I Love My Smith and Wesson (21 page)

She gave a curt nod.

“I can't stress this enough—everything I do in this city depends on the chief constable looking the other way. You could argue that Prestbury isn't Manchester, but try telling him that. So I have to act. You see? Even if Rawhead isn't killing my men, he's threatening my livelihood.”

“You know his name and his address. Do you know what he looks like?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” He unfolded a computer printout and laid it before her. It was a blurred photo of a bunch of schoolboys. “We got it off that Friends Reunited site.” He pointed to a lean, solemn child in the back row. “That's him. In the class of '81.”

“Unless he still wears short trousers, that's no use to me.” She pushed the crumpled image back across the table to him. “How much are you offering?”

She might have been discussing wallpapering his living room.

“The same as before. A thousand a week. Get a result, there'll be fifty thousand on top.”

“No. Two hundred thousand
at least.
”

“I could go up to seventy-five. That's my best offer.”

“Fine.” She put down her fork and got up to leave.

He waved her down. “All right, all right.”

“If I succeed,” she said, “everything you've worked for will be saved. If I fail, you won't have to pay me. Now, that
has
to be a good deal.”

Even Chef, who hated spending money, saw the sense of this. “Either way, I win.” He reached across the table and took her hand. It was icy cold. “Now. Do you think you can get this bastard off my back?”

“Just tell me where to find him.”

*   *   *

It was midafternoon when she arrived at the Bedfordshire village of Dudloe. There was a three-quarter moon high in the sky and the bright sun lingered over the fields. Every so often a warm wind rose up to shake the trees in the churchyard. Then the wind died away abruptly, waiting until all was still before resuming its erratic campaign.

Chef had sketched a map on the back of a napkin, showing her where to find the house and the church. “The vicarage is the next house but one to the church. That's not the place you want. You want the
old
vicarage, the big house next to the church. There's no sign outside, but you'll know it when you see it, because it looks like something from a horror film.”

With or without Chef's help, the Spirit would have picked out Rawhead's house. His presence hung over the building like a biblical plague. The walls breathed malice. The house was Victorian, but its true style was American Gothic. All towers, ivy, sweeping gables, and an underlying preoccupation with death. It was the kind of house the Spirit of Darkness would have chosen for herself.

She parked her Range Rover on the grass outside the church, adjusting her mirror until she could see the house. She had the window wound down, her elbow resting on the frame. She could hear birds singing, the whisper of the leaves. The stillness came as a shock to her after the noise of Manchester and the roar of the motorway.

She switched on the engine and moved off down the quiet country road. Soon houses began to appear. She turned left and almost ran into a group of teenagers who were playing in the road. She braked so hard that she smelled burning rubber. The kids, two girls and a boy, stared at her blankly, waiting for a rebuke that never came. Unhurriedly they stepped out of her way, and she drove on.

The road brought her to a crossroads, with a school on one corner and a pub on the other. If the village could be said to have any heart at all, she supposed this was it. She waited at the crossing while a tractor chugged by, casting a trail of shit behind it. The pub was called the Plough Boy. She drove into its car park, pulling up near a large notice that proclaimed:
BAR MEALS, LARGE GROUPS CATERED FOR
.

Besides the Range Rover, there were only two other vehicles in the car park, an ancient Skoda and a Suzuki van. She walked into the pub. She was dressed in a staid black business suit. The scar on her face was camouflaged with a subtle sheen of makeup. She looked exactly like what she was pretending to be: an estate agent in between appointments.

Two old men were standing at the bar. Their conversation dried up while she stood beside them, waiting to be served. A sour-faced old cow walked out from the kitchen and addressed the old men without looking at the Spirit. “No Cornish pasties, Bob. But I could heat up the lasagna if you like.”

Bob, a long-faced man with thick gray hair on his exposed forearms, shook his head. “No, I don't like any of that I-talian stuff. It repeats on me.”

“Don't you mean retreats?” said his companion. “Wops always retreat. In fact, they're known for it.”

This pleasantry invoked comfortable laughter.

After ignoring the Spirit for just long enough to be offensive, the landlady eventually turned to her. “Yes?”

The Spirit gave her a white smile. “What a lovely welcoming little pub this.”

“We try our best,” said the landlady slowly, obscurely aware that she was being insulted but unable to determine precisely how.

“A vodka and tonic. With ice, please.”

“You're foreign,” said Bob with a wink. “I can always tell.”

“I was born near Dublin,” said the Spirit.

“That's what he's getting at,” said the other man. “You hail from foreign parts.”

“Don't mind Dennis, here,” said Bob. “He was shot in the war. He's never quite recovered.”

“You mean, I was killed in the war,” said Dennis.

“That's right,” agreed Bob. “He was pronounced clinically dead.”

“Then I started breathing again,” said Dennis. “But for a minute or so, I was dead. So when people ask, I always say I died in the war. Technically, it's not a lie.”

Bob laughed. “Clinically dead. But did they ever pronounce him clinically alive? That's what I want to know.”

The Spirit sipped her drink and smiled along with them. “Does anyone know who owns the big house next to the church?”

The question spawned a cautious silence.

“The reason I ask,” she continued, “is that I represent an estate agency. We tend to keep an eye open for unoccupied properties that aren't yet on the market.”

“Oh, it isn't unoccupied,” said Dennis.

“No, that's Roger's house,” added Bob. “I can see why you think it's empty, but no. Old Roger lives there.”

“There's quite a few round here who don't like to walk that way after dark, if you get my drift,” said Dennis.

“Why's that?” said the Spirit.

“Some people say there's a ghost,” said Dennis. “I don't believe it.”

“Don't just leave it there,” said the Spirit. “I love ghost stories.”

“All I know,” said Bob, “is that a little girl is supposed to have fell off a balcony and broke her neck. Now whether that's true or not I couldn't tell you.”

“But Roger doesn't mind the ghosts, then.”

“He's never said anything about it,” said Dennis, “and we've never asked. Mind you, he's hardly ever there.”

“That's right.” Bob shook his head. “Turns up every few months for a day or so; then he's off on his travels. Works all over the place, does old Roger. One of these high-flying executives, as far as I can make out.”

“And he's quite old?” she said. They looked blank. “You called him ‘old Roger.'”

Bob seemed surprised. “Oh, no. Rodge ain't old. No more than … what would you say?”

“Thirty-five?” ventured Dennis. “No more than that.”

“Nice enough bloke. He does odd jobs for them that are really decrepit,” said Bob. “Like Dennis here.”

“You're only as old as you feel,” said Dennis.

“And how old do you feel?” asked the Spirit.

“Seventy-eight,” Dennis admitted.

“I'll tell you what,” said Bob. “He could do with doing a few odd jobs for himself, state of that house of his.”

Dennis nodded. “I don't think that place has seen a lick of paint in years.”

“But you don't think he's home?”

“He may be,” said Dennis. “He was here a couple of nights ago. He always drops in for a drink and a giggle when he's home.”

*   *   *

The Spirit drove back to the church. It was dusk. She gazed up at the octagonal spire with its gargoyles and pinnacles, once again feeling the cold presence of the man she had come to kill.

A drink and a giggle?

From the churchyard she could see the windows of the neighboring vicarage. They were dark and empty. They told her there was no one home. She walked through a gap in the hedge at the end of the churchyard. On the far side of the graves lay tilled fields and a sky the color of rotting fruit. The wind came over the fields, cutting through her, colder than ever now that the sun had gone. The winter was old and dying, but it still had its teeth.

The grounds of the old vicarage ran down to the hedge at the edge of the field. Peering through the hedge, she could see the ash of an old bonfire. The garden was rugged and unkempt. A gray statue of Flora stood in the center of the wild lawn, leaning drunkenly to one side. Beyond the statue, the house brooded and scowled.

*   *   *

After dark, she returned. She had exchanged her work clothes for a black jacket and jeans. Although there were no streetlights in the lane outside the church, the moon was bright enough to cast blue shadows over the house and lawn. The Spirit went round to the back of the house, scanning the windows for any sign of habitation.

There was an old wooden outhouse, door ajar. She stepped inside and saw tools hanging on the walls. A drill, hammers, and garden shears. An ax with a shiny black handle.

When she was satisfied that there was no one hiding in the garden, she approached the house and punched a hole through a window with her leather-gloved hand. Then she reached through the gap and unscrewed the lock. She raised the sash and climbed through the gap to find herself in a room full of crowded bookcases.

She shone a small torch over the room. There was thick dust everywhere. She stopped and listened to the silence. A fly buzzed close to her ear. She didn't react. The Spirit knew that the books she was looking at were priceless. Bound first editions of
The Turn of The Screw, The Haunting of Hill House,
and, most astoundingly of all,
Dracula.

She took Bram Stoker's masterpiece off the shelf and opened it. It was a genuine first edition. The ancient yellowed pages smelled of piss and vinegar. She held the book to her face and kissed it. Rawhead was evidently a man of exquisite taste.
Dracula
was the Spirit's favorite novel. She did not intend to leave this house without it.

Still clutching the book, she moved across the room and opened the door. Now she was looking onto a large, bare hall. The flashlight picked out a white shape that turned out to be a statue of the Virgin Mary, gazing down proudly at the grotesque Jesus nestling in the crook of her arm.

The Spirit moved across the floor, her footsteps echoing on the bare floorboards. The house was a wreck. The ceiling overhead was scarred by a deep, twisting rent. She took a step toward the staircase and trod on something soft. When she knelt down to see what it was, she found herself looking at an enormous dead rat with a crushed skull, brains spilling out of its ears.

The Spirit kicked the rat out of her path and climbed the stairs.

The beam of the torch cast the shadow of the banister rail before her. A shadow that shuddered as she climbed. She felt so at home in the darkness that she didn't even bother to draw her gun.

Only two of the rooms on the first floor had furniture. The larger room, facing out to the church, had a double bed. The other room was across the landing. As soon as she entered she knew that it was his room. There was a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, and a bare mattress on the floor. At the foot of the mattress lay a pile of blankets, neatly folded.

She looked inside the wardrobe. There were no clothes, but at the bottom of the wardrobe lay a Remington shotgun and a box of shells. In the chest of drawers she found socks, shirts, sweaters, jeans, and T-shirts. But no bills, bank statements, or photographs. Nothing to pin a face to the man she was hunting.

On the top floor, it was the same story. Dusty, abandoned rooms with windows that hadn't been cleaned for fifty years. One of the rooms contained an old wooden cradle and a rocking horse. The Spirit walked to the window and peered through a wide crack in the dusty pane. She could see the moon sailing through clouds. The wind sang like a ghost, carrying fresh country air in from the fields.

She shone her torch at the window ledge. With a chisel or a blade, a name and date had been scored into the wood.

Meg Gear 1856

The Spirit was halfway down the stairs when she heard a cry. It sounded like a wail of outrage. She stopped breathing to listen. Her father had been a manic-depressive, given to making similar noises whenever he mislaid a shoe or accidentally dropped a licorice allsort on the floor. For a moment she thought she was hearing the old man's ghost.

Perhaps she would have to murder him all over again.

From the soft leather holster nestling over her left hip the Spirit drew her gun and took off the safety. It was a Sig 220 with night sights. The magazine held seven forty-five-caliber rounds.

Calmly and methodically the Spirit searched the ground floor. She checked the library again, then secured the only other two furnished rooms. When she entered the long kitchen, she walked into a pocket of foul air that might have been caused by another dead rodent or something rotten in the fridge. The Spirit of Darkness suspected otherwise. She placed
Dracula
on the table and listened.

There was another shrill, pitiful screech of anguish. It seemed to come from beneath her feet.