Walkers Read Online Free

hysteria.
    Gil asked her, gently, ‘Where do you
live? I could take you.’
    ‘Do you have a car?’
    ‘Sure, that Mustang convertible
right across the street.’
    ‘Okay, then, thank you.’
    They walked off together, Gil and
Susan, leaving Henry standing alone. After a while, Henry shrugged, and walked
the sixty yards back to his cottage, unlocking the door with the key which he
always kept around his wrist. He went through to the living-room, opened up the
glass-fronted cocktail cabinet, and poured himself a very large vodka, straight
up, no ice, and drank it.
    He coughed as the vodka burned its
way down his throat. Then he filled up his glass again, and walked over to the
wide sliding windows which led out on to the balcony.
    He could see the police cars from
here, with their flashing lights, and Lieutenant Ortega in his
cinnamon-coloured suit. Further down the beach, towards Del Mar, two uniformed
policemen were already dragging trestles across the beach, marked Police Line – Do Not Cross.
    Henry watched the police activity
for almost twenty minutes. Then he went back into the cottage and sat down on
the white-painted bamboo sofa, and stared at himself in the shiny glass door of
the stereo cabinet on the opposite side of the room.
    Life after death? The only life in
that poor dead girl had been those wriggling eels; and what kind of life did they represent?
    He thought about the morning’s
events and all he could see was a series of frightening still pictures. The girl’s
hand, clutching at the beach. The silver chain on her ankle. The whiteness of
her back. Then the eels, in their complicated Chinese-puzzle pattern. And the
severed head of that single captured eel, gripping the policeman’s face like an
ancient symbol of evil persistence.
    He finished his third glass of
vodka, and then tilted across to the cocktail cabinet to drain the bottle into
his glass. ‘Stolichnaya,’ he pronounced, with what he liked to think was a
thick Russian accent. Then, ‘Zdarovya.’
    With inebriated care, he went to the
bookshelf at the end of the room, under the window, and ran his finger along
the spines of all the marine books that his less-than-dear departed wife had
left behind her. At last he came across a large illustrated volume entitled Anguilliformes: Migration & Life-Cycles
of Common Eels.
    He tugged it out, took it over to
the coffee-table, and opened it up.
    It was the quotation on the opening
page that caught his attention first of all. It said simply, The eel was eaten
in olden times because it was thought to give exceptional potency. In certain
parts of ancient Scandinavia, shoals of eels were described by a single
mystical word which meant “sperm of the Devil”.’
    Henry was about to take another
drink, but he paused, and read the quotation again.
    Then he looked towards the balcony,
and out towards the beach, and frowned.

CHAPTER
TWO
    G il and Susan said very little as
they drove back to Del Mar Heights Road, where Susan lived. Gil glanced across
at Susan from time to time, but he could see that she was still shocked by what
had happened at the beach. He was pretty queasy himself, thinking about those
eels writhing silvery-black in that woman’s white body, and how that
policeman’s face had been half bitten off.
    Susan said, ‘Here – here it is,’ and
Gil steered the shiny yellow Mustang up the steeply angled concrete driveway,
and yanked up the handbrake. He hopped out of the car without opening the door,
and went around to the passenger side to let Susan out.
    ‘This your grandparents’ place?’ he
asked her. It was a small Mexican-style house, with a balcony overlooking the
garden, and rows of pink-painted arches. Three lizards watched them from the
clay-tiled roof, blinking in prehistoric small-mindedness. Outside the back
door there were six or seven recently watered azaleas, in terracotta pots, and
matching rocking-chairs, in white-painted cane.
    ‘Thank you for driving me home,’
said