No One Home by Tim Weaver

Author:Tim Weaver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-05-16T04:00:00+00:00

36

On the floor, Healy tried to move.

His wrists were tied in front of him. The cut above his eyebrow had reopened. His nose looked busted, the straight line of the bridge puffy, the skin purple where he’d been struck. But while he was obviously dazed and half-conscious, his stunted actions and soft, continual moaning was coming from something more than just his injuries.

He’d been drugged too.

He must have fought, which was exactly why Mills had been forced to give him a sedative: he’d been surprised by Healy, by his will to survive, to resist. As I dropped to my haunches, placing a hand against Healy’s arm, I felt him flinch. When I told him it was me, there was a fractional delay, and then he frowned and started repeating my name. His voice crackled with the pain of his injuries and the first swells of a fever.

I looked up at Isaac Mills.

‘You need to stop,’ he said again.

‘Where are they?’

‘Who?’

I stood up again, facing him down.

‘The villagers. The people from Black Gale.’

He sighed, closing his eyes for a second.

‘Just tell me what happened to them.’

Mills shook his head, as if he were dealing with a child, and then he turned the shotgun – moving it in an arc – so that the barrel was pointed at Healy’s chest.

‘Haven’t you been listening to me, Raker?’

‘Was it to do with what Patrick Perry was looking into?’

Mills didn’t respond.

‘Was it something to do with Beatrix Steards?’

This time, he glanced at the phone, still recording our conversation from the living-room table, and then – when his eyes switched back to me – something was in them, something different: a hint of definition, as if they’d coloured at the mention of Beatrix Steards’s name.

‘Mills?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Was it something to do with Beatrix?’

‘Shut your mouth.’

I watched him for a second, but whatever had been in his eyes was gone now. I tried a different angle: ‘Why is Randolph and Emiline’s camper van missing?’

He broke into a smile this time.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You,’ he said. ‘You’re what’s funny. “Where’s the camper van?” What a total waste of fucking time.’

That stopped me – and he could see it.

‘I had it crushed.’

I frowned. ‘What?’

‘The camper van. It’s history. No one will ever find it.’

‘Why would you –’

‘No,’ he said, cutting me off, his voice harsher than ever. ‘No more questions. This is how it’s going to play out from here on in, okay?’ Once more I wondered if he was sick, his nature – his actions, his expression and his voice – so inconsistent. ‘You’re going to go back to London, and anything you’ve got squirrelled away down there on Black Gale, any notes you’ve made about anything, you’re going to rip up and flush away. Before that, and after I’m gone, you’re going to set up a nice little fire in the chimney over there and burn all the shit that was on the wall as well – every last scrap of paper. I want this place so spotlessly clean,

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