Death Penalties

by Paula Gosling

  A car passed down the street, and then another, seeking a short-cut around stalled or slow-moving traffic, the drivers intent only on their journeys home, hunched over their steering wheels, androgynous silhouettes, as unknown to her as she to them, and as uncaring. They could not help her find her child.

  Maybe they’d taken Max away in a car.

  Who?

  Don’t think about that, she told herself. Think about finding a naughty little boy in a bright red anorak and school scarf. Expect to see him any minute, every minute, around this corner, around the next, here, there, anywhere, everywhere.

  Now.

  Yes!

  As she turned the final corner she thought she saw a flash of red in the distance, going into one of the derelict houses.

  ‘Max! Max!’

  She began to run.

  The house was the last in the row, at the end of the cul-de-sac. A high brick wall ran the width of the street between it and the house opposite, closing off the road from the open drop to the rails of the Metropolitan Line which surfaced here, briefly, before plunging once more into subterranean darkness.

  These houses had been condemned two years before, unfit even for restoration. But a preservation order was holding up their demolition, and they continued to be slowly shaken to pieces by the vibration from the passing trains. Another went by now, the sound of its passage transformed into the rumbling of electric animals kept behind the brick wall: dangerous, powerful, large.

  The pavement trembled beneath Tess’s feet as she stood staring at the door of the condemned house. Boarded up, like all the rest, it had a boy-sized hole at the bottom where two bits of wood had been pulled away – so tempting.

  ‘Max! I saw you go in there, young man! Come out here this instant!’

  But there was only the sound of the train, fading fast as it entered the tunnel, and then only silence and the steady drip of condensation from a broken gutter.

  ‘Max! Max Leland! Come out here this instant!’

  A rattle of grit, the creak of a board – something was beyond that boarded door. Something or someone.

  Was it her son?

  The prospect of entering that filthy, crumbling house was terrifying to her, but she had to do it. She had to know.

  She took her hands from her pockets and went up the uneven path to the gap in the boards, bent down, and peered through. Faint streaks of light from the street lamps illuminated the hall beyond, and showed the shattered lower half of the stairway which led upward, to darkness.

  Taking hold of one of the boards, she pulled hard, and nearly lost her footing. It hadn’t been nailed shut at all, merely balanced there to provide the illusion of closure.

  For someone, for some reason, the house was still alive.

  She put down the board and crouched slightly to step through the opening. The house smelt oddly, as if work was going on here. What was it, that sour, penetrating odour?

  The light from outside was very faint now, and she had neither torch nor matches to show the way. Twice she skidded on what felt like plastic bags, once she put a foot through a hole in the floor, cutting her shin and nearly losing a shoe.

  There was a brief flicker of light from the door at the end of the hall. ‘Max? Don’t be afraid, love. It’s Mummy – and I’m not angry. Please come out.’

  ‘Ooohh, Max . . . it’s only Mummy . . . and she’s not angry. Noooooooooo . . . ’

  Tess froze in the doorway as she found herself facing a ring of pale faces, watery-eyed, grinning, wavering and rocking, the floor in front of them littered with plastic bags and rolled-up tubes of glue and cigarette butts and empty cider bottles and spoons and squares of foil and four or five disposable syringes.

  None older than twelve, she thought in that first, shocked moment. Boys or girls, it was impossible to tell. And any one of them could have been Max.

  But wasn’t.

  They giggled as she stared, and then the grins became feral, defensive, vicious. ‘Piss off,’ one of them, snarled. ‘Piss off or we’ll cut you.’ When she didn’t move, one of them, the largest and oldest, began to gather himself up.

  ‘PISS OFF!’ he shouted, balancing himself precariously and then stumbling towards her as his foot rolled on a bottle. Instinctively she caught him by the shoulders before he fell. His breath, foetid with decay and the acrid tang of solvents, whooshed into her face. She waited a moment, pushed him away, and spoke in a cold, hard voice.

  ‘Have you seen a little boy in a red anorak. A little boy named Max?’

  The boy looked at her blearily, caught unexpectedly by a question rather than the expected accusation. ‘Go away,’ he said, thickly.

  She looked past him. ‘Have any of you seen a little boy in a red anorak?’

  They stared back at her, uncomprehending, uncaring, lost in their haze of glue and drink and whatever else they had been sold. Their clothes were cheap and worn, their faces thin and surrounded by matted tendrils of unwashed hair, and she did not blame them or dislike them or pity them or excuse them.

  She just wanted her child.

  ‘The police are searching the neighbourhood for my little boy,’ she said, quietly. ‘They will be here soon, I expect. They weren’t far behind me.’

  ‘Shit,’ the oldest boy said.

  There was a whining scramble as they all struggled to their feet and pushed past her, running down the hall and dropping to their knees to scuttle out of the door and into the street beyond.

  Tess, knocked to the floor by their frantic passage, tried to get up and cried out at the sudden pain in her ankle. This room had obviously been the kitchen, and her foot had caught in a corner of the torn linoleum as she went down. The house suddenly shook with the passage of another train behind and below it. There was a brief faint flashing from the rear window, and in its light she saw a figure standing in the hall doorway.

  Before she could get up, the figure moved forward and lifted a foot to press her down into the filth of the broken floor. The foot was between her shoulder blades, squeezing the breath out of her, forcing her face down into the plastic bags still reeking of glue. Just inches from her eye, the exposed needle of one of the used syringes glittered in the faint, treacherous light. High above her, a voice spoke.

  ‘Time this was finished, Tess. Time for the game to end.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  it was Archie – or Kobalski, they’d said his real name was. The fake Australian accent and slang were gone – as were the lovely manners he’d displayed at the Ritz.

  He was big and strong and terrible, strong enough to hold her down with one foot while he lit a cigarette and enjoyed the spectacle of her squirming there.

  She looked up over her shoulder and saw his face momentarily illuminated by the flickering flame of his lighter. The handsome features, once so warm and lively, were cold, and there was cruelty in his beautiful eyes.

  ‘Now we can do this easy, babe, or we can do this tough.’

  He lifted his foot from her back, and for a moment she thought she might get up and run, but it was only so he could kneel beside her. And there was no running away from those hands.

  ‘Where’s my son?’ she demanded. ‘What have you done with Max?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything with your damn kid. Maybe we’ll deal with him later, after we’ve finished with you. After I’ve finished with you.’ Suddenly his hands were in her hair, twisting it around his fingers, pulling her head back. She cried out with the sudden pain of it, her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘Where’s the money, babe? Where’s the money your husband stole off us, hey? Got it stashed away good, have you? Keeping it a secret, biding your time waiting for that rainy day? That stupid old man didn’t take it from the car, like I thought at first. And I couldn’t find it at your place, so I figured you’d got really smart and maybe stashed it at that old h
ouse you were working on. I tried being nice, but you don’t fall for nice, do you? And I’m fed up with waiting around. So where is it, hey? In some safety deposit box somewhere? Yeah, that’s it, isn’t it? Not a bank account – the tax man might be nearly as interested as I am, right? No, a box. Or maybe you buried it in the garden, how about that?’ He jerked her head back even further, and she heard the sudden, horrifying click of a flick-knife opening. ‘Did you bury it in the garden, sweetheart?’

  Because he’d pulled her head so far back her throat was tight, and the words could barely crawl out. ‘There’s no money. Roger wouldn’t steal money from anyone.’

  ‘That’s what you think. He stole it from my main man, and my main man doesn’t like getting stolen from, on principle. Leaves a nasty taste, makes him look a little foolish. Makes him mad. And when he gets mad, he gets even. Capice?’

  ‘I don’t have any money. I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she gasped in a strangled voice. The cold edge of the knife was under her ear, but after a moment of staring down at her he took it away and laid it down on the floor. Then he rolled her over onto her back, half across his knees.

  Tess screamed at the half-seen expression on his face – greed and anger and lust combined to twist his handsome features into a demonic mask – and then her scream was cut off by the pressure of his cold, wet mouth over hers. He tasted of garlic and stale whisky and cigarettes, and she twisted her head away to scream again.

  It was a mistake.

  His snaking hand left her body and returned with the knife.

  He drew the razor-edged blade down the side of her neck – she could feel the sting of air on the thin wound – and then dug the tip of it into the cleft between her breasts.

  ‘Like I said, it can be easy or difficult, sweetheart. If I don’t get the money back, my main man is going to think I can’t do my job right. But I can do it – when I’m not interfered with. “No violence,” he said.’ He mimicked a voice she thought she recognized. ‘ “Don’t hurt her,” he said. Pigwash. I handle assignments the way I want to, not anyone else. What I start, I finish, you understand? I have a reputation to maintain. I lay off one, maybe they think I’m going to lay off the next one, or the next. Or that I can be bought off, maybe. That’s no good for business. No good for me. I have an investment in myself, you might say.’ Though he kept the knife pointed towards her throat, held lightly in his fingertips, he rubbed the palm of his hand over her breasts, lingering over the nipples, pressing down, and all the while breathing into her face. Another underground train rumbled past, the faint flickering light from its windows showing the white of his teeth, the strong lines of his nose and jaw. Oh, the betraying perfection of those handsome features behind which lurked a cruel and greedy man. ‘Mmmmm,’ he said. ‘Nice little knockers, sweetheart. What else have you got to offer a hungry man?’ He laid the knife between her breasts and his hand slid down her body until it reached the hem of her skirt, and began to slide upwards again, beneath it.

  ‘You obviously don’t have a very good memory.’

  A voice, hard and harsh, came from the hall.

  At the sound Kobalski jerked around, caught by surprise. The knife slid onto the floor, and his hand loosened in her hair. ‘I remember what I want to remember,’ he snarled. ‘And I remember we have some unfinished business.’

  ‘Then let’s get it sorted out, shall we? You can deal with her later.’

  Kobalski pushed Tess off his knee and got slowly to his feet, squinting into the darkness of the hall. He bent down and snatched up the knife, held it blade out towards the shadow in the doorway. ‘Right,’ he said.

  As he moved forward the man in the hall stepped back into the darker shadows. ‘I think we should talk about the money first.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? You have it?’

  ‘I know where it is. I found the hiding place you were too stupid to find. I can put my hands on it anytime I like.’

  They moved down the hall, the newcomer backing away, Kobalski coming after, drawn inexorably by the lure of the money. Drawn away from Tess. She lay there, unbelieving, her mind refusing to accept what it heard. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. But she knew the voice so well, had heard it in the dark before, had heard it in the light, had heard it and been grateful,

  Fool.

  The man in the hall was John Soame.

  She got up as quietly as she could and looked around her. The door from the kitchen to the rear of the house was no more than a black gap in the wall, covered by a couple of loose boards. She edged over to it and quickly ducked under the lower one, stumbling down a stone step into the pitch-black yard beyond. Her ankle stabbed pain up into her leg, and she gasped with the shock of it. It was weak and wobbly, but it did not give way. She nearly did, the pain was so great. But she must not give way, she must get away.

  There was still Max.

  He wasn’t here, so Kobalski had taken him somewhere else. She knew she could find him – if she could just get away.

  She couldn’t see the fog, but she could feel it against her face, cool and clammy. Overhead the lights of the city diffused into it a pale grey glow, tinged with orange from one side of the sky to the other. A glow that gave no light, but only absorbed it, so that here, on the ground, she was blind. In the darkness her stumbling feet encountered a bottle which skittered away and smashed against something metallic.

  ‘Hey!’ came a shout from the house behind her. ‘She’s out!’ and she could hear Kobalski cursing as he kicked away the boards over the door.

  She ran down the littered, overgrown yard, stumbling and lurching as she prayed for escape. But there was no escape – and she realized why the glue-sniffing children had chosen to risk running straight into the arms of the police rather than escape from the house this way.

  The yard was enclosed on all three sides by a brick wall, its surface slimy and cold under her scrabbling fingers. It was very high on either side, but against the sky she could see that the rear wall had tumbled down in one place. It would have to be there, she had no other alternative. She could hear Kobalski coming down the yard towards her, closer and closer.

  Desperately she climbed up the wall, sticking her fingers and toes into the chinks left by fallen or broken bricks, trying to reach the top, planning to go over into the next yard and get away. As she reached the top and swung a leg over, another Tube train rumbled past, shaking the ground, the wall, and – seemingly – the whole world. There was no other yard on the far side of the wall.

  Just a straight drop to the Metropolitan Line.

  And its electrified rails.

  As she hesitated, she felt Kobalski’s hand clutching at her legs, and realized that she, like the wall itself, was outlined clearly against the oddly pale fog-lit night sky. There was no real choice, no other way.

  She kicked out at him, felt her toe connect with what she hoped was his head, heard him yell, and then swung herself over the wall. For a moment she hung there, a moment that was as close to eternity as she had ever known. Then she let go.

  And dropped to the tracks below.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Tess lay perfectly still where she had fallen.

  She’d been stunned for a moment, but now her mind was clear – terribly clear. She sensed, but could not see, the electrified underground rails beside her. She could smell the acrid presence of high voltage, rubber buffers, oil. Lifting her eyes she saw a long narrow strip of sky high above her – the diffuse luminous orangey glow of the city under the fog. Beneath her, dirt and grit pushed a thousand points into her skin, penetrating even the heavy wool of her skirt.

  She was afraid to move for fear of touching the live rail. That was certain death.

  Gently she flexed her arms and legs and neck, testing to see if pain shouted the news of broken bones, torn muscles. No. She was bruised, but aside from the throb of her previously twisted
ankle, she seemed whole enough. Despair had made her go limp as she fell through what had seemed like miles of space – as if the ground, seeing her descent, had pulled away to avoid the impact.

  Overhead, where the wall to which she had clung edged the sky, she could see the outline of a head – Kobalski had reached the top and was peering down into the cutting. She could hear shouting, but the words were not clear because of the noise from the approaching train.

  The approaching train.

  Her stomach lurched and her heart seemed to go into suspended animation. A train was coming and she was lying within inches of the rail. What would happen? Would she be sucked beneath it? Worst of all, would the electricity in the rails arc to her body and burn her to death as she lay there, helpless?

  The rumbling grew louder, filling the long narrow declivity, growing, swelling. There was a screech of metal on metal as the wheels scraped the rails. The ground beneath her shook and trembled as if it were as terrified by the approaching monster as she. Suddenly light came, the light of the train bursting from the tunnel, emerging one-eyed from its lair, bearing down on her.

  She screamed but could not hear herself at all, curled back against the filthy wall, a small terrified animal transfixed by the light. Beneath the dumbfounding roar of the train, echoed and amplified by the enclosing walls, she could hear the crackle from the thousands of volts of electricity that propelled it, felt the wind of its passage sucking grit and paper and discarded rubbish into a whirlwind that rose and surrounded her. She screamed again as the train thundered past. She knew she screamed only because her mouth stretched and her breath was expelled and there was a tearing in her throat – but she heard only the deafening clack and clatter and thunder of the train itself.