LITMIR.BIZ

       VII Rough Roads

      1

      Knowing Boone was gone from her was bad enough, but what came after was so much worse. First, of course, there’d been that telephone call. She’d met Philip Decker only once, and didn’t recognize his voice until he identified himself.

      ‘I’ve got some bad news I’m afraid.’

      ‘You’ve found Boone.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘He’s hurt?’

      There was a pause. She knew before the silence was broken what came next.

      ‘I’m afraid he’s dead, Lori.’

      There it was, the news she’d half known was coming, because she’d been too happy, and it couldn’t last. Boone had changed her life out of all recognition. His death would do the same.

      She thanked the doctor for the kindness of telling her himself, rather than leaving the duty to the police. Then she put the phone down, and waited to believe it.

      There were those amongst her peers who said she’d never have been courted by a man like Boone if he’d been sane, meaning not that his illness made him choose blindly but that a face like his, which inspired such fawning in those susceptible to faces, would have been in the company of like beauty had the mind behind it not been unbalanced. These remarks bit deep, because in her heart of hearts she thought them true. Boone had little by way of possessions, but his face was his glory, demanding a devotion to its study that embarrassed and discomfited him. It gave him no pleasure to be stared at. Indeed Lori had more than once feared he’d scar himself in the hope of spoiling whatever drew attention to him, an urge rehearsed in his total lack of interest in his appearance. She’d known him go days without showering, weeks without shaving, half a year without a hair cut. It did little to dissuade the devotees. He haunted them because he in his turn was haunted; simple as that.

      She didn’t waste time trying to persuade her friends of the fact. Indeed she kept conversation about him to the minimum, particularly when talk turned to sex. She’d slept with Boone three times only, each occasion a disaster. She knew what the gossips would make of that. But his tender, eager way with her suggested his overtures were more than dutiful. He simply couldn’t carry them through, which fact made him rage, and fall into such depression she’d come to hold herself back, cooling their exchanges so as not to invite further failure.

      She dreamt of him often though; scenarios that were unequivocally sexual. No symbolism here. Just she and Boone in bare rooms, fucking. Sometimes there were people beating on the doors to get in and see, but they never did. He belonged to her completely; in all his beauty and his wretchedness.

      But only in dreams. Now more than ever, only in dreams.

      Their story together was over. There’d be no more dark days, when his conversation was a circle of defeat, no moments of sudden sunshine because she’d chanced upon some phrase that gave him hope. She’d not been unprepared for an abrupt end. But nothing like this. Not Boone unmasked as a killer and shot down in a town she’d never heard of. This was the wrong ending.

      But bad as it was, there was worse to follow.

      After the telephone call there’d been the inevitable cross questioning by the police: had she ever suspected him of criminal activities? had he ever been violent in his dealings with her? She told them a dozen times he’d never touched her except in love, and then only with coaxing. They seemed to find an unspoken confirmation in her account of his tentativeness, exchanging knowing looks as she made a blushing account of their lovemaking. When they’d finished with their questions they asked her if she would identify the body. She agreed to the duty. Though she’d been warned it would be unpleasant, she wanted a goodbye.

      It was then that the times, which had got strange of late, got stranger still.

      Boone’s body had disappeared.

      At first nobody would tell her why the identification process was being delayed; she was fobbed off with excuses that didn’t quite ring true. Finally, however, they had no option but to tell her the truth. The corpse, which had been left in the police mortuary overnight, had simply vanished. Nobody knew how it had been stolen – the mortuary had been locked up, and there was no sign of forced entry – or indeed why. A search was under way but to judge by the harassed faces that delivered this news there didn’t seem to be much hope held out of finding the body snatchers. The inquest on Aaron Boone would have to proceed

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