‘Shifty?’
Another rumble, and this time the floor trembled beneath my feet, sending slow sticky ripples spreading across the bloody pool.
I turned, but there was no sign of him. Nothing but darkness where the torch’s beam couldn’t reach. ‘SHIFTY: STOP SODDING ABOUT!’
Maybe he’d done the sensible thing and buggered off out of here, before everything collapsed into the sea? Maybe that wasn’t a daft idea at—
Alice’s phone rang in my top pocket: David Bowie’s ‘Ashes to Ashes’. The ringtone she’d set so she’d know it was me calling.
Which could only mean one thing.
I pulled out her mobile and answered it. ‘Gordon Smith.’
‘Ah, Mr Henderson, I’m so glad to hear your voice again!’ It was little more than a whisper, barely audible over the creaks and groans of the storm-battered house. I turned the phone’s volume up full. ‘You’re not a man who likes to stay dead, I like that about you.’
‘You killed Leah.’
‘Yes, well...’ He cleared his throat. ‘Turns out you were right about that, so credit where it’s due. You tried to tell her, remember? But would she listen? Teenagers, eh?’ Putting on a singsong voice for, ‘What ya gonna do?’
Another rumble, and this time a sound like ice cracking on the surface of a very deep dark lake joined it. The torch hadn’t switched off as the call came through, so I held the phone in front of my face, swinging it around. That pool of blood had got a lot shallower around my trainers.
‘Where are you?’
‘You see, I know a lot of people look at someone my age and they think, “He can’t be any good with modern technology and stuff; dinosaurs were roaming the earth when he was a wee boy, for goodness’ sakes!” But you can’t be a Luddite and work in the theatre these days, it’s all electronics and software.’
That cracking noise sounded again.
I backed away from the end wall.
Actually, sod backing away, I turned and hurried through the maze of boxes and family crap. ‘She looked up to you like a grandfather, Gordon. She loved you!’
‘So I had a dig through your phone and discovered the tracker app. Did you know, if you agree to be traced, you automatically get to see where the phone tracing you is? It’s rather sweet, really. An exercise in trust and mutual surveillance.’ Still no louder than a whisper. ‘At first I thought you were this Alice woman, but then I saw you and your fat friend creeping into Helen’s house and I have to admit, it was quite the shocker. I could’ve sworn you were dead when we dropped you in that inspection pit. I clearly need to work on my garrotting skills.’
I turned the last corner, before the stairs, and stumbled to a halt.
‘Anyway, as you’ve come all this way, it would’ve been rude of me not to pop in and say hello.’
Shifty lay facedown on the concrete, one arm twisted beneath him, the other hand still clutching his collapsible baton. The back of his bald pink head was stained, wet scarlet.
‘And I’m sorry Leah couldn’t be with us — not in spirit anyway — but I simply couldn’t cope with her foul language any longer.’
I spun around, torch brushing the nearest boxes with its narrow beam of cold white light. ‘If you’ve killed Shifty, I’m going to tear you to pieces.’
‘So I gave Leah the starring role in her own production: A Delicate and Terrible Death. She was excellent, Mr Henderson, screamed like a professional. Her mother would’ve been so proud.’
I hunkered down beside Shifty, dropped my walking stick and felt for a pulse. Still there. As I stood, something glittered in the torchlight — halfway up the wooden steps to the trapdoor. Like a granite thermos flask with silver handles fixed to it.
The funeral urn from the barn. The one Gordon Smith had been talking to.
That’s why he was whispering down the phone at me: he was in the basement. I swapped the mobile into my bandaged hand and yanked the .22 out again.
‘Do you ever go to the pantomime, Mr Henderson? You should: it’s one of the finest theatrical traditions we have in this country, certainly the purest. People think it’s silly, with its dames and its principal boys and its call-and-response, but it has rules and conventions, traditions and truths that stretch back into antiquity. They connect us with the fairy tales our ancestors told as they cowered in their caves in the night.’
‘Where are you?’
‘After all, what is life if not a pantomime?’
I hung up and turned again, torch sweeping around like a lighthouse. The gun following it. ‘COME ON YOU BASTARD, LET’S SEE IF YOU’VE GOT THE BALLS!’
A laugh slithered out in the basement. ‘He’s behiiiiiiiiiiind you!’
48
Something hard and heavy cracked across my shoulders. I staggered forwards, stumbling over Shifty, the phone flying out of my ruined hand to bounce against the nearest boxes. Its torchlight swinging and tumbling — then thump, it hit the floor, beam shining straight up into the dusty air.
A line of sharp-edged grey whistled towards my head, shining bright as it passed through the LED beam — hooked, like a hockey stick, but longer. More solid looking. And coming in fast.
I got my arms up just in time for it to crack across them instead of my face. Sending me crashing over backwards against the stairs.
The gun hit the ground and skittered away, came to rest with a dull metallic clank.
‘Don’t you play shinty, Mr Henderson? It’s a great game. Very physical. Keeps you fit!’
Another whistling crack and the stick battered into my arms again, hot and numb at the same time, the muscles howling, bones creaking. Wooden steps groaning against my spine.
DO SOMETHING!
Smith loomed out of the darkness, pausing above Alice’s phone so the torch caught him from below. Lit like a monster in an ancient film — his lined face slashed with shadows, eyes glittering in the hollow of their sockets, Santa beard turned into something a lot less wholesome. ‘It’s a shame we don’t have more time, Mr Henderson, I’d love to stay and play, but the house is hungry.’
Another rumble, and this time the cracking noise didn’t stop, it built and grew, thin and cold, snapping and pinging. Concrete and brick giving way, then: WHOOOOOM...
The back wall disappeared. One moment everything beyond the torch’s beam was utter darkness, and the next a pale grey light snarled into the basement — borne on the wings of a howling wind. Sucking the air from the room, sending it spiralling out into the night, as what was left of Leah MacNeil vanished into the North Sea.
Waves booming and roaring right outside that ragged patch of grey.
Gordon Smith leered in his DIY monster-light. As if he wasn’t already horrific enough. ‘Time to say goodnight, children.’ Edging closer, shinty stick in one hand, Joseph’s cutthroat razor in the other.
I scrabbled backwards, up the bottom couple of steps. And something bumped against my shoulder. Something about the size of a thermos flask with silver handles. Cold and smooth against my palm as I grabbed it. ‘Oh no it isn’t.’
‘That’s the spirit!’ The razor’s blade glinted in the narrow torch beam. ‘OH YES IT IS!’ Lunging for me, cutthroat sizzling through the angry air.