by Steve Mosby
And then he'd found something else. Just a brief aside in a comment trail.
Let me tell you the worst thing *I've* ever seen…
What followed wasn't a video or even an image. It was simply a phrase, but it had lit a fire inside him. When he'd first read it, his heart had tripped, stumbled - and then begun beating hard and fast. A cold sweat had prickled on his face. He wasn't even sure what the story meant, but it was certainly the worst thing he'd ever read as well. And from that point on, he'd been lost. Driven to comprehend.
After a moment, White moved his hands down and stared across the table at him. Kearney saw that the confusion in the man's expression had been replaced by barely concealed disgust. He felt that mirrored within himself. A sense of the purest shame he'd ever known. He was dirty. Revolting.
'Why, Paul?' White said.
And Kearney was about to explain - to tell White at least part of it - when something inside him suddenly hardened, resisting the idea. His emotions clenched up like a fist. •
No. You're not going to do this.
You're not going to tell him anything.
And it didn't matter anyway. A man like White wasn't interested in the why. He wasn't even prepared for it: the fact that the question was its own answer; that asking why was like directing a video camera at a television. You got the same image, repeating to infinity, smaller and smaller. It happened all by itself, and it formed a tunnel that, once you started to look, you could do nothing but fall deeper and deeper into.
So Kearney said nothing.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dan Killingbeck watched his son disappear out through the back door, chasing the dog. Sam was still dressed in shorts and a T-shirt - probably still sand in the creases - and he was little more than an enthusiastic flap of thin limbs. The boy was so uncoordinated recently, he thought. Eleven years old now, his body was growing up faster than his mind could keep track of.
A part of Dan was glad he was still a boy at heart, though - that Sam was as excited about picking Barney up from the kennels and bringing him home as he had been about the holiday they'd just been on. As he was about everything, really. It was nice to see.
A lovely kid.
That's what people said when they met him. He was sweet and good-natured. Secondary school was probably going to kill him.
'Watch yourself out there,' he called.
'Yeah, yeah.'
The words drifted back in on the cool evening air, more breathless than dismissive. But Sam would be fine out there with Barney. God help anyone who messed with his son with that dog around. Even Dan himself was second when Sam came to visit. That was fine too.
He shook his head and threw his car keys down on the kitchen table; they clattered, skittered to a halt. At the far end of the room, beside the door, the blinds were open. In the pitch black square of the window, he could see a blurred, yellow reflection of himself, and he watched as it shrugged off the leather jacket it was wearing, and hung it, down out of sight, over the arched back of the kitchen chair.
Then he ran his fingers through his hair and turned away. Stretched his back. It had been a long drive today, and in some ways he was glad to be home; but there was always something bitter about returning. He got Sam two weekends a month, which was OK, but the highlight of the year was always the long week he got in the summer, which was the week just gone.
For the last few years, after Joanne finally agreed, he'd taken Sam to a campsite in France. Just a simple place, really. There was the two of them, a tent, and a double cooking stove that he made Sam take half charge of. In the daytime, they sat and read, or drove to the nearby castle, or took the path down to the beach. In the evenings, they caught films at the open-air cinema. Most important of all, they talked. There were times when Dan felt he had so much he wanted to tell his son, and other times when he just wanted to listen and think: Jesus - isn't he just fucking great?
It took at least two days there and then the same back, and Sam loved staying in the bed and breakfasts too. On the radio, they alternated favourite CDs and his son laughed at his attempts at singing. Outward bound, Dan drove pretty quickly; the way home, he stretched it out a little. Even today, with Sam mostly asleep against the passenger window, his son's face reminding him of the baby he'd once been, Dan had slowed the journey down. As though it wasn't the time they had together, but the distance.
Now that he was back, habit took him over to the fridge for a beer. Bathed in the light, he paused. He wouldn't normally drink with Sam here - it was sort of an unwritten law he had, designed to contradict any of Joanne's propaganda. But then he shrugged to himself. One wouldn't make much difference, and Sam was getting older now.
At the time of the divorce, when things got quietly nasty, his own father had given him the best advice he'd ever had. Just don't play a game. Never say anything bad; just be a good father, as much as you can. Because the only worry he had was losing Sam's affection. And even if he was momentarily swayed, his son was smart: the way most kids were. Dan had lost touch with his old man as a teenager, convinced of all kinds of things, but only really on the surface, where his mother had needed to see it. His father had soaked it up quietly, confident that Dan had always known the truth deep down. And, of course, he had. Sam would too.
So he twisted off the cap.
And that was when Sam, still out in the back garden, began screaming.
They collided at the kitchen door.
'Sam?'
His son pressed himself tightly against him; Dan could feel his heart beating as he put his arms around the boy. But even as he tried to hold him, Sam twisted and pointed out into the dark garden.
'A monster! It's killing Barney!'
'A what?'
'A monster!'
Dan gripped his son's shoulders.
'Sam. Go inside now.'
'It's out in the field.'
The boy started crying, so Dan physically turned him around and moved him back into the kitchen. Tried to make the hold on him a more reassuring one for the second before he released it.
'It's OK. Just stay here.'
'Be careful.'
'I’ll be fine.'
Dan glanced left and right and found the torch sitting on top of the fridge. He'd got it out when he was packing last week, estimated that the battery wouldn't last, then dug out the smaller one from upstairs instead. Now, he pressed the rubbery button and weak light illuminated the grass at the edge of the lawn. It would do.
'Just stay here.'
He stepped outside, then reached behind him and pulled the kitchen door closed. Whatever was happening, he didn't want Sam to see it. He had an unpleasant feeling about what was going on at the far end of the garden. Barney's enthusiastic scrappiness was endearing when he was playing inside; when he got out in the field and crossed paths with the local wildlife… less so. One of the neighbours' cats had been found dead a month or so back, and he'd had his suspicions. The neighbour had too, but nobody could prove anything.
Not again, he thought.
Please God, just let it be a… fox or something.
Dan followed the flagstones up, training the torchlight at ground-level, and then raising it as he reached the fence up ahead: just posts with barbed wire strung between them. Beyond it, the tall, wavering grass of the field. Far back, the trees were like black clouds against the dark-blue night sky.
He couldn't see a thing.
'Barney?'
But he heard something. It didn't sound much like a fight. Barney was snuffling, growling a little. He called his name again and the dog barked eagerly in response, but didn't come as he'd been taught. Too distracted by something.
At least he didn't sound hurt.
Dan stopped at the end of the path and moved the torchlight methodically along the ground at the base of the fence, shivering in the breeze. He wrinkled his nose. Something smelled bad, he thought. Not terrible, but… off.
His hand stopped moving as
the light fell on a section of fence close to the corner post. Barney was there, his hindquarters low down and shuddering. Struggling with something.
'Barney.'
He said it sharply. Maybe because of the light, the dog took notice this time. It let go of whatever it was working at and turned to look at him, a reproachful look on its face.
Dan glared back.
'House.'
The dog trotted to one side, and the light fell on what it had been fighting with. Dan froze. His hand began trembling. He didn't even notice it when Barney slunk past him and padded back towards the house.
Which suddenly felt a long way behind him.
His first thought was that Sam had been right. It was a monster. The face was vaguely humanoid, but swollen and pale, the features lost apart from a single, huge black space where an eye should have been. The thing was completely still. Dead. The skin on its arm was mottled, and it appeared to be pointing at him.
He swallowed. There was no such thing as monsters, of course, and after that first jab of shock he realised exactly what he was looking at. Barney must have smelled it, run into the field, and then dragged it back here as best he could.
God, the face…
He recognised it from the newspaper.
* * *
Part Four
* * *
Twenty-Nine
The next morning, I woke up early. The miniature kettle on the table beside the bed rumbled and clicked as I made myself a piss-weak coffee, and then I sat cross-legged on the end of the bed, in the light from the small television, waiting for the local news to come on.
The first item was a double shooting in the suburbs.
I sipped my coffee slowly, trying to work it past the knot that was tightening in my throat. When they went to the reporter on scene, he was standing outside Mike and Julie's house.
I nodded to myself. In my heart, I'd already known that something had happened, but there was still something shocking about seeing it on the television screen in front of me. The building now looked even more unfamiliar and strange than it had when I'd first turned up there.
I waited.
The reporter said, 'Police have also revealed that a baby was found at the house. The child is apparently uninjured and is currently being cared for by trained officers.'
Josh. At least that was something.
But then I remembered Mike and Julie and realised that it wasn't. It really, really wasn't.
You shouldn't have come back.
The voice had been right all along. Everything here seemed to have stemmed in one way or another from my leaving in the first place, and now my return had made things even worse. I didn't understand it all, and it was true that I never meant any of it, but neither of those facts seemed to matter any more. Perhaps they never do.
Regardless, I'd already decided what was going to happen next. My passport was out on the bed beside me; everything else was packed. I was going to leave. Maybe it was another mistake, but sometimes you have to make them, just because that's all there is on offer. And if you're going to end up damned by your actions, it's better for it to be the things you didn't do, rather than the ones you did.
I sipped my coffee.
Besides, there was nothing else I could do.
I certainly couldn't go to see my brother. The missing link in the chain had come to me last night. How had the man in the grey suit moved from a mention of Sarah and James at Ellis's flat to talking to Mike?
I mean, has he even had any other visitors?
That was all I could think of: that Mike had been the only person who'd been visiting my brother in prison. Yesterday evening, I'd wondered how well-connected the men I'd seen at the hotel were. They obviously had some kind of contact within the police, and now this indicated they had access to prison visiting records as well. So they would know about my appointment.
I tipped back the dregs of my coffee and nodded to myself again. All that was entirely true.
And yet I couldn't shake the feeling I'd had last night on the train, and I knew the idea of going to the prison had brought something else along with it. It wasn't just fear of these men. It was the same small curl of panic I'd felt in Venice. And even though I tried to ignore it, I wondered about that.
I wondered if maybe what I was running away from was not the man in the suit at all, but something James might tell me, and that I would finally be forced to see.
At just before ten, I walked up along the wide, curving driveway that led to the prison's reception area.
It was another nice day. There was a warm, gentle breeze, and the air smelled of cut grass from the neatly trimmed verges on either side of the drive. Up ahead, the prison itself looked like a castle from a children's story: a solid old building covered with turrets that stood out against the blue sky and the white, comforting tufts of cloud behind. It was almost tranquil here.
But the knot of emotion remained in my throat, growing tighter with every footstep. The voice in my head was adamant that this was a huge mistake, for several different reasons, and that I really didn't want to do this.
And that was the point.
You were right, I'd told Sarah. You have to face things. Ever since I'd returned here, I'd been telling myself I was taking responsibility for my actions: that I was dealing with the repercussions of what I'd done. But perhaps I hadn't been. In fact, I thought that coming here today might be the first thing I'd done right since I arrived. The fact I didn't want to was evidence of something.
But with every step, that feeling increased.
You shouldn't be doing this.
The glass doors at the front of the building slid open, and I walked into the reception. There was a single guard sitting at a desk, concentrating on paperwork. To my right, an area of plastic seats, where the people were waiting quietly, minding their own business, like patients waiting to be seen in a surgery. In one corner, there was a woman in her twenties, with a little girl curled up asleep on the seat beside her. Several older people were staring into the mid-distance; some young people were slouched out, arms and faces folded. Nearest the door, a woman with tired eyes was ignoring the child in front of her, who was banging toy bricks together.
None of them paid me any attention.
I gave my details at the desk, fished out some ID, and then took a seat with the others. No alarm went off. Nobody looked at me. The only sound was the little boy with the bricks; every time he clacked them together, my heart jumped a little.
Just after ten, another guard came to collect us. We were taken down a corridor and through security. It was too late to back out now. From there, we were led into a large room. It had the smooth, polished, wooden floor of a school gymnasium, and the folding tables were set up like desks for summer exams. Every small noise - the scuff of feet, quiet coughing - echoed around. Down one side, there was a long, makeshift counter loaded with clean cups at one end and used ones at the other. A woman in the middle was pouring out teas and coffees from black plastic urns.
I picked a table and sat down.
Ready for this, whatever it might bring.
A few minutes later, they brought the prisoners in from a door at the far end of the room. The men trooped along in a line, then dispersed amongst the tables, seeking out the mothers, wives and families that had come to visit them. They were all dressed in casual clothes - jeans, T-shirts, jumpers - but had bright orange bibs tied around their chests, which made them look like labourers coming in for a break from work.
No James.
Out of everything I'd anticipated happening, I hadn't prepared myself for the most likely eventuality of all - that my brother would decline my visit.
After a minute, the door echoed shut. Everyone around me was settling down, leaning forward, the air full of conversations that mingled into a single, complex murmur. I was left very obviously alone. Upright and awkward in a room full of people huddling together.
I was wondering what to do when I noticed a mid
dle-aged man in a suit and small, round glasses. He was standing at the side of the room, whispering to one of the guards. Both of them began peering around. When the man's gaze hit me, it stayed.
So that was it then.
I looked back at him and waited. There didn't seem any point doing anything else. A moment later, he began to thread his way between the tables towards me, and when he reached mine he leaned down, speaking quietly, so the people around us couldn't hear.
'Is it Mr Connor?'
'Yes.'
'Would you come with me, please?'
The man escorted me back down the corridor, and introduced himself as Charles Peterson, explaining that he was the prison's Family Liaison Officer. He'd left instructions at the front desk for them to call through when I arrived, he said, but for some reason it had been missed.
At this point, as he apologised to me, I understood that I wasn't being arrested. But that was about all I understood.
'Can you tell me what's going on?'
Peterson nodded, but didn't. 'We'll talk in my office.'
He led me inside. It was small and tidy; there was a window at the far side, and little more than a desk, chairs and potted plant in between. He closed the door behind us and gestured for me to take a seat. Something was humming, and it was too warm in the room. As I sat down, Peterson sighed gently to himself and began adjusting buttons on an AC unit by the window.
I lost patience. 'What's this about, Mr Peterson?'
He gave up on the AC and sat down on the other side of the desk. Then rested his forearms on it and looked at me.
'I'm sorry to have to tell you,' he said, 'that your brother died last night.'
His voice was serious and professional, with just the right amount of sympathy underlying the tone.
'OK,' I said. Then I shook my head, leaning forward. 'Sorry, what did you just say?'
'Your brother,' he said. 'James Connor. He was found in his cell yesterday evening. He was taken to the infirmary, but they were unable to resuscitate him. I'm really very sorry to be telling you this.'
