by Paula Daly
Leon had then escaped.
I put my fingers to my neck. It was throbbing. My mouth felt as though I’d been drinking lighter fluid. I was trembling, but Frankie was too shaken up himself to notice.
‘Are those scratches?’ I asked him.
He nodded.
‘From what?’
‘That bush by the back door.’
‘The rose bush?’ I asked.
‘If you say so, yes.’
Fearing for his life, he said, Frankie had rushed upstairs and locked himself inside the bathroom – Leon hammering on the door for a full half-hour demanding he come out and face him.
‘How did things escalate to that?’ I asked.
Frankie didn’t know. ‘It came out of nowhere,’ he explained. ‘He got up from resting, came downstairs, and I suppose he was mildly surprised to see me. He couldn’t recollect my being here earlier; it was as if his memory had been—’
‘Wiped clean?’
‘Exactly that.’
‘It happens. But he remembered you, right? He knew who you were?’
‘Oh yes, he remembered me. We even chatted about work. He was interested in how I was going about editing my new book, so we talked shop for a bit. To be honest, for a while it was like I was speaking to the old Leon. He even cracked a couple of funnies … They weren’t actually funny, but that’s a step in the right direction, yes?’
I agreed. Jokes were a new thing. A good thing.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Well, then he just totally fucking lost it. He grabbed me by my neck and lifted me from the chair. He said I was spying on him. That I’d been sent here to take his material. He said that I was nothing but a second-rate writer who bored everyone to tears and was incapable of original thought.’
‘You know he doesn’t mean that.’
(He did.)
‘I know, but, Jesus, Jane … he was frightening. I’m not sure you’re OK to be here with him. I mean, is he even ready to be out of that place yet? I don’t think he is. Was he properly assessed?’
When it looked as if Leon was not going to give up and Frankie was worried he was going to knock the bathroom door right off its hinges, Frankie had made the decision to climb out of the window. He did not have his phone on him, so effectively he was held prisoner. He lowered himself on to the ridge tiles of the utility room’s roof, before dropping over the side of the building, getting tangled in the roses on his way down.
When he had tried to sneak around the side of the house Leon was there waiting, shaking his head, bemused by Frankie’s attempt at escape.
‘I’m off,’ Leon had said to Frankie calmly.
‘Where are you going?’ Frankie had said, but Leon told him it was none of his business.
‘So, you have absolutely no idea where he headed?’ I asked Frankie.
‘None.’
I exhaled. This was the last thing I needed. What I needed was to get rid of Frankie, call Inspector Ledecky and tell her about Ryan Toonen.
‘What was he wearing?’ I asked.
‘Jogging bottoms and a T-shirt.’
‘No coat?’
‘No coat.’
‘Well, I suppose he’s not going to freeze to death.’ It was a mild day. Damp but mild. ‘What did he have on his feet?’
Frankie shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Jane, I can’t remember.’
Leon had taken to wearing flip-flops most of the time. He’d also done away with the need for underwear, something we’d talked about at length. I’d pleaded the case for wearing it but Leon simply saw no need. ‘Like wearing gloves inside the house,’ he’d explained.
Frankie threw back the rest of his drink.
‘How many of those have you had?’ I asked.
‘Three,’ he said. ‘But I’m absolutely fine to drive.’
He wasn’t, so I dropped Frankie at home. He lived not far from us in one of those three-storey, once grotty, now decadent, Georgian townhouses on Upper Parliament Street. The place was furnished and decorated white on white, like a Copenhagen apartment, and this was done to showcase Oona’s art. Her stuff was all a bit GCSE textiles for my liking: hemp cloth stuck on to jagged bits of green patina, Celtic designs bordering large hangings of parchment. There was no actual drawing involved.
Some time ago, at a dinner party at Frankie and Oona’s (when Leon had had a drink too many), Leon had picked up a pen and paper and challenged Oona to sketch a man riding a bicycle – to prove that she could draw. She’d laughed it off, but when Leon wouldn’t let it drop, she ended up smoking and crying outside, telling me what a cruel fucker he could be.
And she was right. He could.
Oona had become a skeletal version of herself in these last months. None of us knew what was at the back of it, but it seemed to have been done wilfully: she had begun exercising to extremes and choosing the vegan option whenever we ate out. We knew she’d gone too far. Her head looked too big, her eyes abnormally large inside her face, and when finally she gained back some of the weight, it was as if her features couldn’t quite recover from the lengthy assault. What’s done is done, they seemed to say, and she was left looking like an older, shrivelled version of the person she once was. She had, before that, been very good-looking, but now no one could quite remember, so her beauty no longer held much relevance.
When Frankie was out of the car, I picked up the children from school and nursery and began searching for Leon. He was alone. He couldn’t look after himself. I had to find him.
I doubled back towards our house, reasoning that because Leon was on foot, and without money, he couldn’t have got very far. I told the kids to look out for him too, but every time I spoke, it sounded as if the ends of my words had been scraped away. Jack looked at me suspiciously and I told him I thought I was coming down with a cold. I scanned the pavement and thought of Leon. He must have known he was in danger. He must have known Toonen’s associates on the outside would eventually come to collect, and when he couldn’t pay them, he’d pay with his life. Was that what the videos were all about? He’d tried to get them on camera as some sort of insurance?
‘Why is Daddy out all on his own?’ asked Jack now from the back seat.
My first instinct was to lie: He just wanted to go for a nice walk. But the way in which Jack asked, his voice full of worry, his little eyebrows knitted together, a crease I’d never seen before forming across his forehead, made me think he needed the truth.
Jack knew that the person who had come home from hospital was not the person who’d gone in. I’d catch him looking at Leon, sceptically, when Leon said something out of context, or did something slightly off. Such as when Leon covered the whole of his chicken leg in ketchup before eating. Or smothered Jack in kisses before he went up to bed, because, after all that time of being unable to recognize the children, Leon had now done a complete one-eighty, and was embracing them with gusto. Particularly Jack. He would spontaneously squeeze him – too hard. Which I could see was making Jack uncomfortable.
Jack was now frightened of Leon, but he was also frightened of pulling away from Leon, lest it hurt his feelings. Because if Jack did pull away, the hurt would register instantly on Leon’s face, and I could see this tore Jack up. He didn’t know what to do.
Two people who had always had such an easy warmth with one another were now practically strangers and it was agonizing to watch.
I’d tried to talk to Jack about it. Tried to explain as best I could that he should not feel bad if he didn’t always like being held so tightly by his daddy. It was going to take a bit of time for all of us to adjust to one another. But I also told him he might find it easier if he pretended to be having fun with Leon sometimes. He didn’t always have to be having fun for real.
I could try to rein in Leon’s sudden displays of affection, but it wasn’t fair to tell him to stop altogether. Nor did I think it was healthy for Jack in the long term to pull away from Leon completely. We all had to find ways of being able to be around him, and
the fake-it-till-you-make-it approach was currently working out the best for me, so I hoped it might help Jack too.
Martha, by contrast, didn’t care one bit what Leon did. I’m not sure she even remembered Leon properly. Of course, when he was in hospital, and then later in the rehab unit, the adults around her had talked of Leon incessantly. But I don’t think she actually pieced together that this person who was taking up so much of our time was her father. Now that he was home, she seemed perfectly at ease and would squeal with happiness whenever Leon tickled her too hard, or hung her upside down by her ankles.
‘Daddy’s not really supposed to be out on his own, Jack,’ I said in answer to his question. ‘He left without telling Uncle Frankie where he was going and I’m a bit worried.’
‘Do you think Daddy might get lost? Or someone might steal him?’
These were the warnings I’d given to Jack in the past. He was not allowed out of our front gate because he might get lost or stolen.
‘I think so,’ I said.
‘Daddy won’t get lost,’ said Martha, giggling, as if the thought of Leon disappearing was truly hilarious. ‘He’s big.’
‘He’s big,’ said Jack crossly, ‘but he’s not clever any more, Martha.’
I looked in the rear-view mirror to see him turn away from his sister in disgust.
The light was starting to fade. I headed towards Sefton Park and drove slowly around the perimeter. Would Leon go for a run? I had no idea what the new Leon would do. I don’t think Leon knew what the new Leon would do.
I thought about reporting him missing. ‘Is your husband a vulnerable individual?’ I imagined them asking.
He was a six-foot-two man in good physical shape who had not lost his ability to fight mean.
But yes, he was vulnerable. Of course he was vulnerable. He had a brain injury. He was easily riled and he had no concern for his own safety. Add to that he had no coat, no money, no phone and no keys.
Which was why I’d had to leave the back door unlocked – just in case he came back.
23
The sky was now black.
The house, too, was in total darkness; the porch dark like the inside of a sack – which meant Leon had not yet found his way home.
We’d been looking for nearly two hours and the kids were tired, fractious and needed a meal. I’d stopped to ask at the shop on Lark Lane, where Leon sometimes bought his beer; enquired at Keith’s Wine Bar, where Leon would grab a coffee when the writing was getting on top; I went to his gym; I drove to the Albert Dock, the Salthouse Dock, the Queen’s Dock. The docks were one of the first places the people of Liverpool were drawn to when someone went missing. But there was no sign of Leon anywhere and eventually I had to give up and return home.
I opened the front door. ‘Leon?’ I shouted from the foot of the stairs.
Nothing.
I should ring the hospitals. Find out if he’d been brought in injured. I should call Gloria too. She should know.
But something stopped me. Should I worry her with this? So soon?
I turned on the table lamps in the hallway and flicked off the stark ceiling light overhead. I got the kids out of their coats and shoes. Martha was demanding a chocolate biscuit and was using a new habit she’d adopted when I wouldn’t give in to her demands. She would repeat the same word over and over, woefully, until she was finally able to make herself cry, and her tears, she intimated, were evidence of how wrong I was in denying her whatever she so clearly needed. Biscuit. Biscuit … Biscuit.
‘You can have half,’ I said to her, and she quit the tears, skipping off to the kitchen to help herself.
I turned on the kitchen light for her, hung up my coat, and took out my phone from my bag. Then I googled ‘the Royal’, pressed ‘call’, and waited for an answer.
‘The Royal Liverpool Hospital.’
‘I wonder if you can help … my husband’s missing and—’
‘Missing persons are dealt with by the police.’
‘Well, he’s not … The thing is he might not actually be missing. I don’t know yet.’
Silence from the woman receptionist at the other end.
‘He has a brain injury,’ I explained. ‘And he’s wandered off. And I’m not sure he’s really able to look after himself. Not yet anyhow. He’s not been out of hospital very long and I’m just trying to find out if he’s been hurt. If not, then I should probably wait a bit longer before contacting the police … He’s only been gone a few hours.’
‘His name?’
‘Leon Campbell.’
A pause, and then she said, her voice softer now, ‘We haven’t had anyone brought in with that name today, love.’
‘He has no ID on him. What if he’s injured and no one knows who he is?’
I could hear her typing.
‘We’ve not had any unidentified men through these doors today at all. Have you tried Aintree? There’s the A&E there as well.’
‘I’ll call them next. I was hoping he couldn’t have got that far. He was on foot.’
I walked through to the kitchen to check on Martha. She was sitting at the table; her chubby legs, encased in flowery leggings, were swinging backwards and forwards, and she was sucking the chocolate from a KitKat. Her fingers were covered, as were her cheeks, and her chin.
I stopped dead.
Behind her, the kitchen door was wide open.
‘Did you open that door?’ I whispered.
Martha shook her head.
A shudder passed down the length of my spine.
‘You’re quite sure you didn’t open that door?’ I said, the alarm clear in my voice.
And Martha looked up at me, her eyes rounded and fearful, now quite aware there was something very wrong.
‘Did you?’ I repeated.
‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘Mummy, I didn’t.’
‘Mrs Campbell? Are you still there, Mrs Campbell?’ I could hear the receptionist’s voice coming from the phone in my hand.
I cut off the call.
I walked over to the back door and stuck my head out. There was a motion-sensor security light that came on whenever anything came within a few yards of the house. But everything was in darkness, meaning it hadn’t been triggered in the last five minutes.
Did that mean someone was already inside the house?
Had the person who attacked Leon come back?
I closed the back door, gently, so as not to make any noise, and I stood with my back against the wall, my breath catching with fear.
I motioned to Martha to keep quiet.
‘Fingers on lips?’ she whispered.
I nodded.
I considered my options. If there was someone inside, then I’d need to be able to get out fast. Need to get the kids out fast. I wondered if it was a mistake to have closed the back door.
I opened it again.
I could take the kids across to Erica’s. Deposit them with her and then get Charlie to return with me to check the house.
Charlie kept guns. Shotguns. Up until this moment I’d always considered them to be a monstrous liability. Why keep guns in the house when the statistics said that rather than defending your own property successfully, you were far more likely to die from your own weapon?
Suddenly guns didn’t seem such a bad idea after all.
‘Don’t move,’ I said to Martha. ‘I’m getting your brother.’
‘Can I have another biscuit?’
‘Don’t move.’
Jack was in the living room. He was watching TV. Or else he was supposed to be watching TV. That’s where he’d headed earlier, but the TV was on and he wasn’t in there.
I walked into the room, stood in the centre, and did a full three-sixty. Then I did it again just to be sure.
No Jack.
He must have gone up to his room.
I stood at the foot of the stairs and listened for any sounds coming from above. Was Jack up there? Had someone taken him up there? I cursed myself for not spot
ting the open back door immediately on my return. If I had, I could have got straight out of the house and called the police.
Children make you astonishingly vulnerable. You can’t run and you can’t fight.
Did I get Martha out now and come back for Jack?
No. I couldn’t leave him.
I took the stairs carefully, one at a time, planting my feet silently, still listening. There was no light filtering from beneath Jack’s door. None from Martha’s either.
‘Jack?’ I whispered. ‘Jack, are you up here?’
My house didn’t feel like my house. I loved this house. This was the place I wanted to be when the outside world was chaotic, when things got too much. This house restored me.
Now my house was a stranger in an alleyway. It was threatening, wanting me to feel afraid of it.
‘Jack?’
Again, my voice came out strangled-sounding and hoarse.
There was a little light pooling around the top of the stairs from the lamps I’d lit previously in the hallway beneath. But other than that, the rest of the first floor was in shadow.
I moved into the darkness and stopped.
There was a sound.
From above.
Someone was on the second floor. Someone with a heavy tread, too heavy to be Jack’s.
The steep attic stairs elbowed round to the right halfway up. Meaning the top of the flight was invisible from where I stood. I placed my foot on the first step and then retracted it quickly. Think, you idiot! Think about what you’re about to do. People met their deaths by not considering the facts, not weighing up the risks.
I punched out a quick text to Erica. Someone in my house. In attic. Send Charlie.
I would wait for Charlie.
That was the sensible option. Safety in numbers. Charlie would help. He would know what to do.
I checked my phone. No reply.
But what if he didn’t come? What if Charlie wasn’t home and someone had my son up there and—
I scaled the stairs fast.
I saw a strip of light beneath the door. Moving closer, I could hear nothing. No voices from within. I nudged open the door enough to see inside.
What greeted me was carnage.
Absolute devastation.