Bone Machine (12 page)

‘They will.’

She sighed. ‘God. Just what I need.’

‘But you can’t remember.’

She shook her head. ‘Let’s think.’

She put her head back. Donovan saw crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, a neck developing rings and turkey folds. She was
older than she first appeared. Or the job had aged her.

‘I think it was Tuesday, you know.’ She nodded. ‘Uh-huh. It was. I know because of the other punters I saw that night. Some
of me regulars.’ She looked at Donovan. ‘Do I have to prove it? Tell you their names?’

‘It may not come to that. But I do need to know that you would be willing to testify to that in court.’

Sharon almost smiled. ‘You gonna pay me?’

‘You know I can’t.’

‘Why would I do it, then?’

‘Out of the goodness of your heart.’

‘Prossies don’t make the best witnesses.’

‘They do if that’s all the defence has.’

Sharon seemed to be thinking to herself.

‘And they wouldn’t, y’know, try to prosecute us?’

‘They wouldn’t.’

She smiled. ‘That would be a laugh.’

‘Thank you.’ He turned to Katya, gave her a smile. She looked relieved not have been asked to take part. She returned the
smile. ‘That’s all we needed to know. We’ll be off.’

Sharon held up the photos. ‘Can I keep these?’

‘Sorry. I need them back. Evidence.’

‘Can I get a copy? These are good.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘He wanted to photograph us again, you know.’

‘Really?’ said Donovan.

She nodded. ‘Said he had a studio in town he wanted to take me to. Fully equipped, he said.’

‘Well,’ said Donovan, ‘I don’t think he’ll be doing that now.’

Donovan picked up the photos. Made arrangements about contacting her, organizing a formal statement. She gave him her mobile
number. He gave her his business card. He headed for the door. He turned, about to thank Sharon for her time when his mobile
rang. He answered it. Jamal.

‘Joe? Two people comin’ from a parked car way down the street. Movin’ quickly. Headed for you.’

‘We’re coming.’ Jamal started to say something more, but Donovan cut him off, pocketed the phone. He turned to Katya. ‘We’ve
got to go.’

Fear sprang into Katya’s eyes.

‘Don’t worry.’ He grabbed her hand. ‘Come on.’

‘Wait.’

Sharon put her hand on Katya’s shoulder. Grabbed her. Katya spun round.

‘I know you.’

Katya froze. She looked from Donovan to Sharon, not knowing what to say, what to do.

‘I know you. You used to work here, didn’t you?’ She couldn’t keep the incredulity from her voice. ‘I’ve been rackin’ my brains.
I remember you. Foreign girl. What you doin’ with him?’

Katya opened her mouth to speak; no sound came out.

‘Come on!’

Donovan grabbed her, made for the stairs. They ran down them almost together, ran down the hall towards the front door. Noddy
was standing at the bottom, trying to say something. Donovan ignored him. They reached the front door, Donovan stretched out
a hand to open it. There was a knock.

Donovan stopped, looked at Katya.

Another knock.

Donovan spun around. ‘Is there a back way out?’

Noddy just looked at him.

‘Is there a fucking back way out?’

Noddy pointed to the back of the house.

Another knock.

‘Come on.’ Donovan turned, ready to go.

Another knock. And the sound of a voice.

‘Donovan? Joe Donovan?’

A voice addressing him. He thought he recognized it.

Donovan snatched a look at Katya. Shook his head. She frowned at him. He sighed and, with great reluctance, opened the door.

‘What d’you want?’ he said.

There stood DI Diane Nattrass and DS Paul Turnbull. It was hard to tell which one looked the least happy to see him. Turnbull
spoke first.

‘You’re fucked,’ he said.

The Discovery Museum on Blandford Street was dedicated to the social history of the north-east. Housed in the old Co-operative
Wholesale Society for the Northern Region, all Victorian red-brick, metalwork and turrets, it was the north-east’s biggest
free museum and told the story of Newcastle from Roman times to the present day.

Past the
Turbina
, once the fastest ship in the world, a series of atmospherically lit mazes led viewers through history. To the schoolchildren
who trekked through it, the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s could have been as distant as the eighteenth century or the Middle Ages.
Their guides tried to enthuse and contextualize, put the displays in relation to the children’s own lives and histories and
families, claim them as living history, since there were artefacts behind glass many people still had in their homes. The
children looked and listened but laughed at the things their parents had thought of as cool. Like all teenagers, they believed
themselves to be the first generation – the only generation – to have been born at ground zero. They wouldn’t make the same
mistakes as their parents. They wouldn’t end up like them.

The Historian hurried past the displays. He had expected on his first visit to stand before the displays and experience the
past all around him, see into it, talk with those long departed. But nothing had come. With their faux history, taped sounds
and shop-window dummies miming action, for ever stuck in the same position, frozen in time, the
displays held nothing for him. They were dead. Instead of bringing the past to life, they had killed it and displayed its
empty husk, ignoring the ghosts of the dead that informed the present. Silencing their voice. The teenagers and the museum’s
creators were well suited. None of them understood the truth about history.

He hurried past them, on his way to his destination.

Through the double doors, turning left. The brightly lit, highly coloured twenty-first-century surroundings disappeared, to
be replaced by a sombre reception area, resplendent in dark wooden panelling and opaque glass. He rounded the reception and
walked down a long, straight corridor, again in dark wooden panelling, with doors at either side displaying various permutations
of non-admittance stencilled on the half-obscured glass.

He slowed down, enjoying the cool feel of the place, the soundproofed walls, the carpet beneath his feet. This was better.
This worked for him. With every step he took, he felt like he was walking back in time to some government offices from fifty
or sixty years ago. He could hear the faint noises of big old typewriters working away behind each door as he passed, the
rattling clatter of the keys, the ping of the bell, and the trilling of Bakelite phones. He could hear voices.

But then he could always hear voices.

Ghost meetings. Ghost conferences. Ghost planning committees.

They were still there. He could still hear them. He smiled. Drew comfort from that.

He reached his destination, a set of double doors at the end of the corridor. He pushed them open, went in.

The Public Record Offices. Smelling of age and must, the tobacco-yellowed walls sporting the odd council poster or genealogy
group meeting, the staff by and large silent and
unsmiling. Card indexes, boxed paper files, huge leather-bound books, microfilm readers. The past compartmentalized, filed
away. The usual souls he always saw in there, working the microfilm and peering through old census files: odd folk in anoraks,
sloganed sweatshirts and fleeces, both male and female, most of them past retirement age, all of them in some way driven to
discover something. Desperate to dig up the past, make it, in some way, live again.

He checked his watch, looked around. He was later than usual. Would get only an hour or so of work done before they closed
the place for the night.

He found his usual seat, sat down, began unloading from his old sports bag. Then sat still, head cocked to one side. Waiting.

For how long he didn’t know. He focused, tuned in. And they came. Rising from the graves of the card indexes, clouding out
of leather-bound, yellowed newspapers, uncurling from boxes of paper files, unspooling from rolls of microfilm. The voices.
The ghosts.

He listened, smiled. Nodded. Their conduit, their medium. Their instrument.

At first he had thought they were in his head, a direct result of not taking his medication. But the more they spoke to him,
the things they said and showed him, the truths they revealed to him, he knew they were more than that.

They directed him to plans, diagrams.

They gave him his room.

He had been thrilled when he had found it and set about changing it, making it his. The walls no longer bare, cold brick,
the stone flags of the floor developing a covering. The decorative figurework. The lights. All his own. His workplace, but
more than that: his studio, his sanctuary, his sanctum. Where he felt at home, where he belonged.

And the voices talked to him, asked him questions. The
same ones he had been asking himself, that had been haunting him, depressing him. They would help him, they said. Show him
how to find those answers he so desperately craved.

The work had consumed him. Even the initial try-outs. The failures. The planning and anticipation giving almost as delicious
a thrill as the act itself. Almost. Because nothing could match the consummation. Nothing ever would.

He had needed that after his mother’s death. He wished, not for the first time, that she were still with him. He had to see
her again. And he would see her again.

Soon.

He got up from his seat, found the maps he was looking for, spread them out on the desk before him.

The city of Newcastle, 1789.

He could get lost in them, tracing roads and rivers, mouthing the names as he went. Visualizing the city as it was, finding
comfort in what had been before, the contemporary city overlaid on top. The past not gone, only hidden. There to be found.
Ghosts walking, guiding him. To the past. The present. And beyond.

His mind wandered. The city’s history became his history. The roads on the map taking him to one street in particular. One
house. His house, now. Open the door, and there he was. A boy alone in the shadows of his childhood.

He blinked. Saw the white flashes of anger. Of pain.

Saw his father again.

The smell of alcohol on his breath, the foul words he used. Hitting his mother again and again. Her prayers and hymns ineffectual
shields against her husband’s cruelty. He glimpsed it again through barred fingers, curled into a terrified, foetal ball,
wishing he had been stronger, stood up to the bully, feeling the guilt still gnaw.

He knew which memory would come next, flinched in
anticipation. His father turning his attention on him. A harsh attention. A violent one.

An invasive one.

His barred fingers as effective a shield as his mother’s hymns.

He blinked, looked around the room, trying to dislodge the memory. Everyone was staring at him. Had he shouted out loud? Screamed?
He might have done. His heart was beating fast, sweat on his face and hands. His fingers over his eyes. He felt his face reddening,
looked down again. Tried to will everyone in the room to stop staring at him. Concentrated on the map before him. It was blurred.
He waited to refocus. The image to change.

Another flash. Now ten years old, the young man of the house, sitting on his mother’s knee. A cuddle that gripped too tight.
Kisses that went on too long. Hands all over him, making him feel good. His mother telling him God wouldn’t mind. Telling
him about love. Him telling his mother she didn’t need God. Or Jesus. He would protect her.

Then later, just the two of them. No more kissing and cuddling. God had decided it wasn’t right, she had said. But he still
loved her.

Even when MS struck and life changed. She couldn’t run the shop any more. Couldn’t sew or do her embroidery and cross-stitch
that she loved so much. He had been planning to go to university. That was out of the question. The money saved had to go
towards living expenses. He had to stay at home and help her cope. He looked after her. They coped. He still loved her.

The house became filled with protuberances. Beige and white and metal. Clinical. Things to help her get from one place to
another and back again. Things to stop her going outside.

She still prayed. Sang hymns. God did everything for a
purpose, and she was going to a better place. With no pain and only angels.

He bottled everything inside. His needs. His hopes. His worries. His anger. With God and everyone else. And he couldn’t let
them out. Because his mother needed him.

But then he found the room. Heard the voices. Met the spirits. Who helped him to unbottle the things inside. Encouraged him.
And life improved.

And then she died.

And he was heartbroken.

After the funeral he had retreated to his room. And listened. Sure he would hear her voice, see her face there in the shadows
with the rest.

He never did. She wasn’t there.

He searched and searched. Listened and listened. Couldn’t find her. He began to doubt, to fear. He formulated a plan.

He looked up. The library was closing. Everyone packing up, making ready to go home. Giving him sly looks out of the corners
of their eyes. He felt his face reddening again and hurried to join them, to slip away. But he wasn’t going home. He was going
to his room.

He had to plan.

The house was large, even by the standards of the other big houses that populated the exclusive Darras Hall area of Northumberland.
Large enough and secluded enough to make dog walkers and neighbours stop, stare, wonder who lived there, what went on that
they couldn’t see. It was regarded with envy and suspicion among the locals. Envy, suspicion, and everything in between.

The house stood in its own grounds, gated and walled, entry applied for through the intercom mounted on the stone and brick
gatepost, entry granted only after the scrutiny of the cameras and at the discretion of those behind the wall. Inside, the
green, expensively sculpted grounds hid motion-sensor alarms and spotlights, CCTV: a private security firm had an on-site
base replete with uniforms and attack dogs. It was half-palace, half-fortress.

Marco Kovacs took his security very seriously.

Decca Ainsley drove up in his cobalt black BMW 545 Sport, G Unit: ‘Beg for Mercy’ blaring, 50 Cent explaining how you didn’t
want to bang with the best because he’d have the doctor removing fragments from your chest, making Decca feel good. Windscreen
wipers thrashing against the downpour. High-wattage beams against the darkness. He screeched to a standing stop by the gatepost,
leaned out, pressed the intercom button. Gave his name and drove in, the gates swinging wide to admit him.

The house itself was an old Georgian mansion. Decca heard that it had once been a mental hospital. Figured.
Despite the amount of care and, more important, money that had been lavished on it to transform it into a showpiece home,
he still felt a shudder when he looked at it, like the ghosts of the mad and disturbed still held claim to the place. He thought
that if he turned around quickly he might still catch a glimpse of them staring down from the upstairs windows. The dead watching
the living. The fact that it was evening and raining made it even worse.

He turned the engine off, silencing Tony Yayo in mid-proclamation that the shells hurt him but he would take them like a man,
and got out of the car. Keeping his eyes fixed resolutely on the front door. Ignoring the two Ferraris in the drive, the Bentley
and the Jeep Cherokee. Knowing Kovacs’ other cars were garaged at a different location. Tamping down the rising jealousy,
feeling that familiar hunger scraping inside him, gnawing away at him, forcing him on. One day, he thought. One day.

Before he could reach the door, it was opened for him by Christopher. Decca swallowed hard, tried not to let his unease show.

‘Awright?’ he said.

Christopher nodded. Gestured down the hall. Decca stepped inside; the doors closed behind him.

The hall looked as it was expected to look after so much cash had been lavished on it. Decca walked down the thick carpet,
sculpting his damp hair back into place, checking it in mirrors, looking at the walls, wondering, not for the first time,
whether the paintings, furniture and ornaments were all genuine antiques. He reckoned they were. That jealousy, that hunger
for success was eating away inside him again. He wished, not for the first time, that all this was his. Not that he particularly
liked any of it; he thought it looked awful, but it had class. It had style. It was the way you were expected to live when
you had the money.

And as soon as he had the money, he would be doing it.

‘He in the study?’ asked Decca.

‘Vivarium,’ said Christopher, barely moving his lips.

Decca swallowed. He would be. The room he hated most.

He followed Christopher through to the rear of the house, past door after door, past the indoor swimming pool and fitness
complex, up to a closed set of double doors. Christopher leaned forward, opened them. Ushered Decca in. Decca took a deep
breath, stepped inside.

The room was huge and oblong. Windowless. And hot. Trees, rocks and foliage, real and fake, dotted the room. It was like an
indoor rainforest. From the ceiling, blindingly bright lights threw down artificial sunlight. And around thick branches and
under rocks were the things Decca hated. Snakes. Pythons. Boas. And in an indoor pool at the far end of the room, sculpted
to look like a naturally occurring small lake, an anaconda. The big ones, the crushers. And along the far wall, glassed off
from the rest of the room, the others. The mambas. The cobras. Cottonmouths. Corals. Diamondbacks. The venomous ones. The
deadly ones.

And in the centre was Kovacs.

‘Derek. You are just in time. Come in.’

Kovacs was standing before a large metal basin that he had placed on a table. He was looking down into it, dressed in suit
trousers and rolled-up shirtsleeves. There was a smile playing at the sides of his mouth.

‘Come closer.’

Decca reluctantly did as he was told. He slowly approached the table, feeling cold reptilian eyes chart his progress, eyes
that, he thought, held primeval secrets, primeval evil. He tried not to let his unease show. He wondered what the lunatics
would have made of the snakes. He reached the basin, tried hard not to look inside.

Kovacs was looking, enrapt. There was almost love in his eyes. ‘This is a python.’ he said, ‘A small one.’ His voice sounded
regretful. It didn’t look small to Decca. ‘Dinnertime.’

Kovacs turned, reached behind him and brought forward a little cage. Decca heard the scampering of tiny, fearful feet from
within. Kovacs reached in, brought out a brown rat. Holding it by the tail, he dropped it into the bucket. The rat tried to
get out, run its way up the side of the ceramic, its claws sounding like miniature fingernails down blackboards. The snake
seemed to ignore it at first, allowing the rat to tire. Then, without warning, it pounced. Jaws distended clamped on to the
rat’s head. It wriggled, tried desperately to pull away. It was only prolonging the agony. There was no escape now.

Decca closed his eyes. He had never heard a rat scream before.

‘It will eat its prey head first,’ said Kovacs. ‘That way the legs will fold into its body. My snake will not be scratched
or hurt. There will be nothing to stick in its throat. It will swallow its prey whole.’

Kovacs watched as the snake slowly gulped down the rat, the rat eventually giving up the fight.

‘Look at that. Just muscle. No compassion. No conscience. No loyalty. Just the triumph of the will.’

When there was nothing more to watch, he looked up. Straight at Decca.

‘The girl is gone?’ he said.

Decca nodded.

‘Completely? You did as I told you?’

Decca nodded.

‘Where?’

Decca shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Just threw her out. Replaced her at the café. End of.’

Kovacs stared at him. ‘Good.’ Kovacs’ eyes were unblinking. He gave Decca the same scrutiny one of his reptile pets would.
‘Good.’ He looked around, took in the artfully recreated jungle. ‘Lenny had trouble the other night,’ he said, addressing
a yellow snake wrapped around an upper branch.

‘Yeah,’ said Decca, ‘yeah, I heard.’

‘He was taken to hospital. His arm has been broken in two places.’

‘He didn’t say anything,’ said Decca. ‘Told them he’d been mugged.’

‘I don’t expect him to say anything.’

‘Some punter getting overattached, wasn’t it? Running away with one of the girls.’ Decca shrugged. Attempted a smile. ‘Not
to worry. Plenty more where she came from.’

‘It might be worth worrying about.’

Decca frowned. ‘How come?’

‘Because I don’t believe it was random. She was taken for a reason.’

‘What reason?’

Kovacs looked at the python. The rat was now a distended lump in its body. It was unmoving, allowing its internal acids to
go to work. ‘That’s what I want you to find out,’ he said.

‘What … what d’you want done about it?’

‘I want her found. I want her brought back to me.’ He pointed to a document wallet on the table. ‘There is a photo of her.
And where she was last staying. There is also a description of the people who took her and the car they took her in. A man
and a woman. I want to know why they did. The girl I want alive. The ones who took her … use your judgement.’

Decca edged forward, stretched out his fingers, expecting the snake to jump out of the bowl at any minute and attack him.

Kovacs looked amused. ‘It is a constrictor and it has just been fed. It is harmless.’

Decca gingerly lifted the folder from the table, jumped back as quickly as he could.

‘I just don’t like them,’ he said. ‘They’ve always given me the creeps.’

Kovacs smiled as if at a private joke. ‘Nature is cruel. And that is its beauty.’

‘Yeah. Whatever.’ He looked at the folder.

‘Take Christopher,’ Kovacs said. ‘He can help you. You can use your knowledge of the area. He can do the things—’ Kovacs paused,
looked down at the basin ‘—that you find distasteful.’

‘Distasteful?’ Decca had tried to keep his face blank and not speak but he couldn’t help himself.

‘You are good at hitting women, Derek, keeping them in line. And dealing with the men you put in place to manage the houses.
But those women are weak and those men are cowards.’

Decca kept his face blank, nodded. He understood what was being said.

‘You are being entrusted with a great opportunity here, Derek. Use it wisely.’

‘Yes, Mr Kovacs.’

‘He will be waiting for you at the front door. I suggest you waste no more time.’

Decca, realizing he had been dismissed, thanked his boss, told him he wouldn’t regret it and turned to leave. The doors seemed
miles away, the snakes watching him on all sides. He walked slowly towards them.

Once out of the vivarium he breathed a huge sigh of relief. Then another. After the third, he thought it time to go.

He walked down the hallway, looking again at the paintings and antiques. It was the way you were expected to live
when you had money. As he walked, he smiled. He would do his best with this job. He would prove to Mr Kovacs that he was a
good worker, that he was ripe for promotion. It would be a shame if anything happened to the girl or the two people who had
taken her. But that wasn’t his priority.

He had a boss to impress. He had money to make. A lifestyle to aim for.

He felt that hunger for success eating away inside him again.

Felt the spirit of Clint walking beside him.

No one, nothing, was going to stand in his way this time.