Decay Inevitable Page 7

  She resisted going into the street in case she brought attention upon herself – and also because her transition was incomplete – so she was only tangentially aware of what was happening outside. The murmur of traffic, a skitter of shoes on the pavement. At night, through a grille in the ceiling, she saw the houses lose their shape to the darkness, squares of pale colour dotting their invisibility: people who could not sleep. An hour later, her breathing decreased to one inhalation every four minutes; as she felt the bones of her pelvis dissolve and re-knit into a broader shape, she heard a telephone ringing on one of the floors above her. An answer machine cut in and she heard giggling voices tell the woman she was becoming when they would arrive. Same time tomorrow night. She recognised the voice. The person who owned it was called... Susan... Suzanne... Susannah. Susannah.

  What is my name?

  It seemed that by the following morning her transition was complete. It took a few hours to emerge from torpor, by which time she felt refreshed and dangerous. The curve of her body was noticeable through her ill-fitting clothes. She felt a scar creep across her hip, watched a constellation of freckles birth themselves on the bridge of her nose. Yet as she studied her new aspect in the bathroom mirror, it became evident the change hadn’t ceased, that it went beyond this new physicality. Something was niggling her; a memory she’d never had before, one that seemed to call at her before the shock of the new. She couldn’t fully understand how this was. There was a compulsion to achieve something, to fulfil a pledge she couldn’t recall making. And other things too: the vague itch in her bones which might or might not be the calming of her marrow after such an upheaval. What did it mean? Only a tiny part of her gawped at the rushing of these events – presumably the area of her mind that groped for clues to who she was – for her name, the stock of memories she treasured were dwindling like tail-lights in mist.

  Who am I? What is my name?

  Enough of her remained to know she was being possessed or, more accurately, subsumed, but the thrill of the experience erased any fear.

  Later, as the dark came again, she rubbed moisturisers into her skin, enjoying the sheen that it created, the softness. She inspected every bit of her body and when she was finished, she started again, until she was intimate with all of it.

  She whispered, “Who am I?”

  Footsteps on the path outside. She could hear Simon and Susannah and Joe? Joel? Jonathan laughing. Perhaps she should persuade them to go for a drink. Wasn’t that what usually happened when she had visitors? But no. Alcohol, and all its attendant possibilities, held no frisson for her; rather, other appetites had begun to develop, along with her psyche and the ripe shell in which she was contained.

  Vacating the bathroom, she wrapped herself in a white towelling robe and went downstairs, the activity in her bones reaching a new level of intensity. Only when they piled through the door carrying suitcases and food parcels did she finally realise the nature of its energy.

  They stared at her. The door swung shut.

  “Dawn?” gaped Susannah.

  Dawn... of course.

  “In a manner of speaking,” she replied, untying the robe, watching her body spill to the floor.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: M

  THEY JOINED THE motorway at Brent Cross. The traffic was heavy, but fluid, winding into the first curves like the swift channelling of water. They had arrived at Elisabeth’s parents’ house around lunchtime. Katherine, her mother, accepted them both with a curt nod; she had always resented Will for his treatment of her daughter. He was in no mood now to pick up on an argument five years old, especially as he thought he had acted correctly, ending a relationship swiftly because it had seemed to have run its course. That Cat was already sleeping in his bed at the time should not have been an issue, but Katherine had berated him for weeks afterwards, strafing him with phone calls long after Eli had accepted the outcome.

  “I need to borrow your car,” Elisabeth had told her as she made them both mugs of tea in the narrow, sunlit kitchen. Katherine had handed over the keys without a peep, but gave them both icy, unblinking stares. Elisabeth was old enough now not to be told where she was going wrong. Still, with her mother unrelenting with this slow-burn look, Elisabeth told her: “I know. I know,” as they left the house.

  THEY WERE A mile shy of Rugby, the radio masts clearly visible, when the car in front of them lifted into the sky. The beginning of Eli’s startled cry was eclipsed by an explosion that seemed to rupture the air itself. In the moment before their car was flipped over by the shockwave, Will thought he caught a glimpse of what death meant. It shimmered in the core of bloody colour spraying from the split petrol tank of their doomed neighbour; it engulfed the car with a film of uncertainty, before the flames tucked in and ruined the illusion of insubstantiality with some of their own. And then a pocket of dark to hide in for a while, as all around them pieces of the sky and the earth swapped places.

  HE REVIVED FIRST, certain that Elisabeth was dead. A lump the size of a walnut had risen from the side of her head, just above her ear, which was torn and bloody. A tooth had been chipped and her lip was swollen and red. A worrying amount of blood had darkened the area of her T-shirt that covered her breasts.

  “Eli.” Will reached over and dug into her throat with his fingers, searching for signs of life. It was there, a pulse stronger than he was expecting. He breathed out, shocked by sudden tears. He must not fold now; they might still be in danger from the fires. Although the windscreen was a riot of cracks, rendering the glass opaque, he could see how the sky was orange and waxy with movement.

  Will managed to kick open the corrugated mess of the door. His seatbelt was preventing him from falling on top of Elisabeth; the car had come to a stop on the passenger side. Grabbing hold of the steering wheel, Will released the belt and hauled himself through the gap, gritting his teeth to an agony that never came. Now he could see the road, or what remained of it. Great jags of tarmac had been forced into the air, as if from a tectonic collision. Smoke rose, either in urgent, pumping cones of black or gently wafting veils, depending on the severity of the flame that fuelled it. Will stopped counting when he reached twenty charred vehicles. Another dozen or so had escaped the fires but disintegrated in the ensuing pile-up. Rounding the crimped bonnet of the Golf, he saw a limb on the roadside, neatly encased in a pink cardigan sleeve. The fingers were gripping a half-eaten chunky Kit Kat.

  Will rubbed his face as he felt the heat draining away from it. Fainting wasn’t going to be of use to anyone. He pressed his shoulder against the roof of the car. By rocking against it, his movements becoming progressively more violent as the balance shifted, he was able to generate enough momentum for it to right itself. Elisabeth jounced and flopped in the passenger seat, her senseless movements like those of a soft toy, renewing Will’s nausea. For a moment, he believed the car might be all right for all its dents and fractures, but then he saw there was no road to drive upon, even if the engine did turn.

  Sirens flew into the hot sky behind him, at a distance too great for him to fathom what was causing them. He couldn’t understand the reason for the panic that flitted through him; Elisabeth might be critically ill, she might need urgent medical attention.

  So why am I doing this? he asked himself as he wrenched open the passenger door and eased her out of the seat. Her arms jerked under his touch; she said: “Not in that colour,” before falling silent once more.

  He tip-toed with her through the wreckage, hoping to find a gap in the buckled road, but the trauma had been too great. Walking wounded drifted by him, ignoring him, as dazed as lost tourists.

  The embankment was littered with broken glass and hot rinds of metal. He staggered to the bottom where a fence pegged back a ditch and a field that fell away to a smudge of woods. Cows chewed like outlaws in a Western. Smoke rolled down the embankment here. Will strode through it, trying to shut out the dreadful cooking odours that enveloped him. He was on the other side of the smoke wall, angling his way back up
to the road when he again had the curious epiphanic certainty that he understood death, that its secret was somehow within his grasp. He almost dropped Elisabeth. To his right, limning the edge of the oil-smoke, sunshine picked out what appeared to be solid surfaces, dented and mottled like beaten tin. Yet there was nothing behind it, no caved-in car or jack-knifed juggernaut. Someone was screaming somewhere. His attention diverted for a second, the moment was lost: just oil-smoke rolling into a brilliant winter sky.

  The clamour of rescue behind him, Will breasted the embankment to find more confusion. The explosion that had halted him was not the only one. The distant road sported similar eruptions. Will almost hoped that Elisabeth would die; the remainder of his journey would have to be by foot.

  He had to get her off the road, at least until the pandemonium was over. A series of blackened farmhouse buildings – stock-sheds, stables, a barn – were collapsed against each other about a quarter of a mile to the east. There was nothing else.

  The embankment was less treacherous on the opposite side, the fence not as well tended. Elisabeth sneezed three times as he made his way through the rape fields, knowing that he must be as conspicuous as a fly on a wedding cake, but nobody called to stop him.

  About three hundred yards shy of the fire-ravaged stables, Will heard the first deep, blatting rotor beats of helicopters. It was a directionless sound, fading and coming, fading and coming. Will’s neck ached, trying to pinpoint the source. He didn’t like the way his senses were abandoning him; perhaps he had been damaged in the crash, in a way he could not yet understand. Finally, as he moved into the shade of a line of silver birch, he saw them: half a dozen emergency service helicopters, low on the horizon, coming in from the south.

  The stables were gutted. None of the four had contained horses for a long time. The fire that had done for the buildings had been a major affair, although the main house had been only partially consumed.

  Will left Elisabeth propped up against an ancient engine block that was so large it must have belonged to a tractor. He spread his coat across her. She was still unconscious but her brow was knitted, as though she were deep in concentration. Will whispered to her that he would be back, then padded across to the farmhouse. Fire engines were scattered across the motorway, trying to control the flames. As he watched, a car exploded, half of it spinning into the air like a toy at the hands of a tantrum child. Great arcs of thick foam were directed to this fresh blaze. More helicopters clattered overhead, heavier types carrying water that was discharged in ribbons over the carnage. A rainbow flashed across the sky for a few seconds.

  To gain access, Will had to kick in some boards covering a ground-floor window, but they were rotting and gave way easily. Fire had peeled away much of the inner skin of the room; the walls were scorched brick, floorboards had been exposed above and beneath him. The smell of the fire had long since vanished; now the dampness was thick with the sour smell of spoor and rot. There was nothing of use here. Will moved deeper into the house. A staircase reached into the heights but had been cheated of its ambition; the final half-dozen risers were missing, trashed by an infalling of masonry. In the kitchen he found an old, unopened roll of toilet tissue. Cairns of unidentifiable animal shit were scattered in some indecipherable pattern. A cracked, fly-speckled window wrenched the M1 disaster site into something unworldly. Smoke was condensed by the flaws in the glass; the rescuers were more hunched and twisted than the survivors they pulled from the wreckage. Will’s neck tingled. It was not just the shock of the accident or the thrill of having survived. He had witnessed something other just now. An opening, a promise of a different place. The opportunity to gain finer understanding. The unimaginable laid bare, perhaps, and made simple. It was as if God had dropped some of his blueprints into Will’s lap.

  He tried to push the sensation away. Thoughts like this weren’t going to help Elisabeth. Will climbed the stairs carefully, vaulting the gap and moving across the landing to the bathroom. Fallen chunks of plaster concealed much of the carpet in here. A faded map of Australia took up the majority of one canary-yellow wall. Cracked, multi-coloured tiles finished the decoration above a badly stained enamel bath. An upside-down bottle of Aveda shampoo and a nailbrush were the only adornments, not counting the desiccated robin in the wash basin.

  In the medicine cabinet, Will found a small, ancient tube of lignocaine and a plastic tub filled with Ibuprofen, the seal of which was still intact even if the expiry date had come and gone a year ago.

  “It will do,” he muttered, and the closeness of his voice made his neck tingle.

  He retraced his steps and was about to leap over the gap in the stairs when he saw something glittering in its darkness. At first he thought they were coins, but when he bent to pick them up, he realised, too late, that they weren’t.

  CHAPTER TWELVE: SHIVERY EYES

  THE FOREMAN WAS a stocky, catarrhal man who wore a Manchester City pin just below the knot of his tie. “Rapler,” he introduced himself. “Tony Rapler.” It wasn’t much of an interview. Rapler asked him, over superheated cups of weak coffee, what experience he had had on building sites.

  “Not much,” admitted Sean. “But when I was younger I did some casual labour on small sites. Building garages and extensions, that type of thing.”

  “You look fit. Work out much? Swimmer?”

  “I run a bit. And my last job was warehouseman, humping kitchen units and firecheck doors around. It helps.”

  “Any form?” Rapler asked.

  “No. I’m disappointingly clean.”

  Rapler laughed. “You’ll be fine. We need a few more meatheads about the place. All we get are students sniffing around for a few weeks’ work in the summer. They usually cry off after a couple of days. Think they’re going to turn into Lou Ferrigno – ‘Aye, boss, no trouble. I could carry bricks all day’ – and before you know it they’re walking around like they’ve just had a hernia.”

  “What was this place?” Sean asked.

  “Built in the 1970s. Nobody knows what it was meant to be. Hotel most probably. But it was also an office block, with a private residential quarter and a leisure facility. You could have been born inside and never had a need to go out. Maybe if they built it down south it would have worked, but up here?”

  “Interesting.”

  “Yeah, up to a point. Guy who designed it, Peter de Fleche, hanged himself. Dutch. After it was abandoned and the demolition orders went through you’d see him in this fucked-up Jag, giving it the slow drive-by. Felt as if he’d failed, they reckon. Did a couple other buildings in a similar vein. Then nothing.”

  “He doesn’t need to know any more.”

  Sean turned to see the barrel-chested man from the funeral standing in the doorway. He had so much neck it resembled a collar for his head to nestle in.

  Rapler said, “This is Ronnie Salt. You’ll answer to him on the softstrip. He runs a good team, does Ronnie.”

  Ronnie nodded at him. Up close, his eyes were unpleasant splashes of cement-grey either side of a nose that might have once been used as a blacksmith’s anvil. The two men walked across the sunken, blasted forecourt to the condemned building as another man turned up. He nodded at them and Rapler clapped his hand on the new man’s shoulder. “Marshall?” Rapler asked, “Jamie Marshall?” They disappeared back inside his Portakabin.

  “Why is it being knocked down?” Sean asked, as they approached the de Fleche building.

  Salt regarded him with what looked like a wince, as if he had expected Sean to be mute and was now resigned to having to converse with him. “Well, it’s completely shagged out. I mean, look at it. Nobody has lived there or worked in it for years. Sick building. Air conditioning system never right. Couple of people died. Airborne disease.”

  “Great. Must be a pleasure to spend your days in there.”

  Salt sneered at him. “It’s a job.”

  The front of the de Fleche building soared away from them like the prow of a ship. The entrance was a f
ly-blown revolving door ten feet high with so many cracks it looked like a feature. Behind the fogged barrier of glass, a bank of shattered TV screens hung from the ceiling over a horseshoe desk. Sean tried to imagine what the lobby must have looked like.

  “Let’s have a closer look,” he said.

  The doors gritted and squealed as they pushed through. The air in here was a urinous melange; a deep scar in the far wall showed how vagrants might have gained access. Squatter evidence lay around them: empty tins, shit-streaked toilet tissue in a bin sack, newspapers bearing dates from half a decade previously.

  Salt stood by the door, his hands in his pockets, toeing something small and shrivelled that owned claws and a tail.

  “Has work started on this place yet?” Sean asked.

  “Yeah. We’re going top to bottom. Just a couple of floors done so far. Slow job.”

  “Where’s your team?”

  A blunt thumb jutted upwards. “Wordy bastard aren’t you? Do you ask so many questions all the time?”

  Sean spread his hands. “Just being friendly.”

  “Keep friendly for your knitting circle, or whatever it is you do when you leave us. Work is here. Hard fucking work. And I will come down on you like the knives at a knacker’s yard if you step out of line. Hear me? Don’t like it? Hard-hat off, fuck off. Simple as that.”