‘This is fucking dog food,’ he said, stabbing at it with his fork. ‘You think it’s okay to feed me food not fit for a fucking dog?’
I tried to catch my breath as I started to cry.
‘Oh, turning on the tears now, are we?’
‘You’re scaring me!’ I cried.
He threw the plate of pasta at the wall behind me. I felt the sauce splatter my back.
‘Why are you just sitting there? Clean it up.’
I pushed back, the chair scraping as I slowly got up.
‘Clean it UP!’
I flinched as he came around the table, grabbed the back of my hair and turned my head to the wall. A streak of red was smeared down it. ‘What is this shit? I work my arse off and you make this shit.’
I squeezed my eyes shut. Trying to clamp down my emotions, but tears escaped and ran down my face. I thought things had been getting better, but then this shit had happened with Charlene and Thomas, and now he was taking it all out on me.
‘Would you eat this?’ he said, still gripping my head and picking up a handful of the cold pasta.
‘I did eat it…’ I didn’t get the rest of the words out because he shoved a handful of the pasta into my mouth and rubbed the rest over my face. I tried to spit it out, but he kept his hand on the back of my head and the other pushing the sloppy mess into my mouth. I could feel it slipping to the back of my throat, and I couldn’t breathe. The sauce was in my eyes and it stung and I couldn’t see. Max suddenly let go and I dropped down on the floor heaving and trying to get my breath.
I heard the back door slam and the lock turn. I cleaned myself up, and the mess, and it was then that I saw he had taken my phone.
This can’t continue. I’m going to leave him. When he comes back, I’m going to have a knife ready, and I’m walking out.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
MONDAY, 18th SEPTEMBER
I sat at the kitchen table all night, facing the door with a huge carving knife on the table in front of me, but Max didn’t come back. In the early morning sunlight, I got up and made some tea, and saw the neighbours outside starting to go about their business. The old lady down the hall went past with her shopping bags. The kids started to play, and my panic eased.
Sunday went by so slowly, and then the sun began to set. I worried how I would get out if there was a fire. How I would escape. The iron safety bars are screwed outside each window, like a cage. The back door is made of stout wood with safety glass in the window. There is no way out.
At three in the morning, I woke up with a gasp. I felt about in the bedsheets and found the handle of the carving knife. Rain was slapping against the window, and I jumped as thunder cracked and rumbled. I came out of the bedroom with the knife held out in front of me. The living room and bathroom were empty. I came into the kitchen and got a drink of water. I sat at the table in the dark, listening to the storm. The lightning flickered, illuminating the walls.
Then I heard the sound of a car pull into the car park, it bounced over the water-filled potholes and the headlights shone through the blinds, casting a grid of light above my head, before it slid along the wall. It was replaced by a dim red light. The car had turned around. The red lights intensified and the hum of the engine got louder.
I got up, thinking that the car was going to reverse through the kitchen wall. I poked my finger through the blind and saw the car was parked up with the boot inches from the back door. Max got out. He was drenched. I let go of the blind, and stood braced with the carving knife held out in front of me. My hand was shaking as I heard the key scrape in the lock, and the outline of Max appeared through the frosted glass. The key turned and the door swung open. Thunder cracked loudly, and the rain echoed on the concrete walkway. I moved towards the door, and Max had his back to me, opening the boot.
He turned.
‘Jeez! What are you doing, Neen?’ he whispered, seeing me with the knife. He looked genuinely confused as to why I would be pointing it at him. His clothes were soaked through, his long blond hair hung wet around his shoulders and he had a smear of earth on his cheek. His eyes had lost the psychotic coldness from the previous evening, and he looked scared.
‘What are you doing?’ I said, keeping the knife pointed at him.
‘I need your help, please,’ he whispered, putting up his finger to his lips. ‘Put your coat on and give me a hand.’
I was so weirded out by his change of mood, so relieved to see him, that I came back inside and pulled on my long coat, belting it up over my pyjamas. I put a baseball cap on my head and, still holding the knife, I came back towards the kitchen.
I stopped in the doorway. I could see the boot of the car was open, and Max had his arms under the shoulders of a man’s body, and was dragging it into the kitchen. He dropped it in the middle of the floor, and went back through the door. The head bounced off the lino, and the arms flopped out. I recognised the grubby jeans and football T-shirt before the face. It was Thomas.
Max put his head around the door as there was another crack of thunder and lightning.
‘I need a hand,’ he said, as if it were shopping bags he had in the car.
I walked past the body, and outside into the corridor. The windows along from us were dark. I joined Max at the rear passenger door of the car where he was pulling out the body of Charlene.
‘Help me with the legs.’
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head, and came back inside.
A moment later Max followed and dumped Charlene’s body beside Thomas.
‘I’m just going to put the car back where it normally goes,’ said Max. He closed the door and left me with the two bodies. I felt like I had experienced death and trauma over the past few months but nothing prepares you for the surreal experience of having two dead people laid out in your kitchen. I wanted to laugh. It wasn’t funny, but a laugh escaped my mouth. It didn’t sound like a laugh though. It was a strange panicked sound. Charlene’s clothes were torn. She wore a long skirt and a blue blouse, but the buttons were open and one of her breasts was showing over the cup of her bra. Her blonde hair was matted with blood, and her nose was completely flat. Thomas’s face was a bloody mess, and his arms were flopped out at a funny angle.
The back door closing snapped me out of staring. Max was inside with two large suitcases which he’d propped against the counter. He checked the blinds were closed and tied back his hair, pulling an elastic band from his wrist. He went to the sink and took out the big roll of black bin liners. He tore one off and shook it open.
‘Can you hold it, Neen?’
I shook my head. I still had the knife; I was gripping it, but it was like it wasn’t there. He gave it no more than a glance, and took off Thomas’s then Charlene’s shoes and dumped them in the bin liner. As he bent down to do it, I saw the butt of a gun poking out from the back of his jeans. I saw myself moving over, pulling it out and shooting him. It would take no more than a few seconds.
He now had a pair of scissors and, with a whistle of fabric cutting, he slit Thomas’s football shirt up the front and one of the arms. He caught the skin at the top of Thomas’s right arm and swore, but cut the rest of it off and then dropped it in the bin liner. There was a thick layer of dark hair across Thomas’s chest, but his skin didn’t look real; it was a pale yellow. Max turned and started to cut off the jeans, which wasn’t as easy.
‘You killed them?’ I said.
‘Yes. They were gonna leave the country. They’d booked flights to go to Jersey.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘I’ve got mates. I know people who keep an eye out for these things, when people owe money.’
‘Jersey? Why Jersey?’
‘I dunno, something to do with her dad. What a couple of fuckers. They were clearing off, leaving for good…’
He was now cutting off the right leg of the jeans. Charlene’s body shifted on the kitchen floor and she sat up. I was too afraid to move, but finally I screamed as she reached up with a s
trange misshapen arm and lifted the gun out of Max’s trousers.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he said.
Charlene was sitting up, and trying to move her legs. One of her eyes was swollen shut, and she transferred the gun to her unbroken hand, which shook as she pointed it at Max. There was a deafening bang. I’d never heard a real gun go off, and the force of it threw her arm back, but she made a strange moaning sound and held the gun up again, pointing it shakily at Max’s chest. He looked at me, and I realised I still had the knife. I knocked her arm away and sank the long blade of the knife between her breasts, up to the hilt. She struggled under me, but I pushed her back onto the kitchen floor and sank the knife in deeper, up to the hilt, twisting it until she was still again.
‘Jeez, Neen,’ said Max, looking at me in awe as he retrieved the gun and checked the bullets.
I ran to the bathroom and threw up in the sink. I locked the door and took a shower, staying under the water for a long time, until I was numb from the cold. When I went back in the kitchen, Max was mopping a vast pool of blood off the floor, and there was a meat cleaver in the sink. A bin liner by the sink contained Thomas and Charlene’s clothes, and by the front door sat two bulging suitcases. Blood was oozing from the bottom of both.
‘We need to clean this up, then dump the suitcases in the river before it gets light,’ said Max.
I was shocked at how in control I now felt.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What about the gunshot. It was loud...’
‘The police would have been here by now. And this is a rough estate.’
I nodded and took the mop from him. I had killed Charlene to save Max’s life. She would have shot him in the chest. I no longer felt like a victim. I felt in control, and for the first time I felt I was Max’s equal. Things had happened to me that I would never be able to come back from. I would never be able to go back. I had to move forward, and I had to survive.
‘I know a place by the river. It’s quiet and there are no cameras,’ I said.
It was almost four in the morning when we loaded up the suitcases and drove out to a run-down industrial estate in Battersea Park. It was an old printworks I used to visit with dad when I used to go with him on his deliveries during the summer holidays. Dad delivered fizzy drinks all round London.
We parked at the side of the crumbling office blocks and heaved the two suitcases to a small jetty next to the river. There was very little light and the water was an expanse of black.
We dumped the suitcases with Thomas and Charlene’s bodies in the river, throwing them as far out as we could, and with a splash they were gone, sucked down into the water rushing past.
Max put his arm around me and we stood there for a long time, watching the water. It looked black, like ink.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Thursday, 2 November 2017
It was early evening as Erika climbed down from the back of her brother-in-law’s Jeep Cherokee. It was high up off the ground and stepping down from it seemed to aggravate her cracked rib, which was almost healed. With her good arm, she helped out her niece, Karolina, and nephew, Jakub. Despite the dark cold evening, the car park outside the cemetery was busy and she told them to keep close.
They were dressed in their best clothes, as was Erika. A group of old ladies walked past in smart black coats, gold jewellery and coiffed hair. They each held a large plastic green wreath with vivid coloured flowers and joined the end of the line waiting to file in through the cemetery gates. Hundreds of tea lights and votive candles blazed next to a statue of the Virgin Mary embedded in the wall beside the gates, and Erika could see a carpet of candles glowing inside.
The second of November was celebrated as All Saints Day. It was an important day in Slovakia, and in the early evening, the crowds were pouring into the cemetery. Erika’s sister, Lenka, appeared around the car pushing the buggy with two-year-old Evka, who was dressed in a smart back winter coat and black bobble hat.
‘Look at your face!’ cried Lenka to Jakub, who had a smear of chocolate on his chin. She pulled out a hanky and spat on it.
‘Mamiiiiii!’ he shouted, pulling away.
‘My face is clean,’ added Karolina.
‘Jakub, come here. You are not going to Grandma’s grave with a messy face!’
‘Here,’ said Erika, pulling a packet of make-up remover wipes from the pocket of her coat. ‘These don’t have spit in them.’ She crouched down and Karolina helped her open the pack, and pulled one out. Erika still had her right wrist strapped up in a plaster cast. She gently wiped her nephew’s cherubic face, and he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, making her laugh.
Erika’s brother-in-law, Marek, came out of the car to join them, talking on the phone. He was a huge imposing man, with a shaved head, but he had kind brown eyes. He’d put on a black suit for the occasion and Erika thought how well he scrubbed up. Just as he ended the call, his phone rang again. The ringtone was ‘Gangnam Style’ and it cut through the sombre mood.
‘Ty si sedlac,’ hissed Lenka.
‘It’s business!’ he said, rolling his eyes, but he took the call, and moved off up the car park.
‘This is one of the most religious days of the year, and he’s doing business beside a graveyard!’
‘Yes. He’s selling a lot of ice cream in November,’ muttered Erika, giving Lenka a look. She finished wiping Jakub’s face, and he gave her a gummy smile with his two front teeth missing.
‘Don’t you start,’ said Lenka.
‘I like you being here, Auntie Erika,’ said Jakub. ‘Please can you stay for ever?’
Erika had been staying with them now for a couple of weeks, and she had been made to feel part of the family. Of course, she was part of the family, but she’d forgotten how things worked in Slovakia. Families rubbed together, often arguing, but were always honest with each other, and that honesty was underscored with love and loyalty. Erika thought back to when Mark’s relations would come to stay. It was always a time where everyone was on their best behaviour, and it was exhausting.
Jakub and Karolina were looking up at her, waiting for an answer,
‘I can’t stay for ever, but I’ll be here a little longer, until I’m all healed up.’ She smiled.
‘Tell us again how you fought those two men with guns!’ cried Jakub, grabbing her hand.
‘How did it feel to shoot them?’ asked Karolina.
‘It was a taser I shot them with. It’s not a gun, it fires an electric shock into…’ started Erika, but a couple of old ladies walking past gave her a funny look. ‘Maybe we should talk about this afterwards when we go for hot chocolate.’
‘Daddy’s got a gun; he keeps it in a Batman lunchbox,’ said Jakub.
‘That’s enough talk, let’s get moving,’ said Lenka as she took a wreath of flowers and a packet of tea lights from the back of the jeep. She shoved the wreath at Marek, who was still on the phone.
‘Have you seen her belt,’ mouthed Karolina. Erika looked at the belt on Lenka’s coat. The buckle was emblazoned with the words ‘GOLD DIGGA’. ‘She doesn’t know what “Gold Digger” means,’ added Karolina.
‘Take these candles,’ said Lenka, handing the tea lights to Karolina. ‘It’s a brand. A very exclusive brand. I got it from Bratislava.’
‘A Gold Digger is a woman who sleeps with a rich man just for his money,’ piped up Karolina. Erika stifled a smile. Lenka wasn’t listening. She went over to Marek and told him to get off the phone, then they made their way into the cemetery.
It was the biggest cemetery in the town of Nitra, and stretched away for several acres with a carpet of lights twinkling into the far distance. It was crowded with people moving amongst the gravestones, and Erika looked at the candles in coloured jars and ornate glass holders as they passed each stone. The trees above still had the last of their autumn leaves, and the light from the mass of candles was reflected with a warm orange glow. They walked in silence for a few minutes, and then found the gravestone for Erika and Lenka
’s parents. It was simple with grey marble and gold lettering.
IRENA BOLDIŠOVA
1953–2005
FRANTIŠEK BOLDIŠ
1950–1980
Lenka lay the wreath of flowers on the marble, and the kids set to work clearing away the candles which had burnt down and replacing them. As Erika helped Jakub light a small tea light and drop it into one of the votive candleholders, she looked at the names written in gold on the stone. She had been eight, and Lenka six when their father died. He was a distant memory, and Erika could only recall snapshots of him in their childhood; when he came home from work at the plastics factory with a pocket filled with sweets; a holiday when they went camping beside a lake and they took it in turns to sit on his shoulders as he walked out into the deep water.
The memory was still vivid in her mind of the night there was a knock at the door of their flat. A policeman was outside with the building manager. Erika could still hear her mother’s wails when they informed her that he’d been killed in an accident at the factory. Lenka had been too tiny to understand, and Erika had taken her to their room and they’d played with dolls for hours and hours, not knowing what to do.
Over the next ten years, Erika and Lenka had watched their mother descend into alcoholism…
Erika shook away the memories she didn’t want to dwell on. She looked over at Lenka and Marek, holding hands, Jakub and Karolina standing in front of them next to little Evka who was looking at all the candles in wonderment. They were the picture of a happy family, all bathed in the soft glow.
Erika left Slovakia when she was eighteen, running away from her unhappy childhood, and the terrible relationship with her mother, to find a better life – a new life in England. In the light of the flickering candles, she thought about her life in England over the past few years, of losing Mark, how she had to fight every day at work to get the job done. Then she thought of the case she’d just been working on, of her last meetings with Melanie and Peterson. She knew that she and Peterson were over, but hearing it from his lips made it concrete. And what had it been, their relationship? It had been a minefield in many ways. She was his senior officer, they worked together, and it had been such a big thing for her to commit to another man after Mark. And she hadn’t fully committed, she knew that now.
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