Road of the Dead (11 page)

“It’s all right,” I said calmly to Jess. “Just tell him to piss off. He won’t do anything.”

Red smiled. “Two…”

I smiled back at him, then looked up at Skinny and said, “Three.”

Skinny blinked once, then his finger tightened and he pulled the trigger and a deafening blast ripped through my head.

“T
he blast came from Red’s gun,” I told Cole later that night. “Skinny’s wasn’t loaded. Red fired his shotgun into the air just as Skinny pulled the trigger.” I paused then, reliving the memory of the moment—the dull metallic
click
, the simultaneous
crack
of Red’s shotgun, the nothingness…and then the trickle of warm liquid running down my leg…

“Christ, Rube,” breathed Cole, “what were you
thinking
? You could have been
killed
.”

“I knew Skinny’s gun wasn’t loaded.”

“
How
did you know?”

“Come on, Cole—they weren’t going to shoot me, were they? They might be dumb, but they’re not stupid. Skinny didn’t have the guts for it, anyway. He couldn’t have killed me to save his life. I could see it in his eyes.”

“That’s
it
?” Cole said incredulously. “You could see it in his
eyes
?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit, Ruben…”

“What?”

He looked at me, shaking his head. I tried to smile at him, but the look in his eyes was too much for a smile, and I felt instead the moist tingle of tears welling up in my eyes.

I hadn’t felt anything at the time—not consciously, anyway. I suppose my body must have been shocked at the sudden blast of Red’s gun—otherwise I wouldn’t have wet myself—but there was nothing going on in my mind. Nothing at all. I didn’t have time to think or feel anything. There
was
no time. No time for flashing lives or final regrets, no time for fears or prayers…

No time at all.

Just—
BAM!
—and everything stopped—the air, the world, the hour, the day—and then moments later everything suddenly started again. I was Ruben Ford. I was kneeling on the ground. My mouth was dry and my pants were wet and my head was bloody and I wasn’t dead. I could see the blue sky, the white grass, the granite-gray tor in the distance. I could see the red maniac. I could hear his gunshot echoing around the moor and the sound of his laughter staining the air as he walked away up the hill without even bothering to look back.

And then Jess was there, kneeling down beside me, tearfully asking me if I was all right, and I was telling her not to worry about me, that I was fine, that she ought to go
and see to her dog. And then she was running over to Tripe’s lifeless body and picking it up and crying herself to death.

We’d walked back in silence. Down the hill, down the Lychway, down the Road of the Dead—adding to its sadness and longing—then through the forest’s cathedral light and out through the stone gateway at the side of the road where our journey had first begun. Here, Jess had gently laid her dog on a sunlit boulder and we’d embraced each other in the dying shadows of the afternoon.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered into my ear. “I should have kept my big mouth shut. I just didn’t—”

“You don’t have to say anything,” I told her. “There’s nothing to say.”

She’d kissed me then, touching her lips to the shotgungraze on my forehead, and then she’d turned around and picked up Tripe and walked away down the road with Finn trailing sadly behind her. I’d watched her until she’d disappeared around a corner, then I’d turned around and started walking back to the farmhouse.

As I headed down the lane, the image of the dead dog began haunting my mind—his sad little body splayed out on the moor, his three legs limp, his mouth hanging open, his dog-brown eyes staring at nothing. The picture was clearer to me then than it had been at the time. In my mind I could see one of his ears moving, and for a witless moment I’d thought of miracles—
He isn’t really dead,
he’s only stunned, knocked out, in a coma
—but of course it was only the wind, breezing over the hill, ruffling his fur.

I wished I’d done something.

All I could imagine was putting my hand on his body and feeling the cold stillness of death, and that made me shiver and cry.

By the time I’d gotten back to the farmhouse, the sun was starting to cloud over and there was a faint scent of rain in the air. The house and the yard looked quiet. There were fresh tire tracks in the yard, but no sign of the Land Rover, so I guessed Vince had come back and gone out again. The front door of the farmhouse was unlocked. I let myself in and went quietly upstairs, not wanting to bump into Abbie, and I’d found Cole waiting for me in the bedroom.

“Where’ve you been?” he said impatiently as soon as I opened the door. Then almost immediately he saw the cut on my head, and suddenly his voice went cold. “Who did that?”

I’d told him everything then—what happened with Abbie, how I’d met Jess, what she’d told me about the village and the hotel and John Selden, and then all the stuff about Red and Nate and Skinny—and now here we were, sitting together on the bed, my eyes filling up with tears and Cole’s filling up with a cold, calm rage.

“Did they do anything else?” he asked me. “Did they hurt you or anything?”

I shook my head. “They were just trying to scare us. I don’t think anything much would have happened if Jess hadn’t started making Red look stupid. He’s a psycho, Cole. He killed her dog without even thinking about it.”

Cole nodded. “But he didn’t hurt you?”

“No.”

“Did they say anything about Rachel?”

“Not really. Red made a crack about ghosts or something, but that was about it. They were just doing the usual stuff, you know—dumb threats, scary looks, taking the piss. Jess got the worst of it. I mean, they really laid into her.”

“Yeah, well”—Cole shrugged—“she’s a gypsy. She’ll have been through it all before.” He looked at me. “If she’s anything like the rest of the Delaneys, she’s tough enough to deal with it.”

“Do you know them?”

“The Delaneys? Only by name. Dad knew some of the Essex Delaneys a few years back—I think they lived on the same site for a while. They’re a big clan, though, so I’m not sure how close they are to Jess’s family.”

He got up and went over to the window and lit a cigarette. I watched him for a while, wondering if I ought to tell him what Jess had said about Dad and the Dochertys and Billy McGinley, but I decided that we both had enough to think about just now without delving back into the past and stirring up all the bad stuff again. It wasn’t all
history, though—and I knew we’d have to talk about it sometime soon. But not right now.

“How did it go in the village?” I asked Cole.

“It didn’t,” he said, puffing moodily on his cigarette. “No one’s talking. No one would even come near me, let alone talk to me. It was like I was a leper or something. I managed to ask a few questions in the post office, but it didn’t do me any good.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “It was like talking to a bunch of bloody zombies.”

“Did you go up to the gypsy camp?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

He nodded. “Yeah, it was OK. They didn’t talk much, but I didn’t really expect them to. They knew all about us, though—me, you, Rachel, Dad. They know who we are.”

“Jess told me that her uncle used to watch Dad fight,” I said. “He told her you punched like a Ford.”

“Yeah, I know—I talked to him.” Cole frowned. “Well, actually, he did most of the talking. I just listened.”

“What did he talk about?”

“Fighting, mostly. I kept trying to ask him stuff about Rachel, but all he wanted to talk about was bare-knuckle fighting—the good old days, the big fights, the famous names…all that kind of stuff.” Cole shook his head. “There’s something a bit weird about him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know—I couldn’t work it out. I mean, he’s all
right…
I’m not saying he’s whacko or anything. There’s just something a bit strange about him. It’s like he hasn’t got any grip on reality.”

“Jess said he used to fight.”

“Yeah, I know. He told me all about it.”

“Maybe he took too many punches.”

“Maybe…”

“So what’s so strange about that? He’s just a punchy old guy with a few screws loose—there’s plenty of them around.”

“Yeah, I know—but he’s the
guvnor
, Rube. He’s the one they all look up to. When I first got to the camp and started asking around, all I kept getting was—‘Best see the guvnor, mate…best ask Reason about that…’—and they all kept looking over at the old man’s trailer. Then, when he finally came out and invited me in, they all backed off and left us alone.” Cole looked at me. “He’s not quite right in the head, Rube. Don’t you think that’s a bit odd for a ‘guvnor’?”

“Maybe that’s why they’re here,” I suggested.

“What do you mean?”

“You said it yourself—there’s nothing here for them, is there? No work, nowhere to sell anything, no fairs. Maybe that’s what happens when you listen to a whacked-out old fighter like Reason—you end up in the middle of nowhere.”

“No,” said Cole, “there’s more to it than that.”

“Like what?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure there was something he wasn’t telling me.”

“About Rachel?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure…”

“Do you think the rest of them know anything?”

“I’d be surprised if they didn’t, but I don’t think they’re going to tell us. They don’t want to get involved. I don’t blame them. They’ve got enough crap of their own to deal with, without getting dragged into ours.”

We were silent for a while then, both of us just thinking things over, weighing things up, trying to work out if anything meant anything.

After a couple of minutes, Cole lit another cigarette and started gazing out the window again. I went over and stood beside him. The afternoon light was beginning to pale now, the lowering sun casting faded shadows across the distant hills. The yard below was empty and quiet.

“So,” I said to Cole, “you didn’t find out anything in the village, then?”

“Only that it stinks.”

“No one said anything about this hotel complex?”

“No.”

“Or Henry Quentin?”

“No…”

“And no one mentioned John Selden?”

Cole looked at me. “Yeah, all right, Rube—I get the point. You found out everything and I found out nothing.”

I smiled at him. “Don’t feel bad about it.”

His face remained blank, but I could see a half-smile in his eyes. “How’s your head?” he asked me.

“It’s all right…” I started to say, brushing the graze on my forehead, but then I realized what he meant. And I guessed he was right: I might have found out a lot more than he had, but it’d cost me a lot to find it. “Yeah, well,” I told him, “at least I didn’t come back empty-handed.”

“You nearly didn’t come back at all.”

I lowered my eyes as the sudden realization hit me again—that I might
not
have come back, that I could have ended up as another cold body on the moor, another Tripe…another Rachel. The thought was so frightening it made me feel sick. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was knowing how close I’d come to putting my family through hell again. I knew what that hell was like, and I couldn’t bear thinking of anyone going through it for me—
because
of me.

“Hey,” said Cole, resting his hand on my shoulder, “don’t worry about it. You did all right.”

I looked at him.

He smiled at me. “If I wasn’t such a heartless bastard, I’d be proud of you.”

“Thanks.”

We looked at each other then, and something passed between us—something that hadn’t been there for a long time. It was an intimacy, a closeness beyond our everyday closeness, and it reminded me of when we were kids, when all we had was each other. It was a good feeling.

Just as I was beginning to enjoy it, though, Cole’s smile faded and he drew himself back into his shell again.

“All right,” he said, putting out his cigarette, “I want you to tell me everything again—and this time I mean
everything
. Rewind that camcorder you keep inside your head and play it all back to me—word by word, scene by scene—from the moment I left this morning until the moment you came back.”

A couple of hours later we left the farmhouse and headed up the lane toward the village road. The moorland light was dimming under a cover of darkening clouds, and the murky air felt heavy and damp. Everything seemed blurred and muffled—sounds, colors, surfaces, shapes—and I wished there were some lights around. I missed having lights. I missed their sharpness, their brightness, the way they define things…the way they show you where you are.

I was tired and hungry.

Vince had come back while we were talking in the bedroom. We’d heard him arguing with Abbie about something, then a short time later Abbie had come upstairs and asked us if we wanted anything to eat. It was the first time I’d seen her since she’d stormed out on me that morning, and I could tell by the way she looked at me that she hadn’t forgotten about it. She wasn’t exactly
un
friendly toward me…but she wasn’t particularly friendly, either. Cole had given her his nice-guy smile and told her that we were going out, but thanks for the offer anyway…

So we hadn’t eaten.

And it was getting cold.

And my head was throbbing and my legs were aching from all the walking I’d done earlier, and now I was trying to keep up with Cole as he marched on ahead of me up the lane…and I wasn’t looking forward to the next few hours.

“What did Abbie say about not leaving the farmhouse?” Cole said to me over his shoulder.

“What?”

“Abbie—she told you she didn’t want to move out.”

“Hold on,” I said, scuttling up behind him.

He stopped and waited for me to catch up, then we carried on walking side by side.

“It was her mum’s house,” I told him, remembering what Abbie had said. “That’s why she could never leave it. It means too much to her. Her mum was born there, she died there.”

Cole nodded thoughtfully. “If what Jess told you is true, she must be one of the last ones left who haven’t sold.”

“Yeah, I suppose…unless the hotel people don’t want her place.”

“Why shouldn’t they want it? This Quentin guy has bought up everywhere else, hasn’t he? And he doesn’t sound like the kind of man who’d take no for an answer. I bet he’s offered them a pretty good deal. And it’s not as if they don’t need the money. The farm’s not theirs anymore, and neither of them’s got a steady job.”