The Love of the Dead Read online

  Over her shoulder, a man stood framed by the doorway, coming in from the kitchen. The patio door was open, and a cold wind was blowing into the room.

  Mary shuddered. Beth shuddered.

  “Even if I could answer,” he said, “It would be too complicated. Far too complicated.” He shrugged as though he was apologizing. He didn’t seem sorry. His body said one thing, his eyes said something else.

  Neither Mary nor Stan said anything about his lack of clothes. Too polite, or just too strange? Beth saw through Mary’s eyes, but she didn’t think her thoughts. She was still Beth, but she could see the past.

  The killer wore a cloak of deep black, made from feathers. He was naked underneath, his own skin almost black with thick, matted hair. Mary gasped and covered her eyes as she noticed the man’s hanging penis. Halfway engorged, and shocking in its enormity.

  Beth understood. She saw things in sequence, unlike Mary. It was almost as though there was a time lag, or Mary was giving the vision in parcels so Beth could understand, could see it all.

  The killer smiled when Mary gasped.

  “You’re like a maid, Mary. But then, childless, always a maiden.”

  “Leave here,” Mary said, “You’re unwelcome.” Mary understood the nature of the beast, even if Stan did not.

  “Bitch. Barren bitch. I’m not some fairy spirit you can order around. I’m the real fucking deal.”

  He laughed, guttural, beastly. He spun, his cloak of feathers flapping out wide, like the spreading of wings.

  Mary’s bladder let go.

  From under the cloak, the man pulled something that hurt Mary’s eyes. The room became suddenly darker. The killer held a black blade, but made of something so dark no light reflected from it.

  It was longer than a knife, maybe not quite a sword. Mary didn’t think this as she watched his terrible smile and cried while he approached. These were solely Beth’s thoughts, but this close, within Mary’s mind or memory or spirit, she could understand the terror, the knowledge of the end to come. It was so close now. The man stalking on bare feet over the carpet in pure silence. Mary screamed, but now Beth didn’t know if it was her terror or Mary’s that she was feeling.

  He came closer. Mary turned her head, saw Stan, looked deep into his eyes. He was a small man, never brave or outgoing, but in his eyes Beth could see Mary’s love for him reflected.

  The blade swiped across her throat. Beth looked up from the floor at Mary’s body, her body. The room shifted wildly and she felt giddy as her head rolled. It came to a stop, looking up at Stan. Stan was looking away from her, toward his death.

  The blood pumping from her neck cascaded over her mouth, and she tasted it. It hit her eyes and mercifully made her blind so she didn’t see Stan’s head suddenly thump beside her.

  But she heard it.

  Beth sat up, herself once again, and puked down the front of her shirt.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Mary’s spirit knelt over Beth, deep concern etched into her face. Beth held out a hand for her to step back. She didn’t want her near her. Not again. She couldn’t take that ever again.

  She’d been a vessel before, and she’d always hated it. That complete loss of control. Someone else, some spirit, riding you.

  She’d never experienced death first hand, though.

  She felt bile rising into her throat again and gagged it down.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked, even though she knew Mary would not, could not, speak.

  Mary’s eyes were infinitely sad. Beth’s old friend shook her head.

  She couldn’t say. Wouldn’t say. Beth got the message. Some things weren’t for her to know. But it was a hell of a way to go about it.

  She was still disoriented. Her head swam and her eyes felt like they weren’t her own.

  The young policeman, Newman, remained in the kitchen. Somehow a spirit, Mary’s or something else, was keeping this room sealed away from him. He couldn’t hear, he couldn’t see into it. Beth was sure he would have come to investigate if he’d heard her being sick or speaking. But she looked through into the kitchen, and now he was staring out of the window, looking at the garden. She wondered what he was seeing there. Perhaps not as interesting as what she saw, but she envied him a little. It must be nice to see only flowers and no dead gardeners.

  Mary tugged Beth’s sleeve, perfectly able to manipulate the material. She was powerful, even in spirit.

  The spirit pointed at something on the wall. Something nobody else had seen, because it looked like it belonged there. But they couldn’t see what she could see. The police had all walked past it, ignoring it as if it was just background, something irrelevant, like the sink or the couch. But it wasn’t irrelevant.

  There was a picture on the wall. A collage made of pebbles behind glass, so the pebbles didn’t fall down. The stones had been worn smooth by the sea. Maybe the Westmoor’s had collected them on a vacation, maybe they’d bought the picture. But the feather in the middle of the stones, it didn’t fit.

  Mary nodded when Beth saw it. Beth knew it wasn’t right. The feather, the stones. The feather was black, and it didn’t come from any happy vacation. If the collage was store bought, she was sure no one would have put a feather in with the pebbles. It was incongruous, discordant. Just the look of the thing there in and among the stones, the soft with the hard, but the feather wasn’t soft. She felt something coming from it, black and deep and powerful. She wouldn’t touch it, ever, because she knew that if she did she’d cut herself and its poison would seep into her blood. She’d sicken, die. But what if it was the kind of sickness that didn’t kill you? A kind of sickness that made you like him—the kind of man who could take a woman’s head and make it talk as though it were nothing more than a puppet?

  Beth shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.

  Newman remained oblivious. She checked, because she didn’t want to freak him out. He seemed sweet enough, and she’d got what she came for.

  “Move on, Mary. Stan’s waiting for you.”

  Mary nodded, unable to speak. But Mary’s smile was enough. She raised her hand.

  Goodbye.

  Then she was gone.

  Beth felt like crying, but she reined it in. She felt like crying a lot lately. It wasn’t surprising. She’d seen things nobody should know. Felt things that nobody should feel. Things that would drive some people crazy, she didn’t doubt.

  She took some tissues from her bag and tried to clean the vomit from her top. She couldn’t get it all, but she managed to pull her jacket over it. It would have to do.

  Her visit had been hard, but worth it. She knew more than she had yesterday, and even though she thought Coleridge would do right by her, she couldn’t rely on anyone else. Peter was gone. Miles was dead. It was just her. She had to do it herself, because she knew she couldn’t trust the killer to keep to his word. He was a liar. He was building a tower and the tower was death. But his card wasn’t the Tower. It was what he did, not what he was.

  She couldn’t afford to trust his word, because he was the beast himself. She knew that now. His card was the Devil, and he would be coming for her, too.

  Chapter Thirty

  A raven hopped up to the windowsill in Miles’ room. Deep black feathers shone in the sunlight like wet hair. It shifted its head this way and that, testing the air. It hopped down onto the bare floorboards of Miles’ room and made a toc-toc sound by clacking its beak, like it was happy.

  It flapped its wings, spreading them wide, flew through the doorway. Its wingtips brushed the frame of the door.

  The windows were open in every room. The air was chilly, but the raven didn’t feel the cold. It was an intelligent bird, but it didn’t think.

  It wasn’t him, but he called the bird kindred. A brother in soul and sometimes form. An eater of the dead, a carrion bird, once proudly haunting the field of battle, taking the flesh of the brave and cowardly and the noble and the lowborn alike.

  This raven
had only ever tasted the flesh of road kill and carrion rotting in the fields and forests.

  He had promised it flesh.

  The raven craned its head this way, that way. There was no flesh here, only a lingering trace of something long dead, a corpse left behind on the battlefield that it could not eat.

  It cawed, frustrated, hungry.

  The phone rang and it leaped into the air.

  Head cocked, it listened then copied the sound, mimicking the shrill ring perfectly. The ringing stopped, and a man’s voice came through.

  “Beth? You there? Pick up would you?”

  A pause. The raven waited and listened, intelligent eyes scanning the phone, like it understood the words.

  It knew many words. Its kind were ancient and proud. People forgot them in the new world, but the raven was an old soul.

  Its master, older still.

  “Alright, Beth. Look, call me, OK? I’m getting worried. I haven’t heard from you for a couple of days. I’ll try you again tomorrow. If I don’t hear anything I’m coming down. Listen, when I said if you need me...I...ah...I’ll be there. Just call. Please call me back, Beth, I’m getting worried now.”

  The man on the phone sighed. Couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  The raven listened to the silence. Flapped and hopped onto the small wooden table that Beth used for the phone and her keys and the other objects that people put down when they came in, cell phones, spare change, pieces of paper with lists, receipts. The table was littered, the raven’s claws rustling the scraps of paper as it walked stiff-legged to the phone.

  It watched the red light blinking for a moment then hit it with its beak. It listened to the man’s voice again.

  A woman’s voice followed this time.

  “To listen again, press 1. To save the message, press 2. To delete the message, press 3.”

  With its heavy black beak, the raven hit three.

  Looked this way and that, flapped into the kitchen, flew out of the kitchen window and away into the dunes, then it was lost in the distance.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Coleridge wasn’t happy. He’d already been from Beth’s to the coroners, to the station, and now he was in the car again.

  Aside from all the other indignities of cramming his bulk into a car, his back ached like a bastard, and when he drove for more than half an hour his left leg went a little bit numb below his knee.

  They just didn’t make cars his size. Maybe he could get himself a Land Rover or something bigger, instead of these shitty little toy cars.

  Maybe he could cut down on his food. Get some exercise. Go for a walk. Live longer. Get out on the date circuit. Speed dating. That’d be about his style. Meet some women, then have enough time left over to go and have some decent grub. Fast dates followed by faster food.

  But the fact was, he wasn’t that man. He couldn’t think while he was walking. That was how he worked. He talked to people, then he ate, then he thought. That was about the long and short of it. He didn’t have a partner because he didn’t want one. His last partner had blown his head off. That was it for Coleridge. There was only so much you could take.

  He figured he had big shoulders. He could take a cheating wife. He could take his boss breathing down his neck—he had every right.

  He couldn’t take an empty stomach, though.

  What he really craved, what’d do the trick nicely, was a spot of fish and chips. He headed into Cromer, a town only twenty minutes from Beth’s. He didn’t want to drive anymore than he had to. He pulled up outside a chip shop on a busy street, on a double yellow line. People hit their horns behind him. He figured they could go up on the pavement to get by if they needed to. The coast was pretty much deserted in the winter.

  He got two large cod, large chips, a pickled egg, and a can of Coke. The beeping horns were getting on his nerves. He paid and took his food, wrapped, back into the car. Drove to where he figured the sea was, got out and walked until he found a bench.

  Sat down and thought.

  Ate. Thought some more.

  He finished his first piece of cod, his chips, his pickled egg. He took out the second piece of fish and managed to take a bite before a seagull came down and took the whole lot out of his hand.

  “Oi!” he shouted, got up, about to try and chase it. “You’re welcome,” he said, laughing. What was he going to do? Fly after it?

  He’d eaten enough anyway. He felt the energy running through his massive frame, finally reaching his brain. He picked up his cell phone and made the call he should have made right at the start, when Yvonne Stanton’s corpse had been found, missing a head and a heart.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Who’s that?” Coleridge said when he got through.

  “Mooney. Coleridge?”

  “Listen, Yvonne Stanton. Get her client list. It’s a blue book with little flowers on it. Check it for a name that only comes up once. Got that?”

  “I’m not your fucking gopher.”

  Coleridge took a deep breath before he spoke again. “I know. But I’m in Cromer, you’re in Norwich. Just do it, would you?”

  “For fuck’s sake, Coleridge. We’re working our asses off. What the fuck are you doing in Cromer?”

  “Having fish and chips. Very nice it was, too. I’ll wait. Call me back.”

  He hung up before he could take any more flack. He’d have to talk to the boss soon, but he didn’t want to talk to him before he had something to go on.

  He walked back to the car while he was waiting for the call. It came through just as he got to the parking lot.

  After catching his breath he picked up.

  “Coleridge?”

  “Yeah,” he panted. “What you got?”

  “A few regulars. Some names that only appear once. Not many.”

  “Scratch the women. It’s definitely a man.”

  “Three names. You want them?”

  “Not yet. Check the others.”

  “Ahead of you. Smith didn’t keep a book, or if he did we didn’t find it. Same goes for George and Meakings. But the Westmoors kept records.”

  “Go on. Don’t fucking draw it out.”

  Coleridge could sense Mooney smiling over the phone.

  “Gregory Sawyer.”

  “Gregory Sawyer? Is it him?”

  “What do you think?”

  Coleridge thought he’d have to have some kind of dark, foreboding name. The kind of killer who’d do that to people, take someone’s heart right out of their chest. Cutting their heads off. What the fuck would someone called Gregory want with a bunch of body parts? No. His first instinct was that Gregory didn’t cut it.

  But what’s in a name? Nilson? His first name was Dennis, for Christ’s sake. West, fucking Fred. Shipman, what was that? Harold. A Harold, a Fred, and a Dennis.

  Maybe people with simple first names were more, not less, likely to be serial killers.

  Coleridge caught his mind wandering. Wished he’d got to eat his second piece of fish. It was just a fucking name, and more, it was a lead. Slim chance, but better than yesterday.

  “How far away did the Westmoors live from Stanton?”

  “Hold on.”

  Mooney went to check some online route finder. Quicker and more accurate than a map.

  Coleridge would’ve checked the map and guessed.

  “Forty-three miles. On the back roads, north of the county? Could take over an hour.”

  “Long way to drive,” said Coleridge. “You get an address on Sawyer?”

  “Harvey’s working on it.”

  Fucking Harvey. He had a score to settle with him.

  “Alright. Work it. Tell him to get his finger out of his ass, would you? Call me back, anything changes.”

  “You want to be there?”

  “No. I need to get to Beth’s house.”

  Coleridge could almost hear the old bastard’s wrinkled face rustling into a smile.

  “Shut up,” said Coleridge.


  “Didn’t say a thing. You want to talk to the boss?”

  Coleridge shook his head. “No. You talk to him. Call me back you get anywhere.”

  “Will do.”

  Mooney hung up. Coleridge opened the door to his car and squeezed himself in.

  He’d just got somewhere, and he should have felt good about it. But he didn’t. Because it didn’t work. Gregory Sawyer? Maybe. But it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like all of it.

  Beth was the key. She knew something. He hadn’t wanted to push her before, not after what she’d seen. He’d felt guilty, too, so he’d taken it easy on her. Gone soft. But he could feel time ticking down.

  He couldn’t afford to baby her anymore. He was sure she was holding something back, and whatever it was, he needed to know. What he didn’t know might kill her.

  Coleridge started to think about how to get it out of her. Working it over in his head, he started the car, drove with that kind of absent concentration people have when their mind was on other things.

  To finish the case, he had to have what Beth knew, whatever it took. Even if he had to be a bastard to get it.

  He wasn’t the kind to leave things undone. If you start a thing, you should damn well finish it.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The ride back to Beth’s house was slow and quiet. The policemen asked if she found anything. They asked if she was all right. She told them no. Short, simple, but in a hard voice that left the “leave me the alone” off the end.

  They drove the rest of the way, silence in the car apart from the occasional burble from the radio.

  When they got back, she didn’t ask them in or offer them a cup of tea to warm up. They didn’t seem disappointed.

  “Night, then, ma’am,” said the older one, the one with the ghost dog. Dean, she remembered. She didn’t care though.

  “Night,” she said.

  “We’re right out front if you...” he said, but she was already closing the door.

  She showered in her cold bathroom. Her house was tiled throughout and in the winter it was freezing. She didn’t mind. Sometimes in the morning she splashed cold water on her face first thing, just to get her blood flowing ’round her pounding head. Walking barefoot around the house in winter had the same effect.