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way and then the other. Old brickwork groaned as timbers sheared, chimney
stacks toppled and windows shivered into fragments in their twisting frames.
And as the house sank in leaping flames and molten earth, so its substance
became fuel for the fire.
Fire raced up walls inside and out; great red and yellow gouts of flame
spurted from broken windows, bursting upward through a rent and sagging roof.
For a single instant longer Georgina
Bodescu was silhouetted against a background of crimson, searing heat, and
then Harkley House gave up the ghost. It went down groaning into a scar of
bubbling earth that resembled nothing so much as the mouth of a small volcano.
For a little while longer the peaked gable ends and parts of the roof were
visible, and then they too were consumed in vengeful fire and smoke.
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Through all of this the reek had been terrible. Judging by the stench, it
might well have been that fifty men had died and been burned in that house;
but as Roberts climbed up into the passenger seat of the truck and Layard
headed the vehicle down the drive towards the gates, all five survivors,
including Trask who was now mainly conscious, knew that the stench came from
nothing human. It was partly thermite, partly earth and timber and old brick,
but mainly it was the death smell of that rendered down, gigantic monstrosity
under the cellars, that 'Other' which had taken poor Gower.
The mist had almost completely cleared now, and cars were beginning to pull up
along the verges of the road, their drivers attracted by the flames and smoke
rising high into the air where
Harkley House had stood. As the truck rolled out of the gates onto the road, a
red-faced driver leaned out of his car's window, yelled, 'What is it? That's
Harkley House, isn't it?'
'It was,' Roberts yelled back, offering what he hoped looked like a helpless
shrug. 'Gone, I'm afraid. Burned down.'
'Good Lord!' The red-faced man was aghast. 'Has the fire service been
informed?'
'We're off to do that now,' Roberts answered. 'Little good that'll do, though.
We've been in to have a look, but there's nothing left to see, I'm afraid.'
They drove on.
A mile towards Paignton, a clattering fire engine came tearing from the other
direction. Layard drew dutifully in towards the side of the road to give the
fire engine room. He grinned tiredly, without humour. 'Too late, my lads,' he
commented under his breath. 'Much too late - thank all that's merciful.'
They dropped Trask off at the hospital in Torquay (with a story about an
accident he'd
suffered in a friends garden) and after seeing him comfortable went back to
the hotel HQ in
Paignton to debrief.
Roberts enumerated their successes. 'We got all three women, anyway. But as
for Bodescu himself, I have my doubts about him. Serious doubts, and when
we're finished here I'll pass them on to London, also to Darcy Clarke and our
people up in Hartlepool. These will be simply precautionary measures, of
course, for even if we did miss Bodescu we've no way of knowing what he'll do
next or where he'll go. Anyway, Alec Kyle will be back in control shortly. In
fact it's queer he hasn't shown up yet. Actually, I'm not looking forward to
seeing him: he's going to be furious when he learns that Bodescu probably got
out of that lot.'
'Bodescu and that other dog,' Harvey Newton put in, almost as an afterthought.
He shrugged.
'Still, I reckon it was just a stray that got into... the grounds somehow?' He
stopped, looked from face to face. All were staring back at him in
astonishment, almost disbelief. It was the first they'd heard of it.
Roberts couldn't restrain himself from grabbing Newton's jacket front. 'Tell
it now!' he grated through clenched teeth.
'Exactly as it happened, Harvey.' Newton, dazed, told it, concluding:
'So while Gower was burning that... that bloody thing which wasn't a dog not
all of it, anyway
- this other dog went by in the mist. But I can't even swear that I saw it at
all! I mean, there was so much going on. It could have been just the mist, or
my imagination, or... anything! I thought it loped, but sort of upright in an
impossible forward crouch. And its head wasn't just the right shape. It had to
be my imagination, a curl of mist, something like that. Imagination, yes -
especially with Gower standing there burning that godawful dog! Christ, I'll
dream of dogs like that for the rest of my life!' [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]