Ventriloquists by David Mathew Read Free Book Online Page B

then crashed down in a lump.
    Connors kept moving towards the rear of the property.
    Then something hit him powerfully from behind.
    9.
    ‘I’m still not sure about this,’ Bernadette said softly, in one of those voices that she would use more normally to ask Are you awake, Chris? A voice soft but not too close to silent; at which point he would either say nothing at all (if he was asleep), or he would mumble something about wanting to be asleep; or, as he did right now, he would surprise her ever so slightly with a fully conscious response.
    As clear as a bell Chris now said, ‘No, I’m not sure about this either, babe.’
    Bernadette sat up and flicked on the table lamp. She took a second to think things through, but either as a result of fatigue or touched nerves, she found it all-but impossible to stick to the facts. Her unconscious insisted on feeding her lines that seemed not only from other occasions, but from other lives .
    The fact that Chris had been unable to sleep on it either did not help calm Bernadette down. Even though the two visitors had only left a few minutes earlier, Chris could sleep on the edge of a cliff and dream the sweet dreams of the righteous and the safe. If the conversation was bothering him ...
    A glutton for punishment, Bernadette returned to the window. ‘I don’t like any of this,’ she admitted. ‘What if they’ve found us?’
    Chris sighed heavily. Twisting his upper body, he opened the drawer on his nightstand and retrieved a box of cigarettes.
    ‘Not in here, Chris,’ said Bernadette, irritably.
    ‘I wasn’t going to.’ While Bernie kept her watch on the road a storey down, Chris pulled on the dressing gown that always lived on top of the bed and under which he slept by way of it being an extra blanket. ‘I’ll go out the back with Chelsea. Poor girl’ll be wondering what the fuck.’
    ‘She’s not the only one. I’ll come with you.’
    Dressed for bed, then, the two of them stepped downstairs, the cords of their dressing gown flapping like tails. When they entered the kitchen, Chelsea watched them from where she lay but decided not to move to greet them. It had been a busy night already; Chelsea’s jaws remained still on her forepaws, only her eyes shifting.
    ‘She’s probably confused with the dark as well,’ said Bernadette. ‘Thinks it’s getting-up time. But it’s dark, she’s thinking, so how can it be, eh girl?’
    Chris unlocked the door to the garden. ‘We often walk her when it’s dark,’ he said.
    ‘Yeah, after she’s been asleep .’
    ‘I won’t be a second,’ he continued, abandoning any attempt at debate. It was too deep into the small hours for them all, not only Chelsea... Wielding but a lighter and a smoke, he took the step down into the small back garden, leaving Bernie behind to fuss the dog for a few minutes – or to make a brew, or to do whatever it was that she thought it best to do in these insomniac hours.
    Chris was only halfway through his cigarette, but he tasted that he’d had enough. Taking care to extinguish it in the dish of water that stayed on the windowsill for just such a purpose, Chris was about to step back into the relative warmth of the kitchen when he heard a noise that held him to the spot, with one slippered foot on the doorstep and one on the ground.
    The roar of water. The din of glass smashing.

 
    Housewarming
    1.
    The driveway was a quarter of a mile long. It felt longer. As though in awe of the spectacle, the bewhiskered chauffeur had maintained a purring crawl since giving his passenger’s name into the voicebox at the gate and being granted entry onto the estate. Or perhaps (the passenger considered) the slow speed of progress was for the passenger’s benefit – a chance for him to savour the full autumnal spread of all that he now owned. It didn’t matter. The passenger was in no hurry to reach the house, and so new to him was the notion that this was his that he didn’t wish to miss a thing