A Trick of the Mind

by Penny Hancock

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know. But there would be time if I went right away. If she wants me to.’ He had said I, this time, not we, and I wanted to hug him. ‘I could get the Clipper up to Embankment, in fact,’ he went on, ‘couldn’t I, Ellie? From Trinity Buoy Wharf?’

  ‘Yes. The Clipper goes from North Greenwich, you have to call the Predator to take you across.’

  ‘The Predator?’ This was Louise.

  ‘It’s an ex-police boat that runs a ferry service over to the other side,’ I said. ‘You have to call it up. It only runs when there are enough passengers to warrant a crossing.’

  ‘Sounds very anachronistic,’ she said. ‘I thought the wharf was supposed to be ultra-trendy?’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Finn. ‘I could do that if we left straight away. Meet you on Pall Mall, Louise?’

  I felt Louise prickle and I knew what I had to do.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘It’s OK. Thanks, Finn. I can manage. There’s no need. You should go with Louise or you might miss the film.’

  It was time I was able to judge my own work. It was what I had wanted all those weeks ago when I’d made the decision to end my relationship with Finn, to be independent, to stand on my own two feet both artistically, and in life. Patrick had interfered with the latter, though I was freeing myself from him, now. So I must deal with the former myself. I’d won the commission without Finn’s help, without anyone’s help. I could complete it on my own.

  ‘I’ll see you two soon,’ I said. ‘Have a good time at the ICA. Come on, Pepper.’ And I left them, without looking over my shoulder once.

  Finn caught up with me as I got to the doors.

  ‘I found this the other day. But I was afraid you’d be angry with me for interfering.’

  He thrust a printout of some local Southwold news into my hand.

  ‘It was just, when Louise told me you’d caused an accident on your way down to Southwold, the weekend you didn’t invite me’ – he shrugged and pulled the corners of his mouth down – ‘when she said you hadn’t gone to the police, I knew it sounded more like one of your old obsessive thoughts about hitting something in your car. All those times you thought you’d knocked someone over! So after I saw you the other day, and realised how convinced you were you had to put up with Patrick when it was clear you were unhappy, I did a bit of research on the internet. Here.’

  I read it on the Tube.

  A local man has come forward to confess to the hit-and-run that happened in April. The man in question decided he preferred to confess than to have the accident on his conscience. He describes how he deliberately went after Patrick McIntyre in his van, knocking him over on the A1095 in April after a dispute in the pub. However, the victim of the accident, Patrick McIntyre, who suffered minor head injuries, failed to press charges and is no longer living in the area. The dispute was over the death of Stephanie McIntyre, the man’s niece. Patrick McIntyre was arrested for the murder of Stephanie McIntyre after her speedboat went out of control. Witnesses said they had seen McIntyre tampering with the boat. However, insufficient evidence meant he was released without charge. His wife had made previous complaints about domestic violence since marrying McIntyre and was said to have been living in fear. McIntyre has since been out of the country. He had had previous convictions for Grievous Bodily Harm and Actual Bodily Harm. Police say they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the hit-and-run.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  I couldn’t get the picture of Stef’s smiling face out of my mind. Looking so happy in her wedding dress in the photo by Patrick’s bed. She had had no idea what lay in store for her, that day she tried, for whatever reason, to get away from Patrick on the boat.

  She thought she was leaving him . . . she had no idea she was about to die.

  I tried to wipe the image from my mind as I made my way back through London’s summer streets to my studio.

  Finn, dear sweet Finn, had bothered to find proof that the accident had been another of my obsessions. And tomorrow I was going to New York! I would be far away, on the cusp of a new life.

  I’d lost two and a half hours’ painting time, however, by the time I’d dealt with the disrupted Tubes, ended up walking two stops, and finally decided to walk back between the high walls of the disused warehouses back to Trinity Buoy Wharf.

  I had to finish the painting, but every time I thought I’d finished and was ready to pack up, I changed my mind. It needed a little more work here, another mark there. A layer in the top right-hand corner.

  Every so often I checked outside, alert to the fact Patrick might decide to come down and find me. There was no sign of him. Only the usual bustle of the wharf, a crew filming beside the lightship, dancers sitting on old buoys outside the café, drinking coffee, chatting, calling Pepper to them, tossing him bits of panini. Reassured by the everyday activity all around me, I worked on. There was no way Patrick could hurt me here, even if he did turn up, with so many people about.

  And soon I’d be gone.

  I added a layer to the sky, hoping to give it a sense of the opaque, and then decided it didn’t work and that I should change it back. I wondered what Finn would have said. Reminded myself I could use my own judgement.

  The shipping company phoned and said they would come first thing on Tuesday morning and could I have the painting bubble-wrapped and labelled and ready to transport? I was to leave the studio key at reception. I could feel panic build within me, crippling my creative muscles. It would take some time to change the painting back to how it was before I’d fiddled with it, and then it wouldn’t be exactly as it had been before I added the layer.

  I should never have meddled with it.

  Unable to make a decision, I went outside. The tide was low. I leant on the wall. Counted the rungs on the ladder leading down into the red lightship. Twenty metal steps. Up above, the cable cars moved silently across the sky, passing each other on their wires. Sunlight glittered on the surface of the Thames. It was hot and airless and I wanted to get away. I had no more energy for the painting, or for anything.

  In the end I changed my mind. I would leave the painting, hoping the new layer added nuances, and have another look at it after leaving it an hour or two, see what it was like when it was dry.

  In the meantime I would pack up everything in the studio, make sure I left nothing for Patrick to use as an excuse to get in touch with me, and be on my way to Dad’s. I’d persuade him to let me stay on his sofa tonight, reassuring him that tomorrow I’d be out first thing, and on a flight to New York. There was no choice, nowhere else I could go.

  Lights were twinkling on across the River Lea by the time I had wrapped the painting and packed my things in my car.

  I was ready. I could hear music somewhere, the beginnings of an evening of drinking and laughing in the pubs, and on the tourist boats on the river.

  Behind me in the towers of Canary Wharf, lights were coming on; it was a bright checkerboard to the skies. Over to my left, The O2 was also lit up, ready for whichever big event people were gathering for. On this side, my container was the only one with a light left on. Once upon a time I would have gone off to meet Chiara and the others in the pub, Louise had said they were all meeting at the Coach & Horses, in Soho, but that would be impossible now Louise and Finn were together.

  I would simply have an early night at Dad’s, ask him not to answer the door to anyone.

  I walked across the wharf to my car, which was parked beyond the lighthouse. Before I got in I turned round to have one last look at the studio and realised the window in the back of the container was lit up. I’d left the lights on.

  ‘Come with me, Pepper.’ I hurried back across the yard.

  I pulled back the bolts of the studio door, stepped inside to reach the light switch, flicked it off and turned.

  Patrick moved so quickly I didn’t have time to gasp.

  I’d seen the look in his eye, the one where it was as if Patrick the charmer, the sweet-talker, was simply no longer in the
re. As if he was possessed by someone else entirely. Or perhaps it was that there was nobody there at all. Certainly there was no empathy. No humanity. A blank.

  My mind did a quick scan of the situation. I was alone, everyone else had gone off, as far as I could see, wanting to get some air, or to a pub for a cold drink on a hot night like this. And anyway, the container was isolated, facing away from the yard, and over the River Lea.

  Pepper was growling, low and fierce.

  I spoke, words coming out without too much thought. Automatic, defensive.

  ‘I’ve finished, I think,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here, it’s too hot on a night like this. Let’s go for a drink.’

  ‘You were leaving me!’

  I made for the door.

  He put his leg out and tripped me so I keeled over, banging my head on the metal wall. I grabbed one of the girders and just managed to maintain my balance.

  ‘I thought you were better than all the others, Ellie. But you just picked me up to let me down.’

  The blow was so sudden and forceful I stumbled back across the container, lost my balance and fell onto the floor, stars spinning around my head when I forced my eyes open. Instinctively I reached for my mobile but Patrick snatched it out of my grasp and hurled it at the wall where it smashed and clattered to the floor.

  Then I felt something pressing down on my chest, and when the stars subsided I saw that it was his foot, not the real one, the prosthetic. I tried to move but was constrained by the weight of it and a searing pain that gripped my chest and shoulder where I had landed awkwardly. Pepper had sunk his teeth into the fabric of Patrick’s trouser leg and was tugging at it angrily. But before I could sit up, Patrick grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and stuffed him into a bag of bubble wrap.

  ‘Patrick, no, stop! Why would you do that to Pepper? He’s done nothing to you.’

  ‘He’s annoying me.’

  He kept his foot pressed against me as he ripped parcel tape from the reel I’d used earlier and wrapped it round and round Pepper in the bag. Then he tossed Pepper into the corner, where I could see him wriggling inside the polythene. The rigid plastic of Patrick’s prosthetic foot pressed me back down harder.

  I tried to kick my legs, to bash my heels against the floor to alert someone, anyone who might be outside, but there was no chance of anyone taking notice of a thump inside containers that were surrounded by the sounds of the docks and building works, the almost constant drone of the planes landing at the airport, and police sirens wailing out on the A13.

  ‘I really thought you were better than Stef. I really believed in you, Ellie, I thought you were the one I could trust. But it turns out you were just the same.’

  He stood tall above me, looking down at me.

  Then he knelt beside me. His hands, the ones I’d loved, with their black hairs and strong knuckles, crept up my chest and then exerted extreme pressure on my throat.

  I could barely breathe.

  ‘How could you walk out on me, Ellie? When you’d already run me over? When you had already driven away once, and left me without a leg?’

  ‘I know all about it. I told you already.’

  My words came out strangulated, followed by a coughing fit that made me feel my lungs were giving in.

  ‘Patrick.’ I could barely speak. ‘It wasn’t me, you know that! You used my doubt to control me.’ His hands increased their pressure on my throat and I grew hot, felt the world vanishing until it was far away, just a speck.

  ‘You came to the hospital. You led me on!’

  He released his hold a little and I struggled to sit up but he pushed me back down.

  I looked into his face, attempting to appeal to him, but I could see straight away that nothing would get through to him.

  ‘When someone comes to find you, in the morning, or whenever they come looking, because it’s the weekend, isn’t it, and I suppose they will assume if this container’s locked up it will be because you’ve gone off to New York with your painting. When they find you, I will be gone. I’m the one who’s leaving you now, Ellie. I win.’

  He kept his foot on me as he picked up my Stanley knife, leant over to my canvas, all beautiful and complete and ready to ship. He looked at it, then I heard his knife slit through the wrap, the crackle and pop of the bursting bubbles as it moved. A sad vain hope shot through me, that he just wanted to see the painting, that this was the only reason he was undoing all my careful wrapping.

  ‘This was taking you away, it’s all you cared about, instead of me,’ he said, and again he lifted the knife.

  ‘No, Patrick. No!’

  ‘You used my studio, my flat to make your painting and then you dumped me!’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘You thought you could just drop me and move into the New York art scene, you thought you were superior to me because I was a poor abandoned child brought up in care who your aunt wouldn’t even take on as a foster child.’

  ‘That’s not true, Patrick.’

  His eyes came into focus, too close up, cold as ice, almost white, his pupils pinprick dots.

  ‘I really don’t understand why you wanted to do this to me,’ he said. ‘Why you decided to come to me, and then leave me. Why would you do that?’

  ‘I . . . never meant to. It wasn’t a plan, it . . .’

  ‘So now I’m going to have to show you how it feels. It’s what I had to do to Stef. She gave up on me too the minute she decided I wasn’t good enough for her. Decided to run off in the power boat! I couldn’t guarantee the boat would lose control, but I knew if it did, she would be chopped into little pieces by the engine, and I chose to check it over before, in case she insisted on driving it. No one could ever prove one way or another that I had arranged for there to be no safety cord. But she deserved it. She deserved it.’

  ‘Is that why those guys came after you? At the pub . . .’

  ‘All the charges against me were dropped. They are so frustrated!’ He laughed. ‘So mad at me! They even tried to run me over! But they can’t do a thing any more except watch me become more and more successful.’

  ‘Successful? But the flat in Wapping isn’t actually yours, is it? Where did you get the money from to buy all those designer clothes, all those dinners?’

  ‘Successful at using other people’s credit cards. It requires a certain kind of intelligence, don’t you think? To use one, and move on to another. And not get caught.’

  I stared up at him.

  ‘Let me go, Patrick. Punishing me won’t help. Someone will come, they’ll know it was you. And then they’ll come after you for everything else . . .’

  ‘Got myself a job on a yacht out in Malta and no one will bother to look for me out there.’

  ‘Look, if you let me go, we can talk. When I get back from New York, when things have settled down.’

  ‘You still think you’re off over the pond?’ he said. ‘Watch.’

  And he took the knife back to the painting. Then he stood back but with his heavy foot still pressing me down, and I watched helplessly as he lifted the knife and let it rip through my canvas.

  All my hard work, all the feeling and emotion I’d put in since – yes, since I’d met Patrick, all the heightened emotion that in a way had been due to him, he cleaved in two with his knife.

  And I saw my whole future, my career as an artist vanish in those few seconds it took for him to destroy what I’d spent months creating. He moved the knife through the painting with broad sweeps, each movement making another slash, and I saw the canvas curl apart, peel open, revealing the blankness behind.

  ‘You led me on like everyone else,’ said Patrick, his eyes bright with fury, and something else beneath, which I took to be sorrow. ‘If you move, if you scream, remember, I have Pepper and I’m sure you don’t want him to suffer.’

  I thought of Frank, the old man who I had taken Pepper from, promising him Pepper wouldn’t die before he did.

  And now Patrick picked u
p Pepper– he was still wriggling – and all I heard as he walked away and slammed the door was Pepper’s frightened yelps, and the bolts that kept the container door locked shut slam down into place outside.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I realised I wasn’t so afraid of dying as I was of being in the wrong place when it happened. I wanted to have sorted things out first. I wanted to apologise to Finn. To my other friends. And I wanted to be in the right place. The way May had chosen where she was to die, and made it the way she had wanted it to be. Not dying of starvation or dehydration in a hot metal container. Not with Pepper struggling inside bubble wrap with Patrick in a state that meant he might do anything to the old man’s little dog who I had promised to keep safe.

  I lay in the stifling heat, in the dark, afraid of moving in case Patrick was waiting for me. My face throbbed from where he had hit me, and my arm was trapped uncomfortably beneath my chest. While I lay there, uncertain whether moving would hurt more or less than lying here and waiting for the stars to stop spinning round my head, I thought of my friends enjoying an evening in the pub. I thought of my mum at the Apple Store and Dad with his bottles of beer and Lou Reed saying what a perfect day it had been on the spinning vinyl in his flat. No one knew where I was. No one would miss me. Even Dad – he’d assume I’d changed my plans at the last minute, it wouldn’t occur to him to find out where I was.

  They all thought I was busy with my commission, getting it packed off and ready to be sent, busy with my new lover, my new ritzy life in Wapping.

  My head began to swim, the container started to feel as if it was swaying, and then I must have passed out for a time because later, I woke with a start, no longer dizzy but aware that the world outside had fallen quiet. It must be late. It was still stifling, and my mouth was so dry I could barely peel my tongue from my palate. For the first time, I began to panic. If I didn’t get out of here soon, I would become dehydrated. How long did it take to die of thirst? I began to feel breathless as well as parched, as if the air in the container was being sucked out.