Vengeance Child (18 page)

A report five days later quoted the police emphatically ruling Jay out from any involvement in the fire. The blaze had started in the basement when a faulty boiler had caused a gas pipe to heat up until it exploded with enough ferocity to demolish the house internally. Yet the reporter also quoted the child of a neighbour who claimed Jay had spoken to her the day before the fire.

‘Good God,' Victor breathed. ‘Death and disaster follows you around, doesn't it?'

‘What's that?'

Startled, Victor turned in his chair to see Laura Parris standing in the doorway.

‘You were miles away. You must have found something fascinating.'

‘Oh, this?' Victor switched off the computer so Laura wouldn't see Jay's picture. ‘It was something that Solomon said about Mayor Wilkes. I thought I'd do some research on our illustrious politician.' He looked closely at Laura. ‘You look exhausted. Grab a seat. I'll get you a drink.'

‘Thanks. Sorry about just appearing at your apartment like this. Your sister told me to come straight up.'

‘You're always welcome.'

‘Am I?'

‘Sure, we're partners in adversity now.' He headed for the kitchen area at the corner of the room. ‘Coffee, or something stronger?'

‘Coffee for now, but I'll take you up on “stronger” later.'

‘Everything under control in the village? You've rounded the wanderers up?'

She dismissed his question quickly. ‘It's fine now.' Something more important demanded their attention now. ‘Victor, I need to talk to you.'

‘I know. I've been thinking about Jay non-stop.'

‘There's Jay. Absolutely. But there's an important question I have to ask you, Victor.'

Twenty

Victor put the kettle on to boil. ‘You want to ask me a question?'

Laura sat down on the sofa. ‘Can you guess why?'

Victor was mystified. Laura's attractive face was unreadable. It seemed as if she had some secret of her own to reveal. He spooned coffee into a pair of mugs. ‘OK, fire away.'

‘We find ourselves in this situation, but we don't know one another, do we?'

‘My name's Victor Brodman, age thirty-five, the island ranger. I live here, the former chauffeur's apartment at White Lodge Farm, Siluria.'

‘Great, just great.' Laura spoke politely. ‘You've given me information I could find in one of your educational handouts.'

‘Am I missing something?' He frowned.

‘My name is Laura Parris. My parents ran a care home for the elderly. When I was seven I found one of the residents, a man of eighty, lying dead in the greenhouse. He told me often that he loved the smell of tomato plants. The day I found him he'd taken a drug overdose. I've never told anyone this before outside my family. My first boyfriend liked to massage oil into my breasts as he made love. He was horrified when I suggested oral sex might be nice. When—'

‘Whoa, Laura. Why on earth are you telling me this?'

‘When I qualified as a nurse I got the job of preparing corpses before they went to the morgue. I used to go back to the nurses' accommodation block every night and wondered how I could deal with it. You know, moving the arms and legs of dead people like they were just the plastic limbs of a doll. Those noises they made after death? They made you want to rip your own ears off. I started to drink vodka. It works best with sugary drinks. Pow! A liquid right hook. But you know how I stopped going mad from handling dead men and women? Like pushing my fingers into mouths to pull out their false teeth? You know how, Victor? I discovered a taste for erotica. I read sex stories in magazines. Then I graduated to reading erotic novels. I haven't told anyone else about that, either. No . . . don't make the coffee yet. I want you to listen.' She spoke in a cool, purposeful way. ‘Reading about people having sex – full penetration, lots of different positions – it all helped. People enjoying the act of creating life chased away this fog of death that surrounded me. Before that I'd look into a mirror, then all those dead faces, with staring eyes and blue lips, would flow through my reflection. Reminding me I'm mortal, that we all die anyway.' She took a breath. ‘I haven't told anyone else this either: Before I met you I hadn't had sex for fifteen months.'

‘Oh.' Victor didn't know what to say.

‘There, I've put my trust in you with all these facts.' She tilted her head. ‘You've given me your biographical details that appear on the handout. Funny that, hmm?'

‘It's been a difficult couple of days.'

‘Difficult in what? About Jay or what Solomon told us? Or difficult that you haven't been able to give me even one sentence about what attracted you to me? Or that we made love, or maybe it was just sex? I don't sleep around, Victor. But you've made me feel disposable. Now you expect me to trust you with everything I know about Jay, or what
we
should do with him, or
to
him when he's my responsibility. I don't even know you, Victor. You know nothing about me. Even though you took a heck of a lot of pleasure in screwing me.'

‘Hey, that's not fair. We haven't had time to—'

‘What was wrong with making a time just to say you feel something for me, and that being in bed with me was at least OK.'

‘Laura—'

‘You've made me feel like a piece of gum that's had the flavour chewed out.'

‘Laura, you're wrong about that. You're wrong to take this attitude, too.'

‘I thought you'd repressed all memory of us being together.'

‘Laura, you're exhausted . . .'

‘I'm angry. Incredibly angry. You don't want to even make a start about discussing us.'

Victor shoved the cups into the sink. ‘You better go back to your room.'

‘I trusted you. I came here tonight to see if there's the start of a relationship we could develop. But you've built this great big wall around Victor Brodman – no one can see the real man. What we get is an island ranger, with a sunny disposition, but with less heart than one of those little lizards you stand guard over here.'

‘Laura, this isn't—'

‘Working. You're so dead right.'

‘Laura—'

‘Good night, Victor. I hope you're so damn well pleased with yourself.'

She left without slamming the door. For some reason that sudden silence was an even more eloquent expression of her contempt for him than words or noise ever could be.

Twenty-One

Victor opened his eyes. Far away the church clock struck two in the morning. He lay there in the darkness as echoes of the final chime lingered on the warm air. A moment later a human voice called his name to the rhythm of the bell's chime. ‘Victor . . . Victor . . . Victor . . .' Rather than sound it seemed a ghost of a sound.

Victor sat up in bed, hopeful that Laura had come across the yard from the farmhouse. Her accusations yesterday had pained him. Just what had made her flare up like that?

Now this call. It possessed a shimmering quality that suggested a voice emerging from the river waters. He went to the window. ‘Victor . . .' When he looked out it wasn't what he expected. First of all the farmyard had vanished. Instead of an area surrounded by fences, with the block-shaped farmhouse standing at the far side, there were trees. He licked his lips. A usual dryness made his mouth feel like paper. The person calling his name wasn't whom he'd hoped for. Jay stood beneath the trees, arms limp by his sides. Jay gazed up at Victor as he uttered his name: ‘Victor . . .'

Victor pushed open the window. Only it wasn't there any more. His hands brushed against leafy branches rather than glass.

‘Victor. I'll take you to meet someone.'

‘It's late,' Victor told him. ‘Go back to bed.'

‘Like I promised before, I've come to take you to her.'

‘No doubt you are in bed.' Victor gave a grim smile. ‘Just like I'm in bed. Because I'm dreaming all this, aren't I?' He glanced back at where his bedroom should be. In the moonlight he saw trees. Through the trunks he glimpsed silver glints of the Severn. He checked his hands. There was a scab on the stretch of skin between his fingers where he'd cut himself while freeing the fawn. ‘In great detail,' he told Jay. ‘But I'm still dreaming this.'

‘I'm going to show you Ghorlan.'

‘Correction. My subconscious is going to show me Ghorlan.' Victor grimaced. ‘She drowned in the river. They never found the body. So don't go showing me any horror pictures, will you?' Victor realized this wasn't so much a dream as the beginning of a nightmare. He sensed the approach of something ominous. ‘I'm not going to like this, am I? Tell me why am I questioning a dream version of Jay Summer?'

‘Follow me, Victor. I want you to be happy.'

‘Happy before I die?' Moonbeams pierced the branches. ‘Laura told me what happens. You're taking me for one of your little walks.'

Jay moved through the forest ahead of him. A herd of Saban parted to allow him through. Their blue eyes regarded Victor with such deep sorrow. They had the eyes of human babies. ‘So the legends are true . . . these animals are the souls of children . . . then I'm dreaming this, aren't I?' He pricked his hand as he pushed a branch aside. When he pulled out the black thorn from his palm a bead of red welled out. ‘Ouch. Boy, does this dream have verisimilitude.' He sucked the wound clean. ‘Good word that:
verisimilitude
. Authentic. The substance of truth.' He licked his dry lips. ‘I see accurate details: you, trees, moonlight, the river, the Saban, nettles, this purple foil from a chocolate bar in the grass. I felt the thorn prick my hand. See? Still bleeding. It tastes like real blood. Everything indicates reality. Only I'm in bed sleeping. So, therefore, I dream.'

‘Nearly there, Victor. You'll see her soon.'

‘Please God, don't make it a nightmare. The times I dream she's lying on the river bed . . . in such a mess . . .' He swallowed.

Jay continued in a monotone. ‘Victor . . . you see yourself walking through the forest. It's that day the new ferry replaced the old one with the yellow funnel. You're going to find Ghorlan; the sailing times have changed; you have to leave earlier, so you don't miss the ferry; you're going to visit your parents . . .'

‘Jay, I don't want to do this.' He tried to stop. However, his traitor feet kept him moving through the wood. A fox watched him. ‘Mr Fox, you know something I don't, don't you?' Despite shivers cascading through his flesh he chuckled. A light-headed sensation disorientated him.

Jay walked toward a moonlit clearing. ‘You're wearing the ranger fleece.'

‘It's our first wedding anniversary. It wasn't like this. I didn't walk through the woods in the dark.'

‘When you did see Ghorlan, you found her doing something, didn't you?' He moved faster. ‘She was doing something you didn't expect at all.'

Victor surged through the bushes into the clearing. A woman with hair as black as raven feathers knelt in the centre. Her actions were exactly the same as when he'd surprised her on that first anniversary of theirs.

Ghorlan glanced up, a look of astonishment on her beautiful face. ‘Victor? I didn't want you to see this. You weren't supposed to know.'

Victor approached her. When he'd seen her on that day she'd been wearing the green ranger fleece. Now she wore a white flowing dress, a fairy tale kind of outfit that a child might imagine would be gorgeous to an adult.

Victor's heart clamoured. ‘I know this is a dream,' he said. ‘I wish to God it wasn't.' He turned to Jay. ‘You've been making dreams come true, haven't you? Or at least you've tried. Because this wish-granting thing of yours has been going wrong, hasn't it?'

‘It's not my fault. People wish for the wrong thing. They want to see people who've died, but I can't make dead people live again. Not properly anyway.'

Victor watched Ghorlan. When he'd found her on that day a decade ago she'd been planting a tree. It had been her intention to surprise him with it. Then she'd been using a spade and been wearing the fleece. Now, in this dream-version she wore the beautiful flowing white dress as she smoothed soil around the newly planted tree with a shiny hand trowel.

‘It's Cedar of Lebanon,' she explained. ‘In my village it was a tradition to plant a cedar on the first wedding anniversary. It would grow as the married couple spent their years together. So the hillside near my home was magnificent with all the Cedar of Lebanon standing there. Big green sentinels. Enduring symbols of love, no?' She smiled at Victor, her lips an outrageous red. ‘You weren't supposed to see this yet. It was to be a surprise.'

The sensation made him sway. For a moment it seemed he'd really stepped back all those years to the day he found his wife planting the tree. While in his hand he saw he held a bracelet. Engraved on a gold tag: Ghorlan~Victor.

Victor shook his head. ‘Jay. This isn't right. You've manufactured a fantasy version of what happened. Ghorlan didn't wear a dress like that. She never wore scarlet lipstick. You think you're pleasing me by showing me Ghorlan, but you've made her grotesque. This is a leering puppet. Artificial. Lifeless!'