Cold Hands

by John Niven

  34

  SPRAWLING ON THE gritty cement floor, in the workshop part of the pool house, I caught my breath as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. I could make out the shapes of machinery around me; the big petrol mower, the Bobcat snowmobile, the old barbecue set. The only light in the room was a tiny forest-green square in the corner near the floor, the ‘on’ light of the chest freezer. Being used only in summer the building was unheated but somewhere over there was the little plug-in electric fan heater that Danny used sometimes when he did work out here. Walt was lying on his side, breathing shallowly, his head lolling. He looked drunk. I crawled over and brought the heater back, plugging it in, turning it on, a tiny red square joining the green one in the darkness, hot air blasting over Walt.

  ‘Walt. Walt! Can you hear me?’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘We’re in the pool house. I’ve got the heater on. Stay here. I’m going to get some towels.’

  Feeling my way in the darkness, my breath misting in front of me, I went through the connecting door that led to the changing-room half of the structure and found some dry towels stacked on the pine benches. Lying on the floor, as I’d hoped, I found a pair of Walt’s old combat pants and a couple of T-shirts, all stale and dirty but dry. I locked the exterior door that led from the poolside into the changing room. I glanced through a dirty, frosted windowpane towards the main house. The lights were still on at the back of the house, the corridor that ran along the bedrooms. Beyond getting Walt warm and dry I had only one thought: get to the office and get my gun. Then I saw a red shape moving fast past one of the windows and I dropped to my knees below the window.

  She was in the house.

  She was waiting for us. Maybe waiting until the storm abated a little, or for the first rays of daylight, so she could go out on the Bobcat and make sure we were dead, find our bodies somewhere in the snow. I ran back through to Walt in a low crouch. He was shivering again, a good sign. I checked his hand, having to stifle the sobs in my chest, and saw that the bandage was iced up, crusted to him with frost, but that he’d stopped bleeding. I towelled him dry, stripped his wet clothes off and quickly dressed him in the dry ones. I took an ancient, filthy Barbour jacket of Danny’s from a nail on the wall and wrapped him in it, pulling the wet North Face one on myself now, my skin recoiling at its slime and damp, the faint scent of her perfume still on it.

  ‘Is that better?’ I whispered.

  ‘C . . . cold.’ He opened his eyes and looked at me sleepily.

  ‘Just stay here, close to the heater. OK, son? We’re going to be OK.’

  ‘What happened? I . . .’ He seemed to remember something and went to bring his hand up. He started to sob. ‘My finger . . .’

  It took everything not to cry too. ‘Listen, Walt, we’ll get a doctor and he’ll fix it all up, OK? They can do anything these days. But we need to be quiet just now.’

  He stiffened in my arms. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She . . . she’s in our house. But don’t worry. The police will be here soon. You just stay here. Keep quiet. Keep warm.’

  ‘Don’t go!’ he almost yelled as I went to get up.

  ‘I’m not, Walt. I just need to do something, OK? I’ll be right over there.’

  He nodded and I moved over to the window on my haunches.

  I looked towards the house again, but there was no sign of her. I looked at my watch – nearly 2 a.m. It’d probably be first light before Regina started trying to contact the helicopter team on the radio. Five or six hours at least. Could we just crawl into a corner and wait to be rescued? She’s going to start checking these outbuildings. The next thought followed automatically – she’s going to come through that door sooner or later and you’d better have an idea about what you’re going to do.

  I scanned the workshop: some garden tools, shears, a rake, spades. A crate of empty wine bottles, from a party last summer. Nothing you’d want to go up against a handgun with. The mower, the snowmobile, a shelf of tools – chisels, pliers, spanners, a three-pound hammer I’d last used to drive the post for the Swingball set into the grass. A box of Cook’s Matches next to the barbecue.

  The matches triggered a string of connections.

  Matches, bottles, mower.

  I leaned down, unscrewed the cap and sniffed the mower’s tank. Using a sharp chisel I cut a length of garden hose off the big green reel. I lowered it into the tank, put the end in my mouth and sucked, instantly getting a mouthful of petrol, gagging and coughing, memories of a summer night nearly thirty years ago flooding through me. I retched and spat and then filled an empty wine bottle. I tore a strip from one of the towels, soaked it with petrol, and stuffed it into the neck of the bottle. All the while Walt lay in the corner by the softly whirring heater, quietly watching me, not speaking. I took the box of Cook’s Matches from the barbecue, pulled a packing crate up to the little window and sat down, stuffing the three-pound hammer into my belt. (If things went wrong, if the worst came to the worst, I hoped the first blow would stun Walt completely, that the second or third would kill him.)

  ‘The past is another country’ runs the hoary old cliché. I thought mine was another aeon, another planet. I was a wee boy who did a terrible thing. But the past isn’t another country. It is ever-present. It was out there now, somewhere in the snow, with a butcher’s knife and a heavy revolver.

  I waited.

  The snow finally stopped.

  35

  IT WAS PERHAPS thirty minutes after the snow stopped that I saw it – a white-yellow cone of light scything through the dark. I moved closer to the window and watched her walk along our back porch, just visible in her red parka. The beam of her flashlight swept across the backyard, picking out the shapes of garden furniture buried under rifts of snow, moving over the outbuildings; the stables, the pergola, the pool house. I ducked out of the way as the cone swept along the wall, Walt whimpering in fear as it cut through the workshop, playing weakly on the walls above our heads. It moved away and I peeked out. She was heading towards the stables, the building nearest the house.

  ‘Come on, Walt,’ I whispered.

  I picked him up and, crouching low, carried him through to the changing room, settling him on the floor near the door I locked earlier, out of sight of the window. ‘Now just stay here and be very, very quiet. OK?’

  He grabbed at my sleeve. ‘No! Don’t go. I’m scared.’

  ‘Listen, son, I’m only going to be next door. I . . . please, Walt. Be brave.’ I peered over Walt’s head, out of the window. The torch was already bobbing away from the stables, heading towards us.

  Walt choked back a sob. I looked at him, stroked his face. ‘I’ll come back and get you. Whatever you do – don’t make any noise. I love you.’ I kissed his forehead. With a whimper, he let me go.

  I crawled back through to the workshop, seeing the beam coming through the windows, bouncing crazily off the walls now. I crouched down among the machinery, behind the tarpaulin-covered Bobcat, maybe twenty feet from the door, and readied myself, the wine bottle in one hand, the long match in the other. I heard a knocking at the glass. She had her face pressed up against it, scouring the room with the torch. I flattened myself closer to the cement floor. The beam disappeared, a second or two passed, and then I heard the doorknob squeak as it started to turn. For a split second I was rigid with fear, mind blank, unable to move as the door kept shuddering and banging. Move, do it. I set the bottle down. The door was swinging open as I struck the match.

  A soft splintering of wood against sandpaper as the match-head crumbled to pieces.

  My insides tumbled.

  You didn’t check the fucking matches.

  The torch was raking the room now as I fumbled in the box for another, spilling matches everywhere. I struck one – another dud.

  And now you’re going to die.

  I looked up as I took a third match between trembling fingers and saw her head coming round the door, the flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other. I str
uck the third match and it flared as I held it straight to the petrol-soaked towelling. It went up – a streak of clear, rose-pink flame leaping six inches into the air, burning my hand, her hearing, sensing something, wheeling around towards where I was hiding, gun extended as I leapt up, the flaming bottle in my fist, my arm already drawn back like a pitcher with a fastball. She squeezed the trigger at the same moment as I screamed and hurled the Molotov cocktail with everything I had. The concussion from the gun was deafening in the small concrete space and I felt the air move beside my face as the bullet passed inches from my cheek. The bottle flew past her head, missing her, smashing on the breeze-block wall beside her.

  A whumf as it exploded, showering her with burning petrol, her hair and parka going up instantly, her screaming and flailing, the gun going off again, blowing a hole in the roof but I was already running, back into the changing room, grabbing Walt and throwing him over my shoulder as I unlocked the other door and sprinted for the house.

  Pile-driving my aching legs through the snow, I looked back and saw her come thrashing out the door. Her upper body was just a match head; blue-tipped flames arcing several feet into the air, her terrible, high-pitched screaming suddenly stopping as she threw herself face down into the snow, legs writhing and kicking. I kept going, closing the distance between us and the house.

  We came in through the utility room and I kept sprinting, down the long hallway, running full tilt, Walt still over my shoulder, weightless in the adrenalin surge. I stopped, catching my breath, and glanced into the guest bedroom on my right: Officer Hudson, on her back on the oatmeal carpet beside the bed, her eyes staring sightlessly, a huge gash across her throat, a puddle of blood around her, a spray of it across the white wall above the bed. Cut her throat while she was sleeping. Walt screamed. ‘Don’t look, Walt!’ I yelled, covering his face. She was stripped to the waist, wearing just a black bra. I moved closer to the body, close enough to see that her holster was empty and her radio was gone. I backed out of the room and started running again, all the way down to my office, that glass cube on the side of the house.

  I grabbed the keys from the Ramones mug, spilling pens and paper-clips everywhere, and, with shaking hands, opened the drawer and pulled out the automatic, my fingers lacing around the chequered grip and through the trigger guard, relief flooding through me.

  ‘Daddy!’ Walt cried from behind me. ‘Look!’

  I turned and followed his finger, through the blue-tinted glass, across the yard, to where the workshop door was swinging open in the wind, flames still flickering and licking around the door-frame, to an indented shape where she’d fallen in the snow.

  She was gone.

  The lights went out.

  36

  I CLICKED THE safety off. ‘Stay here,’ I said to Walt. ‘Under the desk.’

  I crawled down the corridor and into the main living area, slithering softly across the polished wood on my stomach, the gun held in both hands in front of me, the house in total darkness around me. There were no external doors or windows that could be opened behind us; to get to where we were she would have to come from the other side of the house and cross the huge living room, fifty feet, easily. She would either come from the hallway that led down to the bedrooms and basement or the short half-staircase that led up to the kitchen. There was just enough moonlight coming through the acres of glass to see by. My hands trembled as I swung the gun from one entrance to the other, waiting. When she appeared I was going to let her get out into the open and then I was going to empty the fucking gun at her.

  A noise from the kitchen – a distant, agonised cry, like pain being stifled. I tried to breathe slowly, feeling my heart flexing against the floorboards. Minutes passed in silence. Five? Ten?

  The kitchen door swung open at the top of the short staircase and there she was, coming hesitantly down the steps, steadying herself against the wall with her left hand, the gun still in her right. In the semi-darkness I could see that half of her head was white, like a Q-tip, and I realised what she’d been doing: bandages, gauze, antiseptic cream maybe. She knew where everything was from babysitting Walt. I let her get to the bottom of the staircase, let her take a few steps across the hardwood floor, to within thirty feet of where I lay behind a sofa, gun trained squarely on the centre of her chest now. It was utterly silent when I cocked the pistol and watched her freeze instantly. I hesitated, my finger rigid on the trigger.

  ‘Put the gun down,’ I heard myself say.

  She held her hands up. Palms outwards, fingers off the weapon. ‘Put it down.’

  ‘Don’t shoot, William, I’ll empty it.’ With one hand she flicked the chamber on the revolver open and I heard the clatter of the big brass cartridges falling on the floor and rolling away. ‘I’m going to sit down,’ she said. ‘I’m a wee bit weak.’

  I stood up as she sat down on the edge of the sofa. She’d bandaged up the left-hand side of her face. Her hair was badly singed, frazzled. ‘How do I look?’ she asked, eyeing me calmly, taking in my reaction. I kept the gun on her, leaning against the arm of a chair for support, my legs close to buckling beneath me. She had started humming a little song to herself, almost absent-mindedly. ‘I might become a little incoherent,’ she said. ‘I took a few of Samantha’s Percocet, you see. For the pain? I haven’t taken prescription medication for many years. They’re quite strong, I think.’

  ‘Walt?’ I shouted down the hallway.

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘Everything’s OK. Just stay where you are.’

  ‘Ah. The good father,’ she said.

  ‘How could you? To Sammy? To Walt? You know them, they –’

  ‘You knew Craig.’

  ‘I WAS JUST A KID!’

  Silence. She let my shout reverberate, die away in the big echoing room. ‘You’ll see those moments forever, won’t you? They’ll never leave your head. But I wonder what’s worse – definitely knowing what happened or inventing your own scenario every night? I could never really get a clear picture of what happened to Craig. I’d invent it. Alter it. Change it almost every night. And you go, you know, you go mad!’

  ‘How, after all this time, how did you find me?’

  ‘You remember Mr Cardew, don’t you?’

  37

  YEARS BACK THERE had been a flurry of press reports surrounding the release of Boy C, William Anderson, a young man now, with a new name and a new identity. You remembered him well from court. The newspapers had tried to contact you for a quote about him getting out but you were so far gone at that point.

  You began by travelling up to the Mitchell Library in Glasgow every day – taking the bright orange train along the west coast, travelling over the railway bridge, looking down at the weir where Craig died, whispering a benediction to him every time – where you sat at the microfiche tables, turning the big knob and studying every report, every photograph. There were several from Anderson’s release and various prison transfers: a blanketed figure emerging from a police van, being moved through photographers into Glasgow Sheriff courthouse, the snarling mob in the background. You noticed the same figure in several different photographs; a silver-haired man in his fifties, sticking close to the shrouded figure, an expression of irritation on his face as he scanned the mob of photographers jostling for a shot.

  You studied his face intently, for hours, learning every line. He didn’t look like a policeman. His facial expression, as you studied it over and over, it wasn’t so much irritated as anxious, concerned. He had a protective arm around the crouching figure beneath the blanket. This, you came to believe as you gazed at the grainy black-and-white photographs for hour after hour, was someone from one of the ‘caring’ professions: a social worker perhaps, certainly someone with great reserves of understanding. Someone who could manifest sympathy for the thing under the blanket, the thing that, according to his testimony, had watched as his friend stuck a broken fishing rod into your son’s rectum.

  You reasoned: if he were a social worker who h
ad worked on this type of case . . . was it possible he was now working on others? Where would such a person be found?

  Very likely in and around the courthouses of Glasgow.

  It was 2002, the twentieth anniversary of Craig’s death, when you began your new daily routine: that bright orange train to Glasgow, canvas bag with sandwiches, flask and research books (nursing, torture) over your shoulder. The walk from Central Station along Jamaica Street, along the river and across the bridge to the Sheriff Court. There you’d sit on one of the benches, watching the comings and goings, the lawyers and police officers and the accused and their wretched families, lost in the pall of last, hurried, cigarettes in their stained, crinkled sportswear.

  You watched and you read your books and this went on for nearly two years.

  Rebuilding your body was a whole lot easier than rebuilding your mind. You’d put on three stone from the drinking and your jowls, bum and belly all hung fleshy and slack. Your lungs were desiccated from pack after pack of Embassy Regal, the brand you’d chosen because it was what Stephen used to smoke years ago. The first few times you tried to go running were a joke – maybe four or five hundred yards before you collapsed sobbing and panting against a hedge. But you kept going, increasing it a little every day. It must have been true that you had an addictive nature because you were soon up to three, then four, then six miles a day. From your flat you’d run the length of Harbour Street until you hit the shore, make a left on the hard, packed sand near the surf and run to Barassie and back; three miles each way along the beach, the wind whipping into you, the spray stinging your face, mixing with your sweat, burning your eyes. You’d get twitchy and irritable if you didn’t get your run in by 7 a.m. and some days you’d do two runs; one first thing and another around 6 p.m., which was when you’d sometimes feel yourself getting fidgety, walking around the flat, opening the fridge door, and you knew it was your body craving a drink, wanting its old routine.