by Kevin Brooks
‘What if it’s not?’ I said.
‘Pardon?’
‘What if I look forward and it’s not all right? What if I’m right to be worried?’
‘Ah,’ she smiled reassuringly, ‘but it will be all right. You have to make it all right.’
‘But –’
‘Look, let me go over it again …’
I gave up in the end. Stopped listening. Tuned out. Yeah, right, yeah, I see, OK, great …
And that was that.
I don’t know what time it is now. Probably about 10 or 11 at night. To tell you the truth, I’m too scared to go outside and look at the clock. There’s a lot of bad stuff going on. Jenny is with me, and we’ve got the chair jammed up against the door.
Bird’s been at it all night – screaming, swearing, stomping about, jabbering away like a lunatic. I saw him earlier on, about an hour after he’d gone loopy with Jenny. I was heading down the corridor towards the bathroom and he was just standing in his doorway, watching my every step. His face was a horrible shade of red, almost purple, and his skin was stretched as tight as a drum.
‘Lye-nus,’ he drawled, his voice all slurred. ‘Hey, Lye-nus. Wanna see this?’ He grinned a horror-grin and tugged violently at the open wound on his neck. His fingers bloodied. He licked at them, jabbed a crooked finger at me, and started chanting: ‘Linus Linus Linus Linus …’
I walked away, my heart beating hard.
Fred came to see us later.
‘Stay in here,’ he said. ‘Keep the chair against the door. Bird’s having a whack attack.’
‘It’s the dog bite,’ I said. ‘He’s got blood poisoning or something.’
‘Yeah, I know. Just stay in here, OK? He’s been reading that stupid note. You know, the killing note. He just keeps reading it, over and over again. I don’t think he’ll actually do anything, but you never know.’
‘What about you?’
‘Me?’ Fred grinned. ‘You don’t have to worry about me. I’m invincible.’
‘Where’s Russell?’
‘Barricaded in his room.’
‘Anja?’
Fred shook his head. ‘She keeps trying to talk to Bird. She thinks she can reason with him. I told her it wasn’t safe, but she wouldn’t listen. You know what she’s like.’
An image of Anja suddenly flashed into my mind, the Anja of six weeks ago. A confident-looking woman dressed in a sheer white top, short black skirt, tights, and high heels. Late twenties, well-spoken, honey-blonde hair, fine nose, sculpted mouth, perfect teeth, silver necklace. It was a far cry from the Anja of today – skinny, wretched, shabby and dirty, holed up in a stinking white room …
The trouble with people like Anja is they have no sense of danger. They don’t know what fear is. They spend all their lives cocooned in comfort, and the only fears they ever know are the small ones – worries, anxieties, trifles. Anja has probably never had to be afraid before, not really afraid. And if you don’t know how to be afraid, you’re in trouble.
Fear serves a purpose.
It’s not just for watching spooky films or riding rollercoasters. It’s there for a reason.
It keeps us alive.
It’s getting on for midnight now. Fred’s gone. Jenny’s asleep. I’m sitting against the wall, listening to the expectant silence and wondering what’s going to happen. I know something’s going to happen. I can feel it in the air. It’s just a matter of what and when.
It’s quiet outside.
The silence hums.
It’s going to be a long night.
Wednesday, 14 March
So much has changed since I last wrote.
So much.
I don’t know where to start.
It’s unbelievable.
Maybe when I write it all down it’ll make some sense.
I’ll start at the beginning.
Tuesday morning, just gone eight o’clock.
The coldest day yet.
I’m lying on the floor, too cold to sleep, but too cold to get up. My stomach hurts. I raise my head and look around. Jenny’s bed is empty. I don’t know where she is. I suppose she’s in the bathroom, or maybe the kitchen. We still have a few tea bags left. She’s probably making a nice hot drink. I rest my head on the pillow and imagine cupping the tea in my hands, breathing in the steam, sipping the liquid heat …
And then the door opens and Jenny comes in, tea-less and agitated.
‘Get up, Linus!’ she says. ‘Quick, get up.’
‘Uh? What –?’
‘Come on, hurry!’
Her face is white and her eyes are shocked.
I sit up. ‘What’s the matter, Jen? What is it?’
‘Anja,’ she says, and her voice breaks into breathy sobs. ‘I don’t know … Fred said … she was … she’s …’
I get out of bed and put my arms round her. ‘Hey, come on. It’s all right –’
‘No it’s not.’
‘What’s the matter? Tell me, Jenny. What is it?’
She can’t speak, she’s too upset. She can’t stop crying. I hold her for a while then gently sit her down.
‘All right,’ I say. ‘You stay here, OK? I’ll go and see what’s happening. I won’t be a minute.’
I leave the room and shut the door. Down the corridor, outside Anja’s room, Fred and Russell are talking quietly. As I approach them, they stop talking.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask them.
They look at me with grim faces.
Fred says, ‘Where’s Jenny?’
‘In my room.’
He nods, then elbows Anja’s door open. ‘You’d better take a look.’
I go inside.
Anja is lying face up on the bed. Naked. Her throat is ringed with heavy bruising and her face is discoloured and swollen.
She’s dead. Strangled.
‘Shit,’ I say.
Fred and Russell come in and stand beside me.
Fred says, ‘I found her like that about ten minutes ago.’
I look around the room. It’s a mess. Sheets and pillows on the floor, dirty clothes all over the place, the bedside cabinet knocked over.
I shake my head, too numbed to know how I feel.
Russell puts his hand on my shoulder. It feels as light as a feather.
‘Where’s Bird?’ I say.
‘Here.’
I turn round. Bird is standing in the doorway. He’s barefoot and dressed in his suit. Underneath the suit he has a sheet wrapped around his chest. His head is tilted stiffly to one side, almost resting on his shoulder. He’s staring past me at Anja’s body, his eyes full of nothing.
I look questioningly at Fred. ‘What happened?’
He scratches his head and sniffs. ‘I don’t know. I was up until six this morning. Didn’t see anything. Didn’t hear anything.’
‘Then what? After six?’
‘I don’t know. I fell asleep.’
I look at Bird. ‘Did you do this?’
He doesn’t answer me.
‘Hey, Bird.’
He blinks and looks at me. ‘Hmm?’
‘Did you kill her?’
‘Did I what?’
‘Did you kill Anja?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’
He cricks his neck and twists his mouth into an unnatural smile. ‘Why would I kill her? She loved me.’ He grins, staring at me. ‘And besides, it’s not me who’s got a proh-per-pensity for vi-oh-lensss, is it? I mean, who’s the street-fighting man round here, eh? Is it me?’ He shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so, do you? I don’t think it’s me that goes round –’<
br />
Fred steps forward and hits him hard in the belly. Bird groans and sinks to the floor.
Next thing, we tie his hands with a belt. Then me and Fred wrap Anja’s body in a sheet and drag it out to the lift. It’s about eight-thirty now. The lift isn’t down yet, so we leave the body by the door.
Fred grabs hold of Bird and we go down the corridor and gather at the table. Bird has clammed up now. Hasn’t said a word since Fred hit him. His mouth is clamped shut and his jaw clenched tight. His face is alive with twitches. His skin is trembling.
‘You know,’ Russell says, ‘he probably didn’t know what he was doing. In the state he’s in, he’s not really accountable for his actions.’
‘So what?’ says Fred.
Russell shrugs. ‘I was merely saying –’
‘Well don’t.’
Russell looks like a living dead man. Colourless, frail, spiritless. There’s nothing left of him.
‘What are we going to do?’ I say.
No one answers.
I look at Bird, then at Russell. ‘How long has he got?’
‘Who?’
‘Bird. How long has he got?’
‘I don’t know,’ Russell says. ‘I’m not a doctor. I don’t even know what’s the matter with him.’
‘You said he was infected –’
‘No. I said as long as he doesn’t get infected he should be OK.’
‘But he’s not OK, is he? He’s sick and crazy.’
‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly. He may be suffering from some kind of personality disorder … his symptoms may be exacerbated by the pain and infection of the wound –’
‘I wish you’d shut up,’ says Fred.
We all lapse into silence.
At this point I’m still trying to get my head round what’s going on. I don’t understand it at all. The cold shock of death, this strange aftermath, full of confusion …
And as I’m thinking about that, something really strange starts happening to me. I suddenly find myself – or some weird part of myself – floating up out of my body … up, up, up … and when I get to the ceiling I kind of twist around, and then I’m looking down at the scene below. I’m looking down at four tattered figures slumped round a table. Four barely-human beings, all dirty and tired, with sunken eyes and sick-looking skin. I see a big man with thick brown hair and a raggedy beard. I see a skeletal old black man, his skin hanging loosely off his frame. I see a bloated man with his hands tied together, dressed in a lunatic suit, all crazy and twisted. And I see a boy, a pathetic-looking thing with ropy hair and junkie skin and the baggiest clothes in the world.
And I think to myself – what are these people doing?
Well, says a voice in my head, three of them are discussing the presumed act of the fourth. Three of them – a villainous drug addict, a dying man, and a vagrant kid – are discussing what to do about a purple-skinned fat man who they assume has murdered a rather distasteful woman.
And with that thought I float back down into my body just in time to realize that we’re all just sitting there, so wrapped up in our own futility, that we haven’t noticed Jenny coming out of my room and crossing over to the lift. We haven’t done anything to prevent her from seeing the sheet-wrapped corpse on the floor. And I hate myself for that.
I don’t hate myself for much, but I hate myself for that.
We’re all just sitting there, lost in our own sick heads, and poor Jenny’s standing alone with a dead body under a sheet.
And then the lift comes down.
G-dung, g-dunk, whirr, clunk, click, nnnnnnnnn … nnnnnnnnnnnnnn … g-dunk – mmm-kshhh-tkk.
I get up and go out into the corridor and my heart stops at the sight of Jenny stepping into the lift. She stoops down, picks something up, and steps out again holding a piece of paper. She reads it. Looks up, looks over at me, smiles awkwardly, then glances at the shape under the sheet, comes over to me, and hands me the sheet of paper. I see printed words.
I look at Jenny. ‘Are you all right?’
She nods.
‘You sure?’
She nods again.
I smile at her, then read the note.
It says:
LiES – mY TRUTH:
LiNUS sLAYEd thE lADy
I read it again. And again, and again. And all I can think is – what? WHAT? And then my brain kicks in and I think – shit, what am I going to do with this? Tear it up? Screw it into a ball and eat it? Or do I put my trust in the others? Russell, Fred, Jenny … do I have enough faith in them to trust me? Do they have faith in me? Do they trust me?
Of course they do.
Jenny follows me back to the table. We sit down and I pass the note to Russell. He reads it, looks at me, then passes the note to Fred. Fred reads it, looks at me, throws the note on the table.
‘Well?’ I say to no one in particular.
‘Well what?’ says Fred.
‘What do you think?’
‘About what?’
‘The note, for Christ’s sake. What do you think?’
‘What do you think I think?’
I shake my head.
He says, ‘It’s bollocks. Bullshit. You should be ashamed of yourself for even asking.’
A tingle rises in my throat.
But then Russell says, ‘Now, hold on a minute …’
And that’s when he starts jabbering on about stuff – justice, guilt, truth, innocence … the need for objectivity. At first I just assume there’s nothing to it, he’s just rambling. He’s confused, sick, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
‘We mustn’t jump to conclusions,’ he says. ‘We have to listen to all sides of the argument. We have to lay aside our emotions and limit ourselves to the facts. And we have to consider the words of a witness, even if we mistrust his intentions. We have a duty to consider his testimony –’
‘What witness?’ Fred says. ‘What are you talking about?’
Russell says nothing, just looks up slowly and points at the ceiling.
Fred frowns, not getting it.
I still don’t get it either, but then a worrying thought suddenly creeps into my head.
I look down at the note on the table.
LiES – mY TRUTH:
LiNUS sLAYEd thE lADy
‘Is this what you’re talking about?’ I ask Russell, picking up the note. ‘Is this what you mean by “the words of a witness”?’
Russell just looks at me, and it’s clear from his silence that I’m right.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Fred snorts, suddenly getting it. He glares at Russell. ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’
‘I’ve never been more serious in my life,’ Russell says.
Fred snorts again, shaking his head in disbelief.
Russell goes on. ‘Look, I’m not saying we have to believe His testimony –’
Fred laughs dismissively.
Russell remains calm. ‘Who else apart from the killer saw what happened?’
Fred shakes his head again. ‘This is ridiculous. Linus didn’t kill Anja, for Christ’s sake.’
‘I’m not saying he did. All I’m saying is …’
As Russell and Fred carry on arguing (and Jenny slopes off quietly to my room), I just sit there in silence, too miserable and bewildered to do anything. I know that Russell’s lost his mind, and I know he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept. He’s doubting me. Sick or not, he’s doubting me. And that hurts. So I just sit there, not really listening to him any more, just trying to empty myself of all the bad stuff I’m feeling …
Maybe he does know what he’s doing?
Or at least, he thinks he does.
Maybe he thinks he’s trying to help you?
And then I start thinking about the other note, the killing note –
lISTEN – mY WORD:
hE WHO KILLS aNOTHER SHALL BE fREe
– and I remember when Russell tried to persuade me to go along with it. All you have to do, he’d told me, is ‘Kill me or Bird, or both of us if you want, and He’ll let you go.’ And now I’m thinking that maybe the reason Russell is trying to convince Fred and The Man Upstairs that I killed Anja is because he thinks it’ll get me out of here.
In his twisted state of mind, he actually believes that Anja’s killer will be freed, and he thinks (in his madness) that if he can persuade both Fred and The Man Upstairs that I’m the murderer The Man Upstairs will let me go.
But, of course, The Man Upstairs knows it wasn’t me. He sees everything, he knows everything. He is the only witness. And He’s not going to let anyone go anyway.
But Russell can’t see that. His brain is all messed up, his reasoning has gone. He’s lost it.
But I don’t want to say that.
I don’t want to say to Fred, ‘Hey, don’t listen to this crazy old man. He’s sick in the head. His brain is mangled.’
No, I don’t want to say that. It wouldn’t be right.
So I just sit there, not hurting quite so much any more, and wait for Russell to talk himself out.
After a long twenty minutes or so, he begins to lose track of what he’s saying. His twisted logic becomes even more twisted, he starts getting really confused – mumbling, muttering, rambling incoherently – and eventually he ends up just sitting there, staring at the table, his mouth hanging open and his poor face lost in bewilderment.
‘I’ll take him back to his room,’ I tell Fred.
Fred nods.
I take Russell back to his room, get him into bed, then go back to the table.