The Darkening (15 page)

‘Tris loved you coming over. Saturdays. Cheese sandwiches. Watching
Combat
. Remember?’

Nicholas nodded. The two men looked at each other a long moment. A calm statement formed in Nicholas’s mind.
He’s going to shoot me now.

‘It’s okay, Gavin.’

Gavin nodded. With a practised hand, he drew back the gun’s bolt and chambered a round. The street was still. No one had an inkling that in a few heartbeats, a man was going to die.

Nicholas suddenly realised his fingers in his pocket had curled around something - wood beads and stone. The necklace Suzette had given him.

Gavin cocked his head. His eyes lost their sharp focus. His lips trembled. When he spoke, his voice was so soft that Nicholas wasn’t sure he heard right.

‘The message is: He touched the bird. But it should have been you.’

Gavin put the sawn barrel under his own jaw and pulled the trigger. The CRACK was sudden and as visceral as a lightning strike. Nicholas jumped.

The crows wheeling in the sky galvanised and took flight. Gavin was still standing. His lower jaw was mostly gone. He shook his head stupidly and the flaps of skin and white bone shook like a chicken’s wattle. He shrugged, and his cheeks lifted the broken flesh - a macabre, embarrassed smile at his error. He swiftly reloaded, put the gun deep under his chin.

‘Gavin—’

CRACK. This time, the top of his head seemed to levitate slightly. He crumpled to the ground like a dressing gown that had missed its hook. The gun clattered on the stoop.

In the next street over, a dog began barking. To the south, the grey sky became a curtain of slate where rain was falling.

Nicholas watched Gavin’s body for a moment, then let himself fold to sit on the front step. A packet of John Player Specials poked out of the dead man’s jacket pocket. Nicholas leaned forward and pulled it out. Then he fished in the pocket again, found a lighter.

‘Nicholas?!’

Two pairs of bare feet rushed down the hall towards him. Nicholas lit a cigarette. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I got the door.’

‘Oh my goodness . . .’ whispered Katharine.

‘Who is it?’ asked Suzette. Her face was as white as paper.

‘Gavin Boye.’ He sucked in lungfuls of smoke. His hands shook. ‘He was a smoker.’

‘Oh my goodness.’

Nicholas fought the urge to cough. He could feel his sister and mother standing, staring. ‘Maybe phone someone?’ he suggested.

‘I’ll go,’ whispered Suzette.

Heads were poking out of the doors and windows of neighbouring houses. Nicholas waved cheerlessly to them. Then he felt something on his lip and wiped it off. The gobbet was hard white and soft pink. He retched dryly between his knees.

‘I’ll get a cloth,’ Katharine said thinly, and walked away on unsteady legs.

As Nicholas wiped the ropy spittle away, his eyes were drawn to the truncated rifle that lay neatly beside Gavin’s body. Something was carved into the stock. The gouges in the walnut were fresh, pale against its darker burnished surface. The figure was a rough oval. From it sprouted two jagged lines like antlers. Within the oval was a symbol: a vertical slash with a half-diamond arrowhead on one side.

Nicholas flipped the rifle over so Suzette wouldn’t see it.

By ten o’clock, Nicholas had counted eleven police officers step through the front gate, and Katharine Close had made tea for all of them. Four had arrived - lights and sirens - in answer to Suzette’s telephone call, then another two who left soon after discovering the claim had already been staked, then the police photographer accompanied by the scientific officer who phoned an armoury specialist. Finally, two plain-clothes officers introduced themselves, a man and a woman. Nicholas instantly forgot the man’s name, but the woman’s was Waller, and he thought she would look quite pretty had her face not been saddled with a heavy scowl. By the time these last two arrived, Nicholas had told the story of Gavin’s unexpected arrival and even more unexpected departure five times. He told it yet again to the detectives.

All through the recounting, the large male detective took notes and Detective Waller watched Nicholas and scowled. As usual, and without questioning himself, he omitted the bulk of the conversation he’d had with Gavin, restricting it to Gavin saying that he’d heard Nicholas was back, and that he felt it should have been Nicholas, not Tristram, who died in 1982.

‘Died?’ asked the male detective.

‘Murdered,’ answered Nicholas. ‘Like the Thomas boy. You guys should keep records. They’re quite handy—’

‘You were involved in a homicide when you were a child?’

‘I nearly
was
the homicide when I was a child,’ said Nicholas.

He touched the bird, but it should have been you.

He was awfully tired. Shock, he knew, could weary a person, but this was just fucking tedious.

‘I hadn’t seen Gavin in more than twenty years. I don’t know how he knew I was back, but it’s not commercial in confidence. I’m sure he was resentful that Teale murdered his brother instead of me. And yes, these are his smokes.’

Nicholas lit another one, and offered the open pack to the detectives. They refused, and he saw them exchange a glance.

Katharine arrived quietly at the lounge room doorway with a refreshed tray of tea and cups, placed it, and just as silently retreated. Nicholas just wanted to sleep.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘You guys . . .’

‘Is that it?’ asked the male detective.

‘I really fucking wouldn’t mind if it was.’

He rubbed at his stubbled chin and felt a lump come away. It was a piece of pinkish bone the size of a match head. He felt his tongue sink back in his throat. He just wanted to shower and get to bed.

‘Okay.’ The male detective folded his notebook, then looked again into Nicholas’s face. ‘Why do you think he didn’t shoot you?’

‘Well,’ said Nicholas, ‘it took him two shots to hit his own brain. Maybe he was afraid he’d miss.’

‘What sort of a relationship did you have with him?’

Nicholas sank his head in his hands. ‘What relationship?! Christ, I thought we were done!’

‘What sort of a relationship did you have with Gavin Boye as children?’

Nicholas smoked, and shook his head. ‘He was my best friend’s older brother.’

‘Were you lovers?’ asked the female detective.

Nicholas felt his eyebrows rise. He was almost delighted to be surprised. ‘No. I lost my virginity at nineteen to a girl named Pauline McCleary who could probably have spent those three minutes much more productively. I’ve never had nor wanted to have sex with a male of any age, although if I was going to turn I think that Sean Connery has a nice voice but Robbie Williams looks like a harder fuck.’

Her scowl remained fixed on Nicholas, unshiftable as desert sandstone.

‘We’re done.’ The male detective stood. ‘Thank you, Mr Close. You’ve had a very disturbing morning and I strongly suggest you consider making an appointment with a qualified counsellor. We can recommend one if you like. Thank you for the tea, Mrs Close,’ he called into the kitchen. Nicholas watched him reach into his pocket and switch off the tiny digital recorder there.

He followed them to the front door, where the female detective hesitated. ‘Do you recognise the mark on the gun stock?’ she asked.

Nicholas met her eyes. ‘What mark?’ Lying, he realised, was easy when you just didn’t care.

The male detective nodded, and the pair left.

Nicholas helped mop the blood off the front steps before he finally took his shower, then he went to bed and fell into a sleep as deep and empty as the night sky.

Suzette popped another two ibuprofen from their foil card, put them in her mouth and concentrated on swallowing them. She had the unpleasant sensation of the hard pills ticking at her molars like loose teeth, and into her mind jumped the horrible flash of Gavin Boye folded on the front stoop, his eyes partly open and seeming to stare at the potted philadelphus, his own shattered teeth grinning from his red and ruined slash of a mouth. Her head throbbed. For the hundredth time she wished she were at home and could grab some mugwort from her herb garden. Finally, the pills went down.

When he woke, his room was dark. Thunder rolled grimly outside, stabbed by flashes of lightning. He was shaking and so cold that his muscles had spasmed tight, making it difficult to sit up. As soon as he did, a swell of nausea rode up to the back of his throat. He put his feet over the side of the bed and reached with jittering fingers for his watch. It was nearly two in the morning.

He touched the bird. But it should have been you.

Something had wanted him dead a long time ago. And now that something knew he was back. It had sent Gavin.
And it wants me to
know
that it knows.

Why didn’t Gavin shoot him?

Because he wasn’t supposed to.

Nicholas kept his eyes open, because whenever he closed them he saw the top of Gavin’s scalp rising on its little font of red and grey.
You’re one small step from the loony bin, my friend. Not content with seeing reruns of suicides - you need premieres now?

He felt hungover, foggy.

What possessed Gavin to do that?

The words hovered in his mind like smoke in a closed room.
What possessed him?

Someone had left a glass of water on the bedside table. Nicholas reached for it. His hand quaked with every beat of his heart, making tiny, circular ripples.

What possessed Gavin? Was it the same thing that had possessed Elliot Guyatt to march into Torwood cop shop and admit he killed the Thomas boy? The same thing that had possessed Winston Teale to confess to Tristram’s murder?

Teale
did
murder Tristram!

Did he? Teale certainly chased us into the woods . . .

Exactly!

Only . . . Teale was built like a bull. He couldn’t have fitted through the tunnels under the water pipe.

Nicholas sat upright, suddenly wide awake.

That’s right. Not too sharp, are you? Twenty-five years you’ve had to figure that out. Maybe Teale was just the sheepdog. Maybe Teale didn’t kill Tristram.

‘Then who did?’ he whispered.

The same person that told Gavin to kill himself. The same person that made a talisman from a dead bird.

Nicholas put his feet over the bed edge. He had to talk about this, lance it before it swelled in his head like a sac of spoiled blood and poisoned him. He had to tell Suzette. He stood and struggled into his hoodie with shaking arms.

The hall was dark. Suzette’s door was open. Her bed was unmade.

Nicholas frowned and padded to his mother’s door. No snores came from inside.

‘Mum?’

Nothing. He put his hand on the doorknob, but let it rest there. He could feel her wakefulness on the other side of the door. A dull slosh of anger rolled inside him, which he swallowed down.

Can you blame her, weirdo? You’re an albatross.

Nicholas realised he was still shaking. His legs were weak and vibrated like cello strings. He shuffled to the kitchen and made tea, then stumped to the lounge room.