by Rachael Blok
He can’t say only half of it. So he says nothing. He tells her of the cell, the food, the library, the heat. He protects himself, and her.
‘How’s it going, Benny?’ It’s Tabs. He’s naked apart from a towel tied round his middle. He holds his bag with shampoo and shower gel. He’s older than Ben, and he’s been in longer. Lines are dug around his eyes.
‘Come on, lads, we’ve not got all day,’ one of the uniforms says, and they move forward.
The showers are open plan, cubicles with no doors, stainless steel and old. There are scratches down the sides, and a patina of soap, cleaning products, blood and dirt has faded the steel, carved its own history.
‘So-so,’ he says, but he knows there’s something on his face, as Tabs raises his eyebrows.
‘What gives, Benny?’
‘I saw…’
‘Stop the chatting,’ the uniform says, calling from the back of the room. ‘I’ve got B Wing in here next as there’s a problem with their water. Come on, lads.’
Showering quickly, he speaks quietly to Tabs on the way out. ‘The news bulletin. My brother. They’ve dug up a grave in Ayot, just outside of St Albans. It’s so close to home. Ana practically lives next door. I wonder if… Well. You know.’
Tabs whistles, long and slow. ‘Fuck, Benny. It’s been newly buried? They never found the body, no? If it is your brother, then this could be your ticket out. I know Ayot. Used to teach near there.’
Ben nods, only half listening to Tabs, just focusing on the thing his brain has been going over since the news that morning. That it might be his route out. They might have found Leo’s body. They might realise he didn’t kill…
‘So, what’s next?’ Tabs asks. ‘I don’t know many people, but I’ve been in here a few years. I could ask around. See if there’s any word out? If it’s your brother, must have taken some planning, to hide the body for that long. You got anyone in mind? Someone you think they might have missed?’
Shrugging, Ben starts saying, ‘I need to think…’ But then, too late, he sees a hand swing high and fall on Tabs’s head. A shampoo bottle in a sock, landing with the weight of the swing, and blood pours quickly from the corner of Tabs’s eye.
Ben stands back. Macca is laughing. ‘Nonce,’ he shouts, and the group around him titter like schoolboys, with adult aggression. Ben looks to the guards but there are only two of them. He sees one press his radio, but he knows they won’t intervene. Not before the next blow. The guard shouts to warn them to stop, but that is all he’ll do for now. They need three guards on each prisoner before they will step up. Safety of the guards comes first.
Tabs’s eyes are still closed and he’s hunched over. Macca is walking slowly, waiting to see if there’s any response, but there won’t be. He gets another kick in before a few more uniforms arrive. The sock with the shampoo is confiscated. He’ll be nicked, but Macca is in for a long sentence. A few more days added on doesn’t bother him.
They pick up their things. The blood from Tabs’s head drips on the dirty floor, mingling with soiled water, and Ben steps back, keen not to get involved.
They dress. Lining up, eight of them walk back. The sun dries their hair. Ben’s skin on his face is quickly tight with the rays, his neck beginning to burn just as they get to G Wing.
‘Nonce,’ Macca says again quietly as they enter, and they bend round, walking towards the cells.
Ben dips his head. Tabs’s walk is slightly off; he tips into the wall before bouncing back out and making it to his pad with the arm of the guard.
‘OK, mate?’ the officer says, and Ben sees Macca’s eyes narrow as Tabs lifts his head to answer. ‘I can take you to medical?’
‘Aye, just slipped in the shower. All good.’
The officer shrugs and carries on, putting them inside, each door locked from the jangle of keys that hang heavy and low from each belt.
Ben thinks of getting out. Allows himself to believe for a split second he could leave this all behind, but pulls himself back. That way madness lies.
The room. A shout down the hall.
It’s hot in here, but not like a holiday. Not like an indulgence. Like a punishment. Hot like hell.
‘…isn’t, d’yer reckon…’ Kiz is still going. The rattle against his brain like a tiny hammer. A bruise.
A fly buzzes in through the bars. The rattle of the trolley going past. A bucket spills somewhere and there is a shout. An alarm rings further up the wing.
He closes his eyes again as Kiz drifts back to the screen. Talking at the walls, the beds, the toilet that smells like piss.
Ana. He wills her to his mind. He wills her like a shield.
Leo and Ana, the three of them, before it broke.
8
Thursday 14th June
ANA
The train rattles its way home. Her reflection is a ghost in the window. She’d finished late; starting a new deal always takes a bit of time, but she is happy to spend it. Since Ben has been in prison, time has had a price. She invests it at work, the pub, in her mum. She spends it where she will not feel the drag of days.
St Albans station is never empty. The trains run all night. Even now, just after midnight, there are still people falling out of the train, walking, striding. In this heat, even in the middle of the night people are in T-shirts, bare arms. The air is velvet.
She ducks left, exiting the main entrance towards the car park, passing two smokers, a few cars waiting to pick up.
Footsteps follow her. She slows for a second as her foot slips out of her heel, listening.
That glimpse of a profile returns behind her eyes, like a paper cut – whoever she had seen reminded her so much of someone, but was it Fabian? She can’t be sure. There was a time when she’d seen that outline poking up when she’d least expected it; sometimes she’d been afraid to leave the flat. Even now, the thought of it sets her teeth on edge. Could it have been him who sent her that photo? Could he have her work address?
Is it in her mind? That the footsteps slow, too? That they follow her tread?
Stop it, she tells herself. Stop allowing yourself to be spooked. Just because someone has tried to spook you.
Instead of turning in to the first set of doors that lead into the car park, she walks on, to enter at the other doors further up. But still the footsteps follow her.
She thinks again of the anonymous envelope coming to her place of work. Of an unidentified body lying in a grave five minutes from the bed in which she sleeps.
The heavy doors scrape the floor in a screech, making her wince. She runs up the concrete steps on the balls of her feet. Jumping the last two in one stride. Her heel lands sharply.
The stench in here is putrid, the heat intensified. That car park smell is overpowering: urine, leaked oil.
Level 3. She checks behind her quickly: nothing.
The keys are in her hand already. She has taken them out of her bag on the train, years of knowing not to stand in a car park at midnight, fumbling for them, alone. Like most women, she learned these rules at an early age. As she approaches the car, the footsteps land: tap, tap.
Lengthening her stride, she unlocks the car. As the lights flash, she dives in, pulling the door behind her quickly.
Her breath still tight, she turns the key. She can hear her heart beating, her pulse hammering in her ear. The click of the central locking slotting into place calms her.
The figure passes behind and walks on. She can’t see their face, but they’re wearing a cap, with lettering unreadable in the dark.
There’s a glimpse of something familiar. Her heart tugs and her mind screams. What is it?
She turns on the engine and takes a deep breath. Just someone on their way to their car. She mustn’t lose it. A body has been found and Fabian Irvine is returning to Ayot. It’s time for cool.
*
The larger roads of St Albans narrow to hedge-lined lanes as she approaches the village.
The pub lights are dark. Her mother closes pr
ompt at 11.30 p.m. during the week. Ana finds an open ground-floor window and she closes it, checks the locked door. She checks all the locked doors.
The mattress of her teenage bed finds its familiar shape as she sits and lays her tote bag across her knees. The photograph burns inside, and she places a hesitant hand on the metal clasp that snaps the bag closed.
She is smiling in the photo. Even now, with all that has happened, there is a tiny pocket somewhere that smiles still: she feels composed of her memories, like flesh on bone, fragments of smells, colours. She had smiled and cried that night.
Should she phone the police? Pour wine? Wake her mum? But what would she say to the police? They will contact her soon if the body turns out to be Leo. And as for wine, she’s nervous – Ben has years left inside. She can’t medicate her way through this grief with alcohol. Running is her drug of choice, a defence against losing herself.
She doesn’t pull the curtains. The night is cloudless, and she stares hard across the black ocean of space that lies between her and Ben. They are tiny dots in the vastness of the universe. And yet, sometimes, all she can feel is him. She had loved him for so long. For years, it had been like a distant goal – an island she was sailing towards. And then with him, she had realised what it was like to find her home, to know herself. There was no touch on earth that belonged on her skin more.
Flicking her bag’s lock, she tugs at the edge of the package containing the photo. It’s the first time she’s thought of it for… She doesn’t know.
She had tried to visit on Ben’s birthday, but he hadn’t wanted her inside. They speak on the phone, but he won’t see her in there. Their calls are stilted, made in a corridor with other phones. At first it had been heartache. Now it sits with her beneath everything she does, like a blister underfoot.
*
The taste of toothpaste is sharp as she finally opens the envelope holding the A4 photo. Should she take it to the police tomorrow? It is difficult to decide. Someone is stirring up the past and carries knowledge like a weapon. If she is right, and the body does turn out to be Leo, then police involvement will be inevitable; it would be better to be upfront. But telling them means telling everyone…
She tries to hold the edges, thinking too late about fingerprints.
But why now? What possible reason could there be to stir this up now?
She should call Harper. She trusts Harper. But even as investigating officer, Harper couldn’t save Ben.
She needs to think, to compose herself. She hopes Ben calls tomorrow. Her mother had been upset about the news of Fabian’s return, but she had shaken her head gently when Ana had mentioned the body. ‘Why, Ana?’ she had said. ‘Why would whoever killed Leo risk drawing attention to it? They’ve got away with it.’
And she is right. Ana can’t think of a single reason why moving the body here might not be dangerous for the killer. But the body is here. And she has received the photo.
She stares across the night, through the empty sky, and thinks of Ben, sitting wilting on a bed in a cell in this heat. Dreaming of her. Of this air. Of being able to hold her.
Empty blackness.
9
Two Years Earlier
June
LEO
‘Dinner at the White Horse?’ Leo says as they shower off at the harbour.
‘Rude not to,’ Ben says. ‘I’ve got the tent in the car. Ride down to the site and pitch it first?’
Nodding, Leo stretches back under the cold shower before upending his wet-boots and washing them out. The sea, the cold – he feels better.
The path around the harbour is rough and boggy at points. Standing on his pedals to ride over a coarse patch, Leo watches the sun dip lower in the sky. The horizon is clear blue now. Ben pulls alongside.
‘How’s Ana?’ Leo asks.
‘Good – she’s looking forward to seeing you. You’re still coming for dinner with us before you fly back?’
‘Of course. It’s her birthday soon. What you getting her?’
Ben goes over a bump and stands on his pedals, then sits again. He says something but the words are lost in the wind as the track bends and the breeze flies at them.
‘What?’ Leo shouts.
‘She’s tricky to buy for,’ Ben shouts. ‘She hates the clothes I buy for her, she doesn’t really wear much make-up, or much jewellery. I was thinking though…’
Leo cycles in front as they approach a couple with a dog. They ride single file to pass and stay like that for a few miles as the path narrows. People are out for late-afternoon walks, the sun bringing out the bodies.
The day begins to stretch into shadows as they approach. The path wends towards the sea, and the old house their parents owned sits behind their camping spot. They camped at the bottom of the big garden when they were kids. Now they come and pitch up just below the trees, on the flat ground off the coastal path that overlooks the sea and the small bay. The cliff isn’t too high – they used to dive off it when they were young. There’s not much beach here, but there’s a little patch of shingle down from the cliff path. It’s enough to moor a small boat if you sail there from further up the coast.
Riding faster, Leo jumps off, dropping the rucksack he’s been carrying, and starts to pull the bike up the bank to the site, which is hidden from below.
‘Here, throw me your gear,’ he calls down to Ben.
Getting hot, he pulls off his T-shirt, then bends to start pegging the tent.
‘What’s that?’ Ben says, laughing. ‘When did you get a tattoo?’
‘Oh that, a bit ago. Fancied a bit of a change once Fleeta moved out.’ Leo glances down at his shoulder. ‘Needed something new, and I can afford it now, since the deal. You know how much these things cost in New York?’
‘Well, looks like you get to spend some money in the gym, too,’ Ben says, throwing him the bag of pegs. ‘Is that a nine-pack?’
‘Fuck off,’ Leo says, laughing. ‘Yeah, I work out now. You know, eat well and all that. It’s different over there. What were you saying earlier? You were thinking of getting Ana something for her birthday?’
Ben rubs his hand across his mouth, then sits, nodding. ‘I wanted to tell you first. You ready for this, little bro?’
Falling back to the earth, Leo drops the mallet to the dirt and swivels to face Ben. The sun is in his eyes, and he pulls his shades off his head, slipping them down on his face. He knows what Ben is going to say. Preparing himself, his expression, he uses the last second of feigned ignorance to conjure a smile. There’s a tiny bit of him, the hollow part that never gets filled, that starts to ache. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling. It’s the part of himself that he hates the most.
‘Yeah?’ he says. ‘You have my full attention. Hit me.’
‘I’m going to ask her to marry me. I’ve bought the ring and everything. I’ve been waiting to see you, to tell you. You’re all I’ve got, apart from her. I need to know you’re happy about it before I do anything else.’ Ben’s face is serious now. He looks at Leo.
For almost a second too long he sits, time stretching in the sun, Leo squinting up at his older brother, the smell of the sea… And then he does it. Stands, claps him on the back and hugs him.
‘This is brilliant news! I’m so pleased for you both! What she sees in you, I’ve got no idea.’
They hug, standing under the sun. Leo feels the ache disappear. It was nothing.
It was nothing.
10
Thursday 14th June
MAARTEN
Liv lies still. Machines beep. There’s a tube coming from her nose.
He’s asked Nic to give him a minute, said that Sanne would need her until he could return. The operation has gone well and Sanne lies dozing with her cast.
‘Papa!’ she’d called as he’d gone up to the recovery ward, her voice drunk and soft. ‘I feel dizzy,’ she’d said, lying back on the bed. ‘Do you want to write on it?’
They’d given her a certificate for being good in the
atre, and she’d clutched it as they’d wheeled her back down to the ward, where Nic waited. Waving it when she’d arrived, a dot in a huge bed.
Liv is in a room on her own. And he needs this minute. He needs to fall apart before he has to put himself back together.
They have lowered the lights in the hospital. The staff have changed hands, speak in quiet voices. Someone had wheeled a machine that wouldn’t stop beeping off the main ward floor and put it by the lift. The family room had been shown to him: it had biscuits and a hot water machine that hung from the wall. The fridge contained three pints of milk, all half-empty.
Liv.
Her hand feels warm. Still. Smooth.
His heart aches. It’s heavy in his chest, and it pulls. The thought of losing her – it’s a sharp pain, which makes him gasp, makes him reel backwards in the plastic chair. His heart is shooting stars, tiny fragments of anguish bursting out in flames, rocketing in his blood.
His phone buzzes in his pocket but he doesn’t look, not for a minute. He needs just a minute.
‘Liv, can you hear me? Can you hear me? It’s me, it’s Maarten.’
There’s no response. Her lashes lie still on the top of her cheeks.
He hasn’t let go of her hand. There is a knock at the door, and he knows that things wait outside. This minute is almost past. He leans close and whispers in her ear. She understands him. He knows that she will understand him.
‘Blijf bij mij.’
Stay with me.
*
‘Jane, thanks for coming.’
His mother-in-law is red-eyed. Her hair is a shade lighter than Liv’s, the blonde fading with streaks of silver. She’s roughly the same frame as Liv, but where Liv fills space with her energy, Jane sits now like a wisp on the chair, gripping the edge with her fingers. She looks crushed. Her handbag is on the floor by her pale deck shoes, tilted to one side. Everything wilts. It’s still the middle of the night and the girls are asleep on the bed together. He sits in a chair.