by Penny Grubb
She saw a foot in a boot, attached to half a leg. Just like Freddie Pearson’s catch. And even now she didn’t understand why.
‘Dish,’ said Jak, as though she’d asked. ‘Had his uses, but got a bit sentimental over you. He wanted to take you to your dad’s.’
I remember. I heard him say so.
‘You got it, Annie?’ She couldn’t respond while he dragged her on, out of the door she’d watched as the fire started. It didn’t lead to an infinity of empty stone-floored rooms, just to a drab corridor. He strode down it, she floundering at his side. It opened on to a small space with wooden benches, lockers, cabinets. He sat her down and turned to search through a cupboard. So confident he’d subdued her, it was safe to turn his back. He was right. She couldn’t move. He repeated his earlier question. ‘Have you got it now, Annie?’
‘Got what?’
‘How they burn to ash.’
‘But you were going to burn a pig. You said … I didn’t want you to …’ She heard her voice ramble through the irrelevant words. ‘I heard it. I heard a pig. You told me …’
He laughed, and snuffled just like the pig noises she’d heard. ‘I told you a lot of things, Annie. I told you Charlie called me. I told you to meet me before you ran home to Daddy. You believed me, Annie. You trusted me. D’you still trust me?’
Both his face and voice had reached out to her from two decades distant, from beside her mother, and all rational judgement had flown. She remembered, but it was too late.
‘I told you I’d burn a pig for you, Annie, and I did. How did it burn to ash?’
‘Uh … accelerant. Special accelerant.’
He gave her a half-smile over his shoulder. ‘Come on, I thought you were smart. You watched it burn, didn’t you?’
It? ‘Dish was a person.’
‘No point fighting for losers, Annie. Your mother wouldn’t have. What d’you know about the accelerant? Did you smell it?’
‘Yes.’
He paused his rummaging through the cupboard. ‘She told me that too. The accelerant. It isn’t, but I believed her. That’s why she wouldn’t burn, but you will.’
Annie flinched.
‘Makes it quicker, that’s all … helps the flames to take hold. But it’s the wick that does it. One match’ll do the job, with the right wick. Understand now?’
She didn’t understand; no longer cared. His hands reached out to tip boxes towards him, so he could see inside. The man in front of her wasn’t Jak, laid-back, not a care in the world, nor Jak, panicked, vulnerable, unable to cope. Those Jaks were only ever a ruse to trap her, to find out how much she knew, to learn what Charlotte had told her, to discover where in hell Charlotte had hidden the tapes. He’d been nearby when she and Charlotte shared confidences in the pub. He’d seen her in the distinctive Margot jacket that sealed Casey’s death warrant.
‘They know Casey Lane and Julia Lee were killed by the same person.’
‘You figured it was Jules, then?’ He sounded almost impressed. ‘When and how?’
‘Can’t remember.’ He didn’t know she’d heard the tapes, mustn’t ever know. Aunt Marian mustn’t become his next target.
Charlotte’s story hadn’t been so far from the truth, after all. She’d heard about a leg washed up, didn’t want to jeopardise her sister’s fake death plan, but was worried sick she couldn’t find her. She’d known the Doll Makers were somehow involved – all those questions. And she’d known Jak, in some guise, from somewhere, and walked into his arms just as Annie had.
‘I didn’t kill the other one, Annie. You killed her when you dressed her up and sent her out into the night. Did you know? Of course you knew. You sacrificed her. You’re one of us really. You’d be good if you hadn’t your father’s blood in you.’
On one level, he was right. Her mother had made her part of the pack with all the powders and potions. No wonder it had been like coming home when she found the pill-pushers at school.
‘How did you find my little sister, Annie? How did you find Elora?’
He’d stopped his rummaging in the cupboard … had spoken Elora’s name almost reverently.
She wanted to ask, would you really have killed your own sister up there on the hill, but couldn’t because then he’d know she’d heard the tapes. And she knew the answer. If he’d caught her, he’d have killed her, but he hadn’t been able to do it later in cold blood. He’d plucked her from her hospital bed. She’d been made to tell her story in a protected environment so he’d know what she’d done and who she’d told. He must have panicked when Charlotte ferreted out the story.
Annie had crumbled; not even listened all the way through the tapes, because the voice had reached across the years and pulled her back to her childhood nightmares. She’d been just as helpless faced with Jak. Entwined in her past, he’d played her like a prize salmon and she’d never felt the line that snared her, until it dragged her beyond safety.
‘How did you find her, Annie?’
She stared into his eyes, which had become Elora’s, rationality gone. Sanity was a game they played with the world to get what they wanted. Jak … Kovos … Iakovos … the supplanter … further gone than any of them.
Tumbling into his world, momentarily unafraid, she blurted out, ‘You must have been so scared when I got away from you, when I found Elora. If I hadn’t answered your message …’
‘But you did, Annie. Sinners always fall. It’s how I know I’m right. I can feel the forest better than you ever will. You’ve never known where I am, have you? Where was I when you rang me?’
‘Uh … I don’t know … at Dish’s place.’
He laughed. ‘I was in your flat. You keep it nice and neat. I was waiting for you to come home. I had to pull out the stops to get to Glasgow ahead of you. You were already on your way, weren’t you?’
She nodded.
‘How did you find Elora, Annie?’ Jak’s voice was hard now. She hoped she’d bypassed that question, but he was going to make her answer.
‘I paid someone to steal some records for me. I got her address.’
‘So that was your doing, was it? I was there, you know, near enough to go and see who was meddling. It was only luck that he got away.’
This was skirting dangerous ground. She needed to divert him to more recent events. ‘What if I hadn’t taken that stuff you fed me, if I hadn’t been hungry?’
‘I’d have made you have it, Annie. I might have had to give you more, might not have had the sport of needling you to go inside. You enjoyed it, didn’t you? You got further than I expected.’ His tone was friendly, reasonable. Of course, he’d have made her take it. Hadn’t she had stuff forced down her all along? Pills from her mother, abuse from Mrs Latimer, and all the time her father with his head turned away. Dad, you must have seen something …
Only Aunt Marian had stood rock-solid for her, always doing her best.
In this fractured state, her mind couldn’t compete with his. Nothing would keep her from going over this edge, but she mustn’t take Aunt Marian, or Mike, if he was even still alive, or even Beth. He enjoyed being able to boast at last. She had to use that, it was all she had left. ‘How do they burn to ash?’
‘You’ve seen a candle burn, Annie. It just needs a wick. And with the right wick you can get the wax to catch, then it’s the devil’s own job to put it out. Bodies are the same. The fatter the better, but they all burn. With the right wick to direct the fire, the fat catches.’
‘It can’t be that easy.’
‘It isn’t easy, Annie. It takes a good while to take hold. People don’t sit still and allow themselves to burn. Even if they’re out of it, the fire doesn’t always catch, but once it does, the body burns itself.’
He couldn’t be right. She thought of what she knew about crematorium ovens, but then that was probably a matter of efficiency. It would take too long to burn bodies to ash; better to finish with a cheaper process.
‘What do you mean, a wick?’
; ‘Down the inside on a candle, down the outside on a body. Works down the outside of a candle too. Try it sometime and see. Well, you won’t have a chance, but take my word. Of course, a wick down the outside burns too fast if it’s the wrong stuff. I tried all sorts before I got it right. Simplest is usually best, Annie. Ah, here we are.’ He pulled a case down from a shelf inside the cupboard and held up a long oilskin coat. ‘Oilskin’s good, Annie. Just right for a wick. Come on now. Let’s try it for size.’
Instinctively, she pulled away as he went to lift one of her arms into the coat. The sudden movement sent a shaft of fire through her head, making her cry out at the pain.
‘Poor Annie.’ Her skin crawled as he leant close and stroked the side of her face. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t kill you here. I know what’s right.’
It was hard to hold back tears of pain and tiredness, but she tried. She didn’t care about showing weakness in front of him – she’d have fallen on her knees and begged if it would have done any good – but he seemed to feed off her emotion. She fought to keep her voice matter-of-fact. Maybe, in his madness, he’d forget who he was, what he was doing
‘What do you mean, what’s right?’
‘You weren’t meant to go in an accident like Charlie. Or a sordid city murder, head smashed with a hammer.’
Casey died from a hammer blow. Annie wished there was a way to tell Dean she hadn’t burnt to death.
‘And you aren’t even meant to go here. Not even here …’
His words confirmed that they were in some far-flung part of the labyrinth beneath the building-with-eyes. She understood the reprieve. He’d tried to run her car off the road because she’d given him the opportunity and he knew she’d talked to Charlotte, but she’d outrun him and his sleek silver beast in her old Nissan. Then there’d been Casey and now she’d survived injury and smoke despite the locked room. It was unthinkable to him that he’d failed, that she’d been better than him. He had rationalized it as a higher being telling him she wasn’t to die an ordinary death. She was to go with ritual.
She wondered what ritual meant to him, where he would take her, and would the journey there allow her any opportunity to call for help?
‘Take these, Annie.’ Three white tablets lay in his hand. He knew she hadn’t given up. He’d mocked her up above the building-with-eyes, needled her, knowing what the drug would make her do. What would these tiny pills do?
‘No, I don’t need them.’
‘I want you to take them, Annie.’
‘No, really. I don’t need to take them. Please Jak … Please Iakovos …’
With no warning, his face pressed close to hers, his hand grasped the material at her throat, choking her. ‘You do not know who I am!’ he screamed.
‘No … no. I don’t know …’ She rasped out the words through the vice that crushed her head, the twisted material that closed off her windpipe.
He dropped her as quickly as he’d grabbed her. She sat gasping for air, praying for the pounding in her head to subside. She watched him add another two tablets to the ones he still held in his hand, then watched him crush them to powder.
‘No … Jak … please …’
One hand pinched her nose, and snapped her head backwards. The other was at her mouth, stuffing the bittersweet powder between her lips. She choked and gagged, would have promised to swallow any number of pills if she could have spoken, and begged him to let her go, to let her breathe.
When finally he released her, she pitched forward, retching and trying to cough the powder out of her lungs. She saw the floor swim in and out of focus, knew it was too late. Lead flowed into her limbs and she would have slumped to the ground if he hadn’t caught her and lifted her to her feet.
It wasn’t like waking up because she was never asleep. She was aware when they moved outside; the cold air seeped through her clothes to stroke her body. Forest floor swung into focus and out again. She smelt it. Childhood rambles in the wood, the musty aroma of the undergrowth as small feet kicked through.
Sometime later, he dropped her on the ground, face in the earth. A sour taste flooded her mouth and her lips felt gritty. The sickly smell of scorched fabric puckered her nostrils. She felt a hand at her back. He lifted her to a half-sitting position.
She knew this place.
Jak wandered away from her, inspecting the ground as he went, turning the black earth with the toe of his shoe. Then he came and sat facing her. He glanced at his watch. She strained to see but he kept the watch face turned away. The wind gusted, blowing her hair over her face.
He stared into the trees. She looked too. Branches waved frantically against a dark sky. The green canopy above rustled in alarm as the force of the wind bent the tall boughs. At ground level, an invisible blade sliced through the detritus of the forest floor, throwing flurries of leaves and twigs into the air. It must be late in the day, and a storm was brewing.
The smell of scorched earth rose up again.
Jak eased himself to his feet. He looked down at her, then dropped to his knees and lifted her hand off the ground, tucking it inside the oilskin coat. He did the same with her other arm and pulled the belt tight so she was in a makeshift straitjacket.
‘There, Annie. That’s better. Nice and well-wrapped, burns better.’
Her mind had thrown off the chains of the drug, but her body was as limp as one of Beth’s straw dolls. She tried to hold down the panic. If she gave in to it, she’d suffocate.
‘Wind like this’ll really make the flames take hold.’ His voice held satisfaction; the weather stormed its approval. At last, he would sacrifice her in a way that would work.
Would he kill her first or just set her alight; how would he do it? She couldn’t frame a question she could bear to ask.
Her mind conjured Beth. Beth, who knew these woods, who was minus seven years old when Annie’s mother died. ‘How old were you, Jak?’
‘I was twenty one when she went.’
He’d known both the question and the answer, without any pause.
‘Did you kill her, Jak?’
‘No, Annie. I sacrificed her. She was the first. She’d not have burnt, whatever I used. She had the devil in her. I wonder if you’ll burn.’
The breeze cut cold across Annie’s face, where tears tracked down. She couldn’t stop them, didn’t even know who she was crying for. ‘Why did you kill her? Why did you kill my mother?’
‘Annie, your mother was dangerous. Loose cannon barely scratches the surface. And she was greedy. Where d’you think we’d be now if she’d stayed above ground? She wanted it all, but it needed patience. Your mother had no patience, Annie.’
It was true. She could remember that much now, but it wasn’t why he’d killed her. He’d killed her because she always had the better of him.
The old man, Kovos and Elora’s father, had died a couple of years before her mother. Elora stuck around for several years afterwards. It had taken a long time to build all this to the efficient operation she’d seen. He must have been sane to get it all off the ground, to keep it going. And now it was in the process of falling apart. Customs sniffing round … Julia Lee finding things she shouldn’t … and now Annie. He may have been sane once, but he was long past that now. Caine, too, whatever her father might say. And Elora, who had left them in their small crazy world, and fled to the safety of hers miles away.
Aunt Marian had known him. She’d seen the face of Kovos behind the façade of Jak, but then she’d recognized him as Charlotte’s young man and her first impression was chased away. He was the lad her aunt had meant when she’d talked about Annie’s mother taking an unhealthy interest in the Doll Makers.
It was the lad. He nearly led her astray.
Kovos, six or seven years younger than her mother, would have been just a lad to Aunt Marian. There were twenty years between the two sisters. Her mother had been a late baby, spoilt as much by her doting elder sister as her ageing parents.
Now that she unleashed them, memo
ries of Kovos crowded her. The dream where her mother snatched away the doll and scratched her hand had been real.
I want a doll, Mummy.
I said you shouldn’t fucking bring her.
No fucking choice, sweetie. She won’t say anything.
She’s six years old, for Chris’sakes! She’ll remember.
Not after the cocktail she had for breakfast.
Loud laughter.
‘I remember you from when I was six years old.’
He glanced at her but said nothing. The manner of her death was in the hands of a madman who had killed her mother. Her father had known it was the same killer, almost from the moment Freddie pulled his catch from the loch. That was what he’d hidden from her. She remembered the look on his face. And now his daughter would go to the same man. It would kill him too.
Your mother bought one … just a few days before … I kept it … always wondered.
They should all have listened to Aunt Marian. She’d homed in on the tapes, got them out of Charlotte’s grasp and hidden them away. She’d recognized Kovos, and she’d known there was more to the straw dolls than the limp oddities Mr Caine sold in his shop.
And the fat dolls of her own dreams had substance. They were real memories. Her mother, stuffing dolls so their middles bulged … dolls she wasn’t allowed to touch. Dolls that never coincided with memories of her father.
‘What are you thinking about, Annie?’ The voice caressed her, as though they were lovers, as though he really cared. She looked into his face. It looked back, smiled, almost made her believe in it.
She mustn’t say a word that could take him to her aunt. The trouble with Aunt Marian was that she always had the story sideways. It was the wrong bits she got wrong. Mrs Watson’s nephew who’d seen Jak from his bedroom window. It was the alibi that bolstered Annie’s misplaced trust in Jak. Hard to believe she’d missed it. School holidays. He wasn’t in the school dormitory, he was at home. And that put Jak right on the spot for the night Julia Lee’s remains were tossed into the loch.