Five Parks

by Ross McGuinness

  ‘Let’s start at the hill I fell down, near the railway tracks, near where Phillips parked his car. If he’s left something behind, it might be there. Do you have a torch on your phone?’

  I hear a click below me and a bright light burns into my face.

  ‘Sorry, Suze!’ she says, turning off the torch.

  ‘Okay, let’s go.’

  But there’s something I want to do first. I lean in and give Sylvie another hug, one that says I never want to let go. She squeezes back. She hasn’t given up on me. She has been with me through everything. All good things come to an end, and she unfolds herself from the embrace to gaze at me under the moon. She must think she undid the spell too soon, because she opens her arms out wide again, welcoming me in for another hug before we go search for clues, two little Nancy Drews alone in the dark. I spread my own arms in return, but not wide, for the knuckles of my opposing thumbs graze each other as my hands move forward, until they fit tightly around Sylvie’s neck. And then I do my own squeezing.

  47

  My best friend’s neck stiffens in my grasp and her fists rain down on either side of my head, hard and determined at first, but then more flailing. Desperate.

  I can do this. I can keep squeezing. It’s the easiest thing in the world.

  Sylvie’s mouth bawls open to drink in air and moon before gurgling something disgusting. Spit lands on my bare lower arms. They are taut and purposeful. Her eyes go big and white to match the moon and her nostrils tighten. I keep squeezing. My foot skids in some random part of Rob’s broken phone, but my arms stay straight.

  I turn my eyes away from Sylvie’s blackening, throbbing face and examine my hands. They too are black in the moonlight, dark with cuts and scratches to remind me of what happened in that room.

  The blows to my head cease. Sylvie has stopped fighting. She banishes more fluid that slimes down her chin and between my fingers. Another liquid slides along my arms, but coming from the opposite direction; I hadn’t known I was crying.

  The rustle in the bushes to my right tells me I can loosen my grip; my job is done. A huge force emerges from the darkness and barges me off the bench on to the ground. My left arm skids across the gravel before I drag myself to my knees, coughing my way through the dust. An echoing splutter from the bench alerts me that Sylvie is still alive. I didn’t really want to kill her, at least not until I started trying. Why else would I have asked him to hide in the bushes?

  ‘Suze, what the fuck are you doing?!’

  The words are Michael’s, but he isn’t looking at me. He is rubbing Sylvie’s back as she leans over the metal arm of the bench, taking in noisy gulps of precious night air.

  The pain in my knee splits up into my thigh and down through my shin as I get to my feet.

  ‘Get away from her, Michael. She is mine.’

  Now that I know Sylvie is safe, I want to kill her again.

  ‘Suze …. fuck … what have you done?!’

  I was prepared for Michael’s reaction, but now that I’m in this moment, a moment I predicted but dreaded, I am too angry. I want to rip her apart.

  ‘Michael ….please … get off the bench … get out of my way. It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask you to do for me.’

  ‘No! Stay away from her!’

  I’ve already used up my last wish. Just do one more thing for me, that’s what I asked him a few hours ago, back in his bedroom. But I was no longer asking him to bring me to the hospital. Instead, I asked him to wait for us to leave, then come here, to Gladstone Park, to the thick bushes behind the bench at the tennis courts.

  Trust me, I told him, knowing he believed I kidnapped Miles Phillips, that he may never trust me again. I didn’t know if Michael would come or not. He wouldn’t answer back in his bedroom. He’s got plenty to say for himself now.

  ‘Just stay the fuck back, Suze!’ he shouts, stroking Sylvie’s hair. ‘What were you thinking?’

  I need to get close to her. I hold my hands up in the air, like a surrounded robber exiting a bank, and Michael’s head follows mine as I slip slowly back into my corner of the bench. His body is a barrier between me and Sylvie.

  ‘Just stay there, Suze. Don’t fucking move.’

  He doesn’t trust me. He doesn’t know why he’s really here. Sylvie’s spluttering eases and she finally manages: ‘Please. Keep her away from me!’

  I have lost them both. It’s time to reel one of them back.

  ‘Why do you think I attacked her?’ I ask Michael. ‘Why do you think I asked you here?’

  ‘I don’t know, Suze. Because you’ve lost the fucking plot? You need help.’

  ‘It was you who solved all the clues that helped you find me, wasn’t it?’

  ‘We both did, Suze. We both wanted to find you. But what we saw in there when we found him … and how you’re acting now … I don’t know what to believe.’

  ‘Did you think you solved the clues first because you are smarter than her, or because you wanted to find me more than she did?’

  Sylvie rediscovers her voice.

  ‘Suze, you’re crazy. What is wrong with you? Michael, I want to go. I’m scared.’

  I ignore her.

  ‘You say you don’t know what to believe, Michael. All I want you to do is believe your ears.’

  He cocks his head from the shadow of the trees into the mixed light of the moon and the streetlamps, and I catch a glimpse of his eyes. I have to make him understand.

  ‘When you were in the bushes just now, did you hear Sylvie ask me about Date #1.5, the date with the TV presenter in the hotel?’

  His head stays still, half in shadow, half in light.

  ‘Yes. So?’

  ‘And do you remember a few weeks ago when I told you about Date #1.5?’

  Michael leans back on the bench, back into the darkness.

  ‘No. I don’t. You didn’t tell me about it. I don’t know who you’re talking about. Suze, what is all this about? You’re scaring me too.’

  I can’t let him leave. I have to keep snapping.

  ‘The reason you don’t remember it is because I didn’t tell you about it.’

  ‘So what? Sylvie just told you she heard the story from Rob. You told it to Rob. You’re not making sense, Suze. I have to get Sylvie to hospital. She needs someone to take a look at her neck.’

  I lean forward and take my own look. There is no light on her to guide me, but the shade of Sylvie’s neck matches every shadow around her. I had a good grip. Fuck her neck.

  ‘Rob didn’t tell her about it either,’ I say.

  Her reaction is swift.

  ‘Why are you doing this, Suze? Why are you calling me a liar? Because you’ve told so many yourself you don’t know the difference? You’re pathetic.’

  ‘Rob didn’t tell her about it,’ I repeat. ‘I did.’

  ‘So what?’ says Michael. ‘Who cares who told who? You’re not making any sense.’

  I ignore him and concentrate on forming the words.

  ‘I told her about it. But it wasn’t one of those secrets I whispered over a few drinks. This one was special. So I typed it up for her. At a laptop.’

  It’s Sylvie’s turn to lean forward, so I can see her past Michael.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Suze. You’ve lost it. Rob told me about the TV presenter. You need help.’

  I thump my fist against the back of the bench and both of them jump.

  ‘Don’t tell me what I need you fucking bitch!’

  Michael puts his arms out to prevent me going for her.

  ‘Maybe you didn’t have time to publish it,’ I continue, at Sylvie. ‘Or maybe you didn’t have room for it. Date #1.5 was another suspect you didn’t need, because at that late stage you were leading me down only one path, the path to Aaron. He was the one you wanted me to suspect in the end, and fuck did you get your wish.’

  Michael’s arms lower as Sylvie holds on to his shoulders for protection.

  ‘You’re crazy, Suze
. You’re delusional,’ she says from behind him.

  ‘Rob didn’t tell you about Date #1.5, because I didn’t tell Rob about him. Only one person other than me knows about Date #1.5 – and it’s the person who kidnapped me. And the reason I know this is that until I wrote about Date #1.5, he didn’t exist. There was no Date #1.5. I made him up.’

  Michael is trying to take in what I’m saying. He has stopped shouting at me, which is a good sign, but I don’t know if I’ve been clear enough.

  ‘I could see my captor was pointing me in one direction, so I thought I’d throw in another suspect – a fictional one – and see how they reacted. You didn’t publish my description of the hotel room, Sylv. You left it out. I didn’t see it on the blog just before I got out of the room, and when Harding didn’t understand my reference to it in the notepad she gave me, I knew my captor hadn’t published it.’

  ‘Suze—’

  ‘Shut up! In Michael’s flat earlier, you called me “Suzanne”. You never call me that. You asked me, “What’s the plan, Suzanne?” I know where you saw that phrase. You read it in my account of Date #1.5. But you fucked up, Sylv. There was no Date #1.5. I made the whole thing up. No one but my captor knew about it. Until you brought it up a few minutes ago. And Michael is my witness that you did.’

  My witness bends over and puts his head in his hands. He’s still trying to fathom what I’m saying. I have to persuade him. But Sylvie gets in first.

  ‘You try to strangle me and then you accuse me of kidnapping you just because of some story you’ve made up that no one knows about. Harding is right; I think you did take Phillips and framed him.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Sylv. Plenty of people know about my little story now. The problem for you is that you knew about it first. I just needed Michael to hear you talk about it. But we aren’t the only ones. I can’t believe you didn’t catch me. I was doing it almost from the start. Everything I wrote in that room is on that laptop. Everything. Even the one piece you decided not to publish. Do you know how easy it is to hide Word documents on an old laptop, how many folders there are in which to bury things? When the police go through that computer, they’re going to find everything I ever wrote in that room, because I hid it all. And they’re going to find one article that didn’t make it on to Five Parks. An article about a meeting with a famous TV presenter in a hotel room. A meeting that never even happened. It won’t take them long to figure out that my captor was the only person to read that article, and after they talk to Michael about tonight, they’re going to discover that person was you.’

  Michael shifts up the bench on to my side and turns to Sylvie.

  ‘Is all that true?’

  Sylvie clears her throat.

  ‘No! This is the biggest load of rubbish I’ve ever heard. She’s going to be charged with kidnapping tomorrow and she’s trying to blame anyone else so she can get out of it. Rob … Phillips … me … who’s next? You saw her blog, Michael; she thought you were in on it at one stage too. She’s a compulsive liar.’

  I am a liar, and it’s often got me into trouble. But with Date #1.5, lying has got me out of it, and helped me find the truth. Sylvie, how could you do this to me? I didn’t want to believe it.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what any of us believe, Sylv,’ I say. ‘When the police see that article hidden in the laptop, they’re going to come asking more questions. And there’s something else you overlooked.’

  Both of them lift their heads up to meet mine in the shadows.

  ‘You forgot about Bob.’

  The park falls silent for a second.

  ‘Bob the Builder. I kept writing about him as if he was in the room with me throughout, but the second time you came into the room to torture me, Sylvie, when you chained me to both ends of the bed, I did two things with my free hand. The first was punch you in the face, just below your left eye. You can pretend that mark came from the glass I broke at the front of the theatre, but we both know the truth. The second thing I did was slip the Bob the Builder badge into your back pocket.’

  Sylvie arches her back up off the bench. She is uncomfortable, but she is still plotting, like a wounded animal pondering how to scratch its way out of a corner.

  ‘Maybe you found it later and discarded it,’ I say. ‘Maybe. But maybe you didn’t notice it was there at all, and maybe you haven’t had time yet to dispose of those black trousers. Michael solved the clues too quickly for you, didn’t he? He was on his way to the Gaumont while you were already there, trying to tie up loose ends and complete the blog. You were there when he got there. And you haven’t had the chance yet to bury all the evidence.’

  Bob the Builder. Can we fix it? Yes. Yes, we fucking can.

  When I finish talking, Michael’s left thigh is pressed against my right. There is a lot of bench between him and Sylvie now. He doesn’t know who to protect any more.

  ‘Michael, you can’t believe this nonsense,’ she says. ‘We’ve been friends for so many years. The truth is you don’t know what you heard in the bushes. This is all so ridiculous. You said it yourself after we ran in and found Phillips the way we found him – she did it. She did all this to get back at him for the article he was going to write, then pretended he had kidnapped her. She’s a fucking psycho, Michael, and we’re better off without her. I’m going to call the police now and tell them she strangled me. She tried to kill me. She’s fucking dangerous.’

  I hear Michael take a deep breath.

  ‘Just tell the truth, Sylvie,’ he says. There is fear in his voice, but he sounds like he is making room for anger too. ‘Did you kidnap Suze? Did you do what she says you did?’

  ‘No!’

  She is crying now, pleading with him. I have to give it to her, it’s a brilliant act. Michael has squashed me, deliberately or not, into the corner of the bench. The metal arm on my side digs into my hip. I want to get around him and have another go at ripping her head off.

  ‘I wouldn’t do this,’ she says, her left arm raised in a tentative ask for some solace. ‘She is lying to you, just like she always did about everything. She doesn’t deserve you. She never did. You don’t belong to her.’

  It happens so fast that at first I think she has given him a playful slap on the thigh. Something on her right hand catches the moonlight on the way down and back up, but it’s too big to be a ring and I know from her blows to my head as I choked her that she isn’t wearing a bracelet. Michael lets out a faint growl. When the dark stain opens up on his jeans, my first thought is that he has wet himself, but something thicker than passed water attacks my nostrils.

  ‘I’m sorry, Michael, I’m sorry I have to do this,’ says Sylvie, her tears gone, her throat clear. ‘She put you in this position. It’s her fault. I’m sorry you don’t believe me. If I can’t have you, I won’t leave you for her to steal again.’

  She twirls the blade in her fingers, maybe just to see how it glistens in the moonlight, then thrusts forward and plunges it back into Michael’s leg, this time with double the force. Something warm and wet flecks on to my face. His faint growl is replaced with a scream of anguish, and when she draws back the weapon a second time, his whole upper leg runs black with blood.

  She slithers away from him, back to her corner of the bench. I forget about trying to attack her. I pick at Michael’s belt and unclasp it from his jeans, then slide one end of it through a gap in the wooden panels so it wraps around his thigh. He roars again. The next voice I hear is Sylvie’s, but she isn’t talking to us.

  ‘Hello? My name is Sylvie Watts. I’m in Gladstone Park in north London. I need an ambulance … and the police. My friend has just been stabbed. He’s losing a lot of blood. She just … stabbed him out of nowhere. Her name is Suzanne Hills. I think she wants to hurt me too.’

  She throws the phone on the ground in front of the bench, just like Rob did a few days ago. It bursts back into life almost as soon as it lands. The emergency dispatcher is calling her back. But Sylvie won’t pick it up. None of us will. Sh
e slides along the bench and holds the knife under Michael’s chin, just like she did to me in the room.

  ‘Get off him,’ she orders, and I obey, almost as if we are back in my prison cell. I roll on to the ground, leaving Sylvie and Michael alone together on the bench. With her knifeless hand, she reaches down and undoes the buckle on the belt I had made into a tourniquet. It falls through the gaps in the wood to the waiting gravel.

  ‘I’m sorry, Michael,’ she whispers, and her tears are back. They disgust me, because they are genuine.

  He looks down at his leg, seeping blood, dumbfounded, drained.

  ‘Why?’ he asks her.

  ‘You’re asking the wrong person,’ she replies, pointing the knife down at the gravel, down at me. I have to get her off that bench. Little black balls drip from the inside of Michael’s jeans on to the ground.

  ‘She stole everything from me, Michael. She took you away from me. I didn’t invite her to the drinks party; she crashed in and stole you. You were supposed to be mine.

  ‘She stole my life from me, and now she has the cheek to be angry when all I’m doing is stealing it back! Bitch. But she’s even managed to ruin that too, by involving you, Michael. You shouldn’t have followed us here tonight. We could have had the life we deserved together, but she had to make you her accomplice. I’m sorry you heard what you heard in the bushes. I’m sorry I can’t let you tell the police what you heard. She has to be punished. She has to rot in a cell for taking everything away from me.’

  Michael’s arms are limp at his sides.

  ‘Sylvie,’ he says. ‘Don’t do this. Take me to hospital.’

  She keeps feathering him with the point of the blade, but looking at me, her face hideous in the moonlight.

  ‘The ones that came before her were easy to get rid of, even Jessica. But you really loved Suze, so I had to work harder. You loved her, but not as much as I loved you, so that’s why I did what I did. I thought disgracing her by getting her sacked would do it, but even after that you still wanted her back. I had to be more creative. I wanted you to believe she was capable of kidnapping someone – and you did believe it, until she tricked you into coming here.’