Never Coming Back (35 page)

A second later, there was the soft suck of footsteps across the garden—and then it felt like he broke my jaw. The punch was so hard, I left the ground, clipping the side of the house and landing on the wet grass like I'd fallen from the sky. All my breath, every last drop of air, seemed to burst out of me and, after that, there was only pain: it tremored across my face, taking my breath away for a second time. As my senses restarted, I could smell rust on myself and realized he was using an old anchor chain, had it wrapped around his fist to protect his hand, to increase the damage, to ensure I couldn't respond.

The flashlight cast light out of the house like a strobe, passing through its spaces in a series of blinks. He came at me: there, gone, there, gone, from light to dark on repeat. I retreated, attempting to get some distance between us, brain firing, trying to figure out how to fight back—but then my back hit the edge of the property. I turned and looked up. A six-foot vertical rock face rose out of the drowned garden to street level.

Shit
.

His fist clamped on to my shoulder, trying to suppress me, to keep me in place. The light from the house blinked in our direction again, and it momentarily freeze-framed him: fist above his head—chains wound tightly, all the way up to his elbow—eyes dark and controlled, expression blank, unreadable. Then the punch came. I shifted to the side and felt metal brush the side of my face, and as his momentum carried him through, I smashed the meat of my boot into his knee. A soft crack. He made a short, sharp sound—an animalistic growl—and staggered back across the lawn, reaching down for it.

Scrambling to my feet, I charged him.

I hit him every bit as hard as he'd hit me, my shoulder smashing into his chest, my weight carrying us through the front door of the house and inside. His head clipped the flashlight on the rope and the lighting changed instantly: fast flashes, our shadows flickering on what remained of the walls. We landed on the floorboards, dust spitting up, water fanning out around us. As he tried to move, tried to come at me again, he cried out, the second time even more feral than the first, and I saw his lower leg was limp.

I'd broken his knee.

Getting to my feet, I loosened the knot on the rope, removed the flashlight, and pulled the line down from the rafters. He'd shifted across the floor on his backside, soundlessly, his pain internalized. But then, as I moved over to him, something in his face stopped me. There was a weird kind of calm to him suddenly, a light being switched off, even though his leg was damaged. A tilt of his head. Then that half-smile broke across his face again.

“What are you smiling at?”

He didn't say anything, just stared at me.

I walked around him, keeping my distance until his back was to me, then quickly grabbed him under the arms. He didn't react. Didn't struggle. Didn't put up a fight at all. Alarm fluttered in my chest. I looked over his shoulder, trying to see if he had anything hidden, anything that would still give him an edge. There was nothing in the pockets of his jeans, nothing in the front of the apron. I cast my eyes out to the rest of the room, into its dark corners, then back over my shoulders to the extension. Cornell had just given up.

Why?

What had I missed?

I began hauling him across the room, through the stagnant water, to where one of the counters still stood, its exterior eaten away by mold. Inside it, there were two lengths of rusting iron, originally there to support the counter top. I propped him against it.

When I went back for the rope, he said something.

“What did you say?”

His head was forward, against his chest. No response.

“What did you say?”

My eyes lingered on him, then I grabbed the rope and began looping it around him, securing him to the iron support and pinning his arms to his side. His head was still against his chest and he was almost silent now, like he'd gone into some kind of trance. I felt a brief moment of vulnerability, but pushed it away, concentrating on the binds. By the time I was done, there was nowhere for him to go. No way for him to escape.

And yet, somehow, I still didn't feel safe.

It was hard to tell whether he was conscious or not. I dropped to my haunches about five feet from him and leaned to the right, trying to get a clear view of his face.

His eyes were closed.

“Cornell?”

He didn't respond. Didn't even move.

Dum. Dum
.

I grabbed the flashlight off the floor and shone it beyond him, to the open doorway into the extension. Flicking a look at him, silent and still, I got to my feet and inched past. As I walked, debris scattered against the toes of my boots, and water moved in a V-shaped wake, out under the counters, into the rotten skirting boards.

Dum. Dum.

When I got to the door, I directed the flashlight inside. It was exactly as I remembered it: a space—probably once a storage room—that finished about thirty feet from where I was standing, the rest of it torn away by the power of the storm. As I inched forward, waves lashed against the rocks five or six feet below and water began to slosh in. It ran past me, through my legs, and washed out into the kitchen.

Dum. Dum
.

That same ceaseless pulse.

I shifted away from the edge, felt the extension sway with my weight, and slowly returned to the house. As I stepped back into the kitchen, I heard a gentle sound, like a tap running, and saw a puddle of water slowly pouring out into the room from under a skirting board. The wall panel above it had two holes at the top and bottom, and had started to bend and soften over time. After five seconds the water flow started slowing, then it stopped altogether.

I looked back at Cornell.

Head still bowed. Silent. Still.

Then I remembered the body he'd been carrying.

Heading out, I moved around to the side of the house, a biting wind rolling off the water. My wet clothes felt like sheets of ice, and my jaw was starting to ache even when I breathed. I rolled it a couple of times. It wasn't broken, but it was painful and I could feel blood and fragments of teeth rinsing around. I spat them out on to the lawn—barely even that, just a square of standing water—and cut through the darkness with the flashlight.

She was dumped, face down, against the house.

About eight feet beyond her, the garden dropped away to the sea, the boundary wall—a crumbling memory—going with it. Every time the
waves boomed on to the rocks, fresh seawater fed across the lawn, seeking out the holes in the house. That explained the water coming in under the skirting board: next to where the body had been left there was a fist-sized hole, water running into it like it was being drawn into a drain.

Dum. Dum
.

I moved toward the woman.

He'd left her there to come and take care of me, and I felt a swell of anger at the way she'd been cast aside. There was no life in her, her suffering over, but what remained had been afforded no respect; she'd been dumped against the house like a bag of rubbish. The closer I got to her, the more water fanned out from my feet and went back through to the house. The hole next to her made a gurgling sound, like somebody being choked.

Dum. Dum.

I stood over her, pausing for a moment. This was a crime scene. If I moved her, if I rolled her back toward me, I was interfering with it. But then I realized it was too late for that: she'd been moved from wherever she'd originally been kept. Cornell had carried her up from the boat and then discarded her when he'd seen me. So I bent down, touched her arm—as rigid as concrete now—and turned her over.

It was Katie Francis.

“You shouldn't have come here,” a voice said behind me.

I turned.

Colin Rocastle was pointing a gun at my face.

Rocastle led me back toward the house, his gun pressed against the back of my head. “You're working for
Cornell
?” I said to him, but he didn't reply. We passed the boat again, off to my left. The narrow deckhouse door had blown open, stairs leading down into a half-lit interior, and I could see at least one other body, wrapped in the same tarpaulin, a single, blood-flecked arm escaping the covers. If they'd brought Francis here, they'd brought the security guard as well—and they'd brought Carter Graham.

As I reentered the house, Cornell looked up from the floor, that same expression on his face. He'd given in because he'd known he wasn't alone. Rocastle forced me to my knees behind Cornell, one hand on my shoulder, one pushing the gun in harder against the dome of my skull. “Untie him,” he said.

I started loosening the knot.

Outside, the sea was relentless: it boomed against the rocks, emerged from the cracks and fissures of the house, before drawing all the way back out again. And then it would come again, metronomic, a dam breaking and draining, over and over.

I kept my head still and scanned the room, trying to figure out where I went next. I had a gun to my head and was cut off from the mainland. I didn't have any options. If I made a break for it, if I even got as far as doing that, I would hit a dead end, whichever direction I headed. I couldn't take Cornell's boat because I didn't have the key. I couldn't go back for the dinghy because, as soon as I got out into the water, they'd pick me off.

“Faster,” Rocastle said, jabbing me with the gun.

Half an inch of water, maybe more, was remaining inside the house at all times now. It was freezing. Before long, I couldn't feel my skin anymore, only the pressure of my kneecap against the floor, spongy and rotten and bending to my weight. Next to me were the skirting board and the wall panel. As I pulled the knot away, finally freeing Cornell, water began running past me, out from under the boards, escaping into the room.

Dum. Dum
.

Rocastle grabbed me by the collar and hauled me to my feet, then
shoved me out into the center of the house. He went to help Cornell, help unravel the rest of the rope, but Cornell pushed him away, eyes fixed on me. He used one of the counters to pull himself up and then ran a hand through his hair, straightening it. In that moment, I saw everything he was: all the destruction and violence, all the lives he'd ruined.

“Well, well, well,” he said, an empty smile opening out across his face. “This is an unexpected surprise.” He looked at Rocastle, a flash of anger in his face. “Isn't it,
Detective
Rocastle?” I looked between them, unsure of what was going on. Then his anger instantly vanished, and all that was left behind was that smile.

But the smile was just a lie, a piece of tracing paper I could see right through; and as he stood there, he tilted his head and looked at me, eyes darting from one point of my body to the next, like a butcher sizing up a carcass. He wriggled his fingers, stretching the muscles, and then looked around the room. He was searching for the chains he'd had on his wrists. When I'd tied him up, I'd tossed them across the room, toward the extension.

I turned to Rocastle. “Why?”

A minor shrug.

“Was the money worth it?”

This time he gave me nothing.

“All the money in the world can't be worth this.”

Behind him, Cornell put a finger to his lips. “Ssshhhhh.”

Water began running into the house, under his feet, between his legs, out to where Rocastle was standing. Cornell didn't notice, his eyes on me. Rocastle glanced down at the water, watching it approach him, then looked up at me again. His face was an utter blank. No emotion, just a glazed-over stare. The gun was gripped in his hand at his side.

Dum. Dum
.

The noise came every time water entered the house.

Dum. Dum
.

And every time it drained back out again.

Cornell moved away from the edge of the counter, limping. He took a couple of steps, then stopped. “What, I wonder, was the point of all this?” he said. I remembered his voice now: low, sharp, an indistinct accent that was difficult to place. As I watched him take another step toward me, I felt the same sense of recognition I'd had earlier; as if I'd seen him before, somewhere else.

Not just Vegas.

He tilted his head as he looked at me. “Was the family worth it?”

I didn't answer.

“Were they worth dying for?”

“I haven't found them yet, so I couldn't say for sure.”

Cornell picked up on something in my voice; a tiny tonal shift, a moment when my reply had betrayed everything I was feeling. “Why do they even matter?” he asked.

“Everyone matters.”

The corners of his mouth turned up again. “I've known men like you before.” He took another step toward me. “Do you think you've got some
attachment
to the family?”

I didn't respond.

“You think you understand them?”

I flicked a look at Rocastle. He just stared at me.

Cornell's lips peeled back into another smile. “That's it, isn't it? They're the replacement for . . .” He paused, ring finger rubbing against his thumb as he tried to recall her name. “
Derryn.
Are they your pretend family now she's rotting in the earth?”

I gave him nothing.

He nodded, then ran a hand through his hair, ensuring his parting was as straight as possible. “The Lings are all just bones now too—you
do
know that, right?”

“They deserve a proper burial.”

“We
gave
them a burial.”

“I doubt that.”

“Sure we did,” he said, limping toward me, stopping six inches from my face. Rocastle moved around to my left, lifted the gun and placed it against my temple. My heart shifted in my chest. “Where's the photograph?” Cornell said.

“What photograph?”

“Where's the photograph?” Cornell said again, as if he hadn't heard me.

“I don't know what photograph you mean.”

I could smell him now: hair oil and lotion, and the faint trace of cigarette smoke. When he got no response from me, he leaned forward, his mouth stopping an inch from my ear. “You know,” he said, hot breath against my face, “it doesn't really matter. If you tell me where it is, that's
great—that saves me a problem. If you don't, I'll just go on looking for that picture after you're dead. And I'll find it. Because that's what I do.”

“Why do you even care about it?”

He blinked; said nothing.

“Kalb's already dead. Everyone who might have even been vaguely connected to him is dead. What can the photograph
possibly
have in it that matters anymore?”

He seemed faintly amused, as if he were listening to the reasoning of a child, then his eyes stopped at my stomach. “Tell me, how did it feel when you were dying?”

I ignored him and glanced at Rocastle. “What about you?” Something flickered in his face. “Do you even know
why
you're killing?”

“I've always wondered what it must be like,” Cornell said.

I turned back to face him.

“What it must be like when the light goes out.”

“Maybe one day you'll find out.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But not today.” There was a sudden kind of stillness to him. In any other man it would have looked like mourning for all the misery he'd wrought. But not this man. “You of all people should understand what we're doing.”

I smirked. “Is that a
joke
?”

An expression formed, as if he was genuinely surprised. “Why else have you been running around for all these years, being shot at, being stabbed, trying to rescue hopeless cases like your idiot friend Healy?” I glanced at Rocastle: because of him Cornell knew everything about me. Every detail. “Why? Because, like me, you have a cause.”

“Daniel Kalb isn't a cause.”

“You don't know anything about him.”

“Graham, Schiltz and Muire knew him—and look where it got them.”

“They only knew a part of him; a version of his history. But, ultimately, that was enough.” He shrugged. “The pictures they had, what they knew about him, what Ray saw at Farnmoor, we couldn't let that go. Ray had started to suspect Katie might be involved in something too, which is why he went to the police instead of her. He liked a drink or three, but he was still sharp enough. We had to do some repair work on that.”

I frowned. But then it slipped into place, and I turned to Rocastle. “You doctored the interviews you did with Muire.”

“He made some adjustments,” Cornell said.

“You mean Muire's suspicions about Katie Francis?”

Cornell drew in a long, deep breath, hands back at his sides. “That, and Muire telling the world how
clearly
he saw your precious Paul and Carrie.”

Another memory: standing over Prouse at the Ley and then, before that, speaking to Martha Muire, and her telling me about the missing photograph.
Did you ever worry the combination of the drink and his eyesight might be a problem?
I'd asked.

We're old, Mr. Raker, but not that old.

She'd meant his eyesight. News that he was half blind had come as a surprise to her. And then, a day later, Prouse was saying the same thing to me:
He could see just fine
.

I looked at Rocastle. “Muire's diagnosis was a sham.” Instantly, I could see in his face that I was right. “You never went to see a doctor. You faked the diagnosis. That's why both his interviews go totally off the rails—because you altered them.”

Cornell broke out into a smile. “Bravo.”

I ignored him, fixing my gaze on Rocastle, replaying what Cornell had said:
Muire only knew a version of Kalb's history.
And if Muire didn't know the full story, neither did Schiltz or Graham. Neither did Rocastle. “Do you even know who Kalb is?”

A movement in his eyes.

“This is a man who killed two hundred and fifty—”

Cornell punched me in the throat.

It was so sudden, so fierce, it felt like my body had shut down. I staggered back, grasping at my windpipe, trying to force air up and out of my body. My vision blurred. And then I hit a wall, felt it bend against my weight, dust showering me from above, water running out from somewhere unseen—against my legs, my ankles, my feet.

Cornell took a couple of steps in my direction, leg dragging through the water like an anchor. Rocastle remained behind him, almost cast into darkness. My throat was on fire, acid burning at the top of my chest, and I could feel swells of nausea. I closed my eyes for a second, trying to clear my sight. When I opened them again, Cornell was closer: he'd moved again, this time in silence. The only thing that spoke of his
approach was the wake fanning out from his shoes. “Where's the photograph?” he said.

This time it was my turn to smile.

I saw the anger in his eyes. “Where's the photograph?”

“Gone,” I replied, my voice hoarse.

“Gone where?”

“Tell me where the Lings are buried.”

He grabbed me by the throat again, teeth gritted, hands like the jaws of a shark. I could feel myself blacking out.
“Tell me where the fucking photograph is!”

His face blinked in and out.

And then, finally, everything went dark.

When I woke again, Cornell was looking down at me. Rocastle was next to him, gun in the belt of his trousers. As I tried to tune back in, Rocastle reached down and hauled me up. I rocked back against the wall, using its sodden bones for support.

“You know,” Cornell said, calmer now, “this is exactly how that little bitch tried to play me.
Carrie
. When she told me there was another copy of the photograph floating around, she tried to use it as a bargaining chip. ‘I'll tell you where the photograph is, if you let me and my family go.'” He lowered his voice. “She was pretty strong. Pretty resistant. But eventually she gave in: it was in the laptop. So I thanked her, and then I had Prouse walk them both to the barn.”

But she didn't tell him which laptop.

Even at the end. Even as she suffered unspeakable torment.

“So why are you still looking for it?”

No response. No emotion. “When you've got as much money as me, you can solve all sorts of problems. So I put those two girls on a jet to the States, while Mum and Dad were already feeding worms.” He stopped, eyeing me. He was trying to use the girls to get a reaction out of me. “They landed at Henderson Airport, got waved through by a man I'd handed a suitcase full of money to, and their trail—
boom
—just disappeared. You can take your time when they're off the grid,
really
get the answers you need.”

“Why take them to the States?”

Cornell just shrugged. “All you need to know is after they gave me what I wanted, I drove them up into the hills, cut them both into pieces and buried them in the desert.”

A tremor passed through me. “You fucking prick.”

“Oooooh,” he mocked. “Are you angry?”

He was three feet from me.

“Are you upset that your new family got—”

I grabbed him by the throat, clamping my hand on to his windpipe, squeezing so hard I felt cartilage pop against my fingers. An anger burned in me I'd never felt before. As he started to choke, I shoved him away. He stumbled, his leg locking up, and then I went at him again, hitting him harder than I'd ever hit anything in my life. It felt like I broke every bone in my hand—but I didn't care, didn't even react to it. This time it sent him crashing back into the counter, the whole thing reverberating, part of it coming loose and falling to the floor, into the water. He tried to sidestep away from me, his back to the wall panel, but I grabbed his hair—a handful of it, as much as I could get—and drove him head first into it. He made a soft grunt as the wall panel erupted into a puff of plaster, a shiver passing through the house.