Sal

by Mick Kitson

  To calm down I went and got a Buffalo Burger and chips and a can of Coke and sat on a bench that looked out across the river and ate them. Buffalo tastes like beef. I got that lovely rushy feeling you get when you are really hungry and you eat and you want to dance about. And I felt better and calmer and my mind stopped racing and worrying. When you are hungry you get tense and your body produces adrenaline and other hormones that make you want to get food so that was what had happened to me I think.

  I was going to have to take a risk and go back into the library. Sometimes you have to calculate the potential loss and gain of a decision when you cannot know the outcome and are risking something. Predatory fish like Pike do this when they are hunting. It is a kind of calculation where they weigh the potential energy they will get from attacking a prey against the amount of energy it will take to attack it and the likelihood of them being successful, given certain variables like how far away the fish is, what kind of fish it is and even things like water temperature and flow. If the gain outweighs loss in the risk then they attack. When you think about it that is a very complex calculation. And Pike do it in milliseconds with a really small brain. That is why big Pike often only take very big lures or lures that create enough disturbance to appear like a big prey fish.

  So I thought about it and went back to the library and when I went in the man with the beard was on the desk and he held up his hand and went ‘Feeling better?’ and I said aye and went to the terminal. I like old men, like him and Ian Leckie.

  I had nearly thirty minutes left but I couldn’t find anything about Maw in the news bits, I just found a thing from a paper that said THE CHAOTIC LIVES OF MISSING SISTERS and there was a picture of our flats and another picture of me and Peppa when we were wee and a big picture of Robert. One bit said ‘The dead man, Robert McColm, 31, had been Claire Brown’s partner for three years. Police say he was well known to them and had spent time in prison and had a string of convictions for theft, burglary and assault. Police sources confirm McColm had suffered stab wounds to the throat and was found in the bedroom of the oldest girl, Salmarina, when police entered the flat last Wednesday morning.’ There was a picture of my school and the rector had said ‘Salmarina is an intelligent and capable girl who received special support in the school’s vulnerable learners unit.’

  I read everything I could and searched Maw’s name again.Then I thought of Twitter, because people always tweet stuff about murders that you don’t get in the papers. When I searched Maw on Twitter there were loads of tweets, lots of them by people who said they knew her or knew us. Mhari had tweeted on it loads of time. Hers went ‘Prayin 4 there safety. God bless them both and keep them safe.’ A woman called Blonde Iris said ‘Just prayin 4 the lasses missing 7 days now.’

  There were ones about Robert. One from GORDON-MAC said ‘Robert McColm wus a horible wee shite an got wot he deservd. If the lassie did him it was coz he was abusing her.’ People had retweeted it and there was a thread all about that.They said stuff like ‘He wiz a fukin pedo. Hud it comin.’

  Then I found one from ALISON@THECLUB from yesterday and it said ‘Claire in rehab now getting dried out. In the Abbey. NHS are paying.’

  Another on that thread said ‘The Abbey is the best place for her now even with the lassies away. Claire needs to go into a recovery programme.’ And that was Ian Leckie.

  I searched ‘rehab the abbey scotland’ and found one called the Abbey and there was a picture on the website of an old stone house with a big lawn and trees in the sunshine. It said they offered detox and rehabilitation for people suffering from addiction problems and it followed the Twelve Step recovery programme. And it was in Galloway. I got the address and searched it on Google Maps and then Google Earth. It was twenty-six miles from the Forest Park and set back off a road. And that was where Maw was.

  I printed out the map and the site page and then my hour expired and I paid for the print and went.

  I got back to the layby on the main road at just after 3.00. It was five miles to go now and there was no way I’d do it in the light, but I started back through the car park and up the forestry road.There were two cars in the car park and as I was going up the forestry road a man and a woman both in cagoules and walking boots were coming back down and they nodded at me but I just kept looking down.

  But I felt better. I had the food and Maw wasn’t in the jail and there was nothing to say they were looking down here or even that they knew where we were. They knew about the school uniforms and knew we’d gone into Glasgow but that was it.

  The backpack was heavy and I tried to get a slow rhythm walking and leaning forwards and breathing slow. It was overcast and dull and the wind was still from the west and it was still warm and all the snow was gone. My thoughts started to go slow.

  Seeing the picture of Robert made me think about when I killed him.

  I decided to do it just before Easter, the night I tried to block the door and stop him getting in and he was raging and he forced the chest of drawers out the way. I sat on the bed and he stood over me and went ‘What did I say Sal? You got to be nice to me. If you don’t I’ll go see Peppa.’

  And I said ‘You fucking leave her.’

  And he laughed and said ‘She’s getting old enough.’

  And I said ‘If you touch her I’ll kill you. She’ll fucking kill you and she’ll tell Maw.’

  And he laughed and started undoing his trousers.

  Afterwards he fell asleep on my bed. He always did if he was drunk and I had to belt him and push him to get him off. That night after I’d been to the bathroom I looked at him and thought I could kill him. And the whole plan came into my mind. Getting the locks and fitting them. Running to the woods and surviving and making it so they couldn’t blame Maw. I’d read a story about two kids who killed a woman and her daughter and they stabbed them in the throat because it stops you screaming. I already had the Bear Grylls knife then and I already knew loads about survival.

  The next week I got the lock and put it on Peppa’s door and I gave her a key and told her to lock herself in when she went to bed in case Robert was drunk and tried to get in. I didn’t say why then but I told her later when I said I was going to kill him.

  The problem was that I never knew when he was going to come in and I had to get everything ready and bought and arranged and the locks done on Maw’s door. I got Mrs Kerr to show me how to read an Ordnance Survey map and plot with a compass and she nearly shat herself when I asked her and she went all gushy and kept saying ‘This is marvellous Sal.’ I told her I wanted to go orienteering and she showed me grid references and the lines of longitude and latitude and the way you use the compass and find north and then plot the direction you want to go. She also showed me contours and indications of gradient and how to tell what type of woodland there was.

  Robert didn’t come in every night. Sometimes it was weeks and weeks between it. Even when he and Maw had been drinking he didn’t always come in and after Robert came Maw was drunk a lot more and there was a lot more weed and whizz and mandy in the flat.

  But if I thought he’d stopped he hadn’t. Sometimes he came in and was all quiet and whispered and called me ‘darlin’’ and sometimes he came in and just grabbed me and yanked me up and held my hair in his fist. He was strong and he twisted my hair. Sometimes afterwards he said things like ‘You’re very special to me, you know that?’ and sometimes he just pushed me back onto the bed and walked out. I never looked at him or saw his eyes and they were always half closed anyway.

  Sometimes he sat there afterwards and told me about not telling and about us getting taken away and split up and sometimes he talked like everything was normal and he handed me tissues and said things like ‘I’m away to Glasgow the morra, bit of business’ like I wanted to know. Once he sat on the end of my bed and started crying and saying sorry. He was really drunk that night and he leant over and fell asleep.

  It took months to get everything we needed and I watched loads of YouTubes on
everything. I had everything under my bed and I was always the first one up to get the post and packages. I had about twelve different emails for the Amazon accounts and I had so many usernames and passwords I had to write them down with the account numbers in a wee book I kept in my bedside drawer. I bought nuts and raisins and brioches in sealed bags and cake and belVitas that would keep.

  It was the day Peppa’s trainers and Helly Hansen waterproof and backpack arrived and I made her put them all under her bed and then I told her I was going to kill Robert. And she said ‘You’ll go to prison’ and I told her I wouldn’t and I told her the plan about running and surviving and she got excited. Then I told her about what he did with me at night and how he’d said he was going to start on her and she went really quiet and then she said ‘Kill him Sal.’

  For the next two weeks Peppa was excited about running all the time and kept coming up and saying in a low voice like in a film trailer ‘We are going to survive!’, and I told her to be quiet. She started watching Bear Grylls and Ray Mears on YouTube and I showed her the map and stuff about making a shelter and how we’d make a fire. I showed her the knife and she said ‘Nice.’ She packed her backpack ready and kept it under her bed and I let her try on the school uniform and then we hid it.

  The Saturday before we ran Maw and Robert didn’t come home and in the morning I got Peppa’s breakfast and she went off to gymnastics and I put the lock on Maw’s door and cleared all the shavings and sawdust up. The lock worked and I put the key under the council recycling box in the hall. Maw and Robert got back in the afternoon when I was watching YouTubes and Maw sat in the front room and drank cider and Robert smoked weed in front of the telly.

  That night Robert came into my room and he was rough and angry and kept saying ‘Oh you little bitch’ to me. I wanted to do it that night but the next day was Sunday and it was no good trying to run on a Sunday. All the train and bus times I’d got were for the week.

  But I knew it was going to be soon because I kept feeling calm when I thought about it and I wasn’t panicking at all. It was October so there would still be some leaf cover in the woods and there was still a good chance of catching fish. The weather forecast for that week said it was going to be clear and cold with a northerly wind moving in towards the end of the week.

  I told Peppa it was going to be that week and we carried on like normal on Monday. I got her up and got her breakfast and we both went to school and Maw went to the club in the afternoon and Robert was in the flat and not going away. On Monday night when they were out I found another forty quid in his drawer and took it. On the Tuesday I started dumping all the cards and the laptop and the phones I’d been using. I took out the SIMs and threw them into the sea off the wall. I chucked in the book with all the passwords and usernames because I had got everything we needed. On the way back I saw Ian Leckie coming down the shorefront and he said ‘How’s ma Bonny Sal?’ and I said fine and he asked about Maw and gave me ten quid for chips for me and Peppa.

  Robert and Maw went out on Tuesday night and got back about 11.00 and there was a bit of shouting and banging and then it went quiet and I knew Maw was passed out and I could hear the telly and I sat in my room waiting. Then the telly went off and Robert came in and said ‘Alright darlin’

  – your maw’s out of it.’ He was drunk and stoned and kept staring at me with a grin on his face and I sat on the edge of the bed. He stank of drink and fags and the incense sticks they burned and he leant onto me still grinning.

  Afterwards he was still grinning and he lay on his side on the bed and was saying things to himself in a little quiet voice. He was wearing his pants and his jeans were on the floor. I went into the bathroom and washed my face and then got the key from under the recycling box. I opened Maw’s door and she was lying face down on her bed. Her mobile was on the bedside table and I went in and checked it had charge. Then I locked her in and put the key in front of the door on the hall carpet.

  I went back to my room and it was quiet and dim with just my bed light on and Robert was asleep and breathing slow. I felt under the bed and got the knife and stood over him, behind him on the other side of my bed with the knife pointing down in my left fist over his neck. I did slow breathing and tried to centre myself and felt the breath coming in and lifting my diaphragm and my belly going in a bit. I felt the breath coming out and my belly going out and I just made myself aware of that.

  I stabbed him three times. The first was straight into his windpipe and the knife went through and into the bed underneath and Robert’s eyes opened and his mouth opened and he went ‘ock’. The second was slightly further out and cut his throat right across and blood spat out in a stream and hit the wall and there was a hissing and whizzing sound coming from Robert. On the third I stabbed harder and felt the knife go through muscle and hit a bone which was probably his spine. The blood gushed and pumped out onto the bed and up the wall and I stepped back and I had blood up my arms and could feel it on my face.

  Robert’s mouth was open and his eyes had gone wide and you could see all the yellow in them. In his throat there was a big round black hole and his head was hanging back. He was still and then he jerked and blood gurgled out of the hole in his neck.

  I stood there for five full minutes which I counted using elephants. Robert made another ‘ock’ sound and then he didn’t move. Blood had soaked into the whole bed and it was all red.

  I went through and had a shower and washed the knife off and then I dried myself and put my clothes in the washing and went back into my room and got clean pants and socks and a vest. I didn’t look at Robert and I closed my door so Peppa wouldn’t see in, then I went and banged on her door and she came out. She’d been asleep and I said ‘We’re going in the morning.’

  She said ‘Is Robert dead?’ and I said ‘Aye’ and she said ‘Was it easy?’ and I said ‘Aye.’ She asked if Maw was alright and I said she was in her room asleep.

  I got the rucksack and checked all the stuff and Peppa brought her backpack out and we put on the tights and skirts and blouses from the school uniform and then Peppa got her quilt and went through and slept on the sofa. I sat in the chair in the front room watching her sleep and set my alarm on the phone for 5.30 a.m.

  It was dark by the time I got to the climb up towards our woods but there was a moon and it kept appearing from behind the clouds that were running along on the west wind. I went slow and sometimes I stopped and put the backpack down and stretched and flexed my shoulders.When the moon came out it was bright and clear and I could see everything in silver and grey. I heard a Tawny Owl screeching along by the plantation woods and as I climbed the steep bank up to our woods three deer jumped out of the bracken and bounded up away from me. When the cloud went over the moon it was almost too dark to see and I walked slower and tried to feel what was in front of me. It took a long time to get up to the start of the birch and pine in our woods and I was puffing and breathing hard lugging that backpack.

  The clouds cleared again and the moon was bright as I got to our woods and there were sharp shadows of trees and diamond patches of silver light on the ground. The trees waved in the breeze and the light patches stretched and closed. The trees sounded like someone shuffling cards and there was my steps on the leaves and sometimes twigs cracking.

  I could smell the fire from a way off and as I got nearer I saw a very faint glow and the round shape of the bender through the trees. Peppa had kept the fire going all day. I called ‘Peppa!’ as I came up to the bender and I heard her shout ‘Yo Sal!’ and she came running out and we hugged. The fire was going well and there was a new stack of wood by it.

  ‘You’ve been away for ages. I was getting worried about you.’

  ‘I was worried about you’ I said.

  ‘Did ye get me a book?’

  ‘Aye. I got you two. And a steak.’

  She poked the sticks on the fire into a blaze and I started unpacking the backpack. I showed her the books and she got a head torch and looked at the
m and then started reading Kidnapped while I put the kettle on.

  I said ‘Were you okay? Did you see anybody?’

  And she kept on reading and then she looked up and said ‘Aye. I met a lady. She made me a fire because mine had gone out. She’s called Ingrid.’

  Chapter Seven

  Ingrid

  Peppa told me what happened. She slept a lot after I left and then she tried to cut up the rabbit skins and make a hat but she couldn’t get the needle through the skins right and she cut all the bits wrong and she said it looked like a rabbit that had been in a blender when she’d finished. Then she tried to get the fire going but couldn’t get the little sticks started off the embers. She drank some boiled water from the kettle and ate a brioche and almonds and raisins and then she fell asleep again.

  When she woke up there was a woman squatting in the entrance of the bender and looking at her. She jumped and panicked and wondered if she should shoot her with the airgun but the woman was smiling and holding a bunch of birch bark and pointing at the fire.

  The woman was old and had long grey hair and was wearing a long, long coat all the way to the ground made of waxy cloth and had scarves tied up in her hair. Her face was flat and she had a small nose and eyes like she was Chinese. She had big white teeth and was wearing red lipstick and had bangles and beads on her wrists. There was a wee white scar on her cheekbone just under her eye in the shape of a crescent moon.

  But she was smiling and saying things to Peppa in a foreign language and she started blowing at the embers of the fire and then she shredded up the birch bark and got a striker and flint out and made sparks and got an ember going just like I did. She blew it and fed it with bark and twigs and burned ends. And then she said something else foreign and walked off into the wood.