Louise Welsh - Death is a Welcome Guest

Paul was suddenly crouched beside him. ‘They’re going to lynch us.’ He caught Magnus by the elbow and hauled him to his feet. Magnus made a half-hearted effort to bat the tall man away, but the fight had gone out of him. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling you might need this.’ Paul shoved Mr Perry’s rifle back into Magnus’s hand.

Malachy’s men were jostling Father Wingate down the platform steps. The old man recited, ‘The Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air…’

Belle was running on ahead with the child. Magnus wanted to catch her, but he heard a shout behind him and turned to see a man armed with Will’s sword tearing towards the priest. Magnus stood in his path and aimed Mr Perry’s rifle at him. ‘There’ll be no more killing today.’

The stranger faltered to a halt. His eyes were wild. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’

‘You volunteering to be next?’ Paul stepped to Magnus’s side and pointed a revolver at the man.

The stranger said, ‘You murdering fuckers are outnumbered,’ but he fell back.

‘Come on.’ Paul pushed Magnus’s shoulder, urging him on.

They jogged towards Tanqueray House, their weapons in their hands. Magnus scanned the lawn for Jeb, but it was as the guard had said, the condemned man had vanished. It hurt Magnus to leave Raisha alone on the stage. Wherever her soul had gone, he had held her body and it strained his heart to abandon it. He looked back at the platform where she lay and wondered again where Jeb had vanished to.

Malachy locked the kitchen door after them and collapsed on to a chair. He tossed the keys at one of the guards. ‘Make sure the other doors are locked.’

The man lobbed the keys back at him. ‘Do it yourself.’ He left the room, slamming the door behind him, and a moment later they heard the sound of a motorbike disappearing up the drive.

Paul said, ‘I’m gone too.’ He looked at Magnus. ‘You should get out of here.’

Magnus ignored him. Father Wingate was hunched on a chair by the door to the hallway. Magnus put a hand on each of the chair’s arms and leaned into the priest, so close he could see the pores of his skin, the three white hairs sprouting on the bulb of his nose. He was not sure why he had saved him from the stranger with the sword. It was an effort not to put his hands around the old man’s neck and squeeze. Magnus whispered, ‘Did you kill the others too?’

It seemed impossible. The priest was too frail to force a young woman’s head into a noose or make a grown man slash his wrists.

The flight across the lawn had tired Father Wingate. His skin was grey, but he raised his face to Magnus’s and looked him in the eye. ‘Melody recognised that the good Lord wanted to bring an end to the corruption in the world and so she offered her life up to Him.’

‘Melody wasn’t corrupt.’ Belle was perched on the kitchen table, cradling the boy on her lap. ‘You brainwashed her.’ Her voice was loud and the child whimpered. ‘Shhhh.’ She rocked backward and forward, stroking his forehead, and said more softly, ‘Melody spent hours with that bastard. We thought he was trying to help her, but all the time he was convincing her to kill herself.’ She pulled the boy closer.

A stone smashed through the kitchen window. The child cried out and somewhere in the floors above the dogs set to barking. Paul said again, ‘I’m gone.’ He went into the hallway, leaving the door open behind him.

Malachy looked bewildered. He made an effort to reassert himself. ‘We should all go and leave him to his fate.’

Will was leaning against the kitchen cabinets. He muttered, ‘I was going to do it. I would have killed him.’

Belle shushed the child and gave a crazy little laugh. ‘I don’t know why I ran. This has nothing to do with me.’

Magnus grabbed Father Wingate by the scruff of his bloodied cassock. The old man’s bones were sharp beneath their thin covering of flesh. ‘I’ve not finished with you yet.’ He shoved the priest into the hall. They followed Paul through the house to the front door where the dogs were whining to be let out. Magnus peered through the hall window. Around a dozen men and a couple of women were standing on the drive. They reminded Magnus of groups he had seen on television, silently waiting outside law courts for the arrival of a child-murderer. They had been robbed of Jeb’s death, more than robbed, had innocent deaths forced on them in its stead. They would start shouting soon, working themselves up to do what needed to be done.

Magnus said, ‘We’re too late.’

The priest whispered, ‘It is the end of days.’

Malachy’s voice wavered. ‘Do you think they’ll let us go if we give him to them?’

Paul said, ‘I wouldn’t like to bet on it.’

Malachy said, ‘Why don’t they storm the building?’

‘They’re just ordinary people like us.’ Paul ruffled the dogs’ heads, trying to quiet them. ‘Maybe they don’t know what to do.’

Magnus said, ‘They know what to do. They just don’t have the courage to do it yet.’ He pressed the priest into a chair and squatted on the ground, so that he could see his expression. ‘What happened to Henry?’

Father Wingate said, ‘We have been a terrible disappointment to God—’

Magnus slapped him hard across the face.

Father Wingate touched his reddening cheek with his hand. ‘I am a man of God.’

Magnus whispered, ‘Do not doubt that I will slice you to pieces slowly and make a fucking martyr of you, if you don’t tell me what happened.’

Paul said, ‘We should go upstairs and barricade ourselves in one of the rooms.’

Malachy shook his head. ‘It’s the priest they want. Let’s give him to them.’

Magnus snapped, ‘What I just told him goes double for you. He’s going nowhere until I say so.’

Father Wingate touched his cheek with his fingertips again, as if he had never been slapped before and was amazed at the sensation. Tears had sprung to his eyes, but his voice was resolute. ‘Henry was a worldly man. I knew there was no point in trying to make him see what our Lord God intended for him… what He intends for us all. But the Lord came to my aid. He gave Henry toothache. Raisha would have been able to prescribe something, but she was absent and Henry was nervous of taking anything stronger than an aspirin without her advice. I told him I had a natural remedy that would help. It was the first time I had tried to make the infusion. I must have got the quantities wrong, or perhaps he didn’t drink as much of it as I’d intended.’ The priest’s smile was wistful. ‘I believe it does taste rather foul.’

Magnus said, ‘Why did you take his body to the barn? How did you get it there?’

‘The body walked there all by itself.’ Wingate smiled as if he had said something clever. ‘We were looking for harvesting equipment, just as you were on the day you and Jacob found him. I gave Henry the medicine and he drank it as we drove to the farm. He was overcome in the barn, but I could tell that he was still breathing. I was afraid he had merely sunk into a deep sleep and would wake, so I secured his wrists with some packing ties I found in the barn. I went back to the house, took a knife from the kitchen, and then I sent him to paradise.’

‘Jesus.’ It was as if Malachy had just taken in what the priest was saying. ‘You were going to let us execute Jeb Soames for murder.’

‘Every life is a sacrifice to the Lord. Jeb Soames too was worthy, as are we and all of those people out there.’

Malachy said, ‘We brought them here to re-establish law and order, but you planned to poison them. No wonder they’re baying for our blood.’