Graham Masterton - Innocent Blood

‘No, but I’m sure I can find it.’

‘OK then, the Garden at twelve o’clock, how’s that?’

‘Good,’ she said. Then, ‘Sing it for me.’

‘What?’

‘“The Girl With The Left-Footed Limp.” Sing it for me.’

Frank shook his head. ‘Not today. Maybe one day. But not today.’

Four

When he arrived home, Ruth’s red Jeep was parked in the driveway. Margot and Ruth were sitting together in the conservatory, drinking green Chinese tea and smoking cigarettes. Ruth was wearing a black dress, which made her look even more like Morticia than usual, and Margot was wearing a white cotton pajama suit. They both looked up at him with undisguised disgust.

‘So where were you?’ Margot demanded.

‘Out, that’s all. I went to the beach.’

‘Oh, you went to the beach. How nice for you. The hospital called and asked which funeral home we wanted Danny taken to.’

‘Funeral home?’

‘Yes, Frank. He’s dead, remember?’

Frank covered his mouth with his hand. This was going to be harder than he had ever imagined. At last he took his hand away. ‘Which . . . um . . . what did you say?’

‘I said Kennedy and Lester’s, on Olive. They handled my grandfather’s funeral.’

‘Good, yes. That’s fine.’

‘I called Kennedy and Lester’s and John Lester said they’re going to arrange it all. We can go see Danny tomorrow afternoon.’

‘OK. OK, good.’

He didn’t know what else to say. It was no use asking Margot how she was feeling because it was obvious how she was feeling. Looking around, he saw that she had taken down the painting that he had scrawled on, and replaced it with another Impression In White . He had no idea how many Impressions In White she had painted, because he could never tell one from the other. All he knew is that every time he came home she was standing in front of her easel, surrounded by dozens of squeezed-out tubes of titanium white. It looked like the massacre of the maggots.

‘Are you staying for a while, Ruth?’ he asked.

‘So long as Margot needs me,’ Ruth challenged him.

‘Well, that’s good. I’d say she needs you a whole lot just at the moment, considering the circumstances. I’m just going to . . .’ He hesitated, because he didn’t know what he was going to do or where he was going to go. ‘Make a few phone calls,’ he added lamely.

He couldn’t sleep that night. He tried watching television in his study but on the first channel he flicked on to they were showing Boys’ Town and on the next one Batman Forever , which had been one of Danny’s favorites.

He went into the kitchen and opened the icebox. There were two pork chops on a plate, covered with Saran Wrap. He took them out and looked at them but then he put them back again. They were left over from the last meal that they had eaten together, on Tuesday evening.

Back in his study, he picked up the book he was reading, whenever he had the time, which wasn’t very often. It was called The Process by Brion Gysin, about a black Fulbright student who goes to Morocco to discover the Sahara Desert and smoke copious pipes of kif .

‘The silky surreptitious silence of the Sahara starts in Ghardaia, where every soft footfall is shod in sand. Men speak softly, knowing that they will be heard. Everything crackles with static electricity as if one were shuffling over a great rug. Everyone in the Sahara is very aware, tuned into the great humming silence through which drones the sound of an approaching diesel from hours away.’

But after ten minutes he found that he couldn’t focus any more, so he placed an I Ching stick in the book to mark his place, and closed it. Dawn found him in the conservatory, his forehead pressed against the cold patio window, staring at nothing.

He made two mugs of strong coffee and took one in to Margot. She was lying in an Indian rope-trick of sheets, either sleeping or pretending to sleep.

‘Margot.’

He stood over her and at last she opened her eyes, blinking against the seven o’clock sunlight.

‘I brought you some coffee.’

‘I don’t want any. I don’t want anything from you.’

‘Margot, we ought to talk about this.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t have anything to say. You let Danny die and that’s all there is to it.’

He stayed there for a few moments more. Then he said, ‘I’m going to see Gerald Marquette. I should be back around three. Then we can go visit Danny.’

‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll go on my own.’

He went back into the kitchen and poured the coffee down the sink.

He was an hour too early for his meeting with Astrid so he drove to Franklin Avenue. Outside The Cedars, the street was still cordoned off by fluttering police tapes, and at least seven squad cars were parked on the sidewalk, as well as two station wagons from the Coroner’s Department and a dark green armored van. FBI, probably.

Frank left his car on the corner of Sierra Bonita Avenue and walked the rest of the way. As he approached the school, he saw scores of investigators in Tyvek suits and respirators, crawling all over the wreckage like white ants. Three backhoe diggers had been brought in, and two of them were nudging down the front wall of the Memorial Library, while the third was demolishing the portico. There was a pall of fine gray dust over everything, and Frank’s shoes crunched on the concrete as he came nearer.

Lieutenant Chessman was standing just behind the police lines with his hands thrust into the pockets of a sagging green linen coat. Detective Booker was there, too, in his shirtsleeves, talking to a tall young man with black wavy hair, a black polo neck and an expensive gray sport coat. The young man glanced over at Frank as he approached, and gave the briefest of frowns, as if he recognized him. Frank thought he looked rather saturnine, like the Devil on his weekend off.

‘Mr Bell,’ said Lieutenant Chessman, lifting one hand in acknowledgement. ‘What brings you here?’

‘I don’t know exactly. I guess I had to take another look at it, just to convince myself that it really happened.’

‘Well, be my guest.’ He lifted the tape and Frank ducked underneath. ‘We’ve recovered all the bodies so far, and everybody’s been identified and accounted for. Now we’re looking for shrapnel. Pieces of van, and any other junk that those bastards were carrying.’

‘You still don’t know who they are – this terrorist group?’

Lieutenant Chessman took out a Rolaid and popped it into his mouth. ‘So far, we don’t have any leads at all. The FBI tell us that they’ve never heard of them before, and neither have the CIA. Apparently there was a broadcast yesterday evening on the Al Jazeera network, and they specifically denied that Dar Tariki Tariqat has any connection with Al Qaeda.’

Frank bit his lip and wondered if he ought to tell Lieutenant Chessman that he had met Astrid. After all, if she could help the police to find out who had killed Danny and all those other children . . .

But Astrid had sworn to him that she hadn’t seen anything, and told him in confidence that she wasn’t supposed to be here on Franklin Avenue at all. He didn’t want to betray her trust before he had even had a chance to get to know her.

Lieutenant Chessman said, ‘Usually, you know, you get a buzz of information when something like this happens. We have some pretty good contacts in the Muslim community, Algerians and Iranians and all those guys. But this time, stony silence.’

‘You haven’t found out who was driving the van?’

Lieutenant Chessman shook his head. ‘They were atomized, both of them. The only way we could tell that they were a man and a woman was because we found one of the guy’s Nikes about a hundred and fifty feet away, and because there was an intra-uterine device melted into the door of the glovebox.’