Last Days (42 page)

Another journey. Until what? Until he was found dead with his mouth and eyes wide open.
Or not found at all.
He shivered. ‘And if I walk away from this right now, I’ll be OK?

And Dan? We’ll be fine?’

Max pursed his lips, pulled his shoulders into his body, raised his palms in resignation as if to imply,
what can I do?

‘I hope . . . I’m not so sure.’

Kyle grinned, but not pleasantly. ‘Blackmail.’

‘I’d prefer to see it as negotiation.’

He stood up quickly. Max flinched. Kyle’s body shook with rage. He also wanted to sob with frustration. ‘You got me into this. And you think I’m still going to work for you?

You’re the same. As her.
Katherine.
You’re cut from the same cloth.’

Max grimaced. ‘Don’t you say that. Ever!’

‘What’s the difference? You use people. Like that’s all we’re good for, your own self-interest.’

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ADAM NEVILL

Max’s eyes narrowed. His smile was more of a grimace.

‘My dear Kyle. What you have been given is an opportunity to witness miracles. And to make the most astonishing documentary. I’ve given you your life’s purpose. All great ventures carry risk, do they not? You saw what still walks in the house in Clarendon Road. You could have abandoned this project before you set one foot in Normandy. Most would have done, and who can blame them? But you didn’t.

You even went to America after all you saw in that bitch’s
fermette
. I’m impressed with you, Kyle. And I bet poor Dan took some persuading to stay along for the ride.’

‘You fucker.’

‘And maybe even the horrors of the Last Days were preferable to another night shift in the warehouse, Kyle.’

‘How did you know—’

‘I answered your prayers, Kyle. Insolvency’s wretched, I hear. You’d be shooting weddings for the rest of your life and making short films for a fiver. And all I have done is given you a chance to be someone, Kyle. To be more than some straight-to-YouTube loser. You were over the edge, Kyle, and I gave you a hand.’

‘I’m going.’ Kyle turned on his heel and headed for the door.

‘Kyle!’

Kyle reached for the door handle.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Kyle. I have the money and enough of a film already, so I should run and just keep running until all of this is far behind me. But there are places, Kyle, where money has no value.
The Kingdom of Fools
as depicted by Verhulst. So, either you leave this to me and hope I succeed in my desire to defeat her. Or you run. But if I don’t 372

LAST DAYS

succeed, Kyle, you might just be waiting around like the rest of us have been, to die one night in the dark.’

Kyle turned the handle.

‘Please! I need you.’

Kyle paused.

‘See the triptych. See it! And you will know. Know it all.

I promise.’

Kyle turned the handle and opened the door, stepped through it.

‘Kyle! Wait! Please. Please. The story. You must tell this story. You were made for this, boy. It’s in your blood.’

And then he found himself unwilling to walk any further from the bedroom. And for not doing so, he hated himself.

Like a film on fast forward he thought of Susan White, Gabriel, Conway, Sweeney, Emilio, Martha Lake; footage shot in three countries; the terrible nature of the mystery as it unravelled, entwined, involved him. And he knew he would always wonder what really happened in Arizona. Would always sleep lightly. Would flinch at every watermark on plaster and every footfall in an upstairs room. Would be drawn in mind and spirit, if not in body, back to those places, to see, to marvel, to fathom. He could not bear to know; he could not bear to
not
know. How many times in a film-maker’s lifetime did such an opportunity present itself? This was his chance to be
who
he was, and for everyone who ever doubted him or derided his work to really see what he was all about. A life’s work.
Perhaps the end of a life too.
He took a deep breath. ‘And if, and I mean
if
, I go and see this painting. If I even live that long. Then I will know everything. Everything that you know?’

373

ADAM NEVILL

‘You have my word. On your return tomorrow, and you must return, Kyle, you must. You will know what only I have come to understand and to accept as Sister Katherine’s true legacy. The Blood Friends.’

374

TWENTY-FIVE

antwerp. 24 june 2011. 11.30 a.m.

‘Max tells me I am to instruct you about Niclaes Verhulst and the Blood Friends, eh?’

Kyle took Dr Pieter Gemeen’s hand and shook it. ‘He sent me to see some paintings.’

Pieter frowned. ‘In good time. Such things are not to be taken lightly.’ And then he relaxed again and smiled. ‘Come, coffee? Or beer maybe? Beer I think.’

‘It’s early.’

Pieter grinned at him. ‘Beer will be best. Trust me in this matter.’

They’d met at the train station; the Renaissance historian already waiting for him on the arrivals platform of the airport shuttle. And Kyle wasn’t sure he’d ever actually spoken to anyone who wore bow ties before. Nor why he was surprised that anyone associated with Max would be eccentric, because Doctor Pieter Gemeen immediately confirmed the stereotype of an insane academic with his snow-white hair launching from his scalp in a fountain, only to be carefully sculpted back at its furthest extent, like a quiff grown too long. His pointed face was all nose and minimalist spectacle frames, his brows thick and incongruously jet like a 375

ADAM NEVILL

character from
The Muppet Show
that he couldn’t remember the name of. An observation he wished to share with Dan, without whom he felt exposed and vulnerable in the strange city.

Dan had called him five times during the flight. Just seeing his name in the missed calls list had flooded Kyle with relief and a welcome glow of warmth and familiarity; one night away from his best friend and he desperately wanted to repair any damage caused during their fractious flight back from Seattle. Dan left two messages in a voice unusually subdued, and full of uncertainty.

Mate, mate. Where are you? Call me. Shit. You won’t
believe this. I found something. Oh, man.

There had followed sounds of laboured breaths, and insinuations of background interference as if Dan moved with a heavy weight in his arms.
The camera?
The allotted time for a message then ran out. The call was timed at 5 a.m., when Kyle would have been in security at Stansted airport. He’d risen from the sofa in Max’s study at 3.30 a.m. Had spent three undisturbed hours out cold when he was roused by Iris with toast and coffee just before the airport car service pulled up outside. Kyle’s flight to Antwerp had departed London at 6 a.m.

Dan’s second message arrived twenty minutes after the first:
Dude. This is weird. You need to call me. Right away.

Answer your bloody phone.

There were another three missed calls listed from Dan’s number, made ten, twelve and sixteen minutes after the second message. Since his arrival in Antwerp, Kyle had called Dan twice. There had been no answer, so he left messages and tried to explain in a few minutes where he was and why 376

LAST DAYS

he was there. He wondered if Dan had gone back to Finger Mouse’s flat, for the all-nighter on the Avid. Maybe they’d found something on the footage, maybe on the audio track.

And then his thoughts darkened and he wondered if Dan was in danger; a peril he had placed his best friend within reach of. A sudden cold seizure immobilized him in the train station and he nearly broke into flight, straight back to the airport.

No
, he was here now and a moment from the revelation they needed to understand what it was that hunted so many through the dark. He had to know and needed to hold his nerve until Dan made clear his position; his calls could be nothing more than news of an accidental image caught on camera. Another one.

‘Your first time in Antwerpen?’ Pieter broke Kyle’s anxious absorption.

Kyle followed Pieter, who carried himself out of the station and onto De Keyserlei Strasse, like an old dancer upon voguish leather shoes, and one expensively dressed in a tailor -

ed three-piece suit. His companion smiled as if pleased with his role as guide, and struck a quick and purposeful pace through the pedestrians, cyclists and trams as the city opened around them; the sight of it added fresh demands on Kyle’s worn-out mind. He wondered if his brain function would soon reach maximum capacity and just shut itself down.

‘Not what you expected?’ Pieter smiled, and bowed slightly as he spoke, which made Kyle feel automatically privileged, as if his counsel was being sought, or as if something of great importance was about to be imparted. The man had a professorial gravity that drew in a listener’s concentration.

Which made Kyle desperate to film him, and all of this, the 377

ADAM NEVILL

spectacle of Antwerp. It really wasn’t what he expected; he’d expected a facsimile of a depressed British city in the 1970s.

Though couldn’t think why; he knew nothing about the place.

Pieter guided Kyle towards a cab. ‘A good day to walk, but the time we must be aware of. You fly back today, so we talk for a short time, and then maybe we see something.’

‘My flight’s at six.’

Pieter nodded, and once they were inside the cab, he said,

‘Let me tell you about this city. I have a friend. Also English.

He deals in art too. He has been here two years and every week he tells me he finds a new square when he walks. He tells me this city is half fairy-tale and half Gothic nightmare.

I wish I still had those eyes.’ He added as a sad refrain.

Through the windows of the taxi, Kyle could see what Pieter meant. Under a blue sky and late-morning sunlight, the place was everything he loved about continental cities: chic and shabby, spired and blackened, mysterious and beckoning. ‘We come to the Old Town up here. I know a place that serves Tripel Karmelite. The finest beer in the whole world. You English like beer.’

Kyle nodded.

‘It will be good for you.’

‘That bad?’

Pieter lowered his voice so the driver couldn’t hear, leaned into Kyle’s shoulder. He smelled of cigars, garlic and mouth-wash. ‘It is only an informed man that can understand these works. You see, one must get past the grotesque and understand the . . . er . . . the images, the symbols, that these works contain. In themselves. Otherwise we are just horrified, and we learn nothing.’

378

LAST DAYS

They took seats at a wooden table outside a bar in the Grote Markt, darkened by the shadow of the Cathedral of Our Lady. Itself surrounded by walls of grand stone palaces and the colourful Stadt buildings. Cobbled lanes fed off the vast square into a labyrinth of medieval shadows, dark glass, iron balconies, walls blanketed by ivy, turrets and flags. The cathedral flung its ecclesiastical claws at the heavens while the town at its foot promised to whisper and enchant amongst its alleys and canopied cafes. It excited Kyle and flooded his imagination with panoramic shots; it was beautiful, but daunting.

Pieter relished a long draught of the golden beer that came in a glass shaped like a vase. Nodded at the square. ‘The world has been coming here since the Frisians. The Franks.

Romans. Vikings. The Spanish. Napoleon. The Dutch. Germans. All of them, they come and go. But they all leave something behind. Curious things. Antwerpen draws things to itself. Strange things. It collects them.’ He looked at Kyle over the rim of his glasses, smiled. ‘And you thought it was all industrial? Maybe cranes and docks?’

Kyle returned the smile.

‘No. Antwerpen itself is history. So much so it can hardly be unravelled because even as I say this to you, it changes again. It is art. Which is why Niclaes Verhulst came here too.’

‘You know about the film I am making?’

‘I do. Max told me. I should like to see it someday.’

‘But do you
know
about what we have seen?’

‘Max has confirmed some details that we expected, yes.’

‘Expected?’ He swigged at his beer. ‘Who is “we”?’

Pieter smiled. ‘Patrons. And my occasional employers. An old family who prevent remarkable things falling into the 379

ADAM NEVILL

wrong hands. What I am about to show you, Katherine once tried to buy it. You know that? No? She was not the first, nor will be the last.’

‘Curiosity is killing me here, Pieter. I’m wondering how this relates to the story I am trying to tell.’

Pieter watched him gulp another mouthful; it was as sweet as wine and refreshing as a cold lager. ‘Slow. That beer is very strong. It gets you in the legs.’

‘Good.’

Pieter opened an elegant cigarette case. Withdrew a cigar -

ette and offered the case to Kyle. ‘You have seen many strange things.’ It was a statement, not a question. Pieter lit their smokes. ‘All who seek
old friends
find out things they wish they did not know.’ He let the thought stand upright like an eager waiter beside their table. Looked about himself with an almost imperceptible turn of his head. ‘Like Niclaes Verhulst. He saw things. Many things he wished he did not.

And he painted them. Here. After he escaped from a little place in France that I think you know of.’

Kyle frowned. ‘The farm?’

‘More or less. But it was a town then. In 1566.’

Kyle wiped beer off his chin. ‘1566?’

‘Yes. Sister Katherine and her followers were made in the image of some other thing.’

The immensity, the age, the epochal stature of the square seemed to lean inwards, to crush Kyle deeper into the cold shadows at the foot of the blackened cathedral. He shivered.

Pieter exhaled smoke slowly, watched it drift. ‘People come here to see Rubens’ work. Brueghel. Others. But I think Niclaes Verhulst is the most affecting of them all. He painted what was known as
The Saints of Filth
. Something that 380

LAST DAYS

tourists do not see. I would like to say you are fortunate, because I will show you a forgotten masterpiece. But I cannot say that. Because the fact that you get to see it means you are involved too. Which is no privilege at all.’