Captured

by Neil Cross

  He wouldn’t be able to stand it much longer.

  Nobody could.

  25

  Becks was leaning across a desk at the police station, talking to a uniformed police officer. Jonathan’s dad, Dennis, had come with her.

  Becks said, ‘The thing is, he’s been really depressed. Really stressed out.’

  The officer said, ‘Stressed out by what?’

  ‘The usual. Work. Money.’

  The officer’s name was Jenny Cates. She went through the procedure, taking details of friends and relatives, places that Jonathan was known to frequent; his medical history; his bank account, his credit and debit card details. She asked for a recent photograph, but didn’t want to exacerbate an already delicate situation by requesting a DNA sample – toothbrush, a comb. This was for possible forensic comparison, should a body be found in a state of decomposition.

  Now and again, filling out the form, she sneaked a glance at Dennis Reese. He seemed decent enough, hunched and defiant in his M&S windcheater, big-knuckled and full of shame.

  As Jenny Cates wrote it all down, Becks said, ‘What about the broken window?’

  ‘The neighbours didn’t report any disturbance.’

  ‘Like they’re going to. Who does that?’

  Jenny Cates tried not to sigh before telling her: ‘Most probably, he’s gone walkabout.’

  ‘His window was broken. Somebody broke his window.’

  ‘Probably, that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.’

  ‘He thought someone was in the attic.’

  ‘In the attic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who was in the attic?’

  ‘He didn’t know.’

  ‘And was there someone in the attic, d’you think?’

  Becks hesitated, embarrassed. ‘I don’t think so, no.’

  Jenny Cates gave her a look, both sceptical and compassionate. ‘Look, you’d be amazed if I told you how often something like this happens. He’ll come back with his tail between his legs.’

  ‘He runs a business.’

  ‘People walk away from businesses all the time. Every day. Especially now – credit crunch, global downturn. Landscape gardening? Anything to do with the housing market, really – it’s first to go. Best thing for you to do, try not to worry too much. Give him a few more days.’

  ‘He could be in a ditch!’

  ‘But most likely, he’s gone off to think his problems through.’

  ‘Christ, it’s been days! When do you lot get off your fat arses and actually do something?’

  Jenny Cates clicked her pen, to show that this meeting was over.

  She said, ‘Jonathan will be listed as missing on the Police National Computer. An officer will be assigned and enquiries will be made.’ She pocketed the pen. ‘But chances are, he’ll turn up. They usually do. Honestly. Meantime, try not to worry. If you need to speak again, you’ve got my number.’

  Outside, Becks and Dennis waited on the corner until Ollie pulled up in the company van.

  He leaned over to open the front passenger door. Dennis and Becks got in. The van smelled of vegetal matter and sweat and tobacco and sinsemilla.

  Ollie drove them back to Jonathan’s.

  Dennis said, ‘They’ve got it in for him. The police. Since day one, they’ve had it in for him.’

  Becks and Ollie said nothing.

  Dennis and Becks stood in the living room, looking at the boardedup window.

  Dennis said: ‘You really think he did this? Our Jonathan? Threw a brick through his own window?’

  ‘The police seem to think so.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  Becks shrugged.

  Dennis pinched the bridge of his nose as if very tired. ‘He hit her once, you know. The first one. That Caroline.’

  Becks took a deep breath. ‘Yeah. He told me. Truth be told, it sounds – not like she deserved it. Nobody deserves it. But she did provoke him.’

  ‘Oh, she had a tongue on her, mind. She was vicious, that one.’

  ‘He told me all about it. He’s still ashamed of himself to this day.’

  Dennis was looking at the floor now, whispering: ‘I don’t know where he gets it from. I never laid a finger on his mother. He never went without.’

  ‘She made him unhappy, Dennis. Unhappy people do things they’re ashamed of.’

  ‘He never hit you, did he, love?’

  ‘Not even close.’

  ‘Good.’ He nodded, still looking at the floor, close to tears - not a man who liked to be seen crying.

  Becks left the room, so both of them could go on pretending she hadn’t noticed.

  Elaine tidied the house and did the vacuuming and the laundry. She washed the bedding, so it would be nice and fresh for Jonathan when he got back. She scrubbed the toilet and mopped the hardwood floor. Then she cooked chops and oven chips and peas from the freezer.

  After everyone had eaten (or tried to), Ollie tugged the strands of Golden Virginia from between his teeth and said: ‘When he was burgled the other day . . .’

  Everyone looked at him.

  He hesitated and said: ‘Well, what if it wasn’t a burglar?’

  Dennis scrutinized Ollie through his bifocals: ‘Then who would it be?’

  Becks gave Ollie a look.

  Ollie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m just saying.’

  Elaine stared at Ollie for several long seconds. Then she stood, gathering up the plates, scraping the leftovers into the pedal bin. She began to wash up.

  26

  Late in the afternoon, Jonathan said: ‘Can we talk?’

  Kenny said, ‘Of course.’

  ‘I need food.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It hurts.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I can’t stand it. I’m starving.’

  ‘It’s only going to get worse. You’ll get weaker.’

  ‘This is torture.’

  ‘Then make it stop. Tell me what I need to know.’

  ‘I can’t. I don’t know.’

  Kenny didn’t get the chance to respond, because they were interrupted by the sound of a car pulling into the gravel drive.

  Kenny hurried out to take a look and saw Mary’s Fiat Punto with Mary behind the wheel.

  He rushed back to the last bedroom, picked up the crowbar, jammed it under Jonathan’s jaw. ‘If you make a sound, a single sound, I’ll come back here and smash your skull.’

  Jonathan tried to nod, an indent in the flesh of his lower jaw pressed white by the teeth of the crowbar.

  ‘Not a sound,’ said Kenny, and left the last bedroom, fumbling with the big key in the old lock.

  He was hiding the crowbar in the cupboard under the sink when the kitchen door opened and Mary walked in.

  She looked elfin and beautiful, but she was scowling – and when she saw Kenny she started to cry.

  Without saying anything, he embraced her. He was looking over her shoulder – down the corridor to the door of the last bedroom.

  At first, she stiffened in his embrace. Then she relaxed: he could smell her moisturizer, her washing powder, her skin, even that she’d smoked a cigarette today. He could smell her tears.

  She said, ‘What is it? Don’t say “nothing”.’

  Kenny was still looking down the corridor. Then he looked at Mary and held out his hand. ‘Come with me.’

  In a clearing on a low hillside not far away stood the relics of a stone circle, so little-known and forgotten that Kenny didn’t even know if it had a name: eight stones, tapered at the top like flint axes, all but two of them long-since toppled and overgrown.

  He and Mary had come up here many times. It was a good place, a restful place, charged with endurance and transformation – Kenny often thought of what had risen and fallen while these stones had lain here, in this earth.

  They sat next to each other, their backs to the cold blue stone. The earth was baked dry beneath them and the sky was blue and they coul
d see sheep and cattle, the distant motorway, the faraway village - and Kenny’s cottage, white in its halo of green, the brook behind it, the sweep of driveway leading to its door.

  He kept an eye on it.

  Holding Mary’s hand, he said: ‘I’m dying.’

  She turned to face him. ‘What do you mean?’

  He said it again. He told her about the aggressive tumour burrowing into his temporal lobe, his dwindling days on earth; the process of letting go the world like the string of a balloon.

  She snarled and punched him in the upper arm, then clambered to her feet and called him names. He was a bastard, he was a selfish tosser, he was an arsehole, he was a spiteful prick.

  Then she sat, not touching him or looking at him, looking at her own feet as he explained it again, more slowly, and she looked, watching the edge of the clouds, the world turning.

  She said, ‘How long?’

  ‘Not long. A few weeks.’

  ‘And there’s nothing they can do . . .?’

  ‘Not really. Well, nothing you’d want to go through.’

  She was toying with a blade of grass, concentrating on it. ‘Come and live with us.’

  ‘I’m sure Stever and the kids would love that.’

  She laughed and punched his arm again, more gently this time. ‘Then I’ll come to live with you.’

  ‘Mary

  ‘Let me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’ve got the kids. And Stever.’

  ‘And you’re all alone.’

  He wasn’t. But he said, ‘Can you imagine it? Me and you, living together – in a situation like this? It wouldn’t be good. For me or you. It wouldn’t be good.’

  ‘Have you thought about – y’know. Places. There are places. For when things get too difficult. Hospices.’

  ‘It’s on my list.’

  ‘Can I help you find one?’

  ‘If you like. It might be a bit depressing.’

  ‘I want to help. I want to do something.’

  ‘Okay. Then help me find a place. That’ll be good. Find me a place. In Wales.’

  ‘Why Wales?’

  ‘It’s where I should be. You know. Welsh blood.’

  She looked at him, squinting. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She touched him, very gingerly. Stroked his forehead. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Not really. Sometimes.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  He took her hand and guided it to the side of his head, just above his ear. The tumour squatted half an inch below their fingertips.

  She withdrew her hand and rubbed it, as if it had been burned. She didn’t know she was doing it. ‘Can you feel it?’

  ‘I get headaches, sometimes. I’ve been having seizures. I can see better, I can hear better. I can remember things as if it was yesterday, just like old people say. But it’s true. As if it was this morning. You remember all the camping trips? In the Combi, to the beach?’

  She could remember them all, but she couldn’t bear to talk about it. She said, ‘What’ll happen?’

  ‘Maybe the headaches will get worse. Maybe I’ll have more seizures, more often. Or maybe the headaches will get better and the seizures will go away. Nobody really seems to know.’

  ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. In some ways, it’s a good thing. You get to see everything. You get to see what’s important.’

  ‘And what’s important?’

  He didn’t answer. She was silent and Kenny could see she was making the face she made when she was trying hard not to cry.

  He thought about the day he’d left her, to come and live alone in this isolated place.

  He’d embraced her and they’d wept: for each other, for all the things they’d felt and said, for the times they’d made each other laugh, nursed each other’s fever, comically fallen over, burned food, made love. And they’d wept for their lost baby, a stillborn girl whom they’d never named and were never able to discuss.

  They’d broken apart while promising to stay friends for ever. And as Kenny had moved his stuff into the hired van there had been an ache deep in his core, his spinal column, his organs.

  He moved out to the cottage and became what he’d promised himself he’d become one day, a portrait painter.

  Now they sat here, among fallen stones that had been just the same before they were born.

  Mary said: ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘Not really. There’s supposed to be this process: anger, depression, making bargains with God. After that, if I’m lucky, if I’ve got the time, I get to acceptance. But what’s the point of all that, really? Who’s got time?’

  ‘Are you just trying to make me feel better?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  Mary had nothing to wipe her face. Kenny took off his T-shirt and bundled it up like a rag. He gave it to her. She wiped the tears and snot from her face on the hem.

  Kenny said, ‘Stever’s a good bloke.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And he’s a great dad. He should get his hair cut, though.’

  Mary laughed through her tears. She threw the bundled-up T-shirt at him.

  He caught it and put it on. The hem was damp with tears and snot, but he didn’t mind. What was the point of minding?

  They strolled back to her rusty little Punto, holding hands like teenagers.

  At the car, she leaned against the door and reached out to tug gently at the hair on the nape of his neck. ‘How am I supposed to leave you?’

  He didn’t speak. She waited, then gave up, holding up one hand in resignation. She dug out her car keys and mimed ‘call me’.

  Kenny nodded. He waited until the Punto pulled away and was out of sight. Then he turned and raced back to the cottage.

  He ran through the kitchen, banging his hip on a half-open cutlery drawer. He cursed and slammed it shut, then ran down the hall to the last bedroom.

  He unlocked the door with fumbling hand, opened it, stepped inside.

  Jonathan Reese had escaped.

  27

  Jonathan had wrenched the radiator from the wall; it lay like an art installation in the middle of the empty room. There were dark blotches on the floor where rank old water had leaked from inside the copper pipes.

  Kenny took a moment to work it out. Then, abruptly, he grasped the significance of the open cutlery drawer – the one on which he’d banged his hip.

  He rushed back to the kitchen but couldn’t identify what might be missing; the drawers were always a mess.

  Jonathan wouldn’t know where he was, but he must have known a car was parked outside the front door. He must have known that Kenny and the driver of the car would be returning, although he couldn’t know exactly when.

  If Kenny had been Jonathan, he’d have run away from the car. That meant past the outbuildings and beyond.

  Kenny glanced at his watch. He had no idea how long Jonathan had been gone. A fit man could probably have reached town by now, but Jonathan was weak and hurt and barefoot.

  Kenny grabbed the crowbar from under the sink and bolted out of the back door, past the outbuildings into the dappled shadow of the great old trees. Junk lay scattered all over the oil-soaked ground – the corpses of Morris Minors. Bits of bumper, engine blocks, oily carburettors, torn seats, springs.

  Kenny negotiated these with ease and pushed through the undergrowth at the bottom of his land. He ran past the old rope swing with the crumbling tyre. He knew the gaps, he knew where the brook could safely be crossed. Jonathan knew none of these things.

  Kenny elbowed through the trees. They scraped at his face.

  He found the stepping stones and ran across them, slipped, got soaked to the thighs, then scrambled up the opposite bank – snatching at exposed roots, hanks of grass, cow parsley. The soil was crumbly and inky black; it smeared his knees, got in his hair.

  At the top of the bank, he moved along the hedge until he found the badger-p
ath which ran underneath. He crawled on his belly like a slow-worm, wriggling his hips against rocks and soil until he was through the hedge. Then he stood with crowbar in hand at the edge of a sunlit barley field.

  There was Jonathan at the other corner of the field, running parallel to the hedge, towards the main road.

  Kenny sprinted after him.

  Jonathan turned and saw Kenny.

  As Kenny caught up with him, he saw the knife in Jonathan’s hand, stolen from his own cutlery drawer.

  It was part of a set that had come as a wedding gift. Now it glimmered at him with turncoat malice.

  Jonathan said, ‘Just back off, mate.’

  Their eyes locked and there was a moment of strange embarrassment – the tidal pull of normality. It seemed like they might suddenly laugh and walk away like men who’d jostled each other’s shoulder in a pub. Then the moment passed and Jonathan was charging at Kenny, screaming.

  He tried to stab Kenny in the guts but slashed him under the ribs instead, dropped the knife and ran.

  Kenny had a feeling that was like a loud noise. He stumbled and fell over. He lay in the barley field clutching his side. He saw blood between his fingers, bright cherry red in the sunlight.

  He fumbled with his other hand, looking for the crowbar. It was lost in the barley; then it was there, cold and slippy in his hand.

  He lifted his shirt and saw the wound. There was something yellowish inside its lurid mouth: fatty tissue. But it wouldn’t kill him. He stood up on Bambi legs and saw Jonathan throwing himself at the wild hedge, scrambling over it.

  Kenny followed, hobbling. He limped to the hedge, struggled over the wide, spiky crest of it.

  On the other side, among the pale haphazard trees, his feet slid in the rich soil and he lurched, wheeling his arms. He slid down the brook-bank, grabbing at loops of exposed root to slow his descent.

  Jonathan was knee-deep in the brook, casting round. He found a branch – three feet long, wide as his wrist, lichen spotted.

  Kenny could see it was windfall, weak with rot.

  They faced each other: Jonathan in the water, Kenny on the bank.

  Then Kenny stepped forward, sweeping the crowbar in a wide backhand that connected with Jonathan’s skull and spun him backwards into the water.