Free How the Dead Live (Factory 3) by Derek Raymond Page A

‘So can I please have his bank statements checked? I’m not being tactless – he’ll never know his account’s been checked.’
    ‘I’m thinking about it,’ said the voice, ‘don’t ride me. Listen, did you accuse him of anything to his face?’
    ‘I’m not in a position to yet,’ I said, ‘but I asked him if he was hiding or withholding information from me about the Mardys, yes, because I had the feeling, as strongly as possible, that he was.’
    ‘Oh God, why is it,’ said the voice, ‘that every case you handle, something frightful blows up in it virtually straight away?’
    ‘Because there’s something frightful in every case, sir.’
    ‘Just calling me sir isn’t going to make me any better tempered,’ said the voice, ‘though I’ll make a note of it – the last time was Christmas Eve, and I got the impression that you’d had a few that day.’
    ‘Kedward’s bank statements,’ I said. ‘I want to go up and see Mardy now.’
    ‘All right,’ said the voice, ‘yes.’
    ‘You’ll get the results down here to me as soon as you can? By courier?’
    ‘Yes. You’re not to get in touch with his bank directly, do you understand?’
    ‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘photocopies are all I need.’
    ‘Tell me,’ said the voice, ‘I know it’s early days, but what’s your instinct about this Mardy woman? What do you think may have happened to her?’
    I said: ‘I feel there’s every possibility that she’s dead.’
    ‘Well,’ said the voice, ‘that’s what we’re here for. All right, keep at it. You’re cheeky, I had a half-hour hate from Chief Inspector Bowman about you this morning, but you’re an energetic officer and you’ve got brains, I’ll say that for you.’ He rang off on me, muttering: ‘A corrupt police inspector he digs up – oh God, who ordered any of that?’

9
     
    With the map I had I traced my way through the lanes north of Thornhill. I made mistakes, first driving up rutted tracks into a blank, frostbitten field, then turning off wrong at an unmarked crossroads. It had got completely dark with sleet, then icy rain, turning to hail, battering the high ground.
    But at last I was speeding past an old brick wall with most of the coping gone and reached two stone pillars that supported half-open gates. I got out with the torch that I kept in the car. There was a mailbox screwed into the wall by the gates that read Thornhill Court, so I opened the gates, got back in the car and drove up five hundred yards of mud.
    The house didn’t look beautiful in the headlights even while I was far from it; when I got up close it was hideous, sombre and huge. Fallen masonry, a lot of it, sprawled across the left-hand edge of the drive’s circle under the façade. I got out of the car; not one window was lit. All round me wild trees prayed soaking in the rain, their bare arms nagging the sky. I walked past a rusty Ford van with a flat front tyre and looked up at the five storeys, streaming with wet, that stooped over me. Then I noticed that one of the plate-glass front doors was swinging ajar in the gale, so I went up the porch steps and stood on the threshold. I shone my torch round the hall beyond; it was vast, unlit and empty. Rain spilled on to me from the balcony overhead.
    I called out sharply: ‘Mardy? Dr William Mardy?’
    There was no answer. I went in and stood in the hall. Facing me was an organ, its loft very high from the floor; the windows I picked out were stained glass, black now against the blackness outside. Far down from me was a marble fireplace, its breast rising to lose itself in false beams high above from which rain pattereddown everywhere, dripping at logical intervals on a table built to seat twelve.
    I called out again: ‘William Mardy? Are you there?’
    Nothing.
    Now that I was in out of the wind my hearing adjusted itself to the house. At first I thought the place was silent except for the droning of the gale, but presently I became certain that