His study, however, was a different matter.
Blake had been pleased, when he had bought the house, to discover that it not only possessed an attic but also a double cellar which ran beneath the entire building. He had converted the subterranean room into his study. Every day he retreated down the steps to work, free of the noises and distractions of everyday life.
Buried beneath the ground as it was, it reminded him of working in a giant coffin.
He kept the door locked at all times. The cellar was his private domain and his alone.
The smell of pizza began to waft from the kitchen. He ate it from the foil wrapper, saving himself any washing up. Then, still clutching his glass, he headed through the sitting room into the hall where he unlocked his case.
His notes were on top and Blake lifted them out carefully, hefting them before him. They had a satisfying heavy feel.
The fruits of so much research. The hard part was almost over. Another week or so of note-taking and preparation and he could get down to the serious business of writing.
As it was, there was one more thing be had to do.
Blake opened the cellar door, peering down into the blackness below. He smiled broadly to himself and flicked on the light.
‘Welcome home,’ he murmured and walked in.
Before he descended the steps he was careful to lock the cellar door behind him.
The silence greeted him like an old friend.
New York
Across the untarnished brilliance of the azure blue sky the only blemish was the thin vapour trail left by a solitary aircraft.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The sun, even so early in the morning, was a shimmering core of radiance throwing out its burning rays to blanket the city in a cocoon of heat.
The heavens did not weep for Rick Landers but there were others who did.
There were a handful of people at the graveside as the small coffin was lowered into the hole. Toni Landers herself stood immobile, eyes fixed on the wooden casket as it slowly disappeared from view. The only part of her which moved was her eyes and, from those red-rimmed, blood-shot orbs, tears pumped freely, coursing down her cheeks and occasionally dripping on to her black gloved hands. There was a photograph of Rick on the marble headstone but she could not bring herself to look at it. Every now and then, the rays of sunlight would glint on the marble and Toni would squeeze her eyes tightly together but, each time she did so, the vision of Rick flashed into her mind —memories of that
day a week or more earlier when she had been forced to identify his remains.
She had gazed on the mangied body of her child, stared at the face so badly pulped that the bottom jaw had been ground to splinters. The skull had been shattered in four or five places so that portions of the brain actually bulged through the rents. One eye had been almost forced from its socket. The head was almost severed.
It would have taken a magician not a mortician to restore some semblance of normality to a body so badly smashed.
Toni sucked in a breath, the memory still too painful for her. She shuffled uncomfortably where she stood and the two people on either side of her moved closer, fearing that she was going to faint. But the moment passed and she returned her attention to the gaping grave which had just swallowed up her dead child. The priest was speaking but Toni did not hear what he said. She had a handkerchief in her handbag yet she refused to wipe the tears away, allowing the salty droplets to soak her face and gloves.
Against the explosion of colours formed by countless wreaths and bouquets the dozen or so mourners looked curiously out of place in their sombre apparel.
Toni had deliberately kept the number of mourners to a minimum. She had phoned
Rick’s father in L.A. and told him but he had not condescended to put in an appearance. Amidst her grief, Toni had found room for a little hatred too. But now as she watched the ribbons which supported the coffin being pulled clear she felt a cold hand clutch her heart, as if the appalling finality of what she was witnessing had suddenly registered. Her son was gone forever and that thought brought fresh floods of tears from the seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of her pain.
This lime her knees buckled slightly and her two companions moved to support her.
One of them, Maggie Straker, her co-star in her last film, slipped an arm around Toni’s waist and held her upright. She could hear the other woman whimpering softly, repeating Rick’s name over and over again as if it were a litany.
It was Maggie who first noticed that there was a newcomer amongst them.
The grave stood on a slight rise so his approach had been masked by the mourners on the far side of the grave.
Jonathan Mathias stood alone, a gigantic wreath of white roses held in his hand. He looked down at the final resting place of Rick Landers then across at Toni.
She saw him and abruptly stopped sobbing.
Mathias laid the flora! tribute near the headstone, glancing at the photograph of Rick as he did so. He straightened up, listening as the priest finished what he was saying. He paused for a moment then asked those gathered to join him in reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
Mathias stood by silently.
When the ritual was complete the mourners slowly moved away, back down the slight slope towards the black limousines which stood glinting in the sunlight like so many predatory insects. They too looked alien and intrusive amidst the green grass of the cemetery.
Mathias did not move, he stood at the head of the grave, gazing down into its depths at the small wooden casket. And it was towards him that Toni Landers now made her way, shaking loose of Maggie’s supportive arm.
i hope I’m not intruding,’ the psychic said, softly.
‘I’m glad you came,’ Toni told him. She glanced down at the wreath he’d brought. ‘Thank you.’
Maggie Straker approached cautiously.
‘Toni, do you want me to wait I …’
‘It’s OK, Maggie.’
The other woman nodded, smiled politely at Mathias then made her way down the slope behind the other mourners. Toni and the psychic stood alone by the grave.
‘What will you do now?’ he asked her. ‘What are your plans?”
She sniffed.
‘I’m going to spend some time in England with friends,’ Toni informed him. ‘I can’t bear to be around here. Not now.’ She wiped some of the moisture from her cheeks with a handkerchief which Mathias handed her. Toni turned the linen square over in her hands.
‘You knew he was going to die didn’t you?’ she said, without looking at him.
‘Yes,’ Mathias told her.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference. There was nothing you could have done about it.’
‘Was there anything you could have done about it?’
i wish there had been.’
He took her hand and, together, they made their way down the slope towards the waiting cars. But Toni hesitated momentarily, looking back over her shoulder towards the grave.
Towards her son.
It was over.
He was gone.
All that remained now were the memories.
She felt more tears streaming down her cheeks and Mathias put his arm around her shoulder, leading her
