by John Niven
There was a soft, rapid popping noise – three ‘pops’ in quick succession – and Danko suddenly jerked bolt upright in his chair, as though an electrical current had been shot through him, his face screwed up in agony, his feet kicking out, hitting the table, sending his glass skittering across it. I jumped back, terrified, thinking he was having a stroke, or a heart attack. He sat bolt upright, clutching the edge of the table, frozen for a second, his eyeballs fluttering up in their sockets.
Blood began to pour from the corner of his mouth.
He smashed face first down onto the wooden table. The back of his head was a bloody mess.
Standing directly behind him; Irene.
Her oven-gloved right arm was extended to exactly where the back of Danko’s head had been a moment ago and the tip of the glove was charred and smoking, with a ragged hole in it. I was stumbling backwards, shaking, trying to speak, trying for a handhold on something – the chair back, the counter – as Irene shook her hand from side to side, allowing the glove to fall off.
She was holding a small automatic pistol. Smoke wreathed from its muzzle.
She was smiling, a broad awful grin.
The pool of blood spreading out from Danko’s head was already dripping onto the floor. His leg was twitching.
The smell of cordite filled the kitchen.
‘Hello, William,’ Irene said.
Her Georgia accent was changing, becoming something else.
24
SHE CAME AROUND behind me, this woman that I knew now was not Irene Kramer from Georgia, and I could feel the hot muzzle of the gun very close to my neck. I was very sober now, nausea rising in me with the terror. Danko’s body twitched again and I jumped. ‘Easy, William,’ she said. ‘Put your hands behind your back, through the slats of . . . that’s it.’
‘Why are you calling me that? What’s –’
Screeching pain as she smacked me on the forehead with the butt of the gun. ‘Don’t lie to me again.’ I could feel cold metal slipping around my wrists and every cell in my body recoiled, screaming, ‘Do not let this woman handcuff you to this chair.’ I tensed, ready to spring forward, and, instantly, the smoking muzzle was in my neck, just under my ear, burning me. ‘Don’t,’ she said, and I heard the ‘snick’ of the cuffs ratcheting home.
I was crying, my head hung, saying ‘Please’ as she stepped in front of me and said, ‘Look at me.’
I looked up, knowing now that it was her. Knowing it, but not really believing it. I could make no connection with the elderly red-headed woman standing above me and the young blonde I had last seen in a grainy online file photo, or the last time I had seen her in the flesh, in court, nearly thirty years ago. A lifetime. ‘What’s my name?’ she said. The Georgia accent was completely gone now, replaced by a west coast of Scotland brogue, a gentler, more refined version of my own. The theatre group. Amateur dramatics.
‘Mrs Docherty,’ I said, through sobs. ‘Gill Docherty.’
‘Good boy, William. That’s better.’
‘You killed Sammy. Our dog . . .’
‘Plenty of time to discuss all that. We’ve got all night. You’ll never know how much planning went into all this. My life’s work, actually.’ She was rooting in her bag now, bringing something out, something shining in her hand. A silver disc. ‘I ran this off earlier,’ she said as she crossed towards the TV and slipped the disc into its side.
She pressed ‘PLAY’ – a jarring burst of static and then a picture appeared.
Sammy.
Naked, lashed to a chair with silver electrical tape. Her face was slick with blood and sweat and she was crying and screaming noiselessly. Then Gill Docherty was thumbing the remote and the green bars were going across the bottom of the screen as the volume went up and then Sammy’s screams were filling the kitchen. She was saying ‘Oh please, oh God, oh God, oh Jesus, oh please stop!’ and I could see, just on the edge of the shot, the top of Irene’s head, shaking, her elbow moving in and out in a sawing motion.
I started screaming as hard as I could, drowning the TV out as I shut my eyes and shook violently. Suddenly I felt her arms around my neck, gripping me tightly, the cashmere of her sweater against the side of my face; I could smell her perfume. ‘Listen to me, William,’ she said, close to my ear, her voice terrifyingly calm. ‘Open your eyes. I want you to watch this video.’ I felt something very sharp beneath my eye and opened them, seeing the point of a chisel. ‘If you close your eyes again I’ll cut your eyelids off. Do you understand?’ I nodded.
The tears in my eyes made it possible for me to look at the screen but to keep it blurred, unfocused. I could do nothing with my ears. ‘JESUSPLEASESTOPNOOHJESUSCHRIST!’ Sammy’s pleas were endless, a torrent, until suddenly it went quiet and I blinked, seeing that, on the screen, Sammy’s head had flopped forward and she had either died or passed out.
I could see now that she was surrounded by tall, silver stands with milky plastic bags attached to the tops, tubes running down. Saline and sodium thiopental. Someone kept her alive while . . .
‘You know it’s going to be much worse for you, don’t you?’ She took a cloth and a brown bottle from her bag and smiled at me.
‘I WAS JUST A KID!’
‘And he punishes the children, and their children,’ she said, pouring stuff into the cloth, stepping towards me, ‘for the sins of the parents, to the third or fourth generation.’ She stuffed the cloth into my face, over my mouth and nose, the intense smell of the ether hitting me, causing nausea and headspin, blackness pouring in as I heard her saying, ‘Exodus 34 . . .’
And then I couldn’t hear anything.
25
I CAME ROUND with a sharp, throbbing pain in the middle of my forehead. As I opened my eyes I felt the blood caked on my cheek crack and split. I was breathing through my nose and could feel ragged duct tape sealing my mouth. There were wooden stairs leading up in the corner, next to a big gas boiler.
A basement.
I was tied to an old, heavy wooden chair, arms lashed to the arms, legs to the legs. The only light in the room came from an old anglepoise lamp over on a workbench. Directly in front of me was a wooden butcher’s block table. Turning my head left, producing another jolt of pain, I could see a small window at shoulder height, probably level with the ground outside. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I noticed that old mattresses and egg-box cartons had been crudely fixed to all the walls and with tumbling blood I realised why.
Soundproofing.
I started to panic and began pulling and tugging at my bonds when I heard a soft moan. I looked down. Walt was stretched out on the concrete floor beside me. He was hog-tied; his hands and feet lashed together behind his back, a silver strip of gaffer tape covering his mouth. He woke up too, with a jolt, like someone coming round from a terrible dream. He looked around the room, blinking, his chin just off the cement floor and then he looked up and saw me. Walt’s eyes widened – I guessed at the amount of blood on my face, from the cut where she smacked me with the gun. We looked at each other, me trying to convey sorrow, apology, reassurance, Christ knows what, with just my eyes. I started frantically tugging my forearms this way and that, looking for some purchase, some give. Nothing. Not an inch. I started rocking the chair from side to side, trying to tip it over, perhaps smash it. The wooden legs scraped and banged on the cement.
Almost immediately, directly above us, I heard footsteps clacking across wooden floorboards.
Breathing hard, sweating, the sweat loosening the dried blood on my face, I looked over towards the stairs and saw something on the workbench I hadn’t noticed before, something I hadn’t seen since Walt was tiny: a baby monitor, green-and-white plastic with a steady red LED light indicating that it was on. Then a door creaked open above us, a bar of widening light spilled across the stairs and heavy boots started clumping down.
‘Look who’s up!’
Mrs Gill Docherty was wearing jeans and a baggy cream sweater. She would have looked like any casually d
ressed elderly lady were it not for the streak of blood across the sweater and the butcher’s knife she was holding.
She put the knife down on the table and picked up Walt, hefted him into a chair, ignoring his wriggling and his muffled ‘mmmmffs’ and ‘uhnnnns’ as she started to lash him to it, humming a little tune to herself, looking very much like a mechanic wrestling with a piece of machinery. I was shouting into my gag now, making terrible, beseeching noises. Once she’d tied Walt in place she crossed over to me. I felt a chunk of my lip come off as she tore the gag from my mouth.
‘Please, please let him go. I’m begging you. Ire—’
She raised an eyebrow.
‘Mrs Docherty, please –’
‘We’re all grown up now, William. You can call me Gill.’
‘Please. It’s Walt. You know him. You don’t want to hurt him.’
She ignored me and perched easily on the butcher’s block table. ‘First, it’s time to tell your son who you really are.’
Walt looked at me, his nostrils flaring rapidly, shallow, fast terrified breathing.
‘I . . . oh Christ. It was so long ago.’
A zinging sound as she picked up the knife, scraping the blade along the wooden table, and brought it up to Walt’s cheek, pulling his head back by the hair, Walt screaming uselessly into his gag. ‘Please,’ she said.
‘William. My name is William Anderson.’ I said the name aloud for the first time in twenty-nine years, trying very hard not to cry as I said, ‘Please don’t hurt him.’
‘Now, I’d like you to tell Walt what you did.’
‘I wasn’t the worst one,’ I said, feeling how useless it was as I said it.
‘But you’re the one I found.’
‘I was just . . . just a wee boy . . .’ I was crying now and Walt started to cry too. She let him go and moved over towards the table. She reached into her bag and began taking things out. ‘How did you find me?’ I asked.
‘All in good time.’
She started to place things on the table in front of us.
A hacksaw.
A silver scalpel.
A huge hunting knife, with brutal serrated teeth.
A car battery.
A chisel.
I went mad: shouting and screaming and crying and violently rocking the chair from side to side.
‘Save your strength, William.’
‘People will be here soon. The police. Sammy’s parents.’
‘Not till the morning. We’ve got all night. All night for a lovely trip down memory lane. Come on now. Tell your son all about it.’
I hung my head, sobbing. ‘I can’t remember.’ I heard her sigh, pick up the knife and step towards Walt again.
I started talking.
26
A SATURDAY MORNING, sunny and clear. The first week of May 1982. We were down at the river, up near the railway bridge, at the bend that led out towards the sea. We were sitting on the concrete wall by the weir, our legs dangling over the side above the brown, frothy water, throwing stones at an empty Coke can we’d thrown in, seeing who could sink it first. We were talking about the Pope’s visit to Scotland the following month.
‘If that dirty Fenian bastard comes doon here,’ Banny said, ‘he’ll get his fucken baws booted.’
Tommy laughed. ‘Aye, too right. Imagine it, man. Jist runnin’ oot and bootin the cunt in the chanks?’
We all laughed.
‘UDA, all the way,’ Banny said, spitting into the river. ‘Fuck the Pope and the IRA,’ we chorused.
Across the river, on the opposite bank, an old guy appeared, walking a dog, a Border collie.
‘HO! MISTER!’ I shouted. ‘ARE YOU RIDING THAT FUCKING DUG!’ The guy shook his head and walked on. Banny and Tommy pissed themselves. ‘You’re aff yer heed so ye are, Wullie,’ Tommy said.
Banny threw his last stone hard and smacked it right into the Coke can, with a ‘plop’ and ‘ting’ combined. ‘See that! Ya fucken dancer!’ The red-and-white aluminium bobbled, glugged and sank.
Banny stood up, wiping chalky dust off his Sta-Prest, his Harrington. ‘Fuck it, man. This is boring as fuck.’ He looked along the empty stretch of riverbank. ‘C’mon, we’ll go doon the puggies.’ The puggies; Defender, Galaxian, Asteroids, Scramble.
‘Aye, whit wi?’ Tommy asked. ‘Ah’m skint.’
Banny shrugged. ‘We’ll nick some wee fanny’s credits.’ He’d done this before. Just shoved a kid off the machine when they still had credits remaining, telling the kid he’d put the money in while they were playing. What was some wee fanny going to do to Banny?
‘Aye, aw right.’ Tommy stood up too. ‘It’ll be better than this pish.’
Tommy and Banny were standing over me, their shadows blocking out the sun, when it happened. I heard footsteps, the sound of someone approaching, and then Tommy was saying, ‘No way, man. No fucking way.’ I could hear the grin in his voice as he said it and then I was getting to my feet and following their gaze.
There he was, coming round the corner of the poured-concrete weir house, a fishing rod in one hand and a small trout dangling from the other. Craig Docherty.
The fucking Professor.
Alone. In the wild.
He saw us and jerked back, like he was thinking about turning and running for it, but Banny was already walking towards him and Docherty froze. Just stood there.
‘Aw right, Professor?’ Banny said, casually, almost pleasantly. Docherty glanced up and down the riverbank, looking, praying, for an adult to appear. Nothing – just the dog guy, hundreds of yards away on the other side now.
‘Whit ye got there?’ Tommy said. We were all around him now.
‘Trout,’ Docherty said quietly. He’d looped a piece of nylon fishing line through the fish’s gills and was carrying it by that. He looked utterly miserable, the enormity of the situation dawning on him. The kickings he got at school were, by necessity, brief and hurried. Swiftly terminated by teachers. There was never the opportunity for a kicking outside school because Craig Docherty didn’t go anywhere we went. He didn’t hang around the puggies, or the chippie. He didn’t go to parties. Or discos at the community centre. Now and then you’d see him in the supermarket with his mum.
‘Gies it,’ Banny said, reaching for the little fish.
Docherty moved it away, behind his leg.
‘Fucking gies it,’ Banny said, pushing Docherty, snatching it. ‘Gads o’ fuck!’ Banny said, his face screwed up in disgust as he examined the trout. ‘Slimy as fuck.’ It was brown, about eight inches long, with blood-red mottling standing out on the dark back, the milky-silver underbelly brilliant in the sunshine. ‘Whit ye gaunny dae wi it?’ Banny asked.
‘Take it home,’ Docherty said.
Banny tossed the trout into the river, a flicker of white as it sank, floating just below the surface. ‘No any more,’ Banny said as Docherty watched sadly. He turned away, head down, eyes averted, and went to walk off. ‘Hey!’ Banny said, catching him by the shoulder. ‘Where ye gauin?’
‘Aye, we’re fucking talking tae ye!’ Tommy said.
‘Here, ah fancy a bit of fishing maself,’ Banny said, grabbing for Docherty’s rod.
Docherty pulled the rod tight into his side, the end resting on the ground, like a soldier performing a rifle drill, and shook his head fiercely. Banny pulled, moving in, towering over Docherty, a foot taller.
‘Gie him it!’ Tommy said, shoving Docherty, who was turning away, trying to shield the rod with his body. Banny grabbed it with both hands and slammed his hips into Docherty, body-checking him hard, sending him flying across the poured concrete, his glasses flying off, the rod in Banny’s hands now.
Docherty lay there, looking up at us, breathing hard, his face strange and blank without his glasses. There were tears in his eyes but his jaw was set and his fists were balled. ‘Give it back,’ he said.
‘Nae bother,’ Banny said. He snapped the rod cleanly in half over his knee and threw the pieces in Docherty’s
face. ‘There ye go.’ Tommy laughed. Then something happened no one was expecting.
Docherty went for Banny.
Instantly, you could tell he’d never been in a fight in his life: head down, fists flailing wildly. Banny, an eight-year veteran of playground battles and street fights, just stepped back and let Docherty reach him, taking a couple of weak, useless punches on the arms before he grabbed Docherty’s hair and started slowly pulling his head towards the ground.
‘Iya! Iya!’ Docherty squealed.
Banny kicked Docherty hard in the face, one, two, three times, then let him go. Docherty staggered back and fell down, blood pouring from his nose and mouth, but trying to get back up, trying to stand on trembling legs.
‘C’MON THEN!’ Banny screamed.
It became like a dream, like a nightmare, like a video, like one of the horror videos watched on those endless afternoons off school, the curtains closed in the living room of the small council house, the only light coming from the fizzing television. Things happened quickly, fast-forward, and yet seemed to take all the time in the world. Freeze-frame. Slow motion. Banny whipping Docherty with the rod, shouting things I couldn’t hear. Tommy, his jaw set terribly as his foot lashed back and forth, real blood on the ox-blood Doc Martens. Above us the sky was cloudless, smiling on the crime, the riverbank empty for miles in both directions. The bushes and the poured-concrete weir house bearing silent witness. Docherty’s trousers were pulled off, then his pants, his trembling, bloodied hand as he tried to stop this, tried to hold onto this last shred of dignity (‘no, no, no, please, no . . .’), and then the bronze rod was arcing against the blue again, the sun kissing the length of the graphite as it whistled through the air, a filament of silver line trailing behind it. The red welts appearing on his thighs, his buttocks, the blood. More blood. His face – the face I still see every night as I reach for sleep – caked in dirt and tears, a pebble stuck to his cheek, looking at me, begging. Tommy sitting on his back, Banny on his legs, moving the broken end of the rod towards . . .
