The Captive

by Deborah O'Connor

  ‘Are you open?’ She rubbed at her side and gestured at the deserted space. ‘I wasn’t sure.’

  ‘Not for ten minutes.’ He looked her up and down, jawing a wad of pink gum. ‘But I can make an exception.’

  Hannah ordered a lime and soda and took a seat at the bar. He served her and then got back to stocking the fridges.

  ‘Worked here long?’

  ‘A while.’ He didn’t look up.

  ‘Ever work with a guy called Jem?’

  He paused and Hannah couldn’t tell if it was because he’d lost his grip on one of the bottles or something else.

  ‘I work with lots of people.’

  ‘My husband,’ she said, trying a different tack. ‘He drank here the night he died. He was stabbed.’

  He wedged the last two bottles into position, got to his feet and began winding the gum onto his finger.

  ‘The detective?’

  Hannah nodded.

  ‘Sorry for your loss.’ He pulled his hand away from his mouth, stretching the gum perilously thin.

  ‘I wanted to see what it was like, to try and imagine him in the space.’ She swirled the ice around her glass. ‘Jem, the person that did it, he worked here. He’s living in my house now, in my kitchen.’

  The guy twisted another loop of gum round his finger but it was pulled too thin. It snapped and fell to his T-shirt, like a rope bridge slamming against a cliff.

  ‘Better get back to it,’ he said, stuffing the gum back into his mouth.

  Hannah finished her drink, took one last look around and headed outside, in the direction of the alley.

  In court they’d shown CCTV of John leaving the bar over and over, so she knew the route well. Cross the street at the traffic lights, then keep going another three to four hundred metres until the alley appeared on the right.

  It had been assumed that John had been headed toward Liverpool Street to get the Tube home but if Jem was telling the truth, and he had been on his way to meet someone, then his direction of travel could have been a red herring; maybe he was going somewhere else entirely?

  The CCTV had been a huge part of the prosecution’s case against Jem but his lawyer had got them to concede that they didn’t have definitive coverage of the entrance to the alleyway. There were gaps: a small area to the right of the opening and a patch a few metres from the left side. In theory, someone other than Jem could have got in or out, but footage from the other parts of the pavement suggested this was highly unlikely. Besides, the presence of Jem’s DNA on the murder weapon was damning. His lawyer could have nit-picked all she liked. It would have made no difference.

  She reached the opening to the alley and stopped, trying to summon the courage to move forward. The air was saturated with urine and rice-flecked takeaway cartons littered the floor. Above she could hear the pneumatic squeal of drills and the rhythmic thump of a hammer, hard at work in the carcass of a building that already reached six storeys high.

  John had died here in the dark, alone and frightened.

  Grabbing her amber pendant for comfort, she kicked the takeaway cartons into the street and began walking the alley’s perimeter. The width of a car, it stretched a hundred metres back and was used primarily by local businesses to store waste-bins. John had been found halfway down, lying on his front.

  Again, she knew the chance of the police failing to spot some hidden doorway was ridiculous, but she checked anyway. The walls were solid, a combination of brick and concrete, and reached at least twenty feet high. Beyond them were the walls of other buildings, a mix of old and new. A stretch of pebble-dash to her right was branded with a ghost sign for Bovril, yellow capital letters on a faded blue background.

  She videoed the whole scene on her phone, lifting it high and low so as to cover every possible angle, and then, after lapping the alley once more, she headed back onto the street.

  She looked left and right, trying to get her bearings, and was about to set off toward the Tube when she saw someone who made her pause. Directly opposite her, on the other side of the road, was the guy from the bar. Leant against a stack of hire bikes, he was talking on the phone, another length of chewing gum wrapped round his finger.

  It made no sense for him to have followed her here. It must be coincidence.

  She stared directly at him but he didn’t flinch. The sunglasses made it hard to tell whether he was looking at her or at some other random point.

  She decided she was being paranoid and set off at pace toward Liverpool Street. But when she turned round to check she saw he’d stepped away from the bikes and was now facing toward her, his sunglasses focused squarely on her progress. She picked up speed, walking faster and faster, and then she was running. Pneumatic drills pealed through the air, drowning out her footsteps with their din.

  Jem

  ‘Abracadabra!’

  A small boy stands in the doorway holding a baguette. He snaps it toward me like a wand and the bread breaks in two. The top half falls and hangs limp in the plastic.

  The social worker pushes me forward and I flinch. My back is almost healed but still sore to touch.

  ‘Jem, this is Lucas.’ She holds my bag in the air, shows it to him. ‘Lucas, Jem has come to stay for a while.’

  Lucas laughs and turns on his heel, the fractured baguette bouncing at his side.

  A woman and a man appear. The man is wiping his hands with a tea towel.

  They look at me and smile. ‘We didn’t hear the door.’

  ‘Mr Tarker,’ says the social worker. She nods at the woman. ‘Mrs Tarker.’

  Mrs Tarker holds out her hand, palm flat.

  ‘Would you like to see your room?’ Her chin, cheeks, forehead – even her earlobes – are covered with freckles, her reddy-brown hair a coarse bob. ‘We have bunk beds.’

  When I don’t reply we go inside to the living room. The social worker chats to Mr and Mrs Tarker about our journey.

  The house is warm and through the doorway that leads to the kitchen I can see a pan steaming on the hob and a bowl of fruit. The apples are shiny, the bananas yellow.

  I wonder where Mum is, what she’s doing. If she’s thinking of me.

  Lucas reappears, a chunk of baguette in his mouth. He gnashes his teeth against the dough and white crumbs fall to the carpet like snow. He’s much younger than me, maybe four or five, and his face is round with puppy fat, his hair the same reddy-brown as his mum’s.

  He lifts his hand and I think he’s going to perform another imaginary magic trick but then I see he’s torn a piece of bread for me. I stuff the lot in my mouth and he gives me a thumbs-up.

  For the first time today I smile.

  ‘Allakazam!’ he says and toddles back to the kitchen for more.

  Hannah

  It was an hour from King’s Cross to Cambridge. Hannah got off the train and made her way out to the taxi rank.

  Roddy Blessop. Forty-two years old.

  John’s browser history showed he’d searched for his funeral announcement on seventeen different occasions.

  Why?

  She didn’t have much to go on, just the man’s name and St Laurence’s, the Catholic church where his funeral had taken place. She hoped it would be enough.

  The car crept along Milton Road, past streets crumbed with fallen leaves and pavements flaky with dust. The university town was cooler than London but the air was still toffee-thick and people moved through it slowly.

  Hannah hadn’t been inside a church since John’s funeral and as they neared their destination she thought back to that day and how it had marked a watershed.

  She’d once moved through the world freely. Put one foot in front of the other and just expected the ground to be there. She’d go to a wedding and assume the marriage would last, she’d hear about a friend’s pregnancy and start talking baby names, she’d go on holiday and have no doubt the plane would land in one piece. After John was taken from her though it was like she’d had a membrane of skin removed, like she could see
and feel life and its random horrors more truly, no longer oblivious to the tragedy waiting round every corner. She’d see a mother walking her kids home from school and imagine a car mounting the pavement, crushing them against the wall, she’d look at a house with a fairy-lighted tree in the window and see the plug overheat, the sparks turning the place to ash. She’d refuse invites to baby showers, scared the event was a jinx, hubris she wanted no part of.

  In the end, seeing the world through that filter became too overwhelming. She’d had to find a way to lock it down and separated from reality, just a little, imagine herself as a pond-skater, gliding across the surface, able to observe everything going on beneath the water but never getting wet.

  It had made life more bearable but it had also made her less.

  Had made her life less.

  She arrived at the church to find the priest locking the herringbone door. The entrance was sheltered by a wooden porch and, seeing her, he stepped out from under it, into the light.

  ‘Mass was at twelve thirty,’ he said, smiling kindly.

  ‘No.’ She stopped, not sure how to explain. ‘Last year,’ she gestured at the church’s modern red brick. ‘There was a funeral.’

  The priest half-closed his eyes, squinting against the harsh light.

  ‘We have many funerals sadly, but also many happy occasions.’ His tone was benign but wary. ‘Weddings, christenings, first holy communion.’ He wasn’t sure of her, what she wanted, and reciting the list seemed to be a way of buying himself time.

  ‘It was in December,’ she said, angling her body so that his face was shielded from the sun. ‘Roddy Blessop?’

  ‘Ah.’ He pocketed the keys in his cassock. ‘Sad business.’

  ‘This is going to sound weird,’ said Hannah, ‘but my husband, he was a Met detective. Earlier this year he was killed.’

  At this the priest seemed to relax. He rocked back on his heels and once again found himself back in the sun’s firing line.

  ‘He’d looked at Mr Blessop’s death notice online,’ she went on, ‘many times. I’m trying to find out why.’

  The priest nodded, now squinting so hard his eyes were almost sealed shut.

  ‘Maybe they were colleagues?’ said the clergyman. ‘Roddy was also a detective. Cambridgeshire police.’

  Jem

  Later, the social worker has gone and Mr and Mrs Tarker are in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Lucas is on the floor, watching TV, one sock on, one sock off.

  I sit on the edge of the sofa and think about Mum. I want her to be worried about me, to miss me, but I know that she won’t, not for a while anyway.

  The sofa is full of cushions and a blanket sits folded on one arm. It’s cosy, the air fogged with simmering Bolognese.

  I don’t want to like it here.

  I get up and skirt my way around the edges of the room. A shelving unit stacked with books and board games sits next to an armchair and an airer, heavy with wet clothes, hugs the radiator.

  Lucas looks away from the film, observing my progress.

  ‘How old are you?’ he says, swinging his feet back and forward.

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘I’m four. In one month I’ll be five.’ He inserts a finger into his right nostril and begins to dig. ‘I’m in reception. My teacher is called Miss Yewande.’

  School.

  Come Monday I’ll have to start again.

  I continue my circuit. I want to take a closer look at the picture over the fireplace. It’s a black and white print of an old-fashioned-looking woman in a white dress floating horizontal in mid-air. A man in a suit stands behind her, hands outstretched. It seems like he has pulled her off the floor with invisible strings and is using all his might to keep her hovering. I move forward and my knee bashes against something solid.

  I look down and see a black case with steel edges. Tucked between the recliner and the lamp, it’s like an oversized briefcase and has silver stars stuck to its edges. Blue glitter smears each corner.

  I kneel down and run my finger across the stars. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the room. It’s solid, dense, like a rock.

  I smooth my hand across the top and down the side. My pinkie snags against a lever, inset into the bottom right corner of the case. Without thinking, I press down.

  The top lid of the case springs up and bashes my chin. I fall back in shock.

  Lucas is at my side in an instant.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he says, taking my hand.

  I look back at the case, now standing tall, the top half forming a kind of small table. Silk handkerchiefs and playing cards litter the carpet.

  I look toward the kitchen, checking they haven’t noticed. I don’t want to get in trouble on my first day.

  ‘Help me,’ I say trying to stuff everything back inside. Lucas does as I say, his chubby hands bunching the cards into the gaps at the bottom.

  I’m fiddling with the lever, trying to get the case to retract, when Mr Tarker enters the room.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  My mouth opens and closes. Just tell the truth. That’s what the social worker said. Tell the truth and nothing can go wrong.

  But now looking at Mr Tarker’s face I’m not so sure.

  Lucas steps forward and places his stumpy body between me and the case.

  ‘It was my fault Daddy,’ he says, pushing his socked foot against his inner calf. ‘I wanted to show him your magic.’

  Mr Tarker looks from me to him, unconvinced.

  In the intervening silence Lucas manages to inch off the sock and, with a little shake, discards it on the carpet. He stands there barefoot, his nostril caked with drying bogey, and stares until finally Mr Tarker turns back to the kitchen.

  ‘Spaghetti will be ready in five minutes,’ he says. ‘Both of you, go wash your hands.’

  Hannah

  That night, Hannah sat at the kitchen table. Balanced on her finger was the gold SIM card the plumber had found. She examined it up close. It might have sustained too much damage. On the other hand.

  Follow through on every lead, no matter how ordinary or extraordinary. That’s what John had always said.

  On her way home from Cambridge she’d done two things: emailed her contact at COPS (Care Of Police Survivors) and asked if they could pass on a message to Roddy Blessop’s widow requesting she get in touch (it was standard practice for the charity to reach out to the partner of a police officer after their death); and two, bought a pay-as-you-go mobile.

  Now she placed the SIM inside the phone and turned it on.

  Jem was engrossed in the copy of All The Light We Cannot See she’d bought for him that day in Primrose Hill and paid her no attention.

  The phone screen lit up and began searching for a signal. She had no idea if the card had belonged to John or what need he might have had for a second phone but she couldn’t figure out where else it could have come from – who other than he might have been in the house and thrown it down the waste disposal?

  Jem’s assertion that John had been on his way to meet a lover flicked back into her head. She planned to call any and all of the numbers recorded on the card. What would she do if a woman were to answer?

  Finally, the signal stabilised and she was able to access the log. There were no texts to speak of but there were two numbers listed. Both mobiles had been called multiple times a day over a period of months. The last registered call had been made in February, four weeks before John’s murder.

  She brought up the number and dialled.

  The line was dead.

  She moved onto the second number. This time the phone connected.

  She braced, willing someone to pick up or at the very least for it to go through to voicemail. It rang and rang.

  After a few more tries she hung up.

  She sat there in the quiet, the silence punctuated by the occasional papery lisp as Jem turned a page, then went to the countertop and opened one of the Tupperwares. Before going into town this morning she’d expe
rimented with a new fondant and made a batch of cupcakes each with a tiny figure from history on top. Looking down she saw Frida Kahlo sitting alongside Martin Luther King, Emmeline Pankhurst and Alan Turing. She selected the most intricate of the batch – a particularly accurate rendering of Winston Churchill – and took it over to the cell.

  ‘I went to Shoreditch today,’ she said, handing it to him through the bars. ‘To Fleece, where you used to work.’

  ‘You did?’ He accepted the cake dozily, his brain still straddled between the book and the real world.

  ‘I needed to see it for myself.’ She wanted to tell him what she’d uncovered so far – that there was merit to the things he claimed to have overheard John say that night – but she was still scared this was some awful set-up on his part, that he was playing her, out of cruelty or because he thought it might make his life easier somehow. ‘I talked to the guy behind the bar.’

  Jem swung his feet off the bed and came to stand by the cell bars

  ‘Don’t go there again,’ he said, then stopped. When he spoke next his words were measured, but he couldn’t shake off his initial urgency and it lingered like an echo. ‘Or, if you do, take someone with you.’

  ‘Nothing happened,’ she said, thinking of the way the bartender had watched her from the other side of the street.

  ‘Just promise me?’ he said, his voice strained.

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I promise.’

  She waited for him to sit back down before continuing with the next part of her story.

  ‘I also went to the alley.’

  Jem looked to the floor.

  ‘I know what you said in court, but I want you to tell me again. That night. What happened?’

  He blinked slowly and took a breath, as if to prepare himself.

  ‘Look, I don’t know how to prove to you or anyone that I didn’t do it.’ He gestured at the cell. ‘Obviously, or I wouldn’t be here. All I can say is I have no history of violence, I’ve never laid a finger on anyone and I never would.’