Into the Fire

by Rachael Blok

  Ebba looks up. Her face is blotchy, tears falling. ‘Because you would never have forgiven me. You would never….’ She cries again. ‘God, Lois. You have no idea how insanely hard it is trying to measure up to your exacting standards of near fucking perfect righteousness all the bloody time!’

  ‘But I… You’re my sister! You just needed to tell me. You just needed to say.’ Lois, heavy with the weight of it all, struggles to understand. ‘You should just have told me, Ebba.’

  ‘But you see, he was going to tell you…’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  Lois knows there’s something big coming, but she can’t think of anything more than this. ‘What, Ebba? Just tell me, tell me, please.’

  ‘Oh fuck. It’s not just about the IP theft. It’s about what happened afterwards…’ Ebba’s head drops to her hands, hides away. ‘It’s the fire. He was going to tell you about the fire. He’d written it all down, in a letter. Like the one he sent to Richard. He might have been done for IP theft, but me… People died, Lois! I killed people!’ She cries, loud and raw. ‘All those people. I’m not a monster, Lois. You think it hasn’t eaten away at me?’

  Almost crawling, Lois makes it to Ebba’s bed, sits next to her, puts her arm around her.

  ‘Go on,’ she says.

  ‘The meeting with Obaidur, when Aksel was posing as a researcher… He made me go. He said he needed to know if the product idea was viable. So I sat in, and we looked at the headset, the positioning of the lens. His drawings were technically perfect. Such a simple, ingenious idea. And then Aksel sent his car and driver with Obaidur back to work, and told him that now we’d paid him for the idea, he had to burn his drawings. He told him to put the stuff in the waste unit, and burn it.’

  Lois can’t speak.

  Ebba carries on. ‘I went with them. Aksel said he needed me to check the evidence was destroyed. But when we got there, Obaidur was late… He could have been in trouble if he’d been late for his shift…’

  She leans forward, rocking.

  Lois’s mouth is dry, her tongue tight, immobile.

  ‘Obaidur ran for his shift; I ran with him. We took it to the waste burning room, and he gave it to me… Told me what to do.’ She looks up, holds Lois’s gaze. ‘I threw it all in. I put them all in there, but I couldn’t close the unit properly. Someone was coming. I knew I couldn’t be found there. I threw it all in the burner, and I ran. I shut the door but I didn’t hear it click shut. Lois, I had to leave!’

  Lois stares at her.

  ‘I was sure whoever was coming in would have done it properly, but within hours, the factory was burning. There were no real fire safety measures in place. And you were in the factory. You’d gone back. To see it again.’ She shakes her head.

  Lois thinks back. She and Ebba had visited the factory on the first day, and Lois hadn’t been able to speak. She’d been so frightened – the horror of the whole thing. People working, like ants, like slaves… Then Ebba had gone off for a meeting, and Lois had returned on her own. She’d walked through the factory, and then the sound – like the ground itself might swallow them up.

  ‘Aksel tracked down Obaidur later. Made him write a statement, saying what I’d done. His driver wrote one too. I killed those factory workers.’ Her cries are louder. ‘I know Iqbal has been angry with Obaidur for disappearing, like Rajita. But it was shame, Lois. I’m sure of it. His drawings lit the fire. He was powerless to challenge Aksel. And he’d accepted money.’

  Lois stares at her hands, limp in her lap. So many deaths. So much guilt.

  ‘All those deaths, Lois. Almost your death. That’s what Aksel threatened to tell you, if I didn’t do what he wanted. I knew you’d forgive me for most things, but not for silence about that. I never had any choice. I had to kill him. I had to.’

  74

  MAARTEN

  ‘The door is locked!’ He runs into the next room. The darkness is softened by the red glow from the window. The fire has hit this wing of the house. The smell of smoke makes his head spin.

  ‘Sunny, get out. The smoke is getting bad. I can’t have you in here.’

  ‘I’m not leaving! Anyway, the staircase is out. Is there another way? Is there a way into the next room from here?’

  ‘I was hoping… Kak!’ Maarten swears as there is no adjoining door. He pushes open the window in the room, leans out. It’s not so far down. He will not let Sunny die.

  They run back out into the hall. The sound of fire engines arriving is distant over the rage of the fire.

  ‘Can we break the door down?’ Sunny asks, looking round for something to use.

  The crackles are loud.

  ‘It’s so hot! Let’s just get out. The crews will be here…’ Sunny’s voice is fading, as Maarten feels dizzy.

  He thinks of Lois in the room. Filip had heard, ‘It was never meant…’ But Richard had heard, ‘It was Ebba, meant…’ The dying man had named his killer. And now she’s locked in a room. The lab was still determining the poison. It looked plant based, possibly from a poisonous flower. Most people don’t know how dangerous plants and flowers can be. He doesn’t have enough to bring a case against her – he needed her to give herself away. Liv had said Ebba had been good with flowers, it was a hobby. But he’d had no idea she would do this…

  The window frames are now ablaze. How quickly it spreads.

  Sunny falls against the wall. His blond hair damp against his brow. Maarten strikes pointlessly at the smoke, trying to clear a path to him. He lifts Sunny from beneath the shoulders. Inching backwards, his chest screaming, Maarten pulls him towards a door that is open.

  Sunny is out cold. Kak. Once he makes it into the room, he slams the door closed, and runs to raise the old sash window.

  Air rushes in, cooling him. He grabs the quilt from the bed, and he pushes it up against the space beneath the door, trying to slow the smoke.

  He drags Sunny to the window.

  Sunny’s cheeks are pink, and Maarten lifts him up to the air, the oxygen.

  Fire flicks from the rooms nearby.

  These walls are thick. These doors are thick.

  Verdomme.

  He will not let Sunny die. He will save a life.

  He just has to hope that there’s time.

  75

  LOIS

  Part of her still doesn’t believe Ebba could have killed anyone. If Ebba turned round now and said she didn’t do it, she knows she’d believe her. She wants to believe her. She struggles with the details.

  ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘I used aconitum – wolfsbane. It’s a hugely poisonous flower. It’s one of Sophie’s favourites. She liked its power. Those are the flowers I put in her room. I think it’s a close enough link to stand up in court.’

  ‘But what about Filip?’

  ‘He was on to me! You heard him. He said it was like Aksel had been poisoned. It was only a matter of time. And I know he heard what Aksel really said on the helicopter. He heard, It was never… but Aksel said, It was Ebba… Aksel knew I’d passed him the drink. And he knew what I stood to lose.’

  Lois feels stunned. ‘But… but the police said Sophie killed Filip?’

  ‘Sophie poured the milk for Filip’s coffee. I had the poison in my pocket to put in his coffee, but I put a few drops in the milk jug afterwards and swirled it round. Forensics should pick it up. We should be OK.’

  ‘We?’

  Ebba nods, coughing now.

  Lois thinks of Maarten, talking about what Richard had said earlier. ‘Maarten knows. He knows it’s you.’

  ‘Yes, he fucking thinks he does. But he’ll find proving it harder than thinking it. I made the poison and put it in her make-up bag, the flowers are in her room, she admitted she sent those letters – she let something slip recently, after drinks. Sophie will go down for this, not us. We can still get away with it, Lois!’

  Lois is aghast. The gulf that lies between them is made up of more than right or wrong. Iqbal stands there, Sophie�
� Obaidur. But they’re tied in blood. Lois could no more deliver Ebba to the police than she could strike her dead.

  ‘But why, Ebba?’

  ‘God, Lois, you have no idea! You have no idea how hard it is to break your way through. Your ideas were so perfect, so bright! But if we couldn’t compete financially, then how would we ever get off the ground? You want to be like Dad? A failure? Dead before fifty-five?’ She shakes her head. ‘He trusted someone, he worked hard. It’s not enough. There are Aksels everywhere. Morals might be good enough for you – but I wanted us to win! Now we’re almost worth millions. Millions! You could see it through. We’ll do it for Dad. Prove ourselves to him. Prove Aksel hasn’t won.’

  ‘I thought you were having an affair with Aksel! I thought you were in love…’

  ‘With Aksel? He was threatening me. Us.’

  ‘And you were meeting him, on Friday night?’

  ‘He told me I had to pay Filip the same distribution rights, even if it bankrupted us. Otherwise he’d expose us. Either way, we’d lose everything. He needed the agreement to go through.’

  ‘Was it you, outside?’ Lois can barely speak through tears. A life without Ebba opens up. She can’t be alone. She can’t be.

  ‘In the garden? Yes. I’d gone to meet Aksel. I knew someone was following me – I was nervous it was Maarten. That’s when I decided to use the flowers on Aksel.’

  ‘But you could have died too? On the helicopter?’

  ‘God, I didn’t know it would happen like that! I thought he’d just keel over later – much later. I thought it would look like a heart attack.’

  With the sadness of a lifetime, Lois realises that the loss that swamps her now is bigger than her ideas, bigger than Archipelago. If she could hand Archipelago to Aksel, alive, and keep her sister and Filip, she’d do it in a flash.

  Coughing, her throat raw, Ebba is hard to see now. The room is filled with smoke. Dense. Acrid.

  Everything is already lost. The heat is intense. The room swims.

  Crawling, she makes it to the window, pushing up the sash. She sticks out her head, and Iqbal stands below.

  ‘Jump, Lois! Jump!’ he screams.

  But she’s too tired. She can barely lift her arms.

  ‘Lois!’ It’s Maarten. He leans from the window to the right. ‘Lois, jump. Ebba will be OK. The fire crews are here.’

  Nothing is clear now. The night air smells like a burnt firecracker. And Lois has nothing left. She turns to look for Ebba, but all there is behind her is a blurred figure in a smoky grey sea.

  ‘Ebba. Come!’

  Ebba shakes her head. ‘I need to think. I can’t face anyone now, Lois. I can’t face it all.’

  Iqbal stands below, arms outstretched. Will she make it?

  ‘Ebba, we have to jump. We have to.’

  But her sister shakes her head. ‘I need time to think. I’m not going down until I’ve worked it out. I started the fire, Lois. I just need time to think.’

  Too dizzy, Lois leans out. There are sparkles in the sky. The world is dancing with light.

  76

  MAARTEN

  Maarten inches along the window ledge. He has lowered Sunny down. Iqbal had pushed over the iron table, built it up with all the garden cushions he could find. Sunny is out, and he can hear the engines, but Lois and Ebba do not have long. He clings to the brickwork.

  He thinks of Liv. His face burns and his throat is clogged. He thinks of getting home and telling her everything, all of it: Marieke, attending the call too late, the death… Holding her.

  ‘Lois!’ he shouts. ‘Lois!’

  The sash window lifts, and he pulls himself into the room. Lois is unconscious, heaped up against the wall.

  The room spins. The engines’ sounds are louder now, but the smoke is dense. He can’t see anyone else in the room.

  ‘Ebba!’ he shouts.

  There is nothing.

  Lifting Lois, he manages to get her up to the ledge, and he looks down for Iqbal. The smoke pours out of the downstairs windows now. It is impossible to see clearly.

  Dizzy, he sits on the ledge. The cushions are somewhere down there. Somewhere. He can’t lower her; his hands shake and his visions swims.

  Judging where he thinks Iqbal is, he wraps his arms around Lois, and turns backwards. She is pregnant. He can protect her fall.

  The fire crackles above him in tiny flecks of flame, fierce and bright. The heat is tremendous.

  ‘Ebba!’ he shouts one more time.

  Then he allows himself to fall, holding on to Lois tight, arms crossed round her. He thinks of her baby. He holds the two of them.

  Liv’s face is the last thing he sees, as he falls into nothing, into blackness. There’s a shooting pain in one leg, and then the sound fades away.

  77

  LOIS

  ‘Liv!’ Lois wraps her arms around her. ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’s OK,’ Liv says. She holds a balled tissue in one hand. ‘It’s just a broken leg. He’s inhaled smoke, but they said he’s fine. And he’s been on the phone to work.’ She half laughs, half sobs. ‘I never thought I’d be so happy to hear him chat to his boss on a Sunday night!’

  ‘Oh, thank God.’ Lois collapses into a chair. The hard plastic offers no comfort, but she’s exhausted. She’d heard Iqbal telling Maarten about hitting him, apologising, over and over again, as they waited for the ambulance. But Iqbal had watched for him, softened his fall.

  ‘And how are you?’ Liv sits next to her.

  ‘Fine, I’m fine. Maarten saved me, you know. If I’d been in there any longer, I’d be in the same state as Ebba; the doctors said it was the smoke... He got me out. He fell on the cushions Iqbal had put out, but I was on him, so I’m OK. I’ve been given the all-clear. The baby is fine – they scanned me, checked its heart rate. My chest still hurts…’ Cries rise up in her in a wave, and she breaks down. Her whole body shakes.

  ‘Oh, Lois. Do they know yet?’

  ‘She wouldn’t come out!’ Lois fights to breathe through the sobs. ‘She wouldn’t. I really think she meant to die in there. I don’t think she could find her way out… Even if I’d dragged her. I always knew she was fragile. I know what she’s done… God, I know it’s terrible. But I can’t hate her. I just love her. She is all my family. All of it. Why couldn’t I save her?’

  Liv shakes her head, puts her arm around Lois and pulls her in tight. ‘We can’t save everyone, Lois. We have to realise we can’t do it. We’re not super-beings. We’re just human. We just do the best we can do, most days. And some days that best is better than others. Ebba wasn’t yours to save. No one is. You tried your best. All of us try, and sometimes we fail. We just have to get up, and try again.’

  Epilogue

  Just after Christmas

  IQBAL

  Iqbal’s palms sweat. There is a lump at the back of his throat he can’t swallow. His body is warm and his toes are cold. His blood races round his organs.

  ‘Is it hot in here? It feels hot.’

  Lois laughs. ‘Iqbal, it’s freezing. The heating system in this building must be crap.’ She puts her hand on his shoulder. ‘It will be OK.’

  His hands are shaking. ‘It’s been such a long time. What will I say? Lois, what will I say to her?’

  ‘You’ll think of something. I know it.’ Lois’s phone beeps. She looks down at it.

  ‘Is it Ebba?’

  Lois shakes her head. ‘No. I’m due at the hospital again later. The nurse said she’d let me know if there’s any change, but I don’t think there’s going to be.’ She flexes her hands, her fingers. There are a few scars on there. The ledges had been hot.

  She shakes her head. ‘Even if they did get her off the ventilator, they’re not sure… And even then, she’d have a whole court case to face. Then prison, realistically. The consultant doesn’t think it will be long. I spoke to her this morning. She’s been kind all the way through, but it’s been two months now. And no change. She suggested we talk about th
e next step. About…’

  Lois pulls out a tissue and blows her nose. ‘I will not get upset, not today. Today is your day. You’ve waited long enough.’ She smiles and Iqbal pulls her in, holds her close.

  ‘Lois, without you…’

  ‘None of that. I’d be nothing without you. You saved my life in the factory. And then again at the house. I wouldn’t be here without you.’

  Lois’s phone beeps again. ‘It’s Marieke. She’s arranging another meetup. She’s very keen.’

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘So-so.’ Lois shrugs. ‘It’s been tough. But I admire her – she’s still fighting the fight. Her daughter, Norah, is lovely. And I want this one in here…’ – she pats her stomach – ‘to have a family. I want her to have a sister.’

  Iqbal nods. ‘Any names yet?’

  Lois shakes her head. ‘Thinking maybe Pollyanna? We could do with a bit of gladness.’

  ‘Who?’ Iqbal says.

  Lois laughs. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Think of one for me? I spoke to Sophie the other day.’

  ‘Me too – no trial date. She’s OK, though. It’s not looking too bad for her.’

  ‘No, and I saw Maarten! I meant to tell you. He visited the other day, with Liv. There were a few updates on some of the details of the investigation, but with Ebba at the end… His leg is out of the cast now. He seems to be doing well.’

  Iqbal covers her hand with his own.

  A woman wearing a blue suit enters the room. ‘Mr Bari?’

  Iqbal leaps to his feet. Sweat pours down his back. ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ve just had word. The raid was successful. The police have pulled out five victims. Two from a house in Mayfair. Three from a nail bar run by the owner of the house. They’re on their way here. We need to process a few details, but if it’s her, and if she wants to, then she’s free to come home with you almost immediately. She’s free. She’s free now.’