Sufferer's Song

by Savile, Steve

  “Then where the fuck are they?” Low, menacing. A very definite threat. “And no more pissing me about.”

  “I don't know. I don't know. I told you everything I remember.” Pathetic.

  “Not good enough old man.”

  Devlin got up and left, slamming the classroom door behind him. He stood in the corridor, working the stiffness out of his neck and shoulders and thinking about the two people who remained beyond his tenuous grasp but who had to be apprehended for any of several reasons, not least of which being their potential as light bearers. Johnny Lisker, Alex Slater. A frightening rage seethed under the surface of his turbulent thoughts, and he was perceptive enough to tag this one as something quite different from any anger he had thus far birthed.

  The thrill of it was a dark intensity that shivered through him, the bliss akin to sexual urgency of the most sadistic nature. With nowhere to go, that longing was building up into an acute metamorphosis of feelings; fear and bewilderment, anger and rage.

  Every synapse, every impulse and every nerve ending seemed to carry that inevitable last. Rage.

  To Andy McKenna: “He'll talk. The old bastard is nearly pissing himself.”

  A nod from McKenna, who seemed caught up within his eyes for a moment too long to dismiss. So close to the Good Cop, Bad Cop routine it left him wanting to scream all of the frustration and anger out as one hell-wrenching bellow. “Now give me five minutes alone with Richards and I'll have him confessing to everything from the IRA bombings to 9/11.”

  McKenna called the two officers out of the interview room, ushered Devlin in and turned his back because he didn't want to know.

  Hearing it would be bad enough.

  * * * * *

  Alone with Richards, Devlin laid out his biro on the legal notepad, and then draped his jacket over the back of the school chair.

  “Now, you were explaining,” he prompted, rolling his shirt sleeves up and removing his wedding ring. “Why you killed Monk Sanders.”

  “I was doing no such thing,” Richards protested, sounding weak, but not as yet beaten.

  “Okay, doc. Fine,” he managed the thinnest of smiles, the shimmer of emotion confined to his lips, never so much as threatening to reach his troubled eyes. And no matter what Brent Richards’ stance, however much he wheedled and pleaded, Devlin was content to beat him until the doctor was prepared to share his soul, never mind his secrets. He stood up, walked around the desk. He hauled Richards up with his left hand, grabbing his shirt at the throat. “Maybe this will help jog your memory.”

  He rammed his fist into Richards’ ribs. Hard. “Should leave a nice bruise. Been getting careless again, doc?”

  Richards bit down on his lip. Eyes puffing up red.

  “Have it your way. Plenty of others just waiting to come in and take a pop, doc. No one likes a fella who gets his kicks by messing with kids.”

  Devlin rammed his fist in again.

  * * * * *

  The sun was high and shining hot enough to dry out the hills.

  They had passed above the tree line before any of them spotted the third van gliding into the chapel car-park. The fact that Devlin had fallen back on six tracker dogs was something none of them had anticipated, despite in Kristy's case, her determination not to be surprised. Mentally, Kristy added a new tag to her rapidly assimilating case folder marked with Todd Devlin's name: Not afraid to utilise any means at his disposal. Since he'd pushed things this far, by bringing in the sniffer dogs, she was half expecting to see the local fox hunters come galloping through as Devlin’s newest addition to his tracking arsenal.

  This whole search idea was hopeless at best. They couldn't hope to cover everywhere; they would need three or four hundred bodies, easily, to have any chance of searching the peaks anywhere near as thoroughly as they needed to. And she still felt annoyed with herself, as well as silly, for owning up to Ben Shelton just how messed up she was feeling about everything. Crying on a stranger’s shoulder wasn’t what Kristy liked to think of as her usual style.

  “I’m surprised you managed to find a copy. I thought I had bought up all the remaindered copies. I usually hold midnight book burning sessions in the back garden. I sacrifice a copy at least once a week, to keep the fella's in the Secret Story Shop off my back.”

  “Could be a story in that,” Daniel offered. “Book Burning Satanist Author In Blood Orgy Sacrifice To Heathen Cult. How's that sound?”

  “Prime Pulitzer stuff,” Kristy assured him, a smile spreading itself like strawberry jam across her face.

  The fact they were up nearly eight hundred feet, combing the hillside for a murder suspect and his erstwhile accomplice never quite made it to the back of any of their minds, but almost consciously, they made an effort to jolly the conversation along as naturally as was possible. There was something altogether odd about that in itself. Something almost peculiarly English.

  Kristy checked her watch. Two hours left before her rendezvous in the park with Robin Stone, and it was going to take her very nearly an hour to get off the mountain and drive back to town.

  “I'm going to have to call it a day pretty soon. Got to get back to see someone for four.”

  “No problem,” Daniel assured her. “Ten minutes down the hill and you're in the village. Can't get lost, just follow the steam clouds.”

  “I'll do my best to remember that when they've got the helicopter out looking for me come tea time, thanks.”

  The greens of the spruce and the Scots pine and all the others were just so incredibly verdant against the contrast of the patchwork sky with its vapour trails, blue sheets and steamy froth. Quite breathtaking. The view ran down to the sheep fields and across to the custard fields before eventually running into the stark, elegaic beauty of Swallowship Hill and its archaic cemetery. Nothing false, or man made in sight either way, until Hexham. Even the supposed main roads were masked by the crest of the ridgeline after the Spine Road petered out. It was hard to imagine a better place to stand on top of the world and look down, though it wasn't so difficult to come up with a better time or set of circumstances.

  The foundations of the feudal manor house were probably around here someplace, and then she thought of Pilgrim's Hall just over the hill. So maybe the village had moved over the years, retreating from what was now Richards' evil haven into the cup of the hills?

  If it had, she couldn't find it in herself to apportion any blame. It was all so naturally Northumberland, laid out beneath her feet in a quilt of greens and gradually russetting browns.

  Across on the other side random grey-brown stones settled around the cotton wool bodied sheep. The sun was so bright now, so suggestive of real warmth; the predominantly Easterly wind's bite was deceptively harsh. Ben was grateful for his thick cable knit sweater and wax jacket, even if, together, they made him look like a poor imitation of a young Conservative farmer out for a Sunday ramble.

  With the dogs barking behind them, Kristy said dryly, “Well, they'll know where coming by now.”

  Ben sucked on his lips thoughtfully before nodding. “If they're here at all.”

  “Oh, they're here all right,” Kristy assured him, feeling the eyes lingering there on the nape of her neck.

  * * * * *

  They watched the dogs gradually work their way closer, always straining at their leashes like slavering bloodhounds, only to drift away without ever picking up the scent. Must be too old, Johnny thought, not altogether sure that a scent could get too old for a trained hunter, but hopeful.

  It didn't solve the problem, other than to throw up a temporary stop-gap solution.

  “What're they doing?” Johnny hissed.

  “Just looking. They haven't got a clue.”

  “So, who the fuck told them we were up here in the first place?” Johnny had his back pressed against the stone, needed its reassurance. One thing Alex had noticed already, in the troughs, Johnny was as good as agoraphobic. In the cave, he'd scuttle off into the furthest corner and pull the sleepin
g bag up over his head. Sometimes, he'd stay like that for ages. For him to even be out now was a sign of just how desperate things were becoming.

  Cocky, confident Johnny Lisker, knuckle-headed arsehole with a death wish, was already looking for a way out of the mess he had sunk them into.

  But even for Johnny, home wasn't an option.

  Not as yet, at least.

  Of the three other searchers he could see, Alex recognised Daniel Tanner, and the writer Ben Whatshisface. But not the girl. Mind, she was little more than a quarter inch blot back up the hill a good four hundred yards.

  He couldn't believe no one had seen them as yet, but didn't expect their luck to hold out. Sooner or later someone would stumble their way, it was inevitable and it all came back to how serious they were about finding them. If Johnny had killed that biker in The Railway House, and watching the hunters Alex was rapidly becoming certain he had, then they going to be bloody serious about it, all right.

  Christ, what a mess.

  The best thing he had to say for himself was that he was still alive, might as well have been alone for all the use Johnny was proving to be, and frightened.

  Needles from the overhanging Scots Pine had been wind-shed and were matting haphazardly to provide a carpet of insulation from the dirt. Sweet smelling branches interwoven above, behind and all around, sunlight only trickling through. The small stand of evergreens was the best shelter close enough for them to scramble to from the crack up to the Judas Hole. Dense enough to give some protection from the watching eyes if either of them stood up - not that Alex expected Johnny to stand now or sometime soon. He pushed aside the prickly blanket, picking at the bits that were tangled in his hair, and then crawled on his hands and knees back to the edge of the copse where he lay, studying the incline between his perch and the procession of sniffing hounds, scratching where the needles scratched him.

  The cutting wind of the helicopter had faded into a silent breeze. The helicopter itself, circling over the cemetery, far enough away not to present a problem.

  Johnny came up behind him.

  Christ, he felt jumpy. Jumpy, that was a laugh. He was too bloody scared to feel jumpy, with or without the circulation cutting off in his hands. Alex had to flex them and then rub them together briskly to force the blood to flow. Ran them through his hair. If Johnny's unkempt mane was any sort of yardstick, Alex reasoned, he must look like a cross between the Wild Man of Borneo and Piltdown Man. He smelled as bad as both.

  The stubble on his chin was rough, not yet long enough, or soft enough to be called a beard, but getting that way. Alex hated the feel of it intensely.

  Next to him, Johnny sank to his knees, moving with obvious difficulty, his cheeks burning red, face alive and alert to the one overriding need – the hit that was almost too late in coming.

  He took a stone and tossed it in a shallow curve, aiming for but missing the hill stream.

  “Don't be so fucking stupid,” Alex hissed, shocked by the conflicting emotions in Johnny's torn face. There were tears in his eyes, that ever-present grin and a sad look of blankness underlying it all. Johnny wasn't even there, not with him. He was away somewhere completely unreachable.

  He snapped a dry twig between his hands.

  A sudden flight of pigeons took to the sky, loud in the still air. Loud enough to draw the seekers attention to their stand of trees, should have drawn them like flies. Drawing a shaky breath, Alex saw them consciously ignore the most blatant of nature's signposts.

  Maybe they don't want to be the ones to find us, Alex reasoned, looking again at the blonde woman with her raggy shoulder-length bob, down to her legs, the curve of her buttocks. Nice piece of tit and arse, that. She seemed to be saying her goodbyes. Maybe they were giving up looking, after all.

  Johnny was looking at her as well. Staring. Touching himself, oblivious to Alex. Alex was torn two ways, he wanted to haul Johnny up and pummel his fist into his forever smiling face, and he wanted to get up and stalk off. It was a close run thing.

  He couldn't go on living like this, on the outside all of the time. And, after all, what had he done? I wasn't the one with the knife, was I? He thought to himself. I wasn't the one with the knife. Good God, no! He had made a mistake, panicked and run and as of now, was paying the price with every minute he had to spend with Johnny in this Godforsaken strip of Hell.

  And there was the tightness in his lungs to worry about.

  Damned asthma. A couple of quick blasts on the Ventolin should sort it. Alex fumbled for the inhaler, forgetting it was back in the cave. Not smart, kiddo, he berated himself, trying consciously to relax his breathing. Told himself it was psychosomatic, like Eddie Spaghetti in the Stephen King film, puffing water and all the time thinking it was the magic medicine. The tightness was still there, ever present since Beth's verbal knife in the heart. Not to be outdone by his throat, his lungs felt as if they were filling up with water, drowning out the air available for Alex to breathe with. He was on his feet and in fresh air, and yet he really did feel as if he were drowning.

  The murmur of voices, feet and dogs drifted along the slope. A haunted and haunting sound that matched Alex's current nightmare with frightening synchronicity. The dogs sniffing, trying to catch the whiff of the fox's scent on the breeze. And the woman coming their way.

  Coming his way.

  Peering through a clamp of thorny weeds, Alex saw her, not a local, not a pig, no badge of authority to the way she walked, picking her way down the slope and moving easily, it had to be said. Alex made a downward motion, hoping Johnny would read his meaning, and a moment later flattened himself to the ground.

  Johnny flopped back onto his belly, still grinning inanely but, and a small mercy it was, no longer playing with himself.

  East and west, the land was the same verdant green, rolling grassland and wide scattered thickets. Sweat trickled down Alex's face. She was heading for them, all right. Unless something or someone drew her away, she was going to come by less than ten feet from where they lay. Shaking, he mopped his brow, counting to stay calm. He tried to speak, to warn Johnny, but his mouth, painfully dry, wasn't about to have any of that. After a minute he managed to work up some saliva, enough to whisper: “Stay down,” and as an afterthought, “And pray she doesn't decide she needs a pee.”

  That nearly made him laugh, thinking about it, caught because the woman needed a piss and chose their thicket. Just as long as the Golden Shower doesn't rain on my head. . .

  * * * * *

  Kristy couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched, as understandable as it was, coming down off the hill with the knife-happy yokel equivalent of Norman Bates hiding out nearby. Certainly not a comforting thought.

  She was starting to wish she had never come up here.

  It was too isolated for her liking all of a sudden. Too open. Too much space. She turned to wave at Ben and Daniel, tipped a finger to her temple in a rough salute, and turned back to the barely trodden track Daniel had assured her led back down to Westbrooke. Here and there, dotted about on the slope, stands of Scots pine, sycamore, gorse and birch acted as pathfinder markers, keeping her straight. Not so long ago this sort of downhill jaunt would had her whistling Dixie or The Bare Necessities or some other happy tune, but as of halfway through last night her love of nonsense songs and music had died, laid open on the hospital floor with a good friend for company.

  Kristy thought of Jason, thought of Richards and his get-away-from-it-all, the Messiah pose in his press release. She wondered if the fear, the guilt and sadness would ever simply dissolve, or if it would remain, haunting her forever with the photographically sharp recollection of Jason's disembodied hands gripping the bed posts, rigid.

  And what was worse, ostensibly, the nightmare was still only just beginning.

  No, whistling now would have left her feeling too much akin to the Pied Piper, courting trouble she could well do without.

  She shivered, a goose treading on her grave, somewhere, sometime,
and started to run, the tears for Jason in her eyes and on her cheeks.

  * * * * *

  Johnny's eyes, never warm but now chillingly grey, icy, seemed to flay at the flesh and bone to get at his soul beneath. Those eyes scared the hell out of Alex. He turned quickly away, pretending to be interested in the thorny spines scraping at the skin of his neck, plucking at the shoots, doing anything not to have to look at those eyes. It was almost as if he was seeing Johnny's eyes, eyes he had faced down every day from childhood through to now, for the first time. Now Johnny's face was sallow, gaunt and. . . well, haunted.

  Johnny had more than his share of demons to shake from his back and all Alex wanted to do was go home. But not Johnny, nothing so simple for Johnny. Sweat had broken out on Alex's forehead. He was chewing his lip. The woman forgotten, the overwhelming sense of excitement promised by those eyes shaming him.

  “It’s over, Johnny,” Alex wasn't sure that he had said it in words. The words were inside his head, a promise of freedom, of going home and things being normal again except they'd never be normal, not with Beth, not with Johnny, not with anyone. It was fucked. He was fucked. . . but had they made it as far as his tongue?

  That ghastly smile that wasn't so much a smile as it was a calculated threat, flickered and froze on Johnny's blank face. Was that fear there in his eyes?

  “Say again,” Johnny demanded, hissed, obviously some tamped down faculty inside him still mindful of the risks involved with shouting out here, with the hunters as close as they were. “Say that again, say it,” Johnny pushed himself up level with Alex, pressed his face to Alex's, sour breath escaping through clenched teeth. “Come on, say it. Fuckin' say it!”

  Hands clenching and unclenching. A brittle twig snapped clean in two. Johnny spat into the dirt, over Alex’s shoulder. Never stopped looking, intimidating. Shades of colour swam through his pale blue eyes in a kaleidoscope of pain, anger, hate and betrayal. Eyes darted, always on the move, looking, searching for something or someone.