by Jane Davis
“Oi! I thought we was Magic Johnson!”
“No, you’re Michael Jordan.”
“That’s it!” The bottom half of Michael Jordon spun round. “If I can’t be Magic Johnson, I’m not playing!”
Jim scanned the children’s playground where he had once spied Aimee. But that would have been too easy. A child’s buggy was parked in her hiding place under the slide.
In the afternoon, Jim retraced the route through Beddington Park, trying to remember everything Aimee had told him. Crows mocked him: from the tops of trees, walking boldly on the grass. “Kraa, Kraa, Kraa.” “Look at you, acting like you belong.” The air was humid, shimmering with ghosts; Sir Walter Ralegh’s and Queen Elizabeth’s mingling with their own. Jim’s sense of Aimee became stronger as the church came into view, framed by the arc of trees. Sanctuary. Where else would she go? But the heavy handle failed to respond. There was no grinding noise, no give.
“It’s locked.”
Jim turned to see an elderly woman hunched over a grave, placing a single rose stem in a jam jar.
“Why’s that?”
“Blame it on the vandals, spoiling it for the rest of us.”
He located the tomb of the Carew who had forfeited his place in the family vault by gambling away the family fortune. Perching on the corner, the boy traced what little was left of the carved name with a stem of grass. “Looks like we’re both locked out, mate.”
“Alright, Jim Stevens?” Bins asked when Jim slumped down beside him on his low kerb.
“Would you mind?” Bins indicated to Jim’s feet, which were tapping out an impatient Morse code message. “You’ll disturb the fish.”
“Sorry.” The boy hugged his knees to his chest. Bins smelt strongly of potato peelings. “You see everyone, don’t you?”
“You might say that.” The man’s brow furrowed as he carefully threaded a prawn onto a hook. “I keep an eye on things.”
“I’m looking for a girl you met the other evening. Her name’s Aimee.”
Bins pressed his lips together as if in serious thought. “I don’t know any Aimee.”
Then Jim remembered: “That’s only her nickname. She’s got this really embarrassing name.” He snapped his fingers, trying to summons whatever it was she’d called herself.
“Nervous girl? Not from round here?” Bins asked. “Fuzzy hair?”
“That’s her!”
He threw the line, holding the hook just above the tarmac. “That’s young Verity you’re talking about. She hasn’t been back to see me. The nearest she’s got is the wall over the other side of the road.”
Jim sat up sharply. “When was that?”
“A couple of days ago, at least. I don’t go as far as there. All that traffic.”
Sighing, Jim felt the first spits of the rain returning.
“I’ll keep an eye out; tell her Jim Stevens is looking for her.”
It was hopeless: she obviously didn’t want to be found.
“Thanks, Bins.” He stood up and turned around, feeling the need to tell someone. “It’s my birthday today.”
“My birthday’s the twenty-fourth of October. Is that soon?”
“Almost two months to go.”
Walking away, Jim heard singing: “Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you.” Bins, in a waterproof world of his own.
By the time his mother arrived home, Jim needed someone to talk to.
“Sorry, I’m late, love,” she shouted out. “Blasted trains are up the spout! I got us a Chinese. Thought it’d make a nice birthday treat for you.” She walked into the living room and, seeing him, pulled down the corners of her own mouth. “Why the long face?” It was the punchline to his granddad’s favourite joke, designed to raise a smile: A horse walks into a bar and the barman asks… “That bad?” Jean perched on the arm of the sofa, bending to kiss the top of his head. “I take it you went to see Mr White.”
He could see prawn crackers bursting free from the top of the plastic bag she held. “She’s gone missing.”
“Missing?” His mother looked troubled.
“I’ve been out looking for her most of the day.”
“Have you been back to ask if she’s shown up?”
“Not since this morning.”
“Well, then. She’s probably at home eating her tea right now.” The plastic bag rustled as Jean stood and walked into the kitchen. She stared out of the window as she said, “Your brother ran away once. He must have been about eight.” Jim was dumbstruck to hear his mother speak about Nick. His name was almost unmentionable. “I can still remember my panic when I discovered he was missing. Camped out in one of the bin sheds, he was. If it hadn’t been emptied the day before, he’d have been home a lot sooner. He said he’d forgotten his football. No apology: just that he’d forgotten his football.” The smile on her face looked unnatural when she turned back to Jim, plain plastic bag in hand. “Enough nonsense. The food is getting cold,” she said, setting takeaway boxes out on the table, removing lids, filling the room with the smell of sweet and sour. “It’s not been much of a birthday, has it? Looks like the postman’s late with your dad’s card.”
Fed up of the pretence that Dad cared enough to remember, Jim shot back, “I’m not bothered about my birthday!” Instantly, he regretted it.
“Course you’re not,” his mother responded quietly. “You’ll want to head straight round to Aimee’s after your tea.”
They ate in silence. Jim looked up from the shovelling of glutinous rice and battered pork from time to time. If he had caught her eye, he would have said, “Thanks for the takeaway, Mum,” and everything would have been alright. But her thoughts were still facing out of the window.
CHAPTER 35: JIM - AUGUST 1992 - THE BRIDGE/2000 - ST HELIER
Without thinking, Jim set out on his usual route via the bridge. The cordons cleared away, the road had been reopened, temporary traffic lights installed. He paused at the top of the concrete steps, looked both ways and ambled down: not too quickly, not too slowly. No barrier could have kept him out, not even the prospect of coming face to face with his no-good junkie brother.
Crouching low, Jim gripped his knees, attempting to divine answers out of the approaching dusk. Where are you, Aimee? They had never tried to walk further along the side of the track than was necessary to get out of sight. Even if it were possible, the going would be difficult, especially in her chosen footwear. The vegetation was machine-cut, leaving behind sharp woody stalks.
Unmistakable, the sound of an old-fashioned football rattle had him training his binoculars, searching for a flash of black and white. There it was: a magpie, sitting alone.
The bird shuffled round displaying tail feathers; not black but iridescent blue-green. It looked from left to right and then dropped to the ground below, where it began to nibble delicately at something, pushing its black tongue forward. Jim heard his own sharp intake of breath before he was conscious of what he was looking at: yellow plastic attached to a yellow base.
He could hear his own words nagging, “Why d’you insist on wearing your flip-flops down here? Your feet will get ripped to shreds.”
Find a way to balance and Jim estimated the bird could carry the weight of the flip-flop. It was just a piece of foam, after all. A magpie won’t give up a trophy easily, but Jim knew its one weakness: greed. A distraction was needed, something sufficiently shiny. He cast his eyes around. It didn’t take long to gather enough squares of abandoned foil to roll into a ball the size of a walnut. Jim flashed his binoculars, letting the setting sun bounce off the lenses.
Once he was sure the magpie’s watchful black eyes were on him, he rolled the ball between thumb and index finger, moving it from side to side, muttering, “Right, let’s see what you make of this.” Then he launched the ball. It landed a few metres away from the flip-flop where, among rusted leaves and dead twigs, it looked tantalising. Reluctant to tear himself away from the shoe, holding it down for fear it might try to escape, the bird walk
ed the length of the foam sole for a better view. Still the nibbling, still the protruding black tongue, he succeeded in breaking the toe piece. Urgency gnawed at Jim’s stomach-lining. He needed to do something more - before the bird took flight. Exaggerating the sweep of his arm, Jim faked a move in the direction of the foil ball. The threat of competition proved irresistible. With a sideways hop, the magpie swooped, carrying the foil ball off in its claws.
But victory was bitter-sweet. Jim retrieved the foam and plastic remains, having no doubt what he was holding. She had been - and gone.
“Aimee! Aimee!” Using his hands as a loudhailer, Jim spun and spun as he called her name repeatedly. The silence was overwhelming. His breathing hard and fast, he struggled to pull in enough air. No one would deliberately take off a shoe by the side of the tracks, his mind raced. If the twigs didn’t get you - cold sweat broke out on his forehead - the stinging nettles would. If there weren’t enough stinging nettles to do you any serious damage, there were always the barbed-wire brambles. And that was without the list of things you would have preferred to avoid stepping in or on: what the foxes and the junkies left behind.
“If the Indians are right, someone’s in for some very bad luck.”
Then, out of the silence, came the electric buzz that precedes the approach of a train.
“Nurse, Jim’s at it again. NURSE!”
Sophia padded into room 3, armed with her characteristic sigh, and gripped the iron rail at the foot of the bed. “What is it, David?” She placed her other hand on an ample hip. “You know what time it is? You’ll have everyone awake if you carry on like that.”
“I should have known! I should have known!” Glancing at David’s neighbour, she saw Jim tossing from side to side. He seemed to be increasingly agitated. The doctor had been treating him for depression, but, of all the medical team, she had spent the most time with him. There was more to it than that.
“What about me?” David propped himself up on one elbow. “I’ve had to put up with his shouting these last two nights.”
“That’s the thing about hospitals. They’re full of people in pain.”
“Can’t you give him something to knock him out?”
“We’ll see.” She whooshed the thin curtain between the two beds across: it caught midway on a join.
Whoosh! Jim stood back automatically, the thunderous ten-tonne wall of power slapping him smack in the face, jolting him backwards as a ghost passed clean through him.
Sitting in Jim’s visitor’s chair, Sophia took one of his hands in hers and stroked it with her thumbs. “What should you have known? Hmmmn, Jim?”
“No good.” He stirred, his head writhing this way and that.
His skin was hot to the touch. He was burning up. Sophia hadn’t been too happy with the appearance of Jim’s wound when she last changed his dressing. Now she checked for telltale red spots, crooning, “You wanna cross the road, is that it? I got you. We do it together. Look right, look left -”
Her brow furrowed as she examined his chart: fluid intake good; output low.
“Spend-your-life-watching-still-does-you. Does-you-no-good.”
“No, it most certainly don’t,” she said, keeping her voice calm while sighing in frustration.
Someone on the last shift had missed a trick - and she thought she knew who. Jim had all of the signs of septicaemia.
He wanted someone to tell him he was wrong; that Aimee had made her way home hours ago; that she was at home eating her dinner.
Durnsford Road in the early evening was a quiet place. Cars with ticking engines were parked in gravel driveways. The clink of cutlery and the laboured sound of piano scales wafted out of open windows. But Jim, normally so attuned to detail, was aware of little of this. Unable to suck in enough air to run all of the way, he had alternated with a furious march. Aimee’s house sat in the shade, a few degrees cooler than the opposite side of the street. A police car was blocking the drive, but this didn’t stop him. Now he could see his goal, his feet tripped into a final sprint. As the sinking sun blinked through the leaves, his eyes seemed more sensitive to light than usual. His elbows pumped the final few yards.
After pounding on the door Jim stood back, stepping down from the porch to the path. The pain in his chest made him wonder, Is this what a heart attack feels like? Come on, come on, come on! He was back hammering on the door again, when it opened inwards.
A policewoman with a flushed face demanded, “Yes?”
“Is she here?” Jim rasped, hands on knees.
The policewoman stepped outside, pulling on the letterbox. “Mrs White can’t come to the door at the moment.”
“Not her!” he said impatiently, head still hanging. “It’s Aimee I’ve been looking for all day!”
“Calm down a minute. Breathe.” Jim felt her hand on his back and, in the absence of alternatives, did as he was told. “Are you the friend who called round this morning?”
It was obvious that they hadn’t tracked her down. The policewoman would have said so. “I’m Jim.” He nodded, trying to haul himself upright. “I spoke to one of your lot on the bridge.”
The sound of exhausted voices coming from inside gave the impression that the house itself was murmuring. Jim pulled the flip-flop from inside his jacket. “I found this.” He pressed it into her hand. “It’s one of Aimee’s, I know it is. She always wore them.”
The policewoman turned the sole over slowly, examining the bite marks and tears, smoothing the pad of her thumb over the raised number of the shoe size, as if she might be able to erase it.
Frustrated by her lack of urgency, Jim explained, “A magpie had hold of it, but foxes must have got to it first.”
She nodded. “Where was it?”
It would have to come out, all of it. He would be forced to admit to his mother that he’d lied. There was no point pretending that Aimee and he belonged to a club, spending their days with bird-watchers of all ages. No point pretending they didn’t use the railway cuttings. But none of that was important. The only thing Jim needed was for the policewoman to tell him his imagination was running wild. “Down by the side of the railway,” he said.
“Wait here,” she said, disappearing down the hallway again, leaving an astonished Jim searching for comfort in the carved scroll at the end of the banister, the polished table in the hall, the fresh flowers in the cut-crystal vase. He heard muffled voices, a cry, a door slamming. Those were his answers.
The boy was halfway down the path when the policewoman called his name. “Jim! Mrs White is fairly sure it’s Aimee’s shoe you found.”
“I told you that! She’s dead, isn’t she?”
The calm on her set face was infuriating. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s alright. How old are you, Jim?”
It was obvious from the way she shepherded him to the car that the policewoman wanted to get him as far away from the house as possible. Back to the side of the bridge he belonged. “Twelve,” he said, his voice becoming louder as he forced it out.
“Will your parents be home?”
“She is dead, isn’t she? Isn’t she?”
“Now, we don’t know that.”
She was treating him like a kid who couldn’t understand anything, but he knew. He knew!
CHAPTER 36: SHAMAYAL - AUGUST 2010 - RALEGH GROVE
Shamayal came to, heels scrambling, blood pounding in his ears; feeling as if elbows and knees were digging into him from all angles. The shouts he heard were his own. It was only when it dawned on him that blows were no longer raining down - that he was alive - that he acknowledged the shooting pain in his ribs was his fight for oxygen, then his equally furious battle to expel the fetid reality of what surrounded him: a fug of slow-composting baked-bean-digestive-biscuit-sour-milk-bile-piss-puke. Breathe or suffocate, he told himself, nostrils flaring. He choked on stagnant air that tasted the same way it smelled, and this was a new problem, the coughing, tearing him apart from inside. People told you to breathe through pa
in, but what if it’s the breathing that hurts? He felt he might weep: I can’t do this, don’t ask me to, as he curled in on himself like a woodlouse. Fine, his sterner side scoffed, then you die here - wherever ‘here’ is. At least then the pain would stop, and I wouldn’t have to look over my shoulder anymore. A moment of weakness, he gave in to tears. Your choice, innit? He sniffed, focused, forcing himself to inhale. Breathing was an unnatural, torturous process. You would never think he’d been doing it for fourteen years. That’s better, Pussy. Now think! Where the hell have they dumped you?
Like a water mattress, the surface Shamayal found himself lying on alternately gave and held. The crotch of his jeans felt damp. He opened his eyes to blackness (one eye was more reluctant than the other; he wondered if he still owned a matching pair and, if not, what he looked like). He strained his neck as if this alone might cause something to reveal itself, but the night was like no other he had known. Countryside black, there was no neon strobe-stuttering streetlight. Shamayal tentatively held a hand to either side of a thigh, unbending a leg one inch at a time. His calf muscle spasmed. Easy, easy! If I could just find myself a part that isn’t agony, just one likkle part, then concentrate on that. He hummed with the effort, a strange and tuneless borrowed sound. Perhaps someone giving birth. Man, when did I get to feeling so old?
Whatever the toe of his trainer collided with only a few inches away had no give. He reached one hand above his head - the other had decided it was best off resting across his chest, like the tiny gnarled claw of a T-Rex, there to contain his gag reflex, while the braver one trailed through some kind of heavy-duty wallpaper-paste-cold-porridge-gloop. Can’t stop now. His fingers splayed into the curve of a cold, ridged surface: metal. What kinda cell is this? His fast-and-shallow breathing sucked the flesh of his hand into his open mouth. Listen, he tried to talk some sense into himself. What can you hear? That noise, yeah, urgent and irritating? That’s a dozen crazy pigeons cooing. That rumble there, that ain’t your stomach, man. That’s the early-morning freight train. There it goes, city-bound. Right, right, not so far from home, after all. Maybe not so long to wait until the sun comes up. I’ll just close my eyes until there’s enough light to see what I’m up against. OK, OK. That’s what I’ll do.