A Song for the Brokenhearted

by William Shaw

  ‘Like Alexandra Tozer,’ Breen tried to say, but the cloth stopped the words.

  ‘Everything I had believed in was a lie. Who had been Mau Mau and who hadn’t. It was all just madness. They didn’t know. Nobody knew. That was the point. All they were doing was making everyone afraid of them. There was no logic. Only fear. When they let me out I refused to go back to England. I was sacked on grounds of ill health, they said. I went to Nairobi. I spent months there, writing letters to the head of the police force. To the Governor. To anyone I could think of, telling them what had happened.

  ‘They didn’t want to believe me. Nobody did. I tried to see the Central Province Commissioner and the Member for African Affairs. All of them refused to see me. They said I was unwell. I wrote home to the papers. But it was over now. Everybody wanted to forget it had ever happened. Even the bloody liberals and leftists. It was all in the past already, as far as they were concerned. I became known as a troublemaker.’

  He leaned forward and removed Breen’s gag. Breen sucked in air.

  ‘Alexandra Tozer never did anything,’ said Breen.

  ‘Neither did Ruth. Neither did most of the people we tortured in Ngala. I killed people there. I could have gone mad after seeing what I’d seen and what I’d done,’ said Doyle. ‘Instead I became sane. I saw through the illusion. I travelled. I spoke to monks who taught me the meaning of death. Who helped me see that life was the illusion. But when I came back to England, what happened? I found out that you and Jimmy had become Lord and Lady. All the things you did. And you just sailed through it all.’

  ‘Alexandra Tozer. She never did anything,’ Breen said again.

  ‘You’re so hung up on death. You don’t realise. That’s part of the dream. That’s why it hurts you so much to die. Once you know that, nothing can hurt you any more. When I got back here, I followed Jimmy around to see whether he had changed, like I had. But he hadn’t. One day I saw them fucking. I was close by. She was beautiful. He had killed the woman I loved. So I could take her away from him, just as she had taken Ruth from me. Ruth had never done anything either.’

  ‘Let her go,’ said Breen, nodding towards Eloisa. ‘She’ll die. You can get help.’

  ‘I don’t need help. I don’t want it.’

  ‘You’re going to kill me?’

  Doyle didn’t answer.

  ‘You’re blaming Fletchet, but it was you who did the torturing. You’ve admitted it. You’re as guilty as he was.’

  ‘And I’m going to be the one who punishes him. He knows that. Each time I do this he can see me coming. He knows I’m coming. He’s afraid. Each time, he becomes more and more afraid. And his life will be hell for as long as I choose. He taught me well, didn’t he?’

  Doyle held the gag in his hands. He was going to kill him in the same way as he had killed Alexandra Tozer and Bill Milkwood.

  Doyle looked at his watch.

  There was a pattern. Each one the same. A long message to Fletchet. I am still out there. I am coming for you.

  ‘Why did Milkwood pay you off?’

  ‘He was a coward. He was scared. Wouldn’t you be? But I persuaded him I could help him in return. I knew all about drugs. I started to give him information.’

  ‘Real or fake?’

  ‘Real, mostly. Not that the rest of the Drug Squad cared either way. As long as they got arrests.’

  ‘But you killed him all the same?’

  ‘I was coming down here. Back in January I saw police cars at the farm. You were visiting, but I thought the investigation was starting again. I realised I was running out of time. So yes, it was time for him to die.’

  ‘But not before you’d given him information that you could use to fake your death. About drug gangs in Spain.’

  ‘You knew about that?’ Doyle tied the gag even tighter this time.

  Breen was overtaken with a huge tiredness. The torture would be slow and long. And utterly pointless. And then he would die.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Outside, curlews called on the mud. A mournful note. The tide must be low now. It would be morning soon.

  He was half awake. Then someone tugged on his left hand. He didn’t know how long he had slept. Doyle lifted the palm and spread his fingers. Then raised up a pair of garden secateurs.

  The blades were slightly rusty.

  Breen shook his head violently from side to side. Screamed behind the gag. It wasn’t rust.

  With the limited movement he had under the wires binding him, he slipped his hand from Doyle’s grasp, knocking the secateurs to the ground. It was not easy to remove a finger, even from a bound man. Doyle didn’t seem particularly concerned by his struggle. It was as if he had seen it many times before. He knelt to pick up the cutters. They had fallen under the chair.

  Behind him, Breen saw Eloisa now. She seemed to be still. He looked for any sign of rising in her chest, but there was none. A huge sense of sadness enveloped him for a second. He would be like her soon.

  No.

  Breen kicked at Doyle, who was on his knees, feeling for the cutters. Don’t give up. Don’t break. Doyle squealed.

  When he stood, Breen saw Doyle was bleeding from just under the eye. Hobbled though he was, he had caught him with a toenail. But Doyle didn’t seem to be angered by this. He rubbed the skin and walked to the wall, to check it in a mirror.

  Wriggling, still trying to loosen the bonds, Breen’s left foot felt something under it. The secateurs.

  His feet were closely tied, so kicking too far was hard. His first attempt barely moved them. He curled the toes of his left foot onto the floorboards and pressed hard down so that he was forcing his toes back, then in a single movement, uncurled his toes and flicked his foot as far as it could go. The secateurs spun across the floor and under a tool cupboard by the bedroom door.

  Doyle saw the movement from the side of his eyes. He shook his head, then moved to the cupboard and squatted down, feeling for the tool. When he stood he was empty-handed. He could not find them.

  Ha ha ha.

  So Doyle opened the tool cupboard and pulled out a tenon saw instead. ‘Your fault,’ Doyle said. ‘This will hurt more.’

  Breen struggled in the chair. The wire cut his wrists and his ankles. Others hadn’t escaped. Doyle had done this many times before in Africa. But to admit that would be to give up. The pain roused him, made him angry.

  ‘Shh,’ Doyle said. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be done soon.’

  Fuck you, he said silently, under his gag. But however much he struggled with his left hand, Doyle was stronger. Doyle splayed the fingers over the edge of the chair and selected one, bunching the rest up under his fist and pushing down so hard to trap them there that the pain made Breen’s eyes water. His ring finger alone stood out.

  ‘I met a monk in Tibet,’ said Doyle. ‘He could drive a nail through his hand and not feel the pain.’

  Doyle lowered the saw and started to carve. It cut straight away, tearing the pink skin just above the knuckle bone. The agony was fierce. But then, in an instant, Doyle was cutting into bone, which was worse. The vibrations made by the teeth travelled up his arm as the saw worked its way back and forth. His stomach wound had only bled a little; this was worse. Cutting deep, blood pumped onto the floor.

  At the end, the bone gave way and his lifeless finger flapped from side to side, suspended only by a small piece of skin. Doyle removed the saw. Even half blind with pain, Breen could see his finger dangling down now, swinging gently. Doyle released his grip on the hand and put down the saw. He pulled out his knife and sliced through the remaining piece of skin and the finger dropped beyond Breen’s sight.

  And the blood kept pumping out of him onto the tarpaulin.

  A shadow passed over the room. It all happened so fast Breen did not understand what was going on. Doyle looked up suddenly with a look of puzzlement on his face. And then there was the loudest noise the world had ever heard. Simultaneously, the curtains suddenly appeared to be horizontal.

>   And fire and glass.

  And when the curtains fell slowly back into place, they were shredded.

  And Doyle was nowhere to be seen.

  The world rang. A high-pitched, all-enveloping note.

  To his surprise, Helen was standing in front of him.

  She looked great, he thought, but when he tried to tell her, nothing came from his mouth.

  She was trying to say something to him too, but when her lips moved he could hear nothing either. Just the ringing.

  And she had a twelve-bore shotgun in her hand.

  He looked down at his feet. There was glass scattered all around, lying in his blood. She must have fired the gun through the window at close range before coming in through the door. Where was Doyle?

  He craned his neck to the right.

  He was there, propped up against the cupboard. There was blood all over his bare chest. Doyle held his hands across the wound. The shot had flayed his torso. You could see exposed ribcage where the skin had been torn away.

  Doyle was saying something to Helen, but Breen could not hear that either. The blast must have deafened him.

  Untie me, Helen, please.

  She stood for a second with the gun raised and you could see the thought going through her head.

  No, Helen. Please.

  He could see her looking down the barrel at Doyle, finger tightening on the trigger.

  No, Helen. Don’t, he said. Please don’t.

  You’re being stupid.

  Think of the baby.

  There is no need. He may die anyway. If not, we can lock him away.

  Eyes closed, Doyle’s lips moved, preparing for death.

  She stared at Doyle for a second longer, then lowered the gun, propped it against the wall and turned and knelt in front of Breen. She picked up Doyle’s bloodied knife and pulled out her shirt. Digging the knife into the cloth, she tore off a rough square and wrapped it round Breen’s hand.

  She said something to him but he still couldn’t hear a word.

  The gunshot deafened me, he tried to say, behind the gag.

  This time she took the knife and knelt lower, trying to cut the wire that bound his wrists to the chair.

  A train passed. He felt the vibration through the floorboards. The shack must be close to the track. There would be commuters on the way to work; post and parcels in the guard’s van.

  As Helen worked, agonisingly slowly, on the wires that bound him, he felt another more desperate knocking passing through the flimsy wood of the shed. He realised it must be Hibou, she too struggling against her bonds.

  Hibou, he tried to call.

  She would be frightened. She could not see what was happening.

  And he was thinking of how lucky he had been when he saw Doyle start to move. Slowly at first. At first he felt gratitude. He was not dead. He would live. They could bring him to trial and punish him for what he had done.

  But then, behind Helen, Doyle put his hands down on the floor and started to raise himself, slowly.

  He stamped his feet to try and warn Helen, but she didn’t seem to notice or hear. The shot must have deafened her too.

  Slowly Doyle stood. His chest had been flayed by lead shot, and there were pockmarks dripping bloodily on his face, but his arms and legs seemed OK.

  Helen! Breen screamed through the gag. Helen! Helen!

  The bloody man looked around, saw what he wanted and leaned to pick it up.

  The small-handled axe he used to chop wood for the fire.

  Finally Helen looked up at Breen, worried now. What was he making all the fuss about?

  But then she leaned down again, as if frustrated with how long this was taking.

  In the very last second, she looked up at him again, puzzled. She must have seen something in his eyes, because she turned, twisting away as the axe swung into empty air, arcing down and missing Breen’s bare knees by the smallest fraction of an inch.

  A second time Doyle raised the axe, but she had her eyes on him now. Her back was to the wall she’d propped the gun against and Breen saw her desperately feeling for its barrel behind her. It was too far away to the left.

  Doyle charged at her, axe raised again. She ducked and tried to barge past him.

  But the floor was slick with blood, his and Eloisa’s. Helen slipped, legs jerking backwards, body hurtling, face forward, onto the floor instead.

  Doyle turned, stamped on her back as she flailed, holding her down with the right foot, raising the axe again.

  No. No. No.

  It was Hibou, appearing from behind the partition, screaming, that made Doyle pause just for that fraction of a second.

  Unlike Breen and Eloisa Fletchet, she had not been tied up naked. She was still in her farm clothes, but her right wrist was bloody from where she’d been tearing the skin against the wire that had bound her.

  Doyle’s pause was long enough for Helen to get some purchase on the slimy floor and roll sideways, unsteadying Doyle.

  And now Hibou came running at Doyle so hard he smashed back into the wooden wall.

  She held him down, pinning him in a sitting position on the bloody floor, back against the wall. Farming had made her strong.

  ‘Do it,’ she was shouting.

  Helen walked to the shotgun and picked it up. This time she didn’t hesitate. Doyle lifted a hand as if to protect himself from the shot, but seemed too tired to hold it there for long. It fell to the ground.

  ‘Hel. Do it.’

  This time the bang was muted. A dull, faraway thud.

  In that second, Doyle’s head was entirely transformed. The skin left it, baring teeth and skull. His eyeballs disappeared, turned to jelly by the pellets. The shot destroyed the soft tissue of his throat completely. Blood pumped suddenly into the space that it had left, spraying up and covering the wall against which he lay, covering Hibou as she held him. She jerked backwards. For a second his head moved from side to side, as if what was left of him was convulsed by pain. Then he stopped and the skull fell forward onto the mess of his chest. Redness crept across the floorboards towards Breen’s own blood.

  And Helen, covered in blood, put the gun down and turned to Breen, expressionless.

  She said nothing as she finally cut his hands free.

  ‘Christ.’ Hibou had her hand over her mouth, moon-eyed. ‘Look at Paddy.’

  Breen was weak now.

  ‘Is that his finger down there? Oh.’

  He had lost blood. Helen found a dishcloth and tied him a sling so that his hand was raised above his heart. That way the clotting blood seemed to seep less. Next, she knelt to cut the bonds at his ankles, and when she stood, the knees of her jeans were dark with his blood.

  ‘Are you being sick?’ said Helen.

  Hibou nodded.

  ‘Well don’t. Find me a coat or a blanket or something. He’s half frozen to death.’

  ‘God. I fucked up everything,’ said Hibou.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Helen.

  Breen tried to move his feet, but he didn’t seem to have the strength. When Helen finally untied his gag, his throat was so dry he could only whisper.

  ‘Cold,’ he said.

  When Helen had found a grey blanket to put around his shoulders, she turned to Eloisa.

  She put her hand on her head, then felt for a pulse. Eloisa’s skin was a greyish yellow. She must have been dead a while now. There was an old mac on the back of the door, thin and dirty. Helen took it down, placed it over Eloisa, covering her nakedness. The empty sleeves hung down on either side. A grotesque, handless hunchback.

  ‘Your sister,’ he said. ‘Alexandra.’

  ‘It’s finished now.’

  ‘We need to go,’ Hibou said.

  ‘How did you know we were here?’

  ‘I’ve been out since three in the morning, looking. Doyle’s tent was empty.’

  ‘Doyle’s tent?’

  ‘He’d been living in the marshes. I found it an hour ago.’

  They found Bre
en’s clothes but they were still too wet to wear, so Hibou took off her jumper and gave it to him. It was still covered in Doyle’s blood, but at least it was warm.

  Breen leaned against the outside of the hut. The estuary where he had almost drowned last night looked benign today, the water flat and ripple-less. ‘I went to find you,’ said Breen.

  ‘I saw the photograph on your bed,’ Hibou said.

  Breen nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘Really?’ she said.

  They had to cross the railway line to make it to the fields, tramping round the edge. Breen, an absurd figure in a woman’s jumper, a grey blanket and huge waders that flapped at his bare legs, chafing them. Each step an exhausting challenge, even with Hibou on one side and Helen on the other.

  When he could walk no more, they paused by a gate.

  ‘Would I have liked your sister?’ said Hibou. Breen could feel her trembling from the shock of what she had seen.

  ‘Course,’ said Helen. ‘Everyone loved her. She’d have hated you, though. Farm girl. She wanted to move to the city. Get away from this dump.’

  ‘It’s not a dump. I love it.’

  ‘’Xactly.’

  Now from the corners of the fields, white specks.

  ‘Finally,’ said Helen Tozer.

  Policemen in shirt sleeves, running towards them across the sodden fields. They would make a ghoulish sight, the three of them, skin and clothes so bloody.

  When he saw them coming, Breen lay down on the damp soil. He could go no further.

  Hibou sat next to him and took his injured hand. ‘Can we call my mum and dad when we get back?’ she said. ‘I need to say sorry. I thought I was never going to see them again.’

  He asked, ‘Why did you run away?’

  The policemen seemed to be taking an age to reach them. Hibou looked at Breen and said, ‘It was stupid. I stole money.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘One hundred and seventy pounds.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Don’t laugh. I knew they’d be angry if they found out. They’re good people. They didn’t deserve me.’