A Silent Death Peter May (i read book TXT) 📖

But there was no sign of Cleland and Ana. And no indication of which way they might have gone. He bellowed his frustration into the jagged strip of sky between the buildings overhead and closed his eyes.

From nowhere came an image of his father storming the psychiatric patient and his hostage in the close of some dark tenemental Glasgow street. The blade of a knife caught in his flashlight. Then blood, bright red and spurting, drawn in a smile across the soft flesh of a white throat.

He opened his eyes in a panic to banish the image of his father’s folly. And all he could see was Ana’s pale face as it was carried off on the current of the crowd. The sins of the father, the failure of the son. A wave of fatigue and defeat surged through him and his legs very nearly gave way. He reached out to press his hand against a wall to steady himself, and felt the heat of the sun retained in the stone.

What to do? With reluctance he turned to make his way back to Ana’s house. If Cleland had been there, then perhaps he might have left some clue as to where he was going. And more importantly, where he was taking Ana.

*

Ana is aware of the change in temperature as Cleland leads her up the stone steps from the Plaza de San Francisco and into the cool of the Iglesia Nuestra Señora de Los Remedios. She can actually feel the space opening up around her. In her imagination she can hear their footsteps echoing around the vaulted ceilings, can picture the golden candlelit altar. The air raises goosebumps on her naked arms, and she feels Cleland’s tension easing as his grip on her arm relaxes.

‘Light a candle for me,’ she says, and he leads her down the central aisle towards where she knows the candles burn in serried rows. They stop, and she can feel the warmth of the flames, and realizes that Cleland now has no way to communicate with her.

She feels his surprise as she reaches for and finds his hand, taking it into both of hers. Slowly, carefully, she uses her index finger to trace on his palm the letters of the words she speaks. My name is Ana. What is yours? And waits to see if he has understood. It is not the tactile signing she took that teenage summer to learn. But it is simple, if slow, and anyone can do it.

The holding of hands is reversed, and he traces his response in gentle letters on her palm. She almost smiles. Of course he understood. Whatever else he may be, he is not stupid.

– My name is Jack.

So now they are on first name terms. ‘Light two, Jack. One for each of us.’

– What’s the point? You don’t believe in God. Neither do I.

‘I never said I didn’t believe in God, Juanito. Only that I had no time for Him. I light candles in the hope that one day He might burn in the same hell to which he has sent me.’ She pauses. ‘And you. We share the same hell, you and I.’

She can tell by the hesitation in his fingers that he has no idea how to respond. Finally, he lets go of her hand, and she knows that he is lighting the candles. The tiniest increase in the warmth that they generate. No matter how small, their two flames make an impression in the cold air of the church.

A strange serenity suffuses her soul, and she closes her eyes to let the air escape her lungs in a long, slow draught. Now she knows what she must do. She reaches for and finds Cleland’s forearm, resting her hand upon it before giving it the gentlest of squeezes.

*

The Calle San Miguel was almost deserted now. The sounds of the festival a distant and discordant revelry carried on the cooling night air. The despacho de pan and the carnicería had closed early. A solitary elderly couple sat on one of the benches in the Plaza de Juan Bazán, the perfume of the flowers draped all around its walls hanging sweet and fragrant in the dying light.

Mackenzie tried the handle on the door to Ana’s house, prepared to kick it open if he had to. But the door was unlocked and swung into darkness. To his right a door opened into a shuttered storage room whose barred windows gave on to the street. The staircase straight ahead of him climbed up into gloom.

The first thing he became aware of was the smell. The fetid stink of decay, like opening a fridge where meat has been left to fester for weeks beyond its sell-by date. In his pocket Mackenzie found some bloodied tissues from earlier in the day and held them to his nose. This time to staunch the smell rather than the blood. And he began to climb the stairs.

In the upstairs living room he found all the windows opened wide. The same in the bedroom. But the smell lingered in the confined windowless space of the upstairs landing, and hit him with the force of a physical blow when he opened the door to the box room. A plague of houseflies in here had been feeding on the corpse that sprawled on the floor beneath the open window. They had laid their eggs perhaps eighteen hours before and already there had been a hatching of maggots clustering in the mouth and nostrils. In a few days the maggots would generate more flies to feed on the secretions of decomposition and lay yet more eggs.

Mackenzie kept his mouth firmly shut, pressing the tissues to his nostrils, and stepped carefully into the room. He crouched to turn the face of the cadaver towards him. A man maybe not that much older than himself. Dark hair starting to thin. It was not a face he knew. He let the head fall back to the side and saw