Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks Page B

at Vince. He just stared at her. She turned back to Cole, still drying her hands on the dish towel. “I don’t remember exactly…it was late.” She looked at Vince again. “It was about one o’clock, wasn’t it?”
    “Something like that.” He drank some beer. “I was going to pick her up,” he told Cole, “but I couldn’t get the car to start. She had to walk back.”
    Cole looked at Abbie. “You walked back?”
    She nodded. “I got soaked—”
    “You walked back from the village to here?”
    She nodded again, more slowly this time, staring at the twisted dish towel in her hands. Cole just stared at her. I did, too. We were both thinking the same thing: If she’d walked back home from the village that night, she would have gone the same way as Rachel. Same night, same journey.
    Same night.
    Same journey.
    When Abbie finally looked up, her face was pale and her eyes were laden with sadness and guilt.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was going to tell you—honestly. I just feel so bad about it. I didn’t know how to—”
    “Did you see her?” Cole asked quietly. “Did you see Rachel?”
    Abbie shook her head. “I was probably about ten minutes behind her…maybe less.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “God, if only I’d left a few minutes earlier—”
    “It wasn’t your fault,” Vince told her.
    She flashed a look at him then, and for a brief moment I saw something else behind her tears. I saw disgust and anger. I saw hatred. It passed as quickly as it had appeared, but I knew I wasn’t mistaken. I could see the mark it had left on Vince—he looked like a man who’d just had his face slapped. Cole could see it, too.
    “What was wrong with your car?” he asked Vince.
    “What?”
    “Your car. You said it wouldn’t start. What was the matter with it?”
    “Carburetor.” Vince shrugged. “I thought it was just the rain at first, you know…it was pouring down. I thought the engine was wet. But even after I’d got everything dry, it still wouldn’t start. I had to get a new carb fitted the next day.” He shrugged again. “It was just bad luck.”
    “Why’s that?” asked Cole.
    “Well, you know…”
    Cole just stared at him.
    Vince said, “I just mean we might have seen something, that’s all. You know, if the car hadn’t broken down and I’d picked up Abbie—”
    “You might have seen Rachel?”
    “Yeah.”
    “But you didn’t?”
    “No.”
    Cole turned to Abbie. “And you didn’t see anything when you were walking back, either?”
    She shook her head.
    Cole went quiet again.
    Everything went quiet.
    I was beginning to get a bit lost now. There was too much going on that I didn’t understand. There were too many feelings. Too many directions. Too many lines and colors in my head. Too many shades.
    “I think we’d better go to bed,” I said into the silence.
    Cole looked at me. Not yet , his eyes said, I haven’t finished.
    “I’m tired,” I said, kicking him under the table.
    He continued staring at me for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, well,” he said, “it’s been a long day, I suppose. Maybe you’re right.” He rubbed the back of his neck and turned to Abbie. “Do you mind if we head off to bed now?”
    “Of course not.”
    He smiled at her then, which took me by surprise. I knew it was only a fake smile, but it was still nice to see it. Cole doesn’t smile much at the best of times, and since Rachel’s death he hadn’t even come close.
    He kept on smiling as we said good night and left them to it, but as soon as we were out of the kitchen his face went cold and the smile disappeared like the light of a clouded sun.
    As far as I could remember, I’d never spent the night in the same room as Cole before. I’d never had to. Unlike Cole—who was born in a trailer—I was born and raisedin the house at the breaker’s yard. As houses go, it’s not the most stylish place in the world, but what it lacks in style it more than makes up for in rooms.