by Unknown
It was a lifetime before I got to the other side and threw myself at the slope, going at it like a lizard, legs and arms pumping up and down like pistons, using the sore inside of my calves to get traction, losing my grip every few feet and sliding back, grabbing on to gorse and heather to get purchase. At the top I allowed myself exactly one minute to rest – lying on my back, panting and sweating, counting the sixty seconds with metronomic severity. I was running with blood but my head was clear, my thinking tight as a drum. Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty – and I was up, dragging my feet a bit as I started, still bent over low with my arms hanging, but picking up speed until I was upright. Through the open gate. And there again, that wisp-like flash of something among the dark trees ahead. Proof that I was on it – still going. The air and the trees rushed past my face. I pumped my arms, 'FUCKING MOVE!' I screamed at my legs. 'Keep. Fucking. Going.'
Suddenly I was there, in the opening next to the cottage, coming to a juddering halt just in time to see the dull yellow movement of the beast disappearing round the corner, just in time to hear the door slamming, the sound of bolts being thrown.
I dropped my head and rested my hands on my thighs, shaking my head and spitting on the ground, waiting for my heart to stop pounding, for my lungs to stop stinging. It didn't matter now, no need to run. The fucker was mine – trapped in the cottage. When at last my legs had stopped trembling and I raised my head, I saw the window was being silently, secretively closed, a shadowy figure reaching out a hand under the lace curtain.
'NO,' I roared, launching myself at the house. 'No!' I grappled for the window. But I was too late: it had closed neatly and tightly against the frame. Furious, I jumped away, almost dancing with rage, swinging the bolt-cutters to one side and then back, in a perfect golfer's swing, straight into the pane. The glass shattered in a star shape, broken pieces tinkling down into the living room. Quickly I pulled off my sweatshirt, wrapped it round my fist, punched out the remainder of the glass and unhooked the window. I was inside in seconds, slithering through like a worm, falling on my shoulder, rolling on to my side in the scattered glass. With a clumsy, crabby motion, I pushed myself up into a crouch, squatting bright-eyed and alert, moving my head side to side in a series of jerks. I was alone in the living room.
The child's windmill on the shelf rotated creakily, like it was pleased to see me. Slowly, moving very quietly, I drew the bolt-cutters along the floor towards me and straightened. Around me the cottage had gone totally silent.
I went quietly to the wall, switched on the light, then stood very still in the centre of the room, trying to focus on all the air in the cottage, feeling its vibrations move along my skin. Nothing. No movement, and no sound. I turned, my head on one side, my skin crawling with concentration. Slowly I lifted my chin and looked up at the ceiling. Something had moved up there, only a few feet above my head, a subtle, infinitesimally small creak of a floorboard. I opened my mouth in a smile, breathing out, whispering softly, 'Ah, there. I've got you, ya beaut.'
Stealthily, the cutters at the ready, I moved towards the staircase. The night was absolutely silent now, a cobweb on the light-fitting above floating spectrally over my head, like a draught was coming through. I placed my hand on the banister and, slowly, slowly, testing every inch of every step, crept up the stairs. I paused at the top. I could see three doors ahead – two open and one, on the left, closed.
The word trap, trap came back to me, making my skin crawl. I ground my teeth, giving in to a moment's nerves, then inched forward along the corridor, stopping at the closed door, facing it with my feet a pace apart, solid – ready for something to come tearing out at me.
I took in five long, deep breaths. You can still walk away, mate ... raised the cutters above my head and, in one quick move, booted the door in. It flew open, a rush of stale air and darkness, and I saw the creature instantly. It was in the corner, its back to the wall, crying and shrinking away, its feet pedalling furiously. 'It', I saw instantly, was a 'she' – a woman in her teens or early twenties. Her hands were over her head, a terrified keening noise coming from her mouth.
'Who the fuck are you?' I stood with the cutters at the ready – out in front of me like a sword – ready to swing them if she moved so much as an inch towards me. My breathing was coming so rapidly that I had to stop between each word. 'I said, who the fuck are you?' When she didn't answer I made a fake lunge into the room, raising the cutters like I was going to attack. 'Tell me – NOW – tell me who you are. Who are you?'
'Don't don't don't!' She shrank back against the wall, her hands out to defend herself, her face streaked with tears and blood. She probably wasn't much past her teens with chopped-around black hair so short you could see the scalp in places. She had the underfed, dingy look of a thirteen-year-old boy on drugs. Whatever the tail trick was, she had either disposed of it or had it tucked neatly down beneath her. All I could see were the tops of her bare knees, crusted with hardened, white skin. 'Please don't!'
'Stand up!'
'I can't!'
'I said–' I made another lunge towards her '– stand up!'
'No!' she sobbed. 'No. I can't stand up.'
'Stand up or I'll hurt you.'
She shook her head and sobbed louder. I approached, my eyes on her hands, bending cautiously. Her nails were bitten, the tips of her fingers red and sore. Before she could see what I was doing I grabbed her right hand, wrenching it so high and so quickly that she was caught off balance. 'NO! No no – please please please.' She flailed, trying to grab me with her left hand, but I dropped the cutters and grabbed that too, yanking it up to meet the other, crunching the wristbones together.
'NOO! Leave me alone. Please DON'T! Let me go.'
'SHUT UP!' I slammed her hands into the wall above her head. 'Now, you're going to—' She wriggled, trying to kick me, to jerk her hands away. 'Stop that! Now just fucking stop struggling and stand the fuck up.'
'I can't.'
'Do it. Fucking do it.'
I rammed her hands against the wall again, harder now, and this time she stopped struggling. She raised her eyes to mine and we studied each other, both breathing hard. She had these swimmy, inflamed eyes the colour of mud, and a tilted-up, defiant nose.
'Well?' I was trembling so hard I could almost feel my teeth chattering. 'Are you going to stand up?' Her mouth moved shakily, but no words came out, only a scratchy murmur. I shook her again. 'Are you?'
'I – I will. I'll stand up if you don't hurt me.'
'I won't hurt you.'
She dropped her eyes, her whole body trembling, and shuffled her feet together, tucking them as tight under herself as she could. Pushing her head forward so her weight tipped over her toes, slowly, stiffly, she began to straighten. I raised her hands, lifting her, running them up the wall, drawing her up, my arms arching over her head. She was tall – almost six foot at a guess, and as she straightened I was aware that a part of her, something heavy and fleshy, didn't come with her and dropped heavily on to the floor. I could see it in the light coming from the hallway. I released her, grabbed up the cutters, and was back where I could see her properly.
'Don't move,' I said, holding up the cutters.
She dropped her face into her hands and stood pitifully in the centre of the room, her shoulders drooping. 'Don't kill me. Please don't kill me.'
'I'm not going to kill you, for fuck's sake.' I licked my lips. 'Take a step forward.'
She obeyed, not dropping her hands, shuffling forward dejectedly.
'That's it. Stop. Now ... take your coat off.'
She unbuttoned it and let it fall. She was wearing a man's shirt that reached to her knees and you could see her arms and chest, thin as a young boy's. Her bare, muscular legs were crammed into a pair of lace-up boots. I took a sideways step, circling her, staring in silence at what dangled from under the shirt – like something she had deposited there: an obscene, fleshed growth, the skin pale, rather yellow in places. It hung loosely between her legs, all the
way down to the floor, ending in an odd, spatulalike shape of flesh. I could see instantly it wasn't a trick. This belonged to her. There was a vein in the top of it that was pulsing from the effort of the chase.
'Please,' she begged, making a grab for it, trying to conceal it. 'Please don't look.'
I stared for a long time, not knowing what to do or say. I realized I was holding my breath. I let it out in a long sigh, shook my head. 'My God,' I muttered, lowering the cutters to my side. 'What the fuck is going on in this place?'
'I don't know – I don't know. Please let me sit down – please!'
I nodded to the bed. 'Go on.'
She dropped down, pulling the coat over her. She arranged the duvet hurriedly, so that whatever the growth was, it was squashed out of view just behind her left leg, making her sit slightly tilted to one side. I stared at the place it was hidden, my mind racing. When I looked up I found her staring back at me, like she was saying, 'I can't do anything about it. It's not my fault.'
'Oh, Christ,' I said, a wave of tiredness taking my feet out from under me. I sat on the floor with a bump, rubbing my eyes. 'What is going on? Who are you?'
'Angeline,' she said. 'Angeline. I can't help it.'
'Angeline?' I said the name distantly, like it was the strangest name I'd ever heard. 'Angeline?' I frowned. There was an odd, muffled quality to her voice – something sticky about the consonants, something I couldn't place – like she wasn't used to speaking.
'Angeline?'
'Yes?'
'Are you deaf, Angeline?'
She shook her head.
'Not deaf?'
'No. I can hear you.'
I narrowed my eyes. 'And what the fuck have you been doing today? Eh?' I nodded to the window. 'What did you do to Sovereign? And to Blake? What was that all about then?'
She dropped her hands and blinked at me. 'What have I been doing?' she said, wiping her nose. 'No – not me. I haven't done anything.'
'Someone has.'
'Dad,' she said, hurriedly rubbing at the tears on her cheeks. 'My dad. He's gone crazy. There was an explosion and—'
'Dad?'
'I followed him. He waited until they were in the chapel and then he—' She wiped her nose with her shirt sleeve. 'He nailed them inside. He knows about explosives. He's always known how to blow things up. I saw it. I saw it all.'
'And who the fuck's your – Jesus Christ.' I dropped my hands disbelievingly. It was all coming straight now. What a mangled fucking truth. 'No shit,' I muttered. 'No shit. Malachi? He's your father?'
She stared back at me, her face closed and defensive. 'They couldn't get out. Are they going to think it was me?'
Part Two
DUMBARTON
SEPTEMBER
Lexie
1
Dear Mr Taranici
I certainly hope you are coming to understand why I had to cancel last week. Apparently you said I didn't give you enough warning to waive the fee and, of course, I apologize for that, but I really think you should try, as a professional, to understand just what things are like up here. They are so ... I don't even know how to say it ... so completely awful that I have absolutely no idea when I'll be back in London. So maybe you can see why one cancelled appointment doesn't seem all that catastrophic to me. (By the way, just for the record, being nagged by your receptionist didn't help. I mean yes, surprisingly, I do know I've got to pay you. Haven't I always paid on time? And don't you remember why I'm here in Scotland in the first place? To find a way to tell Oakesy about it all, my job and everything? I've told you I'm going to get him to help me with my bills, but your secretary rubbing it in that I haven't got any money is just making my anxiety levels rocket.)
Do you recall saying if I hit an anxiety barrier a good coping mechanism would be to write things down? Remember? To soothe myself? Well, that's what I'm doing now. Writing it all out. How about we treat this letter as my session? Then I won't be paying for empty time after all and we'll both be happy. The other thing I've been doing is reading the chart you gave me (filling it in religiously every day, actually) and trying to identify the 'life/situation/relationship/practical problem' that triggered this catastrophic anxiety. And what do I find? Surprise surprise, at the very root of it all is the usual thing: you-know-who, and his *#%*$* job and his total inability to take me seriously or even notice me. God knows how I'll ever get him on to the subject of money. Especially with all that's happened to him.
You remember I told you we were up here for him to cover a story on Cuagach Eilean? Pig Island? Well, yes, I can just see your face now because you must have heard that name in the news this week. I assume you've already put two and two together and guessed who has managed to get himself caught up in the whole dreadful thing. And now he's the centre of attention and I'll never get listened to or my needs met.
Honestly, it's been horrible, just horrible, from the moment we got here. I'd spent ages choosing my wardrobe for this holiday – I mean, the attention I paid to detail. I bought three sets of shorts, quite shorty ones. Yes, I can hear you saying, 'Alex, are you sure you should be sexualizing another negotiation?' Well, you'd be very pleased with yourself in this instance, because the shorts didn't work. He just spent the whole time on his computer, hardly noticing I was there. And to cap it all he left me on my own in this horrible bungalow with water that's piped down through peat so it's an awful brown colour and makes the toilet look dirty, and this huge picture-window, which lets the sun come in and bake everything until you can't breathe. You couldn't imagine it in your worst nightmares. Fake beams, squares of cardboard daubed with pink ant-killer in every corner, not a soul for miles around.
How long do you think he was gone for? One day? Two days? Ha! No. Try again. Three. Three days I was there, miles from the nearest house, with nothing to do but go back through my credit-card statements for the zillionth time, or stare out at the clouds of midges in the trees. Just when I was really panicking, when I'd gone through nearly all the money he'd left and was thinking there was no point in hanging around in Scotland at all because he wasn't going to be interested in talking to me anyway, suddenly he turns up on the doorstep.
Well, that was almost the end for me. He'd been in a fight. He was totally unrecognizable – half paralysed and bloody, half his hair missing where it had been pulled out. I really had to struggle to keep my temper with him. Oh, I put him to bed and did the devoted-wife number, but I was furious. It turns out that Malachi Dove (you've heard that name in the papers a few times this week, I bet), Oakesy's nemesis for years, is alive and kicking and living on Pig Island. And, typical of Oakesy, he's gone out of his way to provoke a confrontation with him. Honestly. He could have been killed.
It's a class thing, Mummy says. Remember I told you she's got this bee in her bonnet about Oakesy being my rebellion against her? That marrying outside my class is a guarantee cracks will come to the surface sooner rather than later? Well, I've got to the point where I'm almost agreeing with her. I mean, why does he have to drink so much? Where are his social graces? (Incidentally, I'm convinced this is why there were such sparks between me and Christophe – and whatever you say there's no doubt there were sparks. It's a simple fact of life. We looked at each other and recognized someone from the same class, and that's all there is to it.)
It took Oakesy two weeks to get back on his feet. And then he was straight back out there, hiring a boat to take him to Cuagach. But if I thought that put me on edge, sent my stress hormones into overdrive, I had no idea of the nightmare that was about to start. Early Sunday it was, and I was asleep when the phone rang. It was you-know-who calling from his mobile, shouting above the noise of a boat engine, saying something about getting dressed because we were going out when he got back. I propped myself up on the pillow and looked at the clock. It was four in the morning.
'I'll be home in half an hour,' he shouted. His voice kept going in and out of range. Fading away. He hadn't even waited to get a good signal. 'Get ... and don't
... in a hurry. Get dressed.'
'For heaven's sake,' I mumbled. My head was all thick and cottony with sleep. 'For heaven's sake...'
'Just do it. Get dressed.'
And when he said that it really jolted me awake. I sat up in bed, suddenly thinking about Malachi Dove, about all the nightmares I'd been having. 'Oakesy?' I said, scared now, looking up at the window, at the curtains and thinking of the silent woods out there and the long driveway surrounded by rhododendrons. 'What's the matter? What's happening?'
'Wait next to the front door. I won't be long. And, Lex, don't take this the wrong way, but it might be a good idea to—'
'Yes? Might be a good idea to what?'
'To lock all the doors and all the windows.'
'What? What do you mean? Oakesy?' But the phone hissed static back at me. 'Oakesy?' He was gone, leaving me sitting bolt upright in the dark, clutching the receiver, staring at the window.
You know how level-headed I am. Don't you? You know it takes a lot to rattle me. But with that twenty-second phone call he'd got me scared – really anxious about how dark the bungalow suddenly seemed. I got out of bed and went shakily to the kitchen, getting the first knife I could find out of the drawer and standing with it pointing out in front of me in the darkness. Don't take this the wrong way, but lock everything. I went round the bungalow without switching on a single light, holding the knife in both hands, double-checking every lock, my hands shaking. When I tested the window locks I did it really quickly, only slightly opening the curtains, not the whole way. I didn't want to find a face staring back at me through the glass.
In the bedroom I put the light on and got dressed with my back to the wall so I could see the window and the door, my hands shaking so hard I could barely do up my jeans. I got my shoes on and went to sit in the living room, on a chair against the wall between the window and the front door, the knife still clutched in my hands. I kept thinking of the acres of wood surrounding me, pressing in on the bungalow. Every sound was magnified a hundred times: the strange click-click-click of the immersion-heater coming on in the airing-cupboard, a bird walking across the shingled roof. When the phone rang again I snatched it up, my heart thundering.