chapter thirty-five

William Hill

It had been at some stage after leaving the gallery and before turning the corner from the Convent Road into Ashfield that Kay had sensed Frank’s presence. She felt it as an infection in the air that penetrated her lungs and the lymph system. She stopped for a moment and placed both palms, crossed, over her heart and then let her second fingers run forward to her eyebrows from each temple. There was no point in turning back: since Frank was here already there was nowhere to go. It was odd, because although she knew she had killed him, she still felt terrified at the prospect of meeting him. This was not irrational of course. He could, and probably would try to harm her, but it was the legacy of the decade and more of psychological control and chemical abuse that really fed her terror. She looked up into the night sky, now clear of the heavy clouds that had dulled the day, and heard the freezing moisture crack underfoot.

Reality echoed that rupture as she crunched the new-born ice all the way to Trisha’s front door. By the time she stood before the door she was empty of self and so ready for Frank. She pushed the door into the caesura between the streetlight and the icy radiance from the garden that crept into the kitchen and studio. She waited to smell Frank, lurking with some antique weapon; his sweat, his American aftershave, his corrupt cells, but that presence, the quick and the dead of Frank, was absent. She closed her eyes and the after image of the studio remained and began to take shape, and at the same time there was a scent of Frank too, a strange, almost gluey scent. She identified the scent as his come at the same time as her retina made out the body surrounded by the one hundred and forty four plaster cast elves.

She squatted down in the dark beside the ritual circle and considered the black hole in the chest that was the origin, here still encrusted with the plastic crimson of her friend’s blood. Frank had always held himself aloof from her father’s cannibalistic perversions, so he had done this simply to communicate something. She picked up one of the cast models of Douglas. Why the circle? Why on earth had Frank bothered to carefully make this circle of sightless figures face towards the site of his mutilation?

She heard something as if in reply to her thoughts: the thumping of bare feet on colder earth, and an unintelligible incantation in vowel rich words. She sensed a distance and a place in Northern latitudes, and an equivalent distance in time. God, she was getting too close to Frank. This was nonsense.

She stood abruptly and hit the light switch, turning away from the body. She shut out the connection to Frank and squeezed the little model in her hand to confirm herself in the present. This was her business now, selling pictures to tourists and models to children. She let the words cross: “pictures to children and models to tourists”. And then she had it. Frank wanted her to find him, and this was the reason for the circle. She had sold one model to a tourist a couple of weeks ago, and that had been to a German sculptor, living in Dublin, who had left her card at the gallery.

Ten minutes later she had the card from the desk in the Blue Gamp Gallery and made the call. She described Frank to the sculptor.

“He came down here looking for more elves, but I missed him,” she said.

“I know him to see,” replied the sculptor, and then to those around her “Did any of you see Frank recently?” Kay could make out a buzz of conversation and the thump of salsa music, then the German voice returned.

“Pat spoke to him a couple of days ago. Here, I’ll put him on the line.”

“Howya? That Frank, he is a crazy character alright. He told me he’s going to visit a brother in London, Forest Hills I think he said, but I don’t have an address exactly.”

“Thanks, you’re a star,” said Kay. “If you are talking to him, tell him Kay is looking for him; here’s my number...”

After disconnecting, Kay searched Forest Hills on the internet, and quickly discovered the area was actually called Forest Hill. But how to find Frank? She had to be careful; he was leading her in some way, and his murderous intent was clear. Frank needed to be in control; he never gambled.

Twenty four hours later she had a job organised for herself in the safest place in Forest Hill; a bookmakers called William Hill on Devonshire Road.