‘Smelt it too,’ Creed said, ‘just for a second. Like when you’re driving along the highway and there’s a dead animal.’ He was still smiling. ‘Someone else’s death, not mine.’ He stepped forwards, the bones on his suit clicking, loaded dice. His eyes passed from the Skull to Angelo and back again. ‘My bodyguards,’ he said. ‘My executioners.’
Angelo stood in front of Nathan. ‘Who are you?’ But there was nothing in his dark eyes, not even curiosity, and his voice was cold as lilies.
Creed answered for him. ‘He’s coming on the boat with us. He ought to see this.’
So there was a boat. Nathan looked down at Jed, his buckled limbs, his drugged blood. You should’ve listened. Now look at you.
‘We better get going,’ the Skull said.
‘Yeah,’ and Angelo scanned the air above his head, ‘maybe someone heard the shot.’
Nathan watched as they hauled Jed’s body down to the metal platform, then he turned to Creed. ‘See what?’
Creed didn’t answer. He just pushed Nathan down the stairs ahead of him. When Nathan reached the platform he saw another metal staircase, four flights down into the ocean. A white motor launch rocked on the black water.
The Skull and Angelo went first with Jed. They were none too careful. Blood ran from a gash on Jed’s left hand where it had caught on a nail. They laid him in the back of the boat, the place where you’d sit with a crate of beer and wait for the reel to spin, that whine and roar as your line payed out. Angelo climbed the ladder to the top deck and started the engines. The water churned into cream at the stern. Nathan sat down, his feet just touching Jed’s shoulder. Angelo opened the throttle and the note of the engine lifted an octave. Nathan looked round. Down here, under the pier, it was like a forest of metal. The boat slipped between two rows of pillars, evenly spaced, studded with barnacles and limpets, and wrapped in scarves of seaweed at the base. Then suddenly they were clear. In the open, the uncluttered darkness. The Skull stood next to Angel on the top deck, his forehead sloping. Angelo spun the wheel one-handed, his black curls swirling in the breeze. They were heading out to sea.
Creed was going through Jed’s pockets.
‘Could you undo my hands?’ Nathan spoke in a low voice so the others couldn’t hear.
‘I think you should stay like that,’ Creed said. ‘I like you like that.’
‘This is no joke,’ Nathan said. ‘My hands are numb.’
‘I said I like you like that.’ Creed was staring at Nathan as if he’d never seen Nathan before. This sudden detachment, a withdrawal that was both rapid and absolute, made Nathan feel almost dizzy, silenced him.
He watched Creed find something. Candy wrappers. Creed opened his hand and the wrappers fluttered away, swarmed up into the dark air, like butterflies, like dead skin, like fragments of Jed’s soul, and Creed looked at the sky, then at his hand, it was as if he suddenly regretted having let them go.
The Skull clambered down the ladder in his heavy boots. ‘You found the tape?’
‘Not yet.’
The tape was in Jed’s inside jacket pocket. Creed held it up for the Skull to see, and the Skull nodded and grinned.
‘Half a million dollars.’ Creed snapped the tape and fed it out into the wind. A thin streamer flickering behind the boat. Then he just flipped the whole thing over the side.
‘He had a question,’ Creed said. ‘He wanted to know how I knew.’ That soft laugh again. You might’ve confused it with a breath of wind. ‘He held no secrets from me. I put the food on his tongue. I put the dreams in his head. Everything he did was written in my book.’
It sounded like an epitaph. Nathan had a question too, but he was afraid that Creed’s short speech had answered it.
‘He called himself the Leech,’ Creed was saying. ‘Did you know that?’
Nathan shook his head.
‘He was going to bleed me dry,’ Creed said. ‘Now who’s doing the bleeding?’
The Leech, Nathan thought. He hunched over. Jed was still out cold. Some blood seeped from his forehead, from his hand. Not much blood, though, considering his name. It hardly stained the bottom of the boat. Not much of a leech.
In the end Nathan had to ask. ‘What are you going to do with him?’ And when Creed didn’t answer, he looked up. ‘You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?’
Creed was staring out into the darkness. ‘He already did that himself. All we’re going to do,’ and he smiled, almost wistfully, ‘is bury him.’
‘That’s murder,’ Nathan said.
Creed shook his head. ‘Burial.’
They stared at each other until Nathan had to look away. He couldn’t look into those eyes any more.
The boat lifted, spliced a wave. Spray flew past and nicked his cheek. His upper arms and shoulders ached as if his bones had turned to metal.
He faced into the wind. And there, across the water, less than a hundred yards away, he saw a white light glowing. At first he didn’t recognise it. Then, as they edged closer, he realised with a shiver where they were. They were approaching one of the ocean cemeteries, and that white glow would be a memory buoy. They shouldn’t be here, he was thinking, not after dark. These were the sacred territories, these were the pastures of the dead. He found himself remembering the shark run he had undergone all those years ago, the moment when he grew tired and his legs dropped. That deepness where anything you thought of became real.
They passed within a few feet of the buoy, their engines idling now. An angel knelt beside a cross, the whole tableau lit from the inside. Nathan leaned forwards to read the inscription: ANGEL MEADOWS. And then some quotation from the Bible, but he could only make out one word: SLEEP.
The Skull stood in front of Creed, hands on his hips. ‘I guess this’ll do, won’t it?’
Creed nodded.
Angelo flicked a switch inside the cabin and the lower deck lit up. There were colours where there’d been none before. The green and brown of the Skull’s fatigues. The red of Jed’s blood. The white of Creed’s face, the black of his eyes.
Angelo and the Skull began to load clear plastic bags of white stones into Jed’s pockets.
The Skull noticed Nathan watching. ‘We cleaned out the ovens yesterday,’ he said. ‘These are what you might call,’ and he grinned, ‘the leftovers.’
When they’d used up all the bags they hauled Jed’s body down to the stern.
‘Anyone want to say anything?’ the Skull asked.
Creed turned away. ‘Just drop him.’
There was a moment of stillness, unintentional, then the two men heaved the body over the side. Spray rose into the air and flopped on to the deck. Nathan watched as Jed floated just below the surface in the part of the water that was green, almost transparent, lit by the boat’s bright lamps. He saw Jed’s eyes flicker open, close, flicker open again.
He woke up and he was drowning.
It was as if he’d been born into a world where the only element was water. He struck out with his hands, kicked with his feet, but the water wrapped all his movements up, stole all their strength. He struck out, kicked again. Rose to the surface. Drank the black air down. Drank some water too. He could see lights, hear voices. They were talking about him. They were saying goodbye. Was he leaving?
‘Goodbye, Spaghetti.’
‘Spaghetti.’ A laugh. A laugh he recognised. ‘Place in lightly salted water. Cook for ten minutes.’
‘Lightly salted water?’ Another laugh. A different laugh.
And then another voice: ‘Place in lightly salted water. Cook for ever.’
It was like being food. And the cooks were all laughing, they were jolly men with big faces, they were in a good mood.