by Mike Bennett
‘Chelle – ,’ Keith started.
‘We might even have to go down to Gibraltar to stock up on stuff from Morrisons.’
‘Chelle, please,’ Keith said more insistently. She stopped and looked at him. ‘We can’t be on the telly. You’re gonna have to tell your mate Alfredo, thanks, but no thanks.’
Michelle was stunned. ‘What?’
‘We can’t be on the telly, can we? Jesus, love, have you forgotten already?’
‘Forgotten what?’
‘What we was talking about yesterday morning? About Sergei?’
‘Sergei? Oh Keith, come on, he isn’t going to be watching Almacena TV, is he? It’s only available locally. He’s bloody miles away!’
‘But he could have eyes and ears around here, couldn’t he? Especially if he’s looking for us.’
‘But he’s not looking for us, Keith. I saw that thing you were talking about – about that Mark Coleman – in yesterday’s newspaper. Gerald was saying – ’
Keith suddenly held up his hand. ‘Whoa! Hang on! You were talking to the Bensons about this?’
‘Eh?’
‘Chelle, I told you, for fuck’s sake, don’t tell no-one about that business with the Russians, didn’t I? And what do you go and do? First chance you get, you’re piping it into Radio fucking Benson!’ He slammed his hand on the table. ‘Jesus Christ, Michelle!’
‘Now hold on a minute! I didn’t say anything to the Bensons about Russians or anything else, it was in the bloody newspaper, you idiot! Gerald’s the one who was doing the talking about it, not me!’
‘It doesn’t matter, you shouldn’t have said nothing!’
‘I didn’t say nothing, you paranoid arsehole! What’s wrong with you, Keith? You’re acting like a man on the run, like a bloody fugitive!’
‘I am a fugitive, Michelle, don’t you see that? He’s out to get me, just like he got Coleman.’
‘What?’ Michelle was dismayed. ‘Why? That’s mad, Keith!’
‘It’s not mad, Chelle: it’s a warning. Coleman’s head is a warning!’
‘A warning of what?’
Keith sat down. ‘A warning to us, or to anyone who … might have crossed him in some way.’
‘Crossed who?’
‘Sergei!’
Michelle’s sense of dismay deepened. ‘Keith, we sold him a pub, that’s all. That’s not crossing someone, that’s just business.’
‘But he might not see it that way, might he? It’s like I said, yesterday: his people murdered Pete Sweeny, didn’t they, and we were witnesses.’
‘And like I said yesterday,’ she reached across the table and took his hand. ‘If he was going to kill you for that, he’d have done it long ago. He’s not looking for you, love.’
‘Isn’t he?’ Keith held her hand tightly.
‘Of course not. I mean, you haven’t actually done anything to hurt him, have you? If you’d have let me finish earlier, I was going to say the newspaper said that that Coleman might have been involved in the murder of Sergei’s nephew.’ She closed her other hand over Keith’s. ‘So that makes sense, doesn’t it? Coleman’s killing the bloke’s nephew is one thing, but your selling him a pub is – ’ she laughed. Then Keith turned suddenly away from her, taking back his hand and wiping at his eyes. ‘Keith?’
‘No,’ he said, his voice strained. ‘It’s alright, girl.’
She got up and came to his side. ‘Keith, what’s wrong, love?’
He twisted away from her. ‘It’s nothing, Chelle. Please.’
She crouched down and put her arms around him. ‘Oh, Keith, stop it. We’re going to be fine. It’s not like you murdered Sergei’s nephew or anything, is it?’ She felt his shoulders suddenly tense. She frowned. ‘Keith?’ Keith said nothing. A thought crossed her mind, one that made sense of his behaviour and yet was so dreadful it was almost unthinkable. She made a joke about it. ‘You couldn’t do a thing like that could you? Eh? Not a big teddy bear like you?’
Keith, sniffed loudly and wiped at his eyes.
Michelle’s embrace relaxed and doubt crept into her voice. ‘Keith? Keith, tell me you didn’t have nothing to do with this ... this nephew business.’
Keith sniffed. ‘I, I was only trying to protect us, Chelle.’
His words had a strange effect on her. She would later recall it was how she imagined someone might feel if they had been shot by a silenced pistol. Her strength left her quite suddenly, replaced by a sense of numbness. Her crouching knees gave way her legs folded beneath her.
Keith turned to her, his face wet with tears. ‘We were supposed to get him, you see? Get Sergei.’
‘Oh my God,’ her voice was barely a whisper.
Keith slid from his chair to drop down in front of her and he placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘We didn’t know the nephew was gonna be there, Chelle. He shouldn’t have been. The arrangement was for Sergei to come and then – and then – ’
She pushed his hands away. ‘And then what? You were going to murder him?’
‘It wasn’t murder, Chelle! It was self-defence. He killed Pete didn’t he? He might have come after us!’
‘Keith, that is fucking insane! You can’t have really believed that. We were done with him! He wouldn’t have come after us, you fucking madman!’
‘He might have done!’ Keith reached for her again, but she struck his hands away and crawled to her feet.
‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ she whispered over and over again as she moved around the kitchen, clutching at the work surfaces for support. Then she spun to face him. ‘Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Keith?’
He nodded, his face crumpling with emotion. ‘I’m so sorry, Chelle. I did it for us.’
‘For us?’ She grabbed the first solid thing that came to hand – one of the mugs he’d readied earlier – and threw it at him. ‘You fucking lunatic! You’re as bad as he is! You’re a murderer, Keith! You’re a fucking murderer!’
Keith managed to get his arms in front of his face in time to deflect the mug. ‘I know, I know! I’m sorry, Chelle, please! We did it to protect ourselves.’
‘We? Who’s “we”?’
Keith said nothing.
She snatched up the other mug and flung it at him, this time he ducked and it shattered against the far wall. ‘Who’s “we”, you fucking moron?’
‘Damo and Hodge.’
‘Oh my God!’ Michelle reeled as if from a blow. ‘You murdered a man and you took those two with you as accomplices?’
‘Who else was I gonna take? You?’
‘Don’t you – !’ she ran at him, raining blows on the arms that shielded his head. ‘Do you know what you’ve done, Keith? Do you know what you’ve done?’
‘Please, Chelle! I’m sorry!’
‘You’ve killed us, that’s what you’ve done. You’ve killed yourself, you’ve killed me, and you’ve killed our daughter, just as sure as if you’d pulled the fucking trigger yourself.’
‘I’m sorry. Please, please, forgive me.’
Michelle stopped hitting him and dropped onto a chair. Her own tears began rolling slowly from her eyes. ‘How can I forgive you, Keith? How can I ever forgive you? I’m dead. And the dead can’t forgive.’
19
DAVID AWOKE to the sound of birdsong. He opened his eyes and squinted; the room was filled with brilliant sunshine. His window was open and a warm breeze stirred the curtains which he hadn’t closed the night before. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes and saw the mud that caked his nails and the creases on the backs of his finger joints. He grimaced at the acrid smell of dried sweat that rose from under his arm. Then he noticed he was still wearing the clothes he had been wearing the night before. They were filthy with dirt, and something else – dark, rust-coloured stains. Blood – but not his.
Everything came back to him in a sudden flood of memory: the resurrection; Underwood’s murder of Ana and Beltran; the way Underwood had turned into a bat and flown away into the night; and how finally he
, Lydia, and Miguel had laboured into the small hours of the morning trying to bury the vampire’s victims.
David rolled over, turning his face away from the sunlight. As he did so, his fragile memories cracked and broke apart and pain exploded in his head. The broken images swirled like shards of glass in the gelatinous sludge that his brain seemed to have been reduced to overnight, scraping against the inside of his skull before slowly settling into scenes of partial recall. He remembered the whiskey, and he remembered why he’d started drinking it, but it was no excuse. A feeling of self-loathing enveloped him; he pulled a pillow onto his face and groaned into it. After Underwood had flown away, he remembered he’d passed out. Lydia had kicked him back to wakefulness and together they’d gone with Miguel to drag the corpses up from out of the cellar. By the time they’d got them onto a plastic sheet in the back of Lydia’s Land Rover, his hangover had started to kick in. To stave it off, he’d gone back into the courtyard and fetched a water-filled ice bucket containing an unopened bottle of champagne. He also grabbed three mugs from the kitchen.
Lydia had driven them out for about half a mile into the olive groves of Underwood’s estate, to a ruined farmer’s hut that John had prepared for just such an occasion as this. He’d equipped it with shovels, pick-axes, a coil of rope and a couple of kerosene lamps. They’d then set to work digging a large hole. The soil was riddled with tough, spidery olive roots that made progress slow and difficult. He’d drunk the champagne on his own; Lydia and Miguel said they weren’t in the mood for bubbly, but thirst had made them grateful for the bucket of water. They’d got back just as daylight was beginning to blot the horizon like a litmus stain. He’d come straight up to bed, leaving Lydia and Miguel in the kitchen to no doubt plot his downfall. He laughed. Downfall indeed – as if he could he fall down any further than he already had.
His tongue was sticky and the roof of his mouth felt corrugated with dehydration. What was the time? He pulled the pillow from his face and looked at the bedside clock. The LED told him it was five twenty-two.
‘Shit.’ He sat up and the shards of glass in his head swirled again and embedded themselves in the soft flesh behind his eyes. He groaned and clambered from white sheets filthy with grave dirt, noticing as he did that he’d remembered to kick his shoes off the night before. He was impressed. He staggered off in the direction of the en-suite bathroom, struggling out of his clothes on the way and almost falling over as he tried to kick his jeans from his ankles. He got into the bathroom and took a packet of paracetamol from the cabinet. He popped two pills from the pack and dry-swallowed them before turning on the shower and climbing in underneath it. He switched the water temperature to cold, turned his face up to the shower-head and opened his mouth. He drank, the water filling his mouth faster than he could swallow it. He drank for perhaps a full minute before he reached for the soap and began to lather away the stains of last night’s horror. Something was gnawing at his memory. Something he needed to remember, not to do with Underwood, nor with Lydia, but somehow connected with both of them and himself. Something, or someone ...
The prisoner.
Shit. Gavin, the prisoner – the guy Lydia had kidnapped with the intention of sacrificing at Underwood’s resurrection. He had to get him out, and fast. He shut off the water and snatched up a towel. He ran into the bedroom and looked out of the window. The sun was still fairly high in the sky, but it was in its descent.
‘Shit!’ he hissed. He dried himself as quickly as he could then hurriedly dressed in a pair of shorts, a t-shirt and baseball boots. As he struggled with the laces, he recalled the details of the deal he had made with Lydia concerning Gavin the night before as they were digging the grave. Lydia had been bitching about the spade work and how her hands were getting blistered. He’d told her she’d have to get used to it. She looked at her hands and showed them to him: in the lamplight they looked raw.
‘Look at my hands,’ she said. ‘I’m in agony! I can’t do this for the rest of my life. I feel like a fucking slave.’
‘No, you’re a servant,’ he replied, ‘not a slave. Slaves don’t get paid, do they?’
‘Are we getting paid?’
He stopped and leaned on his shovel. ‘You know, in all the excitement earlier on, I completely forgot to ask about terms and conditions. I presume we get some kind of wages. We should ask His Lordship tomorrow. And of course, we’ll need to ask about holiday pay, sick pay ... maybe there’s even a union we could join.’
‘Oh shut up, David. Stop taking the bloody piss! This is serious. My hands feel like they’ve been blowtorched.’
‘Don’t worry, Lydia,’ said David, going back to his digging. ‘They’ll toughen up in no time.’
‘I don’t want them to toughen up! What do you think I am, a docker? A navvy?’
‘Oh, no, but from now on, you are a gravedigger. It’s yet another glamorous ingredient of our wonderful new life with Underwood.’ He grinned, but she wasn’t amused. ‘That is, of course, unless we can get His Lordship to stop killing people and start using blood donors instead. That way, there’ll be no more corpses, and so no more grave-digging.’
Without looking up at him, she nodded. ‘Yes, yes. I suppose you’re right.’
He stopped digging. ‘Thank you.’ He took a swig of the champagne and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘So, does this mean you’re gonna back me up on the transfusion idea with His Lordship tomorrow night?’
She looked at her hands, then at the bodies of Ana and Beltran where they lay beside the hole, ready to be rolled in. She nodded. ‘Yes. All right.’
‘And what about the kid in the cellar? Will you help me get him away?’
She snorted. ‘Now hang on, David. His Lordship knows all about our guest. He’ll be expecting him for breakfast.’
‘Yeah, but what if we made it a fait accompli? Got Gavin out of there; set up a couple of donors; and just offered him a transfusion breakfast instead?’
‘He’d go bloody mental on us again, that’s what. Have you already forgotten how we came to be standing in this hole?’
‘’Course I haven’t, but don’t worry, I’ll take the blame for it. All you need to do is get the donors. All right?’
Lydia looked unconvinced. ‘But what if he kills the donors again? We can’t afford to lose any more Sect members.’
‘No, he won’t kill any more Sect members,’ he nodded to Ana and Beltran. ‘He killed these two because he was starved, he was ravenous. But he won’t be like that again. We’ll be all right.’
‘We’ll be all right? I don’t know how you can stand there, pretending to be such a bloody expert – you got it really rather wrong last time.’
‘Yes, all right, I was wrong, I admit that. But you know yourself, he’s rational now, he regrets what he did, and he’ll be reasonable when it comes to letting the kid go. I’m sure of it. Oh, he might be a bit pissed off with me, but I can deal with that.’
She made a lazy strike at the dirt with her spade. The impact sent a fresh shock of pain to her hands and she shrieked and flung the spade aside. ‘Oh, fuck this! I’ve had enough.’ She clambered out of the grave. ‘Yes! I’ll back you up, all right? Just get me away from this fucking hole.’ She went to the car, got in and slammed the door. Without looking back at David and Miguel, she slid down in her seat and out of their view.
‘You hear that?’ asked Miguel. ‘I think she’s crying.’
The sound of Lydia’s weeping was low, like she was trying to muffle it. David pushed his spade into the earth and resumed digging. ‘She’ll live, Miguel. Just leave her alone for a bit. She’ll be all right.’
Now, David stood up and went to his bedroom door. He went out and hurried down the hall to Lydia’s room. He knocked, but there was no reply. ‘Lydia?’ he called, opening the door a crack. ‘Lydia? Are you up yet?’ He looked inside. The bed had been slept in, but was empty. Her bathroom door was open. ‘Lydia?’ There was no reply.
He turned back to the hall an
d shouted down its length, ‘Lydia?’ The house was silent. ‘Fuck it.’ He ran to the staircase and hurried downstairs. Careful to ignore Underwood’s ever-amused portrait on the wall, he ran on through to the kitchen. ‘Lydia?’ Two coffee mugs stood on the kitchen table. He picked one up: it was cold, but the ring of liquid in the bottom was still wet. It was a hot day; in this temperature the liquid would have dried in only a few hours. So she must have left fairly recently. He put the mug down and noticed the note propped against the salt and pepper mills. He picked it up and read:
Flinch.
I need a haircut. Kindly pop into town and arrange for a barber to come out to the house this evening. Oh, and get him to bring along a jar of Brilliantine or Brylcreem, or whatever chaps are using on their hair these days.
Pip pip
U.
The signature letter “U” was signed with a flourish. Beneath it, in the same ink but by a different hand, was written:
David,
I’ll sort this out. Get the blood transfusion equipment ready. Back before sundown.
L.
David considered Underwood’s note for a moment. Had it been on the table last night when he came in? He hadn’t seen it. But then there could have been a sheep in a blonde wig and a bikini on the table last night and he wouldn’t have seen that either. He put the note down and went to the fridge. He was starving. Inside were various party leftovers that Miguel had cleared away the night before. He took out a plate of thick Spanish omelette that had been cut into segments. He took a piece and pushed it into his mouth. As he chewed, he took out a plate of cold sliced meats and a carton of UHT milk. He drank from the milk carton and helped himself to another piece of omelette. Then he picked up both plates and the milk carton and set off in the direction of the storage cellar where Gavin was being held prisoner. When he got to the cellar door, he set the food down on the floor and reached up along the door frame for the key.
