by Neil Cross
Lenny called out.
Just leave him.
Holloway shouted at Lenny not to watch.
Lenny didn’t seem to hear.
With his toe, Holloway tipped Henry on to his back. He saw the cleft, bleeding hole where his nose had been. It was ragged and scalloped at the edge; the signature of Holloway’s teeth. He watched the slow popping of lazy, rude bubbles, like a volcanic mud pool, that came and went with the rhythm of Henry’s breathing.
Holloway drizzled petrol over Henry’s face. Henry writhed and tried to jolt himself away. He made muffled grunting noises, like a snuffling pig.
Holloway stamped on his belly. Henry made a choking sound and bent at the waist. Holloway poured what remained of the petrol into his mouth. Henry gagged. He tried to vomit. Holloway shook the last drop from the canister, then threw it away.
He crouched to grab Henry’s ankle. He recoiled at the touch of his skin. Then, with an exerted grunt, he began to drag Henry into the fire.
Henry became frenzied. He thrashed and kicked out. He grasped at furniture. When finally he closed his fist round the leg of a chair, Holloway stopped, bent, and stabbed at Henry’s knuckles until he let go.
Stooped, the knife in his hands, Holloway looked up and saw Lenny’s face.
The heat of the flames was like a palistrade. Lenny had retreated to the far side of the room. His edges were erased by the fumes and the steam and the shimmer of heat. He looked like a spectre. But he didn’t leave. He stayed to bear witness on behalf of Jack Shepherd and Joanne Grayling.
Holloway’s face was greasepaint-smeared with tears and soot and blood. He lifted the remains of his jacket over his head. Small blue flames licked over it like arcs of electricity. He could smell burning hair.
He grabbed Henry’s ankle and pulled him further into the inferno.
Henry had contested every inch. Suddenly his movements became disorderly and erratic. He thumped and writhed and jolted. His ankle twisted from Holloway’s grip.
Holloway looked out from under the jacket. He saw that Henry’s face was alight.
He stepped away.
He watched the lips peel back from Henry’s teeth.
As Lenny advanced to meet him, Holloway threw his knife into the purifying heart of the flames and withdrew. The dense mantle of smoke was by now a low, boiling ceiling.
Lenny took his sleeve again.
‘Come on,’ he shouted.
Holloway was not ready to leave. As Lenny tugged at him, he hung back, staring into the flames.
Once, he thought he saw human movement. But it was probably the rapid play of light and shadow.
‘You’re burned,’ said Lenny. His voice clear and distant.
Holloway realized the alarm had fallen silent.
He coughed. His chest felt restricted. He collapsed. Lenny took his weight.
The ceiling was on fire.
Holloway lay his arm across Lenny’s shoulders. He looked down.
Together, they made for the fire door. It was a milky square in the far corner of the room, through which long ropes of grey smoke unbraided and scattered.
It took a long time to get there.
Part Four
The Visitors
I’ve been telling you to this day, without me life has no meaning. I’m the best friend you’ll ever have.
The Rev’d Jim Jones, from his final address to his followers, Jonestown, Guyana,
18 November 1978
22
The ward room was quiet and bathed in a greenish half-light. Holloway lay on a metal-framed bed. He couldn’t move.
From the acute fall of shadow, he knew there was a window somewhere in the room, looking on to the night outside. It might be any hospital in Britain. There was the sharp green odour of cut flowers, an aftertaste of disinfectant. Rubber wheels squeaked in the corridor outside.
He knew that time had passed. A dim glimmer in the upper corner was the butt end of a length of silver tinsel. Christmas had come and gone.
A nurse stood at the end of his bed. Perhaps she had woken him. He tried to speak, but there was a mask over his mouth. There were tubes in his throat and nose, his arm.
The nurse moved to the edge of the bed. She touched his forehead.
His eyes rolled white. He fell again.
The coma was a temporary death. He emerged slowly.
He seemed to remember visitors. But he must have been dreaming, because two of those visitors were Shepherd and Dryden. They stood in the doorway.
In the dream Holloway smiled.
Dryden and Shepherd looked sombre. They didn’t speak. They stood at the foot of Holloway’s bed. When he looked again, they’d gone.
He was visited by his aunt Grace. She smelled like the house in which she raised him, like sweet make-up and baking bread and fresh winter air. Her voice, when she spoke, had all the old strength. She lay a weightless hand on his forehead.
‘Everything is all right,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. We come here first.’
In the dream he couldn’t answer. He was distracted by the curtains, which he could see fluttering through her translucent body as if through a corrupted lens.
There were other people too. Ranks of dim figures lined up in the doorway and shuffled past his bed. But from those people, in the dream, he averted his eyes.
23
The winter had not passed before James Ireland came to Holloway’s door.
Ireland wore a tweed suit in need of cleaning, a knitted tie. Scuffed brown brogues. Mustard-coloured socks pooled at skinny ankles.
By then, Holloway’s lesser burns were healing well. The skin grafts on his arms and hands and shoulders and neck had taken. His eyebrows and lashes had grown back. But breathing remained difficult and a cylinder of oxygen was kept close to the bed.
He tired easily and slept many hours a day.
Although the doorway was quite high enough, Ireland stooped when he entered. It was a trick Holloway had often used. It suggested humility when none was felt.
Ireland stood at the end of Holloway’s bed with his hands behind his back. Holloway could see that he held a bulging carrier bag.
Ireland said: ‘Well, well, well.’
Holloway had been helped into a sitting position. It was still difficult to speak.
He said: ‘Hello, sir.’
Ireland turned and shut the door. He pulled a moulded plastic chair to the edge of the bed.
He said: ‘How are you?’
‘Better,’ said Holloway.
His voice was a grainy rattle.
‘And your leg?’
He tried to smile, but it felt rictal and ugly.
‘It’s a matter of time.’
‘Quite,’ said Ireland and glanced away.
He clapped his hands to break the mood.
‘I nearly forgot,’ he said. He reached into the carrier bag he’d brought along. ‘I brought you some magazines. Are you able to read?’
‘Yes,’ said Holloway.
‘Good, good,’ said Ireland. ‘I wasn’t sure what to get. So I brought a selection.’
‘That’s very kind of you, sir.’
Ireland sat attentively straight as Holloway flicked through the magazines, feigning interest.
‘Will,’ he said at length, as if imparting a great secret. ‘We’re aware that you knew her. Joanne. We checked and cross-referenced every transaction into or out of her bank account. You must have known we’d do that. We know that on five different occasions, you transferred sums of money directly into that account. So we know you knew her, and it doesn’t take Inspector Morse to guess what you were up to. All right? So why didn’t you just say so? Why didn’t you just come to me and tell me if this fucker was on your back?’
Because Derek Bliss, aka Henry Lincoln, was
supposed to have died of a cardio-vascular accident in Australia five years before, it took some time to identify him. The connection might never have been made had a large bonfire in Henry Lincoln’s garden not threatened to rage out of control, causing his neighbours to dial 999. When the bonfire was doused, a charred shoebox split and spilled its contents on to the sodden ashes amid the clothes and books and diaries and newspapers, the busted laptop computers and associated peripherals. The firefighters found a series of charred 8 x 10 photographs of what appeared to be a mutilated female corpse.
They called the police. The corpse in the photographs was later identified as that of Joanne Grayling.
Further items were found that related to her kidnapping and murder. As Ireland and Holloway spoke, the bagged and catalogued ashes were still being sifted.
Ireland knew that the day immediately prior to the murder of Joanne Grayling and his subsequent alleged theft of the ransom money, Holloway had gone to Leeds in search of Derek Bliss.
Indeed, as Henry Lincoln, Bliss had been interviewed in connection with Holloway’s disappearance. So it seemed clear that Holloway knew who was responsible for kidnapping Joanne Grayling before that kidnapping became a murder.
Holloway needed to think. There were a great many lies to prepare. But he couldn’t think. He didn’t know where to begin.
Ireland looked upon him with deceptive eyes; moist and supplicant. Holloway knew the look. He’d seen it in other contexts. Or similar contexts, but from a different vantage point.
He was tired. He wished Ireland would leave. But Ireland hitched his trousers and crossed his legs; the action of a better-dressed man.
With that same deceptive tenderness, he searched Holloway’s expression.
Then he said: ‘If you don’t let me help you, you’ll go down for this.’
He removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. Even Holloway began to suspect he might mean it. But only for a moment.
Holloway met Ireland’s myopic gaze while he polished his spectacles with the tip of his tie.
Ireland breathed on a lens, held it up to the light.
He positioned the spectacles on the end of his long nose. Holloway could see his own reflection. It reminded him of a newspaper cartoon or a saucy picture postcard.
Ireland hung his head like a man come to deliver bad news. Outside, the spring wind carried the excited barking of a dog. Motes of dust span and shone in a shaft of sunlight.
He shifted in the chair.
‘Tell me about Jack Shepherd,’ he said.
He waited. He ran a hand through lank, thinning hair.
‘Tell me who he was.’
The clock on the wall ticked through twenty seconds.
‘I don’t know,’ said Holloway.
Fragments of teeth and shards of bone were found embedded in the walls and ceiling. But there was not enough left of Jack Shepherd’s head to run a check against dental records.
Holloway closed his mind to the thought.
Ireland looked at him for a long time.
Then he leaned into Holloway’s ear. He spoke through clenched teeth. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Fuck you. Do you know what you’ve done to me?’
Holloway listened to the far-off dog. When he got out of here, he was going to get a dog. A Staffordshire bull terrier. Every morning, he would exercise it on the Downs. Eventually, when he’d regained his health, they would go running together along the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The dog would sleep at the foot of his bed. A muscular, triangular head on a low-slung, bow-legged, barrel torso.
Ireland’s eye came closer to Holloway than a lover’s. Holloway could see a crust of tiny yellow crystals rimming his eyelid. He could smell the delicate sweetness of his breath and the soap he’d shaved with, not well. The eggy patches on his lapel.
He stood. He brushed down his clothing.
‘I’m not sure what’ll happen next,’ he said. ‘But I suppose you’re not going anywhere, are you?’
Holloway smiled with half his mouth.
‘I’ll be here,’ he said.
24
On Easter Monday, Kate came to see him.
By then he was quite mobile and better able to enjoy the limited view from his window. Across the visitor’s car park and past the corner of another wing of the hospital, he could see a green stripe of parkland. He spent several hours a day in physiotherapy, swimming gently in the warm, circular pool in the hospital basement. He walked using a treadmill on its lowest setting.
He was in ongoing conversation with a therapist and a groomed, predatory solicitor called Birkin.
Kate rapped on the door with the back of her hand.
Dot dot dot. Dash dash dash.
He looked up. He lay his book face-down on the bed.
The smile felt odd, spreading across his mouth.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Hello, you.’
She paused in the doorway, like people do entering a church.
‘Hello you, too,’ she said.
He said: ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
She frowned.
‘Should I have called ahead? Are you tired?’
He dismissed the questions with a wave.
‘I’m fine. I like your hair.’
She touched the side of her head with two fingertips.
She said: ‘Caroline sends her love.’
‘Right.’ He nodded, or tried to: a spastic Prussian bow.
‘She’s going back to university. Next term.’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘OK. Good. Great. How’s whatshisname? Her boyfriend.’
‘Ex-boyfriend. For the moment anyway. Robert. He’s fine.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘He seemed nice. Very fond of Caroline.’
‘Oh,’ said Kate. ‘He loves her. He adores her.’
‘That’s good,’ he said, although he wondered.
He picked up the book again, but only to mark his page by folding down the corner. Then he closed the book and lay it on the bed next to him, in easy reach.
‘She did come to see you,’ said Kate.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Right. I didn’t know.’
‘Several times. Before you woke up.’
‘Nobody said.’
‘She asked them not to.’
She put her handbag on the bed and unbuttoned her summer-weight jacket. It was darkly speckled with spring rain. She must have been caught in a shower between the car park and the hospital entrance. He had noticed it: several urgent spatters on the window, like the drumming fingers of passing schoolchildren.
‘It upset her,’ she said.
‘I can’t have been pretty.’
Kate faced him with the jacket hung neatly over her forearm.
‘That’s not what I meant.’
She lay the jacket temporarily along the foot of the bed, then leaned over and picked up Holloway’s book. Without bothering to examine the title (it was Captain Corelli’s Mandolin), she put it on the bedside cabinet, next to the empty vase. Stretching, she made an informal little groan of exertion.
Then she said: ‘May I?’
He waved his good hand mock expansively.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Make yourself at home.’
She looked around the room, perhaps searching out Get Well Soon cards. There were two: one from Lenny and Eloise, a second from Fiona Wright.
Kate took the damp jacket from the foot of the bed and hung it on the back of the moulded plastic chair. She sat down and crossed her legs. She tapped her foot at the ankle.
Automatically, she reached out to pat his thigh. Then she stopped, withdrew the hand. She laced her fingers and clasped her hands in her lap.
She said: ‘So. How are you?’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Getting there. You?’
‘Good,�
�� she said. ‘Getting there.’
Their eyes met, locked. Broke free.
She smiled. She was facing the window. The low, fast-moving clouds passed across her corneas.
She leaned forward, made a face.
‘Is it painful?’
‘Not really. Well. Not any more. It hurts when the nerves grow back. My breathing could be better. But it’ll come.’
‘Right.’
She glanced at her lap.
She’d grown her hair. A lock of it fell across her face. A few strands adhered to her upper lip. She looked up.
She said: ‘So. Any news?’
He looked out the window. The light reflected silver on the body of a distant, ascending aircraft.
He said: ‘They know it wasn’t me.’
She closed her eyes slowly and nodded once, a way of telling him she knew.
‘Let’s not talk about it,’ he said.
He didn’t want to lie to her. He knew that, if she asked too much, he would have to.
Without looking at her, he reached out a hand and she took it in hers. He watched her glance at the skin graft, glance away.
The skin of her hand was dry, a condition she always suffered during the winter months. He could smell a clean, cool moisturizer. Not the Oil of Olay she’d used when they were together.
But they weren’t together, and that brand name had changed.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s OK.’
She squeezed his hand and let go.
‘So,’ she said. ‘What happens next?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
No charges had been brought, but he knew a case was being prepared. It was a logistically complex matter, involving several divisions and fragmentary evidence. He was prepared to be charged with the theft of the money. He had denied it. He was willing to do the time if necessary, but Birkin intended to use his record of poor mental health in mitigation. If he made a sufficiently convincing case that Holloway simply cracked under intolerable pressure, the CPS might choose not to prosecute.
Holloway didn’t know what evidence had been left undestroyed on Bliss’s bonfire. Nobody had mentioned David Bishop to him yet. Possibly no one would.