Cold Hands

by John Niven

  She moved towards her bag. Please God, no.

  ‘I think the thing that abhors us most as humans, as top-of-the-chain predators, is the idea of something feeding on us. Burrowing within us.’

  She reached into the bag with both hands and hefted out a big glass Mason jar with a metal lid, the kind you see in old-fashioned sweet shops. There were airholes in the lid.

  Inside the jar – a fat, black rat.

  It was huge, almost completely filling the jar, with a long, wet-looking pink tail coiled around it. She set it down on the edge of the table. The rat was throwing itself at the glass, enraged, confused, its yellow teeth bared horribly. Walt started screaming into his gag, shaking his head from side to side.

  ‘I’ve been starving him for weeks.’

  I felt my mind coming loose. Sanity slipping away.

  ‘Tell me, William.’ She came over and knelt beside me, taking my gag out.

  ‘Please,’ I said.

  ‘What really happened that day? What don’t I know? What are you leaving out? I’ve had nearly thirty years of guessing. If you’re honest with me, if I believe you, I might be persuaded to put him back in the bag and give Walt a reasonably quick death.’

  There was no sound from Walt. He’d fainted.

  ‘I told you.’ I was crying. ‘It was Banny. He –’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Please . . .’

  It was time to go back. Back to the riverbank.

  40

  DOCHERTY WENT FOR Banny.

  Instantly, you could tell he’d never been in a fight in his life: head down, fists flailing wildly. Banny, on the other hand, had been fighting since his first day at primary school; an eight-year veteran of playground battles and street fights. He stepped back and let Docherty reach him, taking a couple of weak, useless punches on the arms before he grabbed his hair and started slowly pulling Docherty’s head towards the ground. ‘Iya! Iya!’ Docherty squealed. Banny kicked Docherty hard in the face, one, two, three times. He let him go and 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 lashing 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 . . .

  His scream.

  This had all gone far enough, too far, much, much too far. But there was further to go, distance yet to run, as Tommy jumped on his head now, laughing, stumbling, falling over. Then I was climbing up on the wall above Docherty and Banny was shouting ‘Go oan, Wullie! Dae it!’ and I was leaping off.

  Me, caught against the sun.

  My black silhouette framed, arms extended, feet coming down, like at the pool (‘No Dive-Bombing’), like an awful bird of prey, falling, falling, my feet the talons, coming straight down at Docherty’s skull, Docherty sobbing, trying to crawl, the glittering rod quivering in time with his sobs. My face, lit with terrible glee. The impact . . .

  Me getting up and walking away, straightening my Harrington, brushing chalky dust off, flicking my hair out of my face.

  Back into real time and the silence, broken by a gull, crying as it streaked low over the river, white on grey, moving fast in the corner of my eye. Tommy was the first to speak.

  ‘Docherty? Get up, ya cunt.’

  They’d told us something, in Physics, about the velocity of falling objects, something to with mass times gravity or something, about unstoppable forces and immovable objects, but the only person here who would have been listening, who could have told you what the equation was, wasn’t listening any more. He wouldn’t be listening to anything ever again.

  A single rivulet from his ear – black and thick as treacle. His mouth and eyes – both open, the mouth caught as though it was forming the end of the word ‘no’, the eyes just staring up, staring dumbstruck at the bland, vacant sky.

  I took charge.

  I was smarter than them.

  Nobody saw anything.

  It was our word against any cunt’s.

  No, don’t get stones and boulders and put them in his pockets. It’ll look deliberate. We rolled him to the edge of the weir and pushed him into the water. It’ll look like he fell down the bank and hit his head on the weir. The current’ll probably take him all the way out to sea. He floated away, face down, just below the surface, the green parka ballooning up out of the water slightly.

  I was a wee boy who did a very bad thing.

  In court. The three of us sullen and bored in the dock. I did better with the child psychologists than Banny or ‘feeble-minded’ Tommy. We were all as bad as each other, but Banny was clearly the ringleader. His reputation at school. The testimony of teachers and social workers. Banny tried to blame me – Aye, he’d battered him, but I’d jumped on his head. I’d jumped on his head. We were all liars and manipulators, they said. We blamed each other. The real story never emerged. Banny did it. Tommy did it. I did it. Who’s to say? Cannae remember. Naw. Honest, man. Dinnae ken. His fault. No mine. Didnae mean it, so we didnae.

  And in the tent that time. Yes. Pushing back against him. Rubbing, letting it all happen until you juddered and saw stars and felt wetness spreading down there in the sleeping bag and Banny was wiping his hand on your back and then –

  Gets all mangled in your mind over the years.

  I swear I could see Banny silhouetted against the sky, jumping down, leather-soled weejuns coming down onto Docherty’s skull. Cannae remember. Honest. Banny did it. Banny –

  I did it.

  41

  SHE’D LISTENED, NOT saying anything, not interrupting the words I had never spoken to anyone. The only sound in the room now was the rat, clawing and scratching softly on glass. Walt lay unconscious on the pool table, looking strangely peaceful.

  After a long time she said, ‘Thank you for your honesty.’

  ‘Please.’ I was sobbing. ‘Let him go. Kill me.’

  I’d only ever been trespassing in happiness, my right, the very possibility, forfeited three decades ago, on that riverbank. This, or something like it, something like Banny or Tommy, pacing in a cell or bleeding to death in the showers, this was what should have happened.

  She walked over to the table, picked up the jar and turned it over. A metallic thunk as the rat landed on the lid. Its tail dangled through one of the air holes, over half a foot long. Its claws grated on the metal. I started screaming. She picked up the scalpel. The rat was hurling itself at the glass, emitting a terrible screech, hopping up and down, scraping at the metal lid, its black claws scraping out of the air holes. She twisted the lid, beginning to unscrew it, the rat turning with it, oddly, madly comic. Walt began to stir, sensing something even through sleep perhaps.

  I dug my teeth into the back of my tongue, feeling blood coming into my mout
h. Could I do it? Bite off my tongue at the root, suck in a deep breath and drown blissfully in a fountain of my own blood? I could hear a regular thumping sound somewhere in my head and I wondered if this was what happened when you went insane.

  Then the walls started to shake and she stopped.

  She heard the thumping noise too.

  My heart stopped as I recognised the sound, hearing it for the second time that night.

  Helicopter rotors.

  She ran to the windows. The six windows in the basement rec room ran all the way along the wall at head height, ground level outside. They were rectangular slits really, too small for a man to get through. The sound seemed to disappear for a moment and then it came again, much louder, and from where I lay twisted on the floor I saw a white beam of light split the night sky and begin probing the ground.

  She smacked the jar back down onto the table and picked up the revolver, checking the chamber. She looked at Walt, seeming to debate something in her head, her one visible eye flipping from him to the windows, the rotors growing deafening, the helicopter seeming to be right above the house. Would she just shoot him?

  ‘Look,’ I said, frantic, speaking fast, ‘it must be the police. Because they didn’t check in or something. Stop all this, I . . . I won’t –’

  She stepped forward and kicked me hard in the face. I felt blood spurt out of my nose, coloured lights sparkling in front of my eyes as she ran out of the room.

  ‘Walt, Walt . . .’ He was weeping, yelling into the gag, his nostrils flaring as he strained at the ropes, trying to move, to pull away from the rat, just inches from his ankles, pawing, scratching, almost toppling the jar over.

  ‘It’s the police. It must be. She –’

  Suddenly the helicopter came down into view through the windows, maybe thirty feet off the ground, trying to land hesitantly, as though it were a living creature, unsure of the depth of the snow. It was being buffeted from side to side in the wind, the snow below so deep it looked impossible to land. The side door on the helicopter slid open and a rope ladder dropped down, catching in the beam of light, swinging back and forth, dangling maybe ten feet above the ground. Walt and I watched as a figure started climbing down. He hung at the end of the ladder for a moment and then dropped down into the snow. Another man, then a third, did the same. As soon as they were down and clear the helicopter rose back up into black sky and – almost immediately – there was a burst of gunfire, very close to the house, and we could hear men shouting out there, the single reports of pistols, another ragged burst of automatic fire, a firefight breaking out. Something raked along the wall of the basement and two of the windows exploded inwards, showering Walt and me with glass, cold air rushing in.

  42

  THE SHOOTING STOPPED. Walt’s sobbing – soft but constant. Then I heard voices outside, close to the broken windows, hushed, whispering. As I opened my mouth to scream, to tell them where we were, a deafening barrage of automatic gunfire exploded close by, rounds hitting wood and concrete along the exterior wall, a scream, the sound of feet running through the snow then silence again.

  Minutes passed. Me hog-tied on the floor, Walt lashed to the pool table. I tried to move and felt stunning, dizzying pain shooting through my left leg, felt fresh, warm blood seeping from the wound in my thigh, soaking my trousers.

  I heard a metallic sound.

  The doorknob was turning.

  I looked up, breathing hard, my eyes bulging, and saw Old Sam in the doorway, a pistol in one hand. His jaw dropping as he saw us.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispered.

  (Later, much later, I would find out about the private Gulfstream G650 he’d managed to charter from a film producer on Maui. The new Gulfstream, the only one on the island, with an operating range of 7,000 nautical miles, capable of getting all the way from the middle of the Pacific to Canada without refuelling in just over eight hours. The helicopter pilot who was paid a staggering sum to bring them out here through the storm. The incredible mountains that can be levelled when money is irrelevant.)

  ‘Sam,’ I said as he ran to the pool table, picking up the knife that lay on the edge and starting to cut Walt’s bonds. He tugged the gag out and Walt collapsed into his arms crying, saying, ‘Papa, Papa,’ over and over. ‘It’s OK, boy,’ Old Sam said. ‘I’m here.’ He started to untie me, freeing my arms first. Walt clung around his grand father’s waist, shaking, sobbing, burying his face in Old Sam’s side. My legs came free and I stretched them, crying out in pain as I did so. ‘Easy,’ Old Sam said. ‘Mike’s here. He’s outside.’ He leaned over me, with Walt somewhere between the two of us.

  ‘Is she dead?’ I asked.

  ‘She?’ he said, his brow creasing in the half-light.

  Jesus.

  A shape behind him, a shadow moving. Before I could scream an arm appeared, clamping round his forehead. He went to reach for the gun but too late, another arm came out – she loomed up over him now, a terrible grimace of determination on her face – and drew the scalpel quickly across his throat. I held Walt tightly into my chest, his face buried in me, as his grandfather’s blood sprayed over us. It seemed to go on for a long time, her holding him tightly from behind, Old Sam juddering and kicking as he bled out, his expression one of astonishment until his eyeballs started flipping up in their sockets. Me screaming, Walt crying into me. Finally she let him fall to the floor. She dropped the scalpel and pulled the revolver from her waistband. She pressed the barrel into the small of Walt’s back as he lay wriggling and crying on top of me.

  ‘No more time, William,’ she said with a sad smile.

  BANGBANGBANG. Three shots rang out in quick succession and she was staggering backwards, gasping, clutching her chest, dropping the gun and stumbling over in the doorway, two more shots smashing into the door frame, blowing off chunks of wood as she fell into the hallway and vanished. I turned to see a man’s arms protruding through one of the broken slit windows, a revolver clamped marksman-style between his fists. ‘MIKE!’ I screamed.

  ‘Stay there, Donnie. I can’t get through here. I’m coming through the house to get you. OK?’

  ‘NO! She’s –’

  ‘Donnie, I just put three .38 shells in her chest. She’s down, OK?’

  He disappeared. I cradled Walt, who had his hands pressed against his ears, and sat up.

  ‘Where’s Grandapa?’ Walt asked.

  ‘He’ll be OK,’ I said. I had Walt’s face pressed tight into my neck now, holding him away from his grandfather’s corpse, the huge bloodstain spreading out from under his face. ‘Don’t look.’ I growled with pain as I got to my feet, holding onto the arm of a chair, pushing us up using only my right leg, pain sparkling through the left one. Stumbling forward in the semi-darkness I edged towards the doorway.

  No body in the hall. She was gone.

  I glanced up and down the long, dark hallway. Nothing.

  Officer Hudson’s black bra – the blood pooling on her bare skin.

  KNOCK KNOCK.

  Fear reigniting.

  The doorway I was standing in was the only way out of the rec room and into the rest of the house. I hobbled back to the window, holding Walt. The bottom of the slit was level with my chin, tiny shards of ragged glass sticking up from it, like teeth. About a hundred yards away sat the police helicopter. In the distance, somewhere above the horizon, I could see lightness amid the black and grey night, the first streaks of dawn.

  ‘Listen, Walt, listen to me,’ I whispered. ‘You can get through this window. I can’t. I want you to run out to the police helicopter, get in the back, and lock yourself in. OK?’

  ‘NO!’

  ‘Shhh, Walt. Please. Listen. Mike’s here. You know Uncle Mike? He’ll stop her. But I need you to go and hide just now, OK?

  ‘DONNIE? WALT?’ Mike Rawls’s voice came from somewhere deep in the house behind us.

  ‘See?’ I said. ‘Now please, Walt. Quickly. Watch the glass.’ I pushed him up to the slit and he scrambled thr
ough and took off running.

  ‘DONNIE?’ Mike’s voice closer now, somewhere down the hall.

  I watched until Walt reached the chopper, opened the rear door, and climbed in. I picked up Old Sam’s pistol and popped the magazine; fat brass cartridges nestling all the way up to the top. I slid it back home and limped to the doorway. I crouched down, looking down the hall, towards the living area, in the direction of Mike’s voice. It was pitch black in the interior of the house, you couldn’t see more than a couple of feet in front of you.