by Thomas Brown
“Don’t die”, I tell him. Thom barely responds. He is going limp.
And all I see is you, Mum. I am holding you in the hallway. The line of blood is drawn down your chin as though you have misapplied lipstick. I can’t feel a heartbeat as I lay my head against your chest. You are still. The world is still. Yet somewhere in my mind, I refused to accept it.
I rest my head against Thom’s chest and hear his heart beating, slowly, slower, slower, slow. I think I hear the ambulance wail somewhere in the street. Yet I can’t be sure I haven’t imagined it. All I know is this time; they will need the sirens. He isn’t dead. Not like you or Daniel. We can get out of the tunnel. We aren’t paused forever.
Still beating, beating, beating, beating, it still beats.
51 Red Fingerprints
Michael pulls me closer. I let myself flop onto his shoulder, not knowing what else to do with my body. My arms are covered with Thom’s blood, now dry. Somehow I believe this is the blood that should’ve marked me after I pushed Daniel. After all, they were made of the same bloodline.
Even though all the information is before me, I can barely draw faint lines to connect them. I know I pushed Daniel. I know he planned it. I know he left clues for Thom. I know Thom and he were actually brothers. And I know that Thom uncovered my secret.
Losing a relative is enough to break anyone, I completely under-stand. But finding out your whole life is a fabrication… that is enough to destroy someone. And Thom knows this now. Every-thing he trusted has twisted out of familiarity and transformed into something else. No wonder Thom has responded to everything as he has.
Destroying a person takes time. And Daniel had had that time. Creating questions and doubts through his clues, bringing unfamiliar people into Thom’s life to unbalance him and distract him, holding back the vital clues to keep Thom chasing him, making Thom’s whole life flip upside down until his head was so full of blood it needed to explode. He’d been clever and perceptive and, most of all, evil.
Even now, I can’t recall the hospital properly. I have faint flashes of him sitting on a bed, perhaps holding my hand? Yet I can’t trust my thoughts. I have the letters now and they give me enough ideas to create something. It makes me shudder thinking about what he must’ve said to me, how he influenced me, how he somehow knew me better than I did. However, I guess a fragile mind is easy to manipulate.
As I followed Thom down to the ambulance, I saw the DVD lying on the floor. Picking it up, it seemed to scream in my hand. I didn’t need to put it on to know what I would see. I shoved it into my coat pocket and it is still hiding there now. I wonder what I should do with it.
The moment I pushed Daniel seems like a dream. I have rehearsed the simple action in my head but it never seems to be real. The only thing that makes me believe I will live with the guilt is the fact that he led me there.
It is then that I realise Michael has fallen asleep beside me. I slowly lift myself off him, only making him stir for a moment before I slip away. I have to wash off this blood. Looking for the nearest toilets, I see they are down the hallway. I shuffle towards them, clamber inside and rush straight to the sink. I pull the taps on to full and let the spray lash at my clothes. My torso is instantly soaked and I imagine it is me that was stabbed, not Thom. Yet there is no pain for me.
Splashing the water up my arms, I scratch at the stained skin until the blood grudgingly re-moistens and slides off. The sink water turns pink and eventually drinks it all. I only stop when the water turns clear again.
I switch off the taps but as I do, catch myself in the mirror. My hair, my left cheek, and the bottom of my neck are speckled with blood. I grab some paper towels, dropping a pile of them in the process, and hurriedly rub at the stains until all that is left are red tension marks. I douse my hair and hope it has caught most of it; but I will have to wash it several times when I get home.
Although, this will never truly wash off.
As I leave the toilets, water dripping onto the dusty floor from my hair and the bandages on my hands, I see them. Richard and Val are standing in the corridor, holding hands. Richard has his head down and even from here; I can see him holding onto Val so tightly that his arms are bulging with muscles. He squeezes her and lets go of her. I begin to duck but thankfully he walks in the opposite direction, digging into his pocket as he walks, filling his hand with coins.
I watch Val for a moment. She is looking around as though she is lost. I can already see the withered tissue peeking out of her sleeve. I am taken back to the first time I saw her, leaving the house I’d been watching for days, her eyes sore and a tissue flapping behind her. I consider turning away and even take a step backwards but in the end, I walk straight towards her.
She barely notices me approach. She only looks up when a drop of water lands on her arm. She lifts her face up with great effort, her wrinkles appearing deeper with each movement she is forced to make. She stares at me for several seconds before she nods in recognition. “Sarah…” she says in a raspy whisper. Her cheeks are raw with tears, her lips cracked. She reminds me of the last time I saw Thom. The only difference is a purple bruise making a small bulge on her lower lip. Where did that come from?
Considering her now, I see the similarities with Thom. She has the same shaped face; a slightly rounded nose, long eyelashes (although hers are glued together in clumps by the mascara and her sobbing), the same downturn of the mouth that makes a smile even harder.
“How is Thom?” I ask. She instantly begins to sob as though I have flipped a switch. I hesitate but finally draw her into a hug, wondering if by being this close she will be able to feel that I am a murderer. She doesn’t seem to flinch though. She simply buries her head in my curls.
“How is he?” I repeat, more urgently. She says something into my hair. I have to push her backwards slightly, yet her words are still muffled like she is speaking through a pillow. “Val, please”. I shake her gently.
“He’s not good”, she finally manages.
“What did they say?”
“They say he’s struggling. He’s lost a lot of blood”, she tells me shakily, digging her fingers into my arms. “What will I do?” she asks me desperately. I deliberate on how to answer the question: “you’ll cope, we all do”, “he’ll be okay, I’m sure of it”, “don’t think about that now, let’s wait”. I can’t help thinking I am the last person who should be comforting her. If Thom had punished the right person, he wouldn’t be ‘struggling’ to stay alive.
“Let’s see what happens first”. I choose a variation on one of them to comfort her. She nods but her face is still twisted in anguish.
“The only thing is; it’s all I can think about”, she admits.
People are filtering by but she doesn’t seem to notice that they are staring at her, wondering if we know each other and wondering if there is somewhere they can move her, so they don’t have to see her pain.
“It must be horrible for you”, I tell her. I feel terrible imagining how I would respond at the possibility of losing two children within a few months; especially as one has only just found out he is her child.
“I don’t think I can cope with this again…”
“I know”. I squeeze her.
I imagine she is you, Mum, alive again. I let her warmth smother me. Her salty tears sting my cheeks. If only you hadn’t left me, maybe I wouldn’t need to drain this poor woman of her last drips of energy.
“You were with him”, she says, easing away from my hold. “Did he say anything about me?”
I remember every word that Thom said in the bedsit. I could’ve recited every word and every intonation to her. Yet now I have begun to feel normal again, I recall that the truth doesn’t always help. If I tell her how angry he’d been, how confused and desolate he felt, would it really make her happier?
“He told me what happened. But he didn’t say too much”.
“Then why did he do that to himself?”
“I’m not sure. He didn’t
make much sense”. I shrug, hoping she is as confused as she looks. She shivers as though I have thrust an icicle into her chest and wraps her hands around herself.
“Did he do it because of me?” she asks quietly, unable to meet my gaze. I think about this carefully before even thinking of opening my mouth. It’s definite that she has some weight in his anger and pain, but is it because of her? I decide the answer is safely no. Without Daniel and myself, he wouldn’t have done it. Under normal circumstances, I believe he may have even reconciled with her one day, despite the years of lies.
“It wasn’t you”, I say, bending towards her lowered gaze to emphasise this.
She nods weakly and says, “I’m his real mother, you know”.
“He told me”. I nod. She seems satisfied, looking away to compose herself.
“Do you want to see him?”
“Yes”, I answer instantly. Since I’d been forced to let the para-medics take him away, I have only thought about the moment I can see him again. I want to see how they have repaired him, fixed the gaping hole in his skin. She takes my arm, the broken leading the broken; towards the person we both love.
As we approach the cubicle, with the curtains drawn around the bed, I try to catch my breath. I can’t believe I will actually see him again.
Unlike you Mum, I won’t be losing him forever. I won’t have to stand at a funeral and feel my mind float up above my body, never quite able to reconnect.
Val peeks through the curtain discreetly, as I hop on my feet. She lets out a small yelp. I push her aside and tear the curtains apart. Before us, the sheets are dishevelled and twisted, alarmingly empty, like a robbed grave. The machines beside the bed are dead. I bend down and see the plugs have been pulled out. The wires connected to the machine are tossed on the bed like haphazard veins leading to nothing. There are a few bloody finger marks on the sheets, on the bedside table, on the curtain to the left.
I follow the blood marks, chasing them into the next cubicle where a surprised family turn to face me. I run around the bed and keep following the marks, diminishing with each gauzy curtain, becoming more elusive with each bed. There are three I pass before I reach the corridor at the end. I check all the doorways for signs of him and after several, I find the faintest mark on the door to the stairway. I fling the door open and fly down the stairs.
I imagine I am a policewoman in pursuit, only a whisper behind. Yet, when I reach the bottom, the door is firmly closed. No one has been here recently. I open it anyway, feeling the cold night rushing towards me. I think about Thom’s clothes and how the knife has torn them, how he could be shivering in an alleyway, or worse, dying.
I step out into the night, looking to both sides. Ambulances are pulling in, a few people loitering in the car park, a few nurses smoking near the corner, but no Thom. I focus my eyes on each spot in my sight but see nothing unusual. I somehow believe that if he is out here, I will find him, despite the darkness and the stinging wind.
Checking the floor for blood, I pace up and down. I look in doorways. I walk in between the cars and search for bloodied fingerprints or smashed windows. I walk to the street and search for movement or a group of people huddled over a body. Yet I find nothing.
I can’t find Thom.
Wrapping my arms around myself, I let myself sink against a car. I look at my arms and remember the stains of his blood and now can’t believe I ever washed it off. This was my last link to him. I may never see him again and I have washed him away out of guilt.
“Thom”, I call into the wind. “Thom!” I scream. The only response I get is from a fox that is slinking across the road which casually glances over and, after a long stare, continues padding onwards. I slide further down the car, leaning my cheek against its cold body.
I know he can’t hear me, wherever he is. Yet I hope he knows I came looking for him, that I called for him, that I am frozen by the heartbreak. This is all I can do for him now. Unlike me, I hope he knows that someone is thinking about him and believes in his ability to heal.
Oh Mum, what should I do with myself now?
Several minutes later, when I drag my body from the floor, I wonder if wherever he is, he will think about me too. And when he does, will he think of me as a lover or a murderer? No matter what I do in the future, there will still be a person who knows what I am.
Yet if I saw him again, just once, perhaps I could tell him I love him and it would change his mind.
The end
Cold Remains
Sally Spedding
The rook is associated with those beguiling but dangerous maidens of the Celtic Otherworld.
PRAISE FOR SALLY SPEDDING
“Her writing is so distinctly unique it will truly chill you to the bone.”
Sally Meseg for Dreamcatcher
“Sally Spedding is a font of creepy stories, the kind of tales which wheedle their way back into your mind, hours maybe days and weeks later…”
Western Mail
“Spedding knows that before delivering the set-pieces it's essential to carefully build suspense through both unsettling incident and sense of locale – at both, she's unquestionably got what it takes.”
Barry Forshaw, Crime Time
“Sally Spedding... has been credited with being a latter day Du Maurier...”
Crime Squad
“Sally Spedding is the mistress of her craft.”
Welsh Books Council
Sally Spedding
SALLY SPEDDING was born in Wales and studied sculpture at Manchester and at St. Martin’s, London. Having won an international short story competition, she began writing seriously and her work has won many awards including the H.E. Bates Short Story Prize and the Anne Tibble Award for Poetry. She is the author of five acclaimed crime mystery novels and a short story collection. Other short stories have regularly appeared in the Crime Writers Association anthologies. She is a full member of the CWA and Literature Wales for services to literature in Wales, and adjudicates national writing competitions. She finds both Wales and France complex and fascinating countries – full of unfinished business – and has a bolt-hole in the Pyrenees where most of her writing and dreaming is done.
ALSO BY SALLY SPEDDING
Wringland
Cloven
A Night With No Stars
Prey Silence
Come and Be Killed
Strangers Waiting
Malediction
To Hookers’ Pen writers for their unfailing support; and to Anna Alessi for lightening the darkness.
I am indebted to Emily Hinshelwood, a wonderful poet, for her time and expertise on technical matters. To the unique and inspiring village of Rhandirmwyn and to those who pointed the way.
Each heart has its graveyard, each household its dead,
And knells ring around us wherever we tread...
MARY T. LATHRAP, Unfinished Lines
PROLOGUE
Tuesday 24th December 1946 – 6.45 p.m.
Christmas Eve in Nantybai, Carmarthenshire, where the small knot of villagers who’d gathered to chat outside St. Barnabas’ Church doors, hurry in to escape the fresh snowfall blowing westward from the Cambrian hills. The candlelight from within casts each crisp white crust on the tilting gravestones in an eerie light, and soon the organ begins its melancholy introduction – a tune that makes the young woman shiver even beneath her heavy winter clothes. For she knows all too well whose clever fingers play the keys, whose feet pump the pedals, yet she must be patient and wait for her lover to finish the last carol so they can escape together for a better life. A true and godly family life.
As she creeps from her shelter under the three Scots pines, and into the teeth of the weather, she knows in her heart she’ll never again set eyes on this welcoming vestry or hear those same voices beyond it now raised in celebration of the Saviour’s birth.
The snow lies deeper, less slippery by the track’s side, and it’s here she chooses to place her booted steps until she reaches the lead
miners’ cottages cwtched against the land behind. Her childhood haunt, with its nervous sheep, its stream hurtling towards the headwaters of the River Towy.
Mrs Jones, the church cleaner, is at home, she can tell. But no one else. For one brief moment, she’s tempted to knock on her door and confess the daring plan to leave. But no. This miserable, now childless widow has too much of a gossip’s tongue. And a gossip’s tongue spells danger.
But danger’s already here with the snap of a twig. Hot breath on her neck. All at once, without warning, two freezing, gloved hands are gripping her throat.
“You first, cariad, which, given your situation, is only fair…”
Her situation is not her fault.
She recognises the big man’s voice, his unique smell, before a pungent whiff of gas makes her catch her breath, draw in too much of it as a cloth is pressed over her face. Now her head’s spinning; her sturdy boots giving way on the sliding ice, but she must fight back. Not just for herself, for that new life kicking vigorously beneath her coat. “The Lord Jesus help me,” she begs. “I adored you. Was trying to protect you, can’t you see?”
But her words slide away like rain off the hillsides, and no-one is listening.
1.
Tuesday 31st March 2009 – 3.30 p.m.
Jason Robbins paused outside the doctor’s surgery in Hounslow’s Pinetree Road just long enough for a passing bus to spray his clean clothes with oily filth from the gutter. That was it. Time to move. He pushed the intercom button and, having given his name and appointment time to whoever’s crackly voice had answered, was admitted into an empty, ochre-coloured waiting room where the smells of those who’d come and gone still hung in the stale air. Another pause, as he surveyed the dimpled, vinyl chairs, posters showing how condoms prevent AIDS and Chlamydia. How breastfeeding is best, and the sun, like booze and fags, an enemy to fear.