The Evil Seed (35 page)

He saw Alice’s stare.

‘You think I can’t? You
think that I’m an old drunk with nothing left?’ He reached into one of his
pockets, pulled something out.

‘See this?’ he said,
holding the gun out to her. It looked old to Alice, almost antique, but it was
polished, the wood of the butt oiled like a beloved cricket bat, and the light
filtering through the narrow window touched its smooth burnished surface with a
cool grey glow.

‘I kept this all through
the bad time,’ he said, with pride. ‘When everything got sold, and my wife left
me, and they tried to make out that I was crazy. While I got drunk and went on
the wagon again. I kept it all the time. I knew that one day I might need it.’
He gestured to her with the gun, grinning his broken, half-senile grin. ‘Go
back,’ he said. ‘I’ll watch the street. No one suspects a wino, not in
Cambridge, nowhere. I’ll see them come. I’ll stop them. You, just do what you
have to do. You’ll know what it is.’ Then, as Alice hesitated, ‘Go on! Time for
talk later. I’ve known for years it would come to this; for years, and I’ve
been waiting all this time, waiting and wondering whether I might get to die in
peace before … but that doesn’t matter much now. What matters is you and me
doing the job in hand. Just be careful. The thing wants doing properly this
time around. You don’t want to leave anyone to bring her back. Not anyone.’

When Alice was upstairs in the little room
Turner had told her about, she looked out of the window, and thought she saw
him, hidden in the shadows, a darker smudge against the stone of the alley,
imagined him keeping watch against what might come.

She was a little way
beneath the roof, in what must once have been an attic, and there was a tiny
unbroken window through which she could see most of the street. It was cold by
now, and she had taken one of Turner’s blankets to wrap around her legs as she waited,
because half the roof was open to the grey evening sky. She had found a flask
of tea, and several bars of chocolate. When she had finished the food and drink
she began to feel warmer, and by about ten o’clock she was beginning to feel
drowsy.

Suddenly, as she drifted,
her eye caught a movement below her, and instinctively she drew back. Very
carefully, she came to the window again, and peered through the dusty pane.
There. A kind of flicker in the shadows, as of a pale face turned furtively
upwards to the light. Someone was watching the house.

Alice felt sick,
adrenalin rushing to her head. Not now, she thought frantically; she wasn’t
ready. The reality of where she was flooded her; she was alone, unknown, in the
nightwalkers’ den, with only what she had brought to protect her. No one would
know what had happened to her if she disappeared.

Mentally she shook
herself. At least, she had the advantage of surprise over them, she thought.
She would be ready for them before they even knew she was there. Daniel had
done it, and in the same house. They could not know she was there. She was
safe.

On the other hand, Ginny
had her friends to help her, the very thought of which turned Alice to ice. She
forced herself to look again. Yes, there it was, only visible to her searching,
panic-sharpened gaze. It was watching.

She reached for the
knife, felt its weight, ridiculously like a studio prop, in her hand. Despite
everything, the weight was comforting, and the sick feeling abated, just a
little. Alice forced herself to move.

Very quietly, holding
the knife before her, she began to creep down the stairs, her eyes straining
against the dark. Inch by inch, she crept down the stairs, her shoes making no
sound against the rotten floorboards, her blood a double-bass drum in her
throat. She forced herself to breathe, though the temptation to listen, to stop
breathing so as not to miss the slightest sound, was very great. One … Two …
In … Out … Avoiding the steps which were unsafe, she concentrated on the
breathing, on the pounding of her blood, and with those preoccupations
uppermost in her mind, managed to reach the bottom of the stairs. There was no
one else in the house.

Outside, then, thought
Alice. She had seen one figure only, but there might be more. Should she go out
to meet them? Every sense screamed no, but Alice knew that to delay would only
be to give the others a greater advantage when the final meeting came. If she
could just creep out … Maybe she would catch them unawares. And Turner was
there too, Turner with his gun. The thought that he was there, with his old
service revolver tucked carefully under his woolly pink scarf partly reassured
her and partly filled her with a kind of hysteria; what could they do, he and
Alice, against Rosemary and her friends? A drunken, half-mad old man and a
crazy painter, with no real faith in her own sanity?

She tried to hang on to
the thought of Turner waiting in the shadows, tried not to think how old and
frail he looked, concentrated on breathing. The knife felt slippery in her hand,
but in her head there was a sudden coldness as she stepped out into the alley.

The alley, just two feet
or so wide, ran alongside the house. Originally it might have been a passage
between the front and back of the terrace or a place to leave dustbins, but now
it was partially blocked with old cans, pieces of charred wood and other
rubbish. She stumbled as she made her way to the mouth of the alley, heard her
feet crunch on some piece of debris and froze. Pressing her back against the
greasy wall she looked around her in a broad arc, the knife held out stiffly in
front of her.

There was nobody there.

She moved closer to the
alley’s mouth, partly blocked by a parked car, dared herself to look into the
street … braced herself for the sight of them, the night-walkers, waiting for
her, but she saw nothing. What now?

Carefully, she looked
around again, the knife raking the air.

‘Be quiet!’ hissed
Turner. ‘Do you want them to hear you? Get down!’ They both ducked back down
beside the car.

‘I saw someone,’ whispered
Alice.

Turner nodded. ‘Stay
here and be quiet. Don’t let them see you. I’ll be all right.’ And at that he
turned and went back to the mouth of the alleyway and stepped out into the
light of the street-lamp. Alice counted to ten and went back to the shelter of
the parked car, looked carefully out into the street from beneath its rusty
undercarriage. Her field of vision was limited and for a minute she saw
nothing, but she was none the less certain that, this time, they were there.
She felt them there, in the soles of her feet, in the dirt under her hands, the
smell of old rubbish and corruption. She knew they were there.

Somehow, the sight of
them was not even a shock. Just a jolt from her heart as it revved up, that
droning in her ears which always accompanied the adrenalin boost. An
unexpected voice in her head laughed and muttered —
time, gentlemen, please
—
then Alice took over again, the cool, practical Alice she had encountered in
the fairground. No time for panic, she thought, it’s far too late for that now —
and she watched for maybe a whole minute through the space under the car, as
the nightwalkers came into sight.

They were all there
except Ginny. Of course, Ginny would have stayed with Joe; only her minions
would stay in the flat. She recognized Rafe by his fair hair, Java by his
height and the little sounds she could hear from his motorcycle boots on the
pavement. Sounds seemed to be magically amplified in the still night, and Alice
thought she could hear all their footsteps, distinctly, individually, as she
listened. Still watching she saw Elaine hanging back in the shadows, Anton at her
side. The nightwalkers came closer, the light from the street-lamp touching
their faces and their forms with a dull, uterine light. Java glanced around
him, almost idly, and Alice flinched, certain that he had seen her.

Then she saw his gaze
stop, snag abruptly as he saw something. Turner? She heard the old man’s
footsteps, audible now, in the street, and she pulled herself a few inches
further under the car to watch. A furtive glance around one of the thick
rubber-smelling tyres was all she dared try, but she retained an impression of
a group of figures crowded around the street-lamp, not three feet from the
house, discussing something.

Turner moved towards them
with a drunkard’s shambling gait, muttering, seemingly to himself. Then he
spoke more clearly, in his ‘street’ voice, ‘Hey! Spare change fr’a cuppa tea?
Hey!’

Alice heard the
nightwalkers react, heard the sounds of movement as they turned to see who was
coming. She recognized Java’s voice.

‘Old man,’ he said
quietly. ‘Get on your way without delay.’

‘Wassamatter?’ complained
Turner. ‘Jussa copper fr’a cuppa tea. Ten pence. Jus’ ten pence.

‘Look,’ the voice was
sharper now. ‘Get out of the way.

Alice guessed that
Turner was nearer to them now, perhaps almost close enough to touch. She could
hear him complaining wordlessly.

‘I’m warning you …’
began Java, now out of Alice’s field of vision. There was a scuffle, as of
someone pushing someone else. A scrape of feet on the flagstones. Then she
heard a shot. Someone screamed. Then Turner fired again. More sounds,
shuffling, running feet, two more shots in rapid succession. Cries. A crashing
sound, a breaking of glass. In a couple of seconds, without stopping to think
about the danger, she was on her feet, out of the alley and in the Street, the
knife ready. In the dim orange light she could not see far, but retained the
impression of Turner slumping beside the parked car, the pistol skidding out
of his hands. Against the side of the car, Rafe was trying to stop himself from
falling, his bloody hands printing smeary pentagrams on the glass. A sound at
her left and Alice slashed out almost blindly with a cry and felt the blade
snag cloth. She leaped forwards at the figure she had touched, and at the edge
of the light she glimpsed Anton and Zach, crouching back into the shadows, and
she felt a brief exhilaration. Their eyes mirrored, like cats’; Anton hissed,
showing his teeth. Then they were gone. A clink of metal from her right, across
the road. Java was almost invisible against the night, but she felt his eyes,
saw a gleam of buckles and chains as he fled.

Silence.

Alice endured the
silence for a minute or so. The street was derelict, and there was no one to come
and investigate. Dizzy and drained by the surge of adrenalin, she forced
herself to think, to assess and to gather the fragments of what had happened.
For a moment, the world spun like a magic-lantern show.

Then she remembered
Turner. She called out to him. ‘Here.’ The whisper was almost inaudible, coming
from a patch of shadow beside the car. Alice sprinted towards him.

‘Turner?’ For a moment
his face was a pale, unfocused blur in the sharp light of the street lamp,
then she noticed the blood on his scarf, the side of his face. His hands went
up to her face.

‘Got two of the
bastards,’ he breathed. ‘That woman. The blond kid. Think I hit the tall
bastard. The others got away.’ His breath was a terrible croaking sound in his
throat, where the blood bubbled out of the cut flesh.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said.
‘I’ll call the police. We’ll get you to a hospital. Hang on. Here, let me put
this scarf—’

He interrupted her with
a gesture.

‘No time.’ He reached
for the gun, which had been lost as he fell and was lying beside him on the
road. ‘Here. Take it before the others come back. Go on.

Alice looked around;
despite everything, the feeling of victory remained.

‘I don’t think they’ll
come back just yet.’

‘Go
on!’

But Alice had already
grabbed him under his arms, and was pulling him into the alley.

‘It’ll be all right,’
she said. ‘Just hang on.’

In the semi-darkness of the house, Alice
managed to light a candle, taken from the upstairs flat, and in its glow she
inspected the damage. Turner was still conscious, but had lost blood; his body
was shaking with cold and his eyes were bloodshot. The cut was not as deep as
it had first seemed, and the knife (if it had been a knife) had missed the
windpipe and the main artery.

Alice, whose knowledge
of first-aid was rudimentary, could only try to staunch the flow of blood, and
pile blankets on the old man to keep him from the cold. The kitchen seemed like
the warmest place; there was an old mattress on which Turner could lie, wrapped
up in blankets, and the windows were boarded up, so
it
wouldn’t be too
cold. She helped him to walk into the little room and settled him in. When she
had done that, she went back into the street and picked up his gun, then,
cautiously, she brought the bodies into the alley out of sight. Elaine, with a
bullet through the head, pale and almost beautiful; Rafe with three or four
bullets in his chest, his thin arms spread, a splash of blood across his
angelic child’s face. They must have been killed almost instantly.

Back in the house, with
their blood splashed on her arms and face, she began to review the situation.
So far, Alice thought, things weren’t looking good. The death of Elaine and
Rafe still left her to deal with Java, Zach, Anton, and, of course, Rosemary.
They would be forewarned, dangerous and hungry for revenge, Turner was still
bleeding — for all she knew bleeding to death, and with no possibility of
calling for help — and she had lost her element of surprise.

Alice did what she
could; she brought the rest of the flask of tea, and some chocolate from Turner’s
hideout, took the gun from his shaking hand, and went into the wrecked lobby
of the house to wait. If it was any comfort, she thought bleakly, she was
certain they wouldn’t be long.

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