Talking to Ghosts (42 page)

“What is it?”

“Gravel. They'll hear us.”

Vilar carried on regardless. The sound of his footsteps echoed off the facade, a sort of muffled crackle that could probably be heard from the road. Inside the house a dog barked. Short high-pitched yelps. Vilar could already picture the breed of dog, the kind he could kill with a single kick. He climbed the flight of steps. Pradeau followed him. The dog went on yapping. Vilar drew his pistol and gently pushed the door, which was not bolted. He was no longer thinking about anything. He was aware only that the cruel sands of these minutes as they trickled through the hourglass with inexorable slowness weighed more than his whole life. He knew that he would live with this weight forever or be buried by it. His feet knew, as they walked on unstoppably in the darkness; his lungs knew, as they breathed evenly and deeply; his calm heart and his whole body knew, responding now with not a trace of tiredness or tension. He crossed a large hall and found himself at the foot of a staircase, turned and saw the shadowy figure of Pradeau join him. The dog suddenly fell silent.

On the right, they heard the muffled sound of a television. A burst of voices from some American movie.

Vilar headed in this direction, the pistol pressed against his thigh. When he opened the door, he saw only the vast television screen, shadows dancing around it. He stepped into the room and noticed a form lying across a low table but did not at first recognise what it was, so he moved closer and now saw that it was the body of a naked man whose head had been hacked off – or rather beaten to a pulp, since the
arcing sprays of blood and brain matter were streaked across the wall opposite, and the piece of modern art that hung there. Vilar crouched down and felt his stomach heave when he realised that the lower jaw, with its row of terrifyingly white teeth, was still attached to the base of the skull. He stood up, gasping as he tried to suck in as much air as he could, choking back the nausea that welled in his throat, shaking off the disorientating paralysis he could feel creeping through him. Pradeau, who had just stepped into the room, let out a cry of revulsion which was drowned out by the chatter of the television, but Vilar ignored him and turned to the wall looking for what he was certain he would find: the blast of buckshot that had embedded itself in the partition wall and ripped the canvas in two places. The wall was riddled with shot. Here and there the plaster had come away and there were small, irregular craters dotted amid the splattered human remains. Vilar guessed that two shots had been fired simultaneously, hence the damage to the body. It was already beginning to smell. Death must have taken placed about two days earlier.

He avoided looking at the corpse and turned to Pradeau, who had switched on two lamps on top of an antique chest. He had pulled on his latex gloves as though about to examine the crime scene.

“Can you explain this?”

“I've no fucking idea. It's not like I was sat outside all day and all night.”

“Who is this guy?”

Pradeau moved forward a little, stepping around the sofa and glancing coldly at the body as he turned off the television.

“The young guy who lives with them.”

“He was fucking both of them?”

Pradeau gave a crooked smile and shrugged.

“They didn't exactly invite me in to watch. But it would be their style.”

“We have to find the other two.”

Vilar went out into the hall, hesitating as to which door to open first. The wave of nausea had passed, but he could feel a migraine
pounding dully against his temples. He felt as though he were in some parallel dimension. With every step he fell deeper into the nightmare, and he knew it would only end when he slipped, exhausted, into unconsciousness. In the kitchen he found dishes in the sink and the remains of a meal on the table. An electric coffee maker was plugged in and gave off a revolting smell of burnt coffee. He discovered a living room decked out in black leather and stainless steel and hung with garish paintings, a dining room lit by a crystal chandelier, filled with antique furniture. Pradeau followed behind him. Sometimes he could feel his breath on the back of his neck.

The dog began to bark again, a long, continuous howl. It was coming from the floor above. Vilar ran up the stairs, shouldered open the doors.

The smell of excrement and putrefaction hit him just as he was dazzled by a blaze of white light. Lit by three small, round spotlights, the bodies of a man and a woman lay entwined on the vast bed. The man was lying between the woman's thighs. Vilar could see his flabby back, his sagging arse around which one of the woman's legs had been crooked. The warm air and the pervading stench was unbreathable.

The dog had rushed ahead into the room, and his high-pitched yaps were now deafening. It was one of those small, shaggy dogs, beloved of elderly women, that look like mops, with hair hanging down from their bellies in dubious tassels. The dog managed to dodge two kicks, but the third lifted him off the ground, winding him and sending him flying to the far end of the room where he crouched by the wall, ears flattened.

There was blood everywhere. On the sheets, the carpets, the walls, the upturned bedside table.

Vilar stepped closer to the bodies and saw the gaping chest of the woman, her left breast and shoulder reduced to pulp by the force of the shot. The man no longer had a face and for a second Vilar could not understand how the whole front of his head – forehead, eyes, nose, jaws – could have been shot away. He assumed he must have been shot in the temple at point-blank range. Some of the contents of his skull had dripped onto the woman's face creating a glutinous, brownish
mask. Vilar jerked back, suddenly bent double by a wave of nausea. Spasms wracked his stomach, he vomited bile, coughed, swallowed great mouthfuls of the warm fetid air.

Just then he noticed the video camera mounted on a tripod and behind it on a small table, a computer with a webcam. As he lifted his head, the migraine now pounding full force, he saw Pradeau standing in the doorway holding a pump-action shotgun.

“What's the hell's going on?” Vilar said. “What the fuck is this place?”

“The house belongs to a guy who knew too much. A bit like you. I'm just cleaning house, is all. What did you expect? You really think I give a fuck at this stage?”

Pradeau pumped the shotgun and Vilar threw himself to the floor just as the back of an armchair behind him exploded and toppled to the ground. He pulled his hand from under him, still gripping the pistol, and managed to blindly fire off two rounds and saw Pradeau leap back and disappear. The air was filled with plaster dust. An acrid cloud of smoke from the gunshots floated above the corpses. He stepped out of the room and immediately ducked, hearing the boom of the shotgun and seeing the flare coming from the stairwell just as the wall behind him splintered into shards of brick and plaster. Bent double, he scuttled over to the banister and lay on his belly, stunned, vaguely trying to convince himself that all this would stop, that reality would resume, that time would start up again from the moment he pushed open the front door and stepped onto the gravel. He stared into the darkness of the ground floor, all the more impenetrable after the glare of the bedroom, and could see nothing. He tried to calm his breathing the better to hear, but he could not make out even a faint rustle. Then he heard a clattering from the bedroom and, turning, saw the little dog appear. Seeing Vilar, it stopped in the doorway, then trotted towards him, wagging its head as though happy to have finally found someone. The animal moved closer, pressing its snout against his face, and viciously he shoved it away.

He noticed that the stench of death clung to the dog's shaggy coat. It came back, sitting about two metres from him like some baleful
creature, a harbinger of calamity and pestilence. He waved at it to go away. Eventually, the animal trotted off on its thin paws and disappeared down the stairs. Vilar heard the faint scratching of its claws on the stairs and then a door creaking.

He got to his feet and walked to the stairs, moving slowly down them with his back pressed against the wall. As he reached ground level, he looked up at the luminous rectangle from which a livid light spilled only to be quickly swallowed by the darkness. He got his bearings and crept past the doors he had pushed opened earlier. There was nothing he could do when a hand grabbed his shoulder and dragged him into a pitch-dark room.

He stumbled down three steps, twisting his ankle, and found himself on all fours on the rough tiles, his pistol skittering across the floor. A bare bulb flickered on. Pradeau had the shotgun trained on him.

“It has to look convincing, don't you think?”

The room was some sort of scullery with whitewashed walls and a low, dark-panelled ceiling, with gaps between some of the beams. In one corner was a stone sink and a laundry basin. Under three small, rounded windows stood a workbench with a vice and a clutter of tools, and above it was a board on which hung some other tools and also coils of wire, electrical cables and string. Upended chairs stood on top of a wooden table. Pradeau stepped towards him. He was smiling, the shotgun resting against his shoulder.

“No point firing all over the place. Shit, we're not cowboys. And besides, it's really important that your death is a suicide … Important to me, I mean … Here you are, the desperate detective searching for his son, you've just killed that sad paedophile fuck. And here I am wiping out two witnesses who were becoming a real pain in the arse. That fucker upstairs was prepared to spill all my dirty little secrets just for the sake of bringing down a cop. Clever set-up, don't you think? I should have been a movie director. Besides, you make the perfect audience, you'll believe any shit, you dumb fuck.”

His voice was slurred and he blinked against the bright light. His upper body was swaying back and forth almost imperceptibly.

Vilar tried to make sense of what was happening. Pradeau's words hung in the air between them and then finally the penny dropped.

“Pablo …” he said.

He was overcome by a wave of grief and rage. He would die without discovering anything, without knowing anything, without understanding anything. Here his son's name was meaningless; it was sucked into this sordid quagmire.

From the hall came the sound of a door slamming, glass shattering. They heard Sanz calling to his brother. The voice was frenzied, breathless. Pradeau seemed to hesitate. He did not take his eyes off Vilar, but it was clear that he was listening. Sanz's shuffling footsteps were coming towards them. They could hear him panting and moaning. He babbled incoherently, cursing his brother, shouting threats.

Pradeau came and stood behind Vilar, pumped the shotgun and raised it to his shoulder just as his brother appeared in the doorway. Vilar hurled himself backwards, anticipating that Pradeau was not in a firing position. He slammed into him, sending both of them sprawling onto their backs while Sanz hobbled towards them, a knife in his hand. Pradeau's head hit the tiles with a dull thud and Vilar had time to wriggle free and roll onto his side. He grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and was surprised to be able to take it from him with no resistance. One arm over his eyes, one knee raised, Pradeau struggled feebly.

Vilar managed to prop himself on one knee, but Sanz launched himself towards him, brandishing the knife. Vilar squeezed the trigger and saw Sanz's body spin, huge and black beneath the dazzling glare of the bulb. He reeled across the room, and then collapsed.

Vilar got to his feet and it took a few seconds for the white-hot intensity of the migraine burning his eyes and his brain to subside. He looked down at Sanz, sprawled on his belly, one shoulder almost completely blown away, leaving only shreds of skin and fabric. He lay in a pool of blood that streaked the floor. Pradeau seemed to be asleep, one arm shielding his eyes. Vilar nudged him in the ribs with his foot. Pradeau only groaned. Vilar saw the pistol under the table and went to
get it. He unloaded the cartridges from the shotgun, dry fired the weapon and tossed it in the corner.

Pradeau allowed himself to be tied up, offering no resistance. As Vilar yanked his arms behind his back he could see the man was crying. He tried to think of something to say but found nothing, nothing that might make him suffer more than the present catastrophe. He bound his elbows with wire and his ankles with rope, then lashed the two together so that he could not move. He did the same with Sanz, who howled every time he was forced to move. It was not particularly his intention to hurt him, yet each moan brought a sense of satisfaction. He realised, in spite of the heat and his terrible thirst, his mouth was watering.

By the time he had finished and gone back to the kitchen, it was almost 3.00 a.m. He took a long drink from the tap, rinsed out his mouth and blew his nose, unable to get rid of the putrid stench. It was as though he himself had begun to rot. For a moment he sat down on a chair and stared at the remains of the meal, the familiar domestic chaos that could so easily be tidied away, but he was thinking about the irreparable chaos all around him, the decomposing bodies, the house that might well conceal yet more terrors.

He gripped the edge of the table and hoisted himself to his feet. A wave of dizziness forced him to lean against the workbench. The throbbing migraine plunged him into an anguished stupor. He wiped tears from his face though he had no sense that he was crying, and went out into the hall. He looked for the door to the wine cellar, since a house like this was bound to have one. He found it to the left of the staircase; it was padlocked. He went back into the scullery, took the shotgun and loaded it. The two men did not react to his presence. Sanz did not move at all, he might well have been dead, Pradeau, lying on his side, watched him, his eyes wide in fear or shock, his mouth open.

It took two shots to blast open the cellar locks. He pressed the light switch and went down the stone steps. The smell of damp stone and mildew pervaded the place, and it was cool. Set into the beaten-earth floor were two pillars that supported the vaulted ceiling. He followed
the line of duckboards, moving between the crates filled with thousands of wine bottles. The cellar was organized by
château
and by vintage, marked out on labels or signs. The cellar was lit by spotlights which gave it a comfortable, convivial atmosphere. Vilar stood and contemplated the space. He could imagine people gathering here to sample fine or rare old vintages, trading pretentious chatter about the world of wine, revelling in this haven in the timeless pleasure of true privilege based on complicity and impeccable taste. He tried to imagine the couple rotting upstairs rhapsodising with their posh friends over the bouquet of a Médoc. He pictured the man whose face had been blown off roaming among these liquid assets, and as he did so the wine cellar was transformed suddenly into a macabre crypt.