Ritual (26 page)

‘M. Musette,’
said Charlie, ‘it seems that I owe you an apology.’

‘An apology, Mr McLean?’

‘Last night I
had a run-in outside Mrs Kemp’s house with that assistant of yours, David.’

Cautiously, M.
Musette said, ‘So I understand. You weren’t hurt, I hope?’

‘A slight cut,
but I think I can forgive him for that.’

‘Did you... see
Mrs Kemp?’

‘She wasn’t at
home,’ Charlie lied. The last thing he wanted was for M. Musette to know that
he had found Mrs Kemp’s body. ‘I stayed overnight at the Bethlehem Motel.’

‘You have my
regrets,’ said M. Musette. ‘David can be impetuous. I think it was after he
lost his hands, you know. He started to throw tantrums, and act rather
violently. He’s not altogether to be trusted.’

Charlie paused
for a moment, and then he said, ‘The fact of the matter is, M. Musette, that I
began to wonder why I was fighting you. I sat in that motel and I bandaged up
the cut that David gave me, and then I sat there and said to myself, “Charlie,
these people are religious, they believe in happiness and goodness and the life
everlasting.” And do you know what else I said to myself?’

‘Do continue,
Mr McLean.’

‘Well, M.
Musette, I said to myself, “If my son has chosen the Celestines as the way to
heaven, then perhaps there’s something in it. Perhaps I’ve been the one who’s
been blind. Perhaps there really is something in all of this business, after
all.” Because what have I seen? Sights that have shocked me, sure, I have to
admit. But a new way of looking at the word of the New Testament, and that’s
for sure.
A new way of taking communion, the flesh and the
blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.’

‘What are you
trying to tell me, Mr McLean?’ M. Musette asked him with unconcealed
impatience.

‘I’m trying to
tell you, M. Musette, that I’ve been saved. I’m trying to tell you that I’ve
seen the light. Your way is the only way, and I don’t want my son to go to heaven
without me. I want to go with him. Damn it, M. Musette, I want to volunteer.’

M. Musette was
silent for what seemed like five or ten minutes. After a while, however, he
said, ‘I find it very hard to trust you, Mr McLean. You have been nothing but
hostile ever since I first met you. I am inclined to think that you are
feigning this sudden enthusiasm in the Celestines in order to gain access to
your son.’

‘M. Musette, my
son can make his own decisions.
If he wants to dedicate his
life to the Celestines then that’s all right by me.’

‘You are
singing a different song, Mr McLean.’

‘That’s the
nature of religious conversions, M. Musette. Suddenly, you see the light. Saul
did that, didn’t he?’

There was
another long pause, and then M. Musette said, ‘Wait there. I’ll send my
security guard to open the gate. But, please – remember that you are on your
honour to conduct yourself with propriety.’

Propriety,
thought Charlie, with bitterness. You can talk to me about propriety after
slaughtering Mrs Kemp?

The intercom
clicked off, and Charlie was left waiting in the wind. The dry trees rustled
like the voices of gossiping ghosts. There was a smell of smoke in the air,
smoke and fall and sadness.

Eventually, a
black Chrysler appeared between the maculata bushes, and the thin youth with
the close-cropped hair and the Buddy Holly suit climbed out and unlocked the
gates.

‘Mr McLean?’ he
said, in a nasal voice. ‘Drive your vehicle slowly down to the house. I’ll be
following right behind. And, please, no faster than ten miles an hour.’

They drove at a
crawl down to the gravelled turning-circle in front of
Le Reposoir
. Robyn looked at the house in amazement. ‘You know
something, I never even knew this place existed, and I was brought up around
here.”

M. Musette was
waiting for them in the doorway. ‘All we need now is speed,’ said Charlie. ‘We
walk straight up to him, push him aside, and then go straight up the stairs to
the corridor where all the new Devotees go. I know which room they’re keeping
Martin in. We force our way in, take one arm each, and frogmarch him out of
there. Bob, you take his left arm, I’ll take his right.

That way, I can
have a hand free to hold the gun.’

‘You realize
Musette is going to recognize me straight away,’ said Bob.

‘Just keep
cool. Speed, and surprise, that’s what we need. Robyn – as soon as we’re
inside, you
turn
the car around and get ready to burn
rubber.’

‘I’m
terrified,’ said Robyn.

Charlie reached
across and squeezed her hand. ‘It’s going to work like a charm, just so long as
none of us loses our nerve.’

‘A charm, he
says.’

‘We’re all
right so far,’ said Charlie. ‘I mean, we got in here, didn’t we? And they
didn’t close the gates behind us. That was one thing I was afraid of.’

The thin youth came
up and tapped on the window. ‘Will you follow me, please?’

Charlie glanced
tensely at Robyn, and then at Bob. He had been so busy reassuring them that he
hadn’t realized how tightly his own nerves were wound up. He gave the youth a
salute of acknowledgement and climbed out of the car. Bob followed close behind
him, keeping his face to the ground so that M. Musette wouldn’t recognize him
until it was too late.

M. Musette
extended his hand as Charlie came up the steps. Charlie’s heart seemed to have
leaped up and caught itself on one of his ribs. He was breathing in short,
shallow gasps. He could feel the weight of the .45 in his inside coat pocket,
and he was sure that M. Musette could see it bulging out.

‘Well, Mr
McLean,’ M. Musette greeted him with a diagonal smile. ‘Perhaps I can
congratulate you on your conversion.’

Charlie’s mind
snapped into overdrive. He swung his left shoulder forward and knocked M.
Musette sideways. He felt M. Musette’s collarbone jar against his arm. Then he
was running across the hallway with Bob right behind him. As he reached the
foot of the stairs he heard M. Musette shouting, ‘Harold!
Haroldl
Lock off the upstairs landing!’

Charlie turned
around, tugging the .45 out of his coat, and tearing the lining as he did so.
He pointed it directly at M. Musette and yelled at him, ‘You try to stop me,
and I’ll blow your head off!’

‘It’s no use,
Mr McLean!’ M. Musette replied. ‘You can’t get away with it! Martin is out of
your reach now! You can only get him back by killing us all!’

‘If that’s what
it takes,’ said Charlie. ‘Come on, Bob!’

Together, they
climbed the stairs. They crossed the landing, but when they reached the door
which led to the corridor where the new Devotees were kept, they found that it
was locked.

Charlie
wrenched at the handle, but the door was solid steel, and he couldn’t budge it.

‘What are you
going to do?’ Bob asked him.

‘Musette,’
Charlie replied fiercely. He ran back downstairs, but M. Musette had
disappeared. He went out through the door. Apart from Robyn waiting in the car,
the grounds were deserted.

Bob said,
‘They’ve locked it all up and left us to it.’

‘Round the
back,’ said Charlie.

They ran around
the side of the house to the garden door which Charlie had used to enter the
house the first time. That, too, was locked. Charlie cocked the .45 and pointed
it at the lock, but Bob said, ‘Forget it, that only works in movies. You’ll
probably end up with a ricochet right between the eyes.’

‘God damn it,
how do we get in?’ Charlie raged.

He ran back to
the front door, back up the steps, and back inside. He tried a downstairs door
but that was locked too.
Solid oak, with a five-lever lock.
He kicked at it, but it didn’t even rattle. He turned back to Bob in anger and
frustration.

‘I’ve blown it,
damn it! I should have taken Musette hostage!’

‘We’d better
just get out of here,’ said Bob. ‘Let’s go back and work out some other way of
getting in.’

Charlie was
almost in tears. His vision of bursting into Martin’s room and dragging him out
had been foiled by the simplest expedient of all. M. Musette had done nothing
more than lock his doors and disappear, so that he could neither be reached nor
threatened.

‘Come on,’ said
Bob, taking hold of his arm. ‘This is one of those times when discretion is the
better part of valour.’

Charlie looked
up at the florid Victorian stained-glass window at the head of the stairs. It
depicted Sir Gawain on his way to do battle with the Green Knight, a brightly
coloured scene of valleys and lakes and bulrushes. Charlie lifted the .45 and
fired at the window. There was a deafening, echoing bang. Charlie had never
fired such a heavy calibre handgun before, and his arm was painfully jarred.
All that he succeeded in doing was blowing out one small pane of blue glass.
Bob looked at him, and said, ‘Are you satisfied now?’

‘I’m going to
get my son back if it kills me,’ said Charlie.

He left the
house, and walked down the steps. They were probably being covered by guns from
M. Musette’s security men, but Charlie didn’t care. He stood at the bottom of
the steps and shouted out. ‘M. Musette! If you hurt my son, it’s going to be
your head next time, not just your window!’

There was no
reply. The ravens croaked amongst the rooftops, the trees shushed and rustled
like the sea. Bob climbed back into the car and Charlie followed him.

Robyn said,
‘What happened?’

‘They locked
the doors. Come on, we’d better get out of here.’

‘I’m sorry,’
said Robyn. ‘I’m really sorry.’

They drove back
to the gates, and exited on to the Quas-sapaug Road. As they did so, however, a
huge Mack truck appeared, as suddenly as a nightmare, bellowing down the hill
from the direction of Bethlehem. Charlie yelled, ‘Go!’ and Robyn slammed her
foot down on the gas so that the Cobra slithered away from
Le Reposoir
with a shriek of tyres and a cloud of dust and rubber
smoke.

Charlie twisted
around in his seat. The truck’s front grille filled up the entire rear window.
Robyn kept her foot hard on the gas, steering the Cobra from one side of the
road to the other as she negotiated one curve after another. But the truck held
on, tailgating them only two or three feet away. As they reached the corkscrew
curve that would take them to Alien’s Corners, the truck bumped them in the
back, and Robyn juggled frantically with the steering wheel as she momentarily
lost control.

They slid round
the corkscrew with their tyres screaming like strangled cats. Their offside
rear wheel jolted against a large stone at the side of the road, and then they
were sliding sideways the opposite way. The truck barged them again and again.
Charlie heard glass and metal grind, and the wfiup-whup-whup of something
scraping against one of the rear wheels.

The truck
shunted right up close to them, and as they came out of the corkscrew it was
actually pushing them along, madly, uncontrollably, like a roller-coaster.
Robyn cried out, ‘Charlie! I can’t hold it!’ and then Charlie saw a row of
trees rushing at them and the Cobra hurtled right off the edge of the road,
flying for nearly twenty feet clear through the air. It collided with two
massive pines with a noise like a bomb going off. Charlie was thrown violently
against the glove compartment, his head hitting the windshield, and something
burst over the top of him and glass exploded.

Behind them,
the truck bellowed around the corner and out of sight.

Charlie tried
to sit up. Robyn was sitting with her head slumped forward but she was wearing
her seat belt and he could see that she had been only jolted and shocked. There
was a large red bruise on the left side of her forehead, but otherwise she
looked all right. It was only after he had looked at
Robyn,
however, that he realized what had hurtled over him when they hit the trees.

Bob – fired out
of the back seat and through the windshield. The whole of the upper part of his
body had gone through the laminated glass, and he now lay face down on the
Cobra’s hood, amidst a slush of broken glass. Blood ran slickly across the
metal.

Charlie managed
to kick the passenger door open, and heave himself out of the wrecked car.

There was a
strong smell of petrol, but there didn’t seem to be any immediate danger of
fire. He walked around to the driver’s door and tugged it open after three or
four strenuous yanks.

Robyn was just
coming round, and she stared at him with widely-dilated pupils. ‘Charlie?’ she
asked him, her voice slurred. ‘Charlie, what happened?’

He unfastened
her seat belt and helped her out of the car. She said, ‘Bob – is Bob all
right?’ but Charlie wouldn’t let her turn around and look. He guided her back
up the slope to the side of the road and made her sit down on a rock. ‘Give me
a minute, okay?’ he told her. ‘Bob’s been hurt pretty bad.’

He went back
down to the car. He had been almost sure that Bob was dead, but as he
approached he heard him groaning. He came up close and said, ‘Bob? Bob,
it’s
Charlie. How do you feel?’

Bob raised his
head from the hood of the car, and Charlie could see what had happened to him.

The broken
windshield had caught his forehead as he had hurtled through it, and sheared
the skin off his face, from his eyebrows right down to his chin. He stared at
Charlie with one white swivelling eyeball set in a livid oval of scarlet. His
teeth snarled bloody and bare, without lips or gums. What was left of his face
hung from his jaw in fatty folds, his cheeks, his nose, and his
chin

–
as
if his features had been nothing more than a latex
Hallowe’en mask which had suddenly been ripped from his head.