Blood Bonds: A psychological thriller (37 page)

She gave a screech and pummelled him with her fists, reaching out over the seat as far as she could. “Bastard! Bastard!” Her breath pumping out in huge gasps. “You’re like all the others!” Finally she turned away from him, staring ahead through the windscreen. Max grunted to himself, ignorant of the proceedings.

“So now he’s forever going to be Philip Calder, locked away in some kind of exotic cell. And ironically the real Philip Calder might just as well be dead too, because he’s gradually been taken over by Gavin Miller. Nobody wants to know about Philip Calder now. In truth they never did and never will. I used to like to believe I was Gavin Miller, not that no hoper Calder, but that was never the case. Max was the real Gavin Miller, the hugely successful author. And I’ve hated him for it ever since.”

“Get out of the car.” She said frigidly. “I don’t want you here.”

Drained emotionally, Miller opened the car door and stepped out onto the gravel. “Where are you going?” he asked again.

“Wherever we’ll have peace. Wherever Max will be safe.”

“What about Carl? We still need to work things out. He plans to blackmail or ruin me. He’s threatened to expose Max as a murderer…”

The car’s engine increased in revs as she put her foot down, her hand on the gear stick. “Don’t worry about Carl,” she returned evenly. The anger had subsided, and Connie, too, looked drained of all energy. Her eyes revealed an empty shell.

Miller closed the car door and peered in at the driver’s window. She wound it down. “Connie…” he said quietly.

“Yes?”

He glanced over at Max. At that moment it seemed that Max was aware he was being looked at, for he lifted his head from the paper and met Miller’s gaze. For a fraction of a second Miller thought he saw recognition in them, almost as if he might open his mouth and say something. The Max of old was there, shining through the aged mask, and Miller cursed himself for never being able to understand entirely what motivated this strange creature until a few moments ago. And then the recognition in Max’s face switched off, the link between them severed forever as if a mental copper wire that connected them had suddenly sparked and blown. He returned to his writing. Miller stared Connie in the eyes.

“Connie, I’m going to miss you…” he said.

She looked away, sighed heavily, her white fingers clutching the wheel tightly. She was fighting inner demons. Then she turned and gazed into Miller’s eyes. For a few seconds she said nothing. Tiredly she smiled. “I’ll miss you, too, Collie,” she said.

“I’ll miss Max,” he murmured. “Max,” he said to the rocking figure. There was no response.

“He hears you,” she said. “Believe me.”

“Take good care of him, Connie.”

She wound up the car’s window and shoved the gear into first. The car roared across the gravel. He watched as it receded down the long drive of Overton Hall, the sound of its engine fading even before he saw it turn silently and spectre-like onto the main road. Connie and Max were gone forever, disappearing from his life as suddenly and as dramatically as they’d entered it. He felt the emotion rise within him, and accompanying it a bittersweet fusion of memories that had been stirred like silt from the riverbed of his past, and which rose to cloud his mind.

Something caught his eye. Something that shivered in the breeze. He went to the spot so recently occupied by the car and bent to retrieve it. He held it up before his eyes. He knew Max had dropped it getting into the car.

It was a feather. A crushed white goose feather.

A white feather with bird shit on it.

*  *  *  *

The pain had gone now, and for that he was thankful. He’d never been able to stand that sort of thing. “Don’t hit me!” he’d scream at school, or to his dad when he used to beat him, “I don’t like being hit!” But they hit him all the same. So it was a blessing it had faded, replaced now by welcome warmth, a curious heat that flowed from somewhere deep inside him and radiated outwards to engulf his entire body. It reminded him of a heat lamp, lying on a beach in summer, something of that nature. He couldn’t move, but that was fine; now he didn’t want to move, and anyway to move meant greater pain and he wanted to avoid that. His sense of urgency had gone. In fact he couldn’t remember what was so urgent anymore. Even the sight of his beloved books lying scattered on the floor all around him, his own blood soaking into the pages, didn’t have any effect on him whatsoever, and he marvelled at this change in him.

Carl glanced up, his eyes seemingly the only part of his body that he could use now, and saw the vast empty gaps on his shelf. Why were there gaps? What was missing? It was vaguely amusing, to be lying here contemplating an empty space.

A memory intruded. That of Mrs Randolf. The smell of her perfume. Somehow it lingered in his nostrils. It wasn’t unpleasant. He never guessed she’d do something like that. Never. And he didn’t even feel the pain of the knife in his back, just an uncomfortable stiffness and a dizziness that forced him to the floor. The pain crashed in on him as soon as his face hit the carpet. He’d never experienced anything remotely like it, and he blubbered and tried to scream, but there was something stuffed in his mouth and the words and pain were dammed up behind a wall of cloth. He wanted to remove it, but the pain was too intense and he couldn’t move his arm. He remembered books falling on the floor all around him, onto him, and he felt their hurt too. His beloved books! What is she doing?

Through a mist of tears he saw her open up a bag and toss one or two into it; particularly the Flemings, which he’d explained the value of, then others of equal value. Mrs Randolf had stabbed him and was now stealing his books! He wanted to scream even more but somehow the thought of wanting to scream brought on a fresh bout of agonising pain that shot unrelenting throughout his being.

No, not stealing. She was making it look that way.

Now, looking back at it, he admired her for it, in a crazy, twisted sort of way. Because now it didn’t matter anymore. It didn’t matter that he was moments away from dying and that she’d killed him, stolen his books, ruined many others. He was happy. For the first time in his pathetic life, Carl actually felt contented and at peace with himself.

There was blood soaking into one of Gavin Miller’s novels.

It’s ruined completely, Carl thought drowsily.

*  *  *  *