David Raker 01 - Chasing the Dead (7 page)

‘That file not enough for you?’

‘Basically, I was hoping you might be able to give me some…
technical
help.’

I held up the picture. ‘With the photograph.’

‘What about it?’

‘It must have been taken by someone Alex met after he disappeared, and the picture’s a Polaroid, which means that person probably handled it as it was develop–’

‘No.’

He’d second-guessed me.

‘I just need it checked for prints.’

‘Just need it?
Just
need it? You realize what you’re asking me to do? Get forensics involved, log it into the system, start a paper trail. What do you think would happen if people find out I’ve been pushing personal work through?’

‘I know it’s diff–’

‘I’m
fucked
, that’s what.’

‘Okay.’

‘No way. Forget it.’

‘I felt I should ask.’

‘No way,’ he said again.

But I could see the conflict in his face. The embers of Alex’s memory hadn’t died out yet. Something still burnt in him. And I still had a shot at getting the picture looked at.

As I travelled east, I could see sunlight up ahead, breaking through the clouds. But by the time I got to Mary’s, it was gone. Evening was moving in.

After she answered the door, I followed her through to the kitchen and then down a steep flight of stairs into the basement. It was huge, much bigger than I’d expected, but it was a mess as well: boxes stacked ceiling-high like pillars in a foyer; pieces of wood and metal perched against the walls; an electrical box, covered in thick, opaque cobwebs.

‘I come down here sometimes,’ she said. ‘It’s quiet.’

I nodded that I understood.

‘Sorry about the mess.’

I smiled at her. ‘You want to see a mess, you should come to my place.’

Then, from upstairs: ‘Where am I?’

We looked at each other. It was Malcolm. Mary turned towards the stairs, then back to me. ‘I’m really sorry. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

After she was gone, I looked around the basement. On the other side, half-hidden behind boxes, was an old writing desk, an open photo album on it. Dusty. Worn. I walked over and turned some of the pages. A young Alex playing in the snow, paddling in the sea,

Right at the back was a photograph of Alex, Malcolm and Mary, and someone else. The guy was in his thirties, good-looking, smiling from ear to ear. He had one arm on Alex’s shoulder and one around Malcolm. Mary was out to the side of the shot, detached from the group. Most of the time you couldn’t read much into pictures: people put on smiles, put arms around those next to them, posed even if they didn’t want to. Pictures could paper over even the most significant of cracks. But this one said everything: Mary was the odd one out.

Quietly, she came down the stairs.

I turned to her and held up the photo. ‘Who’s this guy?’

‘Wow,’ she said, coming across the basement towards me. ‘I haven’t seen him in a while. I thought we’d managed to burn all the photographs of him.’ But she was smiling. She studied it for a while. ‘Al.
Uncle
Al. He was a friend of Malc’s.’

‘But not a friend of yours?’

She shrugged. ‘I think the feeling was mutual, to be honest. Al was a wealthy guy. We weren’t. He bought his way into their affection, and the only way I could counter that was by staying close to them. He wasn’t so keen to spend money on me.’

‘He wasn’t Alex’s real uncle?’

‘No. Malcolm used to work for him.’

‘So, is he still around?

I put the photo back into the album. ‘Did Alex ever go to church?’

‘Church?’ She frowned, as if the question had taken her by surprise. ‘Not at the end, no. But when he was younger he used to come to our church in town. He was part of the youth group there. He made some good friends.’

‘Anyone he kept in regular contact with?’

‘He was friendly with one guy there…’ She stopped. ‘I’m trying to remember his name. He used to lead worship, take the occasional service, that kind of thing. He went travelling for a while, and never came back to us. I think Alex still kept in touch with him though.’ She stopped a second time. ‘Gosh, I
must
be getting old.’

‘It’s probably worth following up, so if you remember him, drop me a line.’ I thought of the birthday card. ‘What about the name Angela Routledge – does that ring any bells?’

She thought about it, but it obviously didn’t. I hadn’t expected it to get me far. Angela Routledge was probably just an old woman raising funds for the church.

‘Well, I better be go–’

‘Mat,’ she said. ‘With one tee.’

I turned to look at her. ‘Sorry?’

‘I knew I’d remember it eventually.’ She smiled. ‘Alex’s friend from the church. His name was Mat.’

Before I went to sleep, I opened the case file containing the printouts Cary had given me and took out the DVD. I sat down, dropped it into the disc tray and pressed ‘Play’.

Taken with a hand-held video camera, the recording was shaky and disorientating to start with, but became steadier. The film began with some shots of the fields surrounding the crash site and the area the car had landed in. There was a dark, scarred trail left on the field. The grass was scorched. Something from the car – perhaps the exhaust box – was embedded in the mud. I was hoping whoever had taken the film might zoom in, but they didn’t.

Instead it cut to where the car had come off the road. There was petrol left on the tarmac. Smashed glass. The light wasn’t particularly good, and when I glanced at the timecode in the corner, I could see why. 17.42. Evening.

The film cut to the car itself.

The roof had collapsed. One door had come off, and the boot had disappeared, pushed into the back of the car. The engine was up inside the dashboard on the right-hand side. As the camera panned from left to right, I could see bits of windscreen glinting in the grass. The

The film cut to a spot about twenty feet away. Scattered in the grass was debris that had been thrown free of the car: a burnt mobile phone; a shoe; a wallet, the tan leather charred. The wallet was open. Some of the contents had spilled out. Part of a blackened and melted driver’s licence, Alex’s face on it, sat in the grass.

Then the film finished.

I ejected the DVD and spread some of the paperwork out in front of me. The investigators were fairly certain the crash had been caused by Alex’s being drunk. There were some fuzzy photographs on one of the printouts, including a shot of the tyre marks on the road, and one of the lorry Alex’s car had hit. The lorry driver had escaped with only minor cuts and bruises. In his statement he said another car had overtaken Alex’s and then, about ten seconds later, the Toyota had drifted across to the wrong side of the road. A third photograph showed the Toyota from head on. The right side had sustained more damage than the left. It explained why, in the film, the engine seemed further back inside the car on the right. I skimmed through the crime scene analysis, and found a technician’s diagram of the crash trajectory.

I moved on to the post-mortem. Like Cary had said, the age of the Toyota meant there was no airbag,

A couple more pictures were loose in the Manila folder, showing Alex’s body. It was a horrific sight. His hands had been burnt down to the skeleton; his feet and lower legs too. His face, from the brow down to his jaw, was also just bone, and there was a huge crack in his skull, all the way down one side of his cheek, where his face had hit the wheel on impact. I turned back to the file. It got worse the more I read. His body had been pulverized: bones smashed, skin burnt away. Everything broken beyond repair. It was obvious from the damage sustained that he had died before the car caught fire.

Except, according to Mary, he hadn’t died at all.

The first thing he could hear was the wind, distantly at first, and then louder as he became more aware of it. He opened his eyes. The room was spinning gently, the walls bending as he moved his head across the pillow.

Am I dead?

He groaned and rolled on to his side. Slowly, everything started to shift back into focus: the right angles of the walls; the dusty shaft of moonlight; the lightbulb moving gently in the breeze coming through the top window.

It was cold. He sat up and pulled a blanket around him. It brushed against the floor, sending dirt and dust scattering into the darkness. When he moved again, the mattress pinged beneath him. A sharp pain coursed through his chest. He placed a hand against his ribs and pressed with his fingers. Beneath his T-shirt, he could feel bandages, running from his breastplate down to his waist.

Click
.

A noise from the far corner of the room. A pillar poked out from the wall, a cupboard beside that. Everywhere else was dark.

‘Hello?’

His voice sounded quiet and childlike. Scared. He cleared his throat. It felt like fingers were tearing at his windpipe.

And now he could smell something too.

He felt a pulse in his chest, like a bubble bursting. The first scent of nausea rose in his throat. He covered his mouth, and moved back across the bed, trying to get away from the smell. Opposite him, lit by a square of moonlight, he spotted a metal bucket. The rim was speckled with puke. Next to that was a bottle of disinfectant. But it wasn’t that he could smell.

It was something else.

Click
.

The noise again. He peered into the darkness in the corner of the room. Nothing. No sound, no sign of movement. Shifting position again, he moved right up against the wall, where the two corners joined, and brought his knees up to his chest. His heart squeezed beneath his ribs. His chest tightened.

‘Who’s there?’

He pulled the blanket tighter around him, and sat there in silence. Staring into the darkness until, finally, sleep took him.

*

He’s standing outside a church, peering in through a window. Mat is sitting at a desk, a Bible open in his lap. Across the other side of the room, a door is ajar. He looks from Mat to the door, and feels like he wants to be there. Standing in that doorway.

And then, suddenly, he is.

He places a hand on the door and pushes at it. Slowly, it creaks open. Mat turns in his chair, an arm resting on the back, intrigued to see who has entered.

Then his face drops.

‘Dear God,’ he says gently. He gets to his feet, stumbling, his eyes wide, his mouth open. He looks like he’s seen a ghost. ‘I thought… Where have you been?’

‘Hiding.’

Mat stops. Frowns. ‘Why?’

‘I’ve done something… really bad.’

He opened his eyes. A blinding circular light was above him. He tried to cover his face, but when he went to move his hands, they caught on something. Suddenly he felt the binds on his arms, digging into the skin, securing him to the chair beneath.

He turned his head.

Beyond the light, the room was dark, but immediately beside him he could make out a medical gurney, metal instruments on top. Next to that was a heart monitor. Behind, obscured by the darkness, was a silhouette, watching him from the shadows.

‘What’s going on?’ he said.

The silhouette didn’t reply. Didn’t even move.

‘What’s going on?’

He tried moving his legs. Nothing. Tried again. Still nothing. In his head, it felt like they were thrashing around. But, further up his body – where he still had feeling – he knew they weren’t moving. They were paralysed.

He looked to the silhouette again.

‘Why can’t I feel my legs?’

Still no reply.

He felt tears well in his eyes.

‘
What are you doing to me
?’

A hand touched his stomach. He started, and turned his head the other way. Standing next to him was a huge man – tall and powerful, dressed in black. He had a white apron on, and a surgical face mask. He lowered it.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘What’s going on?’

‘You’re standing on a precipice. Did you know that?’

‘
What?
’

‘You’re standing on the edge of opportunity, and you don’t even know it. You
will
know it, though. You will come to know opportunity in the coming days, to understand the sacrifice we’ve made for you. But first we need to take care of some things.’

‘Please, I don’t know wha–’

‘I’ll see you on the other side.’

A woman came forward in his place, dressed in a white coat and wearing a surgical mask, a blue medical cap tied around her dark hair. A bloodstained apron squeezed her short, plump frame. She leaned into him. There were blood spatters on the mask too.

‘Please…’

The woman placed a hand over his eyes, over his face. Then she slid something into his mouth. A huge, metal object – like a clamp. It clicked. He tried to speak, tried to scream, but the clamp had locked his mouth open. All he could do was gurgle.

He watched her.

Please
.

From somewhere, a quiet metallic buzz. His eyes flicked left and right, trying to see where the noise was coming from. It got louder.

What are you doing?
he tried to say, but it was just another gurgle. He swallowed. Watched her. Saw her fiddling with something, and listened as the buzz got louder. Then, from her side, she brought up a dental drill, its point spinning.

He looked from her to the drill.

Oh God, no
.

And then he blacked out.

He woke. Everything was quiet. It was the middle of the night, when the shadows in the room were at their
Freezing
cold. He pulled the blanket right up to his neck and turned on his pillow, facing the ceiling.

His mouth throbbed.

He ran a tongue along his gums, where his teeth had once been. All that was there now were tiny threads of flesh, spilling out of the cavities. They’d taken them without asking, like they were taking everything else.

Click.

The noise again. The same noise, every night, all night, coming from the corner of the room. He slowly sat up, and looked into the darkness.

He’d got up and examined the corner of the room in the daylight, when the sun poured in from the top window. There was nothing there. Just the cupboard and the space behind it, a narrow two- or three-foot gap. In the dead of the night, when the silence was oppressive, it was easy to see things and hear things that weren’t there. Darkness messed with you like that. But he’d seen it for himself: there was nothing there.