by Adam Nevill
If it gets in, you’ll see it . . . properly. You don’t want to do that. That’s what Ewan had said, after forcing himself inside Seb’s bedroom, two nights earlier.
Seb had come close to being sick in his lap when he’d first endured this notion of an assassin that could materialize beside a bed.
Ewan had given it a name: Thin Len. The hanged child-killer. He’d described it as a ‘shade’, a ‘hinderer’, and up on Berry Head he’d gibbered to Seb about the ‘gliding of the double’. What else had Ewan said, during that time when his wits scattered at the mere idea of what had been sent after him? But it’s me! Me, it’s come for me. They sent it.
Within the theatre of his own mind, Seb had then rescreened the activities of several previous evenings he’d endured at his home, and with a vividness that left him feeling fragile.
After the detective had entered the room, he noisily pulled out a chair from the other side of the table. ‘So you are saying he wanted money from you? That was his reason for his travelling to the area?’
‘Yes, as far as I am aware. And he wanted me to write a book for him.’
When Seb divulged this information, Detective Leon seemed to encounter new ground, concerning the motives for blackmail and extortion. It took him a while to think of a response. Eventually, he asked for more details and Seb continued with the story he’d rehearsed in his hotel room, while desperately hoping that the police officer would fail to recognize the significant process of editing that Seb was employing in his statement.
‘But, I’m not entirely clear, Mr Logan, on how he came to be staying with you in the first place? In effect, he was your guest.’
At the first hint of a cross-examination, Seb wondered, and not for the first time that day, if he should request legal representation. At all costs he had to avoid describing the full facts of the phenomenon surrounding Ewan’s arrival in Torbay.
His voice less steady than it had been moments before, Seb attempted to explain himself. ‘I’d seen him around, as I told you. He’d been following me, watching me. Getting closer. And when he turned up on the drive, I was actually opening the front door. I’d just dropped a friend off at the train station in Paignton. And, well I . . .’ Seb struggled to admit that he’d been terrified. ‘He was, technically, a friend. An old friend from college. And he’d pretty much done this before, when I was living in London.’
‘You said earlier this was twelve years ago. The last time you saw him?’
‘That’s right. So I thought I’d find out what he wanted, and I hoped to encourage him to leave me alone. But he stayed. He became drunk. He was already half-cut when he arrived, but he carried on drinking. It got late.’
‘This was the first night, Sunday?’
‘Yes. He wouldn’t leave when I asked him to. He then suffered this terrible fit. I mean, it was awful. I thought he’d died. I’d never seen anything like it. And I didn’t have the heart to eject him after that, so he stayed for a second night.
‘I was at a loss as to what to do. Should I call you, an ambulance, or some department in Social Services? He was suffering from fits, using drugs, virtually homeless, an alcoholic. I offered to pay for a room for him but he refused. And that’s when we had our biggest disagreement, that second night. A massive row. There were several leading up to it, in fact, because of the outrageous demands that he was making. I just couldn’t get rid of him while he laboured under this assumption that he could just occupy my home and force me to write a book for him, as he sat around getting pissed. It just made me see red.’
‘You never called us.’
‘I thought . . . that I could deal with the situation myself. It was also embarrassing. I didn’t really want to draw attention to it. But the general aim of his visit was to extract assurances that I would help him. Then came the demands for money. He’d been through my personal financial records to find out what I was worth.’
‘I see. Did these disagreements ever become violent?’
Seb flushed hot then cold, and then hot again when he knew that the detective had seen his reaction. He thought of the scuffle up on Berry Head, and of the potential subcutaneous bruising on Ewan that might have been caused by the tussle. ‘A bit, yes. Early yesterday morning. I finally got him out of the house in the early hours, and chased him off into the nature reserve. There was some pushing at one point, and . . . Afraid I am no fighter, but it did become ugly at one point. This was after he demanded money from me. I’m afraid the red mist just fell again at that point.
‘He knocked me down. Despite his lifestyle, he was still bloody strong. And then he ran off. That was the last time I saw him, early yesterday morning. He went back to my place to fetch his bags. I didn’t want to stay at home after what had happened, so I took the room in Torquay and had the locks changed at home. From what you’ve told me, he obviously headed to this B&B in Paignton, and . . .’
The detective nodded, in what might have been agreement, because he’d probably already checked on Seb’s whereabouts with the staff at the Commodore Hotel. Seb hoped that the detective had done so too, because the hotel’s security cameras would reveal that he’d never left the hotel premises last night, and couldn’t possibly have killed Ewan in a guest house in the next town in the bay.
‘You don’t know where he was staying before he arrived in the area?’
‘I have no idea. He was very selective about what he told me. He liked to be enigmatic, you know, about himself, and where he’d been. But I had the impression he’d been involved in something unpleasant, some kind of group. He was reluctant to talk about it. I don’t know any more because he never gave me any details. Nothing, in fact. I think he’d just run out of options, so he came looking for me. He knew about the success of my books. That was my general impression of his motives.’
The officer nodded again, his eyes thoughtful, but otherwise inscrutable. ‘That’s very similar to what his mother said this morning.’
‘She must be getting on.’
‘Eighty-eight. But she hadn’t seen the deceased for three years. She said her son was studying. She couldn’t tell me much more. The only time she ever heard from him, he would ask her for money. It’s odd, but it was my impression that she was a bit wary, or even frightened of her own son. But she’ll have someone take care of the funeral arrangements, and she doesn’t want his effects sent back to Manchester.’
Seb thought of the two bin bags full of paper. He imagined them being hoisted into the back of a rubbish truck and he felt a wild and vindictive desire to laugh out loud. When the feeling passed, he considered it incredibly sad that Ewan’s jumble of paper, his great work, which was destined to change the very perception of the world, should suffer such a fate. The sum total of Ewan’s life, and his literary delusions, were going to a landfill or recycling plant. As was any recorded evidence of the reckless but remarkable things that he had actually achieved. It was a postscript that Seb would have struggled to invent in one of his own stories.
The detective checked through the shorthand notes on his pad. ‘I’m also going to assume he’d worn out his welcome with anyone else he knew. Anyway, there’ll be an autopsy to confirm cause of death, and we have his old medical records now. But unless anything else shows up, I doubt we’ll be in touch again. Thank you for identifying the body.’
The officer stood up. ‘Are you all right? We can recommend counselling for victims of this sort of thing.’
‘No, thank you. It’s all left me a bit dazed . . . I’m not entirely sure how I feel.’
‘That’s quite normal. Even a bit of guilty relief that it’s over, eh?’ The police officer smiled faintly, but knowingly. ‘I’ll have someone drop you back to the hotel.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Might be a bit of material too, eh, for the next book?’
This was the detective’s first acknowledgement of what Seb was known for locally. He didn’t know how to react, or even if he should. Levity seemed inappropriate.
DCI Leon remained unapologetic. ‘My wife’s read some of your books. She always liked that one about the moors.’
‘Oh, well, do thank her from me. That’s nice to know.’
‘Though she had a few problems with the last one about the ship. Can’t remember what it was called, or what she didn’t like about it.’
12
Second Death
So this is where Ewan died: 15 Beach Road.
The street was lined with two-storey townhouses, each building painted a different colour, from coral pink to duck-egg blue, with picnic benches on tiled forecourts and tall palms clattering their fronds behind low front walls overrun by an easterly wind.
Permanent signage the length of the street advertised Sky TV, room rates, AA star ratings and Rosette restaurant awards. Perhaps the road looked a little tired between seasons, but under a blue sky at any time of year, it effortlessly conjured impressions of family holidays, cosy rooms, carveries and suntanned granddads holding pints of Bays Topsail in the lounge bars.
Seb had always been fond of Paignton, particularly the seafront and the streets that led to the Esplanade. To him the little hotels were a living installation of English comforts, veritable Larkin poems twinned with facets of a living social history; places where the working class, and mostly the retired and those with young families, still came and stayed for their annual holidays and long weekends.
The area hadn’t been gentrified like Dartmouth or Totnes, so the town remained more affordable and retained a post-war echo. Moving with the times where necessary, but retaining the seafront for ordinary people. Those had always been his impressions whenever he walked inland from the long promenade. But Seb knew he’d never look at Paignton in the same way now.
To the east, gulls shrieked over the pier and the shoreline. Beyond the cinema, the pirate-themed mini-golf course and the Shoreline restaurant, where he liked to eat crispy squid, the sea stretched into a vast, euphorically blue distance. The near-empty fairground on the green flashed and blared.
A man passed on a mobility scooter, his Jack Russell trotting alongside the whirring carriage. Seb moved aside, then returned his attention to the Beach Haven Hotel. This shouldn’t have happened here. Ewan had no right bringing that here.
A retractable green awning covered the front windows on the ground floor and the rooms above were concealed by nets. The hotel’s rates were stencilled in white type on a staircase window. It looked all right. Neat and clean, the trees in good condition, the paintwork freshly mint green on the masonry and a bright white on the sills and around the doorframe. Seb bent over to open the tiny gate and entered. The front door was locked but the hotel was still advertising vacancies. He rang the bell and waited.
Three uneventful days and three tense nights had passed since Ewan had died. Seb had spent much of that time on walks in the nature reserve, around Torquay’s marina, and out to the lighthouse at the end of the slipway in Brixham. But whatever he’d been doing, he’d found himself incapable of thinking about much besides Ewan.
He’d also spoken with his agent and answered the most pressing emails from his publisher and the three film production companies adapting his books, but hurriedly. His ties to a life preceding the reunion with Ewan had failed to reform in his mind as important. As unpleasant as his reacquaintance with his old housemate had been, he’d been taken to the edge of the truly remarkable. The experience left him wondering if he’d be able to write about anything else. His perception of the world, and himself in it, had been fundamentally altered. Seeing the world through new eyes made him ponder if the sensation was similar to being devout.
An elderly man came to the guest house door. He was portly enough to fill the doorway and protrude out of it. Muscled arms emerged like hairy logs from a short-sleeved shirt, and as the morning brightness struck his face, his tinted glasses blurred the definition of his deep-set eyes.
Seb introduced himself, before stumbling through an explanation of his association with the guest house’s recently deceased guest. A connection that instantly made the man tense and too bemused to react. But Seb’s earnest offer to cover the missing payment on Ewan’s room did elicit a delayed response. The man’s accent was thick West Midlands. ‘You say he was a friend of yours?’
‘Once, but not for many years. I hadn’t seen him for a long time, until recently. All the same, I was still shocked, and I still am, when the police told me that he’d died.’ Seb looked up at the building. ‘Here. But he’d been staying with me for the two days before he passed away. He wasn’t very well.’
The man continued to weigh Seb up from the threshold.
Seb reiterated his desire to cover the unpaid bill. ‘It’s the least I can do, for some kind of closure. It’s very odd, but I feel some kind of obligation to him. I’d also like to ask you a couple of questions . . . about how he died. I mean, that night . . . It was so sudden and the police didn’t tell me much.’
The man finally relaxed and introduced himself as Ray, though Seb could appreciate how any mention of Ewan would cause reactions ranging from caution to outright horror. ‘You better come inside and talk to the wife. She’s better at this sort of thing.’
Seb was introduced to Dot, who came out from an office to stand behind a counter set in an alcove under the staircase. A front desk small enough to suggest a lectern. Even then, a vast array of brochures, stationery and equipment had been arranged upon it. Somewhere from the office behind, a telephone rang.
‘I’ll get it,’ Ray said, and then nodded his plump, hairless head to indicate Seb. ‘This fella was a friend of the one in number three.’
When he saw the look of dread on the woman’s face, Seb quickly redefined the ‘friendship’ for her, and found himself repeating the short speech that he’d edited and improved through repeat usage to explain his association with Ewan.
He also endeared himself to Dot by producing his wallet and then his credit card and insisting that he cover Ewan’s unpaid bill at the Beach Haven.
Seb was not entirely comfortable with the idea that he was paying for information, but what he desperately sought was a grim reassurance that Ewan had died because of a fit. That his much-weakened constitution and poor health, after decades of hard living, alcohol and substance abuse, had mostly been responsible for stopping his heart. Seb needed to believe that whatever it was that had been hunting Ewan could not kill a man by appearance alone. The idea of death by such an agency, and then a victim’s fate post-mortem, was the destination to which Seb’s thoughts had recently flowed, circled and then settled.
Dot returned from the office with a set of keys attached to a large plastic fob. Coming out from behind the tiny counter she said, ‘Come on up. I’ll show you the room.’
Ray shuffled from the office and stood at the foot of the stairs, reluctant to join the tour.
The little hotel was clean and plainly decorated. Clearly a business in which much pride and hard work had been invested, and this amplified the indecency of Ewan’s transgression. But Ewan had long stopped caring about anyone not committed to his obscure and selfish cause. What little sympathy Seb had conjured for him since his death evaporated.
When they stood outside number three, indicated by a brass number fixed into a newly white door, Dot said, ‘We came up in the morning because he still hadn’t paid. And you should have heard him in the night. He woke up the lady on the other side and the couple upstairs. We heard it too, me and me husband, but then it went all quiet in here.’ Dot nodded at the door as she unlocked the room. She didn’t share Seb’s sudden nervous reluctance to see it opened.
‘He liked a drink, that was clear, but he kept hisself to hisself and didn’t bother no one. Don’t think he went out much. Never ate breakfast here. Don’t think he was up in time. Only saw him eat once and that was chips.’
Seb followed Dot into the room. It was small but well kept. There was a bed with a fitted cabinet on one side, a wardrobe, a tiny desk and a flat-screen television att
ached to the wall.
‘We’ve given it a thorough clean and it needed a good airing.’ Dot paused and wrinkled her nose. ‘Between you and me, I don’t think he ever used the shower.’
Seb cleared his throat. ‘He certainly had his fair share of problems.’
‘It’s hard to tell with people these days. You know, with all their tattoos and piercings and things, but we’ve never been quick to judge, like. Live and let live, we’ve always said. You can’t jump to conclusions, but we were in two minds about letting him have the room in the first place. When we started to, you know, really catch wind of him, it was too late and he’d paid for twelve nights. He said he wanted to keep the room for a few more nights so we held it for him, but he never paid up when he came back. We felt a bit sorry for him too, you know. He seemed lonely. Depressed, like. And with the drinking we was just kind of counting down the days till he moved off. But that’s where we found him, by the radiator, under the window.’
Dot shuffled to the window as if to recreate the scene for Seb. ‘He was down the side of the bed, somehow, with his arms up like he was trying to climb out. Still in his clothes. I don’t think he had any other clothes with him, just bags of paper when the police went through his things. They wore gloves too and wouldn’t take his stuff with them. You could see they didn’t even like touching it, cus of the smell, like. Said someone would come and fetch it, but they still haven’t. Bags of paper he had with him. Fancy dragging that round with you? Horrible sound he made, though. Screams, you know, and really sudden, like.’
Seb nodded, trying to appear as thoughtful as he could manage. ‘No one heard anything else that night?’
‘Well that’s the strangest thing, because the lady down the hall, now she said she thought she’d heard someone else in his room on the night before Mr Hazzard died, when he wasn’t here, like. Sorry, Mr Alexander. But we never knew that at the time. He’d give us a false name. But the lady down the hall mentioned these noises she’d heard in Mr Alexander’s room to Ray – a complaint, to be honest, about the chap in three. She’s not here no more, otherwise I’d ask her to tell you what she told me. But she told us that she saw someone the night before he died, on his hands and knees, and moaning like he was unwell. Out in the hall. Or this fella on the floor might have been crying. We never saw no one come in though. The lady across the hall thought he was blind drunk, like Mr Alexander often was.
