by C. L. Taylor
‘I only came upstairs to use the toilet and I heard voices from Katie’s room. I didn’t expect to see Trevor …’ She sighs wearily and rests her head on my shoulder.
‘Let’s get you onto your bed.’
Malcolm takes a step towards Trevor’s room. ‘I’m not letting him get away with this.’
As I reach out an arm to stop him, Melanie’s legs crumple from beneath her and she slips out of my arms and onto the carpet. As she stares up at me with dark, uncomprehending eyes, a shiver runs through me. Someone just walked over my grave.
Chapter 29
Dani
Dani Miller sits ramrod straight on her bunk, her back against the wall, her feet dangling off the side, and stares at the photos on the wall opposite until they smooth and blur into a kaleidoscope of colour. Unlike her cell mate, Dani hasn’t got any photos stuck to the wall with toothpaste. She doesn’t want anyone to know her vulnerabilities or any dirty skanks to see what her daughter looks like. Doesn’t trust herself not to react if they say something that pushes her buttons. She imagines her three-year-old daughter’s face amongst the smudge of colour; focusing in on her until she can clearly see her curly blonde hair, round brown eyes, little squirrel nose and impossibly soft skin. She imagines her mum, grey roots showing against her dark brown hair, leaning over Maisie’s pink princess bed and scooping her up for a hug and a kiss. She’d better not be telling Maisie to call her Mummy or Mama or anything like that. She can call herself Nana or Nini or Nona but not Mummy. Dani is Maisie’s mummy and that’s never going to change.
That’s why she’s doing this. Not because she’s a psycho, although she’s glad that the other women think she is. It keeps her safe, stops anyone from fucking with her. She’s never going to make anything of her life. She’s been told that enough times. When she was a teenager it fucked her right off but now she’s older … well … sometimes you can’t fight what you can’t change. But it’s not going to be like that for Maisie. Maisie’s different. She’s clever and she’s about as beautiful as they get. You need cash though, to make it in this life, and when she’s eighteen a fat lump of cash will be coming her way. That’s if her arsehole of a father doesn’t rob it. Dani hasn’t heard from Del once since she was sent down. Probably got someone else to go on the rob for him so he can get a hit four times a day. Jesus, what was she thinking, buying all that crap about her being the only woman for him? She can see through it all, now that she’s clean.
She gets up, glances over her shoulder to check no one’s walking past her cell, then reaches into the gap she’s dug into her thin mattress and pulls out the toothbrush. She runs her thumb over the pointed end, the plastic burnt and rough. She didn’t make the shank. It was given to her by the same fat dyke who asked her if she wanted to make some money. She tucks it under the band of her bra, then bags out her sweatshirt and steps out of her cell, shoulders back, chin up. It’s just a job, she tells herself as she crosses the corridor. Just a job, a means to an end.
The prisoner jolts as Dani walks into her cell and closes the door behind her. The book she’s reading falls from her hands and she backs up against the wall, her eyes wide and fearful. The knot in Dani’s stomach loosens a little. Scared is good. This woman’s not going to fight back. She’s not going to do her any damage. Not if she acts quickly. But she needs to make sure she stays quiet.
‘You Donna?’ she asks.
The woman nods. She’s a big bitch, huge tits sitting on her equally big stomach, thinning hair pulled back into a ponytail and no neck to speak of. She looks like the sort that sits on her arse all day, shovelling sausage rolls into her enormous gob.
‘Donna Farrell?’ Dani asks.
The woman nods again. She’s got her hands up by her face, her fingers tapping on her doughy cheeks. Morse code for ‘fucking help me!’ Dani thinks, making herself smile. Dani’s smile fades. ‘You killed two people,’ she says.
‘I … I …’ Her target’s eyes flit from Dani to the door. Dani can sense her panic rising, smell the fear beneath the honk of body odour and sugary snacks. She needs to act quickly, before Donna finds her voice, or her legs.
‘You could have killed a kid,’ she says. ‘You could have killed my kid.’
It’s not true. Maisie’s never left Crawley but saying it makes Dani feel better, stronger, more justified.
‘Two years,’ she says, repeating what she was told. ‘I got more for doing what I did and I didn’t hurt no one. That’s sick, innit? It’s wrong.’
‘No,’ the other woman says as Dani pulls the shank from her bra and grips it tightly. ‘No. No. Don’t do this.’
Dani weighs up her options. If she lunges forwards and stabs Donna where she is – scrunched up into a fat ball in the corner of the bed – the other woman might have time to grab her, maybe even wrestle the shank off her. She needs her to get up and expose the tender spot under her massive tits – that’s if she can find her stomach beneath all the flab.
‘Get up,’ she barks. ‘Get off the bed.’
Donna does what she’s told, shuffling across the bed then heaving herself up and onto her feet. Her lips part as she turns to face Dani and her chest expands as she takes a deep breath but the scream doesn’t leave her throat. It’s smothered by Dani’s hand, then silenced by the long shard of plastic that pierces her clothes and her skin and buries itself in her stomach.
Dani keeps her hand pressed to Donna’s mouth, pinning her head to the wall as her legs crumple beneath her and she sinks to the ground.
‘It’s nothing personal,’ Dani says, pulling the shank from Donna’s guts, jumping back as blood gushes from her stomach and pools between her legs.
She pulls off her blood-splattered sweatshirt and wraps the homemade weapon in it, then takes one of Donna’s sweatshirts off her shelf and puts it on. It swamps her but she nods in satisfaction as she turns to leave the cell. ‘Sometimes you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.’
Chapter 30
Steve
Steve Laing is having dinner, alone, in front of the TV, when a phone vibrates on the table beside the sofa. He tears his eyes away from the screen (it’s one of his favourite scenes in The Sopranos, the one where Tony sits outside the family house at night with a gun, protecting his family from a bear) and places the slice of pepperoni pizza he’s been eating back in the box. He licks his fingers then wipes them on a napkin before he reaches for his mobile.
It’ll just be one of the lads, he tells himself as he picks it up. But there’s no new message showing on the screen. His throat tightens as he reaches for the other phone and the pizza churns, thick and greasy, in his stomach.
It’s only a four-word text message but it makes him heave so violently his mouth fills with undigested pizza and bile.
Order dispatched as requested.
It’s over. Justice has been done. Donna Farrell, the lorry driver who fell asleep at the wheel and murdered his son, is dead.
Part Three
Chapter 31
Anna
After Melanie’s collapse, Malcolm and I helped her into their room and onto the bed. I tried not to panic as she lay there, pale, silent and wan. After what had happened to David I was terrified that, if she became gravely ill, we might lose her too. Katie, standing in the doorway, looked equally scared. She apologised over and over again about letting Trevor into her room, eventually bursting into tears. As Malcolm comforted her I gave Melanie water and a bar of chocolate I found in the top of a rucksack. I’d noticed her picking at her food during mealtimes and assumed she was a fussy eater, but as I held her hand I could see how thin her wrists were. After five or ten minutes her cheeks began to pink up again and when she snapped at Malcolm to stop fussing as he tried to layer another blanket on top of her, I knew she’d be okay.
‘Are you all right, Anna?’ Malcolm says now. ‘You look exhausted.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say, but the yawn I fail to stifle gives me away.
‘Go and have a nap.’ Mela
nie props herself up on an elbow. ‘You were supposed to be taking it easy today.’
I glance at my watch. ‘But it’s nearly lunchtime.’
‘We’ll save you some.’
‘It’ll probably just be soup. Not that I’m complaining,’ Malcolm adds swiftly.
‘Okay.’ I look from the pair of them to Katie, her eyes red-rimmed but no longer crying, curled in the armchair by the door.
‘You’re not going to start anything with Trevor, are you, Malcolm?’ I say as I get up from the end of the bed. ‘What happened was an accident.’
Melanie raises her eyebrows. ‘He wouldn’t dare.’
I don’t bother to undress when I get back to my room. Instead I lock the door and throw myself onto the bed fully clothed, then flip onto my side so I’m facing the door. It’s been less than a day since David died and I’m completely drained, physically and mentally, but there’s no way I can sleep. I’m waiting for the handle to turn and the door to my bedroom to swing open. Logically, I know there’s no way that can happen. It’s locked and I’ve got David’s master keys and the spare in the pocket of my trousers. But someone let themselves in last night and I’m pretty certain it’s the same person who wrote ‘TO DIE, TO SLEEP’ on the lobby window. I want to believe Katie when she says it’s not her but I don’t see who else it could be. Unless someone else unlocked my door before she came up the stairs. But why? To stand in the doorway and watch me sleep? The thought makes me shiver and I lift the duvet over my shoulder and pull it tightly around my body.
Whoever it was is determined to make me suffer for what I did.
I’m sorry! I want to scream. I’m sorry I killed them. I’m sorry they’re dead. I would bring them back if I could. I’d rewind time. I’d do anything. I’d—
The thought stalls as a new one cuts in front of it.
They don’t want me to suffer. They don’t want me to say sorry. They want me dead. Whoever’s been leaving me the messages wants me to kill myself. It’s the only thing that will make them stop.
I bury my face in the pillow but Freddy and Peter’s faces swim in and out of my mind.
How can you sleep, Anna, after what you did?
I press my hands against my ears.
You did this, Anna, you destroyed our lives.
I shake my head. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I didn’t want you to die.
And yet we’re still dead …
I hug the pillow to my face, pressing the soft white cotton into my mouth to stifle my terrified sobs. I just want it to stop. Please, please, just stop.
I cry until my throat is raw and I feel as though I’m suffocating on each inward breath, then I hurl the pillow across the room and thump the mattress until I collapse, numb, raw and spent. I curl into a ball and lie still, my breath raggedy and my heart pounding in my chest. My eyes are open but I’m not really seeing. I’m not looking at anything. I’m just staring at the distance that stretches between me and the wardrobe. The space between me and the world.
I lie there for a long time, doing and seeing nothing, until my right shoulder begins to twinge and ache. I try to ignore it. I want to lie here forever, not feeling, not moving. But the pain increases, gnawing at my muscles and nerves, and the voice in the back of my brain grows louder and louder. You’re going to have to move. You need to turn over.
Out of the corner of my eye I see my mobile phone on the bedside table, the light blinking green. I grab at it, sending a glass of water tumbling onto the hard wooden floor. But it’s not a message or a missed call. It’s just a notification from Samsung Health that I haven’t met my activity targets for this week. There’s no signal in the top right corner and no Wi-Fi symbol. As I open my bedside drawer to tuck it away, out of sight, I see something that wasn’t there the last time I opened it. Something that’s definitely not mine.
Joe is bent over the toilet bowl, a plunger in one rubber-gloved hand and a straightened coat hanger in the other. The water on the floor has been mopped up but it looks as though the blockage remains. He glances over his shoulder at me and gives a sharp shake of his head.
‘You might want to come back when all this is finished.’
‘I don’t want to use the loo. Have you got time for a chat?’
He grimaces. ‘Can it wait?’
‘Not really.’
‘Okay.’ He sighs as he straightens up. ‘Give me a second to get cleaned up.’
I point across the lobby. ‘I’ll wait in there.’
Five minutes later Joe strolls into the lounge, his shirtsleeves still pushed up to his elbows but his hands rubber glove-free.
‘What’s going on?’ He parks himself in the armchair opposite me and leans forwards on his elbows.
‘Is this yours?’ I uncurl my hand.
He looks down at the capped piece of plastic lying on a sheet of paper in my palm. ‘It’s a syringe.’
‘I know. And according to the leaflet it’s got insulin in it.’
‘Insulin?’ He plucks the rolled piece of paper from beneath the syringe. His confusion turns to concern as he reads it.
‘Have you seen this?’ He turns it towards me and points to one sentence that’s been picked out in bright yellow highlighter pen.
May result in death.
Of course I’ve seen it. It made me gasp and slam my bedroom drawer shut. Another message from my tormentor. Another reminder that they want me dead.
‘Where’d you get it?’ Joe asks.
‘Is it yours?’
‘What? No.’ He looks at me with genuine confusion. ‘I use cartridge insulin. You saw the packet when you cleaned my room. Remember?’
‘I know but I thought you might use syringes too.’
‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘Never. Where did you find this?’
‘In my room. In my bedside drawer. The instruction leaflet was wrapped around the syringe.’
He runs a hand over his beard, tugging lightly at the wiry hairs. ‘It wasn’t there before?’
‘No. Definitely not.’ I point at the piece of paper in his hand. ‘Is that normal? For a sentence to be highlighted like that?’
‘Not in my experience.’ He looks at it again. ‘It’s not been printed on the page, it’s pen. Look, it bleeds through to the other side. I don’t understand why you’d do that unless … it’s not Katie’s, is it?’
‘Why’d you say that?’
‘It’s the sort of thing you might do for a teenager, I guess, make sure they remember how dangerous an insulin overdose can be. My parents always used to drum it into me how important it was to test my blood sugar and keep a Mars bar close at hand when I was away on school trips.’
I’m trying to read his reaction. He does seem genuinely surprised by my discovery but he’s the only guest with diabetic medication in his room – that I’ve spotted, at least.
‘I suppose it would make sense for it to be Katie’s,’ I say. ‘She’s the only other person who’s been in my room, other than me.’
As far as I know, I think but don’t say.
‘When she sleepwalked last night, you mean?’
‘Yes. But if it is hers it means she let herself into my room, put her insulin and the instruction leaflet in my drawer and then walked back to the doorway.’
‘It’s possible.’ He shrugs. ‘Remember my sleepwalking story about the bin?’
I do remember, but it still seems like such a strange thing to do.
‘So what do you want to do?’ Joe asks. ‘Are you going to have a word with her?’
That didn’t exactly go well when I asked her about the sleepwalking earlier.
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Not yet. I’m going to have a look at the medical questionnaires first.’
Joe follows me into the lobby then hovers by the reception desk as I search through the drawers for the guest folder. When they made their walking tour bookings, the agent in London had them each fill out and sign a medical questionnaire which was then forwarded o
n to us. David preferred to keep it paper-based, he told me, because you couldn’t trust the Wi-Fi. He was right on that count.
I find the folder and flick through the forms. Trevor’s is on the top. He’s ticked no to all the major medical issues – asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, etc – and scratched a line through the question ‘Have you ever had any serious illness not listed above?’ The box for listing prescribed medication is blank too. Malcolm’s next, he’s ticked high blood pressure, Christine has ticked thyroid disease in ‘current conditions’ and cancer in the ‘medical history’ section, Melanie’s ticked anaemia (which might explain her collapse earlier), Joe has ticked diabetes and neither Katie nor Fiona have had any major medical issues and aren’t on any medication.
‘Well?’ Joe says from across the desk.
I don’t reply. Instead I flick back through the forms. He’s definitely the only one who’s ticked diabetes, but why would he lie about the syringe being his? Unless … my breath catches in my throat and a cold shiver passes through me.
‘Well?’ Joe says again. He’s taken his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms over his chest. There’s an intensity to his gaze that wasn’t there a few seconds ago.
I force myself to look him straight in the eye. ‘It’s Katie’s,’ I lie. ‘You were right. She’s diabetic too.’
Chapter 32
Mohammed
The best thing about the spinal rehab centre, Mohammed thinks bitterly as cheerful voices drift into his room from the corridor, is that he’s no longer tortured by having to watch other people’s visitors come in. It was hell, scanning their faces, looking for his girlfriend – half hoping she’d come to see him, half hoping she hadn’t. He told her not to visit, via his parents at first, then, when he was brought a mobile phone, via text.
He took a while planning what he’d say (time was something he had plenty of) and he finally settled on: