Her face fell. ‘It’s OK. Just say it. Just say it, James, so I can hear it.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ he whispered.
‘Right. That’s all right, that’s-’
He hushed her with a finger on her lips.
‘I’m really, truly sorry, but you’re going to have to break Rhys’s heart.’
They caught a cab from the rank on the Quay. They sat as far away from one other as they possibly could on the back seat. Too close, they’d become volatile elements, intermix and explode. They didn’t even look at each other as the street-lamps strobed by overhead.
‘Keep the change,’ James told the driver, the cab’s engine purring hot gas into the night cool.
‘Really, mister?’
‘Oh yeah, really.’
‘Have a nice night,’ the cabbie called as he pulled away.
Gwen laughed as James failed to get his key in the lock at the fourth attempt.
‘Not a good omen,’ she giggled.
‘Shush, my hands are shaking.’
‘Nervous?’
‘Yeah.’
The door opened and they blundered inside, wrapped around one another. The deep kisses felt like the first they’d ever shared. It was weird, charged, startling.
‘Hang on,’ he said, ‘hang on a sec.’ Pulling open the last few buttons of his shirt and ditching it, he headed into the kitchen. She heard the fridge door thump open, followed by a clink of glasses.
James reappeared with a bottle of Moët and two crystal flutes.
‘I came by earlier, and put this in the fridge,’ he said. ‘In case… just in case we had something to celebrate tonight.’
‘Oh God, that’s so sweet,’ she whispered.
Two hours later, they remembered the champagne and opened it. It was warm by then, but they didn’t care.
EIGHTEEN
Flicker. Fast-cut: a bridge, a river, a palace. Shades on the high walls.
Too fast to follow, too jerky and chop-cut. Flicker. Edit. Edit. Smash-cut: the bridge, very old, very worn. Smash-cut: the thundering torrent of a river boiling along a deep, stone-cut channel under the bridge. The river is a mile wide. The bridge, therefore, worn and crumbling though it seems, is a mile wide too.
Smash-cut: the palace, made of silver-green bricks, towers reaching up into the clouds. The palace shimmers. Its high, silver-green walls are like the lustrous scales of a sleeping reptile. The sky is a silent bowl of black, marked by pinpricks of fire.
Smash-cut: the lurching segue of dream logic. Someone is running across the ancient bridge. Running fast. Fast footsteps on stone. Someone is running away from the palace across the ancient bridge. It’s him. He’s running away across the ancient bridge. Why is he running?
The shades on the high walls stir. Alerted by distant sirens, they begin to move, leaping and scurrying, like shadows, like whispers, like wraiths. They are barbed, and armed for killing.
They run faster than he does. Of course they do. They were made that way. They run faster, faster… faster than he could ever run. Leaping, bounding, they close the distance. They are catching up with him.
They are silent. They make no sound. Not even footsteps.
Still running, he looks over his shoulder. The shades are there.
One leaps-
He wakes. Bolt upright, wet with sweat.
‘Babe, what is it?’ she asks, head buried in the pillows beside him.
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Weird dreams. Go back to sleep.’
Thursday morning, six o’clock. Still dark. Dean Simms gets up, and makes tea by the light of his single bulb. The B amp;B is quiet. He sneaks along to the bathroom and takes a quick shower.
Back in his room, he suits and boots as he sips his tea and checks over the electoral roll. Tovey Street. As good as any. He does his nails, digging the quick with the nib of a fresh orange stick. A splash of smelly. He pulls on his jacket and flicks his tea bag into the bin. Got everything? Keys? Briefcase? Secret?
He strokes the soft lump for a moment before zipping his briefcase closed. All set.
He goes out, locking the door behind him.
Outside, it’s sharp and clear. Frost on the pavements. Glitter in the bushes. He hears a milkman clinking on his rounds down the street, the rising then falling hum of the milk float coasting point to point.
Dean crosses the street. The milkman nods good morning as he whirs past on his chinking float. A good day, a clear day. Dean takes a deep breath. Cold air.
A tabby cat slinks by along a wall, tail down. Dean reaches his vehicle and unlocks it.
He gets in. The vinyl seat is cold. The hard plastic wheel is cold. When he starts the engine, cold air breathes through the vents. There’s frost on the screen, but nothing the wipers can’t handle.
Mirror, signal. He pulls out of his parking slot into the street.
Gonna be a good day, he promises himself. Game on.
As the kettle boiled, Davey Morgan spooned out cat food into a bowl. He set the bowl down on the kitchen floor. There were two other bowls there already, untouched. He picked them up, banged their contents out into the bin and washed them up.
He hadn’t seen the cat since Tuesday. Some one else was feeding him, Davey decided. The cat had got a better offer somewhere. Cats were like that. Fickle things.
Davey went into the bathroom and studied his face in the mirror. There was a scab of blood under his nose and his left eye had blackened. Bloody bastards. He’d come home from Normandy looking healthier. Still, his skin hadn’t been translucent then.
‘I’ve got old,’ he told the picture on the hall table. ‘I don’t care what you say. Old.’
He wondered if the cat was all right. He put on his digging jacket.
Out in the yard it was brisk. His breath steamed. He rubbed his hands and pulled on his mittens. There was a proper mist that morning, swaddled all over the backyards and beyond. The sun was climbing reluctantly above Seraph Street, a thin, molten slice of light.
He limped up the path to the allotment gate. There was a funny smell in the air, like compost.
The grass was wet. As soon as he passed through the gate, he knew that something was up. Broken flowerpots, upturned planters, uprooted veg. The yobbos had been in overnight, ransacking. To get back at him, no doubt.
He reached his own plot and came up short. He blinked. He started breathing hard, breathing in short, sharp gulps. Oh no, no, no…
The windows of Davey’s shed had been smashed in. Those responsible — Ozzie and perhaps four or five of his fellow yobs — were still outside.
What was left of them.
Taff Morgan had seen death, first-hand. The bloody debris left in the aftermath of a well-ranged mortar bomb. An entire advancing section atomised by a shell from a Nazi 88, nothing left behind except charred scraps of kit and pink mush. Friends he’d known cut up by heavy Spandau fire that sectioned them like hot wire.
He thought he’d been forced to see his share.
The bodies — there were no whole bodies, just pieces — had been scattered in front of his shed. It looked like a direct hit by an 88 round, except there was no crater, no litter of cordite ash. The poor bloody bastards looked like they had been pushed through a wood chipper. Bits of bone and half-limbs, some still partly clothed in meat, protruded from the soil as though they were heads of celery, carefully planted. Davey saw blood-black ribs, wet lumps of marrow, yellow, intestinal ropes glistening in the daylight.
Worst of all, whatever had killed them had preserved their faces. A row of Davy’s gardening implements had been staked out in front of the shed door: spade, fork, hoe, shovel, rake. From the top of each handle swung a limp, meat flag; the flesh of a skinned human face, scalped off, lank and heavy in the dawn breeze.