by Tim Weaver
‘The main gate?’
He nodded. ‘It was open enough to allow me to escape. My body was telling me to make a break for it, but my brain was holding me back. They never left it open — ever.’
‘Was it some kind of trap?’
‘That was my first thought. But, after a couple of minutes of standing there, I started walking towards the gate.’
‘And that was it — you just went through?’
‘No. When I got to the top… Andrew was there.’
‘Just waiting for you?’
‘Just there. In the shadows. I was about four feet from the gate, close enough to run for it if he tried to come for me — but he didn’t. He just stood there.’
I looked at him. ‘And did what?’
‘And did nothing. He just stayed like that. And then, when I finally made a move towards the other side, he said, “Bringing you here was a mistake. We never wanted you, Alex. None of us. I’m sick of fighting you; of not being able to give you the drugs I need to. If you really were a part of this programme, we would have sacrificed you already. But you’re not — never will be — and I’m willing to take whatever consequences come my way now. I don’t want to see your face any more.”’
‘That’s what he said?’
Alex nodded. ‘It still felt like a trap, but when I stepped through the gate, on to the road, I realized it wasn’t. I looked back and watched him push the gate shut behind me. Then he said, “If things get bad, if you try to do anything to us, bring anyone here, we will get to you. And when we get to you, we won’t care what kind of protection you have — we will kill you.” And then he headed back to the farm.’
‘What did he mean by “protection”?’
He shrugged. ‘They can’t kill me.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
We drove for a little while without speaking, both of us thinking about the night Alex had escaped. My mind was racing, trying to put things together. Something didn’t add up.
‘Did they say anything else to you?’
‘No. I just ran. I didn’t look back. I hitched a lift to the first station I could find, and then got on the train down to London. I hid in the toilets all the way. I sat there, too scared to go out in case they’d tricked me. I couldn’t tell people what they’d done, in case they followed through on their promise to kill me. That’s why I had to get you to go to that place. I had to get someone to stop it. Every day since I left, I’ve been cowering in the shadows with my back to the wall, terrified they would find me. I was sick of feeling frightened.’
I looked at him. ‘It’s strange…’
‘What?’
‘You never seemed frightened today.’
He nodded. ‘I suppose a part of me expected to die. They told me never to come back, but that’s what I did. When you think you might not live to see another day, it gives you some focus. And I just needed to make sure you got out.’
‘What about Al?’
He looked at me. ‘You know about him?’
I nodded.
‘I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I did,’ he said. ‘I spent a lot of months being scared about dying. And then I spent the last few weeks wondering what they would do to me if I came back here. After what I did to Al, maybe I would have deserved to die today. But I couldn’t die before I did something about the farm. I know what happened today doesn’t make up for what I’ve done… but it’s the only thing I could do.’
‘So, why did you kill him?’
‘I did it for Dad,’ he said. ‘Dad and Al, they went way back. Dad used to work for a bank in the City, then Al offered him a job doing the books at his stores. We got a new TV, a new kitchen, went on a nice holiday to the south of France. But then it started to go wrong. Everything Mum and I thought we owned, Dad knew differently. Because Al really owned it all. He’d loaned Dad money for just about everything, told us we never had to pay it back because we were like family to him. Then one night he flipped. Dad came home and told me Al wanted to take back what was his. Everything we’d ever got from him, he wanted repaid. There was no way we could do it. If we gave him back all that was his, we would have had nothing.’
‘Why did he suddenly turn like that?’
‘I don’t know, but it just got worse and worse. Dad invited Al round to the house when Mum was out, to try and talk him round. They went down into the basement, and Al absolutely lost his head. He punched Dad. When Mum asked, we told her he’d had a fall while we were out at the lake, fishing. Dad couldn’t bring himself to tell Mum, couldn’t bring himself to tell her everything he had bought for her, the life he had created for her, was about to fall apart. That our home and everything in it would be gone.’
Alex looked out of the window.
‘This went on for a few months — and then Dad came up with an idea. We’d pay Al back with his own money. Dad could fiddle Al’s books quite easily. Al had three stores, each making a lot of cash. That was when we first got talking about the five hundred grand.’
‘Five hundred grand?’
‘The money we would take from him. After that, we realized the only person who could stop us was Al himself. Because eventually he would find out. If we stopped Al, we got to keep the money.’
‘Your dad helped come up with the plan to kill him?’
‘We just got swept along by it, corrupted by the idea…’ He seemed to fade a little then. ‘In the end, I did it. But, that night, I never set out to. The closer we got to the idea, the less certain I became, until eventually I said to Dad it might be better for me to go and talk to Al. Dad didn’t want that. By then, he was very sure of the path we needed to take, but the thought of… the thought of what we were going to do to Al, it scared me shitless.’
We passed under a set of signs. Eighty miles to London.
‘So, I went to meet him at that strip club in Harrow. He was drunk by the time I got there, sitting next to the stage, letting these strippers rub their tits in his face. He wasn’t in a fit state to talk. He wasn’t in a fit state to do anything. Every time I tried to reason with him, he turned his back on me and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I tried to give him a chance, tried to let him give me a chance, but in the end I lost it with him. I told him to stay the hell away from my family. I told him if he ever came near us again, I would kill him.’
He stopped. We both knew what came next.
‘I told him I would kill him,’ Alex said gently, ‘and that’s what I ended up doing. Mum had the car that night. She was out with friends. I guess I could have got the train, but I just wanted to get in and get out again. I didn’t want to spend time with Al, I just wanted to do what was necessary. So I hired a car at a place close to Mum and Dad’s. It was a Hertz but the manager there was this old guy. I showed him my ID, but lied on the form, so nothing could be traced back to me. The guy looked at the form after I was done, but didn’t even twig the name and address were different. I guess, deep down, I knew there would be trouble that night.’
He paused for a moment.
‘Anyway, I came out of the bar and headed back to the car and he came after me. He was so drunk he couldn’t stand up, let alone walk in a straight line. But he charged over to me and started pointing at me. Telling me what a piece of shit my dad was. There were a couple of people standing outside the bar. As soon as they went in, I hit him. He was so drunk he didn’t see it coming. When he was on the floor… I broke his nose with the heel of my shoe.’
The lights from the motorway flashed in his eyes. He was caught somewhere, silent for a moment. Then he turned back to me.
‘When he finally got up, he was a mess, could hardly speak properly. But he looked straight at me and said, “You just made a big fucking mistake, Alex. I was trying to help you. I was trying to help your mum. You came down here for your dad, right? Your fantastic dad. Well, why don’t you go and ask him about his dirty little secret in Wembley?”’
‘What did he m
ean by that?’
Something glistened in his eyes.
‘I got in the car and tried to calm myself. Then he started again. He was spitting blood all over the bonnet, telling me to go fuck myself, telling me he’d make a special journey to watch Dad being kicked out on to the streets. And then, before he went to walk away, he looked at me and said, “Go and ask your dad about your brother.”’
‘Your brother?’
He nodded. There were tears on his face now.
‘I put my foot to the floor, and went straight through him. He hit the middle of the car, just flew off to the side. And I left him there. When I looked in the mirror, he was lying in a puddle. And he was still. Absolutely still.’
47
‘Where did you go?’ I asked. It was dark, almost nine o’clock, and we were ten miles from my house, stuck in traffic on the edge of London.
‘France,’ he replied. ‘After I left home, I took my bank card, withdrew the maximum amount of money they would let me take in one day, and headed down to Dover. I dumped the car in long-term parking, then found a trawler willing to take me across the Channel. I didn’t have my passport, so I paid them whatever it took. Just to keep them quiet.’
‘What did you do in France?’
‘Worked some crappy jobs, cleaning toilets, waiting tables at cafés. I just tried to keep my head down. I didn’t spend more than three months in each job, just in case the police were on to me.’
‘So, what brought you back?’
‘I got homesick. I ended up hating everything about my life there. The jobs were terrible, the places I lived in were worse. I spent five years doing that, and every day ground me down a little more. So I found a boat that would take me back, and went and saw Michael.’
‘You knew him from before?’
‘Yeah,’ Alex said. ‘He used to be a friend. A good one. Back when I lived with Mum and Dad, he worked at our local church. Called himself Mat back then. Michael Anthony Tilton. Then he went travelling. When he got back, he took that job in east London, and I noticed small changes in him — like, he never talked about his family any more, and he got uncomfortable when I still called him Mat. Andrew was changing him too, I suppose, just not with the drugs and the torture and the fear. I went and visited him at the church a few times before I disappeared. The last time was just before I killed Al.’
‘That was when you bought the birthday card in the box?’
He nodded.
‘Why did you go to Michael after you came back?’
‘I thought he would know what to do. I thought I could trust him. I couldn’t go to Mum, because of Dad. I couldn’t go to John, because of his job. Kath wouldn’t have understood. None of them would have. I thought Mat might. So, he made a few calls and arranged for me to be driven up to the farm. They were fine for a few hours. Took my picture, talked to me, told me everything would be okay. But do you know what they did after that?’
I shook my head.
‘They knocked me out. I turned my back on them once, and they knocked me out. And then… Then they tried to take my memory away. I could feel my body pleading for the drugs, but I had some fight in me. I managed to cling on to something. And so, even in the darkest times, I could see the outline of the people I loved. Could hear things Mum had said to me. See places I’d been with Kath. I used that as strength, to help me get out of there.’
‘Do you know how they faked your death?’
He nodded. ‘They used Simon.’
‘Simon was supposed to be you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘We had the same blood type. I remember that from when Simon and I used to give blood at uni. That made it easier to disguise the fact it wasn’t me in that car. And I think maybe Andrew and the others on the farm… they liked the symmetry of it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, one friend making the ultimate sacrifice for the other.’
Based on what I’d found at the farm, I imagined Alex was right.
‘Simon had been on the farm for a few months. They’d fed him drugs — but he’d fought them. He fought back against the programme. He pushed down the terror he felt at everything that was going on, and he pushed back at them. But in the end he pushed back too hard. One night, when one of the women came in with his meal, he launched himself at her. He beat her so badly she lay there until morning in a pool of her own blood.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘There was a girl with me in the room with the rings. Rose. She was drying out when they put me in there. She wouldn’t speak at night, because of Legion. She knew, at night, he watched us. But, in the day, before she started to disappear into the programme, she would talk a little and tell me things she had heard. And Simon was one of the things she heard…’
* * *
Darkness. And then light. Hands grab at him and pull him out of the boot of the car. Cool air bristles against his skin as he’s dropped on to a patch of grass. A foot comes down and pins him to the ground. He can feel wet mud against one side of his face and the last weak rays of evening sunlight against the other. Fields and a dirt road stretch out in front of him, and an old Toyota is parked further down, rope attached to its underside.
* * *
‘So, they killed him in that car crash.’
‘Yes. When I saw him, when I watched them take him away on that leash, it was the day after he beat that woman. I could smell the petrol on him right from the other end of the corridor. It was only afterwards, when I found out I was supposed to be dead, that I realized why — and what they did to him.’
‘They used your teeth.’
Alex left one hand on the wheel and peeled back his lips with the other. He placed a finger and a thumb on his two front teeth. And pulled. The teeth came away.
They were all false.
‘One of the women on the farm used to be a dentist. They put my teeth into Simon’s mouth, plied him with so much alcohol he could hardly stand, and doused him with petrol. Then they led him out of that farm on a leash, and drove him nine hours down to Bristol, so it looked like I’d been close to home the whole time. Simon was supposed to be me.’
* * *
Through the windscreen of the Toyota he can see a car close in front. Maybe only three or four feet away. The two vehicles are attached by a length of rope.
Everything in the car smells of petrol: the dashboard, the seats, his clothes. He glances at the speedo. They’re still accelerating. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. He tries to move, but can’t. He looks down. His arms and body are paralysed.
Suddenly, there are headlights up ahead.
And something pings.
There’s the brief, grinding sound of metal against metal, like a clasp being released. Brakes squeal. Then the car in front veers left, the rope trailing behind it, swinging across the road.
A horn blares.
Simon desperately tries to jab at the brakes, the insides of the Toyota swimming in the light from the lorry. But his feet don’t move. Not an inch.
And then there is only darkness.
* * *
Alex pulled into a parking bay at a train station about a mile from my house. I gave him enough money to get a ticket, and some more so he could get wherever he needed to go. He climbed out of the car and shook my right hand.
For the first time I glimpsed the wounds in his fingers.
‘It’s ten o’clock, Alex,’ I said.
‘I know.’
‘Why don’t you just stay at mine?’
‘I’m still on the run,’ he said. ‘I think the less time you spend with me, and the less you know about where I’m going, the better it is for you.’
He got ready to go, but then turned back. He ducked his head inside the car again, and stared at me for a moment.
‘Do you know what the last thing you hear is?’
I looked at him. ‘Last thing before what?’
‘Before dying.’
I
knew. I’d heard it myself when I’d been bound to the cross.
‘The last thing you hear is the sea,’ Alex said, and nodded as if he knew I understood. ‘Waves crashing. Sand washing away. Seagulls squawking. Dogs running around on the beach. If that’s the last sound I hear in this life, it won’t matter to me. Because I like that sound. You know why?’
I shook my head.
‘It reminds me of sitting on the sand, in a cove in Carcondrock, with the person I loved.’
After that, he turned around and disappeared into the crowds.
48
I didn’t want to go home, so I stayed the night in a motel across the street from the train station. The woman booking me in glanced up a couple of times at the dried cuts around my cheeks, at the streaks of purple and black on the side of my head, but didn’t say anything. As I limped to my room, I could see her reflected in a thin strip of glass by the elevators. She was looking again. My body was exhausted, and a dull ache coursed through my system, but the cling film had helped to quell some of the pain, even if the injuries to my face were more difficult to hide.
The room was small and plain, but it was clean. I set the holdall on the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress for a while, breathing in and out, trying to relax. But the more I relaxed, the worse I started to feel; as the adrenalin ebbed away, it took the numbness with it. I got up again and went to the bathroom. Alex had stopped outside a pharmacy before we got to the train station so I could pick up some medical supplies. The smell of the bandages, of the antiseptic cream, of peeling away the plasters, suddenly reminded me of Derryn’s years as a nurse. Then a memory formed: of her attending to my face three weeks after she’d come to join me in South Africa. I’d fallen into some masonry in a desperate run from a Soweto shootout.
‘It’s a Steri-Strip today,’ she’d said, placing the transparent plaster over a cut close to my eye. ‘I don’t want it to be a coffin tomorrow.’
My eyes fell to my newly bandaged fingers, and — finally — to my body. Cling film was still wrapped around it, blood pooling at the sides, crawling around from my back in thick, maroon tendrils. I couldn’t see the lacerations themselves; wasn’t sure I ever wanted to. One thing I did know, though, was that I didn’t have the courage to start removing the cling film.