Ghosts

by Matt Rogers

  She said, ‘Maybe I didn’t want to know.’

  ‘Maybe not. The truth isn’t usually pretty.’

  ‘Did you feel different?’ she said. ‘After your first.’

  ‘Everyone does.’

  ‘Maybe not you,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard about Slater’s response to it. He used to stop thinking about the killing by drinking until he didn’t have the capacity to think. You never did that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You just bore it on your own.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I’ve never once heard you say that was the right way to do it.’

  ‘We all have different methods of coping.’

  ‘So drinking’s the answer?’

  King tilted his chin upward, nodding in the direction of the bottles of spirits in the glass-doored kitchen cabinet. ‘Have a drink if you want. I’m the last person to judge.’

  ‘You still drink?’

  ‘Occasionally. It’s never been a problem for me.’

  He stood up, put his empty espresso cup on the countertop, and pulled down a bottle of Hennessy Paradis Cognac. A bottle went for just over a thousand dollars. He took a tumbler out of a lower cabinet and splashed a thin measure into the glass.

  She said, ‘I shouldn’t. For Will’s sake.’

  ‘Then don’t,’ King said. ‘I’m not a babysitter. I let people make their own decisions.’

  He knocked it back.

  Sighed and closed his eyes.

  He murmured, ‘To a job well done.’

  She said, ‘It’s tempting.’

  ‘Don’t abstain just because of Slater,’ King said. ‘There’s bottles in this house. There’s bottles in every bar out there. He can be around alcohol and still refrain.’

  She said, ‘He’s strong.’

  ‘He is.’

  She said, ‘Pour me a small one.’

  He obliged.

  Handed it over.

  She sipped it and bathed in its warmth. She realised she needed it.

  He said, ‘Are you okay? Honestly?’

  She returned the empty tumbler to the bench.

  She said, ‘I think I’m fine.’

  ‘It’s okay to feel terrible,’ he said. ‘I sure did after my first.’

  ‘I think it all balanced itself out somehow. After I got out of Ray’s warehouse I was a mess. I was trying not to show it. I wanted to lash out at everyone. I wanted to show that you can’t just take me prisoner, you can’t take advantage of me, you can’t do that. Then those men came here, and they didn’t want to take me sexually, they just wanted to kill me. Which was somehow worse. So I lashed out. And I lived.’

  He didn’t respond.

  She said, ‘So, yeah, I’m good.’

  He nodded.

  He liked what he heard.

  She said, ‘I guess I don’t need to ask if you’re okay.’

  He said, ‘This is my life.’

  She nodded. ‘I finally get it.’

  ‘You did before.’

  ‘From an outsider’s perspective. Now I’m in it.’

  ‘Welcome.’

  She smiled. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Go be with Will. He needs you.’

  ‘I need him.’

  ‘You’re the best thing that’s happened to him.’

  ‘You mean that?’

  She saw him recall a memory — maybe a talk with their new guest, Elsa.

  He said, ‘I mean everything I say.’

  She fetched ice packs from the freezer, ibuprofen from a drawer, and floated for the stairs. ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Try to sleep.’

  ‘I’ll sleep like a baby,’ she said. ‘Trust me.’

  She treaded up the staircase.

  She was an only child, and she realised Jason King was the closest thing she’d ever have to a big brother.

  95

  Two weeks later…

  The gates opened.

  Josefine Bell stepped out into freedom.

  She tasted the air. The sky never looked so good. The blue never looked so blue.

  She had to constantly check if she was dreaming. She pinched her arm, blinked twice, but her surroundings were the same. Eleven years, wiped away without fanfare. It wouldn’t make the news. It would go quietly into the public record, never to be accessed or scrutinised. One American life changed completely. In the big picture, nothing.

  To her, everything.

  There was a small party waiting for her. Five people. She recognised two of them.

  Jason, from the park. He was still enormous, still stoic, still focused. She found no difference in his demeanour from when she’d first encountered him. But a whole lot must have happened, because his face had faint scabs and scratches that hadn’t fully healed yet. The damage didn’t seem to faze him. He looked imperturbable.

  She recognised the second familiar face, and her heart stopped in her chest.

  Yes, a whole lot has happened.

  Elsa stood there, her eyes wet, her hair damp and slicked back, dressed in clean clothing, freshly pressed. She was so much thinner than the last time Josefine had seen her. Undernourished, almost. But defiant. Chin up in the air, hands crossed in front of her, fingers interlocked. She was smiling.

  Josefine walked over.

  She didn’t say a word.

  She couldn’t find the right ones, not with the torrent of emotion gripping her from within.

  She threw her arms around her daughter and cried.

  Time passed but she didn’t notice. She didn’t think Elsa did either. Her daughter sobbed into her chest, conveying everything she’d wanted to say for months.

  I’m still alive. I’m still here. I’m okay. It’ll all be okay soon.

  When she finally parted, she pinched herself again.

  Jason smiled. ‘It’s real.’

  Josefine looked up at him, shaking. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Enough. I had help, though.’

  He introduced Josefine to his friends.

  First Will, a big African-American man who seemed Jason’s counterpart in every sense of the word. They were fiercely intense men. Will wore a moon boot, but it didn’t seem to impede him.

  Then Violetta, a blonde woman with blue eyes who was somehow just as fierce. For Josefine, it was like staring in a mirror. Suddenly everything made a lot more sense. Jason doing a double-take in the park, that first time she’d seen him. He’d thought Josefine was this Violetta woman. Maybe they were lovers. Maybe not.

  And finally Alexis, a black-haired woman with green eyes. She didn’t have the same look, but she was tough. She might even be a killer.

  She shook their hands, one by one, and cried again.

  Jason said, ‘Let’s talk for a moment.’

  Josefine nodded. All she wanted was to hug her daughter, breathe her scent, appreciate her presence, but these strangers had rescued both her and Elsa from a fate worse than death, and they deserved at least a moment of her time.

  She stepped aside with him, and the rest of the party melted into the background to give them privacy.

  She said, ‘Am I in danger?’

  ‘No,’ Jason said. ‘It’s been handled.’

  ‘What’s been handled, exactly?’

  ‘It’s best you don’t know.’

  ‘Does Elsa know?’

  ‘She knows some of it. I’m sure she’ll tell you in her own time.’

  ‘Can’t you fill in the blanks for me?’

  ‘What good would it do?’ Jason said. ‘It’s over. It’s done.’

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘Is there anything you want from me? I don’t have much money, but I’m sure I could scrape together—’

  Jason held up a hand, and she stopped short.

  He said, ‘Your daughter said the same thing. You two are cut from the same cloth. You’re good people. But this was never about money.’

  ‘Then why did you do it?’ />
  ‘Because you were innocent.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Then don’t say anything.’

  She blinked back tears. ‘What do I do now?’

  ‘You get on with your life. Elsa’s been back at the family home for two weeks. I had a long talk with her father. He was confused, but he seemed to understand I wasn’t going to share everything. He was happy to see her.’

  ‘My other girls?’ Josefine said. ‘They’re…?’

  ‘Safe. All safe.’

  ‘Is there a chance of—?’

  ‘No,’ Jason said.

  She understood.

  She tried not to think about it, but she understood.

  The people who’d done this … they weren’t around anymore.

  Which could mean they’d fled town, or could mean they were six feet under.

  She took one look into Jason’s eyes and thought she knew which it was.

  ‘You don’t have anything to fear anymore,’ he said. ‘We took care of it.’

  ‘Can you tell me who you are, at least?’

  ‘I told you my name.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  She looked at the ground.

  He said, ‘It’s better this way. The less you know, the faster you can pretend this never happened.’

  ‘How the hell am I supposed to do that?’ she said.

  For dramatic effect, she swept a hand over the prison she’d just stepped out of.

  ‘Because it’ll be the most important thing you do,’ he said. ‘It happened. It’s terrible that it happened, but it did. You owe it to yourself to give yourself the best life you can. And Elsa, too.’

  ‘Is she okay?’

  ‘She’s been through a lot,’ he said. ‘But she was never touched. She was never taken advantage of. I know she still saw terrible things, experienced terrible things, but that’s some small victory at least.’

  ‘Her friend,’ Josefine said. ‘That girl, Melanie…’

  ‘Let us handle that.’

  ‘Will I hear from you again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I want to know you,’ she said. ‘I want to know all of you. The people who saved my life. My daughter’s life.’

  ‘It’s best that you don’t. We’re not easy people to know.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It does.’

  ‘So that’s it?’ she said. ‘All this is in the past? My record’s expunged? How am I supposed to trust anyone ever again? How am I supposed to just keep going?’

  ‘You’ll figure it out.’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘What will you do now?’

  He smirked. ‘You really want some information, don’t you?’

  ‘I just want an idea. That’s all.’

  He looked at her.

  Decided.

  He said, ‘Slater and I are going to go tie up some loose ends.’

  ‘Do I want to know?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, Josefine.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  He walked back to the party and spoke a few hushed words to Elsa. She nodded, stepped in and hugged him around the waist. He hugged her back. They parted, and Elsa went to her mother.

  Josefine said, ‘Please.’

  Jason looked at her.

  She said, ‘I want to know something. Anything.’

  He grimaced. Looked at Violetta. She nodded, and he relented.

  They were definitely lovers.

  Lucky woman.

  Jason said, ‘Check the papers tomorrow. There might be something about a judge.’

  Josefine stiffened.

  Jason turned and left, and the rest of the party followed.

  She watched them go, until it was just her and her daughter, alone in the lot.

  She looked over her shoulder at the closed prison gates and the complex beyond.

  If only the walls could speak…

  She put her arm around Elsa and led her daughter away.

  96

  Kerr had told Alastair Icke to come alone.

  So he did.

  It wasn’t easy. He needed a cane just to get out of the car, and it took him two full minutes. He got one leg out, put it down, rode out a bolt of agony. Then he sat there for thirty seconds, summoning the courage to put his other foot in the sand. Pain was coming, and he had nothing to turn to in order to dissipate it. Eventually he managed. Then there was the trouble of getting his weight up. He’d packed on another ten pounds over the last two weeks. Stress eating in full swing. He cursed his ineptitude as he clenched his teeth and fought his way out of the driver’s seat.

  He was up. He used the chassis of the BMW X5 to support himself, slumping against it, using the cane to distribute the rest of his weight. A bead of sweat that had originated at the top of his forehead ran down his nose and fell off the bridge. He let it. He didn’t have the energy to brush it away.

  And there he waited.

  It’d have to be good enough.

  He would have brought his wife if they’d allowed it. She’d been helping him simply exist for the last two weeks — following him meekly around the house, helping him out of bed, standing quietly beside him at all times, attentive to his every word. Twice he’d caught her crying behind his back. It infuriated him. An insidious thought struck him a few days ago — maybe she hates me — but he’d drowned it in half a bottle of rum.

  She was the only person who listened to his commands anymore. Everyone else had abandoned ship. They’d been forced to. He hadn’t answered their calls.

  That brought more pain than his physical ailments.

  There was nothing worse than watching your life fall apart.

  Call it fear. He never did, he tried to rationalise it as best he could, but deep down he knew the truth. If he answered that phone, if he told his underlings why he’d left them in the dark, the two monsters would come for him. He hadn’t thought he’d known what being scared felt like.

  Now he did.

  So he let them call, let them go to voicemail, let them get spooked and pack up and flee town. His work phone got quieter and quieter as the days went by until it became a coffin, empty and unmoving, filled with skeletons.

  An empire dissolved, just like that.

  It hurt him to the core.

  He’d always been able to suppress it all — the uncertainty, the tortured soul, the turbulence. Take any amount of suffering — in his case, purely emotional — and there’s always substances that’ll do the trick. Sometimes booze and weed and nicotine and cocaine didn’t suffice.

  Sometimes he had to turn to the darker stuff.

  The benzos, the Dexedrine, occasionally a hit of smack — he’d only done heroin five times in his life, and he prided himself on that. Most took it once and spiralled into uncontrollable addiction. He always knew he was stronger than those weaklings. So he did it when he needed it, and the restlessness went away.

  Now he knew there was a level of emotional pain that no amount of drugs could hold back.

  Like a tsunami going up against a weak dam wall.

  He looked around. The desert was hot and dry and empty. Red boulders dotted the landscape.

  A ghost town.

  Kerr finally got out of her car. She seemed broken, too, but not like him. She carried herself upright. She moved well. Her pain was solely inside.

  She looked different.

  He couldn’t figure it out.

  She crossed the sand — no man’s land, technically, if this was anything remotely like a standoff — and stopped a few feet away from him.

  He sagged more of his weight against his car. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Thanks for coming.’

  ‘You should have run.’<
br />
  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘What do you mean you can’t?’ he said. Then he paused. ‘Christ, did they threaten you too?’

  She didn’t answer.

  He said, ‘They’re not everywhere. They don’t know everything. That’s why you wanted to meet out here, right? Look, I’ve made them think I’m giving up. I’ve let it all fall apart. What we built. But I don’t care about that. I care about me. I’m gone tonight. I thought you should know. Might give you the courage to try something similar.’

  She didn’t answer.

  He said, ‘You still have time.’

  She didn’t answer.

  But she looked like she wanted to say something.

  The anger built up. He wasn’t all the way gone. He still had some of the intensity that had climbed him up the ranks.

  ‘What?!’ he said. ‘Spit it out.’

  She looked at him with something he’d never seen before.

  Contempt.

  She said, ‘They told me I had to be here for this. I’m actually glad.’

  He stared at her.

  A shape appeared in the distance, over her shoulder.

  From behind the nearest boulder.

  The dark-skinned guy from the loading bay. The one who’d stepped back and watched. It was daylight, hot and arid, but the guy looked even more terrifying than he had a fortnight ago. He wore civilian clothes, but the pistol in his hand spelled it out.

  Icke tried to run.

  He didn’t even manage to lever his weight off the car.

  The guy strode for them. Gloria didn’t turn around. She stared at Icke.

  The guy kept walking. He was coming fast. He’d been limping in the warehouse. He wasn’t limping anymore. One ankle was clad in a moon boot, but it didn’t affect him.

  Icke pitched forward, leaning all his weight on the cane to get off the car. Pain flared in his shins. In that moment he knew he was weak. He crumpled back against the chassis, giving up.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no, no.’

  The guy kept walking.

  Gently pushed Gloria aside.

  Seized Icke by the throat and pinned him against the car.

  Put the barrel against his forehead.

  Icke said, ‘I did what you asked. Please.’