by J G Alva
“I want to ask you some questions,” she said.
Sutton tried to get a read on her. His conclusion, in the end, was that she was very angry, and doing what she could not to show it.
“Okay,” he said equably.
She stared at her hands, clasped between her knees.
“First off, who was she?”
Sutton hesitated, and then said –
“A very sick woman.”
“But who was she?”
“You didn’t recognise her?”
Her eyes flicked to his face. She looked, of all things, outraged for a moment.
And so he told her: who she was, what she had done, and why she wanted to get back at Sutton.
At these revelations, Janice reacted as if she had been hit, a gasp of breath escaping her.
“So she…did those things…”
“Because of me,” he said. “She’d been following me. She knew I cared for you. She knew that if she hurt you it would hurt me.” He paused before adding, “and it has.”
Janice’s hands were trembling.
“And where is she now?” She asked.
Sutton didn’t answer.
She looked at his face, her eyes travelling over it.
“Where is she?” She asked again.
He said, “she won’t bother you anymore.”
Janice swallowed.
“Did you…did you murder her?”
“No.”
It didn’t seem like she wholly believed him.
“Then where is she?”
Sutton cleared his throat and said, “I’ll tell you…if you really want to know.”
She looked at his face, trying to read it, and then seeing something on it she didn’t like she looked away and said, “I don’t need to know.”
“No. You don’t.”
“She won’t hurt anyone again?”
“No.”
She stared at him, daring to believe.
She cleared her throat, and then smoothed the fabric of her jeans.
She said, “I think there was something happening between us. Something…serious.”
She looked to him for confirmation.
“Yes,” he said.
She nodded, very business-like.
“I don’t want to lose that. Because of her. I don’t want her to win. But…I don’t think…it won’t be easy, for you I mean…I don’t…”
She sobbed, covering her mouth with a hand.
Sutton was elated. He leaned forward in his seat to rise and comfort her, but she held up a hand. She shook her head.
“Don’t,” she warned. “Please. Not yet.”
“Janice…”
“Please,” she pleaded. Her eyes were big and round in her face. Afraid. My God, afraid? “Can we just…just move slowly…I don’t know what I’m feeling, whether…” Another tear slipped down her cheek, and once more her scared eyes found his, beseeching silently for mercy, for understanding.
As if it was he that had tortured her.
Maybe in a way he had.
“Slowly is fine,” Sutton said.
She burst into tears suddenly, burying her face in her hands.
Sutton watched her suffering and could do nothing, was allowed to do nothing…and so suffered himself.
*
She cooked and they ate, and the conversation was polite and diffident. It was all that she could manage, and Sutton was happy to oblige her in this. He could be patient. She was worth the wait. Worth the effort.
When the meal was over, he didn’t ask to stay, and she didn’t offer, but he saw the look that she couldn’t quite hide: the evident relief at his leaving.
The nail in his side had been bad, but it was a small and unimportant thing to this deeper, and more lasting, pain.
He saw her three more times in the next two weeks, sat for three more meals, had three more polite and diffident conversations. She was back at work again; the BRI was slowly, steadily, being repaired; she was thinking about learning to play the violin; all anyone at the hospital could talk about was Dr Bodel.
Life went on, but not for them. They were fixed, unchanging, each afraid to move for fear of upsetting the other.
As they were cleaning up the plates, she turned to him and said impulsively, “would you like to stay for a bit?”
She forced a smile and said, “we can watch a DVD.”
So they sat at opposite ends of the same sofa and watched the DVD. Sutton, for his part, could not remember any of it when it was finally over, as his consciousness had been wholly fixed on Janice throughout, mere feet from him, separated only by a cushion. Paradise…that for all intents and purposes might as well be on the moon.
Once the DVD was finished, Janice reached out with the remote control and turned it off.
Silence.
She sat with her legs curled under her, her body turned toward him but her face turned away. He saw the pulse in her throat. He was sure he had never wanted anything as much as he wanted to touch that throat.
“I want to try something,” she said, with difficulty.
She looked at him then, and the fear was naked on her face.
“I want to kiss you,” she said.
Sutton’s mouth was suddenly very dry.
“But you can’t touch me,” she added quickly.
“Okay.”
“If I think you’ll try to touch me, I can’t do it.”
“I won’t touch you,” he promised, although he ached to do so.
On hands and knees, she came toward him; like a lioness, stalking her prey. He sat unmoving, watching her. He could see passed the edge of her top, to the skin running from her throat down to her breasts.
She touched his face, a hand to his cheek. It was as if she was checking to see if he was real.
Slowly, hesitantly, she leaned forward and kissed him.
It was almost chaste. She was trembling. She held her lips against his for perhaps ten seconds, before pulling away.
Sutton tried to keep his response to her to a minimum, but it was a difficult battle…and not something he could completely control.
The kiss done, she sat back and opened her eyes. She searched his face, and the agony that came in to her own tore at him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, a hand coming up to cover her eyes. She sounded miserable.
It came to him then: whatever feelings she had had for him were gone. The trauma of what had happened to her had underlined all that had come before, and in order for her to triumph over it, she had to rid herself of its associations. He wondered how far the damage had gone. What would she discard, in order to survive? Would she rid herself of her friends? Would she change her job? Would she sell her house, and move to a new city? Would she dye her hair, change her clothes? Would her very personality be altered?
The first thing she had to discard, of course, was him.
Veronica had had her revenge after all.
She had won.
“Why did you take so long?” She asked, in a voice that was almost a whisper.
“Janice, I-“
“Where were you?”
The hand dropped, and the eyes that looked at him now were accusatory.
He had no reply to offer.
No excuse to give.
I was too late, Janice. That’s all. Just too late.
“I don’t want to blame you,” she said, looking away. “I don’t want to, but…where were you?”
She began to cry once more.
Sutton did not speak.
“I prayed for you,” she said. “I prayed for you to come and save me. I thought you must know…that, I don’t know, you would sense it somehow…that I was in trouble…”
She shook her head.
Sutton began, “Janice-“
“But you didn’t come.”
The words were flat, but damning.
Sutton shook his head.
He had trouble looking at her.
“You don’t understand,”
Janice said, and something in her voice made him look up. Her eyes beseeched him again. “Some of the things she did, she made me want it…with my body…and I couldn’t stop myself responding…”
So. Sutton had betrayed her, that was true, but the guilt that strangled her now came from the knowledge that she had also betrayed herself.
*
Back at his flat, Sutton looked at the portrait that would never be seen, not now.
He had captured her as best he could, from the photograph he had inadvertently taken when the camera had been in his lap and she had been unaware.
Janice had been one of the good ones; in a lifetime, there were only so many.
He had wanted to tell her how she had helped him, how it was she who had helped rid him of the nightmares of being trapped in the bowels of that hospital…But he knew now that this was something he could never tell her. Her world was full of her own pain; she could not make room for anything else. And he thought that she would feel more betrayed, if anything: that he was whole, while she was so obviously not.
Feeling an oppressive weight of sadness, he put the portrait away and tried not to think about what he had lost.
*
That night.
Veronica came to as he was carrying her to his car.
It was a feat not without some difficulty. She was a big woman.
“Buh…?” She mumbled as he laid her in the back seat.
Something was wrong with her jaw; Sutton supposed he had broken, or dislocated it at the very least; he had hit her hard enough after all. Her lips and the side of her jaw were swollen horribly, and one eye was obscured by distended flesh. She looked like a circus freak, an elephant woman. Sutton was gratified to see it.
She moved her head gingerly. She looked down at her tied wrists.
He had dressed her in jogging bottoms and a hooded top, pulling the clothes at random from Veronica’s closet.
Janice was asleep, at home, sedated. He had time for this.
Sutton shut the door on Veronica and went around to the driver’s side. He got in, started the car, and then pulled away from the curb. He continued up the hill. Not far to go. He indicated, took a left, and mindful of his passenger, kept strictly within the speed limit. He couldn’t be pulled over. Not now.
“Werrbootegginbe?”
“Shut up, Veronica.”
A pause, and then a strange guttural snorting…which Sutton eventually took to be laughter.
“Nebbakillbagull,” she said.
He looked at her in the rear view mirror.
Veronica tried again.
“Henbored,” she said. “Nebbakillbher.”
“Helen Board?”
Veronica nodded.
“Harrtack.”
“What?”
“Harr…tack.”
“She had a heart attack?”
Veronica nodded again.
“Bugs.”
“Bugs?”
“Nuh. Brugs.”
“Drugs? She had a heart attack because of the drugs?”
Once more, Veronica nodded.
“If it was an accident, then why hide the body?”
Veronica shook her head slightly, as if he was being dense. Perhaps he was.
“You were famous,” Sutton said knowingly. “You didn’t want the scandal.”
Veronica gave a noise that Sutton took to be a confirmation.
“Youberr…wongbowdme.”
Sutton nodded. There wasn’t much traffic on the streets. A car was pulling away at the traffic lights further ahead. Occasionally, the glow of animated Christmas lights hanging from the front of houses popped into Sutton’s vista. Was it nearly Christmas? He had almost forgotten.
Not far to go now.
“Maybe,” he admitted finally. “Maybe I was wrong about you and Helen. But I wasn’t wrong about what you are.”
“Werrbootegginbe?”
“Where am I taking you? You’ll see.” Sutton turned slightly in his seat and smiled; it was the unpleasant smile he had given her when they had met at the Albion. For a moment, behind the pain, Veronica felt cold with fear. “It’s where you belong.”
*
“Who is she?”
“Veronica Halls.”
“The Veronica Halls?”
Arby bent down to look in through the car window.
“Yes.”
“She doesn’t look like Veronica Halls.”
“She had an accident.”
“An accident?”
“Fell down some stairs.”
Arby frowned at Sutton.
“Why should I take her?”
“She’s a murderer,” Sutton said, and shrugged. “Nobody’s going to give a shit about her if she goes missing.” He paused, and then added, “she’s the one person in the world I don’t care what you do with. Take her. Have fun.”
Arby thought about it, and then nodded.
“Hey. Have I told you my theory about the three holes?”
Sutton shook his head. He didn’t want to hear this.
But as he opened the car door, and they both attended to Veronica, Arby continued.
“Women have three holes, right? Three holes by which you can gain access to their bodies. But these three holes also lead to the three aspects of their being: heart, mind and soul.”
Sutton slid Veronica around so that Arby could grab her under her shoulders. He took her feet.
They marched with her across the pavement to Arby’s door. Arby lived in an old shoe factory in Old Market. This part of Bristol was dilapidated, every second building abandoned or rotting; Arby’s place was no exception. Sutton looked up and down the street, and at dark windows, but there was no one watching.
Not that he cared.
“I don’t want to know, Arby.”
“Then why did you bring her here? This is fine.”
Arby stopped inside the door, and Sutton laid Veronica’s feet on the cold concrete.
There was a smell coming from inside the shoe factory. Sutton struggled to place it. Rot and stagnant water he could identify, but there was also another strong smell which he could not put his finger on. An animal smell, faintly repulsive.
Sutton stood and then stared at Arby.
“It’s a shame,” Arby said.
“A shame?”
“I can’t call you Saint Mills anymore.”
Sutton nodded.
“Right.”
He turned and went back to his car.
“Hey, Sutton.”
Sutton, tired to his very core, turned back toward Arby. The movement seemed to take a millennia.
“I’m going to do everything to her three holes,” he said, smiling, and then slammed the metal door shut.
THE END
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So if you would like to know what Sutton Mills got up to next, then here is the first three chapters of THE ARTISANS, the third novel in the Sutton Mills series. Enjoy!
THE ARTISANS (Sutton Mills Book 3)
He is a lover of puzzles, an aspiring student of Art, an admirer of women.
His methods are unorthodox, and if he doesn’t break the law, then he has been known to bend it from time to time.
But tonight he is none of those things. Because tonight he is on the run.
Sutton Mills has managed to recover Toby Matheson, a fifteen year old boy, from the clutches of a cult known as the Church of the New Artisans. But in his haste to escape and prevent the boy from being brainwashed, he has inadvertently left a trail of breadcrumbs for the Cult to follow. The Artisans – led by a delusional psychopath known only as Bellafont – have despatched their Soldiers in an effort to bring back the boy. Trained, deadly, they will stop at nothing to recover young Toby.
Even if it means harming innocent bystanders in their way.
Or Sutton’s friends to get to him…
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Read on for the first three chapters of THE ARTISANS…
PROLOGUE
2004
It looked like they were going to cut off his arm.
Sutton had come in through the kitchen at the back of the house, creeping through the darkened interior like a Grendel; now, he stood in the hallway, watching as they prepared to carry out this terrible threat.
There were three of them: two to hold him down, and one to do the cutting. The sixty watt bulb inside the paper ball bamboo style lampshade cast a diffuse pool of light into the lounge, illuminating a depressingly prosaic interior for the scene of such horrific torture: there was an old tube TV by the window; an X-box on the floor; a small shelf unit full of DVDs; two brown four-seater sofas; a not wholly unexpected profusion of merchandise that indicated four men were living together in this three bedroom terraced house: crushed beer cans, overflowing ashtrays, football shirts, car magazines. It was nothing new.
