The Walking Dead

'Best left where the Revenue doesn't know. Not as though the bedding was new. Can of worms if I phone the police, that's my opinion.'

She said, 'I've done a nice plum crumble, your favourite.'

'That's grand, my love,' the farmer said. 'Can I take it that's the end of the matter?'

'The end.' She cleared his plate and hers off the table. Time now was short. That evening there was a meeting of the parish council. He was chair and she was the minutes' taker. At the sink, she turned. 'Actually, they were very pleasant, the ones I met. Particularly the girl, so well-mannered — and the man, the older one, very handsome, a real charmer…'

* * *

She heard it, then flicked the curtain and saw the car. Fury burned in Anne Naylor. She tried the number again. She heard his voice. In the metallic automated tone of the damn speaking clock, he told her that he was unable to take the call and urged that a message be left after the beep.

'I'm telling you, Dickie, that your behaviour today — no contact, not a word — is absolutely unforgivable. Where are you? Still running round like it's a Scouts' jamboree and you've to be there till the last tent's been taken down, the last campfire put out? I suppose you think the people at that damn place will admire you for working right up to the eleventh hour of the eleventh day — they won't. I just thank God that Daddy's not still with us and a witness to your pathetic behaviour. I promise you that tonight — and it won't be in a quiet corner — I'll bend your ear and not care who hears me. For Heaven's sake, what do you think you've achieved by this pitiful display of childish dedication? By Monday morning they'll have forgotten you. Me, I'm not in the forgetting business. Damn you, answer your bloody phone.'

She slammed down the receiver.

Her coat for the evening was silk. Her late mother had worn it at her father's farewell party, when the Service had been based at Leconfield House. A little dated, but elegant. In front of the mirror, she touched her hair — dabbed her fingers on it…and she remembered. Her mother had said, in the minutes before they had walked into the governor's formal salon, at the Aden residence, 'You don't have to do it, my dear. Pregnancy out of wedlock isn't the end of the world. Daddy and I will stand beside you…It's not as though he's a wonderful catch. I'm sure you can do better…All right, all right. Just promise me you won't snivel…And promise me you won't regret it.' God, that evening she regretted marrying Dickie Naylor. She closed the door behind her, double-locked it and hastened down the path.

The chauffeur held open the rear door for her. He looked puzzled. 'Just you, Mrs Naylor? Not your husband as well?'

'No, just me,' she said acidly. 'I'm meeting him there, but we'll be coming home together.'

'I suppose he's working,' the chauffeur said. 'Funny that. Most of those I take for their last party wish they'd quit a year ago.'

'I expect he'll get used to, retirement, growing tomatoes in a new greenhouse.'

The chauffeur closed the door gently behind her, and drove off. God — see if she didn't — she'd bend his ear, then burn the bloody thing to a crisp.

* * *

'Give him more.'

'You sure, Mr Hegner?'

'It's what I said.'

'Never gone up that high before, Mr Hegner.'

Joe Hegner sat in his chair and asked the question in a clear voice, as if it didn't matter to him, like he was the schoolmarm talking to infants back near Big Porcupine Creek. 'The Engineer, my friend, will he be journeying with him?'

The prisoner hung from the hook, and his body had the look of an animal carcass that his grandfather had slaughtered and left to bleed. He could not see it, but was able to imagine it…The trousers were down to the ankles, crumpled and lodged there, along with the fouled underpants; The wires' clips were dug into the folds of the prisoner's lower stomach, near to the testicles but not on them. The bare feet swivelled. He expected the prisoner, when the question was put, to stiffen and writhe, try to summon resistance, but his body turned slowly half-way to the right and then half-way to the left — and Hegner knew it because of the creak of the weight on the hook. He strained to hear an answer, but there was nothing.

'Do it, guys.'

There was the gasp and the grunt, then more silence.

'Do it again, give him more.'

He heard the scream, shrill inside the walls and under the ceiling, and the strain on the hook whined.