Virtue

by Serena Mackesy

  The bare lightbulb behind me fizzes, dies.

  It’s still light, for God’s sake, you stupid tart. The light’s on on the desk.

  I’ve started talking to myself again. Decision-making in order, and the internal dialogue is pumping away.

  Can’t I just hide somewhere?

  Don’t be stupid. He’ll see you.

  Why did this happen to me?

  Nothing’s happened.

  Yet.

  Yet. But it’s going to.

  What did I do? Why me? What did I do to deserve this?

  Shut up. Do something.

  There’s a five-year-old child bawling and wailing and shouting inside me. I can hear it, and I can hear the blood surge in my veins.

  Shut up.

  Stupid. I actually think he’ll be able to hear me breathe. Kick my shoes off at the bottom of the steps. Tiptoe across the cellar floor, snap off the light.

  The kitchen door creaks open. Whoever it is is standing in the doorway. Probably deciding which way to go first. Looking around. To his left is the bar, and the cash till and the alcohol. To his right is the cellar door. God, let him turn left.

  Frozen, I realise that I am still not entirely in darkness.

  Fuck. Computer’s still on. God.

  Maybe it’s not enough light. Maybe it’s okay. How much can you see by the light of a computer screen?

  Stupid. Stupid stupid. If he comes in and sees that the computer’s on, of course he’ll know you’re here. Stupid. How could you be so careless? You think he’s being careless?

  Maybe he won’t know.

  Just turn it off.

  He’ll hear.

  Turn it off.

  I can hardly bear to breathe as I creep round the desk and feel along the underside of the monitor. He’s still standing in the doorway; hasn’t moved. Listening. My fingers find the switch. Thank you, God. I depress the raised end.

  Beep.

  I’m down in the kneehole of the desk before I’ve thought; knees and ankles and elbows and head crammed in like noodles, mouth hanging open in the gasp I don’t dare let out.

  He’s heard. He opens the door.

  I stop. Completely stop breathing. I think my heart actually stops. He’s standing at the top of the steps, and he does nothing.

  I don’t know what they mean when they give you all that guff about adrenaline kicking in, or your mind being overtaken by calm in crises. Every hair on my body, every pore of my skin, every nerve ending within, is pure fear. Freezing, sharp-edged, paralysing fear. The only part of me that is not screaming at this moment is my mouth. Oh, God, make him go away. Make him go away.

  The light comes on.

  Silence.

  Heart.

  Silence.

  Heart.

  Silence.

  A word forms in my mind: God knows where it came from. It’s the word brave men use when facing death on the battlefield. It’s a word that takes me totally by surprise.

  Mummy.

  I have to breathe. Take my hand from my mouth and, with infinite stealth, allow air to stream into my shuddering lungs. Let it out again. In again.

  Silence.

  Breathe.

  Silence.

  Breathe.

  He speaks.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he says. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  Steps backward. Turns off the light. Closes the door.

  He’s playing a trick. He’s still inside. Waiting. I can hear his heartbeat. Smell him. Upstairs, footsteps cross the restaurant floor. It’s my heart. He must be able to hear it.

  They cross back, pause once more outside the cellar door. Then a sound I really don’t like.

  He laughs.

  Kitchen door creaking. Make him go away, God. Please.

  He stays. I hear the scrape of Shahin’s stool at the central island. He’s sat down. At least I can breathe. Briefly, this improvement in my circumstances is enough. I haul air into my body, uncurl my legs to make more space for my chest. That’s fine, stupid, but you’re still trapped.

  I know.

  Get out.

  I can’t.

  He’s waiting.

  I can’t.

  You must.

  How?

  The mobile. You stupid bitch, the mobile.

  My bag is on the floor beside me, round the back of the desk out of his eye view. The mobile.

  Save me.

  It’s off. I stuff it under my tunic and switch it on, muffling the beep. The welcome message takes half a lifetime to load; all the time, I can hear him shift about on the stool. What’s he doing?

  Menu.

  No bars.

  Shit. Basement. Widest coverage in the UK, my arse. What’s the use of a network that lets you talk from a beach in Cornwall when you can’t talk from a basement in London?

  I cast around. There is nothing here, no way out, nothing. We had the coal hole blocked up when we brought the computer down here in case of burglars. Good joke.

  He’s waiting.

  You’ve got to go to the top of the stairs.

  No.

  You’ve got to do it.

  I start to cry, stifled wimpers which I cover with my sleeve. Please don’t make me. I’m so afraid. Please.

  You have to.

  Please.

  You’ve got to GO.

  And I know I’m right. But I’m snivelling like a cornered bully and the five-year-old’s screams have reached full volume.

  GO NOW.

  I go. Crawl out from under the desk and, because my legs won’t hold me, slither over the slimy floor to the foot of the steps.

  He shifts on his stool and I make ready to bolt back to my hiding place. But then he settles down.

  Please, God, please, please.

  Don’t let the steps creak. I go up slowly on my knees, weight all thrown over onto the wall side. Check the bars on the phone as we rise. One. Nothing. Two. Nothing. Three. Nothing. Four. Nothing. Five. Nothing. Six. Nothing. Seven. Nothing. Eight. The display flickers; for a split second a bar appears, then nothing.

  There are only two steps between me and the door. My legs are shaking.

  Go on. Go up.

  I can’t.

  GO UP.

  I go. Nearly drop the phone because of the sweat on my hands.

  He’s humming in the next room ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’. And there’s a strange scraping noise, like metal on metal. What’s he doing?

  A bar. I punch in 999 with hurried fingers, as though failing to act will make it go away.

  It rings, it seems, for ever, then a woman’s voice.

  ‘Emergency. Which service?’

  ‘Police.’

  ‘Sorry, caller. Can you speak up?’

  It sounds to me like I’m shouting already. ‘Police,’ I repeat.

  ‘Putting you through.’

  The line crackles, starts to ring again.

  ‘Hello, police. What’s your emergency?’

  Suddenly, I can’t say anything. Draw a couple of sobbing breaths, then, ‘Please help me.’

  ‘What’s the nature of your emergency?’

  ‘I – there’s someone here.’

  ‘Speak up if you can, caller.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I whisper. ‘He’s just outside the door.’

  Suddenly, background noise drops away. ‘Where are you?’ she says.

  ‘Chelsea Ladies’ College,’ I say.

  ‘What’s the address?’

  I give her the address, but my voice is shaking so much it comes out as a gurgle.

  ‘I couldn’t hear that, caller. You’ll have to repeat it. Tell me the postcode.’

  I whisper, very slowly, very clearly. In the kitchen, the scraping continues. I don’t think he’s heard me.

  ‘Is that a school? Are there minors there with you?’

  I almost laugh. ‘No. A restaurant. I’m in the cellar.’

  ‘And you have an intruder?’

  ‘Yes.’

>   ‘Stay on the line, caller,’ she says. ‘There’s a car on its way.’

  Stay on the line? What kind of fucking idiot are you? I’ve hung up and started back down the stairs before you can say constabulary.

  The stool in the kitchen scrapes back. He’s standing up.

  Everything racing again; internal organs scrambling to be first off the ship. I’m going to scream. I will scream. No time to get to the desk. I throw myself off the steps and scrabble in among a pile of cardboard boxes underneath. The thunder and rustle of my landing effectively disguises everything else. I scramble in as close to the wall as I can, don’t even look for spiders, shrink down, make myself tiny. Maybe he won’t see me. Maybe I’m invisible.

  Silence. No sound from upstairs, no creak of door hinges.

  Where’s he gone? Is he in here already? Standing on the stairs, listening? Waiting for me to move and betray my position?

  My nose is pressed against a Del Monte logo; cling peaches. We sell a lot of tinned peaches and cream because the punters like to throw them at each other. Back when life was simple. I chew the back of my hand, wait like a prey animal crouched in bracken as a buzzard sweeps overhead.

  Silence.

  No way. Don’t even think it. He’s in here, and he’s waiting.

  Silence.

  The display on the mobile says it’s been five minutes. Surely no one can go five minutes without making a noise.

  You have.

  I’m frightened.

  He can too.

  I’m getting cramp in my hip.

  Don’t even think about it.

  Aargh.

  Don’t. Don’t fucking move!

  Aargh.

  Footsteps upstairs. Oh, God. Careful footsteps, making their way across the kitchen pausing by the island. Shuffling. Moving on.

  Pushing open the kitchen door. Pausing on the threshold. I shut my eyes.

  ‘Hello?’ A different voice, a London accent, trained in authority. ‘Police?’

  I explode from my hiding place, cardboard boxes around me, jump up and down and try to shake the pain from my upper leg. ‘HAAAAH!’ I shout. Then, ‘I’m down here!’ Then I collapse on the floor and start to kick, hard, at the prop on the stairs. The door opens and a couple of men in hats stand looking down at me in concern.

  ‘Are you all right down there?’ asks the man in front, who looks a good ten years older than his near-adolescent companion.

  ‘Haaaargh!’ I reply, almost laughing through the agony, the relief is so great. ‘Cramp!’

  They come down the stairs two by two, and the elder grabs my ankle, pulls. I let out a howl of pain, and everything stops.

  ‘Christ,’ I mutter from the floor.

  ‘Blimey,’ says young copper. ‘Thought you were hurt for a minute.’

  I take a moment to compose myself, sit up, wiping my eyes. ‘No. I’m okay. Just scared witless.’

  ‘We had a report of an intruder,’ says older copper.

  ‘Yes. That was me.’

  ‘You’re okay?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘No sign of anyone upstairs now,’ he says. ‘And no sign of a break-in. How did they get in?’

  I don’t know how many hours they spend on the subject at training college, but I’ve never met a policeman yet who didn’t manage to make you feel like a total fool. ‘Stupid.’ I say what I know they’ll be thinking anyway. ‘The other staff left and I forgot to lock the door behind them. Sorry.’

  Young copper offers me a hand up, which I take. Stand there, brushing bits of ancient distemper off my clothes.

  ‘That’s not very sensible,’ says older copper. Christ. He can’t be more than a couple of years older than me, but it feels like getting a lecture from a headmaster.

  ‘Doh,’ I reply. It’s amazing how quickly you can get your sarcasm back after a fright. ‘I think if I’d remembered I’d’ve done something about it.’

  Older copper gives me a big smile. Nice teeth, nice eyes. Short, sandy hair under the checkered hat; probably quite good fun down the pub.

  ‘No harm done,’ he says. ‘Though I think you’d better come up and have a look at something.’

  I’ve been thinking the same thing myself. I’ve had enough of this cellar to last me a good deal longer than the very short lifetime I recently thought I was going to have. I follow the two of them up into the restaurant. They’ve turned on the top lights. Tables four, five and six, shoved together for the big party, look sad and grimy, half-drunk brandies lolling among seedy ashtrays. ‘We had a late table,’ I explain. ‘We were going to clear it up tomorrow.’

  The two of them nod wisely. I’m still shaking. Pop behind the bar. ‘I need a drink. Can I get you anything?’

  ‘Thanks, no,’ says younger copper.

  ‘I thought that not drinking on duty thing was a myth?’

  ‘No,’ says older copper. ‘You can drink under special circumstances.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ I pour a couple of fingers of brandy into a snifter, sling in some ice. ‘And what are those?’

  ‘Well, obviously you can’t if you’re a common-or-garden uniform,’ says older copper, ‘but it’s absolutely essential under certain circumstances if you’re a pathologist.’

  ‘Or a forensic psychiatrist,’ says younger copper.

  ‘Or if you work under cover,’ says older one, ‘specially if you handle guns. But you’ve got to have one particular qualification.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Full membership of Equity,’ says younger copper.

  Ah. Comedians. Just what I need.

  ‘So have they taken anything?’

  ‘I don’t know, love,’ says older copper. God, I hate it when people call me love. ‘You’ll have to tell us, I’m afraid.’

  Nothing has changed in the restaurant. It looks no more and no less crappy than usual. I shake my head.

  ‘You do believe there was someone here, don’t you?’

  They both nod. ‘Oh, yes. We believe you.’

  Older copper nods back towards the kitchen. ‘You haven’t sacked anyone lately or anything, have you? Had any business rows? Fallen out with anyone?’

  ‘Nope. Why?’

  ‘Well …’ He pauses. ‘I think someone’s not very popular around here.’

  Oh, Christ. ‘What?’

  ‘You’d better come and look.’

  He leads the way into the kitchen. Shahin, thank God, has made a good job of clearing up before he cleared out, and everything gleams under the neon strip-lights. So it takes, like, seven-tenths of a second for me to see what’s out of place.

  The two big knives have been taken from the butcher’s block and lie, their tips worn away, on the worktop on the central island, by the stool. And scratched into the stainless steel, remarkably deeply by a determined hand, is a single word.

  TRAITOR.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  A Question of Race

  My nerves get the better of me, and I don’t want to go and hang about on the street waiting for a cab. So we sit in the front of the restaurant, back door firmly bolted, and have another brandy while we wait for a minicab. Roy’s gone home, cursing me because there’s no way the insurance will pay out for the worktop when I left the door unlocked and the alarm switched off, and Shahin has finally been persuaded to go home because I think that he’ll probably get banged up himself if he makes one more promise to hunt down and kill my assailant.

  ‘I’m so sorry about this,’ says Harriet. ‘It never occurred to me that any of them were nutty enough to do something like this.’

  ‘Not your fault. If we should blame anyone, we should blame Leeza Hayman. If she wasn’t stirring up all this grief none of this would’ve happened.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Harriet. ‘It’s not like Leeza Hayman holds the copyright on stirring up the mob.’

  ‘What did you actually say to her when she called down at Belhaven? Did you really say the things she said you did?’
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  ‘Well, sort of,’ says Harriet. ‘You know what it’s like. Cut out a couple of sentences in the middle, and you can make someone say anything you want to.’

  ‘So what did you say?’

  ‘Look, I didn’t really think about it. I picked up the phone while you were in the bog, and it was the Witch of Hayman on the other end going on about this beatification business and organising some sort of march or something, so I said that I didn’t think there was any way that any church in the world would accept that a polygamous former stripper was qualified for sainthood, however much good she’d done, and that anyway, if I wanted to get involved in some sort of campaign, it wouldn’t be one run by a lying, mischief-making drunken old hag like her and would she please get off the line. So then she said something like “So what you’re saying is that you don’t want to have anything to do with cherishing your mother’s memory”, and I said no, I don’t want to have anything to do with her pitiful attempts at latching on to causes for her own self-aggrandisement and would she please bugger off and leave me alone as I was really busy. And then I hung up.’

  ‘Oh, Harriet.’

  ‘Don’t oh Harriet me. You’d’ve done the same thing.’

  ‘Um, I’m not the one who seems to be permanently in the firing line. How many emails have you had now?’

  She raises her eyes to the ceiling, counts. ‘Something around the hundred mark, I guess. But you know, email’s pretty harmless. It’s not like they’ve got our address or anything.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s still pretty unpleasant.’

  She shrugs. ‘Well, obviously. But it’s hardly like I’m not used to being public enemy number one. Everyone hates me. Nothing new there.’

  ‘I don’t hate you, Haz.’

  ‘You don’t count. You’re not allowed to hate me. You owe me. We’re inextricably bound together by bonds of duty.’ She smiles grimly.

  ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘I actually think you’re brilliant.’ Poor old Harriet. Things never seem to rain in her life when they could pour.

  ‘Don’t turn fruity on me. I’ve got enough fruitcakes to deal with without you going the same way. You should be mad as hell at me for getting you into a situation like that, not being all forgiving. I mean, what if this is only the beginning? What if we’re going to spend our entire lives being pursued by crazies out for my blood? What? Are you going to stick around saying how brilliant I am then?’