To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

“You should clear this, Roy. It’s a bit disappointing,”

“But, Dad. It isn’t mine.”

“It’s all yours, Roy. Everything is yours, ours. We just have to face it, show it we’re not afraid. Never turn your back on these things, Roy. They’ll only get worse.”

My father had become the Master now. He even wore the robe.

We reached a hill above the forest and saw moonlight rake the acres of the trees. Above, stars burned blue. It was, as dreams can be, detailed and entirely real.

“How’s mother?” I asked him humbly.

“Your mother?” he said. His voice grew quiet and tense. “She has a lover, Roy. She didn’t wait for me. I’m up to killing that bitch.”

When Duran phoned me at seven the next morning I was not amazed.

Nor, of course, when he said, “I still can’t get anything from your landline, Roy.”

“No. Trying to get them to fix it.”

“Gawd. Don’t hold your breath.”

“I’m not.”

“Look, Roy, I hate to’ve let you down. She’s gone into well – we thought it was labour and she’s not due till June. But they’ve took her in and – well, I wanna be with her,

“Yes, Duran, of course you do.”

“Can I call you later?”

“Whenever, Duran. Don’t worry about that. Good luck. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, Roy. You’re a king.”

Satanus Rex. A king.

When I thought to look, the white car had been removed from the junction of the Lane and the Crescent.

I was fairly sure Duran wouldn’t be calling me back, or if he did only to say he couldn’t make it. They might send her home and he must be there to look after her, not to mention their other child, who was only just at school age.

The problem was, should I simply leave the house as it was? Presumably Joseph could break in. Or could he? Did his cleverness also lie in that direction? He gave off an almost supernatural impression of being able to manifest out of thin air, but in fact there were always reasons for everything he had achieved that way. He’d made sure I understood them. No, the house could resist him. Somehow he had got the piano speed-delivered and installed on that single day he was here before. Since then he hadn’t come back. After all he might never come back. Presumably he had achieved his purpose, whatever insane purpose it was.

Even so, preparing to pack, I meant to put everything together again very carefully, all my documents and valued files, placed in my holdall.

At 9 a.m. this time Matt called me on the mobile.

“Your phone doesn’t work, Roy.” He meant the landline evidently. He sounded aggrieved. Faithless wives, useless telephones… “I tried you yesterday. Twice.”

“They’re being slow to repair it. As I have the mobile I’m not an emergency, it seems.”

“You are to me. This call’s costing me the earth. And a mobile phone, did you know, can give you cancer?” he added. Gloatingly he continued, “She has one. Reason I called. I can’t make this weekend. Some old chums have turned up out of the blue. Every inch of space here is taken. I’ll be clear Monday morning, and good riddance.”

I sensed, without any evidence, he had picked up another woman and she was staying the weekend with him. Hopefully it might defuse some of his angst.

“Let’s make it Monday then, Matt.”

This was better, in its way. Monday would be easier for travelling up there. Saturdays like Sundays were always chancy, trains cancelled, works on the line.

But now I had tonight and two more days and nights here.

When I locked up that night the top bolt on the front door seemed loose. It had a little the previous night, but this was worse. Duran had been a bit rough with all the bolts, testing them and telling me off for using flimsy things like that still, although he had installed them himself years ago. “Yeah, but Roy, things have improved. Anyone could kick this door down. Bust the locks, the bolts’d just fly off.”

I had told him I would then hear all that and telephone the police.

“Mate of mine,” he said balefully, “he had a break-in. The cops took an hour to get there. By which time he’d chased the burk off himself. But I don’t see you doing that. Not your style. Too much a gentleman you are, Roy.”

I wobbled the bolt home gingerly. The lower one, which last night I’d forgotten to shoot, as I sometimes do when I’m tired, seemed conversely very stiff. I got some WD40 and squirted it, but it didn’t seem to do any good. I left it and simply locked up. Then I brought a straight chair from the front room and leaned it on the door. I felt foolish doing this, despite everything that had happened. But in any case, I couldn’t utilise the bolts from the outside, or the chair, when I left.

This was going to be one of my fully insomniac nights, or so it seemed. I got to bed about ten-thirty and tossed and turned until one. Then I got up, made some tea and went into the study.

Here I tried to make a start on the new novel, Kill Me.

Outside two cats were wauling at each other. Up the road No 98 was having a party; I could catch the thump-thump of their music.

I managed to squeeze out five hundred words of dry, formulaic crap, but it was, I told myself virtuously, a start.

Then I found myself reaching out for the disc of Untitled.

I put it in the machine.

Chapter XVI. Printed up, this began on page 273, and ran on to Chapter XVII, and so to the part at which I had left it, in the spring of the year 2000.

I skimmed through it, once or twice pausing, even now, to change a word, pare or extend a sentence.

Lying on the floor of the Master’s upper room, Vilmos had just slaughtered a man dragged in for him from the alleys.