The Captive

by Deborah O'Connor

  Jem finished eating first. He motioned to the half-completed Lubetkin cake.

  ‘You’re talented.’

  She said nothing, hoping her silence would discourage him, but then a few seconds later he spoke again.

  ‘Did you train as a baker or teach yourself?’

  ‘I taught myself,’ she said dully.

  ‘YouTube? You can learn how to do anything these days.’

  She slammed her plate onto the worktop.

  ‘Stop it.’

  Jem jumped and his cutlery fell to the floor.

  ‘Just making conversation.’

  ‘Conversation?’ said Hannah as though she was trying to make sense of a word from another language.

  ‘Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do, get to know each other?’

  Not wanting to be around him a moment longer, she gulped the last of her food and covered the cake with foil. She’d get up early, finish the penguin figures then.

  ‘While you’re here, I’ll treat you with respect, follow the rules, but make no mistake,’ she said, her voice nettled, ‘we aren’t friends and we never will be.’

  She was at the foot of the stairs when he replied.

  ‘I know what they claimed in court, what they decided. But I need you to know. I didn’t do it.’ He said the words slowly, each syllable as deliberate as a high-wire footstep. ‘I didn’t kill your husband.’

  She turned to face him. The top right corner of the beach picture had fallen down. It flapped in the breeze.

  She marched over to the fan and jabbed the switch, turning it off.

  Let him sweat.

  Upstairs she sat on the edge of the bed, her blood stilled. She was furious but she was also shocked, surprised at herself, at what she had done.

  Being mean had come easily.

  She could see how a person might do it again.

  The next morning, after delivering the christening cake to the family in Dartmouth Park, Hannah scurried home. Leaving Jem alone for the first time, albeit locked in the cell, had been unnerving – it felt like she’d left the gas on, or a tap running – and she was keen to get back and check all was well.

  It had only just gone eleven but the sun was hot, the sky blue, and the streets were full of people and dogs on their way to the Heath. The pavement was sludgy with fallen apples and the fruit foamed in the sun. A pair of dog walkers approached, a couple with a white lurcher in tow. As they passed the woman tripped on a broken paving slab and the man reached to catch her fall. She righted herself quickly but his touch lingered and they paused to smile at each other before carrying on their way.

  Hannah felt for the smooth spot on her finger where her engagement ring usually sat. She’d searched for it again this morning, but to no avail. Without it she felt untethered, like the rope connecting her to John was starting to fray.

  He’d been gone almost six months and the needlessness of his murder had yet to get any easier to bear. He was a detective sergeant in the Metropolitan Police and the night he died had been so painfully ordinary. He’d gone to enjoy a post-work drink with his partner Rupert on the Kingsland Road and at 8.30 p.m. Rupert had left to go and meet friends in another part of town. John had stayed at the bar and then headed home around 10 p.m. Halfway down Shoreditch High Street he entered an alley. It was impossible to know if he took a wrong turn and went in there by mistake or if he’d needed to relieve himself before he got on the Tube, but CCTV showed that he was followed into that alley by Jem, who was working as a glass collector in the same bar from which he’d just come.

  The theory went that Jem had noticed John drinking heavily and figured he was someone he could hustle without too much resistance – Jem’s colleagues had testified to rumours, never proven, that he sometimes stole from inebriated customers – and that when they ended up leaving the bar at around the same time he saw an opportunity. It was thought that Jem entered the alley to try to mug John, that he threatened him with a knife, and that as John was in the process of handing over his possessions he told Jem he was a police officer in the hope he would get scared and run away. Instead Jem had panicked and stabbed John – twice in the stomach, once in the ribcage and twice in the back – as he lay face-down, helpless and bleeding, before fleeing the scene.

  The alley was a dead end. CCTV showed that no one else went in or out until the following morning, when John’s body was discovered by a passer-by.

  Jem had protested his innocence throughout the trial, despite the fact his fingerprints and DNA had been found on the inside and outside of John’s wallet and its contents as well as his phone and keyring – and, most damning of all, that his fingerprints had been found on the murder weapon discarded in a nearby commercial waste-bin.

  Clearing the Highgate Road, Hannah decided to take a short-cut and, after nipping across the bottom of Parliament Hill, jogged through an alleyway dense with privet.

  She was halfway down the street before she realised her mistake.

  This route would take her past the house on the corner.

  She decided to retrace her steps and go back the long way round. It would add another twenty minutes to her journey but she didn’t care; she couldn’t face that house, not today. She was about to double back when her phone rang. Aisling. Her best friend.

  ‘Ash.’

  ‘How are you holding up?’ Her voice was slow and nasal. The warm weather must have reignited her hayfever; either that or she was getting a cold.

  ‘I’m scared of being in my own home and I hardly slept a wink.’ She spoke fast, like she didn’t want to dwell on her new reality. ‘I got up at the crack of dawn to finish a cake and he was already awake, just sitting there staring.’

  ‘Any news on the Foster Host?’

  ‘I should hear soon.’ Hannah took a breath, and when she next spoke her tone was bright. ‘What time are you coming over?’

  Hannah was forbidden from having visitors until tonight; they had arranged to get together and order takeout.

  ‘About that.’ Aisling’s words were pinched. It seemed like an effort for her to speak. ‘Something’s come up. Last-minute booking.’ She forced out the last piece of information. ‘I need to be in Belgravia by 7 p.m.’

  A masseuse, Aisling worked in a physiotherapy clinic two days a week and supplemented her shifts with mobile jobs, dragging her massage table around the city and treating people’s aches and pains in the comfort of their own homes.

  ‘Oh.’ Hannah scrambled to hide her disappointment. She knew Aisling needed the money and that she wouldn’t ditch her unless she really had to. Still, she’d been looking forward to seeing a friendly face. ‘You can’t reschedule?’

  Aisling was the one person Hannah could not do without and, these last six months, had been her rock. At her side when the police knocked on the door with news of John’s murder, having arrived by chance half an hour earlier, that’s where she’d stayed through the funeral and the trial and all the grey days and nights in between. She’d made sure Hannah had hot food to eat and clean clothes to wear and had come to comfort her in the bleak twilight hours when she thought she would go mad with grief. At a time when everyone else had tiptoed around the topic, scared to say John’s name for fear of causing upset, Aisling had made sure to constantly remind her of all the funny, annoying or special things John had ever said or done.

  ‘It’s a ninety-minute session and the client pays premium, so . . .’ Aisling faltered. ‘Sorry.’

  With curly brown hair and pale skin, Aisling had been born and bred on a sheep farm in New Zealand. The only member of her family to ever leave the province, let alone the country, she’d travelled to the UK with dreams of being a zoologist and ended up in the same Deptford houseshare Hannah was living in then. Aisling had grown up on a diet of meat and boiled vegetables and on her first night, not long after she’d unpacked her things, Hannah had blown her mind by cooking her tortellini with Parmesan sprinkled on top. A week later and Aisling had tried to repay the favour by
making a recipe she’d found online: stir-fry with noodles. Hannah had her fork raised, ready to dig in, when Aisling had reached across and, with a proud smile, proceeded to shower her plate with Parmesan. Hannah had devoured it without comment. They’d been friends ever since.

  ‘What’s it like?’ – Aisling sniffed – ‘having him there?’

  ‘Weird. Everything in the kitchen is the same, except there’s now a whacking great cell where the breakfast bar used to be.’ She stepped on a particularly gooey bit of rotten apple and almost lost her footing. ‘I keep banging my knee against the bars on the way to the fridge.’ She grabbed a wall to anchor herself and, looking around, realised she’d forgotten her plan to change course. She now stood opposite the very place she had so wanted to avoid.

  The house in question was situated on the corner of Shirlock Road and had a large front garden, lavish even by NW3 standards, bordered by hip-height brick walls that wrapped around the front and side. The square of grass to the right of the front door was dominated by a sycamore tree and underneath it was pitched a two-man dome tent. Khaki with a brown stripe around the bottom, the tent’s roof was spattered with white stains, bombardments from the birds above.

  ‘You’re sure you’ll be OK?’ said Aisling, misinterpreting her silence. ‘You’re not mad?’

  In front of the tent was a camping stove and next to it was a plastic table, a bucket containing metal plates and utensils underneath. Hannah was about to scuttle away when a woman emerged from the tent and checked on the kettle. Laurie Simmons. Immaculate in navy capri pants and a white T-shirt, Laurie was a trader who, until she was raped, had lived inside the house with her husband and three boys. She’d chosen to pursue a conviction, rare these days, and, unwilling to live under the same roof as her rapist and unable to get out of her obligation (she was required by law to reside on the property for the duration of the sentence), when the guilty verdict came through she despatched her family to her in-laws in Crouch End and moved into her front garden. That was four years ago. She’d been there ever since.

  Her situation had been covered in depth by the Ham & High and had always filled Hannah with horror, but ever since John’s murder she’d gone to extreme lengths to avoid the story and the house itself. Laurie’s predicament was now a horrible combination of the familiar and the obscene. She found the way the grass and flowers had started to grow up around the tent almost graphic. It was the longevity.

  ‘Hannah?’

  Hannah watched as Laurie lifted the kettle off the stove and poured the boiling water into a teapot. Leaving it to brew, she zipped the tent and approached the front door.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Hannah, unable to take her eyes off Laurie. ‘But let’s get together soon OK? I need you.’

  Standing on the doorstep, head dipped, Laurie reminded Hannah of a high jumper pausing to fortify herself before taking a run-up to the bar. A few moments later and she put the key in the lock. Hannah waited until she was gone and the door closed behind her. Only then did she continue on her way.

  Back home, Hannah picked up the post from the mat and headed downstairs. The fresh air and exercise had given her a boost but in the last few minutes she’d started to get the heavy, foggy-headed feeling that meant her blood sugar was low. She needed to drink some juice and fast, otherwise she’d pass out or, worse, have a seizure.

  Inside the kitchen the midday sun was dazzling. She recoiled and, without waiting for her eyes to adjust, felt her way to the fridge and poured a glass of orange juice.

  It was then she realised.

  She’d yet to see Jem.

  She turned round and squinted at the cell. The bedcover was smooth, his chair stored neatly under the table. He wasn’t there.

  Maybe he was on the loo?

  She moved in close to the bars.

  ‘Jem?’

  Nothing.

  Trying not to panic, she got down on her hands and knees and searched for his feet in the gap between the bottom of the toilet cubicle and the floor, but there was no sign of him.

  ‘Jem?’ she said, louder this time. ‘Where are you?’

  She knew it was impossible; still she checked the hook by the sink, making sure the key was where she’d left it. But then maybe there’d been a power cut while she was out and he’d managed to pick the lock? The cell door looked secure, but it was hard to tell. She was about to push on it to check when she heard a noise upstairs. A thump, like someone falling over.

  She scrambled back, reached for the red button round her neck and pressed it once, raising the alarm.

  Her phone rang a few seconds later.

  ‘This is the Domestic Prison Service.’ The woman’s voice was blank. ‘We received an alert from this address. Who am I speaking to?’

  ‘Hannah, Hannah Cavey.’

  She hovered by the mouth of the stairs, adrenalin lashing through her veins. Jem couldn’t have gone far. The chip in his neck also corresponded with the invisible electric fence that now surrounded her house. Any breach across it would trigger the implant and administer a mild shock. If, after that first shock, he continued to move away from the boundary then he would be hit by another, much stronger jolt that would increase in intensity until it disabled his nervous system and he collapsed.

  Activated by six-digit codes that were reset every four weeks and which only Mr Dalgleish had access to, the fence was divided into two zones, one at the front of the house and one at the back, and was controlled via the keypad on the wall.

  All that meant he had to be hiding somewhere in the house, but where? Her instinct was to run, to escape into the street, but what if Jem was lying in wait? He could be anywhere en route to the front door.

  ‘My inmate, he’s not in his cell.’ Pressing her back against the wall, she began to climb the stairs. ‘I went out and when I came back he was gone.’ The fog in her head was getting thicker now, seeping deeper into her brain. The orange juice was still on the side, the glass furred with condensation. She could dash back and get it but what if Jem had hid in one of the cupboards? In theory she was supposed to press her red button for five seconds and shock him, but what if she didn’t do it in time? What if he beat her to it? ‘I know the cell was locked, I know it.’

  The woman’s voice remained flat to the point of sounding bored.

  ‘A team is on their way.’

  Hannah hung up and, after broaching the last few steps, she stopped, listening. Nothing. She peered round the corner. It was ten paces to the front door but to get there she’d have to go past the living room.

  She blinked, trying to maintain her focus. Her peripheral vision was starting to cave in, the walls like a collapsing hall of mirrors. If she didn’t go now she risked passing out here, alone.

  Keeping her finger on the device, she sprinted to the door and out to the opposite side of the street. On a gently sloping hill, the road was wide, the pavements spacious, some of the houses so tall you had to crick your neck to see all the way to the top. The sun was brutal but a horse chestnut tree offered shade, its branches heavy with shrivelled conkers. She shuffled toward it and sagged against a wall.

  Almost immediately a woman appeared at a nearby bay window, a fat grey cat at her side. She was wearing a mauve and yellow kaftan and her hair was masked by a matching turban that she patted like a frightened pet.

  Kiki Masters and her house cat, a Russian Blue named Poobah who regularly made breaks for freedom and who, on more than one occasion, had tried to sneak in through Hannah’s front door.

  Kiki had no time for Hannah. The problem was her house. Being a key-worker property, it was owned and maintained by the council, which meant it was visibly down at heel compared to the rest of the street. It was widely agreed among Kiki and her neighbours that its practical UPVC windows and lack of Farrow & Ball brought down the tone. Kiki was especially vociferous because her and her surgeon husband Maxwell Masters had had their house on the market for over a year but had yet to secure a decent offer. Kiki blamed thi
s on the fact that her property overlooked Hannah’s. And now, to make matters worse, Hannah had the ultimate real-estate deterrent: a prisoner.

  Kiki peered out into the street, nose wrinkled, no doubt calculating how much the last forty-eight hours had caused her house to depreciate. Hannah thought she was going to come and shoo her off but then her eyes widened and Hannah turned to see a van with metal grilles on the windows pull up. A team of guards in stab vests and helmets tumbled into the road, followed by Mr Dalgleish. He directed them toward the house and came to join Hannah.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said as he guided her back across the street. He moved cautiously, as though it hurt to put one foot in front of the other, and Hannah wondered where he was in his current chemo cycle.

  ‘The cell was secure.’

  Mr Dalgleish narrowed his eyes.

  ‘You didn’t let him out? Because some do, despite everything. They feel sorry for them or they want to be their friend.’

  ‘No.’

  Hannah remembered what he’d said to her in training ‘Criminals aren’t like us. They will lie to you, they will get you in trouble. They don’t care.’

  Mr Dalgleish studied her a few moments more, clearly trying to work out if she was telling the truth, then shrugged.

  ‘He’d be fried to a crisp if he went past the perimeter for any length of time so he must be nearby. Still, I’ve put out an alert.’

  The guards reappeared, moving down the path in a smooth formation. She searched for Jem in their midst.

  ‘No sign of the prisoner in the house or back garden.’ One of the guards raised his hand. ‘We did find a pile of books on the floor in an upstairs bedroom. It looks like they toppled under their own weight.’

  Mr Dalgleish raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Oh dear.’ He waited until the guards had got back into the van, then turned to Hannah. ‘Shall we?’ He nodded at the house. ‘I need to take your statement.’

  Hannah led the way. She was still paranoid Jem might be hiding somewhere inside, but in the last few seconds her lips had started to tingle. If she didn’t get some glucose into her system in the next few minutes then her mouth would go numb, and not long after that she’d lose consciousness.