Текст книги "Cemetery Lake"

Автор книги: Paul Cleave

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chapter fifty-seven

‘Why can’t I get hold of Schroder?’ I ask.

“He’s busy, Tate,’ Landry says. ‘He’s got his own case he’s

working on. I was about to call you anyway. Where are you?’

‘He did it,’ I say. ‘David Harding killed Henry Martins first.

Then Rachel. Then the others.’

‘What the hell? Are you drinking?’

“He did it, Landry. He absolutely did it. He found Henry

Martins and confronted him about leaving, and when he learned

the truth, when he learned from Martins that his real father was Father Julian, he used that university education of his and killed him, but first he got the list of names. Martins knew about Julian’s bank accounts. That’s how he found out Julian was having those affairs. It might even be why he started to suspect his own wife.

He knew the list of names and he gave them to David before he

died.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Listen to me, Landry. David Harding …’

“No, you listen to me. Where the hell are you?’

The city is dark now. The cloud cover is thick, but the occasional flash of sky comes through and shows a quarter moon or a few

stars before shrouding back up. Sunday night is kicking in, and Christchurch is getting ready to watch primetime TV before

falling asleep and starting the week all over again.

Answer me, Tate. Where the hell are you?’

‘I’m out and about.’

‘Jesus, I told you to stay the hell out of the way. Where’s

Horwell?’

‘What?’

‘She just phoned her producer a few minutes ago. You’re in

some deep shit.’

‘What?’

‘You need to come into the station.’

I pull the car over and cut the ignition. ‘What the hell is going on, Landry?’

‘Horwell made the call. Somehow she got to her cellphone.

She says you abducted her and you’re going to kill her. She said everything she suspected about you was true, and you found

out. She said she had proof you killed Quentin James and Sidney Alderman, and also Father Julian. And she gave us a location.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘Come down to the station.’

‘Have you found Deborah Lovatt?’

‘Stop making things harder for yourself.’

‘It’s David Harding. He’s doing all of this.’

‘You’re wrong about Harding. I have a good bullshit meter,

Tate, and Harding didn’t even make a blip on it.’

‘That’s because the guy’s a sociopath,’ I say. ‘It was an act.

Come on, Landry, you need to trust me.’

I pull back out and start driving fast. I steer around a corner a little too quickly and my dad’s car fishtails. I drop the cellphone while I gain control of the car.

‘What the hell?’ Landry asks when I pick the phone back up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘When is Father Julian getting buried?’

‘What? He got buried today’

^Nobody gets buried on a Sunday’

‘Yeah, well, God or somebody made an exception. It was

all part of the service. It was Julian’s church, so it made sense somehow to have the funeral today. Look, Tate, you need to calm down and think about what you’re doing. You hurt Horwell, and

you’re …’

‘I don’t have her, Landry. You’re being used, don’t you get

that?’

“He sed? Explain that to me?’

‘Figure it out yourself. Look, I’m on my way to find Deborah

Lovatt. I know where she is. She’s …’

‘She’s at home, Tate. She spent the weekend with her boyfriend, and she left her cellphone behind. She’s home and we’ve spoken to her.’

‘What?’

‘Whatever is going on, Tate, is going on inside your head.

Now listen to me, you need to …’

But I’m not listening to him. Deborah is at home? It doesn’t

make sense.

‘… some serious shit.’

‘What?’

“I said …’

‘It doesn’t matter. I gotta go,’ I say. I hang up and switch off my cellphone.

If Deborah Lovatt is fine, then who is David meeting today?

The cemetery is like a magnetic pull. It’s so strong that even if I drove all night in the other direction somehow I’d end up arriving back here. The entire graveyard is one huge shadow. My headlights fight back the darkness as I drive into it. There are no police cars parked anywhere and I figure that’s all part of David Harding’s plan. The night of the funeral of a murder victim normally has the grave under surveillance. It’s standard procedure, because killers often like to come back. But not tonight. David Harding has led them all away in a different direction, probably about as far away as he can get them from the cemetery. He’s using Casey Horwell and me as bait, and it’s working.

The sky is overcast, no slivers of moonlight, and as I start to run to the church the rain begins again as if to cleanse the night.

I think about how that conversation between David and Henry

went, and decide it would have started badly and only got worse.

I can only assume he was David’s first kill. I wonder what he

thought, how he felt, and I wonder if in that we are similar. I felt nothing after killing Quentin James. I certainly felt no desire to do it again, even though I have done. I wonder if killing Henry Martins was like scratching an itch for David, or whether it was an experience that created an urge.

I reach the church. There is nobody around. No cars. No sign

of life. But eight hours ago things were different. Eight hours ago all the crime scene tape was pulled away from the chapel and the pews were full of people. Father Julian came back to the church for one final time for one final service. Friends and family and his parishioners prayed over him. They sang, they shed tears and told stories, and they put tokens and photos on his coffin. Some would have felt relief. None of them truly knew the man they

were burying.

I make my way inside the same way I did the other night,

and walk through the chapel and to the front of the church, my torch leading the way. The place still feels like it has a presence – maybe it’s Father Julian. I scan through the registry and find it’s already been updated with the Sunday funeral of the priest.

I study the map of the grounds and figure out the location.

I carry the small Maglite with me as I walk among the dead,

and the images of what happens in horror movies when people

like me walk through places like this suddenly seem real. Hands digging up through the ground, the rotting dead back to some

semblance of life with bony fingers as they claw their way from the dirt that has kept them captive. I shake the images away and they’re replaced with David Harding, a man far scarier and far more real.

It takes me ten minutes to reach the other side of the cemetery.

Running through the gravestones and the trees is like running

around in a maze. There could be a dozen other people in here

and I’d completely miss them. Given the amount of time I’ve

spent in the cemetery lately I ought to know the place like my own backyard, because that’s what it’s become. Maybe if I started drinking it’d all come back to me. The rain starts to ease up again, and the soft ground sucks at my feet. When I get to the section of plots I want, I don’t even know for sure that I’m in the right place. Everything looks the same.

I start scanning the headstones. Names and dates start flashing by as I begin running between them, hardly slowing down as the torch lights up the inscriptions. Birthdays, death-days, messages from the dead, from the living, beloved by all, by some, by few – they blend into one as I move between them, my feet threatening to slip on the grass with every step. I start looking for freshly turned earth.

There are thousands of graves out here. But only one of

interest.

It doesn’t take long to understand that I’m lost. Dark trees and dark graves, and nothing to help me get my bearings. Even when I start to backtrack my steps, I don’t know where they are. The grave I want could be anywhere. The church could be anywhere.

Then the world rushes up as my feet drop away, and suddenly

I’m falling. I get my arms halfway up my body, but not all the way, and my face hits the opposite edge of the grave wall; my

head snaps back, my shoulder smacks into the edge of the coffin lid, one leg goes into the coffin, and the other is shunted against the dirt wall. For a few moments I can’t move as the darkness

settles in around me. I have no idea what has happened. The

world has gone dark and my mind is spinning.

Slowly this land six feet down from the rest of the world shifts into place and it isn’t pretty. I can feel a hand beneath me, pressing into my chest. My face is wedged up against the side of the coffin.

I manage to roll onto my side, and suddenly the light appears

again as my body shifts off the torch. I pick it up.

I’m the only person in the grave. The coffin is open, the pink lining clean except for a sprinkling of dirt, and the entire thing is wet. And blurry. The entire coffin is blurry, and when I hold my hand out ahead of me and point the torch at it I see both hand and torch are blurry too. I reach up and touch my forehead, and my fingers come away wet with blood.

I grab the edge of the coffin to try to pull myself up, but my hand slides across it and I slip back. I kill the torch and let the darkness settle over me, and for a moment I have fallen far deeper than the depth of a coffin six feet in the earth, and into another world that light or life has never touched. I listen to the night but can’t hear a thing – not at first – then I begin to make out a soft murmuring. It disappears, and I begin to convince myself it was only the wind when it starts again. I turn the torch back on for a second to orientate myself, then I make my way to the end of the coffin and step onto it, balancing myself by pushing my hands into the damp walls of the grave. I think about Sidney Alderman, and then I think about all the policemen and women I’ve known

over the years, and all the cops in movies and TV and books who say they never believe in coincidences. I think of Quentin James and I think of the man I became. I think all those cops who don’t believe in coincidences need to live a little more.

I reach up and brace my arms over the ground and kick at the

cold wall of dirt as I make my way up. Every day above ground is a good day, so the saying goes, and suddenly I know whoever came up with that got it dead right. I listen for the sound again but can’t hear anything. I point the torch at the temporary gravestone and highlight Father Julian’s name. There are no other inscriptions – they’re being saved for the real gravestone.

There’s a mound of dirt piled up about a metre away from

the coffin. A large tombstone ahead of it must have blocked my view of it before. I stay low to the ground and look around, but all I can see are dark shadows across a landscape of black. I creep a few gravestones along, then squat down. I reach into my pocket for my phone, only to find that it’s been busted in the fall. Maybe God is trying to tell me something about cellphones.

I drop down to my knees and I listen as hard as I can. I close my eyes and wait, and after a few seconds the noise returns – just briefly, but it’s enough for me to get a fix on the direction.

I move a short distance away from the grave.

I take the torch out of my pocket. There is a dark shape on the ground. I crouch and turn on the torch. A girl, perhaps in her late teens or early twenties, is naked, her skin scuffed up with mud.

Her hands are bound behind her, her ankles bound too. The same duct tape binding her has also been placed across her mouth. The rain has swept the blood from a cut in her shoulder over her

chest. She is shaking. Her face is so pale she looks as though her body has been completely exsanguinated. Her dark eyes are

wide with fright as she stares at me. She tries to pull away. All she can see is the torchlight, and I realise she thinks I’m the one who did this to her. I have no idea who she is, what sister she could be.

I turn off the light and take off my jacket to put over her, and then the sound of a car comes crashing through the silence.

chapter fifty-eight

‘Don’t worry, I’m going to get you out of here, okay?’

The torch is still off, so I can’t tell whether she looks as though she believes me or not. But I’m sure her mind will grip tight to the ‘or not bit when I tell her what’s going to happen next. I have put my jacket back on.

‘I’m going to leave you tied up, okay?’

She starts whimpering.

“I need him to think he’s here alone with you.’

The headlights wash towards me, and I duck down on the

other side of the gravestone to where the girl is lying. The car comes to a stop, and I figure David has just dumped Father Julian in the lake. David is following the same routine, even though he didn’t start it.

‘Don’t let him know, okay? If he lets you speak, don’t tell him.

You have to be calm. I’m a police officer, I’m going to help you get through this, but you have to trust me. You’re going to be okay, I promise.’

The lights are no longer pointing in my direction, but rather

at the grave I fell into. David keeps them on but shuts off

the engine. He steps out of the vehicle and crosses the path of the beams, and I can see he’s dressed completely in black. Maybe he’s mourning his father. There is another change that has taken place since the last time I saw him, but then I realise it isn’t a change at all, that the man I am looking at is the David Harding he has been for the last two years since he found out the woman he loved was his sister. The man I saw a month ago was the impostor, the grieving David Harding who stared at the ring and who looked

like his heart had just been torn open. I move out from behind the stone and duck behind another one five graves away.

He looks out over the graveyard and I wonder if he’s looking

for me. He pauses when his eyes come to rest on the girl. There is enough ambient light for him to see her. He shrugs his shoulders back as if to get rid of a crick in the middle of his back, then walks forward. He isn’t holding anything in his hands. When he reaches her he crouches down.

‘This isn’t your fault,’ he says. ‘Really there is only one person to blame, but if it makes you feel any better, he’s taken responsibility for his actions.’

The girl murmurs. There is enough light to see the absolute

fear in her face. Her hair is tangled up and sticking to her cheeks.

David reaches forward and brushes it aside.

‘You’re probably wondering how I can be doing this,’ he says,

‘and sometimes I wonder the same thing. I think about it a lot, you know. Ever since Rachel. She was your sister too. I think how things might have been different, but you know what? They’re

not different, are they? They’re exactly as they are.’

He grabs her arms and starts dragging her towards the grave.

She slides easily over the wet ground. I still have no idea who this girl is.

She tries pulling away from him, but she’s too weak, too cold, and probably in too much shock to be able to fight him. He gets her next to the grave. He lays her alongside the hole and crouches over her.

I start circling around the edge of the light towards him.

The girl’s murmurs grow louder.

‘Sshh,’ he says, ‘sshh. It’s going to be okay now. Ifs going to be okay. Things are going to be easier for you than the others.’

He unzips his jacket and takes it off. He undoes his belt

and pulls it from his waist. He undoes the button and the fly, and starts to lower his jeans.

He hears my footsteps as I run towards him. He looks over his

shoulder, but he can’t move because his pants are halfway down his legs, and when I hit him he’s in no position to defend himself.

We fly into the grave and he lands heavily on the coffin with me on top of him, just like it was with Sidney Alderman. There is a loud cracking sound of bone breaking, but if it’s mine I can’t feel anything.

It’s not dark down here like it was last time, and I’ve a better idea of the geography of the place now, so I’m able to right myself before he does. I pull him up by the front of his jacket and swing my fist at him as hard as I can, and this time the sound of breaking bone comes from my hand as it connects with the side of his face.

He falls backwards, and I start to shake my hand, unsure of how many fingers I’ve just busted.

I get to my feet and back away.

David Harding lies unconscious, his arm twisted on a strange

angle and his face lolled into the corner of the coffin.

I make my way out of the ground the same way I did last time.

The girl is staring at me. There is a small bloodspot in her left eye, perhaps from a burst blood vessel. I pull the tape from her mouth and she sucks in a deep breath. I grab my keys and try using the longest one to cut through the duct tape around her wrists but it won’t make a start.

‘Wh … where is … is he?’ she asks, her teeth chattering and her eyes darting back and forth like a wired-up junkie’s.

‘It’s okay’ I say.

‘That’s … that’s what he said.’

I try picking at the edge of the tape, but my fingers are too

cold on one hand and busted up on the other.

‘What’s your name?’ I ask.

‘Stacey’

‘Listen to me, Stacey, it’s going to be okay. My name is Tate

and I’m here to help you. You just have to wait here for a few seconds.’

“No, no, don’t leave.’

“I’ll be ten seconds.’

‘Please.’

It hurts to ignore her cry, but I do it. I open the door to David’s car and pop open the glovebox. There’s a pocketknife in there

that makes fast work of the duct tape.

She sits up and folds her arms in front of her.

‘Okay Stacey, here’s what I want you to do. We’re going to

get you to your feet and into the car,’ I say, taking off my jacket.

‘It’s dry and warm in there, and —’ I wrap the jacket around her – ‘and I want you to drive away from here. You know how to drive, right?’

‘Where do I go?’

“I want you to drive home. Then call the police.’

‘Okay’

I help her into the car. She tightens the jacket around her when she sits down. I lean in and start it.

‘Drive carefully, Stacey. You’re in a state of shock, you need to be careful. Do you think you can drive?’

‘Yes.’

Are you sure?’

‘There’s another woman.’

‘Where is she?’

‘He made her make a phone call. He made her lie about where

we were.’

‘Where is she, Stacey?’

She starts to cry. “I was so scared. I couldn’t help her. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything.’

‘Where is she?’

‘He put her into the water. He tied something around her legs

and she couldn’t swim with all that weight. She just sank. She sank real fast. It was so …’

She doesn’t finish the sentence.

‘Put your seatbelt on, Stacey.’

‘Okay’ She answers as if on automatic now. ‘Do you have a

cellphone? I can call the police.’

“It’S not on me. If you don’t think you can drive, then wait at the exit from the graveyard.’

‘What way is that?’

‘Turn around and go back the way he came. You’ll see where

to go soon enough.’

‘Okay’

And Stacey?’

‘Yes.’

‘Take your time. There’s no hurry now. I have a promise to

keep.’

chapter fifty-nine

There has to be a shovel around here somewhere but I can’t see it. I don’t want to spend long looking for it, and after about a minute I figure that’s long enough. The night is quiet except for the wind swirling around the trees and the rain slapping on the ground.

I shine the torch into the grave, and David is lying there in the same position I left him.

‘Hey hey, David, wake up. Hey!’

I pick up handfuls of dirt and start throwing them at his

face, hoping they’ll bring him around but they don’t. My hand

is aching from the punch I threw. I throw more dirt at David.

He groans. He looks half asleep as he tries to roll over inside the coffin. Things get a little awkward for him, and he reaches up to his face and a moment later opens his eyes.

Everything must flood back to him, because now he sits up

straight. His arm is on a funny angle and he stares at it with a confused look. He seems to understand what has happened just

as the pain hits him. His face tightens up as he tries to cradle his bad arm with his good.

‘What the fuck?’ he says.

‘Remember me?’ I ask.

He looks up at me, and I point the torch at myself so he can

get a good look.

“Yeah look, Mister, I don’t want any trouble here,’ David says, as if I’m the one causing trouble and he just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

‘Cut the bullshit, David. You’re not fooling me twice.’

‘I don’t even know who you are,’ he says, and a month ago he

might have been able to act his way out of any situation. But right here, right now in this moment, the mask he wears to fit into and be a part of normal society doesn’t cover his eyes.

‘You know who I am.’

‘And what if I do?’

‘If you do, then you know you’re seriously fucked up right

about now.’

‘So what, you’re going to kill me now? Is that your plan?’ he

asks.

‘You know I really haven’t decided yet. That’s about as close

as I can get. See, the last four weeks have been kind of tough on me. Hell, the last two years. I’m trying to weigh everything up, and I just don’t know.’

‘Fuck you.’ He gets to his feet and starts looking around,

probably trying to figure out if he can climb out before I get to him. I wonder how he got Father Julian out. He doesn’t look

strong enough to have lifted that much weight. I point the torch at the ground and pick out drag marks across the grass. He probably tied a rope around the body and towed it with his car. Maybe he towed him all the way to the lake.

‘Tell me why’ I say.

‘Get me the fuck out of here, man, my arm is killing me.’

‘Talk to me.’

‘No.’

‘Come on, tell me why. Was it because you liked fucking your

sisters?’ I ask, trying to shock him.

He doesn’t answer. Just looks up at me.

‘That’s why you raped them all, right? Because you loved it.’

‘How the fuck can you know anything about anything?’

‘I heard the tapes, David. I know you enjoyed it.’

‘It’s so simple for you, isn’t it?’ he says, and here is the calm David again. And perhaps the real one lives in both worlds, Good and Bad, Light and Dark, a man who balances his life between

creating an illusion and playing a monster. ‘Its simple to stand up there and look down on me, judging me, because you’re not the

one with a head full of disgusting memories, you’re not the one who …’

‘You’re a sick fucker who acted out,’ I say. ‘That’s the bit I understand. Rachel didn’t deserve what you did to her, not by any means, but I can at least figure out why. What I can’t figure out is why the others) Why kill them?’

‘Why the fuck not?’

He reaches his hand out to the ground above the grave and I

step towards it. He pulls it away without the need for me to crush his fingers.

‘When you were here two years ago for Rachel’s grandmother’s

funeral, what happened? Who spoke to her?’

‘It wasn’t her.’

‘Somebody spoke to you? Was it Sidney Alderman?’

‘Just some old drunk who smelled like he hadn’t showered in

about a month. I told him to fuck off. You want to know what

he told me?’

‘What?’

‘He said, “How does it feel fucking your sister, David? Is she juicy?” I pushed him away and he just laughed at me, like he was somehow proud of it. I took a swing at him and knocked him to

the ground. He stopped laughing then, but he wasn’t finished.

He said, “Do you know who your dad is? Do you know who her

dad is? Look it up, boy, look it up. And do something about it.”

I walked away from the guy, but his words, man, they just kept following me. It wasn’t because the guy knew who I was, it was something else. I found out the following day who my father

was.’

“Henry Martins told you.’

He starts to laugh. ‘That old fucker was just as bad as the

others. He told me all about Father Julian, and told me I wasn’t the only one. That fucking priest had been sleeping with his

parishioners for years. I asked him about Patricia Tyler. He knew, man! He fucking knew her. I went back to the cemetery. Bruce

was my brother. The old man, he was fucked up with drink, but

Bruce was okay. A bit nervous, but okay. And the closest thing I had to family.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘You’re kidding, right? If she hadn’t been fucking around back then, none of this would have happened. I’d have had a normal

life.’

‘You wouldn’t have even existed.’

He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter.

‘When you were alone at the funeral, how did Sidney Alderman

know who you were?’

“How the fuck do I know? I guess he recognised my mother,

and later I had all the proof I needed.’

‘You told Rachel who her dad was, and took her to see him,

didn’t you.’

‘She confronted him and he admitted it. I waited outside for

her. When she told me, I felt like I’d been hit in the stomach with a sledgehammer. I dropped to my knees and just threw up.

When she tried to comfort me I pulled away. I didn’t want to be anywhere near her. I told her to leave me alone, but she wanted to talk. Thing is, she couldn’t when I had my hands crushing her throat. The life had gone out of her, and still I couldn’t let go. You probably think that’s bullshit. You think that it was my plan to kill her if that old drunk was right about what he said, but it wasn’t.

There was no plan. Jesus, we were still in the cemetery when it happened. I could even see the church.’

The rain is starting to get heavier and I wonder if it’s pooling inside the coffin or soaking into the wood. I have both hands

jammed in my pockets—my right one is starting to throb painfully – so I start pacing around the grave. David keeps turning in the coffin so he can keep looking up at me.

And the others?’ I ask.

‘What about them?’

‘Why’d you kill them?’

‘They were my sisters. I figured if it could happen once, it

could happen again.’

‘You’re full of shit. You’d already killed Henry Martins, which means you already knew the truth before driving Rachel to speak to Father Julian. That means you thought about it pretty hard

for a couple of days. It means the knowledge of you being with your sister grew like a cancer inside your brain and the only way you could cut it out was to kill Rachel. You took her to see Father Julian knowing that she wouldn’t be seeing anybody else ever

again afterwards. Once you knew who those other girls were,

there was no chance of accidentally dating one of them. You

were killing them because you enjoyed it. What about the girl

tonight? She’s not even one of your sisters, is she? You just can’t stop yourself.’

He shrugs. ‘So what does it matter?’

‘Because you were talking to her like she was. It just goes to show how fucked in the head you really are. But why me? Why

try and frame me for Father Julian?’

‘You killed my brother.’

‘He killed himself.’

I think about Patricia Tyler’s last words to me, the promise

she wanted me to make. The last month has been full of broken

promises. I think of the man I once was, the man I became when I was drinking, the man in between, and the man I am now.

Which one of them is the real me? I could keep talking until the police arrive, or take him into the station myself. That would earn me some credit. They’ll lock David up and there’s enough

evidence to put him away for a long time, but a long time in this justice system is only ten years. Is that really justice? He won’t even be thirty-five when he comes out. I doubt that would sound like justice to any of the girls. Or to Patricia Tyler. Can this sick kid be redeemed in ten years? Is redemption even possible?

‘We’re going to the police,’ I say.

‘Fuck that.’

‘It’s the only option.’

He goes quiet as he thinks about it. ‘Okay but you’re going to have to help me out of here. My arm’s broken.’

‘Don’t try anything.’

‘I won’t.’

I close my eyes. I think of Emily. I think of all the dead girls.

I think of a promise I made. I crouch down and lower my hand.

He grabs it and pulls me down, and I fall, just as I have been falling since the day I drove Quentin James out into the woods.

I let it happen, and I knew it would happen, and when I land on top of him my face doesn’t register the surprise he was hoping to see. His plan, his only plan, to pull me in and crack my head into the coffin or break my neck, hasn’t worked. He can see that now, and he can see his mistake.

The blood floods out over my hand. It’s warm and sticky and

thick, and I hate the feel of it. When I pull it away from him, I leave the pocketknife I took from his car in his chest. He reaches down to it and pulls it out as if he’s just been stung by something, then looks at it as if he has no idea what it is. He stares at me, his face pale and streaked with blood and tears. His mouth opens and closes, but he can’t say anything; his mouth forms an O but nothing comes out. This lonely boy who learned who he was and

made the rest of the world pay for it. He breathes heavily until the breaths become softer and softer. The knife falls from his hand.

He sinks back down as he dies in front of me. I wipe my hand

across the soggy lining of the coffin before pulling myself out.

I sit on the ground and lean against the gravestone, and I watch the sky, looking for a break in the clouds, hoping for a break in the rain, wishing more than anything that I could have a drink right about now.

I’m not sure how much time passes before the police arrive,

but I’m still sitting here when they do. Three days sober, and more positive than ever that I now know exactly who I am.

acknowledgments

I had a lot of people help me in a lot of different ways with Cemetery Lake. I want to start out by thanking Harriet Allan from Random House. Harriet is an awesome person who has

shown a lot of faith in my story-telling abilities, and without her support and feedback, and the rest of the team at Random, this book – along with the previous two – wouldn’t exist.

Thanks also to my friend David Batterbury who has helped

more than he knows with not only the book, but in pretty much

every other area of my life. And to Daniel Myers, my friend and agent and fellow author who provides the magic feedback I need to make me a better writer.

I want to thank my friends who made sure I got to the end

of 2007 with some sanity: Paul Waterhouse and his wife Tina,

who offered feedback on the book and are always there for me;

Daniel and Cheri Williams; Nathan and Samantha Cook; Kim

McCarthy; and Phil ‘Dr Phil’ Hughes, who I can count on for

anything at any time.

Amanda Harris offered ideas that were truly helpful as Cemetery Lake took shape. Shawn Ingham reminded me of something important about the basics that helped a lot with the final draft. Ray-Charles Smading, a man for whom there is no