You’ll hear why, mate!
He paced the cluttered floor space of his flat; it didn’t take him long to do a dozen circuits. Smoked Lucky Strikes until his mouth burned and what felt like his last remaining taste buds died. Was queasy with nerves and tiredness, hadn’t eaten properly. He checked the fridge again, but nothing besides an open packet of pasta parcels, three limp spring onions and a pot of yoghurt did anything but turn his stomach over.
Books were picked up and put down. A Woody Allen film 89
ADAM NEVILL
was started and stopped. Dishes were washed, and even dried and put away. The cat was fed again, but didn’t mind. The main window of his flat, overlooking Goldhurst Terrace, was peered through, repeatedly. A bottle of Wild Turkey was uncapped; it made his stomach burn, but he felt better after two glasses. Outside, people came home from evenings out.
The sexy girl with the haircut like Trinity from
The Matrix
announced herself on the pavement outside with the usual
que que que
sound of her high-heeled boots. He went to the window and briefly and hotly lusted for her. But even she couldn’t take his mind off the footage.
Had that been a drug addict on the film? Wasted and lanky, hunting through the dark, all dignity gone, the voice shrill and cracked from emaciation and the privations of chronic addiction? Maybe
it
,
he
,
they
had gained access to the building, had concealed themselves among the city’s wealthiest residents. In an empty building. Must have done.
The sound of his and Dan’s voices had roused it from where it had been hiding in some near-fatal narcotic slumber.
He’d once seen two skeletal female drug addicts in Camden, before they cleaned the place up; two girls rummaging through bin bags outside one of the markets at four in the morning; they were upright bones inside clothes they had once worn to nightclubs; their faces had been lumpy with purple boils.
Or perhaps a former member of the cult had been drawn back to the house, harrowed and unable to break their attachment to The Last Gathering after forty years?
Kyle put a Volbeat album on the stereo to stop his head-chatter. Fell onto the sofa. Stared at the ceiling. Rewound his memory again through the dim horrors of the Clarendon 90
LAST DAYS
Road footage. Thought of the terrible stain in the cellar. Fear coiled inside confusion. The flat was warm, but he shivered as if stationed before a persistent draught. Felt like he was about to accelerate vertically into a bad trip, one chilled by paranoia and tense with perceived danger.
The cat joined him on the sofa, kneaded his chest and stomach with its front paws for a few minutes, but couldn’t make Kyle’s chest comfortable enough for sleep. The cat left him. Tail high, it went into the tiny kitchen, and he heard it find the last of the weak sunlight on the window sill.
Kyle picked up the eight pieces of uncollected mail he’d taken from the hallway of the Clarendon Road house on his way out that morning. And then began to google the names of the former tenants.
‘Mrs Phillips. Rachel Phillips?’
‘Speaking. Who am I talking to?’
‘Kyle Freeman. You’re at work on Sunday? Tough.’
‘I’m at work every day. Who are you?’
‘Oh. We don’t know each other—’
‘You’re not selling anything are you? I’m in the middle of something.’
‘No, no. I was just, well, I have an interest in a property you rented at Clarendon Road.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Well, I understand you were the previous tenant of the ground-floor flat and—’
‘How did you get this number?’
‘Oh, I googled you.’
‘Googled me?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. It must seem intrusive. And ordinarily I 91
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wouldn’t have bothered you, but, well, I was at the property on Saturday and . . . I’m not quite sure how to put this . . .’
‘I have a feeling you’re going to ask me why I left the flat halfway through my lease.’
‘Er, you did?’
‘Don’t rent it. Don’t go near it.’
‘I don’t intend to. Wouldn’t now, anyway.’
‘So the estate agent gave you my name so you could google me?’
‘Umm, no.’
‘Glad to hear it. So how did you get my name then?’
‘Mail. But I didn’t open it. I saw some mail this morning, when we went back for the . . . and I decided to call one of the previous tenants. You were the only one I could find a number for. At your chambers. You’re the only QC online called Rachel Phillips. I was going to leave a message.’
‘My, my, you are tenacious.’
‘Well, it’s quite important to me. And it’s just that, well, I wondered—’
‘If I noticed anything unusual about the property when I lived there?’
‘Exactly. Like, did you come across any funny smells?’
‘Smells? Ha! And the plumbers told me there was nothing wrong with the pipes. I say plumbers because I had three of them look. And the drainage is fine too. But the smells were the least of my worries, Mr?’
‘Freeman. Kyle Freeman.’
‘Mr Freeman,’ she lowered her voice as if someone might have been listening at her end. ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’
‘You know, I get asked that a lot. Perhaps I better come 92
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clean; I make films, ma’am. I’ve made films and documentaries about unexplained phenomena—’
‘Sorry, I thought you were a prospective tenant. You should have said. I have no intention of going on the record about any of this—’
‘No, no, you don’t have to. We had permission to go inside the house to shoot a documentary about its history—’
‘History? What history?’
‘It does have a bit of one. Look, I’m not a journalist, and I would never use your name for anything at all. I’m an independent documentary film-maker, and I don’t even want to film you, unless you wanted—’
‘Good God, no!’
‘Sure. Not a problem. But . . . Do you have time to talk now? About the house?’
‘Not really.’
‘Could we meet then? I’m happy to spring for lunch.’
There was a pause.
‘Ma’am?’
‘Yes. Hang on. Just looking at my diary. Look, maybe it’ll help to talk about this to someone other than my friends, who think I’m mad whenever I mention it. Are you free Monday?’
‘I can be.’
‘At one? It’ll have to be tomorrow. I’m unavailable for the next three weeks.’
‘Sure, sure. I can do that.’
‘And you’ll have to come to me. I work off The Strand.’
‘Right. Great.’
‘Good. Meet me at the Star Inn. One sharp. I can give you twenty minutes. See you then. And bring my mail with you.’
93
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‘Of course,’ he said to a dialling tone.
Kyle exhaled, then gulped at the pint of tap water on his coffee table. He turned to his laptop and googled the name of the pub Rachel Phillips had mentioned. Opened another window on his screen and pasted the postcode into Google Maps. Looked for the nearest Tube station. Chancery Lane.
Maybe he could black-cab it and charge it to Max, who’d be pleased with this lead. Maybe he could try to persuade Rachel to let him record her testimony anonymously, then get an actress to do her narration in a voice-over if it was good enough. Rachel Phillips QC was abrupt and time-precious, but as a barrister she didn’t fit the profile of a kook who was willing to jump to
woo-woo
conclusions about odd sounds and smells in a rented flat. Didn’t barristers have to be accurate?
He was suddenly tempted to call Dan again and tell him the news about the interview; this unexpected confirmation of what they had
actually
experienced inside the building. He swept his phone off the table, but remembered Dan would be working and put the phone back down. Kyle slumped into the sofa. Looked at the shroud of the chestnut tree beyond his living-room windows, through which the dying sun came in, filtered as if through diamonds.
This was really turning into something. He could feel it.
That tingling, precious moment when the usual slog of the research, the hunt for interviews, the endless phone calls to set up a shoot, the standing around between takes, the fretting, the let-downs, the revisions and compromises, just seemed to elevate into a coming together; a serendipity, when one lead opened into another and he was transported, dizzy with excitement, by a project coming to life and taking a 94
LAST DAYS
unique shape as it told its own story; a narrative he never expected to take form in the script. The best stories told themselves and turned the original premise into fossils; he knew that from experience with
Blood Frenzy
and
Coven
. They burned out because they were just waiting to be told if you found the right people and asked the right questions.
‘Yowser!’ he said to the cat that sat on the arm of the sofa.
It blinked and turned on to its back.
Still no word from Max; he’d left a garbled message on Max’s mobile phone that morning. Two more in the early afternoon when he’d been too antsy to sit still after watching the footage on the final flash drive. Hadn’t Max asked him to call right away, straight after the interview with Susan White?
He opened his email, and began typing:
Hey Max,
Sorry for the excess of enthusiasm, but we had
an extraordinary experience Saturday night at
Clarendon Road. My head is still reeling. Anyway, will tell you more in detail when we next speak.
Panic over: we retrieved the cameras early this
morning, with some trepidation, I might add, so
Dan could meet his next engagement. Place was a
different proposition in daylight. No evidence of anyone having been in there besides us at all. Just like it was when we were there with Susan White:
empty, bare, ordinary, totally innocuous. Electric lights were still out though, and we didn’t have the bottle/time to check the stain in the basement, but 95
ADAM NEVILL
you need to tell the landlord about it. It stinks down there. And if it’s a stain, then the Vatican should know about it! Anyway, I’ve done some sleuthing
after last night’s fright, and now have an unexpected lead that I’ll be pursuing tomorrow.
Speak soon,
Kyle
96
SIX
lincoln’s inn fields, london.
13 june 2011, 1 p.m.
Rachel peered at Kyle as he retrieved his screeching phone from the side pocket of his leather jacket. ‘Do you need to get that?’
Kyle shook his head. ‘Nah. It can wait.’ It was the third call from Max since he’d sat down with Rachel Phillips on a bench in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. One look through the window of the pub and she’d quickly eschewed her own choice of eatery. ‘Don’t worry,’ she’d said. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to be seen with you. But I don’t want anyone overhearing our conversation. I know too many people in there. I only have twenty minutes. I can eat later. You don’t mind?’
Quickly, concisely, breathlessly, as they’d walked to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, her eyes rarely left the screen of her BlackBerry and Kyle understood this interview was going to be brief. ‘Hope you’re not going to bill me for your time. I’m guessing you’re expensive.’
She’d laughed. ‘Can be.’ Crisp white blouse, a single strand of pearls, designer glasses with black frames, charcoal pinstriped suit, glossy white tights, sling-backs, perfumed maturely. She was plump, but sexy, in that handsome way 97
ADAM NEVILL
middle-aged blondes with pale skin can be. When she moved her hands, her red nails glinted like the shells of large lady-birds and a thin golden chain glittered on a smooth freckled wrist.
Kyle gave her DVD copies of his last two documentaries, hoping she would get past the lurid covers and watch them; see that he was serious and not crazy or exploitative and could be trusted if she ever changed her mind about speaking to camera, or at least letting him use her dialogue. ‘Oh. My God.
Coven
. Whatever next?’ she said, then gave him a con-ciliatory look and said, ‘Thank you,’ while quickly pushing the discs inside her bag.
‘Not my choice of title. Distributor,’ he offered by way of explanation.
Kyle’s phone cheeped as Max left another message.
‘And I thought
I
was busy,’ she said.
‘It’s the executive producer of the film. He can wait. I know your time is precious.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, demurely, and stared out across the grass towards the cupolas and ramparts of St Mary’s University. ‘The smell came first. That was the first thing I noticed.’
‘How would you describe it?’
‘Ghastly. A faint residue of sewage in the beginning. But then I became convinced there was a dead rat under the floorboards. Like carrion. Unmistakable. I spent some time with the UN, in Bosnia, investigating war crimes. So I know what death smells like.’ She blinked her carefully shadowed eyes three times. ‘But it would come and go. At night. It was never there when the letting agency sent a tradesman around during the day. They couldn’t find anything. The plumbing was fine.’
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‘Did they check the basement?’
‘Of course.’
‘Because that’s where we found a leak, I think.’
‘A leak?’
Kyle nodded. ‘Behind the boxes and the furniture. On the wall. The lights weren’t working.’
‘The lights.’ Rachel bit the side of her bottom lip; her manicured hands fidgeted for a moment around her BlackBerry.
‘Yes. When we went back at around ten to finish up a couple of segments, we found the lights were out. So we were using the camera spotlight when Dan saw the stain on the basement wall.’
‘It wasn’t a leak,’ she said, her voice almost a whisper. She looked about to make sure no one was eavesdropping.
‘No?’
Rachel shook her head. ‘Am I right in saying that you saw a
discolouration
in the storage room?’ she said tersely, her blue eyes narrowed in tandem with the interrogatory tone of her question.
‘Yes –’ He stopped himself from finishing with ‘your honour’.
‘And what did you see exactly on that wall?’
Kyle shrugged, still unsettled by the sudden directness of her inquiry. ‘Er, a stain, I think. Or scorch mark. On the plaster. When I played it back, I saw . . . I don’t know. Bones or something.’