by Tom Marcus
The sign for the hospital, thank God. Pulling off the main road, I follow signs for the entrance. I hit the brakes hard, the tyres skidding to a complete stop. I ditch the car in a reserved spot and barrel through the doors, almost knocking over a smartly dressed woman who must have been waiting for me. She quickly regains her composure and puts a hand on my arm. I realize I’m shaking.
‘Hello, sir. If you’d like to follow me, we have a room just down here.’
‘A fucking room? Where’s my family? Who the fuck are you?’
‘I’m Special Branch. We can explain everything. Please, come with me.’
She purses her lips, trying not to show any emotion, but her eyes have already told me the worst. The surrounding voices of the doctors and nurses all blend into one another as we make our way down the corridor to a room with an armed police officer standing outside, the butt of his specially modified Heckler & Koch MP5 resting against his right shoulder.
The Special Branch officer opens the door. My team leader is standing by an empty chair. He greets me with that same look.
‘FUCK YOU! Stop looking at me like that. Where’s my family? I know they’ve been hurt, I want to see them. Joseph will want to see me, he’ll be scared.’
‘Logan, please take a seat. Please.’
‘No! If no one’s going to tell me anything, then either take me to my wife and son or I’ll find them myself.’
He stands there next to the Special Branch woman, saying nothing. A couple of shop-window dummies. A wave of anger washes over me and my instinct takes over as I fire back towards the door. I need to see Sarah and Joseph. I grab the handle and rip the door open, but the police officer is standing in the way. He turns towards me, clearly not expecting the door to open so quickly after I entered.
‘MOVE!’ I shout into his face.
He doesn’t react, just puts one arm out with his palm towards me in a ‘calm down’ gesture. I don’t have time for this. ‘Fucking MOVE!’ I stiff-arm him out of the way and, despite the fact that he’s well over six foot and built like a heavyweight boxer, he staggers back against the wall.
I turn left down the corridor, looking for the sign to A&E. That must be where they are. But all the signs just have names of wards on them. Everything starts to get blurred as my head swings left, right and back again. Where the fuck is A&E? I go right. If I keep going in one direction I’m bound to find it.
‘Logan!’
Lee is right behind me. I step out in front of a nurse, blocking her path. Seeing her panicked look, I try to sound calm and sane.
‘Excuse me, my wife and son have been brought here. I think they could be in A&E. My wife is Sarah Logan, my son is Joseph. He’s eighteen months old.’
She wants to help but I can see from her vacant expression that the names mean nothing to her. Hundreds of patients come through A&E every day. ‘They were both attacked at the zoo earlier, it’s been on the news?’ I add, hoping that will help her.
She puts a hand to her mouth to stifle her horror. She knows. Everyone knows. Lee steps in front of her and fills my field of vision. He grips my shoulder firmly, but not aggressively. The rage inside me drops to my feet like I’ve just let go of the world’s heaviest weight, leaving me light-headed. The need to tear this hospital down brick by brick until I found them was protecting me; my aggression, my need to retaliate, was shielding me from the awful truth. A truth I cannot bear to admit. My family. My little Joseph.
No, I won’t believe it.
‘Logan, please. Please come back into the room and sit down.’
I can’t focus. Details move in and out, like someone is adjusting a camera lens. A sign reminding people to wash their hands; the safety catch of the police officer’s rifle; a yellow strip light in a ceiling of otherwise white lights. It feels as if I’m standing still and the world around me is moving as I’m led back into the little side room. The police officer, still expressionless, takes a step back to allow us in. I can’t see Lee’s face as he gently pushes me forwards, but by the reaction of the Special Branch woman, a look has passed between them.
Weirdly, I feel calmer back in this room, as if the terrible reality only exists across the threshold. Back in here, Sarah and Joseph could still be OK. I sit.
A new hand squeezes my shoulder.
‘Mr Logan?’
A doctor, in clean scrubs. Beside him a man in a dark suit with a gentle expression, who I instantly know is one of the family liaison types who try to rationalize death with a leaflet. Sitting on a grey sofa, sandwiched between Lee and the Special Branch officer, I feel boxed in, claustrophobic. I take a deep breath. Focus. Front this feeling out. Sarah and Joseph are fine, just hurt. They’ll be recovering. That’s all. Recovering.
I just need someone to tell me that. But no one is talking. Why the fuck doesn’t anyone say anything? Somebody. Anybody. TALK!
Lee breaks the silence.
‘Doctor, I’m Mr Logan’s team leader. You’ve been briefed by Special Branch about the potential security threat we’re investigating, correct?’
‘Yes, of course. My primary concern, though, is Mr Logan.’
The doctor looks at me. His expression cuts through the thin veneer of hope and exposes the well of darkness below. He knows that, deep down, I already know the truth.
‘We did everything we could. I want you to know, they both fought hard. But . . . the injuries they sustained . . .’
He breaks eye contact as he tries to clear his throat. I know he’s thinking about the injuries to my wife and son. I want to know what he’s seeing, but at the same time I’m terrified of what it might be.
‘I’m sorry. We’re all sorry. We couldn’t save them.’
Now that someone has actually put it into words, I can feel the tension in the room easing. It’s as if everyone was holding their breath. And I feel different, too. A moment ago, I was a jumbled mass of emotions: hope, fear, anger. Now it’s as if all my insides, all my feelings, have been ripped out, and I’m just an empty shell. For what seems like an eternity, I just sit there. I can see my hands, placed flat on my knees to stop them shaking, but they seem to belong to someone else. I’m not here. I’m nowhere.
And then a small flicker of feeling, like a spark in the darkness. It grows into a flame and I start to feel it burning inside me.
‘I want to see them. Now. Right now.’
I stand up. I need to remove myself from the compassionate sandwich of this sofa.
‘Tell me everything or I’m going to fucking lose it.’
‘Matt . . .’ Lee never uses my first name, ever. I realize he’s holding a brown folder, and I instantly know what’s inside. ‘It’s not advisable for you to see them because of their injuries, but you can ID them. We still don’t know if this was a specific attack to get to you. We’re making arrangements to get you out of here. Right now, we’re just not sure if this was a lone wolf attack or a larger cell.’
Nothing he’s saying makes any sense. All I know is that he’s about to show me pictures of Sarah and Joseph. That’s the closest I can get to them. I can’t hug them. Kiss them. I won’t be able to touch them ever again.
The liaison officer stands up, preparing himself to be a shoulder to cry on while I look at pictures of my dead family. The thought of it fans the flame inside me into an inferno.
‘Don’t you dare try and offer me comfort.’
I lurch towards him, hands clenched into fists. Lee’s hand slams against my chest as the hospital’s liaison officer stumbles back towards his chair. He’s terrified.
As quickly as it had erupted, my fury is replaced by shame.
‘I didn’t mean . . . I shouldn’t have . . .’
The doctor tries to take control. ‘Mr Logan. Matt. I was in charge when your wife and son arrived with the other victims from the zoo. I treated them personally.’
Taking the folder from Lee, he pulls the first picture out, then another. He holds the two pictures against his chest. Moving to stand alongs
ide me, he puts his free arm around my shoulder. He holds the pictures in front of me, one behind the other, as if he’s about to demonstrate a card trick.
Sarah. She’s sleeping, her head to one side. Eyes closed. I feel my hand moving towards her to touch her cheek. To gently wake her up. But I know now why no one wants me to actually see them. The photograph is cropped close, only showing her face, but I can see the beginning of gashes where her hair should be.
‘Sarah . . .’ My voice is barely a whisper.
The doctor removes his arm briefly from around my shoulder and pulls the second picture out from behind the first.
‘Baba . . . my little man.’ This time I can’t stop myself from reaching out to touch my son. There is a piece of gauze hiding one cheek and his left eye. I want to pull it away.
Then the pictures are gone. The doctor quickly passes them back to Lee, who puts them back in the folder. The magic trick is finished.
My eyes fill with tears and my chest tightens. I want to be sick, but I can’t swallow. I have to move. I hear voices but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Arms claw at me but I don’t feel them.
I’m nearly at the hospital exit. How did I get here? More voices, shouting now. Just get away, Logan. Run.
‘Logan, wait!’
I’m not waiting for anyone. I have no idea where I’m going, but I can’t stay here. It’s dark outside, cold and starting to rain. My team car’s still where I parked it. I jump in, reverse out, then floor it, turning onto the main road without bothering about oncoming traffic. Drive, Logan. Go somewhere, anywhere. The radio’s still on, the music interrupted by the warning alarm telling me I haven’t put my seat belt on and the beeping horns of cars swerving to avoid me. I slam into third gear. Speedo jumps to eighty. Drive faster, just get away.
But I can’t outrun reality. The music stops for a newsflash.
‘Breaking news tonight, a drug-fuelled knife attack in broad daylight leaves a mother and son dead and half a dozen more fighting for their lives . . .’
Bile surges from the bottom of my stomach, my abdominals are suddenly in full spasm and I start to lose control of the car. Instinctively, I hit the brakes and clutch at the same time, turning my head as vomit spews out onto the passenger seat and down into the foot well. The screech of the tyres drowns out the rest of the news report. I push my body back upright, bracing myself for a collision as I bring the car to a halt.
But the crunch of twisted metal and broken glass doesn’t come. Instead, my headlights pick out a row of dark, dilapidated buildings in front of me. I’ve slid off the main road onto a disused access to an industrial estate.
The screen on the dash lights up again with an incoming call. And another. The stream of calls is endless as I stare out of the windscreen at a rusting metal fence protecting an old abandoned warehouse. In front of it there’s a lamp post, its bulb long broken, providing no light at all in this dark corner of nowhere. My phone is receiving text messages; voicemail from the missed calls. But I don’t want to talk to anyone. Except for the two people whose voices I’ll never hear again. I’m desperate to see Sarah and Joseph, to hear their voices one more time, but my work phone is sanitized – no personal photos or videos. All I can hear is the ticking of the engine as it cools.
They’re gone. And I should have been at the zoo to protect them. If I’d chosen my family instead of this fucking job I could have stopped that cunt hurting them. My fist flies out, my knuckles banging the window, but it’s too late. My anger has missed its target. They died because of me, because of what I do and because I wasn’t there. The most important job in the world, being a father and a husband, and I failed.
Suddenly I’m retching again, but I don’t have anything left in my stomach. Whatever my pathetic body is trying to achieve, it’s futile, like me. Pathetic and futile.
My family is the only thing that makes me whole. Without them there is no point in existing. We had so many plans. Now I’ll never see Joseph’s first school nativity, Sarah and me holding hands in the audience, glowing with pride. Or pretend to be the tooth fairy, sneaking a coin under his pillow. We’ll never play football in the park.
An animalistic cry comes out of me. I can’t bear this.
I’ve never believed in an afterlife, heaven and hell and all that. When you’re gone you’re gone, I’ve always said. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe they’re in some sort of afterlife, not clouds and angels with harps, but . . . something. Life’s mysterious. After all, energy can never be lost, right? Only transferred into a different state. Wherever they are, I could join them right now. We’d be together forever. And this time I’d never leave them. Never let anything bad happen to them ever again.
I breathe out slowly and an icy calm settles over me.
OK, let’s do this in a way that doesn’t hurt or kill anyone else. I can’t drive flat out into oncoming traffic. Can’t slit my wrists in case someone finds me and tries to save my life. Has to be quick.
I look out of the window and there it is. My salvation.
I turn the car around and reverse back towards the lamp post, ignoring the beeps of the parking sensors. I walk round to the back of the car and open the boot. Searching through the operational kit bags, I find the breakdown kit and its two long, heavy tow ropes. I nod to myself. They’ll do.
The car’s beeps are now telling me that I’ve got the boot and driver’s door open while the engine is still running. Their rhythm oddly matches the thumping of my heart against my chest.
I wrap one of the two ropes around the base of the lamp post, looping it onto itself to create an unbreakable anchor point. I’ll have to feed the loose end into the back seat of the car through the boot space. Grabbing the second tow rope, which is longer and a fair bit heavier, I move round to the back doors of the car and lean inside. I join the second tow rope to the first, make a second anchor loop, then feed this loop through the headrest of the driver’s seat, leaving most of the slack on the back seat directly behind the driver’s position. More than enough. I walk round to the driver’s side and get in, shutting the door behind me.
I’ve got just enough tow rope to slip over my head and around my neck.
Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong . . .
It seems like the car’s warning bongs are speeding up along with my heart rate now. The cold air from the open boot is like the touch of the grim reaper, waiting to escort me to my family.
I’m ready.
I should be able to get up to 20 miles per hour before the slack runs out and the lamp post tightens this makeshift noose. The break should be instant. I don’t give a fuck if it pulls my head clean from my shoulders. The quicker this is done the quicker I’ll be with my family again.
I keep the clutch down, slip into first gear and pile the revs on. My left foot is sliding off the clutch, seconds to go and it’ll be done. No more pain. Closing my eyes, I can picture Joseph holding his elephant teddy, a smile growing across his face. Daddy’s coming!
There’s a bright light and my eyes open instinctively. It’s the information screen on the dash.
Not a call this time. A text message from Alex. From anyone else, I’d ignore it.
Logan, the guy responsible was acting alone. It’s early in the investigation but it looks like he’ll be tried for manslaughter and will get away with diminished responsibility because he was hallucinating. I’m sorry. So sorry. Ring, text or come meet me if you need anything. Day or night. A
Until now, I’d managed not to think much about the man who’d killed my family. I didn’t give a fuck about him. All that mattered was that my family was dead. Now, suddenly, he’s real. Alex’s words lodge in my brain and I can’t get them out. Diminished responsibility. I could see how it would play out now. He won’t even be tried as a murderer. I can see him sitting in court, smiling to himself.
The revs on the engine come down as my foot comes off the accelerator. My hand instinctively slides the gearstick into neutral again. I take my foot off the clutch.<
br />
This bullshit system of arresting people for murder and letting them off, blaming it on the drugs that warped their minds. He’s a killer. He murdered my family! I’m not cold anymore, I’m boiling hot, ready to erupt. If that fucker wants to play the human-rights card or pretend he’s mentally ill, I’ll make him wish he was never born. I’ll rip him apart with my bare hands.
In this moment of rage, it hits me that I can’t commit suicide. It would be so easy, just forgetting about the injustice of the world so I can be at peace with Sarah and Joseph. But I know now that would be betraying them. Letting the murderers escape justice. Letting them win. Letting them have this world.
I can’t just shrug off the pain of losing them by taking my own life. I don’t deserve to have that peace. I need to keep fighting. And I’ll be a tougher opponent this time round. I’m stronger now, because I have nothing to lose.
And there’s another reason too.
My wallet’s on the passenger seat. I pull out the director general’s card, pick up my phone and punch in the number. As it rings, I force the tow rope back over my head and throw it behind me.
I wonder if the DG will tell me how sorry he is; ask me if there’s anything he can do. But when he answers, his voice is steely.
‘Logan.’
I pause, like a diver on a high board, working up the nerve to jump.
‘I’m in.’
5
I’m lying in a coffin, wearing my best – my only – suit. Hands are by my sides like I’m stood to attention back in the army. Waiting. The smoothness of the silk lining is like nothing I’ve felt before. It’s pitch-black but I’m calm, knowing I’m dead, absorbing the non-judgemental ease of it. There’s one more thing I have to do before I can be completely at peace; I just have to let them push the coffin into the flames. There’ll be a few seconds of pain, as the excruciating brightness overwhelms me, then I’ll quickly turn to ash and blow away in the wind. Wait, I’m dead. So why will there be pain? How am I talking to myself? There’s something else; another thing I have to do, and I can’t quite remember what it is. Not knowing starts to gnaw away at my sense of calm. I start shifting around; it’s no longer comfortable inside the coffin. It’s suddenly become harsh and strong, not soft to ease my journey. It’s been made to keep me in here, a prison to keep me locked in the guilt of failing my family. God, please no. I’m still alive.