The Deceit Read Free

arrived here on Christmas Eve in this grand and spooky old house, perched between enormous rocks in the wild west of Celtic Cornwall – which was itself the wild west of England – he had tried to hook up with her, in as subtle a fashion as he could manage.
    And he had failed. Maybe he hadn’t been subtle enough? Maybe he had been too subtle? Maybe he could try again when they were all back at university. The holidays were nearly over. It was January the first, and it was – what? – three a.m.
    Three a.m.!
    Malcolm sat on a table and swigged from his bottle of beer. Amy Winehouse was still lamenting all the drugs that would kill her from the stereo. The music was so boomingly loud it was probably annoying the dead in Zennor churchyard, half a mile away.
    Beer finished, Malcolm wondered vaguely, and groggily, where everyone else had gone. Rufus was presumably in one of the many bedrooms, with their amazing views of the sea, sleeping with Ally, as they had been doing ever since they had shared a bottle of vintage port on Boxing Day. Andrei had crashed with his girlfriend immediately after midnight. Josh and Paul were probably smoking upstairs, or chopping out a line. Or flaked out in their clothes.
    Jojo turned over on the sofa, half-stirring, but still asleep. Her little denim skirt rode up as she did. Manfully, Malcolm resisted the temptation to linger; instead, he stood up, walked across the room, then wandered through the
enormous
mess that was the kitchen (they would have to hire some kids from the village to clear this up) and opened the kitchen door to the large gardens that surrounded this great old house, Eagle’s Nest.
    The night was cold. The garden seemed empty. Then a dark and sudden figure loomed into view.
    ‘
Jesus!
’
    Freddy laughed, and casually dropped his glowing cigarette onto the grass, not bothering to crush it underfoot.
    ‘Sorry, old boy. Did I frighten you?’
    Malcolm was half-angry, yet half-relieved.
    ‘Yes you did. What the fuck are you doing, skulking out here?’
    ‘Well I came out to chuck up into the bushes, as is traditional on New Year’s Eve.’ Freddy smirked. ‘That last joint was a bit of a serial killer. But the air revived me.’
    Now the two of them stood together in the cold, looking out to the distant waves. The house, Malcolm recalled, had once been owned by artists. You could see that its position might inspire.
    ‘So? Do tell. Did you manage to ravish Jojo yet?’
    Malcolm sighed.
    ‘Not exactly.’
    ‘Ten days and not even a kiss? This is potentially worse than the Holocaust.’
    ‘Maybe. I’ll survive.’ Malcolm gazed down, once more taking in the magnificent view, the vast granite rocks and the moonlit fields below, which led down to the Atlantic. ‘Anyway, Freddy, mate, why are you still out here? You’ve been gone hours. It’s freezing.’
    Freddy put a finger to his lips.
    ‘I wanted to sober up, as I said … and then …’
    ‘Then what?’
    Even in the semi-darkness he could see the sly frown on Freddy Saunderson’s face.
    ‘
Then I heard something.
’
    ‘Duh?’
    ‘Something weird. And I
keep
hearing it.’
    ‘That’s Amy Winehouse. She’s dead.’
    ‘No. Not the music. Something
else
.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘There it is again! Listen.’
    Freddy Saunderson was, for once, not joking. From way up on the moors there came a wild and very loud scream. No, not a scream – a feral chorus of screams; yet distorted and shrieking, mingling with the howl of the wind.
    Malcolm felt an urge to step back: to physically retreat.
    ‘Jesus Christ. What is
that
?’
    For a moment the noise abated, but then it returned. A distant choir, infantile and hideous. What the hell would make a sound like that?
    At last, the noise ceased. The relative silence that followed seemed all the more oppressive. The thudding music in the house; the waves on the rocks below. Silence otherwise. Malcolm felt himself sobering up
very fast.
    Freddy pointed.
    ‘Up