Road of the Dead (13 page)

“What are we going to do?” I said to Cole.

“Nothing.”

I looked at him. “We can’t just stay here—”

“It’s all right,” he said calmly. “We’re going in a minute. I just want to see what this piece of shit has to say.”

I followed his eyes and saw Ron Bowerman heading toward us with a pint of beer in his hand. His eyes were glazed and his bald head was sweating under the gleam of the bright pub lights.

“Mr. Ford,” he slurred at Cole, leaning on the bar beside him, “nice to see you again. I see you decided not to go home, then?”

“We’ll be gone soon,” Cole told him.

“Glad to hear it. Now then…” Bowerman paused and drank deeply from his glass. Wiping the froth from his lips, he tried to focus on Cole. “Sorry—what was I saying?”

“Do you always do what the barman tells you?” Cole said to him.

“What?”

“He doesn’t want us in here, doesn’t want any trouble, so he gets you to tell us to leave and you get your slate wiped clean. Is that it? Or maybe you’re just following Henry Quentin’s orders like everyone else around here. What’s he like to work for, anyway? Good man, is he? Good money?”

The bar had gone quiet again. Everyone was listening and staring as Bowerman leaned his reddened face into Cole’s. “Listen, sonny,” he hissed, “I don’t know what you think—”

“How did you feel?” Cole interrupted him.

“What? How did I feel about
what
?”

“When you were waiting on the hill with my sister’s body. How did you feel? I mean, she must have been a hell of a sight—all ripped up and naked and dead. How did that make you feel?”

“Christ, you’re
sick
.”

“You think so?”

“I’ve never heard anything so dis
gus
ting—”

“Have you found John Selden yet?”

Bowerman froze. “What?”

“John Selden—have you found him?”

Bowerman’s eyes darted briefly across the room, and in the mirror I saw Henry Quentin watching him. It was a look of pure domination. When Bowerman turned back to Cole, his face was marked with fear.

“Who told you about Selden?” he said under his breath.

But Cole wasn’t listening anymore—he was staring intently at Henry Quentin. Quentin stared back at him, and their eyes split the silence like a white-hot poker cutting through ice. As Quentin studied Cole, I studied Quentin in the mirror. He was an ageless man, stern and
dark and motionless. He had amber eyes and greased black hair and a face that belonged to another century. He was wearing heavy black trousers and dull black boots and a brass-buttoned soldier’s coat with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His eyes were the eyes of a traveling preacher man.

“I asked you a question,” Bowerman said to Cole.

Cole said nothing. Keeping his eyes fixed on Quentin, he stubbed out his cigarette and started walking across the room toward him. He moved steadily, drifting like a ghost through the clouds of cigarette smoke hanging in the air, his footsteps soundless in the silence. As he passed the table where Skinny was sitting, he briefly glanced down at him.

“All right?” he said.

Skinny grinned nervously and looked away, and Cole continued across the room. He stopped at Quentin’s table. No one moved for a moment. Red and Quentin just sat there, looking up at Cole, and Nate and Big Davy remained motionless behind them. Then Red raised his glass and winked at Cole, and Nate and Davy started lumbering out from behind the table. Cole didn’t move, just kept on staring at Quentin, and after a moment the bearded man held up his hand and waved Nate and Davy back. Cole stared briefly at Nate, then turned his eyes back to Quentin.

“Henry Quentin?” he said.

Quentin didn’t reply.

Cole said, “Are you Henry Quentin?”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Ford?”

His voice was hollow and heartless.

“Where’s John Selden?” Cole said.

“Who?”

“John Selden—the man who murdered my sister. Where is he?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Quentin said.

“Yeah, you do.”

“I’m sorry? Are you calling me a
liar
?”

“Listen, mister,” Cole said calmly, “I just want to know where Selden is. You can either tell me now or you can tell me later. It’s your choice. But if I were you, I’d do it now.”

Quentin smiled, showing cracked gray teeth. “Is that a threat, Mr. Ford?”

“Absolutely.”

I
t was raining when we left the Bridge, a warm summery rain that fell to the ground with barely a sound, deadening the night to a moist black silence. Cole was quiet, too. He lit a cigarette and gazed up and down the High Street.

“Are you OK?” I asked him.

He nodded.

“I should call Mum,” I said. “Let her know we’re all right.”

Cole just nodded again, then turned around and started walking up the street toward the telephone box. I followed him. When we got there, he pulled some coins from his pocket and handed them over.

“Don’t be long,” he told me.

I wasn’t long.

Mum sounded really low on the phone. She tried to hide it from me by asking all the usual questions—
Are you
OK? Have you got enough money? Are you eating properly?
—but I could tell she was in a bad way. I wanted to talk to her—not necessarily about Rachel…I just wanted to talk—but Cole was waiting impatiently outside, and Mum was waiting for Dad to call, and I guessed there wasn’t much to talk about, anyway. So we kept it short and said our good-byes and I went back out to Cole.

“How’s she doing?” he asked me as we headed back down the street.

“You could try asking her yourself.”

I felt his reaction as soon as the words left my mouth, and when I looked at him he suddenly seemed small—small and young and vulnerable. And I wished I hadn’t said anything.

“It’s different,” he said quietly.

“What is?”

“You know…the way it works. I talk to Dad, you talk to Mum…” He looked at me. “I mean, why didn’t
you
talk to Dad when he called the other day? It doesn’t mean anything, does it? It’s just the way it works.”

“Yeah, you’re right—I’m sorry.”

He nodded his head and shrugged his shoulders—getting himself back to his normal size—then he looked at me again. “So—is she doing all right?”

“Yeah, just a bit down, I think.”

“She misses you.”

“She misses Rachel.”

Five minutes later we were sheltering in an alleyway across the street from the Bridge—sheltering, waiting, watching the hotel door. Cole hadn’t told me what we were waiting for, but I had a pretty good idea.

“Can I ask you something?” I said to him.

“What?”

“All that stuff in the bar just now…you know, when you were asking Quentin about Selden?”

“Yeah?”

“You know he’s dead, don’t you?”

“Who—Selden?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I know he’s dead. You told me—remember?”

I looked at him. “So when you were asking where he is…you meant his body—right?”

“Right.”

“You realize it’s probably buried somewhere on the moor?”

“So?”

“The moor’s a big place.”

“Everywhere’s a big place.” He looked at me. “Look, it’s simple, Rube. We find out where Selden’s buried, we tell the cops, they dig him up. Once they’ve done their forensic stuff and proved he’s the killer, they can release Rachel’s body back to us.”

“That simple, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you really think Quentin knows where the body is?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I was just stirring the barrel.”

“What barrel?”

“The barrel of bees.”

“Bees?”

He shook his head, suddenly embarrassed. “It’s nothing…”

“What do you mean—
It’s nothing
? You can’t just start talking about a barrel of bees and then suddenly tell me it’s
nothing
.”

“Just forget it, OK?” he said, lighting a cigarette. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Talk about what?”

He sighed, realizing that I wasn’t going to give up. “It was just a stupid dream,” he said awkwardly. “It doesn’t
mean
anything. I just saw this picture…last night…you know, like an image in my head.” He paused for a moment, staring into the darkness, then he closed his eyes and began telling me what he’d seen. “It was really weird…I can still see it now. There’s this boy, he’s about my age, and he’s standing beside a tar-stained barrel. He’s dressed in a black suit and he’s got a stick in his hand, some kind of cane. There’s a sound coming from inside the barrel—a buzzing sound.” Cole opened his eyes and looked at me.
“The barrel was full of bees—black bees. There were thousands of them, millions, all swirling around inside this barrel, and they couldn’t get out. They couldn’t get out because there was a lid on the barrel. And the boy, this boy in the black suit…I don’t know…I didn’t actually
see
him doing anything, but somehow I knew what he had to do. All he had to do was lift the lid off the barrel and poke his stick into the mess of bees and stir it all around, then step back and see what happened. That was it. He just had to see what came out.”

“Why?” I said.

Cole looked at me. “What?”

“Why did he have to step back and see what came out? He must have known what was going to come out. I mean, it was a barrel full of bees. The only thing coming out of a barrel of bees is bees.”

Cole sighed and shook his head. “See? That’s exactly why I didn’t want to tell you. Why do you always have to
analyze
everything, Rube? It was just a dream—”

“Yeah, I know.”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I
know
. I just thought it’d be better if there was something else inside the barrel, that’s all.”

“Better?”

“Yeah. I mean, the rest of it makes sense. The barrel is obviously the village, the boy in the black suit is either you or me or both of us—”

“Christ, Ruben—it was a
dream
. Dreams aren’t
supposed
to make sense. If they made sense they wouldn’t…”

His voice trailed off and he stared across the street. The two metalheads and some leather-clad bikers were coming out of the hotel—talking, smoking, laughing, grunting…their muffled voices cheapening the night. They slouched their way over to a line of parked motorbikes, mounted up, started the bikes, then rode off into the rain. The roar of the engines took a long time to fade.

“Bees?” I said, turning to Cole.

“Bees,” he agreed.

“Not the ones we’re after, though.”

“No.”

We had to wait another half hour before the ones we were after finally came out. While we were waiting, a steady stream of now familiar faces rolled out of the bar. It felt good to be watching them for a change, instead of them watching us. We watched them all in silence: Ron Bowerman staggering through the door, trying to light a cigarette, his face a beacon of beer-sweat; the hoods in tight T-shirts, their drunken voices cracking the night; Big Davy, jawing his mouth and rubbing his neck; Vince and the plump girl, their arms around each other’s waists; Teardrop; the lookout boys…

As we stood together in the alleyway, watching and waiting in the darkness, I could feel Cole’s stillness beside me. There were no thoughts coming from him, no feelings,
no nothing—he was just there. Watching. Waiting. Breathing. Being.

“There,” he said under his breath.

I looked across and saw Nate and Skinny coming out of the hotel. They stopped in the doorway and looked up and down the street, then, satisfied that everything was OK, they stepped out onto the pavement and stood aside as Red and Quentin came out after them. Quentin was explaining something to Red. Red was nodding his head up and down like an idiot. They stopped on the pavement and continued talking for a while, with Nate and Skinny standing guard on either side of them, then Quentin slapped Red on the shoulder and walked away up the street. Nate and Skinny started after him, but Quentin turned them away with a dismissive wave of his hand.

I felt Cole tense beside me.

I thought we were going to get moving then. I thought we were going to follow Henry Quentin up the street. But Cole didn’t move. He just stayed where he was, his eyes fixed on the others. They were just hanging around now—lighting cigarettes, joking, jostling each other. They seemed a lot more relaxed now that Quentin had gone.

“Cole?” I whispered. “What are we—?”

He held up his hand—
Shut up
.

I shut up.

I heard someone making a barking sound, then whining, then laughing—and when I looked across the street
again I saw Red and Skinny and Nate reenacting the death of Jess’s dog. I saw lifeless paws, rolling eyes, lolling tongues…stupid grinning faces. I saw redness and blackness and bone-white fury…I saw violence…pain…I saw myself doing things I’d never thought possible.

“You ready?” Cole whispered.

“What?”

“Come on, before we lose them.”

The three men had split up now. Red was driving off in his Toyota pickup; Nate and Skinny were crossing the street toward a dark blue Astra estate. Cole had taken the backpack off his back and was holding it in front of him, his right hand inside the bag.

“Come
on
,” he hissed at me, tugging my arm.

The Astra was parked on our side of the street, about ten meters away. As Nate and Skinny opened the doors and got in, I followed Cole in a crouching run up to the back of the car. I saw him glance through the rear windscreen, then he signaled me to take the left-hand side, and as the engine started, coughing exhaust fumes into our faces, he darted around to the right and yanked open the rear door and jumped in. By the time I’d done the same, getting in the other side, Cole had already pulled the pistol from his bag and was jamming it into the back of Nate’s head.

“Drive,” he told him.

Skinny’s head snapped around in the passenger seat, but before he could say anything Cole had cracked the gun
barrel into his face, then quickly shoved it back into Nate’s head. As Skinny slumped forward in his seat, holding his head in his hands, Cole leaned in close to Nate’s ear.

“Drive,” he told him again.

And this time the car got moving.

Nate’s hands were shaking on the steering wheel as we headed slowly up the street. Sweat was gleaming on the back of his neck, and in the rearview mirror I could see the fear showing white in his eyes. It was an animal fear—thoughtless and dumb—and a part of me felt sorry for him. It was only a tiny part of me, though, and it wasn’t hard to ignore. In the passenger seat next to him, Skinny was groaning and cursing, his face and hands streaming with blood.

“Christ,” he spat, “shit…my nose is broke—”

“Shut up,” Cole told him.

Skinny started to turn around again, but then quickly jerked back with a stifled scream as Cole gave him another sharp crack with the pistol, this time whacking him hard across the mouth. Skinny doubled over in the seat, his eyes screwed shut in pain, and I guessed he had a couple of broken teeth to go with his broken nose.

“Turn around at the end of the street,” Cole told Nate.

Nate’s eyes darted nervously in the mirror. “What?”

“Are you deaf as well as stupid?”

Nate frowned. “I don’t—”

“Just turn the car around.”

We were at the end of the village now. As Nate slowed the car and started turning it around, I could see Henry Quentin’s big stone house glaring down at us through the darkness. A solitary light glowed brightly in an upstairs window, but the rest of the house was dark. In the light of the window I could just make out the shadow-shapes of tangled trees in a vast rambling garden at the back of the house. Half a dozen vehicles were parked in a ramshackle driveway out in front. Among them were a couple of Land Rovers—one of which could have been Vince’s—and the tanker we’d seen at the gas station.

“Where to?” Nate asked Cole as he got the car straightened up.

“There’s only one road.”

Nate flicked a look at him again.

Cole sighed. “Just drive.”

We headed back down through the village, over the stone bridge, then up the hill toward the junction with the main moorland road. The darkness was thick and silent, the rain a mist of blackness. As we passed the gypsy camp, the pale lights of the trailers glimmered faintly behind a line of spindly trees. I wondered what Jess was doing right now. Crying? Sleeping? Thinking? Forgetting? I remembered her torn-heart screaming, and her silence in the forest, and her saddened kiss in the dying shadows…and then I closed my eyes and saw her face in the light of another time.

It’s early morning, cold and bright…some time soon. Maybe tomorrow. Jess is kneeling down, talking to someone. I can’t see who it is. I’m not there. I don’t know where I am. Jess looks sad, but not as sad as she’s been. It’s the sadness of someone who’s doing what they always wanted to do, but in the wrong place and at the wrong time and under the wrong circumstances.

I can hear a gas fire hissing, and I can smell cigar smoke and coffee, and I can see Jess lowering her eyes and smiling in the light of the sleepy blue flames…

And then I lost it.

When I opened my eyes again we’d reached the junction at the top of the hill and Cole was telling Nate to turn left. Nate did as he was told, and we drove on in silence along the empty moorland road. The night sky was huge now, like a vast black curtain of starless velvet. There was nothing to see and everything to imagine.

I looked at Cole. His eyes were dead. The gun in his hand was a silver-and-black 9mm automatic pistol. I could tell that he’d held it before—I could feel the remembered weight in his hand—and I was pretty sure that he’d fired it, too. I could feel the muscle-memory in his arm—the sudden jerk of the gun and the whip of the recoil as he flexed his finger and pulled the trigger…

Did he kill Billy McGinley?

Did I want to know?

I looked at him again. His eyes were scanning the darkness up ahead, and I was suddenly afraid of what he was going to do.

“Stop here,” he told Nate.

“Where?”

Cole said nothing, just jabbed the gun into the back of Nate’s neck. Nate slowed the car and pulled up at the side of the road. The engine rattled and sighed, then settled to a low juddering rumble. No one spoke for a while. I saw Nate glance briefly at Skinny, and I guessed he was looking for some kind of support, but Skinny was out of it—slumped against the passenger door, holding his head in his hands, groaning quietly.

“You all right, Rube?” Cole asked me.