 
### Love Hurts

### by Russell Taylor

Copyright Russell Taylor 2011

Published by Erik Simonsen at Smashwords

#  PROLOGUE

Let me tell you something about love. They say love hurts; well, my love killed a whole town. Only a small town mind, but a whole town all the same. Love doesn't just hurt, it maims, cripples and kills. I know; I've seen it in action.

I assume it was love. I didn't study the subject at college and as far as I'm aware there isn't an Idiots Guide, so just a guess then. But I had all the pain inside that the poets talk about, and there was a woman and there was trouble – lots of it. So, love would seem a good guess.

I'd like to make it clear from the start that this is _real love_ we're talking about here. I wouldn't have seen a town die for anything less. I'm not that sort of person. By real love, I don't mean the kind of affection that puts smiles on faces, but the sort that puts faces in coffins. I suppose it's a lot like hate, except that I doubt hate has ever caused as many deaths.

What concerns us in this instance is a particular kind of real love – the love for a woman called Laura. Love takes a lot of different guises, but I'm willing to bet it's never looked as good as Laura and never quite managed a walk like hers either. Laura was the face of my love, and if love has a face then I can also tell you that it has a cold, cruel heart, and that, I suppose, was my contribution.

Let me tell you something else about love before you begin. It doesn't have an ending. It has a clearly defined beginning, but it never stops, not real love. So if you're looking for an ending – happy, sad or otherwise – then perhaps you should look elsewhere. However, if you realise that cupid's arrow has a never-ending shaft and a poison tip, then read on.

# CHAPTER 1

I would probably never have heard of Quil Marsh had I not taken a wrong turning on a rainy May evening eighteen months ago. In all probability you haven't heard of it either. It was located more or less in the middle of nowhere, so that it appeared to have been dropped while being carried to someplace of significance and then lost among the fields and the reeds. Lost that is until I found it. Don't bother to try and find it now because it doesn't exist anymore.

I'd set off from home in my car a few hours earlier with the intention of finding somewhere quiet to stay for a couple of months. I wasn't looking for Quil Marsh. If anything, Quil Marsh found me. What I was actually looking for was a place to write my book.

I write crime novels. Not the sort that are big on realistic forensic detail and courtroom trials, but the sort with a doomed love and a cold heart. One critic referred to them as Mills and Boon where Mills gets to cut Boon's heart out, and I think that's as close to a one-sentence epitaph for my work as you're likely to get. They don't sell well enough to keep me in a heated swimming pool but they shift enough copies to keep me out of regular nine-to-five work, which is good enough for me. Or at least they did until two years ago when the unthinkable happened – I ran out of ideas.

Up until then I hadn't had to think about my books (some of the critics were right about that one) and the stories just followed one after another like sheets ripped from a toilet roll (chalk up another strike for the critics). But then the plots vanished and I suddenly found myself with more publishers' cheques than I had novels to justify them. That was when I decided that a change of scenery might unlock some new murders. If I'd known how many murders were on the other side of that lock I would probably have left the novel unwritten, but I didn't – well, not until I no longer cared, anyway.

And that was how I found myself in Quil Marsh, and was, I suppose, where this story begins.

However, before we proceed, there are three things you should know about me. The name that I will use, Will Travers, is not my real name, but the initials are mine so at least you can speculate. The second thing is that I had never thought about killing anyone before I entered Quil Marsh. No one – not even my critics. The third and final thing you should know is that I have not killed anyone. You'll have good reason not to believe this while reading the book, but take my word for it, even though the jury wouldn't.

Now, where were we – ah, Quil Marsh...

# CHAPTER 2

_Welcome To Quil Marsh_. Welcome? Where were the signs saying _One Mile to Quil Marsh_ , _Quil Marsh Up Ahead_ , or even _Turn Around Now Before it's Too Late – You Are Approaching Quil Marsh_. But there had been nothing.

That's what I thought, but I could have been wrong as my visibility stretched not much further than the end of the car bonnet. The rain had been hammering down for what seemed like an eternity. The constant tapping on the car roof served as a constant reminder of the tapping I wasn't doing on a keyboard and a migraine lodged behind my eyes like the cloud above the car.

None of the above did anything for my sense of direction which, truth to tell, was pretty much non-existent to begin with. Leaving London, the plan (not much of a plan) was to take myself off in the general direction of Cornwall. Why Cornwall? The books of Daphne du Maurier were the reason I'd taken up writing. Jamaica Inn, The Birds, and Rebecca had etched themselves on my schoolboy dreams in indelible ink. How wonderful it would be, I thought, to be able to create such thrilling worlds of mystery and imagination.

I determined at a young age that I would create my own Rebecca. I knew it was a big ask, but I firmly believed everyone should reach for the stars. But all that was in the days before I realised that the stars were too high and my arms were too short.

Du Maurier had famously written out of Cornwall, while I had less famously written out of Croydon. As a result, I believed I was working at a disadvantage. It might have just been wishful thinking on my part (and was certainly not my only disadvantage), but I thought that some places, such as Cornwall, had great fiction beating in their hearts, while other places, such as Croydon, had no heart at all.

And so it was that I found myself getting ready to head south in the hope that a place whose scenery had provided enough inspiration to enable Daphne du Maurier to fulfil her literary destiny, might have enough spare to help me fulfil my contractual obligation.

Like I said; not much of a plan. I'd made a similar trip some years previously during another crisis of inspiration and found myself the story of the Killer Check-Out Girls, a tale which Daphne had carelessly overlooked during her own time there.

It was a late afternoon in late September when I set off with a travel bag in the boot and hand written directions on the driver's seat. I wound down the window, let the Indian summer in and the smell of stale fast food out, and scanned the horizon for possibilities. Even before I'd left the end of my street I was already picking at barely formed ideas.

I can't say precisely when it first occurred to me to cross Dartmoor. It certainly wasn't a part of my plan when I set off and it wasn't something I'd done on my previous visit to Cornwall. I wasn't a total stranger to the moor. I'd visited it a couple of times on romantic weekends with my then-girlfriend, Kelly (like so many of the other people in this book, she's dead now), but I can honestly say that neither Kelly nor the National Park were on my mind that afternoon.

In fact I can't say if it occurred to me at all to take the detour. Rather, it felt as if I'd been _directed_ towards the moor. The direction I'm speaking of was not of the divine intervention kind, but rather the big, tatty guidebook type that was imploring me to _VISIT DARTMOOR_! from a shelf at the Haracombe Cross services.

I reached over to the display and pulled out the book for further inspection. _SEE A WORLD OF MYTH AND LEGEND!_ the rest of the cover demanded. I opened it up at a random page and leafed through it. The faces of villains, ghouls, escaped prisoners and their invariably haunted houses slipped through my fingers in a series of lurid articles.

Flicking through the guidebook it became obvious that Dartmoor was an open mine of folk tales and fables. As the glossy pages slapped against one another it occurred to me that I might be able to create a tale of my own after a visit to such a place. By the time the covers had fallen shut I thought that if I couldn't conjure one up, then there was a good chance that I could appropriate an existing one for myself.

And that, much to the relief of the woman who was waiting in the queue behind me, was when I decided to take the guide and pay for my petrol.

Back in the car, I spent an hour reading the book. Most of the stories were historic in nature, which wasn't really my thing, and quite a few were supernatural, which definitely wasn't my thing, but in spite of this there was something about them that caught my imagination. It was their incompleteness. Each was a passed-down, half remembered, second-hand yarn dulled by darkness, time and, in many cases, drunkenness. Reading them left me with a compelling sense of a land swimming with unfinished stories. All I had to do was drive through Dartmoor, drink them in and then spit them out in black printer ink when I reached Cornwall.

Having confirmed my initial inclination in the store to change my journey plans, I folded the pages of the book back to reveal a basic map, and then started the car and headed for the moor.

It was a short journey from Haracombe, and, such was my optimism at having found a solution to my writer's block, that I spent the brief journey wondering why it hadn't previously occurred to me to take this route. Before I could produce an answer the moor was upon me. After passing through Heath Field and Bovey Tracey, I caught the B3387 and allowed it to lead me beyond the reach of the imagination strangling clutches of uninspiring suburbia and out onto the vast sea of wilderness that is Dartmoor.

The sense of descending into the untamed landscape was as exhilarating as if I'd landed on another planet. It felt as if the world had been removed from in front of my face and now finally I could see. And what a sight it was.

The sky was as high and untouchable as the horizon was distant and unreachable. A rolling tide of bracken and yellow flecked gorse swept out from the brow of the road for as far as the eye could see. To my left the land rose up to a plateau before descending on the other side out of reach of my eye line. The ground was sparsely carpeted by hard, reedy grass, while splinters of white rock littered the surface, giving the hill the impression of a giant shallow grave. To my right, whiskey coloured streams glinted in the fading light and a stretch of white cotton grass shook in the breeze like a field of confetti.

The roads were empty and my only company was the occasional petrified tree and a murder of black winged crows that trailed in my wake. I put my foot down on the accelerator and they scattered somewhere over my shoulder.

I had a good idea that the road I was on would lead me across the moor and out onto the dual carriageway on the other side, which would take me to Cornwall. Somewhere in-between was the legend of Childe's Tombe, The Bloody Meadow, the Phantoms of the Parishes and the Geat Grimpen Mire where the Hound of the Baskervilles had stalked Sir Hugo, as well as dozens of other imagination popping locations. I squirted a couple of jets of screen wash onto the windscreen; I didn't want to miss a thing.

Such was the electric character of my new surroundings, that by this time I was firmly convinced that the series of sparsely populated settlements along my route would open up my imagination and save my writing career. Inspiration-Ville would be followed by Muse Town, which would be a short drive from Best Seller Village. However, as I made my way down through the valleys, past the stony hills, over the downs and into the heart of the moor, I saw no inspiration villages, just Blank Page Hills and Clueless Fields everywhere I looked. It felt as if I was taking my writer's block on a scenic drive. I might as well have packed it a picnic.

The guidebook map, vague familiarity and the occasional road sign allowed me to fill in some of the details of my unplanned journey. After navigating Five Wyches Farm, I passed through Lower Down and the Colehayes Plantation; Yarner Wood loomed up to the roadside before dropping back towards Black Hill. After that came Haytor Vale and the bleak grasslands of Haytor Down. I saw no ghosts only ponies. The tors of Saddle and Rippon stared down on me from their granite perches, looking not so much like twisted spectres, as bored groups of rocky old men waiting for a bus. The wide sweep of Blackslade Down opened up in front of me and the descending sun licked a broad, golden path across it. It wasn't the kind of path you'd expect to see the Baskervilles' hound from hell roaring down. However, I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see Julie Andrews dancing her way along it.

I reached Widecombe in the Moor with barely enough inspiration for a child's pop-up book. I wondered if the fact that I'd taken a once familiar route had dulled my senses and turned my murder scene window shopping into a rose tinted trip down memory lane. With no more pressing engagement ahead of me than registering at the bed and breakfast hotel I had booked for the night, I decided to give the moor a second chance. Instead of continuing east to the other side, I swung the car round and headed north on the small, nameless roads that led to, well, I didn't know where.

I cast a glance at the guidebook map, but it was as clueless as I was. A swathe of shiny green paper showed nothing but fields and hills. Suspecting that the map wasn't the only inaccuracy in the book, I flipped the covers shut and pressed on.

However, If I thought unfamiliarity was going to throw a sinister light on my surroundings, I was wrong. The lilac hoods of bellflowers danced to the tune of a light breeze, while brooks tumbled playfully through the rocks and skylarks sang a sunset lullaby. It made me depressed. And then I realised I was lost.

I knew when I set off from Widecombe that Bone Hill was somewhere up ahead, and further on than that was North Bovey and Chagford and beyond that was the A382. _Had to be the A382_. Precisely where or how much further on, I couldn't say.

Early in my new route I passed an activity centre, a couple of farmhouses and a lone hill walker. After that, I drove on for thirty minutes and saw no sign of life, not even a sheep or a goat. Not even a tree. I bitterly regretted the impulse that had led to me taking the detour to Dartmoor. All I had to show for it was a head filled with sugar-coated scenery and a journey that was at least two hours longer than it should have been. _At least_.

The road shrank and its surface became pitted and crumbled around the edges. Endless turns and bends served only to disorientate me further. A moment of hope was dashed when an upcoming metal pole turned out not to be giving directions, but simply rusting in the wind. And then it began to rain.

The first spots of drizzle appeared as I crested a hill. By the time I was in the valley the skies had opened and an avalanche of water engulfed the car. Within minutes the skylarks had fled and the bellflowers were drowning. The storm drew in a blanket of black cloud across the sun, which cast a long, dark shadow over the landscape. As I broached the other side of the valley, a broken dry stone wall that looked like the jawbone of an old skull rose up out of nowhere and followed me for a short distance before receding into the ground.

The rain graduated to a deluge. Soon I could see little more than my wipers drowning on the windscreen. By this time I had given up attempting to work out where I was and tried to take comfort from the fact that if I simply pressed on I was bound to come across a route out of the moor eventually. It was little comfort, but that soon became no comfort at all when, after completing after a winding stretch of road, I emerged from a valley to see a broken stonewall that looked remarkably similar to the jawbone I'd passed earlier. I slowed and cleaned a patch of condensation from the window. The bite radius looked exactly the same. It seemed I had been driving in circles. The sky grew darker and a lone crow screamed at me at I passed the wall. I would have given anything to see Julie Andrews at that moment.

A few minutes later I passed the rusting metal pole again. Determined to escape the road to nowhere I seemed to have found myself on, I decided to take the next turning that presented itself, regardless of its direction. In the event, at the top of the next incline, I came upon a junction that I hadn't noticed before. It was easy to see why I had missed it. The second fork jagged back from the road I was on at such a precarious angle that it looked as if it were falling away from it, and that if I had passed an hour later it would have dropped away altogether to some other part of the moor.

I swung the car round, surfing through the heavy surface water, delighted to have found this new direction, regardless of the fact that I had no idea where it would lead. I accelerated onto the road, hoping that it didn't fall away while I was on it. So long as I didn't see the jawbone wall again I was happy.

I was soon disavowed of this happiness. The road was hardly a road at all. A token strip of tarmac barely separated two wild hawthorn hedges that looked as if they had once been one and would soon be one again. The rough briars clawed at the side of the car, jabbing at my face against the glass, and the road undulated as if someone had hold of it at the other end and had snapped it hard. Two hills loomed up on either side of me through sheets of rain and I felt as if I was being swallowed whole by a giant, grassy whale.

In spite of the lack of visibility, I put my foot down, pressed my eyes against the windscreen and fixed my mind on the idea that if I kept going then sooner or later I would make it to Cornwall, get my novel written and eventually return home. I never made it to Cornwall and I didn't make it home either.

Unexpectedly, the road began to open up and the hedge peeled away. I thought I was finally free. Then I rounded a bend and ran into Quil Marsh.

Its appearance was so sudden and unexpected that I braked sharply on seeing it as if it were something living that had stepped into the road in front of me. Had I not braked then I would probably have been through it before I'd even realised I had seen it and all this would never have happened. But it did happen and there's no point pretending differently.

The car I was driving was a medium-selling novelist's car. That is to say, it had seen better days and probably better novelists too. When I punched my foot down on the pedal, the old brakes struggled to lock the wheels and the old tyres struggled to maintain their grip on the road. The upshot of this was that I briefly saw the back of the car overtake me before it righted itself with a spin. At some point during this ill-judged manoeuvre a violent impact bounced the front right-side tyre into the wheel arch. This was swiftly followed by a second blow as the side of the car slammed into something out of sight of my eye line. There was a sharp crack like the sound of a butcher's knife slamming into a bone. Surprise jerked my foot off the brake for a split-second before my survival instinct jammed it back on. Eventually the car came to a lurching halt, bumping up onto the grassy roadside brow.

I slumped back in my seat and gulped in big breaths to try and calm myself. Once I'd oxygenated my brain sufficiently to realise my only likely death was going to be from starvation due to my failure to write anything publishable, I put the car into gear and engaged the engine. However, the engine failed to engage the wheels and the car lurched forward then stopped abruptly, making another stab at giving me the whiplash it had marginally failed to dish out moments earlier. It was beginning to feel personal.

I reached into my inside pocket and pulled out a lighter-size tin, flipped the lid and spilled out one of the headache tablets inside. I would much rather have found a bottle of something strong in my pocket, but it was an empty wish as I was driving. Supposed to be.

I tried to move the car again, gently this time, but the best it could manage was a brief judder along the rocky kerb. It felt as if the wheels had been removed and I was trying to drive on the axel. Then it dawned on me what the problem was. The realisation made me sick and I thought I might throw-up. Something was trapped under the car: something or _someone_.

My first reaction was to hope that it was a dog. I have nothing against dogs, but I thought that if it was a dog then it couldn't be a person...trapped...dying...maybe dead. I felt as if I might throw-up again. I sat in the car and tried to persuade myself that this couldn't be the case, but the truth was I just didn't know. So afraid was I of discovering that something unspeakable lay twisted in the wheels that I think I might still have been sat there today had I not been more afraid of not knowing. I unbuckled my seatbelt and got out to look.

Even with the torrential rain clouding my eyes I could see that the front of the car was free of crushed limbs, human, canine or otherwise. The feeling of relief was so immense that I actually did throw-up this time, and the pleasant feeling that was relief was quickly replaced by the bad smell that is vomit.

I wiped myself clean as best I could, using the rain and the back of my hand, and then knelt down to see what the offending object was. It was a mangled road sign. Probably not mangled before I'd hit it, but very definitely mangled now. I reached under the car, shook it back and forth a couple of times, and then finally managed to free it. As bent as it was I could still make out what it said: _Welcome to Quil Marsh – please drive carefully_.

# CHAPTER 3

I suppose it was ironic and I might have even smiled had I not been on the brink of pneumonia and smelling of sick. So I didn't smile. Instead I swore at the sign for the damage it caused my car and threw it onto the grass verge where I felt it belonged. I thought that if Quil Marsh was really serious about encouraging people to drive carefully it should refrain from jumping out in front of them on rainy nights.

Once I'd rid the car of the offending sign, I inspected the undercarriage for damage. It appeared as if someone had been trying to break-in from underneath. Now it didn't look like a medium selling novelist's car anymore, but an out-of-contract novelist's car. It seemed as if my car was trying to tell me something. I gave it a sharp kick to remind it to keep its thoughts to itself.

The impact dislodged a handful of feathers from the wheel arch, revealing what it was that had banged the tyre up into the car during my spin. Initially I couldn't tell what kind of bird it had been, apart from a very unlucky one. I stepped back, careful not to touch the feathers in case any of that bad luck should be passed onto me. I fetched a screwdriver from the glove compartment and scrapped the rest of the carcass from its rusty perch. It looked like it was a crow. _Had been a crow_.

Having removed the bird, I cleaned the screwdriver with a rag and then looked up at the clutch of houses ahead of me, hoping to see whatever it was that had caused me to veer off the road. I strained to find some sign of the movement that had caught my eye, but I could see nothing to explain it. As I turned my gaze away from Quil Marsh back to the car, I noticed that something else apart from the road sign had become dislodged from the verge and was now lying in the road. It looked like a wooden post of some description.

I walked over to it. Closer inspection showed that it was a notice board. It looked as if its main pronouncement now was that it had been prematurely retired. I flipped it over to see if it had anything else to say.

Beneath the cracked plastic frontage was a tatty fly-sheet. I brushed the water from the facia so that I could see what it said. _Quil Marsh gives notice of its intention to register for town status. There is a part-time post available for a well-organised person to administer the registration_. Town status? From where I was standing Quil Marsh barely seemed to merit a notice board. I wiped more water from the surface so that I could see the rest of the flier. _Applicants can give notice of their interest by contacting the post-office. We need someone with writing skills_.

I read this last sentence a second time to convince myself I wasn't seeing things. It felt as if the notice board were talking directly to me. It might sound strange now, but you have to remember that only moments earlier it felt as if the car was telling me I was finished, so when the notice board began asking for my writing skills I was more than happy to listen.

I peeled back the plastic cover and pulled out the flier. It was dated just eight days earlier. I was convinced that the vacancy was still available. Such was Quil Marsh's out-of-the-way location that I thought I was probably the first person to pass through since the fly-sheet had been put up.

I looked over my shoulder to where Quil Marsh was receding under the darkening skies. I didn't think there were many stories to be found in such a small village. However, I only needed one and I was suddenly determined that I would find it somewhere in the handful of buildings up ahead. At the time I did not know that the story that I'd travelled so many miles to find would be my own.

A crack of lightening flashed low across the village, illuminating the stone houses and momentarily making a face of the shadows. It was only a trick of the light – of course it was – but the face appeared so beautiful that I was temporarily transfixed. And then the light was gone and with it the face.

A shiver ran down my spine and I folded up the flier and put it in my pocket. Then I moved the notice board out of the road and hurried back to the relative comfort of my car. I didn't feel lost anymore. Finally I felt as if I had a sense of purpose.

I put the car into first, bumped down from the verge and went in search of the post-office.

# CHAPTER 4

I was into Quil Marsh before I'd got the car into second gear and I was past it before I'd reached third. To be frank, it was lucky that I hadn't blinked otherwise I would have missed it altogether.

Once I'd realised that the small huddle of buildings I'd passed through was all there was to it, I turned the car around and headed back. I drove in slowly this time, so as to make sure I didn't miss it a second time. I parked up at the entrance to a field and wound down the window to take a look around.

The buildings seemed to be arranged loosely around a central square. There weren't enough of them to form a compact fringe, and they sat at awkward distances from one another like strangers at a party, albeit a very badly attended party.

If one of the buildings was indeed a post office, then I couldn't see it from the car. I decided to get out and explore. It was still raining, but I didn't care. I was already wet and the car's faulty air-conditioning was only strong enough to circulate the water on my clothes, and a full service short of actually drying them out.

I left without bothering to lock-up and made my way the short distance over to the square. If a village square is supposed to be the heart of the local community then, as hearts went, this was at the warmer end of the scale. The border was edged with rows of well-tended flowers. The square itself was a lush carpet of grass, criss-crossed by paths of coloured brickwork. There was a marble cherub in the centre engaged in taking a stone bath that looked more like attempted suicide in the heavy rain, and over to one side there was a suspended summer chair. Together they made the kind of scene that ended up on postcards, but never really seemed to exist.

I noticed a discarded book lying in the crook of the chair and walked over to inspect it. The sodden paperback had almost dissolved into a single inch-thick page in the downpour, and now more closely resembled a bar of soap with covers and a spine. I flipped it over to see if I recognised it, but the storm had shredded the cover so that only part of the title remained. _Fifty Ways to Kill_... and then a white jagged space where the author's name should have been. I imagined my name filling the empty space. It felt like an invitation – that perhaps Quil Marsh had been expecting me. It also felt as if perhaps the warm heart wasn't quite so warm after all.

I threw the book back onto the chair, and made my way over to what appeared to be a location-map pinned to one of the chair supports. The map turned out to be a laminated hand-drawn illustration of the village. There was a big red X pinpointing the square with the words, _You are here_ written next to it.

On a scale of helpfulness the sign ranked somewhere up there with pointing out you were standing in your socks in case you had somehow become lost in your shoes. In fact, the village was so small that the X seemed to mark the village's proximity to myself rather than visa versa. It felt as if Quil Marsh was finding its way around me.

Each of the buildings on the cartoon map was labelled up according to its function. There were six buildings in total, including a church, a hotel, a school, and a doctor's surgery. Unfortunately there wasn't a dry cleaners or a writing school, but there was a post office, and that meant there was a job and if there was a job, then I thought that maybe there was a novel here too.

Once I felt I had my bearings, I turned away from the sign and looked around. The sun was dipping behind the hills and the fading light cast out long shadows making the village seem cold and desolate. The surrounding buildings didn't look like a budding community anymore, but a collection of pale ghosts. I felt as if I was standing in the middle of a graveyard.

On any other night I would have been keen to leave, such was the sense of doom generated on that bleak, wet evening. However, on this particular night a sense of doom was just what I was looking for.

I pulled my saturated coat up around me and hurried back to my car and guided it the few hundred yards to where the post office was located.

My headlights picked out the silhouette of a house sat in the shade of a formidable oak tree; it was three stories high with a single gable over the middle bedroom and a patterned cornice running under the eaves. A curtain of rain cascaded over a black slate roof and shattered on the stone porch below. The water foamed around the base of the building as if an underground fire was frying it. Stamped between two flat store windows was a thick hardwood door reinforced with a band of black iron that gave the impression it was keeping something in rather than keeping something out. All in all, it looked like the kind of post office where the devil sorted his mail.

I pulled up on the grass verge, got out of the car and approached the front door to see if the devil had sorted out any messages for me.

# CHAPTER 5

As I made my way up the weed strewn path I could see that the lights were off and the frontage was shrouded in darkness. If this was indeed the devil's post office, then the devil kept conventional hours.

I tried the door, but found it locked. Locked from what, I couldn't even begin to guess. Whatever the reason, if I wasn't to spend the night in my car I was going to have to make my presence known at this postal morgue.

I banged the flat of my hand against a frosted glass pane but got no response. I banged again, harder this time, and a shelf of water that had been balancing precariously in an overhead gutter fell onto my head and ran down my face. Now not only was I wet, but I smelt of drains too.

I stopped knocking and removed a piece of moss from my face. Then a light flickered on in a downstairs room. It was as if the occupant had been disturbed by my humiliation. If it were possible for humiliation to cause disturbance then I supposed my current state was deafening.

The downstairs light was followed by a short lull of inactivity, which was followed by the hall light, which was followed by the sound of bolts being drawn across the frame.

The door was pulled back a short distance and a face was pushed into the narrow opening. It belonged to a woman in her mid-to-late fifties. She had wire wool hair scrapped back into a bun, small black eyes and sunless white skin which hung in folds around her jaw like melted ice-cream. Her features were screwed up as if she were about to sneeze.

"Yes?" she snapped.

"I'm here about the job."

"You don't look like you're here for a job," she added, gesturing at my dishevelled appearance.

"It's raining," I said.

"I can see that," she replied. "I hope you can do better than this in your interview."

She leant a little further out of the doorway and narrowed her eyes to get a better look, as if she were examining something she'd just stepped in. She glared at the stain running down the front of my clothes where I had wretched after crashing the car.

"Is it raining vomit out there, then?"

"I can explain."

"Don't bother. I already have enough reasons to slam this door in your face. I half suspected someone like you would turn up. You'd better come in before someone else like you arrives who isn't covered in puke."

And with that, she turned round and made her way inside without waiting for a reply. I watched as she waddled back down the hallway like a malevolent duck in a knitted cardigan, before she disappeared through a door at the back of the house.

I looked over my shoulder to where my car was sinking into the mud. Suddenly a night curled up on the backseat didn't seem quite so bad. If the air-conditioning had been working, I think that's where I probably would have slept. But it wasn't working, and so I plucked the remaining moss from my face and stepped inside to see if the woman's hospitality was any softer than her interview technique.

# CHAPTER 6

I closed the door behind me and then shook myself down, hoping to rid myself of some of the water I'd accumulated and the feeling that Quil Marsh had been waiting for me.

I managed to rid myself of a little of the water in the dimly lit hall, if not my sense of unease. A bare light bulb wrung flickering ghost-like shadows out of the ceiling rose while long, nicotine fingers of damp crawled up under the wallpaper and peeled it back at the corners, and spiders webs which looked as if they'd caught nothing but dust for years strung out along the coving like forgotten Halloween decorations. I didn't think the house actually had a belfry, but I thought that if it did it was almost certainly filled with vampire bats.

I walked the length of the hallway to where I'd seen the woman vanish moments earlier. When I stepped into the backroom she was standing at a doorway that led to the kitchen, holding a steaming cup.

"It's tea," she said.

"I'm sure it is," I replied.

"It has no sugar."

"I usually have..."

"I said, it has no sugar. Take it and sit down," she concluded, gesturing at a dining table in the centre of the room.

I took the cup and did as I was told. She followed me over to the table and pulled out a chair opposite me.

"My name's Eliza. Eliza Birch. Some people call me Liz, but you can't."

"Eliza it is, then. I'm Will Travers"

"So, you're here about the town-status job, eh?"

She said this as if she had caught me trying to sneak into the vacancy without anyone noticing.

"Well, I didn't come to Quil Marsh specifically for it, I just noticed the job advert as I was passing through."

"You're not exactly trying to talk yourself into the position, are you?"

"Is this a job interview?" I asked.

"No, it's not," she replied. "I just thought you'd like to know something about the work first. You do want to know something about the work, don't you? I think it might help. You look like you could use some help."

I nodded and took a sip of the tea. It tasted awful, and I thought went some way to explaining her sour expression.

"Are you lost?" she said.

"When I started off from..."

"That's the point. You're lost and that's how come you're here. And that's why the town administration job is available."

"Because I'm lost?"

"No, because Quil Marsh is," she said abruptly. "Do try to keep up."

"Quil Marsh is lost," I said dumbly.

"Lost?" she replied incredulously, as if I'd just conjured up the image myself. "Quil Marsh is more than just lost. It's invisible. It doesn't exist. It might as well be microscopic or located on the moon, or even both. And do you know why that is?"

"Is it because..."

"No, it's because it doesn't have town status."

"And that's why there's a job organising an application for town status."

"Ah, maybe there is a light on in there after all," she said.

"But what difference will town status make?" I asked.

"Looks as if there's a pretty small bulb making that light inside of you," she snapped back.

"Batteries are a bit wet," I replied. "Indulge me."

She pulled a face as if I'd asked her to carry me up Everest taking the difficult route.

"You don't get official recognition without town status," she barked. "Without town status, you don't get grants, you don't get services, you don't get decent roads and you don't even get road signs. All you get is forgotten."

"What about Father Christmas?"

"You really haven't got the hang of this interview thing, have you?" she said drawing her eyes into razor blades to match her cut-throat face. "Mr Travers, we may not be in the Sudan, but we here in Quil Marsh are facing starvation as surely as if we were stranded in a desert."

"Forgive me for saying so, but what made you open a post office in the desert?"

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," she said, leaning back and striking a contemplative pose. For a moment she looked almost human. "When Quil Marsh was proposed as a new community we were told that we only had to turn up to have the place awarded civic status. But there were forms to be completed, and some of them didn't get sent and some of them got filled in wrongly. The upshot was that we came but the town status and all that goes with it went somewhere else."

Wherever it had gone I thought I couldn't blame it and, indeed, I wanted to join it, but I had to remind myself that I needed a novel and I couldn't let the attitude problem in the cardigan stop me.

"And you want me to fill the forms in properly," I said.

"Maybe – maybe not. Fortunately for you, I'm not the only one with a say in who gets the job. That can be decided at a meeting of Quil Marsh residents at the civic hall tomorrow. I'll phone around and get something arranged. You can make tomorrow, can't you?"

"Yes. Would it be rude to ask who my competition might be?" I asked.

"To be perfectly honest, you don't have any," she replied. "But don't get carried away that the job's yours. When faced with a choice between incompetence and starvation, I'm not sure everyone is going to choose incompetence."

"Well, I'll try to be smarter and more punctual than starvation," I said, forgetting myself for a moment and taking another sip of the tea. If anything, it tasted even more disgusting cold.

"No one makes tea like me," she said, showing some pride in her attempt to poison me.

"I'm sure," I replied. "Well, if you'll excuse me, I must get back to my car. If I'm to do well in the interview I'll need a good night's sleep. Now, if you'd be good enough to point me in the direction of somewhere I might get a room for the night."

She scowled and pointed to the stairs.

"First on the left," she said. "The room comes with the job, but if you don't get it I want you out tomorrow. This isn't a holiday home you know."

"My mistake," I replied. "Right, I'll go and get my things and then I think I'll retire to bed. It seems I have a long day tomorrow."

"Don't bank on it," she said by way of goodnight.

I let myself out and found that it was still raining. I didn't mind because while I was getting wet this meant I wasn't being assailed by Eliza and her Doctor Crippen branded tea bags.

I paddled my way over to the car where I popped the boot and retrieved my travel bag and the box that contained what I thought I needed to get my novel written.

I slung the bag over my shoulder and carried the box back into the post office. Having negotiated the stairs I ran into Eliza on the landing. She'd changed for bed and was wearing a night-dress that hung around her body like thick smoke.

"Ten o'clock tomorrow morning," she said. "You can't miss the civic hall, it's just across the square. Don't be late and don't steal anything from the room – this isn't a hotel either."

I nodded, then bid her goodnight and regretted I wasn't writing a horror novel.

# CHAPTER 7

I pushed the door open with my foot, stepped into the darkness and deposited my belongings on the floor. I discovered the light at the end of a drawstring and snapped it on.

The room I found myself in could best be described as drab. Dull, dreary, boring and lifeless are probably the next best descriptions. It was smaller than I'd expected given the size of the house, and was sparsely furnished with a warped chest of drawers in one corner and a low-slung single bed in the other. The walls were the colour of dishwater, and the quilt on the bed looked as if it had been stained to match.

It appeared that as far as Eliza was concerned, grey was the new black and prison was the new look. A draught funnelled up through the splintered floorboards from somewhere below that I didn't particularly care to think about and I took a step forward to escape its company. That's when I noticed something peculiar about the long polyester curtains on the far wall. They weren't hanging flat, but jutting out at an angle as if they were draped over something. I went over to investigate. What I saw when I pulled the curtains back made my heart jump and my head spin.

Standing three feet high and looking every bit as prison-issue as the rest of the furniture was a writing desk. To the casual observer it would have appeared to be a cheap, nasty, worthless piece of junk that was representative of the poor taste that went into furnishing the room. But not to me - to me it was a sign that I had been right to stop in Quil Marsh. It was a sign that this was the place that I would finally get my novel written.

The desk had been disfigured by time and the stale atmosphere in the room, so that the legs were bowed, the original colour had drained away and one of the drawers would no longer open. The surface, however, was immaculate. I let my fingers glide across the clear varnish. It was free of any of the blemishes that might have suggested it had been worked upon. There were no splashes of ink or pen marks, just a smooth, pristine (if slightly warped) writing surface. I stared longingly at it, imagining the volumes of words that it might produce, even though I had not the faintest idea what those words would be.

From the moment I laid eyes on the desk, the room was transformed. Instead of the dungeon it had been a moment earlier, now it seemed an Aladdin's cave of writing possibilities – mystical and magical, all be it about as damp as any cave I'd ever been in.

I retrieved the box I'd deposited just inside the door and took it over to the desk, keen to unpack and lay claim to my newly discovered literary goldmine. Inside the box was my laptop. It was called an Elloray; at least that was what it said on the casing. In truth its origin was uncertain and diverse, having been cobbled together by a local electrical dealer some years ago. In design and function it owed more to the manual typewriter than the power book, but I'd had success of a sort with it and after that I'd been reluctant to change it for one of the mass produced computers that they practically give away these days. However, as it hadn't produced anything publishable for almost a year, I was beginning to have second thoughts.

I placed the laptop on the desk and found it to be a perfect fit. The Elloray had always looked out of place set upon the modern tubular computer tables I'd owned, but sitting on Eliza's deformed bureau it finally looked as if it had found its home.

I located a socket by the head of the bed, plugged it in and switched it on. There was the familiar whirr and hum of electricity as it scrambled backwards and forwards through the circuits trying to figure out some sort of logic to the wiring.

While I waited for it to warm-up, I turned my attention back to the box.

Using both hands I managed to lever out the entire dozen novels that had been sitting beneath the Elloray, and deposited them on the window ledge behind the desk. The novels represented my entire body of work, if you can call eight years of pulp-fiction a body of work. As bodies went, it was a bit on the anorexic side, but it gave me a thrill to see them lined up, all the same. I suppose I was proud of them in the same way as those people who achieve an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for eating pancakes or standing on one leg are proud.

The books were all first draft prints and still bore the names of their working titles. You probably won't remember them, but you still might own one. They tended to find their way out of shops almost in spite of themselves, and that was why my publisher liked them. What was now worrying my publisher was their growing inability to find a way out of me. However, I felt more optimistic than I had in months that this impasse would finally come to an end. I was so inspired that I thought I might finally produce a novel that people actually read, and, having read it, actually remembered.

I made my way to the bed and sat down. The uncomfortable jab of the springs forcing their way up through the limp mattress returned a little reality to my perspective. Even so, I was on a high now and it would take more than sharp springs to deflate me. I got undressed, prepared a set of clothes for the morning and went to the bathroom for a wash.

When I returned I was greeted by a droning noise coming from the word processor. It sounded like an electrical sigh of relief, and signified that the power source had finally managed to find a way to load up the software.

I walked over to the desk and looked down to where the screen was offering me a blank page. I leant over the keyboard and typed the words, _It all began on a rainy night in Quil Marsh_.

I labelled up the file as Chapter One and saved it. It wasn't much, but it was more than I had written in a long time and I was happy with it. I was so sure it was the beginning of something special, that when I got into bed that night my only concerns were securing the job and avoiding drinking anymore of Eliza's tea.

Then I set my bedside alarm, and, in spite of the uncomfortable surroundings, I slept a deep and untroubled sleep. I have not slept so well since, and doubt I ever will again.

# CHAPTER 8

The alarm woke me a good hour before the interview was due to take place, but, mindful of Eliza's warning not to be late, I washed the damp out of my skin, dressed quickly and was ready to go fifteen minutes later. Before leaving my room, I picked up a book to occupy me over breakfast. It was a copy of Learning to Die, which I had written some eight years earlier. I was re-reading it because I thought there might be a sequel in it somewhere – Learning to Die: The Re-sit, or some such thing. With the book in hand I made my way downstairs.

Eliza was nowhere to be seen, but there was a note for me pinned to the living room door directing me to breakfast in the kitchen in the same abrupt fashion she might have told me herself had she been around.

Breakfast was a bowl of cereal and two slices of cold toast. Next to the toast was a jar of jam with the words _HOME MADE_ etched in two-handed block capitals on a white label around the side. I pushed the jar away.

Not having eaten since lunchtime the day before, I wolfed down the rest of the food. As I did so I read the final few pages of _Learning_. I didn't find the sequel I was looking for, but at least it diverted my attention from breakfast until it was time to leave.

I tucked my bookmark inside the cover, pocketed the novel and made my way into the hallway. I stopped mid-stride when something on my right caught my attention. Posted high on a door was a sign in Royal Mail red, which said, _Post Office_. I wondered what a post office in a haunted house looked like. I turned the handle, expecting it to be locked. It wasn't, and the door drifted back. The layout inside was drearily familiar: racks for postcards, wire frame stands for leaflets and rows of laminated shelves for stationery. However, the content was different – there wasn't any: not a single postcard or leaflet or even a stamp. A big grey blind was pulled down over a seemingly redundant counter. It was hard to tell if the place was getting ready to open or ready to close.

Being mindful of the time, I closed the door and stepped back into the hall, pausing at a mirror to check my appearance and reflect on what I might say. The last time I'd attended a job interview was sixteen years ago, when all I'd had to do was promise I would deliver the newspapers on time. I decided that the best course of action was to make more promises and to try not to upset Eliza again.

I left the post office and made my way over to the square as instructed. I stopped when I reached the summer chair to reacquaint myself with the village I'd only seen in the rainy gloom of the previous evening. To the south of Quil Marsh were the twin hills I'd passed on my way in, now shrouded in a light morning mist. On either side of me were unattended, tree-lined fields that banked slowly upwards like the gentle curve of a wave. To the north the land was more thickly wooded, particularly around a steep incline which partially obscured the rising sun and cast a splinter of darkness across the valley. Overall, the landscape gave the impression that the village had been built in the centre of a giant cloven footprint.

A sense of quiet calm had descended with the mist. The surroundings had a fresh, clean, pressed look to them after the previous night's storm. The village didn't look at all murderous now. However, I knew better. The menace had not gone, but had simply washed itself down in an attempt to destroy the evidence. If anything, its clean clothes and scrubbed-down alibi made it seem even more murderous than it had appeared the night before. The thought made the adrenaline pump in my veins, and I hurried over to the civic building, keen to secure the post and then to return to my room to put words to the sense of danger I had discovered.

The civic hall was a small single story building that looked more like a large garage than the centre of municipal life. Next to the front door was a calendar of community events mounted on a white board. Public meetings (none), Social activities (none), Business developments (none), and Interviews (one). I took that to be me, knocked on the door and prepared to clear the calendar.

Eliza came to the door.

"Good morning Eliza. I got the breakfast and..."

"You're late," she growled.

"Actually, I'm ten minutes early," I replied, pulling back my sleeve so that she could see my watch.

"We've all been here for a quarter of an hour and that means you're late."

"Well, in that case I can only apologise."

"You'll have to do more than that if you want this job," she replied. "You'd better come in, but don't say you're anything to do with me. I've got a reputation in this town to keep up."

I could only shudder at the thought of what this reputation might be, and followed her in, closing the door behind me.

# CHAPTER 9

Upon entering I was confronted by a semicircle of tables seating several expectant stares. I assumed they were the local residents. Seeing the combined population of Quil Marsh arranged before me in a space no larger than your average classroom, I was struck by just how small a community it really was. It didn't surprise me that they hadn't been granted town status as the room full of people before me barely qualified as a full elevator load.

"Please take a seat Mr Travers," said a distinguished, handsome looking woman in a green suit, gesturing at a lone chair in front of them.

I did as I was told.

"Perhaps we should start with introductions," she continued. "My name is Bernadette - Bernadette Somers. I'm the teacher at Quil Marsh Elementary."

I nodded, and then she pointed to the person next to her.

"This is Eliza, but I believe you two know each other already?"

"Only vaguely," I replied, to Eliza's obvious satisfaction. "Who's next?"

"My name is Jerry Lee and this is my wife Katie," said a forty-ish man in a polo neck who was sat beside a thirty-ish woman in a matching sweater. Together they looked as if they had been plucked from a nineteen-seventies clothing catalogue. "We run the hotel and restaurant."

I smiled at them and they smiled back.

"Jacob Jones, pleased to meet you," said a quietly spoken bald man with a weak mouth and half-moon spectacles.

"Likewise," I replied.

"I'm the parish priest," he added, adjusting his glasses with one hand and scratching his head with the other. He turned to his right and motioned for the bearded man sitting next to him to speak.

"Medicine's my game," the man shouted. "I'm Doctor Jennings – Henry Jennings. You'll have to forgive me, but I'm a bit hard of hearing so I tend to speak up a little too loud for some people's taste."

"You sound fine to me," I said.

"What?"

"I said, you sound fine!"

"Oh, right. Good."

A leathery, weather beaten face to the right of the doctor extended itself in my direction. The owner of the face was also the owner of an I love New York baseball cap, a faded t-shirt, ripped jeans, grey eyes and a broad smile. "General maintenance," he volunteered. "I fix stuff and up-keep stuff too. But it's mostly fixing stuff," he said earnestly.

"Your name," Bernadette prompted. "Tell him your name."

"Lyle."

"And the rest."

"Mace. Lyle Mace. I fix stuff."

"Last, but not least," said a voice to my left.

I looked across to see that the voice belonged to the youngest person in the room apart from myself, a square-jawed, sandy haired man in an expensive looking herring bone suit and electric blue shirt. He reached out a hand, which I took, and he pumped it like he was jacking up a car with my arm.

"Sam Fisher," he said, fixing me with a big ear-to-ear smile. "I'm an insurance and accounts man. But don't let that give you the wrong impression," he said, continuing to work my hand. "I'm not just books and numbers, I can be a little crazy too."

He pointed at his tie, which closer examination showed was covered in Daffy Ducks hitting themselves on the head with mallets.

"I hope you don't mind crazy," he said, releasing my hand but continuing to beam at me as if I were a winning lottery ticket.

"No," I replied. "Crazy is good. I like crazy."

"Excellent."

"Well, now you've met all of us," Bernadette said. "What about you?"

# CHAPTER 10

"I'm thirty years old, I'm single, I don't own my own home, but I do own a car. I have no pets, no criminal record and no distinguishing physical characteristics that I'm aware of. Oh yes, and I'm a writer."

I said these final words with weary resignation. Upon my utterance of this observation the same questions and comments followed as inevitably as a 'Reduced For Quick Sale' sticker followed my first print run. _A writer? I've never read your books. Actually, I've never heard of your books. To be perfectly frank, I've never heard of you, either. Are you sure you're a writer?_ I always put up with them with good grace, partly because I know they didn't mean any harm and partly because you can't afford not to have good grace when Pippa the Penguin outsells everything you've ever done by a margin of three to one.

"Here," I said, dipping into my pocket and pulling out my battered copy of Learning to Die, "take this if you don't believe me."

"I'm not sure that will be necessary," Bernadette said. "I have barely enough space on my shelves as it is."

"Barely enough space is all it requires," I replied. I removed the bookmark, which was a folded page of glossy A4, and offered the book up to her.

She smiled politely, took the novel and placed it in her lap, covering it with her hands.

"This work could take some time," she said. "I'm not just talking weeks here. There are returns, then there are submissions, and then there are depositions, and then..."

"Time is not a problem," I replied. "I have other business I can take care of while I'm here."

"Writing business?" said Lyle.

"I hope so," I replied.

"This is important work Mr Travers and cannot be entered into lightly," Bernadette continued. "The livelihoods of those living here in Quil Marsh depend upon it."

"It is my intention to do everything I can for you and everyone else living here in Quil Marsh to see that you get what you want," I replied. "You can count on me."

"We can count on him," said Lyle.

"Count on him to do what?" said Eliza.

Lyle scratched his chin, but couldn't conjure up the answer he was searching for.

"Listen," Bernadette cut in. "Mr Travers, we run a democratic community here. Everyone has a single vote. This being the case I suggest we waste no more of your time and go round the table to see if you've been successful. Sam?"

Sam Fisher smiled and gave me a big wink of the sort favoured by Disney's cartoon characters. "Welcome aboard," he said. "The sooner you start the sooner you'll be able to be on your way."

"Lyle?"

"He's a writer, ain't he?"

"I'll take that to be a yes. Doctor Jennings?"

"I barely heard a word he said, but he looks alright."

Then Jacob Jones nodded, as did the couple in the matching polo necks. I noticed for the first time that they were holding hands under the table.

"I suppose we don't have much choice," said Eliza. "He's got to be better than nothing."

"Then it's agreed," said Bernadette. "You have my vote too, and you have the job if you still want it."

"Absolutely," I said.

"Good," she replied. "Now it only remains for me to arrange a handover between you and the person who's been temporarily responsible for the work you're about to undertake. Ah, speaking of whom."

I heard the sound of the door swinging open behind me, and then an instant later, swinging shut. I eased myself round in the chair to see who it was.

"Mr Travers, this is Laura – Laura, Mr Travers."

If you're the sort of person who keeps a check on such things, then you might like to know that it was at this moment that the fates of all of those present in the room were sealed. Ten minutes past one according to the clock on the wall or a quarter past one according to my watch – take your pick. In that instant each of them acquired a fuse wired up to death. Some fuses were longer than others, but they were all lit the moment I set eyes on Laura. If I'd known I'd certainly have warned them, or at least taken a photograph to preserve the memory of the last time they would ever sit together. But I was oblivious to their future. Even if I had known I'm not sure there's much I could have done – apart from take the photograph, of course.

# CHAPTER 11

I knew Laura was special the instant I looked at her. Time stopped, my blood ran cold, my eyes burned and my heart froze. It has been my experience that these are the ways you can tell if someone is special. Time stopping is a particular give-away.

It would be useless to try to describe Laura because her beauty was unique to her. I could say her blue eyes were like sapphires, or I could say her red hair was the colour of fire, or her skin was as soft as white rose petals, but it still wouldn't do her justice for these things were only like her, but not of her. These things are only almost perfect, and Laura _was_ perfect; perhaps even more than perfect if such a thing is possible. In short it would be pointless to try to describe her. Even with time stopped it would be a waste of time.

If I had one other feeling when I saw Laura, aside from my vital life-signs giving up, it was that she seemed strangely familiar. I hadn't seen her before of course, but I had longed for her and now here she was. When I saw her it was almost as if I had wished her into existence.

If you don't know what I'm talking about then you have probably never felt desire's breath on your lips or love's passionate beat on your heart, and you most certainly have not met Laura. Well, don't despair because you're about to become acquainted with her. I only ask that you remember who it was that met her first and we'll get along famously.

# CHAPTER 12

"Go on, take it, I washed it this morning."

I looked down from Laura's face to where she was thrusting a hand in my direction. My first impulse was to kiss it, then thrust a ring on it and say _I do_.

Fortunately it was an impulse I was able to resist. If I had continued to resist impulses in this way, you and I would not be talking now, but I didn't and so this dialogue has some distance still to run.

Instead I took her hand and shook it, both shocked and relieved to find that she was not just a beautiful apparition.

"My friends call me Laur as a pet name, but, as that makes me sound like a statute, I prefer Laura."

"Laura it is, then."

"So, you're the new me," she said.

"That explains the longing for a make-over and a body wax then," I replied.

She laughed, and the sound vibrated my heart so that I thought it would break as if it were made of glass.

"Well, as long as that's as far as it goes," she said, placing her hands on her hips.

My eyes were drawn to her body. It was long and lithe with a fine golden skin stretched over light curves that looked as if they had been teased from honey. The only other time I'd seen a body as flawless as Laura's was on an ice sculpture at an art exhibition. That time the body melted, but now I could feel the body melting me.

"So, do you have a first name?" she said.

"Yes," I replied, dragging my eyes upwards.

There was a brief pause while I tried to untangle my brain from my heart.

"Will," I said, eventually.

"Well Will, now I know it too so next time you forget it you'll be able to ask me. And the same goes for my name," she added. "You'll remember my name, won't you Will?"

"Yes."

"Excellent. Now what have they told you about Quil Marsh?"

"Not much," I replied.

"And about me?"

"Nothing."

"Well, I think you're going to have to get to know both of us a good deal better than you already do."

"I should...I mean, I should?"

"Of course," she said. "How else are you going to be the new me? Come on, let's go for a walk and I'll give you some insight into what you've let yourself in for."

"Absolutely," I replied. "Just as soon as this meeting is...over."

I looked around me to find that Laura and I were alone.

"The meeting _is_ over Will," she said. She snapped her fingers in front of me and giggled her breaking glass laugh again. "Come on, let's get out of here before they convene another one."

She walked over to the door and let herself out without looking back. I got up from my seat and followed her because by this point I was powerless to do otherwise.

# CHAPTER 13

I caught up with Laura just as she was crossing the square.

"Where are we going?"

"To my secret hideaway. Really I ought to blindfold you before going there, but I think I can trust you. I can trust you, can't I?"

"Completely."

She looked across at me and smiled. I thought she was looking to see if she could tell if I were being truthful. If this was the case then she must have seen the trust she was looking for because we carried on walking beyond the square and then up the road for some distance until Quil Marsh was diminishing behind us.

"This is it," she said, pointing to a thicket.

"This is what?" I replied.

"The key to my magic kingdom."

"It looks more like a triffid to me."

"Look again," she said, brushing some of the leaves back with an outstretched arm to reveal a dilapidated gate. "Now, what is it?"

"A gate-eating triffid?"

"Come on, you'll see."

And then she was gone into the bushes. I hurried in after her.

Beyond the gate was the faintest of paths, which zigzagged up into a thinly wooded patch of land on the side of a hill. Shrouded as it was from the sun, the ground was damp, and Laura removed her shoes to protect them from the mud.

"You'll hurt your feet," I said.

"No, I won't she replied. "It's all soil and grass up here until you reach the top. The stony ground is to the south of Quil Marsh. Besides," she said, shaking her shoes free of dirt, "my feet are easier to clean than my shoes, and we do want to keep a secret a secret, don't we?"

"Of course."

I removed my own shoes and socks, and followed her up the hill. However, I picked my steps gingerly while Laura strode on without looking down and soon I was some way behind. I called out for her to slow down, but she just responded with laughter. Moments later she vanished from sight.

The path reached an abrupt end at the foot of a rocky plateau. Laura was nowhere to be seen. I shouted her name again and this time her smiling face appeared, looking over the white stone outcrop above me.

"You'll have to try harder than this if you want to discover my secret," she said.

Then she disappeared, leaving me looking up at the sun. It was no substitute for her perfect smile. I slipped my shoes back on, pulled myself up the rocks and clambered onto the plateau.

When I reached the summit, I found Laura sitting cross-legged, looking out into the valley below.

"This is your secret, then?" I said.

She didn't reply, and I sat down next to her to share the silence. The wild moor seemed to stretch out in front of us for an impossible distance, wrapping the world in a vast blanket of bracken and heather. I scanned the horizon, looking for a landmark from the world beyond, perhaps a distant office block or the brow of a main road. I saw nothing to convince me that there was a world outside the moor.

"You can see every building in Quil Marsh from up here," Laura said eventually, "but Quil Marsh can't look back."

"Quil Marsh watches you?"

"No, of course it doesn't, but it feels that way sometimes. This is a strange place with its own moods and you'd do well to get to know it a little better before judging it."

"It looks like a regular village to me," I said, straining to see what Laura was looking at down in the valley.

"Maybe you're right," she said. "But that's not how it feels. The weather is never the same here as it is in any of the surrounding villages, the flowers seem to bloom and die whenever it suits them and there's barely any wildlife to speak of. I thought a place like this would be teeming with animals."

"Perhaps they're waiting for town status too."

"Perhaps, but I prefer it up here all the same. I feel as if I'm just out of reach. Out of reach of what, I couldn't begin to say. But when I'm up on the hill I feel as if Quil Marsh is mine. I suppose it's the little girl in me and Quil Marsh is my village of dolls houses."

"It's not all Barbie down there," I said.

"You're staying with Eliza, right?"

"Right. More voodoo doll than Barbie doll."

"Don't be too hard on Eliza, she's a doll in her own way."

"I'll take your word for it. So, this is your toy town, then?" I said, wanting to move the conversation on from Eliza.

"That's about the size of it," she replied, pulling up her legs under her, "and more or less explains why your new job is so tough. You have to convince someone that the microscopic municipality down there is worthy of civic recognition."

"They seemed to think it can be done at the interview," I said.

"Yes, I know. I'm not sure there isn't a little desperation behind that belief."

"I'm not surprised," I said. "Eliza told me that their survival depends on getting town status."

"No, it's more than that," she replied. "I think they were already desperate before they arrived in Quil Marsh."

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"Look at it – look at Quil Marsh. How much of a metropolis do you think it would be even with roads signs and grants? The truth is that even with town status the only people passing through here would be the lost...and maybe other desperate people too."

I coughed self-consciously and fidgeted with my hands.

"Think about it," she continued, "why would anyone want to come here in the first place? Bernadette Somers is a teacher who's travelled to a school with no children. Jacob Jones runs a church in the one place that probably even God hasn't heard of. The Lees run a guesthouse that's never seen a cancellation let a lone a paying guest, and Eliza runs a post office in a place that doesn't even have a postcode. As for Doctor Jennings, well he must be here to heal the invisible, and Lyle Mace claims to have come here to make his fortune – you figure that one out. Same goes for Sam Fisher."

"What about you?"

"I don't know." She looked across at me. "Perhaps fate brought me here."

At that moment I thought I knew how a fish feels when it bites down on the bait in the sweet moment before it encounters the hook.

Her stare was too bright to hold for more than a few seconds and I looked away, back down at Quil Marsh.

"So, what's your story?" she said. "What brings you to Quil Marsh?"

"I'm a writer – a writer looking for something to write."

"Novels?"

"Crime novels."

"That's fascinating."

"Not really," I replied. "Mildly diverting would probably be a better description."

"No, seriously, I think books can change people's lives."

"Which book did it for you?" I asked.

"It hasn't happened yet. I suppose I'm still waiting for the book that's going to change my life."

"Perhaps it will be the next one," I volunteered.

"Perhaps," she replied. "So what sort of crimes do you write about?"

"Mostly murder. Occasionally embezzlement and armed robbery, but mostly murder."

"So you spend all day thinking about killing people?"

"I suppose."

"Isn't that a little weird?" she asked.

"Perhaps, but the hours are good."

She leant back on the grass, stretched out and closed her eyes. I looked down on her, not because I was sure she could not see me but because I was incapable of looking anywhere else.

"Do you have any of your books with you?" she asked.

"I have my entire pulped back catalogue over at Eliza's," I replied.

"You will let me have one, won't you?"

"You want to read one of my books?"

"Partly."

"Partly what else?"

"Partly I want to get to know you better," she said. She half-opened one eye, smiled and looked up at me. "And partly to make sure you _have_ written a book too, of course."

"I can certainly provide the proof, though I wouldn't like to describe them as biographical."

"I'll be the judge of that," she responded, easing herself up into a sitting position. "Listen, I'm not in Quil Marsh tomorrow, but why don't you meet me back up here on Wednesday at the same time? I can let you know some more about the town application and you can bring me a book. But don't forget, this is a..."

"Secret place. Don't worry, I won't."

"Two days time, then."

I nodded.

She got to her feet. The taffeta dress she was wearing was speckled with grass. She dusted herself down and then reached into a hip pocket.

"Here, this is yours now," she said, throwing me a loop with two keys attached. "The gold key is for the civic building and the silver one is for the office. The office is a small pre-fab thing tacked on the back of the hall. It's not much, but it has a desk and a storeroom where most of the previous application work is stored. Have a look around to gauge the hopelessness of your task and then bring me any questions you might have, such as how to escape."

She gathered up her shoes and made her way to the edge of the plateau. It was clearly not her intention that I should follow, and so I sat and watched her, which was not a difficult thing to do.

"Just a moment," I said, as she lowered herself down. "I only know your first name. If you're to read my novel I think I should at least know your surname."

"Fisher," she replied.

"That's a coincidence," I said, "that's the same name as Sam the accountant."

"It's no coincidence," she responded, fixing me with an even stare. She then lowered herself from my view without waiting for a response.

Having experienced the sweet feeling of biting down on the bait, I now knew the bitter feeling of encountering the hook.

I sat stunned as the sound of her scrambling departure ebbed into silence. I remained motionless, letting her words sink in, waiting to see if they would have any impact on the way I felt about her. If my love for Laura was a fire, then hopelessness and pain seemed only to be kindling heaped upon it.

I got to my feet and began the journey back into Quil Marsh, keen to return before I burst into flames.

# CHAPTER 14

I made straight for the civic building because I needed to be alone and because of a vague feeling that there was work I should be doing. The door was locked. Clearly someone else had a key.

I let myself in and found the chairs had been stacked in a corner next to the toilet, and the tables had been pushed back to the sides of the hall. One of the tables was covered by a raised linen cloth.

I pulled the cloth back to reveal a plate of sandwiches. A note was pinned to them with the words EAT THIS scratched in a heavy hand. It was the work of Eliza. I inspected the sandwiches but couldn't determine their origin. I picked one up and began eating in the hope that breakfast had inoculated me against her culinary skills.

Sandwich in hand, I made my way to the back of the hall where the office was located, unlocked the door and pushed it back. The room I found myself in was surprisingly professional in its appearance, with a leather chair, oak desk and a big north-facing window, which lit it up the office with the morning sun.

Beyond the desk, situated next to an empty cork pin-board, was a second door. I walked over, pulled it back and leaned in. Inside was a narrow stockroom filled with cheap laminate shelving and an assortment of boxes and files, but nothing of immediate interest. I closed the door and went to inspect the desk.

It looked as if someone had cleared it in a hurry. There was a working space in the centre, but the sides were still cluttered with personal effects, including a brightly coloured cup, a chewed pencil, an empty photo frame and a glass snow-scene paperweight. And then I remembered my own personal effect.

I reached into an inside jacket pocket, pulled out the folded piece of glossy paper that had been my bookmark, and flattened it out on the desk. It was a small poster.

Two years ago my publishers had been promoting my work at a book fair in Paris, and the poster had been part of that promotion. The artwork showed the villains from all of my novels emerging from a blue, moonlit murderous night. It was a nice piece of work and certainly more impressive than any of the novel covers that had been commissioned for me. But, this being me and my books, there was a problem with it nevertheless – they put the wrong name across the top of the poster. Worse than this, it was the name of a rival, but as it was a rival from the same stable, my publishers weren't that put out and didn't pay for a new run. Unsurprisingly the book fair didn't do much for my sales, though I hear a fellow novelist picked up a few more orders. Even so, I was fond of the poster and liked to carry a copy of it around with me. It was a little badge of my little success and I wasn't going to let a little inaccuracy ruin it for me.

I picked up a drawing pin from the desk-tidy and took the poster over to the pin-board. Then I folded the top back (the part with the wrong name) and tacked it to the wall. I hoped it would provide inspiration for the new novel I was going to write, but failing that, I hoped that at least it would be a reminder that I was supposed to be writing.

I returned to the desk, sat down and started searching through the drawers. I found a couple of government booklets, some letters and a few envelopes.

At first sight the paperwork appeared to be pretty scarce, but on reflection it was probably on the high side given that it had been generated by the sort of village that wouldn't look out of place in the centre of a child's railway set.

I reached into the top drawer and picked out a booklet entitled All You Need To Know About Town Status. It was thicker than you might expect.

I pulled out a chair, sat down and opened the booklet at page one: How To Get What You Need. I put my head in my hands and tried to think of an answer.

# CHAPTER 15

It was late when I got back to the post office.

"It's late," Eliza said, letting me in.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you."

"Don't you think it's a bit late to apologise for that now that you've got your slippers parked in my spare room?"

For want of being able to think of anything else to say, I apologised for my apology.

"You'd better come in to the kitchen," she continued. "I've made you some food. It's cold now."

What she forgot to add was that it was also unrecognisable and inedible. Eliza pulled out a chair opposite me at the table and watched me eat, which did nothing to improve my disposition to the meal. In spite of this I consumed enough to sate my hunger.

"How do I pay for this?" I said, gesturing at the empty plate.

"Full-board comes with the job," Eliza grunted. "It's so you can spend more time working, not so you can get fat, so only eat what you need," she concluded stabbing a finger in the direction of the kitchen.

From where I was sitting, the larder looked as if it had been stocked using a world war two ration book. I did not envisage weight gain being an issue.

"I'll try to exercise restraint," I said.

"See that you do. I'm going to retire now," she said. "I've got work of my own to attend to."

It appeared that Eliza had lost interest in me now that I evidently wasn't going to choke on her meal.

"What work is that?" I said, pushing the plate a safe distance from my face.

"I've got to get the post office ready for when you turn this place into a boom town, haven't I?" As an afterthought, she reached into a pocket, pulled out a key and slammed it down on the table in front of me. "If you lose this, you'll be sleeping on the doorstep."

Then she got to her feet and took my dish over to the sink while muttering something to herself about the terrible state of the world. Though I wasn't mentioned by name, I got the distinct impression I was directly implicated.

I picked up the key, excused myself while she was running the taps and returned to my room.

Once inside, I took off my jacket and retrieved a crumpled page from one of the pockets. The paper contained the few notes I'd made while going over the documents in the civic hall office. I'd listed a couple of useful phone numbers, jotted down some of the key points of what a town application required and then written a brief sketch of what Laura had already collected. After this I'd listed a few questions that had occurred to me. _Is there a time limit? Will I need to interview everyone? Does Laura have any more papers at home? How long has Laura been married? Could she have feelings for me? Do we have a future?_

I threw the papers onto the bed and began to pace up and down. I hadn't been able to shake Laura from my thoughts since laying eyes on her. My attempt at reading in the office that afternoon had been a futile exercise in denial, and though I had looked over eternal numbers of clauses and sub clauses, nothing had made its way into my brain. The truth was, there simply wasn't room for anything else. Laura occupied every lobe, smothered every membrane and engulfed every synapse. Just the thought of her made my eyes burn and my teeth ache.

I wanted so badly to be with her, but I knew that this was impossible. She had already found the person she loved. Worse than this, she was married to him.

I walked over to the bedroom window, pulled back the curtain and looked out. My room was well situated for a clear view across the surrounding buildings, but darkness had fallen while I'd been kicking my heels and I couldn't pick out Laura's house from the grey stone shadows marking the surrounding fields. It didn't really matter – I could see Laura everywhere I looked.

I let the curtain fall back into place, walked over to the bed and sat down. I covered my face with my hands, but I still couldn't block Laura out. The truth was that I knew I would never be able stop thinking about her while I remained in Quil Marsh. I wouldn't be able to sleep, I wouldn't be able to do the job and I wouldn't be able to write my book. And I wouldn't be able to be with her.

I decided there and then that I would leave Quil Marsh. I wasn't sure if I could outrun my feelings for Laura, but I thought that I might be able to put enough distance between me and the object of my pain to remove her from my life and put her back into my dreams where she belonged.

I was energised by the thought of salvation, and I jumped up from the bed and began hurriedly stuffing clothes into my travel bag. Not knowing where I was, I couldn't tell you how I thought I was going to escape, but that didn't seem important at the time. What did seem important was packing up as quickly as I could and leaving before my resolve left without me and I was trapped.

I sealed the travel bag and pulled on my coat. Then I walked over to the desk where my laptop had been sitting untouched since I'd arrived. It was still switched on and the sentence _It all began on a rainy night in Quil Marsh_ was still waiting for company. I closed the lid and prepared to disconnect the power source and the story, when I saw my novels stacked behind it.

It was a moment of revelation – not the key moment in this story, because there are many of those, but certainly one of them. Looking at the spines I was suddenly transported back to the hill where I had spent the afternoon with Laura. _Books can change lives...I'm still waiting for the book that will change my life...It could be the next book...Can I read your book? Can I? CAN I?_

But she was married. Shouldn't I just move on anyway? It seemed as if that would be the decent thing to do. Leaving would mean starting again somewhere else with someone else – someone who wasn't Laura. Someone I would describe as my best friend. So good a friend that we would probably decide that we wouldn't want to work together if it meant seeing each other all the time. Sooner or later we would decide to take short breaks separately, then rediscover old friends and then get in touch with old loves. Eventually other friends would be equally best, and later still there would be friends who were better in other ways. And then I would start to notice other women the way I had when I was single and think _maybe_. And of course the same would be true of her also. Was that the future I was going to settle for because I felt as if I should do the decent thing? I firmly believe that if there is a hell, then it is built from regrets and decorated throughout with what ifs. And more than that, hell is a place that never receives a visit from Laura.

Was that what life was all about?

I shrugged off my coat and let it fall to the floor. Then I leant over the books on the window ledge to see if I could find one that would change Laura's life and make it mine.

# CHAPTER 16

I have to confess that my novels are not normally known for their life changing qualities. They are more adept at passing the quiet times in between changes the way that sleep does. It's a good analogy and perhaps the only difference between sleep and my writing is that I doubt sleep has ever been as badly reviewed.

This didn't deter me. I suddenly had a straw to clutch at, and though it was as thin and inconsequential as any straw that had ever been grasped, I was determined that it would carry my dreams. It turned out to be a stronger straw than I could ever have imagined, for it bore the weight of my nightmares too.

What I was looking for as I scanned the paperback spines in front of me was a book that would convey my feelings to Laura. Ideally, I wanted something that showed that we were meant to be together, but I thought that if I could find something that would convince her that she should be single, then this would be a start.

Unfortunately, an examination of the titles reminded me that, being crime novels, most of them were not so much love letters as death threats. The sentiments sandwiched in-between the cover of each weren't promises of love and loyalty, but lurid guarantees of murder and betrayal. My heart sank.

I was almost resigned to the fact that if I wanted a novel to reveal my feelings, I was going to have to write it there and then that night, when something caught my eye. I reached over, levered out a book, and held it up to the light to get a better look.

You may have heard of _Cruel Hearts_ , particularly if you keep an eye on the book lists in the Sunday supplements – it made a brief appearance in the top-ten best-seller charts. This appearance wasn't due to sales but the result of an editing error which saw the book listed as a high new entry instead of the new release that it actually was. The following week it claimed its rightful place back among the anonymous in the chasing pack. Quite low down in the chasing pack, as it happens.

I knew that it was one of my first novels, but couldn't remember when I had written it. The considerable number of stories I'd imagined, drafted, composed, destroyed, lost and, yes, sometimes published had fuzzed up the edges of my memory and erased some of the detail, including dates.

I opened the book and found it had been published nine years earlier. I flipped it over to read the dust jacket summary. It told the story of a man who met a woman, fell in love with her and of how a mysterious event helped overcome an obstacle that was between them. The mysterious event in question was once more a mystery to me because I couldn't recall for the life of me what it was. However, I could remember something of the nature of the text, and thought the eighty thousand words perfectly articulated the simple sentiment I wanted to declare. Boy meets girl, and girl realises she must be with boy. And death of course, but I hoped that wouldn't overshadow the main message.

The edition I had was not an original, but a recent re-issue. There were paragraph-sized summaries of my other novels on the first page - an advertisement, which now looked increasingly like a begging letter to the reader. It was my one and only re-issue. Why? I really don't know.

I closed the book and looked at the cover. It was a garish cartoon picture of a man giving a woman a red rose that was dripping with blood. I remembered everyone being unhappy with the cover, me because I didn't think it did the story justice, and the publishers because it wasn't wrapped around a million-seller. But I was happy with it now - now that it was wrapped around my heart. I prayed that Laura would make it past the book jacket and find herself somewhere inside...and find _us_ somewhere inside.

Of course there was always the possibility that she would get past the jacket and get past the laboured first few chapters, and the difficult middle chapters, and even make it right through to the fractured final chapters and still not get the point. To be sure that she would get the message in my bottle, I turned to the last page and the final words: _She was free at last_. I picked up a fibre tip pen and wrote the words _I love you_ to make a new last sentence. Looking at it, I thought that it was perhaps the best thing I had ever written.

I closed the book, undressed, and climbed into bed. I felt an enormous sense of relief at the prospect of having rescued my love for Laura. The feeling was similar to that experienced by anyone else who has just stepped out of the frying pan moments before they realise they are in the fire. I had a few days yet before the fire really took hold, but make no mistake, by this time it was well and truly smouldering.

# CHAPTER 17

The next morning I woke late and made my way downstairs with the notes I'd compiled at the office the previous day. I walked into the kitchen to find Eliza waiting for me.

"You're not being paid to sleep," she said.

"I'll take it as holiday then," I replied, trying to inject a little humour into our relationship.

"You're not being paid for those either."

"I'll try to remember that. Any chance of..."

"Breakfast? I packed you something in that lunchbox," she said, gesturing to a plastic container on the table. "I thought that perhaps you late starters liked to eat on the move."

"That's exactly right," I said, picking up the container. "I've got a feeling this is going to really focus my mind."

She narrowed her eyes as if she was trying to see another meaning to my words. I wished her a good day and left before she found one.

I decided not to go straight to the office, but opted instead to take a walk and get to know Quil Marsh a little better. If I was going to save a place I thought I ought to try and get on first name terms with it, especially if I thought that place were also going to save me. I decided to begin with the central square. It seemed like a good place to plan my world tour of Quil Marsh.

When I got there I made my way to the hanging chair and sat down. I looked around for the murder novel I'd seen lying on the chair when I'd first arrived, but it was gone. I supposed its owner had retrieved it.

I sat back in the chair, closed my eyes and tried to visualise the village and my way around it. In my mind's eye I could see the buildings I had passed in the rain when I first arrived. I counted them out and they came to a round six: one for every person and couple in Quil Marsh. I thought that if I started with the bungalow to the south and worked my way anti-clockwise around the village then I would cover every dwelling by early afternoon, and maybe every occupant too. With a bit of luck I might also discover the identity of the owner of the murder novel. I thought it would be nice to meet someone with a similar interest in novels... _or a similar interest in murder_.

The thought jolted me out of my daydream and I looked around, flustered and shaken for no good reason I could think of. I was still alone and grateful for it. I pushed myself up out of the chair and left the square a little faster than I would have cared to admit at the time.

# CHAPTER 18

My first port of call was one building modified into two by paint. The series of single story rooms that made up the structure faced up to the road in a straight line as if they were queuing for an opportunity to cross to the other side. The front half of the building had been painted white and the back half black for some reason other than aesthetics, unless it was the wish of the resident to live in a giant liquorice allsort.

The front door was approached through a gate and a brief path fringed by petrified flowers wilting in the morning sun. There was a plaque next to the door giving opening times, but not saying anything about what it was opening for. I pushed the door back and stepped inside to find out for myself.

I found myself in a small waiting room populated by plastic chairs and obscure magazines. I walked over to the reception hatch and pressed a bell that was sitting on the counter. I waited a couple of minutes and then pressed the bell again. Eventually Doctor Jennings appeared at the window.

"What?" he said.

"I didn't say anything," I replied loudly.

"Oh. Good. I like to say _what_ in case I've missed something."

"You haven't missed anything."

"What?"

"YOU HAVEN'T MISSED ANYTHING."

"Good. Is that what you came here to tell me?"

"I'm just making my rounds," I replied. "Trying to do a bit of background research for my work. I hope you don't mind me taking up your time."

Doctor Jennings raised his eyebrows and gestured to the empty waiting room behind me. "I got time," he said.

"Ah, no patients in today."

"No patients in any day. No one's signed up because they're not sure if they're staying."

"So, what is it you do with yourself while you're waiting for registrations?" I asked, "Keep abreast of the latest changes in medicine?"

"What? Medicine's changed? When did that happen?"

"I don't know...I mean it probably hasn't I was just making small talk."

"Drug companies are always trying to change our job," he said. "If it wasn't for changing brand names nothing would have changed for twenty years. To tell the truth I was just tending my garden."

This wasn't quite as comforting as it sounds. If the flowers at the front were an indication of the quality of Jennings tender loving care then it wasn't surprising that his waiting room was empty.

"This place has an unusual paint job," I said.

"I did it myself. Well, I painted the back half myself. It's so that there's a clear distinction between where I live and where I work."

It struck me that a simple sign might have saved him an awful lot of black paint, but as he didn't seem to have anything else to do it was a moot point.

"Hey, while you're here, why don't you sign up as a patient?" he added.

"Why not."

He handed me a register with a pencil attached to it on a piece of string. I opened it at the first page, which was blank, and wrote my name at the top of the page and then put my signature next to it.

"Suddenly I feel like a doctor again," he said.

"Suddenly I feel sick," I replied.

"What?"

"Nothing. So, what was it you did before you moved here?"

"The same as I'm doing here. But I'm hoping it'll work out better for me this time."

If his place in Quil Marsh had more potential than his last job, I could only assume his previous surgery had been on the moon.

"What went wrong?" I asked.

"Things," he said.

I nodded knowingly as if things were the cause of most of my own problems too.

"Would you like a check-up while you're here?" he offered.

"Maybe next time – I'm supposed to be working."

"Next time might be too late."

"Better too late than never," I replied.

He gave me a quizzical look, and for once I wished he hadn't heard me. I made my excuses very loudly and left.

It was a short walk to where the next architectural resident of Quil Marsh was waiting for me. The high iron gates, the courtyard with the play area marked out on it and the small tower with the bell were enough clues to identify the building's purpose. However, if a further clue was needed then a big blue sign emblazoned with the words, _Quil Marsh Elementary_ provided it.

I peered through the gates and saw Bernadette Avery with a pot of white paint marking out some sort of court in what I took to be the playground.

"Good morning Bernadette," I called out.

She looked up and dropped something on the floor and appeared to crush it with a twist of her foot. She then placed the brush back in the pot and walked over.

" _Miss Avery_ ," she said when she reached the gates.

"Sorry?"

"While I'm at school I prefer to be known as Miss Avery. It sets the proper example for the children."

"But there aren't any, are there?"

"I also believe in starting as I mean to go on. Rules are rules Mr Travers. The Education Act requires a degree of formality."

"I'm not at school anymore, so you can call me Will."

"As you wish."

I thought I caught the hint of a smile as she turned her eyes downward. There was clearly someone else hiding just behind the prim façade. I stepped forward and pushed at the gates to find out who it was, but they wouldn't open.

"I'm afraid the gates have to remain closed during school hours. School regulations are very clear on this matter."

"I promise not to tell anyone."

"I can't take that risk Mr Travers. This is more than my job; teaching is my life. You couldn't expect me to play fast and loose with life, now, could you?"

Playing fast and loose looked like the last things on her mind. She was dressed in the kind of starched grey uniform that made her look as if she had wrapped herself in a textbook cover. However, the prim uniform couldn't entirely hide the presence of something more sensual pushing evidently unwelcome curves into the stiff fabric. But it was only a hint of the woman beneath the job title as all the buttons were fastened down to the hem and right up to a high neckline. It appeared that her concealed femininity had as much chance of escape as the imaginary children she kept corralled in the empty school.

She cleared her throat to raise my attention back to the warm blue eyes that were hiding inside the disapproving glare.

"I was just trying to find out a little more about what you all do here," I said. "For including in the town application."

She arched an eyebrow. "I think you mean - for _inclusion_ in the town application. Correct English doesn't cost anything Mr Travers."

"You wait until it's privatised," I replied.

She arched her other eyebrow to show that several of her facial features held me in contempt. Then there was that smile.

"In answer to your question, I'm single. My work is my life really, and I don't have time for anyone else."

"It wasn't really your love life I was interested in."

She blushed ever so slightly and raised a hand to her face to try to conceal it. "I'm sorry I thought..."

"No, I'm sorry, it was my fault, I wasn't making myself clear. What I wanted to know was why you decided to set up shop here in Quil Marsh."

"The short answer," she replied, "is that my old school is no longer in existence. It closed down and I had to find somewhere else to work. The longer answer involves my dream of running my own school where I can be responsible for the hopes and aspirations of a town and its children. My dream is that through education I can make their dreams come true."

She was now gazing through the gates, and I looked over my shoulder to see if I could spot what she was looking at, but I couldn't. "I could go on for hours, but you'd need to see me outside of school hours if you want to know more," she concluded.

"That's good for now," I replied. "But I might need to call on you again once I start to get a little further into the work."

"I'm at your disposal Will...Mr Travers. I'm not sure you know how much it means to me that you breath life into this place."

"It's your life, right?"

"Perhaps you do know then."

"I'll do my very best, on that you have my word."

"Good, that goes some way to putting my mind at rest," she replied.

She would not have been so relieved if she'd taken time to think that my words generally retailed for six pounds for eighty or ninety thousand making my individual word not worth a great deal at all – I'll let you do the maths. But I had no intention of deliberately failing the job and her desire would not make it either more or less likely to happen, so there seemed no harm in easing her worries.

"I'll let you get back to your work then," I said, nodding in the direction of the white lines. "Whatever that is you're working on."

"A court for my children to play on."

"Your children?"

"I'm sorry, I mean the town's children."

There was no town and there were no children, but as it wasn't part of my job description to educate Bernadette, I waved her goodbye and left her to her painting, her school regulations and her imaginary world.

I checked my watch and saw that it was past twelve. I felt hungry, but decided against returning to the office where Eliza's packed lunch looked as if it had the potential to kill more than just my hunger. Instead, I decided to make my way over to the hotel owned by Jerry and Katie Lee. It seemed a likely place to get a bite to eat, but in a place where the doctor had no patients and the school had no children, it wouldn't entirely have surprised me if the hotel had no food. In spite of this, I began the journey, driven by the knowledge that no food was better than Eliza's.

# CHAPTER 19

The hotel turned out to be a converted cottage. Converted into what precisely, was another question altogether. The building was festooned in so many ornamental decorations that I could only be sure there were walls because the roof was two stories off the ground. A pair of rose trellises, a pink wagon wheel, a heart shaped bird feeder, assorted windmills and whirligigs, fancy lanterns and a host of hanging baskets were plastered over the frontage. The lawn was also barely visible beneath a wishing well, a hanging love chair, a kissing-couple fountain and assorted animal shaped plant feeders. The place looked as if it had been vandalised by a drunken fairy.

However, I could see the hotel windows, and in the bottom right hand corner of one was a menu with 'Today's Specials' written across the top and a date that was today's date next to it. I pushed the door back, keen to be inside before the fairy returned and started on me. A bell tinkled signalling my arrival.

There was no one else around when I stepped inside and I got the impression that the bell had not done a good deal of tinkling recently.

Due to the restricted floor space, all the fixtures and fittings were pushed up close together. The counter was a combined reception desk, a bar and a short- order till. Behind me were three tables, which hinted at the limited ambition that was on the menu. The reception desk was playing host to a lone stool and a register.

I walked over to the counter and flipped the register open. There were a couple of entries. The first one had been scratched out so that it was unreadable. The second one showed that John and Joan Smith had booked in. The names sounded like pseudonyms. It struck me that you had to be very concerned about anonymity to put a fake entry in a book that no-one was going to see. I held the register up to the light to see if I could make out the obliterated name, but whoever had crossed it out had done a pretty thorough job and not a single letter was identifiable.

"Good morning Mr Travers."

I looked up from the register and saw the smiling face of Katie Lee. She had long blonde hair and it was twisted into two braids which made a soft frame for her pretty face.

"You're not looking for a room, are you?" she asked.

"Not yet. I wondered if I could take a look at the menu?"

"Sure you could!" she replied, offering me a laminated card.

I went to take it from her, but she pulled it back out of reach. "Hey, have you booked?"

"No, I didn't think I'd have..."

"Only kidding," she said, waving a _get away_ hand at me. "Wednesday is no-booking day, silly."

"Of course, silly me." I took the menu from her and examined it. Each of the courses on offer had Jerry and Katie's names before it as if they had invented them. Each dish also had a couple of kisses next to it. "I'll just have the lasagne," I said.

"There's nothing _just_ about our lasagne!" she snapped back, waving a finger at me. "Now you just go and take a seat and I'll be with you before you can say tiddly tee!"

I made my way over to a table with tiddly tee about as far away from my lips as it was possible to get. I looked out from my seat at the window and saw a figure hard at work on the other side of the square. When he straightened up I could see that it was Lyle Mace. He appeared to be fixing something mechanical, or at least I assumed he was fixing it, even though he was raining hammer blows down on whatever it was he standing over.

My speculation as to what you might fix by beating it into submission was disturbed by the prompt arrival of my lasagne.

"Tiddly tee!"

I looked up to see Katie grinning madly at me.

"Here's Tony. Tony, Mr Travers – Mr Travers, Tony."

"Sorry?"

"Tony," she said, jabbing a finger at the lasagne. "I always name my dishes. I think it's kind of cute, don't you?"

I looked at Tony for help, but he was speechless too.

"I guess so."

"Good," she said, placing the dish in front of me. "Bon appetite."

Before Katie had a chance to back away from the table, a pair of arms encircled her and Jerry's face appeared over her shoulder.

"How is my apple blossom, the love of my life and the very reason for my existence?" he said.

I was relieved that Katie took this question to be directed at her.

"Oh you, I've missed you so much," Katie replied, squeezing his hands.

"Have you been away?" I asked his grinning face.

"I've been away in the garden," he replied. "Haven't seen Katie here for nearly thirty minutes."

"Ah, well you know what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder," I responded with clearly insufficient irony in my voice.

"Absence makes my heart grow fonder and togetherness makes my heart grow fonder too. Me and Katie here are like two peas in a pod...we're a pair of love birds..."

"We're like Mickey and Minnie Mouse," Katie added.

"We need to be with each other all the time," Jerry continued. "That just wasn't possible in the city where we lived before; there were just too many other things trying to pull us apart. We had to be together Mr Travers and that's why I bought this hotel for my Minnie."

"That's a lot of love," I said.

"Oh, I've got a lot more love than that. I'd do anything for her. I'd probably even kill for her, wouldn't I my little sugar lump?"

Sugar lump looked about as surprised as I was at this statement. For a moment it looked as if Minnie Mouse had hooked up with Hannibal Lector instead of Mickey.

"Come on sugar bunny," he said, "if you're finished here, come help me make a heaven for the squirrels and birds in the garden."

It appeared that Mickey had returned. Personally I was sorry because I preferred Hannibal, but Katie seemed happy again.

"The garden it is then," she said. "Enjoy your meal Mr Travers."

And then they were gone. I picked up my knife and fork and looked at the meal, but I couldn't eat it. It wasn't that it didn't look good or that it didn't smell good, but more the fact that it was called Tony. I'd never taken a bite from a Tony before and I didn't much feel like starting now. I looked across to where Lyle's hammering was growing ever more manic, and found that my curiosity had got the better of my hunger. I pushed Tony to one side and stepped outside to find out what Lyle was up to.

"What's that you're working on, Lyle?" I said, making my way over to where he was toiling.

"Ah, Mr Travers," he said, pausing from his exertions. "I'm fixing stuff...or at least I'm trying. I think this may be someway beyond fixing."

I looked at the subject of Lyle's fevered activity and saw that it was a lawnmower – one of those big things that has a seat up back and lets you ride instead of having to push. The floor was littered with mechanical odds and ends, which looked to be the heart and probably most of the soul of the engine. Lyle didn't appear to be as much fixing it as putting it out of its misery.

"It looks like its working days are behind it," I said.

"Yes...well, no, that's not strictly true. It never worked to begin with, at least not for me. I found it in a shed back at my place when I arrived. I've got a regular push-mower, but I like to work on this from time to time to keep my hand in."

The hand Lyle wanted to keep in appeared to be a particularly unskilled one.

"Can't you get them to buy you a new one?" I asked.

"Get who to buy me a new one?"

"Whoever's employing you to do this job."

"Oh, I don't have an employer as such. Everyone here chips in to pay my wages. I'll get a proper wage when we get town status – then I become a government employee."

"It must have been tough to pick up a property round here on those kind of terms," I said.

"Impossible," Lyle replied. "That's why I haven't got one. Well, not of my own anyway. I'm living in a place owned by Mr Fisher. I need them and they need me."

This could only be true if the chances of Quil Marsh getting town status could be improved by hammering the place into the shape of an oxo cube.

"So, which is your house, Lyle?"

"The small three room affair back there," he said, flinging an index finger over his shoulder.

"That is a small place."

"It's the smallest place around," Lyle said with misplaced pride. "But it's bigger than I'm used to."

"Your last place was smaller?"

"That's right, a one bedroom flat. But that's not why I moved here. I came here for the piece of land that goes with the house. Not for me you understand, but for my babies."

"You have children?"

"Not the sort that grow up and become adults," he replied.

"What other sort are there?"

"Ones with wings and beaks...pigeons. Landlords aren't very keen on pigeons in flats. Pigeons aren't very keen on flats either...or landlords for that matter," he concluded, scratching his chin thoughtfully.

"But they like it out here?"

"I think so. They definitely look happier."

"I'm not surprised, you've done them proud."

"God's been looking after us," Lyle replied firmly, as if Jesus were planning on setting up a pigeon racing team of his own with Lyle's birds. "One day God will take them and then he'll take me too and I'll be able to look after them again."

If Lyle was indeed right, then I hoped God wouldn't be tempted to ask him to have a go at fixing the pearly gates.

"This has been very useful," I said. "Thank-you for your help."

"You must come round for a meal sometime."

"You cook then?"

"Not really," Lyle replied, adjusting his baseball cap by twisting it back and forth as if he were trying to remove a child-proof lid. "But you must still come round all the same. I'll show you the pigeons."

"I'd like that. Sometime it is then."

I raised a hand in farewell to him and he raised his hammer and continued bringing it down mercilessly on the stricken lawnmower.

Passing Lyle's place and circling around the back of the square I came upon the church, the home of Jacob Jones. It looked like one of those quaint affairs that you see set into hanging plates, and was roughly the same size. The knave was so small that I assumed the congregation did their praying standing up, and the spire didn't appear to be much more than an ornate television aerial.

The church was surrounded by a stone wall, and towards the back there appeared to be a graveyard with a single gravestone in it.

I stepped in through an ivy-covered arch and made my way the short distance along the stone path to the front of the church. Jacob Jones emerged from behind a fence, his face covered in a light, wet sheen that gave the impression he had been drinking from the font.

"God's work is very punishing," Jacob said, producing a handkerchief and wiping what turned out to be sweat from his brow.

Jacob had a pair of shears in his hand, so I assumed God's work that day amounted to pruning the hedge.

"That's a nice church you've got there...Reverend?"

"Oh, just Jacob," he replied, removing his glasses and applying the handkerchief to the lenses before replacing them. "I don't feel comfortable with official titles like reverend or vicar. I suppose you get fed up with being called a writer all the time?"

"That's right," I said. The truth was I loved to be called a writer. I was referred to as a hack far too often to find the label writer offensive. "I hope you don't mind if I ask you some questions about yourself for the work I'm doing."

Jacob fidgeted and then removed his glasses again and rubbed them even more enthusiastically than before. "Not terribly personal questions?" he said, directing the question at his glasses.

"No, I don't think so," I replied, leaning forward so that I could catch his eye to reassure him. "You don't have to answer them if you don't want to."

"Alright then."

"Where are you from originally?"

"The south east."

"That's a long way to come for such a small flock."

" _Potentially small_ flock," he corrected me. "The truth is that not everyone here is a regular church goer."

"Oh? How many?"

"Just Lyle, but that's okay as I'm not very good at speaking in front of bigger groups."

"Bigger than one?"

"Maybe a little bigger. Anyway, one out of seven is nearly fifteen percent, which puts my diocese in the top quartile of successful churches in the country. I hope to have that up to nearly thirty percent soon if I can get Miss Avery to stop in on her Sunday walks."

"It's still a long way to come," I persisted.

"For Miss Avery?"

"No, for you."

"Ah. I'm here because of my father – because of God and my father," he corrected himself. I waited for a moment for him to elaborate, but it soon became clear that he considered this to be the end of the matter as far as his arrival in Quil Marsh was concerned. "Who knows, perhaps I'll have to build an extension if you manage to successfully turn this place into a town."

I thought that if I managed to turn this place into a town then such a miracle would probably allow him to convert his church into a sacred shrine and he would have the kind of following that would make Lourdes green with envy.

"I won't take up any more of your time Jacob. I've got work to do and I expect God's work is never done?"

"Well, it's mostly finished by six, so If you ever want to stop by again, any time in the evening is fine with me."

"Thanks Jacob, I may well do that."

"Or Sundays of course!"

"Of course," I replied, taking this as my cue to put some significant distance between Jacob and myself.

"We're doing some readings from Matthew and Luke this Sunday," he shouted after me by way of temptation.

Fortunately a hedge rose up on my right to shield me from any more of Jacob's implorings, and I hurried along the road to where I thought I would complete the circle and find the doctor's liquorice allsort. Instead, when I rounded the corner I came across a large house perched on a rise. I stopped in my tracks when I saw it because I thought I had seen it before. I hadn't been sure at the time, but I was sure now – it was what had caught my eye and caused me to crash my car on that first rainy night in Quil Marsh. This was Laura's house.

# CHAPTER 20

It looked more like an ancient monument than it did a home. Standing an imposing four stories high, it was as deep as it was tall, with evidently long rooms reaching back into the generous garden space behind. But it wasn't its size alone which generated the feeling of being in the presence of a building that was more than just a home, and more than just a building too. The fabric of the house was roughly hewn from large blocks of quarried stone, which gave the walls a volcanic appearance, as if they had erupted from the earth beneath them. The roof was similarly naturalistic, with large slabs of raven black slate interlocked like shark's teeth. Beneath the roof, the sunken windows made the walls look impossibly thick, giving the impression that the building was almost solid. If it hadn't been for more recent additions to the structure, the house could easily have been mistaken for a primitive religious edifice.

The recent additions included a wooden porch, decorative trim along the eaves, black shutters on the upstairs windows and a token dash of clapboard which hid some of the stone on the front of the building. What appeared to be the newest modifications to the building were a large pair of skylights set into the roof, which glinted in the afternoon sun. I thought that this was what I'd seen projecting lightening flashes into the road the night I discovered Quil Marsh.

In front of the house a path of coloured stone unfolded through a perfect lawn of lime green grass to a pristine envelope-white gate. An oak walk-through frame looped over the gate, and, hanging from the frame by two short lengths of chain, was a plaque. The words Millwood House were printed on it in rustic lettering.

The other thing that struck me about Millwood House, apart from its size, was its darkness. It couldn't be seen by looking at the house face on, but it appeared in the corner of my eye whenever I turned my head to scan the frontage. It was an elusive something, and being elusive it's hard to describe. It was as if what I was seeing was behind the shutters and walls. It sounds as if I saw nothing at all, but the cold shiver that ran down my spine suggested otherwise.

So mesmerised was I by the house that I didn't realise I was being watched until I noticed something moving off to my right. Cautiously I moved along the fence to get a better look.

Flush up against the side of the house was a chicken-wire cage, and in that cage was the ugliest dog I had ever seen. It had no ears, too many teeth and was sat hunched in a pool of its own drool. A rack of swollen muscles were stacked up around its shoulders giving it the impression of being heavily armed. It was ugly, but it was safe, of that I had no doubt. I thought that if there had been an opening of any sort, then the dog would have been through it and at my throat long before now.

The words _Beware: Raul the Spanish mastiff lives here!_ were hand-painted on a sign stapled to the top of the cage. The name was familiar to me from school history lessons. Raul shared his name with a medieval Spanish despot. I thought that even though they shared a name and an unpleasant disposition, it was unlikely that the despot had smelt quite as bad.

In spite of Raul's killer BO, he was a caged dog, and as such was a lame reason for not making a visit.

I stepped up to the gate and pushed. It was bolted shut. I was relieved to find it closed. It was the justification not to proceed that I had been looking for. By this point I was completely unnerved by the house, and the closed gate gave me the perfect excuse to avoid confronting the darkness I thought I had found.

I suppose I could have leant over the waste-high fence and slipped back the bolt, but I was sure that Laura wasn't in and the empty driveway suggested that Sam was elsewhere too. I reasoned that a walk to the front door would be a waste of, oh, seconds.

I turned around, leaving the gate closed, and made my way back to the office where I could waste hours instead.

# CHAPTER 21

The rest of the evening took an eternity to pass as I fidgeted the hours away waiting for my rendezvous with Laura the next day. I jotted down the precious little information I had collected on my walk and filed it in a manila folder.

When this was done, I took a jotter and opened it to a blank page in order to put down a few words to open up the novel I was planning to write. I looked at the page before me, and my hands remained resolutely at my side and the page remained resolutely blank. I hadn't given the book a second thought since I'd opened my word processor on the night of my arrival. Writing had been my reason to exist before my arrival in Quil Marsh, but now it was no longer at the forefront of my life. I wasn't even sure if it was still there at all.

Sitting there, struggling to conjure up a sentence, I found it hard to believe that I had been responsible for writing twelve novels. It occurred to me that perhaps I had already written everything I had inside me and that there was nothing left. I decided not to pursue the book any further that afternoon. I was happy to wait until another day to find out if my career as a novelist was over.

Instead, I returned to the work I was supposed to be doing for Quil Marsh and passed another couple of hours aimlessly shuffling files and flicking through government leaflets and letters. I read a lot, saw little and remembered even less. Laura was blocking my view. I decided to give in and return to the post office.

I let myself in, shook my coat off in the hallway and then made my way up to my room. For the first time I locked the door behind me. Ever since I'd conceived my plan to win over Laura I'd felt as if I was being watched. I thought that anyone who had discovered a way to win Laura's heart would be the subject of intense scrutiny. Wasn't a plan like that what everyone wanted? I thought so.

I undressed and got into bed. It was only eleven, and when I was writing I usually worked through the night and slept during the day. However, now that the possibility of writing was gone, there was only the possibility of sleep.

And so I lay in bed waiting for sleep to come, but the hours passed and it didn't show. Instead I lay there staring at the ceiling. I didn't just wonder when sleep would come, I wondered if, like the writing, it would ever return. I couldn't imagine closing my eyes again having seen Laura. And though I have closed them since, it is only because I have discovered that Laura exists in my sleep too.

# CHAPTER 22

I dragged myself out of bed feeling as tired and drawn as if I'd had to row myself across the night. I checked my watch. I was late for my date with Laura. Despite having slept only fitfully and even though I had thought of nothing all night but our rendezvous, somehow I was late.

I washed and then returned to my room where I hurriedly slipped into my clothes. Still pushing my left foot into its shoe, I hopped over to the window ledge and snatched up my copy of Cruel Hearts. It is probably the only time that novel has been snatched up quite so feverishly. And then, with my future clasped tightly in my hand and my feet finally in their shoes, I dashed from my room and made for the hill.

"I thought you weren't coming."

"I'm sorry," I said breathlessly. "Thanks for waiting."

"I wasn't going anywhere," she replied. "I can't afford to lose a new friend that easily."

Her words burned the air between us and I raised a hand to my face, reacting to their almost tangible impact.

"I hope you don't mind me calling you a friend," she said.

"No, why should I?"

"You might think I was being a little forward. We've only just met after all. You might think friend wasn't appropriate."

What did I think of _friend_? I wasn't sure. It was better than _enemy_ , but it was a long way short of _the love of my life_. I became conscious of the novel that was tightly clasped in my hand. On the way up to meet Laura it had felt like the ring with which I would declare my undying love to her. Now it felt like six pounds ninety-nine worth of paper that probably would have been pulped for toilet roll had I not found a place for it on my bookshelf. I moved it behind my back out of view.

"I don't mind friend," I said.

"Good, sit down here with me," she replied, patting a patch of grass next to her.

I took the invitation and dropped down beside her. She was hunched up with her knees under her chin seemingly deeply focused on some point down in Quil Marsh.

"What are you looking at?"

"Nothing. Just daydreaming."

"How long have you been here?"

"I don't know." Then she turned and smiled at me. "There's no use talking to me, is there? Let's talk about you instead. What have you been up to since I last saw you?"

"Nothing very interesting, I'm afraid. Work mostly. I've been visiting everyone in the village trying to get some background information for the application."

"Everyone?" Laura said, her eyes narrowing and hoisting a frown across her brow.

"Well, not you or Sam. No one was home, but you probably know that."

The smile returned to her face. "Of course. What did you make of the others?"

"Each one stranger than the next."

"That's the easy part. It's what makes them strange and what made them decide to be strange in Quil Marsh that's the tough part. Did you get that?"

"No," I replied, "but I've still got time. What about you? What keeps you occupied when you're not up here?"

"Not much now I'm no longer Quil Marsh's civic guardian."

"You can't find any other work?"

"I'm not expected to find any other work," she replied.

"I don't understand."

"Sam doesn't approve of my looking for employment outside of Quil Marsh."

"That's terrible," I said.

"Some days it is, but on other days like this then it's not so bad. I'd much rather be sat up here with you then tied to a desk somewhere."

"It doesn't have to be like that," I said. "I think I can find a way around this."

"Yes?"

"Why don't you work with me?"

"What? Help you write?"

"No, help me with the town application work."

"Is there enough work for two?" she asked.

"To be honest there isn't really enough for one," I replied, "but I've just had a batch of forms come through that need sorting out. Maybe together we could do enough duplication to make half a job seem like two."

Laura raised her eyebrows, and then sat up smartly and adopted an interview-type pose. "Well, I can drag my heels as well as the next person, I put things off to the last possible moment and I always misfile."

"That's all well and good as far as it goes Ms Fisher, but what's your commitment like?"

"Almost non-existent."

"And your performance?"

"Negligible."

"You do sound very qualified for this particular post, but I'm going to need references."

"Oh, I know several people who will vouch for my poor work attitude."

"Excellent. And finally, perhaps you'd like to explain why you chose us?"

"Because I'm fond of the employer," she said, her voice losing its sarcastic tone.

Suddenly the joke fell away and I was left feeling intensely uncomfortable. I tried to think of something to say to diffuse the moment, but love had mislaid my tongue and I couldn't speak. Seconds passed and suddenly I couldn't remember whether I had responded or not.

"Are you alright?" she said.

I finally found my tongue where I had left it, in my mouth. It was dry and swollen and burning the way the rest of me was, but fortunately still operable. "Of course I'm alright. I've just been promoted, haven't I? Now I'm a manager."

"Don't hold your breath waiting for a pay rise."

"A bit less time in the vicinity of Eliza's kitchen is all the reward I need."

"You're terrible." Laura said, through a mouthful of giggles. "Eliza's sweet really. Her bark's worse than her bite."

"Unfortunately, her cooking is worse than her bark and bite combined."

"You're a hard man Will Travers. Perhaps that's why I like you."

I shrugged. I couldn't think of any other reason why she might like me, unless she had a thing for poorly paid men. Her current choice of husband suggested this was not the case.

She popped another flashbulb smile at me and resumed her interview pose. "When do want me to start?"

"As soon as you can. The time wasting is piling up without you. How about tomorrow?"

"Let me see. I've got to finish lazing around first, and then there are the daisies to be picked and of course I'm going to have to give the ducks notice if I'm going to stop feeding them."

"Of course. I wouldn't want it any other way – you must do the decent thing by the ducks."

"Having said that, I think I can be ready for tomorrow."

"Good," I said, pushing myself up and getting to my feet. "I look forward to seeing you tomorrow Ms Fisher."

I stretched out a mock hand to conclude our mock interview. She made no attempt to take it. Her eyes remained fixed at my feet.

"Ms Fisher? Laura?"

"What's that?" she said.

"What's what?"

She pointed to where I had been sitting. When I looked down I saw the novel.

"Is that a book?" she said. "Oh god, that's your book, isn't it?"

I'd forgotten about the novel and was equally surprised to see it lying on the grass next to where I'd been sitting. It felt as if it had followed me up the hill without my permission, like something on my shoe that I thought I'd scraped off earlier.

"Oh god, it _is_ my book," I said

"Here, let me see it," she said stretching out a hand and taking it without waiting for a reply. "It's big," she said, confirming one of the few positive comments it had received on its release. "And it's complete."

"That's the way they publish them."

She examined the cover, running her fingers over the title and the painted figures beneath it. Then she flipped it over and read the summary on the back. I watched her eyes skip over the sentences and suck in the words until they pushed her eyebrows up.

"Intriguing," she said.

"Really?"

"Absolutely."

She opened the book and read the opening line out loud. "This story is about a man and a woman. Love brought them together, but murder tore them apart."

"Still intrigued?"

"More than ever."

She held the book by the spine and began to flick through it. She was three quarters of the way through it when I remembered what I'd written on the final page. I reached out and closed the book shut in her hand.

"I think it should be read a page at a time."

"I know, I'm just excited to see how it pans out. I'll read it properly, I promise."

"All of it?"

"Of course. All of it, right down to the last word." She stood up. "I really must be going. I'll see you tomorrow, if the reading doesn't keep me up late."

She smiled, and then she turned and made her way back down the hill.

My agent had told me that it had been a mistake to write Cruel Hearts. But if my agent could have been standing with me, watching Laura stroll across the field with the novel clutched tightly to her chest then I think he might have changed his mind. He doesn't represent me anymore. Since then the only representation I've had was that provided by the legal firm that took me on after I left Quil Marsh.

# CHAPTER 23

The week that followed was the happiest of my life, of that there can be no question. That it was also the last happy week of my life is equally unquestionable.

Like a couple of newly weds, Laura and I set up home at the Civic Centre. I don't mean that I carried her in through the doorway or that we swapped the desk for a four-poster bed, but I do mean that we set about sharing each other's lives as completely as any couple I've ever met.

Laura told me about her past. She had been born into a happy family, which had remained happy for the two years it took her father to find someone else to be happy with. Her mother hadn't remarried, but had soldiered bravely on alone enduring the poverty and the insinuations that went with being a single mother. That was until she died of cancer when Laura was eighteen. This left Laura alone in the world with nothing to her name but her beauty. And sure enough beauty had kept a roof over her head when she picked up cosmetics work, trying to convince other women they could look as beautiful as herself (although she didn't describe it so bluntly herself). And that saw her through to her twenty fifth year when she married Sam Fisher.

I countered with my own considerably less interesting life-story involving school, college, and deadend jobs and the surprise acceptance of a story that I had given-up on several times before completing.

"You must have a real passion for writing," she said.

"I have a passion for not working," I replied.

"When I was a teenager I used to dream that one day I would marry a writer...a poet or some such thing."

"Perhaps you will."

"You forget, I'm already married."

And she was right, I had forgotten. I had forgotten about her marriage, about my writing, about work and towns, in fact about the whole outside world.

"It had slipped my mind too these past few days," she added, and quickly turned her gaze to the official papers scattered in her lap, allowing me to gaze unhindered at her face. If anything, her tragic past seemed to make her even more beautiful.

But our pasts were only a small part of our talk. We spoke also of imagined futures – fantastical, fun filled imaginings of a paper shuffling kingdom where she would be queen and I would be king – a world that she conjured up and one in which I was more than happy to live.

And so we passed the week, secluded in the castle of our own company. In between there was work (I think) and we made the slow, painful progress that we agreed was best. In fact, so slow was our progress that it didn't cross my mind that one day our time together at the civic building would be over. But that day did come – seven days into our working relationship.

On that fateful day Laura had arrived wearing a shawl, which was unusual as it wasn't really her style and it wasn't a particularly cold day either. In addition to this she was unusually subdued. Her conversation was peppered with one-word answers, she wasn't able to raise a smile and she wouldn't look me in the eye, preferring to lose herself instead in the form filling which she had been so studiously avoiding over the preceding days.

The day dragged on as none of the others had done and I longed to know the source of her misery, particularly whether or not it was me, but she blocked every question with a down turned glance which only served to heighten my paranoia. When the answer eventually presented itself, it had nothing to do with my concern and everything to do with a small mouse that chose our office for a shortcut home.

I assume it was a mouse. I didn't see it, but I heard the scream and jumped up at the same time that Laura did. I was standing behind her and thus in an ideal position to catch the shawl as it fell from her neck. And that's where I saw the answer.

# CHAPTER 24

At first I thought she had a bat tattooed on the back of her neck. A big ugly, purple and powder blue bat that had landed on her collarbone and embraced her, clasping its claws around the top of her spine.

And then the bat was momentarily gone when Laura dipped down to pick up the shawl. When she stood up again I could see the bat clearly for what it actually was. The colour wasn't ink, it was bruising, and the shape was not a pair of wings...it was a pair of hands.

Once I'd identified the source of the markings, the whole picture fell into sharp relief. I was able to make out each of the heavy digits that had been pressed upon the skin and the thumbs which circled her trachea. The pressure applied appeared to have been so great that hands had sunk into her neck and were still there trapped just beneath skin, preserved like a medical specimen in a beautiful jar.

Laura swept the shawl back up into place and turned around swiftly with a shocked expression on her face as if I'd just seen her naked. For a moment we just stared at each other.

"It was a mouse," she said, eventually.

"What?"

"It was a mouse. That's why I screamed. I...I think we may have mice."

"Mice?" I replied. "Who cares about mice? What happened to your neck."

"My neck?" she said, pulling the shawl a little more tightly around herself. "Oh that. That's...that's the dye from shawl. You know when it gets wet it...."

I knew this was a lie. I knew it was a lie because the colours were too deep and the shape too symmetrical to be the product of a simple stain. And finally, I knew it was a lie because briefly, after uttering the words, she began to cry.

I put an arm around her shoulders, sat her back down and waited for the tears to stop. "Come on, it's not dye, is it?"

"No...no, it isn't."

"I want you to tell me what happened," I said.

More tears, and then: "I can't...you shouldn't have seen it." She rubbed her eyes with her palms.

"But I have seen it. You might as well tell me...you _must_ tell me."

She removed her hands from her face and looked me directly in the eye. For the first time I became acutely aware of the arm I had around her. I thought I could feel her heart beating.

"I don't know if I can," she said.

"Are you afraid?"

"Afraid? Yes, I'm afraid. I'm also ashamed – ashamed of what I've become."

A lock of hair fell across her forehead and I raised a hand to push it back into place. It felt like satin.

"Tell me," I insisted.

"It's Sam," she said, lowering her eyes as she spoke.

"Sam did this to you?"

"And the rest," she said, a hint of bitterness creeping into her hurt voice. "I don't know when it started precisely. It feels like it's been going on forever, but I know that it hasn't. I know that there were good times once."

She paused to run a hand across her glistening cheek.

"Go on," I said.

"I didn't know what marriage was supposed to be like – I suppose nobody does – but I had my ideas and I think early on it was probably just as I'd imagined it would be. Sam was the loving husband and I was the faithful wife and we just got on with our lives trying to make each other happy and ourselves happy in the process. But it didn't last; there was another side to Sam that I had not seen before. It was a kind of darkness. It was as if there was someone else in the marriage."

"Darkness?"

"It was just little things at first...looks, tone of voice, that sort of thing. Then the tone of voice found words to fit, and they were cruel and hard. Next came blame. Things began to happen that he wasn't happy about and it was all because of me; everything from broken cups to bad days at work to the weather. And then..."

She paused mid-sentence, her lips trembling and her eyes brimming. I handed her a tissue from a box sitting on the desk. She smiled, thanked me, took the tissue and dabbed gently at her face.

"I'm sorry."

"Take your time. There's no rush here."

She sucked in a deep breath and gathered up what remained of her composure. She fixed her gaze on a point straight ahead as if she were watching what she was about to tell unfold again before her.

"And then there was the violence. Bumps, pinches, knocks and then cigarette burns."

"No?"

She peeled back a sleeve to reveal a forearm peppered with tiny violet bruises, starting a couple inches up from the wrist and running in slight curve along the soft flesh.

"But why didn't you walk out?" I asked. "Why didn't you leave him the second he laid a finger on you?"

She shrugged, still staring blankly at the vision that only she could see. "I suppose because I thought it was my fault. Everything seemed to be my fault, why not this too. I think by this time I hated myself as much as he did. If he hadn't started harming me then I think I might have started harming myself. Yes, I think I might even have been grateful. He was, after all, only saving me the trouble."

"That's terrible," I said.

"That's life," she replied. "Well, that's my life anyway."

"But what about this," I said, reaching out to touch her neck. "This isn't a slap or a punch, this is..."

She flinched away from my touch. Her yes were wrenched from the place on the wall that they had been transfixed too and now regarded me with terror. The look softened when I pulled my hand back.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I'm just a little jumpy. But you're right, this isn't the sort of abuse that I've been used to, this is something different. This is attempted murder."

Murder had been trade in fiction for more than ten years. I had courted it, groomed it and it had paid me back by providing a living for me. However, now that I was confronted with the reality of murder I felt nauseous and afraid.

"I still don't understand why you're still with him."

"I don't know. I think I'm just tired...tired of it all. I don't have the strength to fight it anymore. Yes, that's it, I'm just waiting for the inevitable now...I'm waiting to die."

"You can't be serious," I said.

"Oh yes I am," she replied.

"But what about going to the police?"

"What would be the point of that? I would only be delaying the inevitable for a few weeks or maybe a couple of months. No, I've waited too long already. I can't take the waiting anymore."

"There has to be another way," I said.

She reached out, squeezed my hand and gave me a grateful smile. "Trust me, there isn't."

"Come with me," I said. "I'll take you away from all this."

"That's sweet," she said. "And I do believe that you think you can, but you can't. He would find us one day. I know he would. I've seen his hatred close up and I know that he wouldn't rest until he could put his hands on me one last time. And you too...you would be in danger. I wouldn't want that."

"But we could make a new start; we could be happy together," I said, betraying my desire to do more than just drive her away from Quil Marsh.

"I don't doubt we would be happy together. Don't think I haven't thought about it because I have. In these last few days it's almost all I've thought about. If I'm honest – and honesty is most difficult where feelings are concerned – I was taken with you the day we first met. I don't like to call it love at first sight, but I don't know how else to describe it. I think I saw in you the happiness that might have been...that might have been if I hadn't met and married Sam. But I did and there's no point pretending differently."

"But I feel so helpless. There must be some way out?"

"Sam's death is my only way out."

The sentiment was as shocking as it was unexpected. It was like hearing a child utter an unrepeatable obscenity.

"I'm sorry," she sighed. "I shouldn't have said that."

"It's alright, you didn't mean it."

"Yes I did," she replied firmly. "Don't be offended, you don't understand. Just like you probably don't understand how much you've done for me. These past days since you've arrived have been a light in the darkness, and that means the world to me. For however long I have, I won't forget it."

She looked at me, I looked at her and then she leaned towards me. The feeling is as real to me now as it was then. It was like falling from a mountain into a clear, turquoise tropical lagoon. The beauty rushed up at me so fast it made my head spin. I thought for a moment I might faint, or worse, I might wake-up and find that it was not really happening. And then we were kissing and I knew that it wasn't a dream because I'd never felt so alive.

Everyone spends their life searching for something. They may do it consciously or it might manifest itself in a constant mental itch that you can't seem to scratch. But you're always looking – that's the whole point of life. That missing something you feel you can't live without, but something most people live a lifetime not having. But what happens if you find it? I believe few people ever find out, but I did when Laura kissed me. I can't really tell you what it feels like (that would be like trying to describe love itself), but one thing I can tell you is that once you've found that thing you have been looking for you can never live without it again. Never.

Laura pulled away from me.

"This is wrong," she said.

"Wrong?"

"This has no future other than in our hearts and that is where we must leave it."

"Please give us a chance."

"If only I could," she replied, dragging a hand across her tear stained face. "But it's impossible. It's best if we don't see each other again...ever again."

"Best for who?" I said, leaning in towards her this time. Now she leant back.

"Best for both of us."

"No."

"Yes."

She got to her feet and released her hand from mine. I tried to catch her but her fingers slipped from my palm. She turned and made her way across the office. Heartbreak anchored me to my seat and before I knew it she was at the door.

"Wait!"

She opened the door and then turned to look at me. I'll always remember her that way. Her pained, beautiful face framed by the darkness of the night beyond her – it was a portrait of tragedy. She cupped a hand, blew me a tragic kiss and then disappeared out into the night.

I didn't find my feet until the door slammed behind her. I jumped up, caught my knee on the corner of the desk, fell, found my feet again and limped to the door.

By the time I looked out she was nowhere to be seen. It had begun to rain and a cruel wind was mocking me with its howl. I stepped out onto the path but I was too late to catch even the memory of her departure. I sank to my knees and called out her name, but the words were lost among the elements. Just as I, in turn, was also lost.

# CHAPTER 25

_Sam Fisher had to die_. I didn't reach this conclusion lightly or easily or without stopping off at a dozen other possibilities, but I did reach it eventually. The death wish went from being the abhorrent reaction of a desperate woman to an inescapable truth which I could not deny, in one long evening of soul searching.

I was initially dismissive of Laura's suggestion that the only way to resolve her situation was through the death of Sam Fisher. I reasoned that it was panic and fear talking, and that these were two emotions not to be trusted to make life and death decisions. Instead, I devoted hours to the seemingly simple task of coming up with an alternative. But the hours passed and the simple alternatives came and went without ever being close to offering up a genuine plan worth the name. Each one floundered on the rock of Laura's unwillingness to leave Sam. You can line up as many escapes as you like, if the escapee won't walk then there can never be freedom.

Eventually, tired and hurting from the pain of pointless thought, I had to concede to myself that Laura was right. The only way to free the prisoner who won't walk is to destroy the prison.

Having made my decision I slumped down on the bed. I waited for someone to come and arrest me, but of course they didn't. No one knew what was going to happen to Sam Fisher, except me.

Laura's imminent freedom was all I cared about and now that I believed I was about to secure it I was happier than any man has a right to be, lying in a strange bed in a strange town. There would be freedom and there would be happiness and there would be love. All I had to do was kill Sam Fisher.

The thought made me want to throw-up and I bent over the edge of the bed, but nothing came.

I didn't know where to start. Not only had I never killed a person before, I had not even killed an insect deliberately. The only killings I had ever carried out were the deaths of my fictional victims and even then I'd had fictional killers to do the work for me. But I knew it could be done. There were thousands of people languishing in jails all over the world for committing just such an act. The prison populations of some countries suggested it was almost a national sport in the more volatile parts of the world.

So, how did they do it? Usually with a knife or with a gun according to the transcripts of the court cases I had studied for my books.

I got to my feet and drew a make-believe knife from my pocket and made a few pretend swishes through the air with it. And then I could see Sam Fisher in front of me. I was facing his back and it made a big, broad target that was fit for a knife and a man with the motive to push it in. I clenched my fist and brought the invisible knife down, but my hand pulled up an inch short from its intended target. I couldn't bear the idea of pushing my hand through blood and bone and cartilage, even if it was Sam Fisher's. The thought made me feel so sick that the only likelihood of my killing him this way was by drowning him in my vomit.

That left guns. I certainly didn't own one and equally certainly didn't know where to get one. And time was short – very short. I wasn't even sure that I could fire a pistol that was loaded with anything other than water. I put the safety catch on the imaginary gun that had replaced the knife and put it back in my pocket where it couldn't do any imaginary harm.

I sat back down to try to see a better way past my problem. Instead the problem became bigger the more I examined it. Not only did I not have the nerve to kill someone the way that the Category A prisoners I'd read about had done, I couldn't do their jail term either. I already had Sam's homicidal inclinations between Laura and myself; it wouldn't profit me much to swap this barrier for a set of prison bars. And then it came to me. I was looking to the wrong people for inspiration.

It wasn't the killers that were incarcerated that I should be interested in, it was the thousands more who had killed but were still roaming the streets free having avoided detection who should be my inspiration. I wasn't thinking about the ones on the run who are waiting to be caught, but the ones who weren't even being looked for. Their crimes were invisible. Why? Their crimes were _accidents_. Something slipped, something fell, something collapsed and someone died. It happened all the time and no one was to blame – at least no one _was_ blamed.

I felt much happier with the prospect of an accident. An accident didn't require the hands-on malice of cold-blooded murder. It didn't require a perpetrator or a sentence. It wasn't vile, it was unfortunate. There was no knife or bullet, just a bolt from the blue. It was something that just happened when you were passing by. I didn't need to be a killer then, just a certain kind of passer-by.

So, it was decided. Sam Fisher would have an accident. There would be no weapon, no murder and no prison. Instead there would be a blameless, can't help it, these things happen accident. And there would be Laura.

It was with an enormous feeling of relief that I considered myself to have engineered Sam Fisher's demise after his unwelcome tenure on planet earth. I had, after all, been responsible for plenty of accidental accidents in my time (all- be-it non-fatal ones); now I simply had to be the instigator of a deliberate one. I considered it a problem solved and rolled over onto my side and slipped into a light sleep, feeling unburdened of my troubles. In truth my troubles were just beginning.

# CHAPTER 26

I spent the next day locked in my office at the civic hall. I had a pen in my hand and a writing-pad on the desk, feverishly trying to design the accident that would free the world from Sam Fisher.

A blank page about a third of the way through the pad reflected my own blank mind back up at me. The missing pages contained the ideas I'd managed to conjure up thus far and were screwed up into little white fists in the wastebasket by my side. The schemes that hadn't made the grade seemed to me at that moment to cover the full spectrum of fatal accidents. Fuelled by thoughts of what he was doing to Laura, I had begun at the grimmer end of the scale – falling into farm machinery (where is it and how do you fall into it?), burns (how does someone accidentally burst into flames when it's not November the fifth?) and being dragged through the streets by a horse (in a village with no horses, I won't even begin to describe the problems associated with this one).

After reality had dampened my anger, I tried to conjure up an accident that could actually happen and that didn't frighten the life out of me just to think about it. My sanity depended on it and, more importantly, so did Laura's life.

The subsequent plans included electrocution (I decided I was more likely to electrocute myself in the process), inducing a heart attack (Sam Fisher didn't sound as if he had a heart), a falling tree (tapping a keyboard for a living left me some way short of the strength needed to plant a tree, let alone fell one) and six other sounded-good-at-first but on reflection completely implausible ideas. And that left with me with a full wastebasket and a blank pad.

For want of being able to think of anything else I drew a picture of him on fire being dragged through the streets by a horse with a tree on him. I tore out the page and dropped it in the bin with the others.

I was getting nowhere fast. At this rate I thought Sam Fisher would die of old age, and Laura...well, that didn't bear thinking about. It occurred to me that what I needed for inspiration was a place with a sense of the macabre. I decided to return to Eliza's.

I dropped a match into the wastepaper bin and watched my failed plans smoulder and crumple into ash. With this act I had begun to cover my tracks, which gave me the feeling that my crime had finally begun. I knew from this moment on that I was going to have to take great care if it were ever to be completed as I intended. I left the office, taking the bin with me, and offered up the charred contents to the wind, which scattered them off towards the trees and out over the hedges. For a moment I wished I could leave with them, but it was only a fleeting thought.

I made my way back to the post office with my mind still tumbling the kind of unlikely freak occurrences that made a triple lightening strike seem common place. I stepped into the road without thinking and it was almost the last unconscious act I ever made. A car bore down upon me and the first thing I knew of it was the scream of its unyielding engine racing towards me. Not just racing towards me, but _veering_ towards me. I threw myself backwards just in time to avoid the certain death that would otherwise surely have been mine.

I lay crumpled by the side of the road, intoxicated by the smell of burning rubber and my own fear. By the time I'd pulled myself up, the car was out of sight, eclipsed by the interlocking branches of the trees between us.

I sat looking after it in a state of shock for some seconds, and then I got to my feet and stepped away from the roadside in case it returned. When it was clear that it would not, I dusted myself down and looked back along the road to where it had emerged, seemingly from out of nowhere. As distracted as I had been, it was hard to believe that I had not heard the approaching sound of the car before it was upon me. It was with this thought in mind that I walked back up the road to investigate.

After a couple of minutes I came across a lay-by. The parking area was shielded by dense, overgrown hedging and not the sort of place you would notice unless you knew it was there or were specifically looking for it.

I was still jumpy enough after my near escape to make sure the road was clear before investigating further. Close to where the main road edged the parking recess, there were a number of discarded cigarette butts. I kicked them around with the toe of my shoe and saw that one was still glowing with the dying breath of its last inhalation. I put it out of its misery with the sole of my shoe.

Something else caught my eye. A discarded paperback was sitting in the roots of the bushes. I walked over and retrieved it. It was a pulp-fiction murder novel, much like the one I had found on the hanging chair. It was called Deadly Intent. Whatever its intent had been it had clearly not been to sell millions of copies as I'd never heard of it.

The conclusion was inescapable: someone had been sitting there for some time waiting. Waiting for me? I wondered how much Sam Fisher knew about Laura and myself. And more to the point, how much he knew about me and him. I found it hard to believe that Sam was already on to me, and the longer I thought about it the easier it became to put the incident down to bad driving and paranoia.

I left the book where I'd found it and then made my way back to the post office, being sure to keep my wits about me this time.

When I let myself in I found the place to be deserted. I assumed Eliza was out visiting one of the surrounding villages, slandering me in places I'd never heard of.

I was glad of the solitude – solitude is always a good thing where Eliza is concerned, but on this day particularly so. I put the kettle on and set about making a drink, when the phone rang. I was still nervous after my escape and the unexpected sound made me jump and I knocked the cup over.

Having established that I wasn't about to be crushed beneath an on-rushing telephone, I went into the hallway to locate the source of the sound. Sitting on the wall next to the stairs was a big, black bakelite phone that looked as if it was about to ring off the wall. It was the sort of telephone you might see in an old black and white movie, and you could easily imagine lifting the receiver and finding Katherine Hepburn or Spencer Tracey on the other end. However, this being Eliza's phone I wouldn't have been surprised to find Boris Karloff or Bela Lugossi on the line. In the event it was worse than that. Much worse.

"Hello. Eliza's residence, can I help you?"

"Will? Will Travers?"

"Yes. Who's that?"

"Sam Fisher."

My mouth went dry and I didn't think I would be able to speak.

"Are you still there?" he said into the silence.

"Yes...yes, I am. What can I do for you?"

"I think we need to talk Will. Am I right?"

Talk? I hadn't considered that. All my ideas had involved hitting, burning and smashing.

"We do?" I said.

"That's right. I believe you've interviewed everyone else in Quil Marsh, so that just leaves me. Well, me and Laura, but I can speak for both of us."

"I see. Where and when?"

"How about Jerry Lee's place," he replied. "Can you make tonight?

"That's short notice."

"I thought you had a tight timetable? It's just that I'm tied up for most of the rest of this week."

"Tonight's fine," I said. "You're right, time is short."

"Eight?"

"Eight's good."

"Later, then."

"Later."

I replaced the receiver in its cradle. It felt as if I had just untied the rope on the guillotine and the blade was falling – maybe slowly in my case, but falling all the same. I just had to ensure there was a neck underneath it when fell - _accidentally_.

I picked up my notepad and made my way up to my room. A quick flick through the sheaves of paper showed there were thirty or forty pages left. At the rate at which I was producing unworkable ideas I thought I was going to need every page. I closed the door, took a seat at the desk, and began to sketch the details of a partial roof collapse directly over just one seat.

# CHAPTER 27

By seven-thirty I had reached the card at the back of the pad and had a wastepaper basket full of the kind of ideas that were likely only to cause serious harm to myself.

I was grateful to see that I was out of time and therefore relieved of further cataloguing my ineptitude. I decided that I would trust to fate, which, I believe, has considerably more experience of engineering accidents that kill than you or I.

I pulled on my jacket even though I was sweating profusely at the thought of what was to come. I didn't resemble so much the cool killers of my novels, but a damp firework that was shrivelling up on its launch pad. I left my room, closed the door on what remained of my innocence and made for Jerry Lee's.

It was dark when I reached the redbrick lodging house and I was surprised to find that all the lights were out. I made my way up the path, negotiating the minefield of bad taste on the way, and tried the front door. It was locked. There was a sign just visible on the other side of the glass. Not surprisingly, it said _Closed_.

It could have been a mistake on Sam Fisher's part or a change of schedule at the hotel, but it didn't feel like that: it felt like a trap. I took a deep breath. _Ring the bell_ , I told myself. _Jerry and Katie are probably in a backroom exchanging marriage vows for the thousandth time_. I pressed the bell, but there was no response. I pressed it again and still nothing. I stepped back to see if I could spot any signs of life, but the all-enveloping darkness seemed only to signify death.

Standing on the edge of the steps, it struck me that with the gaudy adornments erased by the darkness the Lee's place looked unnervingly like the Bates Motel. The image startled me and I stumbled off the step, lost my footing and braced myself to hit the ground. Instead I found myself in the arms of Sam Fisher.

"Pleased to see you too," he said, easing me back onto my feet. "Started drinking without me?"

"Er...no...I thought the hotel was closed."

"Come on, let's go inside and see if Jerry has your poison."

# CHAPTER 28

Sam released me, then plucked a key from his pocket and slipped it into the front door of the hotel.

"You have the key?" I said.

He didn't reply, but turned the key and pushed the door open. He stepped inside and flicked on the light switches.

Lit up, the hotel didn't look any less sinister than it had in the dark. If anything it looked as if Norman Bates had just announced his presence.

"Are you coming in?" he said, dropping a briefcase he had been carrying. "There's no one out there to catch you now."

I grimaced, tried to wipe his touch from my clothes and then followed him inside.

"How come you have the key?" I persisted.

"When the Lees are away they need someone to make the hotel available to those who need it. Having said that, the only person I've had to use it for so far is Katie Lee."

He made his way behind the bar and examined the drinks on offer.

"What can I get you?"

"I'll have whatever you're having," I replied.

"Two pints and two shorts it is then."

He took the drinks over to a corner table; I followed and took the seat opposite him.

He reached into an inside jacket pocket, produced a silver cigarette case, and flipped it open with a thumbnail. It contained five slim-line cigars. He offered me one. I declined, and he set the case down on the table beside his drinks.

"It's good of you to see me when you're so busy," I said.

"Not at all. We both want the same thing after all."

"We do?"

"Of course. You do want town status for Quil Marsh too, don't you Will?"

"Absolutely. That's why we're here."

"Then let's begin."

And so I began. I asked him when they'd moved to Quil Marsh (twelve months previously), what he did for a living (freelance accountant), and whether he intended to stay in Quil Marsh for the foreseeable future (he did). He spoke eloquently and seemed friendly, helpful and, most surprisingly of all, completely harmless. He also drank fiercely and was beginning his third round of drinks by the time he'd finished answering these questions.

"And what about before you came to Quil Marsh?" I asked. "What were you doing then and why did you decide to come here?"

"What was I doing before I came here? That's easy. I was waiting – waiting for Laura. Didn't realise it at the time of course, it was only when I met her that I knew this."

In that moment I almost felt pity for him. I knew the precious thing that he had and I knew he was soon to lose it. The imminent loss of his life seemed inconsequential by comparison. However, the thought of the marks around Laura's neck tempered any sympathy I felt for him.

"We met accidentally," he continued, while playing with the cigarette case. "There was a meeting – she wasn't even supposed to be at it – but schedules had been mixed up and there she was. I knew I had to have her when I saw her. You know what I mean, right?"

I nodded. I could hardly do otherwise. "And bam, that was it?"

"There was a bit more to it than that," he said, shifting in his seat uncomfortably, "but that's all you or anyone else needs to know."

He was beginning to talk faster and louder, his words being propelled by the substantial amount of alcohol he was consuming.

"And you came here so that the two of you could be together?" I asked.

"Yes...no...sort of. I came here so that she would be away from everyone else. When one owns something precious and beautiful, one wants to keep it from others. Do you understand?"

"She's a person, not a work of art," I replied. "Surely you don't think you can keep her locked up from the world?"

"Yes I can, and don't try to tell me otherwise," he shot back. The colour had risen in his face, his eyes narrowed and a vein rose up in his forehead. He banged a fist down on the table, shaking the drinks. Then the fist flattened out into an open hand which he dragged shamefully back to his lap. "Sorry about that, but I'm afraid you don't understand. Why should you, it's not your problem. I'll admit I have a problem with it."

He finished off another short. Still not content, he took my remaining drink and finished that too. It was clearly taking its toll and he rested his face in his hands for a moment. When he lifted he head, his brow was covered in a light sweat and his eyes seemed mean and shrunken.

"Mind you, I'm not the only one with problems in this place. I don't suppose your little interviews have picked that up, have they?"

The momentary calm that had returned to his demeanour was gone, replaced by a spiteful, insinuating, whiskey drenched tone.

"Everyone seems happy," I said.

"They would, wouldn't they?" He laughed. "Another drink?"

"Not for me, thank you."

"Come on, you'll need more plenty more to drink if you're going to sit through what I have to tell you."

He made himself two less-than-short shorts and two similar size drinks for myself, and sat them carefully down at the table. He knocked the first short back in one.

"Let me tell you something about accountancy, Will. Accountancy is a profession, and that means it has standards – high standards. Another thing you should know about it is that it means balancing books and to do that you have to know everything that comes in and everything that goes out. And you know what that is Will, don't you?"

I didn't know what he was talking about and so I said nothing.

"That's good advice for life too. When you have something special it pays to be careful. What I'm trying to say is that I didn't just come to Quil Marsh because it was out of the way, I came here because it was safe."

"Safe for Laura?"

"Safe for Laura and me," he replied pointedly. "I knew before I came here that Quil Marsh was a place I wouldn't lose Laura."

"How could you be so sure?"

"I had a private detective check everything out first. I found out who the residents were and why they were here; by way of insurance you might say. I think I can quite confidently say I know more about the residents of Quil Marsh than you do Will."

"I don't think I need to know any more than I..."

"Let me tell you that there are rich pickings to be had here for a man with more than his fair share of knowledge and less than his fair share of morals. It's a bloodsucker's paradise. Take Doctor Jennings for example. Looks harmless enough, doesn't he? Harmless, though I wouldn't trust a pet rat to his medical care. What reason did he give for coming to Quil Marsh?"

"He was looking for something with more potential," I replied. "He said that there had been problems with his last post."

Sam Fisher smiled and shook his head. "Oh, there were problems alright. He was thrown out of his last partnership for using his position to supply his methadone addiction. He wasn't prosecuted or struck-off because his partner thought the bad publicity would destroy their practice. Instead it was agreed that Jennings would leave and that the matter would be hushed-up. But not so hushed up that I don't know about it."

"And that's Doctor Jennings's secret?" I said casually, trying to give the impression I thought it was no big deal. "It's of no concern to anyone but him."

"It's only his concern if only he knows about it," Sam sneered in reply. "Doctor Jennings is an addict with a secret and a hearing problem, and that means he has an overstocked chemical larder for anyone who cares to walk in when his back is turned. Let's face it, he's not really in a position to report anything to the police, is he? Imagine that, a pharmacy that doesn't require a prescription and never closes."

I picked up my drink and cleared three quarters of the glass. "Every town has its secret," I said, trying to wrest the initiative away from him. "This doesn't surprise or interest me."

"That's the thing about Quil Marsh that I have discovered and that you are missing. You see, this place just doesn't have one secret or for that matter, two secrets. No, it's packed with secrets everywhere you look. And, as I hope I have made clear Will, I have indeed looked. Let me take another case and see if I can interest you this time. How about Bernadette Avery? What did you make of her?"

"Wants to run her own school. Nothing wrong with that."

"No, nothing wrong with that at all," he replied. "It's the reason she's still not teaching at her old school that might interest you."

"I can assure you I consider it no business of..."

"An affair with a pupil is the reason she's the only person who'll employ herself as a teacher these days. The boy was sixteen years old so it wasn't statutory rape, but I believe certain professional codes had been contravened. The school didn't make a fuss about it for obvious reasons and the boy's parents were keen that it didn't make the papers, so Bernadette was struck off. All she was left with were the kind of references that wouldn't even get you an unemployment cheque. The mention of Bernadette's name is all it takes to illicit the story from the school's employees. Why, you got it out of me with a drink."

"Okay, so she's got a past that's good for a salacious anecdote, what of it?"

"It's good for more than that," he replied. "Think about it; what would you do if you'd found this out sooner?

I was lost. "Sympathy? A shoulder to cry on?"

"How about blackmail?" he said, holding an imaginary physical representation of the word in the air. He laughed, and then concluded his perverse mime by flicking through a handful of imaginary notes.

"Are you saying..."

"I'm not saying anything Will, I'm just, how shall we say, supposing."

"That's offensive all the same."

"That's life. Don't pretend that this isn't precisely the same stuff you write about for a living. It's all up there in your head."

"There's a world of difference. Besides, I'm not taking pleasure from this the way you seem to think that I am."

"You're still here, aren't you?" he said, pointing a shaky finger in my direction. "Enjoy it on the inside if you like then. The only difference between you and me is that I'm honest about it."

I wasn't keen on the idea that only honesty separated Sam Fisher and myself. I thought that perhaps civility, humanity and decency might also be junctions where we parted company. However, I also knew we had more in common than even Sam realised.

"Next up to the plate of shame is Lyle Mace," he continued.

"There's nothing wrong with Lyle," I said defensively.

"Indeed there isn't. Well, not if having an IQ in double figures, calling pigeons your babies and having your only talent as incompetence qualifies you as faultless. He probably told you he's here because he needs a place to keep his pigeons."

"Something like that."

"I'm guessing he didn't mention anything about his long-stay residence at the home for cuckoos and fruitcakes?"

"No," I said. "But he did mention his landlords in passing."

"Well, let me elaborate for him. His landlords have been chiefly psychologists for the past ten years as far as I can make out. He's harmless enough of course, he just can't be trusted to look after himself - not that he realises that. He's supposed to be on day release, but the day he should have returned passed about six months ago. He thinks he's escaped to a new life that no one knows about. He thinks he's now able to live on his own. He thinks he can fix things in Quil Marsh. He is, of course, wrong on all counts. Lyle may not be able to fix things, but he can cut grass, pick up litter and trim hedges, after a fashion, so he does serve a purpose of sorts. The down side is that his pigeons are a pain. They could do with having their wings clipped – somewhere around the neck region. You can do this or pretty much anything else you want with Lyle because he's got more chance of fixing that lawnmower than he has of working out what's happening around him."

"Sam, I didn't ask for any of this," I responded, holding up a hand. I was mistaken if I thought this would stop him.

"No you didn't, you just got lucky, but let me tell you you've still not heard the best of it. Wait, let me fix us more drinks first."

I was beyond protesting by this point. In fact I wanted the drink as a welcome relief to Sam Fisher's increasingly toxic personality. "Can you put a little water in mine?"

"You're going to regret that when you hear what I have to tell you," he replied, bringing the drinks over to the table. "Now, where were we...ah yes, next on the list is Jacob Jones, our resident holy man. Fortunately for us Jacob's here to shine God's light on our lives. Unfortunately for Jacob I have shone my own light on _his_ life. My sources tell me that Jacob has practised his work in many churches – more than you might expect of a man of his age. Jacob moves around so much because his churches are rather keen to see him gone. Believe it or not the places Jacob has worked have a tendency to become very vulnerable to theft. The churches have taken the polite view officially and assumed he's forgetful with his locks and catches. Unofficially, he's suspected of helping himself to God's family silver – hence being moved on all the time."

"Are you saying he's stealing from Quil Marsh?"

"He could be, but it's hardly likely given the poverty of the church. No, I think it far more likely that he came to Quil Marsh to hide his precious possessions – a bit like me really, I suppose. There's a lock-up that belongs to the church a couple of fields behind it. I took the liberty of inspecting it after discovering Jacob's past. It contains enough silverware for the Last Supper, Last Breakfast and Last Tea."

"So?"

"So who do you think Jacob Jones could complain to if he woke up one morning and found he only had enough silverware for The Last Picnic? Probably not God, and certainly not the authorities."

He made a gesture of holding open an imaginary bag and dropping imaginary loot into it.

Sam Fisher was an appalling mime artist, but as it seemed the least of his crimes I didn't let it unduly occupy me.

"Really, I fail to see the importance of all of this," I said.

"Knowledge is power," he replied, "and my knowledge gives me the power to keep Laura mine. Believe me, the good people of Quil Marsh have too many other things to worry about to involve themselves with my concerns. In fact I'd go as far as to say this must be the world's most worried square smile."

He picked up his glass and washed the observation down with the remains of his drink.

I didn't try to disengage him further. I shouldn't have been trying to disengage him at all given my purpose that evening, but he made me more uncomfortable than I had imagined he could.

Sam Fisher fetched more drinks to the table. The alcohol seemed to be flushing the malice out of his system. I steeled myself with the thought that it would soon be over – for good.

"And now the best at last," he said, a drunken smile lurching uncertainly across his face. "Jerry and Katie, whose fine hospitality we're enjoying. Now you could say this is about one of them, but in truth, neither of them comes out of it particularly well. What story did they spin you?"

Sam Fisher had his poisonous routine perfected by this point and I thought I knew my role well too – the straight man to his Lucifer.

"They're here because they wanted to be together," I said. "I suppose you could call it love for want of a better word."

"I can think of a better word," he snapped. "In fact I can think of a lot of better words. How about blindness, or myopia or plain stupidity? Have you slept with Katie Lee?"

"Don't be ridiculous. For one thing she's married and for another I told you I've barely spoken to her."

"Trust me, you don't need to have spoken to Katie Lee to have slept with her; that's the kind of girl she is. Come here," he said leaning forward in a conspiratorial fashion. "Jerry loves Katie and Katie loves Jerry, but Katie loves other men too, and plenty of them. Jerry can't see it because he's an idiot. You may have been able to work that part out for yourself. As far as I can make out, it was Katie's idea to come here because she wants to make a fresh start - a fresh start at infidelity more like. Now don't give me that look; she's a pretty woman and I'd bet my mortgage that you wouldn't say no. I'd bet three of my mortgages that she wouldn't say no."

Sam Fisher grinned, and then the grin melted and was replaced by a cold, hard stare.

"Quil Marsh is an orchard full of cherries ripe for picking," he said. "And the best thing about it is, no one need know who it is who's doing the picking. So tell me Will, what do you think of that?"

# CHAPTER 29

What did I think? I thought I was sitting opposite the very essence of evil. Of course I didn't actually believe I was actually sitting opposite the devil, but I thought there was a good chance I was sharing a table with a close relative.

If I thought it hard to believe that Bernadette indulged in under age sex, that Jacob was a thief, that Doctor Jennings was a drug addict and that Lyle was on the run from institutional care, then I considered it beyond belief that someone could cheat on Laura. I know it sounds perverse, but it almost seemed worse than beating her. It was certainly conclusive proof, if further proof were needed, that Sam Fisher did not deserve to live.

"That's enough for one night," he said.

When he spoke his slurred speech made the words sound like _That's enough for one life_. The drink had numbed my feelings, but now everything was brought back into sharp focus. Sam Fisher had to die and I was the man who had to kill him – _tonight_.

"Come on, let's go while we can still walk," he said, edging around the table.

I dropped our glasses onto the steam cleaner and switched it on. The machine rattled into life, and I turned around to see him make his way uncertainly to the door and snatch up his briefcase at the second attempt. His legs wobbled and his feet seemed to be struggling to go in different directions. It wasn't a good walk in the normal course of things, but appeared a particularly bad walk when it was to be the last walk he would ever take.

I followed and he thrust the key into my hand. "Here, you lock-up. I don't think I could put the key into the doorway, let alone the lock."

He stumbled off into the dark, and I switched out the lights and secured the door. As an afterthought I took the sleeve of my jacket and wiped the handle clean. I shivered. It felt like the first act of the murder I had planned. Actually, _planned_ probably isn't quite the right word as I had no real idea how I was going to eliminate him. The thought of killing someone, even as an accident, was too gruesome to contemplate much in advance and so I hoped that an opportunity would spontaneously present itself which required as little precognitive thought as possible. Half-baked is probably a better way to describe my strategy. I left the hotel in search of Sam Fisher to try and completely bake it.

I wasn't capable of walking much better than Sam Fisher by this point, but still expected to catch him in a few seconds. A few seconds soon became half a minute, and that quickly became a minute with no sign of my intended victim. The alcohol may have blurred my vision and the darkness shrouded my view, but I didn't think that even being stripped of all my senses I should have failed to come across him. Put simply, he had vanished.

I panicked and doubled back, sure that I must have passed him without noticing and that perhaps I would discover him asleep at the roadside in a drunken stupor. But I saw no one and found myself back at the hotel, alone.

And then I was calling out his name. Not just whispering it, but shouting it with a hand cupped to my mouth. Barely minutes after having cleaned my fingerprints from the door I was advertising my intent at the top of my lungs to anyone who was passing.

"Over here...I'm over here."

He repeated the words, sounding plaintive, like a lost child – like a lost, intoxicated child. The sound was coming from my right and not along the road I'd taken. I hadn't realised there was a path there, and now, even guided by Sam Fisher's voice, I still couldn't find it. Instead, a thick growth of branches and briars scratched at my face as I fumbled blindly looking for a way through. I'd almost given up when a heavy hand landed on my shoulder.

"I said, I'm over here!"

The hand clasped a fistful of my jacket and pulled me through an opening that moments earlier hadn't seemed to exist. And then I found myself beyond the undergrowth and in a rough, overgrown lane.

"Not many people know this is here," he said, leaning up close to my face to compensate for the lack of visibility. The smell of alcohol hung over him in a thick smog and I wondered how I could have failed to locate him.

"Where are we?" I asked. "I thought we were supposed to be heading back."

"We are. This is the scenic route. I take it when I've had too much to drink to give myself the chance to sober up."

I thought that Sam Fisher was so drunk that this route back would only give him a chance to sober up if it circumnavigated the globe before dropping him at his doorstep. I didn't complain however, as our detour into the back of beyond seemed tailor-made for the murder I had in mind – the murder I was trying not to think about.

"Come on...follow me," he said, weaving his way into the darkness.

I listened to him kicking up dust as he made his way along the track, vanishing into the night. It was as if he were already dead and that only the sound of his footsteps remained.

I hurried after him. My heart beat so wildly that I thought I might be the one who would die. Eventually, we found ourselves in a clearing, flanked by what I presumed were fields on either side, though I could not see them.

"Where are we?" I asked what I took to be Sam Fisher, though in truth it could have been a tree or a fence post.

"This is what is considered to be the border of Quil Marsh," he replied. "Take one step this way and you're in a different place altogether."

I heard him take that step and then fall down flat as if the place he'd stepped into had a much higher gravitational pull. I leant over and held an outstretched hand for him to take. I didn't want to step outside Quil Marsh if I could help it. I thought that if I did it would be like Alice stepping back out through the looking glass – that I wouldn't be able to find my way back and that the town would vanish as suddenly as it had appeared to me on that rainy night, and that Laura would vanish with it.

"Thanks," he said, getting to his feet, releasing my hand and dusting himself down. "I swear my feet change places when I've had too much to drink. Now where was I? Oh yes. This is the border of Quil Marsh. Over that way lies Ashton" he said, thrusting out an arm, though I couldn't see exactly where he was pointing it, "and another little town called Locton. There's something else that lies outside of Quil Marsh too – know what that is?"

"No...no, I don't."

"Out there lies sanity - a regular life with regular people doing regular things that regular people do. But here...here there is only insanity. Here there is poison and lies and hate and cheating...and I...I am a part of it."

I felt his hands take a hold of the lapels of my jacket and he pulled me up close to him so that I could see the whites of his swollen eyes.

"I want you to leave; you've got no business here. You weren't meant to be in Quil Marsh...this isn't how it was supposed to be. Who are you? Who are you really? You're the only one I don't know and that's why you worry me. I don't know if it's because you're not as crazy as everyone else, or it's because you're even crazier, but you worry me."

He tightened his grip on my jacket lapels and tried to lift me up, but the drink wouldn't let him.

"What is it Sam? What's the matter?"

"I'll tell you what the matter is. I want you to leave, that's what the matter is."

"Is that a threat?"

"Consider it a warning. Now, come on, we'll never sober up at this rate."

His hands slipped from my jacket, he patted my arm and then headed down the lane, and I trailed off behind him with Sam Fisher still not noticeably closer to meeting his maker than he had been when we first left the hotel.

It was hard to measure distance, but time dragged without any sign of our destination and I guessed we must have covered nearly a mile, (even if a lot of this distance was made up by our faltering zigzag walk) before I was struck by a thought that stopped me in my tracks. What if Sam Fisher had the same idea as me? What if he was waiting for the same opportunity that I was? More than this, what if he had planned it better? He could hardly have planned it worse.

I froze. I half expected a house brick to crash down on my head. It was with immense relief that I heard Sam's voice calling to me some distance ahead. When I found him he was leaning against what appeared to be a wooden rail.

"You don't want to get lost out here," he said. "Not at night." He was smiling. I couldn't see it, but I could hear it in his voice.

"I'll try to keep up."

He tapped his hand on the structure he was leaning against. "Let me introduce you to the eighth wonder of the world – this is Quil Marsh bridge."

I strained to see what he was alluding to while keeping a couple of yards of darkness between us. A slight bridge forded two banks, and for the first time I became aware of the rush of water somewhere beneath.

"The eighth wonder?" I said.

"It was broken," he replied, "but Lyle fixed it. That makes it the eighth wonder in my book."

"I didn't know that Quil Marsh had a river."

"It doesn't belong here, it's just passing through – like you would be if you had any sense. Come on, let's see what Lyle's handiwork is like."

I could hear that smile again.

Then he was gone, his shoes tapping on the wood as he made his way onto the bridge, confident at first, then slowing and stopping a few feet across. He began to moan, and then the sound of him slumping onto the handrail was followed by painful retching. He was vomiting into the river.

Sam Fisher was incapable and bent over a bridge rail above a river. So, this then, finally, was the opportunity I'd been waiting for.

It started to rain. I took what little courage I had in my hands and followed Sam out onto the bridge.

When I reached him he was prostrate across the waist-high rail. He was mumbling incoherently about giving up alcohol, spitting into the water and holding himself on the bridge with the tips of his toes - _barely_ holding himself on.

This was it then. Murder at last. And there was to be no gun, no knife, no garrotte, no blood, no broken bones and no screams. Just a single hand pushed into his back and then he would be gone. I had no doubt that this was all it would take. Sam Fisher could barely walk, let alone swim. He would scramble and splash for a few seconds, but only for a few seconds. The current would spin him around and it wouldn't be long before he didn't know whether he was face-up or face-down. Then his woollen overcoat would soak and drag him down, and all the time he wouldn't be sure if it wasn't just some alcohol-fuelled dream that he could expect to wake-up from at any moment. Finally, realising what was happening when it was too late, he would sink to the riverbed, where I thought the weight of his malicious stories would keep him anchored for the rest of the night. And then it would be all over.

Just a single hand pushed into his back. It was almost nothing at all...just murder.

I took a step closer so that I was nearly breathing down his neck. He was oblivious to my presence, still retching as if he were intent on bringing up every fluid ounce of liquid in his body.

One slight push and he would be gone. No doubt about that. I raised a hand and held it up close to his back. I made a pushing gesture just to prove to myself that I could do it, and my hand did indeed move forward. Not that this proved anything, of course. Even though it was just one hand and just a push, it was still murder, all be it the smallest possible murder imaginable. Courts, as far as I was aware, did not differentiate between small, medium and large varieties of murder the way that might be the case if MacDonalds were responsible for the legal system. I had to remind myself that while it would be murder now, by the time morning brought the discovery of the body, it would be an accident.

The rainfall became heavier and a sharp wind fell in behind it. I knew that Sam Fisher couldn't remain oblivious to the elements forever. Sooner or later – maybe in the next second or two – he would push himself up, rub a hand across his chin and stagger off. And that would be it. Chance gone. I knew then that what I needed to do was to remind myself why I was there. I took a deep breath and turned my face up towards the sky. I closed my eyes and let the rain run down my face and the pictures explode in my head. I saw him taunting Bernadette and taking her money, I saw him cheating on Jerry, and I saw him forcing Doctor Jennings wrinkled hand to push a syringe into him, and I saw him wringing the necks of Lyle's pigeons, and I saw him stealing from Jacob and I saw him cheating on Jerry. I saw all of these things and it still wasn't enough. And then I saw Laura. I saw him taking her fragile beauty and crushing the life out of it with his bare hands.

I opened my eyes and looked down at the still prostrate figure of Sam Fisher. It was time. No one would know it was murder - no one but me. Not even Sam Fisher would know he had been killed. There were no footprints to show that the two of us had walked onto the bridge. The rain had taken them away. Not that I thought anyone would trouble themselves to look. They would surely be too busy celebrating his death to worry about why or how. I lifted my hand and slowly pushed it towards Sam Fisher's back. Before my hand could make contact with his coat when there was a loud crack.

Sam Fisher's body jerked forward - by just a fraction at first. His senseless limbs began to spasm and scratch as he tried to pull himself upright. Then there was another, louder crack and I realised that the rail had broken. His body lunged forward. I instinctively reached out my hand, caught the collar of his coat and swung him away from the broken rail.

He fell back onto the bridge, still scrambling around and trying to reach out for the railing, which was some distance away from his outstretched hands, floating downstream. When, having failed to grasp the railing, he finally grasped the realisation that he was safe, he sat bolt upright and took hold of my legs. He then hauled himself up by my clothes until he was face-to-face with me.

"You...you saved my life."

He removed his hands from my jacket and wrapped his arms around me in a bone-crushing embrace. His boozy breath blew in my ear, the drool from his mouth dripped down onto my neck and I thought I felt a tear fall onto my cheek.

"No question about it...you saved my life."

And then he released his grip, patted me on the shoulder and took a step back into the darkness, taking his drool and his tears with him. He took walked over to the broken rail and pulled the remaining piece away from its bracket.

"I should have known better than to trust myself to Lyle's handiwork," he said. "You know what this is, don't you?" he added, brandishing the splintered wood in front of me. "This is attempted murder."

My heart skipped a beat. Sam Fisher laughed, and then I thought that perhaps my heart had stopped altogether.

"Aren't you going to say something?" he said.

"You're alive," was all I could manage.

"You bet I am and it's thanks to you. But I can't stand here talking to you all night, I've got business at home with Laura."

After that I think he offered up a hand for me to shake, but I didn't take it. I heard him shuffle around on the bridge and then the sound of his footsteps moving off.

I didn't feel the relief you might expect to see him gone. Instead I felt sick – sick to the very pit of my stomach knowing that I had sent him back to Laura.

I sat down on the bridge, put my head in my hands and began to cry.

# CHAPTER 30

The pain of my failure felt like a razor blade drawn across my soul. From here on in I considered myself responsible for any harm that came to Laura. The way I saw it, it wouldn't just be his hands crushing her throat, mine would be wrapped around it too. I would sooner have been dead than have that happen, but my dying wasn't going to make any difference now.

I sat on the bridge for a long time. I can't remember exactly how long I sat there, but when I lifted my head from my hands the sun was beginning to rise, shedding its light on the scene of my tragic ineptitude. I got to my feet and walked over to the broken rail. I thought about jumping myself, but like I said, that wouldn't have made a difference that would do Laura any good.

I kicked at what remained of the rail, but it didn't fall away. It didn't even shake. I went along the bridge and tested the rest of it. It was as secure as London Bridge itself. Somehow Sam Fisher had found the one weak point and had decided to lean against it. It felt as if Quil Marsh had tried to kill him. And me? I had saved him.

Downcast, I turned to leave, but tripped over something at my feet. I knelt down to see what it was and found Sam Fisher's briefcase. My first impulse was to fling it into the river the way I'd meant to do with Sam himself, but, as satisfying as this would feel, it would only cause more questions to be asked later about a night I would rather forget.

Instead, I dropped the briefcase back at the civic hall and then hauled a screaming headache back through the mud to the post-office.

Once inside, I took a glass of water and something for the migraine back up to my room and somehow, in spite of everything, I lay down on the bed and slept. I slept so hard I didn't dream and I couldn't swear that I even breathed. Twelve hours – twelve hours without moving a muscle. Twelve hours when I was gone from the world. When I woke up the world came back and now it was drawing thousands of razor blades across my soul.

# CHAPTER 31

I'd like to tell you that after that night on the bridge, I came to my senses and contacted Laura. I want to be able to say I convinced her there was another way around this and persuaded her that we could start again somewhere else. I wish I could relate that we agreed it would be difficult and that we might have to lose contact with the life we'd known and the people in it, but that as long as we had each other and our love we could build a new life - a life with hope and a life without fear. But that would be a lie and this is about telling the truth – the truth as I see it, anyway.

Instead I locked myself in the office for the next twenty-four hours, overcome by remorse at the cowardice that had let Sam Fisher escape. I spent the time tormenting myself with thoughts of what might happen as a result of my failure to act when it really counted. I was finally distracted from this morbid pursuit by a knock at the door.

I pulled my shirt collar together, flattened my hair and ran my hands over my face to try to bring a little colour to my cheeks. I knew I looked like death, but at least I looked like death with flat hair and that was good enough to allow me to answer the door. I pulled the lock back to find out who it was.

When I opened the door I saw that it wasn't a _who_ but a _them_ – all of them. Eliza stood at the front of the queue and behind her were Jacob, Jerry and Katie (holding hands), Bernadette, Lyle and Sam Fisher. Laura, however, was nowhere to be seen.

Collectively they looked like a bridge club that had branched out into lynching. Eliza stepped up to the door and narrowed her eyes accusingly.

"Yes?" I said.

"The meeting...there's supposed to be a meeting!"

"Really?"

"Yes, really. If you move out of the way then we can get started."

I stood to one side and Eliza stepped in and paused when she was opposite me.

"Which hedge were you dragged backwards through?" she said, jabbing a finger into my chest. "That has to be the dirtiest hedge in the country."

I smiled weakly and she shook her head and walked past me.

The others followed. Last through the door was Sam Fisher. He paused, smiled and winked, and then made his way inside.

I looked at the open door that they had just walked through and thought I might step outside and keep walking, but it was only a thought. I couldn't leave without first trying to find out what had happened to Laura.

When I stepped into the main hall they were seated in a semi-circle, looking expectantly at me as they had when I first came in for the interview. I, however, looked a lot more drained and confused than I had on that day.

Bernadette coughed politely to try to get me to sit down.

"Sit down!" barked Eliza. "This is a meeting not a bus queue!"

"Perhaps you would like to start," Bernadette said.

"I...I haven't seen the agenda," I replied.

"Neither have we. You were supposed to write it."

"Must still be on the computer," I said, hooking a thumb over my shoulder in no particular direction.

"Well, if you just tell us the progress you've made so far, we can take it from there," Bernadette said.

Progress? Apart from falling in love, contemplating murder and suffering an emotional breakdown, progress of any other sort had been thin on the ground. However, I had a vague idea of what they wanted, and so I began to deliver it to them – verbally, at least. I hoped that no one would ask for evidence.

"...and once I receive that set of forms and get them completed, then I believe we will really be close to achieving our goal."

I can't tell you if what I said made sense. I opened my mouth and the words came out. I was thankful for that much at least. The presence of Sam Fisher overwhelmed my senses and I could concentrate on nothing else but his insidious presence. I could feel his stare lingering on the side of my face and it made my flesh crawl.

Eventually my stream of consciousness came to an end and I looked around for a reaction. Judging by their expressions they were still trying to figure out why had they given me the job in the first place.

"Any questions?" I asked.

"I have one," said Bernadette. "What happens if they say no?"

"They won't."

"How do you know?"

"Erm...They gave me assurances."

Sam Fisher cleared his throat. "And then you'll be leaving us?"

Silence and then: "Yes...no...I hadn't thought about it."

"Your job finishes at the end of the month," added Jacob.

"I'll stay as long as I have to, even if it's not paid," I replied.

"There's no need for that," Sam Fisher said.

"Well, don't go forgetting how much we need this," Jerry said. "We can do with all the help we can get."

"Eventually people will come through here regardless of the town issue," Sam Fisher responded. "Give it time. We shouldn't detain Will any longer than needs be. I'm sure he has more pressing concerns of his own."

"It's not just about getting people into Quil Marsh," Doctor Jennings chipped in. "It's about keeping unsavoury elements out. I took the border route in this morning. I almost got my neck broke for my troubles. Somebody's broken the handrail on the bridge. My guess is it's the tourists at Chagford. Planning permission and a decent grant for decent fencing would go a long way to improving this place."

"They broke my bridge?" said Lyle. "I can't believe it. Have you any idea how long that rail took me to build?"

No one answered because they all knew that however long it was, it was several times longer than it should have taken.

"I could kill them," Lyle said, slapping a hand on his knee.

Lyle Mace's remark was just a throwaway comment. It meant nothing and should have been forgotten a moment after it was spoken. But I for one will never forget it. I am not for one second claiming that Lyle was responsible for any of the deaths that were to follow, but had he not uttered that apparently meaningless comment he might still be around today to utter more meaningless comments.

Lyle's claim that he would like to kill whoever had damaged the bridge was an idle threat, just as it would be if he knew that someone had damaged his lawns, or pulled down his hedges or broken his broken lawnmower. I looked at him and watched his brow knit and his mouth wrinkle into a barbed wire jag all over the demise of a bridge handrail. I couldn't help but wonder, as I watched his creased face crease even further, how he felt about the death of his beaked, birdseed-eating babies. What if he realised someone other than God was taking their lives? What then? I thought about the way Lyle had spoken of his pigeons. I thought that he loved them more than life itself. I thought that if he threatened to kill someone who killed his birds then it would be no idle threat.

I looked at Lyle Mace, and for the first time I didn't see an amiable, bumbling handyman – I saw a would-be killer. This image of Lyle shocked me, and I looked down the line of his fellow Quil Marsh citizens to see if anyone else had noticed. But I didn't see anyone looking edgily at Lyle. No, what I saw when I looked down that line was more of the same; four more Lyle's, all capable of killing given the right circumstances.

Take Jacob Jones. I wondered what he would think if he became aware that his collection of religious relics had been stolen. He had been building his own personal stairway to heaven and now he had nothing. A man with nothing to lose might do anything, and that anything could well include murder.

Next along the line was Bernadette Peters. Bernadette clinging to her final opportunity to lead the life she wants to live so tightly that she's probably prepared to pay someone to let her do it. I contemplated what she would do if the name of the extorter became known to her. What would she do if she had the opportunity to remove the threat to her last chance? I thought that a woman who was threatened with having her life taken away might do something extreme to keep it. Even kill. _Probably kill_.

Doctor Jennings was sat next to Bernadette. Doctor Jennings for whom life wasn't worth living unless he got his daily methadone shot. What then if he was made aware of the person who was stealing his fix? I thought that if Doctor Jennings killed the person who was interfering with his drug addiction then he certainly wouldn't be the first and, equally certainly, wouldn't be the last.

Sat on the end of the line were Jerry and Katie Lee. Jerry seemed happy enough, but then Jerry had found his heart's desire. It was debatable that Jerry would still look as happy if he realised someone else was undressing his heart's desire. I felt I had an insight into this one. Jerry would think that he had been given a one-way ticket to eternal hell if he found out Katie was having an affair. I thought that it was a pretty safe bet that if he were going to hell then there might be someone he would like to take along with him.

I looked back down the line and saw the same familiar faces, only now they looked different. Perhaps it was just a trick of the light, but their faces seemed to have changed. The eyes looked meaner, the mouths tighter and the expressions harder...somehow malevolent. They didn't look like the happy residents of a country village anymore. Now they looked like a police line-up for a crime yet to be committed.

I thought that for the first time I was seeing them for what they really were: five killers in waiting. When I looked at them I wasn't seeing people any more, but five unexploded devises to which I alone had access to the detonator.

Maybe you see it now, maybe you saw it some time ago (and in that case it's a shame you weren't around to tell me and you could have saved me a rainy night on a bridge), but I'm going to tell you anyway. I wasn't the only person in Quil Marsh with a reason to kill, I just happened to be the only who knew enough to act on it.

More than this, I thought that there might be another difference between me and the other residents – that I was the only one who couldn't go through with it. Well, if you didn't know what I was thinking before, you do now: by making use of Sam Fisher's revelations, I thought I could get the killing done for me.

It was a genuine _eureka_ moment and the force of it felt like something big and heavy slamming into my chest. I think that if my seat had not had a backrest I would have fallen out of it. The plan was ringing so loudly in my ears that it was hard to believe that no one else could hear it.

I looked over to where Sam Fisher was still smiling at me. Now it didn't seem to burn the way that it had. Now I smiled back at him.

"If there's nothing else to say, I must get back to work," Bernadette said.

"Me too," said Jacob.

"And us," Jerry and Katie said together.

"And me," said Lyle.

"What?" said Doctor Jennings.

"We've got to get back to work," Eliza barked, so loudly that if he wasn't clinically deaf before then he probably was now.

"Perhaps you could remember to print off the agenda for the next scheduled meeting," Bernadette concluded.

_There's another scheduled meeting?_ "Of course," I replied.

They got to their feet and filed out. A line of sideways glances passed me. The expressions didn't look murderous anymore, just the usual combination of boredom and indifference. Sam Fisher was the last to the door.

"Thanks for last night," he said. "I want you to believe I mean that. I want you also to believe that this is a bad luck town and that the next time it strikes it might be you, and you might not be able to save yourself."

# CHAPTER 32

Left alone in the office, I could barely contain myself. I paced back and forth, unable to sit down or stand still for a moment. Suddenly I felt as if I had Sam Fisher back on the bridge. I had been given a second chance, and that meant that Laura would get a second chance too. A bad-luck town? What did Sam Fisher know; this was more luck than I could have hoped for (bad luck for _him_ , maybe). I was determined that he would not walk away with a smile this time – not when there would be a queue of people waiting to push him over the edge.

The plan followed me out of the meeting almost fully formed. I say _followed_ deliberately, because it felt as if the idea found me rather than the other way around. I don't know how else to explain it - it came to me out of nowhere...and of course it followed me, and went something like this: my fellow Quil Marsh residents were being persecuted by an assailant who was anonymous to them – all I had to do was reveal the name behind the pain and then that name would be removed. Put bluntly, once Sam Fisher became linked to the crimes he'd boasted to me about, I was sure that one of the victims would exact the kind of revenge that would finally put an end to his reign of terror.

I believed in my newfound plan with all my heart, but I also believed in it with my conscience too. By revealing what I knew about the crimes that were being committed, I wouldn't just be helping Laura, I would be helping the other residents as well. Each one of them had a human parasite attached that was sucking them dry; sucking away their happiness, their piece of mind and their dreams. In the circumstances, I thought that they would surely be desperate for the name behind their misery to be revealed and to finally have the opportunity to scratch the itch; the opportunity to remove the parasite and stamp on it so that it could never harm them again, or anyone else for that matter.

I would tell one of them because they would undoubtedly want to know. No one could deny that they would have earned their place on a bridge with Sam.

I don't want to make out that this was a purely altruistic exercise because it wasn't (other than for Laura, but love and altruism are somewhat different), so I'll just say I justified it and leave it at that. I won't dwell on the morals of this story for much longer. For one thing morals won't bring anyone back to life, and for another, the morals began to slip quite early in my endeavour. Can we agree that I started with the best of intentions?

As I said, the plan followed me out of the meeting _almost_ fully formed. In order that it should be made complete I still had one very important decision to make – who to select to reveal Sam Fisher's guilty name to?

My thoughts turned to heartache and loss. Which of them, I wondered, stood to suffer the greater injustice by not knowing? But I found that if heartache is difficult to quantify even when you've experienced it, when you haven't it's simply unfathomable. The things that meant so much to the other residents meant little or nothing to me - I didn't do drugs, I didn't like birds, I hated schools even when I was a child and the thought of being condemned to a life with the fluffy Katie Lee made me feel ill.

What I needed was an outcome. I needed to know how each of my possible choices would pan out, should I pick them. It sounded as impossible to me then as it probably does to you now.

I picked up the snowstorm paperweight from the desk. It was another chilly day in the glass ball and the white paper blizzard floated around the tiny houses huddled into the little patch of countryside glued beneath them. It looked just the way I imagined Quil Marsh would on a winter's day. Curious, but not earth shattering. I needed a crystal ball badly, but I didn't think this cheap souvenir was it.

However, when I held it up to the light and looked into it, I saw more than just fake snow, I saw the answer to all my problems. Call it divine inspiration, call it luck or call it madness if you will, but when I stared into the globe I saw the place where I would find the outcomes I was looking for.

Reflected through the inch-thick glass and looking like a warped postage stamp was the book poster I had pinned to the notice board.

I snatched up my jacket and ran all the way back to the post office. I was in a hurry – I had a date with the future.

# CHAPTER 33

And so it was that fifteen minutes later I found myself kneeling in front of the shelf of books that up until then had been little more than a meal ticket.

It was the second time in a few short days that I'd come to my work for help. I can't say for sure how much I was driven by rational thought and how much I was chasing the only answer that had presented itself to any of the problems I'd encountered. What I can say is that I was beginning to think that I'd unknowingly written these novels with this purpose in mind, particularly after the crystal ball moment.

When I looked into the paperweight and saw the book poster I had a moment of clarity that couldn't be obscured by a fake snowstorm. Seeing the covers of my novels wrapped around the tiny hamlet it dawned on me that I knew more about the lives of the residents of Quil Marsh than I had previously realised; more even than I could ever have dreamt. I knew their dark pasts, their troubled present and, yes, I knew their futures too. How did I know this unknowable thing? Because I'd written them – _written them all_.

Betrayed? Cheated? Blackmailed? Persecuted? I'd catalogued every one of these experiences in my work, and more importantly, the people who had experienced them. Quil Marsh was a world with its foundations built deep on sin and guilt and peopled with a cast of victims. If you took my entire body of work, laid it on a table in Castle Frankenstein and passed electricity through it giving it life, then I thought it would not be unlike Quil Marsh.

I was convinced that the residents could be reconstructed piece by piece from the right chapters and pages and sentences. At that moment it felt as if I had crashed my car on a rainy night in my own imagination.

But what did it mean for me to say that I knew someone the way I knew one of my characters? If that were indeed true, then it meant that I probably knew them better than they knew themselves. I had spent months and years dreaming about each one of them – about the minutiae of their lives. Endless hours had been consumed thinking about what they wore, the cars they drove, the jobs they did, the way they smelt, how they wore their hair and all the other things that you need to consider when you're creating new worlds out of thin air. I'd dreamed them up and given them life, even if it was only a pulp-life, and you can't do that without knowing someone heart and soul.

That wasn't the whole of it. I gave them more than just a paper existence. I gave them trouble, and plenty of it. I conjured up a dark angel for each one and transformed their humdrum lives into nightmares – nightmares that the residents of Quil Marsh would recognise all to well.

But my fictional victims had more than just nightmares, they had futures too; futures in which each of them had freed themselves from the clutches of the demons that were oppressing them. This wasn't the kind of freedom that involved making a fresh start somewhere else, this was the kind of freedom made possible by killing off the victimisation – _literally_. You could call it revenge, but I prefer to think of it as justice.

I thought that if the good people of Quil Marsh had futures too then, eventually, they might turn out to be similar to my fictional ones, and that Sam Fisher would meet the same unhappy ending that my villains had. And then their salvation would be my salvation too.

But therein lay the problem – _eventually_. How long did I have left to wait? I didn't know. I had no idea how long the piece of rope was that I'd seen Laura dangling from. I didn't think I could wait forever. I didn't even think I could wait for eventually. I had to act, and that meant my intervening in someone's life to begin a revenge that, although probably already ordained, might not happen for months or even years. But whose revenge should I instigate?

The obvious answer was to pick the novel whose character was the closest fit to one of Quil Marsh's residents. The reasoning was that the closer the resident to the fictional character, the more likely they would be to replicate the vengeful destiny therein. But even so, _which one_? There were twelve novels and six potential flesh and blood twins and one crucial decision about who to pick.

I focused on the shelves in front of me. A novel jumped straight out at me. It was sitting on top of the pile as if it knew its own importance and had pushed itself to the front of the queue. It was called The Double Edged Sword, and on the cover the profiles of a man and a woman were inserted into each side of a blade. The three central characters are an accountant, a doctor and a nursery school teacher. The accountant is the bad guy. He has a hold over the doctor and teacher because he's privy to a secret that each has and would do anything to prevent from being revealed. The hold manifests itself as blackmail and extortion.

It seemed a perfect match, but it was, in fact, fatally flawed. The doctor and the teacher in this story are star-crossed lovers. It was hard to imagine two people with less romantic potential than Doctor Jones and Bernadette.

I cursed when I remembered this plot detail and threw the novel down on the ground. It was demoralizing to have what appeared to be an instant solution snatched from my grasp, but I took heart from the way the story appeared to be a child of Quil Marsh. If anything, I was by now more certain that the genuine offspring of this unhappy settlement were sired somewhere amongst the thousands of pages facing me.

I took all eleven remaining novels and dumped them in a pile in the centre of the floor, and then sat before them cross-legged. I looked at the jumble of glossy covers for a few minutes trying to remember what was in them, but it was an exercise in futility. To finish a novel you have to erase it from your head otherwise the rewriting never stops, and to start a new novel you have to erase the last one otherwise they all run into one. The truth was I had put almost as much effort into forgetting these books as I had into writing them. I might just as well have been looking at a pile of someone else's novels.

I picked one up at random and thumbed through the pages. A year's work slipped through my fingers in less than a minute. Minus tea-breaks, aimlessly staring out of the window and channel hopping, it was probably closer to a couple of months, but it still gave me goose bumps to see my life slip away in such a short space of time. The usual words and phrases sped past my eyes... _he was surprised to find...how did they think he could have...it was up to him now to find the truth_. These were the building blocks of any murder novel and just because they can be found more often in mine doesn't mean you won't find them in an Agatha Christie or a Conan Doyle, you just have to look a little harder is all. However, scattered among these familiar phrases were a number of considerably less familiar ones... _take-off...zero-gravity...re-entry_. This particular book was my attempt at writing a murder-in-space novel. Unfortunately for me, NASA had already killed the space race before I killed the space novel. Not much use to me then and not much use to me now either. A quick check of the final page showed that it was the government who did it. Apparently the motive was sabotaging a mission in order to save money. In retrospect, it seemed that a paper to a committee or a memo to those in charge might have been equally effective. I didn't think I would find Jacob or any of the others in a Rocket To The Grave, just my writing career on board if I'd decided to pursue a sequel. I put it to one side and then lifted another book from the pile.

The next book my hand fell on was called Broken Hearts. The picture on the cover of an anguished bridegroom standing over his prone bride told me everything I wanted to know. I opened the book and began to skim through the pages.

# CHAPTER 34

Just a quick glance at the first page convinced me that this was what I had been hoping to find. I raced ahead with the story, now reading from what I remembered in my head. It was perfect. In fact it was almost too perfect. I had to stop myself occasionally and return to the book to make sure that I wasn't inventing a story that I wanted to exist rather than the one I had written. But no, it was all there. There was the love, the idyllic marriage, the infidelity and then the murderous revenge. I was only surprised that I hadn't named the two main characters Jerry and Katie.

It's probable that you're not familiar with Bleeding Hearts unless you work at the paper plant where it was pulped after it's second run – that or you were a member of the Women's Institute group who mistakenly subscribed to it because they thought it was a straightforward romance. It's a romance alright, just not a straightforward one. But then, what romance is?

This particular affair began with a fellow called Chase Lane who worked in leisure management for a national chain of hotels. Chase didn't have a girlfriend and to be honest, no one was really that surprised. He was a compendium of little eccentricities and was, frankly, odd. Jennifer Marx was a dizzy accounts clerk at the same hotel and she was, frankly, odd too. Jennifer didn't have a boyfriend and, to be honest, no one was that surprised. But when Chase and Jennifer met, that was it. They were like two spare pieces from different jigsaw puzzles that became interlocked in the junk box. They went out, they got engaged and then they got married, and that was that as far as everyone was concerned, especially Chase.

They gave up their jobs working for the hotel chain and opened their own place. Chase thought they were in heaven, but he soon discovered signs that Jennifer was the only one enjoying a celestial experience; a tie that wasn't his, a stained handkerchief that wasn't his (handkerchief and _stain_ ), and a spent contraceptive that he didn't spend. And, of course, a wife who had been his, but whose ownership he was now less clear about. Chase decided to find out exactly was going on.

He discovered that Jennifer's dizziness with regards to the accounts was closer to a financial aneurysm. The upshot of this was that she had gotten them into deep trouble with the taxman and had secretly employed a financial advisor. However, she had been unable to pay him, and so he had helped her out of trouble on condition he could help himself into her bed. Chase decided that the matter had to be resolved and he set about doing just that.

I won't tell you the exact nuts and bolts of how he went about this in case, suddenly intrigued, you decide to order a copy. However, I will tell you that two days later the accountant was found conveniently dead with a convenient suicide note in his stiff white hand.

After that, Chase did the accounts himself and Jennifer applied herself to those parts of the business where her dizziness would be a bonus. She knew what he had done and he knew what she had done, but neither of them mentioned it because a known thing doesn't have to be spoken. And because both knew each had done their deed for their love of the other, they were, if anything, closer than they had been before.

I saw this novel as the potential basis for a film script (Cameron and Tom, perhaps), but the publishers saw it as the basis for fulfilling a distribution contract they had with a cut-price bookseller. So far as I'm aware, Cameron and Tom do not get their novels from such places.

And so the novel came out, generated minor (cut-price) sales, and was then forgotten until I'd fished it out of the pile in front of me. Now I had found it once more, it was never to be forgotten again.

Any doubts I had nursed about my plan to eliminate Sam Fisher (and in all honesty I have to say that in my desperation I did not have many) were dispelled by Bleeding Hearts. The feeling I had at that moment was that I had written the book of my life – my future life. I turned the book back to page one and began to read carefully to see what my future life had in store for me.

# CHAPTER 35

"Hello, is that Jerry?"

"Jerry, bright and ready!"

"This is Will."

"Hi, Will, what can I do for you on this bright and cheery morning?"

"I need to speak to you – it's about the town status work."

"Sounds like Quil Marsh is relying on me."

"You could say that."

"Do you need to speak to Katie too?"

"No, that won't be necessary."

"In that case you can come over this evening, if you're free; Katie's out visiting. Say seven?"

"Seven sounds fine."

I replaced the receiver gently. Only Jerry and myself needed to know about that phone call.

"I saw you make that phone call!" Eliza said from somewhere behind me.

"You heard my phone call?"

"No, I _saw_ your phone call, cloth ears," she replied. "We have telephone bills here you know."

"I'm sorry, I'll square up with you before I go."

"Make sure that you do. Everything in Quil Marsh has a price you know."

"That's alright, I don't mind paying."

"That's easy to say now."

And then she shuffled off into the kitchen leaving me with just her threat about the phone bill for company.

I returned to my room and spent the rest of the day going over my copy of Bleeding Hearts with a fine toothcomb to see if I could spot a weakness in my plan. If anything, the more I studied it, the more perfect it seemed to be – as a murder plan, that is, not a work of art. Not only would Sam Fisher meet his black-hearted maker, Jerry would avoid arrest, and he and Katie would live happily ever after. And of course Laura and I would be able to retire to the fairytale ending that I felt was surely ours for the taking.

But before any fairytale ending there is always a dragon to be slain. I dropped the novel onto my bed and went in search of my knight.

# CHAPTER 36

"Hello Jerry. Not too early I hope."

"Not at all; come in," Jerry replied. "We're always ready to embrace visitors here whenever they arrive."

"That's what I've heard."

"Good. I've prepared something for us. We can eat while we talk."

I followed Jerry over to a table which looked unnervingly like it had been set with a romantic evening in mind. A big triple headed candleholder sat in the middle of the table and either side of it were flute champagne glasses and his and hers purple and pink roses in their own tiny vases. I hovered nervously by the table while I waited to see if I were to be him or her. It was with some relief that I was shown into the seat with the purple rose.

"I always make an effort like this when I'm dining with someone or even when I'm dining alone," Jerry said, pushing in my chair for me, "because in my mind I always imagine I'm dining with Katie."

"That's nice."

Actually, I was a little disturbed to be occupying the Katie-place in his imagination, but so long as he only had dining in mind I was prepared to let it pass.

"I'll go and get the food," he said.

He threw me a flirtatious smile and I did my best not to look flattered. When he returned five minutes later I was grateful to see that he was still dressed. He swooped down on the table and deposited a dish on each side. It was an exotic Italian dish, all pasta and herbs and spices. It looked like heaven and smelt like heaven and...and it was made into a smiley face.

"It...it's got a face," I said. "A...a smiley one."

"Yes, this one's called Katie," Jerry replied.

"Ah, the naming the dishes thing."

"That's right. It's not really my idea, it's more one of Katie's little idiosyncrasies. But hey, it's a good way to have Katie join us tonight, don't you think?" he added with a big, love-sick grin.

Frankly, I didn't. I wasn't keen on having Katie around while I was planning the death of her lover – even if it was a carbohydrate Katie. I jumbled her features around with my fork to scramble her view of things.

"Where did you say Katie was tonight?" I asked.

"Out visiting a friend."

"Someone you know?"

A vexed expression appeared on Jerry's face and he scratched his head. "Now that you mention it, I've never met this person. I mean, I know the name and I've even spoken to them on the phone, but I've never met them face-to-face. It's an old university friend, I think."

"Oh yes? Which university did Katie go to?"

Another vexed expression. "Something university. Iben... aben... lond... I don't know," he said finally.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "Bar one or two, they're all pretty much the same, aren't they? "

"Yes, I suppose they are," he replied, still clearly trying to wrestle an answer from his memory that wasn't there.

"What did she study?"

"Study? Well, that's a question and a half." Another pause. "I suppose she must have studied something."

"It's very likely," I replied. "Though, it must be said, not always the case."

The vexed expression was now replaced by a worried one. "Are all of these questions for your work?"

"No, of course not," I replied, placing a comforting hand on his arm. By comforting Jerry I was confirming that he should indeed be worried – why else would someone comfort you? "There's no point to these questions. It's just small talk."

There was indeed a point to the line of questioning I had taken, and it wasn't to establish Katie Lee's eligibility for a higher diploma. The point here was that the questions should create a foundation of uncertainty on which I would later build Sam Fisher's gallows. I hoped that I could put a little doubt into Sam's mind so that denial wouldn't get in the way when I revealed the truth to him.

Frankly though, I hadn't expected it to work this quickly. Jerry's sketchy knowledge of Katie surprised me. Having spoken to her briefly some days earlier, I thought I could probably help Jerry answer some of the questions myself. I decided to go easy after that because I only wanted to sew the seeds of doubt about his relationship with Katie and not crop dust it out of existence.

And so the conversation turned to Jerry's work. We talked about his interest in the catering industry (love at first sight), his career history (one beautiful dance after another) and his plans for the future (to love Katie). It wasn't the sort of thing I could use on a town application; in fact it probably wouldn't even stand up on a teenager's valentine card.

"I'm not looking to expand, mind," he said, stroking his Katie meal in a way that looked disturbingly like foreplay. "Once upon-a-time it was my heart's desire to own a big hotel chain, but my heart has a new desire now and I already have that."

"Just like Chase Lane," I said.

"Who?"

"Sorry, I'm just thinking aloud. Chase is a friend of mine."

"A friend who's like me?" he asked.

"I hope so," I said.

"Are there many more questions? I've got some kitchen preparation to do."

"No, I'm pretty much done. I may need to speak to you again though. When are you out?"

"Most evenings for the next week or so," he replied, "I'm visiting suppliers. Mornings are best. Done now?"

"Yes."

"I'll leave you to finish eating Katie, then."

"Ah, yes, Katie," I responded, prodding at the pasta. "Almost done with her."

"Can you let yourself out when you're done?"

"Certainly. What time will Katie be back?"

"Ah, she'll be back at...erm...I don't know," Jerry replied scratching his head vigorously as if the answer were just beneath the surface of the skin.

"It's just that I don't want to be around when she gets home," I said. "I guess she'll be tired."

"Tired? No, why would she be?"

"I don't know, I just thought her and her friend...oh, forget it, I'm talking nonsense. Just tired myself I suppose."

Jerry nodded vaguely. The seed had been sewn and was now watered. Jerry shuffled out into the kitchen area, dragging the weight of his newfound uncertainty behind him.

I considered my work done. Let me make it clear that none of this gave me pleasure. Even though I now considered myself close to being with Laura, I was deeply unhappy as I sat at that table. I felt that Sam Fisher had made a tragedy of both of our lives and that this was the only way the tragedy could be removed. I wished more than anything that there was another, less terminal, way around the problem, but for the life of me I couldn't think of it.

I pushed the plate away and with it any final misgivings I had about my plan. What I required now was firm resolve, not indecision.

Being mindful of the fact that I would have to return uninvited to deposit the truth about Sam and Katie for Jerry to find the way Chase Lane had discovered the truth about Jennifer, I walked over to a window near the door. Having checked that I was indeed alone, I reached up to the catch and slipped it back so that it was only the rust of the hinges that was keeping the window closed. I then let myself out.

I had barely put ten yards between myself and the hotel, when a voice stopped me in my tracks.

"Fancy seeing you again so soon. Where are you going at this time of night?"

It was Katie Lee.

"I've just been to see Jerry," I replied. "About the town application."

"Ah, I see. I suppose you'll want to speak to me again too?"

"Yes, but not right now."

"I understand," she said, and threw her head back and laughed. She put a hand over her mouth to calm herself. "I'm sorry, the night makes me a little giddy."

Her giddiness could only be put down to nighttime if the darkness had been buying her whiskey and pulling her clothes all over the place. Her hair was dishevelled to the point that it looked as if it had had more than just the wind running through it.

"How was your friend?" I asked.

"Friend?"

"University friend?"

"Ah, right. Well...erm...well educated." More giggles followed.

She put her hand to her chest to calm herself and then realised that the top four buttons of her blouse were undone. She hurriedly fastened them as well as her drunken fingers would allow her. She paused when she reached the top button and reached in to extract something from inside her blouse. It was a dark hair that clearly didn't look as if it belonged on her blond head.

"I'm moulting," she said. "I guess it must be the unseasonably warm weather."

"I guess it must be."

"Much as I'd like to I can't stand around here chatting to you all night, Jerry will be expecting me."

I nodded an acknowledgement and she reached into her coat pocket for her key. When she pulled her hand out she had a pair of women's underwear in her fingers. She looked at me to see if there was any chance of stuffing them back in before I'd noticed, but my raised eyebrows must have informed her otherwise.

"Like I said, it's unseasonably warm," she said.

I lowered my eyebrows and she replaced the underwear in her pocket, and then walked past me to the hotel where she could conduct the rest of her key searching in private.

Sam Fisher simply had to be stopped.

# CHAPTER 37

I woke early the next morning from a sleep troubled in equal parts by the cold weather and Katie's underwear. I pushed back the covers and dressed quickly. I was working to a deadline now. The window catch wouldn't stay off its hook forever. There would be a check and the catch would be replaced, probably before Katie's underwear. And Jerry's doubt would fade and the sugar coated, sick-making trifle that was his love for her would smother any of the suspicions I had raised. The sooner I made Sam Fisher's presence known, the better.

With this in mind, I made my way to the civic hall and locked the door behind me. My purpose in the office that day was to recreate Sam Fisher. Not literally of course, one Sam Fisher was already one too many. What I wanted was a representation of him that could be used to show Jerry his bad intentions towards Katie and his success in pursuing them.

I decided to look in the storeroom where I hoped that I might find something hidden among the boxes of files and records that Laura had collected. What, exactly, I couldn't say. Perhaps an inappropriate photograph or a record showing they had been together when they should have been somewhere else with someone else. I wanted something that I could push Jerry's way which would put a match to his doubt and an instrument of revenge in his hand.

I didn't know for sure what it would be but I thought I would know it if I found it, armed, as I was, with a jealous mind of my own.

I walked over to the storeroom, stepped inside, snapped on the drawstring light and assessed the size of the task in front of me. The shelves were three slats high and three units across: nine shelves in all and each one stuffed to the gills with shoe-box size cartons so full that the lids had to be taped down. At a rough guess I thought there were perhaps upwards of thirty packed cartons. It appeared that Laura had hoarded everything she had come across. More than this, it seemed that there was a great deal more to the residents of Quil Marsh than I had managed to uncover. It was an observation that didn't unsettle me the way that it should have. Instead I went looking for Sam Fisher's file.

The boxes were labelled up according to a coding system, and it took just a minute to work out that the numbers on each box referred to property numbers.

Quil Marsh had what can only be described as an optimistic numbering system. The seven numbers ran from twenty-two to seven hundred and forty. I expect that the thinking was that the first arrivals got to pick the numbers they wanted and that subsequent residents would fill in the gaps. There were plenty to choose from and in the coming weeks there would be plenty more, though I didn't know that then.

I scanned the boxes until I found the ones I was looking for on the fourth shelf.

Sam Fisher had three boxes in all, and I collected them up and took them back to my desk. I picked one at random, sliced the tape off with a paper knife and lifted off the lid to see if I could find Sam and Katie anywhere inside. The top of the pile was littered with receipts, which were for office items such as calculators and ledger books. Beneath the receipts were photocopies of certificates: The Accredited Body of Certified Accountants; The Associated Accountancy Board; The Accountancy Regulatory Board and three or four more certificates relating to accountancy regulatory bodies. I had no idea that accountants required so much regulating. For all this, it did not seem as if the ABC or the AAB had done a particularly good job of regulating Sam Fisher. I put the certificates to one side and shuffled through the remaining papers, but found nothing of interest. I opened up the second carton, but found only more of the same. I resealed the lid and took a look inside my third and final chance.

The third box was all but empty. I reached in and pulled out the single scrap of paper that was carpeting the bottom. Sam Fisher's signature was scrawled repeatedly between the ragged edges. Initially, it appeared as if the box was some pointless over spill to Sam's previous two files, started at a time when it looked as if he might need a third. But there was something else on the paper – something written beneath the cloak of Sam's name. I held it up to the scrutiny of the bare light bulb. The repeated heavy stamp of Sam's name had done a good job of obliterating the message, but not a perfect one. The words _I need help_ , printed in an even, decorative hand, were just legible. It was the same decorative hand I'd seen the previous week while working on the town application. This then, was Laura's file. The cry for help resonated so clearly, that when I closed my eyes I could hear her voice speaking the words.

And then, distracted as I was, the paper slipped from my fingers. I reached out to catch it, but succeeded only in pushing it further from my reach.

I sighed and bent over to pick it up. As I was leaning down towards the floor I saw the real file containing Sam Fisher's life. His briefcase was sitting behind the door where I'd left it after rescuing it from the bridge.

Invigorated by my new-found hope, I snatched up the bag and took it out into the office where the light was better, then popped the clasp and looked inside.

A first glance showed a lot of darkness shrouding a clutch of unidentifiable paraphernalia. I cleared a space on the desk, up-ended the bag and emptied out the contents. They formed a small pile that was a still-life exhibit of the incidental junk that no one needs and yet everyone has – a bit like an appendix or a heart, I suppose: pens, a black notebook, a handkerchief, a packet of throat lozenges and a calculator.

I pushed a hand into the clutter and scattered it across the desk. Nothing was revealed except more junk – a comb, a broken key ring, a tube of sweets, paperclips, a professional card. It was the kind of flotsam that fell out of people's pockets all the time and indicated nothing more than a need for a clear out. I removed the items from the centre of the desk one by one until I was left with a tiny package wrapped in white paper. This looked anything but pocket flotsam.

I lifted the package and gingerly began to peel back the paper. I was anxious in equal parts about what I might find and what I might not find.

Eventually I managed to free the object from its wrapping and turned it over in my hand to inspect it. It was a heart shaped pendant.

I was elated to find what I thought I'd been looking for. I polished the surface with my sleeve and examined it. Sam had taken Katie's heart and threaded a gold chain through it. Jerry would see that too. I was certain that when he saw what Sam was planning to put around Katie's neck, he might have plans to put something coarser and more noose-shaped around Sam's neck.

I was delighted with my find. However, my elation only lasted the few seconds it took to inspect the tiny gold plated decoration. There was no inscription on it. I realised that it was not what I had been looking for at all. Without Katie's name it was merely an adornment, and not the token of betrayal I had been looking for. The gold heart was as useless as the one Sam Fisher had been born with.

Defeated, I set about wrapping the pendant again to return it to the briefcase. It was then that I noticed that the paper had writing on it.

I unfolded it and flattened it out against my palm. It was a letter. I'll recreate it for you below. The meaning and the sentiment are all present in my version, though I can't pretend that it's the same letter word for word (apart from the opening sentence). Perhaps if you've ever written a similar letter you can reword some of the sentences for yourself. Anyway, this is it:

To my secret blonde lover,

I just wanted to put something down on paper to say how I feel about you. Well, I want to, but it's not that easy when there aren't the words to do it. I was going to write you a poem, but it would take a better poet than me to capture these feelings. Being with you is like heaven and making love to you is more than heaven if there can be such a thing. I believe there can be having met you. If I could I would spend all my life making love to you, but as I'm sure you understand, this is not possible for obvious reasons. However, this Saturday is more than possible. I look forward to it – I know that you do the same.

Your secret grey man, Sam Fisher.

I could barely believe my eyes. I had to read the letter a second time to convince myself of what I'd just seen. Frankly, I couldn't have written a better letter myself. Well, I could have written a _better_ letter. Sam Fisher's prose was like that of an illiterate schoolgirl with a crush.

When I said I couldn't have written a better letter, I meant of course that I couldn't have written anything more damning. I considered the note to be practically a video recording of their affair. I thought that if I could plant it in an incriminating place then Jerry would be under no illusions as to what had been happening behind his back. On his sofa. On the stairs. In his bedroom. In the shower. Then he would believe that Sam Fisher had been murdering his love.

It's hard to predict how anyone will react to a given situation with complete certainty. However, when Jerry Lee found Sam Fisher's letter (as he most certainly would) I wouldn't have wanted to be Sam Fisher for all the movie-book tie-in deals in Hollywood.

The only decisions left to make were _when_ and _where_ to reveal the letter. The when side of the equation took care of itself. Sam Fisher's rendezvous was scheduled for Saturday, so, as today was Wednesday, this left only Thursday and Friday to make clear his intent. I decided that Friday would be best as it was closest to the impending moment of betrayal. I thought that when you were looking for someone to act impulsively, the less time there was for reflection, the better.

As for the question of where to leave the letter, I wasted a good hour considering assorted convoluted possibilities before settling on the obvious one. And so, by a process of elimination, I realised that the evidence of the crime should be placed at the scene of the crime – in their bed.

The die was cast. I got up from the desk and walked over to the window. The sun was beginning to ebb as dusk rolled in. It wasn't a particularly brilliant sunset, but it was special all the same. It was after all the penultimate time that the sun would go down on a Quil Marsh which had a population of eight.

# CHAPTER 38

I didn't leave my room on Thursday. Instead I spent an interminably long day thinking about the quiet life I had lived before I came across Quil Marsh, and wondering if it had ever really existed at all. By the time Friday finally arrived I had not convinced myself that it had done so. It felt as if my life had started the stormy evening I first set on eyes on the houses around me. Some might say it ended the day I left.

Once night had fallen I made my way over to Jerry's place with a thumping heart, a torch and Sam's love letter. My intention was to deposit the syrupy note for Jerry to discover so that he could fulfil his paperback destiny and set Quil Marsh free. That was the intention.

When I got to the lodge it was shrouded in darkness and Jerry's assertion that there would be no one home looked to be true. I circled the building to check for any signs of life, but found none. I then made my way up the steps and banged the front door. Nothing. I rattled the handle a couple of times and found it to be locked. Satisfied that I was alone, I turned my attention to the window and climbed up onto the ledge. When I pulled at the lip of the aluminium frame, the window moved up and offered me entry.

The entry that it offered was smaller than I remembered and it was not without some difficulty that I managed to manoeuvre myself into a position where I could get all my limbs through. Having achieved this, I fumbled my way down onto the tiled floor and tried to get my bearings. However, the impenetrable darkness meant I might as well have been standing on the moon as in Jerry's dining area for all the idea I had of how to proceed. I had hoped on my way over that evening that I might be able to move around the dining area from memory, but this was clearly not the case.

I reached into my pocket for the torch which I had brought with me to cover all eventualities. When I switched the torch on I found that eventualities had rarely been as thinly covered as they were by my discount store, two-battery plastic light. The feeble glow provided by the tiny bulb melted into the darkness just a few inches from its source.

I staggered around for a while trying to build up a mental picture of the room as I had known it and the position I now found myself in. It was a futile act. Every time I moved I seemed to be kicking chairs until it felt as if the chairs were kicking me. Eventually, more by chance than plan, I found a door. It was a cause for some relief. Once I'd located a door I knew that I was inches from a light switch, and once I had light then I could extricate myself from the furniture maze I found myself in.

I opened the door, and then ran my hand along the doorframe until I discovered a plastic switch. I was much less concerned about putting the lights on at that moment than I had been when I first entered the building. Any pretence at stealth that I'd had when I began evaporated with the deafening racket I had made trying to negotiate the tables and chairs. I thought that if anyone had been home then they would have heard me by now. And if anyone was to see the lights on returning, then better that they thought they had been forgetful and I should have the chance to escape than they should find me stumbling around in the dark like a drunken sleepwalker.

I flicked the switch and saw that I was at the foot of the stairs. I pocketed the now redundant flashlight and negotiated the steps with the tips of my toes. When I reached the landing I found myself in a longish corridor with five doors leading off it. Given that one of the doors was most likely a bathroom, that still left me with one letter and four bedrooms to choose from.

I had been confident before leaving that I would be able to tell the bedroom shared by Jerry and Katie apart from that shared by their would-be guests. Much to my relief, when I pushed the third door back I found this confidence to be rewarded.

The walls and the drapes were a swathe of bright confectionary colours. The paintings that lined the walls were montages of fluffy clouds, cuddly castles, storks carrying babies and little fat cherubs playing harps – little fat harps. And there were wooden plaques dotted about the place presenting homespun homilies as a reminder that home is where the heart is, in case you had thought that it was the chest. The only unexpected ornament was a snake, but as it was a furry one with a goofy smile it did not deter me from my conclusion.

It was as sugary sweet a bedroom as I thought I had ever seen. It looked as if it had been decorated by a child or a drunk, or more likely, a drunken child. It was in stark contrast to the other sober bedrooms I had inspected and a quick check of the drawers and the bedside cabinet proved that this was indeed the room I had been looking for.

Any remaining shred of doubt I might have had vanished when I saw that the fruit bowl had a name (Arnold, in case you're wondering). Now that I was sure it was Jerry and Katie's room I thought it was time to show Jerry that it was Sam and Katie's room also.

I fumbled around in my right-side pocket for the note, panicked when I couldn't find it, regained my cool when I found it in the left-side pocket, and then panicked again when I saw how crumpled it was. I smoothed it out to make it legible.

Having restored it to a readable condition, I pulled the top sheet back and dropped the creased paper onto the bed where I thought the act of betrayal might have taken place.

Looking at the note, I tried to imagine how I would feel if I came home and found it. In truth I think I would have been glad to have the opportunity to off-load Katie. I hoped Jerry didn't feel the same way.

I gave the room a final once-over to make sure I hadn't left anything incriminating behind. My eyes dusted down the room, leaving it clean, except for an eyewitness: Arnold. I decided to leave Arnold to his eyewitness duties. I had a feeling that his evening's work was just beginning.

I walked to the door, flicked a switch and pitched the house into darkness. It was then that I noticed car headlights cutting a path through the woods to the north of Quil Marsh, heading towards the hotel. Alarmed, I stepped back into the corridor, momentarily worried that the headlamps would suddenly light up the bedroom window, projecting my terrified face into the night sky. I knew that I had only minutes to make my escape. And so, in spite of not being able to see my hand in front of my face, I turned and ran.

Good fortune rather than design deposited me on the landing, and I threw myself down the stairs like an avalanche victim. By the time I'd stumbled back through the dining area to the open window I could hear the rumble of a car engine growing louder as it drew closer.

I clambered up onto the window ledge, cutting a finger and almost putting my hand through a pane of glass as I searched for the opening I had arrived through. When at last I found it, I launched myself at my escape route.

Seconds past, but instead of finding my feet on the ground outside, speeding me to safety, I found that I was trapped. Suddenly the unlatched window seemed no bigger than a letterbox and I squirmed in the frame like a stranded fish. I was gripped by panic, which seemed to be swinging on my legs and stopping me from hauling myself through the opening. The full beam of the headlights was now in full view.

And then I was free. Face down in the dirt and sweating profusely, but free. I scrambled to my feet, seized what small semblance of rational thought I had left, and pushed the open widow back into its frame. And then I turned and ran. I didn't think about where I was running to, I just ran.

As I staggered into the bushes that bordered the road, the headlights washed over me, momentarily pointing an accusing neon finger before the undergrowth rescued my careless escape.

I lay face down where I had fallen, not daring to look up or even breath. I thought that if I could convince myself I wasn't there, then there was a chance that whoever had been in the car might overlook me too.

The car ground to a halt. However, the engine continued to tick over in neutral, giving the impression that something was being contemplated. Minutes passed and I was on the verge of losing my nerve and getting to my feet and running when the engine died. Now all I could hear was my own heavy breathing and the beating of my heart. It was hard to believe that whoever was in the car could not hear them too.

Then there was the clunk of the car door being opened, which was swiftly followed by the crack of it being slammed shut. The sharp sound released a thought that stopped my heat - who was entering the house – _who would be reading the note?_ I scrambled upright, but by the time I'd extracted my face from the dirt and found some viewing space between the leaves, the front door had closed behind whoever it was. _What if it was Sam Fisher?_

I briefly considered creeping up to the front of the house and looking through a window to find out he identity of the new arrival – but only briefly. I thought I'd used up my supply of luck for the night, but not my supply of incompetence.

Somehow I made my way back to the post office without getting lost. I didn't see anyone else on my return journey though I cannot say for sure that no one saw me.

And that, as inconsequential as it may seem, is the story of the first death.

# CHAPTER 39

Have you ever waited for death to come? I don't mean have you ever wondered when you'll die or if the world will end some day. There's a difference between waiting and idle curiosity. I mean, have you ever seen death rushing up towards you like a great wave, felt the spray of its cold breath on your face and looked up to see it arcing over you? I'm referring to that precise moment between when you realise it's above you and when it crashes down and smothers your senses. Have you ever waited?

Have you ever waited to see if, as close as it was, it would pass you by? That even though it was rattling your gate and making the dog bark and its feet were kicking up against your doorstep, you waited to see if it would skip over the dividing wall and ring next door's bell?

If you have then you'll know that time loses all meaning. Some events are just too big for time to hold. Death and imminent death are two such events. Frozen in fate's headlights, time doesn't drag or slow down, it simply ceases to exist. If you haven't experienced this, then take my word for it, that's how it is. If you have experienced this then you have my deepest sympathy.

I waited for death to call, but it didn't. Instead it sent a messenger. He had bottle bottomed glasses, a bushy moustache and red, rosy cheeks. It seemed that death moved in mysterious ways. I was to have this observation confirmed five more times in the following weeks.

# CHAPTER 40

The sound of the doorbell startled me, and I threw the bedclothes back and reached for an alarm clock that wasn't there. The bell sounded again. It was louder this time, the sound no longer being filtered through my dreams.

I swung myself up into a sitting position and saw that I was fully dressed. My clothes were creased and crumpled and did not look as if they had been getting the sleep they should have. I knew how they felt. I put my hands to my face and rubbed some of the remaining fog of tiredness away. As I did so the memory of the previous evening re-emerged. For a moment I thought that perhaps it had all been a bad dream, but when I saw the cut finger I had caught on the hotel window frame, I knew better.

The doorbell rang again, louder and more insistent.

I walked over to the bedroom window. If Quil Marsh was any different because of the previous night, then I couldn't see it from where I was standing. I turned away and sat down on my bed.

Checking my watch, I realised it was late. Before I could dwell on this observation any longer, the bell rang again.

I ran a hand through my hair and waited to see if Eliza would answer the door. A shiver spiked the back of my neck and I had a vision of a dead Sam Fisher standing at the front of the house. His skin was purple, his eyes were bloated and bloodshot, and a fat tongue lolled out of his swollen face. And he was outside, waiting for me. The vision was so real I sprang to my feet and stepped back from the bedroom door. A voice called up from outside for someone to come out. It wasn't Sam Fisher's voice – not even a bloated Sam Fisher with a swollen tongue.

Eliza clearly wasn't at home and so I kicked my feet into a pair of shoes and made my way nervously downstairs.

Through the glass in the door I could see the silhouette of a heavyset man. I pulled the door back and found a heavyset man filling the silhouette. He was scribbling a pencil across the pages of a notebook.

"Ah, I hope I didn't disturb you sir," he said, looking up from his work.

His eyes appeared tiny, the thick lenses of his spectacles giving the impression that you were looking at him down the wrong end of a telescope. "No. What can I do for you?"

"I don't know. I suppose that's why I'm here," he said, raising his eyebrows in a conspiratorial fashion. "I'm Detective Calhoun."

He extended a large hand in my direction. I took it and shook it as best I could given its considerable weight.

"I'm Will...Will Travers."

"Pleased to meet you _Mr Travers._ "

Suspicion pushed up his eyebrows again.

"I...I _am_ Will Travers."

"But of course you are." Eyebrows up. Eyebrows down. "Tell me Will, do you live here?"

"I answered the door, didn't I?"

He looked me up and down slowly. I followed his eyes to see what he was looking at. Together we took in the dishevelled clothes I had slept in.

"No, really, I do live here," I persisted.

" Of course you do. And how long have you done that for?"

"Two weeks, I think."

"Well, if you don't know Will, who does?"

"No, it's definitely two weeks...that is, sixteen days to be precise."

He took his pencil, pulled a face and made a big show of crossing out my first answer, which, as far as I could make out, he had not even written down.

"Excuse me Detective, but has something happened?"

"Funny you should say that, something has. A man is dead."

So death had come calling after all.

I was simultaneously shocked and elated. No other certain event shocks like death does, and few other unexpected ones can match it either. I was shocked but I was delighted too. After all, hadn't a monster just been destroyed and six lives set free? Seven, including my own.

"Did he die in Quil Marsh?"

"That's right."

"A local?"

"Yes, the man is a resident... _was_ a resident."

"When?"

"Can't say exactly, but sometime in the last twenty four hours."

Detective Calhoun was so obliging with his answers that I thought that if I asked him for everything he knew, he would tell me. I was soon to learn that asking him for everything he knew was not necessarily a profitable exercise.

"Was it an accident?"

"Not what you and I would call an accident."

"A murder, then?"

"No."

"You always think that murders occur someplace else, but...what? Did you say _no_."

"Yes."

This was one of those few uncertain events I mentioned earlier that occasionally have the same shock value as death.

"But if it wasn't an accident and it wasn't murder?"

"Then it must have been something else," Detective Calhoun responded enigmatically.

"Suicide?" I persisted.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not." He twitched his moustache one way then the other, and then repeated the exercise as if he were rocking it to sleep.

"Excuse me, but do you mind me asking who it is that's dead?"

Detective Calhoun flicked through his notebook, pausing occasionally, before locating the name.

"Mr Lee. Jerry Lee to give him his full name."

"Jerry Lee is dead?" I said, no longer having to act shocked.

"That's what it says here," Detective Calhoun said, tapping his notebook with his pencil.

To say I was shocked didn't do the feeling justice. I felt as if life had just punched me hard in the midriff so that I could barely breath. I sat down on the doorstep to try and catch my breath.

"I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news," he said. He paused, and then: "What is it you do here?"

"Ask questions," I said, getting back to me feet. "I'm interviewing everyone to support an application for town status for Quil Marsh."

"Interviewing, eh?" Detective Calhoun replied, raising one of his knowing eyebrows. "Is that how you knew the deceased?"

"Yes."

"And did you notice anything, shall we say, suicidal about him when you spoke?"

"No, I didn't," I replied. "I've never met a happier person."

"That's what I've heard from other people I've spoken to."

Detective Calhoun raised up his notebook, scratched his chin with it and weighed me up with a squint. "Listen, Mr Travers, can I trust you not to repeat what I'm about to tell you?"

"Yes, of course."

"I don't think this was suicide," he said, his voice becoming quieter and more conspiratorial.

"Oh?"

"I think this is a case of auto-erotic asphyxiation. That is, he killed himself while trying to heighten his sexual pleasure by reducing oxygen to the brain. Are you familiar with it?"

"Yes...no. Well, I've heard of it, but I don't practise."

"Glad to hear it," Detective Calhoun replied. "There's no way of knowing for sure, and though he didn't appear to be engaged in any kind of...act when we found him, the fact that he was found hanging from the light fittings with a furry snake around his neck suggests he wasn't planning on being found this way. The damn thing looks like it attacked him. But that isn't the real clincher. The fact that there wasn't a suicide note seals it for me."

Note? Suddenly I remembered the letter. Sam Fisher's letter. The letter that once they'd traced it to Sam and Sam recalled leaving his bag with me, would become _my_ letter. But there was no letter.

"You're sure there wasn't a note?"

"I have it on good authority that a great deal of looking took place."

"But no note?"

"If I'm right about the manner of the death, and I like to think that I am right more often than not, then it's not really the kind of circumstance in which you would want to leave a memo explaining the reasons for your activity."

"So, no note then."

"No."

"How is Katie taking it?" I asked.

"I think it's fair to say that _badly_ is the answer to that one. She blames herself. It's a natural reaction."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Of course. Does anyone else live here Mr Travers?"

"Yes," I replied. "Eliza Birch, the postmistress. I think she owns the place. I'm just here temporarily. Do you need to speak to her? I don't think she knew Jerry Lee particularly well."

"No, that won't be necessary," Detective Calhoun responded. "Sometimes you can ask too many questions."

He raised his eyebrows, apparently ignorant of the fact that you can also make too many facial expressions.

"If you don't need me any more," I said, "I have...things to be getting on with."

"Actually, there was something else."

"Yes?"

"You're a writer, aren't you?" he said.

"You've read my books?"

"Oh no. Someone in the village told me. The thing is, I'm a writer too."

"Well, I haven't read anything of yours either," I replied.

"That's because I haven't written anything yet. I suppose I'm a would-be writer. It's an ambition I've harboured for years. Mr Travers, meeting you could turn out to be my inspiration to finally make a start. Perhaps one day I'll get a quote from you on the dust jacket."

The words, _Don't blame me for this book,_ flashed through my mind. "Perhaps."

"Well, I'm not needed any more in a place that has no murderer and no victim, so I'll wish you a good day." He snapped his notebook shut, said farewell with his eyebrows and then turned and left.

I stood at the door and watched Detective Calhoun walk his unique brand of police work and facial comedy back to his car.

And then he was gone, taking his erroneous deduction with him, while I was left standing on the porch with the truth. There had been betrayal and there had been a note and there _had_ been a suicide. There may have been a furry snake, but this was Jerry Lee and that was only to be expected.

I was disturbed from my reflection by the sound of shuffling. It was Eliza.

"I didn't know you were in," I said, turning round.

"You don't know much, do you? Who was that?"

"A policeman," I replied. "Apparently Jerry Lee is dead. An accident of sorts."

"Fool. Still, one less Quil Marsh resident for you to worry about."

"You won't be sending flowers then."

"No, and you don't get a day off either."

And with that she turned and scuttled back down the hallway as far as the kitchen before pausing.

"Are the police going to be coming back to Quil Marsh?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I really don't know."

# CHAPTER 41

So, what happened to the note? To this very day I don't know. I suppose it could have slipped down the back of the bed or got bundled up in an initial search and then forgotten, or Katie could have found it before the police and removed it. However, I prefer to think that Jerry called it George and then ate it.

Some things don't disappear quite so easily, and one of those is my part in Jerry Lee's suicide. Right now, you're probably thinking that I'm responsible for the death of Jerry Lee. It's an understandable reaction because it's the same one I had. I sat in my room with my head in my hands and cried my heart out. As I cried I vowed to myself that I would contact Detective Calhoun and tell him the truth.

When I could cry no more I lay on the bed and thought about what had happened, running it through my head over and over again. And that's how I came to see things differently. Given the chance I believe that soon you will do the same.

Jerry was dead and initially I believed that this was because I had left Sam's letter on his bed. But was that really the reason – I mean, _really_? Jerry was dead alright, but it was more than my visit that had wrapped the rope – correction: furry snake – around that light fitting. I thought that if Sam hadn't beaten Laura then I wouldn't have delivered the letter. Then I thought that if Sam hadn't written the letter in the first place, then there wouldn't have been anything for me to leave. More than this, I thought that if Sam hadn't been sleeping with Katie then there wouldn't have been anything to write about. The several questions as to why Jerry had died all seemed to have the same answer – Sam, Sam, and Sam.

Are you seeing things differently yet? Bear with me, there's still time.

What had I done really – I mean, _really_? The more I thought about it the more I thought that I hadn't actually killed Jerry. No, the worst thing I could be accused of was bringing the date of Jerry's death forward by a few months or weeks, or even days. It seemed logical to think that he would have found out himself sooner or later and when he did it seemed reasonable to assume his reaction would have been the same.

I know this doesn't make me an innocent man, but it was more than my intervention that put Jerry in a box and me where I am today.

And so I decided not to call Detective Calhoun. I hope you understand. If you don't understand then I hope you remember that I still had to save Laura's life and so perhaps you'll make allowances, if only for the next hundred pages or so.

# CHAPTER 42

The day after Detective Calhoun's visit was probably the only time since I'd met Laura that I hadn't been thinking about her. This wasn't anything to do with Detective Calhoun's own personal attractiveness, but Jerry's untimely death.

I was depressed both by Jerry's death and the continued threat posed by Sam Fisher. I even contemplated suicide the way that Jerry Lee had. But as the time passed I realised Jerry and myself were not the same. Jerry had jumped ship because he felt his purpose for living had gone. On the other hand, mine had not. My perfectly formed, green-eyed reason to live was still alive (as far as I knew at this point) and that, I thought, was the reason I was sitting on a step biting my nails rather than dancing from a light fitting.

Now that suicide had been discounted, and not knowing what else to do (apart from bite my nails), I called another residents' meeting.

I sat in the civic hall looking at the semi-circle of empty chairs in front of me. There were seven; I'd put out a chair for Katie Lee too, though I didn't expect her to show.

And so I sat there alone and waited. At this point I had no plan of action to speak of. It's not something the prosecution cared to believe, and to be honest – or should I say, _and to continue to be honest_ – I don't blame them. I was not thinking of another way to dispose of Sam and I was most certainly not thinking of how to secure Quil Marsh's town status. All I could think of was setting eyes on Laura again. It felt as if it had been a lifetime since I had seen her, and in a way, I suppose it had been – Jerry's.

"I hope you're not wasting my time."

I looked round to see Eliza looking like something that you used to imagine hid in the closet or under your bed at night as a child.

"Calling meetings?" she bellowed. "You're not some overpaid bureaucrat, you know."

"I know."

She took a seat opposite me and proceeded to bore into me with a withering stare.

The door opened again, and one by one we were joined by the others; first Bernadette Peters, followed in quick succession by Doctor Jennings, Lyle Mace and Jacob Jones. Then there was a delay of some minutes before Sam Fisher made his entrance. He was alone.

"Not too late I trust," Sam said, pushing a stick of juicy fruit into his mouth and dropping down into the nearest available seat. He began to work the gum nosily around his mouth as if he were taking it for vigorous exercise.

"Is Laura coming?"

"Ah no, I'm afraid not; this meeting was called at rather short notice."

My heart sank.

"I can tell you now that Katie won't be coming either," he added. "She left Quil Marsh last night after Jerry was discovered."

The truth was Katie was as good as dead. Unbeknownst to me or anyone else in the room at that time she had already decided that she couldn't go on without Jerry. I discovered Katie was dead later in court when she couldn't be called to give evidence without the aid of a ouija board. The explanation given by the police was that it had been death by misadventure after she had choked to death. I knew it was suicide. When someone dies as a result of forcing so much candy into their mouth that they can't close their mouths let alone breath, I'd say the circumstances are at the very least, suspicious. However, when you know what I know about Jerry and you discover that she choked to death on sugar coated candy snakes, then suicide is the only logical conclusion. I've no doubt that somewhere in the great here-after Katie and Jerry are back together again. The truth is, nothing can kill love – not even furry snakes or candy snakes. Now they have eternity together, which is just as well as Katie has quite a bit of explaining to do.

"Everyone knows about Jerry, don't they?" Sam prompted.

Everyone nodded.

"Shall we get started then?" he said, rubbing his hands together.

Starting the meeting was the furthest thing from my mind at that moment. What I wanted to do was to leap off my seat, run over to Millstone House and knock down every door and rip up every floorboard until I had found Laura. However, what I wanted and what I was capable of were two entirely different things, as I believe I've already demonstrated. So, instead I handed around some notes I'd put together on my endeavours thus far.

"What does it all mean?" Lyle said, holding the pages upside down as he flicked through them.

"It means there's still a lot of work to be done," I replied.

" _Still_ a lot of work?" Eliza said. "Is this what they're calling a lot these days?"

"What do you have in mind?" Sam said, momentarily removing the ball of gum from his mouth before re-inserting it. I thought it was quite possibly the first thing that I'd seen come out of his mouth that didn't have a lie attached to it.

"Expansion. I've still got to make a credible case for this place getting bigger instead of..." I had intended to say _staying the same_ but the words stuck in my throat when I realised Jerry's death suggested _getting smaller_.

"Getting smaller!" Lyle helpfully shouted out.

"Moving in a different direction," I corrected him.

"Well, at least we're moving," Eliza said.

Doctor Jennings craned his head forward. "Hoovering?"

" _Moving_ ," I said.

"Ah, good," he replied. "Perhaps I'll have to get myself a new patients' register."

"He said we were moving, he didn't say we we're expanding," Eliza pointed out. "Sinking ships move too."

"We're not sinking," I countered. "We've just taken an unexpected detour."

"So, how do we get back on track?" Bernadette asked.

"More interviews. It's not enough now to know what your plans are for the next year or so. I think I'll need to know what your plans are for the next five years, or maybe even the next ten if you can think that far ahead. That way we can show how serious you are about building your lives in Quil Marsh."

"What will they make of Jerry Lee?" Bernadette said.

"I have to account for the population of Quil Marsh if it has reduced, but I doubt if the unfortunate circumstances of Jerry's death will count against us."

"Good," Bernadette replied.

"And death is good news for you, right Jacob?" Lyle Mace added, with a big _I'm pleased for you_ grin.

Jacob looked up with a start at the mention of his name.

"Sorry, I was thinking of something else. What did you say?"

"Death's good for you, right?" Lyle said again. "It's like having another customer. Jerry is someone else to put on the escalator to heaven."

"To be honest," Jacob replied, "I try not to encourage death. Life is best. And anyway, I don't think Jerry will be being buried at my church. My escalator will remain relatively free for some time yet I believe. And..."

Jacob's line of thinking trailed off into silence. The escalator analogy was a dead end and anyway, he clearly had other things on his mind

"I think the point is that all of our escalators will remain free unless there are some major developments Mr Travers," Bernadette said into the space left by Jacob.

Doctor Jennings leaned forward and said; "I'll tell you whatever it takes. I've got plans. They're probably not as big as the plans you younger people have but I can blow them up a bit if it helps."

"I can blow my plans up too," said Lyle.

"You've got plans?" Sam asked.

And on they went, but I wasn't listening. In fact I've adlibbed a little because I hadn't been listening for a minute or so. I was looking at Jacob Jones who continued to stare into space looking for the end of his sentence.

Jacob's face was playing out the thoughts he could not or would not say. His brow creased then smoothed, and then his mouth frowned and then grimaced as his feelings trampolined across his features. He removed his glasses, blew on them and then rubbed a handkerchief across both lenses. His chubby face had broken out in a hot schoolgirl blush, and beads of sweat that were popping out of his forehead as if someone were hand-ringing his brain.

Do you recognise this man? Of course you do. He's your typical forty year old introvert. He's painfully shy and dislikes social gatherings as much as they dislike him. He's probably never kissed a woman, let alone lost his virginity. He wears his ticks and twitches like a rash, and like a rash they make you want to keep your distance. If you've ever got beyond the awkward body language and engaged him in conversation, you'll know he has a collection too. It could be stamps, books or coins, or it could be eighteenth century this or nineteenth century that, or in Jacob's case, a hoard of religious artefacts, but one thing you can be sure of is that it won't be a casual accumulation. No, it'll be enthusiastically logged and preserved to the point of obsession – maybe beyond that point.

Have you ever asked yourself, _why the collection?_ Probably not, but I have. I suppose its part of the writer's job description. Everyone needs a reason to exist. For most of us it's the company of a loved one or the care of a family - something or somebody that you feel responsible for. However, when life has dictated that there won't be a someone, then there's a void that needs filling by something that can be loved, nurtured, valued and protected. In my experience, nine times out of ten that something will be a collection.

It's simple psychology, I'll concede that, but that doesn't make it any more false than complications make psychology true. And besides, I've always found simple psychology sells well enough.

I'm sure you know a Jacob Jones yourself, perhaps lurking at the back of the office or in the corners of your local library. If not, it may be because you're a Jacob Jones yourself.

Well, all that's as may be, but this is about the Jacob Jones that I knew. My Jacob was called Todd Meekins and, metaphorically speaking, he lived with me for eight months between the spring and winter of nineteen ninety-eight. Let me explain further.

# CHAPTER 43

Todd Meekins spent his brief life between the pages of twenty-four and one hundred and fifty in a book I had written called The Quiet Revenge. As it happens, it wasn't just the revenge that was quiet. The release was hushed, the promotion was barely audible and the sales were almost completely silent. However, it did get picked up by a company that recorded audio books for the partially sighted, allowing me to upgrade my car by fitting a radio cassette player. The blind, it seems, prefer their retribution to be a little more hushed than the rest of us.

Who was Todd Meekins? Todd was forty going on thirteen. He couldn't cook, he couldn't kiss and he couldn't talk to strangers. Everyone was a stranger to Todd, even himself. He lived on his own in a run-down house he had inherited from his deceased parents. Todd's life was so removed from the regular world occupied by those who could talk, kiss and cook that it may have appeared to some that he barely existed at all. Todd felt the same way about his so-called life and that was why he had the mirrors and the dark room for processing.

There were so many mirrors on the walls of Todd's house that it sometimes seemed to him that the building was made of glass. The mirrors served as a constant reminder to him that he was indeed alive, even if they were also a constant reminder that he was alive, dishevelled and ailing. And if the mirrors reminded him he existed, then the darkroom proved to him that his existence had a form, all be it a shallow, meaningless one. Todd took photographs. Not family photographs or special occasion pictures because Todd could no more conjure up a special occasion than he could a family member. No, Todd took photographs of his life, and that meant albums full of walking down the street, crossing the road, approaching shops, waiting for buses, walking back down the street, crossing back over the road...you get the picture, as it were. They say the camera never lies, but in so far as it proved Todd had a life, it was at least guilty of bending the truth.

But this wasn't just Todd's life story (if it had been, it might have sold more copies); this was a murder story. One evening, somewhere between crossing over the road and crossing back again, Todd's constantly snapping shutter captured a man killing a woman. Todd didn't give the incident a second thought, but the killer did, and the killer, having completed his killing, followed Todd home to retrieve the incriminating picture. When Todd woke the next morning his world had changed. Every camera he owned was gone and so was every picture he'd ever taken – boxes of them, just gone. And just for good measure, before leaving, the killer had smashed every mirror he could lay his hands on. Sort of a warning I suppose; I can't remember exactly.

I'll digress for a moment to give you a chance to think of the punch line. This novel was one of the few that I promoted with a book signing tour. Perhaps tour is too grand a word as it took in only six or seven shops in nondescript towns. Anyway, I was already aware at this point that The Quiet Revenge wouldn't put my face on the map, and more importantly, a Porsche in my drive. Even so, there were a few purchases – there always are. Most tend to be people who have never heard of you or your book before, but think you might be either someone famous or someone they met on holiday fifteen years ago, in which case I try not to contradict them – a sale is a sale. By the time I'd reached the third bookstore I realised that The Quiet Revenge wasn't going to be the book that was going to get readers trawling through my back catalogue. However, a quick glance around the shop was all I needed to convince me that there were plenty of other books that could. The result of this observation was that I took a handful of copies of the nearest next big thing writer and started passing them off as my own instead. So, if you happen to own a Bainks or a Rankin or a Whit which contains a signature that looks nothing like the cover name then you probably walked through a bookshop in the mid-nineties and spotted someone you thought you'd met on holiday signing books. If you read another of my novels as a result, then I'm glad. If not, then maybe I should have chosen better writers.

Okay, you've had long enough – figured out the ending? It goes something like this: Todd isn't destroyed by what he finds; in fact it's the making of him. He realises that his existence isn't dependent on his vast collection of pictures and mirrors. Todd is a new man with a new sense of purpose and that purpose is to avenge the woman he did not help.

I won't go into the details of his detection of the killer or the revenge he took on him, but I do recall that the broken glass from the mirrors played some part in the killer's demise. Broken glass aside, I think the point was that it was irony that killed the murderer. By trying to cover his tracks he became visible to the one person who could identify him.

How did that compare with your ending? If you guessed right, then you too could be making a (bare) living from crime fiction. If not, then at least you were surprised, even if it wasn't a pleasant surprise.

The novel's pretty much forgotten now by everyone but me. If I learned one thing from it, then it is that if vengeance is a dish best served cold, then irony is a book best sold with a 'Two Pounds Off' sticker on the cover. If I learned a second thing from it, then it was that wolves are indeed often found in sheeps' clothing.

I looked up from my recollections at Jacob Jones. But now I was seeing Todd, not Jacob. Todd who fidgeted instead of making eye contact; Todd who lived on his own; Todd who stuttered when he talked to strangers; Todd who probably couldn't kiss and couldn't cook; Todd who had a collection which justified his existence – a collection which had been stolen.

The fit was almost perfect. I wasn't sure if my writing was that good or Jacob's character was that badly formed, but it was hard to deny the similarities. Having made this link, my thought process went something like, 'introvert...collection...villain...theft... revenge...irony...the demise of Sam Fisher'. And then all this was replaced by an image of me in a field of poppies with Laura – I kid you not.

All I had to do was to reveal Jacob's true circumstances to him and he would be reborn as a man of substance who no longer had to rely on hoarding relics to justify his place in the world. He would rise from the ashes of his hermit existence as a man capable of finding his true self – as a man capable of ultimate revenge. And who would suspect? No one had suspected Todd because he was as unknown to the outside world as the outside world had been to him (ah, more irony – strike another pound off the cover price). And, I was equally certain no one would suspect Jacob for the same reasons.

I watched Jacob Jones looking for all the world as if he were testing for the film role of Todd, which is about as unlikely a concept as you're ever liable to hear. In the background the constant hum of conversation about the town application fuzzed like grey verbal wallpaper.

From where I was sitting I was in a perfect position to see the false smile of the man who had laughed when demonstrating the desecration of the collection of religious artefacts. If Jacob Jones hadn't been so busy polishing his glasses and trying to avoid making eye contact with people he might have seen it too. What Jacob needed was someone to show him that his mirrors had been broken and his photographs taken.

# CHAPTER 44

When I arrived at the church the following evening I was accompanied by a burnt sky and the sound of thunder rolling off the hard black clouds. It felt as if it were a portent, signalling that something bad was about to happen. It could have been a warning for me or a warning for Jacob, or, I suppose, it could even have been interpreted as a warning for Sam Fisher. I hesitated at the door trying to decide what it actually meant. Eventually, I decided it was a portent for rain, and banged my fist on Jacob's door.

A moment later, the church door creaked and then edged back slowly, revealing the middle third of Jacob's face.

"Jacob, it's Will. We agreed to meet, remember?"

I'd cornered Jacob at the conclusion of the meeting, having no real idea what that conclusion had been, so taken was I by the thought of Jacob's revenge. Being as shy as he was, conversation proved to be difficult. However, once I raised his plans to convert Quil Marsh into the new holy land he became increasingly animated. I took this to be a positive sign. Not a positive sign that Quil Marsh might be about to become some heavenly paradise, you understand, but that these were the embers of an inner-Jacob who was waiting to be released. I thought that once those embers were fanned that this could lead to a fire that would finally see Sam Fisher get his evil fingers burned for good.

There was nothing in the exchanges that followed to deflect me from the idea that Jacob was Todd Meekins made real. I even called him Todd a couple of times, but if he was offended he didn't show it, which I was pleased about because I wanted him to save his offence for when it really needed to be taken.

"Ah, yes, of course," Jacob replied. "I hadn't forgotten about your visit, it's just that you can't be too careful when you get visitors these days. I see Doctor Jennings has taken to putting locks and bolts all over his house after a break-in. I don't think it's done him much good though. Anyway, do come in."

He pulled the large oak door back and I walked in. He then led me through the nave, past the little seating that there was that was still a little seating too much, beyond the altar and through a door at the back which opened up into his living quarters.

"Take a seat and I'll fix you a drink," Jacob said, throwing a hand out vaguely in the direction of an armchair. "Would you like a drink?"

"Coffee, thanks."

He returned a couple of minutes later and handed me a mug. The mug turned out to be an expensive looking cup decorated with people in robes at a table, and the words, Jesus Is My Saviour, running over the handle.

"Now, where were we," Jacob said, settling into a nest of cushions opposite me.

"You were going to tell me about the cathedral you'd like to see built here one day," I replied.

"Ah yes, I was, wasn't I."

I hadn't wanted to be the one to raise the topic again because it made it sound as if it were my idea, but Jacob left me with no choice. When I had told Jacob that I wanted him to embellish his plans for the future to promote Quil Marsh' town application, a key was turned in the dream factory in Jacob's head. In a matter of seconds Jacob had gone from wanting Bernadette Peters to stop by occasionally to wanting the kind of cathedral fit for the presence of God and royal weddings.

"Stained glass windows there and there and of course a spire – a very big spire."

Jacob took off his glasses and began to rub them furiously with his handkerchief as if he were rubbing a genie up from a bottle to grant his wish, a wish which frankly appeared to be beyond any genie I'd ever heard of.

"Can I be frank?" I asked.

"Er, yes. I suppose."

"Jacob, I don't mean to be rude, but I couldn't write any of this down and put it in the town application."

"You couldn't?"

"Well, I could if I wanted to kill people."

He leant back as if I'd just poked him in the eye. "Sorry?"

"People would die laughing if they heard this."

If all of this sounds a little brutal, then I suppose it is and I'm sorry it had to be this way but I wanted to test Jacob properly before I opened his eyes to what was really happening in his life. I wanted to see if the spark that was going to light Sam Fisher's funeral pyre was really there.

"Surely not die," Jacob said, replacing his glasses and looking at me to see if I was serious.

"Possibly not dead, but very ill," I replied.

"Oh," Jacob responded. His face deflated like a punctured football. There was a moment's silence while Jacob's dream was demolished in his head. You could almost see the dust escaping from his ears. "Well, I could scale it down a bit if you like," Jacob said, momentarily rediscovering his enthusiasm

"Jacob, the only way you could scale this idea down far enough to make it believable is if you were to build the cathedral from matchsticks. Even then I'm not sure that it wouldn't be considered too grand for Quil Marsh."

I thought this was at the very least hurtful; possibly more than hurtful. I thought that ridiculing a man's dream – possibly his only dream – in this way might be provocative, maybe even incendiary. I watched Jacob and waited for him to explode.

"Oh never mind," Jacob replied. "Perhaps you've got a point. I can't say your observations make me happy, but you're only doing your job, right?"

_Right?_ I could not believe how wrong I'd been about Jacob. I had hoped to find a hint of a caged tiger, but instead I'd discovered a wet lettuce. My disappointment was so immense that I couldn't help but let out an audible sigh.

"Are you alright?" Jacob said. "I do hope my improper plans haven't upset you."

This apology was the final weak, soggy straw. I decided that I would abandon my plan to unleash the inner Jacob on Sam Fisher, because there did not appear to be an inner Jacob to unleash. It was time to make my excuses and leave. Not that I felt that I had to make excuses with Jacob; at that moment I felt I could walk right over him to get to the door.

I got to my feet, and as I did so I kicked over the cup I'd been drinking from. It was only a minor kick, barely enough to tip the cup off its base, but somehow it was still enough of an impact to crack the lip and break the handle.

"OH GOD MY CUP!" Jacob exclaimed, clasping his hands to the side of his face as if I had just kicked and broken his head instead.

"Sorry?"

"MY CUP!"

Jacob rushed over, kneeled down at my feet, picked up the stricken mug and cradled it in his hands.

"YOU BROKE MY DAMN CUP!"

He was furious, and I was surprised and a little afraid. I started shuffling back.

"It's just a cup," I said. "Why are you so upset?"

"IT WASN'T JUST A CUP, IT WAS PART OF A COLLECTION!"

His explanation stopped me cold.

"Did you say it was part of a collection?"

"Yes," Jacob replied, having found the handle, the chip from the lip and some of his composure. "It's part of a set of twelve."

"Twelve? That's some tea set."

"Yes, it is, isn't it. It's a cup for each of the disciples. It's to commemorate The Last Supper."

It seemed that the disciples had developed quite an expensive taste for bone china while wandering through the wilderness.

"I'm sorry about the cup," I said. "If you tell me where you bought the set, I'll buy you another."

"Oh, you can't simply buy these as a set," Jacob replied, fitting the broken piece back onto the cup and rediscovering his smile. "I had to search through journals, papers and shops across the country to pick up each one individually. They're not worth anything as such, but they are a set."

"Well, I am sorry, but couldn't you have given me a different cup?"

"They're all..."

"Sets."

"That's right," he said. "Like the saucers and the plates and the cutlery and the tea towels, they're all part of a collection commemorating something of one sort or another. The last supper for the cups, the distribution of the loaves and the fishes for the plates and the Sermon on the Mount for the tea towels."

"They had tea towels at the Sermon on the Mount?" I asked.

"No, silly. They're not copies, they're _commemorative_."

"Of course."

He juggled the broken piece of china around in the raggedy edge it had left behind. "Superglue should do the trick, I think. You can fix anything if you know how. It's when you lose something that you're really stuck."

I thought about what Sam Fisher had told me about Jacob's little collection of religious artefacts. It appeared that Jacob was not so much stuck, as buried in concrete. I thought about Todd too and his stolen photographs - and his revenge.

Jacob still looked a long way from a caged tiger, but I was increasingly of a mind that Sam Fisher had severely underestimated him. I considered it time – for Laura's sake, for my sake, and not least for Jacob's own sake – to find out if Sam Fisher had made the mistake I'd hoped he had.

I walked over to the window and looked across the fields and up the hill to where Jacob's secret vault was supposed to be located. "It's beautiful walking countryside, don't you think?"

"It certainly is," Jacob replied. "Not that anyone walks on it of course."

"They don't? Surely that can't be right. I can see this very spot from my window and I've seen at least one regular walker. Well, not so much a walker as a loiterer."

Jacob stopped examining the cup and joined me at the window. "There's no reason for anyone to be up there. Did you recognise the person?"

"Sam Fisher."

"What was he doing?"

"Don't know."

"But you're sure it was Sam Fisher?"

"I'm certain it was Sam," I replied. "Sam and a bag. Now that I come to think of it, quite a heavy bag."

Jacob dropped the cup he was holding and it shattered into so many pieces that all it was able to commemorate after that was Jacob's shock and horror.

"Right, I must be off," I said. "It's been very useful talking to you. I hope you feel likewise."

But Jacob wasn't listening. His stare was fixed upon the empty landscape, which he was now beginning to realise was emptier than he had previously given it credit for.

"Don't bother seeing me to the door," I said to Jacob's back, "I'll let myself out."

Again, no response. As I stepped out of the room, I spared Jacob one last look over my shoulder. If my instinct was correct, and I firmly believed that it was, then he appeared to be at page ninety-five of Quiet Revenge.

Once outside I noticed that it hadn't rained. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now I can see that this meant the dark clouds must have had another warning in mind other than a storm.

I made my way back to the post office where I waited for the remaining pages of Jacob's novel life to flick over.

# CHAPTER 45

I can't say for sure exactly what I was doing when the emergency services paid a second visit to Quil Marsh, but I was down at the civic hall, so making a token effort at work is as good a guess as any.

However, I do remember my eye being caught by a flashing light sweeping over the hill and down into the village. My initial reaction was that it was a breakdown truck. I thought for a moment that this Venus Flytrap of a village had captured another traveller. I recall running over to the window and realising that it wasn't a breakdown truck, but an ambulance. It could have been in the village for any number of reasons, but I thought I knew better than that. I believed that the last page of The Quiet Revenge had finally been turned.

The view was poor and I hurried back to my desk to pull up a chair to stand on, but when I got back to the window the ambulance was gone. However, I thought I had a good idea where it had gone to, and I rushed out of the hall, leaving the door swinging in the breeze behind me. I ran down the road to the bend, beyond the bend, then across the village square and back onto the road for another couple of hundred yards until I reached Sam Fisher's place.

The ambulance was nowhere to be seen. No ambulance, no medics and no Sam Fisher being carried out of the house with a blanket over his cold body. Nothing.

Then I heard loud, urgent voices coming from the direction of a pocket of trees further down the road - the direction of the church.

The ambulance was departing when I finally made it to the gates of Jacob Jones' drive. Something had clearly gone wrong with my quiet revenge.

Seeing that the church door was lying open, I decided to take a look inside to see if my fear could be confirmed.

When I stepped into the nave, I saw Detective Calhoun. He appeared to be praying at the altar. I say _appeared_ because in-between kneeling with his hands clasped together, he clutched at his chest, fell forward and then did the whole thing again.

I cleared my throat and he looked around. He smiled when he saw me and made his way over to where I was standing.

"I didn't realise you were religious," I said.

"Religious? Me? Not in the slightest." He looked upwards, pulled an apologetic face and mouthed the word _sorry_. "No, I'm a Detective, a man of logic and science."

He pulled another face, which I couldn't interpret.

"What about the praying?" I said, gesturing towards the altar.

"I was re-enacting the main event."

He raised a knowing eyebrow. Involuntarily, I raised one too, but mine knew less than his.

"What main event?" I asked.

"Mr Jones death," he replied.

"Oh God, that's terrible news."

"Indeed."

"Did he die alone?"

"That's a strange thing to ask," Detective Calhoun said, and placed a hand on my shoulder. "Why did you ask it?"

Because I want to know if the devil is dead.

"Because...I...erm..."

"Relax, I'm only joking," Detective Calhoun said, slapping my arm with the hand he had held against me. "Everyone's in the clear on this one. It was that old serial killer we'll never catch."

"Excuse me?" I thought he meant Sam Fisher, so help me, I really did.

"Natural causes."

"Oh."

"A massive heart attack was the culprit this time, " he continued, patting his chest. "We found him kneeling at the pew, eyes closed, hands in prayer holding a broken cross, smelling of alcohol and dead as the proverbial dodo. Look, I'll show you how I think it happened."

Before I could decline the offer, he turned and staggered up the aisle. He paused by the pew where Jacob had been found and slipped out of character to give me a running commentary.

"Jacob has almost certainly had some kind of theological crisis: am I satisfying God; am I doing his work; is he listening to me; and so on and so forth. So he's taken to drink in order to drown out the questions as he's probably done many times before. However, tonight the questions have learned how to swim. Unable to find an escape through alcohol, he's come into the church to find the answers that will allow him to be in peace. And of course there is only one way to answer these questions, isn't there Will?"

He puckered up, pursing his lips as if he were trying to suck the answer out of me.

"I don't know," I said. "Is there?"

"Forgive me Will, you're not a detective, I shouldn't expect you to know. The only way he could answer those questions was by speaking to God. He took a front seat down here, clasped his cross so hard that it broke in his hands, and he prayed and begged and pleaded to meet his maker."

Detective Calhoun got into the front pew and struck up a praying pose similar to the one I'd seen him in when I entered the church.

"Who knows what happened after that," he continued. "Perhaps he thought he heard something or maybe even thought he saw something. But one thing's for sure, Jacob Jones wished so hard that he got what he wanted – a one-way ticket to meet his maker. His heart popped like an over-inflated balloon when he thought he'd got through to some one on the other side."

He let his chin fall on to his chest to show that Jacob Jones was indeed dead and that the show was over. I walked across to where he was getting to his feet.

"How did you find out he was dead?" I asked.

"We got a call from a passer by – Bernadette Peters. A great shock for her, no doubt, but she seems to be coping well."

"Ah, I see. Well, I'll leave you to your work Mr Calhoun."

I turned to go, and made it as far as the door when I heard Detective Calhoun's footsteps coming up quickly behind me.

"Yes?"

"I was coming over to see you," he said. "Your visit to the church has saved me a trip. I've started looking for something."

I panicked and wondered if I'd left something behind when I'd visited Jacob.

"I'm looking for my voice," he said.

"Sorry?"

"After our conversation on my last visit you inspired me to put pen to paper," he explained. "I've been trying to find my voice."

"That's great," I said, my relief injecting genuine enthusiasm into my reply. "Have you found it?"

"I don't think so," he replied, "but I'm still looking. My question to you is, how will I know when I've found it?"

In spite of the comedy faces he was pulling, it was a good question. How do you know when you're expressing the uniqueness that is yourself – a perception and interpretation of the world that belongs to you and you only. It's the thing that makes the difference between fiction and art, between writing that passes the time and that which affects people's lives, and between that which is instantly forgotten and that for which you will be remembered. So, how do you find it? I wasn't sure, as I'd given up looking once I'd found a voice that would help me avoid nine-to-five work. I suddenly felt sad and empty.

"Just be true to yourself," I replied. "Keep writing, that's the trick."

"Just write? That's it?"

"That and find yourself a good story. If you find that then the writing will take care of itself. A good story shouldn't be too difficult to find for someone in your line of work."

"You'd be surprised," he replied. "A lot of my work is taken up by straightforward cases such as Jacob and Jerry's."

"Of course."

"If I write something I'm happy with, can I show it to you?"

"Certainly," I said. "That is, if we ever meet again."

"You never know," he responded, knitting his eyebrows into a question mark. "You never know."

He then wished me a good day and strode off to where his car was parked just beyond the gates. I didn't know what to make of him. I didn't think he would ever get his novel published, I didn't think he would ever find out what really happened here in Quil Marsh and I didn't think I would ever see him again. In some ways I was right and in some ways I very wrong.

I stood in the doorway and took one last look at the place where Jacob Jones had slipped off his mortal coil. I thought I knew why Jacob had left us and I didn't think it was anything to do with trying to arrange a blind date with God. I was wrong to think that once you take away a person's life obsession that you get a new person. No, once you take away a person's reason to live you take away the person too. When Jacob had discovered that his collection of religious ornaments were gone, he also discovered that his heart had gone with them.

I left the church and closed the door for the last time. I looked up at the sky. I thought that Jacob was probably sitting up in heaven with his harp – one of many he had mysteriously acquired since his arrival.

Hands in pockets and dragging my feet as I went, I made my way to the road. However, as I was closing the gate behind me, I noticed the strangest thing.

# CHAPTER 46

Someone had disturbed the solitary grave next to the church. I leaned forward over the gates to get a better view. It was no mistake or illusion; the grave had been interfered with. The undergrowth had been beaten back from around it, and it appeared as if something had been etched on the headstone.

It wouldn't have registered with Detective Calhoun because in the first instance he had probably been too busy perfecting his scene-of-crime performance to notice, and in the second you would have had to have seen it in all its overgrown glory to know that it had received a recent, brutal visit. I knew. I pushed open the gate and walked back up the drive.

The wild ferns and nettles were flattened down in an apparent attempt to clear a space around the headstone, and the headstone itself had been freed of most of the vines that covered it. In the now empty space that they had once occupied, something had been scraped into the surface of the grimy monument.

I approached the grave and kneeled down beside it. A few creepers had fallen back into place, feeling their way back onto the mossy surface that had once been home. I reached across and pulled the stems away so that I could get a better look at what had been carved into the stone. The markings were words – fresh words. The white powder from the roughly cut grooves was still sitting along the edges of the letters, the weather not yet having had time to dust it away. I rubbed a hand back and forth over the surface a couple of times to clean it up, and then got to my feet and stepped back so that I could see the whole headstone properly. Being badly chiselled, the carving took a moment to register, but when it did the shock of recognition hit me like a thunderbolt. Its impact was such that I actually fell onto the grave and hurt my hip in the process. However, I wasn't feeling pain because fear had a monopoly on all my senses right then.

I pushed myself up on my arms and took another look with my face pressed up against the headstone to make sure I wasn't seeing things. The inscription was real enough: Laura's name had been gouged into the space previously occupied by the grave's current incumbent, and below that a new date of death had been scratched over the old one. The new date was this month and this year.

But what did it mean? It took me a few seconds to come up with an explanation; when it arrived I felt as I'd been hit not just by a thunderbolt, but that the whole sky had fallen in on me. _Laura was buried in the grave I was lying on._

I scrambled off the raised surface until I was on my knees next to it. Was I really too late? I felt wretched and sad and my heart felt fit to burst at the thought that Laura had been taken away from me. I imagined that this must have been how Jacob Jones had felt just before he died and I wouldn't have been at all surprised if death had come to me at that moment. However, nothing so merciful occurred.

Instead, I fell upon the grave and began to dig away at the surface with my bare hands. I tore at the briars and thistles, and ripped out lumps of earth and grass, cutting my fingers and bruising my hands as I did so. I was down to the concrete plinth that lay on top of the casket before I realised that the grave had been untouched – untouched in the last fifty or sixty years, anyway.

I sat back. Tears of relief rolled down my face and I brushed them away with a dirty sleeve and they were replaced with tears of joy. I didn't know if Laura was still alive or not, but I knew she wasn't in the grave and for the moment that was enough.

What of the carving on the headstone then? I thought (no, desperately hoped) that Sam Fisher was mocking me (because I had no doubt the message was intended for me) and not actually informing me of her death. Laura could of course have been buried somewhere else, but there was no suggestion of that in the message and I was happy not to look too deeply for it.

I stood up and looked around, suddenly aware that my tormentor might still be close at hand. However, so far as I could see I had no company but the light evening breeze that rustled the leaves and tussled my hair.

Mindful of the fact that there really was someone buried in the grave, I took the earth I had removed and replaced it as best I could to return it to its original state. The mourners were gone (probably in graves themselves by now), but the thought that the forgotten soul could be someone else's Laura meant I was bound by empathy to treat the grave with the highest respect.

Although I had seen no one, I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. I dusted my hands on the side of my trousers and made rapid steps back up the drive.

I was happy once I'd closed the gates behind me and put a little distance and some wrought iron between the desecration and myself. However, the sense of menace released by the visit had left me feeling sick and afraid.

I hurried back to the comparative safety of the civic hall, took a headache tablet and proceeded to vomit into the toilet. As I was sitting back on my knees and brushing a tissue across my mouth I heard a voice behind me.

"Ah, Mr Travers, we meet at last."

# CHAPTER 47

I looked round through the open toilet doorway to see a dapper looking man in a button-down collared shirt, mohair trousers and loafers offering me his hand and a smile.

I wiped the remaining drool away from my lips and flushed the toilet. Then I made my way over to where the man was standing, still extending his arm as if it were actually mine and he were returning it. We shook, and he gripped my hand enthusiastically in spite of the recent task it had been performing.

"My name is Matthew Sweeting," he said. "I hope you don't mind my letting myself in. I couldn't find the doorbell and the door was unlocked."

"I don't mind you coming in, but I can't think why you would want to."

"For our meeting."

"Meeting? Do I know you?"

"Only by mail," he replied. "I'm from the government: the Town Administration Department to be precise. I've been writing to you for several weeks about your application for town status. Didn't you get my letter notifying you of this meeting?"

I looked over his shoulder at a cabinet by the door that was swamped with unopened envelopes that I had deposited there and then promptly forgot about. I wondered how many other meetings I had missed before this one.

"Unfortunately, the post is quite bad in these parts," I replied. "It's one of the reasons we're trying to get town status. Come with me, I have an office where we can talk properly."

Matthew Sweeting followed me in and took a chair on the other side of my desk. He lifted up a tan leather briefcase he had been carrying with him and proceeded to spill forms out of it.

"Don't worry, most of these are for me to fill in," he said, taking a pen from his pocket and shuffling the first one to the top. "Now, I hear you're one person light since I last came."

"That's one way of putting it," I replied. "Actually, we've lost three residents recently."

He wrote something down. "Any prospects of the number of residents moving up in the near future?"

I strained to think of something that would throw a better light on Quil Marsh. "There's something in the pipeline," was the best that I could do.

It appeared to be a better answer than I had given it credit for because Matthew ticked a whole sheet-full of boxes on the strength of it.

"I don't mind telling you you've got a difficult job here," he said, turning over a fresh page.

"I know it looks bad," I replied, "but, in spite of everything, I'm confident I can get town status for Quil Marsh."

"That's what the last man said."

"Man? Wasn't it a woman who started the work?"

"Ah, Laura," he said. "Yes, she did the job before you, but she wasn't the first. No, before her there was a chap...just trying to remember his name...Chester Green."

"How long was he here for?" I asked.

"Oh, not too long. I can't remember exactly. It's a shame, he seemed like a nice guy."

"A shame?"

"He's dead now."

My jaw literally dropped. "You're joking."

"Not at all. He crashed his car into a big tree near where the road leaves Quil Marsh. Very sad. By the way, what happened to the three residents no longer living here?"

He scanned back up a sheet looking for the appropriate box.

"One left," I said, "...two...died."

He stopped writing and fixed me with a stare. "Now, will you look at that? You know what I say? You can't have enough protection. I mean, look at me, I've got protection up to the eyeballs."

"How do you protect the heart?" I said.

"You're right there. Some things you can't insure against. That's life, I suppose." He shook his head and checked a few more boxes. "Almost done."

He stacked the completed forms into a neat pile.

"Hey, you know, I saw Laura on my way over here," he said.

"You did?" I involuntarily rose to my feet. "Where? When?"

"Over there," he said, jerking out a finger and leaning back in his chair, startled by my reaction. "By the gate that leads up to the hill. Probably not more than five minutes before I got here."

"But you're sure it was her?"

"Not at first. She was wearing dark glasses and a headscarf, but when she waved I recognised her. I pulled over and we spoke briefly."

At this point I was practically leaning over him. "What did she say?"

He shrugged. "Just polite conversation. How are you, how am I sort of thing. Oh, when she heard I was coming here she did ask to be remembered to you."

"What exactly did she say?"

He shrugged again. "Is it important?"

"Yes. Very."

He looked uncomfortable, squirming in his seat as if he were trying to dispose of the answer without me seeing it. "She wants you to try to forget about her when she's gone," he said, finally.

I cursed, banged the desk with a fist and sat back down.

"Ah, I can see you're upset by this news," he continued, "but if it's any consolation there's something else I want you to know."

"Yes?"

"If you should decide to leave," he said, scanning down the back of a form with the tip of his pen, "it doesn't count as someone having left Quil Marsh as you are only technically a temporary resident and so wouldn't have counted anyway. Yes, here it is," he said, moving the form across the desk.

"No, it isn't any consolation at all," I replied.

"However, if Mrs Fisher leaves then I'm afraid that's a definite setback. You see, according to paragraph thirty-three, sub-paragraph four; even though the household remains, if one part of that household should..."

I raised a hand to bring his explanation to an end.

"And so on and so forth," he concluded. "Is this bad news?"

Slowly the shock subsided and I was able to see the real meaning of what he had told me.

"Actually, it's not bad news at all," I said. "In fact it's very good news."

She was alive, and regardless of the threat of imminent death, this was the best possible news.

"Forgive my reaction," I continued, "it's just my...asthma causing me problems."

"Ah, now that's where you could score some more points," he said. "You see as a temporary resident you score nothing, but as a temporary resident who cannot move on because of illness you are counted as..." He ran his pen down the back of another form. "...half a person!"

"So I do exist then."

"For the time being," he replied.

"I'll try not to recover."

"To be perfectly frank, it might take more than a bad case of asthma to make this application successful. I'm more used to downgrading places like this from village to hamlet status. And to be very perfectly frank you're still..." The pen rolled down another form like a bureaucratic divining rod until it found the rest of his sentence. "...one person short of a hamlet. Well, half a person if you count the asthma."

I made some heavy breaths (fake ones). It was time to draw Matthew Sweeting's impressively dull display of town status legislation to a close.

"If there's nothing more," I said, "I'm afraid my condition is getting the better of me and I need to lie down."

"No, I think that's about it," he replied. "If I could just get you to sign here and here on these returns."

I took his pen and scratched my mark in the appropriate places.

"I think that's everything," he said. "If you just take these," he concluded, sliding a couple of forms over to my side of the desk, "I think I can leave. I won't ask you to show me around Quil Marsh as you're clearly in no condition for a long walk, but do you mind if I take a look myself? Purely to satisfy the purposes of the new government guidelines which strongly suggest that..."

"Be my guest."

He got to his feet and shook my hand. "Good luck!" And then he was gone as suddenly as he'd first appeared. In fact, if it wasn't for the forms sitting in front of me I could easily have convinced myself I'd imagined the whole bizarre experience.

I took the forms and put them on top of the filing cabinet with the unopened envelopes where there was plenty of dust to go around for all of them.

I gave Matthew Sweeting an hour or so to complete his sight seeing tour of Quil Marsh and then, when I felt sure he must have gone, I left the civic building and made straight for the hill and Laura's secret place.

The journey was a struggle, and, in spite of my being no stranger to the area, I lost myself more than once among the trees. It felt as if the terrain was constantly moving, trying to remain elusive, but my poor sense of direction was, I suppose, a more likely explanation. Eventually I found the steep path that led to Laura's hide-away.

I scrambled rapidly up onto the rocky plateau, my heart racing at the thought that I might see her again. I clambered over the final few rocks and ran over the grassy verge until I could see the place where we had sat together on previous visits. She was not there.

The disappointment was immense and I dropped to my knees. I called out her name, quietly at first and then loudly, not thinking or caring about the consequences of my action. Still nothing.

Drained by panic and heartbreak, I got to my feet and walked slowly over to where we had gazed down onto Quil Marsh. I stood and took in the view, but it didn't look the same now. Before it had looked like a launch pad for a new life, but now it looked like a graveyard. Now it _was_ a graveyard.

The thought made me depressed, and I turned with a heavy heart to drag myself back down to the cold comfort of the post office. That was when I saw the envelope.

It was hard to believe I hadn't seen it before. It was a lilac envelope and was propped up against a stone at the spot where I'd sat next to Laura.

I looked around to make sure I was alone and then bent down and picked it up. The words _My Love_ were printed on the front in a black font and _5b_ was hand-written in the top corner. My heart didn't just skip a beat, it pole vaulted one. I slipped a finger under the seal to open it.

Inside was a greetings card with a picture of two swans with their necks entwined. With my hands trembling so much I was barely able to hold the card, I flipped it open and read the handwritten message inside.

I love you more than anyone I've ever met before, or will, I believe, ever meet. You mean more to me than life itself. All I want is to spend the rest of my life with you, and hope and pray that the fates will allow this to happen.

Yours, always, your secret love.

It's hard to describe the transformation these few words had on me. Where only moments earlier I had been cast into the pit of a black despair that I could see no escape from, now I was suddenly lifted by the thought that anything was possible. No, that anything was _probable_. The change was as much a kiss of life as any pressing of lips had ever been.

I felt inspired and ready to execute great plans. The problem was that I had none to speak of. With two failed books behind me I could pretty accurately be said to have lost the plot, if you'll forgive the pun. I hope that you do, because I will be asking you to forgive a lot more than that before we're through here.

Invigorated, but completely clueless as to how to make the future mine, I decided to get my clues from the past instead.

I made my way back to the civic hall in search of my previous incarnation.

# CHAPTER 48

What did I know about the late Chester Green? I knew that he appeared to have been named after a village square and that he had been a careless driver. All that and he had been Quil Marsh's town application administrator – me.

What did all this mean? Amongst other things, his mother should have consulted a baby names dictionary, he should have stuck to walking and he should have talked to a careers officer before putting his money on a no-legged horse called Quil Marsh. However, more importantly than this – much more importantly – he may have actually been effective in his job and discovered what made Quil Marsh tick. If he had inadvertently discovered something about the dark heart of this picture postcard – a way out, or a way to stop that heart beating – then I wanted to know about it.

I pushed the office door open with a foot, stepped in and slipped off my jacket. Even though I'd already looked through the shelves of papers and box files and not come across any mention of Chester Green, I still had a pretty good idea where I might find him.

I put the kettle on and then returned to the entrance where the filing cabinet sat next to the door. Up until I'd been made aware of Mr Green's existence, I'd not given the cabinet a second thought other than it was just somewhere to dump Mathew Sweeting's mail. Now, as I approached it, the initials CG on each of the two drawers told me that it was much more than this. At the very least I thought it would present me with enough short cuts so that I wouldn't have to worry about the town application work I should have been doing. And at best? At best, I thought that perhaps the beat up cabinet might be Quil Marsh's black box; the flight recorder for a town whose maiden voyage was going up in flames.

I pulled at the top drawer but it wouldn't open. I juggled the drawer around on its hinges in an attempt to free it, but eventually was forced to concede that it was locked. I retreated back to my office and found a flat-bladed butter knife that looked as if it would be a decent substitute for the missing key.

I took the knife to the four screws that were holding the facia of the drawer on and managed to pop them all out easily. Then I lifted the cover out of its sill and deposited it on the ground with the screws. I reached in and my hand fell on a solitary folder.

The file was smothered in dust. I wiped it off with the palm of my hand to reveal the word _HISTORY_ , which was hand-printed across the front. I unclipped the flap and spilled out the contents.

The History of Quil Marsh weighed in at a lightweight four pages, but it was still almost four pages more than I'd expected.

Quil Marsh had been born on a Spring day in sixteen seventy four when a man called John Millwood and his new bride arrived on behalf of the Church on a quest to start a new parish. Using labour from surrounding villages, Millwood had mined a stone quarry in Quil Marsh and used the stone to build himself and his new wife a home; Millwood House. For reasons Chester failed to discover, towards the end of that first summer John Millwood murdered his bride. Millwood himself was found dead by a church representative in January of the following year (which incidentally was also the time his dead wife was discovered). Apparently he had frozen to death sometime during the winter due to the poor insulation qualities of the roughly constructed stone house.

Times being what they were, the area gained a reputation for bad luck and the plans John Millwood had put in place for a settlement before his death were abandoned. However, the abandonment was only temporary (if you call fifty years temporary) and a new tenant arrived in the shape of a farmer who had spotted crop potential in the fertile soil. His success brought others and soon there was a civic hall (not the current one), a place of worship and a new settlement. The legacy of John Millwood was that none of the new buildings were built from Quil Marsh stone and Millwood House went unoccupied. Clearly, fifty years wasn't long enough for bad luck to die.

References to Quil Marsh were picked up in various stock counts taken by landlords of the time up until seventeen hundred when it seemed that the village had been cleared because of a fear of smallpox. By the time it was established that the smallpox had in fact been nothing more than a resident's allergic reaction, everyone had relocated. Quil Marsh became a dead town, only good for sightings of spooks and ghost by drunks and children.

A new community settled in Quil Marsh at the end of the nineteenth century, but faded again during the depression, and after that it had dissolved into an area of fallow land for more than sixty years until now. For Millwood House, which appeared to have remained vacant the whole time, that wait appeared to have been closer to three hundred years.

As I'd suspected, there wasn't much to tell, but I'd picked up enough from the official papers I'd read to know that some sort of documented past was an essential part of the town application. Finding Chester's saved me the trouble of having to invent one.

I returned the papers to their folder, put them to one side and replaced the facia. Then I turned my attention to the second drawer.

This was easier to dismantle as two of the original screws were already missing and I was becoming an expert with a butter knife. I removed the front and saw that things seemed to be looking up. This time there were two folders. I pulled them out and dusted them down. The first one was labelled, _Interview/CV_ and the second, _Meetings/Town Application Work_.

I opened the _Interview/CV_ folder first. Chester Green's CV ran to a modest two pages and his interview notes were a slightly more impressive four pages long. At first it struck me as a little peculiar that Chester should have his own interview notes, but I supposed that when you had access to all of Quil Marsh's paperwork, curiosity was bound to lead to some unusual filing procedures.

On glancing at his CV, the first thing I noticed about Chester Green was that he was an artist. Degree: Art; Interest: Art; Work: Artist's Assistant (five times over): Career Aspiration: Artist. I thought that even Detective Calhoun could have deduced Chester's artistic leanings. Closer inspection of the CV showed that Chester was only a would-be artist. It was his education, his interest, his aspiration and he had been an assistant, but nowhere was there a mention of a residency of his own. My initial reaction was that he was probably a young man who still had time on his side, but then I remembered Chester's fate and the fact that the only time he had available to him was on the _other side_.

And that was more or less it as far as his CV went. Frankly, I was surprised he'd managed to stretch it over two pages. I turned my attention to the interview notes.

A list of attendees showed that everyone I'd known since arriving in Quil Marsh was present and correct for Chester's appraisal. A set of questions was typed out on the page with a couple of paragraphs worth of space between each for the answers, which were duly scribbled down in a spidery hand that I didn't recognise. _What was he doing in Quil Marsh?_ Looking for somewhere to paint (his own phrase was 'geographical muse'). _Why Quil Marsh and not some other village?_ A fortunate co-incidence as he was just passing through. _Why did he think he was qualified for the administrators post?_ Years of administrative work in financial institutions (which hadn't seemed to have made it on to his CV). _Did he realise the work paid very little?_ It didn't matter as he was assisted in his artistic aspirations by fiscal support from his parents, who were art collectors, though, given their luxury address, I supposed the art they collected was not Chester's. _Had he any intention of leaving before the work was completed?_ The answer was _no_ and that was a promise. Unfortunately for Chester, the promise was not his alone to make. Fate and bad driving had made a liar of a seemingly otherwise pleasant young man.

I won't trouble you with the rest of the interview, but needless to say he got the job.

The notes didn't tell me anything of real interest, except that Chester had experienced as easy a ride as I had, interview wise. I put them back in the folder and opened the final file in search of an elusive spark of enlightenment.

On weight grounds alone, the Meetings/Application folder was more promising than any of the others. The three sheaves of paper-clipped notes easily eclipsed all his other work combined. However, it wasn't this which caused me to approach the papers with some trepidation. This, after all, was most likely the only remaining record of the final weeks of Chester's life. It was a testament to his last days and a permanent record of what had been denied to the world by his premature death.

The first sheaf of papers had a post-it stuck to the top sheet which said _Completed Work Forms_. I recognised the look of the forms, but not the way they had been completed. Instead of putting ticks in the boxes provided, Chester had blocked them in with coloured fibre tip pens and then joined them up across the page to make cartoon faces. Chester's novel method of form filling made for a poor town application and an even poorer epitaph. It's funny what you can find yourself doing the day before you die, when you don't realise that day is at hand.

The meeting notes appeared to be more of the same. A heading at the top was his only concession to traditional minute taking. The pages of each of the half a dozen meetings he'd attended were filled with doodles, personal reminders and silly rhymes. Chester's commitment to his work appeared to be as tenuous as his grip on maturity.

Greatly disappointed, both in Chester's failure to find anything of significance and in his upbringing, I sighed and turned to the final set of papers. They turned out to be a collection of portraits. The chances of Chester passing on any significant messages from the grave now appeared to be non-existent.

A quick skim through the papers showed that they seemed to be portraits of Quil Marsh's residents. I say seemed, because the quality of Chester's artwork made it a poor mirror.

Despite the lack of perspective and an apparent inability to prevent the colours from running, I could tell that the first picture was of Laura and Sam, principally due to her red hair and his daffy duck tie. The next couple I assumed were Jerry and Katie (the big grins), then Lyle (baseball cap), then Jacob (the glasses), then Bernadette (holding a book) and finally Doctor Jennings (beard). But not finally. There was another page.

I flipped over the last portrait and looked at it. The painting was of a man and a woman and they were completely unrecognisable, even allowing for Chester's sparse talent. She had short black hair styled in a bob like a sixties model, and he was an older man, greying at the temples and with heavy crows feet at each eye. Each of the paintings had been dated as well as signed, and this one had been completed several weeks after the others.

I was startled to find the additional residents. I did a quick headcount of the existing paintings, but I still came out two ahead. I checked the backs of each, but there were no names to provide a clue.

The possibility that Quil Marsh had two other residents that no one had told me about made me curious. The possibility that they had shared a similar fate to other ex-residents made me anxious and afraid. I determined that the only way to ease either of these reactions was to find out who they really were.

As I always did when making my way back from the civic hall, or anywhere else in the village for that matter, I made a detour up one of the hills with a good view of Quil Marsh. I never saw anything, but this didn't deter me. I thought that I might one day, and on this day I did; I saw Bernadette. She seemed to be in a hurry, and her arms swung furiously by her side. It was this exaggerated motion that caused me to notice that she had something in her hand. It looked like a book, but from where I was sitting it was difficult to be sure. She moved momentarily out of view behind a hedge. When she reappeared she was still walking fast – if anything faster – but the book or whatever it had been was no longer in her hand.

Suddenly she looked over in my direction and I dropped down, not wanting to be caught spying. When I regained the courage to get to my feet she was gone.

# CHAPTER 49

"You're talking nonsense."

"Perhaps it was a couple who were here before you?"

"You're still talking nonsense."

"Do you mind explaining to me why you think it's nonsense?"

Eliza scowled. She paused at the sink where she had been engaged in washing the dishes so vigorously it looked like she was drowning kittens. "I was the first one here, so I've seen everyone who's passed through Quil Marsh. There have only been two couples in Quil Marsh: Laura and Sam, and Jerry and Katie. Love doesn't come easy in a place like this. If you want to know the truth, I don't think there's been much love between those four either. There have been no other couples. Maybe they were ghosts," she added, sarcastically.

"But there _was_ a Chester Green?"

"Certainly there was a Chester Green, but he didn't really live here. He was just passing through. A bit like you I suppose. I don't recall much about him, though I do recall that he did an awful lot of note taking during meetings." Eliza made a scribbling motion with her hand and nodded approvingly. "Bad driver though. Apparently he wrapped his car around one of the trees on the out road. Don't you try anything like that; this place is small enough as it is without pulling down the trees too."

"Quite. Do you know why he appeared to be leaving Quil Marsh in such a hurry?" I asked.

"What? Do I look like his mother? He probably heard you were coming."

"And you're sure no other couple has stayed in Quil Marsh?"

"About as sure as I am that we made a big mistake in giving you the job," Eliza replied, banging a saucepan down to emphasise her point. The saucepan lid fell off and rattled on the counter. She fixed me with a _that was your fault_ look. "I see that Mr Sweeting was here yesterday. About the application I presume. What did he say?"

"Everything's going fine, just fine."

"Well, don't you go mentioning anything about your ghosts to him. It's town status we want here, not ghost town status."

"I'll try to keep it to myself."

"Fine," she snapped. "Now if you're finished asking me about your imaginary friends I've got things to do."

"There was something else," I said. "Have you seen Laura recently?"

"Do I look like Laura's mother too?"

I had to concede she had a point this time. If there was one person's mother she did not look like, it was Laura's.

I left Eliza in the kitchen, and, as it was getting late, retired to bed. As I undressed I remembered that I still had the painting of the unidentified couple in my jacket pocket. I took it out for another look to see if it could inspire an explanation, but it didn't. However, it did inspire my dreams, and that night the couple came to me in my sleep and offered to show me a way out of Quil Marsh. The pathway they showed me eventually led into an open grave, which they gleefully pulled me down into.

When I awoke, it was still dark and I was covered in a blanket of sweat, giving my dream an uncomfortable physical edge. The silence was punctuated by the slow tap of a branch from the oak tree against the window, sounding like a clock about to stop.

My first inclination was to get out of bed and destroy the picture in the hope that I wouldn't continue to dwell on it if it was gone, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. While I was prepared to believe that Chester Green had an infantile sense of humour and ideas above his station as far as his chosen career went, I did not believe that he was seeing things. This left me with the nagging feeling that Chester Green knew more about Quil Marsh than Quil Marsh would have liked him to know. No amount of shredding was going to remove that particular splinter.

I left the painting untouched and slipped back into sleep. In the brief space occupied by the remains of the night, I was visited by a second dream. I imagined that Laura and I were dead and that the only thing that remained of us was a painting which no one could identify. When I woke again it was with a silent scream burning my lips.

# CHAPTER 50

I spent the next few days up on the secret hill, hoping to run into Laura. From early in the morning until late in the evening I sat and waited, but she did not come. I looked among the trees and bushes around me, I looked down into the village and I even scanned the horizon but I did not see her. And so, staring out into the distance, I found myself looking for Quil Marsh instead.

I knew I was somewhere north of Widdecombe, but where north and how far, I couldn't say. So much of my journey on that first night had been spent lost, driving in circles, that the duration of the trip was no real measure of the distance I'd travelled. But now, with a vague knowledge of the surrounding moor I had gathered from the service station map, I thought I was ideally placed from my lofty vantage point to pick out the landmarks that would allow me to give Quil Marsh the recognition that the government would not.

However, what I had considered a simple exercise in orientation proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated. It wasn't that there weren't landmarks to be spotted; the moor was awash with them - any map I'd ever consulted was swamped in crosses and triangles signifying places of significance or historical interest – it was the fact that Quil Marsh's proximity to them, sat as it was in a permanently gloomy valley, meant that they were shrouded in a murky fog, and as difficult to differentiate as stars in the night sky. What looked like a tor one day, looked more like a funnel of cloud the next, distant farm houses and stone beacons appeared interchangeable as the sun rose and fell, and an apparent river seemingly morphed into a field of damp bluebells in the space of forty eight hours and then back to a river over the next forty eight. One day I thought I was near Mortonhampstead, the next Chagford, and the day after somewhere between Manaton and Becky Falls. By the fourth day it felt as if Quil Marsh had been cut loose and was drifting too and fro across the moor in the night. The thought made me feel sick and so I decided to concentrate my attention on the tiny community below. But, if I expected to find comfort down there, I was mistaken.

Looking down on Quil Marsh I was struck by the fact that it actually appeared to getting smaller. Initially I thought it reminded me of a flower pulling in its petals around the bud, but, on that fourth day, as the afternoon cloud cover rolled in the evening, I thought it looked increasingly like a spider folding up its web around a stricken victim.

And, just as Quil Marsh contracted, so did Laura's pool of would-be rescuers. I had already wasted two wishes from my bargain bin genie, and now there were only three more possible saviours. But how to know which of the strangers below it would be?

After hours of idle contemplation I thought I had discovered my problem: I had been trying to match the plots of novels to people I didn't actually know. Jacob Jones turned out not to be Todd Meekins, and Jerry Lee was anyone but Chase Lane. I had been foolish to suppose I knew Jacob and Jerry so well, and I had been doubly foolish to take so long to recognise this. The inescapable conclusion of this line of thinking was that I needed a resident to select a novel themselves.

As inescapable as this conclusion was, it was also, for all intents and purposes, equally impossible. For three days I did nothing but try to think of a way around it. Three days and still nothing.

Something else of note was also occurring at the same time. I became aware that I was being followed. I'd had a vague feeling of being watched soon after my arrival in Quil Marsh, but had written the feeling off as the paranoia of unfamiliarity. Now, with the sounds of an unwelcome shadow closer than ever, I was certain that I was not alone.

I tried taking different routes up to the hill and casting sudden glances over my shoulder, but either I was too slow or my follower was too quick, because I saw nothing. Then, late on the third evening, I lay down in a patch of long grass and waited to see if my suspicion would reveal itself. I had to wait barely five minutes before a silhouette picked its way carefully towards me by the light of the moon.

In the haunting blue light of the night, the figure projected a spectral quality. It could have been because I was afraid, but more likely it was because this was Quil Marsh, that I actually thought for a brief moment that it was a ghost; perhaps one of the figures from Chester's painting come to fulfil the nightmare I'd had. But then my stalker tripped in a most un-ghost-like fashion and fell facedown into the leaves.

I seized what little courage I had left and rose to my feet to confront the fallen prowler.

"Who are you?" I called out.

"Me? I'm your number one fan."

# CHAPTER 51

"Lyle, is that you?"

"I think so," he replied, dusting his hands over his clothes in an apparent double check.

"What are you doing out here?"

"I'm following you," he said.

"Have you been following me long?"

"Since you got here."

"Do you mind if I ask why you're following me?"

"No."

Pause.

"Lyle, why are you following me?"

"I love your writing and I want your name."

"You want my autograph?" I said.

"That's right."

"Why didn't you just ask me at one of the meetings instead of scaring the living daylights out of me?"

"I didn't want to look foolish," he replied.

I looked at Lyle as the starlight twinkled off his leaf-covered, muddy body and tried to imagine him looking more foolish, but could not.

"Very well," I said. "Let me have the book and a pen, and I'll do it for you now."

"Can't," he replied. "The book is back at my house."

"If you wanted my autograph, why is the book back at the house?"

"Because," he said, pausing as if pointing out the obvious, "I need you to come back to help me take the bolts off the lawnmower as well. You don't mind, do you?"

"I suppose not."

"Good. I want you to know I would be more than happy to help you with your next book in return."

"Thank-you," I replied. "I'm sure my publishers will be pleased to hear that."

"I'm not doing this for any of their other writers, mind," Lyle warned.

"I understand."

"Good, let's go."

I stood and watched Lyle as he disappeared off into the gloom. Given my recent lack of progress, I thought my publishers would indeed be glad to hear I was getting help, even if it was from someone smothered in mud. And then I made my way in Lyle's direction, happier to think that this time I was the one doing the following.

# CHAPTER 52

"And it turns out that the pigeons are not really from this planet at all."

I pondered the twist for a moment as the oil from Lyle's lawnmower leaked over my shoes.

"Where do you get your plots from?" I asked.

"They just come to me out of thin air," he replied.

Prior to this I'd had no idea that thin air was so preposterous.

"Do all these pigeons come from Mars or something?"

"Don't be daft, they don't have pigeons on Mars," Lyle replied, shaking his head. "They come from Pigeonopolis. I made that up, it doesn't really exist. It's a sort of heaven for pigeons."

"And I can use that for myself?"

"I'll think about it. Let's see what sort of job you do with the lawnmower first."

I turned my attention back to the lawnmower engine and screwed on the last nut. It didn't look the way it had before we dismantled it. It looked different, but not in a fixed way, more in a mutilated way. I tried to put the cover back on but it no longer fitted.

"That happens to me all the time," Lyle said. "You fix something and then somehow the cover shrinks. That's nothing. The last time I tried something like this I fried the ends of my fingers off. Apparently you shouldn't try to fix something while it's switched on."

He held up his hands to show me his scarred finger tips.

"Hey, at least you haven't got any left over parts," he added jauntily. "Let's try it out."

I stood back and Lyle gave a big jerk on a rip-cord hanging by the handle. The sound of silence was punctuated only by the rap of the dangling cord tapping against the frame.

"It doesn't matter," Lyle said. "At least it looks better than it did. I'll put the kettle on to celebrate."

I watched as Lyle brought the kettle to the boil, poured the water onto a teabag and then retrieved the teabag with his fingers.

"So, you've read all my books," I said. "I didn't think anyone had done that except me and my editor."

"Well, I wouldn't say I've read them all."

"Some then."

"No, I wouldn't say some either."

"What would you say?"

"I'd say one book," he replied. "Actually, not one complete book – I'm about half way through it."

"But you're my number one fan?"

"Well, do you have any others?"

I had to admit that to the best of my knowledge, I did not.

"So, which book is it?"

By this point in the conversation, I was not even convinced that it would turn out to be one of mine.

"The Art of Death," he replied, reaching onto a shelf and pulling out a tatty copy of the novel and handing it to me. "It's amazing stuff. It's the best book I've ever read. In fact, it's the only book I've ever read...well, almost read."

"Do you mind if I ask why you're so taken with it?" I asked.

"It's the story of my life," he said. "I've seen so much of my past in this book, I've actually taken to following the story in my own life because I know that Toby Montigue and I are one and the same person."

He opened the book in my hands and pointed out passages he had underlined several times.

"It's all in there," he enthused. "If you want to find Lyle Mace, you've only got to look in this book."

Personally, if I had wanted to find Lyle I might have rolled in the mud and hid in the woods, but I certainly wouldn't have looked in the book I was holding.

The Art of Death was published in nineteen ninety-seven, though you probably won't hear it mentioned on any nineties nostalgia programme. It was my only novel to be translated into another language – Icelandic. It was an attempt by my publishers to test my appeal across the water. Apparently Icelandic is the cheapest language to be translated into. I still haven't conquered Iceland yet.

The book itself is the story of the aforementioned Toby Montigue, a man who escapes to the countryside to pursue his passion. So far, so Lyle. However, at this point the connection does not so much become tenuous as completely non-existent. Toby Monitgue is the son of Earl Montigue and heir to the Montegue millions. Toby is a playboy and man about town. Toby's passion (aside from beauty queens) is painting. His work is feted across Europe and famous art galleries fight for the right to display his canvases, and at auctions they fetch millions in any currency you care to mention. A more un-Lyle person it was hard to imagine. There was no place I knew where they could be considered to be living the same life, except for inside Lyle's head and maybe on Pigeonopilis.

Still, Lyle thought that they were one and the same and that was all that mattered to him. _And me_. You see, as bizarre as Lyle's take on Toby was, I couldn't help but remember that Toby had a quality about him which interested me greatly. Toby had been wronged and then he had taken his revenge. If I remember correctly, it was a most terrible revenge. A scoundrel by the name of Max Courtney-Blaine (a third cousin twice removed) had seen his own art career eclipsed by Toby's glittering success. Out of jealousy, spite and whatever other reasons people have for doing such things, Max defaced Toby's entire body of work, thus rendering it worthless. By way of revenge, Toby then proceeded to deface Max to such an extent that he was also rendered worthless.

I suppose you could say it was another revenge story and, if you had to categorise it further, it would probably be described as a like-for-like revenge. But, ultimately it was the fictional Toby's revenge and I had not previously thought of it as anything else. Now it occurred to me that it might also be Lyle's revenge.

If it was indeed Lyle's story, then it explained where I had gone wrong with Jerry and Jacob. I had made the mistake of thinking that they saw themselves as they appeared to others and had made no allowance for the ultimate motivating force – self-perception. It didn't matter if someone appeared to be an avenger if they saw themselves as a suicide or terminal griever. Lyle, on the other hand, was openly declaring his life to be a murder-mystery just waiting for the plot to unfold. My throat went dry and I swallowed hard. Who could have guessed that Lyle would be the one to save the village?

It is fair to say that Lyle didn't look like any superhero you've ever seen in comic books or films, but at that moment he looked to me like Batman, Superman and the Lone Ranger all rolled into one big, mechanically inept, saviour. And I, with the secret of the deaths of his pigeons that Sam Fisher had confided to me, had the phone box in which he could make his transformation.

However, I was concerned that Lyle should not suffer. It had always been my intention that the person to rid Quil Marsh of Sam Fisher would do so secretly and blamelessly, deservedly avoiding punishment for the favour they had carried out for the world. As it was in the books, so it would be in Quil Marsh, except for the fact that Jerry and Jacob appeared not to have read the script. But Lyle had, even if he'd only read half of it.

The script said that Toby escaped detection by (and look away now if you were thinking of ridding yourself of some loose change and purchasing the novel) using his great art skills to paint himself a new set of fingerprints, simultaneously securing his revenge, throwing the police off his trail and demonstrating his unparalleled painting skills. That's a lot to do simultaneously, but Toby was a special kind of guy. I thought that Lyle was special too, but in a completely different way. I didn't think that Lyle would be able to paint his handprints, let alone his fingerprints. His _burnt_ finger prints.

That was it. Lyle didn't have to worry about painting himself a new identity when he'd burnt the old one off on a lawnmower cover. He could handle anything he liked and still not be connected to the would-be crime. He could even walk there and back on his hands and no one would be any the wiser. This revelation put a mask and a cape on Lyle, and so I resolved to see if he could really save the world.

"So, how are the pigeons?" I asked.

"My babies? All sweethearts and as good as gold," Lyle replied, his eyes misting over with pride.

"I'm sure of it. And are they well? I mean, are they _safe and well?_ "

"Now that you mention it," he replied, "in spite of their good behaviour, they're still dying. Not falling asleep dying mind, but getting ripped to pieces dying. Those damn foxes. I'd kill them if I could get my hands on them."

"When was the last time this happened?" I asked.

"Only a couple of days ago."

"That would be the same time I saw the Fisher dog being walked near your place."

"That dog gets walked by my place?"

"Yes," I said. "I've seen it there a number of times. You know, I'm surprised that a big dog like that doesn't frighten the foxes away."

"You know, I'm surprised too," Lyle replied, scratching his chin. Then realisation exploded over his face like an uncorked champagne bottle. "They must be very big foxes!"

I tried again. "How often does this actually happen?"

"The last two Sundays. Big foxes keep regular time."

"Lyle, that's the same day that Sam Fisher takes his dog for its walk."

Lyle screwed up his face as if it were a ball of paper he was about throw away. "Do you suppose the Fisher dog and the foxes are in this together?"

"Actually," I replied. "I don't think there are any foxes in Quil Marsh."

"No foxes? But how do my babies end up..."

I watched as the thought flew across his face, then circled around for a closer look before finally coming into land. His eyes filled up with tears and then his lips began to quiver, sending the tears rolling down his cheeks.

"The dog running into my pigeons could be an accident of some kind," Lyle said in the shaky voice of a child learning to talk for the first time.

"I suppose it could be," I replied. "That is, it could be if it's a complete secret that you have pigeons, because, perhaps, your pigeons are invisible. Are your pigeons invisible Lyle?"

"No, they are not. I don't hold with any of that kind of thing when it comes to pigeons."

"So, if it's not an accident and your pigeons aren't invisible, then..."

"Then I have to decide what Toby Monitgue would do. Mr Travers, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I have urgent matters to see to."

I got to my feet and walked to the door. Lyle called me back as I was about to step outside.

"Mr Travers, I've decided you can have the story about Pigeonopolis."

"I don't know what to say," I replied.

"I usually find _thank-you_ is good enough for most occasions."

"Thank-you it is then, and goodnight."

Lyle planted his hands on his hips. "Yes, do have a good night Mr Travers. Not everyone else in Quil Marsh will though."

And on that angelically sounding vengeful note, I turned and left Lyle and his truth and his broken lawnmower to whatever the night had in store for them.

# CHAPTER 53

I woke the next morning in a panic. It occurred to me that Toby Montigue had in fact considered _two_ courses of action. Before deciding to take his revenge, Toby had briefly contemplated taking his remaining wealth and trying to gamble his sorrows away in the casinos of Monaco. An image flashed through my mind of Lyle standing alongside the rich and the beautiful in an exclusive waterfront casino, betting lawnmower parts on throws of the dice. It was, of course, a ridiculous image, but I couldn't be sure how much more ridiculous it was than expecting the founder of Pigeonopolis to solve all of life's problems. I showered the thought away, and made my way down to the civic hall and the equally ridiculous idea of achieving town status for Quil Marsh.

By this time I considered myself something of an expert on emergency service sirens. To the casual observer such sirens are a singular ear-bursting whine, guaranteed to slow your journey and speed up your migraine. However, to those involved in the death business, the sirens are as varied as birdsong, and, in the right circumstances, as pleasant to listen to.

So it was that when I heard the clutch of electronic squeals bearing down on Quil Marsh, I was able to deduce the extent and make-up of the approaching emergency services without going to a window to look: one ambulance, three squad cars, an unmarked vehicle and...something else.

I'd spent the morning waiting in hope of their arrival (all apart from the _something else_ ) and had gone as far as putting in some preparation for this moment. The first thing I did upon hearing the sirens was to bang the desk with my hand, and the second was to race outside to where I had strategically placed a table on an incline to give me a partial view of Millwood House.

I clambered up onto the table from where I could see the upstairs windows of the building and, I thought, the top of any large vehicles which pulled up outside. This assumption proved to be right when I saw a blue flashing light come to a halt in front of the house. It was the ambulance. But it was more than this to me. It was also the third paragraph of the final page of The Art of Murder where the rescue services arrive to discover the terrible fate which has befallen Max Courtney-Blaine. It was the moment when justice was revealed. The moment just before the happy ending when bad was removed and good was left to prosper. The moment when, for a split second, all the loose ends of the world were tied up and everything was perfect in the universe.

Standing on the table, looking at a flashing blue light I experienced the same feeling of perfection. The thought that Laura was finally free and that I was free too produced a rush of adrenalin that made me giddy and I almost lost my balance on my perch. I looked up and bright sunshine fell out of a clear blue sky and flooded over me. It felt as if my ordeal in Quil Marsh was at last washed away. More than this it felt as if Quil Marsh didn't exist anymore; as if its black heart had stopped beating. I closed my eyes and savoured the feeling.

I cannot say exactly how long I stood like that, but, being, I suppose, what might be described as _lost in the moment_ , it was probably longer than I realised at the time. I opened my eyes again when I felt a chill in the air. A dark cloud had passed in front of the sun. When I looked back at Millwood House the flashing blue light had gone.

I jumped down from the table. It was time to check Quil Marsh's pulse to make sure it was really dead.

# CHAPTER 54

I arrived at the house affecting what I hoped was the easy walk of a man out for a casual stroll. However, I suspect it was a little too fast and stiff to be anything other than the gait of a man out looking for death.

I paused when I reached Millwood House, unsure whether to extend my walk further up the road to give some credibility to the disguise of the casual stroll I was working under. I decided against it because I thought I might not have the courage to pause at the gates for a second time.

If this was to have been the perfect moment I had dreamed of, then Laura would have burst from the front door and run down the gravel drive, her arms stretched out wide to greet me. The front door, however, remained resolutely shut.

I looked over the house. The windows were open with the curtains partially drawn, leaving just a strip of blackness peering out from within. They looked like snake eyes, and it felt as if they were crawling all over me. I took a step backwards.

And then something did appear from the house - from the side of the house to be precise. It was Detective Calhoun. I took another step backwards.

"Ah, Mr Travers!" he said, throwing me a big wave. "Do come in."

I pushed the gates back and walked up the drive, keeping one eye on Detective Calhoun and one on the house.

"I was just passing," I said without any prompting for an explanation. "I was out for a walk. I hadn't intended to stop by."

"I'm glad that you did," the detective replied. "It's always nice to speak with a fellow writer."

I didn't respond. Instead I waited. I waited for him to say why he was there. I waited for him to say that Sam Fisher was no more and that he had gone to hell where he belonged. I waited for him to say that they did not know who had sent him to hell and that they probably never would. I waited for him to say that it was now alright for me to marry Laura and for all the world to live happily ever after. And I waited.

"It just so happens I've got something to tell you about my writing," he said eventually.

"But why are you here?" I blurted out. "Why are you _here_?"

"Oh sorry, didn't I say? I'm afraid someone has taken a turn for the worse."

"Who?"

Detective Calhoun inflated his cheeks, then deflated them one at a time. "A fellow by the name of Lyle Mace."

"A turn for the worse?"

"He's dead."

"Oh."

"And he's not the only one who's taken a turn for the worse."

"Really?" I said, far too enthusiastically. "When you say a turn for the worse do you mean..."

"I mean, a turn for the worse," he replied.

"But who?"

"Let me show you," he said, rolling his eyes to little meaningful effect other than demonstrating that he could roll them.

I followed Detective Calhoun up the final stretch of the drive for what I hoped would be a rendezvous with the dying Sam Fisher. But instead of walking through the front door, he took a right across the house until we came to the perimeter wall.

"There," he said, pointing an outstretched hand. "Or should I say, there _was_ the seriously injured party."

I looked to see where he was pointing. It was at the wire coup where Raul lived.

"The dog? The dog is the one who's seriously injured?"

"Very seriously," Detective Calhoun replied. "It had a bit of a set-to with Lyle. Frankly, I don't hold out much hope."

"I don't understand," I said, wiping the shocked look from my face with a shirtsleeve. "How could the dog attack Lyle if it was locked up in this cage?"

"Quite simple," he replied. "Lyle came into the pen looking for the dog. Permit me to demonstrate."

He walked over to the enclosure gate, took a mime pair of wire cutters from his pocket and mime cut the lock. I'm assuming they were wire cutters, but with mime you can never be a hundred percent certain and they could have been pliers or even hedge clippers. He then pulled the gate back, stepped inside and stretched out his arms to salute his successful re-enactment.

"Once inside," he continued, "Lyle then approached the dog, who was probably sleeping at the time and appeared harmless. Normally Raul would have been secured with a leash, even in the cage, but tonight it wasn't on. Then, I would guess - and it's only a guess mind - that he barely had time to put his arms all the way around the dog's body before its jaws were around his neck."

"But how do you explain that?" I asked.

"It's an attack dog," he replied. "It's bred to attack."

"No, not that. Why would Lyle be attempting to put his arms around the dog?"

"Simple again," he replied, pushing out his bottom lip as if he were holding the answer in his mouth and there was barely room for it. " _Love_. You may not have noticed what makes Lyle Mace tick Mr Travers, but rest assured I have. I think it would be something of an understatement to say that Lyle Mace is an animal lover... _was_ an animal lover. His affection for animals, particularly birds, goes way beyond anything you and I would consider to be normal."

"Normal?"

"Cat flaps, kitty litter trays and rubber bones. That sort of thing."

"Ah."

"Listen," he continued, "here's some police psychology for you. Lyle Mace has a problem relating to people. Lyle is the only person Lyle understands and that makes him a very lonely man. But one day Lyle finds that there are others like him – simple, obedient, dependent, unsophisticated: _animals_. In short, Lyle gets on best with himself, and in animals he has found numerous examples of himself. He loves animals the way I would love my wife or my children. In Lyle's case, this means he loves them the way he loves himself. Why? Because they _are_ him."

A look of wide-eyed surprise planted itself on Detective Calhoun's face as if his mouth had not previously informed his brain of what was coming.

"And that explains why he was in a cage, hugging a hundred pound dog?" I said.

"Of course," he replied. "He was hugging himself."

"So that means that when the dog attacked him..."

"That's right. In a very real sense he was biting his own face off."

There was a moment's silence as I tried to get my head round the picture that Detective Calhoun had just painted for me. "I see," I said eventually. "Where are the occupants?"

"Sam Fisher left earlier on business. Mrs Fisher took her car and followed the emergency services. Out of respect you understand. I doubt very much if Lyle Mace has any relatives."

Detective Calhoun couldn't possibly know how envious I felt at the thought of Lyle's dead body being cared for by Laura, even if Lyle had had to bite his own face off to achieve it.

"That's that then, I suppose."

"You suppose wrongly Mr Travers."

"Yes?" I replied, nervousness raising my voice half an octave.

"I need to talk to you about my novel," he said.

"Oh."

"I'm really struggling with it at the moment."

"Good. I mean, _good that you told me_. Perhaps I can help."

"I think my problem," he said, "is that I don't have a villain." He ran his fingers through his substantial moustache as if to check that there that there wasn't one hiding amongst the unruly whiskers. In truth I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd found something unpleasant in there. "You can't proceed with a murder unless you have a villain. Any advice?"

Detective Calhoun was, perhaps not for the first time, missing the point. The role of murderer is one that can be taken on by anyone given the right circumstances. Still, I wasn't inclined to tell him this. My life was bad enough as it was without having to queue up behind him on book sales lists. However, at that moment a flash of inspiration struck me.

"As it happens I do have a villain for you," I said.

"Yes?"

"Yes. I've been thinking about him for quite a while, but I can't find a story to put him in. It would be a terrible shame to see him go to waste. Interested?"

"Absolutely."

"He's a nasty piece of work."

"All the better," Detective Calhoun responded, rubbing his hands in anticipation.

And then I began my description. A seemingly respectable man. A pillar of the community. A professional. An apparently ideal domestic home life. A man whom no one suspected of being anything other than a model citizen. However, scratch the surface and you find something else lurking beneath...something darker. A man with malice in his heart and poison in his veins. A man who had access to the private lives of the people where he lived and who sought out their problems and fed off them like a vampire. His twist is that he even feels the need to poison his own life. He beats his lover. She's afraid, so no one knows or even suspects, but it happens. In fact it happens so badly that death is almost certainly waiting for her somewhere down the line – nearby down the line.

When I'd finished my description, I thought I'd presented him with a picture of Sam Fisher that was so vivid that the seed of his true character would be planted in Detective Calhoun's brain. I didn't consider the detective's brain to be fertile land but I still reckoned there was a good chance that suspicion might grow from it.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I don't think I'll be using that character."

"What? Why not?"

"He's not believable, that's why not," he replied with a shake of his head and an indulgent smile. "I've come across plenty of bad men in my time and sometimes they do present a veneer of respectability, but they can't maintain it for long. And more than this, they always look after their own interests. That sort of man is more likely to kill someone else's love than his own."

"Not believable?" I said, repeating his words with barely disguised incredulity.

"No. Perhaps that's why you've had trouble finding a story to fit him into. Would you look at that."

"Look at what?"

"I'm giving you writing advice," he replied. "No need for thanks though; I'm glad this is a two-way process. If we can learn from each other then who knows what we can achieve."

"I don't know what to say," I replied, truthfully.

"Less said the better, eh?"

"I agree."

"Well," he concluded, "I can't stand around here all day giving writing lessons, I've got crimes to solve."

"Where are you parked? I didn't see your car at the front," I said.

"It's hidden away behind some trees a bit further up the road," he replied. "I like to keep it hidden during an investigation because you can never tell when a killer might decide to return to the scene of a crime. But not this time eh?"

"Unlikely, I would have thought."

"No, this time the killer is on his way to the animal sanctuary."

"So, that's what the other vehicle was."

"Pardon?"

"Nothing," I replied. "Just talking to myself."

"Very good," he said. "Don't let me keep you. I wouldn't have thought we'll meet again – law of averages and all that – except that Quil Marsh doesn't seem to have much time for laws of any kind, so perhaps we will."

"You never can tell," I replied.

"My philosophy exactly," he said, tipping me a wink.

And then he marched past me, back down the drive to wherever he'd hidden his car. I hoped his memory was good because I didn't think he could rely on his powers of detection to locate it.

I felt suddenly lonely with nothing to keep me company but the memory of Lyle Mace. Poor Lyle. What Detective Calhoun hadn't realised and what I hadn't foreseen was that it was not Lyle's love, but his hatred of Raul which had led to him making the unwise move of paying the dog a visit. Having painted a picture for him of Sam Fisher setting the dog amongst his pigeons, I was wrong to assume that Lyle would hold Sam responsible for this. No, instead he held Raul responsible, as if the dog had forced his owner to take him to the bird coups. What Detective Calhoun couldn't have known (probably even if he had been directly told it) was that what Lyle saw in Raul, was not himself, but Max Courtney-Blaine. To this very day I'm still not sure exactly what it was about the big slavering dog that reminded him of the aristocratic villain, but I've no doubt that was how he saw things.

If there's any justice at all in this world, and in other worlds too for that matter, then Pigeonopolis really does exist and Lyle has taken up his rightful place as its king.

# CHAPTER 55

Here comes the hard part. Not that what has gone before hasn't been difficult. To be blunt, it has been incredibly, painfully, soul crushingly difficult. To detail the deaths of the people I'd come to know in Quil Marsh has caused me more anguish than you could know and more anguish than I had foreseen. Looking back now I can see that when each of them died, a little part of me died too. But this is hard. Much harder. You see, the following day I saw Laura for the last time.

It's taken me an age to write that last sentence. Every word felt like a nail drilled into the coffin of my hopes and dreams. Even now I can only assume that I've written it, because I cannot see the writing for the tears in my eyes. Perhaps we can pause for a moment? Maybe I could just take a few seconds to remember the good times before I continue? It will make things easier, and, at the end of the day, all I ever wanted to do was make things easier.

The good times weren't just good, they were the best of times. The first time I saw her face was the first time I really knew what it meant to be alive. The first time I heard her laugh was like actually being able to hear the sun. The first time I talked to her it was as if we knew what each of us would say before it was said. It felt like we were speaking from the heart and communicating without words. And the first time I held her was...indescribable. Sometimes I wake in a cold sweat in the middle of the night and think that I might have imagined the whole thing, but I know this cannot be so. My imagination could never have dreamt up something as perfect as Laura.

Because of what followed all of these memories are frozen in time. Neither new memories can be added nor the old ones forgotten. My heart has been sealed in a bottle and thrown out into the cruel sea of life. The chances of it ever returning to me seem to be impossibly remote, but that doesn't stop me waiting. Waiting and hoping for the impossible to come true. But while I wait I'll continue to talk, and while I talk I'll make that which lived before live again. That, I suppose, is the way love works.

There, the remembering is done and the tears are gone now. Gone from my face, if not my heart. I can see again but I'm not going to look back to the top of the page to check if that sentence really has been written. Some things are better left in the shadow of doubt.

Now I can walk you back up that hill one last time – back into the deepest, darkest and most precious part of my heart.

# CHAPTER 56

The following day I washed, shaved and returned to the hill. Having failed to see Laura there on numerous recent visits I had no real expectation that I would find her, but I went nevertheless. The chances of seeing her there must have been, oh I don't know, a hundred to one. I wouldn't normally gamble a penny on odds that long, but I was happy to risk losing a day of my life if there was any chance at all of seeing Laura. Now I would be happy to gamble my life on those long odds if there was a chance of seeing Laura today. If only.

Some days things just fall into place. On a day like this somewhere in the world a UFO spotter saw a cigar shaped object in the sky, a tourist finally saw an undulating shape in Loch Ness and I saw Laura.

She was sitting in her usual spot with her back to me looking down onto Quil Marsh. She hadn't noticed my approach and I stood looking at her for a moment, afraid that if I broke the silence she would vanish into the ether, proving to be no more than an illusion. After a couple of minutes I inadvertently shifted my feet and disturbed some fallen leaves. She looked around. She proved not to be an illusion, but rather the most beautiful woman in the world.

"Will! I hoped I might find you here. Come and sit down next to me."

I walked quickly to the space by her side.

"Have you been looking for me?" I said. "I've been looking for you."

"Yes...yes, I have."

"What is it," I said, settling down beside her. "Why have you been looking for me?"

"You first. Why have you been looking for me?"

"Because I wanted to find you. Because I have to be with you. Because I can't live without you. Because I love you."

She looked at me, but didn't reply. Seconds later she brought a hand up to her cheek to brush away a tear. A second tear ran down her face unchecked. So spellbound was I to see her that without the tear I might have remained completely oblivious to her unusual appearance.

The tears hadn't emerged from her eyes, but from beneath a pair of dark glasses. Furthermore, the first tear hadn't been wiped away by her porcelain skin, but by the suede of a glove and the second tear hadn't fallen onto her neck, but onto a brief silk scarf tied smartly beneath her chin.

"The glasses, the scarf and the gloves...are to hide..."

"Yes," she replied. "It's his latest work I'm afraid. His hand in my face, his hand around my neck and my hand in the door frame. I don't think he's aware that you're supposed to hit where the bruises don't show. I suppose there's not much point in that in a place like Quil Marsh when there's no one to see or care."

"I care."

"I know you do," she said. "That's probably why I'm still here otherwise I might have given up before yesterday."

"Yesterday? I don't understand?"

Alarmed by the dark tone of her words I turned to face her and took her hand. She winced and pulled it away.

"Oh Will, I tried to find you, I really did. I've been up here countless times, pacing back and forth, frantic at the thought that you might have forgotten about me or even have left Quil Marsh altogether."

"But I wouldn't ever for..."

She put a finger to her lips to hush me up. "I know Will, I was just beside myself with worry. I've been to some dark places, and recently they seem to have been getting darker and darker. I'm tired; I can't fight anymore. I have to get out. I decided yesterday that I would leave all this behind once and for all."

"Good, I can be packed in no time. I just have to collect my word processor and..."

"No, I don't mean leaving like that, I mean leaving like this."

She reached into a shoulder bag by her side and pulled something out. Hidden by her hands, it wasn't immediately obvious what it was. Instead it became apparent in glimpses and slivers as she fed it through her suede fingers: flashes of chrome, a tiny steel hammer, a black leather grip...it was a gun - a very big gun.

She held it out in front of her awkwardly, and it moved in large uncertain circles as she tried to demonstrate her intention to use it. It was torture to see. The gun shook so much that I was afraid she would drop it, and it would go off accidentally and hurt one of us.

"You can't be serious?" I said.

"I am," she replied. "That's why I wanted to see you today. Because I wanted to be with you, but more than that because I want you to show me how to fire this thing."

She held the gun up with both hands, her arms trembling under the weight of it. I reached across and snatched it from her. "What do you think you're doing? Are you crazy?"

"No Will, I'm deadly serious. If I thought about living this life for another day then that would be crazy."

She reached over for the gun but I held it further away. "Please give me what's mine," she said, an anxious smile on her lips.

"Laura, I won't allow it," I responded.

The smile vanished. Her face became a patchwork of emotions: hurt, anger and fear. She got to her feet, and when she spoke again her voice cracked under the pressure of these emotions.

"You won't allow it? You _won't allow_ what exactly? You won't allow me to escape being verbally degraded and abused, day-by-day and hour-by-hour? You _won't allow_ me to avoid being beaten for no reason and invented reasons? You _won't allow_ me not to feel the door on my fingers, the hot metal of the kettle on arm and the stab of a fork in my side. You won't allow me to avoid all that? That's pretty big of you."

She was shaking, her breath was being snatched in big gulps and she seemed unsteady on her feet. I felt I could see her eyes burning through the dark lenses of her glasses.

"Sit down," I said. "We need to think this through."

"I can't think," she replied, running a hand through her hair. "I can barely breath."

I reached up, took her hand and pulled her gently back down beside me.

"I'm sure I can work something out," I said. "I just need time."

"That's the point; I don't have waiting time, only hurting time and I can't endure anymore of it."

"Well, you can't have the gun. I hear what you're saying, believe me, but this isn't the answer."

Silence, and then she said: "Perhaps we can compromise on this."

I pulled the gun a little further out of her reach.

"I'll use the gun only for protection," she continued, "...as a last resort. But only to frighten him. I couldn't shoot him, even though I could shoot myself. Funny that. I feel like a co-conspirator in my own torture. I don't know that in some way, perhaps I'm not equally to blame."

"You mustn't say that," I protested. "You're playing his game if you start to think you're at fault for this. And you must swear to me that won't try to harm yourself."

"The truth is, I'm weak, Will. If I'd been stronger it might have been better for both of us. I'd have gotten out and he'd have gotten help. But I'm weak and that's why I need the gun, and more than that, that's why I can't promise I won't use it on myself."

I tried to speak but she gestured for me to wait.

"But I do make you a promise – and this is the compromise – if I do feel so backed into a corner that the only way out is through a hole in my head, I'll call you first. I'll call you and give you the chance to talk me out of it. I'm not making any promises either way but I'll give you the chance. It might not sound like much to you, but it's a big thing for me. I'm giving you the chance to talk me out of eternal freedom. I can't give you more than that."

She put her hand out for the gun, but I continued to hold it out of reach.

"Please," she said. "It's the best I can do. If I don't have the gun then I won't have the chance to warn him off. And besides, I'll only find another way to set myself free...perhaps a less pleasant way. Don't make me do that Will, please don't make me do that."

And then – God help me, but I still can't believe I did it – I passed the gun back to her. She took it gently by the barrel and dropped it back into her bag."

"Thank-you," she said. "That was brave of you. I know you didn't want to do that. That was very brave. That gives me strength."

"You must call me," I said, placing my hands on her shoulders. "You promised you'd call me."

"I promise," she replied. "But you have to promise to be there. I can't wait. That's asking too much."

"I'll be there," I said. "There won't be a time between now and when hell freezes over when you won't be able to reach me. You have Eliza's number?"

"Yes."

"Here, take my mobile number," I said, taking a pen and a scrap of paper from my jacket pocket. "Call me any time, about _anything_."

"If I can."

"But you won't do anything rash without calling me first?"

"You have my word Will. It's all I have to give, but I'm giving it to you. Please don't let me down."

"I won't. I couldn't."

I put my pen back in my pocket; a different pocket this time, and my hand brushed against something. It was Chester's painting. I took it out and unfolded it.

"What do you have there?" she asked.

"A painting," I replied. "It's by someone called Chester Green. He used to work here, right?"

"Ah, poor Chester. Do you know what happened to him?"

"He died in a car accident."

"That's right," she said. "He was a lovely man, but very unreliable."

"Did you know him well?"

"No, not well, just through the work he was doing for us. It has to be said I think he did more painting than he did work, though neither to much effect from what I recall."

I held up the picture I was holding. "I was hoping you could tell me who the subjects are. I've seen his other portraits and this one doesn't appear to fit with the Quil Marsh I know. This couple doesn't seem to exist."

There was a pause while Laura ran her eyes over the paper, and then: "Oh god, I can't believe they don't have this."

"You know them?"

"Yes and you know them too. It's Doctor Jennings and Bernadette Peters."

"You're joking."

"This painting is no joke, it's a tragedy," she replied, shaking her head. "I still can't believe they didn't get this picture. Where did you find it?"

"It was locked away with other portraits in the bottom of a filing cabinet in the civic hall."

"How strange that he should keep his art in a filing cabinet," she said. "Who'd have thought that?"

"That's hardly the strangest part of it," I replied. "Who'd have thought that Doctor Jennings and Bernadette would end up in a portrait together. Are you sure it's them? The man seems to be clean shaven and I don't recognise that bobbed haircut on her."

"Oh yes, I'm sure. Look at the age difference in the two figures. I agree that this is the only indication to the casual observer, but if you knew what I do, then you would realise that I'm right."

I looked again at the picture, and something of the two of them seemed to be hidden in the paint if I looked at it in a certain way, but then it was gone in another view, lost in the vague swirls of Chester Green's clumsy brush.

"What is it that you know?" I asked, trying to readjust my eyes to the real world of identifiable shapes.

"Would you believe that they were having an affair?" she replied. "They probably still are for all I know."

"What? Not an _affair_ affair. You must mean an artistic affair or some such thing?"

"No, I mean a passionate affair of the heart. Emotional, physical and any other way an affair can be between two people."

"I can't believe it," I said, looking at the picture again, which I could now see did lend an undeniable romantic quality to the figures.

"I would have thought you'd been in Quil Marsh long enough now not to be so easily surprised."

"I know, but I'm still amazed," I replied, managing a laugh at what was one of Quil Marsh's lighter revelations. "But how can you be sure?"

"She told me during one my interviews for the town status work. We both had a bit too much to drink and she told me everything. They've been seeing each other more or less since she arrived and had her first consultation with him."

"And nobody knows, but you?"

"I was sworn to secrecy. She was pretty intense about that from what I remember. I can't recall the reason, but I do know it was more than my life was worth to let anyone know."

"But what about the picture?"

Laura sighed. "Bernadette wanted a record of their relationship, so she got Chester to paint them together. However, she was so afraid of anyone finding out that she had him slightly disguise their faces. That way she could display the picture without worrying about anyone knowing. It seems as if Chester died before he had a chance to hand it over."

"That is tragic," I said. "Strange and mixed up, but tragic. Perhaps I should take it over to her now."

"Oh no, you mustn't. Didn't you hear what I was saying? She'd go crazy if she thought you knew. And if she thought I'd told you...well, I have enough problems."

"Of course. I'm sorry."

"But you're right," she said. "She should have her picture. If you give it to me, I'll see that she gets it."

I passed Laura the painting and she folded it away into her shoulder bag.

"And one more thing," she continued. "Please don't apologise to me. You've done so much, I don't know how to thank you."

"Tell me you love me," I said.

"I love you."

And then I leaned across and kissed her. Pulling away from her was like tearing skin from my face. It left a wound that's been bleeding ever since.

She got up suddenly. "Is that the time? I should have been back ages ago. Hopefully he'll have been delayed on his way back. I might just make it yet."

And then she was off, heading towards the brow of the hill and the path that led back down to Quil Marsh.

"Wait..."

"Wish me luck," she said, glancing back over her shoulder.

And then she was gone. "Call me...anytime, I'll be waiting," I shouted.

I'll never know if she heard me.

And I sat there, looking down on Quil Marsh without any idea that Laura was about to disappear from my life and that my world was about to end. So, instead of screaming, crying and beating the ground with my fists, I simply chewed a blade of grass and wondered what to do next. It wasn't until I'd almost reached the post office that I realised what it would be.

# CHAPTER 57

If you've forgotten about _The Double Edged Sword_ then you're in good company. My publishers forgot about it, so that I had to remind them it should have been out the previous year. The printers forgot to put in the last twenty pages in the first print run, changing the course of the novel, but not prompting any complaints that I'm aware of. The distributors forgot to deliver it to my local bookshop on its first day of release (I know, I always check), they forgot to display it when it finally got there, and twenty four thousand people forgot to buy it and went out and bought London Fields instead. And I forgot it.

I forgot about it when Laura told me about Doctor Jennings and Bernadette. However, I remembered when I was putting the key into the post office door.

The Double Edged Sword was the almost perfect answer to my problems when I had a lot fewer problems than I did at that moment. Now things had changed, or at least my perception of them had, and it had become the perfect answer.

It was heartbreaking to think that people might have died because I had overlooked a love affair. However, it was a situation that called for action not regret.

I hurried up to my room to retrieve the book, anxious not to waste anymore time. I felt that there would be time enough to dwell on regret when all of this was done. I was right about that at least.

The Double Edged Sword, as you may now recall, was the story of doctor and teacher lovers and their accountant tormentor. The teacher and doctor were romantically involved and that was their secret. In addition to this, they each had another secret – a private indiscretion from the past that they were on the run from when they ran headfirst into each other. They did not share these secrets with one another, but the accountant knew. He had a history of identifying other people's indiscretions and then converting them into something that would be useful to him. These particular secrets were converted into blackmail and extortion. However, the teacher and the doctor had other secrets – secrets from each other and secrets from the accountant – secrets that made them a danger to the accountant in ways that he couldn't recognise until it was too late.

The more I thought about it the more certain I became that I had, by deduction, intuition or just sheer luck (take your pick), hit upon a plot, a setting and a cast of characters that could, and indeed did, exist in real life. In fact, so alike were Doctor Jones and Bernadette to my imaginary couple that I wondered why I hadn't picked up on their romance myself.

With The Double Edged Sword I hadn't had to worry about readers. This was the first – and to date, the only - book of mine that has been adapted as a play. I was first notified of this event when I received complimentary tickets to see it at the Grand Theatre. It sounds impressive, but unfortunately the truth was a little more prosaic. A church hall, a weekend run and a janitor looking to rediscover his acting roots. Unfortunately the play couldn't even live up to its mundane credentials. It closed a day early when the janitor was convicted of theft.

The play's failure wasn't troubling me at that moment. No, my main concern was who should be the one – who should be the killer.

Should it be the doctor or should it be the teacher? Norman Jennings or Bernadette Peters? For once the clue _wasn't_ in the book. When it came to the police investigation it was found that both had equal reason to commit the crime (and quite a crime it was too). There was minor evidence, but it could have implicated either of them. The police suspected that one of the pair knew what the other had done, but they weren't able to formally establish this under interrogation. In fact they weren't able to establish anything under questioning apart from the fact that the doctor and the teacher shared a special bond that they could not break. Real love, they discovered, does not crack under questioning. Not only was this a problem for the police, it was my problem also. I had left the ending open to interpretation and not identified the real killer – not even to myself.

There in lay my dilemma. If The Double Edged sword was going to save their love and save Laura's life, then I was going to have to pick either the doctor or the teacher to complete the story, but I had not the faintest idea which of them it should be.

But I wasn't without hope. I felt sure that subconsciously I must have known who the guilty party had been at the time of writing. Without being able to remember with any certainty, I was convinced that there must have been a hint buried in the text or a clue hidden somewhere between the lines. Writers and secrets do not make good bedfellows and I was no exception to this rule. I was determined that I should find the answer and so I spent the next six or seven hours searching for it.

I took myself back five years to when I was writing the book. I returned to when the characters were born and I followed them back through the footsteps they had taken – the footsteps I had told them to take – and I studied them closely as they developed through sentences, grew through chapters, paused at commas and ground to a halt at full-stops. I saw what they saw and thought what they had thought because I'd seen it and thought about it first. They had no secrets from me. Or so I thought.

Try as I might, I could not separate them. It felt (and believe me, I know how crazy this sounds) as if they were alive... _still alive_. It seemed to me that they were blocking my investigation at every turn. Whenever I thought I had one of them identified as the killer, the other provided an alibi that I hadn't realised existed. And there was more than that: they said less than I remembered, they were more careful with their movements and they were forever wearing gloves. I was as stumped as the incompetent policemen I had sent after them in two thousand and four. I've heard it said that when a novel is written the characters sometimes take on a life of their own, but this was the first time I'd known characters to actually conspire against the writer. Real love is a strong bond – I can testify that much – and it appeared that fictional love was no different. They were clearly going to take their secret to their fictional grave.

In spite of this flaw, I knew in my heart of hearts that this book was the one. Even looking back at it now and knowing all that has happened since and all that has come to pass, I'm still amazed by how perfect it appeared.

But the time for admiration was over and the time to pick an assassin was upon me. And so, unable to separate the two with logic, reason and deduction, I settled for the bluntest of instruments to perform the most important of work. Chance. After all, I thought, it was chance that had been responsible for my involvement with Quil Marsh, so it seemed fitting that it should be chance that would end it also.

I took a coin from my pocket, assigned a name to each face, said a silent prayer (to whom, I do not know), and then flipped the coin up into the air. I watched as it sailed up past my neck, past my eyes, and past the top of my head. I marvelled at its flight. Even though it was weighed down with my desperation, my fear and the incomparable burden of my love, it continued to climb. Up and up it went, though it was only propelled by a simple flick of my wrist.

I continued to watch, and measured its journey with my eyes. I was waiting for it to reach the top of its arc. This would be the moment when it had lifted my hopes as high as they could go. I had decided that this was the proper time to pick Sam Fisher's executioner. I thought that the moment that hopes and dreams were at their height might also be the moment when luck was at its height too. And so I watched and I waited.

It seemed to take an eternity. As the climb slowed, so the spinning of the coin slowed also. As it did so I could see the engraved faces on each side flipping over and over. I can't recall the coin, but I do recall that the faces were of a monarch and a scientist. I also recall that the monarch and scientist took a temporary leave of absence as the coin approached its ceiling, turning in slow-motion, replaced by a doctor and a teacher, each offering up their willingness to kill. I continued to wait. Eventually the coin's upward journey ended. I closed my eyes, reached out my hand and snatched it from the air.

Then I slammed it down on my wrist, removed the hand that covered it and blew out a big sigh when I saw who it was. I sighed, not because of who the coin had chosen as I had no expectations on that score, but because of what I thought was finally at an end. Laura's suffering, my suffering, and god only knows how many other people's torment.

I jumped up off the bed and made a b-line for the corner of the room where some tatty files were occupying a space only slightly more legitimately than the dust which had occupied it before. I'd brought the files back from the civic hall at a time when I thought that I was helping Quil Marsh rather than fighting it. I think I'd realised we were adversaries sometime after Quil Marsh had realised, and I'd been playing catch-up ever since. But at that moment, kneeling down among the files, I felt I was finally ahead.

I emptied the folders and sifted through the papers inside until I'd found what I was looking for. I tore off the piece of the page that was of interest to me and, with my heart thumping, made my way downstairs to the telephone.

I checked the downstairs rooms and the kitchen and found them to be empty. A second check showed my nerve to be still in place – _just_. I walked over to the phone, picked up the receiver, dialled the number on the paper and waited for a reply.

# CHAPTER 58

A pause.

"Hello?"

"No thanks, I don't want one."

"You don't want one?"

"No."

"You don't want one what?"

"Cello."

"Not cello, _hello_ "

"Ah, hello yourself."

The coin had chosen Doctor Jennings.

"Sorry, I missed your name," he said.

"I didn't say my name."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

There was to be no visit this time. No talking around the subject, dropping subtle hints and leading the individual concerned through the scenic route to the truth. I thought that if I had previously made a mistake (and the evidence of the previous sixty thousand words suggests that I had indeed made several) then it was in not being direct enough with the people I was trying to enlighten.

By dealing in riddles and innuendos I had allowed the blame that I'd intended to be apportioned to Sam Fisher to be twisted and bent so that, boomerang-like, it landed back at the feet of those who were meant to assign it. And when it had returned, it had come back hard and furiously and cut down the thrower in each case. This time there would be no boomerang, but a hard, true, straight arrow.

"I've got something to tell you," I said.

"I don't do call-outs," he replied.

"Just listen to what I have to say. I know about your drug habit."

"That's outrageous!"

"I said, just listen. I know about your drug habit and I also know that someone else is using you to feed their own addiction. That person is Sam Fisher."

"Now that's..."

I slammed the receiver back into its cradle. The impact of the industrial plastics smacking together made a sharp cracking sound like a shot from a starting pistol. A signal perhaps that the beginning of the end for Sam Fisher had just pushed its way out of the blocks.

I made my way back to my room and opened the window. When the sirens arrived this time I was sure I wouldn't want to miss them.

# CHAPTER 59

I listened for sirens. I listened the way I don't think anyone has ever listened before. I strained to hear the sound of the emergency services so hard that my ears ached. And when I couldn't hear them I strained harder. It felt as if every part of my body was a conduit for sound. My skin, every strand of hair, my bones and even the corpuscles rushing around my veins felt alive to anything that created even a fraction of a decibel. I heard the wind shuffle the leaves through the gaps in the fence, the aerial creaking on its rusty perch on the roof, the scratching of bird claws flitting from the guttering, and even, I believed, the blinking of the stars, but I heard no siren.

However, early the next morning, I did hear the heavy stomping of Eliza's hobnailed feet moving back and forth across the landing. It was the kind of sound that even a dead man could have heard. The stomping was accompanied by the dull friction of things being dragged back and forth between rooms.

My curiosity, which must have been the only part of me not occupied with listening for sirens, got the better of me and I went to the door to see what was going on.

I stepped out onto the landing just as Eliza was wrestling a box of clothes to an alcove near the top of the stairs where three other boxes, stuffed with what looked like more clothes and general bric-a-brac, were already jammed into the limited space.

"Is there something I can do to help?" I asked.

"I don't think you'd like the answer to that question," she shot back.

"May I ask what you're doing, then?" I persisted.

"Sounds to me like you already did." And then, in a voice that sounded as if she were talking to a condemned man: "Well, I suppose there's no harm in telling you. I'm getting ready in case the ship sinks."

"Sorry?"

"Well you might be, given it's your fault the ship is sinking."

"The ship is sinking?"

"Correct me if I'm wrong," she said, "but when you arrived there were eight people in Quil Marsh, and, if I'm honest with myself, only a modest chance of getting the town status we need. Now there are five of us and frankly we have more chance of being declared a mortuary. I suppose you ought to know that I'm getting ready in case Quil Marsh takes another step backwards. If that happens, then I'm getting out of here and that means you're getting out of here too."

The thought of leaving now when I thought I was so close to achieving what I wanted left me more afraid than anyone really should be at the prospect of never seeing Eliza again.

"I'm sure it won't come to that," I said. "In spite of everything that's happened I think Quil Marsh is closer to being somewhere people are going to want to live than it has been since I arrived."

"Let's hope that for your sake you're right, otherwise if you want to live here you're going to be living in a field." She bent down and grasped the box of clothes she had been wrestling with in a bear hug and lifted it off the floor. The cardboard flexed under her clutches so that it appeared to be shrinking from her touch. "I don't have to stay here you know. There are plenty of other post offices who would be only too glad to have someone like me working for them and I want to be ready if this opportunity ends and another comes up."

"I really don't think you have anything to worry about."

She grunted, not because the box was heavy but because it was how she liked to express herself, and then lurched off to the alcove. I stepped back into my room, walked over to the window and looked out. Through the overhanging branches of the oak tree I saw the morning light surfing off the dew-damp roofs of the surrounding buildings, verdant hedgerows stretching out in long green yawns and grassy borders shimmering with the promise of a new day. It was an exquisite view but it gave me no pleasure because I knew that behind the beautiful face lay an evil heart.

I held the curtain back for a few moments to see if there was any sign of life out there to prove I was not alone, but I saw nothing; not Laura, not a bird, not even an insect. Nothing.

I returned to my bed, lay back down and continued to listen.

The day passed in silence without even a sound from Eliza, and eventually my restlessness got the better of me and I decided to go for a walk. Desperate as I was to see Millwood House again, I thought it would be wise to avoid both it and Dr Jennings' place until I knew more about the outcome of my phone call. I checked I had my mobile and that it was fully charged, and then made my way over to the civic building.

Upon entering I was surprised to find that the main hall appeared to have been set up for another meeting. I thought that perhaps by some mixture of good and bad luck I had stumbled upon it as it was about to take place, but though I waited for a couple of hours no one showed. Then it occurred to me that it had probably been a meeting about me rather than about my work. I counted up the number of chairs to see if by chance it had happened this morning and that the meeting might be a chair short – Sam Fisher's chair. But this wasn't the case and it appeared that there was a chair for everyone, including Laura.

I spent the rest of the day mooching around the building looking for anything of interest I might have missed. I turned up a box of crockery, a couple of files and a writing pad. If they signified anything other than the fact I was wasting my time, then I couldn't spot it.

Having exhausted all the hanging around possibilities that the hall had to offer, I returned to the post office to wait out the approaching night in the privacy of my own room. Still there was nothing. It felt as if time itself had stopped. In spite of this, morning arrived eventually and brought with it a cloudy day and more silence. I decided that Quil Marsh was small enough that I could do my listening from any part of it and resolved to take another walk and give the beautiful scenery a chance to settle my nerves.

For a while it felt as if it had been the right thing to do. I stayed clear of the road and the paths, preferring the solitude of the surrounding lush fields, a route that took me just beyond the border of Quil Marsh. A cool breeze fanned my brow and the serene surroundings had the required calming effect on my mental state. As I kicked my way through the untamed paradise I felt my fingers slowly uncurl from my palms and my jaw unclench so that a little of the pain I was feeling slipped away.

Such was the beneficial effect of my walk that, as I approached a junction beyond the north tip of Quil Marsh, I fully intended to continue my journey and complete a full perimeter of the village. However, when I stepped out onto the road, and momentarily back into Quil Marsh itself, I was struck by a series of strange markings on the tarmac.

I stepped over to them and saw that they were skid marks. They stretched back down the road for almost forty yards, slewing from verge to verge, and then on past where I was standing, before ending abruptly at the foot of a badly burnt oak tree. The manoeuvre appeared to have been fatal. It was then that I realised that I was looking at the bend in the road where Chester Green had crashed his car.

I stood and stared at the burnt rubber marks, unwilling to step over them because it would have felt like stepping over Chester's grave. Instead I just stared, and the longer I looked the more the skid marks didn't look like skid marks anymore. No, fifty yards long, eight feet high and written in death, the rubber scrawl looked as if the signature of the devil had been burnt into Quil Marsh's flesh.

The thought made my fingers curl back into my palms and my teeth clamped together in a painful grimace.

I became aware of the sky darkening overhead. Angry clouds gathered like a pack of wild dogs. Off in the distance I could see nothing but blue skies flattering the surrounding villages. Not so Quil Marsh. I was reminded of what Laura had said about it having its own moods; I hadn't believed her until now.

The serenity was over. Half falling, half running, I turned and hurried back to my room.

Fifteen minutes later I was standing on the steps of the post office. I pulled out my key and was about to insert it into the lock when the door was pulled back leaving my hand suspended in front of me. Eliza filled the doorway with a mouldy box under her left arm and a rolled up newspaper in her right hand.

"Don't take your jacket off – you're leaving!"

# CHAPTER 60

"What?"

"I'll only repeat this because it gives me pleasure to say it," Eliza said, adjusting her grip on the box. "You're leaving."

"I don't understand," I said.

"That's probably one of the reasons you're leaving. Either way, you're going."

She turned around and walked back along the hallway. I stepped inside and followed her.

"But I thought you said I still had a chance. You said that while there were still five residents left, I was going to be allowed to continue my work."

Eliza paused and spared me a half turn of her head over her shoulder. "Yes, that's what I said and that's why you're going. What's the matter with you? Don't you read the papers? Here, you can have mine, but I'm stopping it out of your wages."

She flung the rolled up newspaper with some considerable force back in my direction. I snatched it out of the air before it sailed over my head. When I looked back to where Eliza had been standing, she was gone.

I unfolded the paper to see what event had prompted Eliza to evacuate the post office as if it had been burning down around her. I didn't have to look far. Plastered across the front page of the local news sheet-come-advertiser were the words _Two Die In Freak Car Accident_. I knew this was my story when I saw it even though the headline didn't contain any reference to names or locations. The fact that it was about death was all I needed to know to realise it was mine.

_Two die_...I felt so sick with worry as to who the two might be that for a moment fear blurred my vision and I could not read the article. Gradually my sight came back into focus and the names of the dead emerged from the fuzzy black type: _Doctor Jennings and Sam Fisher_. It had happened. Finally.

I had been trying to achieve this for so long (obviously not Doctor Jennings's death) that now that it had finally taken place I couldn't believe it. I continued to stare at the names in disbelief, and as I did so the fuzziness vanished and a crystal clear focus was restored. I read the names out loud to convince myself it had really happened...Doctor Jennings and Dan Fincher... _Dan Fincher_? Who the hell was Dan Fincher?

I checked further down the article to see if it might be a spelling mistake, but if it was, it was a consistent one. A proper read through explained everything. The _accident_ (and you should take note of the italics used there) had not taken place in Quil Marsh at all, but in an equally anonymous village in the next valley. The Doctor Jennings involved was undoubtedly my doctor and the Dan Fincher was undoubtedly not my Sam Fisher.

The story, according to the staff reporter, was an inexplicable one. Doctor Jennings was travelling inexplicably in Merrivale, and was travelling inexplicably fast, inexplicably on the wrong side of the road before inexplicably mounting the pavement and inexplicably flattening Dan Fincher (a vague acquaintance of Doctor Jennings), before a failed attempt to retake the road saw him park his car in the centre of a brick wall.

I couldn't understand why the reporter thought Dan Fincher's death was inexplicable (fast car hits man equals death), but I could see why the rest might be a subject of some consternation for those who did not know the full facts. I have to admit that even I was perplexed for a couple of minutes before the full realisation of what had happened hit me the way Doctor Jennings had hit Dan Fincher.

Of course Doctor Jennings was in a hurry and driving his car like it was a bullet on wheels; after all, wasn't he trying to stop his career being ended and his addiction cut off all in one fell swoop? And didn't this involve stopping Dan Fincher?

Well, no actually, not if your hearing is fine and when you're told Sam Fisher is about to end your life you do something about Sam Fisher. However, if your ears carry sound as if your head is permanently submerged in a bucket of water, then you're just as likely to hear the words Jan Fisker, or Sandy Finter, or Stan Fitcher, or, and especially if you know one, Dan Fincher.

I exclaimed something out loud which doesn't bear repeating and slapped a hand against my forehead. Eliza's head appeared through a doorway.

"Now do you see?" she said. "This place is cursed and as far as I'm concerned you're the curse. I'm leaving before I go the same way as the others." And then she was gone.

I felt a pain in my chest, dropped the newspaper and sat down on the stairs. I had failed Laura again. I wondered if perhaps I had failed her for the last time. I took the mobile out of my pocket and flicked through the menu. No calls. No calls missed. The pain flared up and it felt as if my heart was on fire. What if she couldn't call? There was more pain, and I thought my heart really was breaking. I thought that if she was dead then I thought I would die too.

But the more I thought about it the more I was sure she was still alive. She might have looked like an exotic flower, but I knew she was a resourceful woman. I convinced myself that if Sam ever finally attempted to kill her that she would find a way to get out of the house and make it the short distance across the heart of Quil Marsh to the post office where I would be waiting for her.

Just then the doorbell rang.

# CHAPTER 61

I leapt up from where I was sitting and was at the door in three strides. I banged down the handle and wrenched it back.

The face at the door did not belong to an exotic flower, but to an overweight cabbage. It was Detective Calhoun.

"Well, that's quite a greeting!" he said. He shook his umbrella by his side. It had begun to rain. "Perhaps you were expecting someone else?"

"No...no I wasn't," I replied, unable to conceal my disappointment. "Are you here about Doctor Jenning's accident?"

"You heard about that?"

"The newspaper."

"Oh yes, I saw that too," he replied. "You know they took my photograph but they didn't use it. What do you think that's about?"

I didn't answer. I was hardly aware he was still there. I was looking beyond him, over his shoulder and out across Quil Marsh. I was looking for Laura. I did not see her.

"Hey, I recognise that look," Detective Calhoun said, jabbing me in the chest with a finger.

"What look?"

"That faraway, empty look. Writers block, right?"

"Writer's block?" The idea sounded ridiculous. Why would I have writer's block? And then I remembered that I was a writer. _Supposed to be_.

"Yes," he said. "Can't you see it in my face too?"

I looked at Detective Calhoun's vacant expression. He certainly appeared to be suffering from some kind of mental block. It didn't surprise me that it had been affecting his writing because of the effect I'd already seen it have on his police work.

"I think I can see it," I replied. "No luck with the book then?"

"Not yet. I can't understand it though, everything's in place. I've got a writing room, a word processor, paper, the inclination..." He shrugged by way of concluding his sentence.

"Did you get your story and your villain?" I asked.

No, as a matter of fact I didn't. That's probably the problem, isn't it?"

"Could be," I said. "Is that what you came here to talk to me about?"

"Honestly? Yes. The Jennings accident was just a pretext for our little writers convention."

He was doing that thing again. The _me and him writers_ thing. I didn't care for it, and to be honest I wouldn't much have cared to be bracketed as a detective alongside him either.

"The accident itself is easily explained," he continued. "Jennings was an older man with...what's the current politically correct term...health issues? Anyway, I don't think it was much of a surprise to find a man of his years in his condition mistaking the pavement for another lane of the road. But I've come out here because I'm obliged to ask questions regardless. I'm sure you understand."

I nodded. I understood he was obliged to ask questions, but wondered whether the ones he asked were obliged to be stupid or whether this was a personal decision on his part. "So, what are these questions?"

He took out his notebook and licked the tip of his pencil. "Do you know of any reason why Doctor Jennings might have deliberately wanted to crash his car?"

"No."

"What about a reason for him to want Dan Fincher done away with?"

"No idea."

"Good – me neither." He folded his notebook away. "I like an open and shut case."

"And this one's shut?"

"I think so. I wish I could say the same for my book. Any tips in addition to what you've already told me before?"

"Keep your eyes open," I said. "Your book is out there but you've got to recognise it when you see it."

"Excellent," Detective Calhoun said.

Then something caught his eye and I could see him peering into the hallway. "Those boxes...are you planning to leave?"

"They're not my boxes," I replied. "But it's unlikely I'll be here for too much longer."

"Well, if I don't see you again – and it doesn't sound as if I will – I'd just like to say it's been a pleasure."

He offered me his hand, I took it and we shook. "Likewise," I said.

He turned to walk off and I began to close the door and had already started to look away when I heard his voice call out.

"I'll mention you in my book's introduction!"

I closed the door. The thought that Detective Calhoun might be gone from my life forever left me with a feeling of loss that surprised me. I think this related mainly to the fact that while he was investigating my activities I felt safe. I paused for a moment and then opened the door again, but he was nowhere to be seen.

When I closed the door a second time, I turned round to find Eliza standing right behind me. "Still here, eh? Maybe you think you're part of the fixtures and fittings now?"

"No, I was just..."

A horn blasted outside.

"Save it," Eliza said. "That van has come to take me and my things. I'm not going to throw you out of the building, mainly because I'm too old for that kind of thing, but in a few days time people will return to reclaim this place and they _will_ throw you out. Whether you wish to leave under your own steam or not is entirely up to you, but at least you've got the choice, which is probably more than you deserve. Now, I'd appreciate it if you'd make yourself scarce while I'm leaving. It's difficult enough having to go without having the reason I have to leave watching me while I do it."

I didn't argue with her because she was mostly right about my being the reason she had to leave. I left her to it and returned to my room while I still could.

From the window I watched as Eliza climbed into the cab of the van. I knew then that it would be the last time that I would ever see her. However, what I didn't realise was that it was almost the last time anyone ever saw her at all. Soon after leaving Quil Marsh she took up a position as the manager of a post office just outside of Portsmouth. On her first day in charge she was shot dead in a bungled armed robbery. The police arrived too late to save her. However, according to the newspaper report, they arrived in time to arrest the robber, principally because the stricken Eliza had sunk her teeth into his ankle after she'd fallen. Apparently it took them an hour to force her jaws apart.

Although I never saw Eliza again, I've never forgotten her either, as she still has her jaws clamped on some part of my memory. I wouldn't open them, even if I could.

Blissfully ignorant of all this, I sat down on the bed, took my mobile phone out and stared at it. No calls. No calls missed. It was my only connection with Laura; the invisible thread that joined our hearts. I held it up close to my ear the way you do when you're holding a seashell and think you can hear the sea. I thought I could hear her breathing.

I don't know how long I held it for, but I do know that eventually my arm began to ache so that I had to put it down. I fluffed up a pillow, put the mobile in the centre and sat cross-legged, just staring at it. Nothing happened, I just stared. Sometime later, it must have been early morning, I went downstairs and called myself on the phone to be sure it was working. It was.

I returned to my room and settled in for another bout of staring. However, this time my eye was caught by something just beyond the pillow. A book.

It was the copy of Double Edged Sword, which I thought had suggested the doctor had carried out the revenge killing. Something had changed since last I'd looked at it. Now I knew that the killer was the teacher - Bernadette.

# CHAPTER 62

I snatched up the mobile, but I didn't bother to grab a jacket even though I could see that the rain was getting heavier. Getting wet was the least of my problems then, as it is now.

I bounded down the stairs two at a time. I didn't see Eliza in the hallway, and it was just as well as I stumbled off the bottom step and skated across the wooden floor to the door. And then I was outside, head down and breathing hard as I hurried over to Bernadette's house.

There were a lot of reasons for me to stay away from Bernadette. I know that now and I knew that then. Even with my temples pounding and my heart hammering and the rain running down my face, I knew about the reasons not to go: all the other attempts had failed; Bernadette might be better off left alone; I should get on with my life while I still had one; it was raining.

Take your pick from that list or from one of the other dozens of perfectly good reasons to have stayed in my room that I haven't mentioned. You can pick the lot if you like, it didn't matter to me and it still doesn't. I had one reason that outweighed them all. It was my last chance to set Laura free. And so I carried on walking, in spite of the reasons and in spite of the rain.

Nothing would have kept me from Bernadette that morning. Hopelessness, failure, and madness all blocked my path, but I carried on regardless. A man is not easily separated from his last chance, and so it was with me.

I strode up the path that led to the village square and then crossed it, passing the hanging chair and the notice board, and picked up the path on the other side where it fainted to a trail beneath the rain water before delivering me onto the through road, which I followed in the direction of the bell tower to my right. By the time I'd reached the copse at the foot of the hill that led to the schoolhouse, I cannot say if I thought I was going to see Bernadette Peters or the fictional teacher, Mary Task. Ms Task who was obsessed about her private school. Ms Task who was blackmailed to within a penny of the gutter. Ms Task who had a secret affair with a doctor. Ms Task who had killed her tormentor. Ms Task; Ms Peters; Mary; Bernadette.

She would know the identity of her blackmailer soon and Sam would, I hoped, know the full force of her retribution.

Eventually, I came within sight of the brick wall that surrounded the playground. I stopped when I saw it. I was suddenly reminded of the first time I'd seen her. _I'm not sure you realise how much this means to me._ I thought I was about to find out.

I made my way the short distance up to the front of the school, wondering how I would get her attention. It was, after all, school hours and I expected the gates to be locked. Surprisingly, they were not.

The gates weren't even closed, let alone locked, and the wind rocked them back and forth on their hinges. Intermittently they banged against each other, like clanking chains. School's out? Not Bernadette's school, surely? Any school, but Bernadette's.

I pushed the gate back and stepped into the playground. The rain had begun to settle in dirty black puddles, which obliterated the court markings she'd put down. It was easy to believe that they were no longer there.

I continued on, over to the front door, pausing when the wind nudged a stray netball in front of me. It rolled back and forth as if being played with by an invisible child, before a sudden gust of wind took it down to the open gate and out into the trees.

It left me feeling more uncomfortable than I thought a loose ball ever could. Bernadette didn't strike me as someone who would leave things lying unattended like that. I would have expected her to have the ball logged, stored and secured. And the invisible child sat at a desk, come to that. The overwhelming feeling was that something was wrong. That feeling wasn't eased by the sight of the door lying open, swinging in the breeze and fanning the doorframe.

I pushed the door back against the hall wall and looked in. I couldn't see anyone, but I could hear voices. The voices were soon accompanied by music, and I realised they belonged to the television. Thinking she must be home, I called out her name, but there was no reply. I stepped inside to take a look around.

I traced the television to a small study-come-living room. It was a schools broadcast of some sort. I switched it off and stood for a moment, not even breathing, to see if I could hear anything that might indicate someone was home. I heard nothing.

I stepped back into the hallway to continue my search. A few yards further on I came across another room. I pushed the door open and found four rows of tiny desks lined up in front of a blackboard. A brass bell sat above the doorframe like a jilted bride, waiting to end a lesson that in all probability would never begin. A register lay open on the teacher's desk. I walked over and looked at it. The blank pages revealed that there were no children's names in it. More to the point, there was no clue as to where the teacher was. I left the room, pulled the door to and pressed on.

After passing a staircase, I found the hallway opened up into a kitchen area. The work surfaces were cluttered, giving the impression that I had walked in on someone preparing something. Except there was no someone. There were two slices of bread on a cutting board. I ran a hand over them. They were getting hard, but they were a long way from being stale.

I left the kitchen and retraced my steps back down the hallway to where curved white balustrades rose up out of the wooden floor, funnelling a red handrail over my head. I made my way upstairs, announcing my presence as I went. Still no response.

In the master bedroom I came across the first clue that something wasn't right in the world of Bernadette Peters.

Strewn across the floor on the window side of the room was a mass of books. I walked around the bed to take a closer look. There were dozens of them – possibly close to a hundred. The big oak bookcase, on which I imagined they had once sat, had been wrenched away from the wall, tearing the wallpaper and leaving rough little craters in the cement where the fixings had been located. The bookcase itself was now leaning against the window, looking as if it were trying to escape the scene of devastation around it.

The books were oddly distributed. Some of the books were scattered around the side of the bed, but most were piled up against the skirting board leaving an inexplicable space between the two piles. The space was lean and curled, and looked a little like a question mark.

I surveyed the scene and tried to make sense of it. I couldn't. I kicked through the twisted covers to see if there was a clue hidden amongst them.

Beneath the broken spines of the dry teaching texts, I found a cordless phone. I picked it up intending to do a last number recall, but the boot print across the digital fascia told me the phone was broken before I had pushed a button. I dropped it back onto the ground. That was when I noticed that I had already been acquainted with Bernadette's bedroom without realising it.

Sitting in amongst the textbooks was a tatty little paperback that had never made it onto any educational syllabus – it was my tatty little paperback; the one I had given Bernadette at my interview. I bent down to examine it, not looking for a clue as to what had happened, but to see if it had been read. I flicked between the covers looking for a folded page or a bookmark near the end. I found something else entirely.

The middle section of the book had been entirely scooped out, as if the pages had been appropriated for a pack of cards. Only _as if_ of course, but not the real reason. I couldn't see it then, but I think I see it now.

The mutilation made me jumpy and I threw the novel down, keen to be out of the room. I shuffled the books around before I left so that they were as I'd found them, and then moved on to the other bedrooms. There was no further sign of a disturbance and no further sign of Bernadette either.

I ended my search of the upstairs rooms and descended the stairs. Bernadette wasn't home, of that there was no doubt. The answer to the question of whether she would ever return home again was a lot more uncertain. Bernadette had made her exit in such a hurry that she appeared to have left her life behind, still struggling to live on without her.

With Bernadette gone I was all out of plans, novels and would-be-killers. All I had left was a mobile phone and the time it took to wait for it to ring. Even time was slipping away. I was reminded of Eliza's departure. I decided to return to the post office to be sure that I still had somewhere to return to.

I closed Bernadette's front door behind me and took one last look around the outside of the house, but there was no sign of her. I gave up and headed for the gate. When I got there I saw that the netball had somehow made its way back. It was banging against the metal railings. It seemed like one of those dogs from the old movies that is desperate to tell the adults that something is wrong.

I opened the gate and it rolled in and bowled its way back towards the house. I left it bumping up against the front door and began the walk back through the rain to the post office.

# CHAPTER 63

Upon my return I found that the door was locked. Eliza must have returned for a final visit in my absence. I took a step back to see if there were any lights on, but saw nothing.

By this time I was saturated. I dragged a sleeve across my face, and managed to momentarily relieve my eyes of the rainwater running down my brow. My back was particularly sodden where the wind had been blowing the rain into me. It felt as if I had been followed.

A heavy storm was on its way; of that there was no doubt. I was reminded of the first night I had landed at the post office several weeks ago. It felt like a lifetime ago. The truth was, it was several lifetimes ago.

I hunted around in my pockets, located the key and, to my great relief, discovered that the locks had not been changed.

The first thing I did upon entering was to check my mobile phone. _No Calls. No calls missed._ I paused in the hallway when I spotted a note from Eliza pinned to the living room door. The scrap of paper had the words _GET OUT (AND LEAVE THE KEY)_ printed in a heavy hand across the centre. She had written something else and then crossed it out so that I could no longer read it with a couple of thick diagonal lines that looked like a big ugly kiss. I blew the note a kiss back and then went up to my room and sat on the bed. Even though Eliza was gone, I was anything but alone.

The storm that had descended on Quil Marsh had settled in around the post office and proceeded to vent its rage on the building. It was becoming more furious with each passing minute. When I say furious, I mean _furious_. Not force ten or gale force or blustery, but furious. It felt as if the storm was a personal expression of rage rather than a meteorological phenomenon; Quil Marsh's personal expression of rage.

_Quil Marsh was dying_ – I was certain of it. With everyone gone but myself and whoever was still alive at Millwood House, there was little life left in that forgotten corner of nowhere. I was hoping that soon I would be gone too. However, it didn't feel as if this was the reason Quil Marsh was trying to pull down the post office. No, I thought my plan to take Laura away was a much more likely source of the raging torrent of malevolence building up in the tiny hamlet.

Sound unlikely? Quil Marsh had already tried to kill me once before on my arrival. More than this, I was increasingly of the opinion that it had conspired in the death of each one of its ill-fated citizens: Jerry Lee's lost note; Jacob Jones's heart attack vision; Raul's missing leash; and the telephone line that provided the mixed messages that sent Doctor Jennings to his death. And the result of each one of these mysterious occurrences? Laura was prevented from leaving Quil Marsh.

If this gives the impression of someone trying to avoid the responsibility for that which he was the principal mover then I can only ask you to reconsider. Not a day has gone by in the intervening years when I do not remember those who had died and wish that things could have worked out differently. I can't change that, but I cannot and will not deny the wickedness that was palpable in every blade of grass in that god-forsaken place.

Mother nature is generally regarded as a good thing, nurturing life and sustaining it. However, to everything there is a bad seed, and that seed had grown and flourished in Quil Marsh. And now it seemed to be trying to pull the house down. Laura would not be leaving tonight or any other night if Quil Marsh had its way.

One by one I could hear the slates being ripped from the roof as if something had the building in its mouth and was shaking it violently. A burst of lightening lit up the windows and for a second – maybe only a split second - it looked as if the burning eyes of Quil Marsh were pressed up against my room, looking in at me. And then there was the squeal of twisted metal being wrenched free of its fixings, followed by the gunfire rattle of breaking glass coming from somewhere along the corridor. It sounded as if the guttering had been ripped from the eves and jagged through a window. This impression was soon confirmed when a surge of dirty water began bleeding under the door.

I snatched up the mobile, got off the bed and took a step back. The thin rivulets looked like long, bony fingers reaching out across the floor. It felt as if Quil Marsh was in the house now... _in my room_. The rainwater fingers continued to back me up across the room until I was pressed against the window. Suddenly the glass shattered and I felt something cold and hard on my shoulder.

I fell forward onto my knees and looked around. A branch from the oak tree had blown through the broken pane and was now flapping around blindly inside the room.

I tried to get to my feet, but slipped on the wet surface; the mobile phone shot forward out of my hand and skated across the linoleum, finally coming to rest in a gathering pool of water by the door. I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees just in time to see the murky tide carry the phone under the bed.

The phone began ringing and then disappeared from sight.

I scrambled across the floor, my arms flailing out for what I could no longer see. When I reached the bed, I flung an arm into the narrow gap beneath the frame. I found nothing but filthy water. More ringing. It started to sound like a scream.

I got down – I mean flat down so that my face was touching the floor. I strained my eyes to penetrate the darkness, but I couldn't see the phone. Forcing a shoulder under the bed, I managed edge closer to where I thought the ringing was coming from. It felt as if I was climbing into a coffin.

And then I saw it, or at least I saw the milky glow from the face. It was wedged behind the far side leg. Water was rising up around the battery compartment. The ringing became fractured, stuttering like the last words of a dying man... _or a dying woman_. I stretched for the phone and came up a couple of inches short. The gaps between each tone were getting longer. And then they stopped altogether.

For a moment I thought my heart had stopped with it. The poisonous gutter water lapped up around my face and seeped into my nose and mouth causing me to choke. I tried in vain to push the bed up, but it must have been secured to the floor. That was when I realised I was trapped beneath the frame. This was it then. Laura was dead and I, drowning in a deepening pool of rainwater, was about to join her. And then the phone spluttered back into life.

The sound was like a shock of electricity pumped through my heart. I involuntarily jerked out an arm in the phone's direction. Even now I can't tell you how I did it, but somehow, stretching every nerve and sinew until they burned, I managed to snag my fingers onto the rim of the phone case.

Once it was secured in my grasp, I brought it to my mouth and jabbed a finger down on the speak button.

"Hello? Hello? Laura?"

"Will, it's all over...help...come..."

"Laura, what's happening..."

A dull hum interrupted my question, signalling that the line was dead.

"Laura? Laura?"

I was alone again: alone and trapped. But it was a different person who was trapped now to the one who had been stuck fast seconds earlier. Now, with adrenalin flooding through every sinew, pain was no longer the obstacle that it once had been. I pushed my legs against the skirting board and forced my shoulder back against the metal frame. I lost some of my shirt and then I lost the skin on my shoulder, but still I pushed harder. And then I was free.

# CHAPTER 64

I was up on my feet and out of the room in one fluid movement, kicking up the blanket of water that covered the landing a good inch deep. I splashed my way to the stairs and descended, leaping some of the way and slipping and falling the rest.

The downpour had saturated the building. Damp had permeated every membrane, which caused the lights to flicker, glow bright, and then fuse and die.

I somehow survived the descent unharmed and stumbled along the hallway in what little natural light the narrow corridor afforded me. Up ahead the door was rattling in its frame, banging out what sounded like a loud, frantic morse code. It felt like a warning. Warning or not, there was to be no turning back.

As I approached the door the wind suddenly took hold of it and flung it open, dragging it so far back that I could hear the hinges squeal under the strain. And then it was hammered shut, shaking the frame and hurting my ears.

When I reached the door I found that it would not budge. The tremendous impact it had endured had twisted the lock and fused the mechanism into the frame. I panicked and ran to the back door and then remembered that I didn't have a key for that, and then ran from one downstairs window to the next, finding them all locked and all too small to be able to break and escape through. Eventually, panic led me back to the front door where a bolt of lightening lit up the hallway in a fiery orange glow. When I looked up at the fierce explosion of colour I noticed a glass panel between the top of the door and the ceiling.

I raced back into the kitchen and returned with a chair and a rolling pin. I climbed up, shielded my eyes and smashed the glass in two blows.

Stepping up onto the backrest of the chair, I levered myself out through the opening, oblivious to the biting shards of glass and the bruising landing. Once outside, the Quil Marsh I found myself in bore no resemblance to the one I was familiar with.

The rain was no longer just rain, but a curtain of water that appeared to be flooding out of the ground as well as the sky. The wind howled and thundered back and forth maliciously across the landscape. The air was alive with the debris that the gale had seized up and hurled around. Flashes of bright light lit up the sky, which exploded on the back of deep seismic rumbles giving the impression of a nearby war. Nearby, getting closer.

Quil Marsh was in its final death throes now. It was a ship stern-up in a storm and it was going down and taking everything with it. I was afraid and I wanted desperately to escape Quil Marsh with my life intact. But Laura was still there, and her pull was greater than that of life - _far greater_.

I ran as fast as I could in the general direction of Millwood House. I say general direction, because such was the damage wrought on the surroundings that I could no longer be sure the paths I followed were the same ones I had followed day-in-day-out over the preceding weeks. As I went I picked up occasional landmarks (most of them now broken and twisted and not all of them where they had once been). The going was hard, with the bitter wind a cold hand in my face pushing me back. In spite of this, I swear I've never moved faster, before or since, gulping as much rainwater as I did oxygen with every gasping breath I took.

I was almost across the central square before I recognised it. The notice board was gone, ripped up and flown off like a kite, and now probably giving directions miles away in a place it had never seen before. The swinging chair had similarly been yanked from its moorings and was now banging around the square like a rabid dog.

I continued my frantic race and soon the square was history. The path I'd taken opened up into the road and, glad as I was to have found it, it was not without obstacles. On more than one occasion I had to negotiate fallen trees whose wild branches scratched and tore my skin. And every step of the way the blizzard rained down the skeleton of Quil Marsh upon me.

Most of it was just wreckage – not recognisable by me and probably not recognisable by the people who once owned it. Handles from buckets, the trash from bins, slates from roofs and even a headless garden gnome. But there were other things that I thought I'd seen before. Shafts of coloured wood that looked like they had come from Doctor Jennings' fence, a big wooden clock that was a double for the one that had adorned Bernadette's school building, a gargoyle from Jacob's church and a menu board from Jerry and Katie's place. I half expected to see the respective bodies of each of the aforementioned fly across my path too, but fortunately not all of my fears came to pass that day.

Eventually I reached the junction where Chester Green had come to grief (one of the few landmarks not pulled up and flung at the moon), and began the descent back into the east side of the village. I made a left turn at another crossroads and started on what I recognised as the final leg of my journey. I was running faster than ever now, even though my heart was bursting and my ribs felt like crucifixion nails in my side. And then I had to stop.

There it was at last. Even half blinded by the sting of the biting wind in my face, I could see it. Even though the rain fell in saturating heavy sheets, and swirling clouds of dust whipped up by the gale reduced my visibility to almost nothing, I could see it. At last I could see Millwood House.

It was an incredible sight to behold.

But for some superficial damage, it appeared physically untouched by the storm. If anything, it looked somehow larger and more striking than I remembered it, seeming to rise up beyond the confines of its structure as if taking an enormous final breath. All the clapboard had been torn away from the stone walls and the decorative trim was gone too, so that the house had regressed back to the time it had been built. The pale, raw stone looked like bone and the black shutters looked like the hollows of dead eyes, giving it the impression of being a giant skull – somehow, not dead.

The storm buffeted around it, prowling the walls and howling over the roof, sending off a warning to anyone who dared to come too close. If there was an eye to the hurricane that was battering Quil Marsh, then this was it. I was also inclined to believe at that moment that if there was a single cause to the tempest, then this was it too. Every light in the building was switched on. The house was not hiding; it wanted to be found. It looked magnificent, but it looked fearsome too. Somewhere inside this terrible place was Laura.

I got to my feet and ran towards the gates. The wind no longer seemed to be trying to hold me back, but was behind me now, pushing me towards my destination. I did not resist.

When I reached the gates I could see immediately that all was not as it should be. The front door was open. As the wind rattled the door back and forth, it was clear that something was stopping it from returning to the frame.

I called out Laura's name but there was no response, just a repetitive dull thud that sounded like meat being pounded by a mallet.

I pushed through the gate and the storm ushered me along the path. Soon I could see the vague outline of an object lodged in the doorway. A few strides closer and I could see that it was a body.

I was gripped by despair. I planted my feet in the ground and then took a step backwards. I was overwhelmed by the urge to run and not confront the tragedy waiting for me. But it was only a passing impulse. I had nowhere to run to. All of my life was up ahead of me. I relaxed my stance and let the storm shepherd me the remaining distance up to the front steps to where I could clearly see the body. A body it almost certainly was – there was no sign of life. However, Laura's body it most certainly wasn't.

# CHAPTER 65

I looked down at Sam Fisher's blood stained corpse, and his glassy lifeless eyes looked back up at me. The door was rocking back and forth against his shoulder as if it were trying to prod him awake. His head was resting on a liquid crimson pillow of its own making. The top of his head was a pulped mess, leaving a window into his skull. Part of his brain was missing, having hitched a ride on whatever it was that had passed through him – probably a bullet. The residue from the head trauma had exploded out over the rest of his body. He was wearing his Daffy Duck tie and all the Daffys were covered in blood. They looked as if they been the victim of similar attacks.

A handgun was lying next to his head, just out of reach of his twisted fingers. The odour of recently burned gunpowder was still redolent from the barrel. It smelt like brimstone. It smelt like death.

Looking down at Sam I experienced the whole range of emotions: relief, disgust, fear, shame and guilt. But it has to be said, mostly relief. Sam Fisher, it appeared, had committed suicide. I wondered what had driven him to it. More than that, I wondered what had he done before he pulled the trigger on himself. I felt suddenly sick and afraid.

I resisted the temptation to pick up the gun (I knew well enough not to pick it up and not to contaminate existing fingerprints with my own), and instead stepped over the body and pushed the door back.

Once inside my search for Laura began in earnest. _LAURA!_ From one room to the next. _LAURA!_ Turning over chairs and flinging open wardrobes. LAURA! Pulling down curtains and up-ending tables. _LAURA! LAURA!_ I ran from room to room afraid that I would find my dream shot to pieces. Instead I found nothing but the dying echoes of my anguished cries.

The final bedroom turned out to be a converted library. The shelves were stacked from floor to ceiling with bookkeeping manuals, texts on professional standards, guidance on relevant legislation and...and crime fiction.

The paperbacks were tucked away in the corner of the bottom shelf. I only noticed them as I was leaving. They were glossy murder novels of the kind I had found lying around the village. I paused for a moment, pulled one out and flicked through it. The middle section of the book was missing in the same way that my novel had been carved up at Bernadette's house.

Confused, I dropped the novel onto the floor and stepped out of the room to continue my frantic search.

The search concluded in a small converted attic room. From the sloped window set into the roof I had a panoramic view of Quil Marsh – all that it had been and all that it had become. Laura had to be out there somewhere. However, whether she was alive or dead was another matter entirely. Either way, I knew that if I had to spend the rest of my life looking, then I would.

I made my way back downstairs to the living room. Sam Fisher was still where I'd left him, lying in the entrance to the house like a gruesome doorstop. His blood was coagulating in a congealed halo around his head.

I couldn't bring myself to go over and examine his body, but like a traffic accident I couldn't take my eyes from him. Looking at him lying there with his feet on the steps and his head on the welcome mat, it struck me that standing in an open doorway was a peculiar place to shoot yourself. Wasn't suicide a private matter? I had never contemplated suicide myself, but had seen it often enough in the small stories of the local press. Living rooms, garages, bedrooms and cells were typical venues. All enclosed, shut off and private. I couldn't ever recall reading about anyone shooting themselves in their front garden.

No, lying in the doorway like that just didn't look right. It was as if he had just opened the door for fresh air, or to take a look out, or because...someone had come calling...someone had come to the door and rung the bell. The door had been opened and then BANG. Oh God. Suicide? What suicide?

But who was left to pay a call in Quil Marsh? Weren't they all dead or gone, taking their grudges with them? Yes, most of them: all but one. Bernadette.

Bernadette, who had left home in a hurry and seemingly vanished off the face of the earth, perhaps because of what she had been about to do, or perhaps because of what she had already done.

How ironic, I thought, if indeed it was Bernadette. That would mean that the only resident who had decided to exercise their grudge against Sam Fisher was the only one I had not assisted.

But did she have a grudge against Laura, too? Not as far as I knew, but then, what did I know. The thought that somewhere out there Bernadette had murdered Laura did not bear thinking about. Laura had to be found quickly – more quickly than I could find her.

I walked over to the telephone. The receiver was hanging off the hook. I retrieved it and found the line to be dead. I replaced the handset to get a dial tone, and then lifted it up to call the police.

"Hello. Which service do you require?"

"Police and ambulance," I said. "It's an emergency. A man is dead and a woman is..."

"Calm down sir. Could you begin by giving me your address."

"Millwood House in Quil Marsh. It's near..." I stopped in mid-sentence because I simply didn't know where it was near to. Hell?

There was a brief pause while the information was rattled into a computer.

"We already have a callout to that address," the operator responded. "Police and an ambulance."

"Sorry?"

"The emergency services are already on their way."

"But..."

"Please remain at the scene until they arrive. Now, I'd like to take your details."

I replaced the handset.

Somewhere off in the distance I could hear the familiar scream of sirens. Familiar, except that this time they were heading towards me instead of someone else. As the vehicles got closer the sirens got louder, piercing my ears like nails scraping down a blackboard. Above the high-pitched wail I could just make out the sound of vehicles rumbling along the road outside. Then there was a brief moment's silence followed by doors being slammed and the sound of heavy footsteps marching up the path. Another brief lull and then a familiar voice broke the silence.

"What's this then?"

I knew of only one voice that sounded quite as clueless as this. Sure enough, Detective Calhoun's clueless face appeared a moment later.

# CHAPTER 66

"So, you decided to wait," he said, stepping over Sam Fisher's corpse gingerly as if he were secretly queue-jumping in front of him.

"Of course," I replied.

Detective Calhoun raised his eyebrows a couple of times as if they were weights he was using to exercise his brow.

"It was the sensible thing to do in the circumstances," he said. "Trust me, you did the right thing."

"I did what anyone would have done."

"I wish it were always that simple," he replied.

Detective Calhoun made a big show of wandering around the room and giving it a once over. I assumed he was trying to find crucial clues, though he looked rather more like a prospective house purchaser.

"You say I did the right thing by remaining at the house," I said.

"Yes?" he replied, moving his clue-searching attentions to me.

"How did you know that I was here?"

"The telephone call," he responded.

"But I didn't leave my name."

"No, you didn't, but the caller before you did."

"There was another caller?" I said.

"Indeed there was," he replied.

"Do you mind if I ask who the caller was?"

"Not at all. You'd find out anyway."

"Well, who was it?"

"Laura...Laura Fisher."

# CHAPTER 67

And then I fainted. My pupils dilated and Detective Calhoun momentarily became tall and elongated, and the walls stretched upwards like pinched candyfloss. Everything began to spin and I felt as if I was in a vortex that was sucking me down through its centre and into hell. I slumped back in my chair and let it take me, happy to be gone.

When I woke I found that I was not in hell, but somewhere worse. I was still in Millwood House.

Someone appeared to be holding two thick jam jars containing tiny two tiny brown rice grains over my face. I blinked and realised it was Detective Calhoun looking down on me. He shone a light into my eyes that felt as if it were burning a hole into the back of my head.

I pushed the torch to one side and saw that Sam was still occupying the narrow space within the doorframe. Several policemen filed into the room, moving slowly over his body as if it were traffic calming.

"I haven't shot anyone," I said, getting to my feet. "You do believe me, don't you?"

"I'd like to believe you Mr Travers," Detective Calhoun replied, "but frankly you've put me in a very difficult position. You were, after all, the only person at the scene of the crime."

"But the operator told me to stay," I protested.

"The operator couldn't have told you to stay if you hadn't been here in the first place. I see you're not wearing any gloves."

"No gloves? No, I haven't got any...it's...it's not a crime is it?"

"Not in itself." Detective Calhoun straightened up from where he had been leaning over me and walked over to the doorway. He knelt down by the body, took a pen from his pocket and threaded it through the trigger loop of the gun. He held it up for me to see. "Does this look familiar to you?"

I looked at the gun. I mean I really looked at it properly, not just giving it a cursory glance the way I had when I had first entered the house. It was the gun Laura had shown me on the hill the day she had talked about ending everything.

Detective Calhoun performed a brushing motion over the handle. "I think that if we get this dusted we may well find your fingerprints all over it. What do you think?"

I thought he was right: maybe for the first time in his life. I remembered the hour I'd spent arguing with Laura about the gun, the moment I had taken it from her and, of course, the gloves she had been wearing.

"It's not what it seems," I said.

"Nothing ever is just after you've passed out."

"No, what I'm trying to say is that I know this looks bad, but I can explain everything."

"Don't worry, you'll get your chance to say how you see things. You'll just have to hope that twelve other people share your view." Detective Calhoun shot me a doubtful look which suggested that he thought this very unlikely.

"Are you sure it was Laura who called you to the house?" I said, clutching at straws. "Couldn't it have been someone pretending to be her?"

"I've just spoken to the woman," Detective Calhoun replied, still swinging the gun in mid-air by his pen as if it were an executive toy. "If she is pretending to be Laura then she's a master of disguise."

"You mean Laura is close by? Where is she, I need to speak to her. We can clear this whole thing up here and now, you'll see. Please, I'll ask nothing else of you if you grant me this one wish."

Detective Calhoun returned the gun back where he'd found it, stood up, looked over at me and scratched his chin. "You seem so sure," he said eventually. "I suppose it can't do any harm if I mention it to her. But you have to wait here," he concluded, pointing a warning finger at me.

I nodded vigorously. I would have conceded anything to have the chance to see Laura again. Two policemen stood watching me, making my agreement only academic. Detective Calhoun left the house and I sat down. And that was when I was struck by a strange feeling of familiarity.

I rubbed a hand across an aching temple and tried to rationalise the unnerving feeling I was experiencing. Somebody had been shot dead, but where in the mundane life I had led until I arrived in Quil Marsh had I come across such a thing before? And then it hit me – in my books. I let out a loud shout of recognition and one of the policemen opposite me jumped nervously and put a hand on his hip looking for the gun he would have had there had he been in the movies. Fortunately for me, he wasn't.

When I say books, I mean one book in particular. A novel I'd written in which a man falls in love with a woman. It was mostly romance – I don't usually play the love card that strongly, because the readers aren't that interested – but of course, being one of my books, there had to be a murder in there somewhere. The spanner in the romance was that she was already married and her partner was a violent man. She couldn't kill him for fear of reprisals. She couldn't leave him for fear of being found. And her lover couldn't do anything about him because, well, he couldn't. However, in the end she could take no more and she shot him. And the twist? She framed the man she loved. She claimed they'd never had an affair and that he'd had an obsession about her that had culminated in the murder. It was the perfect set up. She had manoeuvred him into being found at the scene of the murder and she'd managed to get his fingerprints all over the gun she'd used. When it came to trial the things she said he'd done in pursuit of her finally turned the jail cell key, if indeed it had needed turning any further. He had been too slow to see it all coming. He had been trapped by his love, and love was a trap from which no one escaped.

And the name of the book? Cruel Hearts, the very same novel I had given to Laura to articulate my love. My whole predicament was almost word for word the same as that novel. So, one of my books had proven to have a basis in reality after all.

I closed my eyes and tried to block out the inevitable conclusion that Laura had killed Sam and set me up to take the blame. There had to be another explanation for the death of the man who had terrorised the village. How could such a guilty man have come to such a blameless death? Unless he wasn't guilty at all.

The thought appeared out of nowhere, like an unwelcome lump under the skin, and like an unwelcome lump, I probed it to see if it was malignant. Perhaps he wasn't guilty.

Perhaps the person who hated Lyle's birds was the woman who owned the dog that killed them – the dog called Raul which just so happens to be an anagram of her pet name (pet name indeed). Perhaps the person Katie Lee was having the affair with was the woman who's underwear she had in her pocket when I surprised her returning to the hotel. Perhaps the person taking drugs from Doctor Jennings was the woman with injection marks along her forearm that looked a little like cigarette burns. Perhaps the person who had stolen from Jacob was the woman whose name and date of death he had etched on the gravestone in a moment of unchristian wish-fulfilment. Perhaps the person blackmailing Bernadette was the woman who hadn't read a life changing book because the middle chapters always seemed to be missing; the same woman who spent her time picking up hollowed-out novels stuffed with money that were being left around the village. And perhaps the person who had left the note asking for help in her box file had been wishing aloud for assistance to dispose of an innocent man, and perhaps the name written repeatedly over the note had been the practising of his signature for the time when he was no more...perhaps.

It occurred to me that Sam's letter to his secret blonde (the letter I thought he'd written to the fair Katie Lee) was probably directed at the formerly platinum Laura, this being the secret he had in mind. Accepting this, it seemed unlikely that a man writing love letters to his wife is also beating her. The bruising, which could have been easily applied by an ex-beautician's hand, could have just as easily been removed when it was no longer required. A bit like Sam Fisher I suppose; a man I now realised who was guilty only of seeing too much when he was sober and talking too much when he was drunk - and of falling in love unwisely.

At this point, I half expected Sam to jump to his feet, exclaim, At last!, and then applaud me wildly. He remained resolutely unmoved by my discovery, which was probably due in equal parts to his having had to wait so long for it to be made and his lack of a pulse.

After that, the remaining pieces didn't so much fall into place as walk up and slap me in the face. For instance the love note written in the two swans greeting card with 5b stamped in the corner of the envelope that I'd found on Laura's secret hill. In the light of my revelation, it hardly seems likely that Laura wrote it. Who then? How about Matthew Sweeting the visiting civil servant who had a happy habit of running into Laura on his visits and who expected Laura to read it, not me. It wasn't hard to imagine the bureaucratic Mr Sweeting numbering the card so that he could refer to it on future dates (card 5b, line 3, sentiment 2.1). I wondered idly how long he had left to live – if indeed he was still alive. And Chester Green? I can't say for sure, but I would guess that he had even less talent for choosing lovers than he did for painting. I'm only guessing, because that's all Chester Green's art allows you to do, but I think the picture of the unidentified couple he painted was of himself and Laura. I realised then that Chester was probably older than I thought and of course Laura was unrecognisable from one year to the next, even without the help of Chester's skills. Am I right about Chester? You'd have to talk to him to answer that question, but of course you can't because he's dead too. Add to all of this the fact that I subsequently learned that Laura was previously widowed twice over and you have a list of partners who are as much ex-mortis as they are ex-lovers. And these were just the people I knew about. I wonder how many other lives have slipped through her pretty fingers over the years.

And there I was, all thanks to love and a battered copy of Cruel Hearts.

Detective Calhoun returned. "She refuses to see you, and frankly I'm not surprised after what she's just told me."

"I'm not surprised either," I replied. "Not anymore."

"I don't like to have to say this," he continued, "having got to know you over the last few weeks, and well, liked you, but Mr Travers I'm arresting you for the murder of Sam Fisher."

"Almost the same words that are uttered in Cruel Hearts," I said.

"Sorry?"

"It doesn't matter," I said.

One of the policemen (not the one with the itchy trigger finger) came over, put my hands behind my back and snapped on a pair of handcuffs.

"Right then, it only remains for me to read you your rights and then get you down to the station where you can be officially charged." The rights were duly read, and then: "Have you got anything to say for yourself?"

"No. To be perfectly honest I think I've already said too much."

"Very good," Detective Calhoun responded, and then appeared to be about to say something else, but stopped, and then started and stopped again. His face contorted in several directions as he appeared to wrestle with his conscience somewhere in the middle of his mouth. "Listen, as I said, I feel I've got to know you pretty well since I first arrived in Quil Marsh, and if the truth be told I think we've become friends. And in spite of what you've done...appear to have done...whatever; I don't like to see you unhappy. So, I'm going to tell you that there's some good news to come out of all of this."

"There is?" I said, shifting in my seat as the burning grip of the cuffs and Detective Calhoun's bizarre speech competed for my attention.

"Yes," he replied. "I feel I've finally cracked the book I was going to write."

"Pardon?"

"Just look at it, it's faultless," he continued. "Quil Marsh is as good a setting as any. Then I've got my damsel in distress, Laura – and let's face it, you don't get much more damsel than that. There's the crime of passion, which is where poor Sam Fisher comes in. And of course there are the accidental deaths to crank up the tension. And remember what you said about needing to find a villain? Well, that's...you."

"And this is supposed to make me happy?"

"I couldn't have done it without you," he replied. "I'll mention you in a dedication at the front."

"I'd rather you didn't."

"Typical," Detective Calhoun said, smiling.

"Typical?"

"Well, that's just what I'd imagine the you character saying in my novel."

"Can we go now?" I asked.

"Soon."

Detective Calhoun walked over to the window and strained his face upwards towards the sky. I didn't bother looking myself as I was beyond trying to second-guess him. The answer came soon afterwards with the whoosh of rotor blades descending from the dark clouds, and a moment later a helicopter landed in the clearing outside.

"I called for a helicopter because of the weather," Detective Calhoun said, with an apologetic grimace. "It wouldn't look good if we couldn't get a crazed killer out of here."

I shot him a sharp glance and he mouthed sorry at me. He walked over to where I was sitting, put a hand on my arm and eased me up.

"And besides," he whispered, "This will look great in the book."

And on that note we made our way to the door where Sam Fisher's body had finally been covered with a blanket. Looking down at him I wondered who he really was. Then I felt a hand nudging me in the back, and I stepped out of Millwood House for the last time.

"Switch everything off when you're done," Detective Calhoun said to the remaining policeman as he followed me out.

The deluge had given way to a light drizzle and the howling gale had slowed to a gentle breeze. Darkness had fallen, but a host of stars lit up the sky and shed a glorious purple sheet of light on the surrounding countryside. It was the most beautiful night I'd seen since I'd been in Quil Marsh. In fact it didn't really feel like Quil Marsh anymore.

Out beyond the gates I could see a standard squad car and two police Land Rover Discoveries. The Discoveries fired up their engines. Their windows were blacked out and I could not see who was inside, but it stood to reason that Laura was in one of them, and that meant my heart was in there too. I stood and watched as the cars shook a foggy cloud of gasoline into the cool air and waited for Laura to fling open a door and come running over towards me. Of course it didn't happen. Instead there was a crunch of gears and then the two cars rolled off at a sedate pace along the lane, down towards the south side Quil Marsh exit.

The further away they got, the more their white shells set against the tarmac made them look like paper boats floating down a black stream. And then they were gone, taking Laura and my heart with them. I was left standing there, wondering when I would be reunited with either. To this day I'm still waiting.

There was a tap on my shoulder and a uniformed arm beckoned me towards the waiting helicopter. There was no reason for me to remain in Quil Marsh now that Laura had gone. I was glad of the chance to be leaving, even if it meant leaving in chains.

I stepped up into the helicopter and nestled into a seat next to Detective Calhoun where I was buckled in, thus completing my restraint. The next stop was a trial and a mandatory ten to twelve year sentence - ten to twelve years before I could be with Laura once more, because, as strange as it may seem, I felt that we would be together again. If one thing can be said to still exist after the death of Quil Marsh and so many of its residents, then it is my love for Laura, and, I honestly believe, her love for me.

If the latter part of this sentiment seems in doubt, or even unbelievable, and I accept that at first sight I appear to be just another soldier in Laura's kamikaze army of lovers, then a second look may suggest otherwise. I'm the odd one out from the others on two counts. Firstly, I'm the only one who isn't worth a penny; the rest were wealthy or the children of the wealthy or insured for substantial amounts, but not me - I couldn't even get life insurance. And the other difference? I'm alive and they are not. By comparison with death, ten years in prison seems almost like an act of love, and this is indeed how I choose to see it.

This is, after all, real love we're talking about. I am as incapable of putting it behind me as I am of putting breathing behind me. If you've found real love you'll know what I mean. If you haven't, try not breathing for the rest of your life.

The rotor blades began to buzz and the helicopter shuddered before spiralling up into the darkening sky; then it settled for a moment, letting the tail level out as it prepared to head off.

I leaned across the window and took one last look down at Quil Marsh. All that remained was the single speck of light that was Millwood House. And then the light went out and Quil Marsh was gone. A second later, so was I.

They say that love hurts – well my love killed a whole town. I've got a feeling that the killing isn't over yet.

