Free The Book of the Crowman by Joseph D'Lacey Page B

wait. He’d never been this close.
    An impulse took him.
    “You say he talks to you, Flora, but do you ever talk to him?”
    “Of course I do, knobhead! All the time.”
    “Flora!”
    Gordon laughed, waving Denise’s scold away.
    “It’s fine,” he said. “Would you be able to give him a message from me next time you see him?”
    “Yes. Yes, I think so. What do you want me to say?”
    Gordon put his fingers to his lips.
    What do I say to him? How do I say it?
    “Could you just say that… Could you tell him that Gordon Black has come to find him? That I want to talk to him because I… need his help. Can you tell him that?”
    “Yes, Gordon.” Flora was once more full of her adult importance and it struck Gordon not as precocious or amusing in the slightest. It couldn’t have been more appropriate. “I can tell him that. And I’ll tell you what he says too.”
    Gordon slumped back. A deep coil of tension had released inside him and he was suddenly exhausted.
    “You can rest here if you’re tired.”
    This was a very different Denise to the one who’d confronted him at gunpoint. Every part of him wanted to stay and sleep. He felt that if he closed his eyes now, he might sleep for three whole days. And up here he would be so much safer too.
    “Thanks,” he said. “But you’ve both done more than enough already. I’d like to come back, though, if that’s OK. In a few days, perhaps. Maybe by then Flora will have seen the Crowman.”
    “You’re always welcome, Gordon,” said Denise. “The least I can do is see you safely off the premises.” She shifted onto her knees and reached for the ladder. “Come on, I’ll follow you down and show you the safest routes.”
    When the hatch was open and the ladder down, Gordon waved to Flora across the tiny space. She waved back and smiled.
    “It’s been great to meet you, Flora.”
    She waved back.
    “Come back soon,” she said. “I know he’ll be excited that you’ve come to see him.”
    Unbelievable. All this time. I’m really going to meet him.
    It didn’t seem possible. Gordon descended to the top landing and Denise joined him. They made the journey down through the house in silence and she followed him out into the tip that had once been a back garden. The hole in the wall was as far as she would go.
    “There are good places all along this road,” she said. “Places the Ward don’t know about.” She gestured out to the front of the house and to the right. “The old swimming baths is a couple of hundred yards down that way. No one thinks of going in there. There are lots of office rooms upstairs but it’s damp. If you go the opposite way there’s a house with a green door. Number 257. It was derelict long before people started to leave. The garden’s so overgrown you’d have to cut your way through but, as far as I know, no one’s ever stayed there and the Ward never touch it.”
    She mentioned other places and Gordon took the information in as best he could, trying to remember one important thing about each bolthole.
    “Thanks,” he said. He glanced briefly up towards the top of the house. “And sorry.”
    “What for?”
    Gordon looked back at Denise.
    “For causing trouble. For bringing them to your place.”
    “Don’t be stupid. It’s not mine anyway. Nothing belongs to anyone any more. Well, everything belongs to the Ward. It’s the same thing.”
    “They only came in because of me.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “Sometimes they know where to look. It’s uncanny. I thought I’d been careful. I don’t know why they came in here today but it put you and Flora in danger.”
    “It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last, Gordon. You can come back here any time you want to. Flora was…” Denise cleared her throat. “It was good for her. She isn’t like that with anyone else. The Crowman stuff, it… makes me uncomfortable. But it’s all she’s got and she told you more today than she’s ever told anyone