by David Thorne
Neither Saskia nor Luke Gove replies to this. They look at the fire, watch the money that could save their estate burn. Watch their future go up in smoke. They look at each other and some understanding passes between them. Luke Gove nods to his sister, then sighs, a deep breath.
‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘but you’re not even close.’
38
I REACH INTO the sack at my feet, take out a couple of bricks of money, twenty grand’s worth. But before I can throw it on the fire Luke Gove says, ‘Stop.’
‘Yes?’
Luke Gove sighs again, his arrogance spent. Perhaps it is the effect of watching a fortune burn. ‘My sister. She’s not well.’
‘I can see that. What is it? Leukaemia again?’
‘How’d you know about that?’ says Luke Gove.
‘Isn’t much I don’t know about you,’ I say. ‘I know you receive stolen cars, keep them for car gangs. How much does that bring in?’
Luke Gove is for a moment at a loss for a response. Then he says, ‘That was you?’
‘At the docks? Yes.’
‘Duncan was fucking furious. Had to pay for the car that got wrecked. Lost the business.’ As if storing stolen cars for organised criminals was a legitimate enterprise which I had deprived them of. ‘Wish they’d fucking killed you.’
‘Oh well,’ I say. ‘Can’t always get what we want.’ I throw a brick of money on the fire. ‘Was there something you wanted to tell me?’
‘Saskia. She has leukaemia.’
‘Yes.’
‘She first had it, first got it, fifteen years ago. The first diagnosis. A year after our mother died.’
I look across at Saskia. She is watching her brother. He puts a hand on her leg, high up on her thigh. Just like the first time I met them, I wonder at this sign of intimacy, at the nature of their relationship.
‘It sent my father crazy. You cannot imagine. He could not accept that anybody dared take away our mother. Then Saskia…’ He closes his eyes, thinks back through the years. ‘He believed it was an attack on him. Took it personally.’
‘Beat one of our workers half to death, just because he put a dent in his Jaguar,’ says Saskia. ‘Lost it.’
The fire is burning brightly, yellow and orange, the flames licking high up the chimney. It is very hot and Saskia’s cheeks at last have some colour, heated by the blaze. Her eyes once more have a light in them, dancing, and I remember the effect she once had on me.
‘You know how to treat leukaemia?’ she says.
‘Blood transfusion,’ I say. ‘Explains why you took your workers’ blood when they first came.’
Luke Gove snorts, a derisory sound. ‘I wish,’ says Saskia. ‘If only it was that straightforward.’
‘What then?’
‘Leukaemia eats at you,’ Saskia says. ‘Drains you. Turns your blood against you, makes your body an enemy. At night I lie still and it’s like I can feel it, like there’s a war going on under my skin, cell against cell. Fourteen years ago it nearly killed me. Would have, if it hadn’t been for my father.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Do you believe that money can cure all problems?’ says Saskia.
‘No.’
‘No. My father did. He believed that my disease could be cured by buying people. Turned out he was right. Kind of.’
I am not following and I shake my head. ‘You’re losing me here.’
‘He found a doctor, a guy from Cuba. Kitted out a medical ward here. See, leukaemia’s a bitch. It gets to a point, the only way to treat it is with bone marrow.’
I nod, but I know little about what Saskia is talking about.
‘But finding a match, that’s hard. That’s really fucking hard. The hospital couldn’t find one for me, spent months looking as I got weaker. But my father, he wasn’t having that. He would not allow me to die, not after they had taken my mother away from him.’
Saskia Gove closes her eyes and I wonder how much effort this is taking her, just to sit and talk. Wonder how far gone she is with the disease this time around. The room we are in is lined with wood panels and thickly carpeted and it is very quiet, the only sound coming from the crackle and spit of the fire.
‘Any idea how many workers pass through this place?’ says Luke Gove, taking up the story for his sister, as if he can tell where she is taking it.
‘No.’
‘Hundreds. Over the years, thousands. The odds of finding a match for Saskia are long. But take enough samples, run enough tests, you never know.’
‘Jessica Farrell,’ I say.
‘Actually, no,’ says Saskia. ‘Stacey Millar. Not a perfect match, but Dr Molina, he said it would be close enough. Might be.’
The Cuban doctor. ‘She worked for you? Stacey?’
Luke Gove nods. ‘Summer work. Casual.’
‘Dr Molina ran her blood. Came up a match. So my father asked her if she would be a donor.’ Saskia shakes her head.
‘And she said?’ I say.
‘Stupid bitch said no,’ says Luke Gove. ‘Fainted having her blood taken, said she was scared of needles, scared of hospitals.’
‘And?’ I say, although I know what is coming next.
‘And my father did not take no for an answer,’ says Saskia Gove. ‘You don’t know what he was like.’
I imagine William Gove, certain that he could dictate destiny, bend it to his will through money. What was it Saskia said? That her father believed her disease could be cured by buying people.
‘You offered her money.’
‘He offered her everything. She wasn’t interested. Some kind of phobia, I guess, needles, medical stuff.’
‘So?’
‘So he went ahead with the procedure anyway. Took the choice away from her.’ Luke Gove shrugs. ‘It was her or Saskia. What was he going to do?’
‘Procedure?’
‘Nothing too terrible. General anaesthetic, then you remove the bone marrow. Takes a big needle, looks like something you’d knit with, but…’ Luke Gove shrugs again. ‘Why didn’t she just say yes?’
‘And it worked,’ says Saskia Gove. ‘My father believed that he was vindicated, that he had saved his daughter. I guess he had.’
I think of Father Donald, telling me that there was nothing William Gove would not have done for her daughter. How he would gaze on her with adoration.
‘And you?’ I say to Saskia Gove. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know what was going on.’
‘I was nearly dead. I didn’t know what day it was.’
‘You?’ I turn to Luke Gove.
‘I knew. But even if I’d said something… Wouldn’t have made any difference.’
‘Why’d you think I went to Africa?’ says Saskia. ‘After I became well, I went to do good. Make amends.’
‘Seems you and your father, you’re both into atonement,’ I say. ‘So long as it’s on your own terms.’ Saskia tries to meet my eye but she cannot. I feel nothing but contempt for her and her brother, for their sense of entitlement which they believe allows them to use other people’s bodies for their own furtherance. I cannot imagine a more immoral state of mind. I am sickened by what I am hearing.
‘And Jessica Farrell?’
‘A friend of Stacey’s,’ says Luke Gove. ‘She discovered what had happened. My father wasn’t going to allow the secret to get out.’
‘She was a runaway,’ says Saskia. ‘Her and Stacey, never spoke to their families.’
‘And now it’s happening again,’ I say. ‘Anica Antonescu. What, was she a good match as well?’
Saskia and Luke Gove do not answer my question but my mind is on something else anyway, what Saskia has just said. How Jessica and Stacey never spoke to their families. Families. I think about what I know about bone marrow. It is not much.
‘Aren’t the best matches supposed to be family members?’ I say. ‘Couldn’t you have been the donor?’
Luke Gove shakes his head. ‘We tried. Duncan and I, both of us. Not compatible.’
‘Siblings do make the most likely donors,’ says Saskia. ‘Just bad luck.’
Bad luck. As if it is they, rather than the murdered girls, who have been given the raw deal. Again I am sickened by what I am hearing. But then I think back to the bar, Saskia spiking my drink. What I spoke to her about. What I told her. Siblings. Stacey Millar and her younger sister.
‘What have you done to CJ?’ I say.
‘Stand up,’ says a voice. I turn. Duncan Gove is standing at the other end of the table. I did not hear him come in. He is holding a shotgun.
‘About fucking time,’ says Luke Gove. ‘Can you shoot this prick?’
‘No,’ I say, unwilling to believe what I am seeing. ‘You should be in court.’
‘Not going to prison,’ says Duncan Gove. He looks at Saskia, his sick sister. ‘Not now.’
‘Wait,’ I say. I stand up slowly and I have not even got to my feet when Duncan Gove shoots me. I feel a weight like a car hit my arm, shoulder, ribs and then I am on the floor, the thick carpet like the horizon of a sea which I am sinking into, drowning, drowning.
39
I AM ON a raft on a tide which advances and recedes, advances and recedes to its own rhythm which I cannot fathom. The waves bring me towards light and back into dark, into terrible heat and back into a wet swampy chill which causes me to shiver uncontrollably. Although I know that I am old I am also young and lying in my childhood bed, alone with a fever which I cannot shake, weak with hunger that no adult is around to satisfy. A figure keeps approaching, looming above me like a B-movie monster and I know that it is not my father because my father has gone away, I have not seen him for days. This figure has soft hands but they cause me pain, tearing and tugging at my skin which feels as if it has been scored by knives, burned by coals. I wonder who this figure who is not my father is and how he has got into my father’s house, into my bedroom, and I wonder what he wants and what he is doing to me. I want to ask him and to tell him to stop but I have been robbed of speech and at some point I believe that I am a creature of myth who traded his voice for the life of a young girl. But then the tide takes me away from the heat and I understand that I am a grown man and that I am a long way from safety, from my childhood bed.
All of this happens in a haze, undefined and nebulous, as if only half remembered from long ago although it is happening to me now. But then I open my eyes and I can see the metal rim of an overhead lampshade above me and I know who I am and what has happened, although I do not know where I am. I turn my head and see that I am on a white metal tubular bed. There is a tube which passes into a catheter on the back of my hand. The room has walls of white-painted breeze blocks which I recognise, am sure that I have seen before. I hear a sound beside me and I try to turn but before I can I feel a cutting of ties as if I am a hot-air balloon that has been tethered to the ground, and as I float upwards my eyes close even though I try my best to keep them open.
When I next awake a man with a big loose face and black-framed glasses is changing a dressing over my ribs. He has thick black hair on his arms and fingers and he is dark-skinned. By some sixth sense he knows that I am awake and without looking up from what he is doing he says to me, ‘How are you feeling?’
I try to speak but my tongue feels fat and I can only mumble. The man crosses the room and comes back with a flannel and a cup. He dips the flannel in the cup and says, ‘Suck this.’ As I suck the water I imagine a hard sponge becoming supple through moisture and my tongue and throat once again feel as I remember them, wet and slick and functional.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Dr Molina. You came here with a gunshot wound. Pellets. Not too serious.’
‘Here?’
He does not respond to my implied question. His glasses are very thick and his eyes large behind them. He turns and adjusts my drip. I try to sit up, get one elbow behind me, another, jack myself up. I look around the room. It is long and there are two other beds. One is hidden behind a curtain. In the other CJ is lying still. There is a needle coming out of her hip. It is so big, it is as if she has fallen on a railing and it needs removing. I think she is asleep. She looks like a little girl, a child. I try to get up, to go to her. The doctor puts a hand on my chest.
‘No. You must not.’ He reaches above me, adjusts something.
‘Take your hand off me.’
‘I cannot let you.’
‘Take your…’ I say, but then I cannot feel the inside of my mouth and my tongue is numb and I move one elbow and fall back on to my pillow which is suddenly no longer there and I freefall back into oblivion.
Time is a strange thing. It has no value without sun and clocks and a normal sleeping pattern. Mine is dictated by how many drugs I am given, when and in what doses, and I have no idea of how much time has passed to the extent that it could have been hours or weeks. I dream and in my dreams CJ is waiting for me by a dark shore, waiting for me to rescue her, growing weaker and more resentful, her eyes becoming large and bitter as her face and body waste away, she loses her hair and teeth. I have brought this on her. I am so sorry, I try to say, but once again I have lost the power of speech and my feet sink into sand and I feel more impotent than ever before in my life.
I awake and Saskia Gove is looking down at me, her dark hair hanging close to me so that her face is framed by it. Her hair touches my cheek.
‘Hello, sleeping beauty,’ she says. She smiles at me. I try to move my arms to scratch my cheek but I cannot, and I look at them. They have been attached to the metal tubes of the bed with plastic ties. I cannot get my arms underneath me to sit up. I watch my fingers flex, bunch. All I can do is look up at Saskia Gove’s face.
‘Sorry to wake you,’ she says.
I blink up at her. I do not trust my voice to speak.
‘Sulking?’ Saskia says. She sighs. ‘Oh well. Doesn’t matter. You’ll talk to me soon enough.’
She sighs again, stands up straight. I can see the metal rim of the lampshade above me. I try to see if CJ is still there, but Saskia Gove is blocking my view. I look back at the ceiling.
‘Dr Molina says you’ll be fine,’ she says. ‘After Duncan shot you.’ She seems amused by this, as if her brother was guilty of no more than high-spirited jinks. ‘Thought you’d like to know.’
‘Why am I here?’
‘Oh,’ Saskia says. ‘Money.’
I close my eyes, listen to her speak without looking at her.
‘Seems the money in those sacks wasn’t, well, wasn’t actually fucking money, Daniel.’
I try to think, work out what she is telling me. Money. Yes. Not real. She is right. The wad of £10,000 I gave Luke Gove was real enough. I won it off him playing tennis. The rest I bought through a man called Billy Morrison for £500. Looked real enough from a distance. Burned like real money. All I cared about.
‘Shouldn’t have shown it to Luke, put it in his head. Now he wants it. Can’t stop thinking about it. So, you know.’
‘Can’t do anything,’ I say.
‘You might want to reconsider.’
‘Not your money.’
‘Do you seriously think we give a fuck about that? We want it. That’s all.’
I pull and struggle against my restraints. ‘Can’t do anything. Not here.’
‘We’ll work something out,’ says Saskia. ‘Just wanted to let you know. What it is we want.’
I shake my head. I am tired and cannot think straight.
‘Now,’ says Saskia. ‘A demonstration. You remember I’m a nurse? Right now you’re feeling tired, yes?’
I open my eyes, look for Saskia. She is at my shoulder. She is holding a syringe and I crane my head back, look at her. She is injecting something into my drip.
‘Welcome back.’
A cold sensation washes through me and my heart beats faster. I breathe suddenly, as if surprised. It is as if my veins have been flooded with iced water. The room I am in pulls into sharp focus and I am aware of every line, every crack in the
brickwork, the sharp rim of the lampshade, the tiny ridges of the cable ties holding my arms. I feel alive, strong. I am aware of the teeth in my mouth, the muscles in my jaw. I struggle at my restraints again, feel the bed move beneath me. Saskia laughs.
‘How does that feel? Feels good, right?’
I keep struggling. The bed is on wheels and my movement causes it to track minutely sideways.
‘Easy,’ says Saskia. I look past her and see CJ. She is lying in her bed, head away from me. I guess she is sleeping. I can see her hair, every strand. She is so close. If I can get free I will throw Saskia Gove into the corner of the room like a rag doll and scoop CJ up and take her away from this place.
‘You see, Daniel, I control you now. Ready?’
I look back at Saskia and she is smiling down at me. Her lips are red and her eyes dark, two holes in a painted mask, large and black, and I look into them as the room I am in shrinks around me, pulls around me as if the walls are a blanket, a warm blanket that feels so good and so warm that I can do nothing more than sink into it, feel it envelop me as I listen to Saskia Gove’s warm, rich voice telling me that she can do anything, anything she wants, do I understand, anything at all.
‘Daniel? Daniel? Please, Daniel.’ The sound of sobbing. ‘Please.’
‘CJ?’
‘Daniel.’ I have my eyes closed and in the darkness behind my lids her voice sounds like that of a terrified child calling up from the bottom of a well where she believes she has been forgotten. ‘What’s happening?’
I open my eyes, shake my head against my pillow, try to focus. ‘CJ, listen to me. We are going to get out of here.’
‘What are they doing to me?’
I look across at her. She is lying in bed, on one cheek, her big grey eyes looking at me with fear and confusion. There is a large machine next to her, white and tall with a screen and tubes hanging from the front of it. What are they doing to her? Taking her life force, giving it to a woman who neither deserves nor respects it. Killing her so that a worthless person can live.
‘Don’t think about that. It’s not important. What’s important is that we’re getting out of here.’