Aleksey reared back. Ben put a very firm hand on his arm, but addressed Squeezy. ‘Let’s all calm down, yeah? Tell us about Neil.’
Squeezy considered them both, narrowing his eyes, still testing one or two teeth for wobble with a finger. ‘Like the old bast—man said, he found him up by Sister’s place and brought him here. I popped over one day, and he was trying to get him outta that fucking shed. We got him to here, as it happens, right where you’re standing, but the whole way was like a fucking cat-fight scream, you know…like you just heard. He started to foam at the mouth and then that turned red—he’d near bit through his tongue. Only seen that once before—some poor sod the Taliban got hold of. Tortured him to fucking death, near as makes no difference, and when we tried to get him outta this fucking hole they had him in—just like old Neil there, he screamed till he died. I told the old bastard we had to take him back. So we did.’
‘Is it…PTSD?’ Ben glanced back in the direction of the garden.
Squeezy laughed. ‘PTSD? My fucking arse. Fucking coward and a liar, that’s all he is.’
Ben frowned. ‘Neil. I meant Neil.’
‘Oh, yeah, right you are. Well, he might have that, yeah.’
Aleksey tried to ignore the pain in his hand. ‘You think he was…what? Tortured?’
Squeezy gave him a slightly abashed look. Good. Aleksey had been tempted to kick him when he was down, and was extremely annoyed his better half had restrained him. ‘Maybe. Sometimes you hear bloody yobs picking on the rough sleepers. Beat them up. Set fire to ‘em sometimes. Kickin’ him in the canal would seem like a right laugh, I expect.’
Ben pursed his lip, glancing over at him. ‘Lee reckoned Misty protected him. Remember how she growled when she heard us?’
‘Well we cannot leave that man in a shed. He could be sedated to be moved, I suppose?’
‘Well, yeah,duh, I fucking suggested that, but…’ Squeezy trailed off, apparently hearing his own tone, and continued more calmly, ‘I suggested that, but the old fool thinks he can…woo, woo ‘im.’ He demonstrated this with some odd finger wiggling which signified absolutely nothing.
Aleksey raised his eyebrows. Ben, the idiot’s usual translator, was also pondering this with furrowed brow. Clearly utterly mystified, he echoed, ‘Woo, woo?’
‘Yeah, you know. Magic garden stuff. Herbs and whatnot. Fucking butterflies, I shouldn’t wonder. I don’t fucking know.’
‘He thinks this place will heal him?’ Aleksey looked around sceptically, and then the extremely annoying thought hit him that this was a monastery and might have possibly been Carthusian. That and his aching hand were enough to make him lose any patience he had with the whole situation. He pushed past the other two and ducked back through the arch. Harry was fixing some canes and glanced over at him as he strode up. ‘Don’t worry about him, son. He doesn’t bother me.’
‘Well he works for me, and he’s bothered me for twelve years.’
Harry chuckled. ‘So, what’s to be done, Mr Rider-Mikkelsen? I’d be grateful for your—’ Before he could finish his sentence, the screaming began again. It was as if the sick man, Neil, didn’t even need to breathe. There was just one long continuous screech of fear that rent the air and frayed the nerves. Aleksey strode over and saw Squeezy and Ben running back too. The door was now wide open. The white-faced man was staring out, just as when Aleksey had been standing there before. Now, though, nothing blocked the view of whatever his tortured mind believed it was seeing.
The hairs on the back of Aleksey’s neck rose at the sound and at the bloodless intensity of the man’s terror.
Then there was a choking sound and Neil began to fit.
He knelt at the jerking man’s side. Ben landed beside him and they tried to open his jaw and reach his tongue, which he’d swallowed. But his muscles were entirely locked. His eyes pleaded with them. Then his agonised gaze turned a final time to the open doorway and to a brilliant scarlet azalea that flowered against the old wall. With one final bone-shuddering jerk, his heart stopped.
* * *
Chapter Fifteen
None of them wanted to do the appropriate thing and inform the authorities except Harry, although he didn’t explicitly argue for this. He seemed entirely sanguine that he would consequently be found homeless and squatting illegally in the old monastery’s grounds with a dead man, also homeless, in his shed—one who had clearly been traumatised before his death. He was just adamant that Neil’s life story should be revealed by someone and that his family would then be given peace, and that the only way this could happen was if they did the right thing.
The strange old man’s quiet determination struck Aleksey forcibly. Dead men: he’d created a lot of these in his life, and many of those deaths deliberately concealed. But each life lost had possibly left a family grieving still, potentially even waiting for a return that would never happen, because he had not allowed them that peace. Again, he saw things a little differently now. You needed something to fear losing to understand such loss in others.
But balanced against these better feelings, was the undeniable fact that he didn’t want the police involved, or if they were, he wanted to be well away when they arrived. It was still only July, and he’d already been responsible for the deaths of over twenty men. And for five months of the year he’d been laid up in bed.
Ben hovered between solutions, clearly wanting to support him, but also concerned for some kind of restitution for the dead man.
Squeezy had listened to them all, but when Harry had put his few thoughts about grieving families into words, he’d punched a hole in the wall of the shed and stomped off to watch the river flow past.
However, he was the one who finally came up with an answer.
That night, he would return Neil to the derelict customs house near where Harry had found him and call it in anonymously. He didn’t elaborate on how he was going to do this, given Exeter, like all cities in the UK, was covered by CCTV cameras, but as they were on the river that led to the canal, and he’d been standing by a small dinghy for the last half an hour, Aleksey thought he could probably work it out without further explanation.
It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was better than the alternatives. He and Ben were leaving, walking towards the arched doorway, when Ben turned back. Aleksey had suspected this might happen, and didn’t want Ben apologising for the punch on his behalf. If he felt apology was in order, he’d make it. He didn’t, so he wouldn’t.
He made to follow and forestall Ben, but before he could round the end of one of the tyre beds, he heard Ben ask, ‘You good?’ and the moron mutter something in reply. He hung back, and Ben continued, ‘Cus there’s something that needs saying.’
