The Scorched Earth

by Rachael Blok

  Ana searches left and right, running. Screaming.

  ‘Maisie!’

  Running up the road, she is wearing only flip-flops, and her feet betray her, slipping sideways, tipping her. She kicks them off, running. The air is tight in her lungs and she sprints faster.

  ‘Maisie!’

  There are lights across the field. They are flashing. Ana grabs the wooden fence, straining to see. They flash again.

  Holding the top of the fence, she vaults over, spinning her legs and landing with her knees bent, in a crouch, and then sprinting up again. The grass is slippery; stems broken off when the grass was brittle are sharp underfoot. They spear her feet like needles.

  She runs.

  ‘Maisie!’

  Her fists are clenched. Her eyes strain to see, strain to find her.

  ‘Maisie!’

  There. There she is. She is bent forward, holding her knees, leaning like she’s having trouble breathing. And the rain has drenched her. Her hair lies flat on her head, plastered, slicked.

  ‘Oh God, Maisie. Are you…’ But Ana can see Maisie is struggling to stand. She’s not bent to help herself catch her breath, she’s bent because there’s weight on her neck. There’s weight pushing her down.

  They stand at the edge of the graveyard. They stand on earth that has been dry for months and is now so hard the rainwater isn’t soaking away, but pools around her feet, splashes as she steps forward, one arm outstretched.

  This time it’s a whisper, and she can barely hear it herself; it floats from her mouth, but is weighted and drowned by the rain.

  ‘Maisie…’

  ‘You think you can have her back?’ Sharp steel cutting through the night, his voice comes sailing through the rain, keeling, tacking. She recognises the voice, but the words don’t make any sense. ‘You think, after everything I lost, you can have her back?’ He shakes his head. His blond hair, bright with wet, even in the black night, flashes like a lighthouse each time the torchlight catches it. It is Leith Kirwan. Her boss. Why is he here? Her brain feels slow, sluggish.

  ‘I can never get Katie back. And you took her. You took her from me. And her baby. You took it all.’ He shakes his head, and the hand that holds Maisie’s body pushes forward, and Maisie stumbles. Kneeling down now, she crashes forward with no sound.

  ‘Maisie…’

  ‘All the lives she could have lived. All of them, ripped from her…’

  It’s only now, as Maisie tips even closer to the earth – this once scorched earth, now swamped with rain it can’t absorb – that Ana looks at him. Stares him in the eye. Shakes her head.

  ‘Leith, I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is Maisie – she’s my sister. What are you doing? Have you gone mad? She’s not here to hurt me.’

  Who is this man? Who is he to turn from protector to aggressor? Who is he to grab her sister by the scruff of the neck in the dead of night and bring her here?

  ‘What are you doing?’ she screams.

  ‘Do you remember my sister? Little Katie Miller. Caitlin Miller. You remember her? Only sixteen years old when she died? When she hanged herself?’

  Like gunfire, the rain slams hard against the pools on the earth. The swell rises quickly, water pours from the roof of the church.

  ‘What are you talking about? I didn’t kill your sister! I didn’t even know her!’

  ‘It was you! It was you who lied to her – told her…’ His face, black with the night, with his rage. Twisted in frenzy. Grief. Tight and unrepentant. Terrifying.

  ‘You told her… You told her I’d raped you.’ The words land as a spit. They merge with the water on the ground, but don’t dissolve. They lie like spilled oil. A pollutant.

  ‘Andy Miller. You are Andy Miller.’ Reeling in shock, Ana stumbles. The wooden fence slippery beneath her fingers as she reaches back for support. ‘But you have blond hair? Blue eyes?’

  ‘Dyed my hair, and I wear blue contacts. I went to Australia in the end. After you took everything from me.’

  The feeling of the pain, as it shot up from inside her. Pain she’s never shaken off. As she tried to make herself ready, unsure, drunk. She hadn’t said it loud enough. She hadn’t wanted it. The feeling of the weight of him, the noise of him…

  ‘But you did rape me. Sex needs consent. And I said no.’ Saying it aloud, for the very first time – the release of the words. She’s kept them back. Because she’s never been exactly sure. Alice Sheppard’s words have embedded themselves in her brain, like an advert ditty you never forget: ‘It’s not rape if you’ve already started. What if he didn’t hear you say no?’ Even though people have said, and she knows now, still, there had been shame. She’s never really been sure she’d said no loud enough. To be sure now, she screams it. Out into the night. She screams it at Andy Leith Miller Kirwan, she screams it so the dead can hear.

  ‘You raped me! I said no!’

  The rain falls. No one speaks. Leith shakes his head. She’s not sure if he’s disagreeing or unsure.

  ‘She asked you. She said she’d been in the loo when you’d told Alice Sheppard, and she’d heard. She heard you say you hadn’t wanted it. She asked you if it was rape, but you’d been sick. You’d thrown up in the sink, for fuck’s sake. How can you even remember what you said? You were drunk. How can you even remember what I did? You went along with it all.’

  Ana can feel her hands shaking. It’s not the cold. Despite the rain, the temperature is still hot, humid. Her head is shaking too. The water flies from the ends of her hair, which has come loose in the run. She feels it whip her neck.

  Is it the smell, most of all? The smell that has stayed with her? Of crisps, beer, of chewing gum and the flowers that had grown near the ground where she had lain. It had hurt, but he hadn’t hit her. What had she done? She’d kissed him. Danced with him. Gone outside with him.

  But she had been sixteen and she hadn’t wanted sex.

  ‘It was rape, Leith,’ she says. She lifts her arms, gesturing to the sky. ‘That’s it. That’s all of it.’

  ‘No. I told her it was bullshit. I said you’d kissed me back. You’d come outside. We’d had sex. Not just me. And she screamed at me! Fuck.’ He shakes his head. His hand is still on Maisie. She’s still bent, leaning. Prostrate.

  ‘Even so, killing herself? How is that—’

  ‘She was pregnant. She was pregnant. We rowed, and I turned and walked away from her – I was so angry… and she followed me. I ran down the steps and she came after me. She put out her hand and I pulled away… She fell. I went to her. I ran! But she was curled at the bottom. When I lifted her, sat her down… There was already blood.’ His eyes close and Ana shakes her head, thinking of Caitlin Miller. Of a wound.

  ‘I will never, never forget the look on her face.’

  He lets go of Maisie and she falls to the ground in a heap. Ana can see she’s not badly hurt. But struggling. She lifts herself on her forearms, taking gasps of air, lifting herself out of the pools that now swell around the graves.

  ‘A midwife helped Katie that night. But the baby had already gone. The miscarriage tore her apart. It left her half dead – she looked… I should have told someone – the doctor – mum. She wasn’t herself. But she wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t look at a rapist! I’m no fucking rapist!’

  Ana wonders if Maisie can run with her, if she grabs her hand, can she run with her? But Maisie is coughing, head forward.

  ‘She told me the next day she wondered if it was doled out because of what I did. Because of what we did. Because of what you told her. That there is equal measure in all things. That if I hadn’t…’ He is crying now. Ana can hear the crack in his voice but she can’t make out tears on his face.

  They are all drenched.

  ‘And then that night she walked into the woods and hanged herself.’ He takes a step towards Ana and his voice is louder now. ‘And I found her! I found her hanging in the woods. Can you imagine what that’s like? We moved away. Mum was a mess. She
started drinking, then she got sick, and wouldn’t fight it. Wouldn’t eat the right things, just drank. Then I lost mum too.’

  A gasp from Maisie attracts Ana’s attention. She has turned her head towards Leith. Her voice is loud when she speaks, still gasping, still sore, but loud.

  ‘Who was the father?’

  Leith shakes his head. And then he smiles. In flashing drops of rain that catch his torch, veil his face, like a waterfall.

  Maisie screams, banging the earth with the flat of her hand. ‘Who was the father?’

  Leith turns his smile to Ana. ‘Leo fucking Fenton.’

  70

  Saturday 30th June

  MAARTEN

  There’s the smell of burning. The rain has come just in time. A barn is ablaze on the edge of a field, and had it not been raining, the whole field would have caught alight. The fire is real, rising high in the sky like a twisting snake, but rain powers down.

  The smoke makes him heady. It mingles with the rain and the already dark night becomes opaque.

  He coughs as he climbs out of the car. He can see Adrika parking further up in the road.

  Fay Seabrook appears to his left, like an apparition. She’s standing at the edge of the road, just out beyond the pub. She wears a raincoat over her nightclothes.

  ‘They’re gone!’ she screams.

  ‘Get back inside!’ he shouts. He’d been waiting for something, he just didn’t know what. ‘I’ll get them. The graveyard,’ he calls to Adrika.

  Running through the fields, he throws his jacket off despite the rain, hooking it over his arm as he sees the church. The night is close. His feet slip in the wet, and it’s hard to see with his glasses. The water blurs them. He pulls them off, running faster.

  The track they follow takes them under a copse of trees and out the other side. Here, the temple lies white against the black of the sky. It’s visible only in blinks, as his eyes work to keep out the rain. Adrika coughs next to him.

  Searching the scene for a tell as they approach, he first sees someone tall. Blond hair, even in the dark.

  Slotting together, like a puzzle, he fits the blond hair to the photo Sunny had shown Ben. The blond man had been standing next to Jack Thurbridge. Fenton had identified the man in the centre as the cyclist. Had Sunny never been more specific than that? Why the fuck? Maarten curses himself for not checking. He is softening. He needs to firm back up, tighten up.

  Who had it been? He thinks of Sunny’s words: Leith Kirwan, Ana’s boss. He’s standing tall, holding a gun in his hand.

  And she’d had the affair with Leo in New York on a work conference. Kirwan would have been in the bar at some point too. He must have seen. He has all the clues to work with. Thoughts fall into place like dominoes.

  Adrika is calling for backup as Maarten searches for the two women. He sees one, flat on the ground. And he hopes she is still alive, that they are not too late.

  Searching again, he sees the other. Her figure is obscured by the wet, but he sees she is bending and rising, bending and rising.

  He feels sick. ‘Adrika, how long will backup be?’

  ‘Don’t know – ten minutes? Shall I go round the back of them?’

  ‘Leith Kirwan is there with both women, and he’s got a gun.’ More than that, what he doesn’t need to say, is while one is lying flat on the ground, the other is digging.

  Digging in a graveyard.

  ‘Kak,’ Maarten mutters.

  Leith Kirwan holds a gun, and it is pointed at the back of Maisie Seabrook’s head, who lies on the ground.

  ‘Shall I? Go round the back?’ Adrika repeats.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Or rather yes, but listen, stay hidden. We’ve got no protection and this man is dangerous. Do not come out unless I can disarm him, or he puts the gun down.’ His whispers are fierce. ‘I mean it, Adrika. You’re there to assist once the shooter is disarmed. You are not to show yourself.’

  ‘Right.’

  Her hair plastered to her head, Adrika nods. He can see she’s scared. He’s terrified. She turns and runs down the field. She is a fading figure in the dark, washed away by the rain, and he is gripped by fear: that this is the last time he will see her. He almost calls her back, shouts her name.

  Is it the heat that has loosened his sensibilities? Turned him into someone fearful? Made him aware of mortality? Or is it this graveyard, with its dark, its twinned sense of eternity and fleeting life?

  He walks towards the tall pillars of the temple. The rain powers down on them and spills from the roof in floods. The ground is awash. The heavens have answered the long-standing call for rain. It will take the earth a moment to adjust.

  ‘Leith,’ he says. His voice reaches out into the dark, through the wetness.

  There is no response. The gun remains pointed down; Ana Seabrook carries on digging a grave.

  ‘Leith!’ This time he is louder, and Leith’s head turns quickly, responding to the shout like a gun has been fired.

  ‘Who’s that?’ The gun lifts and points at Maarten. Again, that sense of death searching for where to land shifts and Maarten lifts both hands, stepping sideways to the tree that stands by the fence.

  ‘It’s DCI Jansen. It’s the police. Please, don’t do anything rash. Backup are on their way. It’s over now. It’s time to put down your weapon.’

  ‘It’s not over!’ The scream flies through the wet night.

  Maarten ducks behind the tree, panting. He takes a breath. His body lies flat up against the damp bark. The tree grounds him, offers him some protection.

  It is clear Leith Kirwan has passed the point of talk-down. His anger is vivid in the dark, like a bonfire. There is no dampening it.

  ‘Leith, please. You can’t get away from this. But you can let the women go. You will help yourself in the long run if you can halt this now!’

  ‘Please!’ It’s Ana Seabrook. ‘Please help us! Maisie is…’

  The sudden silence is swift, as Leith Kirwan lifts the gun and with one swing slams the butt into Ana’s head. She falls sideways, landing on the earth that she has been digging.

  Maarten drops to his knees and peers from behind the tree. Ana is lying, moaning, on the earth. She lifts herself, starting to crawl to Maisie, and Leith kicks her. Her body lifts and falls like a rag doll. But she lifts herself again and this time Leith points the gun. He’s screaming at her as she tries to stand.

  ‘Ever since you walked into that firm, looking like you had the world at your feet, I swore you would feel how I felt. You stole my life from me, Ana. You and Leo. You stole my sister and you stole my mother. All I have wanted, since you perched on that chair and looked so complete, so fucking happy, was to steal everything from you in return.’

  Ana raises her head from the dirt. Her voice is hoarse. ‘It was you. Wearing Leo’s cap, following me, terrifying me.’

  Leith is still. ‘As terrified as my sister was when she walked in the woods? I don’t think so. I thought it would be over, once Leo was dead. But it wasn’t. And then they put that house up for sale. It was a calling card. He needed to lie near her. Near you. And near her. She needed to know I’d done it. Done it for her.’

  Ana’s voice gains strength. ‘You think you’re dispensing justice? You’re not. You are a stalker, a rapist and a murderer!’

  The gun wavers. Maarten stands. There’s no time. This finger of fate, moving quickly in the night, is about to land. He can’t waste any more time. He walks towards the graveyard. He can hear sirens in the background. But they will be too late. The armed units will not arrive soon enough. He cannot allow this man to kill these women.

  ‘You ripped everything from me,’ Leith says.

  Ana Seabrook is kneeling in the dirt. She has made it to her sister, and she kneels over her body. The sound of the sobbing mixes with the falling rain, and the night is awash with dissolution. Disintegration.

  ‘Leith, no!’ Maarten speeds up as the gun lifts slightly.

  Leith changes his stance, hold
s the gun more firmly and steadies his wrist with his other hand, preparing for the kickback.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ It’s Adrika. She appears from the other side of the graveyard and he is surrounded.

  It’s like trying to cage a tiger with bare hands, Maarten thinks. They cannot contain this rage. The gun will go off and someone will be shot.

  He sees Adrika begin to run and he curses, running too.

  The gun is wet and slick in the shadowy night; he whispers a message of love to Liv.

  ‘Tell Ben I’m sorry,’ Ana Seabrook calls, through sobs that fill the night. ‘Tell him I’m sorry for all of this.’

  And there’s another voice too. ‘Stay back, Adrika!’ Harper Carroll appears, bent forward and sprinting.

  A crash of thunder sounds, and they all race towards the gun.

  Someone screams, someone cries.

  The gun fires. And fires again.

  They all fall. Sprawling, collapsing on the softening earth.

  71

  Saturday 30th June

  MAARTEN

  He’s back in the hospital. This time it’s his arm that’s bleeding, and Liv sits holding his hand as he fades back into consciousness.

  ‘Maart, how are you feeling?’

  His view is fuzzy. The room is hot, but he can hear the rain outside. It’s bright, but with the blue light of a predawn morning.

  ‘What… what happened? Are they—?’

  ‘They’re all here.’ Liv squeezes his hand. ‘Adrika’s fine. The two girls are OK. The man, Leith? He’s in custody. Sunny took him in and he’s waiting for you before he does anything. There’s no panic for you to move. The doctors have said you’re OK to go home once you’ve woken. They had to stitch you up. They gave you a local last night, but you were out of it. I think you’d banged your head. They said you might not remember.’

  He can remember someone saying ‘Sharp sting’; someone else had said ‘Sit still’. He’d been sick. His head aches.

  The memory of the dark, of the thundering rain, comes back to him. Makes him lie his head back on the pillow. And the sound of the shot. His arm hadn’t hurt right away.