Ralph’s Children

by Hilary Norman

  And then Pig let out a terrible howl.

  ‘She’s gone!’

  Kate felt Jack go rigid.

  ‘The hook’s gone right through her.’ Pig’s voice was anguished. ‘Simon’s dead.’

  Laurie opened her eyes.

  Sam filled her mind: his birth, his being taken from her at the clinic, his lovely smiling face.

  ‘You,’ Jack said to Kate. ‘You did this.’

  She felt it, literally felt the heat of his rage as he raised the knife.

  She shut her eyes, thought about Rob, about wasting love.

  The sound she heard as the warm spray hit her face was thinner than a baby’s wail.

  Droplets on her eyelids, on her nose, her cheeks.

  She commanded herself not to look – if she kept her eyes closed, she would not have to see.

  What Jack had done to Laurie.

  But she had to look, knew she had no choice.

  A necklace of blood.

  Laurie already gone.

  And now Kate was screaming inside.

  Ralph

  Jack had just called.

  ‘I’m in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘Turner can’t hear me.’

  A thrill ran through Ralph.

  ‘Is it done?’ she asked, knowing from his voice that it was.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jack confirmed. ‘But the game’s not over, Chief.’

  She heard him tell her about Simon, grief striking hard as a hammer blow.

  Time passed, evaporated, ceased to register or matter.

  Ralph remembered Simon as she had been in the early days, soft and fair and sweet and very young. The most innocent of them all, always.

  ‘Chief?’ Jack said at last. ‘You OK?’

  ‘No,’ she answered. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Me neither,’ he said.

  Ralph tried to assemble her thoughts, assemble herself.

  ‘How’s Pig?’

  ‘Like you’d imagine,’ Jack answered.

  Something different was whipping up in her now, along with the grief.

  Rage.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘it was her. She did that to Simon.’

  ‘Fucking right she did,’ Jack said.

  Ralph knew that she needed to still her own emotions, at least for a time. To help her surviving children deal with this.

  To finish this imperfect game.

  ‘Right,’ she said.

  The Game

  The first thing they had done after killing Laurie was to attend to Simon.

  Jack’s grasp on Kate’s hair in those minutes had been so brutally tight she had felt the roots shrieking as he’d made her lean with him over the rail, watching Roger help Pig ascertain that their friend was truly dead.

  There was no doubting that Pig was right. The hook had pierced Simon’s left breast and probably her heart, impaling her.

  Ending her life.

  Kate had looked down and seen the glistening, horrifying, dark red pool on the stone floor directly below.

  She thought, though the stocking over Roger’s face made it hard to be sure, that the terrorist was weeping.

  No such doubts about Pig.

  ‘Right.’ Jack had spoken at last, his voice low and choked and savage. ‘Right.’

  Roger had looked up at him. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Call Ralph,’ he had said.

  Kate registered the name. Another from the Golding novel. The Chief’s name.

  ‘Shoes first,’ Roger said.

  Her weeping already over, her grief, at least for a time, contained.

  ‘We need to check our soles,’ she clarified. ‘For blood.’

  Kate had felt barely alive in the lull that had followed the killing.

  Two killings, she supposed.

  Supposed, too, that from their point of view she had killed Simon. Except she did not feel that pushing a person bent on murder qualified as killing.

  They were responsible for Simon’s death.

  Not in their book, though.

  Kate had found that she could not think about – knew she must not allow herself to think about – what had been done to Laurie Moon. A stranger, and yet her sister. About the unspeakable brutality of it.

  Later she would think about it, find out about her.

  If there was a later.

  Back downstairs – after speaking, Kate presumed, to their Chief, to the newly named ‘Ralph’ – Jack hog-tied her in the centre of the living room, ensuring that Simon’s body was in her line of vision.

  ‘Careful,’ Roger said again as Jack tethered her wrists to her ankles, and he made a sound that was half grunt, half snarl, but the bandages were released just a little.

  God, it hurt, caution or not, though the pain was almost welcome, helping to blot out the hideousness of the memory of Laurie Moon’s killing – but then Kate’s eyes fixed on the gory sight of the dead terrorist, and any relief was gone.

  ‘We can’t just leave her.’ Pig sounded passionate, arguing with the other two about Simon. ‘We have to get her down, we have to take her with us.’

  ‘We can’t,’ Jack told him.

  ‘You know we can’t,’ Roger backed him up.

  ‘Why can’t we at least take the stocking off her head?’ Pig implored. ‘I want to see her face, I want to say goodbye to her.’

  ‘We can take off the stocking,’ Jack granted. ‘But that’s it.’

  ‘Is that what the Chief said?’ Roger checked.

  ‘It’s what I’m saying,’ Jack said.

  Roger hesitated for a moment, then turned back to Pig. ‘It’s that or nothing,’ she told him. ‘We have to make this part of the game now.’ She was gentle but firm. ‘We have no choice, Pig, you know that.’

  They began – Pig from above, kneeling at the jagged opening left by the broken rail, Jack from halfway up the spiral staircase – to ease the stocking as gently as they could from their friend’s head.

  Kate shut her eyes.

  ‘Open your eyes, Turner,’ Jack’s voice rapped. ‘See what you’ve done.’

  Kate opened them, looked up again, saw a young woman with short fair hair messed up from sweat and the stocking’s tightness, her face white and slack in death, grey eyes open. She looked, too, at Pig, whose shoulders shook with renewed weeping as he stretched out one gloved hand to stroke Simon’s hair.

  Love amongst killers.

  ‘God.’ Pig began to tug off his own mask.

  ‘No.’ Roger’s voice was sharp, stopping him.

  Maybe, Kate felt, that meant they still intended to let her live, after all.

  And then she felt a scalding blast of shame, remembering poor Laurie Moon lying upstairs, her throat cut.

  They moved rapidly for a while after that, their need to leave Caisleán as swiftly as possible; then forcing themselves to slow down again, urging caution on each other as they cleaned every trace they might have left.

  And Lord, they were well prepared to do so, Kate could see from her increasingly agonizing best-seat position in their arena, armed with mini-vacuum cleaners, scrubbing brushes, torches, magnifiers and even tweezers, painstakingly picking up every suspect scrap and crumb and hair, depositing each item, like crime scene specialists, in plastic bags together with their disposable coffee cups and plastic spoons.

  They went upstairs again, scouring the gallery, disappearing from sight for a time in the bedroom alcove – and it was good not to see them for a while, though Simon’s body still hung there like a monstrous reproach and Kate was starting to find it harder to breathe, the position Jack had tied her in seeming to strain her chest and constrict her throat.

  They appeared again, came slowly down the staircase, cleaning as they came.

  And returned to Kate.

  Fear filled every atom of her being.

  They did not speak to her.

  Roger took a penknife from one of her pockets and cut the length of bandage that had attached Kate’s ankles to her wrists, and new, exquisite pain shot thro
ugh her, searing her, making her cry out through the tape still covering her mouth.

  ‘Right,’ Jack said.

  What now?

  Jack and Pig picked her up, and she cried out again.

  ‘Shut it,’ Jack said.

  Roger went ahead of them into the bathroom, opened the door, turned on the light.

  The men set Kate down in the bath.

  New panic soared, they were going to drown her.

  Sitting her down, though, not lying, so maybe . . .

  No one touched the taps.

  ‘Here.’ Jack fished out the bandage roll and gave it to Pig.

  Pig bent, took off Kate’s left glove, then placed the roll between both her hands, pressed her fingertips and thumbs on the cut end piece, then around the roll itself, before he straightened up and placed the roll in her mirrored wall cabinet.

  Kate felt her mind shut down again.

  She sat there in her bath, a helpless lump, a package, while Pig went through the same process with the unfinished roll of adhesive tape, and then stood back.

  Jack was the only one who spoke to her.

  ‘I wish to God,’ he said, ‘I could kill you here and now.’

  Kate sat very still and looked into space, not at him or the others.

  ‘Let’s finish,’ Roger said.

  They cut the bandages from Kate’s ankles and wrists, stuffed them into one of their plastic bags.

  ‘Lie down,’ Pig ordered her.

  She didn’t move.

  ‘On your back,’ Roger told her.

  ‘Now,’ Pig commanded.

  Oh, the hate in his voice.

  Kate lay back, terror sweeping her again, and her feet and hands were free, but they were numb again, worse than before, and the pain was like hot needles from her neck and shoulders down to her calves.

  Still no one turned on the water.

  Roger knelt beside the bath, inspected her wrists, then rubbed her skin with her latex-covered fingers where the bonds had made indentations, lessening the furrows a little, then doing the same for Kate’s ankles, rolling up the hems of her jeans a little to make her inspection, wiping away traces of cotton and gauze.

  And all the while Kate half lay in the bath, panic receding again, her mind in a new, odd, fugue-like state, wondering what would happen next.

  Which was simply that Roger peeled the tape from her mouth and placed it into the bag Pig held open for her.

  And then, without another word, they left her.

  They took their bags, looked carefully around the bathroom, scanning ceiling, walls, basin, toilet and floor – and the bath, too, as if she were not in it, as if she had become invisible.

  And then they walked out of the room and closed the door behind them.

  Locked it from the outside with a key, leaving the light switched on.

  Several moments passed before Kate remembered that neither this door, nor any other in Caisleán – except the front door – had a lock.

  Which meant that they had been here before, perhaps more than once.

  Kate began to tremble, more violently and uncontrollably than at any time since the ordeal had begun, her teeth chattering and colliding, chills racking her.

  Minutes passed.

  Then came the sound of a door closing.

  The front door.

  And then nothing.

  Kate

  She was still there, alone, still listening, ears straining.

  Get up.

  She felt too weak to move.

  Have to.

  She made the effort, finally, managed to haul herself up, clinging to the edge, stumbling as she clambered out, one foot striking the side of the bath with a clang.

  She froze, afraid they might still be here after all, might come back.

  Nothing.

  They were gone.

  Kate sat down on the edge of the lavatory, looked at her watch, saw that it was twenty-three minutes past twelve, wondered for an instant, overwhelmed by confusion, if it was day or night, then remembered that it had been morning, daylight, when they had brought her into this room.

  She thought about Simon’s body, wondered if they had, after all, left her.

  Thought about Laurie, upstairs.

  She turned around just in time to vomit, then, when she was done, she rinsed her mouth, caught sight of her reflection, saw Laurie’s blood splattered on her face, and suppressed the urge to wash it off. She sank down on to the floor, huddling in the corner, shaking again.

  Alone now, she told herself. Safe.

  Perhaps.

  She thought again about the lock that had not been there before.

  She had not tried the door yet, had given no thought as to how she might get out, knew she would have to think about that soon, because the bathroom was small and windowless, and though there was comfort in being in here alone, without them, away from all the . . .

  Death.

  That word, even silent in the privacy of her thoughts, felt as shocking, as frightening, as if she had said it out loud. She waited again for repercussions, for them to come back to punish her, finish her off.

  They would not, she knew that. They had gone and would not come back. They had clarified that much when they had argued over leaving Simon behind. And it had been implied, too, in those last words of Jack’s to her:

  ‘I wish to God I could kill you here and now.’

  If not here and now, then where and when?

  ‘Not now,’ Kate said aloud.

  All that counted.

  The key was in the lock on the other side of the bathroom door, and Kate, remembering the old trick that even children knew, tore off the base of a tissue box, slid it under the door, then jiggled the key until it fell on to the torn piece of card and could be pulled into the bathroom.

  Too easy. The key being there in the first place, its vertical position in the lock to facilitate pushing it out, enough space beneath the door . . .

  Much too easy. Part of their game.

  Kate felt sick again as she unlocked the door.

  Opened it.

  No one around.

  Unless you counted two dead women.

  She was trembling again as she reached the phone and picked it up.

  No line.

  Her heart began to thud harder.

  Her bag was still on the floor near the door where it had been, but her mobile phone was missing, and her car key, too, and it was no great surprise to her to find the front door locked with no key in sight. The windows were locked, too, and those locks were their own handiwork, she and Rob had seen to them for insurance as well as peace of mind, but if the keys were here now, Kate couldn’t find them.

  Break a window.

  She chose the kitchen pane, being the largest and, therefore, the easiest to climb out through. She found a heavy bottomed copper saucepan, hardly used till now, and, squeezing her eyes shut against flying fragments, swung it at the window, the violence of the act almost exhilarating.

  She wound two tea towels around her hand and wrist and clambered painfully up on to the window ledge, knocked out as much of the glass as she could, and climbed out.

  Cold fresh air, misty rain, the openness of the downs.

  Purest heaven on earth for several seconds – and then fear returned with a vengeance, obliterating the pleasure, because she was, she suddenly realized, horribly exposed out here with no one for miles to run to for help—

  And they might be watching, concealed by one of the copses of trees just beyond one of those benign-looking, softly rolling hills, they might be . . .

  Kate moved carefully towards the Mini, her legs still weak, almost certain in any case of the pointlessness of the exercise, because they would hardly have taken the key just to unlock the car for her and ease her way now.

  The doors were locked, but her key was in the ignition, her mobile in its hands-free cradle on the dashboard.

  The game continuing.

  Her hesitation was brief, her
only other option a long and lonely walk.

  She found a rock over by the stone wall, returned to the car, smashed the passenger window and reached into the car for the phone.

  The signal was good, the battery charged, and what did that mean?

  That they wanted her to be able to use the mobile, call for help.

  Kate wavered again.

  Paranoia. Of no use to her right now, even if she was entitled to it.

  She brushed glass off the passenger seat, hunched over, kneeling so that she could reach across and open the driver’s door, and then she shut the passenger door again, walked around to the other side, moving more quickly now, pulses racing, trying hard not to panic herself, got into the driver’s side, shut and locked the doors again.

  Realized the pointlessness of that, too, with one window smashed and open.

  She turned the key in the ignition to see if it would start.

  First time.

  And then she keyed in 999, took a deep breath and waited.

  ‘I’ve been held prisoner by a masked gang,’ she said, when she was finally through, and it sounded mad even to herself as she spoke the words, told the woman at the other end where she was and that two people were dead.

  ‘And I think the killers have gone, but I’m still so scared, and can you please hurry.’

  She was asked to hold on.

  ‘I want to phone someone else,’ she said. ‘My husband.’

  She cut off the call, sat for another moment, trembling violently again, and then, when she could manage it, she called Rob.

  He answered quickly.

  ‘Is Emmie all right?’ she asked, before anything.

  She hadn’t mentioned that threat to the police operator, had forgotten.

  ‘Kate?’ Rob sounded startled.

  ‘Rob, tell me if Emmie’s OK.’

  ‘Of course she is,’ he said. ‘Kate, what’s wrong?’

  Speaking to the stranger coherently had been one thing, but telling Rob seemed suddenly impossible, as if layers of mud had suddenly caked her brain and larynx.

  She told him, first, that she was at Caisleán.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ she said. ‘Something terrible.’ Sticking to the bottom line, all that mattered now. ‘I need you, Rob.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ His voice was harsh with anxiety.