by Mark Edwards
‘There’s a penknife in my car, I think.’
She flapped a hand. ‘Go and get it.’
I trotted down the stairs and returned a minute later with the small penknife I kept in my glove compartment. ‘Are you going to pick the lock?’
‘Uh-huh.’
Thirty seconds later the door stood open. I was impressed. I daren’t ask where she had learned to do it. Instead, I silently followed her into the flat.
It was empty. Every room had been stripped bare. There was no furniture: no beds or chairs or tables. The kitchen was gutted, spaces left in the lino where the fridge and cooker had stood. Even the light bulbs had been taken.
Only the dim afternoon light illuminated the flat. In the gloom, I began to picture ghosts: is this where Andrew took the naked pictures of Marie? Did they have sex here? He would have slept with Cherry in these rooms. Maybe even Samantha O’Connell. What else had gone on here, in this now-vacant flat?
I felt a chill pass through me. I hugged myself.
Looking around, I noticed a pile of envelopes. They had been tossed into the corner by the disused phone point. The landlord must have thrown them there when emptying the flat and forgotten them. Andrew’s uncollected post; letters that came after his death.
I crouched down and looked through the pile, Freya standing behind me. Most of it was junk mail: credit card offers, charity circulars and magazine subscription offers. There were a few magazines which Andrew must have subscribed to: Photography Today and Bizarre. At the bottom of the pile, I found a handwritten envelope, addressed to Mr Andrew Jade. It was postmarked Oregon, USA. I turned it over – there was no return address.
‘What’s that?’ asked Freya.
‘Let’s see.’ I ripped it open. It contained a single sheet of white A5 paper. It was a flyer.
THE TIME IS NEAR.
JOIN THE CHOSEN ONES:
COME MEET US
103 SW 30TH AVENUE, PORTLAND, OR.
Behind the text was a symbol that I recognised from my time with Marie: the symbol they used to represent the Chorus, a circle of planets with interconnecting lines.
‘Let me see.’
I handed it to Freya.
As she scrutinised it I felt a bubble of excitement rise up in me. Portland, Oregon. It took me a few seconds to remember: Pete, the American who had been on the hill with Andrew and Marie that first night. He came from Portland. I had never even considered that Marie might have gone that far, and she hadn’t mentioned Pete at all since that night on the hill. He had slipped from my memory. But now I started to wonder.
Had she gone to America? There was no passport in the house, which meant that she might have gone abroad, although I didn’t know if she had had a passport in the first place. What if Pete – and I could only assume it must be Pete – had sent Marie a flyer as well? She had received it and decided, in a moment of madness, her world still upside-down since Andrew’s death, to go.
I checked the postmark on the envelope. October fifteenth. The day before she vanished.
‘Fucking hell.’
Freya looked confused. ‘I don’t get it.’
I was almost panting with excitement. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘I need to get home.’
‘What is it?’
‘I think I might know where Marie’s gone.’
She looked back at the flyer. ‘There? In Portland? Where is that anyway?’
‘West coast of America. I need to contact this address.’
‘Do you think Cherry’s there too?’
‘I don’t know. There must be a good chance.’
I started towards the door. For the second time that day, Freya blocked my exit.
‘What are you going to tell Gary?’ she demanded.
‘Why? What does it matter?’
‘You can’t just disappear. He’ll be furious.’
‘Who gives a shit?’ My heart was thumping, my head felt light.
‘Richard, I told you – he’s dangerous. If he thinks you could lead him to Cherry, he’ll be after you. He’s ruthless. He’s going to ask me what we did this afternoon, and whether I got any information out of you.’
I paused. ‘Can’t you tell him I don’t know anything about Cherry? That you believe I’m a genuine photographer? Tell him I’ll call him to sort out the photo session. That should give me a few days’ grace. I’ll be able to get to Portland, and if I do find Cherry I’ll send her home and Gary will be happy.’
Freya didn’t look convinced. She pouted. But eventually she sighed and said, ‘You’re lucky I like you. As long as you appreciate I’m putting myself at risk.’
‘Maybe you should get away for a few days too,’ I said. The last thing I wanted was for her to get hurt. ‘Until I find out what’s in Portland. If I do find Cherry, Gary will be so ecstatic that he won’t care what happened today.’
She stroked her chin. ‘I might just do that. I could use a break anyway.’
I gave her a lift to the station and gave her my number, which she tapped into her iPhone.
Before getting out she said, ‘I hope you find your girlfriend, Richard. And I hope she’s worth it.’
‘She is.’
‘I hope so, and I hope she realises how lucky she is. If I disappeared, nobody would give a damn.’
She leant forward and kissed me on the cheek.
‘Be careful,’ she said, and I watched her walk into the station, a few heads turning as she swung her hips.
I drove home too fast, shedding images of Freya as I went, gripping the steering wheel tightly, wishing I could make my car fly. I would fly all the way to Portland. Could she really be there, at the address I had in my pocket? I imagined myself pulling up outside a large American house with a white picket fence, and Marie would come out and smile when she saw me and run into my arms. I would cover her face in kisses and tears, and she would invite me to join her in her new life and I would say yes, yes, yes.
We would never be apart again.
I broke the speed limit but didn’t care. I arrived home thirty minutes later and ran into my house.
I stopped dead.
Simon was lying on the floor in the living room, unconscious. His face was purple and grey, his left eye swollen and closed, cuts on both cheekbones, dried blood beneath his nose, his lips split and puffy. His glasses lay beside him; they had been stamped on. One arm was twisted at an unnatural angle.
In the corner, Calico crouched in the darkness, two yellow eyes peering fearfully at me.
16
Simon regained consciousness while we were waiting for the ambulance. He could barely talk because he was in so much pain. He had also bitten his tongue so what he did say came out in a barely coherent mumble.
‘Dey were ooking for Terry.’
‘Cherry? They wanted Cherry?’
He nodded.
A shudder went through me. Gary. He had come to my house, looking for Cherry, while I was out of the way.
I tried to get more out of Simon but he drifted back into unconsciousness. Then the ambulance arrived.
I rode with him in the back. I leaned in close, under the watchful eye of the paramedic, and whispered, ‘I’m so sorry.’
He rolled his good eye towards me.
I had quickly looked around the house while waiting for the ambulance. My home had been ransacked – drawers tipped out, cupboards emptied. The computer lay on the floor, but still worked. I guessed they had tried to access it but couldn’t get past the password. I was surprised they hadn’t taken it with them.
Simon licked his battered lips and I leaned closer to him. He spoke in a rasp, using as few words as possible.
‘There were two . . . Kept asking about Cherry . . . Where was she..? One called Gary . . . Other guy big . . . a gorilla . . .’ He winced with every other word.
‘Cherry’s a friend of Marie’s,’ I said, thinking he was owed some kind of explanation. ‘She vanished at the same time. Gary’s her boyfriend.’ I decided now was
not the right time to tell him about the whole online porn thing.
Simon raised a hand weakly and pointed it at me. ‘He said . . . he’ll kill you.’
Then he closed his eyes.
At the hospital, Simon was checked over and treated while I paced around the waiting room. A nurse came out and told me he had a broken nose, three broken ribs and concussion. She wanted to know what had happened. ‘Was it a fight?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. I just came home and there he was.’
She didn’t believe me but she didn’t press for any more details. Susan, who I had called from my house, arrived just as the nurse said to me, ‘He’s going to be OK, but we’ll keep him in for a few days for observation. The police will be here later. They’ll want to talk to you.’
I had no doubt that, if he still thought I knew something about Cherry, Gary would happily torture me to get the information. I was lucky that he hadn’t done that already. I guess he thought his other approach – of getting Freya to pump me for information while he searched my house – was more likely to work. But now . . .
I should tell the police about him. But I was scared that if I spoke to them they would forbid me from leaving the country while they investigated. And I had to get to Portland as soon as possible. I really couldn’t risk getting held up by the police. There was only one solution I could think of.
Susan glared at me like she knew it was my fault. I turned my head away and looked at Simon. He was asleep now, his body full of pills that dulled the pain – pain that had been inflicted because of me. He looked uncomfortable even in sleep. The nurses had cleaned up his wounds so his face looked a little better, but he still had a black eye and bruises that made his face look like a Halloween mask.
I felt Susan’s stare and looked up at her.
‘When I found out about his affair, I had fantasies about something like this happening to him. But now . . . Do you know who it was?’
I didn’t reply.
She stepped around the foot of the bed and whispered in a harsh tone, ‘Who was it? What did they want? Is this anything to do with that girlfriend of yours?’
I took Susan for a coffee in the hospital café and told her everything I knew about Gary and Cherry, giving Susan Gary’s address so she could pass it on to the police.
‘You’ll be here when the police come, won’t you?’ Susan asked.
‘I can’t.’
She looked confused and angry. ‘Why not?’
‘I can’t explain. I’m sorry, but I have to find Marie. This could be my only chance.’ I didn’t want to tell her I was going to head to America. I stood up to go and she tried to grab my arm. ‘Please, Susan. I have to do this. I’ll explain everything properly when I get back. I promise.’
‘Back from where?’
‘Can you feed the cat? Simon’s got keys.’
‘Richard . . .’
But I was gone.
I went outside and waited for a taxi. I smoked one cigarette and immediately wanted another. Someone had dumped a fresh bunch of flowers in a bin. The sweet scent drifted up, reminding me of Marie, of nights on the hill, the smell of flowers filling the night air.
At home I quickly packed a bag. Calico watched me. He had ventured out from the corner and now crouched beneath the bedside table.
‘I’m going to bring her home to you,’ I said. ‘I promise.’
I phoned a travel agent. The first available flight, the operator said, was at four a.m.
Before leaving the house I booted up Marie’s PC and looked in her contacts. There was nothing listed for Pete, or for anyone in the States. I saw this as a good sign – if she was going to the US she would surely have deleted the address to make it harder for me. Of course that hurt, but my twisted logic told me she had done it out of love: she was trying to protect me from something. Or maybe it was because she knew I wouldn’t understand, would try to dissuade her from going. Whoever had made the flyer – Pete or some other group in Portland – clearly seemed to be preparing to make contact with the Chorus. They expected it to happen soon. Marie would have known that I would tell her this was crazy. My refusal to believe had driven her away from me.
We reached the motorway and I looked up at the sky from the back of the taxi. There were no stars out.
There were things that didn’t add up. Why had Pete sent the flyer to Andrew? Was it meant to act as an invitation? And would Andrew have gone if he hadn’t been killed? Was Pete connected to the alien porn industry too? There were so many questions.
I was sure I was going to find the answers in America.
After checking in I had an hour to kill, so I made my way up to Gatwick Village. I went into a newsagent and bought a couple of thrillers to sustain me on my flight. On the way to the till I saw a stack of that day’s Sunday Telegram. On the strip across the top of the front page was one of my photographs of Hastings’ ruined pier.
I grabbed the paper and pulled out the magazine. There were six more of my photographs inside. They looked fantastic. For one second I forgot all my other problems and woes. The thrill of realised ambition coursed through me. I wanted to grab a passerby and say, ‘Look! I took these! That’s my name!’
I bought the paper and sat outside the shop and leafed back and forth through the magazine. I wanted someone to share this with. I wanted Marie beside me so we could look at the pictures together. She would be so proud of me. After all, she had pushed me to approach the paper in the first place.
I put the magazine in my holdall. I would show it to Marie as soon as I found her. Then I leafed through the main section of the paper. On page nine, a small piece in the bottom corner of the page grabbed my attention:
BESTSELLING AUTHOR VANISHES
Writer Samantha O’Connell, who has published several books on the alien abduction phenomenon, has gone missing. Worried friends reported O’Connell, 48, missing to police last night. She was last seen at a signing in a bookshop in Charing Cross Road, London, last Tuesday. Her agent, Michael Auster, said that she was expected at another signing the following day but she had not turned up. ‘This is not like her at all,’ he said. Police have asked anyone with any information to come forward.
17
We’re standing by the automatic ticket barriers at London Bridge Underground station and Marie starts to tremble. Her Travelcard slips from her fingers and floats leaf-like to the grubby floor.
‘Are you OK?’
She nods, but she looks like a child on her first day of school, staring at the escalators ahead as they sink beneath the ground.
‘I think my blood sugar’s a bit low. Having a crash.’ She smiles at me, but it’s a nervous smile.
‘Do you want to get something to eat now? Or wait till we get to the other end?’
We’re on a day trip to London, something I suggested: a little shopping, a ride on the London Eye, which Marie is excited about, a wander around a couple of museums.
She bends to pick up her ticket. ‘No, let’s go now.’
The Tube is packed; there is no air, just second-hand breath and heat. We just manage to squeeze on, Marie hesitating until the final beep. The doors shut a few inches behind our heads. I hold her hand and pull a face, trying to make it seem funny. She doesn’t smile back.
As soon as the train pulls out of the station, Marie starts to hyperventilate. Her face turns the colour of old books. She clings to me, digging her fingernails into my skin, terrified like a cat suspended over water.
The train goes one stop, the doors open and she flings herself off, onto the platform, staggering and almost hitting the deck. I jump off after her and grab hold of her.
‘Get me out of here, please, Richard.’ She’s sobbing. ‘I can’t stand it down here. Please . . .’
I take her up onto the street and, slowly, her breathing returns to normal.
As we walk to find a bus stop, she says, ‘I’m sorry, I should have told you, but I didn’t want you to think I was pathetic. I just .
. . I can’t stand being underground. It makes me feel panicky and trapped.’ She grips my hand. ‘I hate . . . I hate being so far from the sky.’
‘This your first visit to the States?’ asked the cab driver. I nodded and told him that it was. Under different circumstances I’d have been bouncing in my seat, gawping at the landscape, so familiar from a lifetime of American movies and TV shows. But all I could think about was Marie. I kept remembering the time when she freaked out on the Tube. I hate being so far from the sky. Such a Marie-like statement. And it made me wonder: did I make her feel like that – trapped, claustrophobic, far from the sky? Did my failure to believe in the same things as her make her feel that I was clipping her wings, bringing her down? Is that why she fled?
I needed to find her, to ask her. I had to make her understand that the last thing I wanted was for her to feel trapped by me. But I also asked myself: is it possible to be with someone and allow them to be free at the same time? How can you ensure the person you love can spread their wings without flying away from you?
We crossed a bridge that gave a fantastic view of the city, pink and black office blocks rising against a backdrop of green where pine trees lined the distant horizon.
‘Portland’s a great city,’ the driver said. ‘Real pretty. On a clear day you can see Mount Hood right over there.’
I sat back and forced myself to admire the view: straight roads, pick-up trucks, traffic lights suspended from wires stretched across the road. We headed downtown.
Inside the hotel, I took a shower and went to bed. I lay down and closed my eyes, Marie’s face swimming into my mind’s eye. She was here. I could feel it.
The roar of traffic awoke me. Slats of light pierced the blinds and lay across the bed in fat, hazy lines. I uncurled my body and went over to the window. The sky was blue and I felt my spirits rise – today might be the day. I was excited and impatient, but I also wanted to savour the anticipation, to hang back and appreciate what today might bring.