Candy

by Kevin Brooks

  Everything was going to be fine.

  I really believed it.

  chapter twenty

  I don’t know exactly what happened in the next hour or so. I know I walked out of the bedroom and quietly shut the door, and I know I wandered around the cottage for a while—feeling good, feeling fine, still believing that everything was going to be OK—but I’m not sure how I ended up at the front-room window, staring out at the moonlit woods, thinking about Candy, thinking about me…thinking myself into a hole. Candy…sleeping…Candy…me…Candy’s touch…Candy…me…Candy’s kiss…Candy…me…

  The touch was still there.

  The touch of her kiss.

  I could still feel it, impressed in the memory of my skin—the cold heat, the crystal breath—and I kept wanting to lick my lips, to taste the snowflake on my tongue, but I was afraid that the heat of my breath would melt it…

  And that wasn’t all I was afraid of.

  Deep down inside, I was afraid of everything. My thoughts, my doubts, my desires, my lies, my honesty…myself. As I stared through the window, my reflection looked back at me, paling in the darkened glass, ghosting my face to another…another face, another boy…

  Another me.

  And I didn’t like the look of him. I didn’t like what he wanted. But I couldn’t stop seeing him…I couldn’t stop being him.

  It didn’t make sense.

  I didn’t know what he was. He was me…but he wasn’t me. His feelings were wrong and mine were right; but then mine were wrong and his were right…It was madness. It was too many things to know: lightness, darkness, crying, laughing, hurting, needing, hating, loving…

  Why does it always have to be like this? I thought.

  Why does it have to hurt so much?

  And then my phone rang.

  And I was about to find out the true meaning of hurt.

  I wanted to think it was Gina calling, but even as I pulled the phone from my pocket, I somehow knew that it wasn’t. There was something about the sound of the ring tone…something cold and empty…

  I checked the display.

  17:27, it read, UNKNOWN CALLER.

  The phone kept ringing.

  I checked the reception.

  The signal was fine.

  The phone kept ringing, cold and empty, demanding an answer.

  Just leave it, I told myself. It’s probably just a junk call or a wrong number or something. Ignore it. Let it ring. Turn it off…

  But I knew I couldn’t.

  My hand felt heavy as I opened the phone—heavy and slow and unfamiliar. It was as if I was underwater. Steadying my arm, I lifted the phone to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  The line was silent for a moment—not dead, just hollow and silent. I could tell there was someone there…I could hear them breathing. And I knew—in an instant—I knew what I’d known all along. I knew who it was. I’d heard that silence before—on the answering machine at home, in Candy’s room…

  It was the silence of the other world.

  Iggy.

  “Still smiling, boy?” he said.

  I stared at myself in the window—a shrinking face in a void of darkness. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  “You there?” Iggy said.

  “Yeah,” I muttered, “I’m here.”

  “Good,” he sniffed. “What you doing?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Don’t gimme that sorry shit—I said what you doing?”

  “I don’t…I’m not…I’m not doing anything…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t—”

  “You got the bitch?”

  “What?”

  “You deaf?”

  “No…I just…I mean, I don’t know what you want…”

  He laughed. “You don’t know what I want? Shit—you put me on the floor, man. You put me down and shamed me. You robbed me. What d’you think I want?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “C’mon, Joey,” he sneered. “Think about it. Take an educated guess.”

  I stayed quiet.

  He breathed his silence.

  I tried to steady my heart.

  “Ah, shit,” he said eventually. “I ain’t got time for this. Listen—you listening?”

  “Yeah.”

  “OK, I’ll say it again. You got the bitch?”

  “You mean Candy?”

  “Yeah, I mean Candy… you got her? Yes or no?”

  “I know where she is.”

  “You’d better, for your sake.”

  “I’m not going to—”

  “You ain’t gonna nothing—all you’re gonna do is gimme the bitch and walk away, and that’s it. No shit, no questions. Nothing to pay.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What d’you think I mean? You took what’s mine—I want it back. I’m getting it back.”

  “I don’t think she wants—”

  “Don’t think—just listen. I’m talking to you. Not her. She’s nothing. You hear me? I’m talking to you. You gimme the bitch, you walk away.”

  “What if I say no?” I heard myself say.

  “You ain’t gonna say no.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Why?” He laughed. “You wanna know why? This is why…” The line went quiet for a moment. I could hear muffled voices in the background, then some kind of movement, a shuffling sound, like something being dragged across the floor…and then a sobbing voice came on the phone, and my heart went cold.

  “Joe…Joe…is that you?”

  “Gina,” I breathed.

  Her voice wept down the phone, “Joe…thank God…He’s got me…the bastard took me and ummmmff—”

  “Gina!” I yelled. “Are you all right? Where are you? Has he hurt you? Gina…Gina?…GINA!”

  But she’d already gone. I could hear her being dragged away, her gagged voice fading into the background, and the phone being passed around…and then Iggy’s voice came back on the line.

  “Nice girl,” he said. “Very nice.”

  “You’re dead,” I hissed. “You’re a dead man.”

  And I meant it. If he’d been standing beside me then, I would have killed him without even blinking. Killed him, spit on his body, then killed him again.

  I could feel his emptiness inside me.

  No feeling.

  No heart.

  Only his death.

  I could see it in my windowed eyes. White in the glass, like mirrors…white in the darkened glass…

  A vision in white.

  In me…

  Through me…

  In the woods outside.

  White in the dark.

  “Joe?”

  “Gina?”

  “Joe?”

  Candy…?

  Behind me. She was standing behind me…in the middle of the room…her gowned reflection merging with mine in the window. Her figure…my face. Gina in my eyes…Iggy in hers. The devil in the woods. For a moment I could see us all—me, Candy, Gina, Iggy—drawn together in the mirrored glass, like specters in the dark…

  And I was strangely calmed.

  Then Candy spoke and the calmness crashed.

  “What’s going on?” she said. “I woke up and heard you shouting…who’s that on the phone? Who are you talking to?”

  No one, I suddenly realized. I wasn’t talking to anyone. I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t doing anything. Gina was in serious trouble, she needed me, and what was I doing? Nothing. Just standing there, lost in myself, staring pathetically at shapes in the window…

  I screwed my eyes shut and screamed at myself in hateful silence, Christ, what’s the matter with you?…How could you…?

  Then stopped.

  There wasn’t time.

  All I could hope for—as I cleared the self-disgust from my mind and turned my attention back to the phone—was that I hadn’t been lost for too long. That I hadn’t missed anything. Because if I had…and Iggy had hung up…

  I didn
’t want to think about it.

  With hope beating hard in my heart, I gestured at Candy to keep quiet and pressed the phone to my ear. The line was still open, thank God. I could hear Iggy muttering to someone in the background. He had his hand over the mouthpiece. I blocked my other ear with my finger and listened hard, but I still couldn’t make out what he was saying. I thought about turning the phone volume up, but I couldn’t remember where the control switch was, and I didn’t want to risk pressing the wrong button, so I just kept the phone pressed close to my ear and waited.

  After a moment or two, the muttering stopped and a smothered silence filled my ear. I heard a scraping sound, wood on wood, like a chair being moved on floorboards. Then silence again. A muffled laugh. And then the silence opened up as Iggy removed his hand from the mouthpiece, sniffed hard, and spoke into the phone.

  “Hey, Killer…you there?”

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “You gonna listen now?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “All right, listen good.” A dull slap echoed down the line, followed immediately by a stifled cry. I felt a knife ripping through my heart. “Hear that?” Iggy said. “That’s your sister. You threaten me again, and the next time you see her she won’t have a face to slap—OK?”

  “Please don’t—”

  “OK?”

  “Yes…yes, OK.”

  “See, the thing is, Joey, I could lie to you, I could tell you I don’t wanna hurt your sister…but the truth is, I don’t give a shit. You know what I’m saying? She’s meat to me, same as the rest—meat for money. Money for meat. The only thing stopping me from cutting her up and getting her to tell me where you are…well, like I said, she’s a nice piece. It’d be a shame to waste it. I mean, she ain’t no Candy, but she’s still fresh enough to turn a profit. Course, she’d need some encouragement…” He paused to let that sink in, then went on. “You see what I’m saying, Joey? I can’t lose…either way, I can’t lose. You want your sister, I get the bitch—you want the bitch, I get your sister. It don’t make no odds to me…but if I was you, I’d give up the bitch. Cos if she stays with you, she’ll mess you up, and if she comes back to me…well, I’ll have some fun messing her up. But that’s just a personal thing, you know? I mean, business-wise, there ain’t much in it for me.” He sniffed again. “So, like I said, you gimme the bitch and walk away, or you say good-bye to your sister. And that’s it—that’s the deal. No strings. No shit.” He sniffed again. “You got any questions now?”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You don’t. Anything else?”

  I looked across at Candy. She was shivering. Staring at me. Her eyes full of nothing. I turned back to the phone.

  “Call me back in ten minutes,” I said quietly.

  “What?”

  “I need time to think.”

  “Shit…are you for real?”

  “Just give me ten minutes—please? It won’t change anything, will it? Ten minutes, that’s all.”

  “You got five,” he said angrily, “five minutes. And when I call back, I want an answer—you want your sister, I want to know where the bitch is. I want an address. I’ll ask you once, that’s all. One question—one answer. Anything else and your sister’s mine.”

  After he’d hung up, I couldn’t move for a minute. I didn’t want to move. All I wanted was to be somewhere else—a place where this never happened. I wanted to be the other Joe Beck—the Joe Beck who’d never had a lump on his wrist, never gone to the doctor, never got lost at King’s Cross station…

  The Joe Beck who’d never met Candy.

  I wanted to be wherever he was.

  “He’s got Gina, hasn’t he?” Candy said after a while.

  I looked at her. She hadn’t moved. She was still standing in the middle of the room, still staring at me. Still shivering.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything, just kept staring at me. There was nothing left in her eyes. No questions, no shock…not even fear. Just absolute surrender.

  I crossed the room and took hold of her. She didn’t respond, just hung there, limp and lifeless in my arms.

  “Come on,” I said, leading her over to the sofa.

  She sat on the edge of the sofa and stared at the floor. “God, I’m so sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “Poor Gina…if I hadn’t—”

  “No one’s to blame except Iggy,” I told her. “It’s not your fault.”

  She kept on staring at the floor, speaking as if she hadn’t heard me. “I knew it—I knew he’d do something like this. I shouldn’t have let you—”

  “Listen to me,” I said firmly. “We don’t have time for this. Iggy’s going to call back in a minute. We need to work out what we’re going to do.”

  She looked at me. “There’s only one thing we can do—he wants me back, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And he’s got Gina.”

  I nodded.

  She touched my hand. “You know what he’ll do with her if he doesn’t get me?”

  I nodded again, trying not to think about it.

  “I’ve been there, Joe,” she said. “I know what it’s like—I can live with it. Gina can’t.”

  “He’ll kill you.”

  “No, he won’t—he’s not stupid. He might smack me around a bit, but as long as I’m making him money, he won’t kill me.”

  “You’re not going back to him,” I said. “You can’t…There has to be another way. There has to be something else we can do…”

  “He’ll know if we’re setting him up, Joe. He always knows. That’s why he’s still alive. You don’t mess with Iggy and come out on top—believe me. You do what he says…or you lose.”

  I knew she was right, but I couldn’t accept what it meant. I couldn’t let her go back to him…I’d never be able to live with myself. But if I didn’t let her go…and Iggy took Gina…

  No, that was unthinkable. Impossible. The world couldn’t allow it. Not Gina…not ever.

  Never, never, never…

  Never.

  I looked at Candy again, looking at nothing. She was a ghost. I was a ghost. The only existence we had between us was the cell phone in my hand.

  I looked down at it.

  It rang.

  I flipped it open and put it to my ear.

  Silence.

  Then, “Where is she?”

  “Woodland Cottage,” I said.

  “Where the hell’s that?”

  I told him.

  He didn’t ask for any directions, just took down the address, read it back to me, then started talking.

  “You’re both there, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “Neighbors?”

  “No.”

  “This track—the one through the woods—it’s drivable?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right, listen—I’ll be there in two hours. This is what you do—you don’t go out, you don’t ring anyone, you don’t do nothing. When I get there, I wanna see the lights turned on and the curtains open. I wanna see you and the bitch at the window. You stand there, right? Just stand there. You got that?”

  “What about Gina?”

  “You want her in pieces?”

  “What?”

  “You keep asking me questions and I’ll bring her back to you in plastic bags. You got that?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Sure?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “All right—what do I see when I get there?”

  “What do you—”

  “What do I see!”

  “The lights,” I said rapidly. “You see the lights turned on and the curtains open, and you see me standing at the window…”

  “With the bitch.”

  “Right.”

  “Say it.”

  “What?”

  “Say it.”

  “With the bitch,�
� I forced myself to say. “I’m standing at the window with the bitch.”

  “Yeah,” he sniffed, “that’s right.” He paused for a moment, then said, “She there now? She listening?”

  “No.”

  He laughed, knowing I was lying, then suddenly his voice went cold. “Two hours,” he said. “Make the most of it.”

  The line went dead.

  I breathed out slowly and closed the phone and sat there staring into space. The fire had gone out. The room was cold. I could feel Candy’s stillness beside me. She hadn’t moved. She was still staring at the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “He made me say it.”

  “I know,” she said, without looking up. “It’s all right. When do you think he’ll get here?”

  “I don’t know…It depends where he’s coming from. He said he’d be here in two hours, but if he’s in London, I think it’ll take longer.” I glanced at the clock. It was five to six. I knew it didn’t matter, but I had to say something. “I don’t think he’ll get here until nine at the earliest—”

  The phone rang again, cutting me off.

  I stared at it.

  Too shocked to think…

  It’s Iggy.

  Too scared to hope…

  It’s Gina.

  I snatched up the phone and read the display: 17:56, it said, MIKE.

  I fumbled it open. “Mike!” I gasped. “Where are you? Mike?”

  “Hey, Joe—is Gina there?”

  “What?”

  “Gina…is she with you?”

  Oh God, I thought, he doesn’t know.

  “Joe? Can you hear me? I’m trying to find Gina…I was supposed to meet her at four, but she never showed up. She’s not at home, and her phone’s switched off. I thought she might have gone to see you…Joe? Can you hear me?”

  “Yeah, I can hear you…”

  “Have you heard from her? Has she called you?”

  Tell him, I thought. You’ve got to tell him.

  “Joe…for God’s sake—what’s the matter with you?”

  “Gina’s in trouble,” I said.

  “What? What trouble? What do you mean? Where is she?”

  “Iggy’s got her.”

  “What?”

  “He just called me…about five minutes ago. He’s got Gina. I spoke to her. I think she’s all right—”

  “I don’t understand,” Mike said.

  “He took her…he’s holding her somewhere. He wants Candy back—”