The Sweetest Poison

by Jane Renshaw

  He squeezed her close to his side. ‘Okay?’

  She threw herself away from him, her feet, still tied together, going from under her, and she’d have fallen if he hadn’t held her up, half-lifting, half-dragging her to the door.

  But the twine around her ankles had shifted, just a little: slackened enough that she’d be able to shuffle one foot past the other if she got the chance to make a break for it.

  ‘Have you peed your pants? Helen, Helen. Where’s your dignity?’

  ‘What would you know about dignity?’ She could only move her arms from the elbows. Useless.

  Across the landing to the little box bedroom where Suzanne used to sleep when she stayed over. There was a single bed in it still, with a bare mattress, and against the other wall a stack of boxes. Nothing she could grab.

  They were going to push her out of the window.

  She was going to smash down on the concrete, where she and Suzanne used to draw hopscotch squares with yellow chalk. Onto her head? Her face? Would she feel it?

  Suzanne was standing by the window. ‘We should untie her feet and take those wrappings off her.’

  ‘We can do that later.’

  ‘But they can tell, can’t they, forensics people, how someone fell? From their injuries? They might be able to tell that her feet were tied when she fell, and her arms.’

  ‘Crazy suicides probably fall in all sorts of weird ways. Our problem’s going to be this.’ He pointed a finger at Helen’s forehead. ‘Bad girl, Su.’

  Suzanne shrugged. ‘We could leave the knife up here – like she did it herself.’

  ‘Looks like we’ll have to. Okay. Get the window open.’

  ‘It’s painted shut.’

  Moir pushed Helen onto the bed. She fell awkwardly, her head cracking on the headboard. He went to the window. The lower part shot up under his hands, leaving a gaping space through which pine-scented air flooded the little room.

  ‘Painted shut?’

  ‘Must just have been stiff.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well it wouldn’t open before.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘She doesn’t know anything about my new life. She doesn’t know anything about you. We don’t need to kill her. I don’t want to be Suzanne Clack again. God knows why I thought I did –’ She stopped. ‘So we can just forget it.’

  ‘Kid down there’s dead, remember?’ He put a gloved hand to Suzanne’s cheek. ‘And you think that face isn’t going to end up on every front page? You think it’s not getting top billing on the News? On Crimewatch? Murder victim who’s upper class, disabled, sixteen years old, and looks like that? You think the boys in blue aren’t going to be put under just a little bit of pressure to catch the nasty murderer, if we don’t supply them with one?’

  Suzanne looked from him to the open window.

  ‘I don’t think having second thoughts...’ He trailed his hand down her cheek, her neck, her arm. ‘At this stage...’ He pulled her to him. ‘Is an option, Su.’

  Suzanne’s hand whipped into his face and he howled.

  But he didn’t let her go. As she screamed, as Helen screamed, he lifted her, his strong arms under her knees, and in one swift movement he had her up and over the sill, dragging her frantic hands from his shoulders, throwing her out and over.

  69

  Even over her own screaming, over Suzanne’s, she heard the impact – impacts, one after the other, as if more than just one person had fallen.

  ‘High enough, eh?’ Moir turned back to Helen, one hand to his left eye.

  Helen’s stomach clenched and its contents shot out of her mouth over the mattress and the floor. She coughed, and retched again, and squirmed herself to the edge of the bed. She screamed:

  ‘Help! Please help us!’

  He shut the window.

  She screamed until her throat was raw, until he came over to the bed and grabbed her by the hair and pushed her head down on the mattress. She couldn’t breathe. Nothing mattered but getting air into her nose, her lungs – getting her nose and mouth up off the mattress. Not Suzanne, not Damian, not Hector. Nothing else. But he was on top of her, pressing down on the back of her head. She bucked her body, she wriggled, she thrashed her head to the side, she pushed up against him – and finally he released her.

  Air tore into her lungs, and she gulped it, greedy for it, and when he smiled at her – oh God, she hated herself. She hated herself for giving him a little smile in return. For being grateful for the air she was breathing.

  For knowing she would do anything to live.

  The eyelids of his left eye were already swelling above and below, reducing the eye itself to an angry red slit. He touched it, and then reached out and touched her cheek with his gloved finger, like he’d done Suzanne’s.

  She made herself not flinch away. She made herself smile.

  ‘More convincing this way, isn’t it? Damian gets in the middle of the struggle between the two of you – is tragically, accidentally killed. You top her and then yourself.’ He brought his face close to hers, his breath hot on her cheek.

  She pulled her head back. ‘They’ll be able to tell that Damian – that he wasn’t... Here.’

  ‘That he wasn’t killed here? True. The first fight happened at the Mains. Suzanne runs up here – you follow, push her from the window – or does she fall? Then back you go to the Mains, load Damian into the boot, drive back up here to get Suzanne’s body – But then it hits you. What you’ve done.’ He grimaced, and touched his eye again, and looked at the window.

  He got off the bed and left the room, and she heard his steps crossing the landing; a tap running in the bathroom.

  She had to be quick.

  She wriggled off the bed and upright, pushing her knees against the mattress to balance herself. Then she started to shuffle, as quickly and silently as she could, one foot past the other to the door. It wasn’t properly shut. She heeled it open and then she was out on the landing, straining to hear – there were sounds from the bathroom, but the tap wasn’t running any more. He would hear her on the stairs. Unless –

  She leant back against the wall and slid down it onto her bum. Now she could wheech herself along the floor, using her feet in front and hands behind. At the stairs she dropped her feet over the edge and pushed herself up onto them, lowered her bum down to the next step, and again, getting into a silent rhythm, down to the half-turn, sliding over it, onto the last flight of steps and then she was on her feet, shuffling through the kitchen to the back door, turning to let her hands get at the doorknob, manoeuvring to turn it.

  To pull it.

  The door didn’t move.

  Locked. Of course it was. And so would the front door be. Moir must have a set of keys; maybe they’d got Uncle Jim’s from the Mains at some point, and had them copied.

  She’d have to get out of a window.

  She shuffled across the kitchen, trying to stop her breath rasping in her throat. Trying to hear what he was doing upstairs.

  What would she do even if she did manage to get out of a window? She couldn’t run. He would find her.

  She had to cut off the twine. The bandage.

  A knife.

  The cutlery drawer used to be the one by the Aga. There used to be a big sharp knife in there at the back.

  Stupid. That knife wouldn’t be there any more.

  She backed up to the drawer and eased it open; turned to look inside.

  Tea towels.

  The next one down had a box of matches, string, a roll of binliners –

  Hands grasped her shoulders from behind and she screamed. A hand came over her mouth and she bit it.

  ‘Shh,’ said Hector. ‘Shh. It’s all right.’

  70

  He turned her to look at him. ‘Where’s Damian?’

  She couldn’t say it.

  ‘Moir – he’s upstairs,’ she choked out instead. ‘Suzanne – he pushed her – from the window –’

  ‘She’s dead,’ he
said. ‘Where’s Damian?’

  He was perfectly calm, perfectly normal, as if he was just mildly curious about his brother’s whereabouts. But he had tightened his grip on her arms, excruciatingly, sending pain shooting down to her elbows.

  She pressed back against the worktop.

  ‘Where is he?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Helen.’

  Her arms jerked under his hands. ‘In the car. In the boot.’

  He let her go, and she swayed, and would have fallen if she hadn’t been hanging on to the worktop.

  He was gone.

  She shuffled after him, across the wide expanse of the kitchen; into the gloom of the hall, in time to see Hector yank open the front door and a shape move out from the shadow of the stair.

  She screamed.

  The shape and Hector merged.

  They fell together into the wall. Bounced off it. Spun round against the banisters.

  Something clattered to the flagstones and skittered away from them.

  The knife.

  Helen shuffled forwards. Someone, not her, yelled out, and they crashed again into the banisters. The whole staircase shook.

  She fell painfully to her knees, to her bottom. Hector had Moir pushed up against the stairs but Moir was twisting an arm free to punch at Hector. Her hands, scrabbling behind her, had located the knife, and then she had it tight in her right hand, but with feet and hands tied she couldn’t get up.

  A crack, like a branch snapping.

  Hector stepped back and turned away. Moir flopped to the floor, his head lolling sideways, and lay still.

  Hector had gone.

  She let go the knife. Wriggled away from Moir to the wall; got her feet under her and propped herself on the wall; forced herself upright.

  Moir didn’t move.

  She shuffled away and out of the wide open front door – out into the light, to the strip of concrete that ran between the house and the grass.

  To Suzanne.

  There was blood. Suzanne lay with her arms flung above her head, one leg caught under her, the other pointing outwards in its high-heeled boot. She looked like she was dancing. But there was blood, in a pool at her head.

  ‘Suzanne.’ She dropped sideways, onto her hip, but then she had to turn her back to reach with her hands. To touch the silky stuff of the shirt. The softness of Suzanne’s upper arm. She squeezed it. ‘It’s all right.’ She couldn’t do anything else but hold on to her but that was okay. You weren’t meant to move people in case they had a spinal injury.

  ‘An ambulance is on its way,’ she said.

  Hector would have called an ambulance. Soon there would be doctors to look after her. And Damian. Maybe Damian too. Maybe Damian would be all right.

  She moved her thumb on Suzanne’s arm. ‘You’re going to be fine.’

  71

  How strange life was.

  Sitting on Craig Dearg, and looking down at Pitfourie, at the sun on the Lang Park, and Suzanne dead and buried and lying in the kirkyard.

  With Dad.

  With Grannie and Grandpa.

  She and Suzanne had always called them Grannie and Grandpa, although they’d died before the two of them were born. ‘And here’s Grannie,’ Dad would say, pointing to the familiar, comfortably rounded figure in a photograph. It had been a way, she supposed, of acknowledging a love that would have been. That maybe was, somewhere.

  She couldn’t see the Parks from here, tucked into the lee of the hill. But she could see the yard at the Mains, and a Pitfourie Estate Land Rover pulling into it. Hector?

  She stood, and started back down the hill, her boots finding their own way to the path that snaked through the heather and the blaeberries. This was the time of year, harvest time, when she and Suzanne would be sent up the hill with baskets to pick blaeberries, for the jellies and tarts Mum and Auntie Ina would make. Suzanne would nick the berries from Helen’s basket when she wasn’t looking. ‘I’ve got the most,’ she’d crow when they got back.

  How could it be, that that Suzanne was the same person who’d put the point of a knife to Helen’s face? How could Suzanne have thought those things about her?

  But then, at the box bedroom window –

  She’d tried to stop him, hadn’t she? In those last moments of life, she must have known she’d been wrong about what Helen had done.

  Or maybe it just hadn’t mattered.

  If you loved someone, it didn’t matter what they’d done.

  72

  She’d managed in the end to twist herself so she could touch Suzanne and see her at the same time. She’d kept moving her thumb, round and round, on the silky material of the red shirt. Then she’d leant over and put her fingers, very gently, on the short black hair on the back of her head. ‘They’ll look after you. Soon you’ll be in hospital.’

  Someone said, distantly: ‘Don’t touch it.’ Hector.

  She took her hand away. Of course. The blood might be coming from her head – although she couldn’t see a wound. But maybe the hurt place was at the front. She was lying face down, so Helen couldn’t see. There was a lot of blood, though, which must have come from somewhere.

  ‘All right,’ said Hector. ‘It’s all right.’ He seemed to be a long way away. ‘Just lie still.’

  ‘She is lying still.’

  Another distant voice said something, and she heard her own name: ‘... Helen?’

  Damian. It was Damian’s voice.

  She bent her head close to Suzanne’s. ‘He’s all right. Damian’s all right.’

  There was a lot of blood. Her face must be in the blood. Maybe she couldn’t breathe. You were meant to put people in the recovery position and check they were breathing, but how could she do that with her hands tied?

  ‘Hector,’ she said. And more loudly: ‘Please can you come and help her!’

  And then Hector was dropping down beside them, and surreally his torso was bare, like he was one of those action heroes Suzanne used to love, and he put an arm round Helen’s shoulders and said, ‘She’s dead. We can’t help her. I have to look after Damian. I’m sorry. Let me cut this.’ There was a little penknife in his hand.

  He cut the twine and the bandages at her wrists and ankles.

  ‘Helen. She’s gone.’ His hands were on her upper arms as she reached for Suzanne.

  Then he was pulling her away, along the concrete strip that led round the house, speaking over the rasping in her lungs, telling her that an ambulance was on its way, and she was twisting in his arms to look back at Suzanne.

  ‘Is – Damian –’

  ‘He’s okay.’

  ‘I thought he was dead... His eyes were – open – and –’

  He was easing her towards the gate through to the yard. ‘It’s quite common for people who are unconscious to have their eyes open. That’s why they have to tape eyes shut during operations… At any rate, he soon came round sufficiently to send me a text message. Teenagers’ proficiency with texting finally comes in useful.’

  As they reached the gate she wriggled free; pushed his hand away.

  Ran back.

  And now she was taking Suzanne’s hand, and begging him: ‘Please.’

  He pulled her away, roughly this time, and grabbed hold of Suzanne, and Helen grabbed him and wailed: ‘Don’t!’ because he was being too rough, he was hauling her, turning her over, his voice as rough as his hands as he told her:

  ‘She’s dead. See?’

  She could see.

  She could see what had happened to the top of Suzanne’s head. She could see what had happened to her face.

  ‘Helen –’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I have to –’

  ‘Yes.’

  The sound of his footsteps on the concrete, walking away. Suddenly speeding up, and his voice saying, mildly, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ And Damian, in a thin gasp: ‘You know how – in films – they’re never really dead –’

  ‘And if he wa
sn’t, what exactly did you expect to be able to do about it?’

  As if it was funny. As if nothing much had happened, but what had happened was quite funny. Did he not realise? Of course he must, he had told her, he had said: She’s dead. Did he not care, then? Did he not even think it was anything bad?

  Or had she made a mistake?

  She looked at Suzanne.

  ‘Scream my head off?’ said Damian’s voice. ‘Possibly literally.’ A breathy laugh. ‘Is Helen okay?’

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘Suzanne – It’s Suzanne? She’s dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her hand reached out, to the mess on Suzanne’s face, but it wasn’t possible to wipe that away and her face be all right underneath because that was her face. That was the inside of her nose. White bits of bone stuck together with red flesh.

  ‘You’re getting sick on you,’ said Damian. ‘I’m all sick.’

  ‘I think I’ll survive.’

  When Hector had pulled Suzanne over, one arm had flopped out to the side. If Helen turned, she could sit so she could only see that arm and her little hand, perfect. Tiny pink nails, like a new baby’s, or a dollie’s. Cut very short. Suzanne never grew her nails, or painted them, because she didn’t want to draw attention to her hands. My monkey hands.

  Damian said, shakily: ‘Some got on your shirt.’ And: ‘Are you sure he didn’t cut you or anything, because sometimes you don’t feel it and then –’

  ‘I’m completely fine.’

  She took the little hand and held it tight.

  An ambulance was wailing somewhere, getting closer.

  This hand in hers: on their first day at school, having to be told by Miss Fraser to let go; crossing the burn in spate, shrieking, rain dancing on the water, water inside their wellies; on a moonlit expedition to the kirkyard, hysterical giggles and screams, and getting as far as the gate but then too scared to go in, and all the dark road home still to go.

  As the ambulance’s siren was abruptly cut off, Damian’s voice, suddenly clear: ‘They’re not going to arrest you.’