The Love of the Dead (12 page)

“No,” she said again through gritted teeth, with blood pouring down her face, stroking a dead bird.

“I’ve got a first-aid kit in the car,” he said, instead of fighting a losing battle.

“Well, then, officer. Make yourself useful, and go and get it. As far as I can see there’s not been a crime, has there?”

“I...I don’t know.”

“Get me someone who does. Get me Coleridge. I want to see him. Right now.”

“I can’t...”

“Don’t bullshit me. Call him. He’ll come. I’ll talk to him.”

He shook his head, then pushed himself to his feet and headed out of the door.

She needed to clean up this mess, but first off, she really needed to clean her cuts. She could feel the poison seeping into her blood. The filth of the raven. The filth of him.

She had no doubt. The raven wasn’t him, but it carried his disease. His taint.

Laying the seagull aside, she pushed herself to her feet and walked through the carnage in her kitchen and into the bathroom.

The policemen couldn’t protect her from him, but they could clean up. After all, that was the policemen’s job, wasn’t it? It wasn’t about protection. It was about picking up the pieces, and when he came for her they wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it. They’d just make their little drawings, take their little pictures, and fuss over her corpse.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Blood ran along the bottom of the bath in a meandering river. Streams of blood broke and merged and swirled. The scalding water made Beth’s scalp tingle until it was nearly painful, but she didn’t turn the heat down. Standing under the steaming water, watching her blood wash away, she wondered if that was his plan. For her to sicken and die.

But she didn’t feel sick. She felt afraid. Terrified. She shook so hard she couldn’t hold onto the soap, and her legs were barely able to hold her upright. Sure, she was frightened.

She turned off the water while the blood was still running free. She pulled on her robe and walked to her bedroom. There was a mirror there, and she spent some time checking over her face. There was a long scratch down one cheek, a hole in her neck where one of the bird’s talons must have dug in. Her blonde hair was red at the roots, her scalp torn in so many places she couldn’t even begin to count.

Her eye was a mess. There was a tear in her eyelid, but that had stopped bleeding. The raven must have caught her eye, because she still couldn’t see properly. Her other eye was fine, though, and that would have to do for now.

She could feel the blood running down her arm from the gash the bird’s beak had made. She almost definitely needed stitches, but she wasn’t about to leave her house and Miles and all she owned. Not when he was out there.

Something protected her here. She might not be safe, but she was a damn sight safer on home ground than out in the night somewhere strange.

Miles. Where the hell was Miles?

He’d been around for so long he was almost background noise. Her very own haunting. But he hadn’t been there while she was being attacked.

Maybe he was afraid, too. The killer had cut his throat after all, and even though he was dead, that couldn’t have been much fun.

There was no point in hunting for him or calling for him. He’d come back or he wouldn’t, and if he did, it wasn’t like she could ask him where he’d been. He couldn’t talk. He wouldn’t, anyway. He was still angry with her. She couldn’t say she blamed him.

“Beth? Mrs. Willis?”

Coleridge.

She was surprised at the relief she felt.

“In here,” she called.

He loomed in the doorway. He filled it, a solid, reassuring presence.

“You okay?”

She shook her head. He nodded, like, stupid question, fair enough. But then she was crying and she couldn’t stop. Her shoulders began to shake, then her legs. She shook so hard she had to go and sit on the bed to stop from falling down.

He came over to the bed and sat beside her. She rose about half a foot as his weight settled and the bed groaned.

One of the other policemen poked his head around the door.

“Fuck off for now, eh?” said Coleridge. The head retreated.

Beth sobbed, and he put a hand on her shoulder. It felt good to have some human contact. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since anyone with a pulse touched her.

“I’m sorry,” she said eventually. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“I’d be worried if you didn’t.”

“It’s just...I don’t understand what’s going on. I’m a medium. You understand?”

“You see dead people? All that kind of stuff?”

“Sure I do. I see dead people, right? I must be a little off my rocker. People talk about me in town. Most of the time I don’t give a shit. But I wonder sometimes. I wonder if I’m really some kind of fucking lunatic, making it all up, just seeing things. Like I should be on psych meds or in a padded cell. Maybe this whole life of mine is just a really long breakdown. You know?”

She could see that he didn’t. Not really. And that was OK, because who would? He didn’t even pretend like he understood.

“I saw my first dead person when I was a teenager. Real as you. Solid. Most can’t speak, you know. The dead.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“They’re just kind of...there. They can speak through someone living. Like a vessel. Sometimes they use someone living to communicate. They can write, for some reason. People do that. Automatic writing. Channel a spirit’s voice onto paper, their thoughts, their ideas.”

“I didn’t know that, either.”

“You think this is all bullshit?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know much.”

“I got a name.”

“What?”

“A name. Might be nothing. Might be him.”

She shook her head. “It can’t be, because you don’t know the whole of it. You don’t know what I know. It can’t be him, because the killer’s dead.”

Coleridge nodded. Didn’t look at her.

“You think I’m nuts?”

He shrugged. “I don’t pretend I know everything. I start out not knowing. Like a blank slate. I’m a policeman. It’s what I get paid to do. Not know. Then I find out. Like I’m doing now. I talk to people. They talk to me. Sometimes I get somewhere.”

He shrugged. Looked her in the eye. “Like I say. I don’t know. But I’m listening, and you know what? I’ve got a murderer who leaves no trace. Nothing. I’ve got a feather stuck in a dead woman’s throat. I’ve got a scene out of a fucking horror movie in a lady medium’s kitchen with dead birds and bits and one black bird. I’ve got a name. A real person. I’m waiting on a call to tell me some hard coppers bashed down his door and found a bunch of severed heads. But I’m wondering, too, you know, like I’m deducing, detecting, if it’s the same bird in your kitchen that matches my feather in Sam Wright’s throat. I’m wondering if they do DNA testing on birds. If that’s an avenue worth pursuing. Because I can say things like that, avenues of pursuit, and feel like a dick and still not know a damn thing.”

She decided right there.

“Those other policemen? Do they have to stay?”

“Not if you don’t want them to.”

“You stay. They go. We talk. I drink.”

He looked at her for a while then nodded and got up. She sank back down a few inches. The bed sounded relieved when he got up.

He came back after about half an hour. She hadn’t moved.

“They’ve gone,” he said.

“Time to hit the sauce, then, I reckon,” she said. “Join me?”

“Don’t see why not,” he said with a smile. He had a big face. It had to be a big smile to fill that face. It was a good fit.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The policemen had made themselves useful. They’d taken away the dead birds, done a crappy job of cleaning up, but it was a sight better than it had been before. There was still blood and shit here and there. Enough to make sitting in the kitchen out of the question.

Coleridge took it in. He sighed. “You want to go somewhere else?”

“Through here,” she said, and led him, drink in hand, into the living room. It wasn’t a big room. There was a TV and an Xbox. A stack of games piled into the battered wooden unit that held the Xbox. A couple of shelves that looked straight enough, a tatty couch and a recliner in one corner, right next to the woodstove. The windows looked out into darkness where the road was. There were no street lights and hardly any passing traffic.

It was a cozy room, designed for comfort and little else. It said Beth Willis didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of her. It also said she didn’t have much money, but then that could be a mistaken impression.

Coleridge’s own house was full of expensive furnishings. Designer wallpaper on one wall of his living room. A great big TV mounted over the fake fireplace with expensive looking fake flames that didn’t pump out any heat at all. A mirror bought at an auction in a frame that looked gold but was fake, like everything in his house. None of it was him. It was all his wife’s. Her shit in his house. When they’d split up, he’d paid her for her half of the house. She said she couldn’t bear to take the house, it wasn’t fair. She was leaving him, after all. Amicable. All very friendly, very civilized. But he really wished she’d taken the fucking house, because every inch of it reminded him of her. No matter how much he washed the bed clothes they smelled of her. It was a woman’s house. All the time he’d said he didn’t care either way when she was picking things for the house. Now he was fucking stuck with it.

“I like this,” he said.

“I just never get around to doing anything with it,” she said, as though he’d said it was a shithole.

“Let’s get started on the right foot, eh? I’m not here to intrude. I’m here because you’re important to my case, true, but I’m also here because you invited me, and because, although you’re a pretty ugly drunk, you’re the best company I’ve had for years.”

“Heart on sleeve time, is it?”

He took the couch. Figured the recliner was hers. He got it right.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning?”

She took a breath, just a little hitch. Then she pursed her lips and obviously changed what she was going to say.

“Thank you. I’m sorry. I’m not much for company.”

“I gathered. Me, neither. I’m not the best at being sociable.”

“What’s his name, this man?”

“Gregory Sawyer.”

Beth shook her head. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”

“Never seen him? Given him a reading?”

She shook her head again. “Never heard of him.”

Coleridge shrugged. “Doesn’t mean anything. Might be a coincidence. It happens.”

He said it, but he wasn’t sure he believed it. Coincidence is half of what makes a detective’s job work. Look for things that happened that shouldn’t have. Like a man making a forty-odd mile trip to see two separate mediums.

Neither of them said anything for a time. It was comfortable. Beth drank fast, Coleridge drank slow. Coleridge stared down at the whiskey in his hand. Shook it this way and that. Wished he had some ice. He didn’t really like whiskey. He liked beer.

“You want proof?” she said suddenly.

Coleridge sat back and turned his attention to Beth. He wasn’t sure that he did want proof. He didn’t strictly like the idea of her speaking to the dead, or whatever it was she did. He was open-minded on the subject. Things had been confusing enough lately to let a little light into his perspective on what counted as weird shit. But he could tell she wanted to say something. To show him. Fuck, he hoped she didn’t show him.

He didn’t want proof, but if she needed to give it...

“Not really,” he said. “I’m happy to take your word for it. But then again, I’m in it up to my neck, so let’s do it.”

“Your partner wants his watch back.”

Just straight at him, no preamble. He rocked back and spilled his drink in his lap, like he’d just taken a pretty good straight left.

“Fucking hell. Bet you’re a knockout when you’re itching for sex.”

She smiled sadly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a pulse down there. But yeah, I’m a bitch. But why fuck about, right?”

He shook his head.

“You see him?”

She nodded. She was watching him, waiting to see which way he’d go. He suddenly had the feeling that he was laid bare before her. The last time he’d felt like this was when his doctor stuck his fingers up his ass and tickled his prostate.

“How is he?”

She laughed.

“You know what I mean,” he said, feeling like an idiot.

“You want to know? Really?”

He didn’t, but he needed to. He needed to understand how she worked, because she was the closest thing to a chance he had at saving lives.

“Tell me.”

“His face is half missing. Shotgun, I suppose?” he gulped some whiskey down and clenched his jaw tight. She obviously took it as confirmation. “I’m sorry, Coleridge. I see you were friends. I’m sorry. I can stop. God, I’m crap at this.”

“No,” he said, rubbing his hands over his face. “I need to know how you work. It could be important.”

“Detecting?” she asked with a tentative smile.

“Sure. Like a bastard. How do you know about the watch?”

“Because he’s not wearing it. He keeps pointing to his wrist when you’re around. It’s like mime, sometimes, with the dead. They must be frustrated, not being able to speak.”

She was spot on. He didn’t like it, but she’d given him proof.

“What am I supposed to do about it?”

“You know what it means?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I do. But I don’t know how to fix it. It ain’t something I can fix.”

“I can only tell you what I see. I don’t have the answers any more than you do.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. I get it. You’re the real deal. I’m a believer. You show me mine, I show you yours.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yeah, you do,” he said, staring at her hard. He wasn’t about to let her off the hook. Even if it meant being a bastard. It didn’t bother him, being a bastard. He didn’t want to do it to her, but she had something he needed and he couldn’t let her wiggle around, like she was thinking of doing. He could see it in her face.