Dead Men's Harvest by Matt Hilton

Author:Matt Hilton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

Jennifer Telfer was a pretty woman. A little thicker around the waist and thighs than Tubal Cain preferred in the female form, but she had an excuse. Bearing two kids had left its mark on her body as it did for many mothers. He watched as she walked from the black taxi to the front doors of her tenement building. She was laden down with six plastic carrier bags full of frozen food. Cheap brand name on the bags. The weight of the bags made her stoop and he could detect the strain in her face and the cords of her neck. Her hair was swept up and knotted at the back, a mother-of-pearl clip holding it in place. Beneath her lightly tanned skin he could see the fine line of her mandible, the high cheekbones, and the curves of her orbital sockets. He looked beyond the flesh, judging the bone structure, knew that her cranium would be a fine trophy.

Jennifer entered through a glass door smudged by thousands of handprints. The interior of the building was deep in shadow, but within seconds a spill of light fell across her as the doors of an elevator swept open. Jennifer stood aside, making way for an old man. They exchanged a nod and a couple of words then Jennifer stepped inside, placing the bags down gratefully. She looked out as the doors began to close. She seemed to have straightened, looking even prettier now that the effort had disappeared from her features.

From his hiding place, Cain watched as the old man came out on to the street. He didn’t even look Cain’s way, just bent at the waist and set off with a determined stride, as though conscious of stepping on cracks and inviting bad luck to fall upon him. When the old man was out of sight, Cain moved out of the alleyway and across the road. He shouldered his way through the palm-smudged glass door and into the foyer of Jennifer’s building. The gloom wasn’t so bad once he was inside, most of it down to the effect of the leaden sky on the glass doors. Opposite him the elevator doors had closed but the mechanism still groaned as it delivered its passenger to the upper floor. He made instead for a stairwell. The stairs were filthy, mud-stained and streaked with other things Cain shuddered to imagine. He went up as quickly as he could, pushed through on to a landing and saw the door to Jennifer’s flat closing. There followed a rattle of deadbolts and chains.

Cain shrugged, went back down the stairs.

The children weren’t home yet, so it was too soon at any rate. He left the building, made his way back across the road and took up position again. Then he thought, To hell with this! Jennifer wasn’t going anywhere. She’d be busy unloading her budget-priced shopping into her freezer. She’d be preparing a meal for when the children got in from school. Maybe she’d tidy up the house a little, or read a novel or watch some daytime TV.

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