Free Last Rites by Shaun Hutson

there was also a small wooden shed and a greenhouse. Several of the panes were broken and had been replaced with pieces of thick Cellophane secured with gaffer tape.There were four tables inside the transparent structure but they supported only empty flower pots. When the wind blew strongly the panes rattled in their frames and the door of the greenhouse moved gently back and forth on rusted hinges, sometimes banging against the frame so hard that the glass threatened to shatter.

    The rear garden was enclosed by high privet hedges on two sides and a drystone wall on the other. Standing at the bottom of the garden, any visitor would have been able to look over the wall towards the town of Walston itself, less than a mile away by car.

    Inside the cottage, the same view was available from the window of the main bedroom. From the study window, also to the rear of the structure, the garden was visible. The study had been added, almost as an afterthought, in the 1930s but had been maintained well and appeared a natural extension of the main building. It was a small annexe that held a large wooden desk and some bookshelves. There was an antique-looking television aerial propped on the tiled roof.

    The study led off from the small hallway and the living room.This was a much larger room from which the stairs rose at the far end, the bottom step close to the door of the kitchen. Upstairs, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a large attic, accessible via a pull-down ladder, completed the complement of rooms.

    The cellar ran beneath the entire extent of the house. There was a trapdoor opening in the kitchen that could be pulled up and, beneath it, a set of bare stone steps led down into the subterranean gloom below.This blackness was dissipated by a single unshaded bulb that hung in the centre of the ceiling, accessed by a switch close to the cellar entrance but, even when the light was on, there were shadows it wouldn’t penetrate.

    Areas of darkness and hidden corners that hid their secrets from prying eyes.

18

    North London

    ‘But Pete, this is crazy. You don’t even know if you’re going to get any of the jobs you’ve applied for and, even if you do, you’ve got to find somewhere to live.’ Natalie Mason shook her head and shrugged then let out a long sigh.‘I don’t think you’ve thought this through at all.’

    Mason sipped from his glass and looked at her evenly. The smell of their Chinese food was still heavy in the air, the plates still on the small kitchen table.

    ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Mason told her, lifting his wine glass to his lips. ‘I’ll find a job.’

    ‘I don’t doubt that you will but I just don’t think you’ll get one as easily and as quickly as you think. It could be weeks before you hear from some of these schools. Even longer before you even get an interview and then you’ve got to get the job.’

    Mason held up a hand to silence her.

    ‘Well, all I can do is wait, isn’t it?’ he exclaimed.

    ‘And what do you do while you wait? You’ve got to have money coming in. You can’t just sit around.’

    Mason shrugged.

    ‘I’ll find something to do,’ he insisted. ‘Something’s always turned up in the past.’

    ‘You’ve been lucky, Pete.Your luck might have run out.’

    ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

    ‘You know what I mean. There are plenty of other teachers out there looking for work. Why not go back to the school where you were teaching?’

    He cut her short.

    ‘So your suggestion is that I return to the place where the little fuckers who almost killed me still go? Let them laugh at me every fucking day because they’ve got away with almost killing me? Cheers, Natalie.’

    She exhaled wearily and opened her mouth to speak again but he cut in.

    ‘I can’t do it, Nat,’ he breathed. ‘I just can’t.’

    She shook her head.

    ‘And what about you?’ he asked.‘What does the future hold for you?’

    ‘Does it matter? You’re not going to be