We Are Death (21 page)

The body of the librarian would never be seen again.

*

L
ate evening, they stood on the doorstep of the large house in the Kent countryside, a few miles south of Tunbridge Wells. The air was warm and much heavier than when they’d left the country twenty-four hours earlier.

Leighton rang the doorbell and turned to look over what they could see of the garden in the dark, illuminated by rows of solar-powered lights along the driveway, and then more randomly placed in amongst trees and shrubbery.

‘We should just have come in the morning,’ said Haynes.

They had had the pages of the book transferred to A4, and he was holding them in a folder in his right hand.

‘It’s fine to get him going,’ she said. ‘He lives for this kind of thing. The earlier we set him off, the quicker he’ll get it done.’

The door opened behind them and they turned. A woman in her seventies smiled, opening the door fully. Haynes was relieved to see she wasn’t in a nightgown.

‘Come in, come in,’ she said. ‘I expect the rain will be starting soon. Harrison’s been saying all evening that there’s a storm coming.’

They walked into the house, a reception hall with a stairway leading up from the centre. The walls were hung with paintings of the countryside and a rich still life of a brace of pheasants. There was a warm, maroon rug on the polished wooden floor. From one wall, there came the loud tick of a grandfather clock.

‘Come through into the lounge and wait. Harrison won’t be long, he’s just taking his medication.’

Haynes caught Leighton’s eye with a doubtful look.

‘Are you sure this is all right, Mrs Drummond?’ she said quickly. ‘We could come back tomorrow.’

‘No, no, it’s fine,’ she said. ‘He never sleeps anyway. Not when he goes to his bed, at any rate. Does most of his sleeping in the chair in the middle of the afternoon. You two sit in here, and I’ll get you a cup of tea and a biscuit while you wait.’

She turned, leaving them at the entrance to the lounge, and they walked into a room of organised antique chaos. Maps on the walls, two globes, old seafaring instrumentation on shelves and in cabinets, compasses and barometers and sextants. Three large model ships, and resting against the corner of the room, an anchor. Two framed charts on the lighthouses of Great Britain. In the middle of the rear wall, a large fireplace, the fire that had been burning during the day having dwindled away to the remnant of burning ashes.

‘A naval man, then?’ said Haynes. ‘And don’t say it...’

Leighton smiled.

‘Yes. Missed the War, of course, too young, but he was in the Royal Navy for thirty years. Naval historian since then, been attached to the Library since about 1985, I think.’

‘And he had the fire going,’ said Haynes, indicating the hearth.

‘He feels the cold.’

‘It’s still about thirty degrees out there.’

There was a noise at the door, and a man in his eighties appeared, walking with a stick, smart trousers, a teed waistcoat, soft cotton shirt and tie.

‘Margot,’ he said. ‘Thanks for coming round.’

She approached him and kissed him gently on the cheek, almost as if she was worried she’d knock him over.

‘You must be the police constable,’ he said.

‘Sergeant,’ said Leighton.

‘Sergeant, I’m sorry,’ said Drummond, and he took Haynes’s hand, surprising him with his grip.

‘Come on, come on, sit down. I won’t put any more logs on the fire. Don’t want to fall asleep in the chair. A bit of cold never did anyone any harm.’

Haynes caught Leighton’s eye and they shared a smile.

‘Let me see it, then, come on,’ he said, once he’d settled himself in one of the four chairs that surrounded the fireplace in a neat arc.

Haynes handed over the file, allowed Leighton to sit next to Drummond, and sat down across from the old man.

‘The whole book’s there,’ said Haynes, ‘but we’ve marked the chapter in which we’re particularly interested, if you could look at that first...’

Glasses on, the old man had the pages out and was leafing through them quickly, nodding as he looked. He stopped to study more carefully the chapter they had marked up, then kept on going until the end, Haynes and Leighton watching him the whole time.

‘Shouldn’t be too hard,’ he said. ‘I’ll have it done by morning.’

‘All of it?’ asked Haynes, somewhat incredulously.

‘Well, it may not be perfect, Sergeant, but I should imagine it would suffice for your needs. It’s not a long book, after all.’

‘That’d be great,’ said Haynes.

‘Of course,’ continued Drummond, ‘it might be better if I just popped these pages on the fire there and let them go up in smoke.’

He let the words out into the warm air, then looked from Leighton to Haynes.

‘Why would you do that, Harry?’ asked Leighton.

Haynes was looking at him with curiosity. He had a moment of fear that the old man might suddenly spring up and throw the paper on the fire, before remembering that he still had the information on his phone. It would be irritating, and perhaps illuminating, rather than disastrous.

‘Well, it’s not like me to be coming out with some hackneyed old cliché about mixing with forces you don’t understand, but clearly here you are in danger of getting in over your heads. I don’t know how or why you’ve come to this, or why you’re looking for it, but these pages, in particular the ones you marked, are leading you somewhere I strongly advise you not to go. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

His eyes were on Leighton, but really the question was for Haynes, so he leant forward, his hands clasped together, getting the old man’s attention.

‘I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, but I’m trying to find out. These people, whoever they are, they’re already here, they’re already coming for us. We’re not in a position to just decide that we’re not interested. We have to pursue this. We have no choice.’

Drummond was nodding before Haynes had finished. His slightly dotish demeanour of a couple of minutes earlier had vanished. Time to get down to business.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll get to work. Come back for breakfast. 10 am sharp.’

‘Can you at least give us some idea of what we’re talking about?’ asked Haynes, ‘given that you seem to know.’

There was a noise at the door, and Drummond’s wife appeared, carrying a tray heavily laden with cups and saucers, a teapot, milk, sugar, and a plate of small cakes. Drummond shook his head and waved at his wife.

‘Not now, Anne, they were just leaving.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, yes, I’ve got work to do. Come on, off with you, I’ll see you in the morning.’

He raised himself up out of the chair a lot more easily than had seemed likely from the way he’d lowered himself into it in the first place. Then he walked past them, as if they were already gone, through into a back room. A room that, from the brief view they got before he closed the door, looked even more cluttered with artefacts than the lounge.

‘I should apologise for him,’ said Anne Drummond, although her tone suggested that she found her husband’s behaviour entirely acceptable, ‘but once he’s got the bit between his teeth...’

‘That’s all right, Mrs Drummond,’ said Leighton. ‘I hope you’re not too upset that we’ve brought this to him so late at night.’

‘Don’t be silly. We both know that this is exactly the kind of thing he thrives on.’

Leighton turned and indicated to Haynes that it was time.

‘We’ll see ourselves out, and... well, I suppose we’ll see you again tomorrow morning.’

‘I shall look forward to it,’ she said, the laden tray still in her hands.

A minute later they were sitting in the car, Leighton driving, reversing down the driveway, the gate already having automatically opened for them.

‘I can’t stand it,’ said Haynes. ‘That. Drives me nuts.’

‘What?’

‘The false intrigue. If he knows something, and with all that
you crazy kids are meddling with forces you can’t possibly hope to understand
shit, he presumably does, why can’t he just tell us what the fuck it is?’

‘He has a flair for the dramatic. All these military men are the same.’

‘He could still–’

‘He’s an academic, Stuart. He checks his facts. Of course he’s not just going to spill out everything he knows, in case it’s potentially going in the completely wrong direction. He wants to read the book, he’ll likely jot down a quick translation of the relevant passages for us, and then he’ll fill us in in the morning.’

As they moved off, the first heavy raindrop landed on the car windscreen. Out onto the road, into second, and Leighton moved the car into the left-hand lane and accelerated on the way to the road back towards the M25. They were not quite far enough away to justify spending the night somewhere, rather than going back to her house.

‘The way things are going,’ said Haynes, ‘when we get back here in the morning, he’ll be dead. Or there’ll be someone else living in the house looking at us like, who are you? We’ve lived here for twenty-five years and we’ve no idea about any of this.’

‘You’ve got some imagination,’ she said, smiling.

‘It’s not like these things aren’t piling up.’

She patted him on the leg.

‘Time to let it go for the evening, Sergeant. Back to my place, food, wine and sex. Can we agree on that?’

The rain came down. Suddenly and dramatically, the sky lit up a short distance away and a few seconds later there was the roar of thunder.

*

M
aybe it was because of the large black spider, maybe it was what people did anyway, but there were five of them sleeping on the roof.

Jericho was cold, cursed the old sleeping bag he’d brought along. He dosed, he slept fitfully, he had little idea of time, other than that it seemed to be moving slowly.

Late in the evening he was disturbed by a movement. He raised his head slightly.

Badstuber had stood up out of her sleeping bag and was staring up into the sky. He watched her, as she stood still, her neck craning, her head moving very slowly across the night sky.

Jericho stared up, wondering if she was looking at anything specific. All he saw was the great mass of stars, the dense white sweep of the Milky Way. He glanced back at her, and then once more followed her upwards gaze. There was a star in amongst all the others, bright he realised, now that he’d noticed it, moving perceptibly past the galactic sea.

The sky was beautiful, and yet, inevitably, he found himself watching her, rather than the stars. She moved suddenly, now almost facing in his direction, and he closed his eyes. When he looked again, a few moments later, she was back in her sleeping bag, her head on her makeshift pillow.

––––––––

M
orlock knew the High Atlas, of course. He had travelled extensively and there were few places he did not know well. He covered ground quickly, he learned quickly, and he never forgot.

Kneeling on the side of a mountain, looking down on the scene around the large hut where walkers usually spent the night before heading on to the summit of Mount Toubkal, the highest peak in the Atlas, he knew precisely his escape route over the other side of the mountain and down into the valley below, having been here thirteen years previously.

He was there early, and prepared to wait. He had a bottle of water and some fruit, and would spend whatever time was required of him, waiting for his quarry.

There were few deserted areas in this particular region of the High Atlas at this time in August. It was the main tourist season, with hundreds of walkers in the area. Morlock, however, was able to position himself in a barren area, amongst the rocks and away from well-trodden paths, but his intended victim was unlikely ever to be so secluded. He was destined to die in full sight of others, so the minor difficulty for Morlock was in getting off the hill unseen. The problem barely troubled him.

At just before eleven he saw someone else he recognised approaching the midway hut, walking slowly, slightly behind a guide and a female companion. These three were likely seeking the same people as Morlock, but that too was of little interest to him.

People came and went all the time. Morlock was able to ignore all the outside noise and interference. He did what he was told, and he collected his money.

*

N
ot long after eleven in the morning, Jericho, Badstuber and the guide had arrived at the midway mountain station. A large hut, with sleeping on two levels, and a small shop, selling Mars Bars and cans of Coke. A cold river ran nearby, fifteen feet wide as it passed the bottom end of the hut.

The guide was off talking to the owners, asking after Geyerson, while Jericho and Badstuber stood looking back down the valley, each with a bottle of water in their hand.

The landscape was parched, the mountains rising on either side covered in bare, grey stones. Below them, they could see two groups of walkers approaching, both strung out.

‘Have you seen him again?’ asked Badstuber.

Despite the vagueness of the question, Jericho knew exactly who she was talking about.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Perhaps he hasn’t followed you here. Perhaps he can’t follow you here.’

‘I don’t think it works like that.’

He took another long drink of water. This was the most exercise he’d had in years, on consecutive days. He’d been stiff this morning, pain that had gradually worn off as he walked, but it was coming back now. He’d found himself dropping a couple of hundred yards behind Badstuber and the guide as they neared their destination.

He was mentally prepared for the guide to return and tell them they had to move on, but he was hoping they wouldn’t have to.

‘I can still feel him,’ he said. ‘He’s out there. I just don’t know... I don’t understand how much of a physical manifestation there will be. Of the man. Will he be able to do something other than sit there and look at me?’

‘How do you mean you can feel him?’

‘I can sense him. We
are
linked in some way.’

It sounded absurd, even to him, coming from his lips. The rest of his words dried up. Maybe it was time to return to the old Jericho. The one everybody expected. The one he understood in himself.