Wolf (Jack Caffery) by Mo Hayder

Author:Mo Hayder [Hayder, Mo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: UK
Published: 2013-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

MATILDA

THAT SONG OF Lucia’s keeps coming back to Oliver. Matilda—she needs you.

Oliver doesn’t remember the last time he cried and now there’s no stopping it. His eyes, still sore from the time they were taped open, seem to have turned into geysers. They just flow and flow and flow.

The men didn’t rape Matilda. They let her climb down and get dressed. It doesn’t matter of course, because, as with the movie Honey told them not to worry about, the threat is now so firmly planted in Oliver’s mind it will never go away. Over and over again he pictures Honey holding the knife against Matilda’s white stomach. Pictures the two men smiling up at Lucia. This is worse than the pain of the operation. He sits propped like a spent puppet against the wall, arms flopped helplessly at his sides, his mouth open, tears running down his face. A helpless shuffling old man, incapable of standing straight, let alone protecting what is precious to him.

After a long long time, and only when darkness has fallen outside, he begins to calm himself. There has been hardly any sound from the rest of the house. For a while the men left—he heard a car starting at the side of the house. They haven’t come back.

A presence comes to him. It is a man, dark and lean. He is dressed in a modest suit, off the peg, nothing flashy, and he keeps his hands in his pockets. He comes into the room, moving slowly, deliberately, taking everything in.

John Bancroft. It goes against Oliver’s scientific scepticism, but he firmly believes he’s witnessing Bancroft entering the room at some point in the future when it is over. When they are all dead.

Bancroft stops now and peers down at something. With a jolt Oliver’s realizes it’s a corpse. His own dead body. Bancroft takes note of it, but he doesn’t overreact. Doesn’t panic. He is too professional—he’s seen this before. Instead he is looking round the room for something, some intangible element which will illuminate the incomprehensible. He stands near the window and closes his eyes briefly, as if trying to tune out everything except the message. Unconsciously, Oliver raises a wavering hand to this spectre, wanting to touch him on the forehead. To get the message to him.

‘Think like me,’ he whispers. ‘Think like me.’

John Bancroft doesn’t move.

‘Come on, think like me—look at the rug.’

Bancroft’s eyes open then, in surprise. Slowly he turns to Oliver. He comes and crouches next to him. Looks at the rug. Convinced he’s in the presence of something spiritual, Oliver flips over the rug, scrabbles the pen out from its hiding place, and begins to write, feverishly:

The fact these men persist in using my connection with Minnet Kable to play psychological games on us only confirms to me that they are working for one of the companies I sold the Wolf system to. I have written a book about my life, it is possible one of the companies I’ve written about may be threatened by this.

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