A bitter knife twisted in his guts as he thought of her taken from the place he had made for her and buried somewhere else—somewhere not of his choosing. Even worse, somewhere he didn’t know. He was sure the location of her new grave had been in the papers, but those papers had been kept from him. All he had left of Yasmin Gregory was the memories. And this photograph.
And he might have been able to see the grave of John Elliot too, if only SL hadn’t blocked his view with that stupid car. John Elliot was not his favorite. The boy had pissed on him. Avery shuddered at the memory. John Elliot’s squeezed-shut eyes, his runny nose blowing desperate bubbles of snot because he couldn’t breathe through his mouth anymore. That had been bad enough but then, right before he killed him, John Elliot’s bladder surrendered in sheer terror, leaving urine on Avery’s good trousers. He’d made the boy pay, but he’d had to throw the trousers away; and the shoes. Hush Puppies, they’d been—not cheap—but the thought of the boy’s fluids on them made him sick. Even now that thought made his flesh crawl.
Avery shook the memory from him; it was spoiling this moment. He turned his attention back to the photograph. Yes, the car was in the way. It was a pain. Another reason he knew SL was no photographer—poor framing.
For the first time since receiving the photo, Avery turned his piercing gaze to the car, as if he might be able to see right through it to the moorland behind.
All he could see of the car was the front wing, the wing mirror, and part of the door. It was dark blue and Avery couldn’t tell what kind of car it was, only that it was infuriatingly solid and in his way.
It was in his nature to feel cheated, and cheated was exactly what he felt. He glared at the car angrily, projecting fury that could not be completely assuaged by his eyes straying inexorably to the gravesite of Yasmin Gregory.
And then Avery’s eyes widened and he brought the photo up so that it almost touched his nose.
A single sharp gasp escaped him and then his breathing stopped altogether.
If he hadn’t been obsessing over the car he might—would—never have seen it! A river of ice ran down his back at the thought of what he’d have missed.
Neatly caught in the wing mirror was the small but in-focus reflection of the photographer.
And although the image was tiny, everything changed for Arnold Avery at that moment. The feelings that seeing Exmoor again had sparked in him shrank so small that they were swept away in an instant by a tsunami of stunned, choking, old-familiar excitement that sent blood rushing to his groin and saliva flooding his mouth.
SL was a boy.
The thought spun and careened crazily around his head like a firework in a small room.
A boy.
Just a boy.
His eyes stung and his racing heart pounded in his ears as he stared breathlessly at the image.
A boy. Maybe ten or eleven. Skinny. Dark hair tousled by the wind. Blue jeans, grubby white trainers. The image was tiny and the face obscured by the camera … but if there was one shape that Arnold Avery’s brain was hardwired to recognize, it was that of a child.
Avery sucked in a new breath with a shuddering whimper of sharp desire.
SL was a boy.
A boy who’d shown him possibilities.
A boy who’d handed him power.
A boy who—by cleverly inserting his own image into the seemingly innocent photo of Dunkery Beacon—had issued to Arnold Avery the very clearest of invitations …
Chapter 22
UNCLE JUDE CAME BACK.
One day they were just four and the next they were five.
Steven was in his room struggling with 3x – 5y and all its mystifying variations, when he heard a creak in the passageway and Uncle Jude’s voice ask: “How’s the vegetable patch?”
Steven looked round in surprise, which he quickly tried to conceal. It wasn’t cool to look too happy to see someone.
“Tomatoes are rubbish,” he shrugged, “but the potatoes are great.”
Uncle Jude grinned. “Well, any fool can grow potatoes. Look at the Irish.”
“You’re Irish!”
“That’s how I know.”
He wandered into the bedroom, poking about at Davey’s things, the grin never leaving his face, and Steven realized that Uncle Jude wasn’t trying to hide how happy he was to see him, and that made him ashamed that he had. He swung his legs off the bed and threw his arms around Uncle Jude’s waist, feeling the big man’s hands on his back, patting him hello again after too long.
The sudden urge to tell Uncle Jude everything rose in him like a madness.
Let Uncle Jude take over the making of decisions; let Uncle Jude visit Arnold Avery in prison and beat a location out of him; let Uncle Jude dig up Billy and get all the glory—Steven didn’t care anymore, he just wanted it to be over.
He opened his mouth—
“I see your nan’s trolley’s still going strong.”
Steven nodded, suddenly unsure of his own voice.
“See her out and about with it. Pleased as punch.”
