Читать книгу The Sacred Sword - Scott Mariani, Scott Mariani - Страница 17

The warm, welcoming glow from the vicarage’s windows shone out into the night as Ben climbed out of the Land Rover and trudged towards the house in his wet clothes. He paused to peer in through the window at the empty living room. The lit-up Christmas tree that he could imagine Simeon and Michaela decorating together, which someone else would be taking down. The comfortable furniture they’d never see or use again.

He felt sick as the reality sank in a little deeper.

The dog barked from inside. Ben dug in his pocket and took out the annexe key. Attached to it on a ring was the tarnished brass Yale key for the front door of the vicarage. Feeling strangely like an intruder, he opened the door. The dog was sitting in the hallway, looking at him.

‘Hey, Scruffy,’ Ben said softly. The dog cocked his head, appearing perplexed that his master and mistress weren’t with him. Ben went over to him and scratched his ears. ‘They’re not coming back, pal. I’m sorry.’

The dog lolled his pink tongue and began to pant.

‘All right, you come with me,’ Ben said. Squelching in his wet shoes he made his way down the passage to the connecting door that led through into the annexe. Everything seemed so still and empty.

Shuddering with cold, he stripped off his wet things in the annexe’s bathroom and stepped under a hot shower. He stayed there a long time, hoping that the scalding jet of water would blast away the nightmare and that when he came out everything would be back to normal.

It didn’t happen. He mechanically towelled himself dry and changed into a pair of grey jogging pants and a worn old rugby top from his bag. Finding his whisky flask nestling among the spare clothing, he unscrewed the cap and gulped down a stinging mouthful, then another. That didn’t make any difference either. He padded barefoot into the annexe’s little living room, flipped off all the lights and lay on the sofa with his eyes shut, trying to let his mind go blank. But there was no escape from the images that kept flashing up inside his mind as he lay there. He couldn’t stop seeing Simeon’s face in those last moments. The pallor of his skin, the desperation in his eyes. And Michaela, sitting there lifeless inside the sunken car. The horrific crush wounds on her face and brow.

One minute he’d been having dinner with his friends. The next, they were gone, just like that, like blowing out a candle. Tomorrow would see the start of the whole terrible aftermath. Tonight, there was nothing but that sickening emptiness, as if the world had been scraped hollow with a blunt knife.

Ben groped for the flask in the darkness and swallowed down the rest of the whisky. One gulp after another. The visions began to recede. He drifted into a world of vague and restless dreams that seemed to go on forever and were filled with the cries of people in pain. He couldn’t help them, no matter how desperately he tried … there was nothing he could do …

Ben’s body tensed and he jerked upright on the sofa, momentarily confused by the unfamiliar sound that had torn through the membrane of his sleep. The luminous green hands of his diver’s watch told him it was quarter to one in the morning. He sat up, listening hard.

A few feet away across the darkened room, the dog let out another long, low snarl, and Ben realised what had woken him. He was about to lie down again when he heard something else.

A dull thud, coming from the other side of the wall. The sounds of movement inside the vicarage.

Ben jumped up from the sofa, suddenly wide awake and alert. His first thought was that Jude Arundel must have returned from Cornwall. He went to turn on the light, already preparing mentally for the task of breaking the news to the kid that both his parents were dead.

But Ben’s hand stopped short of the light switch when he heard more sounds from inside the vicarage: a muted splintering crash that was unmistakably the sound of a door being forced, followed a moment later by the grinding thump of something hitting a wall.

Scruffy let out another rumbling growl from deep in his throat.

Ben reached out to him in the darkness and laid a hand on his head. ‘Quiet, boy. Let me listen.’ Creeping across the room towards the connecting door, Ben pressed his ear to it and thought he heard a man’s voice.

‘Wait,’ he whispered back to the dog. There was no time to put on his shoes. Without a sound, he opened the door and stepped through into the passage beyond.

Another thump, louder this time now that he was closer. It was coming from somewhere on the ground floor.

Silently, stealthily, Ben moved towards the sound.