The Love of the Dead Read online

  There was no reason to think he was a night creature, but she suspected he was. She didn’t think daylight would burn him up, like a vampire. But the more she thought about it, the more she was sure she was right. And there was more. She thought it was the form of the thing. The way he’d appeared to her at first, slashed her son’s throat. “I can touch you here, I can touch you there.” Something like that.

  And the head in the box. Like he was showing off.

  He was proud of himself. Proud of his abilities.

  Pride comes before the fall. Her mother used to say that to her all the time. She’d tried not to be prideful when she was young, then she got older and her life turned gradually to shit, and after that, what did she have to be proud of?

  Would his pride be his downfall? Could she somehow use that?

  She laughed out loud. The chatter from the kitchen stopped suddenly. She put her hand over her mouth and chuckled again. She couldn’t help it, but the thought of doing anything but dying was just so damn funny.

  She didn’t have any doubt that she’d die. She couldn’t see any way she wouldn’t. She couldn’t fight him. She couldn’t reason with him. He was coming, and when he came she’d die.

  But she wouldn’t go quietly.

  She heard a car pull up outside. She finished dressing quickly and went to meet the relief.

  She needed to get out, because as much as she was resigned to dying, she didn’t want to. All the years she’d tortured herself, ever since Miles’ death, she couldn’t have cared one way or the other.

  Now death was so close, she found she was reluctant to give herself over to it.

  She wanted to fight, but if she was going to fight him, she would need something of his.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The police car pulled up without a fuss. No sirens wailing, no lights flashing. The policemen stepped out and walked up to her door slowly, no rush, just taking it easy. Out for a fucking stroll.

  Beth was at the door waiting. She pulled on her big coat as they approached, ready to go, desperate to be doing something other than waiting for him to come to her again.

  She remembered his words, now. “I’m going to kill you tonight.”

  Maybe, she thought. But then maybe I’ll have a surprise for you.

  “You’re the relief, right?” she said as soon as their feet hit the sand, about twenty feet shy of her front steps.

  “Yes, Mrs. Willis. We’ll be here all day. I’m Sergeant Read, this is Hind. How are you?”

  “Shit-scared.”

  “We tried to get in touch, but we couldn’t get through on the phone or the radio. I have some news. We caught him last night. A man called Gregory Sawyer. There was...evidence in his house.”

  Beth shook her head.

  “It’s a sweet lie, Sergeant, but you don’t believe it anymore than I do.”

  He shook his head, looked uncomfortable.

  “There’s some loose ends...we just want to make sure. Our boss wants everything covered. No mistakes.”

  “What are the loose ends?”

  “I can’t discuss that with you.”

  “Is my life in danger?”

  He looked uncomfortable, yet again.

  “It’s my life. You can damn well show some common decency and at least tell me that.”

  “He died.”

  “So I’m safe?” It didn’t feel like it. She could feel it, waiting. She could feel him, waiting. Waiting for the dark.

  “I don’t have all the details myself, Mrs. Willis...”

  “Can you take me out? I need to get out.”

  The sergeant shook his head. “I’m under orders. Here, until I get the call. Then I’m to take you into protective custody.”

  “You can come in, or you can go. I don’t care. But this is my home, this is where I’ll meet him when he comes. Shy of arresting me, you can’t do a damn thing about that, either. Can you?”

  He didn’t look sure. Didn’t look sure at all.

  “Now, I need to go out. Are you going to take me?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. He didn’t look sad or embarrassed, just stating a fact. He didn’t leave any wriggling room. For a second, Beth imagined punching him in the face. She wondered if she was strong enough to break his nose. Probably not.

  “You’ve got to understand, I can’t,” he said. He didn’t sound sorry. He didn’t know he was killing her.

  “Well, I’m damn well going, and you can’t stop me.”

  But Miles could.

  As she took the first step away from her house, onto the sand, she felt her hand being tugged. Insistent and strong. Stronger than any little boy had any right to be. Stronger than a ghost should be. She tried to pull away, but Miles just held on tighter and pulled all the harder.

  “What?” she snapped. The policeman jumped.

  “Ma’am?”

  “I’m not talking to you.”

  She turned her attention to Miles. She didn’t have much choice. He pulled her so hard she nearly lost her balance. She stumbled as he drew her into the kitchen. She must have looked some special kind of crazy to the policemen at her kitchen table helping themselves to her tea. Her arm was pulled out in front of her, and she staggered as Miles damn near dragged her to the freezer.

  She couldn’t worry about how the thing looked. Not right now. Miles was pointing at the freezer, his mouth set in a determined line.

  “What? What is it?”

  He pointed again. Threw her hand down so hard it slapped against her thigh. He pulled open the freezer door and ice cubes rained out and tinkled onto the red tiles, spilling and sliding across the kitchen floor.

  She got the message.

  Four policemen stared at the ice cubes skittering across the floor. She couldn’t worry about them. She couldn’t get something of his, but as she’d learned a long time ago, spirits were demanding bastards.

  The spirits didn’t want her to leave, didn’t need for her to touch the killer’s things. They didn’t give a shit if she read his cards or got to know him.

  The spirits only wanted her to know herself.

  She got the message all right: This is for us. Not him. Not you.

  A matter of faith. Let go, they were saying. We’ll catch you.

  The only trouble was, she didn’t have any faith. She was scared, out of hope, waiting to die. But she could feel the power of the spirit, that thing beyond death that she didn’t understand but that could touch Miles and guide him to guide her.

  She ignored the police staring at her and took a shallow washing-up bowl from under the sink. She eyed the whiskey, but that was for when the day was done. She didn’t think this day was quite done yet.

  Maybe she wasn’t quite done yet.

  “I’m going to my bedroom,” she said as she added water to the bowl and ice cubes. “Make yourselves tea. There’s biscuits in the cupboard. Leave me alone, OK? Whatever happens. If Coleridge comes, tell him to wait. He’ll understand.”

  She didn’t wait for confirmation they’d understood.

  Miles was nodding at her, smiling. That was all the confirmation she needed. She was on the right path. She didn’t know where it led, but it was a path, and it was a hell of lot better than wandering blind and lost.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The driveway to Sawyer’s house ran a ways back from the road. On the east side of the city, but removed enough so that it was off the main run, in one of the more expensive neighborhoods of Norwich. The river ran along the Yarmouth road on one side. Sawyer’s house was on the other. A vast expanse of well-tended lawn led up to a house that might have been called a mansion. A heavy red door framed by two ivory columns waited, open. Coleridge wouldn’t have been surprised had the columns been marble.

  The gravel driveway at the front of the building was filled with police cars, crime scene vans, unmarked cars driven by detectives. Plenty of room for all of them.

  Coleridge figured Sawyer had probably been shitty at parking.
r />   He drove up and parked behind one of two crime scene vans. They’d be leaving last. Nodding to a few cops he knew, he headed straight up the stairs. Start at the top, work your way down. Just like cleaning.

  Not that he did much in the way of cleaning, but the theory was sound. The dust goes down, same as the shit.

  Mooney met him on the third floor. He was sitting on a bed, an old fashioned four-poster, smoking. He tapped his ash into a vase placed between his feet. The thick carpet was covered in ash. Mooney evidently wasn’t a good shot.

  “Coleridge. You been down yet?”

  “Thought I’d start at the top. What’s down?”

  “In the basement. That’s where the action is.”

  “I figured I’d start at the top. Work my way down. Like cleaning, you know?”

  Mooney just looked puzzled. He had a heavy face, all drooping eyelids and wrinkles. It was a look that suited him.

  “Never mind. What time did he pop it then? You find that out?”

  “Yeah. Pronounced at 11:47 PM.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “For what?” Mooney dropped his cigarette into the vase. Smoke swirled into the room, which already stank from the cheap tobacco he smoked.

  “For everything to be completely fucked up. The killer phoned about 12 o’clock, give or take. So it wasn’t Sawyer,” said Coleridge. “No way.”

  “Yeah. That fucks things up. But Sawyer’s definitely involved.”

  “Maybe there’s two of them.”

  Mooney nodded. Coleridge wasn’t so sure, but it was the only explanation he could give that a detective wouldn’t laugh at.

  “Could be,” he agreed. “Want the tour?”

  Coleridge nodded, and Mooney pushed himself up with a grunt.

  They checked out all the rooms—four bedrooms on the top floor. One of those was obviously the master bedroom. En suite with a claw foot tub and some brassy looking taps. Looked expensive. Everything in the house looked expensive.

  Coleridge would have bet a month’s pay no one had wiped their feet on the way in.

  But then, Coleridge got to thinking about cleaning again. How you’d start at the top, work your way down.

  He was thinking about cleaning because there was a thick layer of dust over pretty much everything. It wasn’t recent. Even cops didn’t smoke that much. It’d have to be a good couple of months.

  “You think he’d have a cleaner, wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe he did. But not for a while.”

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “I don’t know what I think. Not yet. Don’t spoil the surprise though, eh? I like working in the dark.”

  Mooney laughed, just a humorless bark. It turned into a hacking cough.

  “I’m not doing it to be an ass. It’s the punchline. I don’t want to ruin the gag.”

  Coleridge shook his head as they reached the stairs. The banisters didn’t have any dust on them, but he reckoned a good few cops used it on their way back and forth, even though they weren’t supposed to. You go up a flight of stairs like these, you hold the banister. Natural. You couldn’t help it. Stairs like these made you feel mortal.

  The second floor was much the same. So far Coleridge had counted five bathrooms over two floors, but no sign that any room other than the master bedroom had ever been occupied. It had been the only room with clothes in the closets. Even so, it didn’t look like it’d been slept in recently.

  “Come on, Coleridge. You’re killing me. Downstairs. There’s nothing to see here, OK? The house might as well as have been empty.”

  “Don’t want to miss anything.”

  “You think the hundreds of policemen going over this place can’t do a better job than you?”

  Coleridge had to concede the point.

  “Come on then. I’m tired and it’s going to be a long, bastard of a day. Show me what we’ve got.”

  Mooney clapped his hands. “Ready?”

  “Fuck’s sake, Mooney. It’s not a game show.”

  “Nope. It’s a circus.”

  Mooney led Coleridge to the ground floor, then out past a kitchen that was way too big for one man to handle. Coleridge didn’t need to ask if Sawyer had lived alone. It was obvious. He must have rattled around in it. The house was way too big for one man.

  “No partners? No kids? No family of Albanian’s paying rent?” he asked.

  “Nope. Alone. Had a cleaning company come in once a week. He let them go a month ago.”

  “About the time the killings started?”

  “Bingo.”

  A knot of people were gathered around the top of a stairwell leading to what Coleridge assumed would be the cellar. Mooney had built it up pretty good. He didn’t want to go down there. He didn’t want to see it. “Charnel house” conjured up nasty images. Coleridge had seen some nasty shit over the years, but he knew this was something else.

  He knew from the pale faces on the crime scene techs that came up and the reluctant faces on those going back down. Whispers in the hallway. Cops talked shit about everything. If they were quiet...if they couldn’t find something sick to say...

  No one was laughing. Cops always laughed at a crime scene. Not all of them, but there’d always be a couple of wits about. Dark humors, maybe. Maybe sick. The kind of thing you wouldn’t want the bereaved to hear. God forbid the press ever get hold of it.

  But there was none of that here. Just solemn faces. Scared faces. Faces of men who wouldn’t be sleeping for a while. Their wives would ask, what is it honey? Bad day?

  They’d never speak about it, though. The sensible ones wouldn’t, anyway. When wives get wise to the kind of things a man sees in this line of work, that’s when things start to fall down.

  That’s what the shrinks were there for. That’s what a pint after work was for. That’s what your buddies on the force are for. They know. They understand. Most of all, they don’t judge if a man drinks a little too much when his shift’s done. You do what you have to.

  A tech came up from the basement, a perfect shade of green. Nobody offered him a slap-up meal. They just stepped well back, minding their feet, and waited for him to hurl. It didn’t take long. He managed to get his shoes. No one offered any shit.

  Coleridge really didn’t want to go down there. But he put his left foot on the first riser, and like always, once you’d taken the first step, the rest were easy.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  The smell hit Coleridge as he headed down the stairs. A stink so vile he could have quite happily thrown up right there, before he even got to the heavy work. Seeing the dead wasn’t heavy work like road construction or moving houses. It was heavy work on the heart and the soul. It wore you down after a while.

  Coleridge had seen enough these last few days to see him through the next couple of months, he figured. But it wasn’t over yet. There was a way to go. This was maybe the best of it, because tonight would be worse. He knew without a doubt that Sawyer wasn’t the guy he’d spoken to on the phone, because Sawyer had been dead at the time. So some hard sick bastard was planning on visiting Beth’s house. The kind of man who’d never been caught, even though he’d chopped off people’s heads and carried them away.

  Whatever Sawyer had done, it wouldn’t be over. Not until the sun went down and Coleridge saw the face of the real killer.

  But for now, maybe his accomplice. Sick enough. Maybe Sawyer killed a few. Maybe the other guy killed the rest.

  He wasn’t worried about Sawyer.

  But then he was.

  There were no windows in the basement. It should have had a pentagram on the floor, or a statue of Kali, or burning black tallow made from the fat of babies. But the only lighting was by fluorescents, and in the stark glare Coleridge saw why everyone was hushed, like at a funeral, until someone drinks enough to start a fight or laughs uncontrollably. Coleridge didn’t feel like laughing, but he did feel like starting a fight.

 
He didn’t want to look at the walls, so he looked at the center of the room. It was the easiest place to look at.

  A double bed with off-white sheets. They’d most likely started out white, but now they were covered with bodily fluids. Looked kind of yellow in places, the odd patch of dark red, almost black, that he figured was blood. There was some shit there, and a thick spread of piss about where you’d expect someone to be if they were lying in the middle of the bed.

  The bed wasn’t grand, like those upstairs. Just functional. It was pretty plain. Coleridge approached it carefully. He half expected there to be trapdoors, like some kind of storybook villain might have had. That’d make it easier to take, in a way, if he could rationalize what he was seeing in terms of make-believe.

  But it was right there. All around him.

  To one side of the bed was an empty bag with a tube leading from it. The tube dangled on the floor now, but Coleridge thought it was a drip and that it had been attached to whoever had been on the bed.

  Mooney hung back. Coleridge had questions, but for now, he just needed to look. To take it in. To come to some kind of agreement with his mind over what he was seeing. He had to look, he had to think about it. What he saw down here might not make a difference when dark fell, but it might, and he couldn’t afford to miss it.

  The people down here were already dead. Beth wasn’t.

  He turned away from the bed and took a circuit of the walls. He didn’t know where to start, so he just began at the spot that was closest.

  Set in alcoves, in spaces that looked to have been purposefully built, maybe by Sawyer, there were rows upon rows of heads. The heads weren’t in liquid, like some kind of preservative. They weren’t even in jars, as he’d half expected to find. They were stuck on spikes, driven with enough force in some cases for the spike to come out of the top of the skull. They weren’t in any kind of order. It was easy to tell that some were older than others, because they were decomposed.

  The oldest had a few strands of hair attached. There were some in there that had dried flesh. Others were putrescent, decomposing matter running out of the alcove, dripping past the head’s beneath, pooling on the floor. Some had eyes, some had oily globules on their cheeks where the eyes had gone first.