by R J Bailey
NINETEEN
Thursday
Sarah took me down to the bar last night and there was a policeman there with Matt. He was being very aggressive. I had to say to the policeman that I was fine and Matt was my dad. I thought we were all in trouble because someone had tracked us down or snaked us to the cops, but Dieter took the cop outside and sorted it with him. The cop came back in, ruffled my hair – ugh – and said he would see us all next week.
Saturday
Dieter and Aja have invited me on a boat for a picnic tomorrow. I asked Dad and he didn’t seem too keen but Sarah was there and she said it would be a good idea for me to have some time out on the ocean. She said she will take me to the night market to buy a new bikini and T-shirt.
LATER: I got a SILVER one. It’s really cute. And the T-shirt is old school Hannah Montana.
I used to watch that with Paul, my other dad. I had a dream about him the other night. Nice things – the weekend at Center Parcs when he said it was like a prison and we plotted a mass breakout. The chocolate room at Alton Towers. The day he was attacked by an ostrich at Paradise Wildlife Park and it stole his Cornish pasty.
I wonder sometimes what life would be like if he hadn’t died.
The Jane Austen is so slooooooowwwww.
TWENTY
Normandy, France
Unease was spreading through me like ink climbing up blotting paper. My senses were coming online in a fitful way, as if there was a short-circuit in my wiring. My eyes refused to open. When I forced them, the light was like the flash from a thermonuclear device. When I closed them again, I could still see the solar-bright retinal burn.
My right side felt numb. My arm moved, but without direction, flapping like a freshly landed fish. My head was an enormous bell being struck by hammers.
I ran my good, responsive hand over my face. It was sticky, as if someone had thrown a can of Coke over it. Probably dried sweat. I carried on down, past my throat, over my breasts and onward.
I was naked.
I flung my arm out and patted. I was on a bed. On a bed and naked.
I tried to think how I had got there. Normally I could re-spool events like a DVD on fast rewind, stopping where I pleased. But now I was just looking at darkness. The disc was blank.
I rolled on my side and risked opening my eyes once more. It was still light, so it was the same day as . . . as what? Something had penetrated the blackness then, and slipped away, like a half-glimpsed figure in a fog.
The room was blurred and I felt a burning in my throat. I was in danger of vomiting. There was a glass on the bedside table and I reached for it with my left hand. It was empty apart from a smear of blue liquid in the bottom. Blue? Curacao? I wouldn’t drink that. I wouldn’t drink on duty.
I never drink on duty. Do I?
I rolled back, closed my eyes again and let the nausea wash over me and retreat like an ebb tide. I was coming back to life. It would just take time. I mustn’t rush it. Softly, softly. I steadied my breathing and watched multicoloured lights dance across the inside of my eyelids. Pins and needles began to shoot down my right arm. It was a good sign.
I was in a bedroom, of that much I was certain. I was probably upstairs in . . . the chateau. I was in the chateau. Rewind further. On the road with a woman, her son and Konrad. Hungarian gunman. Trouble on the way to Saint-Lo. Marigny? Yes, got that. Tyres. Needed tyres for the car. Konrad suggested a chateau. I remember arriving, and then . . . and then . . .
What would I have done? If the SitRep was bad, I would have phoned whatshisname. In Geneva. No, Zürich. The Colonel. I would have phoned him. Did I make that call?
The haze swirled and shifted in my brain, like a Victorian peasouper. The lack of detail was frightening, as if I were lost at sea and I didn’t even have a horizon. I tried to imagine myself on the phone. Hello? Colonel? It’s me. But the image wouldn’t take. It faded like a badly fixed photograph.
Naked and in a bed. What did that suggest?
I put my hand between my legs, feeling for any swelling or tenderness. There was none. I slipped a finger inside me. Nothing untoward I could detect. I sniffed it. It smelled of me.
That was a good sign, too.
I checked my armpits. Sour. Like I had run a marathon.
I tried the eyes again and this time I wasn’t blinded, although I had to blink a lot to clear the film over my corneas.
Ornate ceiling with fancy plasterwork, chandelier. There were still flashes of light, like a migraine aura, but someone had put felt on the little hammers striking my skull. I could tolerate them now.
I shuffled up onto the pillows and looked down at my body. As I did so I became aware of another pain, around my neck. I touched the left side and winced. Without a mirror I couldn’t be sure, but it felt like a bruise. I used my fingers to explore and found a matching tender spot on the right side.
Had someone tried to strangle me?
I did a visual of the rest of me that I could see easily. No more damage. No scratches or impact marks. Just the neck, then.
It was another ten minutes before I managed to slide my feet off the bed and sit up. The world tilted a few times and I wasn’t certain my legs could take my weight so I sat there for a while, still breathing as slow and steady as I could. My heart seemed to have other ideas. It had some sort of aerobic workout going on in my chest.
What the fuck had happened? And where were my clothes?
It was a woman walking through gloop who made it across to the bathroom and put her head around the door. Still no sign of any clothes. But the shower over the bath looked inviting and after a process that resembled the first moon landing, I managed to step in and get a stream of water coming out of the head. Several times I had to cling on to the slimy curtain for support. Eventually I got myself firmly under the spray. I began to feel like I never wanted to move again.
Jess. Most days the realisation that I no longer had Jess dawned on me slowly. Then the full impact of what had happened to my daughter hit me like a truck. I let out a strangulated cry.
The Colonel was looking for the two photos she had sent to Saanvi. I recalled all that with absolute clarity. Had he found anything yet though? I had no idea. I became certain that I had called him, although I had no recollection of the actual event. Never mind, I could do it again. If I ever managed to get out of the shower. And once I figured out what the hell was going on. If that was possible in my state.
What about your Principal? Where is she? All this thought for yourself and not one for Mrs Irwin. Protect the Principal?
Shit, I couldn’t even protect myself.
I staggered from the bath and found a towel in a cupboard. I wrapped it around me, then sat down on the lavatory, head in hands. I managed to stop myself crying. But I stayed there for some time, gathering my strength for what I had to do next, my mission to Mars. I had to go downstairs.
I had to assume the others were still in the house, maybe suffering like I was. When I went to the bedroom and threw open the shutters to let full daylight in I became convinced of one thing. It was the next day – the one after we arrived at the chateau. That was morning out there in the ragged garden. I had lost a whole night.
I returned to the bathroom, wiped the steam off the mirror over the sink and gave my neck a good look. Two bruises, one either side, each about the size of a two-pence piece. Someone had gripped my neck. Hard. Were they trying to occlude the carotids? Was that how I had passed out? I doubted it. Those kind of Vulcan death holds only work in movies.
I moved into the hallway and gingerly began to descend the curving stairs. I didn’t even remember ascending them but, willingly or unwillingly, I clearly had. Either way, I soon decided that banisters were one of the greatest inventions known to man. I gripped this one like I never wanted to let it go.
‘Hello?’ I croaked when I was a third of the way down. Then, stronger: ‘Anybody there?’
My voice moved along empty corridors and through deserted rooms, lost
and lonely in the silence.
A short lifetime later I sat down at the bottom of the stairs to recover from the challenging descent. It didn’t look like much but to me it was the Hillary Step. I felt like one of those newborn foals that can barely stand and I was wheezing like a consumptive.
There was a sense of barely contained panic threatening me now. A barrage of questions that could sweep through my brain and overwhelm me. I had to keep that locked down, safe behind my mental flood defences. The trick here was not to jump to any conclusions until I had solid evidence.
Until you find the bodies.
Yes, if that’s what it comes down to. But I mustn’t get ahead of myself. I only had fragments of a picture and at the moment it made no sense at all. I just had to hope the missing parts of my neural system would return at some point.
I found him in the kitchen. He was face down on the table. He’d been sick at some point. I knew this because most of his hair was in it. I crossed over and touched his neck looking for a pulse.
‘Whatthefuck?’
He sat bolt upright like he’d been plugged into the mains, his hair flicking the vomit across the room. Luckily it only hit the towel I was clutching to my chest.
‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘You OK?’
Myles tried to focus through a Nile delta of blood vessels in his eyes. I stepped closer and my toe hit a bottle that rolled lazily across the stone floor. Like an alcoholic game of boules it nudged into another, identical empty brandy bottle. No wonder he’d been sick.
He swayed woozily in his seat. A sentence came out of his mouth, but the meaning was known only to him and God. I fetched a glass of water from the sink and put it in front of him.
‘Drink.’
He did as instructed. ‘What timessssit?’ The tongue was still thick in the mouth, but I got that one.
I looked at my wrist. Force of habit. I had already ascertained that my watch was missing. Gone, along with my clothes? Shame, I liked that Omega. ‘Not sure.’
The sight of Myles actually made me feel a little better. I felt rough but I didn’t look like that. I fetched him more water and used a cloth to mop up the contents of his stomach. It was lucky he’d been sick. Consuming two bottles of brandy was grounds for severe alcohol poisoning. I used a rag from under the sink to get as much as possible out of his hair. Part of me was grateful they had used something other than booze to knock me out.
‘You need a shower,’ I said, as I scrubbed my hands under the tap. ‘And soon.’
‘Yeah.’ He managed to get me in focus by moving his head back and forward like a turtle. That seemed to hurt a little. ‘Where’s your clothes? Why you wearin’ that . . .?’ Something salacious swam into his eyes. I’m sure for a second he thought he was having a PornHub dream.
‘Down, tiger. It’s not for your benefit. Where’s your mother?’
‘She went to . . .’ A pause. Had he lost part of the last twenty-four hours too? ‘To get the passport. With Konrad.’
‘What? We . . . didn’t we dismiss that as a bad idea?’ Or had we changed our minds and that had slipped away too?
‘I guess. I was pretty wrecked by the time they left.’
‘He let you drink?’
‘Hell, yeah. He’s a good guy.’ He didn’t actually say: not like you, you stuck-up . . . But I felt its presence. What had I done to him to make him dislike me? Something else that would emerge in due course, no doubt.
I pulled out a chair and sat. Myles wobbled to his feet. ‘I’ll take that shower.’
‘Sit down!’
‘Fuck,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t drop a ball.’
‘Look, I’ve got some gaps. I can’t remember everything from yesterday.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve got a memory blank.’
‘No shit.’
Thanks for caring, I thought. I suddenly got a flash of Jess – how she shut down when she was with her friends and embarrassed by her mum. I didn’t have to say anything to cause her excruciating agony, I just had to be in the same room and breathing. ‘Myles, I need your help. Can you kill the attitude.’
‘Huh? What attitude?’
‘That attitude.’
He scratched the side of his head, releasing flakes of dried sick. ‘I don’t have any attitude.’
‘Imagine you are talking to someone who isn’t as old as Methuselah and is dressed in more than a towel. Can you do that?’
‘Methu-who?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not your mum. You don’t have to play the tortured teen shit with me. We need to figure out what the fuck has gone on. Just try not to be a cunt.’
As I had hoped, the word acted like a slap in the face. He probably thought I was too old to know it, let alone use it. ‘OK . . .’ He swallowed hard and shook his head before adopting what I guess he thought of as his serious face. ‘What parts can’t you remember?’
‘I dunno. Let me . . . I guess much of what happened after we got here. It’s a blank. I remember pulling up outside, going into the chateau, some of patching Konrad up and then . . . nothing till now.’
‘Je-sus. None of it?’
‘I think there’s a pretty big chunk still missing.’ He seemed oddly pleased by that. He perked up a little and fetched himself some more water.
‘That’s a bummer.’ He sounded almost concerned.
‘Indeed it is a bummer. My job was to drive your mother. Now they’ve gone. When did they leave?’
He thought through the fuzz of his hangover. ‘Last night.’
‘What time?’
‘Seven, eight . . .’ He looked around the table, confused. ‘Hey. Where’s my iPad?’ Then down at his feet. ‘And my sneakers?’
‘There’s a lot missing. All the luggage, my clothes. Don’t worry about that now. So, after we got here, what did we do?’
‘I think . . . you made some calls. Yeah, you did. To this guy called the Colonel. We had a talk in here. We went upstairs, Mom and me, I mean. Got freshened up. Then you went for a shower. Konrad and I had a drink. And a pizza. He explained what was going to happen once the guys with the tyres turned up—’
‘Wait, they came with the tyres?’
‘Yeah. It was arranged, remember?’
‘That’s the problem. I don’t. I think I’ve been drugged. Maybe you too.’
‘But I remember everything. Well, most things. I just feel like shit. But you . . .’ His eyes widened. ‘You could’ve been. Spiked, I mean.’
‘How could anyone spike me?’
‘Lots of ways. Did you have a drink?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. If I did it was probably tea or coffee. I don’t drink when . . .’ I let it tail off. I felt some uncertainty about my not-drinking-when-working rule. Had I broken it?
‘Well, if they used a roofie on you it’d be blue. Well, the legal stuff is blue, you can get colourless.’
‘Roofie? Rohypnol?’
‘Yup. Like it totally fucks up your brain. You can’t remember shit.’
I knew about retrograde amnesia from drugs, but not the fine details. ‘For how long?’
‘Like, the hour before you take it is pretty much frazzled.’
I tried to keep my voice level. ‘There was a blue liquid in a glass next to my bed.’
‘Son of a bitch. You’ve probably been RoHo’d.’
‘But I think I was given that after being knocked out.’ I pointed to the bruise on my neck. ‘I reckon I got these while he was forcing me to swallow.’
‘Konrad?’
I nodded. Who else? ‘Well, it’s either you or him . . .’
His eyes widened at the accusation. ‘Me? Please . . .’ He hesitated. ‘What sort of guy do you think I am? Some kind of pervert?’ He gave a smile I couldn’t quite interpret and then fixed me with those bovine eyes of his.
‘No. Sorry. Of course not. I’m not thinking straight. But how did I get knocked out?’
He thought for a minute. I fetched some more water and made
him drink. He was rehydrating before my eyes. Youth has enviable powers of recovery.
‘Any ideas?’
‘I’m just running through some possibilities. None of them are good.’
‘I’ll take them all.’
‘OK, let’s just say I wanted to knock you out. Assuming I couldn’t get you drunk.’
‘Unlikely.’
‘Right. So if, theoretically, it was me wanting to . . . Whoa!’
‘Whoa what?’
‘Man, he could have used the Devil’s Breath on you first.’
That was a new one on me. And I’d rather he didn’t sound so excited by it. ‘The Devil’s Breath?’
‘It’s a powder. Used in South America. Men would blow it in the face of girls they wanted to drug. That’s how, y’know, it got its name. But these days it’s all over the world. And it’s often on pieces of paper. Beer mats, envelopes . . .’
‘We don’t have any beer mats or envelopes.’
‘And business cards.’
‘Business cards? How does that work?’
‘It’s in the embossing. Think about it. Someone hands you a business card, you always rub your thumb over the raised letters. Everyone does it. Well, the Devil’s Breath is absorbed through the skin. It’s the same shit they use in anti-seasick patches, but a fuck of a lot stronger.’
‘How do you know all this?’ I couldn’t keep the suspicion from my voice. How would he know about how to deliver a drug unless he was part of this? But why would he still be here if that was the case?
‘Look, I didn’t do anything to you,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you are suggesting.’
‘I’m not suggesting anything. Just running down a few stray thoughts. But you know all about the Devil’s Breath or whatever it’s called.’
He shrugged, some of his old indifference to my plight implicit in the movement. ‘Jeesus, we all know about that. We get taught it at college. Security on and off campus one-oh-one. It’s a compulsory unit. And it’s not only girls who get drugged and raped these days, you know.’
‘I suppose not,’ I admitted. Equal opportunities had its downside.
