The Search Read online

  Thunder rumbled over the houses beyond the river. An army of clouds moved across the sky.

  Walker glanced across at the cathedral’s twin tower, gargoyles jutting out from it. In the distance, a thin jerk of lightning. Carver swung at him again, missed. The swish of air had been almost enough to swat him from the wall. He saw Carver lean out still further, so far that he had to clutch the edge of the window with his hand to support himself, preparing to strike. The seconds grew enormous, vast as lifetimes. Carver was drawing back his arm. Walker looked out across to the other tower.

  He bent his knees and sprang out, diving for the opposite tower. The sky gasped. Air rushed around him. He fell through the net of sky.

  His hands clamped around a gargoyle, ripping muscles in both shoulders. The impact was so sudden his right hand slipped clear. Before he had time to reach up again and steady himself his left hand, swollen, unable to take the weight, slipped free and he was falling again – until the fingers of his right hand hooked around the teeth of the gargoyle: hanging by one arm from the mouth of a monster, stone teeth biting into his hand.

  The first sigh of rain. He threw his other arm up over the ridged back of the gargoyle. As he did so the whole of its lower jaw gave way in his hand, embedding in his fingers for a second and then disappearing before that arm curled around the gargoyle’s neck too. His shoulders were on fire but he was able to swing his legs up, locking them around the gargoyle’s back so that he was embracing it, his face inches from the leer of its shattered mouth.

  Thunder boomed. The sky was full of rain, the gargoyle was spitting water in his face. He hung there, regaining his strength. Then began pulling and twisting himself around and on top of the gargoyle, one knee crooked over its spine, the other swinging clear. Grabbing its ear and using it as a belay point he hauled himself up and around until he was straddling the gargoyle like a wounded man, slumped over a stone pony in the drenching rain.

  He vomited into the darkness. Lightning lashed the city. He looked across at the other tower but could see no sign of Carver.

  Using the wall for balance, he shifted his position and began to move his feet on to the back of the gargoyle. The effort made him giddy but once he had steadied himself he began pushing upwards, his back and arms flattened against the wall until he was standing upright. His feet wobbled and shook on the narrow spine as he turned half around, looking for handholds, for a way of pulling himself on to the roof of the tower. At full stretch he hooked his fingers around a ridge of stone, greasy with rain. He paused, waiting for the giddiness to fade. Blood rushed to his head, nausea was welling up in him again. When it had passed he hauled himself up, scrabbling with his feet until he found a foothold. Knowing he would never make it if he waited, he pushed with his legs and pulled with one arm, the fingers of the other groping blindly and then curling over the edge of the roof. Taking his weight on that hand he reached up with the other. Then, knowing that only one final exertion was needed, he hauled himself up until his shoulders were level with the roof. He locked one arm over the low parapet and dragged himself up. Collapsed on to the roof.

  Blood thundered in his head. Dark lightning. Rain jabbing him awake. His head was in a puddle of black water. He raised himself on one elbow, pain wincing through his shoulder. Dragged himself to a sitting position.

  The puddles all around were silvered by lightning. When he looked up he saw Carver shivering towards him through the rain.

  He watched Carver draw closer, so exhausted that even the reflex of fear barely worked, too weak and full of pain to move. He started to speak but his voice was drenched by thunder exploding all around. By the time the noise echoed away, even the impulse to speak had left him. He squinted up through the rain stinging his face. Carver loomed over him, raising the crowbar like an axe.

  Walker stared up. Waiting for everything to be over with as the sky split in two around Carver. Lightning leapt down the crowbar, igniting the figure holding it. Flames licked his head and body. The moment held like a vast camera flash. Then he toppled forward in the darkness. The smell of burning, the blackened shape steaming in the rain.

  Walker lay where he was, rain lashing his face, his eyes scarred with the image of Carver blasted by lightning, arm and crowbar raised triumphantly as if he had summoned the power that consumed him. Walker looked across at the cathedral’s twin tower, ghastly through the rain.

  Lightning shuddered over the city.

  Thunder like a huge groan.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was mid-morning, buildings were taking in their awnings of shadow. Walker’s train did not leave for an hour and he made his way to the station, limping slightly. His body ached everywhere. His left arm was strapped across his chest but any sudden movement made his shoulder flinch with pain.

  Blue sky fitted snugly over the city. Jutting above the cramped buildings he saw the twin towers of the cathedral. At a café he ordered an espresso and sat watching people pass by, wondering what he had learnt from the events of the last months. Maybe he would feel differently in the future but, for the moment, the more he thought about it the less sure he became. It had not made him sadder or wiser. All he could say for sure was that he had applied himself to something and could now head home and feel content for a while. Walk down to the beach and watch the ocean heaving in. Sleep in the same bed, see the same things day after day. Like someone coming to the end of a shift at a factory, he could go home and put his feet up. The longer the search had gone on the more he had hoped for some ultimate revelation – but such expectations already seemed ludicrous. The best you could hope for was to be free from the itch of restlessness, for a while at least. To put your feet up. For nothing to happen.

  He took out the photo of Rachel, looked at it closely for several minutes and folded it away again. It looked like a picture from a dream, proving nothing, promising everything. He sat for a while longer, paid for his coffee and got up to leave, careful not to jar his arm.

  He walked down Via Dante until he came to the river. A film of algae concealed the movement of the water, making the river look like a green sponge, thick enough to walk on. Halfway across the ornate bridge he picked up a stone and tossed it into the river. There was a slight plop and a tiny rip appeared in the green film. A few moments later the rip had vanished and the green sponge was intact again. His eyes followed the river curving into the distance. Shuttered houses, a few gulls.

  On the other side of the bridge was a pay-phone. He dialled Rachel’s number but there was no answer. From a window nearby – he looked around but couldn’t locate it exactly – he heard a phone ringing: someone else who wasn’t there. He let the phone ring twice more and then hung up. Perhaps it was just as well: if he was dreaming he did not want to be woken up, not yet. He wanted to speak to her but had no idea what to say. Maybe in the course of the journey home he would know. Or perhaps not then, not until he saw her. Perhaps not even then. Home: the familiar shape the word formed in his mouth.

  The phone he had heard earlier was still ringing but it seemed fainter now, as if whoever was calling had almost given up hope. Walker picked up the receiver again and called Marek, who answered immediately.

  ‘Hi, it’s Walker.’

  ‘Walker. Shit! Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in town. On my way to the station.’

  ‘But, I mean, what happened to you? Where have you been? Where are you going?’

  Smiling, Walker said, ‘If I remember rightly, there’s a painting by Cézanne called something like that.’ He listened to Marek laughing into the phone.

  ‘It’s Gauguin actually.’

  ‘Gauguin. OK. Anyway, how you doing?’

  ‘Fine, but what about you? Where are you going?’

  ‘Home. My train leaves in half an hour. I was calling to say goodbye – and good luck with the film.’

  ‘What happened, though? You found Malory?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

>   ‘Well . . . Like I said, it means I’m heading home,’ he said, glad of the chance to say the word again.

  There was a pause and then Marek said, ‘Hey, listen, we found some more film. Super 8.’

  Walker looked back across the bridge: people flowing over it, carrying bags of shopping, holding hands, wearing sunglasses and hats, tourists with their cameras.

  ‘Walker? You still there?’

  ‘Yes. What does it show?’

  ‘You don’t want to see it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want me to tell you what’s on it?’

  ‘No. Yes.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Go on.’

  ‘I think it must have been taken the day after, or sometime later anyway.’

  Out of the corner of his eye Walker saw a bird swoop down and glide low over the river.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘It shows him on Via Dante, near the river. He walks over the bridge and stops in the middle. On the other side he . . .’

  Walker opened his hand and let the receiver drop. It jerked and dangled, moving slightly in the breeze.

  Walker limped away but for a few steps he could hear Marek’s voice, growing fainter by the word, explaining how he had walked from the phone and across Via San Marco, leaving the river behind. Glancing back just once before disappearing into the crowds on Via San Lorenzo.