‘All in good time,’ he muttered to himself. He sat back, ignored the come-on from the twins and watched the scarred Gail gyrate and twirl, lost in a world of her own.
Outside the rain fell in sheets against the building, hammering on the roof and pouring from the gutters as if the water were trying to sluice the old pub from the city and make room for something cleaner and less contaminated.
Chapter 8
By four a.m. the rainfall, which had waned temporarily, began increasing again and with it the wind. Rows of streetlights struggled to emit their glow as the weather settled in over them and to walk any distance from their dim light meant that visibility was poor. No matter, Weirdo knew what he was doing. He parked the car in a residential street a quarter of a mile away and walked back to London Road in the downpour, his biker boots squelching over concrete pavement. Eventually he stopped at the edge of the graveyard wall and breathed in. The night air was heavy with earth and wet and decay. The wind shrieked and howled past his ears and pawed at his coat; his Mohican lay crushed and flat under his black beanie hat. Raindrops fell on his skin and rolled down his face. He took a few steps back and then half jogged, half ran towards the lowest part of the wall and began clambering over. Lichen had woven itself through the stones, making it difficult to climb, and he slipped and slithered over the wall.
On the other side he landed heavily, rasped a cough and doubled over trying to get his breath. The bottle rattled against the lighter in his pocket and the smell of petrol cut through the sodden air.
He crept on through the graveyard, stumbling over toppled headstones and discarded debris, empty bottles and syringes nestled beside tinfoil and used needles. His biker boots crunched on broken glass and the sound reverberated around the abandoned graveyard.
He paused.
Waited.
Listened.
Nothing.
Weirdo started on again. Felt the rain smear his face. Heard the wind wail through naked trees and wind its way around ancient headstones, loud enough to summon the dead.
Finally he reached the far wall and scrambled over. He fell hard on the frozen ground and heard the crack of his knee against stone. ‘Fuck Fuck Fuck.’ He felt for the pain, blood on his leg, designer jeans ripped at the knee and then he whispered a curse to a man already dead, ‘You cunt, Gilmore. Fuck you to hell and back.’
Weirdo limped on, taking a wide skirt around the dirt track where the police car was parked. He kept under the cover of shadows until he was at the back door of the house. Christ, his knee hurt. He felt for the knife in his pocket, slashed the air silently. The police tape offered no resistance to his blade. He slid the Yale key into the lock. Once inside, he stood in the darkness, listened to the silence, waited for his heartbeat to slow, then he quickly stuffed the rag into the bottleneck, flicked his thumb on the lighter and when the flame caught, hurled the bottle against the wall and heard it shatter. The flames rose, catching the hem of the filthy curtains and devouring them in seconds, then searched greedily for more to consume.
Weirdo bolted, running and gasping through the freezing night air, the metal stud raw against the tender flesh of his nipple. Bleeding hard. Like his knee. Pain, adrenaline, the fire already blazing behind him. On he went, cursing and running. Not looking back. Trusting himself and the job he had done.
But there was no need to look back.
Out front, the light flicked for a moment before beginning to spread. First the hall erupted into a fireball and then the rest followed. Weirdo was halfway across the graveyard when he heard the sound of shattered glass as the windows blew, belching black smoke into the wet night.
He stood for a second watching the scene, before running through the graveyard, over the wall, limping to his car and climbing inside. He headed home the long way, ignoring the distant wail of a fire engine. Felt a rush of pleasure. Andy Doyle would be pleased.
Job done.
DREAMER
The Dreamer turns in his sleep, eyelids flickering, unaware of the rain falling outside the window. Instead he is reliving another night, hearing the rain on another roof, the sound of breath leaving another man’s body. The groan of the wind outside. The night he had killed Gilmore had been the stormiest night since records began. He had watched the water course from the roof tiles as if the weather itself were trying to wash the house free from blood. The Dreamer moves in his sleep as images flash across his mind, blood mixed with matter. Blood and water. The blood of sinners mixing in some unholy communion.
Chapter 9
Tuesday, 10 December
It was six a.m. when Wheeler returned from her morning run. She showered, dressed and was out of the door twenty minutes later. On the way to the station she listened to a CD, humming along to Sonny Rollins while she systematically revised all the evidence they had gathered so far in the case. By the time she drove into the station car park, she had come to no new conclusions as to why James Gilmore had met with such a brutal death but she knew that the team would uncover more and more pieces of the jigsaw, until they had the complete picture. She opened the door to the station and felt the familiar sense of anticipation that descended on her at the beginning of each case.
She was early for the briefing and sat nursing a black coffee, waiting for the others to arrive. The room was chilly; a forlorn halogen heater rotated mutely at the front of the room, giving off a bright light but precious little heat. The station would heat up as the day progressed and be sweltering before midday. Wheeler looked out of the window: it was still dark outside. Inside, the room was in a seventies time warp. It was a large room, walls the colour of vomit, the skirting a peculiar sludge shade. The parquet flooring had suffered over the years and was now chipped and pieces that were missing had been ignored, leaving the floor uneven. The obligatory fluorescent light flickered lazily overhead. By seven a.m. the room was full and the whole team was assembled; those on night shift were bleary-eyed, needing their beds, while the day shift were yawning, not long out of theirs, but Stewart had requested that everyone attend.
Stewart strode to the front of the room and placed his notes on a desk, patting them firmly into place as if that would create some kind of order from the chaos of their predicament. He cleared his throat and looked at the team, keeping both his voice and his gaze controlled.
‘Can anyone tell me how in God’s name James Gilmore’s house got torched last night?’
Some of the team looked at him, some looked at the floor, others studied the wall. All of them said nothing. Wheeler waited. She knew that the two uniformed cops who’d been in the patrol car were going to be severely reprimanded and that Stewart was going to personally investigate. And after that the two officers would still face disciplinary action. Wheeler, like the rest of the team, knew that the shit had hit the fan and was about to drip all over them.
Then Stewart let himself go. ‘Did you hear what I said?’ he bellowed, banging his fist on the desk. In front of him, officers shifted uncomfortably on their seats but didn’t voice what they were thinking, that last night’s debacle had nothing to do with them. They were part of a team, and somewhere down the line of command someone had messed up and now they were all complicit.
‘But surely the evidence had already been removed.’ Ross spoke clearly, attempting to move the briefing on. ‘So, nothing of any note could have been lost in the fire.’