Survival of Thomas Ford, The (15 page)

As Lorna came, a shuddering passed through her shoulders. Lanski saw her breasts jiggle. She hung her head forward and her hair fell across Thomas Ford’s face, which was already angled away from the patio doors. To Jack and Lanski it seemed now that the woman was consuming Thomas Ford, draining the force from him, filling herself with his life. From the edge of his eye, Lanski saw Jack lick his lips like the wolf he was.

The girl was off Ford in one movement, lying in his arms at his side now. It was only luck that she hadn’t seen the two men standing outside the windows. Jack and Lanski stayed where they were. They saw the girl’s hands remove the used condom from Ford, tie a knot in it, and throw it on the carpet.

It only seemed a matter of moments before the man and woman on the floor of the living room of 16 Cromwell Drive were asleep. Somehow, Lanski and McCallum knew, beyond doubt, that the couple slept now.

Lanski saw McCallum’s hand raise then and move toward the handle of the patio doors.

Detective Sergeant McPherson woke from a violent dream to the sound of his wife snoring beside him. He heard his own rapid breathing. The sweat was a lake on his back, the organic cotton sheet saturated.

Bill McPherson didn’t approve of the organic sheets. He thought his wife, Sarah, had gone too far with that.

The dream though. The dream had been that woman, Lea Ford, her skeleton shimmering in the sunlit current of a shallow river. It had been as though Bill stared down at her remains, from high above the water.

Strange. She had died in deep, black waters. Her body had been recovered the same day, many weeks ago.

Bill thought it must be guilt, from closing the case before the right time.

But that was how everything was now, you had to keep moving forward, like a shark, headed for the next thing, the next target.

It wasn’t about doing the job right any more.

Bill closed his eyes as Sarah exhaled a rasping, long breath. That fucking noise. He could understand murder, sleeping beside Sarah and the snoring. Bill let his mind turn to Detective Constable Liz Davies. Her blonde hair instead of Sarah’s black. Her smell. Her petite elbows. Oh, if he only could. But Liz had knocked him back too many times for it to be just playing hard to get.

Lea Ford’s face drifted into Bill’s mind. Then a black-haired bird-boy driving a red car. If Bill had his way, they’d have found that wee bastard. Unless Ford was only making up the boy in the car. Bill knew that Thomas Ford’s father-in-law suspected that, but Bill could never tell whether there was a real basis for it, or was it just the man not liking his daughter’s choice.

Sarah’s parents had lamented long and hard over her choice after all.

Alan and Jean Gillan were lying awake in the night too.

“Can’t you sleep?” said Jean. “I wonder how Thomas is doing, Alan?”

Alan blinked in the darkness. He didn’t care about Thomas Ford. If it were not for Thomas Ford, their daughter would still be alive.

“He’ll be alright,” said Alan.

“You think so? Maybe I should give him a phone tomorrow, invite him for tea.”

Alan sniffed.

“Do you believe him then?” said Alan.

“About what?”

“All that about a boy in a red car looking like a bird.”

“Of course,” said Jean.

She couldn’t see her husband’s twisted sneering snarl in the darkness. Alan often assumed extreme facial expressions lying in the dark like that. It allowed him to release something that might otherwise build up to an explosion. But what if an explosion was what was needed? Something was certainly needed.

“You can’t keep blaming him, Alan. It’ll eat you up inside. You’ll end up just old and bitter. It was an accident.”

He heard her swallow in the darkness. He lifted his arm like a wing and she shuffled down in the bed until she rested on him. He put his other arm round her as her body began to heave, swelling and emptying again, with sore tears.

“Sssssh darling. Ssssh.”

He kissed the hair at the side of her head.

At the corner of Church Street, in the city’s centre, dozens of varied objects and crafted figures sat silently behind glass shop windows and the sign that read:

WORLD NATIVE ARTS

Proprietor Lea Ford

In the orange glow from streetlights outside, a carved wooden head from New Guinea stared solemnly. A hollow, twisted horn from Sierra Leone lay casually abandoned on an oak table-top nearby.

Like themselves, their owner, buyer, and would-be seller, the late Mrs Lea Ford, was now without life. The array of old objects she had chosen with loving care and discretion had been orphaned in the same way by generations of possessors already though, so there was no shock for them. Only a continuing river of existence, neither hot nor cold, wet nor dry, an unerring, unbelievable, endless median.

A Hell in a way, unless you could weather it, and the gathered artefacts of all the world’s corners in Lea Ford’s Gallery had proven they could weather it.

Wood, and bone, and stone, inert and unchanging.

Lanski was driving.

Thomas Ford’s body was lying across the broad back seat of the Subaru, enveloped in a two-man tent that Jack McCallum had found at the back of the utility room in 16 Cromwell Drive. Some areas of blood had already succeeded in seeping through the synthetic material.

On the floor of the Subaru, resting against the plush velvet carpet, Lorna’s body lay in an attitude of mild genuflection, like an advertisement page for a Swiss Army knife. She too was hidden, by swathes of blanket and duvet cover.

The hardest thing had been carrying the bodies from the house to the vehicle, but the street had been silent, empty, unmoved.

“Left,” said Lanski’s boss now, and Lanski flicked up the indicator. The orange light on the dashboard flashed, the electronic clicking filled Lanski’s ears.

Lanski steered the Subaru through the roundabout. The city was still, peaceful, asleep. The few cars they did pass seemed unreal to Lanski, as though these were only the shadows or ghosts of cars, not solid. Lanski knew there was a good chance the Ford man was dead already, or dying now on the rear seat. McCallum had hit him very hard. But the girl was only unconscious. This made Lanski nervous. He kept expecting to hear sound from the blankets, or movement, but she was still.

Jack McCallum stared directly ahead.

“Follow the road. Over the bridge and straight on past the golf course,” he said.

Lanski was glad he didn’t know where they were going. It was better like this. He could pretend for long moments that nothing was wrong, they were only on the way to some late emergency job, subsidence at a new build or leaking gas.

The Subaru passed over the canal bridge. The golf course was a black shape, an expanse of dense shadow, bordered by old oaks.

“Left,” said McCallum.

Lanski raised his right wrist and the vehicle abandoned the boundaries of the growing city, its headlit nose pressing eagerly against the skirts of the night.

In Marie Ferguson’s living room, tears glistened on Jimmy McCallum’s leathery young cheeks.

“He says to me he’s going to kill all of yous,” said Jimmy. “Aye, Thomas Ford, Lorna, you Mrs Ferguson, and Robert too. He even asked me if I’d told my mum about any of it eh? He’s gone off his fucking head. Nothing’s gonnae stop him now eh?”

Jimmy sniffed and observed the fear in the eyes of Robert and Marie Ferguson. He choked back tears and shook his head.

“No,” he said, “this has all gone far enough eh?”

Convulsively, Jimmy stretched an arm out to the phone on the table by the settee.

“I’ll phone the police, Mrs Ferguson. It’s my dad. I’ll tell them what’s really going on.”

Marie watched Jimmy take a deep breath, then he looked back at her.

“I’ll dial the local cops, Mrs Ferguson. They’re just up the road. My dad says it’s faster than 999 eh?”

Marie watched Jimmy’s fingers tap out figures on the handset of her phone.

Jimmy blinked. The living room was so still and silent now that Marie and Robert could hear the phone’s ring-tone over the beating of their respective hearts.

In the Subaru, Jack McCallum’s mobile rang out violently. Jack flinched and fumbled for it in his pocket. Lanski’s mouth had fallen involuntarily open. The blackness of the huge, monstrous loch flashed by steadily to their left. The road ahead was a dark beast’s belly. The Subaru seemed to move forward against the beast’s throat through a narrow tunnel of light. Lanski had the impression that the night was swallowing them all and there would never be another day.

Jack pressed the button on the phone.

“Hello,” he heard Jimmy say. “I’m calling from 72 Broomfield Road. I need to report a crime that may or may not have happened yet. A murder…murders.”

In the living room of Broomfield Road, Marie bit her lip. Robert felt odd in his stomach, his medication rendered temporarily impotent by events.

In the Subaru passenger seat, Jack McCallum frowned heavily. Lanski whipped his head to the left for a moment, to watch his boss’ expression.

“Please send officers here right away,” Jack heard his son say. “72 Broomfield Road, Marie and Robert Ferguson’s home. And to 16 Cromwell Drive. It’s Jack McCallum, the builder, he’s gone mental. Thank you. Bye.”

Jimmy put the phone down.

“They’re on the way,” he said to Marie and Robert. “Two minutes, they said.”

Jack flipped his mobile closed. As though in reaction, Lorna’s body twitched and shuffled at the back of the Subaru. Jack tapped the phone twice against his chin. He needed a shave. He hated letting all the white hair grow in there on his jaw, like Santa Claus.

“There might be hope for that boy yet, Lanski,” said Jack. “He seems to have started Phase Two of this operation under his own initiative.”

Jack nodded his head. Aye, hope for the boy yet. Jack’s eye drifted to the Subaru’s speedometer.

“Easy, Lanski. Stay under fifty. We’re no exactly set up for a stop by the cops eh?”

Lanski blinked and eased his foot a degree upward. The Subaru was coming up to the corner where Lea and Thomas Ford’s car had left the road, taking part of the roadside’s low stone wall with it. In the headlights, Jack saw the joins in the stone where the Council had repaired it. A sneer crossed Jack’s face. Fucking amateurs. If Jack or Lanski had repaired that wall the mend would be invisible.

“Watch this blind corner, Lanski. It’s a dangerous one. There was an accident here not long ago. A woman was killed.”

In the living-room of 72 Broomfield Road, Marie Ferguson was experiencing an odd, nervous nausea in her stomach. Something was wrong. Something more than the obvious. It was the way Jimmy had spoken to the police, something in his tone.

Marie looked over at Robert. Robert was staring at Jimmy, as though waiting for an instruction. Marie looked at Jimmy. The boy’s black eyes glared back at her. Jimmy blinked and it was as though some hostile spark slipped out for a moment, from behind the mask of expression.

Then Jimmy grinned like a shark in the sea.

“What was my dad like in school, Mrs Ferguson? Can I call you Marie? I’ve always thought you were very attractive, Marie, for your age.”

“Come on, Jimmy,” said Robert. “Cut that out eh? The police will be here in a minute.”

Jimmy nodded.

“I bet my dad was a bastard in school,” he said. “He must have always been a bastard.”

Marie breathed in slowly. Outside the living-room window, the cat gave out a long, low moan.

The Subaru was entering the village.

“Right after the bank,” said Jack McCallum. “Then right again.”

Lanski indicated. There was another brisk shuffle from behind them. Jack turned and stretched to reach the blanketed form on the rear floor. He pounded his fist into one end of it and hit the girl’s foot. A cry came from the other end of the blanket roll. Jack punched that end and the girl went quiet.

Jack turned to face the road again.

“Here!” he shouted. “Here! I told you, right again!”

Lanski jammed the brakes on hard. He gave an anxious look, belatedly, into the rear-view. It was alright. No-one behind. Lanski brought the vehicle around and started along a narrow tarmac road. Within a minute, the headlight tunnel was penetrating the purest darkness Lanski had seen since his grandmother’s village as a boy.

“Stop,” said McCallum. “I’m driving now. Go round.”

Lanski opened the driver’s door and walked around the front of the Subaru. From the corner of his eye he saw his boss shuffling across from the passenger seat to the driver seat. For a second, Lanski was caught in the headlights, blinded. It occurred to him that McCallum could run him over and leave him on this road in the blackness. Then Lanski was getting into the passenger seat. As he pulled the door shut, Jack revved the engine. The Subaru screamed, then lurched forward, its rear wheels stirring up gravel and mud.

Jack brought the car around a left turn.

In the headlights, Lanski saw a sign:

CHALET RECEPTION

McCallum pulled the Subaru’s nose into a passing place opposite the sign. He did a three-point turn until they faced the sign and a one-storey building. Jack drove hard at the building and Lanski thought for a moment his boss intended to ram the structure, but at the last second Jack twisted the Subaru’s nose to the right. Lanski felt the suspension grind against rough track. The gradient was sudden and steep, reminding Lanski again of the hill path to his grandmother’s village, her wooden house.

It seemed to Lanski he was slipping back in time as the Subaru churned the earth and its well-studded tyres bore them all up into utter blackness, except for the shuddering headlight beam.

Lanski looked to the right and saw Jack McCallum’s head grinning. The Subaru ripped its way up the steep hill and, beyond Jack’s head, Lanski saw abandoned vehicles pass the driver’s side window. There was a tractor, illumined by the kiss of the headlight’s edge. It was an old tractor, fifty years old, just like the richest man in Lanski’s grandmother’s village had owned.

Lanski looked forward again.

Jack looked at him and laughed.

“Ah!” Jack shouted. “And you thought you’d come to fucking civilisation eh, coming over here? No, Lanski. This is what’s under the surface man. It’s the same fucking everywhere.”

Jack ground his teeth and absorbed a jump from the Subaru as it bounced over a knotted tree-trunk. It seemed to Lanski they were climbing an impossible gradient now, the chassis and themselves at a forty-five degree angle to the proper earth.

“I was going to build a house up here, Lanski. I lived here with my family, when I was your age, for two years. Aye, I was just like you, Lanski. We had fuck all. Just a caravan on this hill and a dream. But I’ll tell you, the boy was fine then. Jimmy. He was no problem at all when we lived up here. It was when we got the money, Lanski, that’s when it all went to fuck. You remember that, Lanski.”

Jack pulled the Subaru around a left turn and Lanski thought for a moment his boss had oversteered and they would roll the vehicle now, all the way back to the bottom of the hill behind.

Then they were ploughing upward again, straight, at an even more unlikely tilt.

Jack had had no four-by-four to attack this hill with twenty years ago. No, back then it was a third-hand Triumph that Jack, Cathy and Jimmy had arrived with. And here it was, the Triumph, coming up in the headlight beam, rusted and dead. Jack laughed loudly and took his right hand off the steering wheel to point out the wreck to Lanski as they passed it. But Jack didn’t explain anything to Lanski, just let him stare out the window.

“In the end, Lanski, I had to borrow, no, hire, the bastard charged me twenty quid to rent his tractor for the day, that was how I got the caravan up.”

The Subaru’s engine was struggling against the gradient, moaning and roaring in turns.

“Fuck,” said Jack. “I think we might do it.”

But exactly then the rear wheels lost purchase on the rooted track. For a few seconds the front axle ground down and took the slack, but it wasn’t enough. Jack felt the vehicle’s nose slip and slide off to the right. He fought back and got the steering wheel twisted left again, but the momentum was gone. Jack depressed the brake pedal, pulled up hard on the handbrake.

“Fucking good try though,” said Jack. “Closest I ever saw anything get except that tractor. We’re close enough.”

Jack opened the driver’s door, stepped out onto the track. The Subaru’s headlight shone a white tunnel up the track at an odd angle, as though Jack had been looking for some animal in the trees. Lanski heard the rear door opening.

“Come on!” said Jack.

Lanski got out of the Subaru. He stood straight for a moment, looking up the hill against the blackness that enveloped the headlight’s narrow slice of brilliance. There was a cool wind flicking gently against Lanski’s cheeks. He could smell the birch trees and hear their rustle. It was just like home. This Scottish hill was more like the country home of his childhood than any Polish town or city had ever been. Lanski felt the energy come up from the soil, through his boots. He looked back at Jack but Jack was only a shadow on the other side of the Subaru. Then the shadow shifted, lurched, walked uphill several paces. The shadow had a hunched back for a second, like a creature in a folk-tale, then Lanski saw that McCallum was carrying the girl, still wrapped tight in her blankets. Lanski watched this strange man-girl beast walk directly into the headlight beam. Nothing seemed real about it for a long moment and Lanski clenched his fist until his fingernails broke the skin of his palm.

“Lanski!” shouted McCallum. “Get Ford! Hurry up!”

Lanski swallowed. He walked around the back of the vehicle. The rear door was still open, swinging in the light wind. The Ford man was only a shadow on the back seat. Some sense of horror in Lanski made him hesitate. He didn’t want to touch Ford. He didn’t know which end was Ford’s head and which his feet. He couldn’t remember which end had bled through the tent material. He didn’t know if Ford was alive or dead.

“Lanski!” came Jack’s hissed shout through the black air.

Lanski looked uphill. McCallum was gone. There was no sign of him. He had walked beyond the headlit zone.

Lanski snarled and reached far into the back of the Subaru to get his arm underneath Ford’s body.

The man was heavy and awkward. Lanski had to bend his legs deeply, lean hard against the side of the Subaru. He jerked at Thomas Ford’s dead weight. It was difficult to even shift the body on the seat, let alone lift it.

Lanski straightened up. There was no other way. He grabbed the near end of Thomas Ford’s tent covering with both hands and pulled abruptly. He gave a second jerk and Thomas Ford fell heavily from the rear seat of the Subaru to the vehicle’s floor. The thud terrified Lanski and rocked the vehicle. Lanski stood still in the darkness and listened to the squeaking of the suspension.

He pulled again, a long, driving tug, and Thomas Ford left the Subaru. He landed on the rooted earth and knotted grass like a huge, newly-landed fish. Lanski could only just see the elongated shape on the ground, in the furthest reach of the headlight’s grace.