by Tim Weaver
* * *
When he woke, Andrew was sitting at the bottom of the bed. He brought his knees up to his chest, glanced at Andrew, and then looked out through the top window. Early morning. Or maybe late afternoon. He wasn’t sure any more.
‘Have you read the book I gave you?’ Andrew said.
The book. The book. The book. He tried to find the memory, a spark that would lead him to the book, but it wouldn’t come.
‘I can’t remember,’ he said quietly.
‘It was a Bible,’ Andrew replied, ignoring him. ‘The book was a Bible. You remember I gave you a copy of the Bible, right?’
‘No.’
Andrew paused, studied him. ‘That’s a shame,’ he said eventually. ‘We’ve been treating you differently from the others, you know that?’
‘The others?’
‘Your programme is different.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Your room, the food we give you, the way we’ve been with you — it’s not our normal way of working. I don’t think you realize how lucky you are.’ Andrew’s eyes shifted left and right, suspicion in them. ‘But I worry about you, you know that? I worry that you think the best way to get better is to fight us.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘Am I right?’
He shook his head.
‘Normally, that doesn’t concern me. On our regular programme, we have ways of dealing with problems. But with you here, among this luxury, it’s more difficult.’
Andrew looked at him.
‘Do you want to fight us?’
He shook his head again.
‘Good,’ Andrew said, standing. ‘Because you don’t want to fight us. But if I see that look in your face again, I’ll put you on the same programme as everyone else.’
Andrew moved across the room and placed a hand on the door.
‘And, believe me, you don’t want to be on that programme.’
* * *
He lifted his head. He was sitting in the corner of a different room, pitch black. He couldn’t remember how he’d got here. Didn’t know how long he’d been out. His arm was raised to head height and locked to something. Knotted maybe, or clamped. It pinched his skin when he moved, and pin and needles prickled in his muscles.
Where the hell am I?
He could see a thin shaft of moonlight bleeding in through a window further down the wall. And as his eyes started to adjust to the darkness, other shapes emerged: a door, on the far side, closed most of the way; and a white shape, like a sheet, diagonally across from him. There was a breeze coming in from somewhere, and the sheet was moving, billowing up as the wind passed through.
Something specked against his skin. He turned. The wall beside him was wet, almost glistening. There was a liquid on it, dribbling down. He brushed it with his hand. Water. It was running down the walls, all the way along the room.
Next to him, at his eyeline, was a square metal plate, bolts in all four corners, with an iron ring coming out of it. Water was on that too — and something else as well. Darker. It smelt of rust. Maybe copper.
Oh shit, it’s blood.
He tried to move his arm away from the wall — but something glinted and rattled. He felt handcuffs pinching his skin. One loop was attached to the ring, the other clamped around his left wrist. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t escape. Couldn’t even get to his feet without being pulled back down again.
He glanced towards the door.
The sheet had moved now. Edged a little closer to him, parallel to the wall. This time, he could make out something beneath the sheet: a shape.
‘Hello?’
The shape twitched.
‘Hello?’
It twitched again. The sheet slid a little, falling towards the floor. And from beneath the white cotton, a face looked out at him.
A girl. Maybe only eighteen.
‘Hello?’ he said again.
She was thin. Her mouth flat and narrow. Her skin pale. In the darkness of the room, she looked like a ghost.
‘Where are we?’
She looked towards the door — a slow, gradual, prolonged movement — and then back to him. But she said nothing.
‘Are you okay?’
No reply. Her head tilted forward a little, as if she was having trouble holding it up. He tried edging away from the wall, as far across the room as he could go.
‘Are you okay?’
And then he felt something soaking through his trousers. He looked down at the floor. A pool of vomit was under one of his legs. He backed up, away from it, and slipped. The handcuffs yanked at him as they locked in place, and pain shot through the top of his arm, like his shoulder had popped out of joint.
‘Keep quiet.’
He looked across at the girl.
She was staring at him now, her eyes light like her skin, her hair matted and dirty. The sheet had fallen away. Beneath, she was only wearing a bra, some panties and a pair of socks.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
She didn’t reply.
‘Can you hear me?’
She twitched, as if someone had jabbed her with the point of a knife, then turned to look out through to the landing again. She stared into the darkness beyond.
‘What’s your name?’
She finally turned back to face him ‘Keep quiet.’
‘What’s going on? Where are we?’
She shook her head.
‘What’s your name?’
She paused. Looked at him. ‘Rose.’
He edged away from the wall again, careful not to stand in the puke this time. The smell in the room was starting to get to him.
‘Listen to me, Rose. I’m going to get us out of here — but you’re going to have to help me. You’re going to have to tell me some things.’
She stared out through the doorway. Her spine was dotted down the middle of her back; and there was a bruise, big and black, on her left side, just next to her bra strap.
She said something, but he didn’t pick it up.
‘What did you say?’
She pulled the sheet around her again, and faced him. Her arm was also handcuffed to the wall. He noticed there were more rings running the length of the walls on both sides of the room. Equal distances apart.
Then he spotted something else.
A sharp piece of tile, maybe from a bathroom wall, or a roof, about four feet in front of him. It was shaped like a triangle. Jagged on one side. He moved as far away from the wall as he could get, the handcuffs locking in place again, and swept a leg across the floor.
‘What are you doing?’ Rose whispered.
He tried to get to the tile again. His boot made better contact this time, and the tile turned over, the noise amplified inside the stillness of the room.
‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘He will hear you.’
He looked at her. ‘Who?’
‘The man.’ She glanced out through the door. ‘The man in the mask. The devil.’
I wonder what you taste like, cockroach.
A shiver passed through him.
‘Who is he?’ he whispered.
She shrugged. ‘A friend of the tall man.’
The tall man. The tall man. He fished for the memory, but it wouldn’t come. He stared at her blankly.
‘Andrew,’ she said quietly.
Andrew.
Then the memory formed. The man dressed all in black. The tall man. The one who had been there when they’d taken his teeth.
He looked at Rose. ‘I can’t…’
‘Remember anything?’
He paused, a part of him scared to admit it. ‘Yes.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s what they do,’ she said. ‘That’s how they make you forget about what you’ve done. You want my advice?’ She glanced at the doorway again, then at him once more. ‘Hang on to what you can, because once it’s gone, it ain’t coming back.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, eventually, you’ll forge
t everything.’
‘Forget everything?’
‘Everything you’ve done.’
‘What do I need to forget?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘What do you need to forget?’
She watched him for a moment, as if trying to figure out the answer for herself, then turned her attention back to the doorway. The sheet had slipped again. Against her pale skin, the bruise on her back looked dark, like spilt ink. He imagined it was painful too. Right down to the bone.
‘Did the man in the mask give you that bruise?’
Rose looked down at herself and brought her free hand around to her back, running her fingers across the surface of her skin.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I tried to run.’
‘Run from what?’
‘What do you think? This place. The programme.’
‘The programme?’
A creak outside the room.
‘Rose?’
She put a finger to her lips and studied the darkness beyond the door. ‘Seriously, you need to be quiet,’ she said eventually. ‘He likes to surprise you. He likes to watch. Give him an excuse and he will hurt you.’ She paused, felt for her bruise again. ‘The people who help run this place, I’ve watched them. Most of them still believe in something. They still seem to have rules. But the devil… I don’t know what the fuck he believes in.’ Rose stared at him. ‘He will hurt you,’ she said quietly. ‘And he will hurt me. That’s what he does for them.’ She paused, blinked. ‘Sometimes I think he might actually be the devil.’
Click.
They both looked towards the corner of the room. Into the darkness. The one corner where no light reached.
Then out of the night came a cockroach.
Its body clicked as it scurried across the floorboards. The girl’s eyes fixed on the insect, and, as they did, her mouth dropped open. She started to sob, moving back against the wall, her handcuffs rattling above her.
‘You going to save her, cockroach?’
A voice from the blackness of the night.
He shuffled across the floor on his backside, moving in as tight to the wall as he could. Water soaked through to his back. And even from across the other side of the room, he could smell the man in the mask now: an awful, decaying stench. Like a dead animal.
From the corner of the room, a sliver of a horn emerged, sprouting from the top of a red mask.
‘What are you going to do, cockroach?’ the voice continued, fleshy and guttural. ‘Break free and take her with you?’ Laughter, the sound muffled by the mask. ‘Andrew kept telling me you had to be treated differently. But I never saw it that way. You’re a mistake. You don’t fit in here. You complicate things, go against everything we’ve built. And you’re holding on to the miserable fucking existence you once called a life, with no intention of letting go. If anything, we should be treating you worse.’
More of the mask emerged from the darkness: an eye hole.
‘I never agreed with Andrew when he said you weren’t to go on the programme. I went along with it, but I lobbied hard to have you brought back down to earth. All the way back down.’
A second eye hole. Half the mask was visible now.
‘And now I win. Deep down, Andrew knows there can’t be one rule for you and one for everyone else. No one deserves special favours. That’s not what this place is about. You accept what we offer you — or you fight us. And you’ve been fighting us since the first day we brought you here. Maybe you haven’t tried to run like that skinny little bitch over there. But it’s been in your head. In your eyes. I’ve seen it. You want to fight us. And you know something?’
A long pause. Then, suddenly, the devil came out of the darkness, the smell with him, leaning in over the man handcuffed to the walls of the room.
‘I love it when you fight.’
He looked at the devil and tried to speak. But the words refused to rise through his throat. Breath hardly passed between his lips.
‘So, you’re on the real programme now, you filthy piece of shit. No more luxury. No more favours. And I hope you fight. I really hope you fight.’ Slowly, his tongue emerged from his lips, sliding along the ridge of the mouth slit, one end to the other. ‘Because I really, really want the chance to cut you up.’
* * *
Deep underground, in the bowels of their compound, was another place. The biggest room they had. It was split into two and divided by a set of double doors.
The largest part of the room was once used as an industrial fridge, but there was nothing in it now. It sat empty, its strip lights buzzing, its walls stained brown and red with rust, its floor dotted with tears and blood.
Next to it, on the other side of the double doors, was a second, smaller room. When they came for him at dawn four days later, unexpectedly, violently, that was where they took him. They dragged him to a solitary chair in the middle of the room and made him face what awaited.
The final part of the programme.
PART THREE
22
The sun had been up for two hours and I was still behind the door. On the ground, knees up to my chest. A thin shaft of light escaped between the curtains in the bedroom and shone across the bed, flashing in the dresser mirror. Outside, next door, I could hear Liz talking.
I looked at my watch. 9.44. I’d been in the same position for over six hours.
* * *
My eyes snapped open. I’d fallen asleep.
My mobile was ringing in the living room.
I got to my feet, bathed in sweat, and pushed at the bedroom door, edging around it to the hallway. Quietly, I moved through the house, checking every room. Every hiding place. The front door had been locked again. The only evidence the devil had ever existed was a tiny piece of dirt on the carpet immediately inside the door.
The phone was on the living-room table.
I looked at the display. ETHAN CARTER. Ethan had been in South Africa with me during the elections, and was now the political editor at The Times. I’d phoned him when I got in from the police station the night before, and left a message for him, giving him the name Jade O’Connell, the date of 1 March and the keyword ‘Mile End’. I asked him to look into the information, and to give me a call back.
The call ended. I waited for a couple of minutes, checking the house over a second time, and then went to my voicemail. He’d left a message.
‘Davey — I emailed you what I could find. Enjoy.’
The computer was in the spare bedroom. There was a message waiting from Ethan, with three attachments. The first was a copy of a Times front page. It was dated 2 March 2004. At the bottom was a story about a shooting at a bar in Mile End. Three dead, five injured. I read a little way, then opened up the other two attachments. One was a second-page story, dated 3 March, a column headed by a photograph of the bar with a caption beneath that read: The scene of the shooting. The third, dated 6 March, was smaller, a ‘News in Brief’ piece, with no picture. Each of the attachments had been blown up big.
I went back to the first attachment.
THREE DEAD IN EAST END SHOOTOUT
Three people were killed and five injured during a shootout at a bar in Mile End, London, yesterday.
Police couldn’t confirm the names of the dead but did say they believed all three victims were members of the Brasovs, a violent splinter group previously affiliated to notorious Romanian gang, Cernoziom.
Witnesses reported hearing gunshots go off inside the Lamb, a pub on Bow Road, as well as shouting and screaming, before two gunmen exited the building, eventually escaping in a white van. Police said they were interviewing witnesses, and are appealing for anyone who saw anything to come forward.
I closed the attachment and opened up the second one.
MILE END VICTIMS NAMED
The three members of the Brasov gang, killed on Friday at a pub on Bow Road in Mile End, London, have been named.
Drakan Mihilovich, 42, his brother Saska
Mihilovich, 35, and Susan Grant, 22, were all murdered when two gunmen walked into a pub on Bow Road and opened fire on them.
The Mihilovich brothers are widely thought to be responsible for the recent murder of Adriana Drovov, wife of George Drovov, a leading member of Brasov rivals, Cernoziom. The third victim, Susan Grant, was reported to be Saska’s girlfriend.
Four others were injured during the shooting. Two are described as being in a critical condition.
I looked at Ethan’s email. Don’t worry — she’s in the third story.
MILE END VICTIM FOUND DEAD
In a bizarre twist, one of the victims of what police are dubbing ‘The Mile End Murders’ has been found brutally murdered in her hospital bed.
Jade O’Connell, 31, thought to be an innocent victim of a violent gang war in the Tower Hamlets area, was discovered by nurses yesterday, only hours after doctors had given her the all clear. Police said the victim’s head and hands had both been removed.
‘This is one of the most sickening crimes I’ve ever seen,’ Detective Chief Inspector Jamie Hart, the officer leading the hunt for the killer, said yesterday. Ms O’Connell had no surviving relatives.
Jade was dead.
Looks like she’s a goner, Ethan had written. I remember that story. I was doing a piece on Cernoziom at the time. Vicious bastards. They never found out who killed her, but everyone knew it was Cernoziom. Had to be. She must have seen one of their faces. What a way to go.
I thought about Alex, about the parallels between him and Jade. They knew each other. Maybe not well, but she’d heard of him. And now there was a further link too: they were both supposed to be dead.
* * *
I let the water run down my body. I’d been in the shower for thirty minutes, hardly blinking. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was the devil coming down the hallway to kill me.
I knew I was standing on the edge of the darkness now. If I stepped back, I’d step away from the case and from what I’d found so far. Whatever was behind me would be left there. But I still wouldn’t step away from them. They’d offered me the chance to walk and I hadn’t taken it. Maybe I’d thought they were bluffing. Or maybe the reason I had carried on was because everything Mary had said to me that first time — and everything I’d felt since — was connected to how I felt about Derryn. Deep down, perhaps I’d hoped my own answers would be waiting for me when I found out what had happened to Alex.