Sepulchre

sensed the danger, I just damn knew didn't I? Bastards! Halloran, I need more of your men to protect me. I could've been hurt back there.'

'Wasn't it your idea that we limit our forces?'

'Yeah, yeah, you're right. You'll do. You got us out of a tight spot. No more manpower required. Right: I don't feel too good.' Cora immediately reached for him.

'Leave me alone!' Kline snapped, sinking back into his seat. 'I'm tired, I need to rest. You all want too much from me, you all expect too much. Let me rest, will you?' Halloran heard a clasp being opened, a rattling of pills in a container.

'Felix,' said Cora, 'take them, they'll calm you.'

'You think I want drugs at a time like this? You trying to make me weak'?' There was a slapping sound and the pills sprinkled onto the seat and floor.

'I've got to stay alert, you stupid bitch! Those bastards want to hurt me and you're trying to dope me up.'

'They're only Valium, Felix, that's all. You need to calm down.' Monk's seat jerked as Kline kicked its back. The bodyguard continued to watch the passing countryside as if he hadn't noticed.

Kline's voice had risen to a high pitch. 'You know what I oughta do with you, Cora? You know what? I oughta dump you right now, out of the car into the road. Leave you here. How would you like that, Cora, huh? How would you get by then? What fucking use are you to me?'

'Don't, Felix.' There was a mixture of misery and low panic in her voice. 'You've had a bad scare, you don't mean what you're saying.'

'Don't I? Oh don't I? You think I give a shit about you?' Halloran heard the smack of flesh on flesh, heard the girl's small, startled cry. He brought the Mercedes to a smooth halt by the side of the road and turned round to face Kline, one arm resting casually on the back of the driver's seat. Cora was leaning her forehead against the window, eyes closed, a watery line slowly seeping onto her eyelashes; there were red marks on her cheek.

'Kline,' he said evenly, 'you're beginning to irritate. I can do my job better if you don't. I want you to sit quietly so I can think, observe, and get you to our destination unharmed. If by the time we arrive you're sick of me too, you can make a phone call and have me replaced. It's no skin off my nose, know what I mean? Do we have an arrangement?' Kline stared open-mouthed at him and for the merest instant, Halloran saw something in those liquid eyes that he couldn't recognise. He'd faced killers and fanatics before and each had a distinctly similar and identifiable glint adrift in their gaze; he'd looked upon gunmen, abductors, and extortionists—childmurderers even —and a certain mien linked them all, setting them apart from others of the human race. But there was a glimmer shining from deep inside this man that was like nothing else he'd witnessed before. Kline's stare was almost mesmeric.

Until whatever held him became dulled, or at least, was veiled by a creeping normality. Kline laughed, and it was a full, rich sound, unexpected and unlike his usual cackling.

'Whatever you say, Halloran,' he said good-humouredly. 'Yeah, whatever you say.' Halloran turned and shifted into D. The Mercedes pulled away, heading into the winding country roads. And during the last part of that journey, Halloran frequently checked the rearview mirror. But this time he was mostly studying the man who was resting, with eyes now closed, in the backseat.

While Monk, from the corner of his eyes, watched Halloran.

MONK A PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

It was a lousy name anyway. But none of the other kids ever added the 'ey'. MONKEY. Nah, too easy.

They called him Ape. Up until he hit fourteen, that is. That was when the ape pissed right back out of the cage.

Theo was never gutsy (or Theodore Albert, as his mama always called him — 'Theodore Albert you wuz baptised, and Theodore Albert you be called, honey mine'—as she parted his hair right down the middle, slicking either side with a licked palm, every fuckin' morning afore she pushed him out the door and along the path to where good of Uncle Mort waited in the pick-up—'You'd look real purty, boy,'

Uncle Mort often observed, 'if you wunt so porky'- to take him down to Coatesville Junior High where the boys bent their knees and dragged their knuckles along the ground behind him, lumbering from side to side in an ape waddle, imitating his high wheezy voice (another affliction which didn't help none) until he finally flipped his aid and whirled around and knocked them squat—no, a lie: he cried, he always fuckin'

cried. 'cos he was a mama's boy, he knew it and they knew it and they all knew he'd never raise a pudgy fist, he was too chickenshit to hit back, but . . .) but he hadn't been chickenshit those few years later at West Chester High when he stuck the fire under the assembly hall on prizegiving (no prizes coming to him anyway) morning, when all those turds had been up there nudging and sniggering and whispering, but soon wailing and screaming and punching, falling over each other to break out of that burning hell-hall, where only three were really roasted by the fire, but fifteen (no teachers damaged—the parents hated them for that) kicked off from chokin' and crushed rib- cages.

That day was the turning point for Theodore Albert Monk, 'pissin'-out day', the day he discovered every person had a power, anyone—big, small, fat or skinny—could decide for someone else when their Pay-Off Time (POT) had arrived. You didn't need to be Einstein or Charles Atlas (or even Charlie fuckin' Brown) to choose their day for 'em. Point a stubby finger and raise a meaty thumb like a cocked gun and that was it. Bingo. Not right there and then, of course; but that was decision time, that was as good as. After that you waited for the right moment. Could take days, weeks, maybe months. Thing was, it always came. You gottem when they and nobody else expected it. When you were safe.

He'd shown it to insects first, his power, graduating to animals—mice, frogs (slice 'em, dice 'em), Grandma Kaley's old crosseyed cat (weed-killer in its milk bowl), a stray mutt (lured by half a salami sandwich into a rusted freezer left to rot on the town's rubbish dump—he'd opened it up two weeks later and the stink had made him throw up). Then on to the big time.

Four of 'em he'd wasted (he enjoyed the macho sound of wasted), two boys, two chicks. And nobody the wiser.

When he'd moved on to Philly, there'd been two more three if you counted the spic. In LA almost—almost— one (the hooker had fought like a wildcat when, on the spur of the moment maybe just to get hisself excited—he'd decided to cancel her subscription, and the stiletto-heeled shoe she'd been treading him with for his pleasure had nearly taken out his left eye, hurting him so bad that he'd had to leave her there moaning and hollering in a way he'd thought nobody could with a snapped neck and a belly-full of bruises).

Things had gotten a mite tricky after that. The Pigs had a description, they knew who they were looking for. Hooker had seen him around before, that was the piss-puller, seen him hanging loose with Glass-Eye Spangler (an inch to the left with that stiletto heel and they'd have been calling him Glass-Eye, too). And good 'ol boy Spangler knew his drinking buddy's name, where he was from. Turned out there was a small matter of an unsolved crime and a missing delinquent back there in Coatesville. Nah, not the two boys, two chicks—one drowning, one car burning (the lighted rag stuck into the gas filler had blown the tank right under the backseat which the boy and girl were using for a make-out pad at the time), and one rape with strangling as the dessert (or maybe the main course, it was hard to remember now), not those.

There was the little mystery of Mama and Uncle Mort, brother and sister, found locked together in bed (joined at the loins, that is) with bed bugs buddying up with maggots on what must have been one sweltering, rotten feast-week, and Rosie Monk's sixteenyear-old, the one they figured was semi-imbecile because he never talked much and lumbered around like . . . like . . . say it . . . like one of them fuckin'

orangy-tans and just about as smart (this was in the days before Mr Snaith), had lit out, making him Number One suspect, since no one in his right brain would even think about kidnapping the big fucker (oh yeah, Theodore Albert aka Ape had filled his fat with muscle in the two years after POT power), after bludgeoning Mama and that groin-groping bastid Uncle Mort with his battered old Jim Fugosi baseball bat in the bed where they'd grunted and heaved and made the springs sing along.

So the Pigs were on his tail again, years after the event, hot for his ass. And maybe now those cops were finally figuring the big galoot had something to do with those other unexplained homicides, and if not, why not? Neatened up things to hang them on Monk too. Yeah, let's go for it, let's nail the mother-killer, the uncle-pounder,