Gideon nods. He notices the man has put his hands behind his back, hiding the red mess on his white rubber gloves.
‘Sorry,’ Gideon says as he exits and heads back to the bell. This time he pushes it. Within a minute, a stout man in his mid-forties with curly hair and brown rectangular glasses appears, straightening his dark suit jacket as he approaches. ‘Craig Abrahams. Mr Chase?’
He extends a hand. ‘Gideon Chase.’
‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr Chase. Would you like to see your father straight away or would you like to sit down first and talk about the arrangements?’
‘I’d just like to see him please.’
‘As you wish. Please follow me.’
He trails the man down a river of old blue Axminster and through a door at the far end into another corridor, less well lit. Abrahams stops outside a room marked ‘Chapel of Rest’. He coughs, covering his mouth respectfully. ‘Before we go in, there are two things I’d like to mention. We took the liberty of dressing your father in clothes that the police gave to us. If they are not appropriate, we will of course be happy to change them for any that you prefer.’
‘Thank you.’
He gives Gideon a serious look. ‘Secondly, our cosmetic artist has done considerable work, but I’m afraid you may still be a little shocked when you see him.’
‘I understand.’
‘Many clients expect their loved ones to be exactly as they remembered them. I’m afraid that simply isn’t possible. I just want to prepare you for this eventuality.’
Abrahams smiles sympathetically and opens the door. The smell of fresh flowers hits Gideon. The curtains are drawn and large candles flicker everywhere the eye falls. Nathaniel Chase is laid out in a mahogany coffin with a crêpe interior, the top of the casket hinged open so his head is visible. Gideon approaches the body and he can tell the artist has done a good job. At first glance there is nothing to suggest that his father put a gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Slowly he notices things. The skin is too orange. The hair combed in odd directions. His father’s head is misshapen near the left ear — the point the bullet would have exited.
Abrahams touches his arm gently. ‘Would you like me to leave you alone for a while?’
Gideon doesn’t respond. He feels like his emotions are being fast-blended. Regret. Love. Anger. Churned up into a curdled and sickening shake. Fleetingly, he remembers his mother’s funeral. The tears. The black clothes. The men with the long, strange car. Standing at the graveside gripping his father’s hand so tightly because he felt like he was falling off the edge of the earth. It all comes back to him.
‘I’ve seen enough, thanks.’ He smiles at his father, kisses the tip of the fingers and places them on the misshapen head. The brief contact isn’t enough. He can’t just leave it at that. He leans over the casket and puts his lips to his father’s head. Something he can’t ever remember doing before now. Walls in his subconscious collapse. Tears flood his eyes. Gideon wraps his arms around the man who made him, and he sobs.
Craig Abrahams slips silently out of the room. Not out of discretion. He has a phone call to make. A very important one.
39
Nine days to go.
The Henge Master is reminded of the fact wherever he looks. It’s staring at him right now from the calendar on his grand antique desk at work. On the front page of The Times folded neatly for him by one of his assistants. It is everywhere.
In just over a week he must complete the second part of the renewal ritual. He has to prepare the Followers for the nexus. And they are nowhere near ready. If only Chase hadn’t ruined everything. Had he held his nerve and done what had been expected of him, all would have been well. But it isn’t.
The Master’s eyes stray to a gold frame and the gentle face of his wife. Today is their wedding anniversary. Their thirtieth. But it could have been so different, had she not defied the medics and their so-called expert opinions. Their high-tech ‘no-mistake’ diagnosis: PH. Two letters that twenty years ago meant nothing to either of them. They’d both stared at the consultant in disbelief as he said it. Only the twitch in his eye gave away the fact that it meant anything serious.
It was terminally serious.
PH.
Pulmonary Hypertension.
They’d put down the shortness of breath and dizziness to her being tired. Doing too much. Burning the candle at both ends. No proper job — life balance. A career in law versus raising a young family. It was bound to take its toll.
PH.
‘Uncurable.’
He’d almost corrected the consultant, Mr Sanjay. He wasn’t disputing what the earnest medic meant, just his poor English. He wanted to point out that it was ‘incurable’ not ‘uncurable’. A man of Sanjay’s standing, regardless of his origins, should have known that there was no such word. But suddenly there was. And his sweet, gorgeous wife kept repeating it to herself.
‘Uncurable.’
PH.
Then he found the miracle. The Sacreds. Within weeks of embracing the Craft, ‘uncurable’ didn’t exist any more. PH was gone. It vanished as quickly and mysteriously as it had materialised. The hospital ran three months of exhaustive diagnostics before they finally admitted it and almost grudgingly gave her a clean bill of health.
It had baffled them. They had come to hold their cold stethoscopes to her precious breasts, to inspect her blood and peer at charts and notes. They all agreed — there had been no misdiagnosis — and yet the PH had gone. She was cured.
The mobile phone lying on the leather blotter on his desk rings. He looks at it for a moment before answering. ‘Yes.’
‘It’s Draco. The son is at the funeral parlour.’
‘Anything unusual happen?’
‘No. I’m told he became emotional when he saw his father.’
The Henge Master drums his fingers on the desk. ‘Maybe time has healed whatever rift there was between them.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Go easy on him. Be open to all possibilities.’
‘I always am.’
‘And of the other matter?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Sacreds will decide.’
Draco is worried. ‘Are you sure there is time?’
‘The Sacreds are sure. Inform the Lookers.’
40
It’s early afternoon when Gideon gets back to the house. He is emotionally drained but he knows it would be unnatural to feel any different. Not after seeing your dead father laid out in a coffin, cosmetics barely disguising his bullet-blasted head. But he won’t wallow, it’s not his nature. Life knocks you down, you get up and get on with things.
He realises he is repeating advice his father gave to him. For so long he has tried to deny the man. It comes as a shock. The old man had a much bigger impact than he appreciated. Gideon makes himself a cup of black coffee and sits in the lounge looking absent-mindedly out on to the tumbling lawns. He never had his father down as a gardener. Most probably their shape and maintenance has been done by hired help.
He is close to falling asleep when the front doorbell shocks him with its alien jangle. He goes to the door, opens it, the chain still on. A stocky bald man of around forty stands there in jeans and a blue T-shirt.
‘Afternoon, I’m Dave Smithsen.’ He nods to a big white box van parked by the Audi, his name proudly stencilled in black down the side. ‘I own a building company. I heard from someone in town that you’d had a fire. Thought you might need some help.’