The Love of the Dead

by Craig Saunders

  He heard a mumble, then his name, then Finch came on the phone.

  “Coleridge. You better have a fucking great reason for waking me up at...” There was a pause. “Two o’clock. Fuck, Coleridge, I’ve got a press conference at seven.”

  “It can’t wait.”

  “Oh, fuck it. I’m awake now. Go on. You got news?”

  “Yeah. I had a call from him tonight.”

  “What? Fuck. When?”

  Coleridge heard Mrs. Finch in the background, asking if he had to swear quite so much. Coleridge smiled, even though his heart was pounding because he’d been busy eating while he should have been calling in the cavalry.

  “A couple of hours ago,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I know. Can’t be, right? It stinks, Finch, to high heaven. Look, I’ve been busy. The thing is, he’s threatened my missus. It couldn’t have been Sawyer, but it was someone, and he wasn’t fucking about.”

  “Okay.”

  Finch was a bastard, but he knew his job. He didn’t fuck about, and when it came down to it, Coleridge was a bastard, too.

  “Understand?”

  “I’ll get on it. You want to get off the phone?”

  “There’s more. I’ll call you back in a half hour or so.”

  “Get off the fucking phone, then.”

  “Boss?”

  “What?” Impatient. Knowing he had a job to do. Getting ready to do it.

  “Cheers.”

  “Right. Half hour.” He hung up.

  Coleridge stuffed a biscuit in his mouth. He was a bastard alright. A psycho threatens your wife and you eat biscuits instead of calling out some protection, you qualify as a bastard.

  He picked up the phone again and dialed his ex’s number.

  “Hello?”

  “She there?”

  “What do you want?”

  “It’s important. Put her on.”

  The painter and decorator muttered a bit under his breath, but after a minute or so she came to the phone.

  She’d always slept naked. He wondered if she was naked now. He bit into a biscuit while he was wondering.

  “Coleridge, it’s two o’clock in the morning. What is it?”

  “Don’t have a fit, but you know this guy that’s been killing mediums? Killed a cop yesterday?”

  “I heard. Anyone you knew?”

  “Barely. But listen, the thing is...” He didn’t really know where to go with that sentence, so he started again. “Look, things have gotten a bit crazy over the last day or so, and he’s losing it, OK? I don’t want you to worry, but some policemen are going to come over. They should be there pretty soon. I’m fairly sure they’ll only need to stay the day, maybe the night, but then it’ll be over, right?”

  “What are you saying? We’re in danger?”

  “Not the painter.”

  “Terry. His name is Terry.”

  “Whatever. Just listen to me. Do what they say, alright? No work. Call in sick, you know, women’s problems if you have to. It’s just for twenty-four hours.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I haven’t got the time to explain. It’s probably nothing, and the police are just a precaution. They’ll know what they’re about, so do what they say.”

  “Coleridge, is he coming here?”

  Maybe, he thought, but he didn’t say that. What would be the point? He was a bastard, but he’d never been cruel. Even now, listening to her voice, imagining her naked with the painter listening in, he didn’t want to hurt her.

  “It’s just a precaution. And it’s only for twenty-four hours, max. No big deal. Just being careful.”

  “Is he after you?”

  A little pity might not hurt. “He reckons so. I’m a big guy though. I can take it.”

  “I’m sure you can, but be careful, won’t you?”

  A smaller man might have asked why, or asked if she did care after all.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve got to go.”

  “There’s lights outside.”

  “That’ll be them. Don’t worry, OK? It’s probably nothing, but they’re insurance, just the same. I’ll check you later.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I will. Bye,” he said. “Love you.” Shit. Reflex. He hung up before he could hear whether she returned it or not. Either way’d suck.

  Coleridge checked his watch. 2:25 AM. Close enough. He put his fingers into the biscuit pack and came out empty. Looked at his tea. He’d drunk it.

  He picked up the phone and got on with it.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Coleridge called his station in Norwich. Got Feargus on the phone. Poor bastard had pulled nightshift. Fuck, probably every cop in the county was on overtime except for this little piss pot station.

  “Feargus, it’s Coleridge. Harvey there?”

  “Harvey?”

  “Don’t fuck about. Harvey. Weak chin, shitty little goatee. He in?”

  “Yeah, but, where the fuck are you? The boss has been trying to get you all night. What’s going on with Elizabeth Willis? I heard she was attacked.”

  “She was, but she’s all right. Boss’ll fill you in. I’ve got to call him in.” Coleridge checked his watch. “Shit, three minutes ago. Come on, put Harvey on.”

  He heard Feargus shout across the room, the clatter of the phone as he put it down and transferred it. Harvey picked it up.

  “Harvey.”

  “Right, you cunt. I know it was you who snitched to Sam Wright.”

  “What? I don’t...”

  “I ain’t got the time. You want to make it right?”

  “You’ve got some fucking balls, Coleridge.”

  “Big fat ones. Boss is going to be calling in some help today. You get on to the press. Clearly, you’re good at that. I want a call put out, get it? I don’t want it in the paper. The deal is the press get there, they get their shots. Video, whatever you call it nowadays with those fiddly little cameras. I don’t care. Nothing goes live until the boss gives the say so. I want cameras everywhere, you understand?”

  “No. I haven’t got a fucking clue. What are you on about?”

  “There’s going to be a siege at Elizabeth Willis’ tonight. He’s a bastard, this one. I don’t know what’s up with it. I just know I want eyes. The boss is bringing the police. I want eyes everywhere. Night vision, recording. It’ll be after dark. I’m covering the bases. I’m going to be in there with her, but if he gets in, gets out, I want his face. Understand?”

  “But didn’t you hear? We got him.”

  “A dead man. A dead man who left a present for Beth Willis tonight on her doorstep. Sound like you got him?”

  “Fuck.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Coleridge. “Cameras. Everywhere. Got it?”

  “I got it.”

  “Good. Now move your ass.”

  He hung up.

  Now, what else?

  Oh, yeah.

  He picked up the phone again. Called from memory. It was picked up on first ring.

  “You’re late,” said Finch.

  “Love you, too,” he said. “Here’s what I need.”

  “You better tell me what the fuck’s going on before we go anywhere.”

  Coleridge checked his watch. 2:40 AM. He ticked it over in his head. Now that he’d had a snack he could think again. Phone Beth?

  No. Let her sleep. Nothing was going to happen until tonight. Was it?

  No. He was sure of it. You don’t phone a policeman and offer him out like that on a whim. The bastard was showing off. He’d be there when dark fell. Not before.

  “Coleridge? You jerking off?”

  He needed to get to Sawyer’s house, and he had a long drive ahead of him, but he couldn’t just blow off his boss.

  “Just thinking. Same thing, maybe,” he said, shrugging even though Finch couldn’t see him. “OK, here goes,” he said, and gave the boss the biggest pile of bullshit he’d ever spouted in his life.

&nbs
p; Chapter Forty-Nine

  Peter Willis sat up on the bed and saw he was still dressed from the night before. He looked around at a standard motel room. Patterned wallpaper, patterned carpet, patterned curtains. TV in the corner, a small kettle.

  Not his house. He rubbed his eyes and yawned, his jaw cracking.

  It took him a while to figure out where he was. Leeds. Conference. Why was he wearing his clothes?

  He saw the key ring still on his finger and remembered. The news, the worry. A policeman killed in Norfolk, not far from Beth’s. He’d tried to call her.

  He tried again, but Beth’s phone was still dead.

  What about Beth?

  He phoned for the number to the local police, got the operator to put him straight through, but all he got was a busy signal. Call back when it was less busy.

  Out of desperation he called 911. Got another operator.

  “What is the nature of the emergency?”

  “I’m worried about my wife. My ex-wife.”

  “Do you need the fire department, an ambulance...?”

  “Police. Put me through to the police.”

  “Hold, please.”

  He held. It didn’t ring again; he was put straight through. He imagined someone answering the phone, wearing a headset, sitting in front of a computer.

  “Hello?” asked a businesslike voice, calm and assured. She probably took a hundred calls a day, trained in how to deal with distraught people. Peter just wished she’d get her finger out of her ass. He tried to speak faster, to transfer some of his fear to her. Get her to move quickly.

  “I’m worried about my wife. I called last night. Someone said they’d call back. They didn’t.”

  He felt like an asshole. He was trying to get the woman on the phone to move quickly, and he’d fallen asleep when he should have been doing something about it. Beth was all he had left of his family, and he’d let her down. She’d let him down, so many times, but he couldn’t leave her hanging. He could never do that.

  “Can you tell me the reason for your concern?”

  Because her phone’s out of order, he thought. Why didn’t he call the phone company, get them to check the line?

  Because there was a serial killer hunting mediums in Norfolk and his ex-wife was a medium, and she was in Norfolk, and she’d seen him. He’d seen her. He knew her.

  He’d fallen asleep. He needed to move, not be wasting time on the phone.

  But they could get there quicker than he could.

  “Look, my ex-wife’s name is Elizabeth Willis. She goes by Beth. She’s been helping the police investigating the killings in Norfolk. I can’t get in touch with her. I’m worried about her, OK?”

  “Hold on, Sir.”

  He held on. Paced with the phone wedged between his ear and shoulder. Aware of the cheap plastic clock ticking away on the wall. Aware of the sun working its way around the earth. A man with black raven wings...

  “Sir?” The woman came on the phone and the vision fled. Peter tried to hold onto it, but he couldn’t.

  “Yes?”

  “Our records show that there was a call out to Elizabeth Willis’ home last night. I can tell you that as of last night she was fine. No charges are pending, so I...”

  “Can you tell me if she’s all right now?”

  “I can put you through to the Norfolk police.”

  “Do that.”

  “I’m transferring. Please stay on the line.”

  He paced some more while he waited. A raven watched him from the windowsill outside. For some reason he didn’t like it. Creepy fucking birds. He pulled the curtains and heard it caw even through the glass, like it was angry.

  Another operator came on the line.

  “How can I help you?”

  Jesus, he thought. Why couldn’t they talk to each other?

  He sighed, began thrusting things into his bag while he was on the phone. He ran though his speech again, this time quicker. Feeling something pulling at him, urgent, and getting further away with each minute he was on the phone. He realized what it was. Beth, receding. Leaving for good. Dying.

  “Sir?”

  He’d stopped talking, staring into space.

  “Sorry...” he said. He tried to remember how far he’d gotten in the speech, what he’d been saying, but he couldn’t.

  The feeling was getting so strong he couldn’t concentrate. He had to move. Something was calling him. A pull, toward Beth, and he couldn’t deny it.

  “Sir? Are you there?”

  He hung up the phone without replying. He picked up his bag, leaving two suits in the room’s cheap wardrobe, yanked the door open and marched down to the elevator. Went straight past reception without paying.

  “Excuse me...” someone said behind him, but he was already in the parking lot, into his car. He drove a company car, and it was reliable. It started the first time, and he pulled out onto the street without checking to see if anyone was coming.

  The motel’s slip road led straight onto the highway. Five-thirty in the morning, the roads slick and the sky still dark, speeding as fast as he dared. He could feel that sense of doom growing with each passing mile. Something was coming for Beth. It was a premonition. It was such a powerful feeling, and he’d never felt anything like it. This must be how Beth felt all the time.

  Beth.

  He looked up and saw smoke ahead and in the smoke he thought he saw wings spreading wide. He blinked and saw it was just the smoke, blowing into the dark sky.

  “Ah, fuck.”

  He couldn’t see what was happening, but the cars in front of him slowed, flashing emergency lights. The traffic crawled then stopped altogether.

  Peter hit the steering wheel. He swore harder than he’d ever sworn in his life.

  He hated himself for falling asleep, for leaving Beth alone while a killer came for her. But it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. He couldn’t get past the traffic. There was nothing he could do. Nothing at all.

  For the next hour he watched as the emergency vehicles worked on the fire. He didn’t move. He couldn’t even use the shoulder. It was full of a burning truck and two smashed cars. A helicopter landed in a field and took off again pretty soon after.

  He couldn’t shake the impression that the smoke looked like wings, spreading and folding in again. As the night turned to day, he watched the smoke rolling across the road, waiting for the crash to clear, waiting to move on, hating himself because he felt death all around.

  There was nothing but death in front of him. He knew that was right, just as he knew that he could do nothing about it.

  Chapter Fifty

  The clouds blew away and took the rain with them. The sun shone hard and bright into Beth’s bedroom as she woke from a troubled sleep and remembered the night before.

  He’d been there. In her house. Next to her, like a lover, sharing her bed.

  She leapt from the bed before turning to see the indent where someone had been. Too big for Miles.

  Suddenly, she felt sick. He’d been here. In her bedroom...

  God.

  She put on her bathrobe and rushed through the cold hall into the kitchen. The two officers were in her kitchen, looking tired and gray. Not dead.

  “Did he come back?” she said, knowing the answer anyway. Their presence meant that he had not.

  If he had, she doubted they’d still have their heads. For a second she saw their heads sitting on the table, answering her, blood dripping down on her floor to join the rest of the stains there that she could never wash clean, because the memory of the blood would always live on.

  “Who?” asked one of the officers. He had a cup of tea. Not bothered, not scared. Just having a morning cup of tea, passing the time with his colleague.

  He hadn’t come back, then. She tried to remember what had happened after he’d climbed in bed with her.

  “What happened?”

  “You were pretty frightened,” he said. He had stained yellow teeth. She thought you
had to look presentable to be a policeman. But then Coleridge was hardly presentable. He looked like a fat tramp in a suit. “You passed out. We put you to bed. Don’t worry, we’ve been here all night. Nothing.”

  It wasn’t nothing, though. He’d been in her bed. Her fucking bed.

  But it was nothing to do with these two. It wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Maybe hers. She’d been courting the Devil for years, now, hadn’t she? Since Miles’ death, maybe. Could have been before that.

  Why else would he mark her out?

  Why couldn’t he leave her alone?

  “Did you hear from Coleridge?” she said, because these two, happily drinking their tea, looking forward to their beds, they didn’t have any other answers she needed to hear.

  “No. But we’re being relieved in an hour. Might get news soon. It’s still early.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Eight.”

  “What time’s Coleridge’s shift start?”

  The policeman shrugged. “Don’t know. Probably pulling an all-nighter. Most of us are. The cop killed yesterday.”

  “Call him.”

  “I don’t know where he’s stationed.” He changed his tune when he saw her glare. “I’ll call, though. Shouldn’t be too hard to find out.”

  The policeman with the yellow teeth fussed about with his radio, while his partner drank her tea. She didn’t know how she felt about that, but in the grand scheme of things it was a small indiscretion. After all, they’d been up all night, while she’d been asleep.

  He tried his radio, but it wouldn’t work. Beth walked into the hall and tried the phone, but that was dead, too.

  She knew it was him. He’d done something.

  Was she surprised? Not at all.

  She was on her own, then.

  She walked along the cold tiles back to the kitchen.

  “I can’t get through on the phone either. Can you take me out today?”

  “I can’t. Not now. Our relief’s due in twenty minutes. I’d wait until then.”

  Beth nodded and went to get dressed. She forwent the shower. She didn’t have time. The sun was up but the sun was quick in the winter. When dark came she’d be at his mercy again.