Bram feels a sharp smack of pain through his centre, followed by the one feeling he’s been craving all day – longer than that, for weeks, months, years: the knowledge that the final destination he has chosen for himself is utterly right.
Not just for him, for all of them.
51
Friday, 13 January 2017
London, 9.30 p.m.
The temperature has plummeted and it’s deathly cold now. Rage insulates her only so far and she digs into her coat pockets for the gloves and hat she used in Winchester. Before putting them on, she bundles them to her face and inhales the scents of yesterday, of cathedral and woodland and ancient cobbled alleys. Of a lifestyle – a life – that’s gone.
It takes a moment to figure out where she is. There’s a bus stop on the main road and she sees that she is several stops south of Alder Rise, with no service due in the next fifteen minutes. Her mind churns. Faster to walk? Or wait for a taxi? Can she afford one, now everything is lost? Where is the money? What has Bram done? What will Toby do? Will he turn back and come after her, dish out some of the violence that was all too implicit in the car?
She walks. When she reaches Baby Deco, the building is alight with Friday night humanity, people whose lives have been improved by the arrival of the weekend, a laughable notion if it didn’t make her want to sob. She takes the stairs to the second floor. She’s moving strangely, sluggishly, and the light times out before she reaches the door. Any other time, she’d be unnerved by the dark, the hollow silence of a stairwell, but tonight she embraces it for what it is, a respite from scrutiny, exposure.
When she opens the door to the flat, she actually stumbles back out again. The whole unit, barring the kitchen area immediately inside the door, is crammed with heavy-duty removals boxes, a ceiling-high rock face of brown, stamped with the blue of a brand logo. The glazed doors to the balcony can be seen only through a single fractured line, though a wider gorge has been created to allow access to the bathroom. The bed must be hidden under the boxes, while, thoughtfully, the two grey armchairs have been relocated to the kitchen area.
Her fingers probe the items on the kitchen worktop as if her eyes are no longer to be trusted: Bram’s keys to the flat; a yellow A4 sheet, which proves to be the paid invoice for a self-storage company in Beckenham that she guesses contains her furniture; also, inexplicably, Harry’s little blue spelling book. What was going through Bram’s mind, she wonders, to cheat his family on such a scale and yet think to pull aside a school exercise book? When did he last speak to the boys? Did he prepare them for this trauma? Can he really have said goodbye to them and intended it to be the final time?
There is no note, nor any details of bank accounts, but she had not expected that. This is not a puzzle set by Bram for her edification; this is the last act of a desperate man.
With no true instinct as to what to do next, she dislodges the nearest of the boxes and looks inside. Ornaments, photographs, books: all from the Trinity Avenue living room. The next three contain more books from the same room. The fifth holds items from the study, including files and documents from the cabinet, a lucky find so early – if anything can be described as lucky on this most diabolical of days – because she’ll need financial documents for her meeting with the solicitor on Monday. When she pulls herself together, with her parents’ help, she’ll need them to prove her ownership of the house. She starts to sift, removing anything useful, including the blue plastic folder that contains the family’s passports. She is stunned to find Bram’s, untouched, intact, so stunned that she sits for a moment to think.
He must still be in the UK, then. Though bludgeoned by fatigue, her brain seems to know that a passport is required of UK citizens even for France or Ireland. Of course, he may have acquired a false one. If he can steal a house (half a house, technically), then he can buy illegal ID. The criminal underworld is his oyster, evidently, Toby his erstwhile travelling companion.
She experiences a rush of fury at the thought of Toby, which at least energizes her next spell of unpacking. Kitchen utensils, clothing, shoes, toys . . . on it goes. After an hour or so, she breaks to find something to eat and drink. There is nothing in the fridge, not even milk or water, just a bottle of red wine in the rack on the counter, and so she tries the top shelf of the cupboard where they keep pasta and other groceries. Instant noodles will do, or soup.
Immediately, her fingers find something flat and plastic. Behind the stocks of tinned tomatoes and crackers and teabags, there is a phone, a battered-looking Sony belonging to Bram, since it is definitely not hers, and with a charger lead attached. It’s dead, so she plugs it into the nearest socket, eats the crackers and drinks a glass of water while waiting for it to come to life.
When at last it responds, she finds herself looking at a home screen with neither passcode to crack nor contents to protect. No photos, no emails, no history of internet searches. There are, however, two text messages from an unnamed number. The first, dating from October and opened, reads, Uh oh, looks like someone’s getting her memory back . . . and links to an article about the Thornton Heath accident:
Road rage caused Silver Road crash, says victim
She knows who must have sent it even before she remembers those grotesque words in the car – ‘He ran another car off the road and it crashed . . . The kid died’ – and even before she opens the second message, sent earlier today and until now unread:
Wtf going on with your phones? No answer from usual number. Fi on way back to London. Call ASAP.
Her anger returns in a torrent.
You’re obviously no use to anyone . . .
A younger, sexier model . . .
What kind of a dumb fuck . . .?
Almost immediately a new alert sounds and she sees that by opening the last message she has announced her presence – or Bram’s – to him.
I know you’re there. Big problem, solicitor paid wrong account. Know anything about that?
She waits, breathless, for the next to land:
No money, no passport – you know the deal. You have till Monday morning to sort this out or the evidence goes to the police.
No money, no passport? And yet Bram’s passport is here, in the flat. She can see the folder from where she’s standing. She was right then, there must have been a replacement one, procured by Toby and withheld until he’d received his pay-off. How cunning he has been – thought he had been. And yet he finds himself with nothing, because somehow Bram has triumphed, triumphed over all of them. And either he’s forgotten this second phone exists or he’s deliberately left it. Should she dispose of it? What is he expecting her to do?
Then she has a thought she hasn’t had before: this couldn’t have been . . . this couldn’t be Bram’s revenge for her having chosen Toby over him?
But no: Bram must have understood Toby’s interest in her was merely a pretence. She is ashamed to remember her own vanity that night Bram found Toby at Trinity Avenue: all her feminist faith, all her pride in her independence, and it comes down to the cavewoman excitement of two hunter-gatherers fighting over her.
Which it turns out they were not.
How pathetic she is. Homeless and defeated and debased.
As her eye rests on the bottle of wine, the phone starts to ring.
Lyon, 10.30 p.m.
He thought he would never sleep again, but in fact he passes out early and sleeps deeply that first night in Lyon, yanked to the surface only twice. The first time, the pea under his mattresses is a phone. The third phone, to be precise, the Sony Mike delivered to him at the office to replace the Samsung he’d smashed. He knows he never used it, but where did he leave it? In the office? In the flat?
Is there any way it could lead Mike to him here? No. His searches on Geneva and Lyon were made in the internet café in Croydon and his calls to Mike were from the pay-as-you-go, now sitting in the bottom of a bin at Victoria Station.
His eyes close.
His eyes open once more. There was th
at one text, wasn’t there? A link to a news piece about the Silver Road investigation. Is there any way that could lead the police to Mike?
Possibly. But maybe that would be no bad thing.
London, 10.30 p.m.
She declines five calls from him before sending a text of her own:
Calm down. I’m at the flat.
You fucking twat. Where’s the money?
I have it, don’t worry. Mix up with account numbers. Come to flat and I’ll do the transfer while you’re here.
Not sure flat is safe. Fi has been to house, had the police out.
It’s clear. Police won’t come this late.
You think?
Come if you want the money. Your choice.
He must have driven like a bat out of hell because he arrives in minutes. When she presses the intercom button, he barks into it without waiting for a greeting: ‘Mike. Let me in.’
Mike? So Toby has been a fake right down to the name he fed her.
I mean, how gullible are you?
Read my lips: I made it up.
She buzzes him in.
Remarkably, given all that has passed today, she experiences a sensation close to relish when she sees the astonishment on his face as he approaches the open door and catches sight of her waiting inside.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I told you I was coming here. This is the only home I have, remember?’ Her tone is as abrasive as she can muster, but nothing she has to say can wound him. He sees her only as an obstacle to be kicked aside. ‘I’m looking for Bram,’ she adds. ‘Same as you, I assume, since you clearly haven’t returned to propose marriage to me.’
Have you, Mike?
He curls his lip with contempt. ‘Where is he?’
‘He just texted me, said he’d be here in ten minutes.’
It strikes her that she hasn’t muted Bram’s phone, concealed under her bag on the worktop, right next to the knife she’s taken from the kitchen drawer just in case. Just in case this bastard tries to hurt her.
But she can’t reach for the phone with him standing here.
‘He told me he was already here,’ Toby says. Mike says.
‘He must have texted us en route. He’ll be using public transport, remember.’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ His fuse already blown, he looks about him for something to hurt. ‘Well, you’re going to have to wait till I’ve finished with him. Catch up on your way to A & E, eh?’
How could she ever have found this man attractive? He is a brute, a vile, ugly monster. ‘I’ve got all the time in the world. Take a seat.’ She gestures to the armchairs, side by side in their sad, makeshift lounge. ‘Drink?’ she offers, gripping the bottle of red wine she’s already begun.
‘Got any vodka?’
‘I’ve only got this.’
‘Fine.’
Hers is already poured and she fills a new glass, passes it to him. She can’t connect this act of hospitality to the dozens like it when he visited her here during their relationship. The conversation and the flirtation and the sex: that was with a different man. A man who’d pitted himself as the uncomplicated and restrained challenger to a famously uncontrolled ex. Was it the reined-in aggression that she’d sensed and responded to? How does he behave with women when he has no ulterior motive, no agenda that relies on his gaining trust? Unpleasantly, she suspects. Forcefully.
He swallows the wine in impatient gulps, complains it tastes like shit, but continues drinking. She pours him a second glass and a third, while continuing to sip her own.
‘It’s been way longer than ten minutes,’ he grumbles, then suddenly sparks. ‘What did you mean “en route”? Where was he coming from?’
Fi shrugs. She is not scared of him now. ‘I don’t know, he didn’t say in his message, but he’s obviously hit a delay.’
‘Show me the message he sent you.’ He rises, stumbling slightly, and she leaps to her feet, blocks his passage past her to her bag.
‘Don’t you come near me.’
He regards her with contempt, before reaching for his coat and trawling through the pockets for his own phone. As he stabs at the keypad, she is just deft enough to locate and turn off Bram’s phone before he eyes her once more. A fraction slower and it would have given her away.
‘He’s turned it off,’ he mutters. ‘Don’t know what the hell he thinks he’s playing at.’
‘He’ll be here.’
‘You’re suddenly very trusting,’ he mocks. ‘Have you forgotten he’s just shafted you for every penny you’ve got?’
She holds his eye, her expression so hostile, so sour, her face doesn’t feel like her own. ‘Look, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk any more until he comes.’
He scowls, reclaims his glass, helps himself to the last of the wine. ‘You’d be doing me a favour. You bore my tits off, if you must know. Fat old Mrs Holier-than-thou, I don’t know how Bram stood it all those years. No wonder he played away. I would have done the same. With that foxy neighbour of yours, for starters, what was her name?’ He takes one of the chairs, angles it towards its mate as if inviting her to sit and subject herself to more abuse.
I hate you, she thinks. I can’t be near you for another second.
‘I’m going to the loo,’ she says. ‘I’ll wait there.’
She locks the bathroom door behind her and slides to the floor, sits with her chin on her knees. She is shaking so badly her teeth chatter and she clenches her jaw to stop the sound of it.
Instinct stops her from finding her own phone and checking her messages. Instead, she reaches to pull the light cord, puts her fingers in her ears and closes her eyes.
Lyon, after midnight
The second time he wakes up, it is Mike he sees, just as it is Mike who will wake him most often during the next few weeks. If he has learned anything from his own demise it is that he must not underestimate this man. He has, after all, seen him at his best, in command, flying. How will he behave when he learns he’s been deceived? Will he try to harm Fi? She will suffer. Will he kidnap Leo or Harry and issue a message on YouTube like some hooded radical? Pay me my money and I’ll let him go. A knife held to the precious boy’s throat.
No, he has to have faith in the police. The moment the property scam came to light Fi would have been in touch with them, and now she’ll have access to their protection. Mike wouldn’t take the risk.
In any case, he is a chancer, a bounder. He’ll kick a wall or two and then he’ll move on to the next opportunity, hardly limping.
52
Saturday, 14 January 2017
London, 3 a.m.
Though her ears ache, her fingers no longer seal them shut and she can hear awful grinding sounds on the other side of the wall. It’s a monster clearing its throat and preparing to devour her! No, that’s just one of the kids’ stories, the one Harry likes with the greedy sheep that swallows the world.
‘I’m still hungry!’
She struggles at first to understand the stiffness in her body, its proneness on a cold hard surface. Has she been dozing? Her hand moves across tile, probing, and reaches a wall of smooth plastic: a shower screen. She is on the bathroom floor, in the flat.
No, not a story.
She heaves herself into sitting position, back against the screen. Light-headed, she counts to ten, twenty, fifty, before attempting to stand. Her legs are dead, buckling under her weight, and she grips the door handle for support. At last, she finds the light cord and pulls – the dazzle makes her flinch – before unlocking the door and opening it as noiselessly as she can.
It is silent in the main room. As she creeps between the cliffs of boxes, particles of light overtake her, flowing from the bathroom towards the kitchen area. On the worktop, she can make out her handbag, a bottle with the residue of red wine; a sheet of yellow paper; a little blue exercise book.
At the mouth of the passageway, she sees him. He is still seated, his legs outstretched, but his head is tipped
right back, his face pitched skyward. She takes a step towards him. His eyes are closed. The skull bones are sharp beneath the skin and there’s blunt stubble on his face and throat. There is a crust of vomit on his chin and part of his neck, dirty pink drops of it congealing on the chair. The noises she heard were of him choking, presumably in his sleep, unable to gain consciousness, for there is no evidence that he has woken and done anything to try to save himself.
Nor did she do anything.
He is dead, surely, but she can’t bring herself to touch him.
Her heart begins to punch against her chest, her hands to spasm and twitch. She has an image of herself from last night that cannot be hallucination. Of taking Merle’s sleeping pills from her bag and crumbling them into the wine bottle. She appears almost absent-minded in the image, like when she looks after Rocky and gives him his anti-inflammatory for his arthritis. Just half a tablet, broken into two.
But she wasn’t absent-minded, was she? She was attentive to the point of frenzied. There were six sleeping pills in the pack and not only did she use them all, but she also decided they might not be enough. She went back to her bag and removed the box of antidepressants she’d taken from Bram’s package on Wednesday morning. Not that she’d intended to keep them, but after googling and reading and worrying she’d been running late, she’d still had to shower and dress and get to the station in time for her train to Waterloo to meet Toby, and she’d swept the pills into her bag without thinking.
So she’d added several of those to the wine too.
I killed him and it was pre-meditated. I prepared the poison.
But no, that can’t be right! How was she to know he would drink most of the bottle? How was she to know he’d drink any of it? She’d been delirious with shock, her actions reflexive, involuntary, hardly more than a child’s play-acting.
Except she’d poured herself a glass of wine before she added the pills, hadn’t she? Because she needed a drink or in malicious deception? If she was already drinking, then he’d be more likely to accept a glass, less likely to suspect foul play.
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