Текст книги "Cemetery Lake"

Автор книги: Paul Cleave

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

chapter twenty-seven

There’s nothing like waking late in the day with a hangover. It’s something every cop goes through at some point. Perhaps the difference between a good cop and a bad cop is the frequency.

Though even that may not be true. Good cops often drink lots

just to help them get through it. And I’m not a cop any more

anyway.

My bedroom is a tip. I can’t remember the last time I made the bed, and I’m not even sure what the point of it would be. Socks, underwear, shirts, and more socks and underwear cover the floor.

In the kitchen there’s a month’s worth of bourbon bottles and

pizza boxes all over the bench. There are glasses everywhere

and smells coming from cupboards I haven’t opened in a long

time. It’s just like the Alderman house. I pour a glass of water and gulp down a pair of painkillers. I should probably eat but never seem to have any appetite – though the number of pizza boxes

suggests differently. I open the fridge on the off-chance that might change, but when I see what’s in there I reckon I’ll probably never eat again. I make some coffee, then take a shower. It’s been

month since I used a washing machine or an iron, and I don’t see any point in breaking a tradition that seems to be working. I grab some clothes from the top of one of the hampers, figuring they’ll smell less than the ones at the bottom, and definitely less than the ones I just slept half the day in. I dig my hands into the hamper and pull up the clothes from the bottom, recycling them to the top where they’ll air out more.

The dining table has a stack of unopened bills. Bills for power, for the phone, for the mortgage and for my wife. Most of Bridget’s bills are covered by insurance, but not everything. There’s even an outstanding bill from the florist. The rent on my office has expired – or, more accurately, I stopped paying it, and a message left on my machine says the lease is being terminated. I think after what happened the last night I was there, they were quick to kick me out. The industrial cleaners came out to give me a quote but I wasn’t there to see it. They tried contacting me for a bit, but then gave up. I don’t even know what in the hell happened. There’s

probably a bill in here to tell me.

I don’t have the money to pay for another taxi – I’m not even sure how I paid to get home from the station. The small amount of cash left in my wallet already has a designated purpose. I don’t have a lot of options.

It takes me over an hour to walk to the cemetery, by which

time the day is fading and my hands and feet are almost numb.

The church looks dark and gloomy. Mine is the only car parked

out front. I’m violating the boundaries of the protection order even approaching it, but that’s just one more thing I couldn’t really give a damn about.

Just as I get the car started, a van pulls up behind me, blocking me in so that I can’t go anywhere. It’s a similar view to the one I had this morning, except it isn’t two policemen who wander

over but a reporter and a cameraman. I recognise Casey Horwell imediately. She pulls down on the front of her suit jacket to try to get her breasts looking a little better than they are, and it occurs to me that if she can’t get a miracle like that in a church car Park she’s never going to get it.

Just a few questions,’ she says, knocking on my window. Her voice is muffled behind the glass.

‘No comment,’ I say back.

I don’t know what to do. I can’t drive anywhere, and I can’t

talk to these people, and I can’t just sit here hiding, because that makes me look guilty or stupid or both. The only alternative is to open the door and climb out. Actually, there is an alternative, but it involves pushing Casey Horwell over into the gravel and stealing the cameraman’s camera. Instead, I try my best to put on a blank face and use it to look into the camera.

And I say nothing.

‘You’re back here at the cemetery where it all began,’ she says, and I wonder how she knew I would be here – a tip-off of a

lucky guess. Maybe luck didn’t have anything to do with it. Just logic.

I don’t respond.

‘Which is strange, because it’s now on public record you have

had a protection order against you. You were picked up this morning violating it, and instead of being thrown in jail, the friends you so proudly have in the department let you out, and what’s worse is they bring you right back here so you can get your car.’

I let her carry on, not bothering to correct her mistake on how I got here. The last thing she wants me to do is to say absolutely nothing and give her dead air. She starts to scramble, trying to keep up.

‘Would you care to comment on the disappearance of Sidney

Alderman?’

I don’t answer her.

‘Because my source tells me that you’re involved with his

disappearance.’

Still nothing.

‘What do you think Father Julian’s involvement is in all of

this? How long will you keep stalking him? And how far do you

think you will take it?’

Her questions are suggestive but I don’t answer them. I’m

sure that on camera I look tired and hung over and every bit the murderer she wants me to be. But there’s no way I’m going to say anything to her.

Finally she gives up. ‘That’s a wrap,’ she says, and drags her finger across her throat. The cameraman lowers his camera. The light switches off.

‘Who’s your source?’ I ask.

‘Didn’t think you were talking.’

‘Who?’

‘You don’t seriously think I’m going to tell you that?’

‘You can’t, can you, because there is no source. You keep pissing people off, Horwell, and it’s going to catch up on you.’

‘And you’ll take care of that? It’s what you do, isn’t it?’

I climb back into my car. She walks with the cameraman back

to the van, and I think I hear her saying there’s enough time to do something with the piece tonight. Great. That means I’ll be making the ten o’clock news. Just when my parents are likely to be watching.

The van pulls away, and I wait until the lights disappear before driving off in the same direction, heading for the care home.

I don’t want to spend any more time with the dead. I’m aware of the irony, of course – sitting with Bridget is hardly like spending time with the living. But Bridget doesn’t seem to mind the way I look or that my clothes are covered with stains that were once food related. She doesn’t care that I no longer show up with

flowers. She lets me hold her hand while I stare out the window at the same useless view she’s been staring at for twenty-five months now. I don’t talk to her. What would I say? That I spent the first third of the day drunk, the second third asleep, and I’m planning on repeating one of those thirds for the rest of it?

The darker it grows outside, the more our reflections start to solidify in the window. If the accident hadn’t taken her away from me, would she still love me? Would the last four weeks of my life have turned her away? Or would she have saved me?

When I get outside I look up to see her sitting by the window, staring out. I give her a wave, and allow a flutter of hope that she might wave back. She doesn’t even move.

I stop at a bottle store on the way back to the cemetery. The

Pull of both these places is so strong, I’m unable to drive anywhere

else. The store is small and cold and full of bright colours and shiny bottles that suggest drinking ought to be a lot more fun than it is. The guy behind the counter doesn’t recognise me – I’ve been using different stores over the month, which I guess means that part of me doesn’t want to be found out as a drunk by strangers.

I use the last of my cash, emptying out my wallet and dropping the loose change into my pocket.

I park by the tree line near the caretaker’s grave. I open the fresh bottle of bourbon. I intend to let the remainder of the day slide by without me breaking any laws other than being too close to Father Julian. I wonder, too, though without much hope,

whether the cold might just come and take me in the night.

chapter twenty-eight

Around midnight I wake up covered in fog. It clings to me with cold misty fingers. When I stand up I find that the fog is only at ground level, about waist high. I can’t see my legs. Or my drink.

I kneel back down and have to use my hands to find the bourbon.

The bottle is on its side. I stand back up and check it out. Most of it has gone, seeped into the ground. Maybe the caretaker can enjoy it.

My head starts pounding and I reach into my pocket for

painkillers. You learn a few tricks when the drinking turns from a habit into a way of life. I wash them down with more booze, and for a moment consider taking all of them, given how long they’ll take to kick in. Then I stagger to my car, and scrape my credit card across the windscreen to clear the ice – it’s the only thing it’s good for these days. I turn the heater on full and start the car, but keep the lights off and wait for things to warm up before rolling through the fog. I kill the engine at the edge of the parking lot and take another swig from the bottle. Things are obviously turning my way – otherwise all of the bourbon would have poured out while I was asleep.

The church is still dark and the living quarters around the back are out of view. I sit in the car with the heater on, sipping more bourbon to summon up the courage, all too aware there was once a day when I didn’t need bourbon fuel to find my strength.

I close the car door quietly and walk slowly towards the church.

My upper body looks like it is floating on top of the fog. The quarter moon is forming weak shadows, making pale reflections

dance off the stained-glass windows, making the images move,

making them look like they are watching me. My toes are numb

and painful, and my legs are getting wet from the fog. I’m almost around to the side when I trip on what feels like rock. I go down hard, bracing my fall with my hands. There’s a fierce stinging in my palms from the stones that have cut through my skin.

I roll onto my back and stare up at the sky, but all I can see is the fog that has wrapped around my body. It’s like being inside a cloud. I reach up as if to punch a hole to look through, but it makes no impression.

I’m lying there, picking away at the stones in my palms, when

the sound of the church door closing makes me go completely

still. I stay flat and roll my head towards the sound. I can feel the moisture from the ground cooling the hot blood on my hands. I

have to sit up to see through the top layer of the fog.

A figure moves along the wall of the church, keeping in the

shadows. I stay calm, knowing there’s no way Father Julian can see me. Suddenly I feel something sparking away inside of me,

something that has been numb for the last month. It’s a mixture of hope and curiosity. The ground seems to sway as I stand back up and begin to follow him. Julian passes my car, keeping a wide berth, finding safety in the darkness of the church, and then

moving into the trees that line the path to the road. Had I still been in the car, I would never have known he was there.

Julian crosses the road to where his car is parked and starts to work the key into the lock. I turn back and race to my own car, then wait until I hear Julian’s starting before I start mine. Out on the road, I see that he is about three blocks ahead of me. The fog that had attached itself to the cemetery and church has just as strong a grip out here, only the street lights make it look thinner.

Julian turns left. I turn my lights on and begin to follow him. I can just make out his tail lights through the fog about two blocks away.

The occasional car comes towards us. Julian drives around

the cemetery, then turns towards town. He starts to drive faster and I do the same, knowing if he gets too far ahead I’ll lose him as soon as another set of tail lights appears. He races through the intersection, and I follow suit. He isn’t making any evasive manoeuvres, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t figured out I’m

following him. And it’s quite clear that if he parked out on the road and snuck past my car he didn’t want me to know where he

was going.

The lights ahead turn orange. Julian makes it through. I put

my foot down, gaining on him a little more quickly than I would have liked, though I’m pretty sure he’s not going to …

Only I don’t make it all the way through the intersection.

The car emerges out of the fog like a train. I turn my head

towards it, then lift my hands up to cover my face as it slams into me, the shrieking sound of metal loud enough to make my ears

bleed.

For a few moments there is nothing but madness as I scramble

to gain control of the car, but it’s impossible. There is another explosion of sound as I come to a stop, and then nothing as the world slowly darkens around me.

chapter twenty-nine

Alcohol and burning metal. That’s all I can smell. The windscreen has shattered into thousands of tiny diamonds. The engine has

stalled, the front of the car has folded around the lamppost.

The hood has twisted and bent up into a V, and from beneath it plumes of steam are rising and mixing into the fog. More steam is coming through the air vents into the car. The stereo is going.

The heater is going. There is a high-pitched ringing in my ears.

The lamppost is on an angle. Its fluorescent light has busted

and sparks are slowly raining down on the car. I can taste blood and bourbon. There is a pain in my leg. My chest. There is pain everywhere. I tilt my head back, close my eyes and wait for it all to disappear. It doesn’t.

My neck hurts when I move, but I manage to unclip my

seatbelt. The door is buckled and there is safety glass all over my lap. There are chips of paint on my hands, cracks in the dashboard, and sharp pieces of plastic sticking up. One of my fingernails has lifted up and bent all the way back, a few threads of skin the only things stopping it from touching my knuckle. Before thinking too much about it, I wipe it backwards across my leg so that the strands of skin stretch and break and the nail sticks to my pants and stays there. The door won’t budge, so I try to climb over the passenger seat. It is then the floodgates open and pain wracks my body, one knee jamming into the handbrake, the other into the mostly empty bottle of bourbon that has somehow jumped from the foot-well and onto the seat in the crash. It is all I can do to not cry out as I push open the door and stumble out to the road. My feet skid on stones and glass, and I fall onto my knees.

The world is caught in the grips of an earthquake, but I’m the only one feeling it. I get up and balance myself by holding onto the side of the car. There is a shooting pain rolling up and down my leg-The glow from the traffic lights changes colour as one set goes red and the other green. Glass grates beneath my feet as I move, pieces of it cutting into the soles of my shoes. There is blood on my shirt and pants and more of it flowing down the side of my face. I reach up and pull away fingers covered in blood. Only one of my eyes is focusing.

I look back into the car at the empty bottle of bourbon, and

I understand instantly that its contents have brought me to this. I lean in and grab it, then pitch it into the distance. It disappears into the night. Jesus is looking down at me from above the hovering fog, his eyes open, his mouth in a tight smile. He is looking into me, but he is not admonishing me. He is too busy.

His hands are wrapped around a bottle of McClintoch Spring Water. The bourbon bottle crashes and the sound brings the world into focus. It tones down the ringing in my ears and allows a flood of other sounds to pour in. I look away from the billboard and wipe smoke and blood from my eyes, and I move away from my car to draw in clean air.

The abyss gets deeper.

A woman is screaming. It’s a high-pitched note that threatens to break the windscreens of other cars pulling over. Ahead of me a four-door sedan has spun around in the intersection. The front of it is completely caved in. Clouds of steam surround it so I can’t tell if anybody is inside. The screaming is coming from a woman ^ho has pulled over and has probably thought her entire life that she would take action in a moment like this and is quickly finding

she can’t. She has opened her car door, stood up but hasn’t gone any further. Another car is starting to pull over.

I reach the wreck first. I push my arms into the steam and

touch metal, pushing myself close enough to see inside. There’s a woman in there, slumped over the wheel. She looks young.

Like me, she had no airbag. I try opening the driver’s door, but it’s jammed. The woman’s eyes are open; they are rolled into the back of her head and her jaw is pushed forward, either broken or locked, and there is a steady stream of blood coming from the left side of her mouth. I pat down my pockets and find my cellphone but can only stare at it in my hand.

‘Out of the way, buddy,’ a man says, reaching past me. He tries the driver’s door too, then moves around to the passenger side, and it comes open with a loud screech. He looks over at me. ‘You gonna use that thing?’

I look down at my cellphone. It has survived the crash, but

still I can only stare at it.

I have just become the very thing I hate the most. I have

become Quentin James: full-time drunk and part-time killer.

chapter thirty

They want to take me to the police station but my injuries require otherwise. I sit in the back of an ambulance and nobody talks

to me. A paramedic tends to my wounds but he doesn’t really

seem to be putting any energy into it. Like everybody else he’ll be wishing I was the one who was dead.

After a while a policeman takes a statement from me. He

doesn’t know who I am. Doesn’t know my history. I tell him

what happened. He tells me that witness reports indicate I ran a red light. That it had been red for at least two seconds before I hit the intersection. He asks if I’ve been drinking. I tell him I have, because he’s going to test me anyway. He pulls out a breathalyser and makes me say my name into it, as though he’s giving me an

interview and the breathalyser is a microphone. He looks at the numbers, then writes them down. I know what they’re telling

him. I’m way over the limit even though I feel sober. Killing a Woman will do that to you.

At the hospital I’m put up in an emergency ward with dozens

of other people. My bed has a curtain drawn around it. The cut to my leg is stitched up and bandaged and I’m told it will leave a scar. There are other cuts over my body too, other scars. The finger with the missing fingernail is cleaned, wrapped in gauze and bandaged. There is a cut at the top of my forehead which gets stitched. Blood is cleaned off my face. Safety glass is plucked out of my knees. My scraped-up palms with tiny pieces of shingle in them are cleaned.

When the nurse is all done fixing me up, she pushes past the

curtain and Landry pushes his way in. He is expressionless, as if he can’t be bothered being angry with me any more. It’s worse.

‘Of all the people to be drunk and driving,’ he says.

‘I don’t need the lecture.’

‘What were you thinking, Tate?’

‘I don’t know’

“I tried to warn you.’

“I know’

‘Jesus, don’t you have anything else you can say?’

‘I … I don’t know. I wish I did. Jesus, I feel so numb. So

numb.’

‘The girl’s in a coma,’ he says. ‘It’s serious. Four broken ribs, a punctured lung and her jaw was dislocated. You’re lucky she’s not dead.’

I’m lucky.

My heart starts to flutter. ‘I… I thought she was dead.’

She’s lucky.

Luck.

;er.

“I know. Only nobody felt like telling you.’

I’m too angry at myself to direct any of it towards him.

‘She’s going to be okay?’

‘You better pray, Tate. You better fucking pray’

Nobody comes to see how I’m doing over the next hour, and

nobody has made the effort to feed me any painkillers, though

the throbbing in my head and from all the wounds is becoming

unbearable. Nobody cares about that. They all care about the

woman I hurt, and so they should. I want to go and see her. I

want to speak to her family and tell them how sorry I am. I can’t, of course. I’d simply be making myself the punching bag for their anger.

Eventually two officers come to get me. They don’t cuff me.

With a bare minimum of words and gestures they escort me out

to a police car. I sit in the back for the short drive to the station.

They don’t put me in an interrogation room. Instead they escort me to the drunk tank full of other people who’ve made similar

fuck-ups tonight.

I find a small piece of real estate I can call my own, a piece of bench between one guy already passed out and another guy on

his way to passing out. I take my jacket off and ball it up so I can lie down and rest it behind my head. I’ve never been in jail before – not one I couldn’t freely leave at any time – and even this is only a waiting room for the real thing. The smell is overpowering and the moans coming from the other drunks irritating. The floor is covered in piss and the toilet looks about as bad as toilets can possibly get. The cream cinderblock walls spread a chill into the room. I wonder which side of things luck would fall on now.

I stay awake all night. Occasionally our numbers go up, and

in the end we all make it through to the morning. As they lead me from the cell I think about Bridget and Emily and what they would think of me now. I remember having the same thought

yesterday.

I’m led through to the same interrogation room I sat in

yesterday. Everybody looks at me on the way. Yesterday it was

with pity. Today it’s contempt.