I Love My Smith and Wesson (3 page)

“Jesus Christ,” said Billy. Then he realized he was naked. With one hand covering his privates, he turned on his daughter's night-light.

Rawhead held a finger to his lips.

Then he got to his feet and opened the balcony doors. Icy air blasted into the room, rattling the doors.

Rawhead nodded to Billy and stepped onto the balcony. Seconds passed. Billy got curious and stuck his head out of the French windows. There was no one out there. They were four floors up; there was nowhere else to go. But Rawhead had vanished.

Billy sat by Maddy's cot all night, too jangled to go back to bed. He felt physically sick. He couldn't believe his bad luck. Rawhead was back. It was only a matter of time before people started dying.

*   *   *

On the following afternoon, William Edwin Dye finally lived up to his initials by marrying Nicola May Bourne. Just before the ceremony, Billy had taken an artificial additive to see him through the ordeal and jolly himself up after his sleepless night. He felt so happy that the solemn nature of his vows was lost on him. He was glad to be marrying a woman, but it didn't particularly matter which one.

Billy and Nikki were married by Patricia Izzard, a justice of the peace. She was patient, elegant, and kind—not at all the podgy civil servant with halitosis that Billy had expected. The witnesses were Lorna Bourne, sister to the above, and Roger Alton, Billy's brother-in-law. Billy and his brother-in-law had never struck up any kind of relationship, but Billy thought he'd make as good a witness as anyone.

Billy had decided against having a best man. His only real friend, Tony the corrupt policeman, had mysteriously disappeared while Billy had been staying with Rawhead. It would have seemed callous to elect another best man just because his real best man was missing, presumed dead.

Billy wore a suit—his first ever—and Nikki looked resplendent in a dress of black satin, her long dark hair scraped back to show her fine cheekbones. Everyone said the bride looked stunning and that the groom looked as if he'd actually taken the trouble to have a bath. After the ceremony and the photographs, they went in to dinner.

Many guests had used the bad weather as an excuse for not coming. The room was half empty. Billy and Nikki sat at a long table with their immediate family. Their daughter, Maddy, sat between them, imprisoned in a high chair.

Roger, to everyone's surprise, insisted on giving a speech. “I've known William—Billy—since he was seventeen. I can easily say, without fear of contradiction, that marrying Nikki is the only sensible thing he's done in all that time.…”

Laughter and applause.

For reasons known only to himself, Roger was wearing a kilt in the colors of the Campbell clan. Billy found this a little strange. Roger wasn't a Campbell, although he had possibly eaten the occasional tin of Campbell's soup. But he
was
a scoutmaster and spent a great deal of his life wearing shorts, showing off his hairy legs.

Billy wondered if Roger's legs were the link. Maybe he was a bit of a perv. He'd have to be a perv to sleep with Billy's sister Carole, who always wore frilly, patterned dresses. Today her hair was piled high on her head in the manner of Princess Margaret. Carole reminded Billy of a Stepford Wife that had gone horribly wrong.

Yet he loved his sister. He even loved her husband. Mostly he loved their teenage sons, Mark and Chris, who, unlike their parents, were still recognizable as living organisms. Billy's heart went out to the boys, who had been made to wear matching suits and looked profoundly embarrassed by their father's outpourings.

“When I first knew this young man,” Roger continued, “he liked to think of himself as something of a rebel. He would never have entertained the very idea of marriage, such was his horror of conforming. What he didn't appreciate—and has now, perhaps, come to understand—is that conformity can actually be quite pleasant. We may have said good-bye—and some of us would say good riddance—to William the rebel, but I think you'll all join me in bidding a hearty hello to William the polite, responsible husband.”

At one time, Billy might have shouted, “Fuck off! I'm still a rebel. I'm just a married rebel. And you're a white-haired cunt!” But today Roger's platitudes had no effect on him.

He was too busy thinking of Rawhead, the harbinger of death.

The man who thought killing people was a merciful act.

As the ecstasy wore off, Billy started seeing flashing pictures in his mind. He knew these fleeting visions were connected to Rawhead and the night ahead. Billy tried to blank out the images, but they kept on coming. All he could see was the hotel dance floor piled high with massacred bodies.

*   *   *

Nikki's cousin, a music teacher in Iceland, had brought a band of jazz rock musicians from Reykjavik over for the wedding. Billy guessed that in Iceland jazz rock was still considered vaguely dangerous. The music was loud and difficult to dance to. This made no difference to Billy. By six o'clock he was too pissed to dance.

He contented himself with circulating among the guests. Billy's Uncle Bert was already bad-mouthing his wife, Olive. “See this burn on my collar?” he was saying. “Olive did that. Forgot to turn the iron off. A perfectly brand-new secondhand shirt…”

Nikki's father, Kev the slob, was carrying on the fine tradition of wedding stupidity by pretending to dance with a child. The child was Maddy. Kev was so ugly that people regularly mistook him for Nick Hornby. His wife, Marian, was even worse. As hideous as they both were, they hadn't been able to resist having sex with each other. And the result, miraculously, had been Nikki and Lorna, who were both beautiful. It almost gave you faith in the benign will of the universe.

Maddy, who had her mother's face and Billy's frown, was staring, goggle-eyed, over Kev's shoulder. Kev didn't know it, but Maddy had dropped a mouthful of drool onto his jacket, leaving a long, glistening trail. It looked as if a slug had crawled down his back.

Marian, hardly Billy's greatest fan, came over to smear lipstick on his cheeks. She was wearing a hat that resembled a backstreet abortion. There were tears in her eyes. “Now, I know we've had our little differences, but I hope that's all over and done with. I hope I'm not gaining a daughter, I'm losing a son.”

“Don't you mean that the other way round?” said Billy.

Fatty Potts, Billy's agent, had turned up. Fatty had established an alarming rapport with Billy's brother-in-law.

“Thanks for coming,” said Billy to Potts.

“I wasn't aware that I had!” said Potts, and laughed uproariously.

Roger shouted something that sounded like “bare backside!”

“Where?” said Billy, looking round.

Roger got to his feet to repeat his inquiry, this time bellowing directly into Billy's ear. “Where's the bride?”

Billy was forced to admit he had no idea. Roger told Fatty Potts this was a great omen for the couple's marriage. Fatty almost pissed himself.

*   *   *

The roof of the hotel was surrounded by a narrow battlement. A notice on the fire door leading to the roof claimed it was out-of-bounds to guests and that opening the door would automatically trigger a security alarm in the lobby. This was a lie. Billy and Nikki had already visited the roof several times without incident.

Now Nikki, still wearing her wedding dress, stood alone looking out to sea. It was snowing again. The wind had messed up her hair and she was crying. For some time now, Nikki felt she'd been living the wrong life. Not a bad life, just someone else's. She had a new home, which she'd decorated herself. She had a huge garden, planted and cared for, all ready to blossom in the spring. But in her heart she felt dead and unfulfilled.

It wasn't that Nikki didn't love Billy or their daughter—just that whatever she had hoped her life might be, this wasn't it. Now that she was married to Billy, that feeling of wrongness was stronger than it had ever been.

“Hey,” said a voice behind her.

It was a man's voice. Nikki was so cold, drunk, and dazed that she felt no surprise, only mild curiosity. She turned to see who it was. It was Steve, Billy's friend. He was standing behind her, wearing the clothes he'd worn the night before. His face was grave and thoughtful. His head and shoulders, like hers, were speckled with snow.

Rawhead looked at her. He hesitated, reached out, and wiped away a tear with his forefinger. With a little sob, she nodded and fell into his arms. It was below zero, but his body felt perfectly warm to her. He took off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. “You'd better go down,” he said. “It isn't safe up here.”

She looked at him. He was staring fixedly toward the sea, as if he sensed something out there. Something in his voice frightened her. “Go down,” he repeated.

He turned to her. There was no reassurance in his cold, dark eyes. She gave him back his jacket and walked toward the fire door, glancing back at him several times to see if he was following. Rawhead remained where he was with his back to her, jacket in one hand, gun in the other, eyes staring over the roof at the ground below.

*   *   *

Billy noticed she'd been crying but didn't ask her why. He had a feeling he wouldn't like the answer.

A little later, as Billy was dancing with his new bride, Rawhead entered the ballroom and sat in a corner. Billy was trying to dance like John Travolta in
Pulp Fiction
—a mistake many people have made. Then he saw Rawhead over in the corner, watching him like a cat stalking a mouse. Billy felt cold, as if someone was pressing a slab of ice against the back of his neck. The look on Rawhead's face was murderous. Billy knew his dancing was shit, but he didn't think it was
that
bad.

First Billy and Nikki stopped dancing; then everyone else followed. The party atmosphere died, as if someone had rolled a diseased heart into the exact center of the dance floor. The waves of hatred drifting through the ballroom were toxic. Few could absorb them and live.

Billy's sister and her family retired first, joined by Fatty Potts. Their exit gave the more distant relations courage. Feeling they didn't know Nikki or Billy well enough to risk evisceration at the hands of a gaunt psychopath, the great-uncles and maiden aunts, the friends and neighbors, all started trooping out in threes and fours.

Billy went to the gents for a piss. The lavatory was empty. He was very drunk. He stood over the urinal, forehead resting on the cold tiles, listening to the pipes dripping. When the door to the gents creaked open, Billy turned, expecting to see Rawhead. But it was one of Billy's cousins, a guy he hardly knew. The two men exchanged shy nods, embarrassed to be standing side by side in public with their dicks out.

When Billy returned to the ballroom, it seemed even emptier. Rawhead was still sitting in the same place, emanating pure hatred.

An uncle of Nikki's approached Billy to ask who the scowling maniac in the corner was and should they call hotel security. Billy confessed that the man in the corner was not an escaped lunatic but a friend of his. Besides, he wasn't threatening anyone. There is no law against the evil eye.

The band played on valiantly for another few numbers, until they, too, succumbed to the pestilence of fear. The lead singer lost heart in the middle of “Mustang Sally,” simply stopped singing, and sat down on an amp. Then the musicians put down their instruments. It made no difference that they were being paid until midnight and had only twenty minutes to go. The atmosphere in the ballroom had become too oppressive to endure.

They'd had enough. They didn't even offer a last dance, because no one was dancing. They packed their equipment away hurriedly, anxious to leave the venue before something terrible happened. Finally even Nikki deserted Billy, mumbling something vague about checking up on Maddy.

An overzealous waiter turned out half the lights. Then it was only Billy and Rawhead. Rawhead got up and walked over to Billy, two men standing alone in the darkened ballroom. When they were face-to-face, both were silent for a few moments.

“I need you to come with me,” said Rawhead.

He turned and walked out of the ballroom. Billy followed a few paces behind him. The two men climbed the stairs to the hotel lobby and nodded to the sleepy night porter, who opened the doors to a white wilderness.

They walked through the car park, their feet sinking deep into clean, untrodden snow. A calm had descended upon Billy. He hadn't left a will. But now that he was married, all his wordly goods, all future royalties from his books, would automatically pass to his wife and heir.

Huge crystals spun down from a dark gray sky. Billy raised his face to them, wondering why only one snowflake in six seemed to feel wet against the skin. There was a stone wall at the back of the hotel, separating the hotel grounds from a track and the woods that rose in the west. When Rawhead clambered over the wall, Billy considered running back to the hotel and raising the alarm. But he felt this would merely sentence his wife and daughter to death.

The snow was deep on the slopes leading to the woods. The water flooded Billy's thin leather shoes. He kept slipping. Rawhead kept hauling him upright, more like an alpine guide than an executioner. Then they walked into the shade of the pine trees, and the eerie white carpet at their roots.

They walked on, brushing past branches, growing wetter and colder. Billy saw a stout fallen branch on the ground. He contemplated picking it up and using it as a club. But he doubted he could kill Rawhead this way. More likely it would just make him angrier.

They came to a large clearing, out of the shadow of the trees. Snow hurtled down vertically, blocking out the sky. The pines towered around them on all sides. Billy peered through the dense blizzard. About a hundred yards away, a grim little tableau awaited him. It was as if a lunatic had designed a child's snowstorm, imprisoning an abomination under the glass rather than Father Christmas or a fairy cottage.