A Few Words for the Dead
Contents
Additional Document: The Second Life of August Shining
The Clown Service
The Rain-Soaked Bride
Torchwood: The House That Jack Built
Torchwood: The Men Who Sold The World
Kronos
Hands of the Ripper
Sherlock: The Casebook
Countess Dracula
Guy Adams
The gunfire from the jungle distracted Romeo from what the young woman was saying.
‘It is our honeymoon,’ she told him, ‘and it never ends.’
If the woman had noticed the noise, she gave no sign of it, just continued talking while Romeo looked over her shoulder towards the tree line and the dense, wet foliage beyond.
‘It was two weeks in Portugal,’ she continued. ‘The honeymoon. But then the man cursed me. I think he believed this would make us keep away. Make us run. This shows how he does not know us. Toby and I do not run. Not for long.’
There was more shooting. In his thirteen years Romeo had heard too much gunfire. The bandits liked nothing more than announcing their arrival with it, riding into the village in their jeeps, rifles firing into the air. Romeo knew they thought this made them look impressive, it made them seem like an army. They were wrong, the villagers responded with grim indifference to the show of machismo. Nobody was stupid enough to challenge the bandits, they were a way of life, a parasite, mosquitoes with guns. But just because the village gave them the supplies they wanted, and gave them quickly, it didn’t mean they lived in terror. They were simply pragmatic. A cut of their meagre belongings traded against the loss of life that would result in saying no. Besides, the bandits were useful too; they policed each other. This part of the jungle belonged to the El Ninos, and at least that kept other gangs – worse gangs – at bay.
‘The curse has rules,’ the woman was saying. ‘If I get close to Fratfield… That’s his name, or the name we know – he is, I think, a man with many names… If I get close to him then the demon appears. It is a thing of wind. Before, he used a woman who brought rain but we beat her. We will beat this too. If I stay back then the demon does not become too dangerous. It is just a thing you can tell in the air, a change in the weather.’ She pointed towards the trees as they bent in the breeze. ‘If I get too close, the demon takes form. It becomes a thing that is real. Then it is time to move.’
In the jungle there was the harsh sound of branches snapping as someone moved quickly through the foliage. Romeo thought they were coming their way. He wondered if it were, perhaps, time to move to safety. He had no wish to get involved in another man’s fight, he had enough problems of his own. They’d lost three chickens in the night and the crops were fighting all attempts to make them thrive. His empty belly, and the health of his mama, that was more than enough for him to contend with.
‘This angers me,’ the woman continued, ‘because it means I cannot fight the man myself. But if we catch him we can break the curse.’
She smiled at Romeo and he found her more terrifying than he had ever found the bandits. That smile was not a nice smile; he hoped he never had cause to make his own face look such a way. ‘Then we break Fratfield. End of honeymoon!’
Romeo nodded, because it seemed to him that was what was expected.
The woman and her man had arrived in the village half an hour ago, bouncing along the dirt track in their hired jeep. For a few minutes the people of the village had observed them, some of the kids had approached them, eager to do a little business, but once it had become clear that there was nothing to be gained from the
extranjeros
, the children had drifted away and returned to the jobs they had interrupted.
‘More strangers,’ Romeo’s mama had said. ‘They’ll be wanting the man on the mountain.’
The man on the mountain, another invader into their world, had arrived three weeks ago. He hadn’t set foot in the village but nothing made its home in the nearby jungle without their noticing. The empty shack on the bank of the river, a place that had been abandoned after the El Ninos drove its previous occupant away (or, as some of the more gossip-inclined villagers would have it, murdered). One day it had been empty, the next it had been occupied.
‘I wonder what he’s hiding from?’ Romeo’s mama had said, staring up into the canopy as if her eyes could part the leaves and see right to the shack’s front door. ‘No white man makes his home up there unless he’s hiding from something.’
The jungle fell silent and so did the woman. Romeo looked at the trees as their leaves began to whip more forcefully against the hazy sky. The wind was picking up. He hoped it wasn’t a sign of a storm – it wasn’t the season for it and nobody in the village would be prepared for such a thing. Storms were worse than the gangs. Storms could not be bought off with grain.
‘The wind,’ said the woman. ‘I think he is coming. You should tell everyone to get indoors.’
In her pocket her phone began to ring. She tugged it free. ‘Toby? I have seen.’ She sighed. ‘I will move.’
She began to run back towards their jeep, the wind building around the village.
Romeo watched her go. She was attractive, he decided, even if she smiled like the devil herself. A shame he didn’t speak a word of English.
Toby hated the jungle. The jungle was filled with things that wanted to poison you or slap you in the face. The jungle was like the worst nightclubs of his youth.
Why hadn’t Fratfield tried to hide somewhere with wide, tarmac roads and decent restaurants?
Because he didn’t want to be found, of course. Which just went to show how little he knew about the far-reaching abilities of Section 37.
As soon as it had become clear to Toby and Tamar that the only way to escape the threat of Fratfield’s curse was to go on the offensive, Shining had sent Toby a book of field contacts. In it had been the phone number of Angela, a young woman from Tuxtla who did the most awful things with chickens and smoking bowls of incense. She had laughed as Toby had gone green watching her at work.
‘You do not like to see blood, no?’
‘As long as it’s not mine I can stomach it.’
‘Voodoo calls for blood,’ she explained, ‘and sometimes, when you want to find things, you need a bit more than an internet connection and a search engine, though they play their part.’
Indeed they had, an ancient PC computer buzzing along with Angela’s chanting and the panicked cries of sacrificial fowl. The ancient and modern fused together via a tatty wooden box that glowed with a sickly blue light. As Angela’s rite came to a close, Toby saw the screen on the PC fire up, a map appearing, zooming in on a location.
‘I call it Voogle!’ Angela laughed, wiping her bloodied hands on her AC/DC T-shirt. She peered at the screen. ‘I hope you packed bug spray. I’ll grab the location for your sat-nav.’
And now he and Tamar were in the jungle, and Fratfield was –
Toby ducked as automatic gunfire cut the branches of the tree next to him into fragments. As he moved to better cover, keeping low, he heard howler monkeys expressing their disapproval in the branches above. He knew how they felt.
‘Toby!’ his quarry shouted. ‘What does it take to get you to leave me alone?’
Toby didn’t bother to answer. Nothing would convince him to leave the man alone. As long as Fratfield was still loose, Tamar would always be under threat, this new curse hanging over her. They would fight on, however long it took, until she was safe again. He checked his gun and began to move as quietly as he could through the undergrowth. This was something of an impossibility given the dense plant life. Jungle warfare, like so many of his day-to-day tasks in Section 37, had not been covered by basic field training. The closest he had got was a week face down in a puddle on an army assault course in Dorset.
‘You’re risking her life!’ said Fratfield. ‘You know that if you get close to me she’s as good as dead. Why don’t you have the good sense to just leave me well alone? I have no interest in killing her, not really. You stay away and she’s safe, you know how curses work.’
Good sense. Toby had long given up on that as a notion. The man’s question had only one real purpose: to pin down Toby’s location with his reply. Good sense? Right now, good sense was to keep his mouth shut and his eyes open.
He looked towards the sound of the voice, catching a flicker of movement. He raised his gun and fired. He would have preferred a solid target but knew the danger he was in and time was of the essence. He didn’t stand a chance in a fair fight; the man’s abilities went far beyond being able to wave a rifle around. Toby’s only real hope had been to catch him unawares. Now that was off the cards he’d fall back on good luck and bloody mindedness.
There was a low grunt in reply to his bullet. Toby hoped that meant his shot had found its target.
There was no returning fire and Toby counted out the seconds, not wanting to be caught out, fooled by a lure.
Silence. Toby began to move towards where he had glimpsed Fratfield.
As he walked towards the higher ground, the jungle seemed to crackle around him. For a moment he thought he was surrounded on all sides. Perhaps it was the El Ninos, in which case his only option would be to turn on his heels and hope he could keep ahead of them.
It wasn’t the El Ninos.
The jungle itself was moving, branches flexing, vines curling. The soft ground beneath his feet was undulating as roots strained against the soil. Yes, this man could do much more than just fire a gun.
He heard the crack of a quad bike motor starting up and felt the entire operation fall down around his ears.
He began to run back towards the village, the jungle reaching out towards him as he pulled his phone from his pocket. He was damned lucky to get a signal – a few miles south and he’d have been completely out of contact.
‘Tamar,’ he shouted, not waiting for his wife’s voice, ‘he’s on the run and heading towards you, the wind’s picking up, you need to move!’
He heard the quad bike streaking past him some distance away, the wind around him wrestling with the living plant life. He really missed the days dealing with enemies you could just put a bullet into.
A creeper latched on to his arm, yanking him off balance. He pulled against it, crying out as he felt something tear in his shoulder. His only hope was to keep moving – once the jungle got a solid grip on him he’d never break free.
An idea suddenly struck him and he shifted direction, cutting back towards the shack. All around him the air was filled with the snapping of greenery and, above that, the ever-increasing howl of the wind.
