A Few Words for the Dead (17 page)

As it sailed through the air it made a squealing sound, as if it caused the air pain to have such an abomination tear through it. In its wake, the buildings rippled, affected by the proximity of it.

Panic lent him a newfound speed. Just as he had managed to half glide his way down the steps from his apartment, his feet now seemed to gain extra traction on the road beneath him, the street streaking past him as he pulled his way forwards. It was as if he was tugging the world past him like a theatrical backcloth yanked hard on its pulley.

He reached the shadow version St Pancras in seconds, bursting through the glass frontage in a sudden icy moment of transition. He lost his momentum on the concourse, distracted by again having passed through something that should have been solid. He rolled along the stone floor, his hands partially dipping into its surface. He yanked them free, terrified of what might happen if the ground hardened once more. The last thing he needed was to trap himself up to the wrist.

He looked around but there was no sign of his pursuer, just the faceless crowds of shadow passengers, flickering and blurring as they dashed to and from the platforms. Could he hide here? Lose himself amongst these ghost crowds? He looked up towards the next level, running and flinging himself towards it, pulling himself up through the air. He came to land by the champagne bar, surrounded by people with hollow faces, golden sparks fizzing and crackling in the off-white hole where their features should be. One of them raised a glass towards him and its fiery contents popped and burst like a firework. God, he could do with a drink, even one that looked as if it might burn its way right through him.

He moved towards the trains, howling beasts of metal and glass that moved like a piece of speeded-up film, ebbing and flowing on the platforms. Could he get on one? Might it steal him away from the reach of his pursuer? At the speed they were moving he could be in the shadow version of Carlisle in a matter of moments. Surely that was a better option than just waiting here?

He ran towards them, wondering if he might be able to time it precisely enough to leap from the track and inside one of the carriages.

Above him the ceiling shattered like ceramic and glass, and the air was once more filled with that squealing sound that heralded the movement of the creature. It was too late. It had found him.

He couldn’t manage this on his own. Where was Tim when he was needed? This was the sort of thing he dealt with, weird monsters, impossible threats.

‘Tim?’ the creature asked. Not even his thoughts could remain hidden it seemed.

When it spoke it was partly with the lady’s voice but beneath it, just slightly out of sync, was a deeper tone, a drone that reverberated through him. ‘Oh… you mean Shining? He has so many names with so many people. Such a duplicitous boy.’

It sailed down towards Goss and he closed his eyes, unable to bear the thought of running any further. It was hopeless. Let this thing just do its worst.

‘I’ll be seeing him soon,’ the creature continued. ‘I’ll be sure to give him your love. No doubt it will break his tiny, ageing heart…’

Shining, Goss thought. It had called him Shining. It was an apt name. For all his feigned cynicism, Goss had loved helping the old man, had enjoyed the thought that his skills were being put to good use. A drunk dreamer helping to save the world, it wasn’t a bad legacy. Though he’d give it all up to not be here now, to be back in his flat with Alasdair, sat in front of an awful damn movie.

Shining. If only he could have found Shining. Maybe, between the two of them, they could have stood a chance.

Shining…

Goss suddenly felt himself dragged along the floor, the creature bouncing back off the spot where he had just been lying, dissipating and losing form for a moment as the impact shook it apart. What was happening? Where was he…?

The world blurred around him and he couldn’t focus on the streaking lights and buildings. Up in the air where great edifices of cloud rose up before a liquid moon. Beyond that: the stars, pinpricks that burned in the darkness.

Shining.

They began to vanish in the distance, the creature following him still, its bloated body blocking out the night sky.

He felt himself falling, passing through trees, whipped by branches before colliding with the wall of a small house. Where was he? How had he been drawn here? To think, all of the things he could achieve in this plane and he had only just discovered the gift now when his time to appreciate had grown so horribly short.

He pressed his hands against the bricks of the house and felt a charge of energy pass through him. He pushed through and there, right in front of him was Tim – Shining – sat at a bare table talking to a severe-looking woman. These were not shadow people – Goss was somehow pushing back into the real world. He screamed at Shining, desperate to get his attention. Could he not hear him? Behind him, there was the squealing sound that meant his hunter had found him. Already it was too late. He had to make himself heard!

Goss screamed again, focusing all his strength towards the man at the table. Shining suddenly looked up and stumbled back from the table. He could see him! He’d done it!

‘Help me!’ Goss shouted. ‘It’s right behind me! It killed Alasdair and it’s right—’

It grew dark and it took Goss a second to realise it was because the creature’s black tendrils were wrapping around him.

‘Hello, gorgeous,’ it whispered in his ear and he felt the warmth of the old lady’s breath. He could smell her perfume, so real, so solid in this insubstantial world. ‘You are a darling, you’ve found him for me. Aren’t you clever? I’ll be sure to tell him how much you helped as I crush him.’

The light was gone now, cold, back smoke surrounding him, passing into him through his nose and mouth. He could feel it move into him, a chill more real to him than the ghost of his body.

‘Maybe you can even watch,’ it continued, ‘from here…’ There was a tearing sound and Goss faintly became aware that his body was lost to him. This thing wasn’t going to kill him, it was worse than that, it was abandoning him. He felt the darkness withdraw and he floated up through the air. When travelling here there had always been the distant sense of his body left in the real word, the anchor that held him fast, a home to return to. Not any more. Now he was just thought. He tried to move but even that seemed beyond him now, he was just a thought, rising forever up into an impossible sky.

In the bathtub, Goss’s body twitched once, then again and then remained still.

The bathroom door burst open and the woman who was partially April Shining stepped inside.

‘Empty,’ she said, ‘just meat and bone.’

She had an idea, retreating from the bathroom and wandering around the flat. She found what she wanted in a kitchen cupboard and returned to the lifeless body in the bath tub.

‘Best to be tidy,’ she said, pouring the contents of the bottle of paraffin over Goss’s body, letting it soak into his clothes and his hair. ‘No point in leaving it hanging around now there’s nobody using it.’ She lit a match and threw it onto the body, stepping back as it burst into flames.

‘Lovely,’ she said as she took her photos. ‘Lovely, lovely, lovely…’

Toby and Tamar passed over a narrow bridge and on towards St Mark’s square.

Venice in winter seemed a haunted place, not the romantic paradise of holiday brochures and paperback novels, but a sinking city of old stone and ghosts. In the light of a streetlamp, a young woman played a sorrowful lament on a violin. Toby put a euro in her violin case but she didn’t seem to notice, lost in the key of D.

‘Who is this man?’ Tamar asked as Toby checked the street signs against his map. He passed her the small black notebook Shining had given him, the collection of contacts and friendly faces around the world.

‘He’s under “V” for Venice,’ Toby told her.

She flicked to the page and began to read. ‘Giovanni, carpenter and seer.’ She pronounced the latter as see-er which was accurate enough. ‘I wonder what he sees?’ she asked.

‘Fratfield, we hope.’

‘It says “Carl” after it.’

‘That’s the name August uses with him. He changes his name more often than his socks.’

Toby and Tamar had left Mexico following the trail of an aeroplane ticket booked in the name of Jim Lufford, an alias, they were sure, of Fratfield’s. After a few days, the trail had grown cold in Padua so Toby had checked the book in the hope of finding someone close by that could help them heat it back up again. Venice being a short drive away, they had booked a night in the cheapest hotel they could find.

They had needed a rest anyway, as difficult as it was to relax knowing their target still roamed free. Their travels from one country to another had sent their body clocks into meltdown and, after a breakfast that felt like dinner, they had gone to their room – a graveyard of ostentatious furniture and gilt grown tatty by neglect – and slept through the day.

After making a phone call to arrange a meeting with Giovanni, they were now on the hunt for both his workshop and dinner.

‘There it is,’ Toby said, pointing to a small shop at the end of the street. A wooden sign featuring an embossed harlequin’s mask hung above a window filled with doll’s houses, puppet theatres and carnival masks.

Toby looked at his watch. ‘We’ve got an hour and a half to kill, let’s find some food.’

Grabbing a table at a nearby pizzeria, they looked at the menu and tried to pretend they were normal tourists.

‘I’ve always wanted to see Venice,’ Tamar admitted having made her choice of pizza.

‘Horse meat pizza,’ Toby tutted. ‘Who wants to eat a horse? Let alone put it on a pizza?’ He looked up at her. ‘I’m glad we came, then.’

‘It is a place you hear about,’ she said, ‘a place you are supposed to go.’

‘True enough, to ride the gondolas and eat expensive ice cream. Or, alternatively, stalk an assassin with magical powers. Both are popular.’

They looked at one another for a moment then, as one:

‘Sorry.’

‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry about!’ said Toby. ‘All of this is my fault. Fratfield did this to get at me, not you.’

Tamar shrugged. ‘It is what it is. I do not blame you. You did nothing wrong. But now I am a burden. I am weak. I do not like to be weak.’

‘How can you say you’re weak? You’re the strongest person I know.’

‘I am the accident waiting to happen. Where I go, people get hurt. I cannot fight him. I have to let you fight for me. I do not like letting others fight for me.’

‘I know you don’t,’ Toby admitted. ‘But you’re right, if you get too close, others will get hurt. We have to be careful. You’re our early warning system. Our tracker. That’s not weakness. You’re still taking a hell of a risk.’ He hesitated then decided to carry on. ‘You know I wish you’d just go back to England.’

She looked at him with unrestrained anger. ‘You do not say that. It is bad enough I cannot fight. I will not run as well.’

‘I know,’ Toby sighed. ‘I know you won’t.’

The waiter appeared and they ordered their food and a bottle of wine. For a while they were silent. Their wine came. Toby poured and then they continued to stare at the street around them. Then, if only to break the mood, Toby spoke.

‘We’ll catch him soon.’

Tamar made a dismissive clicking sound with her tongue. ‘You are so sure?’

‘Yes,’ said Toby, ‘because he can’t hide for ever. He won’t want to. He’s an assassin. He relies on invisibility, on being able to do his work unnoticed. The more pressure we put on him, the harder that will be. Eventually he’ll come for us, he’ll have to.’

‘I suppose that is true,’ Tamar agreed, ‘and however that ends, I look forward to it.’ She took his hand. ‘I married you because you are a good man. And because I knew that together we would be better than we had been before. That is what marriage is for. It is to make people better than they were when they were apart. He is not letting us do that, so let him come. I want our future, not this.’

Toby leaned over and kissed her.

‘One day it’ll all be done,’ he said, ‘but tonight we drink wine and eat horse pizza.’

‘You order the horse pizza?’

‘He took me by surprise. I panicked.’

They stayed in the restaurant until just before their arranged meeting, ordering another bottle of wine and allowing themselves the indulgence of being drunk. For weeks now they had always had to be on guard, to be ready for the worst. It was a wonderful relief to know that, tonight at least, they were unlikely to die.

Giovanni’s shop was dark. Toby rang the small bell hung by the door and they waited by the window, Tamar pulling faces at the grotesque masks and Toby giggling in that way that only a drop too much wine allows.

After a minute, a light switched on at the rear of the shop and they saw a white-haired man weaving his way through the shop towards them.

‘It’s Pinocchio’s bloody father,’ Toby whispered and Tamar nudged him in the ribs.

‘Do not be rude, he is a friend of August.’

‘Everyone’s a friend of August.’

The door opened and Giovanni greeted them with the sort of exuberance English people only ever found abroad.

‘My friends,’ he said, his Italian accent thick enough to spread on ciabatta and garnish with olives. ‘It is good to see you.’

He led them inside, closing the door behind them. ‘And how is my wonderful friend, Carl? It has been too long since I saw him, much too long. It must have been…’ He stopped, placed his finger on his chin and looked towards the sky, the most perfect mime for ‘Giovanni thinks’ that could be imagined. ‘1998, yes… the problem of the singing fish.’

‘Singing fish?’ asked Tamar.

Giovanni immediately burst into ‘O Sole Mio!’ while weaving between them like a fish, his hands as flippers, his eyes wide, lips pursed.

‘Singing fish,’ Toby repeated and laughed.

Giovanni stopped singing and continued to lead them towards the back of the shop.

Toby stumbled slightly and nearly poked his eye out on a carnival mask. ‘Hell of a nose on him,’ he muttered, ducking beneath it.