Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think we’re going to have a look around tomorrow, see if we can find anything—”
“Do you think you will?”
“I don’t know, Mum. It’s not much of a place. If there’s anything here, it shouldn’t take long to find it. Couple of days, maybe.”
“Well, just you be careful—OK?”
We spent the next few minutes talking about nothing—the yard, the business, what was happening, what wasn’t—and then I heard a car pulling up outside the phone box. It was Vince in his Land Rover.
“I have to go, Mum,” I said. “I’ll call you sometime tomorrow.”
We said good-bye and I hung up the phone and went outside. Cole was standing by the Land Rover talking to Vince. I went over and joined them.
“Who were you talking to?” Cole asked me.
“Mum.”
“Is she all right?”
“Yeah.”
I looked up at Vince. He was sitting in the driver’s seat with his hands resting lightly on the steering wheel, watching us intently. For a brief moment I saw him as a thick-headed spider, waiting in his web, waiting to paralyze us and wrap us in silk and drag us back to his lair…
“You can put your bags in the back,” he said.
I looked at Cole. He nodded. We threw our bags in the back of the Land Rover, then got inside and headed off into the darkness.
Six
It didn’t take long to get from the village to Vince and Abbie’s place. A winding road led us up through a pine forest to a plateau of moorland, and then we were just racing along through an absolute darkness that could have been anything—sky, space, land, sea. It was impossible to tell. For all I knew it could have been nothing.
“Everything all right?” Vince asked me.
“Yeah,” I murmured, looking around. “It’s pretty empty, isn’t it?”
“You get used to it.”
After a minute or two he slowed down and changed gears and swung the Land Rover around a corner and down a steeply banked lane. The lane was barely any wider than the Land Rover, and as we swept along through the blurring darkness, the beam of the headlights lit up the banks on either side of us like the walls of a speeding tunnel.
I closed my eyes and held on tight.
After a while I felt the car slowing again, and when I opened my eyes we were turning off the lane into some kind of yard. Across the yard, pale lights were glowing in the windows of a small white farmhouse, and off to one side I could see the vague outlines of some larger buildings. Farm buildings, I guessed—barns, outhouses, cattle sheds. Beyond the yard, on the other side of the house, I could just make out a patchwork of granite-flecked fields in the dark.
Vince rolled the Land Rover across the yard and parked outside the house.
“Here we are,” he said, cutting the engine and looking at Cole. “You must be hungry.”
Cole shrugged.
Vince looked at me.
I smiled at him. “We don’t want to put you to any trouble—”
“No trouble,” he said. “I’ll get Abbie to fix you something.”
We got out of the Land Rover, grabbed our bags from the back, and followed Vince into the house.
I’d never been in a farmhouse before, so I didn’t know if it was a typical farmhouse or not, but I guessed it probably was. Wooden beams, wooden floors, logs crackling on an open fire. An Aga stove in the kitchen. A larder out the back.
Abbie took us upstairs and showed us into the smaller of two large bedrooms. It had a double bed and a folding sofa bed and lots of pine furniture.
“The bathroom’s just along the landing,” she explained. “There’s plenty of hot water if you want a shower or anything. The food’ll be ready in about ten minutes.”
“Thanks,” I told her.
As she stood in the doorway, looking slightly uncomfortable, I could feel a sadness weighing her down. I could feel other stuff, too, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. Some kind of longing, maybe…a desire to be somewhere else. I thought I could sense a hopelessness, too. Whatever it was she was longing for, she didn’t think she was going to get it.
“Is this the room where Rachel stayed?” I asked her.
She nodded. “She left a few things behind—a couple of T-shirts, some hair clips…I was going to send them down to you, but the police wouldn’t let me.”
I looked at the double bed. “Is that where she slept?”
Abbie nodded again. I looked at the bed for a while, trying to think of something to say—but there wasn’t anything. It wasn’t a moment for words. I looked over at Cole. He was just standing there, like he does—letting things be what they are.
I smiled at Abbie.
She smiled back. “Well,” she said, “I’ll see you downstairs, then…” And she turned around and walked out.
We listened to her footsteps clonking down the wooden stairs, then Cole shut the door and dumped his bag on the sofa bed and went over to the window.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
“Yeah.”
“Do you think we can do this?”
“What?”
“I don’t know…whatever it is we’re doing.”
He turned from the window and looked at me. “We’re already doing it. We’re here, aren’t we? We’re right in the middle of it. You probably know that better than I do.”
“Yeah, I suppose…”
“So why are you asking?”
“I’m insecure,” I said, smiling at him. “I need to know what you’re thinking sometimes.”
“You know what I’m thinking.”
“I need to hear it.”
He looked at me, his head perfectly still. His eyes were as dark as the night.
“You want to know what I’m thinking?” he said softly.
“Yeah.”
He paused for a moment, then moved off toward the door. “I need to go to the bathroom,” he said. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
“I knew that,” I told him.
“I thought you might.”
“I knew that, too.”
He opened the door and went out without looking at me.
While he was gone I went over and lay facedown on the bed. It was freshly made—the sheets and duvet recently washed, the pillows firm and plump. There was no physical trace of Rachel left, but I could still feel her presence. As I closed my eyes and buried my face in the pillow, I could smell her sleeping skin. I could smell her dreams. I could see her face in the darkness. Her eyes were closed. Her breath was sweet. Her shining black hair lay soft on the white of the pillow.
Her lips fluttered.
Go home, Ruben, she said. Let the dead bury the dead. Go home.
When we went downstairs, the food was ready on the kitchen table. There was ham, chicken, salad, bread. Bottled water, beer, wine. Abbie opened the wine and started to pour some for Cole.
“Not for me, thanks,” he told her.
“You sure?”
He nodded.
“Ruben?” she said, offering the wine bottle to me.
I shook my head. “Could I have some water, please?”
As she poured me a glass of water, Vince cracked open a couple of beers and passed one to Cole before he could say no.
“Cheers,” said Vince, taking a long drink.
His speech was slightly slurred, so I guessed this wasn’t his first beer of the evening. Cole raised his can to him but didn’t drink from it. I clinked glasses with Abbie. She took a big slurp of wine, and then we all got stuck into the food.
“So,” said Vince, chewing on a chicken leg, “they wouldn’t let you stay at the Bridge, then?”
I looked at Cole. His face said—You tell him. I already had told him, on the phone earlier on, but I guessed this was just a way to get the conversation going, so I played along and told him what had happened all over again. I didn’t go into any details, and I didn’t mention anything about the policeman, but I got the feeling
“Yeah, well,” he said when I’d finished, “you’re probably better off here, anyway. The Bridge is a bit of a shit-hole, to be honest.”
“Is it closing down?” Cole asked him.
Vince stopped chewing for a moment. His eyes blinked a couple of times. Then he started chewing again. “Who told you that?” he asked Cole.
“No one. It just looked like it was closing down. The dining room—”
“Oh right, yeah…it’s being refurbished.”
“What about the rest of the village?” said Cole. “The houses, the shops, the gas station—are they all being refurbished, too?”
A hint of annoyance darkened Vince’s face. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and reached for his can of beer. “There’s a lot of redevelopment work going on,” he said, “a lot of reinvestment. It’s happening all over the moor. We were hit really hard by the foot-and-mouth thing a few years ago…the whole moor was closed off for months.” He looked at Abbie. “Things were pretty rough for a while, weren’t they?”
Abbie nodded. “I’d only been here a few months. Mum was ill, the farm was shut down…it was really tough. A lot of places went under—farms, pubs, restaurants—”
“How did you manage?”
Abbie glanced at Vince, then back at Cole. “Well, it was a struggle…”
“But you survived?”
She just looked at him for a moment, then started eating again. Cole opened a bottle of water and poured some into a glass.
“Not drinking your beer?” said Vince.
“Not right now.”
Vince shrugged and bit off a chunk of bread. “I hear there was a bit of trouble up at the gas station earlier?”
Cole shrugged. “It was nothing—just a scuffle.”
“Yeah? It must have been some scuffle. Big Davy’s still in the hospital.”
“Big Davy?”
“Yeah, the guy you hit—Big Davy Franks. I’d watch out for him if I were you. He’s not going to forget what you did to him.”
“He’s not supposed to. Who’s the slink in the red suit?”
“What?”
“The skinny little guy with the red hair—the one you were talking to at the gas station. What’s his name?”
“Redman,” Vince replied cautiously. “Sean Redman. Everyone calls him Red. Why do you—?”
“What does he do?”
“What?”
Cole had stopped eating now. He was just sitting there staring at Vince, burning questions into his eyes. I could tell that Vince was starting to get annoyed with it. Not that I cared—I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that Red Suit was actually called Red.
“This Redman,” Cole repeated. “What does he do?”
Vince frowned. “He doesn’t do anything. He just…I don’t know. He does a few odd jobs now and then. A bit of farmwork, a bit of building…whatever comes along. Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious,” said Cole. “I was wondering how he knew who we were, that’s all.”
Vince shrugged. “You know what it’s like in a place like this—nothing ever happens…everyone knows each other. News soon gets around.”
Cole’s eyes darkened. “I wouldn’t say that nothing ever happens.”
“Sorry,” Vince stuttered, suddenly realizing what he’d just said. “I didn’t mean…I just meant—”
“I know what you meant.” Cole turned away from him as if he didn’t exist and started talking to Abbie. “You said that Rachel left some stuff behind—T-shirts or something?”
She nodded. “The police took it all away when they searched her room.”
“Local police?”
“We don’t have any local police.”
“What about the one in the Bridge?”
“Sorry?”
“There was a policeman in the bar at the Bridge—fat, bald, drunk.”
“Sounds like Ron Bowerman,” Abbie said cautiously. She glanced at Vince. “Ron drinks in the Bridge sometimes, doesn’t he?”
“You could say that,” muttered Vince.
Abbie turned back to Cole. “Ron’s the Rural Community Officer for this area. He’s based in Yelverton but he covers all the local villages.”
“Is he involved with Rachel’s case?”
“Well, not exactly…”
“What does that mean?”
She hesitated, looking over at Vince again, but his face was empty of help. She swallowed quietly and turned back to Cole. “Ron was the first one to arrive at the scene.”
“He found her?”
Abbie shook her head. “No, a forestry worker was the first one to find her. He called it in on his radio, and the forestry people called Ron. Ron went out there and sealed off the area until the detectives arrived from Plymouth. They took over after that. I don’t think Ron had anything else to do with it.”
As she was telling us this, I was thinking of what Bowerman must have seen. He must have seen Rachel’s body, all naked and battered and ruined. He must have seen her. He was there. He was with her. And now, less than a week later, he was humiliating her brother and hounding him out of a bar…
I looked at Cole. The hate in his heart was killing him. He was keeping it under control for now, but I knew it couldn’t stay that way for long. When the time came—and I didn’t doubt that it would—Ron Bowerman was going to wish he’d never been born.
“Where was her body found?” Cole asked Abbie.
“About a mile from here,” she told him, turning to point through the window. “Up that way. There’s a wide track of moorland that runs through the forest up toward Lakern Tor—”
“Can we go there?” Cole asked her.
“When?”
“Now.”
Abbie quickly shook her head. “No…not now. You can’t see anything out there this time of night. We’d never find it.”
“Never find our way back, either,” Vince added.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Abbie said.
Cole nodded quietly and gazed out the window. The darkness was impenetrable. There was nothing to see—no lights, no movement, no life—but Cole kept on looking anyway.
Abbie muttered something to Vince, then she started clearing away the plates and things. Vince went over to the fridge and got himself another beer. He was beginning to look quite drunk now. His face was more flushed than usual, his eyes were loose, and when he sat back down at the table he had to put out a hand to steady himself.
“All right?” he said to me, popping open the beer.
I nodded and turned to Cole. He was still looking out the window, still staring into the darkness.
“Cole?” I said.
He blinked and looked at me.
“Are you OK?” I asked quietly.
He didn’t reply, he just blinked again and looked over at the sink where Abbie was drying her hands on a dish towel. “What time did you get back that night?” he asked her.
“Excuse me?”
“The night Rachel died…you said you were at your mother-in-law’s.”
“We’ve already been through all this—”
“I know. I’m sorry. I just want to get things straight.”
“All right.” She sighed. “Yes, I was at my mother-in-law’s.”
“What time did you get back here?”
Abbie glanced at Vince. He just stared at her. She turned back to Cole, still drying her hands on the dish towel. “I don’t remember exactly…it was late.” She looked at Vince again. “It was about one o’clock, wasn’t it?”
“Something like that.” He drank some beer. “I was going to pick her up,” he told Cole, “but I couldn’t get the car to start. She had to walk back.”
Cole looked at Abbie. “You walked back?”
She nodded. “I got soaked—”
“You walked back from the village to here?”
She nodded again, more slowly this time, staring at the twisted dish towel in her hands. Cole just stared a
Same night.
Same journey.
When Abbie finally looked up, her face was pale and her eyes were laden with sadness and guilt.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was going to tell you—honestly. I just feel so bad about it. I didn’t know how to—”
“Did you see her?” Cole asked quietly. “Did you see Rachel?”
Abbie shook her head. “I was probably about ten minutes behind her…maybe less.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “God, if only I’d left a few minutes earlier—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Vince told her.
She flashed a look at him then, and for a brief moment I saw something else behind her tears. I saw disgust and anger. I saw hatred. It passed as quickly as it had appeared, but I knew I wasn’t mistaken. I could see the mark it had left on Vince—he looked like a man who’d just had his face slapped. Cole could see it, too.
“What was wrong with your car?” he asked Vince.
“What?”
“Your car. You said it wouldn’t start. What was the matter with it?”
“Carburetor.” Vince shrugged. “I thought it was just the rain at first, you know…it was pouring down. I thought the engine was wet. But even after I’d got everything dry, it still wouldn’t start. I had to get a new carb fitted the next day.” He shrugged again. “It was just bad luck.”
“Why’s that?” asked Cole.
“Well, you know…”
Cole just stared at him.
Vince said, “I just mean we might have seen something, that’s all. You know, if the car hadn’t broken down and I’d picked up Abbie—”
“You might have seen Rachel?”
“Yeah.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No.”
Cole turned to Abbie. “And you didn’t see anything when you were walking back, either?”
She shook her head.
Cole went quiet again.
Everything went quiet.
I was beginning to get a bit lost now. There was too much going on that I didn’t understand. There were too many feelings. Too many directions. Too many lines and colors in my head. Too many shades.