The Crowlands

by T M Creedy

  Studying Sara’s passports carefully, I decide to use the Australian one in the name of Sara Sullivan. This, I reason, would be the simplest way to get through immigration and security at both airports. At Heathrow, I would be just another Aussie tourist heading back home, and in Melbourne I am an Australian citizen, bound to be welcomed back into the country’s borders without a second glance. Sara’s passport photo shows her with her hair loose around her shoulders; she is not smiling and the badly lit background makes her look washed out. It’s only the hair that makes her look different from me. If I cut mine into the same style I could easily pass for the person in the passport photo.

  The flight leaves London at two tomorrow afternoon. I will have to be at Heathrow by eleven to check-in so I have plenty of time to visit a hair salon tomorrow morning and get my hair cut in a copy of hers but there is one other thing I need to do before I leave. The receipt from the self-storage unit has been bothering me since I stumbled across it. What could Sara have needed to store on the same day she washed up in Peckham? Why would she need to store anything, on a pay-per-day rate, if she was about to leave the country unless she intended to go back to the facility before she got on the flight? I have to know. I have to see what’s in there. First light tomorrow I’ll get the underground to King’s Cross. I’ll have to pay for the four days of locker rental but I figure it’s the least I can do seeing as Sara left me all her money.

  It's weird, but knowing I have all that cash at my disposal I have no desire to gamble. What would be the point? I could use it to chase the big jackpots up for grabs at some of the big online sites but, even if I did win big, I can’t hang around for a week waiting for the money to go into my account. I need to be on that plane tomorrow. Having such a large amount of money has made me protective of it somehow, it’s not to be wasted. I’ll need it to live on for the foreseeable future.

  I send off a quick email back to Margie, telling her not to worry, I’ll be on the plane tomorrow and am expected into Melbourne at six in the morning their time on Wednesday. I’ll figure out the trains to whatever that place is called when I get there and let her know when I’m likely to arrive. Satisfied that I have done all I can for tonight I pack up Sara’s laptop and walk the short distance back to my cheap hotel, looking furtively over my shoulder and listening out for heavy footsteps behind me the whole way. I am relieved when I get back into my room and lock the door, dragging the flimsy bedside table across in front of it for extra security. I feel filthy, as if the horror of the day has been absorbed into my skin and I need to soak it away. The bath in the tiny ensuite is cracked and home to a family of spiders but I carefully scoop them up, offering them a temporary refuge in the grimy sink. Turning the taps on full creates nothing more than a tepid trickle and it will be a while before I have enough water in the tub to call it a proper bath. I have no soap either so I rummage through Sara’s washbag, finding some shampoo and squeezing half of it under the dribbling taps to create the illusion of cleansing bubbles. I wish I had thought to get something to drink while I was out, I doubt I will be able to sleep tonight without it. Every time I close my eyes the scene in my bedroom is imprinted on my mind, the darkness of the blood, the pallor of her skin and her sightless eyes.

  The bath has finally filled up enough to cover my body and I climb in wearily. This morning I had some semblance of a normal, albeit fucked up life, and now I’m on the run from a killer, using a fake passport in someone else’s name and carrying a large amount of stolen money. I don’t think my Gran would be very proud of me right now.

  I’m up way before the alarm I set last night, jittery and jumpy at every sound from the dingy hallway outside my room. Outside its still dark with only the faint traces of pink beginning to light the sky and I re-pack the backpack hurriedly, wanting to be out and lose myself in the rush of early morning commuters. The pack is heavy and swamps me and I’m acutely aware of how much cash I’m lugging about with me in the laptop bag. If someone decides to mug me they’d rip it out of my hand in a second and I wouldn’t have a hope of defending myself – I can barely even balance with this pack on my back so at the last minute I transfer the flattened rolls of notes into the depths of the pack, shoving them down deep in amongst the clothing. Feeling better I hoist the pack on again and head out of the door, barely stopping to throw my room key at the same woman on reception from last night.

  The morning is frosty and my hands grow numb while my back is sweating from the friction of the nylon padding on the backpack. It’s not far to Peckham Rye station and I catch the train to Clapham Junction to pick up the Northern line to Kings Cross. The storage place is not hard to find and the bored looking young Asian man on the reception desk leaps up to assist me when I show him the receipt I found in Sara’s bag. Leading me down an industrial looking corridor he stops at one of the metal doors telling me that this is the one I hired last week. The locker is set with a number code which I have to tap into the keypad and I’m hoping the four-digit number scrawled on the top of the receipt is the right code. The attendant is watching me expectantly so I try to appear confident as I push the numbers and breathe a sigh of relief when the little light beeps from red to green and the electronic door opens with a click and a buzz. I turn to look at the young man, hoping he will take the hint and leave me to it. I don’t want him looking over my shoulder at whatever lies behind the door, I don’t know what’s in there myself. He looks disappointed, it’s probably the highlight of his job, seeing what people like to hide away in their private locked rooms, but he tells me to press the buzzer on the wall if I need any further assistance and ambles back towards the reception desk.

  The metal room is small, the smallest one she could rent I suppose, it is more like a metal chute, extending about ten feet back but measuring only about three feet by three feet square; it’s almost coffin shaped or like one of those body drawers you find in a morgue. It’s empty apart from an old leather satchel, the kind that has a long strap for wearing it across the body, and looks like something one of the Famous Five might have taken to school. It’s battered and scuffed, the brown leather showing matt tan in places where the shine has been worn away. The satchel has been tucked almost out of sight to the right of the door, and I tug it free where it has caught on a sharp metal corner, and fumble at the leather buckles. I keep both the bag and my head tucked into the locker itself, aware that there might well be CCTV cameras in the hallway, and I don’t want any record of what is in that satchel until I’ve opened it, and I know what I’m dealing with. The straps are done up tightly and it takes me a while to unpick the leather enough to be able to wriggle them free, but when I pull open the top flap to expose the contents of the bag, it was worth the effort and broken fingernails. Money. That’s what in the satchel. Plastic wrapped bundles of twenty and fifty pound notes, paper-sleeved packages of Australian and Canadian Dollars, there must be at least twenty grand here. It looks real, not counterfeit, the notes look well used and some have pen scribbles on some of them. I shove the packets back into the bag and check the inner zipped pockets but the only thing in this satchel apart from the money is a handful of flash drives. I’m not even surprised at the amount of money in there, not even shocked anymore. It’s like my mind has been forced to deal with so much in the past twenty-four hours it has shut down, and refused to compute anything else. I swing the satchel strap over my shoulder and allow the bag to rest against my left side, tucking it half under my open coat and turning it inwards so the opening lies flat against my hip, and no sneaky hands will find their way into the bag when I’m standing on the platform waiting for the train.

  Peeling off a couple of twenties from the stash I found at home I settle the bill for the locker hire and head back out into the street, on the lookout for a place that does walk-in haircuts with no appointment necessary. I find a Supercuts a few streets away and ask the hairdresser to cut me in a fringe, and take a couple of inches off the length, giving it a good tidy as she goes. In her passport ph
oto Sara doesn’t have a fringe but I’m counting on the fact that a slightly different hairstyle will make up for the fact that Sara and I, although similar, aren’t quite alike enough to fool any sharp eyed official. I might get some of those heavy framed magnifying spectacles that you can pick up in any chemist as well, and wear them when I pass through security at the airport. I don’t know if it’s enough to be completely convincing but I have to try, I have no other option. The haircut is a success and I feel much lighter and optimistic as I head for the closest Airbus stop for the bus to Heathrow. I have plenty of time to check in, and I’m starving by now so as soon as I’m safely through to airside I can treat myself to some breakfast. I can treat myself to a lot of things now. That reminds me of the money I am carrying in the satchel, I’ll need to hide it before I get to the airport. I’m not sure how much cash you’re allowed to take to another country but I’ve a feeling I’m well over the limit, and my scruffy backpacker appearance is at odds with the amount of money I have on me. As soon as I’m safely inside the terminal I will lock myself into toilet cubicle and scatter the cash about my belongings. I remember a good trick someone once showed me, how to hollow out the middle of a thick paperback book and hide things in the cavity, and I think this will work quite well. I just need to buy the biggest book I can find but I’ll need some kind of blade to cut the pages out so I call into the nearest bookshop and purchase a copy of Bleak House, along with a pair of desk scissors, and spend the bus journey hidden in the front row of the top deck, surreptitiously slicing out a neat square inside the book, one-inch-deep but four inches long. It will hide several of the flat plastic money packets and will not look out of place squashed down at the bottom of my backpack. My imagination takes flight and I make plans to empty out the rest of the shampoo in its opaque plastic bottle so I can stuff some cash in there too.

  At the terminal I buy one of those money wallets from a luggage shop and put several packs in, mixing up the English pounds with the Australian Dollars so it looks like that is my travelling money. I find out from the Foreign Exchange desk that I can take up to ten thousand dollars into Australia but I settle for eight, ready with a story of working two jobs to save as much money as I can before returning home and settling down. The rest of the money is tucked into every available nook and cranny I can find in my backpack; it is tucked into the toes of trainers and folded into sarongs, it is lining the inside of my washbag and rolled up into balls inside socks. The flash drives from the satchel I store inside the metal water flask which has its own net pocket on the outside of the pack. I can go through them when I’m safely in Melbourne and not looking over my shoulder, watching to see if a stocky man dressed in black is following me. The satchel is forlornly empty now as if it realises it has outlived its usefulness. If I squash it down enough it fits inside the laptop case so I bring it with me. I can’t bear throwing it away, not when it clearly meant so much to Sara.

  I check in at one of the self-service points and print off my boarding passes. The British Airways flight stops in Hong Kong for a couple of hours and I carry on to Melbourne with Qantas, landing twenty-eight hours after take-off. Sara has booked a return flight for next year but I have no intention of using it, I will find a way to stay away forever. I’m nervous as I queue up to check my backpack in and I can feel beads of sweat pool on my face but I don’t know if I’m nervous because I am expecting someone to pull me up for being a fraud, or because I know I have squirrelled away roughly fifteen thousand pounds inside that bag. The check-in desk attendant checks my boarding pass and Australian passport and all she wants to know is if I have packed the bag myself. Which I have, several times over, I haven’t lied. The final hurdle is the long security line through to the departure gates. Will I pass for Sara? I hope to God there’s no kind of electronic recognition chip imbedded in the Australian passport when I see some people going past the eye recognition booths, but the passport is several years old now and I think I’m safe. It’s too old for this new technology and I am stamped out of the country the old-fashioned way, with barely a glance.

  This is the safest I have felt in a long time. I am airside, surrounded by hundreds of people all waiting for flights in this crowded terminal lounge, and nothing bad can happen to me now so I can relax for a while. One of the overpriced terminal bars is still offering an all-day breakfast and my stomach rumbles so I order one with extra toast, and unlimited mugs of tea, knowing I don’t have to watch the pennies anymore. I’ve never experienced having money before and I don’t even feel the urge to buy a lotto ticket or a scratch card; as far as I’m concerned I’ve already hit the jackpot so there’s no need to keep chasing that dream. My breakfast arrives and I fall on it, devouring the bacon and sausages and wiping my plate clean of baked bean sauce with the last of my toast. I wander around the fancy shops in the lounge, wondering why on earth people would feel the urge to buy Gucci or Prada from an airport shop - surely if they have the money to buy high-end designer gear then they would do it in far more glamourous places.

  Loading up on sugary snacks and magazines for the long, long flight I am relieved to see my flight number is finally being called and I can go to the gate. Once again I have to show Sara’s passport along with my boarding pass, and once again my hand luggage is x-rayed, but I don’t set off any alarms and I am not pulled roughly out of the line by an airline official demanding to see another form of identification. Sara didn’t seem to have a driver’s licence or even a student card and I found nothing else in her bags, not even a debit card. It looks like she got by solely by using cash, and by not having any other official documents other than the passports she led a totally off-grid existence. I wonder how she paid for things like her flights, whether she went into a high street travel agent and paid in cash; she must have had some kind of credit card, there’s no way you can get by without one these days. It’s further concrete evidence that she was involved in something not quite legal. What kind of person can get away with not having even a library card in this modern age of needing to prove your address for anything and everything? I have my own driver’s licence on me but it is, of course, not in the same name as the passport I am using; I’ll just have to jump off that bridge when I come to it. Hopefully, my life in Melbourne will be so isolated there won’t be any need to prove who I am, or rather, who I am not.

  My flight starts boarding and I check the seat number allocated to me at check-in, noting it is quite near the front, but I’m not so lucky that she booked into business class and I am seated in the first row directly behind the business cabin so I can look but not touch. I have the seat nearest the window and as the flight slowly fills up I pray for the seat next to me to be empty. I cannot face twenty something hours of mindless polite chitchat with a stranger and I wish I’d had the time to buy an IPod so I could stick some earphones in and block out the rest of the world. Luck is still on my side though and by the time the flight attendants are slamming the overhead lockers shut and cross-checking the doors there is still no one in either of the two seats next to me. The plane begins to push back and I settle into my little domain. This is better than business class. I have a row to myself and I waste no time in staking my claim, lest someone further down the plane decides to move into my row and spread themselves out, by making a cosy nest from the pillows and blankets provided by the airline and scattering my books and magazines across all three seats.

  The flight to Hong Kong is quite enjoyable. There are hundreds of movies to choose from, most are new cinema releases and I spend a few hours catching up with the latest films. I would never normally go to the cinema in my old life – why spend a tenner on seeing a film when I could put that tenner into the slot machines? But there’s something cosy about zooming through the sky, wrapped up in a blanket and staring mindlessly at the screen in front of me. With each mile we travel I am further and further away, both in physical distance and in mind, from the gruesome mess I left in my flat. I wonder if they have found her yet. Surely Mr Benny wou
ld have tried to gain access to get his hands on my rent money by now and would have stumbled into the nightmare scene in my bedroom. It crosses my mind that maybe he would think she was me. The body on the floor didn’t look like the lively, vibrant Sara I had met only a few days ago and Mr Benny had never laid eyes on her, he wasn’t aware she was staying in my flat, so there’s every chance the police would assume it was me who’d had my throat cut and left for dead. All of my personal effects were still in the flat after all, and I haven’t used my bank card for a couple of days so if they investigated further it would appear that my life stopped altogether sometime on Sunday afternoon. I am a ghost now, Sara Sullivan probably doesn’t even officially exist, and it is surprisingly liberating. I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to start again somewhere new, with no shadows of my former pathetic life hanging over me. I have money, more money than I’d ever dreamed of, and I have somewhere to live for the next year so it’s up to me to make something of myself. I owe it to Sara – if I am going to be living her life for her the least I can do will be to live it well. I will make her proud.

  Hong Kong International is a blaze of bright colours and sterile spaces. I only have a few hours before I’m on the flight to Melbourne but I’m grateful for the chance to walk around and stretch my aching limbs. The super-clean bathrooms have vending machines providing little kits of face wash and moisturiser and I change a few pounds for Hong Kong dollars to buy one, marvelling at the foreignness of the notes. I change enough to buy a plate of noodles at one of the terminal restaurants even though I’m not hungry, but they smell so good and everything is so new to me I feel like I have to experience everything I can. After washing my face and dropping eye drops into my tired eyes I continue walking around the bright atrium, checking the information board for my next gate number and making a dummy run so I know where I’m going when we come to board later.