Solomon Creed: The only thriller you need to read this year

Tragic accident … So sorry for your loss … Anything the town can do … Anything at all …

She hauled another shovel-load into the grave, then another, numbing herself against her sorrow and anger through the real physical pain of burying her husband. And with every shovelful of earth she whispered a prayer, but not for her dead love. The prayer she offered up, as tears smeared her face and the smell of smoke drifted up from the desert below, was that the wildfire was actually a judgment, sent by some higher power to sweep right through the town and burn the whole damned place to the ground.

Anything the town can do – Cassidy had said, his hat in his hands and his eyes cast down. Anything at all.

They could all die and burn in hell.

That was what they could do for her.

10 (#ulink_7a478518-1de7-5dd4-a52f-d4f695037a5e)

‘How did he die?’ Solomon kept his voice calm but he felt like howling and breaking something. His frustration was like a physical thing, a storm raging inside him, a stone weighing him down. Being confined in the tin can of the ambulance wasn’t helping.

‘Car wreck,’ Morgan said, his eyes still looking up and out of the side window towards the slopes of the mountains. ‘He was driving late at night, fell asleep at the wheel or maybe swerved to avoid something and ended up in a ravine. Bashed his head and cracked his skull. He was dead by the time we found him.’

Dead by the time I found him too …

Solomon stared past Morgan and out of the window. The town was starting to rise from the desert in scraps of broken fence and crooked shacks with rusted tin roofs or no roofs at all. None of it seemed familiar. ‘Where are all the people?’

‘Oh, those are the old miners’ houses,’ Morgan said. ‘They keep it like this for atmosphere, I guess, a curtain-raiser for the tourists before they get to Main Street. Most people live around the centre nowadays.’

A large sign whipped past – old-style lettering telling travellers they were now entering ‘The Historic Old Town of Redemption’ – and the place came suddenly to life. Pastel houses were lined up in neat rows behind white-painted picket fences along well-paved roads. A Wells Fargo wagon stood beneath the shade of a cottonwood tree, the horses tethered by their reins to a wooden rail running along a trough filled with water from an old-fashioned pump. They were twitching their heads, spooked by the smoke blowing their way and anxious to run from it. Solomon knew how they felt. He wanted to run too, away from the fire, away from this town and this strange feeling of responsibility to a man who was already dead.

‘Did James Coronado have family?’ he asked.

‘Holly,’ Gloria said, fixing a dressing over the burn mark on his arm. ‘His wife.’

‘Holly Coronado,’ Solomon repeated. ‘Maybe I should talk to her.’

Morgan shook his head. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘Why not?’

‘She just buried her husband. She’ll want to be left alone, I should imagine.’

‘She might know who I am.’

Morgan shifted in his seat like it had suddenly become uncomfortable. ‘She should be left alone, time like this.’

Solomon cocked his head to one side. ‘It’s an odd custom, don’t you think, to abandon people when they are at their loneliest? If her husband knew me, then she might know me too. And she might be glad to see an old friend.’

‘I can run a check on your name, if you want,’ Morgan said, fishing his phone from his pocket, ‘see if anything comes up.’

Solomon wondered why Morgan seemed reluctant to let him talk to this woman. It made him want to talk to her even more. He watched as he dialled a number then fixed him with a level stare as he waited for someone to answer.

‘Hey, Rollins, it’s Morgan. Run a name for me, would ya – Solomon Creed.’ He glanced down at the book, used the inscription to spell out the name, then looked back up. ‘He’s about six feet tall, mid-to-late twenties, Caucasian – and by that I mean white: white skin, white hair.’ He nodded. ‘Yeah, like an al-bino.’ He split the word up and stretched it out, in the same way that he might say neee-gro. ‘No, I’ll wait. Run it through NCIC, see if you get anything.’

Solomon felt the ball of anxiety expand in his stomach a little. The NCIC was the National Crime Information Centre. Morgan was checking to see if he had a criminal record or was wanted on any outstanding warrants. And the fact that Solomon knew what NCIC stood for suggested to him that he might.

He looked down at himself, his white skin glowing under the bright lights, no pigment, no marks at all except for the ‘I’ branded on his arm, now hidden beneath a dressing. A blank page of a man. He crossed his arms in front of himself, feeling vulnerable and exposed with his shirt off.

The ambulance turned off the main road and a huge white building filled the ambulance with reflected light. Solomon narrowed his eyes and peered through the rear windows at the church, far too large for such a small town, its copper-clad spire needling its way up into the desert sky. He felt it tug at him, as if he recognized it, though he couldn’t say for sure. Morgan had said the cross he wore round his neck was a replica of the one on the altar, and he felt a strong urge to slip out of the straps that held his legs and break out of the ambulance so he could run to it and see for himself.

‘Yeah, I’m here.’ Morgan nodded and listened. ‘OK, thanks.’ He hung up. ‘Well, Mr Creed,’ he said, tucking the book back into the folded jacket pocket. ‘You’ll be pleased to learn that you are not in the criminal database.’

He sounded vaguely disappointed and Solomon was too, a little. At least if he had been in it he would have more of an idea who he was.

The ambulance slowed, turned off the road and pulled up in front of a large stone building. Gloria handed Solomon his shirt and moved with practised speed, pushing past Morgan to the rear doors to throw them open in an explosion of sunlight and heat. She turned back and released the lock holding the gurney in place and the other medic appeared beside her, ready to pull Solomon out of the ambulance.

‘I can walk,’ Solomon said, slipping his arms into the shirt.

‘You can’t,’ Gloria said. ‘It’s hospital policy. Sit back.’

The driver tugged hard and the gurney slid out of the ambulance with Solomon still lying on it. The steel legs rattled as they unfolded and the sunlight made him screw his eyes shut. ‘I’m not hurt,’ he said, squinting up at copper letters spelling out king community hospital across the facade of the building.

‘Sir, you are injured and you have amnesia.’

‘How was my PERL test?’ Solomon said, covering his eyes with his arm.

‘It was … How did— do you have medical training?’

‘Possibly. My pupils are both equal and reactive to light?’ They were certainly reacting to the light now.

‘Yes.’

‘Then I don’t need to go to the hospital.’ He reached forward to undo the straps holding his legs in place, swung his legs free and down to the ground. The moment his bare feet touched the ground he felt calmer.

The driver moved forward and Solomon pulled the gurney between them and stepped out of reach. He wanted to run and get away from these people but he couldn’t. Not yet. Morgan climbed down from the ambulance, the jacket dangling from his hand, the book sticking out from the pocket. ‘Why don’t you just go with these people and let them run their tests,’ he said. ‘Better safe than sorry.’

Safe. Interesting word. Safe from whom. Safe from what?

‘My jacket,’ Solomon said, holding his hand out.

Morgan held it up. ‘You want this? Go with these people and you can—’

Solomon darted forward, shoving the gurney at Morgan in a loud clatter that made him flinch. He instinctively reached out and the jacket swung close enough for Solomon to snatch it. He had moved clear again before Morgan even realized what was happening.

‘I don’t need to go to the hospital,’ Solomon repeated, slipping his arms into the jacket and backing away from the gurney, and the people, and whatever they wanted to do to him. ‘I need to go to church.’

11 (#ulink_c0d6d2a7-066e-5e8d-95f9-4b518ba82c89)

Mayor Cassidy closed the door of his study, shrugged off his jacket and let it fall to the floor. He stood in the downdraught of the ceiling-fan, pulling his string tie loose and undoing the top button of his shirt. His collar was soaked with sweat.

The funeral had turned into a disaster, his big unifying gesture undone at a stroke by the whiff of wildfire. Everyone had drifted away before the ceremony had ended; a few at first, then a stampede as soon as the sounds of sirens had reached them and they’d seen how fast the smoke was rising and which way it was headed. They all had homes and businesses to worry about, so he couldn’t blame them, but it wasn’t exactly the gesture of community support he had hoped for. There was also the little matter of what might have started the fire, and he didn’t even want to think about that.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and his heart clenched in his chest like a hand had taken hold of it and begun to squeeze. He looked down at the crumpled jacket, the black material shivering where the phone vibrated inside it like some large insect had crawled in there and was now trying to get out. There was a small hole in the fabric and the sight of it made him burn with anger. Damn moths, the house was plagued with them. There had been a Cassidy living in this house ever since Jack Cassidy had built it and now it was all being eaten away, pulled apart fibre by fibre, everything unravelling. He felt embarrassed knowing that he had stood in front of the assembled town with a hole in his jacket – their shabby, moth-eaten mayor.

The phone stopped buzzing and silence surged back into his study. It could have been anybody calling. There was a wildfire burning on the edge of town, all kinds of people would be trying to get hold of him, wanting him to lead, wanting him to reassure them, wanting – something. Everyone wanted something, but there was no one there for him. Not any more.