Choked

by Tania Carver

  She found it small, anonymous and dull. That must match the kind of people who stayed here, she thought, then felt a shuddering memory. Her own origins were much lower than this. But she was a different person now, and she intended to stay that way.

  She sat silently on the end of the bed, ankles crossed, arms behind her, watching Michael pace. She knew better than to approach him or speak to him when he was in this mood. This was no time for their intimate power-playing games. When she saw that look in his eyes, that stiffness in his back, she knew that if she even attempted to intervene or turn the situation into a game, he would hurt her. Normally she would enjoy it, give it back, even, if he was in the right mood. But not when he was like this. When the rage was on him, he could carve her up – or anyone who got in his way.

  ‘What … the fuck … was he thinking … ?’

  Dee said nothing. She had not been invited to speak.

  ‘Picking her phone up … speaking to the caller … idiot … ’

  More pacing, more waiting from Dee. Eventually he stopped, turned to her. ‘And have you seen him? What’s he on? What’s Bracken sorted him out with now? He’s … unravelling. Becoming a danger to us.’

  Dee took the direct look from Michael as her cue to talk. ‘Let’s get rid of him, then,’ she said, her voice deferential, her eyes downcast.

  ‘I will,’ said Michael. ‘When he’s finished this job for us, he’s gone.’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘If he’s capable of finishing this job for us.’

  The pacing resumed. ‘We’ve let things get out of control, gone too far this time … too far. It’s time to leave.’

  ‘Where? The country?’

  He nodded, still pacing. ‘The route’s been in place for years in case we need it. Nickoll can stonewall for us until we’re away.’

  Dee nodded. She had expected something like this to happen sooner or later. It would be sad to go, to leave everything behind. But their lifestyle would continue. They had enough put aside to take care of that. And that was fine. Because the lifestyle would be what she couldn’t live without.

  ‘What about the three in the car?’

  The two police officers and the Hibbert woman had been left in the 4x4. Parked at the back of the car park, covered by blankets, the Golem watching over them.

  ‘Hibbert I don’t care about. But we can’t risk them finding the bodies of the police officers. They’ll have to disappear.’

  Dee nodded. It was what she had expected to hear.

  Michael stopped pacing, stood in front of Dee. He grabbed her face, forced it upwards, made her look at him. ‘And when they disappear … we’re gone too.’

  She looked into his eyes, tried to smile, as a shiver of fear ran through her.

  91

  Tyrell stared at the wall in front of him. No. It wasn’t a wall, it was a mirror. And he saw himself looking right back. But he knew it wasn’t just himself. The mirror was twoway. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were watching. He had been watched all his life. He knew when it was happening.

  His hands were in his lap, under the table. His feet together, back relaxed. He felt calm and composed. At ease with himself. He felt the best he had been since he had come out of prison.

  Prison. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but when he looked back, he realised he had been safe there. Happy, almost. But safe, especially. The safest he had been since childhood. Proper childhood, when it was just him and his mother. Before they went to live in the big house. With the old man who said he wanted to be his father and tried to be kind to him. And the brother and sister who only pretended to be kind to him.

  He shuddered. It was one of the memories he had tried to keep hidden because it hurt to think it. But they had all come back now. The good ones along with the bad. He thought of his pretend brother and his pretend sister. How they would smile at him when their father was around or his mother was there. And how they would hurt him when it was just the three of them.

  He closed his eyes. Tried to block out the things they had done to him. Too late. He had thought the thought, it was there in his head and he had to see it. He had no choice.

  How they would hurt parts of his body. Pull, twist. Hit. How he would scream out and they would make him stop. Threaten to send him away from his mother if anyone heard. He would stop crying, but they wouldn’t stop hurting him. They just got worse. Sticks, tennis racquets, cricket bats. Anything was a weapon. And burning him. Tying him up, gagging him, putting lit cigarettes on his skin.

  He wriggled in his seat, reliving the memory.

  He could feel the rope against his skin, the knots tightening as he tried to pull away from it. He could hear the hiss and crackle of burning skin as the cigarette was applied. Smell again the nicotine smoke, the cooking flesh. His own flesh. Hear the screams and sobs in his head, the cries he couldn’t let go, that died against the gag in his mouth.

  And he felt sad once more, sad for his mother, sad for himself.

  Too ashamed to show his mother the scars, hiding them for years.

  Hiding. Hide and seek. He was always the one to hide. And he was always found. But the way they played it was different. If he was found, which he always was, he had to do a forfeit. And the forfeit was always the same. He had to be locked in the cellar.

  He hated that cellar. Every time they mentioned hide and seek, he knew it would end up in the cellar. But he couldn’t say no. He had tried it a couple of times. They had just hurt him.

  The cellar was at the back of the house, right by the river. The water used to come up to the back of the property, and they had a boat moored there. His pretend brother and pretend sister would lift the trapdoor and make him walk down the wooden stairs. Then they would slam it shut and run off, sometimes leaving him there for hours. Even forgetting him completely on a couple of occasions. Inside, it was cold, dark and wet. There was no light, no electricity, no candles even. Just him and the rats. And the slow, swishing sound of the water.

  Sometimes when he touched the wall his hand came away wet. His feet too. When the tide came in, the wooden walls would groan with the pressure, sometimes even seep. At first he had been terrified, thinking they would give way and the water would flood in, drown him. But gradually he came to accept it. Could even time how long he was down there by the tides. But he still hated it, it still made him cry.

  He shook his head, tried to dislodge the other memories that were coming back. The times his pretend brother and pretend sister would strip him naked before tying him up. Tie him up with his legs apart. He would try to struggle, fight, get away. But it was no good. There were two of them, and they were both stronger than him. The pretend sister, she was stronger than she looked. And sometimes the more vicious of the two.

  And then when he was tied up and naked, they would hurt him. It was a different kind of hurt to the cigarette burns. This kind made him scared to touch his own body afterwards. They would shove things inside him. Laugh when he begged or tried to scream. They just shoved harder.

  Hurting him like that would excite them. They would strip off in front of him, do things to each other’s bodies. Laugh at his pain. They would push parts of their bodies in his face, his mouth. Force him to …

  He closed his eyes. No. No …

  Prison. Think of prison. In the cell. Alone. In his head. By himself. His own space. His own time.

  He opened his eyes. Looked round. He had forgotten that he was here. In this room. He sighed. Relieved. Even this room was better than where he had been, back in his own head. Anywhere was better than that.

  He looked at the mirror once again. Knew they were there. He wondered what they could see. He wished they could see what was inside his head. What he had just seen. If they had, they might have been able to stop it.

  He shook his head at the thought. That was just stupid. If they could do that, they would have done it years ago. No. Some things just happened. And no one could stop them. That was life. His life.

  He t
ried to tell himself it didn’t matter. Because even with that in his head, he knew who he was now. It had all come back to him. Even that.

  His life had come back to him.

  92

  ‘He’s getting agitated … No. That’s better. He’s calmer now.’ Marina looked through the two-way glass, kept observing him. ‘Looking at us again. Right there. Like he can see us.’

  ‘Pulling a gun on a kid?’ said Franks. ‘I’ll give him bloody agitated.’

  Marina stood, arms folded round her body, staring at him. The observation room was small, usually managing to fit only two people at the most. Although sparsely furnished, it also served as a graveyard for deceased office furniture. The chair Franks was sitting on had seen better days back when John Major was in power. The desk he leaned on was scarred and pitted by the frustrations of a thousand investigations. The filing cabinet behind them a sixties period piece.

  Franks took his eyes off Tyrell, glanced at Marina. She looked terrible. Her hair was unbrushed, her clothes dirty and torn. Huge dark rings under her eyes. He couldn’t begin to guess what she had been through the past few days.

  ‘Marina … ’

  She kept her attention firmly on Tyrell, nodded to show she had heard.

  ‘Why don’t you go home? Get some rest. I can handle things from here.’

  ‘No.’ Still staring at Tyrell.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here, Marina. You shouldn’t have come back here. And you shouldn’t be working.’

  Marina ignored him.

  The bare-knuckle fight had been too tempting to resist for Franks and his team. As an added bonus, it had yielded a pleasant crop of minor local villains engaged in illegal activity, who were currently overcrowding the interview rooms waiting for various solicitors and mouthpieces to arrive.

  In the process, though, they had lost Josephina and the woman holding her. They had, however, managed to get Tyrell, and had brought him straight back to the station.

  ‘Marina.’ Franks’s Welsh baritone was firm with authority. She turned to face him, reluctantly drawing her attention from Tyrell.

  ‘It’s after midnight. You haven’t slept in God knows when, and you shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘But Gary, I—’

  He held up his hand. ‘Let me finish. If you are directly involved with an investigation, personally involved, then you have to withdraw. You know the rules. And no one’s more involved in this than you.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘If we want a successful conviction, then we have to be seen to have followed correct procedure. And if I keep you here, then your role could be questioned. Am I right?’

  ‘With all due respect, Gary, I don’t care about that. I just want my daughter back.’

  He sighed, shook his head. ‘And that’s exactly why—’

  ‘All right then, look at it this way,’ she said. ‘It’s just gone midnight, like you said.’ She pointed to Tyrell. ‘And he’s sitting right there, probably able to tell us where my daughter is. And you’re going to question him. Fine.’ She leaned on the desk, stared straight at Franks. ‘But look at the state he’s in. Mentally. Emotionally. You’re going to get nowhere. You’re going to need a psychologist. One who’s familiar and up to speed with what’s going on. And where are you going to get one at this time of night?’

  It was Franks’s turn to say nothing.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Apart from the one standing next to you.’

  Franks crossed his arms. Set his jaw. It made his features look even more bull-like.

  ‘Besides,’ said Marina, ‘I couldn’t go home and sleep. You know that.’

  He sighed. ‘Yes. All right. But on your own head be it.’

  Marina managed a small, tight smile. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And if this all comes back on us, I’ll tell them it was your fault. That you talked me into it with your … psychologist’s ways.’

  Despite the situation, her smile widened. ‘My psychologist’s ways?’

  Franks was reddening. ‘You know what I mean. Twisting my words and all that.’

  ‘Fine.’ She went back to looking at Tyrell, but a new thought struck her. ‘Oh. Another thing.’

  ‘Oh God … ’

  ‘My brother. He’s … God knows where. Somewhere in this building. Can we let him go?’

  Franks shook his head. ‘He was charged with taking part in an illegal activity … ’

  ‘He was helping me to catch the woman who had my daughter. And that’s not why you were there in the first place.’

  Another sigh from Franks. ‘Fine. Right. Yes. He’s an asset to the community and a boon to the force. Let him go. Right.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They both looked once again at Tyrell. Marina took a deep breath. Another. She turned to Franks. ‘Ready?’

  He stood up. ‘Let’s go.’

  93

  A my’s head was pounding. The pain sharp, intense, almost blinding. But she wasn’t going to stop. She couldn’t stop. Not yet.

  The child was screaming. Screaming … screaming … screaming …

  ‘Shut up! Shut up, you little brat.’

  Amy pulled the child along by her hair, legs kicking and flailing trying to keep up, trying to walk. Failing.

  She looked round, wanting somewhere to put the kid, keep her quiet, shut her up for a while. Because there was still a chance for all this to work out. She just had to think bigger, be bolder, that was all.

  The kid kept screaming, wanting its mother, trying to pull away.

  Amy turned, twisted the kid by her hair. The kid screamed all the more.

  ‘Oh God, I’ve had enough of you … ’

  She backhanded her across the face.

  The kid’s eyes widened in pain and surprise. Then the screaming started again, louder even than before.

  This was no good. This had to stop. She needed peace and quiet. She needed to be able to think.

  She looked round the house once more. It was falling apart, almost before her eyes. Just how they’d wanted it, just how they had left it. But it had taken longer than they thought it would. She didn’t know how it made her feel being back inside. She had thought it would be strange, with ghosts haunting every room, behind every door. Triggers for memories everywhere.

  But it wasn’t like that. Probably because the house was so dilapidated, so ruined, she found it hard to associate it with the home she used to know. This could be any crumbling old mansion. Any falling-apart Scooby-Doo haunted house.

  But still she walked through it, room by room, familiarising herself with the layout, checking everything was still the same, as she had done when she had last been there.

  The house’s footprint was the same. But things had started to rot, collapse. Curtain rails had fallen, the curtains on them now rotted away to near-cobwebs. Here and there the floorboards had given way. The green and black of damp and mildew clung to the walls, growing, consuming. She touched things that came away in her hand.

  Other people had been living there. Tramps, judging by the old newspapers, empty bottles. And the smell. Like someone had died there. Or had lived there on their way to dying. And rats. She could hear them, scurrying about everywhere. Unhappy at having their habitat invaded.

  And still the kid screamed.

  Then Amy had an idea. She smiled. Perfect.

  She dragged the screaming kid towards the back of the house. Found the right room. It was still there. The trapdoor. Not letting go of the kid’s hair, she knelt down, pulled. The wood was warped and didn’t want to give, but she kept at it. Eventually, with a huge cry and a pain that went all the way up her arm, the trapdoor opened. Still kneeling, she bent down, stared inside. The stairs looked rotten, about to give way. And she couldn’t see the floor for water. She leaned further in. The wall was still there, only just holding. And the water was only ankle deep. Perfect.

  ‘You want to play hide and seek?’ she said to the kid, a cruel smile on her face. ‘Do you?’ />
  The kid didn’t answer. Amy doubted she would know what answer to give.

  ‘Doesn’t really matter,’ Amy said, and hauled the kid over the side into the cellar.

  She kept screaming until the trapdoor came down.

  Amy stood up. Turned, walked away.

  The kid’s screams had disappeared. Become just another one of the house’s noises. Creaking and groaning and scuttling and scurrying.

  The silent screaming from the past.

  And the present.

  94

  Jessie opened her eyes, but it was still dark. She was on her back, a cold, hard floor beneath her. She tried to roll over, get up. Pain shot through her arm, stopping her. She flopped back, gasping for breath.

  She remembered going to the aid of Helen Hibbert. Being attacked by … God knew who. Some huge grey mountain. He had hurt her arm. She was sure it was broken. And then … nothing. Blackness. Then here.

  She felt around with her good arm. The floor was metallic. Heavy. She shivered. And became aware of movement. Someone – or something – on the floor also. Right next to her.

  ‘Huh-hello … who’s there?’

  ‘Me, ma’am,’ came a faint voice.

  She let out the breath she had been unconsciously holding. ‘Deepak … you OK?’

  ‘I … I think so, ma’am. Just … headache. Nothing seems to be broken.’

  ‘Lucky you … ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My arm … ’

  ‘Hello?’ Another voice. Female. Scared.

  ‘Helen Hibbert,’ said Deepak. ‘Is that you? Are you in here with us?’

  ‘Yes … yes, it’s me.’ Her voice small, hesitant. Terrified.

  ‘You OK?’ asked Jessie.

  ‘I … I think so … ’

  ‘Good.’ Jessie tried to get up once more. Failed. Flopped back again, gasping in pain. She looked round, trying to get her eyes accustomed to the dark. See if she could differentiate, grade the greys. She couldn’t.