Death is a Welcome Guest: Plague Times Trilogy 2 (32 page)

It was cold and dank-smelling beneath the trees. He hid his bike in the undergrowth and made his way past the barn where Melody had hanged herself, to the back of the house. Magnus pressed his spine against the kitchen wall, remembering the escape from Pentonville and the way Jeb had kept his silhouette narrow. The wall’s rough stone snagged against the back of his T-shirt as he edged towards the window.

The men in the kitchen looked as tired as he felt. There were five of them, hunched round the table, spooning soup into their mouths. Father Wingate was with them. The priest’s face was animated. He was talking, moving his hands in the air to illustrate a point, but Magnus could not hear what he was saying. He moved closer to the window, trying to see if Belle or Will were in the room. Father Wingate’s eyes met his through the glass. The old priest looked away and Magnus drew back, knowing that if everything had been okay Father Wingate would have beckoned him inside.

From where he was standing, his body flattened against the wall, Magnus had a clear view to where Jacob had been shot. Jacob or Jeb would have been better equipped to deal with the invaders, if that was what the men were, but the soldier-priest was dead and Jeb locked in the dungeon. Magnus edged his way to the side of the house and the door Father Wingate had half-jokingly referred to as the tradesmen’s entrance.

Voices rumbled deep and masculine from somewhere in the front rooms of the house, but the passageway was empty. Magnus jogged along it until he reached the door to the basement. He had eased it open when he heard a clatter of claws against the tiled floor and saw the puppies rushing to greet him, their tails wagging wildly. One of them gave a welcoming bark and a hand grabbed Magnus’s arm.
Fuck!
The word escaped him; a whisper of breath and spit.

Belle put a finger to her lips. She nodded at the door and followed him into the damp darkness beyond, careful to leave the puppies in the hallway. They whined and Magnus feared the dogs would give them away, but then he heard them clattering off on some new adventure. Belle clicked on a torch and led the way to a twisting stone staircase. Magnus waited until they were another level down before he spoke.

‘Who are they?’

‘I don’t know.’ Belle’s face shone pale in the gloom. ‘But I’m staying clear of them.’

‘Do you know what they want?’

‘They say they’re just after a bit of food and shelter, then they’ll go on their way.’

‘But?’

‘You remember the gang I saw in London?’

‘The women chained together? These are the same men?’

‘No, but they remind me of them. I hid when I heard their bikes, but I’ve been watching them. They’re like a pack of dogs, growling at each other, competing for position, out for what they can get.’

‘They don’t know you’re here?’

‘As long as Will doesn’t tell them, I think I’m okay, so far. This house is full of hidden stairways and passages.’

Magnus remembered the concealed staircase Jacob had led him up, on the night he had died. It seemed a long time ago. He said, ‘Will’s not completely stupid. He won’t tell them there are women here.’

A woman, he reminded himself. Raisha was gone.

Belle said, ‘That’s the bad part. I think he wants to impress them. The pack has a leader, I don’t know his name. He’s the shortest of the bunch, but the rest of them seem to defer to him. He’s Will’s latest bromance.’

‘Will’s gay?’ The thought had never occurred to Magnus.

Belle’s whisper was sharp with impatience. ‘I mean he admires him. You must have noticed, since Jacob died it’s like Will’s been trying to be him. He wouldn’t deliberately set out to harm me, but these guys are “real men”, the way Jacob was a “real man”.’ Belle lifted up the hem of her T-shirt and showed him the gun stuffed into the waistband of her jeans. It was the same one she had given to Jeb, the same one that had supposedly killed Jacob. ‘It’s loaded.’

‘It’s also ancient. Be careful it doesn’t blow your legs off.’

‘Ha bloody ha.’ Belle danced the torch up and down his body, seeing him properly for the first time since they had snuck into the darkness of the basement. ‘What happened to you? You’re a mess.’

Magnus told her an edited version of his night: the flight through the forest to the house where Raisha was hiding; Raisha cycling away, in search of children to help.

Belle said, ‘I guess this is where I’m meant to say, plenty more fish in the sea.’

She giggled and Magnus joined in, both of them laughing more than the joke warranted.

A distant shout echoed up the stone staircase. Magnus turned towards it. ‘It’s Jeb.’

Belle said, ‘I don’t want to see him.’

But Magnus had taken the torch from her and was hurrying down the winding stairs to the lower depths.

Thirty-Seven

Magnus shone the beam of the torch through the grille in the floor, down into the cell below. Jeb was stretched out on the cold flagstones and for a moment Magnus thought he was dead, but then he groaned and sat up, shielding his eyes with his hands.

‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s me.’ Magnus turned off the torch, but he had already seen the pale skin flaking from lack of sunlight on Jeb’s face and hands. He had only been down there for a day and a night, but the man looked drawn and Magnus wondered if Will had bothered to feed him. ‘How’s the leg?’

Jeb sounded as if his throat were made of sandpaper. ‘The rest of me’s so fucked it’s hard to know.’

Belle was standing out of sight by the staircase. Magnus heard her intake of breath at the sound of Jeb’s voice and resisted an urge to turn and look at her. He pressed his face close to the bars. ‘I’ve not made much progress.’

‘I told you, you wouldn’t, fucking Jock.’ There was a sound of rustling as Jeb shifted in the darkness below. ‘Have they decided how they’re going to do it?’

‘Do what?’

‘Kill me.’

Magnus turned the torch on again, angling it across the grille so he could make out the substance of the room below, without blinding Jeb. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t know much, do you? Did you bring me any grub?’

Magnus did not want to mention the men congregated in the kitchen. ‘I’ve just got back.’

‘Christ, prison’s a distant memory for you, isn’t it?’ Jeb curled his body forward, hiding his face and stretching his spine. ‘I’ve been thinking about how I want to go.’

‘There’s no point in—’

‘Get Raisha to make something that’ll knock me out. Something painless, she’ll know how to do it. And keep that old priest away from me. I don’t want the last thing I hear to be him blathering on about God’s forgiveness.’

Belle was quietly sobbing in the turn of the staircase. Magnus wanted to tell her to shut up, but he said, ‘Raisha isn’t here any more.’ Jeb looked up. It was hard to make out his expression, but something about the way he cocked his head made Magnus say, ‘She knows as little as we do about Jacob’s murder, less.’

‘It’s the guilty who run. I don’t know why she did it, but I’m betting it was her.’ The sour stoicism Jeb had cultivated in Pentonville was gone. In its place was fear. ‘You let her escape.’

Magnus said, ‘I think I can persuade Belle to change her mind. I’ll ask her to talk to Will and Father Wingate with me.’

‘You won’t turn that bastard. The only way to change his mind is to put a bullet in his head.’

‘A life for a life?’

‘Live by the sword, die by the sword.’

Magnus said, ‘That sounds like an argument for not killing him.’

A grating metal-on-metal sound came from somewhere beyond Magnus’s line of vision. He switched off the torch, sending the space back into darkness. There was a creak of hinges and a scraping noise that Magnus guessed came from an untrue cell door dragging across flagstones. Magnus jerked away from the grille, just before a light arced into the dungeon. A voice he did not know said, ‘That’s him. I remember his face.’

Jeb’s voice was hard and belligerent. ‘Do I know you?’

‘He definitely did it?’ Magnus recognised Will’s voice.

‘No question.’ The stranger sounded convinced. ‘You’ll be doing the world a favour.’

Magnus risked a quick look through the grille. Will and the stranger were standing in the cell doorway and he could only make out the shadows they cast on the floor. Jeb was struggling to get to his feet, but his damaged leg would not co-operate. He gave up and half sat, half lay; sprawled on the flagstones like a man who had suddenly plummeted to earth.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘I’m no one.’ The stranger had a pleasant voice, mild and lilting, with the reasoned delivery favoured by newsreaders. ‘We’re all no one now, except for you. You’re a murderer.’

Will set something down on the flagstones. ‘Water and sandwiches.’

Magnus heard the scraping sound of the door closing.

‘The key witness at my trial was a fucking liar!’ Jeb tore off his shoe and threw it at the door but the key was grating in the lock. He waited a moment, gathering himself, then looked up towards the ceiling. Magnus’s eyes met his; a powerless god’s-eye-view. Jeb said, ‘Either find a way to get me out of here, or find a way to kill me. I don’t want them to have the satisfaction.’

‘I’ll get you out,’ Magnus promised. He stood up, his mind empty of escape plans. He had almost forgotten Belle, waiting in the staircase behind him.

She whispered, ‘Was it the short guy with the longish hair? He’s their leader.’

‘I couldn’t see him.’

‘I bet it was him.’

The girl began to climb the stairs. Magnus caught her by the arm.

‘Raisha told me that you were the first one to find Melody.’

Belle’s features were lost in the dark, but her voice was clear of tears. ‘She said she wouldn’t tell anyone.’

‘Being frightened is nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘Is that all she told you, that I was frightened?’

‘Weren’t you?’

‘I’m always frightened.’ She shook him free and resumed her climb.

Magnus asked, ‘What happened in the barn?’

Belle’s footsteps halted. Magnus remembered the gun tucked in the belt of her jeans and recalled again that it was supposedly the same one that had been used to shoot Jacob. He heard her turn towards him and felt the warmth of her body as she leaned in close and whispered, ‘I killed her.’

The basement was as far as the staircase descended. There was nowhere to go except upwards, and so he followed her, his mind numb, into the deserted hallway of the main house and then through another unmarked door in the wallpaper and up to the attic storeys. She led him into a room that had been converted into an artist’s atelier. The north side of the ceiling and much of the wall was composed of panes of glass. But it was not the room’s bright contrast with the murk of the basement or the unbroken view across the countryside that drew Magnus’s breath.

Images of death danced over the walls, across a landscape that drifted between green countryside, seas that raged then shone glass-calm, and towering cities in skyscraper-wonder. There were cramped suburbs of identical houses and ancient monuments: the pyramids, the Coliseum, Stonehenge. Sometimes death took the form of the laughing skulls that had decorated bags, T-shirts, scarves, even children’s clothes before the sweats. But it also came clothed in flesh, in the shape of beautiful women, bare-breasted mermaids and aged crones. A hooded figure equipped with an hour-glass and scythe crept a steady path through the scenery, touching people on the shoulder, proving that death is no respecter of age, piety, wealth or beauty.

At first Magnus thought all the images had been cut from books and magazines, but then he saw that some of the figures had been painted. The style was naïve, with little concession to perspective, but somehow that intensified their effect.

‘Did you do these?’

‘I used to make collages from photographs I cut out of my mother’s fashion magazines when I was little. I got quite obsessive about it.’ Belle smiled. ‘Sometimes I’d see a picture I liked, a beautiful model, or an amazing building, and tear out the page before she’d read it. I knew I’d get into trouble, but I couldn’t stop myself.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I thought I’d grown out of it.’

Belle had seemed like a spoiled child-woman bemused at her sudden lack of advantages in the post-sweats world, but the images on the wall formed a map of sweltering pain. Magnus stepped closer. He recognised the origin of some of the photographs, others he guessed: here was a smile culled from a toothpaste commercial, here a child that had been used to advertise cereal, here a rose that had once blossomed from a garden centre catalogue. He ran his fingers lightly over the collage, feeling the roughness of the pictures’ edges. It was all there: the pain of loss, the petty frivolousness of things he missed, the hopes – some of them so ludicrous it was strange to think of them now – that would never be realised.

‘It’s amazing.’ It was obsessive too. How many hours had it taken to find and clip the images? How many more to piece them together in a way that made such skewed but perfect sense? Magnus turned and looked at Belle for the first time since they had left the cellar. ‘Did you kill Henry and Jacob?’

Belle gave a small snort of amusement. ‘I wondered if the collage looked a bit serial-killer’s bedroom. I guess I know now.’