by Kevin Brooks
“Iggy?”
“Yeah.”
“Iggy’s got Gina?”
“Yeah…”
“No.”
“He’s bringing her to the cottage—”
“No.”
His voice was bleak. Dead. Broken. I didn’t know what else to say to him. What could I say? Help me? Don’t help me? Don’t worry, it’ll be all right. Just don’t do anything stupid…?
“Tell me what happened,” he said, his voice suddenly calm. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
I explained everything as quickly as possible—the phone call, the threat, the deal, the instructions—and as I talked, I could tell by Mike’s silence what he was thinking. I could hear his thoughts echoed in mine: There’s no deal…there never was—no one’s walking away from anything…not you, not Gina, not Candy. No one. Once Iggy gets there, you’re all dead and buried.
He didn’t have to tell me. I knew what I’d done. I’d done it. I’d told Iggy where we were. I’d given up our only bargaining tool. He didn’t need anything else. He didn’t need us. Not anymore. We were expendable.
I knew that.
And Mike knew it, too.
But I think we both realized there was no point in talking about it. It was done. Talking wouldn’t change anything. All it would do was make things real, and that was too much to bear.
“All right,” Mike said, after I’d told him everything. “What time was it when Iggy hung up?”
“Five to six.”
“OK…I’m leaving now. I’m in Heystone, at your place, so I should get to the cottage before Iggy. Don’t do anything till I get there. Just lock the doors and wait. If he rings again, just do whatever he says, but let me know. Have you got my number?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
“He won’t come alone, Mike.”
“I know.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Whatever it takes.”
The next couple of hours could have been anything—a couple of days, a couple of seconds, a couple of years…It was impossible to tell. The passage of time seemed to melt. If I was thinking of Mike, waiting for him to arrive, every minute felt like an hour, but when my mind turned to Iggy and I found myself waiting for him, the world started spinning like crazy.
Too slow…
Too fast…
Too slow…
Too fast…
It made me feel sick.
Or maybe that was just the fear?
Because, believe me, I was scared. I was more than scared—I was scared of dying, and that’s almost indescribable. It’s like coming face-to-face with all your deepest fears, all at once—only ten times worse. It reaches inside you and crushes your heart. It kills you. It screams. It makes you small. It makes you nothing…
It makes you sick and selfish and incapable.
Just like heroin, I suppose.
Just like Candy.
Too fast…
Too slow…
Too fast…
Too slow…
She hadn’t moved since I’d told her that Mike was coming. She was just sitting there like a zombie, staring at the floor, not saying anything. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking…or even if she was thinking at all. I couldn’t imagine how she felt. I just couldn’t imagine it. I sat beside her for a while, sharing her silence, then I got up and went to the bathroom.
It was a strange thing to think, but I guessed if I was going to die, I might as well die with an empty bladder.
When I came back from the bathroom, Candy still hadn’t moved.
I sat down and put my hand on her shoulder.
She looked at me. “It’s not going to work, you know.”
“What isn’t?”
“Whatever Mike thinks he can do—it won’t work. He’ll just get himself killed. You, too, probably. It’s stupid.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but there’s no harm in listening to him, is there? We can decide what to do when he gets here.”
“And what if Iggy gets here first? We don’t know that he’s starting from London, do we? He could be coming from anywhere. For all we know, he could arrive any minute.”
“Well, if he does, it won’t matter what Mike thinks, will it?”
“No…I suppose not.”
She went back to staring at the floor again.
And I went back to wondering about her.
Does she think she’s going to die?
Is she as scared of it as I am?
Or does she really believe she’s going back to her old life?
And if she does…God, how scary must that be?
Back to Iggy.
Back to the drugs.
Back to the prostitution.
Maybe she’d prefer to die…?
Maybe that’s what she wants?
Maybe—
“Don’t worry,” she said.
I looked at her. “What?”
“Don’t worry about Gina—she’ll be all right. Iggy won’t do anything to her. If he was going to hurt her, he wouldn’t have called you. He would have just done it. He’s not stupid—he knows the easiest way to get what he wants. This is the easiest way. Hurting Gina would just mean trouble. He doesn’t want any trouble.”
“No?”
“Not that kind. That kind of trouble’s more trouble than it’s worth.”
She giggled then, which shocked me, and then it struck me how much she was jabbering…and I guessed she was going a little bit crazy. Not mad crazy, just scared crazy—the kind of craziness that protects your mind from facing the truth. I didn’t like it—it was unnerving, and kind of sad—but I could see how it served a purpose, so I didn’t say anything. I just let her jabber away.
“And another thing,” she said, “another thing…” She frowned at me. “What was I saying?”
“That Iggy wouldn’t hurt Gina…”
“Oh, yeah…because of the phone. That’s how he must have got your cell phone number—from Gina’s phone. He didn’t have to make her tell him—all he had to do was take her phone and look through the phone book. You see? He didn’t have to hurt her.”
“Right,” I said, playing along.
She frowned again. “What I don’t understand is how he found Gina in the first place.” She looked at me. “What do you think?”
I think I should have listened to myself before we got on the train, I thought. I think I should have had faith in that half-formed worrying shadow…
“I think he probably went back to The Black Room,” I said. “That’s the only link he had between me and you.”
Her eyes brightened. “Of course… God, I’d forgotten all about that.”
“Me, too.”
“But would The Black Room have had a contact number for you?”
“No, but they would have had one for Jason. He’s been ringing me at home, leaving urgent messages…but I thought it was about the group so I never called back.”
“Who’s Jason?”
“The singer in The Katies.”
“You think Iggy rang him?”
“Probably.”
“And Jason wanted to let you know?”
I nodded. “He probably gave Iggy my home number. There were a couple of silent messages on the answering machine. Maybe he told him where I lived, too.”
“Iggy could have found that out from the telephone number. He knows people…he knows people who can do that…I don’t know who they are…I don’t know… He knows…” Her voice trailed off and she put her hand to her head and breathed out heavily. Her eyes were suddenly dull.
The craziness had evaporated.
The room was ice-cold.
“God, Joe,” she whispered. “I’m so scared…What are we going to do?”
I looked at the clock.
It was seven-thirty.
I didn’t know what we were going to do.
I still don’t know if there was anything else I could have done. I’ve thought about it over and over again—
thinking, thinking, thinking…staring out the window…lying on the floor…staring into the past…trying to convince myself that I was right, that there wasn’t anything else I could have done—and most of the time I come to the same conclusion.
You had no options.
You had to tell Iggy where you were.
You couldn’t hide.
You couldn’t run away.
You couldn’t call the police.
You couldn’t do anything.
All you could do was wait.
And hope.
And I think I’m right…most of the time.
I’m almost convinced.
But it still doesn’t make me feel any better.
As the minutes passed and the time melted around from seven-thirty to eight, we kept waiting and hoping. Candy slipped back into a state of mind that was somewhere between crazy and zombie, and I tried to keep my hopes up by behaving as normally as possible. I got the fire going, washed some dishes, tidied up, and then I started packing.
It sounds ridiculous, I know. And at the time, I don’t think I knew why I was doing it. But I suppose I thought—in the back of my mind—that if I didn’t start packing, I was giving in. Not packing up meant we weren’t going anywhere. We weren’t leaving. Not packing up meant no future.
So I went into the bedroom and started packing.
After I’d gathered up all my clothes and stuffed them into my bag, I turned my attention to Candy’s stuff. Her clothes were still strewn all over the place—jeans, T-shirts, sweaters, all sorts. I wasn’t quite sure whether to pack them away myself or leave them to her. I couldn’t make up my mind, and the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. I knew it shouldn’t bother me, that there were far more important things to worry about, but I just couldn’t help it. It was really weird.
I was still standing there, undecided, when Candy appeared in the doorway and asked me what I was doing.
“Packing,” I told her. “I was just wondering what to do with all your stuff.”
“Packing?”
“Yeah.”
She didn’t say anything, just blinked in confusion, then looked at the floor. I thought at first she simply didn’t know what to say, but then I realized there was more to it than that.
I was packing.
Packing meant leaving.
Leaving meant a future.
And Candy didn’t want to know about the future. It was all right for me to look to the future and hope for the best, because I had a best to hope for. If I got out of this mess in one piece, I’d probably end up OK. But the best that Candy could hope for was a return to the life she’d led before…
So why bother hoping at all?
I should have realized, I suppose.
I should have given it a bit more thought…
But I didn’t.
And now I felt bad.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, trying to sound casual. “I was just—”
“I’ll do it,” she said.
“What?”
“I’ll sort out my clothes and pack my bag. I need to get dressed, anyway.”
Her eyes were glazed, her voice emotionless…and as she stood there, staring blankly, my mind went back to our day at the zoo, to the day that never dies, when we were alone together in our Moonlight World, sharing the sadness of the tree kangaroo. I could feel again the hush of the darkness, the silence, the emptiness, the cool of the underground air…and I could see that face, that sad-eyed bewilderment, that pitiful fear…
All of it held in a simple little moment.
It was just so…
I don’t know.
Just so much.
chapter twenty-one
I heard the car coming from a long way off. It was one of those nights when the air is perfectly still and the stars shine brightly and the world seems cold and silent. The kind of night when you can hear for miles. I was waiting at the open window, my breath turning white in the misty air, and I could hear everything: the darkness, the emptiness, the rush of my heart. When the first faint sounds of the car pricked the air, I heard it in every part of my body. The low hum, the rolling tires, the faint crunch of rubber on damp earth…
It was moving slowly. Carefully.
I leaned out the window and peered into the dark.
“Is it Iggy?” asked Candy, coming up behind me.
“I don’t know yet—I can’t see anything.”
She’d dressed and showered and washed her hair, and as she stood there beside me, with her hand on my shoulder, I could smell the scent of her skin—the scent of fresh soap and talcum powder. It was just as good as it ever was. And I couldn’t understand how that could be.
“There,” she said suddenly, pointing into the distance. “I think I saw lights…headlights…over there, through the trees.”
“Where?”
“They’ve gone now.”
“How many?” I asked her.
“I don’t know…It was just a flash.”
“It’s got to be Mike,” I muttered. “It’s only eight-twenty…It has to be Mike.” I squinted through the darkness, searching for the headlights. If there was only one car, it was probably Mike; more than one, and it was definitely Iggy.
I closed my eyes for a second, squeezing them shut, then opened them again. The mist seemed to be thickening now, and as I gazed out into the darkness, trying to make out the lane, my mind seemed to be thickening, too. I kept seeing things that weren’t there: mossy branches, waxy green leaves, strange-looking ferns…all of them misty and dark and dripping with moisture. Memories, I told myself, they’re just sense-memories. Hopes. Denials…
Whatever they were, they disappeared as a beam of headlights lit up the woods at the far end of the lane.
“Turn on the lights,” I said to Candy.
“Why?”
“Iggy’s instructions. Open all the curtains and turn on the lights, then come back and wait here with me.”
The headlights were coming down the lane now. Moving slowly, dipping up and down with the contours of the lane, the harsh white lights graying the passing trees. As far as I could tell, there was only one car.
“Do you think it’s Iggy?” Candy asked.
“I don’t know…I don’t think so, but we’d better do as he said—just in case. And it’ll make things easier for Mike if the lights are on, anyway. He’ll have a better view of the cottage.”
While Candy went around turning on lights and opening the curtains, I stayed at the window, my eyes fixed on the approaching car. As it drew closer, the purr of the engine filled the night, robbing the woods of their silence. I could see the exhaust fumes mingling with the mist, and I could see the dark gleam of metal…but I still couldn’t see the driver. The lights were too bright. All I could see was a vague silhouette in a starburst reflection of glass.
It was a man’s silhouette.
He was big.
He was dark.
He was turning the car into the clearing outside the cottage.
As the twin beam of the headlights swept around the trees, Candy came up beside me and looked through the window.
“Is it him?” she said.
“I don’t know…”
The car stopped. It was about twenty meters away from the cottage, angled toward us. The headlights were still on. The engine was idling. The driver was faceless and still.
I suddenly realized how cold I was. Cold, useless, scared to death. What if it was Iggy? I had no idea what I was going to do. I hadn’t even thought about it. I couldn’t. I was just hoping…
“Look,” said Candy, touching my arm.
I watched as the driver leaned forward in his seat, and then the headlights went out and I couldn’t see anything. The sudden darkness was blinding. My eyes burned with the dazzling white afterimage of the headlights, but beyond that I couldn’t see anything. I could feel Candy’s hand gripping my arm, and I could hear the sound of the engine being turned off…and the car door opening…
slamming shut…and then footsteps moving across the clearing…
Moving toward us.
Getting louder.
Getting closer.
Taking shape…
The darkness was lifting. My eyes were readjusting to the starlight glow. I could see…
A shape.
A figure.
A moonlit face.
“Mike?” I said hopefully.
His eyes shone coldly as he stepped into the light of the window. He was dressed in only a T-shirt and jeans, but if the icy air was bothering him, he didn’t show it. He didn’t show anything. He just looked around, checking things out, then turned to me and spoke quietly.
“You all right?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“You alone?”
I nodded.
He stared hard at me for a couple of moments, making sure I was telling the truth, then he looked at Candy, nodded his head, and disappeared toward the front door. As I hurried across the room to let him in, I looked at the clock. It was eight-thirty-five.
The world was spinning like crazy.
“Have you heard anything?” Mike asked as he came through the door. “Has Iggy called?”
“No.”
“OK, first things first—we need to get the car out of sight.”
“You can park it around the back of the cottage.”
“Good.” He gazed cautiously around the room, taking it all in, then—satisfied with what he’d seen—he leaned down and put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said, looking me in the eye. “It’s going to be all right. Trust me—Gina’s going to be fine.” He glanced over at Candy, then turned back to me again and lowered his voice. “How’s she doing? Is she still using heroin?”
“No,” I told him. “Not since Saturday.”
He gave my shoulder a quick squeeze, then straightened up and went over to Candy at the window.
“Can you drive?” he asked her.
“Can I what?”
“Drive,” he repeated. “Can you drive?”
“Well…yeah,” she said hesitantly.
“Here,” said Mike, passing her a bunch of keys. “Move the car around the back of the cottage so it can’t be seen from the lane. If you see anyone coming, hit the horn and get back in here—OK?”
Candy nodded, but didn’t move.
“We don’t have much time,” Mike told her.
She looked at him. “What are you going to do when Iggy gets here?”