Wavewalker

by Stella Duffy

  “Wonderful. Just what I need in my life. Another pushy bloody American.”

  “Yeah fine, we can deal with your insults later, where’s this studio?”

  “Why?”

  Grant leant over Caron and snarled into her face.

  “Because you’ve very stupidly given the keys to Jasmine who, just by chance, wants to kill Max and what’s more, you gave her those keys three days ago, so there is now every chance that she has kidnapped Max and probably killed him yesterday and perhaps it might be a nice idea to get there before the body starts decomposing. After all, that won’t look so nice on your famous front pages either, will it?”

  Caron perceptibly sobered up a few notches and sat up straighter, whispering, as much to herself as to the others,

  “I’m sorry, my lover died, my Deb. I haven’t, I mean…”

  Grant turned away from her in disgust.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, don’t start again. She’s dead, she died years ago and you’re behaving like you did too. Get over it.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Obviously not. But if you don’t…”

  Saz interrupted him then.

  “Grant, I hardly think this is the time to start a grief therapy session.”

  Grant walked to the door, as far away from Caron as he could get.

  “You’re right. So, Mrs North, where is this studio?”

  Caron was draining the last of the bottle, tears falling down her cheeks and into the glass she held to her lips. Saz put out her arm to steady her.

  “I’m sure it’s not that bad, Grant’s a little distressed himself. I’m sure Jasmine just wants to scare Max. Why don’t you just tell us where the studio is and at least then we’ll be able to see if they’re there or not, OK?”

  Caron began to cry again then stopped herself, her blubbering turning into a tiny hysterical laugh.

  “It’s just round the corner, sort of. It’s a warehouse – was, they’re renovating the building again. Still can’t sell the flats. My father bought it for me as an investment – and a safety valve. My luxury hideaway apartment. A nice safe place to bring my not so safe friends. Or ‘lady friends’ as he charmingly puts it. Since Deb I’ve just used it as a studio and a storage place. It’s really close. Only a few streets away, you’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  wavewalker

  So this is what it feels like. Strange. I am not god or devil but feel mortal, shaking. I feel very flesh.

  Perhaps that is right.

  Perhaps it is right that I feel my flesh just as he feels his, railing against it.

  He will not believe me if I tell him he should slip into it gently, he cannot believe me now, I am his midwife and he hates me for the pain of the birthing.

  Mother, I am your daughter who will give birth to my father into the true waters.

  Is this what you want? Are you content?

  Will you sleep now?

  Let me go, I am tired of this and want it over.

  I expected exhilaration and feel only exhaustion.

  I want it done.

  CHAPTER 39

  Saz and Grant made it to the warehouse in about seven minutes flat, Grant running ahead to Saz’s shouted instructions. It was just after eleven o’clock at night and Oxford Street was filled with summer revellers, tipping out of the pubs and down into the tube. Saz lost Grant briefly around the Tottenham Court Road end of the street and then found him again waiting breathlessly for her outside the Dominion. They slowed now to a less conspicuous fast walk and followed a couple of back streets, startlingly empty in contrast, to the old building covered in signs detailing the “luxury conversions” going on in the floors beneath Caron’s studio. It was tall for the area, seven storeys high and old, though it had obviously been renovated once before in the boom eighties, the excesses of chrome and glass gleaming dully in the orange night glow.

  Caron had given them her spare set of keys and they let themselves in through the metal door in the side alley. After listening to the silence for a few minutes they began to climb, both panting with the effort of climbing seven sets of stairs with held breath. They let themselves into the back room of Caron’s studio, Saz gritting her teeth as each knotch of the key sounded like another thunderous metal clang in the lock. The long, narrow back room was lit by the skylight from above, cloud reflected streetlight throwing pale orange across the floor and walls. They could clearly see the small table, with electric kettle and coffee-making materials, a few old newspapers and magazines, a coffee mug sitting on them. Other than the littered table, the room contained a sink and a bench running the length of the other wall, laden with lumps of clay covered with wet cloths and chunks of discarded wood and stone. On the wall above the bench was a range of about twenty different types of chisels, hammers and a variety of stone-cutting drill bits, from a tiny one no bigger than a sewing needle to a couple the size of a fist. Grant crossed the room and helped himself to one of the larger chisels, Saz was right behind him.

  “What the fuck’s that for?” she hissed.

  “You’re English, I assume you don’t have a gun, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well I don’t intend to deal with her with nothing to protect me.”

  “It isn’t necessarily Jasmine we need protecting from.”

  “Whoever, there’s something about sharp, cold steel that’s very comforting.”

  Grant slipped the chisel inside the front of his zipped up jacket, patting it into place. They turned to go out of the room and into the main hallway leading to the studio. As they did so, Saz ran her hand along the edge of the table and felt the heat from the kettle, she lifted the coffee cup to her lips and tasted it, the liquid was very strong and still quite warm.

  “She can’t have gone far, the coffee’s still hot.”

  Grant turned from the door where he was listening intently to the silence outside the room.

  “Is it sweet?”

  “What?”

  “Is it sweet? Jasmine drinks coffee with two sugars. My mom tried real hard to get her to give up but she wouldn’t even think about it.”

  “I don’t think so, I’d have noticed.”

  Saz tried the coffee again and made a face, it was strong and bitter, not a hint of sugar.

  “No. Tastes like shit anyway, but no sugar.”

  “Good, then she must have made it for Max.”

  “Unless she has given up sugar after all.”

  Grant wheeled around and snarled at Saz.

  “I’d like to maintain my own illusions, futile though they may be, if you don’t mind. Just for a few moments, OK?”

  Saz glared at Grant, standing a good six inches above her and looming down with his controlled fury. She thought back to the last week in San Francisco and how charming he’d seemed then, and the huge gulf between that intelligent, affable Californian boy and this angry, violent man pushed her a little further than she really meant to go. She spat back at him.

  “That’s fine with me, just as long as your illusions don’t put me in any danger, you feel free to go on dreaming as long as you want. Now can we just get on with this please? You may be attached to Maxwell North by some sort of warped umbilical cord, but I’ve got a lover I’ve hardly seen for a week, a family, my work and a life to lead out there and I’d actually like to get on with it as soon as possible. Preferably both sane and alive, in that order.”

  She crept out into the hall and Grant followed her silently. Saz almost immediately regretted her outburst, locating Grant as yet another mixed-up kid in her mental classification system and, finding herself feeling sorry for his wounded feelings, she turned to apologize to him.

  “I’m sorry Grant, I’m just on edge. I don’t make a habit of trawling through warehouses looking for murderers and madwomen in the middle of the night. I apologize.”

  Grant looked at her, his face impassive and set.

  “Apology accepted Saz, you can’t be expected to be able to completely c
ontrol yourself in moments of stress, you haven’t had the training I have. When this is over, I’ll take you through the Control Process Patterns if you like.”

  Saz bit her tongue and whispered back to him.

  “Let’s talk about it when we’ve found Max, all right?”

  Max had tried placating Jasmine, reasoning with her, cajoling her. It was all no good, his words held no value in her mind. Jasmine was determined that her plan – her Process as she kept calling it – was to be put into operation. Indeed, that it had been put into operation the moment Max allowed Michael to kill himself. As she centred him in the big studio – tied up on the floor, hands and feet together in a foetal imitation – and placed the various objects around him, she explained what he had done and what she now had to do.

  “Look, you took his life, right?”

  “No. I allowed him to kill himself. He was very unhappy. In some countries it’s almost legal you know. Holland, for example…”

  “When people are extremely physically ill. I know. I do know about the Netherlands.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Only Michael wasn’t extremely physically ill.”

  “He was emotionally.”

  “What are these excuses? You know you helped him kill himself, you said that during your Process.”

  “Yes.”

  “And my mother and John?”

  Max looked up at her.

  “They were endangering the Process, they were threatening to blackmail me.”

  “So you killed them.”

  “They died too, yes.”

  “That other woman, the Australian woman?”

  Max sighed, “Yes, yes. We both know all this, I’ve said so. I’ll tell anyone you like, but you must realize that it won’t do any good. You’ll still be charged with kidnap and grievous bodily harm after what you’ve put me through and you’ll still have no proof, you can’t do anything to me, I’m too important to the system. You’re the one they’ll say is mad.”

  Jasmine ignored him, continuing to place the small boxed items all around him.

  “And that English woman? The rich one – your client?”

  “What about her?”

  “Her too? You killed her too, right?”

  “She drowned herself.”

  “Because of you. And in the Process you say we have to acknowledge our past deeds.”

  “Yes, and then put them away, not carry on prolonging the agony like this.”

  Jasmine smiled, opening the lid on the last box.

  “Don’t worry, it’s not going to last much longer.”

  She went to sit beside Max, taking his head in her hands she turned him to face her, he could smell the spilt petrol on her clothes as she stroked his forehead gently and explained.

  “This is my Process Max. This is my Process to free you, and me; both of us will be free after this. She wants us back, wants her family back, the one you stole from her, the one you stole her from. I’ve wanted this for so long, wanted our family. She is close now, can you feel her? She is so happy with me, I am her baby and I have done very well. We are all together now.”

  Max started to speak but she held her hand tight over his mouth, he could taste the strong petrol alcohol, making him gag. Jasmine kept her hand on him until he was still again.

  “You know they never took me to the house, the burnt house? I wanted them to, but they would never walk me through it because I was only a little girl. But everyone wants the truth, wants to know what really happened. Were there screams? Did they scream when they died? When you burnt my mother to death, what did she say?”

  Max shook his head.

  “It wasn’t like that. They didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t want to cause them actual pain.”

  Jasmine smiled.

  “Lucky them.”

  Jasmine got up and went to the circle of boxes. Around each she had spilt just a little petrol, running in a thin trickle to where Max lay. The boxes were small and wooden, about six inches square and each one contained a single candle, curled honeycomb wax made into a short fat candle the size of a child’s fist. She took a long taper from her bag and lit each candle, very carefully, taking her time. As she lit the fourth candle they both heard a door slam far downstairs, Max started to shout and Jasmine ran over to him, screamed at him to shut up, holding the taper close enough to his face to sear the rough, dry skin on his cheek.

  “Be quiet! She’s not here for you. I need a witness. She’ll come up soon enough. Just wait, we can’t rush this, everything must be perfect.”

  Five minutes later, all the candles were lit and Jasmine waited by the studio door, a box of matches in her hand, ready to let in her audience.

  Saz was trying to locate the right key when the door was pulled open for them. Jasmine stood in the doorway, her clothes stinking of some sort of petrol or alcohol and a box of matches in her hand.

  “Hi! Welcome to my show.”

  Jasmine’s face fell when she realized Saz wasn’t alone.

  “What the fuck is he doing here?”

  But Grant had looked past Jasmine to Max, lying on the floor in the semi-darkness, lit only by the faint city light from the skylight and the six candles placed in a circle and was already moving towards him.

  “Max? Is that you?”

  Jasmine ran in front of him, jumping inside the candle circle.

  “Back off Grant. You shouldn’t be here. This is between Max and me.”

  Saz moved forward more slowly, very aware that the liquid she was walking through, which was no doubt ruining her favourite pair of DMs, was probably the same flammable liquid that Jasmine smelt so strongly of.

  “I’m sorry Jasmine. Grant was worried about Max. He wanted to help.”

  Jasmine looked up witheringly at Saz from where she was crouching above Max.

  “I’m not mad, Ms Martin, so you don’t need to humour me. And I know exactly what Grant wants. Looks like he’s charmed you just like he tried to charm me back at the House. I’m very well aware that Grant has been jealous of me from the day he met me, wanting himself to be Max’s child. He thought that fucking me would be a way to get to Max, but he was wrong there, weren’t you Grant?”

  “It was sex Jasmine, just sex. I tried to tell you that. But you never listened, you’ve always been too obsessed with yourself to see what anyone else was doing.”

  “I saw you. You cheated me. You’re as bad as him.”

  Grant started to walk towards Jasmine.

  “No. I’m better than him.”

  Max watched from the floor as Grant moved slowly towards them. He looked momentarily back at Saz, a flicker of recognition across his face. He started to speak to her but then stopped to watch Grant. Grant was bending down until he was level with Jasmine, just an arm’s reach from the hand where she still held the box of matches. He carried on talking, and Max willed himself to stay awake, the caged fear instinct having started to shut down his body’s natural flight reactions. He concentrated on Grant’s voice and felt himself becoming proud of this boy’s technique, his mellifluous voice soft and even, his tone sensible and firm but also ever so slightly pleading.

  “I didn’t cheat you Jasmine. You’re talking crazy. I don’t want to be Max’s son or anything else. That’s not why I tried to get close to you, to be honest, you were just a fuck, OK? But now I do think you should let Max go and then we’ll all just take off. You, me, Sarah and Max. We’ll go away, we’ll talk this through and we’ll make it all better. I can sort this out. Max has fucked up too badly, but I haven’t. I can fix this. I’m sure you’re hurt Jasmine, I know you’ve had a lot of pain, but this won’t solve things.”

  Saz watched Grant, he was level with Jasmine and Max, just an arm’s reach from the hand where she still held the matches. He carried on talking, his voice soft and even. Jasmine stared at him in the candlelight, smiling.

  “You can’t Process me Grant. I know all the tricks. I know what you’re doing. You can’t talk me out of th
is. This is my Process. Mine. I made it. Look – one candle for each of the dead, one extra for Max, and fire for the fire that cremated my mother. This is the cleansing. This will save us all from him. You can’t change it, you can’t talk me better.”

  Grant laughed, placing his hand on his chest in a gesture of innocence.

  “Jasmine, sweetheart, I have no intention of talking you better. None whatsoever.”

  Saz stared, shocked that she hadn’t realized sooner what would happen, what Grant meant to do. She looked on as, in what seemed like slow motion, Grant moved his hand into his jacket and pulled out the chisel, its sharpened blade catching a little dull light from the candles, briefly reflecting before he dug it into her, her chest heaving and then caving in under the blaze. Saz heard a soft thud and the sound of a gentle slap as the metal made contact with the flesh. She lunged forward to stop Grant but the four slow motion steps she made to get to him took too long, Jasmine was already dying, blood gushing from the deep wound in her face where he’d stabbed her the second time and pouring more slowly from the first jagged hole in her chest. Her blood was on the ground, mingling with the petrol and she fell, crumpled into the same shape her father made beside her. Saz grabbed Grant’s hand, knocking the bloody chisel flying, she was screaming now, they all were. Max’s screams barely audible through his dry, swollen mouth. Saz saw Jasmine fall, her hands clutching at her head and chest, feeling and motion in her lower limbs already gone. The chisel flew against one of the candles, knocking it over and almost instantly the floor around them was swimming in flames. Grant scrabbled over Jasmine’s body, her left hand still flailing, and reached for Max. He picked Max up and, stumbling, Max’s pyjama bottoms on fire, he tried to carry him to the door. As he did so he kicked Jasmine’s legs out of the way and her petrol wet clothes caught the flames around them. Saz watched Jasmine’s hand saw the air and then crumple beside her, she pulled at Jasmine’s head, clumps of hair coming away in her hands and then retreated as the flames took over the whole of Jasmine’s body, streaming up from her legs, covering the torso and the already closed eyes.