Down Cemetery Road

by Mick Herron

  ‘ – Nah.’

  ‘. . . Dinah?’

  But there was only that wet hiccup in reply, as if the name had been escaping air, bubbling up through damaged channels to burst in the liquid gloom.

  Sarah put her hand to the woman’s cheek. She didn’t dare move her; didn’t anyway know how to move her, or where . . . It occurred to her now, they hadn’t stopped to check the body outside, just taken on trust he was dead. What else would he be, stretched out like that beneath the grey sky? . . . When she looked around, she noticed for the first time the pitiful decorations bluetacked to the walls; a child’s renderings of other children, animals, the sky, the sun, a house. The earth, in these pictures, was always a strip of green along the foot of the paper; the sky a strip of blue on the upper edge. Dinah.

  There was a bear, too, a big blue teddy bear. It lay by the door, exactly as if it had been –

  Oh, yes, shot.

  This had been Michael, she supposed. He was fading in her memory, she was surprised to find; probably because she was having difficulty putting what he had done here next to who he was. Who she thought he’d been. But he had come in the night, or early in the morning, and left this mayhem behind him; taken Dinah . . . She felt sick. For a moment it was a worse wound than this woman lying here had suffered: she had lain with that man, and what was he: a war criminal? Filled with revulsion, she forced her mind further back: would she have let him save her life if she’d known him capable of this? Somewhere between that point and sharing a bed, she drew the line, and somewhere on that line, he’d been balancing for years. Maybe Maddy Singleton had been the only hope he’d had, and even that hope was a dim reflection of betrayal; she was married to his brother soldier . . . Even now, Sarah had barely an inkling of the bond that had held those two together. But knew at least that it had been sealed with blood, and couldn’t be broken by less.

  She went to fetch the bear. There was nothing else she could do. It wouldn’t have surprised her if the woman had died in the moments it took to collect it, but she was still breathing when Sarah knelt by her once more with the ridiculous blue toy in her hands. The light in her eyes was flickering, or that might have been a trick of Sarah’s own eyes; watering now, making candlelight out of the gloom.

  There was a noise upstairs. Zoë coming back.

  ‘Die,’ the woman said again.

  ‘Dinah. Yes.’

  ‘Dine.’

  Dying. There was somebody with Zoë; Sarah could clearly hear two pairs of feet on the steps. How had she known they weren’t alone? Was that Michael? Or would he just have killed Zoë like he’d killed everybody else?

  But it wasn’t Michael. It looked, instead, as if Zoë had brought her bank manager along; a neat, medium man with a balding head and a cheap briefcase, who smiled pleasantly when he saw Sarah, as if he’d long been denied the pleasure of an introduction.

  ‘Can you help?’ she asked him.

  ‘Oh, I do hope so.’

  ‘She’s been shot. We think she’s been shot.’

  ‘What a pity. You must be Sarah Trafford, is that right? Sarah Trafford, née Tucker, late of Oxford?’

  ‘. . . Who are you?’

  ‘And your friend is –?’

  ‘Not important,’ said Zoë. ‘Look. Can you help her? She’s dying.’

  ‘I expect she is. Downey did all this, I presume? He’s a better soldier than we thought. Or else the child is just very, very important to him.’

  He stepped further into the room, and put the briefcase on the floor.

  ‘The funny thing is, she’s not his. Did you know that? The blood work was done. She’s definitely Singleton’s.’

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ Zoë said, ‘and I don’t know what the fuck you’re on about, but the question is, can you help her? She’s dying, for pity’s sake.’

  ‘Oh, we’re all doing that. Downey’s dying too, did you know? Caught something nasty in the desert. Long term, but definitely fatal. Just a little bit,’ said Howard, ‘like life.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ Zoë asked him.

  ‘Mad, no. Maybe a little disoriented.’

  But Sarah wondered.

  The man came closer, knelt by the dying woman. Something heavy in his pocket dragged at his jacket, ruining the cut. It looked awfully like, Sarah thought –

  ‘Die –’

  ‘Yes,’ said the man sadly.

  A gun, Sarah thought. It looked very like a gun.

  Amos Crane was using binoculars, binoculars he had found in the boot of the car. Now he sat on the harbour wall, scanning the sea for traffic; not sure yet what he was looking for, but confident he’d know it when he found it . . . Where the sea met the sky was just a thin grey stripe. Ideally there’d be a boat bobbing on that stripe, a boat with a big white sail with a blue and gold target stitched into it.

  My, he felt grand. Oh, he felt really fine.

  On the train he had slept at last, a sleep punctuated, bizarrely, by dreams of the woman he had seen, the woman in the red top, with the coffee and the railway sandwiches. But he’d woken refreshed. And the morning since had passed like clockwork, if about as slowly; he’d found himself delighting in the detail, savouring the moment, as if this were less a routine nutting than a swan song . . . Well, of course it was a swan song. He’d been present at a lot of those. He’d just never been the swan yet. He didn’t intend to be one now.

  . . . Nutting was an Axel-word. It was one of many. He’d been a magpie with his euphemisms, filching them from other contexts: sex and drugs and sports. He’d spoken of twatting and spliffing, and he’d always meant one thing. Rarely used the same word twice. Never had to explain himself. Back in the rarefied air of the office, it was all red-ribbon this and expedite that . . . Like working in a bank. Axel’s approach had been more honest, you couldn’t deny it. When you did a job on someone, you weren’t expediting them. You were splatting them, basically. It was a fact of life.

  . . . He wondered if Howard were here yet, and concluded: Chances were. Howard probably came by helicopter. No budgetary restraints for Howard, thank you very much. Amos closed one eye, and imagined the black circle he was looking through a gunsight. Pretty soon, he supposed, he’d be after a new lifestyle – new identity, new country, all the rest. Howard, though, would be looking for a new plane of existence. Along with Downey, the woman, the child . . .

  The child, yes. He’d taken her a teddy bear, but that hadn’t been sentiment, it had just been the job.

  He shifted a little, to ease the growing cramp in his leg. Doing the child wasn’t something he was looking forward to, obviously, but he’d never been one to shirk the painfully inevitable. So as was his habit, he put this detail from his mind. Let the next thing happen in its order. We’ll shoot that horse when we come to it.

  And way off in the distance a familiar boat hove into view, and Amos Crane thought to himself: Well . . .

  The woman died two minutes later.

  That was what the man had said, bending low over her, his hand to her pulse.

  Hard to know, Sarah thought, whether it was relief or defeat. For the woman, that is. Two minutes of struggle, then she stopped – sudden as that; no winding down, just a full stop instead of a comma. Sarah had left the room, walked up the stairs, come out here into the light and air – birds wheeling about now, couple of hundred yards away, as if they’d found something on which to feed. She kept expecting to cry, but didn’t. Inside her something welled and gathered, but she wouldn’t let it burst.

  She heard sounds now familiar behind her: a soft footfall, a cardboard rustle, the hiss of a plastic lighter.

  Zoë said, ‘There’s nothing we could have done.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Maybe if we’d got here earlier . . .’

  ‘Or been surgeons.’

  ‘Or been surgeons.’

  ‘What the fuck happened, Zoë?’

  ‘Your friend Michael –’

  ‘He’s not my friend.’


  ‘No. What I think happened, what it looks like happened, he got here, probably stole a boat, killed the guards, took Dinah and left.’

  ‘And who’s –’

  ‘I don’t know. One of them. Hush.’

  Whoever he was, he came out and joined them now: something of an absurd little man, Sarah couldn’t help feeling, with his suit and tie, his briefcase, on this grey lump of seabound rock. But he’d known her name. So yes, obviously, one of them.

  And something weighing down his pocket which might just be a gun. Who’s to say it hadn’t been him who caused all this?

  She said to him, ‘Dinah was here, wasn’t she?’

  ‘. . . She was.’

  Zoë said, ‘Sarah –’

  ‘A little child. A four-year-old girl.’

  ‘Four years, yes. Something like that.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘Sarah –’

  ‘She was bait. You bastard.’

  The man tugged at an ear. Then said, ‘Well, yes, technically. But she wasn’t meant to get hurt.’

  ‘You thought Michael would just turn up and ask for her nicely?’

  ‘Sarah –’

  ‘Anything could have happened!’

  ‘Anything more or less did,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Sarah, would you pack it in?’

  ‘Huh?’

  Zoë was looking at her strangely; trying to pass messages with her eyes . . .

  ‘The question is,’ the man said, ‘where is he now?’

  ‘He’s left.’

  ‘Yes, very good. He’s left. You wouldn’t happen to know where though, would you? Mrs Trafford?’

  ‘I’ve got no idea.’

  ‘Perhaps now would be a good time to give it some thought.’

  ‘Thing is,’ Zoë said, ‘we’ve got to be off.’

  ‘You’ve got to be off.’

  ‘Boat to catch. You know how it goes.’

  ‘Leaving the scene of the crime?’

  ‘It’s not our crime.’

  ‘So you say. But you are the only other people here. There’s bound to be an investigation, yes? You’re witnesses to a death.’

  ‘Thing is, Mrs Trafford here’s already been witness to one of those. And by the time you lot were finished with it, it turned out it never happened.’

  ‘My lot?’

  ‘Spooks. Spies. Men in grey.’

  ‘Yes, well . . . ‘

  ‘And what’s worrying me is, you want to disappear this little massacre, you might get ideas about disappearing us. You follow?’

  ‘I think you’re being unnecessarily –’

  ‘Fine. Think what you like. But I’ll say it again, we’ve a boat to catch. The same guy who dropped us here. Who knows who we are. Who has a cheque with my name on it. Who has friends who know where he is. Am I making this clear at all?’

  ‘As crystal.’

  ‘Great. We’ll be off then.’

  The man’s hand, which had dropped to his pocket, dropped away again. And, Sarah noticed, Zoë withdrew her own hand from her shoulder bag: it was holding her lighter, though she already had a cigarette going . . . Sarah herself was holding the blue bear. She felt like a shoplifter, an attention-seeking thief. Hadn’t even realized she’d brought it out with her.

  ‘Sarah?’

  ‘. . . Yes.’

  Zoë was backing away, not taking her eyes from the balding man. Who watched, politely, saying nothing; he looked like, if he’d had a hat, he’d have tipped it.

  ‘Sarah? Are you coming?’

  ‘I’m coming.’

  Bear tucked under her arm, she came. And back along the track they went together, watched a good part of the way by the strange little spook, who frankly looked more accountant than spy . . . ‘Fucking amateur,’ reckoned Zoë.

  Hey-ho, thought Howard.

  He walked over to where the corpse lay, the second corpse he’d found, and idly kicked its apple at a nearby rock. There were a lot of nearby rocks on the island. The apple bounced, bruised; a sizeable chunk flew up, and flopped to the ground. Perhaps he’d kicked it harder than he’d intended.

  Howard looked at the corpse. ‘So what are you supposed to have died from, then? Fright?’

  The corpse rolled over. A large and not particularly convincing wound stained his shirt front.

  ‘I was on my back initially. But it wasn’t too comfortable. I rolled over.’

  ‘You realize you twitched?’

  ‘Rigor mortis,’ said the corpse cheerfully. ‘Or something.’

  ‘And what’s his name, Paul? Paul’s created a work of art in the kitchen.’

  ‘He reckoned the deader he looked, the less chance they’d check too careful. It worked, didn’t it?’

  ‘It worked. No thanks to Dodo.’

  ‘Deedee.’

  ‘Whatever. We’re not handing out Oscars this week. That’s the longest dying scene since Reservoir Dogs.’

  ‘She was pissed off. About the kid.’ The former corpse, Brian, stood up. ‘Paul had to smack her about a bit. Last night. Bring her into line.’

  ‘What about the kid?’

  ‘She didn’t want to let her go. Deedee,’ he amplified, ‘didn’t want to let the kid go.’

  ‘But she did.’

  ‘Downey came. About four hours ago? Early morning, anyway. Motor boat. We could have taken him.’

  ‘I didn’t want him taken.’

  ‘I thought that was the point.’

  ‘The point’s changed.’ Amos Crane had changed it, but Howard wasn’t getting into that. ‘And he took the child.’

  ‘Like I said on the phone. We left her in the kitchen, he must have thought it was a trap.’ Brian shrugged. ‘He took her anyway. Back to the boat, voom, he was off. We were watching from over there.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of the first corpse Howard had found. The indisputably dead one. ‘Next thing we know, Jed’s on the bell. Two more passengers coming. Christ, nothing happens for weeks on end, then it all comes down at once.’

  Paul came out of the house wiping gore from the side of his head. ‘Was that fun?’ he asked them. ‘Was it fuck.’

  Howard nodded.

  ‘They came nowhere near me,’ he added. Aggrieved.

  Brian said, ‘We could have just hidden.’

  ‘Where?’ Howard asked him.

  He grew vague. ‘There’s places.’

  ‘Downey didn’t find you because he wasn’t looking. Once he got the child he was away. Those two,’ he waved in the direction the women had gone, ‘they’d have looked.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  Howard just stared at him.

  And also, he added, if things went wrong from this point in, and they wound up telling their story to anyone, well, it wouldn’t help their credibility when they testified to deaths that never happened . . .

  Brian said, ‘They’re bait too. Aren’t they?’

  Howard nodded vaguely. Sure they were bait. He was assuming they’d lead Amos Crane to Downey . . . His best bet for coming out of this was to have them all wind up in the same place, then get the drop on whoever was left standing. He hoped that wouldn’t be Amos. Still, he’d have to be prepared.

  The helicopter was over them already. Brian said, ‘You following them in that thing? It’s a little conspicuous.’

  Howard shook his head. He didn’t need to. So long as Sarah Trafford kept hold of that bear, he’d know where they were.

  He pointed over to where he’d found the first body. ‘You planning on burying that thing at all?’

  ‘Had to get the blood from somewhere,’ Brian said.

  ‘An’ I always hated that bastard cat,’ Paul said.

  ‘You’ve still got some of its brains in your hair.’

  Paul was still scrubbing while the helicopter took Howard away.

  III

  Sarah stood at the stern, watching the wake scar the sea-surface . . . Only the sea healed without mark; wiped the white scar so cleanly, it had never been
there at all. And that didn’t count the invisible pollutants . . . Hard to think about Michael, now. Invisible pollutants in his case, too, and not just the toxic explosion in the desert – what kind of worm ate into the soul so deep, it allowed you to kill whoever lay in your way? She thought of the trap that had been laid for him, and shook her head in weary disgust. Last time they’d put Michael on that island, he’d left bodies behind him. Why had they thought this time would be any different?

  Zoë asked, ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘No . . . How about you?’

  She made a face. ‘They should put stabilizers on these things. But it’s not as bad as it was before.’

  Though the boat rocked as she said that, and Sarah saw white ghosts crawl over her.

  Looking back to the sea, Sarah said, ‘I can’t believe he did that.’

  ‘Killed them.’

  ‘Did he have to? Wasn’t there another way?’

  She wasn’t really asking. Zoë tried, anyway. ‘He thinks Dinah’s his.’

  ‘He doesn’t know.’

  ‘No. Is that important?’

  ‘That man, he said it wasn’t so. He said she isn’t Michael’s.’

  ‘He did say that. And maybe he was telling the truth, and maybe he wasn’t. Either way, Michael doesn’t know. And even if he did, do you think he’d really care?’

  ‘But – ‘

  ‘Sarah.’ Zoë put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You don’t even know the child. You’ve come this far. Do you think he should have just walked away?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t either. But he does now.’ Zoë turned and spat over the side of the boat. ‘Shit, I wish they’d built a bloody bridge. Sarah? Maybe they shot at him first.’

  ‘He had a gun, didn’t he?’

  ‘That creep? Yeah, he had a gun.’

  ‘And so have you.’

  ‘And so have I . . . ‘

  ‘Would you have done it? Shot him, I mean?’

  Zoë gave her a look. ‘We’ll never know, will we?’

  They heard a buzzing overhead, a giant mosquito whine, and looked up to see light glinting off the fishbowl windscreen of the helicopter as it flashed past, heading towards the island. Sarah caught the impression of a man in helmet, goggles, leather gear. Already he was into the distance.