Fuck! It rings out. I begin to type a text; to get him to ring me back straight away. While I’m typing, I notice the time. 14:49. Fucking hell. I might only have eleven minutes left to live. I’m re-reading my text and am about to send it when the phone begins to buzz in my hand.
‘Lenny, what the hell’s going on?’ I snap down the line, though I snap it as quietly as I possibly can.
‘I’m at Guus Meyer’s house,’ he says. He’s whispering too. ‘Guus was a suspect for De Brun back in the day, Gordon. They never told you about him because of some sensitive information relating to the cop’s interest in him. But I’m questioning him about all of that now and I’ll have answers for you in the next few minutes. I’m going in to search his house now.’
‘Are you telling me Guus took Betsy?’ I can actually physically feel my heart rate rise, but at this stage I really don’t give a shit.
‘That’s what I intend finding out.’
‘They’re coming to get me for my surgery in a few minutes. I don’t have much time.’
‘Gordon, I promise you I will ring you back before three o’clock. Guus’s house is odd. Very odd. There’s something not quite right about it. He has a basement that I wanna get inside. After I check it all out, I promise I will ring you back. And I’ll have answers for you. Now… are you keeping your promise to me?’
I stare over at the envelope resting on my bedside cabinet, then hear somebody outside my room. They begin to wrestle with the handle of the ward door.
‘Lenny, I gotta go. Ring me back!’
I manage to hang up and then hide the phone under my sheets before the door fully opens. Bollocks!
‘Gordy, Gordy, I found her. I fuckin found her. I know where Betsy is!’
I stare up at him as if I’m staring at a ghost.
He moves closer to me, right to the edge of my bed, then leans over and stares into my eyes.
‘Have you got that copy of your will – leaving your house to me? If you have it signed, I’ll tell you where she is.’
I remain schtum, stunned. Then my eyes go wide when I hear a rustling in the cubicle. Oh fuck. Michelle. The door snaps open and out she strides. Straight towards him.
‘You fucking scumbag bastard,’ she screams, clawing at his face. I can actually see rows of cuts form under his eyes.
‘Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you, Alan Keating,’ she howls. She’s on top of him, slapping, punching, scraping.
I throw my legs over the side of the bed, and ready myself to pounce on Michelle; to take her off Keating. But then the ward door opens wide. It seems as if the whole of the bloody surgery team are there. Each of them open-mouthed at what they’re witnessing, Elaine front and centre of the group. She looks up at me, then back down at the two wrestlers on the floor.
14:50
Lenny
Lenny feels his wrist begin to shake a little, which in turn makes his entire hand, even his fingers, shake. He takes the first step down, more wary of what’s going on behind him as opposed to what may lie in front of him. He takes another step down, then another – walking towards the darkness. The light from the hallway behind him is all that guides his next step. He inches an ear towards the dark, the deathly silence making his heart sink a little.
As he reaches the bottom of the steps, he flinches upon hearing Guus’s arm shoot up behind him. He turns around, elbows up, ready to defend himself.
Click.
Guus has pulled at a hanging light switch. Lenny doesn’t take the time to sigh a relieved breath; he just swings his head back around, takes in the basement. Boxes. More boxes. An old washing machine. More boxes. Shelves with boxes on them. He swallows hard, then holds his hands up, palms out, as if to signify some sort of an apology. Or maybe it’s just disappointment. He’s beginning to think Guus isn’t involved at all. Yet why does he always produce that snidey laugh that screams ‘guilty’? Lenny looks back and sees Guus shrug a shoulder, a sly grin on his face.
‘Wanna check she’s not inside any of the boxes?’ he says, then delivers that horrible laugh out of the side of his mouth again.
Lenny holds two fingers to the centre of his forehead and bows his head a little. Heat rises within him, as if his blood is coming to boiling point.
‘Betsy! Betsy!’ he shouts from the top of his voice.
He brushes Guus aside, runs past him and back up the steps.
‘Betsy Blake. I’m here to save you. To bring you home!’
He sprints in to the living room opposite the kitchen. Then darts back into the hallway and into a large dining room. Back out into the hallway. Up the stairs.
‘Betsy! Betsy!’
Into one bedroom. Then another. A bathroom. Another bedroom.
‘Betsy!’ he ends up in the middle of the square landing; his voice echoing off the walls and back into his own ears. As he hears himself calling Betsy’s name, his face cringes. He takes two steps backwards until his back leans against the wall. Then he slides down it slowly into a seated position, and sinks his eyeballs into the caps of his knees.
‘What the fuck am I doing?’ he whispers into his crotch.
Then footsteps sound out. Slowly coming up the stairs towards him. He doesn’t look up. He feels too ashamed, too embarrassed.
Guus shuffles towards him, then slips down into a seated position, their shoulders almost touching. Nobody says anything; Lenny’s frustrated breathing the only sound between them.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he finally mumbles.
Guus lets out a soft sigh.
‘I think old Gordon has made you jusht as deluded as he is,’ he says.
Lenny almost edges to peel his eyes up from his knee caps, but stops himself. He can’t bring himself to look at Guus. He’s never been more mortified at any point in his whole life.
‘You didn’t really think I took her, did you?’
Lenny doesn’t answer. He can’t find the words to justify his madness. He just closes his eyes firmer, forces them deeper into his knee caps. He begins to question whether or not he genuinely believed Betsy was here. He actually can’t remember. The past ten minutes have been a bit of a blur. A cringe runs down his spine, making him shudder.
Guus nudges his shoulder against Lenny’s.
‘Look, maybe you got carried away, but it’s not all your fault. You were just doing a job.’
There’s a hint of sympathy in Guus’s voice. Lenny can’t understand why he’d be sympathetic, certainly doesn’t think he himself would be that sympathetic if somebody ran around his house calling out for a missing girl.
Lenny lets out a grunt; a real frustrated ugly yelp. Then he shakes his head as he wonders why the hell he thought he could solve a seventeen-year-old mystery in just five hours.
‘Cops questioned me seventeen years ago and let me go within a few hours,’ Guus says, interrupting Lenny’s swirling mind. ‘I was in Birmingham alright when Sarah McClaire was taken, but I was in a meeting with twenty-five other people. I wasn’t anywhere near the area that poor girl went misshing from. And when Betsy went misshing, I was on a phone call here to a client of mine. The cops know all this, I had alibis that were proven to be correct within minutes of me being questioned. I don’t know what elshe to say to you… it wasn’t me who took Betsy. In fact, nobody took her, well nobody abducted her. She was killed when a car hit her, her body taken and disposed of somewhere. I thought everybody in the country knew that. Well, everybody except Gordon. It’sh kinda why we had to buy him out of the company. Gordon went… well, Gordon went a bit mad. The guy’s nuts, Lenny.’
Lenny shakes his head one more time, then finally peels each of his eyes from his knee caps. He raises his left hand a little, rests it on Guus’s knee.
‘I’m sorry.’
Then he rises up, manages to get himself safely to his feet without stumbling despite his head still spinning. He rests his palm against the wall for balance, takes a deep breath, then he reaches down to Guus, pats him on top of the head and apologises again. He
staggers towards the stairs, trudges down each step as if he’s got major back problems and then finds himself out in the hallway.
‘Listen, when you talk to Gordon, pass on my best wishes, and tell him I mean that genuinely,’ Guus shouts down the stairs.
Lenny doesn’t answer. He wrestles with the zip of his jacket pocket, then whips out his mobile phone and checks the time on the top of his screen. 14:58. He told Gordon he’d ring him back before three; told his wife he’d be at the school for a meeting at three. He thumbs the buttons on his phone.
‘Priorities. Priorities,’ he mumbles to himself as he opens Guus’s front door and steps out, finding himself in the messy garden once again. He looks up as the tone rings. And rings. The sun is starting to dominate the sky, a light blue winning out against the grey.
‘Bollocks,’ he says when the tone rings out. ‘Please answer, sweetie.’
He rings again; breathes in some fresh air through his nostrils as he waits. It rings out. He thumbs his way into his text messages.
Sweetie. I’m getting a taxi home right now. I’ll be with you soon. I’m so sorry about today. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. Love you. X
Then he scrolls into his contacts list, presses at another number as he walks up Avery Street towards the main Clontarf Road.
‘Hello, Lynck Cabs.’
‘Hi, I need another taxi please. I’m on the Clontarf Road, I’ll be waiting just outside The Yacht pub.’
‘No problem, Sir, we’ll have one with you in less than ten minutes.’
After Lenny hangs up, he edges the phone closer to his mouth, begins to nibble on the rubber cover as he tries to straighten his thought process. He can’t put this phone call off much longer. He tilts the screen towards his eyes. Checks the time. 15:00. Then he looks up to the sky, squints at the brightness.
‘Fuck it,’ he says, then thumbs at his phone again, holds it to his ear. It rings. And rings. Until finally a click confirms the call has been answered.
‘Thank fuck, Lenny,’ Gordon says, almost panting down the line. ‘They’re bringing me down to theatre now, what have you got for me?’
One year ago
Betsy
Dod turns off the light in the back hallway and then inches towards the door. When he opens it, he steps out, looks around at the back of the houses behind us, his head turning left, then right. Then left, then right again. He turns to me and curls his finger to let me know I can follow him. He does the same thing every time.
I pull at the door really carefully to step out and immediately breathe in through my nose to taste the fresh air in the back of my throat. It’s the first thing I do every time Dod lets me out the back. He’s been letting me do this for nearly a year now. I couldn’t stop thinking about that time I sneaked out and really, really wanted to ask him to let me outside. But I didn’t know how I could ask him without letting him know that I had sneaked outside once while he was upstairs. So when he asked me what I wanted for my nineteenth birthday last year, I told him I would love nothing more than to breathe in some fresh air. He really didn’t want to do it, but after he turned out all of the lights in the back of the house, he realised nobody would be able to see us. We just have to stay quiet, that way nobody will ever know we are here.
He lets me out here every Saturday night. Just as a treat. He always stares at me as I take long breaths up through my nose. We stay here until Dod feels as if it’s too cold, then we go back inside. Saturdays are always fun. There’s always something good on the TV whatever time of the year. We like to watch Strictly Come Dancing. And when that’s not on, there might be Britain’s Got Talent. Or Saturday Night Takeaway. Ant and Dec are really funny. I think I might fancy Dec. He has a really pretty smile and everything he does makes me laugh. He doesn’t have to do much. He might just look down the camera or something like that and it makes me giggle.
I don’t have to cook on a Saturday. Dod orders Pizza. We get pepperoni, chicken tikka and green peppers on our pizza. It’s so yummy. It’ll probably arrive in about ten minutes’ time.
It’s cold tonight. I put my arms around Dod’s waist and lean my ear in to his chest as I breathe in the air.
Every time I’m outside here I think about the first time I sneaked out. I often imagine what I would have done if I had have jumped over the fence. I could have screamed at the neighbours and started to bang on their back door or windows. But I’m so glad I didn’t. Life is good now. I am a really happy girl. Or woman, seeing as I’m going to be twenty soon. That’ll mean I’ve been here for sixteen years. Some of those years were really bad. Some of them really good. Like this year. The best year I’ve ever had.
I squeeze Dod a little tighter.
I read – once – in a book called Dear Octopus: ‘the family, that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor in our innermost hearts never quite wish to.’ That really made so much sense to me when I read it. It made me think of Dod. He is my family. My entire family. The most important person in the world to me. I’d be lost without him. I don’t want the neighbours. I don’t want Mrs Witchety across the street. I don’t want anything or anyone anymore. I just want Dod.
‘Come on, Betsy, let’s go inside,’ Dod says as he releases his arms. I smile up at him, then follow him in.
Dod heads straight for the kitchen after he’s locked the back door. I can hear him get the pizza slicer from the drawer. I go into the TV room, pick up the remote control, switch the channels until I find BBC.
‘Come on, Dod, it’s almost starting.’
He arrives with the pizza slicer just in time. The catchy title music begins to play and Dod shakes his shoulders at me. I laugh really loud at him trying to dance. I can actually hear myself laugh and it fills me with a real happiness. Then he holds his hand out to me.
‘No,’ I say, giggling.
‘Come on!’
So I do. I grab his hand. And as the professional dancers begin their routine on the TV – as they do at the start of every Strictly Come Dancing show – me and Dod join them on the dance floor. He spins me around as we both laugh. Then he tries to pick me up to do a lift. But I seem to be a bit too heavy for him. We fall into a heap on the floor and can’t get up because we are laughing so much. In fact I’m laughing so much that I feel tears come out of my eyes.
There’s no better feeling then tears of laughter. Laughing seems to be the only reason I produce tears these days. I’m so lucky.
14:55
Gordon
I’m not sure Michelle has even noticed the presence of five other people in the ward as she continues to claw and slap at Keating. I sit on the edge of the bed and just watch as two male members of Douglas’s surgical team grab at my ex wife’s armpits, lifting her off the old prick. Keating staggers to a standing position, his face already swollen, scrape marks visible under his left eye.
Elaine, still in the doorway, removes her hand from her face and stares at me, her lips ajar.
‘That woman is a psychopath,’ Keating calls out.
‘Me? You’re the fuckin psycho,’ Michelle shouts.
They’re both hushed; one man in a white coat standing between both of them, his arms outstretched.
‘This patient,’ he says pointing at me, ‘is due to undergo major heart surgery now. The last thing he needs is his heart rate rising prior to these procedures. How dare the two of you act in such a manner.’
‘She just fucking hopped on me, started—’
‘Shut up!’ the man in the white coat screams. The whole ward falls silent, no more squabbling, no more murmuring from those standing in the doorway.
‘Mr Blake, what has been going on here?’
As he asks that question, three security men arrive in the ward, shuffling their way past the surgical team.
‘He,’ I say, pointing at Keating, ‘just powered into this ward making up all sorts of false accusations about my missing daughter. My wife – ex wife – was only protecting herself, protecting
us. Take him away.’
Two of the security men step towards Keating and force his hands behind his back.
Keating just snarls at me, shrugs his shoulders.
‘Worth a try, wasn’t it?’ he laughs as he’s led away.
‘And, miss,’ the other security man says, ‘you’ll have to come with me too.’ He places his hand on her shoulder, moves her around so she’s facing the door.’
‘Hold on, hold on,’ Michelle says, turning back to face me.
The security man looks at me. I nod. But as he lets go of Michelle’s shoulder to allow her to come to me, Elaine walks into the centre of the room, between me and my ex wife.
‘Wait!’ she says, then gulps. ‘It’s not clear if Gordon will be going for his surgeries now.’
Out of the corner of my eye I can sense the rest of the surgical team cringe in the doorway.
‘Elaine,’ I call out. She doesn’t react. ‘Elaine!’
She walks towards the rest of her team, and as she’s about to leave the room with them, she turns back. ‘Give us two minutes,’ she says.
The security man remains with Michelle and me; my ex-wife looking like she’s about to throw up, her face paling more and more with every passing second.
‘I’m so sorry, Gordon,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry.’
She drapes herself over me. I breathe her in. It’s been so long since I’ve done that.
‘It’s not your fault,’ I whisper into her ear. ‘I’ve been causing drama in this ward all morning.’
She leans off me, sucks wet droplets of watery snot back up her nose, then wipes at her soaked face.
‘Hey, you really beat the shit out of him, huh?’ I say laughing. She tries to laugh too, but it just causes her snot to fall back out of her nose.
The Tick-Tock Trilogy Box Set Page 47