Last Rites
Authors: Shaun Hutson
Table of Contents
BY SHAUN HUTSON
Assassin
Body Count
Breeding Ground
Captives
Compulsion
Deadhead
Death Day
Dying Words
Erebus
Exit Wounds
Heathen
Hell to Pay
Hybrid
Knife Edge
Last Rites
Lucy’s Child
Necessary Evil
Nemesis
Purity
Relics
Renegades
Shadows
Slugs
Spawn
Stolen Angels
Twisted Souls
Unmarked Graves
Victims
Warhol’s Prophecy
White Ghost
Shaun Hutson Omnibus 1
Shaun Hutson Omnibus 2
Last Rites
SHAUN HUTSON
Published by Hachette Digital 2010
Copyright © 2009 by Shaun Hutson
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means, without the prior
permission in writing of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or
cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters and events in this publication, other
than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious
and any resemblance to real persons,
living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
eISBN : 978 0 7481 1577 8
This ebook produced by JOUVE, FRANCE
Hachette Digital
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DY
An Hachette UK Company
This book is dedicated, with great respect, to the memory of Mr Bob Tanner.
Acknowledgements
This, for those of you who are interested, is my thirtieth published novel under my own name (I’m not including the thirty odd under pseudonyms) so I suppose it’s something of a landmark. It seems strange that such a landmark (or travesty in the view of some, I’m sure) should have come to pass with so little help from others. I struggled through this one just about on my own. So, not the customary three page list of people, places and things that normally clog up the opening pages of one of my offerings. Instead, just a polite thank you to a select few.
Many thanks to my agent, Brie Burkeman for her continuing battle. Without her help and insight you wouldn’t be reading this book.
Every other name that follows should know why they’re included, especially by now.
Barbara Daniel, Carol Donnelly, Andy Edwards, James and Melinda Whale, Jo Roberts, Jason, Jonathan and Maria Figgis, Rod Smallwood, Val Janes, Steve, Bruce, Dave,Adrian,Janick,Nicko,Ian Austin,Leslie and Sue Tebbs, Brian, Martin Phillips and Graeme Sayer.
I continue to thank Cineworld UK, especially those at Cineworld Milton Keynes. Mark Johnson, Debbie, Martin, Paula, Gareth, Dan, Richard, Helen and anyone else who’s either been unwittingly left out or who’s since left.
I would also like to thank Liverpool Football Club. Aaron, Steve, Paul, Tommy, Dave, Pete, Kevin, Brian and Neil as well as Stewards Pete, John and Vinnie.
I wish there were a more adequate word to use than thanks when it comes to my mum and dad but, unfortunately, as there isn’t it will have to do. I hope they realise how much it means.
The same goes for my wife and daughter. Words can never describe how much they mean to me. I hope they too realise it.
And, as ever, lastly and most importantly, I thank you lot, my readers.
Let’s go.
‘The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.’
Andrew Marvell
Exploration
The underground passageway was narrow. Barely high enough for the man to walk in without stooping and hardly wide enough for him to extend both arms on either side of him. Every now and then, the blade of the shovel he carried scraped against the bricks and a loud clang would reverberate throughout the tunnel. Whenever this happened the man cursed under his breath, waited a moment then walked on, the metallic sound ringing in his ears.
The floor beneath his feet was slippery. Some of it was stone, the majority just earth, moistened by the recent rainfall that had seeped through the ground and puddled in a number of places in the subterranean walkways.
The wetness brought with it a cloying, almost overpowering smell of soggy earth but also of something else not so easily identifiable.
Something rank and rancid.
Something ancient and long buried.
The man shuddered and moved on, the beam of the torch he carried cutting through the gloom effectively enough. He was breathing heavily despite the fact that he’d only been walking for ten minutes or less. It wasn’t the distance that was tiring
him. It was the difficulty of the terrain and of having to walk bent over like some arthritic old-age pensioner that was causing him to suck in deep lungfuls of reeking air.
He wondered if there were rats down here with him. It was a perfect environment for them. Spiders too had infested the underground tunnels, spinning thick webs in so many places that he was forced to part their dusty webs with his hand if he saw them in time. Sometimes the webs would brush against his face, sticking to his hair or the stubble on his face and then he would have to pause and pull the strands free, spluttering as he did so. The tunnels beneath the ground were pitch black and had been abandoned many years ago. Shunned by the sensible and the sane. Only frequented occasionally by men like himself.
He wondered how many there’d been before him. How many had travelled this febrile and exhausting route in search of what he now sought? How many had ventured into this underground labyrinth with the same objective?
How many had left, he pondered briefly, and the thought was enough to raise the hairs at the back of his neck. He stood still for a moment, trying to get his bearings, anxious to avoid taking a wrong turning in the impenetrable gloom. If he strayed from the path he now walked then he knew he had little hope of ever finding his way back to the surface. Another thought that made him swallow hard.
Could he, he wondered, simply lose his way down here? Wander helplessly for hours on end, turning this way and that, unable to see clearly until he became irretrievably lost?
The possibility didn’t bear thinking about so he chose to push those thoughts far to the back of his mind, not daring to entertain them for too long.
His torch beam flickered and he felt a stab of almost uncontrollable panic. For an instant he was plunged into the most total blackness he’d ever experienced in his life. So complete and consuming that he couldn’t see a hand in front of him.
He shook the torch and, to his great relief, it glowed brightly once again. The man was angry with himself because he had no extra batteries with him and he didn’t want to be without the light, not down here. Not now. He shone the torch ahead of him and its powerful beam picked out the crumbling stonework that surrounded him.There was a particularly wide expanse of filthy water about ten feet ahead of him and he sighed at the thought of trekking through more of the freezing liquid. The last puddle he’d trudged through had soaked his trousers as high as his ankle. He hoped this latest obstacle wasn’t as deep.
He turned and glanced behind him, ears and eyes alert for the slightest sound or movement.