TWICE

by Susanna Kleeman

  These days helicopters came sometimes at night, woke me with their noise. Modern policing, it wasn’t that weird.

  ‘For a noise complaint?’

  For a kidnapping. Or for some unrelated but nearby crime. Or for you, I thought, squashed under him in the bush. He was mad and someone important, on the loose, like this for how long? What else had he done? They were after him, would have turned up anyway even if Glen hadn’t called. Now I was his hostage. I went limp.

  It fitted some pattern: him cornered, desperate, exposed, come to me as a place of last resort, his childhood sweetheart.

  With the control to appear so fake debonair up in my flat the first time with his cheeses and bags of gags and disguises, wanting the book?

  What was the deal with that book? Gold leaf, done by a famous artist? Like the beads: it wouldn’t be the first time some Alan crud turned out to be worth loads and that always mattered to Chris.

  But now Chris was a zillionaire, or had been last I’d checked.

  On the run, needing cash.

  The misty night, the orange, the wet gag in my mouth, my torn lips and scratched face and juddering heart, the weight of him on me, the dead leaves, the patter in the trees.

  It didn’t have to make sense if he was mad. He’d gone so far, who knew what he’d been up to these past years, all that power and money, on a different scale to anyone, who knew what that did to you, enough to drive you mad even if you weren’t crippled from the start.

  ‘This is the worst,’ he said, mouth on my ear. ‘And it’s the best, cos I never thought I’d be with you again. And it’s the worst, cos now you’re dead too but there’s no going back and I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t the end. We got to move now, they’ll find us, they’re coming for us now, they’ll do anything, you don’t know. You’ll get up and come with me now, no fight, you just have to. For old times’ sake, despite all this. For much more than you and me. You got to hear me out: not here, somewhere they can’t hear us, where we can talk, it’s not far. Listen to what I have to say. And if you don’t like it, if I sound crazy, then you’re free to go. I won’t touch you, you can set them on me. OK?’

  I nodded underneath him in the mud.

  ‘Get up, come with me now, hold my hand. I’m about five minutes away. Just hear me out. For old times’ sake.’

  I nodded. We lay there. In the street below police torch beams shone into us in the trees then moved away.

  He brushed his mouth to my temple then yanked me up, held me by the wrist, started running me through the bushes in the dark away from my road, up through the wooded sub-path that lay alongside what had been the railway track.

  He stumbled on something. I elbowed him and kneed him in the balls.

  He yelped and doubled over. An owl hooted. I yanked my hand from his and pulsed forward, felt for the gag knot behind my head.

  He came at me from behind, grabbed my hand and hair, pulled me on and down back into thorns and thickets so I was face-down in dead leaves again, lay on me again, his breath at my neck. He kneed me in the back and tore my jumper and top off, pulled off my necklace, rings, earrings, belt, stuffed his hands in all my jean pockets, threw away keys, coins, fluff, everything. Searched again for my phone but didn’t find it since it was dead in my flat, searched again. He pulled me up by my hair, yanked me on through brambles in my bra and jeans. He pushed me face-down again, lay back on top of me, put his mouth at my ear:

  ‘You’ll hear me out. It’s crazy but. Haven’t you noticed, for a while now? That something’s off? Everything’s changed? It looks the same but it’s different, right? Over the past few years, when you stopped reading books? The future’s happened but they didn’t ask you. Nothing’s real. Thought machines stealing your thoughts. What went on before seems…quaint. It’s about the machines but it’s not just about the machines. Perfect takeover: soft, no armies, no tanks in the streets. Geeks bearing gifts, buy your own fetters, spin you crud to lap up, everyone clicking away, all so fun and free and simple. The pup you’ve been sold, the world-wide lie, the dot con, getting formatted, get the kids formatted, turn the tap on, take the cookies. And me right at the heart of it. The plans they have for you.’

  I squirmed under him, he pressed down on my bare back, crushed me against sharp ground. Above us the helicopter whirred. Columns of light beamed through the trees. He crawled me under him on my scratched belly under the bushes, waited for the beams to pass, crawled us on more. My only hope was the police, the helicopter above. But he was twisting us under bushes in the dark, they couldn’t see us. The bridge, I thought. We were moving that way, no bushes on the bridge. But when we got there, the high bridge over Stanhope Road, he turned and forced us down the steep embankment instead, still all mixed up in the bushes, down what wasn’t a path, grabbing on to twine and roots, tearing us, tumbling us onto the street.

  Orange misty lights, silence, emptiness, parked cars. He pulled me upright by my neck. With his other hand he got my wrists and twisted them round behind my back and slipped something round them, a noose he tightened till it cut into me and then pressed me against the metal of the cold dirty white car parked next to us. My mouth gagged, my hands tied, my bare belly on the cold wet car, his hand still round my neck, squeezing hard when I tried to kick him. With his other hand he reached into his pocket, got out keys, slipped them into the lock and opened the car door, the passenger side, bundled me in there, into the foot well, a stew of damp newspapers and old food. He pushed on through into the driver’s seat, reached back across to slam the door, pressed down the lock saying he was sorry, we had to go right now, they were here. Anywhere, just to get away, to some place where we could talk.

  ‘Brechfa’s where? In Britain? A real place? Some Scritch I forgot? That’s what you said right: the Brechfa Forest, the sheep, the book? Nod if that’s right. Is that where Sean’s gone? Why? What book did Sean want?’

  I wiggled up to nut him, thrashing my legs. He reached forwards and used the force of my movement to twist me up onto the passenger seat next to him, then put his hand back round my neck and pulled me up higher so I would have blacked out if it hadn’t been for the painful thing he did with my bound arms. Which was: slacken their binds, yank them out from my back so he nearly broke them, crick round my body to force my arms over and down round the back of the seat so I ended up sitting on the seat with my hands tied behind it, lodged there. He retightened the knot. With another rope he bound my bare ankles above my ruined slippers, then brought that rope under my seat and up to where my hands were behind the seat and knotted it to them really tight. So I was tied round the seat with a gag in my mouth and another bit of rope now getting knotted round my already scratched-up waist, naked except for my bra and jeans. Nice rope moves Chris, where d’you learn all that? No way for me to twist free. He’d been practising. What else you got up your sleeve? Pretty obvious I was sat there by force to anyone who saw us but there was no one at that time of night. And then he got something else from the back seat: a big black bit of nylon which he eased over my gagged head and over my whole seat so it covered my head and gag and ropes and backrest, and buckled the seatbelt too over me, so I looked like a big fat covered hunchback big-jawed Moslem woman strapped in there next to him with only my eyes on show.

  I scrunched them shut. Jesus fucking Christ.

  ‘Really sorry,’ he said. ‘Burkas. Very useful, I wear them too sometimes. Moslems, they know what they’re up against.’

  The crunch of the ignition, the car spluttering, failing to start, starting.

  He drove me off into the night.

  6

  That he might kill me. Tied there in the blackness it was like he might, like he might do anything. That it might happen now with that void Chris who I’d let in. Everything I’d tried to be. How I’d wasted my life.

  His fake self gone, this other thing driving me, unmasked bad innards spilling out of control. Some massive crisis at work, techno paranoia, now their victim—always playing the vi
ctim. Bad twins, his death trip, me trussed alongside.

  No techniques to manage this, him operating out of nothing I could connect with. Trying to scream, the wet knot and gag I couldn’t budge jamming my mouth open, stopping sound, suffocating me, dry heaves, retching, beating heart.

  Grag Medusa. Old words woke me like they sometimes did: thanks Alan. Stop. Breathe. Control your mind. Don’t tell yourself stories. Park the big stuff. Go small. Focus on the practical. Where are you?

  Tied and gagged, in a burka, in some car, with some loon. Fraying skin on the sides of my mouth and the pain in my arms, from getting cricked, ropes cutting into me.

  Focus on the ropes.

  Tied so tight. I tried, from inside the itchy black nylon, to brew up a force to slack them one inch, burst my bonds. But he had the skills: nothing budged and I felt blood and worse pain in my muscles and cheeks and the vile cold dribble of saliva I couldn’t wipe off, chafing and rash, sweat, panic, thudding heart.

  Breathe.

  Breathe through your nose. Blanche the terrain. Observe. The eye.

  I breathed through black nylon and opened my eyes, saw from out my slit him speeding us up towards Shepherd’s Hill, turning left towards the Archway Road. Gaunt, dirty, mad.

  A swift blow between the top two vertebrae of the spine. If I could get my hands free.

  Twist those ropes. Bide your time.

  The car was old and filthy, a white Nissan Sunny.

  ‘My dumb car.’ He followed my gaze. ‘Safe, to talk here. “Safe”, cos I’ve scraped it myself,’ all proud. ‘Nothing digital. You have to go pre-’83, or thereabouts, all this has been going on much longer than you know, there’s signs to watch out for.’

  He told me these signs: no child locks, no central locking, no automatic anything. Analogue dials and dashboard, radio torn out, wires exposed.

  ‘A physical engine powered by gas—petrol. I can fix every last bit myself. They hack cars, you know that, right? Get them to go anywhere, do anything: turn, accelerate, smash into tunnel pillars. Pull smartplanes right out of the sky. Every last cog with its own IP address and middle manager these days. The internet of things, the mark of the beast.’

  Pure Tal conspiracy—or its impersonation. The lost self in crisis.

  Unless it’s all his ploy.

  His ploy for what?

  Go small. For now: we were driving, he was driving. I was safe, for now. He needed me, for now, for whatever reason. I had to remember that. Use the time wisely.

  I breathed and worked the ropes.

  He drove and talked on, about bank notes that spied on you, snitching metal and credit cards, remote control, objects brought to life and in the thrall of distant masters, lethal connection, modern animism. Just what you want to hear from the guy who’s kidnapped you, bound and gagged you, is driving you where? He wasn’t just dirty, he was also thinner than he’d looked the first time up in my flat, if I remembered right, and how would you fake that? Unless the first time he’d worn fillers or something, puffed up by water, technically possible, a professional job, for what reason? A waiting team, with needles and brushes to drain and paint him—didn’t seem likely but the alternative was two of them and was that more likely?

  And if there were two of them, why assume this one was my Chris?

  Breathe.

  He took a right at Muswell Hill Road and then right again down that side road by Queen’s Woods with the old big posh houses, drove down past them to the bit where there’s woods on each side and paused there with the motor running, rolled down his windows, craned up to the sky.

  Silence. No sign of copters. Me tied there with him at night, dark woods on each side.

  A cunning spot. He knew his way round, must have skulked about earlier doing a recce, all too calculated to be mad or on drugs, except ultra-calculation is madness and this whole thing screamed maximum fruitcake. He rolled the window back up and turned to me with his hungry searching jittery eyes.

  ‘We shook them. For now. Stop writhing, you’ll only make the knots tighter, you’ll hurt yourself, I’m not going to hurt you, there’s no way you’ll loose them, believe me, I’ll set you free in a bit. For now: the Brechfa Forest. Is where Sean’s heading, right? A real place, not Scritch? That’s what you said, right: the Brechfa Forest, books and sheep?’

  Talking to me, talking to himself, not for the first time, one suspected. I writhed next to him, tasting my foul gag, hurting my wrists, my whole tied body in pain. He turned on the light and fished some mouldy UK road atlas out of the footwell, flicked through the index, trawled through the ‘B’s with his bitten stump till he found Brechfa, turned to that page, turned his mad scratched thin dirty face to me.

  ‘Real. South Wales. Lots of sheep. The actual forest or the village?’ map down, light off, stump to steering wheel, foot back down on the accelerator, turning the car too fast, screeching back the way we’d come. ‘Why Brechfa? Who’s there? Is it..?’ and he came close, pulled the burka down a bit, watched my eyes, his heat and bad smell very near. Then he relaxed, eyes back to the empty roads.

  ‘You told Sean you’d get a book from there tomorrow for him? You wouldn’t give him the address. Good. A book of yours? Nod or shake your head.’

  I sat there.

  He nodded. ‘You won’t help. Not yet. But you will. I hope it won’t be too late. You’re scared, I scared you, I had to, I didn’t want to. We’re going to sit here together and I’m going to tell you and you’re going to listen and we’re going to head west to Wales and Brechfa by whatever knowledge I can glean by your eyes and pure nous till you get convinced.’

  He turned right, went north up the Archway Road past sparse cars and unreachable people, drove in silence for a bit.

  ‘Flora.’ He whipped round at me, made the car jolt, made my ropes dig worse. ‘It’s Flora. That’s where she lives. Brechfa, in her junk house. Scritchwood-upon-South-Wales, knitting her moonshine. I’m right, aren’t I?’ searching my eyes again. ‘Flora’s got some book he wants. I’m right.’

  He was right, because I’d told him all that myself twice before: once up in my flat and once again in the hallway when he’d turned up the second time with his stump and costume change and gag and make-up and crazy twin tale.

  Except I hadn’t mentioned Flora the second time in my hallway, I was pretty certain. Oh for that lifelog. No, thinking back I hadn’t mentioned Flora at all that second time. I didn’t think.

  And if I hadn’t mentioned Flora in my hall then he knew the book was with her because he had been up in my flat that first time. So his twin talk was bogus. I could lay that to rest. His new look was special effects.

  Psychopath, up to something. I felt full fear then: the lying twisted depths of him. And he saw it.

  ‘I know Flora’s in Brechfa cos I know everything about you, you should know that upfront,’ he said. ‘Or I knew everything about you, till six months ago, when I clocked out. Before then I had total access. Don’t think I didn’t abuse it. I’ve been listening in, to your whole life: all the pictures and emails and searches and much worse. Your therapist’s notes. The texts your boyfriends send other women. You can’t lie to me, tucked up in your cloud. I know more about you than you do, believe it. The whole world’s been mine to peep. Don’t think there’s one thing about you I don’t know.’

  I sat pinioned in nylon on the dark empty North Circular speeding west out of London and he told me everything he shouldn’t know about me, every iota of the past eleven years. My fears and interests, my every relationship, how much money I had, health issues, porn preferences, favourite ready meals, my every dirty secret, any contact with barcodes. Courses and jobs, cases and clients. What I bought, what I nearly bought, my music, my mortgage, where I went, the toxic-ex forums I visited, how I still read his horoscope, how often I searched for him.

  ‘My way of staying close to you. I’m sorry, I missed you. Stalking you for years. Like you’ve been stalking me. But with better access. There’s a shippin
g container, right? In the field next to Flora? Lots of old caravans round the back she covers in fairy lights at Christmas? Big summer solstice crustie parties you go to, I’ve seen all the pictures. And if I’ve seen them Sean’s seen them too by now, bet your bottom dollar. He doesn’t need you to give him her address, he’s got it. You’re a person of interest now, they’re combing you right now, refining the profile, sieving the data. Sean’s there right now, heading there for Flora, you betcha, hope she’s OK. To get his hands on some book she has—is it your book? Nod or shake your head.’

  I sat there, clobbered from the inside. Utterly seen. The squirm of him knowing all my searches, up in my flat, Mr Finger-Perfect, so debonair, chatting over cheeses.

  Except fuck that. It didn’t matter what he thought he knew, whatever he’d seen. He was a crazy violent desperate freak, so what if he’d seen some pics and text messages? My searches weren’t everything, he didn’t really know what was going on inside me, Flora’s actual address, any of the rest of it. Digital me only went so far, he still needed real me, that’s why I was tied up there with him. The only thing that mattered was me not forgetting that.

  If you don’t know what to do then do nothing. Yes, that one was useful. I sat there making my wrists bleed.

  ‘You don’t understand the danger you’ve put Flora in. We got to get to her before he does. He wants something, he’ll do anything to get it, you got no idea,’ jerking his eyes round at cars beside us, foot down, speeding ahead.

  Dark rain, bridges, warehouses, superstores, the lit-up curve of Wembley Stadium, empty roads, gyratories, cold air. I prayed for copters and sank into my burka against him and the weather, only my bra on under the nylon, my scratched tummy, the heater blasting foul air but cracks letting cold in, nothing shutting properly in that junkyard on wheels.