Bleeker Hill

by Russell Mardell

  ‘Hello, Mia,’ Davenport was on the gurney, his neat hands gripping the edge as if he might tumble off at any moment. ‘Nice to have you back with us.’ Davenport’s velvety voice was like that of a kindly, gin-soaked uncle. It was an impossible attempt at reassurance. Sullivan was struck by the smell of Davenport as he approached and took position at the wall alongside him; even with the overwhelmingly unwelcome stench of unwashed male bodies that had been their own personal scent from the start, Davenport still carried a delicate tang of aftershave on his skin. Clearly, Sullivan mused, Davenport still had the politician’s skill of wading through shit and letting others carry the smell.

  Mia caught sight of the bloodied mess that used to be Ellis Schaeffer and quickly turned away, her hand rising to trembling lips. Kendrick jumped in front of her, gripping her at the arms, moving her to him.

  ‘Not nice is it? Why don’t you take a seat dear, this may take a while.’

  ‘Joe…for heavens sake, go easy on the girl…’ Davenport’s voice was now rich and smooth, a pontificating actor chewing on an old master’s well-worn words.

  ‘This is easy!’

  ‘She’s not going anywhere, take a breath.’

  ‘Oh that’s true. That’s so true,’ Kendrick spat, his eyes flaring momentarily. ‘You’re going nowhere, Mia. You know that don’t you? You can’t leave this place. You understand that? You do, yes? I hope you do.’

  She pulled away and turned to the gurney. Davenport was gently tapping the space next to him, his warm and caring demeanour slightly undone by the politician’s smile.

  ‘Come, Mia. Sit with me. It’s okay.’

  She turned to Sullivan just beyond him and seemed to be searching for his opinion. Again Sullivan felt his heart shift at the sight of that lost little face, the doleful eyes looking up at him like a child asking if it were all going to be okay in the end. He had seen that look on his daughter. He had told her it was all going to be alright in the end, he had stolen the smile she gave him at that and now, being asked again, lying to Mia was just as easy. Sullivan found himself nodding to her, and that seemed to be all it took.

  Mia jumped up on to the gurney next to Davenport and stared out across the room, past the smears of blood and the statuesque figures of Turtle and Maddox and to the body of Schaeffer; impassive eyes soaking up the scene, capturing the image, developing it under each slow blink of the eye.

  ‘Turtle?’ Kendrick was moving into the centre of the room, drawing their eyes to him, taking control. ‘Find something to cover Schaeffer with.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because even bastards deserve dignity.’

  ‘They do?’

  ‘It’s the new way, Turtle. It’s how we’re going to save the country. Now get on with it.’

  ‘I’m a chef, not a skivvy.’

  ‘You’re whatever I tell you to be. It’s an ever-changing world, Turtle. Man needs to be able to multi-task.’ Kendrick snapped his fingers and then jabbed a thumb in Schaeffer’s direction. ‘And where’s Frankie?’

  ‘I dunno, up and went. Disappeared.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Left his pistol and the walkie-talkie,’ Turtle plucked the pistol out and handed it to Kendrick, his free hand searching for the walkie-talkie and landing on an empty pocket instead. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Frankie Bergan doesn’t just disappear.’

  ‘Well, it is an ever-changing world, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t be facetious with me, Turtle. It’s not in your job description.’

  Turtle turned to the mound of blood and rags that used to be Ellis Schaeffer and let out a long sigh. ‘So this really is the daddy of the Wash? We used to tell stories about this guy to the new lags in the nick, spook ‘em up a bit. Don’t seem so scary now.’

  ‘Get on with it Turtle, no one cares about your opinion. Then when you’ve done it, get something to clean down these walls.’

  Turtle wandered from the room as Kendrick swept around and turned his attention back to Mia, one hand rising to a hip making him look like a low-end catalogue model.

  ‘Well? Mia?’ he snapped, making no effort to conceal his impatience. Every word was short and sharp, a probing weapon. He slid the pistol into his jacket pocket, and gently pulled his clothes straight. He coughed. Then coughed again. ‘You have something you want to say? What happened, Mia? What happened to my safe house?’

  ‘Calm down, Joe.’

  ‘I’m perfectly calm, Eddie. Wouldn’t you say I was, Mia? I mean, considering all the corpses and the burnt out safe house, I would say I’m the model of calmness. I’m calmness per –fucking –sonifed, wouldn’t you say, Mia? I mean an irrational man would probably be pounding your head into the wall to get some sort of answers from you right about now, wouldn’t you think? But not me, oh no, not me, because I’m a calm man, Mia. Really. Right now I’m really fucking calm, so, you know, take advantage of that, that’s what I suggest.’

  ‘Hey, how about you treat her with a bit of respect?’ Sullivan hadn’t meant the edge to the words he gave, but once there he went with it, moving away from the wall and walking around the other side of the gurney, next to Mia.

  ‘What was that, convict?’ Kendrick spat.

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Your point?’

  ‘She’s just a kid.’

  ‘Oh but don’t kids grow up so quickly these days, Mr Sullivan? They have to, you see, because whilst you were rotting away in your six by nine that we saved you from, the country moved on. The country decided to declare war on its own. Perhaps the last couple of days have highlighted the urgency of our situation, or perhaps you are just ignorant enough to think it a passing fad? Of course if you really wanted to know about our predicament you should have spoken to her father…’ Kendrick moved closer to Mia, leaning in. ‘Good old Lucas knew how far we had fallen didn’t he, Mia? What a straight arrow he was. Party through and through. The only man I could entrust such a delicate assignment to. The only one who could secure this place for us. So you see, Mia…Sullivan, when I see the results of what happened here it concerns me. Perturbs me. Confuses me. And I don’t like that. I don’t need that. Dear old Lucas. What happened to dear old Lucas, Mia? What happened here?’

  Sullivan could see she wanted to speak but something was stopping her again; ashamed, confused, scared, every conceivable emotion seemed to be working through her, shaking her, consuming that delicate frame. Sullivan wanted to hold her, comfort her and tell her fatherly lies. He wanted to make it all better for her; he wanted that impossible task and that unwelcome power, yet he had no idea why. The girl was a stranger. They were all strangers. Yet he was the biggest stranger of all, the outsider and the gatecrasher, tethered to someone else’s nightmare.

  ‘What happened here, Mia? Talk to me. Who killed these people? Who burnt down my safe house? What the hell went on here?’

  She turned away from Kendrick and gazed up at Sullivan, some sort of corrupted love behind her watering eyes, and he could see the question in her face again, the seeking of permission, and at that moment he couldn’t give it. He could hear the words before she said them, could hear the reaction from Kendrick and Davenport, and worse still – Maddox, and for that moment he silently pleaded with her not to say what was at her lips. To not put him in the position of defending her against the disbelieving aggression that would pounce on her like a trapped animal. Tell them a story, he found himself thinking; lie, bullshit, tell them something they could believe. Stories, they are just stories…

  ‘There is something here,’ she said to the room.

  Sullivan pulled away and shut his eyes as Kendrick stepped forward once more, moving within biting distance of her.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You heard me. There is evil here. In this building.’

  As conversation stoppers go it was hard to beat. It seemed to knock the venom out of Kendrick momentarily, his irritation and anger replaced by incredulity and a thin break of a
smile. Davenport started picking at his nails, one set of fingers at work on the other and then changing places. His face dropped for a second and then he regained it only to screw it up in an ugly show of bafflement. Sullivan turned and faced the wall, fearful that she would be looking to him again. He could feel the icy sensation returning, running through his spine, that horrid feeling that what she said made sense, belief in unbelievable words. He thought back to that chair in the middle of the corridor, the one he had brushed past, turning it around. At the time he thought it had turned around of its own volition, but surely…

  It was Davenport that responded first, his fingers finishing their probe at their neighbour’s nails and then locking together as he clasped his hands as if in worship.

  ‘Evil?’ His voice was low and empty, as flat and dry as scorched wasteland. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘What do you think it means? There is something wrong with this place. It does things to you. It has a…presence. I don’t know, I don’t know what the word is Mr Davenport. But there is something in here.’

  Davenport stiffened and then looked to Kendrick, something in his eyes, an old memory, a half articulated thought yanked forward, but Kendrick wasn’t watching, wasn’t interested in helping Davenport bring it to the surface.

  ‘Wow really, Mia? Really? You really want to do this?’ Kendrick was struggling to keep the laughter out of his voice. ‘You’ve had all this time to think up a decent story to explain all this and what do we get…what…monsters and ghoulies? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘You wanted the truth. I’m giving you the truth.’

  ‘Don’t try my patience, Mia. Please don’t do that. I’m a tolerant man, and I know you must have been under some…stress, recently. I understand that, really I do. I’m trying to be reasonable here, honestly I am. But don’t try and play me for a fool girl. Don’t do that.’

  There was pleading in her eyes, raw fear, utterly wasted on the coldness Kendrick carried. ‘Please let me out of here. I don’t want to be here.’

  ‘Want has nothing to do with it any more. You are here and you are staying here. You are Party property now and believe me, when they get here you are going to want a friend. You are going to want me onside, Mia. So I ask you again, what happened to my safe house? What happened to the point team?’

  ‘They’re dead.’

  ‘All of them?’

  The tears came again and she rubbed at them viciously, refusing to allow them, not willing to give into them in front of Kendrick.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, swallowing hard.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I told you…’

  ‘No, you told me nothing.’

  ‘Joe…’ Davenport was slipping off the gurney, moving closer.

  ‘I want to know why you, Mia, are the only person to walk away from a pile of stiffs and that little itty-bitty charred piece of what used to be our safe house. Someone went nuts here, right? Was it Schaeffer? Lucas? Was he protecting you? We all know he had a temper. Is that it?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Joe!’

  ‘Listen, Mia. Just tell me the truth. If I’m putting two and two together and coming up with a tutu then tell me, but the way I see it, it seems pretty damn obvious. Who was it? Who did this?’

  ‘That’ll do, Joe. That’s enough,’ Davenport said, moving between them, his hands up to Kendrick trying to placate him, but Kendrick seemed to be looking straight through him. ‘She’s one of us, they both are. Party looks after its own. Remember?’

  Mia, renewed with hope by Davenport’s intervention tugged at his jacket and fixed him with the same pleading eyes. ‘Please, Mr Davenport. Please let me leave.’

  ‘It’s not safe out there, Mia, surely you know that?’

  ‘It’s not safe in here.’

  ‘Tell me what happened here!’ Kendrick was flexing his hands again, coiled in frustration and fit to explode. ‘What happened to my fucking safe house?’ Kendrick screamed the words, his fists up in front of him like he was about to shadow box.

  ‘That’s enough, Joe! Stop it!’ Davenport replied in kind.

  ‘It was Finn…’ she said it so quietly that it took both men a moment to register that she had said anything at all. ‘He burnt the safe house down.’

  A deep silence dropped on the room, seemed to penetrate through the space, like a light going off in a cage, and through that quiet they instantly heard the whispering, whispering that had been there for several minutes hiding under the shouting and the bluster. It was Sullivan that first found its source, and as he turned slowly to the other side of the room, Kendrick and Davenport followed, pivoting around like figures on a board game, slowly manipulated by an unseen hand.

  Maddox was standing in the doorway, his back to them, speaking in secretive whispers, one hand cupped over his mouth. The slither of doorway visible beyond his giant bulk revealed nothing else. He was, it seemed, talking to empty space.

  ‘Hey!’ Kendrick said and clapped his hands together. ‘Hey, Maddox!’

  ‘Is that Turtle? Who’s he talking to?’

  Sullivan could feel Mia drawing herself down, pulling her arms up around her body as if for protection. The chill at his spine was spreading out across his shoulders now and the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up, each a tiny little pin and as sensitive as exposed nerves.

  ‘Maddox!’

  ‘Theo! Hey, Theo! Who are you talking to?’

  Maddox fell silent and dropped his hand; he raised his head and then cocked it to one side and seemed to nod. He brought his other hand up and held it across the back of his neck, squeezing it slowly. For several seconds he didn’t move, frozen in the empty doorway, and then in one swift motion he spun around and faced them, confusion sprinkled across the blue eyes.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  Maddox looked genuinely perplexed by the question. ‘Wasn’t doing anything, just standing here, why, what were you doing?’

  He seemed paranoid, affronted, vaguely embarrassed, as if he had just been caught with his hand where it shouldn’t be.

  ‘Everyone’s rocking their nuts off these glorious days, it would seem,’ Kendrick said, shrugging the incident off as if it were happening in a different world. ‘Right, so, Finn? You were telling us what Finn did, Mia. Tell me what happened and don’t miss anything out.’

  Davenport was still staring at Maddox in a stupefied amazement. To the other side of the gurney Sullivan was gazing at the empty doorway, at the congealing shadows outside, marvelling at the way they bent in on themselves and then seemed to bloom out at will, edging around the light spill like storm clouds around a brilliant sun.

  7

  Her words came slowly to start with, a stuttering jumble of recollections and thoughts, but soon she picked them up and put them together, concluding that she had gone far enough into disbelief already, and if it were to break it would be better to be done from pushing on rather than pulling back.

  She had jumped as Turtle returned to the room carrying what looked like an old dustsheet. He had draped it gently over Schaeffer and silently returned to the doorway where he stood as if on guard. The room gave her quiet as she tried to explain the unexplainable, only the air conditioning outside stirred against her, breathing and whispering its deep unearthly chill.

  Schaeffer’s left arm poked from under the sheet, the bloody letters printed in the congealed blood on his skin still evident, and it was here Mia let her eyes rest. She rubbed gently at the right sleeve of her fatigues and then she nodded across the room, as if there sat the answer to all their questions.

  ‘It’s a warning.’ Mia gently pulled up her right sleeve and one by one they took in the same letters scratched along her arm as were scratched along Schaeffer’s. ‘It didn’t want me here.’ She let the sleeve fall back and then gazed up at Kendrick with a stony set expression. ‘Yet you brought me back.’

  Kendrick backed off momentarily as if the wor
d on Mia’s arm were a threat, a weapon that was coming for him. He turned back to Schaeffer and then to each man in turn and was met by the same gormless, confused expression on each. Only Sullivan seemed to carry any light or understanding. The sight of the lettered scars on Mia’s arm, as frightening a sight as it was, had only made Sullivan want to her hug her, to hold her close and protect her from this macabre circus. He waited for her to turn back to him and offer that hopeless, searching face again, but Mia didn’t seem to need reassuring anymore. She was picking up her story and the threads of her memory and pushing on, as her audience remained caught in their silent stupidity.

  ‘I don’t know what happened to Wallace or Connor,’ Mia said. ‘I don’t remember arriving here. I was unwell with a fever.’

  ‘You took Wallace’s clothes. He had already died when you found him?’ Kendrick’s words seemed to catch in his throat and they came out in jumbled beats. He started to pace the room, from Davenport to the door and then back again, his suspicious eyes flicking intermittent looks to Mia’s right sleeve every time he passed the gurney.

  ‘Of course.’ Mia looked momentarily insulted. ‘I found him like I assume you found him. Why shouldn’t I have taken his clothes?’

  Kendrick shrugged.

  ‘Did you see his limbs?’ she asked. ‘You really think a human could do that?’

  Kendrick gave no reply, merely waved his hand around in the air, pushing her on again. He stopped at Schaeffer’s body and then bent down and tugged the sheet back over the exposed arm.

  ‘He knew, you know? Wallace. He knew.’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘Wallace knew what was going to happen to him. I heard them talking. He dreamt it. At least that’s what he said. He told my father that he dreamed how he was going to die.’ She took a hand to her neck and tapped it lightly. ‘Somehow he seemed to know. He knew…he knew that he shouldn’t be here.’

  Sullivan caught a look from across the room, Turtle was staring at him, his eyes questioning, looking for understanding in Sullivan’s own. Their conversation in the cave came back to Sullivan in quick gobbles of fractured sentences and then Sullivan’s own dreams, those stains in his mind, flared once before dying out again, waiting for him to acknowledge them. To Turtle’s side, Maddox was rubbing at the back of his neck, and he looked as if he were about to speak, to take up Mia’s story and pull it his own way, but Kendrick cut him off, turning in front of Mia and then raising his hands to his hips once more.