The Eye of the Moon (32 page)

As fortune would have it, Sanchez’s arduous journey home took him past the Fawcett Inn. Not a pleasant establishment, and well known as a local werewolf hangout, but seeing as there wasn’t a full moon anywhere in sight he figured it wouldn’t hurt to stop in there for a quick, refreshing glass of moonshine.

Barely had he made up his mind to call in at the pub, than something happened to make him rethink the idea. As he was approaching the place he heard a god-almighty commotion, and then a whole bunch of folks came rushing out of the front door of the thatched building, barging each other aside in their attempts to get clear of the place.
Bomb scare?
thought Sanchez.

Nah.

Fire, mebbe?

No. No sign of any smoke.

So what else could it possibly be?

One other possible cause sprang to mind.

Uh-oh. It couldn’t be?

Could it?

One of the last of the fleeing customers, a fat Mexican nicknamed Poncho, ran towards Sanchez, eyes bulging. He looked as though he’d raced straight out of Trap Two in the pub’s men’s room, because he was holding his baggy brown pants up with one hand and trying to buckle his belt with the other. His half-undone white shirt was hanging out, and he had a length of white toilet paper coming out the back of his pants, and trailing along behind him. As he drew near he shouted the warning that the bartender most dreaded.

‘HE’S BACK! FUCKIN’ BOURBON KID, MAN!’

Poncho barged heavily into Sanchez’s shoulder as he charged away down the street. The slight impact reminded Sanchez of just how tired he was. He stopped walking and let his shopping bags drop to the ground. His legs had turned to jelly a few minutes earlier simply from exhaustion (and because he was unfit). Now they had turned to spaghetti, so it was a miracle he was still standing at all. He stared at the front entrance of the Fawcett Inn, watching to see if anyone else came out. Or any stray bullets, for that matter. Up to this point, he hadn’t actually heard any gunshots, which was unusual if the Kid was back.

Sanchez had survived two previous encounters with Santa Mondega’s most prolific killer. Now, for some inexplicable reason that would probably one day see him handing a blank cheque to a psychiatrist, his curiosity had got the better of him. He wanted one more look at the face that so often hid beneath that dark cowl. He took a few steps towards the entrance. The large wooden door was open inwards, shuddering a little in the wind. Through the gap in the doorway he could see that it was too dark inside to make out much. Even so, it seemed safe enough to step a little closer, because up to this point he still hadn’t heard any gunshots or screams from inside. At least, none that he could hear from where he was. So he took
another step. Then another.

Then he heard something behind him.

He turned sharply and saw Poncho. The tubby Mexican who was an infamous local thief had run back and grabbed the bags of shopping that Sanchez had set down. After picking them up he stopped, shrugged at Sanchez in an apologetic fashion, then ran off with all the bartender’s new stuff.
Bastard.

Sanchez turned his back on the thieving little shit. Yet he had to respect Poncho’s initiative. The opportunity to acquire some free shopping was there and the guy had taken it. Besides, Sanchez had more pressing matters at hand. As carefully as he could, he took a few more tentative steps towards the entrance of the Fawcett Inn until he was little more than ten feet away. And finally something happened.

A sudden movement made his heart miss a beat and his stomach tighten, as though he’d just taken a pineapple up his ass. The door of the pub opened a little more and a body appeared, crawling desperately along the ground. It was Igor the Fang. He was clawing his way along the dusty flagstoned floor and out of the bar as if he had lost the use of his legs and was relying solely on his upper body to get anywhere. He looked up at Sanchez, his face a bruised and swollen mess, his neck seeping blood from a deep cut. For just a moment it looked as though he was about to plead for help. That moment passed all too quickly, for a second later his body was dragged back inside the pub. His fingernails were damn near ripped out as he tried desperately to embed them in the dusty gravel outside, in a failed bid to maintain some kind of grip on the civilized world.

And then, just for a split second, a hooded figure appeared in Sanchez’s line of vision.

Then the door was slammed shut.

It was the cue for Sanchez to make himself extremely scarce. Without another moment’s hesitation he hurried on down the street as fast as his tired legs would carry him. The next bar in the direction he was heading was a mile away. It
was the Tapioca, and Sanchez needed to get there and board the place up before the Kid arrived. And he needed to warn Jessica.

Beth felt horribly nervous. She didn’t like the corridor that led down to Bertram Cromwell’s office. It was creepy, and had a number of very dark paintings on the walls either side. Sinister characters within the paintings seemed to be staring down at her as she passed them. It didn’t get much better when she reached the tall black door at the corridor’s end. She found that creepy, too. It had a gold-coloured doorknob at waist height on the right-hand side, and a small silver nameplate screwed to it at eye level with the word ‘CROMWELL’ engraved on it in thin gold letters.

In the ten years she had spent in prison she had learnt to hate, respect and fear authority in equal measure. Being summoned to the office of a figure in authority, be it the prison warden or the director of a museum, had always spelt trouble for her, so she was more on edge than usual. After counting to three to try to calm herself she knocked twice on the door. A moment later she heard Cromwell’s voice call ‘Come in’ from the other side.

She turned the doorknob to the left and pushed. The door didn’t open. So she turned it to the right and pushed. Still the door wouldn’t give. Beth remembered being in Cromwell’s office once before, some months earlier, but she couldn’t recall how the door opened, or indeed whether it was even she who had opened it. She tried turning the handle in each direction several times, even pulling the door instead of pushing it, and the longer she went without it opening the more nervous she became. After about twenty painfully long seconds she started to feel humiliated. It would be obvious to the Professor that
she was a fool who couldn’t open the door. Each second that ticked by brought her ever closer to having to call out to him through the door to explain her predicament.

Eventually, just as she was about to break out into a nervous sweat, the door opened, courtesy of Bertram Cromwell pulling it from the other side. He stood there, immaculately dressed as always, smiling back at her.

‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t … The door … It just … I turned the knob, I mean handle … but …’

‘Think nothing of it,’ said Cromwell courteously. ‘Lots of people have trouble with this door.’

Beth sensed that he was saying that simply to make her feel better. The chances were high that no one had ever struggled with the horrible door before. She was probably the first. What an idiot, and what an awful start to her meeting with the Professor. Particularly awful because she had a sneaking feeling that she was about to be fired. She’d been fired from every job she’d ever had since her release from prison. Everywhere she went, at least one of her colleagues, if not all of them, would invariably complain to management that they didn’t feel comfortable working with her. She had done well to last six months in this job, and that was probably because Cromwell had known her father many years earlier. Or so she’d been told.

She had been working as a cleaner at the museum since Cromwell had been kind enough to employ her, but she hadn’t managed to make a single friend in her time there. Invariably, every time she got to know one of the other members of staff and began to think they were hitting it off, someone would inform the other party of her colourful past, and pretty soon the friendship would peter out. She’d grown used to it over the years; in fact, it was one of the reasons why changing jobs so often didn’t bother her too much. It wasn’t nice to stay at one place for too long when you knew everyone hated you.

Cromwell took his seat in the black leather chair behind his desk, while Beth stood and admired the shelves of books on the walls to her left and right.

‘Please sit down,’ Cromwell said, indicating one of the two chairs on her side of his nineteenth-century oak desk.

Beth smiled politely and sat down in the chair on the left. ‘I suppose you’re going to want this back?’ she said, tugging at the shoulder of her navy blue dress. It was one of the three standard cleaner’s uniforms she had started her job at the museum.

He gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘You did well to last six months, right?’

‘It’s better than usual,’ she replied. She could feel a tear welling up in her right eye. Despite the fact that no one at the museum spoke to her, it had been one of the better jobs, and she was dreading the thought of preparing for interviews in order to find some kind of employment elsewhere.

‘So, Beth. I’ve been hearing that you have not been mixing well with other staff here? Apparently you take lunch on your own each day?’

‘Well, yes, but I … it’s just that … I don’t have any friends.’ It hurt to say it out loud and she felt the tear in her eye doubling in size.

‘No friends? Hmmm,’ Cromwell drummed his fingers on the desk for a few seconds. ‘You’ve booked the rest of the week off, haven’t you?’

‘Er … yes. Should I … ? Erm … is this it, then? Should I not come back to the museum after my vacation?’

Cromwell reached down to the floor to the right of his chair and picked something up. Beth peered across to see what it was. He placed the object, a package wrapped in brown paper, on the desk directly in front of her. It was about the size of a pillow and seemed to contain something soft.

‘What plans do you have for your vacation?’ Cromwell asked. His line of questioning was beginning to unnerve Beth a little. She was nervous around most people, but figures of authority like professors made her even more so.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Your vacation. You have booked three days off. I was just wondering what you had planned.’

‘Oh, nothing really. Nothing interesting, that is. Looking for a new job, probably.’

‘Don’t do that just yet,’ said Cromwell, smiling.

Beth couldn’t make out whether or not he was telling her that she wasn’t fired, or if he was having a joke at her expense. Since she didn’t want to seem presumptuous, she decided that he must be joking.

‘Okay. So when do I finish working here?’

‘When
you
choose Beth. Or when you smash a valuable antique vase over Simmonds’s head.’

‘I’m sorry, but I’m not following you.’

‘I’m not firing you, Beth. You’re a hard worker. And on your first day back from your vacation you and I are going to meet for lunch in the canteen.’

Beth, astonished, said the first thing that came into her head. ‘Really? What time?’ she asked.

‘
Lunchtime.
I don’t know – any time. Just come and get me when you’re ready. Lord knows I’ve been lunching on my own for so long now I could use some company once in a while. I don’t think anyone else wants to sit with me at lunchtime, so in exchange for not firing you, even though I’ve been advised to by the pony-tailed one, I expect you to invite me to lunch once a week from now on. If that’s okay with you, of course?’

Beth fiddled nervously with her long brown hair. The Professor was such a gentleman, and, she thought, probably quite a ladykiller in his day. And although she knew that he had made his lunch suggestion out of pity, it was a kind enough gesture to ensure that the tear in her right eye slid down her cheek. She discreetly wiped it away, camouflaging the move with her hair twiddling. She thought that the Professor probably hadn’t noticed.

‘Thank you, Professor Cromwell. I’ll do that.’

‘Good, but you still haven’t told me what plans you have for your three days’ vacation.’

‘Oh. Well, nothing really.’ Beth continued to fidget uncomfortably with a few long strands of hair hanging just in
front of her ear.