The End of the Line

by The End of the Line (retail) (epub)

  She would get the answers from Skeebs, she told her husband. All she had to do was make that window, a small length of time where the boy was more afraid of her than his captor hanging in chains.

  One hand to her. A pair of Jacks. She dealt again.

  But what if Bridget was right? What if magic was the only solution? Amanda could picture his concerned frown, the way his forehead wrinkled.

  She won again. Dealt. Her gaze drifted to Reeves. If Simon was really there she’d be peering over his shoulder…

  He shouldn’t worry, she’d figure something out. She hadn’t needed magic against her father, she wouldn’t need it now.

  Steph rolled over to face her, her face slack with sleep. Caleb had lent her his gloves. Now her hands looked huge, the cuffs well past her wrists. For all his violence, the big idiot always had been soft. In a lot of ways, he had always been suited for family life much better than she had. If Michael had lived, if she hadn’t fucked up, maybe he wouldn’t even be here with her now.

  She looks so like her.

  Amanda had been surprised she hadn’t spotted it as soon as the girl had stepped out the car. Bridget’s daughter was rounder but the features were unmistakable. It was the accent maybe – Bridget’s had been Scottish, the girl’s was more English.

  Are you going to tell her you burned her mother’s body?

  If she thought it would help.

  She won another hand. Simon rolled his eyes. Reeves’ chains rattled like applause.

  The only risk was Skeebs might decide to blurt it out when the mood took him. Amanda didn’t think he would though. The boy might be impulsive but he had survival instincts just like the rest of them.

  Reeves won this hand. Amanda wasn’t sure when she’d switched in her head from playing her husband to playing his murderer.

  In a bout of superstition, she promised herself that if she beat Reeves five times in a row then they’d somehow get out of this train alive.

  Steph’d gone straight for Bridget’s bag too. There she’d been, knife in hand, giving Reeves this look. Then she’d cried. It had been convincing. But not so much that Bridget’s bag wasn’t anywhere but at Amanda’s side now. She’d sooner give the girl a gun than access to those books, right now.

  She’s the same age as Emily. Simon was at her side now, chin resting on her shoulder, fingers squeezing her upper arm. He watched her lose another hand, offered encouragement.

  She was the same age as their youngest. Emily always had her nose in a book. Amanda would come home to find her daughter bent over her homework chewing on the end of her pen. She’d always talked about what she wanted to be, eyes fixed on the horizon. Climate change on the television? She was going to be an environmentalist. Earthquake? An architect. An election? A politician, God help them.

  She won’t be anything now.

  Another hand lost.

  Michaela had been different. Always laughing, so firmly embedded in the now, full of life. Worries just broke against her optimism. The first to tell a joke or pull a face, so much like her father it made Amanda’s heart swell to think of her.

  That chair squeaked across her thoughts again. Her wrists would be rubbed raw by whatever AK was using to bind her by now. She’d left AK furious on the phone. What would he do to get back at her? How would he take his anger out on her little girl?

  Another hand lost.

  The cards seemed to shift before her eyes. She was seeing aces where there were none. She saw patterns in her hands that had her elated but then, too late, she realised were meaningless. When were even numbered cards ever a good hand? Or black, red, black, red?

  Reeves was laughing, she was sure.

  Simon wasn’t there any more.

  Her brow had been furrowed for so long it ached.

  She caught herself glancing across the cards every few seconds at the prisoner before her, arms outstretched and head bobbing like a conductor at a symphony. Each time, she expected to find him staring back, the very idea like a fist around her heart.

  The thought of Emily learning magic brought the taste of bile to the back of her throat.

  Kids always picked up a bit of magic here and there, harmless, playground stuff. But to actively teach a child? Give them power over others? Amanda didn’t see a way you could give someone that kind of power and it not end up the same way every time.

  Despondent, Amanda gathered the cards up and placed them back beside her heart. They felt good there. Safe.

  Fatigue crashed down on her like a wave, so strong and so sudden that it made her nauseous.

  She leaned back again, wormed herself a little deeper into her sleeping bag to stay warm.

  Caleb had already slept an hour or two, she should wake him, get up now, right now and just…

  Thirty years earlier

  ‘There she is.’

  The Abras had taken her out back, a cold, bare storeroom filled with boxes of crisps and pork scratchings. One of them had given her his coat, like it was some kind of consolation.

  She’d sat and shivered and kicked herself as they’d drifted back to their conversation, trying to put the little abused girl out of their minds. They’d talked about magic making the world better, better medicine, better society, better everything. You’d think they were honest men, the way they talked.

  Amanda was already crying when she heard the rumble of her dad’s voice like approaching storm clouds.

  She didn’t turn when the door opened behind her. She barely even flinched when his hand came down on her shoulder.

  The present – eighty-seven hours to destination

  A train blasted past outside, a shot of adrenalin to a soporific heart. Amanda jerked in fright, her whole body jackknifing, the train drumming in her ears. The prisoner quivered in his chains, shaking and twitching like a man electrified.

  Amanda pressed herself back into the wall, the passing train thrumming through her body, squeezing every muscle and making her gritted teeth chatter. This would wake him, this would surely wake him and they weren’t ready. She wasn’t ready.

  The passing train was sucked away again. Reeves slumped in his chains.

  Amanda gasped, short breaths like nails in her throat, her pulse throbbing behind her eyes. Shit, shit, shit, shit. She cast around, looking to her companions but they slept like nothing had happened. Everything was just as she’d left it.

  She sagged, her tensed muscles wrung out and sore.

  She shook her head, gathered her thoughts. She’d almost fallen asleep on her own watch. She’d wake Caleb now, get him to watch for a couple of hours—

  ‘No.’

  The prisoner’s eyes stabbed like icicles in Amanda’s chest, a piercing blue in the darkness.

  ‘No,’ Skeebs said again, knees coming up to his chest, a childlike plea on his lips as he dreamed. ‘No. Please.’

  Reeves’ head was down again. Amanda blinked, realised that the prisoner couldn’t have been staring at her, not with his eyes swollen shut.

  Rolling onto her feet, she crossed the short distance between them, the stench of stale sweat and urine intensifying. She checked the manacles. Tight. She ducked down to look at the prisoner’s face. Drool, pink with blood, stretched in an elastic thread. She could make out the contours of the swelling, broken lips and eyes closed up. Caleb had done so much damage.

  The tattoos spiralled and writhed.

  ‘Please, no more… I’ll do anything.’ Skeebs’ words were a croak, a half sob. ‘Please.’

  A wave of dizziness hit Amanda as she stood. She staggered but it passed as quickly as it had come.

  The sound of the rain had changed. It wasn’t the dull roar of a torrent on metal any more, instead it was the light, distant patter of rain on the skylight at home.

  Outside the freight carriage door, she could hear the sound of her husband busy in the kitchen; the whisper of the gas stove, the rattle of the pots and pans, the murmur of the radio. She couldn’t smell his cooking but knew it would be someth
ing warm, thick and comforting. She should wrap whatever she was doing up quickly, join him.

  One summer, before the kids, it had been so hot that he’d cooked naked except for an apron.

  And when she’d found his corpse, his blood had still been warm. Blood had drip, drip, dripped from the upstairs landing onto the stairs.

  She was at the carriage door without remembering stepping over to it, her hand around the padlock, her padlock. But the others had all the keys…

  ‘Please, help me.’

  She was crouched before the prisoner again, passing through the space like she was in a dream. She’d seen something last time, something that had caught her eye.

  Something to do with the tattoos.

  She leaned in closer, ducking her head to see the prisoner’s torso.

  They weren’t like any language she’d ever seen, wasn’t English, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic. She couldn’t tell where one word ended and another began. Maybe they weren’t words at all. But she’d spotted something earlier, some hint of meaning out of the corner of her eye.

  The prisoner raised his head. Stared with her son’s eyes.

  No. Amanda forced her eyes to the ground and tried to calm herself. That hadn’t happened, that was in her head. She forced herself to look again, to take in the prisoner’s face.

  He was staring back.

  Amanda shut her eyes again, the effect making them water. Her eye was telling her one thing, that the prisoner was slumped down just as he had been, but her mind another, that the prisoner was staring straight back, face swollen and lips opening like a wound to speak.

  ‘Please, I’ll do anything. Just let me go.’ Skeebs continued to plead.

  ‘Just a minute, son,’ Amanda muttered to herself. Let her deal with… She stared hard at the tattoos, taking in every curl of ink. She had to decipher them before she woke up.

  Woke up? She frowned at the thought. Was this a dream? No, she didn’t remember going to sleep. Mustn’t be distracted, not with the smell of cooking so tantalising outside. There were clues to be solved, something that would help her save her children in the tattoos, she was certain of it.

  Emily’s body had stared at her when she’d got home. It was her fault they’d died and her daughter knew it. That blank gaze alone was too hard to bear.

  Hints of meaning bubbled up from the inky palimpsest as Amanda’s eye roved but before she could read them a word it would sink back down. She would follow them, delving deeper, deeper into them, drowning herself in the scrawl, drawing closer under Reeves’ shadow.

  ‘Oh, God.’ Skeebs gave a shuddering sob.

  The tattoos had changed, Amanda could swear, harsh jags now gentle swirls. It almost made sense to her now, like a stranger’s handwriting. She willed it to make sense, to reveal something, but she could only make out half of it, the rest obscured by blood and bruising.

  She snorted in frustration. Fucking Caleb had done that. Stopped her from understanding. There had been that little smile on his lips when he’d stepped out of the carriage, hidden the moment he’d seen Amanda watching. Like he was paying her back for what happened to Michael. Fucking Michael. Been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It hadn’t been her fault.

  Simon called her name, beckoning her to join, help stir or fold or knead. An extra hand when he needed, sometimes a pair of lips to taste.

  The whole thing struck her as odd all of a sudden. She frowned at the scribble before her. Why would the kitchen be outside? Wasn’t she… wherever she was? Her home was a crime scene now, silent, empty, blood dried in the carpets and on the walls.

  It was a dream. She’d fallen asleep on her watch. She turned to where she’d been sitting and there she was, arms folded, nose buried in her scarf, sound asleep. But the idea that she could be in two places at once carried no potency and was soon whisked away as she returned her attention to the scrawl on the prisoner’s body. It had changed again, a little closer to legibility.

  There was one line she was sure made sense, dream logic telling her so, but the fucking thing was bruised, the dark ink obscured by the clouded skin thick with burst blood vessels.

  Amanda ground her teeth, shooting an angry look at Caleb. Amanda hadn’t been there when Caleb had set to work beating the prisoner. She’d talked to Jamison loudly on the phone outside, recording her confession too loudly, drowning out that abattoir smack of meat. She’d closed her ears to the words Reeves cried out until they’d fallen silent.

  Amanda’s head was beginning to sing like an exposed nerve. Her teeth were gritted to the point of breaking, she could hear her pulse in her ears. And somehow the haze was what she needed as she saw written over the prisoner’s heart two words that made sense.

  Help me.

  What were they doing? How had it come to this? Keeping another person restrained. Caleb had done it. Caleb had egged them on. He’d known how much it hurt her but he’d wanted that. He’d wanted her to hurt.

  But this was too far. Locking a man up for days? Beating him whenever he pleased?

  The knife. Where was the knife?

  Wrenching open Bridget’s bag, she recoiled. The blade hurt to look at, the symbols like black spots in her vision. She looked away, back to the prisoner’s tattoos, their black like balm. Reeves was comfort. Caleb the enemy. She saw that now.

  She found herself at the supplies, no picking her way between the sleeping bags. She’d passed through as simply as a thought.

  She tipped the top one over, the contents spilling around her feet.

  A tin of food rolled across the floor, coming to a stop when it met Steph’s face with a pat.

  She brought the box down over the bag, hiding the knife from view.

  Neither of her companions stirred. Skeebs continued to whimper and plead.

  Her husband continued to work in the kitchen. Unreachable. Caleb held the key.

  Amanda’s lip tasted of sweat. She felt the shakes of nervous excitement under her skin. She felt bottled up, restrained. The tendons in her hands were stiff and rusty as if they had been still for years.

  Her hand closed around a tin of something. Peaches? Didn’t matter. It was hard, cold, heavy. Perfect.

  Amanda was glad she couldn’t see the bastard’s face, enfolded as it was in the sleeping bag’s hood.

  She hesitated, readjusting her grip on the tin, her fingers slick with sweat. Do this and she could go home.

  ‘Help me,’ Skeebs whimpered.

  Amanda planted her feet like a woman staring over the edge of a cliff, sweat dripping, her lips a thin scar.

  No, she didn’t want— This was wrong— Reeves was controlling—

  She shook her head, pinched shut her eyes, some thought skittering over her brain and gone again. No, she shouldn’t—

  Again, her muscles ached to move, to exert themselves. They glowed as she fell to her knees at her friend’s side. She estimated where the head was, raised the can.

  She could feel the prisoner watching her, feel his eyes boring into her, watching over her shoulder. There was that plea-filled message written on his chest and Skeebs’ words in her ear.

  Her husband called for her again.

  The tin trembled in the air and swung down, hitting the man with a thud, muffled by the thick padding of the sleeping bag. Amanda felt the bite as the rim found its target, grinned in triumph. She’d done it!

  The growl of Caleb’s fractured trachea stopped, and blood began to boil out through the material in a red cloud.

  And Amanda realised that this wasn’t a dream.

  Chapter 10

  Amanda

  Twenty-five years ago

  When Amanda had first met Caleb, decades before, she’d had one burning question for him.

  ‘So, your boss is a real arsehole, isn’t he?’

  The big man blinked. They’d been stood in silence almost an hour, had never exchanged more than two words, and as a first thing to say it was an attention-grabber.

  Amanda stared up at him, dar
ing him to agree.

  ‘He’s alright,’ Caleb replied.

  Amanda snorted and shook her head. She took another drag of her cigarette, tugging at the short skirt she’d been told to wear and trying not to shiver. ‘This is a waste of time.’

  It was raining, and the wind made the bus shelter they were huddled beneath next to useless.

  The business estate was lit by the occasional street lamp that served to make an already bland cluster of squat industrial buildings look even drabber. Camouflage, Amanda considered, so boring that even the most desperate chancer would overlook them. But if you did your homework…

  Straining her ears, she could just about hear the distinctive tink, tink of a chain link fence being cut open. Gillespie & Sons Precious Metals Refinery was now officially under siege.

  Caleb cleared his throat, checked over the walkie-talkie their boss, Skelton, had given them before leaving. Back to awkward silence. Neither knew the other well enough to endure a comfortable one, or how to pick a topic.

  No knowing how long they’d be out here. While the main team were breaking in, sights set on the refineries heavy vault, they were just lookouts, two of four young hopefuls, working for slim cuts. The police checked up on this area two or three times a night and weren’t so lazy that they’d miss the sight and sound of a vault under a blowtorch.

  The distant sound of an approaching car emerged out from under the rumble of the rain.

  Caleb stiffened. Amanda looked up, amused, as he moved towards her with a terrified look on his face. His arms came up and out like Frankenstein’s monster, ready to grab her. Amanda didn’t move to reciprocate, legs crossed at the knee, cigarette dangling between her lips.

  When the cops came circling, he was to signal the men inside then make like they were two kids necking, waiting on their bus.

  She’d never seen a big lad so terrified. He’d even forgotten the signalling part.

  Before committing to grabbing her, his eyes trying to plot a course past her folded arms and hot cigarette, he checked back over his shoulder.