David Raker 01 - Chasing the Dead (14 page)

‘Who is he?’ he whispered.

She shrugged. ‘A friend of the tall man.’

The tall man. The tall man
. He fished for the memory, but it wouldn’t come. He stared at her blankly.

‘Andrew,’ she said quietly.

Andrew
.

Then the memory formed. The man dressed all in black. The tall man. The one who had been there when they’d taken his teeth.

He looked at Rose. ‘I can’t…’

‘Remember anything?’

He paused, a part of him scared to admit it. ‘Yes.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s what they do,’ she said. ‘That’s how they make you forget about what you’ve done. You want my advice?’ She glanced at the doorway again, then at him once more. ‘Hang on to what you can, because once it’s gone, it ain’t coming back.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, eventually, you’ll forget everything.’

‘Forget everything?’

‘Everything you’ve done.’

‘What do I need to forget?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘What
do
you need to forget?’

She watched him for a moment, as if trying to figure out the answer for herself, then turned her attention back to the doorway. The sheet had slipped again. Against her pale skin, the bruise on her back looked dark, like spilt ink. He imagined it was painful too. Right down to the bone.

‘Did the man in the mask give you that bruise?’

Rose looked down at herself and brought her free hand around to her back, running her fingers across the surface of her skin.

‘Why?’

‘I tried to run.’

‘Run from what?’

‘What do you think? This place. The programme.’

‘The programme?’

A creak outside the room.

‘Rose?’

She put a finger to her lips and studied the darkness beyond the door. ‘Seriously, you need to be quiet,’ she said eventually. ‘He likes to surprise you. He likes to watch. Give him an excuse and he will hurt you.’ She paused, felt for her bruise again. ‘The people who help run this place, I’ve watched them. Most of them still believe in something. They still seem to have rules. But the devil… I don’t know
what
the fuck he believes in.’ Rose stared at him. ‘He will hurt you,’ she said quietly. ‘And he will hurt me. That’s what he does for them.’ She paused, blinked. ‘Sometimes I think he might actually
be
the devil.’

Click
.

They both looked towards the corner of the room. Into the darkness. The one corner where no light reached.

Then out of the night came a cockroach.

Its body clicked as it scurried across the floorboards. The girl’s eyes fixed on the insect, and, as they did, her mouth dropped open. She started to sob, moving back against the wall, her handcuffs rattling above her.

cockroach
?’

A voice from the blackness of the night.

He shuffled across the floor on his backside, moving in as tight to the wall as he could. Water soaked through to his back. And even from across the other side of the room, he could smell the man in the mask now: an awful, decaying stench. Like a dead animal.

From the corner of the room, a sliver of a horn emerged, sprouting from the top of a red mask.

‘What are you going to do, cockroach?’ the voice continued, fleshy and guttural. ‘Break free and take her with you?’ Laughter, the sound muffled by the mask. ‘Andrew kept telling me you had to be treated differently. But I never saw it that way. You’re a mistake. You don’t fit in here. You complicate things, go against everything we’ve built. And you’re holding on to the miserable fucking existence you once called a life, with no intention of letting go. If anything, we should be treating you
worse
.’

More of the mask emerged from the darkness: an eye hole.

‘I
never
agreed with Andrew when he said you weren’t to go on the programme. I went along with it, but I lobbied hard to have you brought back down to earth. All the way back down.’

A second eye hole. Half the mask was visible now.

‘And now I win. Deep down, Andrew knows there can’t be one rule for you and one for everyone else. No one deserves special favours. That’s not what this
bitch
over there. But it’s been in your head. In your eyes. I’ve seen it. You
want
to fight us. And you know something?’

A long pause. Then, suddenly, the devil came out of the darkness, the smell with him, leaning in over the man handcuffed to the walls of the room.

‘I
love
it when you fight.’

He looked at the devil and tried to speak. But the words refused to rise through his throat. Breath hardly passed between his lips.

‘So, you’re on the real programme now, you filthy piece of
shit
. No more luxury. No more favours. And I hope you fight. I
really
hope you fight.’ Slowly, his tongue emerged from his lips, sliding along the ridge of the mouth slit, one end to the other. ‘Because I really,
really
want the chance
to cut you up
.’

Deep underground, in the bowels of their compound, was another place. The biggest room they had. It was split into two and divided by a set of double doors.

The largest part of the room was once used as an industrial fridge, but there was nothing in it now. It sat empty, its strip lights buzzing, its walls stained brown and red with rust, its floor dotted with tears and blood.

Next to it, on the other side of the double doors, was a second, smaller room. When they came for him

The final part of the programme.

The sun had been up for two hours and I was still behind the door. On the ground, knees up to my chest. A thin shaft of light escaped between the curtains in the bedroom and shone across the bed, flashing in the dresser mirror. Outside, next door, I could hear Liz talking.

I looked at my watch. 9.44. I’d been in the same position for over six hours.

My eyes snapped open. I’d fallen asleep.

My mobile was ringing in the living room.

I got to my feet, bathed in sweat, and pushed at the bedroom door, edging around it to the hallway. Quietly, I moved through the house, checking every room. Every hiding place. The front door had been locked again. The only evidence the devil had ever existed was a tiny piece of dirt on the carpet immediately inside the door.

The phone was on the living-room table.

I looked at the display.
ETHAN CARTER
. Ethan had been in South Africa with me during the elections, and was now the political editor at
The Times
. I’d phoned him when I got in from the police station the night before, and left a message for him, giving him the

The call ended. I waited for a couple of minutes, checking the house over a second time, and then went to my voicemail. He’d left a message.

‘
Davey – I emailed you what I could find. Enjoy.
’

The computer was in the spare bedroom. There was a message waiting from Ethan, with three attachments. The first was a copy of a
Times
front page. It was dated 2 March 2004. At the bottom was a story about a shooting at a bar in Mile End. Three dead, five injured. I read a little way, then opened up the other two attachments. One was a second-page story, dated 3 March, a column headed by a photograph of the bar with a caption beneath that read:
The scene of the shooting.
The third, dated 6 March, was smaller, a ‘News in Brief’ piece, with no picture. Each of the attachments had been blown up big.

I went back to the first attachment.

I closed the attachment and opened up the second one.

I looked at Ethan’s email.
Don’t worry – she’s in the third story.

Jade was dead.

Looks like she’s a goner
, Ethan had written.
I remember that story. I was doing a piece on Cernoziom at the time. Vicious bastards
.
They never found out who killed her, but everyone knew it was Cernoziom. Had to be. She must have seen one of their faces. What a way to go.

I thought about Alex, about the parallels between him and Jade. They knew each other. Maybe not well, but she’d heard of him. And now there was a further link too: they were both supposed to be dead.

I let the water run down my body. I’d been in the shower for thirty minutes, hardly blinking. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was the devil coming down the hallway to kill me.

I knew I was standing on the edge of the darkness now. If I stepped back, I’d step away from the case and from what I’d found so far. Whatever was behind me would be left there. But I still wouldn’t step away from
them
. They’d offered me the chance to walk and I hadn’t taken it. Maybe I’d thought they were bluffing. Or maybe

The good things are worth fighting for.

She’d told me that once, when she’d first been diagnosed. And now I knew, like then, the only way forward was into the darkness in front of me.

Whatever happened, there was no going back.

I called Spike and got him to source an address for Gerald – Jade’s fake ID contact – based on the number I had for him. It took thirty seconds for him to find out that Gerald lived on the third floor of a dilapidated four-storey townhouse in Camberwell. The police still had my BMW, so I hired a rental car and headed south of the river.

It took an hour to travel eleven miles. When I got to Camberwell, I managed to find a space straight away, right opposite the building. I turned off the engine. The road was like one long concrete storm cloud: narrow, grey-bricked terrace housing; oily sediment cascading from collapsed guttering; dark, blistered paint on the doors and windowsills. There was a big pile of bin liners right outside Gerald’s building, torn apart by animals, the contents spilling on to the pavement and across the dirty, stained snow.

After a couple of minutes I spotted a woman walking towards the house, digging around in her handbag for keys. I got out and crossed the road, catching the door just as it was about to close behind her. I let the woman disappear into the belly of the building, and then stepped inside and pushed the door shut. It smelt old, musty, as if its hallways hadn’t ever been cleaned.

I knocked a couple of times, and waited.

‘What?’

A voice from inside the flat.

‘Gerald?’

‘What?’

‘I need to speak to you.’

‘Who are you?’

‘My name’s David. I’m a friend of Jade’s.’

‘Who’s Jade?’

‘I think you know who Jade is.’

He didn’t reply immediately. ‘I’m havin’ breakfast here.’

I looked at my watch. It was two-thirty. ‘Well, you can eat while we talk.’

A thud. His feet hit the floor on the other side of the door. He was looking through the spyhole at me. I looked back, into the eye of it.

‘Come on, it’ll be fun,’ I said. ‘We can talk about the forgery business.’

He whipped the door open on the chain. ‘Keep your fuckin’ voice down.’

He was pale and fat, about forty, his brown hair disappearing fast. He looked like he hadn’t seen daylight since he was a teenager.

‘You going to open up?’

‘What d’you want?’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘About what?’

He looked me up and down. ‘I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.’

I sighed. ‘Come on, Gerald. You can save the act.’

He eyed me again, then closed the door. I listened to the chain fall from its runner and swing against the door. When he opened up again he waved me in.

The flat was a mess. Clothes were strewn across the back of chairs and sofas; packets of crisps and burger cartons dumped on the floor. Curtains had been pulled most of the way across the only window I could see, leaving a sliver of a view across the street. On one wall was a painting. On the others were shelves full of books and equipment. Towards the back of the room was a guillotine, rolls of laminate and a pile of large silver tins containing different coloured inks.

‘Nice place,’ I said.

‘Yeah, a real penthouse.’

He picked up a couple of sweaters and a pair of trousers and tossed them through the door to the bedroom.

‘I need something.’ I reached into my pocket and took out a roll of banknotes. ‘There’s a hundred here. All I want from you is some help. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Help?’

‘A few names.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘What are you, the Old Bill?’

‘No.’

‘My snitchin’ days are over, pal.’

‘You’re a friend of Jade’s, huh?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Bollocks you are.’

‘Listen–’

‘No,
you
listen. This conversation is over.’