48
The snow had been trampled into brown slush on the roads and in the middle of the pavements, but some pristine white stuff remained at square intervals in front gardens, and I could tell just by looking who was out and who was in. I wondered if it was something burglars paid attention to, or whether, being largely self-employed, they were taking the opportunity to sleep in. I’d put my trainers into my backpack and was wearing a pair of yellow wellies that kept my feet dry and my calves chafed.
There were no protesters outside—perhaps they were taking a snow day—and ducked up into my office. No one else was in, not even Obe, although I imagined the females of the office were all taking aspirin and pouring large mugs of coffee. Last I’d seen Donna, she’d been necking tequilas, so I predicted a sickie there.
I switched on my PC, printed a screenshot of the numbers I was looking for, then headed for Obe’s office.
He had a not-so-secret safe under his desk where he kept all the important stuff. I entered the not-so-secret pin and opened it up. The keys I needed were hanging on a plastic hook stuck to the side with double-sided tape. I pocketed them, left Obe a note in case he went looking for them, then took the lift down to the basement.
Considering we shared half our office space, you might think it a bit expensive to rent the whole of the bottom floor just for old paperwork, but the basement was damp, lightless, airless, and possibly illegal in terms of health and safety hazards. So we got it thrown in for free.
The lift doors opened onto darkness. I stepped forward one step then turned and fumbled around on the wall until I found the light switch. Fluorescent lights flickered on one at a time along the ceiling until the whole room was illuminated. There were no dividing walls or cubicles down there, only supportive pillars at regular intervals and a bare concrete floor. The walls at the far end glistened in the light, and the smell of mouldering paper reached my nostrils.
The entire basement was large, around two thousand square feet, and filled from floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes in various stages of decay. Narrow pathways wound through the front third, where people had actually needed to look for something. The remainder was solid with old files and notes.
I’d received a quote from a confidential waste disposal company the previous year, but Donna had looked at the price, laughed at me, and binned it. It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t be long before everything in this room was completely unreadable anyway.
The boxes were uniform. Before, in the old ballroom, the paper had spilled out of dozens of different receptacles, each dated to a certain era, but with the move, everything was boxed up in plain brown rectangles.
I surveyed the room, headed for a likely stack, and opened the flap of the box at the top. It was filled with small rectangular receipts. The next was filled with old letters, mostly complaints. A neatly typed response, signed by Obe, was stapled to each one.
I worked methodically from left to right, opening and closing boxes as I went. I got lucky and found the ones I was looking for after only twenty minutes. Patricia had stacked them neatly in a row next to a bunch of out-of-date benefit application forms, and judging from the first box at least, they were in order of surname rather than number, which made things slightly more difficult. I looked under B for Brannick, just in case, but wasn’t that lucky. The paperwork was stuffed into brown paper envelopes, tied with elastic bands where there was too much to go in one, and each had a surname written on the front in black marker pen.
I looked at my printout. The numbers were varied, with the lowest at twelve and the highest at 240. There was nowhere to sit, so I stood with both pieces of paper held up against the wall and looked up numbers against names.
And found a Rosa in the second one I looked at: Rosa Agatha Baranowski. I’d seen the surname in the Bs while looking for Brannick. I pocketed my list, returned the names and numbers list to its original box, then pulled out the Baranowski envelopes. There was a solid stack of them, too many for just one person unless something really interesting had happened.
I pulled pages out of the first envelope and found the medical record of an Agatha Baranowski who had zombified after her death in a nursing home. The second was for Rosa. I skimmed her paperwork, found the name Neil Brannick, then stuffed everything back in the envelope so I could take the lot upstairs and peruse them somewhere that didn’t smell like the whole place was about to cave in and bury me in old paper.
Habi was sitting at her desk when I got back, and she gave me a rueful look. I didn’t really want to have a mutual misery session, so I settled for a sympathetic glance on the way to my office then stuffed the paperwork into my backpack and headed out.
I stopped off at the chippy since I was going past, but the suited ghost wasn’t there, and the few who were were focused on the Hollyoaks omnibus blaring out of the TV bolted to the wall.
I went to Starbucks instead and ordered a coffee. There was an independent coffee shop next door with the loveliest proprietor, but I am ashamed to admit I like the anonymity of the big chains. Nobody tries to be nice to me and ask how my day is or engage me in chit chat. I can sit on my own and remain undisturbed by the overly friendly. I also then don’t feel guilty if I sit for two hours, hogging a whole table on a single coffee.
I sugared my coffee, then spilled the contents of Rosa’s envelope onto the table. Patricia’s project had been huge in scope. Its official goal was to identify the reason a small number of people avoided immediate zombification, but I’d always suspected the real reason was to find a get-out clause, that Patricia thought if she just had enough information she’d find a way out of the inevitable.
It meant that she’d gathered every piece of information she could lay her hands on. And the fact that she’d then left it all to rot in our basement meant there was nothing to find. I could have told her that. Anyone could, but she’d needed to learn it for herself.
I stacked the papers in a neat pile and purposely read from the front to the back, not skipping anything or looking for the good bits.
A copy of Rosa’s birth certificate certified that she had been born human to Eric and Agatha Baranowski, both also listed as human. Agatha’s age was listed as forty-two. The name ‘Agatha’ was ringed in blue pen, and Patricia had written ‘carrier’ above it. Stapled to the back was an extract from the Necroambulist Register. There were four Baranowskis: two older brothers who had reanimated, as well as Agatha and Rosa, who were both still marked as living at the time the copy was made. I glanced at the cause of death for the brothers. Lung cancer in both cases.
Her full medical records were included, which I thought was probably a breach of data protection. Perhaps back then no one was as worried about that sort of thing.
I ploughed through random and personal pieces of a life. She’d become pregnant via IVF treatment and given birth to Adam at nineteen. A letter detailed the terms of a settlement with the hospital—a long and protracted birth combined with poor quality care meant that Adam would be Rosa’s only biological child.
I turned to the next page and found a full A4 photograph of Neil and a woman I could only assume was Rosa. I flipped the picture and confirmed the identification from the notes on the back. She’d been a bloodless-looking creature: pale skin, pale eyes, eyebrows so light they were hardly there. She was at least a head shorter than Neil and had Adam’s round face, but there was no puppy fat to it, just flatness. She wore her white-blond hair in a ponytail, scraped tight across her scalp.
I put the picture to one side. The next paper was a fifteen-year-old police report. I flipped to the bottom of the first statement and saw a familiar signature: Paul Ward, Haddad’s predecessor. He’d retired and moved to Spain, but I thought I had a phone number for him somewhere if I had any questions.
I read through the report carefully. Almost fifteen years exactly before Malcolm zombified, the fire brigade was called to number eleven John Line Terrace. I looked at the address again, and the penny dropped.
The neighbour who h
ad called the police over Malcolm had lived in a house with bricks a slightly different colour to the rest in the street. At the time, I’d thought that was because of a wartime bomb, but a rebuild after a fire would do it too. Fifteen years ago, the Brannick brothers were neighbours.
The fire brigade had found fifteen-year-old Adam outside, alone and crying. The front door was barricaded from the outside with what looked like beams of wood nailed to the frame, and shards of glass were all that remained of the front window. Adam told them his father had broken the window when they couldn’t get out the front door. Neil had then gone back in for his wife.
The firemen smashed open the front door to find Neil unconscious downstairs, and Rosa, dead from carbon dioxide poisoning, in the bedroom. Dead, but already crazy with hunger as her body compensated for the poison coursing through it.
49
Until as late as 1958, it was perfectly legal to burn zombies without so much as a by-your-leave, and from then until 1964, you needed to apply for a permit because while it was still legal to burn the living dead, it wasn’t legal to burn their property.
Finally, the Protection from Necroambulism Act was passed and arson for any reason was banned, with anyone attempting to burn zombies looking at a hefty prison sentence. That’s when the Necroambulist Response Team was created, the first ZDC refurbished, and the emergency line introduced.
All so much more civilised, except for the zombies who were suddenly sentenced to spend their afterlives starving and shambling around in stinking darkness instead of a quick fiery death.
What had happened to Rosa had all the fingerprints of a zombie burning, except that she was still alive when the fire was started. It wouldn’t be the first time someone got the wrong end of the stick and tried to burn someone who was still alive, but Rosa actually was a zombie. That would be quite a coincidence.
I read through the medical report. The court ruling that forbade autopsies on the living dead without their express permission had only been made in 2008, and she’d had one whether she’d wanted it or not.
The report put her age at thirty-four and noted that she was showing signs of infected nasal passages, but had been in otherwise good health. Her height was given as 5’ 7” and weight as 130 pounds. It marked off a few minor scars and noted that there was evidence she had broken her leg in early life but seemed to have made a full recovery.
Cause of death was given as smoke inhalation, and it was noted her body hadn’t fully made the conversion from living to living dead. There was no doubt it was the fire that killed her and the reanimation came afterwards.
I took a sip of my coffee and made a face. Bleeurgh, cold. I ordered another one at the counter, keeping half an eye on my table in case anyone decided my backpack looked like it might have something interesting in it.
After the machine finished spitting and steaming, I collected my coffee and went back to the table, where I flipped over the medical report to see Patricia, bless her cotton socks, had inserted three neatly cut newspaper clippings.
The first was a rehash of the fire and showed a slightly yellowed version of the photo of Rosa I’d already seen, but didn’t provide me with any more information. The second was only a few lines and indicated that an arrest had been made in connection with a fire in Wimbledon. The last one was dated almost a year after the fire and confirmed a prison sentence for the arsonist. The name in the headline was familiar but unexpected. It read simply ‘Ogunwale Sentenced Ten Years.’
50
According to the newspaper report, Moses Ogunwale was a man obsessed with the living dead. He’d been six when an outbreak had devoured his village in a part of Nigeria I’d never heard of, turning both his parents into ravenous fiends. The boy survived by climbing a tree and waiting it out until help arrived. He was the sole survivor and was sent to live with the only family he had left—an uncle in Birmingham.
The older Moses was already known to the NRTs. He had thirty-four calls to the emergency line to his name, and each turned out to be nothing at all. Paul Ward had been sent to have a word with him about a year before Rosa died, and the calls stopped. On the day Rosa burned to death, both Adam and Per testified that he had asked Adam to check if his mother was still breathing.
A half-hearted defence was made, testifying to his history and the state of his mental health, but the jury was having none of it and Moses was convicted.
I recalled the old man I’d seen peering out when the NRTs were at the house. The face had looked nervous at all the police standing round, but I’d thought it was the standard guilt that most people got when confronted by police or other figures of authority. Now I was wondering.
I looked at the time on my phone. It was getting close to midday, and the coffee shop was beginning to fill up. I packed up my paperwork, glugged the last dregs of my coffee, and tried not to get annoyed at the people who sat down at the table before I’d even stood up. That would have been completely unfair considering how long I’d been sitting there.
I popped my head into the chippy on the way back to the office, but the suited ghost hadn’t returned. I’d had so much coffee I was sure I could hear sloshing as I walked. But I hadn’t had anything substantial and I was starting to get peckish, so I picked up a box of chips to soak up the caffeine. I sat at the back in my usual seat, taking care to keep my distance from Plague Girl. Not that she was contagious or anything, but dripping sores at close range put me off my food.
I drowned the chips in vinegar and salt then ate them one by one while I watched the ghosts. The Graveyard Theatre only renewed its billing once a week. The ghosts were getting restless. You can only watch Grease so many times before your non-brain implodes.
I was very aware of the weight of Rosa’s death file in my backpack. I’d told Per I thought Malcolm’s zombiehood was probably STD based, and he’d just nodded. I remembered thinking he looked uncomfortable. He must have known Rosa was the likely infector, and he hadn’t said anything. I suppose you wouldn’t in the circumstances. He probably thought it had nothing to do with Ben. Except I was sure it did.
My brain whirled. Rosa was murdered. Leslie was murdered. Someone had tried to murder Alister. And then Berenice was murdered. The person I really wanted to speak to was Alister, but I didn’t know where he was.
I did know where to find Moses. He’d been convicted of murdering Rosa, but he couldn’t have killed Leslie or tried to kill Alister—he’d been in prison. I wanted to hear his side of the story.
51
I wish there was some way to claim air miles for the amount of time I spend on one train or another. I’d started out in Sydenham, visited Wimbledon, gone to the office in Croydon, and now I was going back to Wimbledon again. At least it was all south of the river.
It was time someone invented a transporter. I don’t quite like the idea of my whole body being atomised and shot across the city, but I’d take it to save myself yet another journey on public transport in rush hour.
The air inside the packed tram was hot and wet. The windows dripped with condensation; nothing outside was visible. Somehow I managed to drift off, and if it wasn’t for a kind fellow passenger who shook me awake at the end of the line, I would have gone all the way back to Croydon for the return journey.
I stepped off the tram, grateful for the rush of cold air on my skin. I looked at my phone. It was seven thirty and had been fully dark for four hours.
Police tape still smothered the front of Malcolm’s house, and the space where the door should have been had been covered with slatted boards nailed into the frame. There was no sign of anyone about. The Christmas lights were still draped over the house, but they had been switched off and the house was dark.
Next door, the light was on in the front room in Moses’s house. Blue light flickered from a television set. There was no bell or knocker, so I rapped on the door with my knuckles.
The middle-aged woman who opened the door was familiar, and it took a few seconds before I pla
ced her as the neighbour on the other side of Malcolm, the one whose cat had been eaten. She was out of the dressing gown but looked just as comfortable in a mumsy pair of jeans and shapeless cream jumper. She gave me a polite smile.
I showed her my Lipscombe ID. She gave it a cursory glance before handing it back. ‘My name’s Vivia Brisk. I was wondering if I could speak to Mr Ogunwale.’
‘I’m afraid he’s in the bath.’ She gave me a frank, curious look.
‘I don’t mind waiting.’
‘Can I ask what it’s about?’
‘I used to work with Malcolm. I wanted to have a word with him about what happened here. I’d like to talk to you too, if you have the time.’
She perked up, apparently pleased to tell her part in the drama. ‘I already told the police everything I know, but I’m happy to go over it again if you like. Give me a minute, I’ll tell Moses you’re here.’
She introduced herself as Florence Edley, and I followed her inside. The living room she showed me to was beautifully decorated, if a little too floral for my taste. I took a seat in a pastel covered armchair opposite the door and looked around while she went upstairs. China cats and shepherdesses dominated the mantel. The sound on the TV was off, but subtitles to EastEnders streamed along the bottom. Half of them didn’t make any sense. Florence came back in after five minutes with a tea tray and a box of shortbread. She set it down, then clicked the TV off with a remote.
‘Hope you like tea. Coffee gives Moses palpitations, so he never has any in the house.’
‘Tea’s lovely.’
A fat black cat the size of a small panther padded into the room, took one look at me, and evidently decided he liked what he saw because he jumped onto my lap with one bound and began kneading at my thighs.
‘Just push him off if he’s a bother.’
She poured tea from a pot into two china cups with pink roses on them. She asked about milk and sugar, and passed me a cup.
‘How long have you been living in the road?’ I asked.
‘Just over five years.’ Not long enough to know Leslie.
‘Can you tell me what happened? I know what the police told me, but it’s always better to have it from the horse’s mouth.’
‘Oh, I know what you mean. I’m so sorry about that poor family. I always quite liked Malcolm. He was so friendly. You don’t see that so much these days. People don’t know their neighbours anymore, but he always had a compliment ready.’ She dunked a piece of shortbread in her cup. It fell off into the tea. She fished it out with a teaspoon.
I’m sure he did. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s such a tragedy. Such a tragedy. And his little boy’s so young to grow up without a daddy. And he was such a good daddy too. He took that boy out to the park every day, sometimes for hours. He had so much patience. I’m sure Jillie appreciated the break, but I don’t think that’s why he did it. He adored that boy.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Terrible.’
‘Yes, terrible! Poor child. At least Malcolm took his hunger out on the cat.’
‘You were the one who called the police.’
She nodded. ‘I was just standing out on the step at the back having a fag. I don’t smoke in the house anymore. I look after the grandkids during the day and my daughter insists on it. She says the whole house is filled with carcinogens, and all them little particles are still floating around in the air even if I smoke when they’re not here. Personally, I think she’s overreacting, but it’s not such a big thing to smoke out there. I’m down to a pack a day anyway. Another biscuit?’
I took one, and she did the same. Crumbs fell into her cleavage with the first bite, but she didn’t notice. ‘Anyway, I was standing out there with my fag, and I spotted Malcolm next door. At first I couldn’t see what he was doing, but it was weird enough that I didn’t say hello like I usually would. He was running about the garden like he was chasing something—not even paying attention to those nettles. I’m glad the police chopped them down. They were always coming through the fence into my side, and they sting like buggery. I’ve got special gloves for them, but they don’t do much good. Anyway, then he stops, and I see he’s got my cat, my Coco. My first thought was that she’d been shitting in his garden again. It really annoys the people on the other side.’ She pointed. ‘Although why he would care in that jungle, I don’t know. But then he just picks Coco up and takes a bite out of her neck. I don’t know how I didn’t just scream. Maybe because he just got such a chunk that that was it for the poor thing straight off. I was in such shock. I never believed that about zombie teeth, about them being so much sharper, but I do now. No normal person could bite like that. The police took Coco away, you know. They wouldn’t even let me bury her. Said she was evidence.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s all right. She was old. I don’t think she was going to last much longer. She had such bad arthritis. At least it was quick.’
‘What about Ben? Did you see him fly off?’
‘Oh yes, wasn’t that something?’
‘Did you know him well?’
‘Oh no. He was only here over Christmas usually. I’d forgotten what his name was until it was in all the papers. I see they’re claiming he killed that girl. That’s a shame.’
‘Did you ever see her around?’
‘Oh sure. She was over there almost every day before Christmas. Hung off every word the boy said. No idea why. He’s so skinny. When I was a girl that was a right turn off.’
‘When did you see her last?’
‘Don’t know really. Oh, wait, I do. It was Christmas evening. The grandkids were acting up, and I sent them into the garden to let off steam. She was out there talking to Jillie. I told the kids not to talk to her. I know she’s only half and half, but that’s at least half I don’t trust.’
And once again, it came round to Christmas. I’d spent my own Christmas talking Stanley out of a sulk because he’d wanted to put my mother at the table with us and spent the rest of the evening worrying about Sigrid because I couldn’t find the tinsel and thought she might have eaten it. It turned out she had, which made for a somewhat festive nappy change.
Berenice’s foster mother said she went out Christmas day and didn’t come home. Jillie said she hadn’t seen her, but she’d lied. I couldn’t think of any good reasons why she would, but I could think of one very bad one.
A bell sounded from upstairs. ‘I better give Moses a hand, poor thing.’ She hesitated halfway out the door. She lowered her voice. ‘He is a lovely man, but he’s getting on a bit, and he’s a real chatterbox. And a little’—she made a twirling gesture with her hand—’you know. He was in prison, you know. I think that did it for him. It was arson. He burnt down my house. It was rebuilt of course.’
‘What happened?’
‘Oh, apparently he thought the woman living there was a zombie. Crazy old fool. But if you talk to him, he swears blind she really was a zombie so it’s a good thing she burned. But then says he didn’t do it. Doesn’t even realise that doesn’t make any sense. You know his son’s that bloke who cut his legs off? Crazy obviously runs in the family.’
‘Obviously.’ I swallowed the last of my tea. The cat was seriously weighty. I was starting to lose feeling in my legs.
She gave me a nervous smile. ‘I just wanted to let you know you’ll have to be a bit patient with him.’
‘I understand,’ I said.
Moses came down the stairs ten minutes later, holding onto the bannister, Florence right behind him. He wore pyjamas and a dressing gown. She settled him into a chair and poured him a cup of tea, then put the TV remote on the table next to him.
‘I’ve got to get back to feed the cats. You okay to get yourself to bed?’ He nodded. ‘You call if you need anything. You got your mobile?’
He patted the pocket of his gown. She looked satisfied. She let herself out.
Moses took a slurpy sip of his tea, then said, ‘You wanted to ask me about Malcolm?’ His voic
e was rough and gravelly.
I gave him what I hoped looked like a friendly smile. ‘Actually I wanted to ask about Rosa.’
The teacup stopped halfway to his lips. It shook slightly, then he set it down again.
Before he could say anything, I blurted out, ‘I think whatever happened to Malcolm has something to do with what happened to Rosa. I’m not here to make any judgements or anything like that. I just want to know your side of the story.’
His rheumy eyes met mine. ‘I didn’t kill her. I don’t know who did, but it wasn’t me. She was a nice lady. No one ever believes me.’
‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘Just tell me what happened.’
‘I don’t know. I was home watching TV, and I smelled smoke. I was the one who called 999. They never mention that.’
‘You were alone?’
‘Yes. No. Well, yes. I was by myself, but I had an alibi. A good one. I had a friend on the phone. Leslie, that was Malcolm’s first wife.’
I nodded.
‘We always used to watch the soaps together. She was at her sister’s, but she phoned me and we talked all the way through both episodes. We’d both taped them, and we watched them together. She was going to make a statement to the police for me.’
‘She didn’t make a statement?’ I asked, but I already knew.
‘No. She just ran off after Malcolm cheated on her. She didn’t even say goodbye. She just ran off and left me to go to prison.’
52
I sat on Malcolm’s front step and dialled Per’s number. It rang six times then went to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. I rang again, and this time he answered.
‘What?’
Gracious way to answer the phone. ‘It’s Vivia. I wanted to ask you some more questions.’
‘I know who it is. That’s why I didn’t answer the first time.’
My turn: ‘What?’
‘You set the police on me. They’ve confiscated half my equipment.’
‘That’s not my fault. They’d have found out you knew Ben sooner or later. I did. Anyway, I know they’re not looking at you seriously. I’ve got a few contacts. I’ll see if I can get them to give you your stuff back.’
‘Gee, thanks.’ The tone was sarcastic, but I thought he sounded mollified.
‘I wanted to ask about your dad.’
There was silence. For a minute I thought he was going to pretend he didn’t know what I was talking about, but then he said, ‘Everything’s in the police report. Since you lot are such buddies, you can ask them.’
‘I wanted to ask you.’
‘Ask him. He’s always more than happy to talk about it.’
‘I have. Now I want to know what you have to say about it.’
A loud sigh sounded in my ear. ‘I was sleeping over at a friend’s house when the fire started. I don’t know anything about it. It was a horrible time. My dad went to prison. I went into foster care. I really don’t have anything to add.’
I thanked him and said goodbye.
I sat on the step in the cold and played with the scraps of wood that had once been part of the door while I thought. Jillie had already lied to me once, when she’d said she hadn’t seen Berenice, so I didn’t think she would mind lying to me again. Samson would stand by anything Jillie said. Neil, being a known soul practitioner, was my prime suspect. Adam was already hiding something from me.
There was one person left who did know what happened who I hadn’t spoken to. That was Rosa. Her spirit was either still stuck in the living world attached to some scrap of flesh, or she had passed on to the underworld.
The more traumatic the death, the longer a spirit lingers in the mirror of its death place in the underworld, reliving its death over and over until it can make sense of it. For Rosa, that was probably going to be the pit. I’d never visited the underworld version of the ZDC. I’d never had any reason to. The question was, if I was bitten by a ghost zombie, would I get infected?
Of course, I had no intention of actually going into the pit if it was chocka full of ravenous ghost zombies. That would be stupid. But it couldn’t hurt to take a look into the pit and see who was there, and if they were still sentient.
I needed to draw up a plan of action. My usual plan went something like this: die, find dead person, speak to dead person, stop being dead. I could probably add ‘don’t get beaten up by harpies’ to the list, but even so, heading into a pit full of the living dead required a little more preparation.
I don’t know all the rules of the underworld. I’ve never had anyone to ask. I know I can get hurt—it’s happened often enough. The scratch on my cheek wasn’t healing as well as I’d have liked, but it was nothing a little more antiseptic wouldn’t cure.
My mind turned to every bad zombie movie I’d ever seen. They might not be the most realistic way to research fighting off the living dead, but I didn’t have any other ideas.
First point: zombies always hide somewhere they can bite ankles. Either that or lunge out from somewhere unexpected. I knew decapitation wouldn’t kill them, but it would at least buy me some time.
There shouldn’t be any ghost zombies out and about in the underworld, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I needed some sort of protective clothing and a weapon.
53
The crusaders fought swarms of the living dead in full armour; the troops outside Auckland wore Z-suits. I didn’t have either. Nor did I have a broad sword or a military issue Zed-class bayonet.
I did have a Star Wars Stormtrooper outfit in a box in the attic, courtesy of the Australian boyfriend who’d bought it one Comic Con then left it behind when it didn’t fit in his luggage.
I hauled the cardboard box down the stairs, ignoring Stanley’s call of, ‘Hey, watcha doing?’
I fingered the flimsy white plastic. It wasn’t exactly a Z-suit, but then I wasn’t planning on fighting any zombies. I was just going to look into the pit and see if anyone had regained their senses post-death. It was only sensible to take precautions. All I needed was something to protect me from any initial bites, and that would only be in the unlikely scenario any zombie managed to catch me by surprise. I had no intention of letting any get close enough to even see me. At the first glimpse of any zombies on the loose, I fully intended to turn tail and run very fast in the opposite direction.
And if I did have to do any fighting? I had a more conventional weapon for that in the form of a gift from a former client—a samurai sword which looked much better than the Stormtrooper outfit, even if it did have a small tag on the scabbard that read ‘Ornamental use only. May cause death or injury if used negligently.’
Precautions only, I told myself. It would be stupid to do anything else.
I checked on my sister before I died. She was in bed and asleep, her face slack and relaxed in the dark room. I checked her nappy, kissed her cheek, and left her to sleep. Light shone down the stairs from the attic. I went into my bedroom, closed the door, and dressed in the outfit and a pair of wellies. I made sure the sword was tightly gripped in my hand and began the dying ritual.
I woke under the heavy weight of the harpies. I pushed them off and got to my feet. The outfit chafed.
I exited the house awkwardly and flagged down the Boatman. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of me and burst out laughing. ‘And this?’
I explained briefly. He stopped laughing, but his lips turned up with amusement.
‘Vivia, you don’t need the outfit. I’ve seen hags tell worse things than ghost zombies to bugger off.’
‘Like that works,’ I said, thinking of the harpies.
‘You just need to be more authoritative.’
‘Hmm.’ Easier said than done.
The boat stopped outside the ZDC, and reality shimmered to allow it into the too-small parking lot. I climbed down the ladder at the side then jumped onto the dry pavement, and the death ship continued without me.
I looked around. There was no one to be seen anywhere: no boats moving on the T
hames, no swooping fliers above me. The death world was completely deserted. But the Power Station looked exactly the same as it did in real life. It didn’t even flicker.
The reception area was the same—no flickering, or soft edges. Everything looked hard and real.
A copy of the Evening Standard was stuffed between two of the metal chairs. Something on it caught my eye. I pulled it out and straightened the crumpled front page. It was the same blurry picture of Ben in flight that the BBC had gone with, but it wasn’t quite right. It was definitely him, soaring above the rooftops, but there were no wings. There was some serious mojo going down in the place to make it as solid as it was, and somewhere in that mojo, the photo had updated to Ben as he likely was now. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
I tore the front sheet off the paper, folded it, and stuffed it under the plastic on my forearm. It helped a little with the chafing, but not much. Then I clumped over to the reception window and pressed the buzzer. I wasn’t sure who was going to answer. No one did. The steel door slid upward.
A single fluorescent light flickered overhead, but the others were all out; the door beyond to the inner carpeted reception area was wide open, but it was a perfect rectangle of darkness. ‘How many zombies does it take to change a light bulb?’ I whispered.
This wasn’t right. It wasn’t too late to turn back. I shut my eyes tight and breathed deeply.
Don’t be a wuss, Vivia. Go slow, and if there are any loose zombies, turn and run like hell.
I stepped through. The door to the outside shut behind me with a clang.
Somewhere beyond in the darkness, something shifted, and over the sound of my own breathing, I became aware of a slithery, scrapy sort of sound.
And turn and run like hell. Stupid idea.
I twirled awkwardly in the white plastic and reached for a door handle or exit button or anything that could get me out. I felt nothing but smooth, cold steel.
I tugged at the key around my neck, but nothing changed. The door stayed closed, stayed steel, stayed smooth and handleless.
I turned back to the murk. Through the door, the darkness lengthened and became a long skeletal creature pulling itself along on withered forearms, jaw snapping. Its sex would have been unidentifiable except for a pristine pair of pink high-heeled shoes at the end of its shrivelled legs. Or, I corrected myself, it could have been a male who had a preference for such things. Whatever it was, the thing slowly pulling itself towards me was beyond worrying about its footwear.
And it was not where it was supposed to be. This was the safe zone. A horrible realisation came to me. This was the ZDC without anyone to maintain it. No one who hadn’t zombified would ever come here after death. This was a ZDC where the living dead were in charge.
I took a deep breath. You just need to be more authoritative. I’ve seen hags tell worse things than ghost zombies to bugger off.
I put my best school teacher face on and said as authoritatively as I knew how, ‘Go away!’
The creature, not in the least discouraged, kept coming. I poked at it with the flat of the sword. ‘Shoo!’
It ignored that too. I pointed my sword at it and waited for it to come closer, trying to figure out the best way to dispatch it. Head first and then limbs seemed like the best bet, but this wasn’t a real zombie. It was a soul that thought it was a zombie. The thought crossed my mind that it might just slither back together again.
But I couldn’t think of anything worse than being trapped, confused and hungry, in a decomposing body until there was no scrap of flesh left for the soul to cling to. Some of the spirits in the building had likely been trapped in their bodies for decades before true death had claimed them. If I chopped it up and left it here, some poor sod’s soul might be stuck here in rotting pieces forever. It felt like a mean thing to do.
So in the end, I did an undignified little hop over the thing on the floor and raced towards the door in my wellies.
Glow strips along the walls provided just enough light to see a few paces ahead but no more than that. Both steel doors on either side of the reception window were open. Neither would fit the key around my neck. I needed to find another way out. The zombies arrived via a different door, one that opened up for the containment van. That was at the lowest and deepest part of the building. I peered into the darkness of the door to my left. It stayed steady, and the only noise was of the crawling creature behind me as it tried to about turn and that of my beating heart, which had taken on a drum-like tempo.
I walked slowly but steadily, the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up. At the end of the corridor, I turned right again, following the path I had earlier towards the containment cells where I’d last seen Malcolm. The cells were black hollows against the wall, but the thick glass was still in place, and occasionally something shifted and groaned in the darkness. I walked quicker, unwilling to stop and investigate the thumps and lumps behind me as bodies threw themselves against the glass.
All I needed was the right damn door. I wasn’t even going to start thinking how I could be daft enough to come here in the first place.
I whispered over and over again, ‘Go away. Go away,’ but it had no effect.
And then there was a cell with no glass. Something launched out of the darkness and enveloped me in its arms. Both my arms were pinned to my sides; I struggled to raise my sword, struggled to get any momentum to get a thrust in.
The zombie kissed me, gently, on the cheek and stepped back. ‘Hello, hello, hello,’ it said.
My heart stopped trying to run away all on its own and returned to a calmer rhythm in relief.
‘Hello, Sigrid.’ She’d blended in. Her blond hair hung in strings and clumps from her scalp, and my skin was slimy where she had kissed me. She grinned, showing brown teeth. ‘You look disturbing, Siggie,’ I said, but it was good to have her there, even if it wasn’t good to see her. She could be my watch zombie.
She nodded, thoughtfully. The movement of her head made a glutinous sound. ‘It isn’t quite right being the dead living.’
‘It’s the other way round...’ I started to say but broke off. She was right. She wasn’t the living dead. She was the dead living. Her body was in the living world, but her soul was here. The living dead were the other way round, a dead and decomposing body with a soul firmly stuck within.
‘Can you take me to Rosa Brannick?’ I was very, very aware that the darkness was starting to shift at either end of the corridor. Something was coming closer. I turned and peered into the black.
‘You never come just to visit me,’ she said plaintively.
‘Siggie?’ I turned back, but she was gone. Blinked out as if she had never been there. It was just me and a dark building crammed with the living dead.
54
I advanced into the darkness, holding the pointy end of my sword straight out in front. There was no way left but straight ahead. The glow strips highlighted glass cells, bare walls, and finally a light switch, which I toggled on and off to no effect.
The shifting darkness ahead began to take shape into two distinct shambling forms. Both were withered and skeletal, two souls stuck in a special and unfair form of hell. Both sniffed the air as they shuffled, although they had no noses with which to do so. I stood my ground, thinking. As they drew closer, I pulled back my sword in readiness and waited.
A sharp kick to the left shoved the closest back down the corridor. It coasted into the dark, sliding on its back. The remaining creature shuffled towards me, slow enough that I could line up the sword against its neck. I swung it hard. The sword snicker-snacked into its neck.
Where it should have decapitated the creature. Instead the sword stuck halfway through. The zombie’s fingers scrabbled at my plastic-covered chest. Thank God for geeky ex-boyfriends. I tried to pull the sword out without pulling the undead thing closer to me.
Finally, I pushed my foot against its groin and the sword pulled free. The zombie crumpled to the floor on its back,
limbs waggling.
I hacked at its neck and decapitated it with two strokes. The limbs didn’t stop scrabbling, and the jaw didn’t stop snapping, but it didn’t come after me, which was ultimately the real goal. I peered back towards the remaining creature, feeling a little smug about my swordmanship.
Further away, the remaining creature was still struggling to turn itself around. Something glinted as it twisted—a gold necklace around its neck. Gunk covered the broken locket, any photographs within long since rotted away. The smugness faded. Who were you?
‘I’m sorry,’ I said aloud.
I left them behind me in the darkness and carried on. The glow strips illuminated the metal of my sword, and I shuffled along with it in front of me as if I were playing some first person RPG.
Even at my snail’s pace, it only took a few minutes for me to reach the end of the corridor and a fire door. I reached for my key just in case, but nothing changed. Damnit.
I stood outside it for a minute first, listening. Nothing but silence from within.
I turned the handle and stepped into the dark. I could only see a few feet ahead in the pale light: nothing but institutional floor tiles and darkness. I shuffled forward slowly. The door clicked shut behind me.
And of course that’s when I heard it: a dry slithery sound that echoed in the darkness. No, not an echo. A duplication. A sound coming from all sides at once. I stepped back quickly and pulled at the door handle. Nothing gave. The door had locked behind me. I pulled at it again, but it was solidly shut, a thick steel security door made to withstand a ravening horde. I wouldn’t be able to just force it open.
And then I saw it, high above: a single fluttering fluorescent light. I was in the pit.
Cold fear washed over me. It wasn’t possible. You couldn’t just open a door and walk into the pit. You had to be lowered through one of the cells. There were no damn doors into the pit. At least in the living world. It wasn’t bloody possible.
The darkness moved all around me. There was none of that telltale dead man’s moan. These creatures had been dead too long—even if they’d remembered what their voices were for, their throats and voice boxes had long since rotted away.
Think, Vivia! There was a way in. There has to be a way out. But all I could think was damn Sigrid for running away and leaving me with just a Stormtrooper costume and a sword I didn’t know how to use properly.
My eyes adjusted slowly to the murk, and the moving darkness became a wall of leathery skulls, all looking at me. How could they see me when their eyes were long rotted away? I shook the thought out my head. It wasn’t the best time for zombie philosophising. There were hundreds of them, all pushing against each other to get to me first. As I watched, the front row collapsed under the weight of the creatures behind, who simply crawled over their broken remains. To my advantage, it was slow going. None of them had the muscles left to run or walk. Each step was wobbly, each movement unsure and trembling, but they were still getting closer. The zombie wall shuffled in a decreasing semi-circle towards me.
I did the only thing I could. I ran straight at them, shoving them down as I went. The things toppled backwards onto their fellows, who collapsed under them. My boots crunched as their bones, brittle with the years, broke under my feet.
Hands like claws scrabbled at my ankles but didn’t find purchase on the smooth plastic. Every step, my feet faltered on some uneven surface of rib cage or skull or wriggling pelvis. There was no end to them. I waved my sword around in a circle and felt a satisfying thwack as I hit something. Behind me something grabbed hold of my foot, and I hopped on the other as I tried to pull away. I fell forward and just managed to stop myself from falling face first into a snapping maw.
In the kerfuffle, the thing behind me managed to pull my boot off. I stood on one leg and held my socked foot off the floor away from hungry mouths. I couldn’t hop my way out. I was having enough trouble on two feet. I slammed my foot down and felt a stabbing pain as a sharp piece of bone spiked through it. A fresh shot of fear ran through me. Maybe the ancient, dry bone no longer carried the infection. Maybe.
I shoved the thought away and waded faster, slamming down first with my right-booted foot as I went.
There was an end. About six feet ahead, I could see a blank space not filled with pale nightmares. And beyond that was another door, a wooden door surrounded by a softly glowing nimbus.
‘That better bloody well not be locked,’ I muttered.
I kicked a snapping skull in the face. It splintered backwards.
I ran forward and put my socked foot right into a dead man’s jaw, which clamped down immediately. I screamed and pulled my foot away, but the skull simply snapped off the remainder of its neck and came with, firmly locked down on my foot. I could swear it was making happy little maw-maw noises even if I knew that was impossible.
That’s it. Bitten. Might as well stay here. The thoughts were fleeting, but somewhere in the back of my mind part of me was screaming and didn’t know how to stop.
Two percent. Rotting death deferred, if not evaded. It was a shred of hope to cling to. I swallowed my fear. I’d run free of the slithering masses, but the tide was turning slowly back towards me. There wasn’t time to stop and pry the head free. Instead, I made for the door, crunching the skull against the floor as I ran.
I reached it and pushed down on the handle, praying that it would give. It did. I pushed it open, ran through and slammed it shut behind me, putting all my weight against it. I didn’t think the things in the pit had the strength or brainpower to open it from the other side, but the sheer weight of them might be enough to push it open.
But that wasn’t what was occupying my mind. I’d been bitten.
55
Everything was burnt. The door out of the pit had deposited me into the charred remains of an apocalypse—an urban wasteland of blackened brick and soot. Neat black squares lined with rubble indicated the spaces where buildings had stood, with only the skeletons of dead trees to break up the monotony. Multiple human-like harpy faces watched me expressionlessly.
I sat heavily and leaned against the door. Ash wafted up into my nose, and I sneezed. Pain washed over my foot in waves. The skull was still happily chewing.
I pressed my foot and the skull with it against the ground and pushed at it with my boot until the teeth gave way and the disembodied head rolled off, jaws still grinding.
Slowly, I peeled back my sock and winced. My foot looked like it had made it halfway through a meat grinder. All my toes were intact, but I could see a lot more of my own stringy sinew than I’d ever thought I would. On the whole I’d prefer it if all of my insides stayed, well, inside. Nausea bubbled up, and I swallowed heavily.
The chattering skull on the dusty ground looked for all the world like some cheap wind-up toy, not something that might end my life.
Two percent. I said it to myself silently over and over. It wasn’t much, but it was the only hope I had. Not enough.
Anger began to build. I looked around for something to smash the thing with. Suitable material littered the ground. I picked up a blackened brick, hopped over, and raised it high. The skull chattered and snapped with excitement at my proximity. How did it even know I was there?
Only the tiniest scraps of flesh clung to the ancient bone. Somewhere in those empty eye sockets was someone’s soul. It crunched its teeth at me, and I sighed. Trying to reason with the dead was pointless. I lowered the brick.
‘You’re dead, little soul,’ I said. ‘Dead. Dead. Dead. You don’t have to be a zombie anymore.’
I hopped out of biting range and inspected my foot again. The damage wasn’t deep, but it was wide and broad. Most of the skin on the arch was, if not gone, then mangled beyond recognition. I gave a hollow laugh. On the upside, the likelihood of infection meant I wouldn’t be worrying about it in a couple of days.
High above, the sun shone hot through clouds of smoke. A trickle of sweat rolled down my cheek. I looked around:
there was no one in sight. Except for the harpies, the whole area appeared abandoned.
I pulled off the Stormtrooper’s helmet, and the burning stink hit my nostrils. I pulled off the rest of it. I wasn’t sure why I was here or what here was, but there were no zombies to be seen under the smoky sky. I left the outfit in a pile. My jeans would be too tough to rip for a bandage, so I tried my shirt. I don’t think I have particularly weak fingers, but it, too, was rip-resistant. I pulled it over my head and used the whole thing to wrap my foot. Bright red blood seeped through the makeshift bandage within seconds.
Behind me I heard my sister say, ‘Oh, there you are.’
I turned around, ‘And where the... ack!’
Sigrid was lucky she’d spoken first because if she hadn’t I would have cut her damn head off. How she spoke was another question. She’d dressed for the occasion in her best burnt-out skeleton suit, so she was nothing but blackened bones. Only her voice told me it was her and not some other random skeleton.
‘That is really creepy.’
The skeleton nodded in agreement. ‘I can be the living dead if you like.’
‘No, that’s creepy too,’ I said. ‘And smelly. Can’t you just be you?’
‘Which one?’
She had a point. Should she be the fourteen-year-old girl who’d died or the woman who wasn’t really there?
‘Be you as you should have been,’ I said, and she became, as if the skeleton had never existed, just a slim, bright-haired woman in a strappy sundress.
‘You’re a strange old bird,’ she said. ‘It’s always me.’
‘I know.’ I said, taking her hand and using it to pull myself up. ‘Let me lean on you. I’m a bit hobbly at the moment due to Mr Bitey over there.’
Sigrid leaned over and picked up the skull, fingers through the eye sockets—not how I would have done it.
‘You were talking to him,’ she said. ‘What was it? Oh, yes.’ Then she repeated back to it in my voice, ‘You’re dead, little soul. Dead. Dead. Dead. You don’t have to be a zombie anymore.’
It was weird hearing your voice come out of someone else’s mouth. It was even weirder when the skull swivelled on her fingers and turned towards me. I could swear it nodded of its own accord.
Sig put it down, and it swivelled further, round and round and round, gathering flesh as it did so. It swivelled upwards, growing teeth, skin, tissue in two easy turns.
And not a Mister after all. A Miss or possibly a Ms or Mrs. The skull was an elderly woman in a green knit dress, with beautiful long grey hair that reached to the bottom of her knees.
‘What a relief. That does feel much better,’ said the ex-zombie.
‘Good,’ I said. It didn’t quite feel adequate, but I didn’t know what else to say.
She gave no sign that she’d heard. Instead she pulled a London A–Z out of a fringed handbag, flipped to the back section, and flickered out of sight.
‘How did you do that?’ I put my weight on my right leg and leaned against Sigrid heavily.
‘They’re supposed to listen to you, you know. I just used your voice.’
I didn’t answer. It seemed pointless. I knew what I was. Hag. Death witch. Whatever. I hadn’t had any training. It was all very well for Charon and Sigrid to tell me what I was supposed to be able to do. I knew what I was. I just didn’t know how to be it.
Instead, I stared out at the ashen landscape. Something about it seemed familiar. And then it clicked—the shape of the road, the black stump where an oak tree should be, and the rusty corrugated iron of an old double gate.
I’d found myself back at Malcolm Brannick’s house, but a version that I was sure had never existed in the living world, and one bereft of people—living dead or just plain dead.
With Sigrid’s help, I hobbled across the road and stood in front of the space where Neil Brannick’s house had been. There were a few half walls and piles of broken brick, blackened beams, and other debris, but not much else. The house next door had fared worse—there was almost nothing left—not even the walls remained.
I knew there’d been a fire, but this wasn’t only a fire. Whatever had happened here had had a strong enough impact to blast a whole other reality into the underworld.
56
The murdered don’t die just once. They relive their deaths over and over until they can make sense of them. For some, there’s some tiny thing leading up to the event that is most significant; others, like Leslie, try to remove or prevent the pain of the end, by eating or self-medicating or learning to swim—whatever will stop it.
And a few run through the whole story with an entire cast of not-real characters, going through the events leading up to their deaths over and over again until they can find some rhyme or reason.
Rosa Brannick née Baranowski was in the latter category, and I’d snuck in at the end of the show. I had just enough time to think it was going to start again when the world crumbled around me. The rubble crashed to the ground, and the world flattened. Only the soot and the ash swirled upwards, blocking the world from sight. The earth shuddered under my feet. I sat heavily and dug my hands into the soil to try and steady my body. The ground hardened and spat them out again.
I looked down. I was no longer sitting on ash but rather on a warm pavement dotted with chewing gum. By the time the ash disappeared, it was clear that the world had reset, and I was looking at John Line Terrace.
It didn’t seem much different to John Line Terrace in the living world until you looked closely. Then you noticed that the newest car on the street wasn’t new at all and that the Elect Blair sticker in the window of number fifteen wasn’t brown and curling, and the colour of the bricks on number eleven were the colour as the rest of the road. The front garden hadn’t been paved over yet; yellow rose bushes lined its edges, dotted here and there with the type of annuals Stanley likes to call filling—petunias and pansies. Sweet peas clung to an iron pyramid in the middle. Not-real bees buzzed around them.
I picked myself off the pavement and dusted the remains of my clothes down. Now that I was no longer standing in the middle of an apocalypse, I felt a little out of place in only my bra and jeans, but the few dead that would notice wouldn’t care.
I pushed the gate open. It squeaked loudly in the silence. I mounted the steps and tried the front door. It was locked. There was a knocker shaped like a lion with a ring in its mouth, so I banged it twice—as loud as I could—and when I got no immediate answer, tried again.
Footsteps thumped down the stairs, and I found myself looking at the inquisitive face of a not-real Adam. He was wearing a pair of red shorts and nothing else and was so skinny his ribs were clearly visible on his bare chest.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Hi, is your mum here?’
‘Muuuuum.’
There was no response from the house.
‘Can I come in?’
Not-real Adam shrugged. I stepped through the door. Not waiting for the not-real boy, I made my way to the back of the house. The layout was exactly the same as Malcolm’s, but it was homier somehow. Family pictures lined the walls, but none were the studio style of Malcolm’s. These were favourites—snapshots of life at all the best moments: Adam aged around four opening a present, the contents invisible, but a look of awe on his face; Adam staring at a flock of pigeons and lost in thought. I stopped to look at a framed wedding photo. Rosa was visibly pregnant, but the looks on their faces told me this was no shotgun wedding.
A little clip-clip noise echoed from the kitchen. I followed the sound, which turned out to be Rosa chopping carrots. She stood at the kitchen counter, stopping every few seconds to scoop them into a simmering pot on the gas stove. Her blond hair was scooped up and tied loosely into a bun, but little wisps framed her flushed face. She paused briefly to wipe sweat from her forehead with her upper arm.
Not-real Neil stood at the opposite end, his arms in the sink. I couldn’t see his face, but his hair was longer and darker.
<
br /> ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him,’ not-real Neil was saying. ‘And every time I see Leslie, I know I can’t tell her. The man needs a padlock for his trousers... or what do you call it—a chastity belt.’
‘I don’t think they made them for men,’ Rosa said. She had a strong east London accent slightly tainted with something else. Her Polish parents, I thought. Rosa turned around and smiled at her husband. ‘Actually, weren’t they a myth?’
She finished with the carrots and reached to her left to grab a turnip, which she peeled rapidly in quick little movements of the knife.
But not-real Neil wasn’t finished. ‘I mean she must know he plays away. That whole debacle with the winged woman is a case in point. But his own wife’s sister is something else. And Jillie isn’t any better. Stupid girl. What on earth is she thinking?’
Rosa laughed. She dropped the remains of the turnip into the pot, then stepped over to her husband. She hugged him about the waist. ‘Oh, I don’t know. You Brannick men are pretty irresistible, you know.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s their marriage. If Malcolm listened to you he would never have married Leslie in the first place.’
Neil grunted.
And then it was dark, and I was alone in the kitchen staring at the full moon through the window above the sink. The lights were off, but the sounds of voices drifted in from outside. I opened the kitchen door and stepped out into the garden. The other Brannicks weren’t gardeners, but someone in this family was. The garden wasn’t overgrown—there wasn’t a weed or nettle to be seen and the grass was neatly trimmed—but it did look wild around the edges, as if the gardener couldn’t decide what plants she wanted so settled for squashing them all in. Passionflowers tangled sunflowers which dominated tomato plants, heavy with fruit, which then rose above a carpet of forget-me-nots.
A square brick pond framed the end of the plot. A thick grille covered the top, and it was through this grille that a three-year-old not-real Alister was pushing a stick and pestering the fish. Not-real Adam stood next to him, arms folded, watching silently. He was older than when he’d opened the door, and while he’d grown taller, he didn’t seem to have grown wider—your standard preteen beanpole.
The adults—Rosa and not-real Neil, Malcolm and Leslie—clustered around a gas barbecue, and I got my first real look at a Leslie Brannick that wasn’t a photograph, a morbidly obese soul, or a blackened skeleton in a suitcase.
She was the taller of the sisters, and the slimmer. Whatever gene made Jillie stocky had missed out Leslie. She was thin and wiry with a sinuous quality that, if I hadn’t already known she was a shifter, would have made me wonder if she was. She wore a pair of cut-off jeans with a red V-necked T-shirt, and her short red hair had been gelled so it spiked up and framed her face. There was enough meat on the barbecue to satisfy the most hard-core carnivore—sausage, lamb chops, burgers, and steak.
Not-real Malcolm pierced one of the sausages with a knife and peered inside. ‘These are done.’ He looked around. ‘Where are the plates?’
Leslie said, ‘I’ll get them.’
Malcolm watched her long legs as she strode back to the kitchen.
‘Dad!’
Not-real Neil turned around at Adam’s shout.
‘I think Alister’s stabbed the yellow one.’
Little Alister stood at the side of the pond—not yet crying but with his mouth quivering in a way that suggested he might start bawling at any moment.
‘Let me see.’ Neil picked up a torch from the grass next to the barbecue and shone it down into the grille. I followed, wincing with each step on my injured foot, and peered into the pond. Dark shapes slid beneath the water. Neil put the torch closer, just above the water line. ‘I don’t see anything. I think it’s okay.’
A burst of laughter split the night air, and Neil’s head snapped around to see Rosa smiling at something Malcolm had said. He murmured something to her, and she turned around to look at Neil and burst out laughing again.
Neil dropped the torch and strode back to the barbecue.
And they were gone. The garden was dark and cold. Frost crunched under my feet as I made my way back to the kitchen door. Neil was watching the news alone. He stared at the screen, seemingly engrossed in a story about a man with a prizewinning cabbage.
I found Rosa in bed, blowing her nose. She looked awful. Her nose was raw, and her eyes were puffy and ringed with dark circles. She took a long last sip of something hot and medicinal out of a mug with a teddy bear on it, then stuffed toilet paper in both her nostrils and switched off the lamp on her bedside table.
This was it, I thought. This was the pivotal moment. Rosa’s autopsy had indicated nasal inflammation. This had to be the night she died. Sometime this evening, Moses Ogunwale was supposed to have poured petrol through the letterbox and set the house on fire, thinking his ill neighbour was already dead.
I sat down on the bed next to Rosa and pulled up my foot. Blood had seeped through the makeshift bandage, and the carpet was dotted with red where I’d walked.
The stairs creaked—Neil making his way up to bed. I looked up. He stood framed in the doorway. In his right hand he held a plastic milk bottle filled with liquid.
Rosa stirred. ‘Sweetie? You coming to bed?’
Movement behind Neil drew my focus. Adam stood in the doorway to his bedroom, his eyes wide. Neil felt something, perhaps his son’s gaze, and turned, but Adam ducked back into his room before Neil saw him.
Neil pulled the bedroom door closed, and I heard it click as the key was turned in the lock. It was only minutes before greasy smoke wafted under the door. I tried the door handle, but it was locked fast. Rosa sat up on the edge of the bed. ‘Neil?’ She didn’t seem concerned, just confused. The two plugs of toilet paper were still stuck in her nostrils, and I doubted she could smell the smoke. Rosa reached over, switched the light on, and squinted at her watch on the bedside table. ‘Neil?’ Rosa got up, tugged at the door, and when it didn’t open, banged on it. She began to panic. She slammed her shoulder against the doorframe, but it didn’t budge. The room filled rapidly with smoke. My throat began to itch.
Rosa stumbled to the window. She scrabbled at the lock, coughing as she did so. I reached out to her before I could think about it further. Come with me.
My mouth opened to say the words out loud, but an image of my sister filled my head before I could get them out. Sigrid, alive, but not. Sigrid eating an imaginary sandwich. Sigrid, unaware of the cold and rain in the bus shelter. Sigrid lying in her own faeces.
What good would it do? I wanted to take Rosa with me and let her confront her murderer back in the living world, but all I’d end up with was yet another confused and screwed-up dead person in my menagerie.
I felt for the key around my neck and slotted it into the door. I purposely didn’t look back. Rosa was long dead, but it felt like I was abandoning her anyway.