Road of the Dead Read Free Page B

the phone, I checked out a few things on the Internet and quickly packed someclothes into a bag. Then I stood by the bedroom window and waited.
    After a while, Cole came out of the house and headed across the yard toward a pile of old cars. He was wearing his jacket and carrying his backpack. He took a key out of his pocket and opened up the trunk of a burned-out Volvo that was stacked at the bottom of the pile. After a quick look over his shoulder, he stooped down and rummaged around in the farthest corner of the trunk. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. He put something in his bag, something else in his pocket, then he straightened up and shut the trunk and walked out of the yard and away down the street.
    I waited until he was out of sight, then I picked up my bag and went downstairs into the kitchen. Mum was waiting for me.
    “Here,” she said, passing me about £200 from her purse. “That’s all the cash I’ve got at the moment. Is that going to be enough?”
    “Cole’s got plenty,” I told her.
    “Good. Do you know what train he’s catching?”
    “He didn’t say, but the next one to Plymouth leaves at eleven thirty-five, so I’m guessing he’ll be on that.” I folded the cash into my pocket. “How’s Dad?”
    “He’s OK. He sends his love.” She looked at the clock. It was ten forty-five. She came over and gave me a hug. “You’d better get going.”
    “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”
    She ruffled my hair. “Don’t worry about me. Just try to keep Cole out of too much trouble. And make sure you both come back in one piece—OK?”
    “I’ll do my best.”
    The sun was still shining as I left the yard and headed down the street. I wondered what the weather would be like on Dartmoor. I wondered what anything would be like on Dartmoor.
    A black cab was dropping someone off at the end of the road. I waited for the passenger to get out, then I got in the back and asked the driver to take me to Paddington Station.

Three
    T he traffic around Paddington was all snarled up, and by the time I’d gotten out of the taxi and bought a ticket and scurried around the concourse trying to find the right platform, it was almost eleven thirty-five. I got on the train just as the guard was shutting all the doors. It was fairly busy, but not overcrowded. I waited while all the other passengers were sorting themselves out—looking for seats, stowing their luggage, aimlessly wandering around—and then, as the train pulled away from the platform, I started looking for Cole.
    It was a long train, and as I made my way slowly through the cars, I found myself thinking about Dad.
    He’d told me once that the first thing he could remember was standing by a water trough watching a horse drink. That was it. That was his very first memory—standing onhis own in a field of long grass, watching a horse take a drink from a trough. I’ve always liked that. I’ve always thought it must be a really nice thing to have in your head.
    Dad used to love telling us stories about his childhood. I think it brought back good memories for him. He was born and raised in an aluminum caravan—or trailer, as he always called it—that he shared with his parents and two older brothers. “It was the finest trailer on the site,” he’d tell us proudly. “Fancy little mudguards, a three-ply stable door, a chrome chimney with a cowl on top…” He’d start smiling then, remembering more details—the paraffin lamp fixed to the ceiling, the painted queen stove, the solid oak dining table, his mother’s crystal ornaments…
    Sometimes he’d remember things that didn’t make him smile, like the night a group of locals had set fire to the trailer while they were sleeping, or how his father would sometimes get drunk and beat him with a thick leather belt studded with rings. I often wondered if that was why Dad had become a bare-knuckle fighter—to somehow get back at his father, or the locals, or