Stephen Irwin - The Dead Path

“I do have one question,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Did you shoot him?” She lifted her chin and watched him with those inscrutable gray eyes.

“No,” he answered.

She pursed her lips and stepped away.

They walked past Gavin’s bedroom. As they passed the boxes, Nicholas peeked down again into the half-filled one. And he saw what had caught his eye earlier: the rifle magazines were roughly rolled together and shoved in a plastic bag. On the side of the bag was printed Plow amp; Vine Health Foods. Rowena’s store. Mrs. Quill’s old shop.

“Do you shop there?” he asked, nodding at the bag.

Laine stopped to see what Nicholas was looking at.

“No. Gavin took a liking to dried pumpkin seeds. For the zinc, he said.”

She opened the front door for him.

“Good night, Mr. Close.”

Before he could reply, she shut the door, closing him out in the cold.

N icholas placed the White Pages on the coffee table. Its cover was torn and heavily graffitied by the previous tenants: a Rosetta stone of cartoon tits and spurting phalluses.

As he walked home from the Boyes’ house, the sight of the plastic bag from Rowena’s health food store kept popping into his mind. Gavin took a liking to pumpkin seeds. For the zinc, Laine had said.

He’d shopped in Quill’s old store. The mark on her door, on the rifle, on the bird.

Tristram touched the bird. But it should have been you.

It wasn’t coincidence. He knew it wasn’t. The links were growing too strong.

He flicked quickly through the directory’s residential listings for G. He had an inkling.

I’m right, he thought. I know I’m right.

His finger ran down the surnames. Gull. Gunston. Gurber. Guyatt. There were a dozen Guyatts.

Guyatt, A.; Guyatt, A. Guyatt, C.; Guyatt, E., Linning St., Toor-bul. Guyatt E., Paschendale Ct., Mt. Pleasant.

Then he found it, just as he knew he would. Guyatt, E., 93 Myrtle St., Tallong.

Nicholas sat back.

Elliot Guyatt, the unprepossessing cleaner who had confessed to the murder of Dylan Thomas and died of a stroke just days later, had lived on the same street as Plow amp; Vine Health Foods.

Rowena’s shop. Quill’s shop.

Gavin Boye-deliverer of a cryptic message with a self-destruct ending-had shopped at Plow amp; Vine Health Foods. Nicholas was certain that Winston Teale, the huge man with the small voice who had chased Tristram and him into the woods, would have had the frayed linings of his work suits repaired there when it was Jay Jay’s haberdashery.

He reached into his satchel and pulled out Gavin’s rapidly emptying packet of John Player Specials and realized he no longer had a lighter. He turned on the coil of the electric stove and waited for it to glow. Ridiculous. Rowena was young; Quill and Bretherton were old. Rowena was unthreatening and guileless; Quill had stared from her shop and Bretherton from her photograph through the same cunning eyes. Rowena was pretty and without any air of perfidiousness; Quill/Bretherton/Sedgely was malevolent.

And yet. And yet…

Someone lumbered into the front door with a crash and Nicholas jumped.

“Nicholas!” came the voice on the other side.

“Suzette?”

“Open it!” she yelled.

Nicholas felt his stomach swirl-something bad had happened. He ran for the door, undid the latch, and threw the door open. Suzette sagged inside. Her face was pale and her eyes were wet. She was on the edge of hysteria.

“Jesus, Suze…?”

“I finished dinner with Mum and heard something scratching at the front door,” she whispered. “I opened it-idiot-and a white dog bit me.”

S uzette staggered to the toilet, smacked up the lid, and vomited. The air thickened with tangy brine.

Nicholas felt the world suddenly grind into slow motion. “We have to take you to a doctor,” he said quietly.

She held on to the porcelain pedestal with both hands. Her right had twin puncture marks just above her thumb, as if two sharp pencils had been driven into the flesh.

Oh, God, he thought. My fault. My fault…

“I didn’t even think,” Suzette mumbled, wiping her mouth. “I opened the door and didn’t even think about insect spray.” She rolled onto the floor, ripped off toilet paper, and blew her nose. “Jumped out of nowhere.” Her hand slipped out from under her and she slid to the tiles. Her eyes struggled to focus.

“Suze! I’m taking you.”

She shook her head. “Bed.”

He lifted her and carried her to the spare room.

“I don’ thing I really believe joo…” Her words were slurred.

“That’s okay.”

“Do now. ’S not a dog…”

“It’s okay.” He placed her down.

She nodded at the bite marks on her hand. “Necklace,” she whispered.

Nicholas shook his head-I don’t understand.

“Necklace. I gave you…”

She was sliding from consciousness.

Nicholas ran to his room and pulled the elderwood necklace from his bedside table. The polished stone felt warm. He returned and put it around Suzette’s neck.

“You should ha’ be wear… this…” she said.

As Nicholas rested her head on the pillow, he saw a spot of blood appear on the white pillowslip.

“Suze?”

No answer. She had passed out. Her breaths came slow and deep. He gently parted the hair of her scalp and found a patch of blood. A clump of her hair had been torn out by the roots.

He sat back, jaw tight. Suzette was breathing evenly. He fetched antiseptic and cotton balls, cleaned her scalp and then the punctures in her hand. He’d been bitten twice by Garnock, so wasn’t worried that the bites were fatal. But why Suzette?

She has kids, came the voice in his head. You knew that, fool. And you let her stay.

He felt anger heating inside him: anger at Suzette for not being careful; anger at himself for letting her come up here; angriest of all with the little white shitlicker that had bitten them both.

And Quill?

The thought of her didn’t make him angry. He ran his mind over the feeling like hands over a hidden gift. This was something colder and more solid; a heavy stone to bind with rope and drop into the water, to drag her down and down into the still, brown deeps. He knew she had some plan for him. But fuck her. He wasn’t going to let her hurt anyone else. And he wasn’t going to let her twist him like she did those other men-Teale, Guyatt, Gavin, and who knew how many more. No. It ended here.

He would kill the witch.

P ritam moved his knight to threaten the Right Reverend’s bishop.

“You dirty black bastard,” muttered Reverend Hird, wiping his spectacles on a handkerchief. The old man was swaddled in a padded robe, his striped pajama pants just poking from beneath it. Pritam could see that his flesh between the pant cuffs and brown slippers was swollen as tight as a sausage and marbled with veins. Hird moved his bishop.

“Is that why you never let me play white?” asked Pritam. “So you can slag off at me?” He saw that the white bishop was now stalking his one rook; Hird was the superior player. “You degenerate old chiseler.”

Hird shrugged. “Now you’re blackening my good name.”

Pritam advanced a pawn. He looked at the mantel clock; it was nearly midnight. They often played till one or later, discussing the foibles of the congregation, the vagaries of the synod: serious matters couched in trivialities as the old man groomed the younger to take his job.

“And I feel compelled to point out, yet again, that I’m not black. Of course, if I were black, I’d be proudly black. But I’m Indian. Subcontinental. Hindustani. Whereas you are the ill-favored offspring of deported criminals.”

“Touche,” replied Hird. “And, in response to your brassy defense of your low-slung heritage, let me just say this: check.”