by Gordon Brown
‘You’re doing well. You’re lucky to be here.’
‘What were they giving me?’
‘I’ve no idea. Describe what it felt like.’
I tell her.
‘Hard to tell. A mix. Something to get you up. Something to bring you down and something to make you sleep.’
‘I still want it.’
‘Of course you do. You had an express course in becoming an addict. Most people slide into it slowly. You had front row seats by the sound of it.’
‘Aren’t you interested in what this is all about?’
‘In our business we don’t ask. Discretion is writ large upon our front door.’
‘Tell me again why you’re doing this?’
‘No.’
I dream for the first time in an age that night. Not a long dream. A simple dream of standing on the edge of a lake. Water lapping at my ankles. The lake is warm and inviting. The wood behind cold and far away. I want to walk into the lake.
I don’t need Freud to decipher this one for me.
I wake, drop to the floor and try a press-up. I fail but feel good that I tried.
I’d kill for a burger.
Chapter 34
‘Charlie, I want to kill them.’
The sun is low in the sky. Charlie hands me a beer. I sigh. ‘Are you sure this is good for me?’ My arms are still thin but I’m up to three press-ups today. I could have done four if I’d pushed.
‘If we’re going to talk about Lorraine, essential.’
The wind blows leaves around, and a dust-devil picks some up, wheeling them under the trailer.
‘Why would we talk about Lorraine?’ I crack the tin and sip at the liquid. I’d still prefer a needle but the beer mixed with a few of Tina and Gary’s tablets helps keep the craving at bay.
‘Craig, what did they do to you?’
I look at him and, instead of avoiding the question, I offload. The whole shebang.
When I’m finished he looks at me. ‘Brings back the old times. Me serving you beer. You wringing yourself dry.’
‘This is cheaper.’
‘For you, maybe.’
‘Charlie, why the hell are you helping me?’
‘Hatch Roll.’
‘Garbage. Thousands of people cycle through there. I’m nothing special.’
‘You want to know about Lorraine?’
I don’t want to know about Lorraine. I don’t want to remember the sound of her skull cracking like a busted snail shell. This is the man who took her away from me. And now I’m sitting on the stoop sipping suds and chewing air with him.
‘I know that you didn’t mean to kill her. Let’s leave it there.’
‘No.’
‘My rules. We play by my fucking rules. OK?’
‘My beer. My rules.’
‘Charlie, this isn’t the time.’
‘It’s exactly the time. You know what it felt like?’
I don’t answer.
‘Like nothing. Like the biggest nothing on earth. That’s what. I didn’t even believe I’d done it. Not right after. It was a blank but the suits played me the tape. Again and again. At first I thought it was a James Cameron moment. CGI and all that. Not me. Not me with Lorraine. But they had it on tape and I have to accept it. I didn’t want to believe it but it was me. I still don’t want to believe it. I loved your wife.’
‘I know.’
‘I mean I really loved her. Ever since the day you walked into the bar. I saw her and I didn’t see you until an hour after you sat down. There was Lorraine and there was everyone else. Except you had her. Not me. The joke about the money. A thousand and one dollars! I would have given you every cent in my bank if I thought she would have chosen me. But it was never going to happen. She loved you. And that was that.’
‘So why did you kill her?’
‘Because you made me. Isn’t that the way it works?’
‘All I know is that I’m somehow responsible for you killing her.’ I stop. The words are harsh and too real. ‘I pushed you to do it but there was a reason. I haven’t figured out all the angles yet but I only set off people with bad history. Something nasty in the past that I bring to the surface. Not bad blood. Something hidden. Something that’s rotten at the core of the apple. All rosy on the surface but deep down? Buried. So what happened with you and Lorraine?’
Charlie sits back. He drains the can he’s holding. There is something. The pause is enough to tell him that I know there’s something.
He leans away from me. ‘You know what, maybe it doesn’t matter.’
I shake my head. ‘You wanted this. You dug me from the grave and decided I was worth saving. You wanted this conversation and now I want to know what happened between you and my wife.’
‘I tried it on with her.’ He lets the words hang in the evening air and I watch them blow around our heads.
‘What?’
‘I tried it on with her. One night after closing. You were back at Hatch Roll for a check-up. She had come down for a late-night chat. She didn’t even have a drink. Just coffee. I, on the other hand, had been drinking. Stupid. I pushed, she pushed back. I pushed too hard and she ran.’
‘How hard did you push?’
‘It was enough. I overstepped the mark. I tried to kiss her.’ Pause. ‘And then a little more.’
I hit him square on the chin. Then I’m on top of him. Raining down blows. But I’m weak. He pushes up and rolls me off. I try to stand up. He pushes me back down.
I shout. ‘Bastard. Is that why you’re helping me? Is it? You kill my wife and then tell me you tried to rape her. So this is your Get Out of Jail Free card is it? Save poor Craig and bang goes your guilty conscience.’
The power in my voice feels good. ‘Is that IT?’
‘I never tried to rape her.’
‘But you weren’t far away.’
He drops his head.
‘Fuck you,’ I say. I stand up. He backs off. I spit in his face, turn away and begin to walk towards the woods.
‘I’d never have hurt her,’ he shouts after me.
I turn. ‘You killed her.’
He takes a step towards me. ‘Craig. You killed her and you know it. I might have been there but, without you, it would never have happened.’
I start to run. It hurts but I need to be away from Charlie. I hit the edge of the wood. I feel dead leaves slap me in the face. It feels good. I take another twenty steps and fall to the ground. I struggle to get up. I want to run. I want Lorraine back. I want my life back. My legs won’t support me and I start to crawl. Anything to keep moving. I fall to my stomach and slither forward a few feet. I scream in frustration.
I’m not going anywhere. The scent of the dying leaves buries itself in my nose. I roll on my back. Charlie is standing over me. He reaches out. I flip my face away. I try to crawl but I’m spent. Charlie’s hands grab my waist. I try and wriggle free. Charlie lifts me clean from the ground, wrapping me over his shoulder.
Tears flow as I thump on his back. He walks to the trailer. His back is damp by the time he lays me in my bed.
He walks out. I try to get up, fall back and slide into sleep.
Chapter 35
‘I really do want to kill them.’
Charlie is sitting next to me on the bed.
My anger with Charlie comes and goes. It’s been two weeks since I tried to run. Two weeks of tearing my head apart. Trying to figure what to do. ‘What you did to Lorraine was wrong.’
He says nothing. I want him to say sorry again. Just to let me have another pop. But there is no mileage in this. I need to make a decision.
‘I’m going to kill them. Lendl, Tampoline – then maybe you.’
‘Food and rest first.’
*
I pass thirty press-ups in the next week. Sixty in two weeks. I go for a walk each day. On the day I do one hundred press-ups and walk two miles, I’m on the way back.
I shave my head each day. My dream of thick, offensive hair has
gone for good.
Tina and Gary are like clockwork toys. They arrive every day at eight in the morning and then again at six. Conversation is random but never useful. Baseball scores. World news. Small requests – I’m back reading again. Charlie is in and out. I ask what he’s doing. Where he goes? He tells me he has sold the pub and is tidying up a few things. He tells me how hard it is to do stuff when you have a government agency trying to track you down. And then he tells me if the Unabomber could evade the FBI for seventeen years then a few months should be easy.
I’m not sure I care and I’m not so sure he’s right. The suits don’t seem to dance to the same tune as the FBI.
I’ve worked through a thousand scenarios in my head. All involving the death of Lendl and the senator. None hold water. For a start I’m not sure where Lendl is. I have a rough idea of where I was held, but it was a secure facility and wouldn’t be easy to get into. Anyway, he could be anywhere on the planet. I first met him in Iraq after all.
The senator is easier. He has a public diary but I want both and, given my talent, I know if I can get them in the same room, things may well take care of themselves.
Charlie comes into the trailer. ‘Time to move on.’
‘Why?’
Tina and Gary are just finishing breakfast around us. I won’t need them much longer. I’m still a shadow of my previous self but I’m in no need of babysitting.
‘I caught sight of a couple of suits.’
Charlie has refused to tell me where he’s staying. All I know is that it isn’t Hudson or Sharon’s place.
‘Where?’
‘Too close for comfort.’
‘So where do we go?’
He throws a paper on the table. It’s the Tampa Tribune. ‘I thought you might like to see this. Try the sports pages.’
I flick through. The Devil Rays are at home tonight. The second in a series against the Boston Red Sox. ‘What am I looking for?’
‘Look who’s throwing the first pitch tonight.’
I read. ‘Tampoline.’
‘Thought you might like to know.’
‘Pity that Lendl won’t be there.’
‘Won’t he?’
Charlie drops a small leaflet on the table to join the paper. It’s an invitation to buy into the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. At the bottom there’s a bunch of faces and names of current shareholders.
Lendl’s face is dead centre.
‘He has a share in the baseball team?’
Charlie nods. ‘Clive Lendl’s one of the minor players.’
Tampoline and Lendl. Tonight. In the same place. Assuming Lendl attends.
But of course he’ll attend. He knows Tampoline. He might even be funded by him. After all, Tampoline was there the night they started my experiments.
I look up at Charlie. ‘When is the first pitch?’
‘8.00pm.’
‘Tonight. I’m going after them tonight.’
‘And what are you going to do once you get there?’
‘Let nature take its course.’
‘Great plan.’
‘Best I have.’
The window shatters, something bounces off the far side of the trailer and smoke pours from the object. Charlie looks at it, at me and then to Gary and Tina. I drop to my knees, shutting my eyes. These bastards are nothing if not consistent. In the confined space we have seconds before the gas forces us from the trailer.
‘Gary, Tina – get out.’
I hear Charlie push Gary and Tina to the door – his eyes must be streaming. There’s a scuffle, coughing, then the door opens. Charlie joins me on the floor.
‘Under the bed,’ he coughs.
I want to point out that this is useless, just as a second missile flies in. I don’t see it – just hear it smack off a surface and start hissing.
Charlie drags me under the bed. He fumbles around. There’s a click and I fall into a hole. He joins me then reaches up to close the trapdoor we’ve just fallen through.
‘Here.’ He hands me a mask with small metal bottle attached. ‘Oxygen.’
I strap the mask to my face. I fiddle with the bottle until I start the oxygen flow.
We are lying side by side in a metal box maybe eight feet long by four wide. At a couple of feet deep the tip of my mask touches the top of the box as I lie on my back.
‘What is this?’ My voice is muffled and amplified at the same time. Muffled from the mask, amplified in the metal coffin.
‘A back-up plan. You can’t see the box from the outside. I had it installed when I decided I was coming for you. A modern-day priest’s hole.’
‘It won’t take five minutes for them to find us.’
‘This is only part one of a three-part plan.’
‘What’s part two?
‘This.’
I hear a click in the dark. There’s a few seconds’ silence, followed by a dull whoomph from above.
‘What was that?’ I ask.
‘It’s going to get hot in here. Stay with it. The trapdoor has a strip of Pyroblanket on it.’
‘What?’
‘To give protection from heat.’
‘What heat?’
‘I’ve just set the trailer on fire.’
Chapter 36
Charlie coughs as the fumes he breathed in still rattle around his chest. I feel him shudder with the effort.
I turn to him. ‘What do you mean you set fire to the trailer?’
‘I set up a firebomb in the trailer. I’m betting that once the trailer is a molten mass they’ll assume we’re dead.’
‘Are you kidding? We will be dead.’
‘Not if I’ve thought this through correctly.’
‘Have you?’
‘If you’re asking if I’ve ever done anything like this before – the answer is no.’
‘Great.’
The temperature is rising. Whether this is because of our body heat or the fire above I can’t tell. I try to move but there’s little room. As I wriggle, I feel the metal box bend beneath me.
‘Charlie, the box is moving.’
‘Metal one-o-one was never my strong point. Had to guess at what was needed. This is hardly in the Home Depot manual.’
There’s a roaring sound from above. Light leaks in from the edge of the trapdoor. I turn my head. Charlie is coming into view.
‘Not good,’ he says. ‘I thought the seal on the trapdoor was airtight.’
‘Charlie, this is insane. We’ll bake to death.’
‘There’s still part three. But we need to wait.’
‘For what?’
‘Just wait.’
Something shatters above us. There’s a crash as an object falls to the floor. Another crash and the whole trailer rocks. The box-floor dips a little more. The light around the trapdoor is bright – a constant glare. I can now see the inside of the box. It’s made of the non-slip metal sheets that started life in industrial complexes and are now used as a shorthand by theme parks to indicate danger. The raised surface is a crisscross of short strips. The welding that keeps the whole thing together would fail a freshman’s first exam.
Heat is coming in waves. Each wave hotter than the last. The air has been sucked from the space. My exposed skin is starting to smart. I try to draw slowly on the bottle of air. It doesn’t look like it holds much and without it I’ll be dead in seconds.
‘We can’t take much more,’ I yell.
‘A couple of minutes. Just hold on.’
‘For what, Charlie – for what?’
‘Just hang on.’
An explosion from above suggests that the fire is having fun. The noise is now making it difficult to hear. A series of mini bombs go off as my home for the past few weeks is reduced to little more than ashes and bent metal. Each bang, each explosion, each sound vibrates in the coffin. All the time the heat is rising.
We lurch downwards. I roll into Charlie as we settle at an angle. I hear a faint grunt and realize Charlie is shouting. ‘I can’t get t
o the release.’
The words are a whisper against the hurricane. I lean over to try and press my ear to Charlie’s mask.
‘Lever. Pull the lever,’ he shouts.
I reach around but all I can feel is the rough texture of the metal. We lurch again. A blast of heat flows in as the corner of the trapdoor bends towards us.
‘It’s under me,’ shouts Charlie.
I push beneath his back. I feel a rubber-tipped object. I wrap my hand around it and pull. Nothing happens.
‘I can’t pull it up while you’re on it,’ I scream.
Charlie arches his back. I try again, but nothing happens. He rolls on to his side and the handle is free. I pull hard.
We fall.
We land in dirt. Charlie pushes me away and a blanket flies over my head. I can feel the cool, damp sensation of lying on moist earth. The blanket kills the light, dulling the sound of the fire at the same time.
‘Is this part three?’
Charlie coughs. ‘Yes. I dug the pit before I moved the trailer in. I’d hoped we wouldn’t have to use it. Anyone watching the trailer might have seen us fall.’
‘I doubt it. The whole trailer must have settled a couple of feet. Coupled with the fire we’ll have been invisible. What now – part four?’
‘I was lucky to get to part three.’
‘Well at least they won’t have to dig our grave.’
‘The blanket is the same stuff I used on the floor. As long as something large doesn’t fall on us we should be OK.’
‘What, like a trailer?’
‘That could happen.’
I want to laugh. ‘Charlie, if we survive they’ll still find us. Tina and Gary will tell them we were inside.’
‘Not a problem. They both know what to do.’
‘They’re kids. The suits will make beef-chuck out of them.’ ‘They may be kids but they’re my kids and they’ll do the right thing.’
‘Your kids?’
‘Well, kind of mine.’
I knew there was something familiar about the pair.
‘Look Charlie, we need to get out. This is fucking serious. They know we aren’t David Copperfield.’
Above the roar of the fire I hear sirens.
Charlie rolls onto his side. ‘I told the kids to phone the authorities before I joined you.’