Sara’s Face

by Melvin Burgess

  They were trapped. The feet in the corridor were growing louder by the second, and, to add to them, they could now hear footsteps from inside the room. Whoever was in there was coming towards the door. Mark made a dash for another door in the corridor, but it was too late. The locked door rattled and opened. A face looked out. It was Dr Kaye.

  ‘You’re early,’ he exclaimed, seeing Sara. Then he looked at Mark and glared furiously. ‘And what’s he doing here?’ he demanded.

  Mark began to back off, but Sara just stood there. She seemed to have had the life sucked out of her. She stared at Kaye with her mouth open, her head to one side, a little frown on her face as if she was trying to understand what had just happened. Dr Kaye was scowling at them, but Mark could read nothing on his face to suggest that he’d been caught with his own terrible work behind him. He took Sara’s hand and pulled her back. The jerk made her stagger backwards a couple of steps. But she didn’t look at him at all. She had her eyes fixed on Kaye and began making small whimpering noises at the back of her throat. Then the approaching footsteps became suddenly loud as the people turned a final corner and came upon them. Mark and Sara turned and stood, hand in hand, to see who was going to emerge.

  It was Jonathon Heat himself, accompanied by Tom Woods, a small of group of men and women in medical uniforms and the usual pack of bodyguards. When he turned the corner and saw them standing there together, Heat never paused in his movement, only speeded up slightly. Mark saw his eyes fixed on him like a snake’s, and his head began to rock slightly from side to side, in rage or anxiety, perhaps. The footsteps rang out in the enclosed space, but Mark had an eerie impression that Heat was hissing slightly under his breath as he closed in. He showed no emotion.

  ‘Hello, Mark,’ he said in his mildest voice as he drew up to them. ‘What are you doing down here? This area is out of bounds to staff.’

  Mark shrugged and glanced over at Kaye, then over and into the room. He felt that he had found them out, caught them red-handed, and yet what had he seen that could make any of these people guilty?

  Heat looked at Sara, then to Mark, then to her again. Sara was standing there with a silly smile on her face. She lifted her hands up to cover her face, and Mark realised that it must have been the first time she had been bare-faced in front of so many people for weeks.

  ‘Sara?’ said Heat. ‘Is Mark here with you?’

  She nodded her head.

  ‘I’m her boyfriend,’ said Mark.

  Heat looked at him through those half-hooded eyes and Mark thought, What the fuck are you thinking? What’s going on in there, for God’s sake? But Heat gave nothing away.

  ‘That’s not really my business,’ he said at last. He looked at Sara. ‘Are you ready now, Sara?’ he said. ‘They’re waiting for us.’

  She gave a funny little nod.

  Mark licked his lips. What was going on? It was as if there was another life going on at the same time.

  ‘She doesn’t want the operation,’ he told them. He moved closer to her and squeezed her hand. She seemed to have frozen. He had never seen her like this, that smile without meaning on her face. Her hand felt cold in his. She moved slightly away from him. He shook her hand urgently. He needed her to admit what they were doing here. It was time to stop pretending. ‘She doesn’t trust you,’ he burst out. ‘Stop playing games. We’ve seen everything. What are you going to do?’ He glanced at Sara, willing her to own up and be on his side.

  Or was it him she had been lying to all this time?

  Heat didn’t so much as flicker. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, Mark. Sack you, perhaps. I expect I’ll take legal action for breach of trust, I don’t know. But perhaps you’d better explain to me what you mean by saying you’ve seen everything? There are no secrets in this house.’

  Mark jerked his head over his shoulder.

  ‘There,’ he croaked again, squeezing Sara’s hand. She only needed to say! Why wouldn’t she say?

  Heat looked over his shoulder and into the room. His face gave nothing away. He walked round them into the room and gestured them after him. Mark and Sara stayed still, but the bodyguards grouped around and herded them after Heat into the room.

  ‘There are no secrets here, are there, Sara? What, hasn’t she told you, Mark? Sara knows this place, she’s been here before, haven’t you, Sara?’ Sara nodded, smiling foolishly. ‘This is the operating theatre, Mark. This is where the operation is to take place.’

  Mark turned and stared at Sara, who had stopped smiling and was now looking puzzled.

  ‘Did you know?’ he asked her. Sara glanced away and frowned as if there was something she had forgotten that she was trying to remember.

  ‘We were here earlier today, showing her round,’ interrupted Dr Kaye. ‘Not only that, but I’ve spent most of this evening assessing her and preparing her for this operation. I can’t have my patients interfered with like this, it’s ridiculous.’ He glared at Heat, furious with this latest development. ‘Maybe we should call the whole thing off – she’s obviously been pulling the wool over our eyes.’

  ‘Oh, no, not yours, Dr Kaye,’ Sara cried out suddenly. Mark turned to her, but she pulled her hand away from his. She didn’t seem to know where to turn. She put her hands up to the sides of her face and began to cry.

  ‘Sara, we’ve been in meetings all day and I thought this was resolved. You know that all you have to do is say and we’ll call it all off, but this really is your last chance. It’s not fair on Jonathon. What do you say? Are we going ahead?’ asked Kaye.

  Sara wiped her nose on her arm, smiled bravely and said, ‘Yes.’

  Then everything moved very quickly. Woods stepped in between Sara and Mark, pushing Mark back towards the door, while Dr Kaye linked arms with Sara and led her deeper into the theatre.

  ‘What are you doing? It’s not time yet,’ said Mark desperately.

  ‘Sara’s just in time, aren’t you, Sara? The operation is tonight,’ said Heat. He glared at Mark in a cold rage. ‘If you’ve been taking advantage of this sick girl in the way I think you have, I’ll have you run through the courts till you bleed, you sick bastard.’

  A bodyguard stepped in. Suddenly Mark was being walked swiftly down the corridor by Woods and his men. He couldn’t understand what was happening, but Sara looked so crushed, so hopeless – as if the presence of Kaye and Heat had sapped her of all her strength. He felt certain that she had somehow fallen into their power, although he had no idea how. Suddenly she was like someone else. And yet, from what they’d said, she’d known what the room was the whole time. Had she really agreed to this? Why was she playing such games with him? Even if she had agreed, it seemed to Mark that what they were doing to her was utterly without mercy.

  They got him as far as the first corner. He was walking along in a daze, not understanding what had happened. Then he thought, Christ, what am I doing? Sara’s in trouble, she needs me! He dug in his heels, flailed around at the bodyguard and started shouting, ‘Sara! Sara! Come on – run for it.’ And she responded – she came to the door – she got as far as that. She stood and looked at him. Mark dug his feet down and resisted the shoulders pushing into him, hurrying him along. He could actually hear Woods grinding his teeth in rage, but he stood firm. He could see Kaye standing behind Sara.

  Suddenly she lifted her arms out to him, as if she was going to run and hug him, or as if she was pleading with him to take her with him. She let out a brief cry, like a bird. For a second, everything froze around him. Mark called her name and she took two rapid steps towards him; but immediately after his voice, like an echo, came Heat’s calling her back. She stopped, looked inside, back at Mark … then turned her head one last time and disappeared, of her own free will, back into the theatre. Mark never saw her again.

  Now that they were out of sight, Woods and his crew stopped mucking around. They picked Mark up bodily and carried him. He stopped struggling. They were being much rougher than they needed to be and there was an imp
licit threat of real violence. They carried him to a white van parked behind the house. They dropped him to the ground and, as he got up, Woods punched him in the stomach so hard he fell at once, all the breath knocked out of him. Woods stood back and the three bodyguards grouped round him and kicked him around between them, quite casually, it seemed to him. No one said a word. It was very professionally done, Mark thought – nothing to the head or face, but he couldn’t breathe without pain for days afterwards.

  Woods bent down and frisked him as he lay on the ground, front and back, one of the bodyguards turning him over with his foot. Then they peeled him off the ground, flung him into the van and slammed the door on him. At the front, the doors opened and some people got in – he had no idea how many, the driving area was closed off from the back. There were muttered words between them and the men outside. Someone banged on the sides, the engine started up and he was driven off.

  There were no windows, no cracks in the door where he might see out. Mark had no idea where he was being taken. He tried to lever the door open with his fingers, but the van was new, well built and well locked. Heat and his men, their motives and plans and how far they were prepared to go to carry them out, were as big a mystery to him as ever. Detention, imprisonment or murder – he had no idea what was in store for him. And Sara! What was happening with Sara? Heat had said that she knew all along that that room was the operating theatre and she seemed to have admitted it; and yet her whole demeanour had been so confused and shocked, he couldn’t believe she really knew or was in control of what was going on. She had seemed traumatised, but how could the discovery of something you already knew be traumatic? Mark felt disorientated and very frightened.

  The operation had been brought forward. The layers of deceit and mystery surrounding the whole thing were getting thicker all the time. Even now, Sara was going under the knife.

  As he put it himself later, ‘I just wanted a second opinion.’

  Mark tried shouting and yelling and banging on the plywood at the front of the van that separated him from the driver. After a minute of this the van pulled over and someone shouted to him.

  ‘If I have to come back there, I won’t stop kicking you until I hear the bones break. Understand? Don’t think I’m joking.’

  Mark knew he wasn’t joking. He lay down on the floor and didn’t dare make a sound.

  The van took off again. Mark began to weep. All his care, all his efforts, all his planning, and he had failed to save her from anything.

  It was about this time when he felt the Palm Pilot still in his inside pocket. At first he couldn’t believe it. Could they have missed something so obvious? The video camera had been taken off him when they frisked him as he lay on the ground after his beating. But the Palm Pilot had escaped their hands.

  Mark sat up as quietly as he could. The Palm Pilot was also a mobile phone. He had all his numbers still on it. But who to ring? The only person he could think of was Janet. He sat on the floor with his back to the panel, held his head in his hands, arms curled round him, so as to look in silent despair should his captors have a way of spying on him, and dialled her number.

  There was no response. Sara had asked Janet to be available on the borrowed mobile to receive any calls she might make about a change of plans. Janet, anxious about her role, had turned her own off so as not to confuse matters.

  He left a message, tried again, and again and again. Nothing.

  Mark sat still in the van and wracked his brains. What could he do? Alert the police? To what? If he could think of nothing else, he would, but he had little hope of that succeeding. It seemed to him that everything was already lost. Nothing could stop the operation once it was under way, and who had the power to overcome someone like Jonathon Heat who could afford any level of help to achieve his ends?

  In the end, he had one long shot left. There was one other person that he knew who did not like Heat, who despised Kaye and who, he knew, did not want Sara to go through with the operation. He’d met her once at dinner with Heat and Sara the day he arrived. He’d sometimes thought of contacting her, to try and find an ally, but she had been with Heat for so long that it seemed like a last resort. He had gone to the trouble of getting her mobile number off Sara though; and now he dialled it.

  Bernadette.

  Bernadette at the time was sitting in front of the television with a glass of brandy and hot water in her hand, fast asleep. Heat, as promised, had rung her shortly before nine and told her that so far, no decisions had been made. She didn’t recognise Mark’s voice, and when she first heard him breaking up over a bad signal she was inclined to put the phone impatiently down. But the word ‘Sara’ made her sit up in her chair and take notice. The crackly voice on the other end kept losing its signal and he had to ring back twice as the van sped in and out of range.

  ‘Her boyfriend? But I didn’t know she had one. Well!’ Bernadette snorted. That girl! You couldn’t tell what she was up to. Mark explained to her that the operation was taking place tonight.

  ‘Now? No, you’re wrong. Mr Heat told me himself that there was no decision until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘No … now. They’re doing it now. I saw them. I was there with her. Bernadette, she thinks he wants to steal her face. Do you think that might be true?’

  ‘No, no, no, I told you, Mr Heat himself said …’

  ‘They took her in,’ said Mark. ‘They took me away and kicked the shit out of me. If he told you that, he’s lying.’

  Bernie sat up in her chair. ‘How can you know?’

  ‘I was there! Bernadette, I was there. You have to do something.’

  A lie! Heat and his doctors had been sliding this way and that with their half-truths and evasions, bending things, twisting them so that they might or might not be true. Now here it was – a straight, cold, out-and-out lie. Yes! So now they had showed their true colours …

  If it was true.

  ‘They’ve got her right now. You have to stop them.’

  ‘Wait there.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  Bernadette rang off and phoned the house immediately. Heat’s phone was turned off. Kaye’s phone was turned off. She rang the staff, she had friends there yet. And it was confirmed. Her informant, one of the maids, was willing to speak against orders. Yes, it was true. The operation had already begun.

  Heat had lied to her. It was like an avalanche. The medically cool assessments, the careful insistence on assent and professionalism – they were all a disguise. Heat was lying. The operation was not being put off – it was being brought forward. Bernadette herself – the child’s nurse! – was being lied to. Murder, kidnap, everything was possible now. With a shriek she flung her hands into the air. What a fool she had been! The poor sick child had needed her, and she had come all the way across the Atlantic to sit in her chair and drink brandy while the knife was sinking in. Sara was in the hands of that dragon, that beast, that Bluebeard, that thief of souls and faces, Jonathon Heat. And she had allowed it to happen …

  She picked up the phone, which she had dropped in her distress. ‘I’ll be back,’ she snarled at the maid. Then she dialled the police.

  Back in the van, Mark tried to ring Janet again but got no answer, so he rang Bernadette again – she was engaged too – and left her Janet’s number. That was all he could do.

  The van ran on into the night. His lovely Sara! He had tried to save her and failed.

  He sat there with his back to the driver, hid his face down between his knees, and cried.

  Sara’s Face

  ‘She thinks he wants to steal her face,’ Mark had said. Just the idea of it drained all the energy and will out of Bernadette. It was so monstrous, so vile … But of course, so untrue. Heat was sick and Kaye was mad, but neither of them would play such a terrible trick, even if they thought they could get away with it. That wasn’t the point. The point was, it was what Sara thought, and that in itself was a terrible confirmation of all that Bernadette feared.
The girl was hopelessly unfit for cosmetic surgery of any kind, let alone having the knife range over almost the whole of her body, as Kaye was planning.

  And, despite that, somehow between the two of them they had convinced her to enter the surgery with them.

  Bernadette had been delayed, kept from her patient and ejected from the house. Promises had been made and then broken; she had been lied to by Heat himself. She didn’t know exactly what was going on at Home Manor Farm, but she had let Sara down, she knew that much, and now she was determined to help her.

  And what if it was true? Oh God – what if it was true!

  Her first phone call was to the police. The name Jonathon Heat immediately attracted attention and she soon found herself trying to explain her fears to Inspector Derrick Alderson. Inspector Alderson listened carefully while Bernadette told him about the operation, about the lies Heat had told her, about Mark, kidnapped and kicked, and now held in a van going God knows where. Like many other people, he was appalled at what Heat had done to himself over the years, and was deeply suspicious of Wayland Kaye. But he had no reason to trust Bernadette and, even if he did, it was difficult to see what could be done about an operation that was already under way.

  The minutes were ticking by. Bernadette was desperate.

  ‘Ring the boy – you can do that, can’t you? Ring everyone. Ring her mother, see if she knows what’s going on, because no one else does, I can tell you that. Something’s going on.’ She took a breath and said the mad thing, the thing she feared was happening, and the thing she feared would make the police think she was a complete nutter.

  ‘The boy says Sara thinks they want to steal her face.’