Keller brought the car to a halt as they reached a fork in the road. ‘Which way?’ he asked.
Hobbs could only raise a weary finger and point to the right. The co-pilot gunned the engine and the car leapt forward again.
They had left the priest behind. He had tried to dissuade them from their purpose, urged them to go to the police. But all three knew there would have been little point. How could they explain? Who would believe the story they hardly believed themselves?
Father Vincente had helped Keller half carry Hobbs across the field to the car, his anxious eyes rarely leaving the red glow in the sky, the flames that leapt furiously into the black night. One of the shops in the High Street was ablaze and they could see the fire was spreading. Even as Keller yanked open the door of his car and eased the pain-racked medium into the passenger seat he heard the distant wailing sirens of fire engines.
The priest was uncertain as to whether he should go with the two men or stay behind to help his community face whatever strange danger lay before it. He sensed the fire was only the beginning, and as it spread so would the heavy mantle of oppression that had hung over Eton for so many weeks manifest itself. A force of evil. And a priest would be needed.
He said a swift silent prayer for the two men as he ran off towards the High Street and the burning shop.
Keller watched until the black-robed figure had disappeared into a narrow alleyway squeezed between two buildings which led to the main street; then he started the car and drove out of the car park, leaning slightly towards Hobbs to catch his directions. He’d had to stop before entering the High Street as two fire engines flashed by, screeching to a halt not far down the road from them, blue-uniformed figures leaping from their interiors in their haste to quench the raging fire. The co-pilot had driven slowly away from the scene, praying that Hobbs would remain conscious long enough for them to reach their destination. For not only was the medium badly burnt, but he was also in a state of shock. His weary brain needed rest and his tired, injured body needed stillness. But Keller could see the little man was forcing his mind to concentrate, willing his body not to lapse into unconsciousness. The question was: How long could he keep it up?
Keller increased speed as he drove away from the town, slowing when he reached Eton Wick, Eton’s sister town, glancing at Hobbs, waiting for fresh instructions.
‘Keep . . . going.’ The voice was becoming weaker, less coherent.
The car gathered speed again as it left the town, the road becoming dark, night falling over them like a tossed blanket. Keller switched to full beam, increasing his speed rather than slowing. He knew the medium would not last much longer. Flat fields lay on either side of the road, frozen and colourless in the powerful beam of the headlights and, as the car swept round a long curving bend, the light rippled over the surface of a sunken pond. A small cluster of lights ahead told Keller they were approaching another town and he wondered if this would be the place, if this was where they would find their quarry.
But Hobbs’s fingers clasped surprisingly strongly around his lower arm. ‘Stop! Stop here!’
Keller jammed his brakes and the car slid to a halt. He automatically switched off his main beam and turned to the medium.
Hobbs’s breath was coming in sharp gasps as he struggled to speak.
‘The voice, David. It’s fading. It’s leaving me. But it says . . . it’s here. The man is . . . here.’
Keller wound down his window and peered out into the darkness. He could see nothing.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked Hobbs. ‘There’s nothing out there. Just fields, trees.’
Hobbs slumped in his seat. ‘It . . . says here. Somewhere here. The voice – so frightened, bitter. It’s gone now.’ The medium made an effort to raise his head and look out into the night. ‘It’s nearby, David. I can feel that.’ He suddenly winced, then groaned as the sharp pain subsided. ‘My head . . . can’t see properly. Look around, it must be here.’
Keller pushed his door open and was about to step out when another car swept round the bend, tooting its horn angrily as it swerved around the Stag.
He saw the house for a brief instant, caught in the beam from the other car’s headlights as it turned sharply to avoid hitting his car.
The light had struck diagonally across the field to his right, and there, set well back from the road, stood the isolated house. Keller’s fleeting impression was one of considerable size – and loneliness. It had suggested wealth, but its solitary position had implied emptiness. He closed the door again and eased the car slowly forward, keeping his light on dipped beam, searching for the side road that would lead up to the house, never bothering to question his certainty.
He knew the answers were waiting for him there.
Keller soon found the narrow gravel road and turned off his lights as he drove into it, cautiously following the pale outline against the darker fields on either side. After about fifty yards, he stopped the car and sat in silence, waiting for his eyes to adjust themselves to the night. Hobbs’s breathing had now become deeper and more even. Keller tried to stir him with a gentle shake, but the medium only groaned, his horribly disfigured head lolling to one side.
‘Hobbs, can you hear me?’ Keller’s voice was soft. He felt tenderness towards this little man who had suffered so much because of him. There was no reply, but the co-pilot continued in the hope that his words might penetrate the medium’s unconscious state. ‘I’m going into the house. I know the answer’s there – God knows why, but I’m sure. Don’t move, just rest. You’ve done enough now. The rest is up to me.’
He got out of the car and closed the door quietly. Then he stood, oblivious to the cold, and stared towards the house. It was still at least a hundred yards away and the co-pilot now saw other lights on either side of it, partially hidden by high fences and dense, but naked, trees. All the dwellings were at least a couple of hundred yards apart, providing a secluded privacy for their tenants, a high-priced tranquillity. But the house he sought had an aloofness of its own.
It was difficult to define the difference separating it from its neighbours. Perhaps it was because the other houses seemed alive, the warm lights seen through chinks of curtains betraying their inner life, their hidden activity. This house seemed dead.
Keller moved away from the car and walked towards it, his shoes crunching tiny stones and his mind all too conscious of the sound. And then, the dormant structure seemed to stir itself into a strange wariness. The black windows watched his approach, questioning his presence, his intention. It became a sly thing, guarding its secret, forbidding him to enter and yet, daring him to. He paused at the gate and searched the windows for signs of life. But its stone face was inscrutable.
He pushed the gate open, heedless of the creak made by its rusted hinges, and walked along the path up to the front door. Fear was still with him, but curiosity overrode his nervousness.
He rang the doorbell, then listened.
Nothing stirred inside. There was no sound.
He rang again, hearing only its bell faintly through the door.
No one came.
He stepped off the path and pushed through the shrubbery that surrounded the house, making for a side window. The curtains were drawn and the thin crack where they joined revealed only blackness. He stepped back, away from the building, and peered up at its upper windows. Was it his imagination or had he really seen the barest flicker of a curtain? He returned to the front door and rang the bell once again.
Still no answer.
Could Hobbs have been wrong? Had the tiredness and the pain taken over his mind, tricking him with his own imagination, the new voice just his own desperate attempt to find a solution? No, he, Keller, felt it, too. The answer was here. Inside this house.
He walked round to the back.
In the darkness, Keller failed to see the other footprints in the mud of the ill-kept garden. As he rounded the corner, something struck at his determination; his resolve weakened momentaril
y as a curious, almost electric, sensation surged through him. His heart beat wildly and he had to steady himself with one hand against the side of the house until it had calmed itself to a reasonably steady rhythm again. Fear? Partly. But mostly – apprehension. He felt close to discovery now: the reason for the deaths of all those people, how it had been accomplished. And something more. Perhaps the reason for his survival.
New strength pushed the weakness from his body and he thrust himself away from the wall. His footsteps became more cautious. He saw the black shape of a door and then a window beside it. A movement at the window made him suddenly crouch low, frozen into immobility. With relief, Keller realized it was only the curtains moving in the cold breeze that crept through the open window.
But why was the window open?
Keller moved stealthily towards it and a faint, odious smell reached his nostrils. It was a smell he had lately become familiar with. The smell of corrupted flesh.
It wasn’t very strong, but there was no mistaking the odour: not the incorporeal putrescence of the spirits, but the physical decay of human flesh. There was a corpse inside.
With the unconvincing thought that it might only be the remains of a dead animal, Keller carefully parted the curtains and tried to see into the darkness. There was only blackness.
He pushed his head through the gap, his nerves tingling, his breathing held in check. He was still unable to see anything. Pushing the curtains wider, he raised a foot over the sill and stepped halfway into the room, pausing and listening as he straddled the window-sill, giving his eyes time to accustom themselves to the decreased light. The smell was stronger, although not overpowering. He pulled the rest of his body through, then stopped with his back against the window, his head turning slowly from left to right, tensing for any sudden movement, any sudden noise. But the silence prevailed.
Almost painfully, Keller let stale air escape and breathed in again. Now the odour hit him more strongly, but it was still bearable. Whatever was dead hadn’t died too long ago.
Slowly, carefully, Keller moved around the edges of the room, feeling with his hands before him, never leaving the stabilizing protection of the wall. His eyes began to recognize things in the dark: two squarish white objects to his left could have only been a cooker and refrigerator; a larger, darker object that must have been a cabinet of some kind; a round shape in the centre of the room was obviously a table. But there was something darker slumped across its surface and he knew it was a body.
Keller fought down the urge to run, to get away from the dark, forbidding house. But the sense of urgency, the sense of time running out, was too acute, holding him there, insisting he find the truth. Keeping his eyes on the table and the body it supported, he continued his journey around the room, moving faster now, but just as quietly, his night sight gradually improving. His knee hit a stool or chair and he nearly pitched forward over it, only just managing to keep his balance by pushing his hand against the wall. Once again, he stood still in the dark, wondering if the clatter had been heard – if there was anybody to hear it. After a few seconds, he proceeded and, when he’d reached the next wall, he began to feel for a door. If there was a door, there’d be a light switch next to it. His searching hand finally found the frame and he swiftly felt around for a switch. When he touched the square-shaped plastic, he flicked the switch without hesitation, keeping his eyes closed as he did so. The light flooded the room and stung through his eyelids. He waited for a few seconds then opened them, blinking at the pain, and keeping his face to the wall until his eyes could focus. Then he turned and ran his eyes quickly around the room, ascertaining that it was empty apart from himself – and the body.
The corpse was sitting in a chair, back to the window, sprawled forward across the round kitchen table. Congealed blood spread from beneath its head and arms across the table’s surface, a deep red stain that was shaped like a pool with small, dried-up rivers running from it to the table’s edge.
The face was half-concealed by one arm slung forward and bent at the elbow, the fingers almost touching the back of the man’s head. Even in this awkward position there was something vaguely familiar about the body: the thinning gingerish-brown hair, long strands splaying over the coat collar at the back; the black arm of the glasses, half of one lens just peeping over the top of an elbow, glinting with the reflection from the overhead light.
Keller walked round the table, the anguish already begun before he’d confirmed his suspicion, anger tightening his lips into a thin line. He grasped a shoulder and pulled the body back into the chair, feeling the stickiness of drying blood on his fingers.
Harry Tewson stared up at him with wide, lifeless eyes, his mouth slack, the corners turned down. His face was totally white with the barest tinges of yellow and blue on his cheeks near his ears, the blood from it having drained through the long, deep slash in his throat. His shirt and the front of his jacket and overcoat were dyed a brownish red, his chest completely covered by the still viscid blood. His glasses were tilted across the bridge of his nose. One lens was cracked neatly into two pieces.
Keller clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes shut, sorrow and fury merging into one seething groan. Harry. He must have guessed how the bomb was planted; must have discovered the connection between Sir James Barrett and the person who owned this house. It must have been why he came here. Whoever caused the explosion had to live in this house – he had to be the one who killed Harry Tewson. Had the investigator confronted the man with his knowledge? Oh, the bloody conceited fool! Why hadn’t he gone to the police? Why hadn’t he told someone?
And where was this man now?
For the first time, Keller saw the blood on the floor by the open window. He must have stood in it as he’d entered. Was that how Tewson had been killed – climbing through the window? But how would the murderer have known the investigator had guessed the answer? And why hadn’t he disposed of the body yet? Why place it in such a prominent position? Judging by the smell and the stiffness of the body, Tewson had been dead for at least a day. The coldness of the weather would have preserved the body for a while, slowing the deterioration process, but for no more than twenty-four hours. With disgust, he noticed the moulding loaf on the table, like an island surrounded by a deep red sea. Anger flared up again and he picked the bread up, hurling it across the room. His foot kicked something lying on the floor and looking down he saw it was a long bread knife, its blade no longer shiny metal but dulled with blood. He stooped and picked it up, placing it on the table, loathing its feel, knowing how it had been used.
In an attempt to calm his rage, he forced himself to think clearly. Whoever owned the house was fairly wealthy, for it was large and stood in a privileged position. Could he have been a business rival of Barrett’s? Keller knew Sir James had many business interests other than Consul Airlines; he must have had plenty of enemies. But was it possible that someone had hated him enough to murder him in such a foul way, taking all those other lives, too? Or had Sir James merely been used as a carrier, the murderer knowing the director of the airline would use his privilege of boarding with the crew, and thus avoid having his briefcase searched? Had the assassin used this to strike at the airline? No, it was too flimsy; anything could have gone wrong. But Tewson had found the link, and it had meant his death. A sudden thought struck the co-pilot: had it been Tewson’s voice that had led them there – through Hobbs? But why hadn’t the other spirits done so? Then Keller realized they had tried to tell him, only the other one, the one that seemed to dominate, had thwarted them; he – it – wanted to remain earthbound.
Yet again, the co-pilot wondered at his own acceptance of this other life – this spiritual world. Too much had happened to ever deny it now.
A sudden noise above his head roused him from his thoughts. The man he sought was still in the house. He was sure; he sensed it.
Keller crept over to the kitchen door and stood there with his ear pressed against it, listening for any sound. None came, so
he reached for the handle and turned it slowly, easing the door open quietly, first switching off the kitchen light. The hallway was too dark to see anything so he waited, holding his breath, his ears acutely sensitive. A creak that may have just been the house settling sent his heart pounding, his nerves taut. The pupils of his eyes had enlarged and objects in the dark took on a more definite shape. It was a long, wide hall and at the far end he saw the rectangular shape of a window, a less dense shade of grey against the surrounding darkness. A semicircular shape high to its left must have been a window above the front door. The lights from a distant passing car rounding the curve in the road threw the windows into a sharper, yellowish relief, the two framed shapes reflecting off the wall to his right and sweeping round like a searchlight, quickly fading to nothingness as the car sped away into the night. The glow had allowed him to see the doorway to his right and the staircase ascending away from him on his left. He stepped into the hall and peered up, trying to see the top of the stairs through the balustrade. It was no use; everything had become black again.
He wasn’t sure how long he had stood there – it could have been seconds, it could have been minutes – but the muffled thump from above stirred him into action again. Keller had taken two cautious steps down the hall before he remembered the knife in the kitchen and went back for it. He clutched the loathsome object in his hand and paused briefly to look at the slumped form of Tewson. Although he couldn’t see his face in the dark, he knew those lifeless eyes stared at him across the room, and he felt another voice was asking for vengeance.
Keller returned to the hallway and, holding the knife before him, crept along its length until he had reached the foot of the stairs. Without allowing himself to think further, he began to climb them, pausing at every third step to listen for any movement above. It seemed like an eternity before he reached the top; there were too many shadows, too many deep holes of darkness for someone to hide in. But finally, he was there, crouched low, eyes searching.