Deity

weren’t impressed on the news. I assume Jake survived his final text from Kyle.’

‘Only just. He took sleeping pills but we caught him in time.’

Ray shook his head. ‘Pity.’

‘Go on.’

‘We watched a couple of films and waited until early morning then we walked across the fields to our rendezvous and disappeared into thin air.’

‘Just like Picnic at Hanging Rock,’ said Brook. ‘We know about Lee Smethwick. We know about the ambulance waiting.’

Ray shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘We’ll find out where you took them any time now.’

‘I’m counting on it. I promised Adele — Lee too. It cements the deal. Lee had his uses, but you were always going to find him because he was a whack job.’

‘Was?’

‘He killed himself. That was always his plan.’

‘Because of the cancer.’

‘Partly, yes. You’ll see when you find him. It’s funny, it’s always the quiet ones. Lee had an aura, like an invisible shield, keeping normality at bay. And he loved Deity. He was desperate to be included. Well, he had the ambulance, he had the premises and a sackful of misappropriated drugs. And he insisted on showing me what he could do with those tramps. It wasn’t a great leap from there to tie his skills into Deity. Leave a good-looking corpse that lasts forever. What wannabe isn’t gonna love that reward for their misplaced vanity?

‘It’s interesting,’ he went on. ‘Lee with his Ancient Egyptian thing, wanting to live on after his body gave up on him. In their way, Adele and Kyle and Becky were just the same. Only they’ll live forever rattling around in cyberspace, same as Wilson. Once you’re immortalised in there, you can kiss obscurity goodbye.’

‘Where are they?’ said Brook.

‘They’re in the Village.’

‘Which one?’

‘I can’t tell you until Len’s done his work.’

Brook narrowed his eyes. ‘Work?’ He took a moment to figure it out, then: ‘He’s embalming Lee.’

‘Right. In what the Egyptians called the Ibu. .’

‘The place of purification.’

Ray laughed. ‘Oh, brother. You’re living this case every second, aren’t you? I knew it. The first time I saw you at the press conference hiding behind those lifeless eyes I could sense something in you. And then I just had to find out all I could. And when I’d done that, I had to meet you. And when I’d done that — well, my work was done but after meeting you, it wasn’t enough. I saw the pain you were in. I saw you needed help.’

‘I’m flattered by your concern.’

Ray clapped his hands together. ‘You kill me.’

‘I will if you’ve hurt Terri.’

Ray’s grin faded and he nodded at the gun. ‘Speaking of help — it’s time to die.’ He held his finger dramatically above the Enter button on his laptop. ‘Point that at me and your daughter goes before you.’

Brook picked up the gun and flicked off the safety. ‘You know about guns?’

‘Internet,’ replied Ray.

Brook picked up the M9 and examined it. He had never used it before, didn’t even know if it would work. ‘The firing pin was disabled, you know.’

Ray held Brook’s gaze. ‘You think I didn’t try it out first? You don’t know me, Damen.’ He grinned. ‘Shit, I don’t know me.’

‘You fixed it,’ said Brook. Ray continued to smile. ‘Internet, right? How do I know you’ll keep your word, Ray?’

‘If I can keep a promise to a dead man, I can keep a promise to a friend in his final moments.’

Brook nodded and moved his hands over the gun. He checked the magazine. It was full. ‘A friend — so much more effective than a cyber-bully.’

‘Isn’t it!’ exclaimed Ray. ‘Russell made me realise and, well, Deity’s results will speak for themselves.’ He lifted the camcorder to his eye. The red dot appeared. ‘I told you it would be classy, Damen. The Deer Hunter directed by Michael Cimino — Oscar winner, no less. De Niro finds Christopher Walken playing Russian Roulette in a bar in Vietnam and tries to save his friend.’ Ray sniggered. ‘He fails.’ He held a hand ready to start the scene. ‘Ready for close-up. And — action.’

Brook lifted the gun to his temple and took a final look round his sparse kitchen. ‘One thing I need to tell you, Ray.’ He glued his eyes on to his opponent’s. ‘I’m not your friend.’

Then Brook pulled the trigger. There was a loud click and Ray burst out laughing. Brook tossed the gun on the table.

‘Your face!’ Ray giggled and pointed. ‘What am I like? I don’t know shit about guns, Damen,’ he continued, barely able to speak, ‘except it didn’t work when I fired it either.’

Brook stood and walked to the cupboard. Ray readied a finger over the keyboard. Brook ignored him and took out the leaded tumbler and filled it full of whisky. ‘Drink?’

‘I’m driving.’ Ray motioned Brook back to his chair. Brook glanced up the stairs to his bedroom door then took a sip of whisky before reluctantly returning to his seat.

‘Want to know something, Damen? I knew you’d pull the trigger.’

‘Want to know something, Ray? I knew the gun wouldn’t work.’

‘How?’

‘Because now I’ve seen your personality disorder at close quarters, I know a bullet’s too quick.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that someone as sick as you needs to see the terror in people’s eyes as they die. You need to know that last second of life is as precious to them as it is worthless to you. You need the dying to see you watching on, living the life that they cling to. And you need to make that sensation last so you can feed on that energy in an effort to revive your own dead soul, if only for a few minutes.’

Ray stared at Brook, his grin absent. The silence hummed between them like an electricity pylon. ‘But Russell was quick.’

‘That’s when you found out you needed more. That’s why Deity is so drawn out. So you can watch the suffering. The parents, the friends, even the policeman trying to catch you.’

Brook’s vibrating phone broke the tension. Brook ignored it.

‘Go ahead,’ said Ray. ‘But don’t say the wrong thing.’

Brook looked at the display. ‘John. She’s fine — false alarm,’ he said. He listened for a few minutes. ‘Understood.’ Then rang off.

‘Progress?’ teased Ray.

‘Becky Blake.’

Ray narrowed his eyes. ‘What about her?’

‘We wondered why she was so upbeat in the last broadcast. Now we know.’

‘It’s because she’s famous now, remember.’

‘We spoke to her friend again. Fern. Guess what? Becky told her she was going away but not to tell anyone. She told her she was leaving the country to disappear like the girls in Picnic at Hanging Rock. She said it was going to be all over the internet and when it was over, she was going to be famous. Then, a year later, she’d turn up alive and well and ready for a life in the public eye.’

Ray searched, thin-lipped, for an answer. ‘No. She couldn’t have, she didn’t have her phone. I checked all their texts and calls at the party. We’d unsubscribed from Facebook-’

‘That’s the really odd thing.’ Brook smiled. ‘They had a conversation face to face. The afternoon of the party, she swore Fern to secrecy, told her to say nothing. That she’d see her soon.’

Ray slammed a fist on the table. ‘I told the cunt a million times. It was because of her I took all those precautions. I’m deleting all her scenes just for that.’

‘Take it easy,’ said Brook, worried that he’d smash his fist on the keyboard in a fit of temper.

Ray took a deep breath and gradually regained his composure. ‘Okay, we misled her. I admit it. I told Adele