not, sir, but there are still questions to be answered. We still have the body of Mr. Hammond and he is, sir, whatever your emotional state—minus his left arm.”
An inquest was opened and adjourned almost immediately for further enquiries. A period of six weeks was requested so, for a brief period, we were off the hook. Speaking for myself, I kept thinking of Judie and Hammond. He and I had become friends, and as for Judie—well, she had never shown any kind of response.
I went home, I wanted to get away from this feeling, this dark unknown and the accompanying depression.
It was not easy. I tried all the things that usually worked, without avail. I swam, I surfed a lot, I talked to different people whenever possible, and I rowed the dinghy. I had always found rowing relaxing before, but it seemed to have lost its effect now.
I was rowing back from the edge of the bay when I saw the swimmer and he seemed to be making heavy going of it. He had a strong powerful stroke but I could see he was tiring.
I rowed in close to him. “Are you O.K?”
“Fine thanks. I’m tired but, once past the jetty, I’ll make the beach easily.”
“Are you the swimmer I saw way out about forty minutes ago?”
“Could have been, I’ve just circled the old lighthouse.”
“Hell—that is some swim.” I paused, resting on my oars. “Look, tell me to mind my own business if you like, but I’m local. Before you get to the jetty there’s a natural sandbank stretching out from the shore for about a kilometre. It’s not visible at low tide, but on the high, as now, it creates the hell of an undertow. It’s not the sort of hazard you want to play around with when you’re tired.”
“Well, thanks, boatman, I really appreciate that. What do you suggest?”
“Well, I suggest you take a grip astern and I’ll tow you over the danger area.”
“Thanks a lot.”
I waited until he had a good grip then I began rowing over the danger area, which took about five minutes.
“You were right, man, I can feel the pull as you move. I owe you, I really do.”
He went on talking. He was down here on a holiday for two weeks and still had ten days left. He had hired one of the chalets that they have built recently on the South Beach. They are not much, sort of fixed caravans really, wooden or plastic, with the basic necessities pushed into the back by a hardboard wall. On the other hand, they are cheap, and six metres across the sea wall there is the sand.
I told him when we had reached the safety point. “You’ll be fine from here, sixty metres round the jetty and you’ll be on the beach, no currents at all.”
Before he let go he said: “I’d like to buy you a drink; we could have a couple or two together, share an evening.”
“Well, thanks, would suit me fine.”
“Right, Chalet Thirty-Two—seven o’clock suit you?”
* * * *
It was exactly seven when I knocked and he came to the door smiling.
I gave him no chance to speak. I pulled the trigger.
A small black hole appeared in the centre of his forehead, but the explosive bullet took out everything beyond his face, including the back of his skull.
I put three more shots into his body almost before the first one had had an effect.
His body did not fall, it looked almost like deflation it was so slow; it crumbled in on itself and became a sort of bloody heap. The shattered head lay at angle on the top of it like a carnival mask.
I turned my back on it and put down the gun.
A frightened-looking man in a bathing robe ran up and said: “What the hell’s going on?”
“I’ve just shot a man, get someone to call the police.”
I put my foot on the gun and my hands on the top of my head. “Are you deaf or something? Call the bloody police.”
The police took ten minutes to arrive, four men, two of whom turned green when they saw the remains of the body.
It took them a further twenty minutes before they could accept what I had done and place me under arrest.
* * * *
As I say, I did five hard years, and I think I would have gone insane if Judie had not kept in touch. She wrote to me regularly and, when I came out into the true free sunlight she was waiting with a taxi.
She flowed into my arms without speaking and we just clung together. Later, at her place, after a meal, I said: “I have to tell you why.”
“You don’t have to, I know you’re not a killer.”
“Oh, but Judie, I am—but not a man killer. I don’t know what it was, perhaps it came from the other end of the universe, another dimension, or perhaps it was an elemental of some kind, but I know exactly what happened. It was in that house and, in order to live in our world, it needed a human body. It took the bodies of Landis and Parker, but maybe the left arm of one of them was faulty. It had to find a better one, so it took Hammond’s.”
“You’re certain of this, my love?”
“Absolutely certain, although how I kept both self-control and normal conversation, I’ll never know. I was so dead calm and so intense at the same time. Oh, yes, I knew as soon as I saw the tattoo and the headless cobra. The bastard was swimming about in the ocean using Hammond’s arm to do it—!”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
