by Nick Louth
‘We need to take you in,’ the woman said. ‘Aspirin overdose can have serious consequences. Intensive care can keep an eye on you until morning.’
‘Chris can do that,’ Cantara said, turning to him. ‘Can’t you?’
‘Of course I can, but the hospital would be better.’
‘No. I won’t go. I want to stay here.’
The woman looked to Wyrecliffe. ‘She needs a saline drip with dextrose, but if she won’t come in I can’t make her.’ Then she turned to Cantara, and offered her a form and pen. ‘Okay, you win. Sign this. It shows you’re taking your own responsibility. Take plenty of fluids, water initially. Milk, if you can keep it down.’
She took Wyrecliffe aside. ‘Don’t let her sleep for another hour or two, just to be on the safe side. The basic risk with aspirin is severe stomach ulceration, but if as she says she vomited even before she’d finished taking all the tablets, she’s probably in the clear. Ideally, she’ll need charcoal tablets, which should help clear the active ingredient from the gastrointestinal tract. We don’t have any in the van. If there isn’t a twenty-four hour chemist nearby, try burned toast.’
Wyrecliffe nodded, and while the paramedics packed up, he opened the door, ready to tape back the broken panel. A pale figure in leopardskin-print housecoat and slippers was watching him from the landing.
‘Is she alright?’ Tina asked.
‘She’s going to be fine,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘An overdose.’
‘Poor thing,’ said Tina. She lit a cigarette, watching Wyrecliffe intently through narrowed, accusing eyes. ‘She only needed a bit of love.’ Tina turned, and he heard the slap, slap, slap of her feet descending the cold dirty stairs. Then, before the final slam of a door, one hissed word of accusation. ‘Bastard.’
After the paramedics had left, Wyrecliffe sat with Cantara on her untidy single bed, and cradled her head. Her hair was damp and there was a fine perspiration on her neck. He tried to get her to talk, but she just clung on to him.
They lay back together and listened to the incessant traffic noise, the occasional sound of footsteps, and watched as the clock timer on the TV struck off the minutes towards dawn. By 5am, when Wyrecliffe himself couldn’t keep his eyes open, he let her sleep, and moved off the bed towards the small couch. He had nothing with him, so cleaned his teeth with toothpaste on a fingertip, hung his jacket and trousers on the back of the kitchen door, and pulled a spare blanket over him. But Cantara called out for him, so he squeezed onto the single bed with her, under two blankets, and put his arm around her frail and perspiring body. As the bed sank under their combined weight, they were forced close together, so he could feel the heat of her precious breath on his neck and felt her child-like fingers, hot on his chest.
He dreamed of long bleak corridors, perhaps a cheap hotel, perhaps a hospital, with slamming doors and the sound of relentless feet. And finally one opening door, a grand door, palatial. A woman, a beautiful woman, pulling him in to her. Something delicious, a kiss, perhaps but then he awoke. It was light and the traffic noise was thunderous. Cantara, already awake was looking at him. He was still in the embrace, feeling dog-tired but with a raging erection. It was lodged high against her inner thigh.
Oh God.
‘Feeling better?’ he said, edging away.
‘Don’t go,’ she said, moving her thigh back in contact. Her eyes scanned his face. For minutes they looked at each other. Then a very slight sensation. A finger, a definite exploring finger, was already touching him. Right there. Almost imperceptible back and forth movements. Exquisite, even through his underwear.
‘Cantara, please,’ he began.
She pressed a finger to his lips. Silence. Let the moment be the moment. It will go where it will go. She adjusted her body slightly, moving further down, so that his erection was directed higher along the inside of her leg. She continued to look deep into his eyes. He could no longer resist. He found himself lowering his underwear. She moved again, raising her hips so one leg was partially across him. He moved with her, onto his back, pressed against her. He started to put an arm down to guide himself, but she slowly lifted it onto her breast instead. This was to be her way. Slow. Glacially slow. He could feel the gentle, infinitesimal back and forth of her brushing against the tip of his erection. He pushed a little, and a flash of pain crossed her face. She pressed a hand to his stomach, holding him back. It took many wordless minutes, and all the time she stared into his eyes, small tics of discomfort or pain racing across her face. He tentatively pushed deeper, and she gave a long deep moan. He moved a little so she was completely on top. He eased her gently upright. Her eyes were unfocused now, her eyelids quivering. He slipped the blanket from around her body. Finally, beyond all reason with his own lust, he rolled her gently over onto to her back. Her hair tumbled across her face, and her dark eyes goaded him for more, a sly smile of celebration. Her strategy, he realised, was a total success. He momentarily lost his sense of time and place. Memories of Taseena, of the night before, his hurt and frustration coursed through him like a poisonous adrenaline. He loomed above her, pushing her legs as wide and high as they would go, ignoring her cries. Ten savage seconds, no more. Then a shuddering detonation of lust, longing and vengeance.
Sharp fingernails clawing his chest evaporated the mist. He had Cantara impossibly pinioned, her knees almost by her shoulders, forced back by his weight. She was sobbing in pain, her face contorted and tearful. In horror he sprang back, and she squirmed from under him, and fled naked to the bathroom. She slammed and locked the door. A high keening wail of distress flooded the apartment, rending guilty holes in his heart.
‘Cantara, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ He said, following her, his face pressed to the bathroom door.
The wail dissolved into ragged, unrestrained, breathless sobs. He heard her heaving, gagging and spitting.
‘Let me in, please.’
To his surprise she did. The key turned, the handle moved, and she was there now dressed in a bathrobe, her face red and angry. He didn’t see the scissors, held like a dagger, until the last moment.
‘Get away from me,’ she screamed, advancing on him. ‘Get out of my home. Get out, get out, get out.’ She slashed towards him with the scissors, hitting his protective arm. The scissors were small, blunt and snub-nosed, and did no damage. He raised his arms in surrender, and with a howl she stabbed him in the chest. Had they been sharp ended, it could have killed him. The pain burned him, and there would be blood, a heck of a bruise, but he welcomed it. Punishment. Just, deserved, punishment. Another blow, then another, unfocused and wild. The scissors spun away, and she continued with a flurry of stinging slaps.
Finally, as the blows waned, and the sobs began again, he tried to grab her arms.
‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ she said, her voice low, a tone he had never heard from any woman. ‘You’ve ruined everything. And I want you gone from my life.’
Chapter Fourteen
London November 2009
Many ten-second events make the news. A dictator’s statue toppled, an unarmed Chinese man with a plastic bag halting a tank, an airliner impaling a skyscraper, a black motorist beaten by white police officers. The causes of such events may be months, years in the making. The consequences likewise. But it is the ten seconds which dominates the news. The sound bite, the video clip, the repeated voyeuristic replay of the same silver jet ploughing into the same building, under the same plume of black smoke. So it was for Wyrecliffe. He had his own ten seconds of cruelty and savagery, a pornographic video looping endlessly in his brain. His inexplicable savagery. Hurting Cantara. The causes of those ten seconds? He knew well enough. But he couldn’t blame Taseena for his own failings. It was his lust, his own misplaced love. A misdirected and vengeful passion. If his life had been a quest for atonement for Fouad Adwan’s death, then this act perpetrated upon Fouad’s daughter had negated it all.
He had tried saying sorry. Phoning, texting, e-mailing Cantara every day, sometimes sev
eral times, to apologise, to ask how she was. No response. She had called in sick at the BBC, and wasn’t responding to messages. Until yesterday. He had been worried about her state of mind, and in his e-mail last night said that if she didn’t respond he would be forced visit her flat to see she was okay. She responded almost immediately.
Such a robust and furious response provided him with some relief. Anger directed at him was much better than inwardly directed anger. Besides, he had earned it. He would let her be. The guilt he felt could be put to better use.
Wyrecliffe, having found doors closed initially, had now been told that a transfer to overseas reporting might no longer be out of the question. The BBC wanted to make room for Emily Lance on Today. The hot-shot reporter, an aggressive angular blonde, recently divorced, wanted to come back from Washington so she could get her children educated in a British school. The BBC, so desperate to retain intelligent, incisive female talent, would give her pretty much what she wanted. If Wyrecliffe agreed to move before his contract was up, they’d do what they could to keep him happy. Quid pro quo. Less money, probably. Lower profile, certainly, as the Head of News had told him. He was getting what he wanted, probably, but not because he wanted it, or would be the best person for it. Instead he was being eclipsed by one of the new generation of reporters. Clearly, it was time to go.
Rifat’s hands were shaking as he hefted the gun. He couldn’t wait to get it home. Couldn’t wait to try it out. Couldn’t wait to kill again. It was a few years now since he had used a gun. Years since he had killed, and he still remembered the thrill of it. Rifat carefully wrapped up the gun, closed the drill case and put it in his rucksack. As he waited for the bus to take him back to central London, he smiled. Tomorrow night. That would be the night to make it happen. Wyrecliffe had agreed to meet some colleagues in a Fleet Street pub for pre-Christmas drinks. Wednesday December 18 2009. It would be last day of his life.
It was Wyrecliffe’s round. Grumbling about it, which as a Yorkshireman was expected, he squeezed his way to the bar, nudging shoulders, tapping elbows, using his height and bulk to squeeze through the Friday night crush. He began bellowing his order through across the backs of revellers already at the bar. As he did so, his phone began vibrating in his pocket. Normally he would have left it to ring out, but something made him pick it up. It was Sue Thomas, the editorial assistant to the BBC Foreign Assignments Editor, Hector Munro. Hector fucking Munro as he was universally known among reporters for his predilection for, no, his sheer sadistic pleasure in, sending correspondents to obscure and impossible places at the shortest possible notice. Unable to hear, Wyrecliffe squeezed out through the back door, and stood alone in the sleet in the pub’s back passageway which runs along the edge of St. Bride’s Church.
Rifat had taken a deep breath before going into the Old Bell Tavern. The cacophony of sounds, the roaring laughter, the press of sweaty alcohol-drenched flesh. The ceiling was hung with paper decorations, tinsel and coloured lights. Fat-bellied men with huge noses the colour of blueberries stood with younger men in suits, some wearing absurd red and white Christmas hats, everyone laughing. Jesus Christ was a prophet in Islam, though no-one in his home country would celebrate the birth of a prophet in this blasphemous, sordid, sinful way.
His reconnaissance on Monday afternoon hadn’t prepared him for this. The pub had been quiet then, with just a few people scattered around. Now, at 9pm on the last Friday before Christmas, everything was different. He couldn’t believe the change, the sheer mania of these dens of vice, these modern Sodoms. Even as he arrived, all along the street outside the pubs he could see groups of cigarette smokers, women with low-cut tops and short skirts, braving the cold, drinking large glasses of wine, gulping it down, standing with besuited men old enough to be their fathers, but clearly not, from the way they pawed each other. At least there were enough men wearing suits that he did not look conspicuous in his own. The gun, silencer already attached, was concealed in an inside pocket in which he had cut a hole to take the extra length. The weapon sat cold against his heart.
He’d only just entered the pub when a fortyish woman with a drink in each hand collided with him, slopping white wine down the front of his trousers.
‘Shit!’ she said. Looking down at the damage, she showed him the grey roots in her blonde hair, and a mountain range of exposed bosom. ‘Sorry, darling. Won’t stain.’
He ignored her and fastidiously tried to wipe away the spillage which had soaked through to his underwear.
‘Good job it weren’t red wunnit?’ she cackled. ‘I’d of had to suck it off.’
Rifat recoiled, his discomfort amplified. Backing away, he recognised Wyrecliffe near the bar, in a circle of large, guffawing men. This was the first time he’d been up close since the public meeting in Red Lion Square. The bulky, imposing figure, bearded and jovial, the loud voice, familiar from radio. Rifat already felt he knew him. He’d followed him home. Seen his wife. Met his daughter. Drugged her and her friend with Rohypnol. Stolen and copied her keys. Broken into his house. Rifled his bedroom. Planted a trojan on his computer. Read his correspondence. Crawled into his mind. Now he was ready for the final step.
Killing him.
All he needed was an opportunity. A moment when Wyrecliffe was away from the others. For fifteen minutes Rifat stood watching, waiting for the BBC man to take a trip to the toilet. With the speed and volume of beer consumed, that moment surely couldn’t be long away. But then Wyrecliffe turned away and answered his phone. He was now heading to the pub’s back door. Rifat followed, squeezing his way through the crowd. Wyrecliffe had now opened the door and was talking into the phone. As he moved outside, Rifat followed. He slid his right arm into the inside left pocket of his suit, where the gun sat heavy. He made the move he had practised many times earlier that day. He clicked off the safety catch.
He stepped outside, behind the man he intended to kill. The man who now had his back towards him, and was already dusted with melting snowflakes
‘But we’ve already got a reporter there, right? Oh, she’s coming home. Right. So I’m basically just Christmas cover then. And you are serious that Hector wants me to fly there tomorrow. Well, bugger me backwards.’
He hung up and vented three short but very loud profanities into the night sky, and the towering wedding cake steeple of the church. He lurched round towards the pub door, and ended up face-to-face with a nervous-looking young man who had just followed him out. He was wearing black leather gloves, and seemed to be reaching for something inside his raincoat. There was something vaguely familiar about him.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t mug you,’ Wyrecliffe said, then paused. ‘Where do I know you from?’
The man took a step backwards. He was trembling, and breathing heavily. ‘You’re so drunk,’ the man muttered, as if somehow amazed.
‘Drunk?’ Wyrecliffe wheezed. ‘No, I haven’t even started, lad. Are you one of the production staff at Wood Lane? Well, listen, the BBC bean-counters are sending me to Afghanistan tomorrow, can you believe it? I’ll be there, on Christmas Day, freezing my arse off watching fat American sergeants dressed up as Santa, distributing Pepsi and chewing gum to legless fucking orphans. Poor little sods.’
They stared at each other for a moment. ‘Anyway, I’ve still got a round to pay for. So if you’ll excuse me.’ He began to push past the man, whose hand still seemed to be clutching at something in his inside jacket pocket.
‘It’s alright,’ said Wyrecliffe gripping the man’s leather-clad hand. They were pressed close in the doorway, faces barely an inch apart. ‘I know it’s fucking Christmas, but keep your money. Production staff aren’t paid so well, and I can well afford my round. Sorry if I was a bit rude. But still. Christmas in fucking Afghanistan, eh?’ He lurched in through the door, back into the hubbub.
Book Two
Chapter Fifteen
Rifat
Medina, Saudi Arabia, 2006
Rifat was just sixteen when his sheltered childhood
was brought to a crashing end. All the certainties and securities that had marked his life up until that point were suddenly swept away, leaving him floating in a terrifying limbo. His father, a busy diplomat, had been away in London for six months. He returned home unexpectedly during Ramadan, a week before the festival of Eid al Fitr which marks the end of the period of fasting and praying. He seemed unusually stern and serious and asked Rifat whether he had followed his salat dutifully, and abstained from food during the hours of daylight. Rifat answered that he had. His father then gave him a series of important tasks to be accomplished carefully and without error by the end of the next day. He was to fill up twenty of the biggest jerry cans with water and, with help from Mother Umniya and Mother Badriyeh, assemble enough food for a week. The Landcruiser must be serviced, tyres checked, and two extra spares fitted on the roof. He was told to top up water for the radiator, get extra bulbs for the lights, and a full toolkit.
‘Why, father, what is happening?’
‘During Eid we are taking a week’s trip into Rub al Khali,’ he said. The empty quarter, the world’s largest sand sea encompassed a half million square kilometres of almost impassable dunes, reaching up to 1,000 feet. A forbidding cauldron of desiccating heat, bereft of water, and with almost no plant or animal life. For wealthy city-bred Saudis its edges were a playground for show-off driving in giant utility vehicles, for hunting the elusive gazelle which periodically migrated across the dunes, or simply for playing at being the simple Bedouin that urban Saudis used to be. But a week-long trip, especially in late October when the midday temperature could still exceed forty degrees centigrade, implied something more serious. Most exciting of all for Rifat, was the mention of the new Iridium satellite phone, a bulky and expensive acquisition made in London. Rifat, the most technologically savvy in the family, was to read and digest its instruction booklet, and make sure that it was fully charged. Rifat had already taken apart his own phone to see how it worked, but the opportunity to use a phone whose signals reached up into space, to objects circling the earth, made him very excited. ‘Thank you, thank you!’ Rifat said. ‘But how will we all fit in, with all the equipment?’