The Disappeared

by Amy Lord

  Moving through the house, I began to strip off my damp clothes, leaving them in piles on the floor. The air was cool; I felt goosebumps stir on my arms and chest. There was an old hooded top hanging on a hook on the wall. I pulled it on and wandered into the kitchen without bothering to switch on the light.

  I pulled a bottle of vodka out of the cupboard and unscrewed the cap. In the darkness I could see through the deep-cut windows, out across the gardens. They stretched away into the shadows. Stepping closer, I took a swig from the bottle.

  I stared out of the window for a long time, drinking straight vodka and thinking about her. It was slowly growing light by the time exhaustion hit me.

  Leaving the vodka in the kitchen, I went upstairs to take a shower. The discarded clothes stayed on the floor downstairs; the maid would collect them when she came in later that morning.

  When I eventually slid into bed, I was too tired even to dream.

  Thirteen

  The building looked different in the daylight. At night, it was intimidating: a prison that swallowed people whole. But there was something pathetic about it in the light. The sun picked out the sad state of the paintwork, grey flakes crumbling away to dust. The windows were streaked with dirt, a handprint smeared against one of the panes of glass.

  From the outside, the building looked abandoned. As far as the rest of the world knew, it was. When we took people inside late at night, they rarely re-emerged.

  My office wasn’t as large as the commander’s. I didn’t have a bank of computer monitors arranged for my viewing pleasure. What I did have was a single report waiting on my desk. It told me in great detail what my prisoner had said and done since the moment I left the room the previous night.

  After I had gone, he had been beaten for over an hour, resulting in several broken bones and a loss of consciousness. The duty physician was called to deal with a deep gash on his temple that bled profusely. He now had twelve stitches stretching across his forehead, in thick black nylon thread. These stitches, it was noted, would leave an ugly scar. I knew from experience that they would be painful to remove. At no point during any of this had the prisoner said anything coherent. He had, however, managed to mumble his wife’s name several times.

  I was distracted by the possibility of her presence. I couldn’t help but wonder how she felt this morning, what the world looked like without her husband.

  Shaking my head, I returned to the report. It informed me that the prisoner was permitted three hours’ sleep, before being woken. He had then been subjected to an hour with one of our interrogation specialists, who had several unpleasant tricks involving water.

  I tossed the report onto the desk. Somehow the desire for the interrogation room had drained away. Normally I approached the cells with a sense of determination, the knowledge that I would do whatever it took to force the truth out of whichever miserable specimen was waiting there. This was different. I couldn’t think of Professor Matthew Winter without thinking of his wife. I dragged my hand through my hair, tugging at the roots, trying to shock myself back to reality.

  It was no use delaying; I had my duties to carry out.

  A different soldier stood to attention at the cell door when I approached. ‘Sir.’ He saluted sharply and opened the door for me. I thanked him and went inside. The door swung shut, leaving me alone with the prisoner. But I knew that somewhere, someone would be watching.

  Matthew Winter was slumped forward, head lolling on his chest. The stitches were as ugly as I had imagined. They were uneven and pulled the skin too tightly. The doctors here weren’t used to fixing their patients.

  I took off my jacket and draped it across the chair in the corner. I placed my hat on top of it and slowly removed my tie. I rolled up my sleeves. All the while, he failed to make a sound.

  When I turned to face him, he was staring at me sideways, from the corner of his eye.

  ‘Good morning, Professor. And how are you this morning? Making the most of our hospitality, I hope.’

  His bloodshot eyes followed me across the room, narrow in that swollen face. Still he didn’t say anything.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ I smiled. There was no bed in the room, only that chair. His clothes were crumpled and covered in bodily fluids. He smelled awful. I had to remind myself that he had only been here one night.

  ‘I thought you might be ready to have a little chat. Nothing too serious, we’d just like to know the names of your co-conspirators, the people who supplied the contraband materials you were distributing.’

  On a normal day, if his face hadn’t been so mangled, he might have frowned. He opened his mouth, but whatever he was trying to say, the words emerged as nothing more than a croak. He swallowed painfully.

  I put my hands on either side of the chair and leaned in close to make out what he was saying.

  ‘Don’t know… you mean… what contraband?’

  His eyes bored into mine.

  I smiled. ‘Now Matthew.’ I turned away, casually readjusting my sleeves so they sat more comfortably on my forearms. ‘You don’t mind if I call you Matthew, do you?’

  I didn’t give him time to respond. I don’t think he could have summoned the energy to refuse me anyway.

  ‘You know full well that certain… texts… are not permitted. We’ve done our best to ensure that our university students have access to the best curriculum we can provide. Books that will develop their understanding of our great country and its history, its place in today’s world. We want them to have texts that challenge and provoke them, that teach them how to pursue a line of thought and make a sound argument. We want them to learn. But there are some books that would undermine that. They were written in a different time, when certain… attitudes… were acceptable. They aren’t relevant to our young people today. And we can’t have them corrupting our future, can we, Matthew?’

  He swallowed again.

  ‘Everyone has… freedom… to read. Books are…’

  He couldn’t finish the sentence. His words trailed off into a rattle in the back of his throat. He started to cough violently. I waited until he had finished.

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Professor. Books aren’t about “freedom”. Books are a tool for enhancing the First General’s message and they should only be used as such.’

  His breath was a sharp gasp. ‘Poetry. It was poetry. Beautiful…’

  I snorted. ‘So you risked your life and everything in it for some poetry? I don’t believe that.’ I closed in on him again. ‘You had an agenda. And you had help. Tell me who was helping you.’

  But he was gone. His breathing grew laboured and his eyes began to roll. I couldn’t tell if he was faking. I slapped him hard across the face but his head only swung loosely sideways. I slapped him again. He didn’t react.

  With a sigh, I straightened up and began to roll down my sleeves neatly. I called for the guard. He hustled into the room and stood to attention, awaiting my orders.

  ‘Have someone keep an eye on the Professor here. It’s time we took a little field trip.’

  *

  His office at the university was piled high with books. I had never seen so many all in one place, even in the days before. It was like he was building his own library. I spent a long time going through the titles, as my men waited impatiently in the corridor, more used to gathering prisoners than reading material.

  So much of it was banned. I don’t know how he could have got hold of it all. There was even a copy of The Call of the Wild. I remembered my grandfather reading it to me as a child. We would escape into the story whenever I stayed with him, when my dad was too drunk to know, or care, where I was.

  Some of the books were decades out of print. Others had been purged on the orders of the First General. It was possible that a few copies remained, but the cost would have been exorbitant. There was no way someone on a lowly professor’s salary could have got hold of such a thing. Not without help.

  I was about to call for the bag squad
when I saw it. There was a photograph of her on the desk. It was a family portrait; she stood beside her husband, an arm wrapped around a young girl who I assumed was their daughter. I vaguely recalled seeing something about a child in his file.

  Picking up the frame carefully so I wouldn’t disturb the contents of his desk, I removed the picture, folding it so that only her face was visible. I tucked it into my pocket and shoved the frame into a drawer.

  Straightening my jacket, I went to the door and called the waiting soldiers into the room.

  ‘Pack up the books.’

  They looked at me blankly for a moment.

  One of them piped up, ‘All of them, sir?’

  ‘Yes, all of them. Find some boxes and get them in the van, we’re taking them back with us.’ I smiled. ‘They might be a useful way of getting some information from the professor.’

  I didn’t bother to wait as they scurried off in search of boxes and packing materials. I knew it would take them at least a couple of hours to complete the task. Impatient, I radioed for a driver to collect me from the university. As I waited for him to arrive, my fingers strayed to the picture in my pocket, its rigid folds tucked against my chest.

  *

  It was evening when the bag squad arrived back at headquarters with the books. Boxes and boxes of them, piled precariously high in the back of the van. It took almost an hour to unload them. For once, Duke was happy. There was no blood for him to clean up.

  ‘Take them out into the yard and pile the boxes up,’ I ordered.

  Matthew Winter was where I’d left him, drowsing upright in his chair, arms still cuffed. A lone soldier was stationed in the corner of the room, watching him emotionlessly.

  ‘The key.’ I held out my hand.

  He came forward, digging into his pocket. The metal was hot in my palm as I unfastened the cuffs. The prisoner wilted forwards, slipping onto the floor without the restraints to hold him up.

  ‘Get him on his feet.’

  The young soldier struggled with the dead weight. Winter’s arms flopped uselessly around, his eyes barely open. I shifted my feet, growing increasingly impatient.

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’ I stormed across the room. ‘Put him back in the fucking chair if you can’t get him on his feet.’

  I had to help. The soldier huffed loudly as we wrestled the professor’s unconscious body back into a sitting position. As soon as we let go, he began to slide down the seat of the chair, head slumped unnaturally far back.

  ‘Go and get the doctor.’ I turned to glare at the boy when he didn’t move quickly enough. ‘Don’t make me ask you again.’

  He returned minutes later with the doctor by his side: a wiry man with thick glasses and dead eyes.

  I nodded at the prisoner. ‘Wake him up.’

  ‘Of course.’ He was carrying a small leather bag. He placed it carefully on the floor and opened it. It was full of neatly organised jars and tubes, a stock of hypodermic needles. He selected a small glass vial with a rubber stopper. Approaching the unconscious man, he removed the plug and wafted the container under his nose.

  Matthew Winter woke with a start, a horrible gurgling noise bursting out of his mouth, hands clawing at his throat. It took a couple of minutes, but eventually his breathing began to slow and his eyes focused.

  ‘Professor, it’s about time. I’ve got something I think you’d like to see.’

  *

  They had the fires going by the time we came outside. His books were piled up high in the centre, lit torches lining the yard.

  I had the professor in chains, his wrists cuffed together, the skin chafing into blood. I held the shackles in my hand like a leash, yanking him along behind me.

  When he saw the books out there, he paled. Even in the growing darkness, I could see his skin change colour. I let him stagger closer to the mountain of books. The bag squad had evidently grown bored with arranging the boxes in tidy stacks; many of them were simply thrown in the direction of the original piles, boxes split, books spilling out across the pavement.

  One of the men struck a pose before the bonfire, reading Neruda aloud to a raucous crowd, his voice pitched high and falsely effeminate.

  The professor staggered closer, hands outstretched. The bag squad roared, their faces wild in the half-light. The poet closed the book and with a grin flung it to another man, the pages fluttering over the unfortunate prisoner’s head. He leapt for it clumsily but they whisked it out of his reach. His hands shook. He had to turn away.

  I allowed him to bend down and pick up one of the books. He stared down at the cover for a long time, one hand pressed against it. When he opened it, I could make out the scrawl of an inscription on the first page.

  He turned to me, the whites of his eyes enormous. ‘You wouldn’t…’

  He clutched the book against his heart.

  I surveyed the scene, watched the men as they watched us, waited for a reaction. The torches burned brighter.

  ‘We paid a visit to your office, Professor. I can’t believe you managed to fit all these books into that small room.’ I scratched my nose slowly. ‘A man of your position, you’d think they could find something a bit bigger than that cupboard. Maybe even something with a view.’

  He was staring at me. I could feel the heat coming off him. Surrounded by all these damn books, it was the first time he had even seemed alive.

  ‘Take a look around. They’re all yours. It took the lads all afternoon to get these packed up and back here. They wanted to make a nice display for you. They know how much you care about your books.’

  Their feet began to shuffle against the concrete. They weren’t even aware of it; this desire to come closer. They wanted blood. Blood and scorched ink.

  He grasped the book tighter, hunching himself protectively around it.

  ‘Please. You mustn’t.’

  I kept my face impassive. ‘You know what you have to do. Just the answers to a few questions.’

  I could swear I saw a tear roll slowly down his cheek.

  I gestured to one of the men. He plucked a torch from its holder, the fire dancing as he held it ready.

  ‘You choose.’

  The panic was written across his face.

  ‘There was no one else. Only me.’ He came towards me, his voice pleading. ‘Look at them, look at those books. There are worlds inside them like you’ve never known. Insights, emotions, stories. Knowledge. How could I not share them? How can you deprive the world of something so beautiful?’

  I smiled. Reaching out, I tugged the book from his arms.

  ‘You think that’s enough?’ I turned to the bag squad, coiled around us. ‘Light ’em up, boys.’

  They were like hyenas, flames leaping as they snatched up the torches, the light dancing across their ghoulish faces. They wanted to destroy something. They could smell blood.

  I threw his book onto the pyre.

  The first books caught, the burn flaring quickly. He cried out, charging forwards, trying to rescue his treasures from the flames. He clutched at anything that was within reach, piling them up against his chest until his arms were overflowing.

  I still held the chain in my hand. I yanked him backwards without warning and the books tumbled into the fire. He kept trying to reach for them. I could smell his flesh burning as he forced his hands into the flames.

  Most prisoners broke when you threatened their families, when you caused them physical pain. This one wept when we burned his books. I couldn’t keep the disdain from my face.

  It was a long time before he gave up, the bonfire raging. He seemed to crumble in on himself, sinking down onto the ground, staring deep into the heart of the fire. Nothing we did could rouse him. In his mind, he was the one who was burning.

  Fourteen

  After we burned his books, the professor wouldn’t speak to me for days. He turned completely inward, shutting himself away.

  More and more, I wanted to hurt him. My frustration grew deeper, more difficult to control
, but I could never reach him. It didn’t seem to matter what I did; the books were the breaking point.

  I couldn’t hurt him the traditional way, so I decided to find another way. I went to see her.

  But I’d be lying if I said that was the only reason. After the bonfire, I went home and removed the photograph from my pocket, smoothing it out as best I could. I sat and stared at it for an hour, nursing a whisky as I studied the shape of her face, the curve of her body.

  When I went to bed, I propped her picture up on my bedside table. I could feel her there, in the dark.

  All the way to their flat, I stared out of the car window, trying to concentrate on the details of the neighbourhood. Anything to distract me from the churning in my stomach.

  It was a long walk across the car park outside the building. I had the driver drop me off around the corner; I needed time to collect myself. In the lift, I took off my hat and tucked it under my arm, but it felt unnatural and stilted. I put it back on.

  By the time I reached her front door the hat had found its way back under my arm. As I waited for her to answer, I pulled it free and began to twist it in my hands, fingers running across the brim.

  When she opened the door my breath caught and I couldn’t speak. She stared at me in horror. There was fear in her eyes; I caught my own reflection there. I swallowed.

  ‘Mrs Winter.’ She stepped back and I followed her inside. ‘I thought I would stop by and see how you were.’ In daylight, the flat looked different. Without the stark glare of the overhead light, it didn’t look as shabby. The afternoon sunlight filtering through the curtains gave the room a warm glow.

  ‘You’re the one who…’ She didn’t finish. We both knew what she’d been about to say. I tried not to stare as she fussed with her hair and rubbed her cheeks, which flushed with colour. ‘How thoughtful of you…’