Birdkill

by Alexander McNabb

  ‘Come on, let’s get you into the warm,’ Heather squeezed her shoulder and they limped back to the reception block.

  Robyn cradled the hot mug of whisky-laced tea. She stared into the tan liquid, a broken reflection of her silhouette in the little waves her shaking hands were generating. They were sitting on the blue vinyl-covered guest sofas in reception, set opposite each other with a solid coffee table covered in the same material and topped with glass between them. There were dog-eared magazines on the table. Heather had poured a neat scotch for herself. She leaned forward, her eyes bright. ‘What did you see in there?’

  Robyn wanted to tell her to get lost, to avoid the eager questioning and just curl up into herself and fold herself away into quiet infinity. Heather’s bright solicitousness was jarring. ‘The tower’s round and empty inside. She was hanging in the darkness. The wind turned her, she was facing away from me. And then her face appeared in the light from the window and I saw it was Jenny but before I saw her face I knew.’ She sipped her tea. ‘I just knew. From the second I saw it was a human being up there, I knew it had to be Jenny.’

  Robyn looked up at Heather, helplessness bringing her to the brink of tears again. ‘I just knew.’

  They heard men’s voices outside and turned as Archer and Thorpe came into reception. Both men were serious-faced. Archer sat next to Heather, Thorpe stood. They were all three of them facing her and she felt they had turned into a jury even before Archer spoke.

  ‘Robyn, I’m not sure how to put this, but there’s nothing in there. There’s no body in the tower.’

  She recoiled, confused and betrayed. By whom? Herself? She had seen the girl, clearly. The wet patch under the downward-pointing sandaled feet. The glint of moisture on the shoe leather. The blue lips. Those staring eyes. ‘Where’s Jenny?’

  ‘Safe, I assume. Because she’s not hanging dead in that tower.’ There was an edge to his voice. Anger?

  ‘Find her.’

  ‘David, could you ask Lawrence to please locate Jenny Wilson?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Thorpe strode across to Hamilton’s study. Funny, Robyn thought, I screamed fit to bring out the whole faculty and he’s still banged up in his crusty study. His rap on the door sounded, a faint grumble from within. She knew by now it was ‘Come.’

  Robyn sipped her pungent tea. Archer was staring at her and she knew what he was thinking. That she was mad and he had to find a way of ensuring she was kept away from the kids until they could get her sectioned. She wasn’t so sure he wasn’t right.

  She was battered by a deep weariness. She just wanted to sleep, to close her eyes and shut it all out. Sleep for ever, if need be, but just to seek rest. She put the cup down. ‘I need to go. Sorry if I freaked you guys out. I must have been mistaken.’

  ‘What if you weren’t?’ Heather stood and offered her arm as support.

  Archer stayed on the sofa, leant over and staring at his hands. ‘She was. There was no way anyone went near that tower while we were all watching it. And it was empty when David and I went in. There was nothing to see.’

  Robyn took Heather’s hand from her forearm and squeezed it. ‘Thanks, Heather, I’ll be fine. Honestly.’

  She headed out of reception. She was pushing the door open when Thorpe poked his head out of Hamilton’s study. ‘They can’t find Jenny.’

  Robyn kept walking. She felt she was in a dream nested within a dream. She was broken, a thousand times broken. Grass-smell, cold tarmac under her feet. Hair a mess. Clouds. Her beloved TT over there to the left, raindrops pooled on the white paintwork. Love to drive. Feeling shit, faint. Never mind, keep walking. Card out, doorway. Push, step up. Stairs. Autopilot. Flat. Card again. Fucking cards everywhere. Cards and cameras and cards. Cards, cards, cards. Door. Floor.

  Mariam took the bus to Heathrow. There were no anywhere in London more anonymous and she craved inconspicuousness more than anything else. She picked the Ibis because it was cheap and beyond anonymity, simple as that. She sat in her room working on her notebook, the story taking on a life of its own as she retold it from the notes she had, the emails, Buddy’s archive and the transcript of Foster’s disastrous collapse.

  Despite trying to keep it short, she was seven thousand words in when she leaned back and decided she had to have a break. Her thumbs, her weakest point, were killing her but there was an ache to her wrists as well. And, straightening, her back was on fire. She was a mess.

  She rubbed her eyes and paced the small room. It was eleven, late to get a drink downstairs but there was no minibar. She pulled on her coat and dragged her bag from the bed. Stuff it, she needed a break.

  When she got downstairs she found the lounge was still open, which was a bonus. A double scotch on the rocks in front of her, anodyne woods and coloured carpets around her, she huddled into the scenery and let herself think through her story, the structure of what she was trying to say and how she would break it up. Sensibly, it was too long for a single piece so would have to be broken up into a series of at least, say four. Even then, long. Six 1,800 word features? The first would focus on the forty dead British mothers. The second on the suicides among our troops. The third would make the eugenics link. She sipped her drink. The fourth on the nightmare children, brought up without their mums or dads, moulded by scientists. The fifth would expose the US military’s role in the whole programme and the right wing cabal thrown up by the Buddy archives.

  The sixth was the one she hadn’t started. The others she had assembled frameworks, had the quotes and facts she needed to stand them up. The sixth was waiting for that email from Lebanon. It was the one Mariam really, truly didn’t want to write. But it was the one that, for her at least, made the entire series so explosive.

  It was the murder of a packed classroom of children in a school in Zahlé and the rape of their teacher by US troops out of their minds on a battlefield drug called Odin.

  Mariam drained her drink and escaped the bland lounge. Back in her room, she called room service and ordered a bottle of scotch and a bucket of ice. Actually, come to think of it, fuck the expense.

  The email came in just as she replaced the handset on the house phone by her bed. She barely dared open it. Sure enough, Eli had come up trumps. And part of her wished he hadn’t.

  Eli Haddad was a journalist on Beirut’s Daily Star. He had been with Mariam when she was captured by rebels in Aleppo. They had been split up, rival groups battling over the torn-up remains of the town had fled as barrel bombs rained down on the city. He had campaigned for her release, led the little band of true friends who had managed to locate her and get her out of there. He had contacted her parents and arranged for her to be sent to them in London.

  She owed him her life. Sipping cold whisky in a small beech wood veneer box outside Heathrow, slightly drunk, she loved him.

  A toast, a clinking glass lifted, to Eli.

  And here, on her laptop, were pictures. Downloading, 55%, 78%, 99%. Done.

  She opened the folder and reached for the bottle. He had captioned them for her; she wasn’t quite sure how he had managed it. Looking at them, she wasn’t even sure how she had the stomach to carry on, except the whisky was helping.

  A classroom, obviously enough. But there were tiny bundles strewn on the floor and ugly streaks on the walls. Now a close-up, a little headless body.

  She didn’t need this. She turned away from the screen, her stomach urging. She drank more whisky. She wished she were a smoker. Robyn would be pinging elastic bands around her pack by now.

  Mariam forced herself back to the images. Every one of the delicate little dressed porcelain figures was headless. They had gunshot wounds, too. Plucked cloth, dark stains. Strange poses, hands held up in the air. And then the bundles. A pile of them, an image that brought the Khmer Rouge to her mind for some reason.

  And then one of the bundles had been undone for the camera. The heads, wrapped in linen. An insane act. Forty bodies to be matched with forty heads. Everything was
stained black, the colour of dried blood. The clouds of flies were visible in the images.

  The last three pictures were of the woman teacher. Mariam took an entire hour to open them. She stood, circled the desk her computer rested on. She called down for a bottle of water she didn’t need, because the tap water was fine here but where she was right now you’d want the bottled stuff, actually. Sannine for preference. Sealed. Crackle of plastic as you tear off the shrink wrap.

  She splashed scotch into her class. No more ice, just a plastic ice bucket with cold water sploshing about in the bottom. She called down for some. It was three in the morning and they were arsy and she didn’t care. Just bring me a bucket of ice, please. Don’t spit in it.

  Body fluids. Christ.

  It was Robyn. She knew it from the first image of the woman lying spread on the teacher’s table in the classroom. Mariam saw the still figure of her friend laid out like a corpse on a mortuary slab. Someone had thrown raisins over it.

  Flies.

  The doorbell rang. Mariam staggered to her feet to answer it. ‘Come on. Just put it there. Thanks. Good night. Oh, sure, good morning.’

  She dropped a palm full of ice into the tumbler and sloshed whisky into it. Breathing deeply, she clicked on Eli’s next image file. Another shot of the broken body on the table, bloody legs splayed open.

  Her glass was empty. She was drunk, didn’t need more. She filled the tumbler from the bottle, draining it. She sipped from the absurdly full glass, the meniscus above the level of the rim. It burned. She loved the burning. A few sips later, she plopped a lump of ice in.

  It bobbed around in the orange liquid. She held it up to the halogen spot, admired the play of bubbles and cool ice in the hot whisky. Another sip, another lump. She laughed. So, fuck it. The last image.

  It was the woman’s face in close up.

  Mariam didn’t even try to stem the tears. She let them come, welcomed their warm, salty sting in her eyes. She cried for them both, for her dead-eyed friend and for herself. For the people who had done this to Robyn – not the soldiers, they had borne this memory when the drug had left them. This was why the suicide rate was so high, she was sure. Oddly enough, she found it in herself to forgive them, in a way.

  But the men who had caused this weren’t soldiers, they were scientists. Mariam couldn’t summon the strength to flick away from that last image. She stayed, frozen, gazing at Robyn’s lovely face turned sideways to the table. The terrible bruising to her throat, the contusions on her upper body, exposed by the torn clothing. Her cheeks and temples were scraped and reddened. Rivulets of blood had run from her nose and dried in cracked dark streaks across her jawbone and down onto her neck.

  The dead eyes stared at the camera. The flies grouped in the corners, feeding on the salty moisture.

  SEVENTEEN

  A Story to Sell

  Mariam hurt. Her lips were stuck together and her mouth parched. Her head was pumping and she was nauseous. She opened her eyes and turned painfully to peer blearily at the bedside clock. It was eleven thirty. She’d missed breakfast. Mind, she’d likely have thrown it up. She peeled herself out of the bed and staggered to the bathroom. She drank cool water from the tap in her cupped hands. She ran the shower and stepped in. The hot, hard jet of water playing on her shoulders and neck was the only pleasant feeling she’d experienced since waking. Stepping out, she wrapped her body in a towel and her hair in another.

  She regarded herself in the mirror and reached for the Boots bag on the counter, pulling out a toothbrush, toothpaste and deodorant. She brushed her teeth and tongue. She spat it out, washing the mottled brown gobbet down the sink. More water. Her head began to spin and she grabbed at the worktop.

  She picked her way back into the hotel room, delving in her bag for her mobile. The battery was low and she didn’t have a charger cable. It wasn’t secure anyway. She looked up his number and used the hotel phone. ‘Kelly? It’s Mariam. I have the whole story now, including details of the Lebanon incident. It’s pretty bad.’

  ‘I made some sales.’

  ‘Let’s meet. How about where we met Alan?’

  ‘Perfect. See you there at one?’

  She pulled her notebook to her. The last story started well but, sure enough, descended into incoherence towards the end. Write drunk, edit sober. Hemingway.

  She started to repair the damage, not entirely sure she was any more sober now than she had been when she’d written this last night. It wasn’t that bad actually, the raw emotion of her reaction coming through nicely. She finished up quickly, deciding to let Kelly be the judge of whether she’d got too wrapped up in what had happened in her best friend’s classroom. It was no wonder Robyn’s mind had shut down and had left her fragile and vulnerable.

  Mariam stuffed her things into her bag and stepped out of the room, checking the corridor. She took the lift down to reception and handed her card key and credit card to the cashier. Jake was a fraction too late in turning away from her as she swept her gaze around the reception area. Fine. She’d half expected the unwelcome attention. She smiled her thanks to the woman behind the desk and slipped her card back in her purse.

  Mariam strode out of the reception area into the street. They’d already demonstrated they could grab her if they wanted and she scanned the road behind her constantly as she walked up the Bath Road and turned left and left again. She found herself alone on the pavement. She felt vulnerable and picked up her pace, reaching the Avis compound red-faced and out of breath. She waited behind an American businessman, finally beckoned to the desk by a red-jacketed woman. She was middle-aged, too much foundation and cats-arse smoker’s lips daubed in crimson lipstick. Blue eyeshadow. A lot of it. But she had kindly eyes and the lined face crinkled readily into a powdery smile.

  Mariam grinned back. She was thirsty, hungry and tired. ‘Hi. I’d like a small car, please.’

  ‘Do you have a reservation with us?’

  ‘No. I’m a blow-in.’

  ‘I’ll see what we’ve got.’ She tapped at her keyboard, scanned the screen. ‘A Golf Automatic?’

  ‘Let’s do it.’

  ‘How long will you need it for?’

  The question brought Mariam up with a bump. She had given no thought whatsoever to the future. She’d been running. Once Kelly had the story what was she going to do? Go to Robyn, she guessed, and get her the hell away from Hamilton and his cronies. She wasn’t going back to get her car from Clive’s place, so she’d keep this car for that journey at least.’

  ‘Two days, please.’

  Where would they stay? Frank’s place was compromised. Mariam started to get a feeling for how unsafe they’d be. Buddy Kovak in a bath full of blood.

  ‘Excuse me? Hello?’

  She jumped. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I said can I have a driver’s license and credit card please?’

  Mariam rooted in her bag. She felt like throwing up into it. Maybe Kelly could help with somewhere they could stay until this all blew over.

  ‘Here.’

  The woman looked troubled. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Have you been drinking?’

  Mariam shook her head.

  She drove along Heathrow’s Perimeter Road, pulling into a layby to watch the little clumps of plane watchers ogling the incoming flights. Funny hobby. When the road had cleared she pulled out again, passing the ugly greyness of Hatton Cross Station. Driving up Fagg’s Road, she pulled into the Green Man car park. No sign of any followers. She had definitely seen Jake in the Ibis’ reception and had a healthy respect for her followers’ capabilities. This was too easy.

  She turned the engine off and called Robyn. The phone rang out so she tried again. It answered after five rings. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Robyn. It’s me. How are you?’

  ‘Fine.’ Flat, wooden. She wondered how many times Robyn had told people she was fine when the truth had to be that, no, actually, she wasn’t.

  ‘Listen, I’m coming to get you. We need to
get you away from that place. Can you hold out until this evening?’

  ‘Sure.’ There was no change in Robyn’s intonation, no hint of enthusiasm or reaction.

  ‘Robyn, you know we’re friends, right? Real friends?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Then tell me what’s wrong. You sound like death.’ The picture came back to Mariam, Robyn on that desk.

  ‘One of my kids hanged herself. They can’t find the body.’

  ‘Shit. The police there?’

  ‘No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In my apartment.’

  ‘Can you stay there?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Robyn, listen to me. I’m coming for you. We can go somewhere safe, get away from all the madness. There’s nothing wrong with you, you’re brilliant and lovely and deserve much more than that place. Hamilton’s wrong, Robyn. Take care of yourself and I’ll get there as soon as I can. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Right. Call me before you do anything, right?’

  ‘Like what, kill myself?’

  ‘If that’s how you’re feeling, yes.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Mariam regarded the mobile screen for a long time after the line cut. She slid it into her bag and turned the engine on. A white Mercedes was coming down Fagg’s Road. Mariam bowed her head as it approached. She had glimpsed Jake in the passenger seat and had an idea they were backtracking because she hadn’t appeared at the top of the road. They passed and she pulled out of the car park and headed in the opposite direction. Maybe it was that easy after all.

  Mariam walked into Arthur’s Bistro. Kelly was already there looking small and furtive, an espresso cup on the table in front of him. He was wearing a battered greatcoat.

  ‘You look like a dirty old man.’