Dark Duets Part 11

The water's sweet and cold.

The lid goes back down with a clank. Wesley wipes his eyes on his wet palm. Then frowns out at the patch of snow outside his cage.

There's a mound in the snow, a few feet from the fox. Like a deflated body . . . There's writing on it, just visible through the layer of white. He moves forward, one lumbering step at a time, squinting. What does it say? The letters LOI stand out in bold black lettering, but the rest of the word's hidden. A few more letters: OUSE. And what looks like 8&8. s.h.i.+t: LOINNREACH HOUSE B&B. It's his dressing gown. Still lying where he dropped it.

He grabs hold of the bars. A ball of needles explode in his fists, in his wrists, slamming straight up his arms and into his shoulders. "Jesus!" He jerks his hands away from the metal, curls his arms against his chest, rounding his back as the ache fades.

A little red LED blinks on and off above his cage; the bars are electrified. Of course they are.

Should have looked first. b.l.o.o.d.y idiot.

Wesley gets down on his knees. Eases his hand through the s.p.a.ce between two of the bars. Don't touch anything. . . . Don't set it off again. . . . His fingers twitch and claw at the snow. . . . The dressing gown remains stubbornly out of reach. d.a.m.n.

The fox looks at him. Bares its teeth like he's going to steal its supper. A high-pitched yowl rips from its throat-outraged, urgent, and insistent, like a roomful of hungry babies.

Wesley's heart kicks against his ribs. His temples buzz. He lies down, the rough concrete freezing his stomach and chest. Stretches his arm out, groping for the dressing gown as the fox screams. His arm b.u.mps against one of the bars. Explosions in his bicep, in his shoulder, snapping his hand up. But he forces it back down and keeps fumbling for the dressing gown. . . . There! He snags a pinch of cloth between his fingertips, teases it toward the pen. Inches it closer.

He sits up, hauling his dressing gown toward him. Another jolt tears up through his arms as it comes in contact with the bars, strong enough to shove him backward. But the robe's in the cage now. Success. Suck on that, George. Wesley shakes the snow off it. Checks it over to see how wet it is. Only part of the back seems to be soaked through. He bunches it up, squeezes. Forces a thin trickle out. It'll have to do.

The fox's chilling wail trails off into silence and it goes back to its meal.

He stands and slips his arms through the sleeves. The material is cold and wet and clings to his skin. He pulls it tight around him. Ties the cord. Takes one last glance at the fox, then heads back through the hatch.

I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see Spooks has been singing to herself for a while now, her timid, girlish voice disappearing off into the darkness. It's a pleasant enough sound, but she sings the same song over and over, as if someone's set her on repeat And it's really beginning to grate. He came out into the pen to tell her to be quiet, but couldn't bring himself to do it. No one else is complaining. It's probably some sort of ritual for Spooks, a coping mechanism, and who is he to make her give it up?

b.l.o.o.d.y annoying, though.

No idea what time it is either. The world's disappearing beneath a thick shroud of gray, swirls of fresh snow speckling down from the inky sky. He hugs the dressing gown tighter around his body. Well worth a couple of electric shocks.

Spooks takes a deep breath, ready to start the same d.a.m.n song all over again, when the security lights slam on, glaring back from the pristine white landscape, making Wesley flinch like he's been punched.

He covers his eyes. Blinks.

The sound of a car engine gets louder. And then the back of the BMW comes into view, reversing toward the cages, running lights glowing baleful red. Turning the falling snow into spatters of blood.

Moppet's head pokes out of her cabin hatch, two cages down. She frowns at him.

The BMW stops just shy of Max's body and George gets out. He doesn't even look at Wesley, just pops the boot, bends down, and wrestles Max's mauled corpse in on top of Hugh and Natalie. A threesome of pale flesh and dried blood. It doesn't seem to bother him that the fox hasn't left much of Max's face behind.

George closes the boot, gets back in the car, and drives away.

The taillights dwindle to two small red points, then they're gone and it's silent. A minute later, the spotlights go click, returning the courtyard to darkness. And Spooks begins again: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound Moppet knocks on the bars of her cage. "Was that your car?"

How come she didn't get an electric shock? He scans the roofs of the other cages. His is the only one with a winking red light.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds . . ." He tightens the cord on his dressing gown.

"Was that your car?"

He raises his voice a notch. "Yes. It's mine."

"There were bodies in the boot."

Beyond the cages, wind sighs in the trees.

Wesley clears his throat. "Have you really been here ten years?"

"Came up on holiday. Our first as a family: me, Beth, and . . . Doug." She p.r.o.nounces the name as if it's venomous, as if she needs to spit to get rid of the taste. "I went to sleep the first night and woke up in here."

"Doug and Beth. Did they-"

"Doug's dead."

Of course he is.

"I'm sorry." Wesley moves closer to the bars separating his cage from the empty one next door. Raises a tentative finger and taps it against the metal . . . No shock. Must just be the front set that's electrified.

"They said he wasn't breeding material." She lowers her head, twists the gold band on her ring finger. "Our daughter, Beth, was seven at the time. The Constables told her we'd abandoned her, that we'd run off in the middle of the night, and left her here for them to raise. And when she turned sixteen, they locked her up in here too."

She pauses. Then sniffs, shakes her head. "Did you kill them? The people in your boot?"

"What happened to her after that? What happened to Beth?"

"She's called Boo now."

Boo? The rat-eating heavily pregnant one? Holy s.h.i.+t. "So Max . . . ?"

Her smile is colder than the snow. "Got his head caved in so you could have his job."

Jesus. Wesley pulls his chin back into his neck. "So what, he just . . . How could you let him do that? To you, to her?"

"Goldilocks." She looks away. "There was another male stud for a while: Rum Tum. Just a boy, really. But he was moved on three years ago. Leaving good old Max to shoulder the weight all on his own." There's enough acid in her voice to eat through the bars.

Wesley fidgets with the cord on his dressing gown again. "What's your name?"

"Moppet."

"No, your real name."

She pauses. "It doesn't matter anymore."

He presses himself against the bars, lowers his voice to a hard whisper. "How do we get out of here? Ten years: you've got an escape plan, right?"

She just stares back at him. "There's only one way to escape. The way Max did it."

"No. There's got to be a-"

"You've seen what they're like! And you think getting your head bashed in is the worst they can do to you? This cage here, the empty one, that's where Goldilocks was. She got out when they were putting her to Max one night. Made it as far as the loch before they caught her." Moppet turns her back. "George cut off her hands and feet. Jeanette hacked out her tongue. Goldilocks didn't last long after that."

Wesley closes his eyes. He's going to die here. "Oh G.o.d . . ."

"Try to sleep, Wesley." Then she ducks down and slips back through her hatch.

He stands there until he starts to s.h.i.+ver, looking through the bars at Goldilocks's empty cage. He's going to die here. And no one's ever going to know.

Inside the cabin, he curls up on his side, wrapped in his damp dressing gown, and cries himself to sleep.

He's wading through knee-high drifts toward Angelina. She places the mouthpiece to her lips. "Abide with Me" pours out in rich, fluid tones, as drops of blood squeeze from the bell of the clarinet onto her bare white toes, the nails lime-green against the snow.

"WAKEY-WAKEY, BOYS AND girls!"

He grinds the heels of his hands into his gritty eyes. Dry-washes his face. Crawls over the mattress and drops onto the floor. Then peeks out of the hatch.

Thick snow coats the ground. The sun sits like a scorch mark in the clear morning sky, but it's still cold enough to make his breath billow out in sour-smelling clouds. Perhaps if he behaves, they'll give him a toothbrush?

Jeanette's outside Spooks's pen, smears of flour and egg on the front of her ap.r.o.n, with a service trolley. "Room service!" She opens a flap, like a letterbox, set into the front bars of Spooks's cage and slides a heaped plate through.

She trundles the trolley along the concrete path to Ginger.

The little boy keeps his eyes on the concrete beneath his feet as she pa.s.ses his food through to him. "I promise I'll be good, Mummy. I'm sorry I was naughty . . ."

Wesley unfastens his dressing gown, shrugs it off, and tosses it onto the bed. If they don't know he's got it, they can't confiscate it. He climbs out of the hatch and waits by the gate.

When she gets over to him, she's all smiles. "Good morning, Weasley. Did you sleep well?" She reaches up and flicks a switch. The flas.h.i.+ng LED above Wesley's cage goes out and stays that way.

A plate of sausage, eggs, beans, black pudding, mushrooms, potato scones, and toast slides through on a tray. Plastic cutlery.

Boo gorging on the rat. The fox tearing chunks off Max's face . . . Wesley swallows. "I'm not hungry."

"Nonsense. Got to keep your strength up." She takes a thermos from the lower shelf of her trolley and fills a polystyrene cup with tea. "We had a lovely funeral service, up by the loch. We sang hymns, and Angelina played her clarinet. She's so gifted, isn't she? I was really quite moved by her 'Abide with Me.' And just between you and me, that doesn't happen too often."

"What did you do with the bodies?"

"Left them in the car, of course. George said a few words as it sank." She puts the polystyrene cup on the ground, just within reach of the bars. "Very touching."

Natalie and b.l.o.o.d.y Hugh, locked away forever at the bottom of the loch. It's what he wanted, isn't it? Get rid of the evidence? They're gone; he's safe now . . . safe in a cage, with a pair of psychotic B&B cat breeders in charge.

Jeanette clasps her hands together. "I think you'd have enjoyed it."

"You're a f.u.c.king nutjob. You know that, don't you?"

Her eyes narrow, wrinkling like crushed paper bags. For a second, it looks as if she's about to drag out that blood-smeared hammer again. But she looks away, toward the house, c.o.c.ks her head. "Ah . . . They're here."

The purr of a car engine comes from somewhere around the front of the house. Someone's pulling up the driveway.

Jeanette reaches one foot out and knocks over the cup of tea. "When our visitors are gone, I think we might have to work on your att.i.tude, Weasley."

Visitors? Of course: visitors. He hauls in a lungful of cold air, cups his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. "HELP! h.e.l.lO? HELP! CALL THE POLICE!"

Jeanette shakes her head. "You'll hurt your throat, crying out like that."

"WE'RE ROUND HERE! HELP!"

She sighs, then walks away, wheeling the trolley in front of her.

He's still shouting five minutes later, when a middle-aged man waddles into view: thickset and bearded, dressed for a polar expedition. A woman wearing a matching outfit picks her way through the snow beside him, bleached blond hair held back with a fur-lined headband, knee-high boots slipping on the icy surface.

"OVER HERE! HELP! WE'RE OVER HERE!" Wesley bangs on the bars of the empty cage next to his. Moppet's the only one not in her cabin, eating her breakfast in the relative warmth. "Help me, for Christ's sake!"

She looks at him in silence, then turns and slips through her hatch, taking her tray with her.

"What the h.e.l.l's wrong with you? They can help us get out of here!"

The couple get closer, and Jeanette appears around the corner of the building, moving fast, panting with the effort, closing the gap.

"WATCH OUT: THERE'S A CRAZY WOMAN BEHIND YOU! CALL THE POLICE, FOR G.o.d'S SAKE! PLEASE!"

Then Jeanette catches up with them . . . and they start talking. Smiling at one another.

s.h.i.+t. They know each other . . .

Wesley's neck aches, as if someone's just dropped onto his shoulders. He slumps there, breath catching in his throat as they walk toward him. He cups his hands over his groin.

Jeanette leans in toward the woman. "I know you weren't too keen on Max, but I think you'll like this one."

The woman purses her lips, looks Wesley over. Up close she's more cougar than snow bunny. "Well proportioned. Good bone structure. Athletic. Handsome. Great hair. Mmm. What do you think, Charles?"

The man rubs his gloved hands together, claps them. "Whatever you think, Petal."

"I'm asking your opinion."

"If you like him, I like him." A cough. "You do like him, don't you?"

She turns to Jeanette. "You were right-he was worth tromping up here at this unG.o.dly hour on a Sunday. Ellie's eyes and his coloring . . ." She takes the man's arm. "We'll pay the deposit now."

"Excellent." Jeanette beams. "I knew you'd love him soon as you saw him. That's why I gave you first refusal. Erm . . . will you be planning on breeding from the child?"

She looks at Charles, who shrugs back at her. "To be honest, that's not something we've really thought about. I suppose so. Why?"

"It's quite a bit more expensive." Jeanette moves around behind them, her arms out, taking them under her wings, guiding them back toward the house. "Let's go inside and do the admin where it's nice and warm. I'll give you a leaflet to take away explaining the various prices, payment structures, terms and conditions, the sterilization program . . ."

Wesley drops to his knees.

TINY GRITTY SNOWFLAKES hiss against the corrugated roof of his cage. There's no sign that Max's body was ever there-even the bloodstains have been buried.

Wesley sits sideways on the toilet lid, beneath the glowing heater. Dressing gown wrapped around him, arms wrapped around it. Feet sideways on the concrete floor-the soles pressing against each other. Breathing fog as the snow falls.

All the other cages are empty. He's the only one daft enough to be out here in the cold. Everyone else is in their cabins, hiding from the weather. He could go inside, but what's the point? Sit on a secondhand mattress with no blanket, waiting for George and Jeanette to haul open the curtains whenever they feel like? No thanks.