by Tim Weaver
Prouse shrugged.
‘That’s all Lee gets? A shrug?’
He shifted against the ground, trying to find a more comfortable position. ‘He had a big mouth on him. You talk as much as he did, you gotta expect it to come back at you.’
‘Who else have you killed?’
‘What does it matter?’
‘Did you kill the Lings?’
He looked around him, as if he’d figured out where he was. A bird squawked out on the water. ‘You brought me to the Ley. That’s clever. Where did the police go?’
‘The other way.’
A quick look towards the gun. ‘So now what? You gonna shoot me?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
He tried to find some subtle giveaway in my face, a hint of weakness, but I kept my gaze fixed on him and I could see the first flicker of doubt pass across his eyes. I could use a gun. I’d grown up firing them in woodland only two miles from where we were, and I’d been forced to fire them since; not because I wanted to, but because if I hadn’t I’d already be buried in an unmarked grave.
But I wasn’t going to kill him.
If I did that, there would be nothing to separate the two of us.
‘Where are the Lings?’ I asked again.
‘They’re dead.’
I stepped away from him – a reflex action, as if some mechanical part of me was repelled by the idea of it – and as my legs hit the car, the torch rocked off the bumper and hit the dirt track. Darkness. I dropped to my haunches and felt around for it. When I had it in my hands again, I turned it in Prouse’s direction and found him in the same place: on his back, looking along the water’s edge at me, skin pale, eyes like lumps of coal.
‘All of them?’
‘The husband and wife I did myself.’ There was nothing in his voice, just a cold efficiency. He sniffed and rubbed his chin against his shoulder. ‘I took them to the barn.’
‘The barn?’ And then I realized what he meant. ‘At Farnmoor?’
‘Walked them out to the fields and shot them in the head. Pop, pop.’
He looked at me, his face like a mask: no attachment to the words, no feeling for what he’d described, just an abstract void. Keep it together, I said to myself, keep it together. But I could feel myself losing focus. He murdered them both in cold blood.
‘You were the one Ray Muire saw Paul and Carrie with.’
‘Muire,’ he replied, almost spitting the name out. ‘Arsehole wasn’t even supposed to be in that day. No one was supposed to be in that day. It was a Sunday. I planned it specifically because it was a Sunday. Then, next minute, he’s singing to the coppers.’
‘How did he even see you?’
‘Oh,’ he said, almost sneering, ‘because he was blind?’
‘Are you saying he wasn’t?’
‘I’m saying he could see just fine.’
I frowned. ‘What?’ He didn’t reply. ‘What are you talking about?’
Suddenly, the rain started getting heavier. He slithered around on the floor, hands still behind his back, ankles looped together, trying to ease himself clear of the puddles.
‘Prouse?’
‘Muire dug his own grave,’ he said. ‘He was a dead man the moment he started chirping to the coppers. The fact that he was a part-time drunk just made it easier.’
‘You killed him too?’
‘I gave him a little shove.’ He was unaffected by anything he was saying. He wasn’t even trying to get a reaction from me. This was just a cool, detached listing of the facts. ‘Followed him, watched him get pissed, put him in the river on the way home.’
‘As easy as that.’
He shrugged. ‘I just do what I’m told – then I take the money.’
‘From who?’
‘From whoever’s paying.’
‘Who paid you to kill Paul and Carrie?’
He just stared at me. ‘Katie Francis.’
There was something blacker and more menacing about him now, as if he could see his answers were unbalancing me. Francis had looked me in the eyes when she’d talked about the Lings, about Ray Muire too, and I’d never glimpsed a hint of deception. Now Prouse was trying to feed off the uncertainty he could see in me.
‘Why did she want them dead?’
He shrugged. ‘She was following orders too.’
‘From who?’
‘Shit runs downhill.’
‘From who?’
Somewhere, out on the main road, a car passed. Automatically, I turned towards it to make sure it wasn’t coming down the track, and then, when I turned back, Prouse was looking up at me, his eyes unlit, hostile. ‘I feel sorry for you, boy,’ he said quietly. I didn’t reply, my mind racing. ‘There you are, running around trying to find a family that no one gives a shit about, and all the time you ain’t got one fuckin’ idea who you’re up against here. How can I make this clear to you? Your precious Ling family – they’re dead.’
He said it so quickly, without a single flicker of emotion, that it felt like I’d been knocked off balance again. Then the anger started to build.
‘Now you can stop running around like an arsehole,’ he said, flatly.
Without thinking, the rage burning a hole in my chest, I bent down, grabbed his collar and hit him with everything I had. I broke his nose instantly, could feel it turn and buckle, and just as I drew back again, his body already limp and unresponsive, blood all over his beard, I managed to stop myself. I took a woozy step back towards the car, clenched fist ringing with pain, Prouse lying unconscious on the dark of the track.
‘Shit.’
I checked the time on the phone. 5.57 a.m.
The sun was going to be up in an hour.
Kneeling down at Prouse’s side, I shook him awake. He was struggling to breathe, his nose a twisted mess of bone and blood. I waited for him to come round and look up at me, then dropped him to the floor, grabbed the gun and pressed it against his eye.
‘Who was giving the orders to Katie Francis?’
He moaned gently.
‘You’ve got three seconds.’
His other eye widened, as if he was trying to focus.
‘One.’
He moaned again, blood bubbling at his nose.
‘Two.’
He hacked up a glob of saliva.
‘Thr–’
‘Okay, okay,’ he said, slurring his words.
‘Who was giving the orders to her?’
‘There’s someone in the States.’
I pulled the gun away. ‘Cornell?’
He nodded.
Lee had talked about him having local help. Prouse was that help; Katie Francis was. He looked up at me, eyes glazed and empty. ‘They just tell me what I need to know. Cornell told Francis to split the family up: I’d take care of the husband and wife here, Cornell would take care of the girls.’
‘The girls are dead too?’
He just looked at me, distant, drifting.
I grabbed him by the throat. ‘The girls are dead too?’
He nodded – and then blacked out.
I shoved him back against the dirt and walked away, huge, thunderous swells of anger tremoring through my chest. They’re all dead. You failed them. But then, against the sounds of the Ley, Prouse was talking again, mumbling something else. ‘What?’ I turned and moved back towards him. ‘What did you say?’
‘… a marked man.’
‘What did you say?’
He rolled his head against the dirt track and looked at me. ‘The photograph.’
‘What about it?’
‘Carter Graham’s a marked man.’
‘Graham’s next?’
He didn’t respond.
‘Is Cornell coming for Graham?’
‘He’s coming for everyone.’
‘When is he coming for Graham?’
‘Run, boy.’ His eyes widened. ‘Just … run.’
‘What’s Cornell protecting? What’s in the photograph?’
&
nbsp; ‘I took him out in that box,’ he said, words bleeding into one another. I tried to figure out what he was talking about. He looked disorientated and couldn’t focus. I’d hit him hard. Maybe too hard. I hadn’t cared at the time, but I cared now.
‘What are you talking about, Prouse?’
‘They said to put him in Haven.’
‘Haven?’
‘They said, put him in Haven, the same place I’d put the husband and wife. So I took the boat out …’ His eyes rolled up into his skull, like he was about to pass out.
Husband and wife. He meant Paul and Carrie.
‘Prouse,’ I said, slowly, evenly, ‘where’s Haven?’
He came back, blinking, trying to focus on me, even though I was only a matter of feet away from him. ‘I wedged that box in tight … but I didn’t lock it properly.’
For a second time I heard a car approaching on the main road. I looked up, unable to see it from behind the reeds, then turned back to Prouse, trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. He’d put someone’s body in the same place he’d put Paul and Carrie. ‘Where’s Haven?’ I asked again, trying to temper my irritation.
‘Where I was supposed to put him.’
‘Who?’
‘The beach.’
‘The beach?’
‘The body.’
That stopped me. ‘The man you found on the beach?’
‘Cornell told me to put his body where I put the others,’ he continued, like he hadn’t even heard me, and then he started to drift.
‘Listen to me.’ I shook him awake. ‘Where’s Haven?’
‘The water,’ he said softly.
‘What water?’
‘I hit a wave, and the freezer box toppled over, and everything went overboard.’ His eyes rolled. It was like he couldn’t even hear me now. ‘Everything went overboard.’
‘Are Paul and Carrie buried in Haven?’
He just looked at me.
‘Prouse?’
‘I couldn’t do anything about the body,’ he said, eyes blunt and impassive. ‘The tide took it too quickly. But the coppers wouldn’t be able to identify him. I knew that. That’s why, when that boy found the body, washed up there on the beach, I thought, “If I report it, if I go and speak to that ex-copper, your mate Healy, on the lad’s behalf, the other coppers won’t think I was the one that done it.” ’
I grabbed him by the collar and yanked him towards me. ‘Tell me where Haven is!’ But then I noticed something: blood was dripping from the back of his head. Shit. I turned him. In the light from the torch I could see the damage: there was a black wound on the dome of his skull. My eyes traced the floor. Directly beneath his head was a rock.
When I’d punched him, I’d punched him back into the rock.
And now he was bleeding out of the back of his head.
I laid him back down gently.
‘Prouse, listen to me.’ He blinked a couple of times, his eyes eventually finding my face. ‘I’m going to call you an ambulance, okay? But first I need to know something.’
No reaction from him.
‘Where’s Haven?’
‘Where I buried them all.’
‘Yes, but where is it?’
‘In with all the water.’
This was going nowhere. ‘Paul and Carrie are there, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about the girls?’
He shook his head.
‘So where are Annabel and Olivia buried?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where are they, Prouse?’
‘I don’t know.’
I studied him, searching for a lie, but he wouldn’t have been capable of spinning a lie. Not now. Fresh blood leaked from his nose. ‘Think. Tell me where the girls are.’
‘Cornell.’
‘Cornell killed them?’
He nodded.
My heart sank. ‘Where did he put them?’
He stared up at me.
‘Prouse?’
Nothing from him now. His eyelids fluttered.
‘Haven,’ he said softly.
Haven. He’d talked about putting them in with all the water.
Had he dumped them out to sea?
I’d have to figure it out later. Now, I had to get him an ambulance. He was dying in front of me. I grabbed my phone – once I’d called it in, I’d get the hell out.
He muttered something incoherently.
The line connected.
All of them are dead.
‘Kalb.’
I looked at him. ‘What?’
‘Kalb.’
‘What’s Kalb?’
No response. His eyes were closed now.
‘Prouse?’ I said to him. ‘What’s Kalb?’
‘The man on the beach.’
‘The one you were supposed to put in Haven?’
He nodded, then mumbled, ‘He’s the man in the photograph.’
Instantly, I killed the call.
‘Wait, the man in the photograph is the body on the beach?’
He didn’t reply.
‘Prouse?’
No answer again.
He’s the man in the photograph.
D.K.
Or D. Kalb.
Then, from somewhere behind me, footsteps.
45
I grabbed the duct tape I’d pinned to the car and placed it against the fisherman’s mouth. Then I killed the light. The footsteps stopped as soon as it was dark. For a while – maybe ten seconds – the night was like standing in front of a black wall: there was no definition to anything, no hint of any object in any direction. About six feet away, somewhere on my right, Prouse was moaning gently. I ignored him, ignored the sound of the water stirring on the lake, something gliding across its glassy surface. The rain had eased off again, but there was the whistle of a soft breeze, like air travelling through the neck of a bottle. And behind it all was the sea, its noise smothered by the whispering movement of the reeds, by the banks of the Ley, but still impossible to stop, there in the background.
I ducked my head, closed my eyes and willed myself to listen.
No footsteps any more.
No sound of movement at all.
I looked up again. Slowly, I started to be able to make out the curves of my car, six feet away, parked between the dirt track and the lake. Off the other way, Prouse’s face emerged from the night, like a swish of grey paint, looking in my direction. I couldn’t see it clearly, couldn’t tell if he was conscious or not any more, but the jet black of his beard gave him a sinister, otherworldly look; like a man with only half a head. Briefly I thought of the man in the photograph, of the girls, and then of Paul and Carrie Ling, buried in a place called Haven I might never even find. But I instantly pushed it away.
I couldn’t afford for my concentration to stray.
My hand out in front of me, I inched back towards the car. As my fingers brushed the bodywork, I dropped down again and listened. The noise of the Ley seemed to deaden. For a moment, all I could hear was the rhythmic rise and fall of the sea, but then the breeze rolled in across the lake and the reeds started rocking from side to side, the movement creating a soft chant, like a monastic choir. Swapping the gun from my left to my right, I traced the circumference of the car, keeping out of view of the track, until I found cover at the front of the BMW, next to the headlights, and could see any approach.
Except I wouldn’t see any approach.
It was too dark.
Which meant it was also too dark for whoever was here.
I came out from behind the car, keeping low, and moved silently across the track to the other side. From memory, I knew the track zigzagged back up to the main road, first through a maze of reeds right down here on the lake, then through the high banks of trees and bush that smothered the sound of the sea, then finally across a sprawling swathe of flat grassland. I’d heard vehicles out on the main road, but not in close, which meant, if someone had got this far down the track w
ithout me hearing, they’d come in on foot.
Pausing, I looked out to my left. On this side there was no lake, just an ocean of shoulder-high yellow grass, vaguely drawn against the dark of the night, growing out of wet, mulchy ground. I used it as a guide, moving alongside it and quietly up the track, into an enclosed area, tall reeds on both sides. Suddenly it became difficult to see anything, thick knots of reed obscuring whatever vague definition I’d managed to gain before. I stopped, trying to force my eyes to see more. Twenty feet ahead – maybe more, maybe less – an animal scurried across the track, one side to the other.
I took another step forward, eyes trying to pick out any movement, any sign there was another person here, but after ten paces I stopped again. There was no light now, not even a hint of it: nothing coming through the reeds, no break in the clouds, just a black mass. Feeling around in my pocket, I removed my phone, and then stood there, trying to pick out sounds coming down the track at me. If I switched the phone on, I immediately put myself on the map; if I didn’t, I stood here in darkness, cast adrift and walking blind.
Then a noise behind me.
Footsteps.
Twenty feet away.
I turned slowly, feet soft on the ground, gun up in front of my face. The blackness was total, like standing with your nose against a wall. There were no edges, no shapes or definition – just the night. Nothing else. As I squeezed my fingers harder against the grip of the gun, a stone scattered along the path, towards me, settling somewhere to my left.
Despite how cold it was, I could feel sweat all down my back, tracing the length of my spine; feel my heart pounding in my chest, its echo in my ears. I swallowed, and in the silence it felt like the noise was immense. I tensed, expecting some kind of reaction.
All I got was silence.
But then, a couple of seconds later, there was a gentle squeak; one tiny moment of sound that seemed to carry along the track like a gunshot. Blind in the dark already, I closed my eyes, trying to focus my other senses, trying to understand what it could be.
Then it came to me.
