Sonata of the Dead Read Online Free

Nothing in the previous day’s space. No mention of Sarah. He hadn’t entered any information in the names and addresses section. There wasn’t much of anything, actually. Except, once a month, a single word: ACCELERANTS.
    ‘Who are you?’ Tom came into the bedroom, the glass of water in his fist. No recognition here. He looked from me to Joan and then back again.
    ‘Joel Sorrell,’ I said. The name seemed to make no impact on him. But he was no longer listening. His wife was crying. A stranger was standing nearby.
    ‘I’m calling the police,’ he said.
    ‘He
is
the police,’ Joan cried at him, lifting her head from the pillow.
    ‘Actually—’ I began, but Joan was clawing her way towards her husband, her face slicked with tears and snot.
    ‘Martin,’ she said. ‘MARTIN!’
    Tom was shaking his head. Water from the glass sloshed over the rim. He didn’t notice. ‘What about Martin?’
    ‘He’s dead,’ Joan managed, the words struggling out of her as if they were barbed wire snagging in her throat.
    Tom dropped the glass. He went to Joan and held her. He didn’t take his eyes off me.
    ‘Sarah Sorrell,’ I said. ‘Have you seen her? Did Martin—’
    ‘Get out,’ Tom said. His lips were drawn back from his teeth. He was shaking. He was shaking so hard I thought he was having convulsions.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
    The doorbell rang when I was halfway down the stairs. I didn’t answer it, and went out through the patio doors at the back. I hurried down the garden and skipped over the fence. I jogged along the train tracks until I hit a road and followed it round to where I’d left the car.
    I was on Spaniards Road, gunning through Hampstead Heath, when Mawker called to give me holy hell.

3
    I picked up a litre of Grey Goose on the way home. I had maybe three inches left in the bottle in my freezer, but today was a four-inch kind of day. Mengele was laying in wait for me when I got in, pouncing on my leg like a furrier, more tuna-scented version of Cato. I let him bully me for a while until there was a real danger of him reopening some of his previously administered wounds, and poured him some Fishbitz. I carried the bottle and a shot glass and went out on to the balcony where I got on with the serious business of destroying my internal organs. The heat of the day had been captured by the floor tiles and I kicked off my shoes and enjoyed the warmth in my feet. I could hear the buzz of early evening traffic. In the windows of flats opposite I could see people sitting down for meals or TV or, like me, a restorative gill or two. I poured. I tossed it back. The vodka shot was a syrup slug of iced purity; I held it still on my tongue for a few moments and then let it roll down my throat. Cold became heat. I closed my eyes.
    We used to have a bush in the back garden at Lime Grove. Dianthus. It produced red flowers with attractive grey-blue grassy leaves. You’d smell it on summer evenings when we sat outside with a glass of something, watching the Tube trains clatter over the tracks above the roofs of Shepherd’s Bush market. It had a spicy smell about it.
    Whenever she’d been naughty Sarah would pick one of the flowers and leave it by the bedside. She never confessed to this, but I’d seen her doing it once or twice. I smelled that flower now, across the years, as if some old, dying pocket of my mind had cruelly opened up to let me in.
    I wondered how close I’d come to finding a path to Sarah. Somewhere in Gower’s house, in a notebook or on a computer file, was a phone number or an address that might lead me to her. Martin Gower. Childhood sweethearts. I’d never thought to consider childhood friends as possible sources of information. How many of us retain the relationships we built at school? I tried to think of the other kids Sarah had been friends with but couldn’t for the life of me dredge up any names. I guessed Sarah wasn’t the kind of person to use social networking sites because