Epitaph, p.1
Epitaph, page 1
BY SHAUN HUTSON
Assassin
Body Count
Breeding Ground
Captives Compulsion
Deadhead
Death Day
Dying Words
Epitaph
Erebus
Exit Wounds
Heathen
Hell to Pay
Hybrid
Knife Edge
Last Rites
Lucy’s Child
Necessary Evil
Nemesis
Purity Relics
Renegades
Shadows
Slugs
Spawn
Stolen Angels
Twisted Souls
Unmarked Graves
Victims
Warhol’s Prophecy
White Ghost
Shaun Hutson Omnibus 1
Shaun Hutson Omnibus 2
Copyright
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-748-11953-0
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Shaun Hutson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DY
www.hachette.co.uk
Contents
BY SHAUN HUTSON
Copyright
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
‘They have digged a pit before me, into the midst thereof they are fallen themselves.’
Psalms 57:6
‘O, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive.’
Sir Walter Scott
1
When they reached the gates they ran as if they were being chased.
No running was allowed inside the school corridors and not even in the courtyard and playgrounds but, once they reached the gates that opened out on to the school field beyond, there was no stopping them.
Free from these strictures, they hurtled out on to the vast expanse of greenery like greyhounds released from their traps.
Laura Hacket led the charge, whooping as loudly as her eight-year-old lungs would allow, her long plaits whisking around her face like a duo of benevolent whips. She stumbled once but remained on her feet, giggling as the first of her friends caught up with her and they narrowly avoided colliding with a group of boys who had already sprinted on to the field and were busily pulling off their blazers, putting them down as goal posts as another of their number dribbled a football agitatedly back and forth.
The boys looked around briefly at Laura and her friends but were more interested in their game than in these irritating girls. Laura tugged at her school tie and loosened it slightly as she walked, her pace now slowing as the initial excitement of escaping school once more began to wane.
High above in a cloudless sky, the sun was beating down relentlessly. A promise of good weather to come throughout the school holidays, Laura hoped. She shivered with anticipation even at the thought of six whole weeks of freedom to come. She and her parents were going on holiday to their caravan on the east coast in less than ten days. Laura loved the caravan. She loved the seaside, too. Her grandparents lived there and she would probably stay on with them for another week after her mum and dad returned home. That was what she usually did. Then, when she returned, she had another three or four weeks to look forward to, playing with her friends and just generally whiling away the time until school began again in early September. This holiday was her favourite. No contest (apart from Christmas, of course, when she got so many presents) and she and her friends had been looking forward to it for so long it seemed.
Beside her, two more of her friends were talking about their own forthcoming holidays. One of them was going to Spain but Laura wasn’t jealous. She didn’t want to leave the country. Everything she loved was already here. Besides, at least she was going with both her parents. Her friend was going to Spain with her dad and younger sisters and then, two weeks later, she was spending a week at a holiday camp in this country with her mum and her stepdad. Laura was only too happy that her mum and dad were still together, unlike so many of her friends’ parents who were separated, divorced, about to split up or just plain unhappy. She had no such problems and she was grateful for that.
Once across the school field, past the tennis courts and their high mesh fence, there was a concrete path that led between some trees and bushes and eventually to another smaller metal gate.
Beyond this was a picturesque lane leading towards the estate where Laura and most of her friends lived.
Some of the older boys and girls were sauntering down the path towards this last barrier now. Alone or in small groups, they made their way along it towards their homes, some of the boys shouting excitedly both at each other and at those who shared the path but most were content to amble along cocooned within the world of their own conversations, uninterested in those round about.
Laura saw two boys from her class prodding a spider’s web with a stick, another holding a struggling crane fly near the sticky web. He finally released the unfortunate insect, he and his companions cheering as it flew helplessly into the spider’s trap and wriggled there.
One of Laura’s friends commented on how cruel the boys were but they merely laughed and watched mesmerised as the spider advanced hungrily on the stricken crane fly. Laura shook her head disapprovingly and muttered something derogatory about boys in general.
She and her group of friends reached the rusty gate and turned left into the lane. Blossom had fallen from the branches of many trees that lined the walkway, their fallen bounty looking like fragrant snow on the tarmac of the path beyond. Laura picked two vibrantly yellow flowers from the side of the path and placed them in her school bag. One for her mum and one for her dad, she decided.
At the bottom of the lane there was a set of concrete posts inserted into the tarmac to prevent the passage of cars, and it was here that Laura and her friends separated. Laura’s house lay to the right, across an open green and then down beneath an underpass. Her friends would take different routes. Even so, they should all be home within ten or fifteen minutes. Laura bade effusive farewells then turned and hurried off across the green towards the underpass, promising first that she would ring each of her friends when she got home for a chat and to arrange what time they were meeting the following day.
Halfway across the wide, overgrown green, Laura slowed to a walk. She was hot and thirsty and running, she reasoned, would only make things worse.
As she headed towards the path that led down into the underpass she saw a man walking his dog and she paused to look at the dachshund that was waddling along in the heat looking as if it would rather be curled up in its basket. The man smiled warmly at Laura who stepped on to the cracked path leading down into the underpass.
As she reached the bottom she let out a deep breath. There were words and images spray-painted on the walls and Laura giggled to herself as she recognised some of the words. Rude words, her mum would say. She did not know who was responsible for putting them there. Yobs, her dad had said. Laura wasn’t completely sure what that word meant but her dad used it in connection with quite a few of the boys on their estate. It was a bit smelly inside the underpass; it always was and Laura had no idea why. Nevertheless, she enjoyed the coolness in the subterranean walkway, sheltered as it was from the sun. She slowed her pace and looked at the large, painted letters that had been sprayed on to the underpass walls, mesmerised by their size. There were some empty beer cans scattered across the pathway that led through the underpass and Laura was careful to step over them. Perhaps, she reasoned, they had belonged to the people who’d spray-painted the rude words on the walls.
Laura walked on.
2
Paul Crane closed the door behind him and leaned against it for a moment, eyes closed, head thumping.
He remained in that position for a moment longer then reached out a hand and slapped on the light. A welcoming glow filled the hallway and Paul finally opened his eyes slowly. He sucked in another weary breath then dropped his briefcase. It landed with a thud on the expensive carpet.
The hall was pleasingly cool compared to the heat he’d struggled through outside. Paul hated the warm weather, especially in the summer. The often unrelenting heat that bathed the country for days or weeks at a time. He enjoyed the chill of autumn and winter far more. During the summer he had to retire all his favourite jackets for the duration of the heat. His office, naturally, was air-conditioned but, once he’d left that safe and temperature-regulated haven, he was out on to the streets surrounded, it seemed, by people with pink tinted skin and scarlet cheeks. People who seemed to be impervious to the sunshine or, at any rate, incapable of ensuring that it didn’t cause them to look so comical.
This particular evening, the amount he’d drunk seemed to have exacerbated his dislike not only of the heat but of other people. He had studied those he’d ridden home with and experienced emotions ranging from contempt to hatred.
Everyone he’d looked at he’d imagined to be happier than he was. More financially secure than he was. Had more to look forward to in life than he had. Everything he was about to lose, they probably had.
Normally he would have taken a taxi home from work but, he reasoned, normally he wouldn’t have been thinking about the cost of a cab. He wouldn’t have been consider -ing the cost of anything because financial concerns weren’t high on his list of priorities. This particular evening, however, was different. Since receiving the news he’d got earlier that day, suddenly everything financial seemed of the utmost import ance. Every penny was crucial from now on, he told himself.
It had been the first thought to hit him when he’d heard he’d lost his job.
There had been no sense of failure, no sudden onset of self-doubt and thoughts of rejection. He had been overcome by one all-consuming and unshakeable conviction. He was going to lose everything. His home, his lifestyle and everything he loved. In the middle of the worst world recession in living memory, Paul Crane had been made redundant and he didn’t know how he was going to cope.
He ran a hand through his hair and wandered through from the hall into the kitchen to his left, dropping the mail he’d collected on to the kitchen table. He pulled a bottle of vodka from the freezer, retrieved a glass from the cupboard above his head and poured some of the clear liquor into it. He swallowed most of it in one motion, as if he were dying of thirst, then he put the glass on the kitchen table, pulled out one of the chairs there and sat down. His head was spinning. He’d already drunk half a dozen large measures and a couple of tequila shots before coming home and now he looked at the bottle, common sense telling him not to consume any more of the vodka but a louder voice inside his mind urging him to drink until he collapsed. To anaesthetise himself against the pain of the day. Blot out the reality of the situation until at least the following morning.
Fuck it. Why not? What reason have you got to stay sober?
He held the glass in one hand and the bottle in the other, the cold surface numbing his flesh.
To drink or not to drink. That is the question.
He shook his head.
A job, a job. My kingdom for a job.
He lifted the vodka bottle and poured more of the liquor into the glass.
Employment, employment. Wherefore art thou, employment? Again he shook his head.
Funny fucker, aren’t you?
Paul took a sip from the glass and then put it down, letting out a weary breath.
It was quiet inside the room; his neighbours in the flats above and below and to either side of him were out or going about their business in their usual subdued and undemonstrative ways. That had been one of the things that had attracted Paul to the flat in the first place, its solitude. He knew his neighbours to nod at if he passed them in the walkways or met them in the lifts but, apart from such cursory meetings, everyone including him seemed to keep themselves to themselves. There was very little commun ity spirit within the block of thirty luxury apartments but that was something Paul was grateful for. He was comfortable in the company of others but had always truly enjoyed keeping his own counsel more. He had plenty of friends and always had done. From his various occupations he had amassed the requisite collection of acquaintances during his thirty-six years but, with a handful of notable exceptions, Paul Crane was more content alone.
And, at this precise moment in time, he felt more alone than he ever had in his life.
3
‘I’ve got to go.’
Gina Hacket glanced at her watch as she sat up in bed.
‘Just another few minutes,’ said the figure lying next to her.
He ran one hand up the inside of her right thigh as he spoke, his fingers gliding along the smooth, taut skin there.
‘We’ve been here for three hours already,’ Gina reminded him.
‘Not moaning, are you? You weren’t complaining when we first got here.’
She glanced around the room and shook her head almost imperceptibly.
The hotel room was basic, to say the least. Thirty-five pounds bought functional rather than luxurious. A rough, dark brown bedspread that resembled and indeed felt only two or three degrees softer than hessian lay untidily upon the bed. The sheets beneath were rumpled and sweat-soaked from earlier exertions. The carpet was worn and threadbare in places. There was a sofa beneath the window, its cushions badly in need of a steam clean. The same was true of the orange curtains. Blinds hung at the windows, the slats waving lazily in the breeze from the opening. There was no air conditioning and only the warm air from outside circulated inside the room. The air within smelled musky. A smell of sex and hastily snatched pleasure. From outside, she could hear the sound of passing traffic.
Gina looked at the no smoking sign above the small sideboard to her right, perched above a grubby white kettle and a bowl of coffee sachets, tea bags and single-serving milk cartons.
There were two empty soft drink bottles there, too. She and her companion had brought them into the room when they’d first entered. Gina felt like something stronger.
Her companion trailed two fingers gently between her legs and felt the heat and moisture there. When he removed the digits he offered them to her and she flicked her tongue over them, tasting both herself and his saltier emission, too.
‘Just a quickie,’ he grinned.
‘There’s no such thing with you,’ she told him, trying to inject a note of disapproval into her voice but failing miserably. ‘There never has been.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it? Better than it all being over within a couple of minutes.’
‘Time’s like money; it’s fine when you’ve got it to spare.’
‘Smart-arse.’
‘I was just saying.’ She shifted position slightly on the bed, her attention caught by a long crack in the ceiling. She lay gazing at it.
He pulled her hand down towards his groin and she felt her fingers brush against his erection. Gina looked down at it, her fingers closing briefly around his shaft.
‘It won’t take long,’ he assured her, moving closer to her, kissing her slender neck.
‘I’m sure it won’t,’ she breathed as he pushed more insistently against her, his penis butting against her thigh.
‘Come on’.
‘You’ve got to be back at work, haven’t you?’ she continued.
‘Eventually.’
‘They’ll notice you’re not there.’
‘No one checks up on me. As long as the work gets done they don’t stand looking over my shoulder, you know.’
