BiteMarks (26 page)

“
You're full of shit, Marks. I don't know why you're lying to us and about which parts, but you're full of it. We're done here for today, you're on light duties with your little friend until we finish up the inquiry.”

I smile all the way back across the car park. They haven't got a damn thing on me, the whole exercise was obviously a fishing expedition and now I've been able to let Marcus off the hook to some extent too. 

I wonder whether Karen has been spoken to. There is no reason for anybody to have known about our relationship, but no doubt there have been questions about the source of my information; if not then there will be. I send her a text, hesitating over the content but settling for a brief message to say that I've been spoken to and have indicated the 'truth' – that there has been no passing of information from her staff to myself and that I've acted through my own volition and got lucky with my naïve parallel investigation. I finish with an apology and a weeping emoticon. 

I get back into my car just as my mobile phone starts to ring.

“
Hello?”

“
We need to talk.” Marcus' voice on the other end of the line.

I nearly babble with joy, “Where do you want me?”

“
Meet me at your favorite haunt.”

The line goes dead.

I can't decide whether this is progress or not.

* * *

The interior of the bar is cozily warm, windows steaming up with rising body heat as the temperature drops outside and the place begins to fill up. I find myself wondering why he has chosen to meet up here, it's hardly private. I sincerely hope that's not the point, I don't want him to fear me. A quick glance around the room reveals that Marcus is sat in the corner by the jukebox, I gesture to see whether he wants a drink, but he shakes his head so I order for myself and then head over to take a seat.

“
Hi, Marcus.”

“
Hello, mate, how did today go for you?”

I register the mate and just about resist the urge to beam broadly.

“
All things considered not so badly. After good cop and bad cop had finished their cliché competition with me, I've ended up being put on light duties like yourself until the whole thing blows over.”

“
Reckon they've got anything?”

“
Not a single shred of anything that could result in more than a wrist slap for me. I expressed in no uncertain terms that this was all my doing and nothing to do with you though, by the way. Before I forget, thank you.”

“
What for, mate?”

“
For not just dropping me straight in it and heading for the hills …  For not just having me arrested as soon as I'd opened my stupid mouth about things which should have stayed in the past … that sort of thing.”

“
It wasn't easy to hear if I'm honest with you, Shane. It took me a little while to get my head around what you'd actually said.” He lowers his voice and leans in closer. “I'm still dealing with it in fact, but when I ran it back I realized that you didn't kill anybody. You share some of the blame, but you weren't and aren't responsible for the actions of others.”

“
When you didn't ring I figured that I'd be getting a knock on the door … ”

“
Professional Standards had me in the following day. I knew that there was a chance that they might wait to see if I rushed to contact you, since it would imply some kind of knowledge of wrongdoing with this Dodds' thing. You thought that after all the other weird shit that seems to go on in your world I'd walk the first time you told me something scary?”

“
The thought had crossed my mind.”

“
Listen, mate, I'm going to need you someday, and when that happens I want you to owe me big time so I can cash that big IOU in.” He laughs out loud. “Now drink the hell up and we're going somewhere with a little class for the next one, you're buying tonight though. Oh, and keep your crazy teeth to yourself or lose them.”

* * *

It is early morning out in the woods. The milk white light between the canopy of branches makes the shape of tree trunks indistinct, as if the world isn't yet quite real at this hour, and is emerging from some magical spectral state. Ghost is alert as ever though, exuberant with the experience of living, dancing in and out of the foliage and pursuing every single wind blown leaf that flutters past the end of his nose. 

I walk slowly, vicariously enjoying his excitement, silently wondering how I can capture even a fragment of his love of existence for longer than an instant. The grogginess that I feel is not entirely due to the earliness of the hour. I smile recollecting drinking some daft looking concoction with umbrellas and fruit at Marcus' insistence last night.

The shroud of mist forms ever changing apparitions at the edges of my vision. My own shadow and the movements of the dog in and out of view compounds the impression that things are moving out there, stalking me under cover of the trees. I am not afraid; ready to accept them now. I've been waiting for their eventual appearance all of my life, the specters of my guilt and pain achieving a state of animation. 

I head off the stony path at the top of the familiar hill, and make my way towards the copse that claimed the lives of Meg and Will and witnessed my complicity in those acts. Ghost stops to look at me quizzically, sensing the sudden change in mood. I feel light headed and detached, entering some unreal fugue like trance; I feel the years beginning to fall away and I am a child again.

The ground is bitingly cold on the bare soles of my feet. My thoughts are without substance, melting like the soft snowflakes where they touch my skin. I turn towards the place where I know that they are still swaying in time with the rhythm of the earth, but before I can complete the movement a voice stops me. 

“
Don't do this.”
Meg's
voice is in my right ear, softer than silk; I feel like my heart will burst with joy.

“
You've suffered enough now, we made our choices and you made yours. Don't let the past define you.”
Will's
strange familiar voice in my left ear, an odd echo of my
grandfather's
words.

I try to speak, searching for an apology that is a decade old, but the words won't come.

“
We know. Now leave this place and make your peace with the living, there'll be time for the dead another day.”

Somehow I am back at the car, still standing outside disorientated, and with Ghost trotting impatiently in circles waiting to be let back inside. I turn a full circle, trying to figure out what just happened, and finally sick of waiting, the dog prods me firmly with his muzzle until I open the door and let him onto the front seat. Still unsettled I don't want to return home just yet, but I get in and start to drive slowly out of the car park, turning left on a whim and heading further out into the awakening countryside. 

The empty miles drift away, the smudge of scenery merging with the blur of memories. I turn the wheel to avoid an object at the side of the road, recognizing it as I pass as the gaudy gutter smear of road kill, a dead fox gradually losing the splendor that it owned in life to the slow ravages of decay. 

The insistent vibration of the phone in my pocket startles me. I can't reach it while seated and in motion, and a glance at the clock in the car indicates that
it's
still far too early for most people to be up and about. Perhaps Marcus? Although judging by his hugely inebriated state when I delivered him to his door only a matter of a few hours ago, it seems unlikely. I look for a place to pull in and spot a large lay-by on my side of the road, indicating my intention to pull in even though the roads are empty. 

I leave Ghost in the car, whispering placations to settle him back down and ignoring his indignant glare at me through the glass as I shut him inside. The lay-by overlooks an expanse of fields, the view a pleasing study in geometry viewed in isolation at day break; I feel the soft attention of air flow up from the slope below. My phone is initially illusive in the folds of my pocket, masquerading as a wallet and then as folded leaves of paper, eventually my fingers recognize its contours and lift it out. 

“
I don't need to know what it was or even why it happened; I just need to know that it won't happen again. Promise me that and we'll talk.” The message is from Karen's phone.

I feel her presence and the presence of others, my spirit as a physical being watching over me from up above. I see the faces of Meg and Will animated and alive with emotion, Marcus grinning that broad grin and teasing me gently, Karen astride me now eyes aflame with desire and beyond them all in the distance, the dark faces of Arachnid Jones and Levi Evil full of malice. 

I feel as if I have been brought back to life again, high with the possibilities of finally emerging from the suffocating darkness back into the brilliance of the suns rays. There are new dreams carried on the movements of air out here now, the sensation is unmistakeable. I feel the vampire that I have invented as an identity for myself being released from a life lived full of secrecy down in the gloom below. 

I am still afraid but the fear is gradually receding, and I am ready for the hurt of caring, the pain of sharing once more. Karen's message was deliberately guarded and cool but I am prepared to let her in, or at least to take the chance of letting her really see me before she makes her decision about the shape of our future. Perhaps I'll take her to my special hollow to talk without the black cloak of my personal barriers up in place. There are certain things that I cannot tell her quite yet, but with Marcus as my confidante I don't need to deal with those alone any more either.

I open my eyes again, seeing the sun bleed out across the horizon in shades of red, touching the swaying honey gold fields with long fingers under a soft purple sky. I feel the first unexpected tear escape down my face and I embrace the feelings that flood me like a tidal wave; love and madness, redemption and rage, passion and pain.

Make your peace with the living,
there'll
be time later for the dead.