Solomon Creed. Simon Toyne

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      ‘The point is we’re talking about a man’s life here.’

      ‘No. The point is we’re talking about several people’s lives, including yours and mine. We’re talking about the survival of this town. I don’t want to know who this guy is. I don’t need to know. But I’ll tell you something else: he had a copy of Jack Cassidy’s memoir in his pocket, personally inscribed to him from Jim Coronado.’

      Cassidy felt the blood drain from him. ‘You think he knew Jim?’

      ‘He says he can’t remember, but when I asked him about the book he said he felt like he was here because of Jim. He said he thought he was here to save him.’

      ‘Jesus. He said that?’

      Morgan nodded. ‘Asked me how he died and whether he could talk to Holly. So, whichever way you chop it up, this guy is a potential problem for us. Or maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s actually a solution. The way I figure it, Tío’s going to find out about him sooner or later, which means he’s a dead man whatever we do or don’t do. So if we give him up, we win ourselves some loyalty points and hopefully cut ourselves some slack. And we no longer have to worry about what his connection to Jim may have been and whether that might turn into another problem for us.’

      Cassidy felt sick about what they were discussing. He gazed back up at the stern portrait of his ancestor. He had always felt like the Reverend Jack was looking down on him, judging him and how he was running the town he had built. He had faced some tough challenges over the last few years, real tough challenges, but nothing like this. This was like Armageddon, apocalyptic – world ending.

      Outside, the wail of a siren rose and he glanced up to see a cruiser come to an abrupt halt on the driveway, its spinning lights painting the panelling red and blue.

      ‘There’s my ride,’ Morgan said, heading to the door.

      ‘Where is this guy?’ Cassidy asked. ‘You taken him in for questioning?’

      ‘No. I thought it best to keep him off the record, in case he has to – disappear. Last I saw, he was heading to the church.’

      Cassidy stared out of the window at the white stone of the church beyond the wall. ‘Let me go talk to him first.’

      ‘Now why would you want to go and do that?’

      ‘Because if I’m going to sacrifice a man’s life to save my town, the least I can do is have the courtesy of looking him in the eye first. And I still think we should establish whether the crash was an accident or not.’

      Morgan shook his head and took in the room. ‘Must be nice, living in your oak-panelled world where everyone plays by rules and any disputes can be resolved with a handshake. Let me tell you how things work out in the real world. Talking to this guy is going to achieve absolutely nothing. If anything, it’s going to complicate things. You don’t strike up a friendship with a man you’re about to execute. And it won’t matter a damn to Tío whether the crash was an accident or not. His son died and someone is going to have to pay for it. Someone – or something. Ever hear of a place called El Rey?’

      ‘Rings a bell.’

      ‘It’s a little town up in the Durango Mountains. The local banditos took it over and it became a sort of Shangri-La for criminals fleeing south across the border. Anyone who made it there with enough money to pay for protection could stay as long as they liked, knowing no law would ever touch them. El Rey is also Tío’s hometown. Or it was. It’s not there any more.’

      ‘What happened?’

      ‘Tío happened. I don’t know the exact details, but when Tío was a kid there was some kind of family tragedy involving his father and brother. Could be they fell foul of the bosses or something but whatever happened, Tío never forgot it. When he rose to power years later, he got his revenge. El Rey was the headquarters of the old bosses, so it made sense for him to take it over. But he didn’t. What he did was massacre every living soul in the town and burn the place to the ground. It was symbolic, I guess: out with the old and in with the new. But it was also revenge, pure and simple; an old-fashioned blood vendetta. Tío did the killing himself, the way I heard it. Showed the world what would happen if anyone dared to hurt him or his family.’ He pointed out of the window at the smoke rising beyond the church. ‘And his son just died, flying into our airfield. So you think about that when you talk to this guy. I’ll be at the control line if you need me.’ Then he opened the door and was gone.

       15

      Solomon stood inside the door of the church letting his eyes adjust to the gloom after the fierce sunlight outside. Huge stained-glass windows poured light into the dark interior, splashing colour on what appeared at first glance to be a collection of old junk.

      To the left of the door a full-sized covered wagon stood behind a model of a horse and a mannequin dressed in nineteenth-century clothes. A fully functioning Long Tom sluice box stood opposite with water trickling through it, making a sound like the roof was leaking. A collection of gold pans was arranged around it, beneath a sign saying ‘Tools of the treasure hunter’s trade’. There were pickaxes too and fake sticks of dynamite and ore crushers and softly lit cabinets containing examples of copper ore and gold flake and silver seams in quartz. Another cabinet contained personal effects – reading glasses, pens, gloves – all carefully labelled and arranged, and there was a scale model of the town on a table showing what Redemption had looked like a hundred years ago. And right in the centre of the strange diorama a lectern stood, angled towards the door so that anyone entering the building was forced to gaze upon the battered Bible resting upon it.

      Solomon walked forward, feeling the cold flagstones beneath his feet. He could see the remnant of a lost page sticking out from the binding, its edge rough as if it had been violently torn from the book. The missing page was from Exodus, chapters twenty through twenty-one, where Moses brought God’s ten holy laws down from the mountain on tablets of stone.

      ‘The Church of Lost Commandments,’ Solomon muttered, then continued onward into the heart of the church, breathing in the smells of the place: dust, polish, candle wax, copper, mould.

      The commandments were everywhere: carved into the stonework and the wooden backs of the pews, inscribed into the floor in copper letters, even depicted in the stained glass of the windows. It was as if whoever had lost the page from the Bible had built the church in some grand attempt to make up for it. The altar lay directly ahead of him, the large copper cross standing on a stone plinth. As he drew closer he studied it, his eager eyes tracing the twisted lines and spars identical to the cross he wore around his neck, hoping for some jolt of recognition. But if he had ever been here before or stood and gazed upon this cross and this altar he couldn’t remember it and he felt frustration flood into the place where his hope had been.

      The church seemed gloomier here, as if the walls around the altar were made of darker material, and as he drew closer he saw the reason for it. The stonework, bright white in the rest of the building, was covered in dark frescoes. They depicted a desert landscape at night, populated with nightmarish creatures: hunched men and skeletal women; children with black and hollow eyes, their clothes ragged and tattered. Some rode starved horses with ribs sticking out from sunken hides, their eyes as hollow as their riders.

      Beneath the ground, emerging from a vast, burning underworld, were demons with sharp, eager teeth and leathery wings that stirred the dust, and taloned hands that reached up through СКАЧАТЬ