Decay Inevitable

by Conrad Williams

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: BROCKEN SPECTRE

  SADIE AND ELISABETH were in the back of the Campervan, playing with Eiger the dog. Up front, Will shared his seat with about a hundred Ordnance Survey maps as well as half a tonne of karabiners and buckles and straps. Flint, the mountaineer, drove with one hand while the other searched his Berghaus waterproof for a tube of mints.

  “Where was it you said you were going?” Flint asked. Will couldn’t see his mouth through the tangle of red beard. His eyes were dark, sharp and turned nasty by a ridge of black brows that reared away from his head. The hair was long and straggly, held back in a pony tail by an elastic band. It was a hard, north Wales voice, barely softened by years of travel.

  “I didn’t,” Will said. “Where are you going?”

  “Scotland way,” Flint replied, finally tracking down his elusive Trebors. He offered one to Will. “I want to get up to the Old Man of Storr, eventually. Always fancied that, though I’ve never done a stack climb before.”

  “Well, we’re heading up to Warrington, if it’s convenient.”

  “Nothing’s convenient, the way these roads are being systematically buggered.”

  “We’ve been out of the loop,” Will said, conscious again of the state of his clothes. He wondered if he was starting to smell, but judging by the state of Flint’s Camper, he didn’t think it was something that would be noticeable here. “We’ve not heard any news.”

  Flint coughed and spat out of the window. “Since the first wave of bombs, on the motorway, there’ve been daily attacks. Single explosions on A roads, B roads, bridges. Nobody has a clue why. Al-Qaeda have gone out of their way to dissociate themselves with it all.”

  Off the motorways, progress was still frustratingly slow. The mountaineer had picked them up outside Nuneaton. They had followed the A5 around Birmingham to Shrewsbury, where they joined the A49 going north. Flint told them that this road, if it was safe, would take them straight into Warrington. So far, it had been ignored by the terrorists, but it was a main road that ought to be a target, if the roads that had been attacked over the past few weeks were any indication.

  Flint was from a tiny village outside Wrexham. His father had died in a lead mine and he had been forced to bring up his brother and look after his mother, who had lung cancer, without any outside help. He said it had toughened him and made him feel able to deal with any situation. Climbing, Flint explained, was the only pastime that helped him feel alive, gave him back the youth that had been lost to endless days of cleaning and feeding and being the role model to his younger siblings.

  “Have you ever fallen?” Will asked, feeling faintly stupid once the question was out, but enjoying the ebb and flow of the older man’s voice.

  “Never,” Flint replied, sucking carefully on his mint. “I’ve seen plenty accidents, mind. I’ve seen a man fall twenty-five feet into the Bergschrund on the Hotlum/Bolam ridge, Mount Shasta, this is. California. A fourteen K peak. No injury. Not even a split lip. But I’ve seen death on the rock from the slightest fall. I was with a guy called Errol about five years ago. We were climbing some top-quality granite out at Oak Flats, in Arizona. Errol was this close to topping out when a flake came off and did for him. I was in the roof crack and was pulling slack up to clip when the rock came away in his hands. Nasty wet noise on the slab. I heard it forty feet away.

  “He was lucky. There was a doctor, an orthopaedic guy climbing in the area. He heard me screaming my tits off for help and he helped stabilise Errol while someone drove to the rescue camp for help.

  “Errol was out cold the entire time. He was splinted, back-boarded, insulated, intubated, the lot. They probably put a bandage on his dick so it didn’t feel left out. Helicopter short-hauled him out in a Bauman Bag. Turned him over to Eagle Air Med who flew him to Phoenix, seventy miles west of the Flats.

  “He was mightily shagged, I tell you. Skull fractured like a slab of treacle toffee, left arm radial, ulnar and wrist fractures, left hip fracture and left leg tib/fib and ankle fucked to Shreddies. He was unable to speak. No shit. He was three weeks in Surgical Intensive Care. And for what? A bit of loose rock.

  “The worst deaths I dealt with were never anywhere near the face. The worst deaths happen in beds, let me tell you.”

  “I can’t agree with you,” Will said, his throat constricting slightly.

  “Errol went in bed. This six foot fuck-off meat hill. Strong. The mountain made an old man of him. All that medical care and he goes and necks a big bottle of paracetamol, first thing he does when he gets home. No way he was able to climb again, so he checked out.”

  Flint went quiet, concentrating on pushing the tired blue Campervan through the south Cheshire countryside. At Tarporley, he told them that their destination was maybe a quarter of an hour away. Then he said, matter-of-factly: “Police.”

  At the moment of his saying the word, Will saw the spastic blue lights pulse and skitter around the interior of the van. Elisabeth knocked twice on the separating wall.

  Will said, “Look...”

  Flint was smiling. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

  “What can you–”

  “Well,” Flint said, “I can’t outrun them.”

  “Somewhere in the back. We could hide?”

  Flint laughed as he applied the brakes. “In a Camper? Piss off.”

  “Then we’ve had it.”

  “What did you do?” Flint said.

  “They think I killed my wife.”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “I believe you,” Flint said, simply. “Where is it you’re heading, exactly?”

  “Sloe Heath,” Will replied, tensing in his seat as the police Rover pulled into the side of the road behind them. “The hospital there.”

  “Right,” Flint said, and floored the accelerator. The van tore away, faster than Will might have expected. At the last moment, before Flint yanked the wheel to the left, sending the van bucketing over frozen shoulders of land, he heard sirens and the girls in the back of the van screaming. He saw Flint lean in close towards his face, lips peeling back into an obscene leer that didn’t seem possible in a mouth that had appeared so small. The black eyes consumed his as the van tipped into a fence by a small stream, sending it into a roll. The window smashed and Will felt himself bounce out through it, enveloped by sharp shards of night. He hit the ground hard and skidded across the topsoil of a field at the other side of the stream for about twenty metres until he came to a stop. Raising his head slightly, he saw two officers standing at the top of the road looking down at the upturned VW as steam billowed from its destroyed radiator.

  Will stood up but his legs spilled him immediately. His shoulder flared with pain. Somehow he scrabbled over to the van but found it empty. The policemen were gingerly making their way across the stream. The intense dark in the field meant that he could not be seen. He risked calling out for Elisabeth and Sadie but there was no reply. More sirens. The feathered beat of a distant helicopter. Will saw its floodlight dancing across more distant fields than this one, approaching rapidly. He had to get moving, before its cameras picked him up. He moved through the field as quickly as his unsteady legs would allow, clasping his shoulder tight to him as he went. By the time he reached the far edge of the field, he was shivering violently and could not rid himself of the conviction that Elisabeth and Sadie were face down in the stream, unconsciously sucking water into their lungs.

  A last look back as the authorities sealed off the accident site and searched for bodies. There was light everywhere, and mist resettling on the field where the movement had previously broken it up. Contained in one of these surging fists of fog, like something wrapped in a wad of cotton wool, Will saw a figure sprinting. It seemed far too tall and lithe for Flint, but suddenly it had flattened and spread into the elongated shape of a fast dog in full flight, changing so swiftly, so fluidly, that Will could not be sure he had thought the figure human to begin with.

  Either the
mist thickened, or the figure outran it. Either way, in a second or two, it was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKES

  THE PHONE CALL came at a little before six on Saturday morning. Sean was jolted from his chair, pain shooting through his back and legs as he listed towards the kitchen to answer it. Rubbing feeling into his thighs, he listened as Rapler told him to not bother going into work on Monday.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because there’s no work to go to,” he said. “There was a fire this morning. Around two o’clock. The fire brigade have only just got it under control.”

  “Arson?”

  “It’s too early to tell really, but if you were to ask me, I’d say that it was.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because de Fleche Cheshire South, down in Chester, went up too. At the same time, would you believe?”

  “What about work?”

  Rapler put on an avuncular tone. “Sit tight, mate. We’ll have something else come up soon. Build ’em up, knock ’em down, there’s always something going on. I’ll be in touch. The work you did for us did not go unnoticed.”

  Sean replaced the receiver, wondering which work Rapler was referring to.

  He breakfasted on toast and coffee, trying to rid himself of the vodka that had turned his head sticky. He briefly considered a run to purge himself further, but quickly rejected the idea. He had seen people vomiting in the streets: it wasn’t impressive. A cold shower and more coffee helped, as did sticking his head out of the window for a few seconds to let the wind strip it raw.

  He didn’t know what to do.

  There were various options available to him. He could take a trip out to the de Fleche building anyway, as he had promised himself the previous night, in case something turned up. He could find Tim and quiz him about his wall molestation. Really quiz him. Or he could follow Vernon, see what was so important for him and Salty to discuss.

  It was then that he found the envelope upon which he had scribbled the previous night. He reached for the phone.

  “SO, BONNY RONNIE,” Vernon Lord said. “What makest thou of events thus far?”

  Ronnie Salt hated Vernon. He hated the way he dressed, the way he slicked back his hair in that ridiculous pony tail. He hated the way he talked. And more than that, Ronnie hated the way he talked to him.

  “I don’t trust him,” Ronnie said. “The fucker stinks of cop.”

  “What’s not to trust, Ronnie? The guy spilled blood for me.”

  Ronnie hated this place too, with its high-backed stools and its lunchtime menu. He hated pubs that smelled of vinegar when you walked into them, instead of beer. Pubs were for drinking in, not eating, for Christ’s sake.

  “So you and Redman are nicely loved up, eh? Well that’s nice. All I’m saying is that I don’t trust him. He’s not us. He’s not with us.”

  Vernon steepled his fingers above his lager. “I think he should be.”

  Ronnie bristled. “You want to bring in new faces when we’re this close? This fucking close?”

  “Who was it, you think, who started those fires this morning, hmmm? Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? There’s movement. London say so. Inserts on the prowl. There’s been a collision, son. You know, like has met like. Maybe it won’t be too long before they work out what’s what where they’re concerned.”

  “London sorting it, are they?”

  “One dead. Two left. They’ve got someone on the case, yeah. Someone shit-hot, from the way they went on about her.”

  “Her? Her? Fuck me. We might as well pack up.”

  “Ronnie. Become enlightened. Transcend this pig-headed stick-in-the-mud that you’ve become over the years. You don’t want people calling you Ronnie Sour, do you? Ronnie Bitter? Women... I tell you, women are the new men.”

  “Fucking fuck-up, top to bottom,” Ronnie said. “Used to be security was an important matter. This tit Redman. What do you know about him?”

  Vernon tapped his head and waggled his finger, then he put his hand to his gut and nodded. “Most of us think with the wrong organ, Salty. I don’t care for checking up on people. You can cover up. Everyone wears a different face when it suits them. I go by my gut. Always have. I went with my gut when you came on the scene, and I was right. I think I’m right with Sean too. If you saw the way he took punches for me, for us, Salty, you’d change your tune.”

  “I hope you’re right, Vernon,” Ronnie warned. “We’ll break through before long and end it all. We could do without any interference.”

  “If there’s any interference to be done, Ronnie, this woman from London will be doing it. For us. She... according to those in the know... is special.”

  “So you say. So they say. Whoever. Whatever. I just want to be sure, that’s all. Nothing wrong with that.”

  Vernon patted his arm and went to the bar. When he came back with more drinks, Ronnie said, “So the fires mean we’ve got two doors sealed. Any news on the third?”

  SALLY CAME THROUGH with the information for him after just half an hour.

  “Are you not busy enough?” Sean asked, when she called.

  “Do you want this or not?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Sean made notes in a pad as Sally told him about de Fleche. He seemed to have been an interesting man, if completely insane. When she had finished, Sean made smalltalk and she answered him non-committally. When he asked her what was wrong, she told him she was feeling a little poorly. Her period was due, Rostron was being a wanker, and her new partner, a wet-nosed pup called Firmstone, was more interested in chatting her up than nailing villains.

  “I wish I was still there, in a way,” Sean said, only half-joking.

  “From what I gather, you’re busier than when you were in uniform. What are you up to?”

  “Can’t say,” Sean whispered. “Phone might be bugged.”

  Sally cut through him with a clipped, serious tone. “If there’s something going on up there, something serious, I want to know, Sean. I can help you.”

  Sean said, “I know.”

  “Why can’t you talk to me?” Sally asked. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “I’m just going over Naomi’s past. That’s all. Seeing what I can dig up.”

  “These men you were telling me about. At her funeral. Who are they?”

  “Not sure. Not sure about anything really. I’m just mooching about. I’m being careful.”

  Sally’s sigh, 200 miles away, made him feel good to have her as his friend. He could picture her expression: tired, kind of happy, kind of sad. “You’d better,” she said, finally. “Call me. If things get rough. I can be there in two hours.”

  “I’ll do that. I will.”

  Sally said, “There’s more on this guy. Stuff about what he was into. Designs, you know. Too much to tell you over the phone. It’s in the post.”

  Sean read through his notes as he made his way outside to the car. Peter de Fleche had been born in Helsinki in 1934. He studied at Helsinki Polytechnic and ended up lecturing there in the 1960s when he taught a student, Adrienne Fox, who would later become his wife. Nothing that Sally had told him pointed to any suicidal tendencies. Successful man who had modest tastes. No children. He had moved to the Northwest of England when he was commissioned to design a cluster of intelligent buildings for the Warrington-Runcorn axis during the boom years of the 1980s. Coincidentally, his Dutch father had roots in Merseyside and persuaded him to stay in the region. After the death of his father two years later, the year in which the de Fleche buildings were completed and his wife left him, the architect disappeared, or at least became a recluse. No address for him. No second-hand testimonies about him. No nothing. Apart from Ronnie Salt’s aside that he used to drive around at the dead of night, crawling past his constructions, one hand on the wheel, the other keeping an open bottle of brandy warm. Slowly going insane.

  Sean got in the car and joined the late-morning traffic dawdling along the
College Road, north out of town. A mile shy of Sloe Heath, he saw the old bell tower rising from the clutch of hospital buildings, capped with its roof, the arched windows black, sad eyes surveying the grounds. Whenever he saw Sloe Heath mental institute, Sean shivered. He remembered playing in the fields here with a friend whose father was a doctor. What was his name? Snarled up in traffic, Sean racked his brains for a face. A Pakistani, he was, who joined his school around the time that Naomi and he were becoming fast friends. Good at chess; they used to play during rainy playtimes, with a roll-up board and plastic pieces that packed together like Russian dolls.

  Naeem. That’s it. Sean burst out laughing when he remembered. How could he forget? – it had tickled him because it sounded so much like Naomi’s name. He used to frustrate them by calling out Naeem’s name and when he turned round say, “No, I wanted Naomi,” or vice versa. Really funny.

  The traffic came to a standstill. There had been a crash further up the road, towards the motorway traffic island, a shunt that had caused the two-lane carriageway to become hopelessly strangled.

  Naeem had lived with his two brothers and two sisters in a big house on Hollins Drive. He was the youngest, Sean’s age. It was a good place to go to play. They would take their bikes and a football into the grounds of the hospital and kick it mindlessly back and to until it was too dark to see. Or they’d take their fishing rods and a few slices of bread for bait down to the gravel pit at the side of the M62 and try to tempt the tiny roach and perch to give themselves up while cows ambled over to watch.

  Thursday nights, there was a film shown in the recreation hall, deep inside the hospital. He and Naeem would creep in, especially if it was an X-rated movie, and sit on the ping-pong table that had been moved to one side to accommodate ranks of plastic chairs for the patients. A fug of tobacco smoke hung around them, and something thin and antiseptic, as, slack-jawed, pyjama-clad, they watched what Naeem called “boo” movies: Jaws or Friday the 13th or Still of the Night. While Sean and Naeem jumped in all the right places, the audience’s reactions were disarmed by their dosages. There would be the odd moan, the zombified turn of a head, a cough that seemed too wet for anybody’s throat, but it added to the pleasure of the illicit viewing. Before the lights came up at the end of the film, the boys would leave, ostensibly to avoid capture by the projectionist, but mainly because the slow dance of the patients as they unwound from their seats was too horrible, too languid to observe.