Dead of Light (35 page)

Took me five minutes before I could stand on trembling legs, and totter away to find the bike again. My T-shirt was sodden on my back, even my jeans felt damp, and I only wanted my bed with no one else in it, just my own bed in bright sunlight and space enough to stretch out and groan a little and then sleep and sleep.

o0o

And couldn't afford even to lie down for twenty minutes, didn't have the time to spare. Gone noon already, my ally the sun slipping down the sky, on its way to leaving me. Clouds were building, also; that first stray had been a herald.

Wind in my hair once more, only this time my hair was sticky with dust and sweat and my scalp chilled in the flow of air. Does Superman catch cold? I wondered. And what would happen to me if I sneezed in sunlight? And to those around me? Jet-propelled Macallan, first man to fly; and all his friends — no, sorry, his few and uncommitted acquaintances, and thank you Laura for reminding me of that — caught in the backblast while he soared. Blown to smithereens, and who would miss them...?

Well, actually, I would. Regardless of Laura, regardless of how they felt themselves: I'd miss their company, and I'd miss more the comfort of their being constantly in the back of my head and the background of my life, an ever-present help in trouble...

Which was, I supposed, what Laura was talking about. Didn't want to think about that. Again, didn't have the time.

o0o

Drove to Uncle Allan's house, vaulted off the bike and actually ran to the door, as if a second's difference were worth any amount of ache and weariness in my legs. I yanked on the bell-pull, once and twice and again, and danced my fingers slowly across the brickwork in the porch while I waited for an answer. Thinking,
Let the sun get a little lower, let it shine in here, I could pick you apart with my bare hands. That's if I could be bothered to use my hands at all...

At last slow footsteps coming and going, louder every time they came: someone walking down the hall towards me, treading alternately on boards and rugs. I prayed for Allan, but never believed it; and sure enough, Aunt Jess opened the door.

“Benedict.” Ah, she looked sour, did my aunt: the martinet with the heart of gold, only that someone had stolen away her heart, and that recently so that she still felt the pain of its stealing. Looking at her, thinking of her and Aunt Lucy and my mother, all the other aunts and female cousins — and I was leaving Hazel out of this but probably you could stick her in the same pot with the rest of them, for a little added spice without really changing the dish at all — it occurred to me that maybe it was as well for Laura that she wouldn't be marrying me, though bad bad news that she was so hot for Jamie. Macallan womenfolk didn't seem to survive the status very well. Especially those that weren't blood, the poor deluded fools who married in...

“What can I do for you?” my aunt asked, as if she were some vague acquaintance and not a loving aunt at all.

“I need to see Uncle Allan, it's dead important...” Almost dancing on the doorstep with impatience,
let me in, let me run up the stairs and find him...

“I'm sorry, Benedict, he's not here.”

That stopped me, that stumped me, that was the worst news imaginable. “Not...? Oh,
shit!
Um, sorry, Aunt Jess. Can you tell me where he is?” He should have been here, surely that was what Uncle James had said? But tracking back in my head, I realised that I'd misunderstood, and maybe wilfully so. All that had actually been said was that Allan was on an intellectual quest for answers; I'd simply assumed that meant he'd be coming here, home to his books and instruments. That was the best solution for me, the easiest way to find him, so I'd voted for it and conveniently forgotten that the world was subject neither to my dictatorship nor to my curious notions of democracy, where one vote could carry the day so long as it was my own.

Her face expressed her distaste, but she told me. “He said he needed to study the remains from last night's activity.”

‘The remains' meant Steve, of course, if there was anything left of him. “Uh, do you know where...?”

“The mortuary, I should imagine. Unless they took him to his home.”

No, they wouldn't have done that. Not this time. The mortuary got the decision, except that I didn't know where the mortuary was. All those years of living here, and I didn't know where the dead went; nor would most of my friends, I realised, ripping through a mental list of people I could ask. Christ, I might have to come down to a policeman...

“Okay, thanks, Aunt Jess.” No good asking her, at any rate. “Can I just nip up to his study to leave him a message?”

“I will tell him that you called, Benedict,” her acid voice saying also,
Woman I may be, and not in my prime form now, but you can trust me that far, boy.

“Yeah, but it's a little more complicated than that...”

“Oh, very well, then.” She pulled the door more widely open and stepped aside; and I did run up the stairs, even though I knew now that he wasn't there to greet me.

o0o

Never been in his study alone before, never been trusted enough; and quite right too. There was too much here to play with, too much to touch and most of it fragile or dangerous or both.

My hands strayed aimlessly, reaching for everything, touching nothing until at last I picked up that sheep's skull from his desk. Hazel had killed it, he had saved it; it was knowledge, I supposed, or evidence at least. And his favourite kind at that. All its secrets were family.

I ran my finger over the dark lines of the web that marked it, felt how they were scored into the bone, and remembered Steve last night. How his skull too had borne its marks, after his hair and skin had sloughed away: though that was more intricate than this, no simple web. And then my reluctant mind reminded me that there was another body still that must bear a similar brand, unless his family had chosen to finish what I'd started, and had burned what was left of my policeman.

Sick at heart, I dropped the skull back on Allan's desk. My questing hands moved on, seeking comfort; they settled on what I'd always loved the best, the cool smooth tubes of his old brass microscope...

Ah, shit. I had no time for this, for reaching back to childhood in search of a dream of better times. I jerked myself away, and quickly did what I'd come up here for; I left my uncle a message he couldn't miss, to say that I'd been here in search of him.

Then I picked up his phone and dialled, still moving fast, before my nerve could fail me.

One ring, two rings and she answered.

“Hullo?”

“Laura, it's Ben.” And quickly on, in case she still wasn't talking to me. “Where's the mortuary?”

“What?”

“The town mortuary. Where is it?” If anyone knew, she must. She was a medic, after all.

“At the hospital, of course. What do you need to know that for?”

“Sorry, I'm in a rush. I'll explain later. Thanks...”

And I hung up on her. First time for everything, I guess.

o0o

Down the stairs again, to where my aunt still waited for me in the hall. I put my hands on her stiff shoulders and kissed her cheek, managed a faint smile at her startlement and said goodbye.

Out of the house and onto the bike, and away I raced, down into town under a sky that was suddenly and unfairly clotting up, threatening rain.

o0o

The hospital sprawled over many acres, and I didn't know my way anywhere, except to Casualty and the private rooms. Took me ten minutes to find the mortuary, and the porter I ran into at the door — literally ran into, spinning round a corner to collide with the poor bastard, almost knocking us both to the floor — said that no, not Allan Macallan nor any other living visitor was there. Nor had been there, since he came on duty.

Which left me stranded, desperate and clueless, no chance of finding my uncle now.

Desperate times drive you to desperate measures. Me, I was frantic enough to drive around town spotting this year's Volvos. There were dozens of them, and they were all dark blue, or seemed so; and of course I didn't know Allan's registration number, or anything useful like that.

Volvos on the move were easy to discount, just one glance at the driver and forget it, that wasn't Allan.

Parked cars took more work. Each one I came across I pulled alongside and peered in, trying to spot clues. A child seat in the back meant the wrong car, for sure. So did a jacket in an ugly dog's-tooth check, hanging from a hook behind the door. Aunt Jess bought Allan's clothes for him, and she would never have been guilty of that.

A copy of
Cosmo
on the passenger seat and a mess of peppermints and used tissues on the dashboard: wrong car.

Another car, another magazine; this time I had to bump the bike up onto the pavement and squint.
The International Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicines
— not likely, but possible. Uncle Allan pursued knowledge as a dog rabbits, and the more arcane the better. On the dash, though, was a fat thriller, and there was a Krooklok on the wheel. Case thrown out of court, on two counts.

Allan used to pay Jamie and me to clean his car for him, every Sunday until he caught us with our heads under the bonnet, fiddling with the leads, trying to hotwire the beast. These days he'd have some other young hopefuls on the payroll; dirty cars could be discounted.

There were still a few, however, that were neutral inside and out, telling me nothing, saying neither
yea
nor
nay
. But Volvo owners are careful souls; a foot stretched out from bike to bumper, a little pressure applied, and it was safe money that an ululating alarm would bite through my bootsole and thrill up my tibia, fouling the air for a couple of hundred metres in all directions but down.

As soon as it did, I was away and looking for the next. Volvo owners might be careful souls in general, but my Uncle Allan one in particular; but not in this. I doubted if he'd ever set an alarm in his life, he wouldn't see the point...

o0o

But alarmed or otherwise, if he was anywhere in town I couldn't find him, neither the man nor his wheels. Allan travelled far more than most Macallans, in pursuit of his researches. Some stray idea might have taken him fifty or a hundred miles away, distances undreamed of in the narrow philosophies of my less far-seeking family. Coincidence can't be forced, and it was only ever coincidence would have produced his car for me, just when I wanted him the most.

So I abandoned the search, reluctant despite its futility. At least it had given me something to do, it had kept me moving. Movement promised progress, its natural illusion; and the constant supply of cars of the right age, right make, right colour had dangled hope before me, vividly carotene, keeping me frantic but just the right side of despair. I could think of nothing more productive. Without Allan, I thought, I was lost, we were all lost.

Without Allan, I had nothing to do but hide in the oncoming night. The sky was darkening already, tinting toward Volvo-blue to the east of here. I felt my time slipping from me, the day all run to waste. As the world turned, we turned with it; wannabe hunter turned to hunted, definitely and unquestionably hunted, and I was desperate suddenly for cover.

Couldn't hang out at home, couldn't do what I so hoped Laura and Carol were doing, barring their doors and pulling their curtains and burrowing deep beneath their duvets. Walls and doors were no defence for me, this Englishman's home was no kind of castle. If I'd not been a target before, I surely was now; and anyone looking for me would of course look there first, in case I hadn't twigged it yet.

I wouldn't even have thought of going home, except that I didn't live alone, and anyone found at the flat would be in as much peril as me. Questions would be asked, and answers sought by any cruel or unusual means available. So I spun the bike around and raced the failing light away from the centre of town, up the long hill with all the speed I could squeeze from the throttle and thank God for my sister's machismo, this powerful machine a needful substitute for her inherent weakness.

When I reached the flat I found lights burning, music playing and Jacko fooling around in the kitchen with Jonathan. To be specific, I found Jon at the back end of a fit of giggles, sagging against the wall and trying weakly to buckle his belt and tuck his T-shirt in while Jacko bent unconvincingly over a steaming pot on the stove.

Took both of them a second to remember that things had changed, that they were frightened of me now. Then Jon sobered abruptly, one last gasp for air and even his smile died. He straightened up, sorted his clothes out with quick movements, looked to Jacko for guidance.

“Ben, hi. Er, have you got time to eat?” Jacko offered with a gesture towards the busy cooker, while his voice pleaded for me to say no.

“No,” I said, ever the cooperative flatmate. “And neither have you.”

“Unh?”

“I'm sorry, you've got to get out of here. Can you go to Jon's place?”

A mute shake of the head from Jonathan said not.

“Well, friends, then. Take a couple of sleeping-bags, you can borrow mine, and go crash on someone's floor tonight.”

“Ben, what the hell for?”

“It's getting dark out there. Dark is dangerous, right? Remember? Somebody's after me; and they'll take you too if they find you here, just in case you can lead them to me.”

Jacko looked at me, looked at Jon; said, “Get your jacket, hon. We're gone.”

I turned the gas off under their abandoned dinner and followed them out into the narrow hallway, where Jacko was ignoring my suggestion of sleeping-bags and organising the evacuation of his instruments instead.

“If you can manage the bodhrán and the flute, Jon, I've got the rest.”

“Jacko, man!” I said, almost laughing, almost. “For Christ's sake...”