by Tim Weaver
I got back into the front seat, fired up the engine and moved on.
The address was for a house in St Philips. It was an ugly area and an ugly street, bordered by a wasteland of broken concrete and an imposing Victorian factory building. I did a circuit in the car, up to the main road, back around and then down past the house. The curtains were drawn, and there was no sign of life.
I parked within view of the house and waited, low in my seat, looking out along the road. After a couple of minutes a bus wheezed to a stop at the end of the street. An old couple got off. Behind them a mother and her two children, huddled together, their jackets zipped up to their chins. They veered left, into the side road about halfway down, but the old couple continued along the street towards me. When they passed the car, they looked in, eyeing me suspiciously.
Ten minutes passed.
Another bus pulled up, and then a third. More people got off, all disappearing into houses on the street, or passing the car and moving on somewhere else. When it got quiet again, I fired up the engine and turned up the heaters.
About thirty minutes later, an Astra entered the street from behind me. I watched it approach in the rear-view mirror and then brake, reversing into the space in front of me. It bumped up on to the pavement and then off again, stopping about a foot from the front of my hire car. A woman moved around inside, the hood up on her jacket. She glanced in her rear-view mirror, picked something up, then got out.
Wind carved up the road. Some tendrils of hair that had escaped from her hood whipped around her face. She pushed the door shut with her backside, trying to juggle a shopping bag and her keys. On the keyring I could see a silver crucifix, dangling down, brushing against the side of the door as she turned the lock.
She headed up the street. Her hood ballooned out as the wind came again. It was stronger this time and she momentarily lost her balance. Her foot drifted from the pavement to the road and the shopping bag suddenly hit the floor, fruit scattering everywhere. She stopped, looked along the street, then bent down and started picking it up. When the wind came a third time, she put a hand flat to the floor to balance herself and her hood blew back. A tangled mop of black hair.
She glanced in my direction. Stopped. Looked away.
I watched her start to pick up the fruit again, quicker this time. Suddenly, she looked nervous, grabbing hold of an apple only to drop it, then doing the same thing a second time. Another apple rolled all the way across the street, then another.
Then, strangely, she straightened and started walking away, leaving the fruit rolling around in the gutter. She didn’t care about it any more, barely had hold of the shopping bag, and was trying to sort through her keys with her spare hand as she walked. More fruit escaped from the bag, tumbling into the road. She didn’t look back. She just carried on, finally stopping when she got to her house.
It was the house I’d been watching.
She put the bag down and started going through the keys properly, one after the other, flipping them until she found the right one. Then she looked in my direction once more. Her head didn’t move. Just her eyes.
She was looking right at me.
And then it hit me.
Her hair was a different colour, longer and more unruly. Her face was pale and serious. Older. Weathered. And her nose looked different: it was more tapered, thinned out. Before, when I’d seen her working in Angel’s, it had been wider, less shapely. But it was definitely her.
It was Evelyn.
I got out of the car, set the alarm and started towards her. As I got closer, her movements became frantic. She couldn’t unlock the door. From behind me I heard a voice, distant at first, then louder. I looked back and saw a black guy coming towards me, shouting, ‘Oi! You can’t park here!’ I ignored him. When I turned back, Evelyn had opened the door. She left the shopping bag where it was, on the step, and ran inside.
‘Evelyn!’ I called as I got to the door. It was on a slow spring, creaking as it swung back. I stepped inside the house. ‘Evelyn?’
It was warm. A floorboard creaked to my right. She was disappearing upstairs. I went after her, taking two steps at a time, and heard a series of creaks on the landing, then more movement. At the top, there were three doors. One of them was closed. I knocked on it.
‘Evelyn?’
No response.
‘Evelyn?’
I placed a hand on the door.
‘Evelyn – it’s me, David.’ No response. ‘David – from Angel’s.’
The sound of a window sliding along its runners.
I opened the door in time to see her leaning half out of the window, one foot on the bedroom floor. She looked at me once, then swung her leg over the windowsill and disappeared. I ran over to the window. A flat corrugated-iron roof stretched for ten feet below, a narrow alleyway below that running parallel to the street I’d parked on.
I watched her on the roof, taking small steps, careful not to lose her footing on the ice. When she got to the end, she looked back, hesitated, then jumped down. I could see the pain in her face as she landed, but she didn’t make any noise. Instead she got to her feet, kicking up gravel, and ran.
I headed downstairs. The front door was now closed. The house reminded me of the flat in Brixton: the walls were plain, probably painted once, and there was no carpet on the floor, only the original boards. Along the hall I could see a kitchen, some bay windows and another closed door. No furniture in any of them except for the kitchen units and a microwave. I stepped out on to the front porch.
Then from inside the house: ‘Uuhhh…’
A voice.
I stopped. Listened.
Nothing.
I went back down the hallway, into the kitchen. The house smelt of something. It became stronger the deeper into it I got.
There were two doors off the kitchen. The first led to a small patch of back garden, strewn with weeds and rubble. The other led into a living room. No furniture, no TV, just a few books scattered across the floor and a blanket in the corner. There was one window, the curtains pulled, and a small archway leading to an adjacent room. From where I was standing, I could see through the archway to the edge of a sofa. Small wooden arms, big leather cushions.
And, poking out, resting on one of the arms, a head.
I edged forward. The head. The chest. An arm locked in place, hanging off the side of the sofa, the knuckles brushing the floorboards. Inches from the fingers was a needle. It had rolled away, out of reach. Some of the liquid had escaped, pooling on the floorboards next to an ashtray over-run with cigarettes. It was a man. A boy, really. His trousers were wet, a dark patch crawling from his groin down the inside of one leg. And at the end of the sofa was a bucket.
It was full of vomit.
The stench was immense. Totally overpowering. I turned away, covering my face with my sleeve.
He couldn’t have been older than eighteen, but his arms were dotted with track marks. His veins were puffy and enlarged, clearly visible through the skin. He was as white as the snow outside, his eyes half-closed, dull yellow marks smeared below his eyelashes like badly applied make-up. I couldn’t get any closer. The smell was absolutely horrible.
Then a door opening and closing somewhere.
I looked up.
The door into the kitchen was still open. The one closer to me, leading back out to the hallway, was closed. On the other side of the hallway door, I heard footsteps. A shadow passed below the door, footsteps moving along the hall. I looked down at the kid sprawled on the sofa, and saw something else: a glass vial, empty, the film at its neck punctured by a needle. On the side it said KETAMINE.
A sound from the kitchen.
I went to the hallway door and slowly opened it. I waited. I could hear someone moving around in the kitchen. Drawers opening. To my right, the front door was still closed, but now there was snow on the mat in front of it. To my left I could see the black guy who had shouted after me in the street. He was probably in his early thirti
es, no taller than five-ten, but wide: muscles moved beneath the skin of his neck and shoulders, and a vein wormed its way out from the corner of one eye, up on to his shaved head. He was looking out through the kitchen door at the garden.
I looked back at the kid. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was open. His tongue came out, slapping against his lips like it was too big for his mouth. His gums were bleeding. Then, as his tongue moved again, I saw something else: he had no teeth.
They were all gone.
He coughed, a sound muffled by saliva and vomit, but loud enough to carry through the house. In the kitchen, the man turned around and looked along the hallway at me.
And he smiled.
I went for the front door, but as I got there it opened in at me. Evelyn stepped in, her cheeks flushed, anger streaked across her face. A split second later, she brought her hand up from her side. She was holding a gun. The barrel drifted across my face and I instinctively stumbled back, my hands coming up to protect me. The muzzle flashed, and plaster and dust spat out of the wall above me and to my left. Then another shot, louder this time.
I held up both hands.
‘Evelyn, wait a minute…’
She walked towards me, the gun out in front of her. It was new, in beautiful condition. A gun that had probably never been fired until today.
She stopped about two feet from me. She was going to shoot me in the head. The gun was level with one of my eyes, held incredibly still. Her fingers were pressed so tightly against the grip, perspiration was running out from under her hand.
‘What are you doing, David?’
I didn’t speak. I had a horrible feeling she would fire as soon as I did, even though she’d asked me in a gentle, almost admiring way. Even though I’d known her before Derryn died, talked with her and laughed with her.
‘What are you doing?’ she said again.
There was the smell of gunfire in the air now, burnt and nauseating. A smell that reminded me of driving through the townships before the sun was up. Behind me, I could hear the man coming along the hallway. I didn’t move. Any movement might be enough of an excuse for her to pull the trigger.
‘You should have left us alone,’ she said.
She moved towards me. My body tensed and I lowered my head, angling it away from the gun. She was behind me now, and the next thing I felt was the gun at the back of my neck.
‘Do you hear me, David? You should have left us alone.’
‘I don’t want you, Evelyn. I don’t want this.’
She didn’t say anything.
I turned slightly and could see her standing behind the black guy. He had the gun now, pointed right at me.
‘I don’t want either of you. I just want Alex.’
‘Alex doesn’t–’
‘That’s enough, Vee,’ the man said.
He stepped forward. Swapped the gun from one hand to another. Turned it. And – before I’d even had a chance to react – smashed it into my face.
I blacked out.
26
I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was a red brick building. It was the factory I had seen earlier. It stood empty and derelict: its windows smashed, its walls decorated in graffiti, its doors torn from their hinges. In front of me was a vast expanse of concrete, weeds crawling through the cracks, snow in patches.
They’d gagged me. When I moved, I could feel my hands had been bound, and I’d lost most of the sensation in my feet. I had my jeans, T-shirt and zip-up top on, but my coat had been removed, and they’d taken my shoes and socks. I was sitting barefoot, my soles flat to the ground. The cold was making my bones ache. There were just a few tinges of daylight still staining the sky. Night was creeping in.
I listened. I could make out cars passing on a distant road somewhere, but little else. There were two squares of old walls, half demolished, about forty feet to the side of me, the skeletons of outhouses that had once stood on the site but were now long forgotten.
That was the point. No one came here.
No one would find me.
I thought I heard movement, the sound of birds flapping their wings. I saw something arc up to my left and around. Then there were footsteps, the noise of rubble being kicked across concrete, and the crunch of snow. Someone was approaching out of sight. I tried to move, but my whole body throbbed. I could feel bruising around my jaw and at the back of my head. When I tried to turn, pain shot all the way up from my mouth to my eye. It felt like blood was running down my face.
A bitter wind came then, cutting in across the open ground, and suddenly, with it, the smell of something. Something warm and saccharine, like boiled sweets. When the wind died down again, I could feel someone’s breath, right at my ear. I tried not to move, tried to maintain my composure, but having someone so close sent a shiver through me. It seemed to amuse them: whoever it was backed away after that, as if they’d secured a little victory.
I thought about shouting for help, about making as much noise as I could. But I didn’t have any cards to play. Out here, away from the road, no one would hear me. And even if I did somehow shake off the binds and make a break for it, I wouldn’t know which direction to run in. I’d be running into the darkness as if I was blindfolded.
More wind. Louder and colder this time.
‘Evelyn?’
The gag muffled my voice. I cleared my throat and could feel my muscles tighten. More pain throbbed in my head, and when it passed I felt dizzy and nauseous. I tried to say her name for a second time, but the word got stuck. And as I searched for it, trying to pull it out through my teeth, I felt someone breathing against my ear again. Only this time I could also feel lips – skin brushing skin, only briefly, but long enough.
Footsteps in the snow, moving away.
I started to turn my head, despite the pain, needing to see who was behind me. But as I did, I felt a hand grab me under the chin and a thumb press in against my cheek.
‘Don’t do that again.’
A man.
He let go of my face and pushed my head forward so my chin touched my chest. He held it there. Between my legs I could see blood dripping down from my face, into the snow.
‘Stay like that,’ he said. ‘And close your eyes.’
I could taste blood on my tongue. He’d pressed so hard my teeth had cut the inside of my mouth. I spat it into the snow, and watched it spread out in tiny lines.
Behind me, the man cleared his throat. Then more footsteps in the snow, crunching, fading away and coming back again. He’d been to collect something. I moved my head, discomfort forcing me to raise it slightly. I felt his hand spread across the back of my skull and a gun slide past my ear and in under my chin.
‘What did I say to you?’
‘I can’t hold it there,’ I said through the gag.
‘Move again and I’ll put a bullet through your brain.’ He shoved the gun in harder against my throat. ‘Now stay like that and keep your eyes closed.’
I realized in the silence that followed that I vaguely recognized his voice. My first thought was the man with the tattoo. But it wasn’t him. I knew I’d remember his voice if I heard it again. Who then? My thoughts drifted quickly. I was struggling to concentrate. The cold and the fear were starting to catch up with me.
He pressed the gun in harder against the side of my face, then – just as suddenly – took it away again. I stayed still, looking down between my legs, thinking it might be a trap. Instead, he reached around and pulled the gag away from my mouth.
‘Make any noise louder than a whisper and my people will be picking bits of your face up off the floor for a week.’
My people. He was in charge.
He tossed the gag past me, and it landed in the snow. I could smell his breath again. ‘Now, I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to tell me the truth. Hold anything back, and I will rip out your throat.’
He was close to my ear again.
‘First, what the fuck are you doing here?’
‘Oh, I see.’ A short, aggressive burst of laughter. ‘I’m sure during your cosy little chat with Jade, she must have warned you off this… I’m not sure what you would call it, really. A quest, perhaps.’
He’d spat out the word quest and I could feel his saliva on the side of my face, slowly running down my cheek.
I shrugged.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
I didn’t say anything. Didn’t reply.
‘Huh?’ he said. He was closer now.
I didn’t reply a second time, just looked down between my legs. To my blood in the snow. To my feet, gradually turning blue.
‘You going to answer me, David?’
I let the silence hang.
He didn’t wait long. As I was trying to formulate a plan, he hit me across the back of the head with the butt of the gun. And the white of the snow became the black of unconsciousness.
When I came to, I was somewhere else. It was dark. I could hear the wind but couldn’t feel it. I looked around me. High up, to my left, was a window. Moonlight shone through. I turned my head slightly to the right and, behind me, through the corner of my eye, I could see a doorway. I was inside the factory I had been facing earlier.
It took time for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. When they did, I could see someone sitting with their back to me, on a stairwell towards the end of the room. He was smoking a cigarette. It glowed orange rhythmically. I knew it was a man: broad shoulders, hair closely cropped, a big white hand resting on the step.
‘Are you hard of hearing, David?’ he said.
I remained still.
‘Answer me.’
‘No,’ I replied. I sounded groggy. My lower half was absolutely numb from the cold and the back of my head felt like it was on fire.
‘Good.’
He nodded to himself, took a last drag on the cigarette and flicked it out to the side. It died in the night. He came down the stairwell, his shoes clunking against the metal, and disappeared in the darkness. I could hear him moving, but couldn’t see him. His footsteps became muffled.