DEATHLOOP (22 page)

“Not with any degree of accuracy I can’t, no.”

Another pisshead thought Charlie, why am I not surprised.

“And better to talk to me than to the police, surely.”

“Why the police?” said Charlie, looking serious suddenly.

“It’s a police matter, that’s all… and for you, well, it could become quite intrusive.”

“Wait here.”

Less than three minutes later Charlie came back shaking his head.

“You’ve got the wrong place, pal.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You have. We don’t keep much information, but every number does get logged with the pick up address and this number has not shown up at all.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“What about computer failure?”

“What about it?”

“Maybe it just dropped off the system.”

“It can’t just drop off the system, my old china, the call wasn’t made.”

Zack considered the possibilities. Maybe this guy was fobbing him off, keen for him to get the hell out of his cab office and to leave him in peace. Or maybe Charlie had spent those few minutes making sure that Zack’s number was deleted from his computer’s memory putting paid to any prospective police enquiry once and for all. Whatever, Zack was well aware that he had hit the proverbial brick wall.

Through the window, Zack noticed that all the cabs and their drivers had gone, every last one, as though they had never been there at all. Zack needed transport home but he didn’t feel particularly encouraged to ask Charlie for assistance and so mumbling some semblance of thanks, he left the building and set off, hoping to pick up a black cab on the Harrow Road. He turned left, another left, and left again. The Harrow Road was in the opposite direction and Zack knew that, and that could only mean one thing.

There was a drone from somewhere, like a thousand flies swarming over decay, excitedly waiting their turn to feed off decomposed flesh and in the distance, movement amongst the bins and crates that dotted along the tunnel of grey concrete that stretched out before him. Zack hoped it might be a fox or a cat foraging for food but he knew really what it was. He noticed moonlight first of all reflected in glossy deep red blood, seeping out of this young black teenager who sat slouched against a wall, almost prostrate, a hopeful hand over his worst wound that gaped and oozed. He gazed towards Zack with fateful eyes, willing him on, following his slow progress.

The drone had stopped now and the usual muffled silence fell as though layers of cotton wool had floated down and settled over them. No sounds of cars or the rumblings of tube trains underfoot, just this stifling, vacuum packed insulation that Zack waded through, and when in the end he reached his destination and looked down at the boy, he felt a strange sense of accomplishment to have got there at all.

“Zachariah! I thought you’d never come, help me…”

Zack made a desperate effort now to meet the hand that was reaching up to him, its bony black fingers fluttering like the dishevelled wings of a crow, but as hard as he tried Zack was unable to. He was just a conscious monument, gazing down as this weird thing called life reached its humdrum conclusion. It didn’t seem to matter, relief swept through the boy, who remained looking up at Zack in ecstasy. A smile spread across his face, his lips parting to display a flash of perfect teeth. Then the whites of his eyes washed with blood and his last breath left his body with a jerk, but his body didn’t sag or deflate, it remained taut, defying defeat, refusing to accept its uselessness.

Zack’s movement came back just as a young black girl, her face contorted with tragedy flew towards them, her screams, like the wail of fireworks, weird, alarmed, inhuman. She threw herself at the boy and grabbed him, pawing at his body with greedy fingers, plastic talons at their tips, little gem stones on each one, catching the light. Zack turned away and left them to their final commune, but at the end of the alleyway he looked back as the distant sounds of emergency vehicles came closer, invading the night with their mournful fanfare. She had lain down next to him as though they were about to make love side by side, holding his face gently in her hands for fear it might break. Too late, Zack thought, too late for all that now.

“What the hell?” said Sam woken by the relentless buzzing from the intercom.

“Don’t answer it,” said Clarissa lazily, unwilling to allow anything to permeate their little world, even Zack Fortune, but the buzzer was insistent.

Sam jumped out of bed and padded along the hall to the door. He pressed a button, shouting into the mouthpiece. “
Who the hell is this I wonder
?”

“Come on, Sam, let me in.”

Sam knew that this did not bode well. Zack used to turn up at all hours of the day and night until Clarissa put her foot down, now here he was back to his old ways.

“You know what time it is?” asked Sam, as Zack pushed past him into the hall.

“I presume that’s a rhetorical question. Where’s Clarissa?”

“Where in God’s name do you think she is?”

Clarissa was sitting up in bed now ready to read Zack the riot act, but when she saw him, she lost steam.

“God, Zack… are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay, Clarissa, I’m anything but okay.”

Sam joined them less than a minute later with a bottle of Jack Daniels. He handed out glasses and perched opposite Zack on the other side of the bed, while everyone waited for the conversation to begin.

“Against my better judgement,” said Zack, with the attitude of someone embarking on a long story, “I agreed to take part in some dubious claptrap you call past life regression, maybe you remember that? Well, things have gone steadily downhill since, and as you seemed so hell bent on getting me involved with all this baloney, perhaps you can advise me as to what I do now, Clarissa, because suddenly my life is not my own.”

Clarissa knew that she had had her head stuck firmly in the sand since learning something of Zack’s trauma. She’d just been hoping for the best, hoping that the hushed warnings from her tutors had been an exaggeration, but seeing Zack here like this, she realised they were anything but.

“Okay,” she said, “tell me.”

“I keep coming across dead people, at least not quite dead, but almost. They call out my name and reach out to me as though I can do something, actually, as though I can save them. Usually they seem pleased to see me, then they die. It’s just happened again, so that’s four times now. I don’t want to know the whys and the wherefores, I couldn’t be less interested,
just stop the damn things
.”

“Before the regression, I told you not to come out of it yourself, do you remember me saying that?”

“So it’s my fault now, is that what you’re saying?”

“You never told me what frightened you so much, what was it?”

“Okay, here it is, I’ll tell you. A man was in bed in a cottage or somewhere and I was standing over him. He clutched onto me and asked me to help him, then his mouth opened and he spewed blood all over me. I could feel it behind my eyes, I could taste it in the back of my throat even, actually it was like I was drowning in the stuff… so I did what anyone would do, I jumped up from the famous Chesterfield and I scarpered.”

Sam was gazing at Zack now, disconsolate. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Zack, or at least believe that
he
believed all this, but Sam had thought long and hard about these encounters and he found it difficult to accept that any of Clarissa’s absurd contrivances would lead Zack to end up like this.

“I met someone in Derbyshire,” said Zack, “who more or less said I’d asked for it.” Clarissa looked at him, unsure now where this was leading. “He said I’d brought it on myself because aspects of previous lives were best left where they were.”

“It can be beneficial, but if you break back into your current life suddenly and without warning, your psychic memory can become confused,” said Clarissa, “events can break through into this life which have no business being here.”

“So what are you saying exactly?”

“Well it could be that you knew these people from a previous life, although… I’m no expert.”

“Tell us something we don’t know,” said Sam, under his breath.

“So why go around helping people remember all this stuff if the results are so unpredictable?”

“Usually it’s very helpful…”

“Oh yes? In what way?” said Zack, with exaggerated politeness, “please, I’m all ears.”

“Sometimes… solutions to recurring problems become clearer. We often struggle with the same problems in each of our lives, and by picking up on a solution from a previous life we can bring it into the present and use that knowledge to our advantage.”

“But for some reason all these noble sentiments were lost on me, is that it?”

Clarissa made no reply. She was stumped, and both Zack and Sam knew she was.

“So what the hell do we do about it?”

“Well that depends on what you believe causes these things.”

“Clarissa, please… watch my lips, I haven’t got a clue what causes them that’s why I’m asking you.”

“Look,” said Clarissa, “if you genuinely think the regression sparked all this and you are prepared to give it one more go…”

Sam leapt to his feet, flushed and angry, making Zack jump. “
Are you mad, Clarissa
? Don’t you think you’ve done enough? Drop this whole thing for God’s sake it’s dangerous trash!”

Sam’s outburst surprised them all, but especially Zack who had always thought Sam would defend Clarissa to the hilt, whatever she’d done.

“You’d be better off conjuring up the tooth fairy, mate,” said Sam, “rather than having all this junk rammed down your throat. Listen, take my advice, do what normal people do under these circumstances, try the medical profession first before agreeing to another session with the bloody witch doctor.”

A silence fell. Zack was looking at Sam, Sam was looking at no one in particular, and Clarissa just looked betrayed. Eventually, she got up out of bed and left the room. They heard her going into her office and the door closing quietly behind her. For some moments neither of them spoke.

Zack suddenly felt stupid turning up in the middle of the night demanding explanations, and the last thing he wanted was for Sam and Clarissa to fall out over it, things were difficult enough between them as it was. “I’m sorry, Sam,” he said, “but who else can I talk to about this?”

Sam lumbered over to Zack, plonked himself down next to him and threw a weary arm round his shoulder, his usual show of solidarity. “Past life regression is garbage, mate, you know it, I know it, and before long hopefully Clarissa will know it. Let’s move on shall we? Let’s rediscover common sense.”

“But the thing is though, Sam…” the wary look Sam shot Zack caused him to stop mid-sentence. Possibly now was not the time to talk of Russell and the bridge and the river, possibly it was wiser just to keep all that to himself.

Zack’s phone jumped into life, for some reason the familiar Dambusters march even more incongruous here in Sam’s bedroom.

“Oh Christ, what does she want?” Then, bracing himself and trying to sound positive, he answered the call. “Tracy? What’s up now?”

Sam dropped Zack at the police station and wished him well. They had barely spoken in Sam’s car, both of them desperately worried by the early morning communication from Tracy who had said very little on the phone. Thinking Susan had made further allegations, Zack had asked Tracy to fill him in, but all Tracy would say was that it had nothing to do with Susan, it was another matter entirely.

Tracy had managed a few minutes with Zack before they were called into the interview room, asking him if he knew a man called Russell Garrity. Zack’s reaction rendered his reply unnecessary.

“He’s dead are you aware of that?”

“Yes,” said Zack, his head swimming with the consequences of him being called in to discuss Russell’s death, “I heard.”

Brian Smith had come in specifically to interview Zack. He very much enjoyed the idea of adding to Zack’s woes, so when news of the Renfield enquiry reached him he volunteered to do the honours.

Something inside Zack said that he should just come clean and admit to being on the bridge with Russell, but nothing else. In truth, there was nothing much else to admit to, but how could he? Had it been that simple, why didn’t he go straight to the police station in Renfield and explain what had happened? But then Zack got to thinking that in the same way no one was able to pin Richard’s death on him when he was 9 years old how could they pin Russell’s death on him now? There were no witnesses and he had no axe to grind with Russell. Although there were people who had seen Russell eject him from the chapel it was hardly the motivation for murder.

With a heavy heart, Zack entered the interview room to find Brian Smith and Josiah sitting on one side of the usual clapped out table. Zack and Tracy took their seats as Brian cleared his throat with the drama of an opera singer and gazed across at Zack with studied disdain, before setting up the tape and reciting the formalities.

“You went away last week, you left town.”

“No comment,” said Zack, wary of the traps he knew Brian was setting him.

“Well, we don’t necessarily need your comment, because we have evidence of your debit card being used in two hotels,” Brian glanced at his notes, “Carrickmore Hotel, Telper, and Glenoak Guest House, Renfield.”

Brian looked up at Zack agreeably, his eyes eliciting a reply. Zack shrugged, and thought a moment before replying. “So what?”

“Did you come across a local character during your time in Renfield, a Mr Russell Garrity?”

Tracy again had warned against Zack saying anything for the time being but he found it difficult.

“No comment,” said Zack, realising how shifty he looked, realising he had ‘Guilty’ stamped in big letters across his forehead.

“Your gym membership card was found next to the telephone in Russell Garrity’s house the morning he was found drowned in a swollen river 8 miles out of town. How do you think it got there?”

“I haven’t got a clue,” said Zack, honestly.

“His mother has made a statement to the effect that Russell had arranged to meet someone the night before, and had set off at about 11 o’clock so to do.” Brian Smith leant back after making his little speech, rather pleased at the way things were panning out.