by Russ Thomas
“Oi!” Doggett’s voice follows her up the driveway, but she ignores him.
Lily emerges from the grass and stumbles onto the gravel. Her clothes are smudged with dirt, and she has a tear in the thigh of her trousers. “Edna?” she says. “I couldn’t stop it.” She holds up two red palms. “I couldn’t stop the blood.”
Doggett arrives behind her. “Jesus Christ!”
Rabbani takes hold of the woman’s dangerously thin arms and Lily starts to cry. She can’t see any wounds on the woman. “It’s not hers,” she says. “I don’t think it’s hers. Lily, whose blood is this?”
“He said it wasn’t his fault,” she says. “Gerry told us all about it, but it wasn’t his fault. Cynthia goaded him into it.”
“Where’s DC Daley?” Doggett grabs Lily’s arm, causing her to cry out.
“That’s not helping,” Rabbani snaps, and Doggett raises an eyebrow at her.
“Here!” Enfield is ahead of them. He’s followed the path of flattened grass back in the direction Lily came from. He crouches down and Doggett runs ahead, leaving Rabbani to shepherd Lily back the way she came.
“It’s Daley,” Doggett shouts.
“Head trauma,” says Enfield. “He’s lost a lot of blood but there’s a pulse.”
“Daley! Guy, mate, can you hear me?”
Doggett pulls out his mobile and dials while Enfield tears off his T-shirt, exposing a tight black chest that Rabbani just manages to appreciate before she sees the scar that covers his neck and left shoulder. He balls the shirt in his hand and presses it hard against Daley’s head. Guy Daley groans.
“Oh! Hello, dear.” Lily is back. “Please! You have to get him out!”
There’s a loud crack and one of the windows of the house shatters, smoke spiraling skyward from the hole.
Lily shouts, “Oscar!”
Enfield takes off in the direction of the house.
“Wait,” Doggett shouts. “Shit! Shit! SHIT!” He turns to Rabbani. “Keep pressure on that wound and wait for the ambulance. You’d better call the fire brigade as well.” He hares after Enfield.
“Oscar,” Lily shouts after them. “No, you mustn’t hurt him! Leave him alone!”
Rabbani presses the woman against her shoulder. “It’s all right, Lily, love. They’ll get him out.”
But the woman’s eyes have glazed over.
* * *
—
Tyler opens his eyes on a landscape of color. There’s a hole in his skull and something sharp and pointed is being jabbed, over and over again, into his brain. He reaches up instinctively and immediately regrets it, as a white-hot lance of pain stabs through him. The burning sensation ripples and courses through his head, making him retch.
He forces himself to be still and wait for the pain to subside. Slowly, carefully, he opens his eyes again. This time he sees only darkness. His fingertips are wet and warm, and when he lifts them to his nose he smells the coppery odor of his own blood. It’s a deep wound. But he knows head wounds always bleed badly. It isn’t necessarily something to worry about.
He checks the rest of his body, but everything seems to be in working order. His legs are bent beneath him and as he stretches, tries to work them out from underneath his own body, and sit up, he feels them burst into life with pins and needles.
He waits for his eyes to adjust to the dark, but they refuse. He reaches out again, forward this time, and when he feels the brick wall in front of him, rough and dusty under his fingertips, he understands where he is. He cannot see them, but he can feel the other walls pressing in on him from all sides. He can’t breathe. He draws in gulps of stale air and beats his fists against the cinder blocks, only stopping when he feels the skin on his wrist tear open.
He falls silent and tries to calm down, but his head is full of dangerous thoughts even as it pulses and spills his lifeblood down his face and neck. How long has he been here? How long does he have left?
He searches his way along the wall with his fingers, looking for a gap, a hole, anything. He forces himself to get up, though there isn’t room enough to stand completely, and the pain in his head is excruciating. Using his fingers as eyes, he works his way systematically across the rough brickwork, turning in circles. On and on. The blood flooding across his face burns its way into his eyes, and by the time he lowers himself gently back to the floor, he’s panting with exertion, his breath coming faster and faster, as though it’s in a race with his beating heart.
How long has he been here? How long does he have left?
The rule of three. Three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food.
He’d be losing fluids faster than average, Elliot had said. Then there’s the trauma to the head, blood loss. I doubt he’d have lasted longer than a couple of days. Maybe less.
He knows, abruptly and certainly, what he must do.
He starts with the flat of his finger. A downward motion, stroking at the mortar between the bricks. He reasons that the mortar, by definition, must be softer than the brick, and assuming he hasn’t been here too long, it may even still be wet. And yes, he can feel something moist beneath his index finger. He stops, uncertain whether the moisture is the wet mortar or his own blood. Perhaps the skin on his finger, already torn, is adding to his loss of fluids. But he goes on. It really doesn’t matter. He has no choice.
After a minute or two he reasons that he is running out of time. He might pass out again at any moment. He switches to his nails, the image of Gerald Cartwright’s tattered hand clear in his mind. The cement is still setting; he can pick out whole chunks of the mortar this way. Then a shard of hardened cement stabs up and under the nail of his index finger, cutting deep into the flesh. He cries out and pulls at the shard with gritty, bloodied fingers. Then he switches to the next nail and carries on. It doesn’t matter. He has to do this. Whatever the cost.
Or does he? As he gets deeper into the mortar he finds it’s much wetter. Perhaps he hasn’t been there all that long. Perhaps there is another way. He lines up his shoulder with the wall and pushes at it gently, leaning in with the weight of his body and pressing himself against the unforgiving bricks. The wall refuses to budge.
He leans backward, trying to gather all of his weight onto his back foot. It takes everything he has to not think about the pain he knows is coming. He will not flinch. He may not get another chance.
He throws himself forward.
After that there is only a world of darkness and confusion. He’s not sure if he loses consciousness but when he opens his eyes, light has returned. And with it the smoke. His attack on the wall has worked, and several of the bricks have fallen away to create a jagged hole in the wall, perhaps the size of a ship’s porthole. Through it he can see the flames, and the heat reaches him in full force, burning his face and drying the sweat on his brow. He starts to cough, but he is committed now. It’s all or nothing. Out there with the fire he has a chance. A slim one, but a chance. In here he has none. He braces himself for the pain and throws himself hard against the wall for a second time.
He tumbles out with the bricks and falls to the floor in a heap of rubble, his head screaming at him. A voice reaches him through the haze of his own agony. “Adam.” A voice that cuts across the crackling of the flames. Paul Enfield.
The smoke is so thick and every mouthful of air burns his throat and leaves him gasping for the next, but somehow he gets to his feet. He hears someone coughing. How is Doggett here? Never mind. Follow the voices. The men calling his name.
He finds the bottom of the cellar steps and begins to climb. The voices above are fading as they search for him somewhere deeper in the house, but the cooler air ahead of him drives him on. He won’t stop now. And then he is out, into the corridor where Doggett and Enfield are coming around the corner. They stop, all three of them, and stare at one another.
“Bl
oody hell, Tyler,” Doggett croaks. “You look a right state.”
“Oscar?” he manages. “Sally-Ann?”
Paul shakes his head. “No sign of them down here . . . no, Adam. Wait!”
But he’s already halfway up the stairs. On the first floor every room is alight, the fire eating through the fuel Sally-Ann has left for it; this time she’s taking no chances. The second flight of stairs is untouched and Tyler bounds up them, ignoring the light-headed feeling that he knows can’t be a good sign. Then along the upstairs corridor to the little attic room. The door is open, but there is a small mound of burning material blocking the way. He can see two shadow figures inside, struggling with each other. Beyond them the room burns brightly, every item of furniture ablaze, liquid flame skating up the walls and licking at the damaged ceiling. The old-fashioned wardrobe smolders, smoke curling across its curlicue decor. The curtains at the window are towering pillars of flame. In the midst of the conflagration stand Sally-Ann and Oscar, locked in each other’s arms, grappling like wrestlers. Sally-Ann has the edge, her bulky height pitted against Oscar’s skinny, drugged body, pushing his head down into the burning mattress.
Behind him, Paul shouts something up the stairs but Tyler ignores him and kicks at the bonfire in the doorway, pushing the burning fragments to one side. Sally-Ann looks up at him, and while she’s distracted, Oscar punches her hard in the face. She staggers back, just one, two steps, and then Oscar is using the momentum to push her away from him, across the room.
“No!” Tyler shouts, but it’s too late.
Sally-Ann is swallowed up by the burning curtains. He tries to reach her, stumbling across the room with no real idea what he can do. He thinks he sees her smile and for a split second she seems . . . what? Relieved, perhaps. Then she is gone, transformed into a column of fire. It happens so quickly; her clothes must be saturated with petrol. She glides almost elegantly across the room, squealing—a flickering corpse candle.
Tyler looks for something—anything—to douse the flames, but there is nothing that is not already alight. Oscar stands transfixed, watching. The candle stumbles toward the gable window and Tyler sees what is going to happen just moments before it does. Then the rotten wood and broken glass are disintegrating like paper under her weight and Sally-Ann is gone.
Oscar turns to look at him. “I didn’t mean . . .”
Paul arrives, smacking at the flames with what’s left of his T-shirt. He smothers the remains of the blaze in the doorway. “Go!” he shouts.
Oscar takes the lead, Tyler following closely behind with Paul Enfield bringing up the rear. Part of the ceiling collapses and the corridor bursts into a ball of fire.
“This way.” Oscar takes them to the other end of the corridor, where another set of stairs leads them down, and Tyler remembers coming this way on that first day that now seems like a lifetime ago. It was less than a week.
The fire is waiting for them at the bottom, the kitchen already an inferno; there’s no way to reach the back door. He can see Doggett peering in through the glass from outside, gesturing for them to go back. But there is no back. Oscar leads them through the dining room and back into the living room, but the patio doors are locked. It’s Paul Enfield who puts his naked bulky shoulder to the glass-paneled frame.
At the far end of the room the flames are jumping from one item of furniture to the next, dancing inexorably closer. Tyler hears the doors crack and give, and then he feels that same change in air pressure, just like at Wentworth’s house. Enfield and Oscar stumble out into the night and the rush of oxygen inward fans the flames higher. The firestorm reaches out to engulf him.
As Tyler throws himself backward through the patio doors, the last thing he sees through the oncoming fire is the picture above the mantelpiece. The gray face of the fire watcher, as it melts and runs.
embers
Lily stands in the garden watching the Old Vicarage burn. A woman touches her arm. The Indian girl. The policewoman. The house is almost gone now. She can still feel the heat of the flames, yet she shivers. The girl puts an arm around her shoulders, but Lily can’t feel the warmth; the chill is deep inside her, running through the marrow of her bones. She turns to the girl. Something familiar about her. An Indian woman with a pretty face and a button nose . . . that wrinkles when he screws it up and bawls. Lily asks if she can hold him, just once. The midwife looks round. They’re not really supposed to. Lily begs and the woman relents. He’s a mottled dark-red color, a perfect little ball of anger. She can feel his strength already. She’s not sorry to be giving him up. She wants to put all this behind her and go back to the theater. But that won’t happen now. It’ll be back to Sheffield and she’ll never see any of them again, the girls from the theater or the office. And not Edna. She regrets that most of all. They’ll never let her go back . . . to the cottage where Edna is waiting for her.
“Here you go, Lily.” The girl helps her into a chair that’s appeared from somewhere. “That’s better. You rest a moment, love, all right?” The garden fills with more faces. Faces of the young. Policemen and ambulance people. Where’s Oscar? She saw him come out, she’s sure she did. Why hasn’t he come to see . . . . her father laid out; Mam dressed head to toe in black. Lily came straight from the station; didn’t have time to change. She can feel them all looking. Is that the one? You remember—went off to flash her legs about on the stage. Can’t even be bothered to dress decently! Hasn’t she put weight on?
Hardly anyone speaks to her. She can live with the whispers, but can she live without London? And the dancing. And Edna . . . clutches her hand. “Are you all right, luv?” Not Edna. A man in a yellow and green uniform. The policewoman is looking at her. It makes her uncomfortable. She isn’t sure . . . whether they are safe up here. “Safe?” says Edna. “There’s a war on. No one’s safe!” It’s cold on the rooftop, bitterly so. She clutches Edna’s hand and they listen to the whine of the Messerschmitts overhead and then the whistle of the falling bombs. Lily closes her eyes. She knows this is the end. There’s nothing left. “Edna?” But Edna can’t hear her over the crack of explosions and the wail of the sirens. Then Edna looks down into her eyes. They don’t need to speak. They have each other. They can read each other’s thoughts. Lily reaches up . . .
But Time is coming unspun. The monster from the darkness is almost upon her. She remembers now, but it is all too much and too fast . . . Her father stares at her, the disapproval writ large on . . . his screwed-up face as he bawls . . . and shouts and screams . . . she can feel the strength in his hands . . . covered in blood . . . choking the life from Cynthia . . . no, Edna! Poor Edna . . . safe on the rooftop but . . . there’s a war on, no one’s safe . . . she smashes the bottle down on his head . . . thump, thumpety-thump . . . and Edna smiles her lipless smile . . . wrapped in Edna’s arms while the bombs fall around them and everything burns . . .
Lily remembers.
* * *
—
Tyler sits in the doorway of the incident room watching the Old Vicarage collapse in on itself. Every now and then his eyes travel across the gravel driveway to the covered remains of Sally-Ann Digby.
His head still grumbles but the wound has been patched up, and with the painkillers he reluctantly agreed to take beginning to kick in, he can just about bear it. Doggett’s fingers drum against the roof of his car. It starts to rain.
“Perhaps you could stop that now,” he says, and Doggett’s hand does indeed stop. For once. His fingers hang suspended in midair for a moment. Then he places both hands on the back of his head and exhales loudly. His leg starts to jiggle, the squeaking leather of his shoe taking up the rhythm.
“You should be in the hospital.”
“Guy Daley got my ride.”
“He’s going to be all right,” Doggett says, but it isn’t clear who he’s trying to convince. The leg stops. “It looks like they’re done with him, then.” He nods to the back o
f the remaining ambulance where Oscar is being treated by the paramedics. “What about you and him?”
“No.” It comes out more sharply than he intends.
“I guess I was wrong about him.”
“No,” Tyler says again. “Edna Burnside wouldn’t have asked just anyone to help her bring in the furniture. He was there all right. Sally-Ann told me he was trying to find out what Edna knew about his mother’s death. Hence the blackmail letters.”
“Burnside died from a stroke.”
“He could have rung for help, got her out of the fire.”
“I’m not so sure that would have been doing her a favor.”
Oscar looks across at them and smiles like a little boy.
“Maybe he hated the woman,” says Doggett. “Or maybe he thought she was better off out of it. Anyway, I doubt we’ll prove anything.”
“And Lily?”
“Nah,” says Doggett. “The CPS won’t touch that. Maybe she did kill Cartwright, or maybe Sally-Ann killed him and made the whole thing up. Even if we wring a confession out of the woman, she’s half cuckoo. There’s no way it would stick.” Doggett must realize Tyler’s staring at him, because he turns. “What?”
Tyler grins. “I just realized, you ran into a burning building for me.”
“Oh, fuck off!”
“Just for me.” Tyler lets the smile fade now, so Doggett will know he means what he’s about to say. “Thanks, boss.”
Doggett shakes his head, but he’s smiling now, too. He gets up. “You coming then?”
“Where?”
“We still have to interview the shifty little bastard.”
“I’m suspended, remember?”
“Jordan’ll be here in a minute. She’ll probably crucify both of us anyway. Might as well give her something to shout about.”
Tyler shakes his head. As Doggett turns to walk away he asks, “Why?”
Doggett turns back, suppressing an irritated huff. “Why what?”