The figure, its head down, slowly walked up to the body and stopped.
The bird responded to the whistle that escaped from the visitor. Hooking its right wing up beside its head, it began to prune.
The man fell to his knees, running his hands across the white face of the old woman. He explored the ragged skin across her forehead, his fingers slipping into the crater at the top of her skull. He stroked a thumb across the woman’s lips and caressed her cheeks, now painted with deep bruises as well as blush. He raised his head and sucked in a deep breath of freezing night air.
The blast from between his pursed lips caused the bird to panic and burst from the branch. Like a feathered missile it shot through the trees, avoiding each with sharp twists and turns. Whistles reverberated around the small woods, rising and falling in sorrow and seeming to swell in the air. The tiny bird emerged from the trees and flew across the park, swooping higher and higher.
It headed into the city.
PART 2
7.
The taxi ride over hadn’t taken as long as Nat expected, and she stepped onto the pavement outside her apartment block. It bothered her how close the maze of derelict buildings stood to her home. She expected to wander those streets again in her dreams.
Simon leaned into the open window of the car and paid the driver. Nat looked through the glass doors into the lit foyer of her building. She considered running inside and telling the night watchman that Simon was bothering her. That way, she had a chance to retire to her apartment alone. But the voice, the one that normally talked her into trouble, sounded its protests in her mind. If she left things as they stood, she’d never know about Simon, Johan and the woman.
“Well?” he asked. “Am I allowed up or am I hopping back inside this cab?”
Nat sighed. “You’d better come in.”
Simon waved to the taxi driver. The car pulled away from the curb.
Let’s see what he has to say for himself, she thought, entering the building.
Seeing the sign on the lift doors and remembering it was broken, Nat headed for the stairway. She pushed the door open and stepped through, her heels echoing in the narrow hallway. The light fixtures along the walls, made to look like antique wrought iron containing candles, flickered. Shadows made by the banister danced across the cream walls. She took Simon’s offered hand.
“Let’s go,” he said, taking the lead.
They emerged from the stairway onto her floor. Walking to her apartment at the end of the corridor, Nat heard distant voices from televisions behind closed doors. Her neighbours, whoever they were, must still be awake or had fallen asleep in front of their sets. She opened her bag and fished out her keys. They jingled against each other as she separated them out and slid the correct key into the lock.
The door opened into her dark living room. Pinpricks of light glittered in the void beyond the window, a constellation of distant streetlights. Nat groped along the wall for the light switch and, finding its cool plastic beneath her fingers, switched it on. Blinking in the sudden brightness, she stepped inside to allow Simon to follow. He closed the door softly behind them.
Nat tossed her keys into her open bag and dropped it to the floor. She hung up her coat and wandered further into the apartment. Reaching the sofa, she kicked off her high-heeled shoes and sighed.
“That’s better. Feels like I’ve walked across this whole damn city.” She inspected the small wound on her foot. The skin didn’t sting anymore but still felt tender to her touch.
“How did you do that?”
“Wandering the streets looking for you. It was only a stone.”
“I’m sorry,” said Simon, lowering his head.
“Enough with the apologising,” said Nat, flopping back on the sofa and resting her feet on the coffee table. “You’re making me feel like I overreacted.”
Simon shook his head. “No, this is my mess.” He raked a hand through his hair. Nat noticed his vacant expression had returned, like when Johan had entered the bar. “You still want to talk?”
Nat yawned but nodded.
“If you want to,” she said.
“It’s late.”
“I know, but I can tell you need to. Something happened tonight, didn’t it? With Johan?”
Simon hung his head.
Nat yawned again and tried to hide it behind her hand.
“You’re tired,” said Simon. “It can wait till morning. It’s been a long night. Maybe I should sleep on it anyway, it’s…it’s a lot to deal with.”
Nat nodded and groggily pulled herself up from the sofa. The late hour had finally caught up with her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “The night has tired me out. Come on…” She walked up to him and took his hand. “Let’s go to bed.”
He raised an eyebrow, but his lips stayed straight. “Am I still welcome?”
“You’re better at snuggling than my hot water bottle,” she said. “But no funny ideas, okay? I don’t think I have the energy.”
She expected some retort, but Simon silently followed her out of the living room and into the bedroom, turning the light off on the way.
Nat stood with Gordon, looking up into the sky.
“It’s beautiful,” the chef told her. “A secret just for you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, turning away from the black canvas of night to the sound of his voice. Gordon had vanished, leaving her standing alone on the street. She turned around. The street was empty.
He was here. I heard him.
She gazed back upwards. Gordon, here or not, had been right. It was beautiful. The pure emptiness of the night loomed above her; a dark skyscape of desolation. The city tried to interfere with its lights and noise, but for this instant, the sky remained pure and untainted.
Nat watched in awe as the first stars emerged, appearing almost shyly with their gradual twinkling. They formed in a dusty cluster above her.
I’ll have to share this with Simon. Get him to drive us out of the city and into the country. We could just sit and watch for hours and hours…
Raucous laughter rang out, and Nat gasped, staring upwards, mouth hanging open.
Four smiling faces gazed down at her from the heavens, blotting out most of the sky. Their skin appeared white. Dead.
“What have we here, boys?” boomed Johan’s voice.
Nat fled, holding her hands above her head like a girl caught in a sudden downpour.
“Leave me alone!” she screamed, running from the hovering faces and down the empty street.
Her actions spurred more laughter from the spectres, which seemed to effortlessly keep pace with her.
Left and right and left again, the streets whipped by as she fled in blind panic. Her breaths gasped from her aching chest. Sweat poured down her face in a warm trickle.
“Wait!”
Nat skidded to a stop at the sound of the voice. With her heart pumping and her lungs threatening to burst, she slowly turned around.
“Noooo!” she screamed, seeing Simon. At his feet—
She opened her eyes.
“Ssssh!” said Simon, placing his arm around her neck and giving her a tender squeeze. “You’re awake now.”
Her thin curtains did little to block out the early morning rays of sun. The yellow of the fabric gave the room a golden hue, creating a sense of midsummer rather than the chilly tail of autumn. Simon’s warm, bare chest pressed against her. She gazed around the room taking in quick, sharp breaths.
“That must have been one hell of a nightmare,” said Simon. “I’ve made you a cup of tea. I was bringing it in when I saw you writhing and screaming. I thought you were having some kind of fit.”
“No,” she said. “Just a dream, I guess.”
“Want to tell me about it?” He removed his arm from her and picked up the steaming mug from the bedside table. He gently passed it to her.
“Well,” she said, taking hold of the handle, “I can’t really remember.”
The
final image of the nightmare blazed in her mind: Simon standing in the street with the battered body of Agnes at his feet.
I can’t tell him about that. Then he’d know I was there.
“It might have done you a favour,” he said. “I was going to come and wake you anyway. It’s getting quite late. You don’t want to spend all day in bed.”
“Yeah,” Nat agreed. She raised the mug to take a sip, but feeling the heat on her lips, lowered it back down. “I’ll make breakfast.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Simon, climbing off the bed. “I’ve done a lot of thinking while you were asleep. I think I’m ready to tell you what’s been bothering me…and what happened last night.”
“Okay. Just give me a few minutes to freshen up and we can talk in the kitchen. How does bacon, sausages and eggs sound?”
Simon smiled. “Sounds great.”
Ten minutes later, in a long Nirvana t-shirt and her dreadlocks hanging loose, Nat placed a frying pan on the hob and poured in a little oil. The feast of pork was already under the grill and sizzling nicely. She walked to the fridge and removed a box of six large eggs. She noticed how the bottom of her foot felt fine, the wound already healed. She knocked the fridge door closed with her hip and returned to the cooker.
Simon appeared in the doorway, holding his drink.
“Smells good.”
“Mmm. Doesn’t it just? Nothing beats a hangover like a good cooked breakfast. My mum taught me that.” She sighed. “I did the cooking, she’d have the hangover.”
“It’s a shame we didn’t get to the hangover stage.”
“Yeah. It would have been nice to stay out longer, make a proper night of it. At least I can enjoy the day without lazing around the house with a banging headache.”
She broke an egg on the edge of the frying pan and tipped the contents inside.
“So how do we start this?” she asked. “I’m not good at these heart to heart conversations. Maybe I’ve been single for too long.”
“Well, what do you want to know? A question is a good starting point.”
“First off, tell me who this Johan is. The others seem to do as he tells them and you look…wary at the least.”
Simon nodded.
“Johan is…was…an old friend. We met towards the end of school. We were two loners that kind of drifted together, preferring each other’s company to none at all.”
Nat snorted. “I find that hard to believe. I bet you were fighting the girls off.” She added more eggs.
“Things were different then. I was fat for one thing. Johan was always the athletic one, but I ate and ate and never exercised. I’ve only been able to ditch the candy fat these last few years. The strict diet cleared my complexion too. I feel like a normal person now, but back then, I was a freak. I guess hindsight is a powerful thing. If only I used it sooner.” He tried to smile, but it fell flat. “Johan didn’t have the same problems as me. Okay, his hair brought some unwanted attention from the resident arseholes, but he didn’t have the same self-esteem issues as me. In fact, he was the opposite.”
“What? Cocky?” said Nat. “He came across that way last night.”
“I wish it was that simple. He was just…arrogant, especially towards girls. I think his attitude landed him in loserville with me. He had the brains and body to make something of himself, but it was like he chose to be alienated.”
“Why did you hang around with him?”
“Like I said, we just found each other. Strange, but we got along great.”
Nat crouched down and peered under the grill. The meat was browning nicely. The salty aroma made her mouth water. She straightened up. “Go on. What about the other guys?”
“They came later. Nothing special about them, just three more that seemed to slip into our group. I always saw them as tag-a-longs.”
“That’s not very nice,” said Nat.
“You’ve seen them,” replied Simon. “I don’t think they have a brain between the three.”
“So what happened? Did you fall out with them?”
“In a way.” Simon walked over to the window. Placing his still full mug on the worktop, he gazed out and across the city. “It started as a game at first, one drunken night in our late teens. You see, none of us ever had much luck with women. We’d exchange stories of refusals and knockbacks. In hindsight, I suppose it wasn’t very healthy.”
“No, probably not.”
“But that was what we did. We’d go out as a group and get so drunk we’d not care anymore. We’d try to pick up women, but it was more for a laugh, you know? We never expected any of them to say yes, and none of them ever did. But Johan, he…he…”
Nat frowned. Nothing Simon had said explained why he feared his former friend so much, or what had transpired the night before. These just sounded like old, bitter memories.
“Go on,” she urged. “What did he do?”
“It was a night just like all the others, but he seemed different, more intense than unusual. We went to a bar and immediately started to pick our way through the women in there. It was all a game until one of them…one of them said yes to Johan and took him outside. Alone.”
Nat switched off the cooker and hob. Simon remained staring out of the window, lost in the past.
“We cheered him on, you know.” He laughed and shook his head. “We cheered them out of the bar! We were stupid.”
He reached down and sipped his tea.
“He did something to that girl, didn’t he?” said Nat, approaching him and resting her hand on his shoulder.
Simon swallowed. “I went outside a few minutes later to do something, maybe take the mick, or just see what was going on. I was so drunk, it could have been for anything. I heard someone around the back. I walked round and she…” He shook his head and closed his eyes. “She was on the floor with Johan standing over her.”
Nat bit her lip, thinking of Agnes lying in the street the night before.
“Blood ran from her mouth. He’d hit her. When I got closer, Johan smiled at me and told me she’d deserved it, that all of them deserved it.”
“What did you do?”
“I won’t lie to you,” said Simon after a few seconds. “I’ve held this in for so long, there’s no point lying now. I did nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Johan led me away, laughing and joking. The girl was unconscious in the alley. He said she’d never remember when she woke up.”
Nat gazed outside at the windows of the other buildings. The sun lit up the glass, making each one glow golden, like a giant candle stood inside.
“Johan has a way of making you feel that everything is okay,” Simon continued. “I knew it was wrong, but I, I guess I was a coward.”
“What happened to the girl?”
Simon shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I guess he was right. She couldn’t have remembered. Maybe thought she’d fallen over drunk and knocked herself out or something.”
Nat stroked him on the back and returned to the cooker. She opened a cupboard to the side and removed two plates.
“What he did wasn’t your fault,” she said. “I can see that he’s quite intimidating. Just look at how the others jump at his beck and call. He tells them to run and they run—”
“When did he tell them to run?”
Nat looked up. Simon faced her.
“Well, when he told them to get out of the bar. When Bubba stepped in.”
Simon closed his eyes. “Yes, of course.”
Nat scooped the eggs out of the pan with the spatula and dropped them on the plates. “So what does this have to do with last night? I mean, I presume you stopped hanging around with him after that.”
“I did,” said Simon, nodding. “I’ve been polite to him in passing since, but last night, I just thought…”
Nat swallowed. “That he was going to do something like that again?”
“Or worse.”
Crouching down, Nat pulled out the grill pan and f
licked the sausages and bacon onto the plates. All of a sudden, she didn’t feel hungry anymore. “Was he?”
“What?”
“Was he doing something? Is that why you were gone for ages?”
Simon stepped forwards. “Nat, I’m sorry again, I—”
“Stop,” she said, holding up a hand. “Forget about ditching me. Was he doing anything?”
Simon stopped and hung his head. “No. No, he wasn’t.”
Nat caught the bus across the city and took a deep breath of fresh air as she disembarked. The bus had been packed with no seats remaining. Standing up and grasping a handrail, Nat had spent most of the journey trying to breathe through the corner of her mouth. The guy standing beside her had stunk.
She walked past Ginelli’s quickly, her head down. She preferred not to encounter Andre on her day off, and Gordon only started in the evening. Arriving at the street corner, Nat looked left and right, trying to remember which direction they had walked last night.
I can’t believe he lied to me. The recollection made her face feel hot. I have to find that bar!
Nat had stayed quiet all morning until Simon left the apartment. Although he seemed genuinely sorry for what had gone on in the past, that didn’t excuse him from lying to her. She didn’t blame him for what happened to the girl, or Agnes, for that matter. Hadn’t he been the one begging Johan to stop last night?
Finally alone, she’d sat in her window overlooking the city streets, a mug of steaming coffee in her hands. Something was bothering her, and while she was far from the villain last night, guilt snagged in her gut like a tiny fish hook that refused to budge.
The lack of action.
Her mother had gone through the same thing. The threats, the intimidation and the violence that had played out on the street; the scene had been what Nat imagined all those years ago. What had been done? Nothing. Her mother never made a complaint to police. Nat herself had left the matter in the hands of her older and supposedly wiser parent. What she wanted was for the best, right?
Wrong. She could see that now.
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