Death is a Welcome Guest: Plague Times Trilogy 2 (33 page)

The girl sank on to the floor, among a mess of discarded books and magazines. She winced, pulled the gun from her waistband and set it on the floor at her right hand.

Magnus kept his eye on the gun. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

Belle’s voice was incredulous. ‘Are you serious?’

‘You said you killed Melody.’

‘I had nothing to do with Jacob’s or Henry’s deaths but yes, I feel responsible for Melody’s.’

Magnus’s relief was tempered by a snap of irritation. The confession had been a piece of melodrama. He sensed time draining away, like sand in one of the hourglasses that decorated the wall.

‘You didn’t actually kill her.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Magnus sat on the floor beside her. He knew he should formulate a plan, but he was weary to his bones.

‘Someone close to me drowned himself. It’s a long time ago now. The guilt doesn’t go away, but I didn’t kill him. He did it to himself.’

‘Did you see it happen?’

‘No, he was on his own.’ The sweats had not cured Magnus of his horror of how alone Hugh must have been.

‘Melody was a mess. She was sweet and kind and beautiful, but the sweats had fucked her up.’

‘Raisha thought you were jealous of her.’

Magnus had expected Belle to be angry, but instead she smiled. ‘Maybe I was a little. Like I said, Melody was beautiful, but I wasn’t jealous of her demons.’ She picked one of the magazines from the floor. ‘Raisha brought me some of these. She’s a strange woman, maybe we’re all strange now, but she cares. It’s a shame you let her go.’

It was in Magnus’s mind to say that Raisha had never been his to keep, but instead he said, ‘They’re going to kill Jeb soon. Is there anything in all this that might lead me to Jacob’s killer?’

‘I doubt it.’ Belle took his hand in hers. ‘Was your friend in pain?’

‘He must have been, but I didn’t notice.’

He had not seen much of Hugh in the weeks before he killed himself. Magnus had been waiting tables at the Kirkwall Hotel and trying to get a French student who was working there for the summer into bed. He was not sure what Hugh had been up to. His cousin had phoned the week before he walked into the sea, but the tourist season had been drawing to an end and Isabelle had been due to return to Nantes.

Magnus would exchange the opportunity of reliving all his audiences’ laughter and applause for a second chance at his cousin’s phone call. He had told Hugh he was busy and that he would catch him later.

Belle said, ‘Melody was in agony.’

‘Was she sick?’

‘Not physically, but in herself, yes. We were all depressed of course, still are, but Melody took it to another level. Raisha gave everyone happy pills. I swallowed mine down like a good girl. I think the others did too, but Melody refused to take any. She said she needed her emotions to be authentic. I told her the pills don’t stop you feeling bad. She just needed to look at Jacob or Will to know that. All they do is take the edge off things and make it possible to think without falling apart.’

The long night was catching up with Magnus. In another life it might have been pleasant to sit on the floor of the art room holding Belle’s hand and swapping failures, but he had to think about how to free Jeb. He said, ‘You couldn’t force her to take them.’

‘I thought about putting them in her food. I wish I had now. Melody was in so much agony it hurt to be with her. We went swimming in the river together once. She always wore jeans and men’s shirts with long sleeves. I should have guessed the reason, but it was such a hot summer I thought she was covering up against the sun, or that maybe something had happened to her that made her wary of showing her body. When she took her shirt and trousers off, I saw the slashes on her arms and legs. Melody said cutting herself made her feel better.’ Belle gestured at the collage. ‘I make these pictures for the same reason. It hurts, but I’m in control of the pain.’

The light was stinging Magnus’s eyes. He closed them. ‘You couldn’t have predicted what would happen.’

Belle’s voice was small. ‘She wasn’t dead when I went into the barn.’

Magnus kept his eyes shut. He could feel sleep coming for him. ‘Raisha told me about that too. I know Jacob tried to revive her, but that’s the kind of man he was. Even when it was hopeless, he wouldn’t let death win without a fight.’

‘I didn’t tell Raisha everything.’ Belle took her hand back and something in her voice made Magnus open his eyes and look at her. ‘Her feet were still twitching. The chair she had stood on to reach the beam was standing next to her. I could have climbed on to it and supported her weight until someone came to help cut her down, but I didn’t.’

Magnus already knew the answer, but he asked, ‘What did you do?’

‘I dragged the chair away and ran out of the barn.’ Tears were running down Belle’s face. ‘She was in so much pain, letting her die seemed like the right thing to do.’

Hugh lifted his head from the water. He raised a hand and then sank into a sea that was too calm to drown a grown man. Magnus shifted along the wall, putting a space between them. ‘You let Melody die because her pain made you feel bad.’

‘That’s not true.’

Magnus sat on his hands to stop himself from raising them to her. ‘Melody dragged you down, so you turned your back on her.’

‘No.’

There was a sink in the corner of the studio stacked with paint-crusted pots and brushes. Magnus went to it, stuck his head under the cold tap and then peeled off his soiled T-shirt and began to wash himself.

‘Do you know why you can’t get the image of Melody kicking on that rope out of your head? Because it’s against human nature to watch someone harm themselves without trying to stop them. Compassion for other people is what makes us human. The only person you feel sorry for is yourself. What does that make you?’

Belle was hunched against the wall, hugging her knees. ‘I was frightened of her.’

‘Because she was mentally ill?’ There was a soiled-looking towel on a nail by the sink. Magnus dried himself with it. It was like rubbing his skin with sandpaper. ‘You’re going to be fucking terrified from now on. I’m guessing ninety per cent of whoever is left are off their heads.’

Belle looked up. ‘I loved Melody. It was her who brought me here. She saved me.’

A black hoodie was slung over a chair. Magnus pulled it on. It was musty-smelling and paint-spattered, but cleaner than his mud-stiff T-shirt. ‘If you want to confess, go to Father Wingate. I’ve got things to do.’

Belle’s words came out in a rush. ‘I keep thinking that maybe it was Melody who killed Henry and Jacob and that I’ll be next.’

Magnus’s hand was on the door of the studio. He turned and looked at her. ‘Is this just another bit of drama?’

Belle raised her eyes to his. ‘Melody was pretty crazy before she killed herself. She’d started to say that God intended the sweats to be the end of the world. Father Wingate spent hours with her, but Melody was convinced that the people who had survived had interfered in some divine plan. She was adamant that everyone was meant to be dead, including us.’ The gun was still on the floor by Belle’s hand. She pushed it away. ‘Melody was sweet and good, but I’d started to think she might poison our food or stick a knife in us all while we slept.’

‘Did no one suggest locking her up?’

‘I think Jacob would have liked to, but Father Wingate was against it. He was sure he could save her through talk and prayer and Jacob agreed to let him try.’

‘Why didn’t you just leave?’

‘I was scared. I didn’t want to be on my own.’ She looked at Magnus. ‘I have dreams where Melody comes back for the rest of us. I saw her body, she looked dead, but what if Jacob managed to revive her after all? You used to read stories of people digging their way out of their grave and coming back for revenge.’

‘Not in newspapers you didn’t, not broadsheets anyway.’ Magnus crossed the room and crouched next to her. ‘These stories are fiction. This is just guilt and suspicion.’

Belle’s eyes were wide. She grasped his hands in hers and he saw that retelling the story had pushed her close to panic. ‘What if she’s a ghost?’

Magnus pulled Belle to her feet and hugged her. ‘Ghosts don’t exist.’ He held her at arm’s length. ‘If they did, this place would be hooching with them.’

Belle whispered, ‘I need to get away from here. Can we leave together? I don’t want to travel on my own. Neither do you. That’s why you teamed up with Jeb.’

Magnus let go of her. ‘I can’t leave yet.’

Belle caught his arm. ‘You can’t help Jeb. Even if you manage to prove someone else killed Jacob and Henry, they’re going to execute him. He was found guilty of murdering that woman and her little girl, that’s enough for them.’

‘But he didn’t kill them.’

‘Don’t you get it? When the community voted to execute Jeb it was because we wanted justice. If you’d proved that he hadn’t killed Jacob, we would have backed down—’

Magnus interrupted her. ‘That’s not the way the law works. People are innocent until proven guilty.’

Belle held up a hand. ‘There is no law. Will and these new men will make a big deal of having right on their side, but what they really want is to prove that they’re in control. Melody cut herself and I make my collages; men like that turn their pain outwards. They want an excuse to show how strong they are by making a spectacle of executing someone. The best thing we can do is go, before they do the same to us.’

Magnus said, ‘If we leave now it will be like walking away and leaving Melody to die alone in the barn all over again.’

Belle shook her head. ‘No it won’t. I loved Melody; I don’t give a shit about Jeb.’

Thirty-Eight

Nobody ever slept in action films, but Magnus was an obsolete stand-up who had only ever shot rabbits and barn-rats. The thought of being unconscious with the strangers in the house frightened him, but he was dazed with tiredness. He left Belle in her studio with the gun, crept into his room and changed his clothes. There was no lock on his door and so he pushed the bed against it and slept, fully dressed.

His dreams were filled with noise: the hiss of the sea as it receded, dragging sand and shale in its wake, the boom of the waves as they hit the shore. He dreamed that he was chained to the seabed, trying to keep his head above an incoming tide. The sea was quick and choppy. He lifted his face to the sky, but the waves pressed on and his chains held tight, grabbing him back against the swell. A dark slab of salt water rolled over his head, filling his mouth and nose and Magnus surfaced, gasping for air.

He woke to the sound of voices and hammering.
Christ
. Magnus had hoped that sleep would revive him, but a shaft of sunlight had fallen across his face and he had the sensation that someone had felted the inside of his head. He lay there, hot and uncomfortable in his clothes, trying to formulate a plan, his thoughts a fuzzy choice between fight and flight.

Magnus dragged himself upright. He peeked out from behind the curtains, but the view from his bedroom fell short of the lawn and so he shuffled to a room with a better outlook. Four men were building a rough structure out of planks of pine. Their features were hidden by beards and it was hard to make out their ages, but the men were awkward with their tools and materials. Magnus guessed they were more used to communal offices and Center Parcs holidays than joinery. One of them had the slack skin and cautious gait of someone who had suddenly lost a substantial paunch. Another favoured one leg. All of them wore the blank look he had learned was caused by grief. He might only have shot rabbits and barn-rats, but watching the men on the lawn, Magnus was willing to bet the only contact they had had with guns was paintball. It was a big assumption and he had not yet set eyes on the short, well-spoken man Belle had called their leader.

The men might not be the outlaws he had feared but they had found planks of wood and were busy with their task. Magnus tried to make out what they were building. The group had none of the easy anticipation of each other’s needs he had been used to on the croft and the Italian restaurant where he had been kitchen porter. They subtly challenged each other, holding on to tools longer than needed, blocking each other’s paths. He could not hear what they were saying, but Magnus had been on the stand-up circuit long enough to recognise the stiletto stab and twist of criticism disguised as advice. It was the memory of the stale-beer-stinking comedy clubs where he had spent so many nights that made Magnus realise what they were making: a rough platform equipped with stairs. The sight of it was bewildering. Magnus wondered what kind of show the men were planning and then it dawned on him –
shit, shit, shit 
– it was a stage for an execution. He hurried back to his room, changed his mud-spattered clothes and went in search of Father Wingate.

The old man was not in the chapel or his bedroom but Magnus heard voices in the study that had once been the butler’s refuge. He pressed his ear to the door. Father Wingate sounded composed, but his voice was grave. ‘I will offer to walk the route from his cell with him. He may not accept spiritual comfort, but regardless of his wishes I will say a prayer, committing his life to the Lord.’

An Irish voice said, ‘I would have thought he’d be headed for a warmer place.’ The stranger laughed, pleased with his joke.