Sarah finally gained access via a tiny window that she had to squeeze through. The bruises and gashes on her body cried out as she toppled into a gloomy larder. Mingled into the dust was an acrid, spicy smell; racks of ancient jars and pots were labelled in an extravagant hand: cumin, coriander, harissa, chilli powder. There were packs of flour and malt that had been ravaged by vermin. Dried herbs dusted her with a strange, slow rain as she brushed past them. Pickling jars held back their pale secrets within dull, lustreless glass.
She moved through the larder, arms outstretched, her eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom. Something arrested the door as she swung it outwards. A dead dog, its fur shaved from its body, lay stiffly in the hallway. At first she thought it was covered in insects, but the black beads were unmoving. They were nicks and slashes in the flesh. The poor thing had been drained. Sarah recoiled from the corpse and staggered further along the corridor. Evidence of squatters lay around her in the shape of fast-food packets, cigarette ends, beer cans and names signed in the ceiling by the sooty flames of candles. A rising stairwell vanished into darkness. Her shoes crunched and squealed on plaster fallen from the bare walls.
“Hello?” she said, querulously. Her voice made as much impact on the house as a candyfloss mallet. It died on the walls, absorbed so swiftly it was as if the house was sucking her in, having been starved of human company for so long. She ascended to the first floor. The carpet that hugged the risers near the bottom gave way to bare wood. Her heels sent dull echoes ringing through the house. If anyone lived here, they would know they were not alone now. The doors opened on to still bedrooms shrouded by dust. There was nothing up here.
“Laura?” And then more stridently, as if volume alone could lend her more spine: “Laura!”
Downstairs she found a cosy living-room with a hearth filled with ashes. She peeled back a dust cover from one of the sofas and lay down. Her head pounded with delayed shock from the crash and the mustiness of her surroundings. She thought of her baby.
It didn’t help that Laura seemed to be going off the rails at the time of their crisis. Also her inability, or reluctance, to talk of her father’s death worried Sarah almost as much as the evidence of booze and drug use. At each of the safe houses, it seemed there was a Laura trap in the shape of a young misfit, eager to drag someone down with him or her. Laura gave herself to them all, as if glad of a mate to hasten her downward spiral. There had been one boy in particular, Edgar — a difficult name to forget — whose influence had been particularly invidious. They had been holed up in a Toxteth bedsit. Sarah had been listening to City FM. A talk-show full of languid, catarrhal Liverpool accents that was making her drowsy. The sound of a window smashing had dragged her from slumber. She caught the boy trying to drag her daughter through the glass. She had shrieked at him and hauled him into the room. He could have been no older than ten or eleven. His eyes were rifle green and would not stay still. They darted around like steel bearings in a bagatelle game. Sarah had drilled him, asking him if he had been sent from Manser. Panicked, she had also been firing off instructions to Laura, that they must pack immediately and be ready to go within the hour. It was no longer safe.
And then: Laura, crawling across the floor, holding on to Edgar’s leg, pulling herself up, her eyes fogged with what could only be ecstasy. Burying her face in Edgar’s crotch. Sarah had shrank from her daughter, horrified. She watched as Laura’s free hand travelled beneath her skirt and began to massage at the gusset of her knickers while animal sounds came from her throat. Edgar had grinned at her, showing off a range of tiny, brilliant white teeth. Then he had bent low, whispering something in Laura’s ear before charging out of the window with a speed that Sarah thought could only end in tragedy. But when she rushed to the opening, she couldn’t see him anywhere.
It had been the devil’s own job trying to get her ready to flee Liverpool. She had grown wan and weak and couldn’t keep her eyes off the window. Dragging her on to a dawn coach from Mount Pleasant, Laura had been unable to stop crying and as the day wore on, complained of terrible thirst and unbearable pain behind her eyes. She vomited twice and the driver threatened to throw them off the coach unless Laura calmed down. Somehow, Sarah was able to pacify her. She found that shading her from the sunlight helped. A little later, slumped under the seat, Laura fell asleep.
Sarah had begun to question ever leaving Preston in the first place. At least there she had the strength that comes with knowing your environment. Manser had been a problem in Preston but the trouble was that he remained a problem. At least back there, it was just him that she needed to be wary of. Now it seemed Laura’s adolescence was going to cause her more of a problem than she believed could be possible. But at the back of her mind, Sarah knew she could never have stayed in her home town. What Manser had proposed, sidling up to her at Andrew’s funeral, was that she allow Laura to work for him, whoring. He guaranteed an excellent price for such a perfectly toned, tight bit of girl.
“Men go for that,” he’d whispered, as she tossed a fistful of soil on to her husband’s coffin. “She’s got cracking tits for a thirteen-year-old. High. Firm. Nipples up top. Quids in, I promise you. You could have your debt sorted out in a couple of years. And I’ll break her in for you. Just so’s you know it won’t be some stranger nicking her cherry.”
That night, they were out of their house, a suitcase full of clothes between them.
“You fucking beauty.”
Manser depressed the call-end button on his Motorola and slipped the phone into his jacket. Leaning forward, he tapped his driver on the shoulder. “Jez. Get this. Cops found the bitch’s car in a fucking field outside Leicester. She’d totalled it.”
He slumped back in his seat. The radio masts at Rugby swung by on his left, lights glinting through a thin fog. “Fuck London. You want the A5199. Warp Factor two. And when we catch the minging little tart, we’ll show her how to have a road accident. Do the job properly for her. Laura though, Laura comes with us. Nothing happens to Laura. Got it?”
At Knowlden’s assent, Manser closed his eyes. This year’s number three had died just before he left home. It had been a pity. He liked that one. The sutures on her legs had healed in such a way as to chafe his thigh as he thrust into her. But there had been an infection that he couldn’t treat. Pouring antibiotics down her hadn’t done an awful lot of good. Gangrene set in. Maybe Laura could be his number four. Once Doctor Losh had done his bit, he would ask him the best way to prevent infection. He knew what Losh’s response would be: let it heal. But he liked his meat so very rare when he was fucking it. He liked to see a little blood.
Sarah woke up to find that her right eye had puffed closed. She caught sight of herself in a shard of broken mirror on the wall. Blood caked half her face and the other half was black with bruises. Her hair was matted. Not for the first time, she wondered if her conviction that Laura had died was misplaced. Yet in the same breath, she couldn’t bear to think that she might now be suffering with similar, or worse, injuries. Her thoughts turned to her saviours — if that was what they were. And if so, then why hadn’t she been rescued?
She relived the warmth and protection that had enveloped her when those willowy figures had reached inside the car and plucked out her child. Her panic at the thought of Laura either dead or as good as had been ironed flat. She felt safe and, inexplicably, had not raged at this outrageous kidnap; indeed, she had virtually sanctioned it. Perhaps it had been the craziness inspired by the accident, or endorphins stifling her pain that had brought about her indifference. Still, what should have been anger and guilt was neutralized by the compulsion that Laura was in safe hands. What she didn’t want to examine too minutely was the feeling that she missed the rescue party more than she did her own daughter.
Refreshed a little by her sleep, but appalled at the catalogue of new aches and pains that jarred each movement, Sarah made her way back to the larder where she found some crackers in an airtight tin. Chewing on these, she revisited the h
allway and dragged open the heavy curtains, allowing some of the late afternoon light to invade. Almost immediately she saw the door under the stairs. She saw how she had missed it earlier; it was hewn from the same dark wood and there was no door handle as such, just a little recess to hook your fingers into. She tried it but it wouldn’t budge. Which meant it was locked from the inside. Which meant that somebody must be down there.
“Laura?” she called, tapping on the wood with her fingernails. “Laura, it’s Mum. Are you in there?”
She listened hard, her ear flush against the crack of the jamb. All she could hear was the gust of subterranean breezes moving through what ought to be the cellar. She must check it out; Laura could be down there, bleeding her last.
Sarah hunted down the kitchen. A large pine table sat at one end of the room, a dried orange with a heart of mould at its centre. She found a stack of old newspapers bound up with twine from the early 1970s by a back door that was forbiddingly black and excessively padlocked. Ransacking the drawers and cupboards brought scant reward. She was about to give in when the suck of air from the last yanked cupboard door brought a small screwdriver rolling into view. She grabbed the tool and scurried back to the cellar door.
Manser stayed Knowlden with a finger curled around his lapel. “Are you carrying?”
Knowlden had parked the car off the road on the opposite side to the crash site. Now the two men were standing by the wreck of the Alfa. Knowlden had spotted the house and suggested they check it out. If Sarah and her daughter had survived the crash — and the empty car suggested that they had — then they might have found some neighbourly help.
“I hope you fucking are,” Manser warned.
“I’m carrying okay. Don’t sweat it.”
Manser’s eyebrows went north. “Don’t tell me to not sweat it, pup. Or you’ll find yourself doing seventy back up the motorway without a fucking car underneath you.”
The sun sinking fast, they hurried across the field, constantly checking the road behind them as they did so. Happy that nobody had seen them, Manser nodded his head in the direction of the front door. “Kick the mud off your boots on that bastard,” he said.
It was 5:14 p.m.
Sarah was halfway down the cellar stairs and wishing she had a torch with her when she heard the first blows raining down on the door. She was about to return to the hallway when she heard movement from below. A lot of movement. Creaks and whispers and hisses. There was a sound as of soot trickling down a flue. A chatter: teeth in the cold? A sigh.
“Laura?”
A chuckle.
The door gave in just before Knowlden was about to. His face was greasy with sweat and hoops of dampness spoiled his otherwise pristine shirt.
“Gun,” Manser said, holding his hand out. Knowlden passed him the weapon, barely disguising his disdain for his boss. “You want to get some muesli down you, mate,” Manser said. “Get yourself fit.” He checked the piece was loaded and entered the house, muzzle pointing ahead of him, cocked horizontally. Something he’d done since seeing Brad Pitt do the same thing in Se7en.
“Knock, knock,” he called out. “Daddy’s home.”
Sarah heard, just before all hell broke loose, Laura’s voice, firm and even, say: “Do not touch her.” Then she was knocked back on the stairs by a flurry of black leather and she was aware only of bloody-eyed, pale-skinned figures flocking past her. And teeth. She saw each leering mouth as if in slow motion, dark lips peeled back to reveal teeth so white they might have been sculpted from ice.
She thought she saw Laura among them and tried to grab hold of her jumper but she was left clutching air as the scrum piled into the hallway, whooping and screaming like a gang of kids let out early from school. When the shooting started she couldn’t tell if the screaming had changed in pitch at all, whether it had become more panicked. But at the top of the stairs she realized she was responsible for most of it. There appeared to be some kind of stand-off. Manser, the fetid little sniffer dog of a man, was waving a gun around while his henchman clenched and unclenched his hands, eyeing up the opposition, which was substantial. Sarah studied them properly for the first time, these women who had rescued her baby and left her to die in the car. And yet proper examination was beyond her. There were four of them, she thought. Maybe five. They moved around and against each other so swiftly, so lissomely that she couldn’t be sure. They were like a flesh knot. Eyes fast on their enemy, they guarded each other with this mesmerizing display. It was so seamless it could have been choreographed.
But now she saw that they were not just protecting each other. There was someone at the heart of the knot, appearing and disappearing in little ribbons and teasers of colour. Sarah need see only a portion of face to know they were wrapped around her daughter.
“Laura,” she said again.
Manser said, “Who the fuck are these clowns? Have we just walked into Goth night down the local student bar, or what?”
“Laura,” Sarah said again, ignoring her pursuer. “Come here.”
“Everyone just stand back. I’m having the girl. And to show you I’m not just pissing in my paddling pool…” Manser took aim and shot one of the women through the forehead.
Sarah covered her mouth as the woman dropped. The three others seemed to fade somewhat, as if their strength had been affected.
“Jez,” said Manser. “Get the girl.”
Sarah leaped at Knowlden as he strode into the pack but a stiff arm across her chest knocked her back against the wall, winding her. He extricated Laura from her guardians and dragged her kicking back to his boss.
Manser was nodding his head. “Nice work, Jez. You can have jelly for afters tonight. Get her outside.”
To Sarah he said, “Give her up.” And then he was gone.
Slumped on the floor, Sarah tried to blink a fresh trickle of blood from her eyes. Through the fluid, she thought she could see the women crowding around their companion. She thought she could see them lifting her head as they positioned themselves around her. But no. No. She couldn’t accept that she was seeing what they began to do to her then.
Knowlden fell off the pace as they ran towards the car. Manser was half dragging, half carrying Laura who was thrashing around in his arms.
“I’m nearly ready,” she said. “I’ll bite you! I’ll bite you, I swear to God.”
“And I’ll scratch your eyes out,” Manser retorted. “Now shut the fuck up. Jesus, can’t you do what girls your age do in the movies? Faint, or something?”
At the car, he bundled her into the boot and locked it shut. Then he fell against the side of the car and tried to control his breathing. He could just see Knowlden plodding towards him in the dark. Manser could hear his squealing lungs even though he had another forty metres or so to cover.
“Come on Jez, for fuck’s sake! I’ve seen mascara run faster thah that.”
At thirty metres, Manser had a clearer view of his driver as he died.
One of the women they had left behind in the house was moving across the field at a speed that defied logic. Her hands were outstretched and her nails glinted like polished arrowheads. Manser moved quickly himself when he saw how she slammed into his chauffeur. He was in third gear before he realized he hadn’t taken the handbrake off and he was laughing harder than he had ever laughed in his life. Knowlden’s heart had been skewered on the end of her claws like a piece of meat on a kebab. He didn’t stop laughing until he hit the Ml, southbound.
Knowlden was forgotten. All he had on his mind now was Laura, naked on the slab, her body marked out like the charts on a butcher’s wall.
Dazed, Sarah was helped to her feet. Their hands held her everywhere and nowhere, moving along her body as soft as silk. She tried to talk but whenever she opened her mouth, someone’s hand, cold and rank, slipped over it. She saw the pattern in the curtains travel by in a blur though she could not feel her feet on the floor. Then the night was upon them, and the frost in the air sang around her ears as she was swe
pt into the sky, embedded at the centre of their slippery mesh of bodies, smelling their clothes and the scent of something ageless and black, lifting off the skin like forbidden perfume. Is she all right now? she wanted to ask, but her words wouldn’t form in the ceaseless blast of cold air. Sarah couldn’t count the women that cavorted around her. She drifted into unconsciousness thinking of how they had opened the veins in their chests for her, how the charge of fluid had engulfed her face, bubbling on her tongue and nostrils like dark wine. How her eyes had flicked open and rolled back into their sockets with the unspeakable rapture of it all.
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