The figure lost its angularity and definition; it appeared to be quickly reabsorbed by the stains it had inflicted upon the base and sides of the bath. Kyle looked away. Leaned against the door. When he looked into the bath again, all he could see was a clutter of jet bones and a thin skull inside a bath so dirty it looked as if a fire had been lit inside it. He staggered out of the bathroom, coughing as he fled.
Behind him, he heard Jed say, ‘You weren’t much help, Spielberg. They ain’t easy to catch. Least you could’ve done was film it.’
‘You unscrewed the bulbs?’ Kyle looked about himself, aghast, as Jed continued to nonchalantly fit the light bulbs back into the lamps at the top of each bed. The ceiling light socket gaped. ‘To draw them in here?’ Incredulous, he shook his head. Max seemed bored with him, and sat at the table studying the map.
472
LAST DAYS
‘For intel. Vital before an operation,’ Jed said. He looked pleased with himself. ‘Ever heard the saying, offence is the best defence?’
Kyle was too angry to speak. He looked from Jed to Max, from Max to Jed. When he found his voice it had a shriek inside it that he loathed to hear. ‘You never thought of involving me in this plan? Or was I the bait? Asleep in the friggin’ dark!’
‘You wouldn’t have agreed and we don’t have time for lengthy debates every time something needs to be done.’ Max didn’t even look up.
‘Amen to that,’ Jed said.
‘Why am I here, Max? Why?’
‘Tryin’ to figure out the same thing myself,’ Jed said with a grin Kyle dearly wanted to smash from the portly man’s ruddy face.
‘You and Colombo don’t seem too bothered that I am. Or have you something else planned I’m not aware of yet? That will get me killed tomorrow?’
Max sighed and rubbed his eyes. Beyond the anecdotes and camaraderie with Jed, the man was shattered. Under the abrasive lights his sallow skin sagged around his mouth and throat. His thin arms were slack with exhaustion inside the tailored shirt and his tremulous fingers constantly played with a bottle of painkillers.
Max must know best, he’d told himself on his way over to California; Max had to know what was the right thing to do in this impossible situation. But fear engulfed him again.
Because of his involvement in what amounted to murder in the eyes of the world. He had not wanted to face the truth of the matter until morning, but the bathroom ambush had 473
ADAM NEVILL
suddenly brought the issue forward. They planned to kill,
to
execute
, a sick actor. Max was quite mad; he could see it clearly now. A mad old tyrant. If someone had killed Max in 1967, none of this would be happening now.
How about
that, Herodotus?
How was it possible that he was back here? Back in America, with a camera in a room full of handguns and two men he hardly knew, with whom he planned to trespass, break into private property, then assassinate a sick man allegedly possessed by the body of a dead female cult leader.
Preposterous: his life. A bit of sleep and the attempted interrogation of a Blood Friend had returned reason to his burned-out mind. What had he been thinking?
He thought of the thin figure raking about inside his unlit flat while he hung from the window sill.
The film. The film.
Remember the film.
Was that why he was here? He couldn’t fully recall now. He’d unwrapped the camera in the ruin that was his flat and quickly shot his postscript and uploaded it; the screen of his monitor was cracked, but the PC had still worked. The rough cuts were already uploaded. Finger Mouse would be ten hours into the edit by now. But Max should never have mentioned the idea about a final scene. It had burned into his mind. Kyle wanted to save himself too.
And the child. Avenge Dan.
Dan. Don’t think of Dan.
But he could not deny, even now, that he’d been transported by the idea that the greatest climax to any documentary in the history of film-making was in danger of being missed.
After what he’d just witnessed in the bathroom, it offered no consolation. The familiar spin cycle of doubt, recrimin -
ation, guilt and terror began to whirl. Back in London he’d wondered if he’d die if he just stayed home. And how would 474
LAST DAYS
he know when next they’d come? Because the Blood Friends would visit again and again; or find him wherever he hid, until he was too tired to take one more step. Like Martha Lake and Bridgette Clover; run to ground. Isn’t that what he had told himself in the taxi to Heathrow, and in his seat in first class before he fell dead to sleep? But now he was here, the very idea of destroying a human connection to the inconceivable turned his bones into warm milk. ‘Oh, Jesus.’ Kyle slumped on his bed, face in hands. ‘I’m done. I’m so done with this. I don’t think I can . . .’
Max eyed Kyle. ‘And you’d let us deal with this alone?
Come, come, there is no one else, Kyle. No one left. Just you, me, and Jed. And there is strength in numbers. Don’t you agree?’
‘You better start getting your shit real tight, Spielberg. You choke in there and I won’t flinch. I want you to remember that.’
The room moved around his head, then shuddered still.
‘Max, you hearing this? Who is this fucking clown—’
But he never managed another word. Nor did he get his hands out fast enough to block Jed’s attack. He was thrown backwards, onto the bed, with a thumb bent so painfully into the palm of one hand he yelped like a dog. A great sweaty paw, calloused on the palm, pressed his head into the mattress. A knee, with all of the man’s weight behind it, compressed his solar plexus to the point of ribs going snap, crackle and pop.
Above the pain, he made out Jed’s smile, and a pair of eyes that lacked any trace of humour. They glared in a sadistic delight behind innocuous oval spectacle lenses. ‘Listen up, Spielberg. I ain’t carrying you in there tomorrow.’
475
ADAM NEVILL
‘Jed. Jed, please.’ It was Max, from over by the table, though he didn’t bother to stand up while Jed tortured him.
Because that is what it was: torture.
‘Time to step up, Spielberg. You hear? Man-up, you whiney bitch. You done nothing but shit your pants and fuss since you got here. We goin’ head first into some serious shit tomorrow, so you better get with the programme real fast.
We’re gonna whack that fuck while the light of Jesus Christ Almighty shines in our eyes. And we’re gonna send those pieces of shit back into hell, you get me? You’re gonna point your camera and do whatever Max says. Period. You don’t even have to pull a trigger. But if I think for one minute you are endangering me, or Max, or this operation, I’ll clip your candy ass and not lose a second’s sleep over it. You hear me?’
Kyle stayed quiet.
Jed’s face came down closer. ‘Do you hear me?’
‘Fuck you,’ Kyle managed in a kind of wheeze without consonants.
The new pain that came to the place where his thumb joined his hand made him pass out for a few seconds. When he came around, he was still being held down on the bed and trying not to be sick. Max implored Jed, ‘Enough! Jed!
He heard you. Enough. Please.’
The pressure gradually eased from Kyle’s chest and hand, but not his face. Jed’s fingers stank of the thing they’d burned out of existence inside the bathroom.
Max stood beside the bed. ‘Jed. His friend, they took him.
He’s seen more of this than most could bear. We’re all tired.
Wound up. So let’s just cool it. We need to trust each other.
We have to. So please, enough of this bickering.’
Bickering?
476
LAST DAYS
Jed stepped away from the bed. Smiled at Kyle. ‘Just needed to clear the air, Max. Ain’t that right, Spielberg?’
Kyle held the man’s stare. Cradled his thumb against his belly. Tears blurred his vision. Wretchedness dampened his heart.
So this is how it is
. And in a damning moment of clarity, brought to his mind by the aftershocks of pain, he came to believe he was not supposed to come out of the mansion the following day. His purpose had been reconnaissance from the start.
Expendable.
Like Dan and Gabriel. They were all expendable, as long as little Max survived. Had Jed even been given instructions to ‘clip’ him once Chet was dead and the connection between the Blood Friends and this world was finally broken? Or was he bait, to be flung like a piece of meat to distract hungry lions? He thought he might throw up all over the white duvet.
Max frowned at him. He seemed to read Kyle’s thoughts.
‘My dear boy, we must have the final scene filmed. Cameras don’t lie. You know that better than anyone. How else are we to cover ourselves? Premeditated murder carries the life sentence in California. If we are caught fleeing the scene, we must be able to defend the necessity of our actions, with proof. So before we leave in a few hours, I suggest you familiarize yourself with your equipment, and make sure you have an ample power supply. Without poor Dan, I’m afraid there is, well, there is only you, dear boy.’
Jed placed a tumbler of Johnny Walker Red next to Kyle’s face, and winked at him. ‘Got my eye on you, Spielberg. All the time.’
Kyle held the glass with his good hand. Knocked the whisky back, and felt like he’d swallowed the last of his free will.
*
477
ADAM NEVILL
Five a.m. Face in his hands, Kyle sat on the lowered toilet seat. The bathroom door was locked. Beside him the stench of dead burned things wafted up from the bath. Most of the bones had crumbled and left a layer of dust upon the scorch marks. He could barely breathe, but not because of the smell.
Panic had risen through his chest and cut off his air supply.
Outside, Max and Jed spoke to each other; seated at the table, they pored over the blueprints and surveillance photo -
graphs.
He entertained schemes involving his sudden flight from the motel. Jed wouldn’t gun him down in the street.
But he
might come after you later
. The man was a wacko, with guns.
His thumb throbbed. After that special-forces move Jed pulled, Kyle knew he would toe any line Jed drew around him, and hated himself for it. His say in anything had been scrubbed out. Max would sanction any action that abetted his own longevity. Maybe there was a subtext in his Stalin monologue.
The police?
But what would he tell them?
Finger Mouse uploaded the following night. Went live.
He’d sent Kyle a message to say he’d have a watchable first assembly done by then. Kyle grinned like a mad thing. If he never came back from this, and couldn’t be traced, more weight would be added to the broadcast until Max’s lawyers or the police forced its removal. But once that footage was out of the box, it wouldn’t be going back in. It was all in his final narration to camera: the intended destruction of terminally ill Chet, the incarnation of Katherine inside an adopted child. Few would believe it, but it put Max at the scene of whatever crimes were about to be committed.
And it appeared to be a long list.
Your PR better be good,
478
LAST DAYS
Max.
Should he use this as blackmail now, to renegotiate his position? He lit another cigarette and thought on it.
‘Hope you ain’t smoking in there, Spielberg. I already told you, this room ain’t a smoker.’
‘Jed. Leave him.’
Kyle held his middle finger up at the door, then lowered it, because it made him feel as impotent as a petulant teenager within the confines of a bedroom. His phone rang. Kyle tugged it from the pocket of his leather jacket.
‘That’s his phone. He’s on the phone.’ It was Jed from outside. Followed by the sound of a chair pushed back from the table.
Max. ‘Leave it.’
‘Who’s he talkin’ to?’
Max, now with a note of concern in his voice, approached the bathroom door. ‘Kyle?’
Kyle couldn’t speak, because the name of the caller on his phone screen read DAN. Impossible. Dan’s parents then, looking for their missing son, or one of Dan’s mates? Must be. Putting in a call to Dan’s best friend after a police search of the trashed flat. But how had they come by Dan’s phone to get his number? Kyle accepted the call. ‘Hello?’
‘Kyle?’
It was a woman’s voice.
He swallowed. ‘Yes.’
He knew Jed and Max were listening outside. The door would come in on one wrong word.
‘Oh good. My name is Jenna. I’m a nurse at The Royal
Free Hospital in Belsize Park. I’m calling on behalf of your
friend, Daniel Harvey.’
Kyle closed his eyes and held his breath. They’d found his body. He couldn’t, just could not deal with this. ‘Mmm . . .’
479
ADAM NEVILL
‘Dan asked me to call you.’
‘Dan!’
‘Yes, he’ll be moving to Outpatients tomorrow morning.
Your friend was attacked and he was injured. Quite a few
stitches I’m afraid, and a tetanus jab for the bites.’
‘What? He’s alive . . . I mean he’s OK?’
‘Yes. But his jaw is also broken, so he can’t speak to you.
The doctors think he’s fine to go home tomorrow. Can you
pick him up?’
Kyle eyed the door. ‘No. I’m in America. Working. On the film. Tell him I’m still working on the film.’
‘OK. He’s written a note. He wants me to read it to you.
And he wants you to know that “he believes you now”. That’s
what the note says. And he has written a question. He wants
to know “Will they come back for me?” It’s not my place,
but I can’t help wondering if this is something you should
be telling the police, Kyle.’
‘No. No. It’s not about that. It’s about this film. He’s asking me about the film we’re working on—’
Someone tried the bathroom door handle. A rapid
knocking followed. It was Max. ‘Kyle? Kyle? Who are you talking to?’
Kyle covered the phone receiver with his hand. ‘Dan! Now piss off!’
Max went silent on the other side of the door for a few seconds, then began to speak with Jed, though Kyle couldn’t hear their conversation. He returned his attention to the phone. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry. Tell Dan that I’m in America to stop that happening. Tell him I went back with Max. I can’t explain now. Oh, tell him to go to Finger Mouse. When he gets out. Yes, yes, Finger Mouse. He knows who that is.’ Kyle 480