Dougie had no chair, just a stool. He’d trained himself to sit in it and feel comfortable. And because there were no arms, it made him look as if he was hovering in space. A strangely unsettling and - for Dougie, but not the suspect - empowering illusion.
Dougie sat in the stool, to test out his sitting technique. Then he got up and sat in the suspect’s chair, and imagined being Gogarty.
Then he looked at the cracks in the wall. He sat in the lawyer’s chair.
He sat back in the suspect’s chair and listened to the click click click of the aircon. He coughed; and felt a surge of approval at how choked-up he felt. The aircon was rigged to recycle stale air not new, making the room unpleasantly stuffy. The magnolia of the walls had faded in patches to a dire yellow, like nicotine-stained fingers, an affront to any educated visual palette. And the walls were acoustically treated to make voices echo.
He thought of Julia, in the safe house, interrogating him on his favourite movies. Listening raptly to his life story. Laughing, like a drain.
And then he thought about Julia dead. Sprawled and bloody in the alley. Her bare arm marked with scars. The words spelling out her accusation from the grave:
Gogartey kild me.
Time to begin.
Chapter 17
Skip back five weeks.
Julia Penhall knew that she was going to die. But though that realisation was both shocking and terrifying, she was over it by now. She was, pretty much, cool with it.
Julia prided herself of being of the generation, the post-Occlusion generation, who weren’t afraid to face death. Because unlike their parents and their grandparents, they knew exactly what was to come. Hell. Damnation. And, if you were lucky, resurrection.
Her ambition was to die well. With composure, without regrets, and on her own terms. However, before she died so tremendously and dignifiedly well, she wanted the world to know who the fuck her evil fucking killer was.
He was a strange man. Unlikeable, yes. But also charismatic, in a scary kind of way. And ugly. Fat and bald and, well, ugly. Yet dainty in his habits. And courteous. He had told her his name was Gogarty, and she guessed that was just an alias; no one would be that dumb. He’d also told her that he was thousands of years old and that he was a warlock.
And she had believed him.
He told her too that she was enchained with magic spells and couldn’t escape. Naturally she assumed he was lying, so the minute he left the house that first day she tried to get away. He hadn’t tied her up, he hadn’t mortised the doors, he hadn’t even disconnected the phone. What a fool!
So she tried to phone for help but she couldn’t. She attempted to climb out of the downstairs window and she couldn’t. She tried to run out of the back door, and she couldn’t. And of course she tried numerous times to open the front door, and she couldn’t. Her hands had become these strange other things; her legs were not connected to her brain; her will wouldn’t obey her.
She realised that her twin sister Sarah must have experienced exactly the same form of captivity. And the symmetry of that, frankly, did her head in.
Gogarty’s spells could read her mind too. If she touched the handle of the front door intending to polish it, and make it shine brightly, there was no problem. If however she touched the handle intending to turn it and open the door – then a devastating ennui crushed her spirit, and clenched her throat, and turned her into statuary.
I’m not going to open this door after all! she would resolve.
And the lie would work. Spell lifted; she could move again. But it only worked if she didn’t try to open the door.
After those first few demoralising days, Julia stopped testing the spells. It hurt too much.
Six days after she was abducted, Julia found a chewed biro under the sofa in the living room, and she recognised it as Sarah’s work. Sarah always chewed her biros like this. Gnawing away till the plastic broke and ink spilled out into her mouth. That’s why she so often had black stains on her teeth.
Gross, but there you go. That was Sarah.
When she found the biro Julia knew that Sarah had been kept captive in this very same house. Perhaps, in fact, this was where she had killed herself.
The house was big, but unpleasant. The décor was horrible: orange wallpaper everywhere. If you looked at it too hard, it would make your eyes spin, like one of those whirling tops with lines on them that you get in Christmas crackers. The living room had a Bridget Riley type whorled ceiling. Mind-fuckery.
Julia looked for a cellar but there wasn’t one. She patted the walls looking for concealed spaces and found a few, but couldn’t find anything resembling a secret passageway: a clutching at straws fantasy but she clutched at it. She put a sheet of paper up on the kitchen window which said I HAVE BEEN KIDNAPPED CALL THE POLICE, but no one saw it. She wondered if there were bodies buried behind the walls and under the floorboards. Her guess was that there were.
After further careful searching, Julia spotted a trapdoor on the first floor landing and tried to find a switch that would make it open. But she failed. There was one switch in the bedroom that didn’t turn any light on or off, but it didn’t open the trap door either. So she gave up on that one.
She searched more thoroughly. In every corner and alcove. Under the furniture. In the cupboards. Beneath the carpets and rugs.
She found several more traces of Sarah. Yorkie wrappers, discarded among bedclothes - a Sarah hall-mark. A smiley face drawn in dirt on the bathroom window. Purple hair in the plughole of the bath. And a message, written on a wall, and cunningly hidden from view.
When Julia found that message, she knew she had to live up to her sister’s superb example. And so she laid her careful plans; though she knew she would not survive to see them hatch.
From this point on, she gave up searching the house and plotting her escape. She just dossed. Slept late. And watched a lot of telly. Gogarty had an amazing collection of DVDs and Julia watched almost all of them. The Leopard was her favourite; she wished Sarah were still alive so she could recommend this movie to her.
She also went through the box sets: every episode of Battlestar Galactica, including the TV movie Razor; seven series of Supernatural and the last series of Suburban Witches; all the post-Smith Dr Whos, including the final series with the black female Doctor with the Northern Irish sidekick; and a few BBC dramas including a great but very ancient serial called Days of Hope.
She read lots of Gogarty’s books too. Mainly Graham Greene, Somerset Maughan, Balzac, Trollope, Tolstoy, and history, modern and ancient. And then she read the King James Bible. Till now, she’d only read it in graphic novel form. But she liked the way the story was told in this older version. The elaborate prose, the archaisms, the certainty of tone.
Three weeks and two days after she was abducted, Gogarty came home in sombre mood, and he muted her with a gesture, then blinded her by touching her eyelids.
Then he lifted her up as if she were a doll, and carried her through several doors and dumped her on something metal, which she guessed was the back of a van. She could hear the sound of church bells in the distance but she didn’t know which church it was coming from. Nor did it help her with knowing the time of day – for since the churches had become secular their bells were often rung randomly, for fun, rather than to inform the world of the coming of the hour.
Gogarty drove the van or whatever vehicle it was round and round in circles to disorientate her. So that she wouldn’t know the location of his lair, if she did by some bizarre chance manage to escape.
But as she lay flat on her back on the metal floor of the vehicle, blind and mute and helpless, bouncing every time he hit a speed bump, Julia exulted at her killer’s stupidity.
Because her twin sister Sarah had written the address of Gogarty’s house in biro on the kitchen wall. Behind the fridge, where it could not be seen unless you were looking for secret clues. And, of course, that’s exactly what Julia had been doing. For day after day, hour after hour.<
br />
Sarah was so smart. Julia had always loved that about her.
And now that Julia knew the address of Gogarty’s lair, she was resolved to find a way of getting the message to the police. So they could lay in wait for him, and ambush him on his return. She would, she was confident, find a way.
After a long drive the van stopped. Julia waited a while. Eventually she felt air again. She was carried fireman’s lift style out of the van – by Gogarty still she presumed - and then dumped in a lift of some kind. An industrial lift. She blacked out round about then, from shock or fear she later presumed. Or maybe he had doped her.
When she woke up she could see once more. She was in an old warehouse. Bare brick walls, white pillars, and big glass windows that offered a panoramic view of the streets outside. She could see an industrial winch outside the frontmost window. She was in a docks area somewhere. It seemed that Gogarty no longer cared if she knew the details of her location.
Why was that? she wondered. Was it because he knew this was the place where she would die?
Later Gogarty cooked lunch for her. He was a good cook, and Julia was ravenous.
When lunch was over he bade her au revoir in his old school way and departed, promising to return that evening.
Now she was all alone in the warehouse flat, with all the doors unlocked. And just as before, she couldn’t leave. She could move her hands and legs, she could see; but she couldn’t leave.
She tried the landline, just in case, and was surprised to find she could pick it up. But when she dialled, there was no ring tone. She saw that the wire had been pulled out of the socket. When she tried to plug it back in, she couldn’t.
Same old.
She tried to turn on the computer, but her finger couldn’t press the Start button. She stood at the window and waved, but there was no one around to see her. And when someone did appear, she was no longer able to wave. And then, just in case, she tried to open the door to the warehouse flat - but she couldn’t.
After that, she’d opened the big sash window that opened out on to the street, and tried to squeeze herself outside on to the ledge. But as she had feared, she couldn’t. Her body wouldn’t let her.
But Julia wasn’t defeated yet. An idea had occurred to her. It was an idea about the nature of magic. Julia knew that magic spells were word-dependent, and highly specific. Hence no magician would say ‘you cannot leave this flat’. Instead, he would say: ‘You cannot leave these premises by door or by window or through the roof or through the floor, and nor can you speak into the telephone or use a computer or any other form of remote communication device.’
However, Julia had already noticed that the warehouse windows were old. Which meant, not laminated, not shatter-proof. Just proper old glass.
So Julia picked up the kitchen stool and smashed the glass in the largest pane of the casement window facing the street. An ocean of glass tumbled downwards and Julia spat glass shards and shook herself clean. Then she wrapped her hands with an oven glove and used a wooden chopping board to smash off the remaining shards of glass, until all the glass was gone and there was a gaping gap.
Thinking all the while about how nice to would be to have a refreshing breeze in the room! For nowhere in her binding spell was it likely to say, ‘You shall not break the glass in the window in order to experience a refreshing breeze in the room.’
When the glass was all gone, she closed her eyes, and remembered all her good and bad times. Or at least, as many as she could think of in the time available.
Then she prepared herself to take a running jump through a space that was no longer a ‘window’. Since, by definition, a window is an opening in a wall or roof made of glass. And there was no longer any glass in this part of the wall! Just an absence of brick, and a hole surrounded by wooden sashes.
And nowhere in the spell was it likely to say: ‘You shall not exit these premises via a hole in the wall that formerly was a window.’
And so, with all the remembered skill of her teenage diving classes, Julia threw herself head first through the hole in the wall that formerly had been a window, without touching the sides.
She fell outwards, arms tucked to her side. And for a moment it felt as if she were flying.
But she wasn’t. Gravity reasserted itself brutally. She tumbled downwards, fast, arms flailing, and hit the ground hard and badly. Her vision blurred and she feared she’d cracked her skull. When she stood up and tried to scream for help, she couldn’t. Not because she was enchanted, but because she was concussed. She tottered, drenched in blood, her ribs aching, her head thumping, her vision blurring, and looked up at the ‘window’ she had just leapt through and felt a surge of utter triumph.
For she, Julia, was free! And Gogarty was doomed. She knew his name and what he looked like, and she even knew his home address. All she had to do was get her wits back, then call the cops, then -
A man appeared from around the corner, striding briskly, with all the self-absorption of a person with an urgent appointment. Middle aged, bespectacled, wearing a pork pie hat. The hat didn’t suit him, only young people should wear hats like that. But Julia decided to forgive him. For he was her salvation.
‘Hey!’ she called out, croakily. He ignored her, carried on walking. ‘Hey!’ He was walking past the warehouse. He trod on some glass and looked up and saw the broken window. He tutted. Then walked on. ‘Hey!’ She ran right up to him and stood in front of him.
He was a tubby man. And he wore a dark creased jacket with a T shirt underneath, and trainers. She guessed he was in advertising or marketing or some such shit. That’s why he didn’t dress his age. She saw all that in a glance.
‘Call the police!’ she shouted, with a blend of relief and desperation. ‘My name is Julia Penhall. I’ve been abducted. By a serial killer, the one they call –’
The man did a nifty sidestep, and walked around her. She turned and watched in astonishment as he walked away without even acknowledging her presence. Then he opened the door to one of the adjoining warehouses that had been turned into serviced offices and went inside. And that was that.
She was stunned.
She was a young woman, covered in blood, appealing for help! What the FUCK! What kind of –
She coughed. Blood spilled out of her mouth, large gobbets of it, mingled with puke. Her vision became even more blurry. She was getting a bad feeling about this.
She tried to get her bearings. She recognised the street she was in, it was in Bermondsey. Near the river. That way – she looked that way – was the river. That way – she tottered herself around – was civilisation.
She began to walk to civilisation. She walked for five minutes until she saw the next person. A cyclist. ‘Hey!’ she shouted. He was skinny and clad in lycra and he didn’t stop. She coughed again. More blood spattered the pavement.
She walked on to the road. That way she couldn’t be missed. A car turned the corner. A blue car. She couldn’t see the driver but she was in the middle of the road and the car was driving towards her, though not fast. She raised her arms and waited for the car to stop.
There was a screech of tyres, and the car slowed, then weaved its way around her, bumping up on the pavement, almost crashing, then carried on. Julia got a glimpse of the driver - a grey-haired woman. An old lady! She not only didn’t stop, she drove around a bloodied young woman standing in the middle of the road.
Julia got as far as Pottery Street and the same thing happened. A young man ignored her. A woman with a pram ignored her. A jogger ignored her. A dozen or so cars ignored her. Another cyclist ignored her. A bus cruised by even though she stood screaming in the road. They all drove past her or walked past her or cycled right past her, as if she didn’t exist. And if she stood herself in their direct path, they simply walked or cycled or drove around her.
She knew then that Gogarty had rendered her invisible. Not just invisible: inaudible.
But not intangible. She could touch objects and her touch could
be felt by others. She knew that for sure – after shoving several people almost off their feet. But Gogarty had contrived the spell in such a way that any person who touched her or was touched by her would not realise it. And anyone who was about to bump into her would find themselves impelled to veer a path around her. Without realising what he or she was doing.
Julia had never felt so isolated. She was like a ghost. Except she was in pain, her lung was ruptured, she had concussion, and she was leaving a trail of blood behind her. Blood that she could see, but that no one else could.
‘Oh you bastard,’ she said.
She fell over, abruptly. And slumped on the ground, like a rag doll. She thought for a while about her predicament, and eventually she decided not to despair.
She staggered back on to her feet. She saw a pub. She’d try the pub. The King’s Head. She made her way across the road. Each step was harder and harder now. But she pushed open the pub doors and stumbled inside. It was busy and noisy and the air was boozy.
‘Help!’ she screamed. But no one heard. ‘Help!’
She walked up to a table and grabbed a blonde woman wearing a red tailored jacket, and shook her on the shoulder. The woman jolted, scowled, then carried on talking.
‘Help!’
‘ – and I said to him - no listen to this – I said – are you listening – I said –’
There were blood stains on the woman’s jacket now; but only Julia saw them. There were four blokes and a girl sitting with the blonde woman. There was a fat guy in a blue suit, a smooth looking guy in a pinstriped suit, a skinny guy in a grey suit, and a pimply guy in a slightly darker blue suit. And the girl who was with them was early 20s at most, with long black hair, Asian, wearing a snazzy Hermes jacket and skirt. This was the lunchtime rendezvous for overpaid office workers. And they were all jabbering away about their work problems.
‘Help!’ Julia said.
‘ – I can’t accept that kind of behaviour. I mean –’
Hell on Earth Page 18