk really loudly?”

  “Alright, alright. Dave. David!” Sounds of bed sheets rustling. Probably some really comfy quilt. Nice and warm. With feathers in it.