'And I'm Chrissie,' said the blonde.
'You know about your husband,' Cathy said. 'You know what they've done.'
'Cathy luv, he ceased to be my husband the night he needed somebody else to close his eyes for him. Well, a fair time before that, if truth were known. I've had half a lifetime of Matt Castle, and that's more than anybody should have to put up with, and I can say that now, because I can say anything tonight, believe me.'
As soon as Cathy had walked in she'd spotted the two glasses, smelt the booze.
'All right,' she said. 'Forget your husband. Let's talk about your son.'
Lottie's face hardened immediately into something like a clay mask.
'Dic? What about Dic?' 'Just I don't think he's dead,' Macbeth said.
'Oh, Jesus. Jesus.' Moira put down her lamp in the blood, the light tilted up at Dic's face.
But they couldn't kill him, could they? For the same reason they couldn't kill you. Surely.
'Willie was right, Mungo. We should've been up here, mob-handed. Thought I was being clever. Being stupid. Stupid!'
But sometimes you can do more harm to someone than killing them'd be, you know?
'Tights,' Macbeth snapped. 'You wearing tights under there?'
'Huh…? No. What's…? Oh, Jesus… Dic… please don't be dead.'
'Shit,' said Macbeth. 'Handkerchief?'
'I dunno what's in these pockets, it's no' my coat… yeah, is this a handkerchief?'
'How big is it? OK, tear it in half. Fold 'em up. Make two tight wads.' Macbeth was peeling off the thick adhesive tape binding Dic's arms to the chair-arms. Both arms were upturned, palms of the hands exposed. Veins exposed. There was a welling pool of rich, dark blood at each wrist and it was dripping to the floor each side of the chair. There was a widening pond of blood, congealed around its blackened banks. Late-autumnal flies from the roofspace crawled around, drunk on blood.
'OK, now you hold his arm above his head. You're gonna get a lot of blood on you.'
'I got more blood on me than I can handle,' Moira muttered. 'You sure you know what you're doing, Mungo?'
'I never did it for real before, but… Ah, you don't need to hear this shit, just hold his arms. Right. Gimme one of the pads. See, we got to hold the… this is a pressure pad, right? So you push it up against the wound with both thumbs. Like hard. Idea is, we stop the blood with the pad, then I wind this goddamn tape round just about as… tight… as I can make it,'
'Is he breathing?'
'How the fuck should I know? Now the other arm. Hold it up, over his head… And, shit, get the tape off his mouth. Chrissakes, Moira, didn't we do that?'
The tape across Dic's mouth stretched from ear to ear. Moira tore it away, and Dic mumbled, 'Do you… have to be so rough?'
Moira jumped away in shock. Macbeth yelled, 'Keep hold of that fucking arm, willya?'
'Aw, Christ. You're no' dead.'
'I'm no' dead,' said Dic feebly, and be giggled.
'Don't talk,' said Moira. 'You're gonny be OK. Mungo?'
'He's lost a lot of blood.'
'Don't I know it. I'm paddling in it.'
'He needs to go to a hospital. This is strictly amateur hour. Can't say how long it's gonna hold. Far's I can see, they cut the vein. If they'd cut the artery this guy'd be long gone. They cut the vein, each wrist, taped his arms down. The blood goes on dripping, takes maybe a couple hours to drain the body. How long they had you like this, pal?'
'Not the faintest,' Dic said. 'I was on valium, I think. Intravenous. So I'd know what was happening but wouldn't care.'
'That's good. See, the dope slows down the metabolism and that goes for the blood flow too. This is weird stuff, Moira, this left me way behind a long time back.'
Moira said, 'Do you know why, Dic?'
Dic nodded at the hump under the sacks.
'Do me one favour,' Macbeth said. 'I saved your life, least you can do is let me keep that fucking thing under wraps.'
'That's Matt, isn't it, Dic?'
Dic nodded. He was lying back in his chair, both arms still flung over his head and black with dried and drying blood.
Moira didn't recall ever seeing courage on this scale. Maybe the valium had helped, but it was more than that.
'Suppose you know,' Dic said, 'where they've gone.'
'We have to get you to a hospital.'
'When you're on valium and you're still terrified, you know it must be pretty awesome.'
'Looks pretty cruddy to me,' Macbeth said.
'We'll get you down the steps, OK? We'll get you out of here.'
'He's not sane, you know. I don't reckon he was all there to begin with, lived in his own fantasy world. Like Dad. And that guy Hall.' He closed his eyes. 'Bloody Cathy. The things you do for love, eh?'
'Mungo,' Moira said. 'How about you go downstairs to one of the offices, find a phone? Get us some transport for Dic'
'You'll be OK?' Macbeth looked like he couldn't get out fast enough.
'Sure. Get hold of Cathy. You got the number?'
'Called it enough times from the phone-booth.' He hesitated in the doorway, Dic's blood on one cheek.
'Go,' Moira said.
When they were alone, she said, 'Dic, I need to ask you… Matt…'
'I gave him blood,' Dic said. 'And you…' He nodded at the thing in the other chair.
Moira sighed. Sooner or later she had to face this.
She hooked a finger under a corner of the sacking.
The dead couldn't harm you.
'You get… used to him,' Dic said with a dried-up bitterness. 'You start to forget he ever looked any different.'
She pulled away the sacking. The smell was putrid. It was the kind of smell that would never entirely leave you and some nights would come back and hover over you like the flies that were clustering around Matt's withered mouth, the lips already falling from the teeth.
'I was afraid to look at him in his coffin,' Dic said. 'Mum said there was no shame. No shame in that.'
'Dic,' Moira said. 'What's that in his lap?'
'The pipes.'
'That stuff wrapped around the pipes.'
'You know what it is.'
Moira reached out with distaste and snatched the bundle from the lap of the corpse. Air erupted from the bag and the pipes groaned like a living thing. Or a dying thing. She cried out and dropped the pipes but held on to what had been around the pipes, black hair drifting through her fingers in the flickering candlelight. A glimmer of white.
'Which of them did it?' Her voice so calm she scared herself. 'Which of them actually cut it off?'
Dic said, 'The woman, I'd guess. Therese. They wanted him strong and… driven. You know?'
His eyes kept closing. Maybe he was about to pass out from loss of blood. She didn't know what you did in these circumstances. Did you let him rest or did you try to keep him conscious, keep him talking? He seemed to need to talk.
'I gave him blood,' he said. 'Blood feeds the spirit or something like that. Blood's very powerful in magic. And…'
He winced, coughed, nodded at the hair.
'… so's desire.'
