One For Sorrow

by Sarah A. Denzil

  It sounds appealing, giving up, but my son is frightened and alone in the corner of the room, sitting in urine-soaked jeans. I need to think carefully about what I know, and what I can do to get us out of this situation. First, what I know: Owen Fielding confessed to killing Maisie and James. I can’t trust that to be true. The Fieldings strike me as cunning criminals with souls as dark as molasses. They’ve made some sort of pact. Owen’s confession was a distraction to allow Isabel time to capture me. She wanted me to drop my guard. This is a last hurrah. They don’t intend to get out of this unscathed; instead they’ve given up and they’re taking me down with them.

  I need more time.

  I need to get Isabel to talk.

  “All right,” I say. “I’ll stop fighting. I know that you’re going to win this no matter what I do. I’m just sorry that I got involved with any of you in the first place. You drew me into this mystery and made me question everything, and now I want you to give me answers. Isabel, what happened to Maisie Earnshaw? What happened that day? Don’t let me die without knowing, because I spent months agonising over what might have happened, and now you can finally tell me.”

  “Shall I tell her?” Isabel asks her father.

  David moves over to the table with the knives and perches on the edge. “If that’s what you want to do.”

  Isabel walks over to me, still fingering the knife, and draws it along the lapel of the dressing gown, cutting into the fabric, barely grazing my skin. Despite my attempt at bravado, I let out a small gasp, wincing as the blade draws a small amount of blood. “You were right, you know. When I told you I’d found my father’s pictures as a child it was the truth. But he never hurt me. He used to draw pictures of the women he tortured and killed. They were hidden in a locked drawer in his home office. I was an inquisitive child who noticed that Daddy always carried a key that didn’t unlock any of the doors in the house or his cars, or his work office. I also noticed that sometimes he lied to Mum. He’d tell her he was working late, but he’d come home wearing different clothes or shoes. I was seven, but I was already smarter than my mother.

  “One day I created a diversion. I waited until Dad placed his keys on his office desk, and then I pushed my brother down a set of steps. When I screamed, Dad forgot to pick up his keys from the desk in order to run to my brother.” Isabel directs her lazy eyes to her father. “Got to make sure the male heir isn’t dead.” She turns back to me. “While Mum and Dad were busy checking Owen was okay—which he was, because I only pushed him down a few steps—I ran into his office, tried the suspicious key in his locked drawer, and found the pictures. I kept one of them underneath my mattress and used to look at it at night.”

  A little girl, and a drawer filled with tortured women. Most people could never comprehend the darkness, nor the way Isabel was drawn to it. But I’ve been touched by darkness myself, and the thought of her sleeping on top of that picture makes me feel sick. I almost pity her. Then, I see Tom trembling in the corner and that pity fades away.

  “Why weren’t you frightened?” I ask. “Most little girls would be.”

  “I’m not most little girls,” Isabel says proudly.

  “And you.” I direct my gaze to David. “James told me he’d always suspected you of kidnapping and killing homeless women over the years. Was he right?”

  David ignores my question. “Did you enjoy the meal you had with us, Leah? Did you like it when I wrapped my fingers around your neck? I’ve been so looking forward to doing it again.”

  His words are so cold that they reach into my chest and wrap around my heart. I ignore the sense of dread spreading over my skin. There’s no time for fear anymore. I have to ignore it and keep Isabel talking while I figure out how to get the knife out of my dressing gown pocket.

  “What are you, Isabel? If you’re not like most little girls.”

  She lifts her face to the ceiling of the crumbling house and runs her fingers through her hair. “You know what I am, Leah. I’m a god. I turn people into beautiful things.”

  This surprises me. I’ve never heard anyone claim to be a god before, not in the years I worked at Whitmore, nor even from my father’s drunken mouth. But it makes sense, in a warped, sadistic way.

  “Beautiful birds,” I whisper. “That’s what you did to Maisie. You turned her into a bird.”

  Isabel sits down on the floor so quickly that for half a second I think she’s collapsed. She takes a lock of her hair and strokes it between her fingers. “I’d been telling Owen for months that Daddy was special and liked to turn people into art, but he didn’t believe me. Owen always said that people couldn’t be made into anything beautiful because all people are ugly. We’d been experimenting with animals in the woods, seeing if we could make them more beautiful or uglier. Sometimes Owen would tie me up like the girls in Dad’s pictures, but it never worked out right. I could always get out. I wanted to prove to Owen that we could make a truly beautiful thing. Magnificent.” She stops stroking her hair before giving it a little tug. “Then, Maisie came along.”

  “You dragged Maisie into the woods like one of your animals,” I say. “Then you hit her on the head with a rock, removed her clothes, and carved wings into her back. You did it with Owen.”

  “And now she’s a beautiful bird, not a dirty little girl,” Isabel says triumphantly.

  “And you,” I say to David. “You knew what your children were, and you did nothing about it.”

  “My daughter is an artist,” he replies. “A glorious artist.”

  Tom is watching us in the corner, calmer now, his chest moving up and down less rapidly. Good. My talking to Isabel is giving him time to calm down. My fingers inch around the arm of the chair towards my pocket where the knife is hidden. I ignore the pinch of the ropes and continue.

  “But killing Maisie was reckless. You put the family in jeopardy, Isabel,” I point out. “Your father didn’t need the attention. In fact, I bet you had to give up your hobby for a little while. Didn’t you, David?”

  “It was put on hold,” David admits. “But Isabel was brave enough to take responsibility for what happened, and she was clever enough to get out of it.”

  “Then why have you given up? Why take me? You know you’re not going to get away with this. It’s too high profile. The police have been checking up on me every day. What are you doing?”

  “My little girl has suffered all these years.” David hops off the table and walks towards me, his chin angled down and his eyes gravely determined. My fingers grope the fabric of my dressing gown, reaching for the knife. “She deserves to take whatever she wants in recompense for that suffering.”

  “Now it’s Owen’s turn to protect the family.”

  “Well, he’s hardly innocent now, is he?” David pokes James’s body in the stomach and laughs.

  “Is your wife in on it? Is she a killer too? What is this, Family von Trapp the Halloween edition? You think you’re gods, but you’re sick.” My heart hammers against my chest as David closes the gap between us and grasps my throat in one hand. I’m forced to sit there, helpless, as he squeezes hard, his face growing red with the effort.

  “Let me ask you a question, Leah.” His eyes are glossy and wide, with the whites of his eyeballs shining through the darkness. He’s excited, I realise, exhilarated by the death that surrounds him. What kind of person finds joy in pain? What kind of person comes alive at the thought of taking life from another? “Do you remember the victims? Do you remember the names of the people serials killers take? No? The world will know my name. The world will know exactly who I am. You’re nothing. You’re the bug we’ll grind into the dirt.”

  “Daddy!” Isabel grabs hold of David’s shoulder and wrenches him away. “Don’t be so silly. She is something. She’s a beautiful bird. She’s mine.”

  My throat rasps as I drag in the dusty air, burning me all the way down to my lungs. The lack of oxygen has made me woozy and the room spins. A sad moaning lament escapes from Tom on the other side o
f the room. He’s calling my name through his gag.

  I need to stay strong for him, but my eyelids are drooping. A soft hand caresses my face, then wanders down my chest, brushing the outline of my breasts, before reaching my hands. For an awful moment I think she might find the knife, but instead, Isabel is beginning to untie my wrists. Before hope floods back in, David moves behind me and puts a knife to my throat.

  “Don’t try anything, Leah,” he warns.

  “What… what are you doing?” I mumble. My throat burns so badly that my words are a hoarse whisper.

  Isabel pulls me to my feet, shushing me gently. She tucks a lock of hair behind my ear as she pushes me forwards. With horror, I realise I’m walking straight towards James Gorden, the smell of him hitting the back of my injured throat. His sagging body moves and squirms in the chair, infested with maggots. I start to heave, almost vomiting onto my chest, until Isabel strokes my hair and calms me down. She moves me past James’s body to the centre of the room. Here I get a better view of Tom. He’s quiet and watchful with his eyes trained on mine. There’s a glint of anger in them. Good, I think. I’ll be angry too.

  Isabel stops me and moves away, but I can’t do anything because David is behind me, his sharp knife pressing into my skin. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I wish I’d kept Isabel talking for a little while longer so I could’ve managed to get the knife from my pocket.

  It’s too late now. Isabel is pulling ropes down from the ceiling. I didn’t notice it because the room was so dark, but Isabel and David have set up some sort of rig with climbing equipment. Isabel tests it once, and then moves back to me, sliding the dressing gown down to my feet. I begin to whimper.

  “Hush now, Leah. You’re about to be part of something beautiful, there’s no need to be afraid.”

  My nightgown is split open at the front with her knife and pushed over my arms and onto the ground. I turn away from Tom, ashamed of my naked body in front of my son.

  Isabel taps my breast. “Better than I thought.” Then she takes hold of one wrist, wraps the rope around it, and clips the rope into the pulley system above my head.

  When my second wrist is held in place with the rope, I find myself yanked open, like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. They both move behind my back and someone pulls on the rope so that it’s taut.

  “Now,” Isabel says in a cheerful voice. “Shall we begin?”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Before she starts, there’s a moment so quiet that I can hear the rain on the dilapidated roof a storey above me. Tom’s breathing is raspy through the gag, but both David and Isabel are silent movers, giving nothing away. I can’t see them, I can’t hear them. A solitary drip of water comes down from the ceiling.

  I crane my neck, examining the pulley system. Hooks have been driven into the plaster above, and through the hooks is the climbing rope. The rope slips through the system, pulling my arms and legs apart, fixed at some point behind me so that I can’t move the rope no matter how hard I try. I’m sure the ropes are excellent quality, which means cutting through them won’t work. Besides, I’m naked now. I don’t even have the knife I took from the table in the cottage.

  But what about the hooks? Could that be a weakness? This building isn’t exactly safe even without the added pressure of the pulley system. The light is dim, but I think I can make out a few cracks in the ceiling; some are bad enough to let water drip onto the floor. Perhaps if I try to pull the hooks out, I’d bring the ceiling down with me. It could hurt Tom, but could also give me an advantage over the Fieldings, and I can’t think of any better ideas.

  “Tom will watch you get your wings,” Isabel says brightly. “And then you will watch while we kill your little brother.”

  We’re going to die unless I try to escape from these ropes. I have to pull these hooks from the ceiling, even if I pull half the building down in the process.

  Isabel slowly draws the knife over my flesh, gently touching me with the blade so that it tickles my skin. She’s practising a pattern along my shoulder blades, like a tattoo artist testing out her canvas.

  Don’t scream, I tell myself. Whatever you do, don’t scream.

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” I say, with my eyes directed at Tom. He’s trembling again, and I need him calm if we’re going to get out of here.

  She wants me to scream, I can feel it coming off her in waves, the eagerness. Can I be strong enough not to? Focus on getting out. Carefully, I assess the strength of the ropes binding my wrists, gently pulling on them to test the strain. The water drips down from the ceiling less than a foot away from where the hooks have been screwed in. That gives me hope that there’s weakness in the old plasterboards or the rafters above me. Even if I could loosen one of the hooks far enough to get an arm free it would be useful. Maybe I could knock one of them out and grab Isabel’s knife. But what if they get to Tom first?

  “Remember how you told me that your father was superstitious?” Isabel’s breath tickles my neck.

  “Yes.”

  “He always said hello to magpies. But to me, it’s simply good manners to talk to birds. They’re wonderful creatures, why not address them? Birds are a hundred and fifty million years old. The original dinosaurs. They deserve our respect, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.” My biceps strain as I pull on the ropes above my head, but I can’t allow any of that strain to show in my voice. I’m not a strong woman; I don’t attend fitness classes or go to the gym, but I am toned from restraining patients when I have to and being on my feet most of the day. Since I’ve been working at the farm shop I’ve spent the daylight hours carrying goods, moving tins, lifting sacks. I’m stronger than I think I am. I’m stronger than I think I am.

  When the knife slices into my flesh for the first time the sharp pain takes my breath away. I won’t scream for her, I won’t. What Isabel doesn’t realise is that the deft slicing of her knife distracts me from the strain in my biceps, allowing me to pull even harder. But at the same time I’m aware that flexing my shoulders and back would be noticeable to Isabel. Luckily, she mistakes it for a reaction to pain.

  “Relax, dear Leah,” she soothes as the knife swoops down to my waist. “I need to draw feathers. You need to keep still.”

  “Want me to hold her?” David offers.

  “No,” she replies. “You keep an eye on the boy.”

  Pull, Leah, pull as hard as you can, I think, screwing my eyes tight and gritting my teeth. With my eyes shut, I see Alfie leaning against the wall with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. His hands are pushed into his trouser pockets, and he scrapes the concrete with the toe of his shoe. I’m watching him with sweat pouring down my face, blood streaming down my back, and the muscles in my arms feeling as though they’re going to pop, but he doesn’t seem to register any of that. He lifts his chin and looks me straight in the eye.

  “The Hackney Hacker,” he says.

  Shut up. The words don’t escape my lips.

  “Alf Smith was a family man, a decent man. On the street where he lived with his wife and two children, he was considered a friend to everyone. Always up for a laugh, Alf would be in the pub at the end of the street most nights, singing West Ham chants until the pub was filled with a lively, boisterous spirit. But then he’d go home and everything would change.”

  A groan of pain rises up from my belly and out of my mouth. I feel spittle in the corners of my mouth, but I keep my eyes screwed shut because I don’t want to see Tom’s face.

  “Alf once dreamed of being important. But the accident in the factory changed all that, didn’t it, Leah? He became a different person. He turned meaner and meaner until one day he snapped completely, and hacked his wife to death, almost chopping her head off with the knife. Who found her, Leah?”

  “Tom,” I whisper.

  “That’s right.” Alfie lifts himself from the wall and takes a step towards me. “You’ve always been a victim, haven’t you, Leah? But what about him?” He nods
over to Tom, crouched and afraid. The scenery in my mind is half the abandoned house and half the carpark outside Crowmont Hospital.

  “I don’t want him to be,” I admit. Leah and Tom Smith have been ground down into the dirt for as long as I can remember, but it’s because we’ve let them grind us down. No one with an unbroken spirit can truly be a victim. They can hurt you physically and emotionally, but you’re no one’s victim if you remain in possession of your whole self. Of your willpower.

  Why has it taken me so long to realise that?

  When I open my eyes, I allow myself to scream, but the scream isn’t one from pain, it’s from determination, because I can feel one of the hooks slipping.

  “One for sorrow,” Isabel recites to herself as she continues to carve into my skin. “I carved this same pattern into Maisie’s skin, you know. The police never released that detail, did they? It’s a good job, or you’d never have believed I was innocent little Isabel.”

  Shut up, I think. Shut up about your stupid obsession with birds. A little ceiling dust hits my forehead. Tom’s eyes are on mine and they are intense. He knows what I’m doing. He sits up with his back straight and his bound wrists resting on his knees. He hunches his shoulders and moves himself into a position where he can move easily or reach up to protect his head. He must see the ceiling straining.

  “Two for joy.”

  I scream again, hiding the sound of the plaster cracking above me. One of the hooks is half out and there are fine lines moving across the surface of the ceiling.

  Isabel raises her voice. “Three for a girl.”

  And the ceiling opens. I drop to the ground to cover my head. The pulley system collapses around me. Plasterboard, dust, and debris rains on top of my naked body, bruising me in the back, shoulders, and side. But as I fall, I knock Isabel back, which gives me an opportunity to take more control. Both Isabel and David are protecting themselves from the falling rubble. I can’t rest for even a moment. I need to get my head up and find a weapon. Wishing I could at least check on Tom, I force myself to turn towards Isabel. She’s on her back with an arm thrown up to protect her face. The knife is no longer in her hand. I scramble across the floor, searching through dust and debris for the knife.