Land of the Living

by Nicci French

  Here I was, alone inside my hood, inside my head. Here I was and nothing else seemed real any more. At first, I had not let myself think of life beyond this room, of ordinary life as it had been. I had thought that would be a way of taunting myself and going mad. Now that I wanted to remember things, I couldn't, or not properly. It was as if the sun had gone in and a storm was brewing and night was coming. It was coming.

  I tried to put myself in the flat, but I couldn't. I tried to see myself at work, but I couldn't. Memories lay in gathering darkness. I remembered this, though: I remembered swimming in a loch in Scotland, I couldn't recall when, years ago, and the water was so brackish and murky that you couldn't see through it. I couldn't even see my hands clearly when I stretched them out in front of me. But when I did the crawl, I could see silver bubbles of air in the dark water. Cascading bubbles of silver air.

  Why do I remember that when other memories were shutting down? The lights were going out, one by one. Soon there would be nothing left. Then he would have won.

  I knew what I was going to do. I wasn't going to write any letter. I wasn't going to wait for him to come into the room with his piece of paper. It was the only power I had left. The power of not waiting for him to kill me. It wasn't much, but it was all I had. No memory, no hope. Just that. And it was perfectly simple, really. If I went on sitting here, sooner or later and probably sooner, tomorrow or the next day, I could sense the moment was near he would murder me. Any doubt of that had gone. I was quite sure that he had murdered the other women and he would do the same to me. I wasn't going to outwit him. I wasn't going to escape when he lifted me down. I wasn't going to persuade him that he should set me free after all. The police weren't going to burst into the room and rescue me. Terry wasn't going to come. Nobody was. I wasn't going to wake up one morning and discover it had all been a nightmare. I was going to die.

  I told myself this at last. If I waited, he would kill me, as sure as anything was sure. I felt no hope at all. My pitiful attempts to change that had been like hurling myself against a solid wall. But if I threw myself off this ledge, the noose would hang me. That's what he had told me, and I could feel the wire round my neck if I leant forward. He must have known that I wouldn't try. Nobody in their right mind would kill themselves in order not to die.

  Yet that is exactly what I was going to do. Throw myself off. Because it was the only thing left I could do. My last chance to be Abbie.

  And I didn't have much time. I would have to do it before he came back, while I still could. While I had the will.

  I breathed in and held my breath. Why not now, before I lost courage? I breathed out again. Because it's impossible to do it, that's why. You think: Just one more second of life. One more minute. Not now. Any time that isn't now.

  And if you jump, then you're saying no more breath and no more thought; no more sleeping and knowing you'll wake, no more fear, no more hope. So, of course, you hold off, like when you climb up to the high diving board and all the time you think you can do it until you reach the top step and walk along the springy platform and look down at the turquoise water and it all seems so horribly far away and you know you can't, after all. Can't. Because it is impossible.

  But then you do. Almost without knowing in advance, while in your mind you are turning round and heading back to safety, you step off and you're falling. No more waiting. No more terror. No more. And maybe in any case it would be better to die. If I'm going to die, better to kill myself.

  And I do what I know I can't. I do jump. I do fall.

  Terrible pain around my neck. Flashes of colour behind my eyes. A small interested corner of my brain looked on and said to itself: This is what it is like to die. The last gulps of air, the final pumps of blood before the fading into death and not existing.

  The lights did fade but the pain became sharper and more localized. My neck. A scraping on a cheek. One leg felt as if it had been bent backwards. My face, my breasts, my stomach were so hard on the ground it felt for a moment as if I'd pulled the wall down with me and it was lying on top of me, weighing me down.

  And I wasn't dead. I was alive.

  Then a thought came into my mind like a jab of steel right through me. I wasn't tied down. He wasn't here. How long had he gone? Think. Think. This time I hadn't counted. Quite a long time. My wrists were still tied behind my back. I tugged at them. Useless. I almost sobbed. Had I done this just to lie helpless on the floor? I swore to myself that if I could do nothing else I would kill myself by smashing my head on the stone. If I had no other power, I could at least deny him that pleasure.

  My body felt sore and starved into weakness. And there was a new fear. I had virtually abandoned myself to death and there had been peace in that. It had been a form of anaesthetic. But now I

  had a chance. That knowledge brought feelings back into my limbs. I was able to be very, very frightened again.

  I swung my body around. Now my back was resting on my tethered arms. If I could push them over my feet so they were in front of me. It was a gymnast's trick and I'm so far from being a gymnast. I raised my feet off the ground and stretched them back as if I were going to touch the ground behind my head. Now the pressure was off my wrists. I made an exploratory attempt to pull my hands round. They wouldn't go round. I pushed and pushed. No. I groaned. Then I spoke to myself. Silently. It went like this: Some time soon, in one minute or three hours or maybe five, he will come back and he will kill you. There will absolutely definitely never be another chance after this one. You know this can be done. You have seen children doing it as a game. You probably did it when you were a girl. You would cut your hands off, if that would get you out of these knots. You don't have to do that. You just have to get your hands in front of you. If it means you need the strength to dislocate your shoulders, then do it. Strain yourself. Get ready. Five, four, three, two, one.

  And I pushed with all the force in my body. I thought my arms would come away from my shoulders and I pushed harder and my hands were behind my thighs. If my ankles hadn't been tied together it would have been easier. Now I was trussed up like a pig ready to have a bolt shot into its head. I made myself think of that as I pulled my knees down on to my chest, back as far as I could, and worked my hands round my feet. The muscles in my back, my neck, my arms and shoulders were screaming but suddenly my arms were in front of me and I was gasping and felt the sweat running off me.

  I sat up and pulled the hood off my head with my tied hands, thinking as I did so that he would be there looking at me when I did it. I pulled the gag out of my mouth and drank air as if it were cold water. It was dark. No, not entirely dark. Very dim light. I looked at my wrists. They were secured by some sort of wire. It wasn't knotted. The ends were twisted around each other. With my teeth it was really quite easy to undo. It just took time. Ten horrible seconds for each twist and my lips were bleeding now. And then, with the last twist, it came away and my hands were free. I freed my ankles within a couple of minutes. I stood up and then fell immediately, shouting in pain. My feet felt as if they were being pumped up and were going to burst. I rubbed and scratched at my ankles until I could stand again.

  I looked around. In the near darkness I could see brick walls, the dirty cement floor. There were some rough shelves, broken pallets on the floor. I could see the ledge where I had spent the past days. Then I remembered. I lifted the wire noose over my head. One end was attached to a bolt that my fall had pulled out of the wall. How lucky had I been? I felt my neck with the tips of my fingers.

  I looked in the direction the man had always come from. There was a closed wooden door with no handle on the inside. I tried to grasp it with my fingers but I couldn't get any purchase. I needed something quick. On the other side of the room there was a dark doorway. I walked across and looked through it. I couldn't see anything. The idea of walking into the dark seemed horrible. The only way out I was sure of was the closed wooden door. Maybe it was the only way out. Was there any sense in getting further away from
that possible means of escape?

  I was panting and shivering and sweating. The beating of my heart was echoing in my ears but I tried to stop and make myself think. What could I do? I could hide somewhere in the darkness. He might think I'd gone and run out, leaving the door open. It seemed hopeless. He would probably just switch a light on and catch me straight away. I could find some weapon. I could hide by the door and really smash him when he came in. That was so tempting. Even if it failed, and it surely would fail, I would have a chance to damage him and that was what I wanted to do more than anything. I wanted to rip the flesh off his bones.

  No, the best chance must be to try to get out through that door while he was away. I didn't know if the door was actually locked. I felt around on the floor for something I could use to lever it open. I touched some useless pieces of wood and then felt a strip of metal. If I could hook that on to the door, I could pull it. Or if there was a latch on the other side, then I might be able to push the strip through the crack in the door and raise it. I came close to the door and felt for the crack. I was about to slip the strip through when I heard a sound. I stopped breathing and listened. There was no doubt. I heard the rattle of a door opening, footsteps. I almost sank down on the floor in tears.

  The whole idea of staying by the door and wrestling with him was just stupid. I tiptoed across the room into the awful darkness. If it were just a closed storeroom I would be trapped like an animal. I ran through into what seemed like a corridor. There were entrances on either side. Get further away. Buy myself some time. He might have to search them. I ran along to the back where there was a wall. There was a doorway on either side. I looked through the left. Nothing but dark. Through the right. There really was something. I could see a light. Up in the wall across the floor. Through some sort of glass. Behind me, far behind me in the darkness, I heard a noise, a shout, a door, footsteps, and from then on everything was like one of those nightmares in which things happen in the wrong order, in which you run as fast as you can but the ground has become like soup and you don't get anywhere, you are pursued and don't get away. I left it to some primitive, instinctive part of my brain to make the decisions and save my life. I know that I grabbed something and there was the sound of shattering glass and I was pushing myself through a gap that felt too small for me but I was through and there was a raking pain along my body and there was something wet. There was a banging noise somewhere. It was behind me. And shouting.

  I ran up some steps. I could feel wind. Air. I could feel outside. There were lights in the distance. I ran and ran towards them. Running in a dream. Running past objects and not seeing what they were. Running because if I stopped I was dead. My feet, in their socks, stumbled and tripped on the cold ground. Pebbles and sharp objects bit into them. He would be fast. I had to run randomly in different directions. I wasn't able to see properly. Those days underground. The lights hurt my eyes like a flare through frosted glass. I heard my own footsteps, unnaturally loud even without shoes. Just keep on running. Don't think about where it hurts; don't think about anything. Run.

  Somewhere inside me I knew that I needed to find something moving. A car. A person. I mustn't run into anywhere deserted. People. Get to people. But I couldn't run and concentrate. Mustn't stop. Mustn't. And then there it was, a light in a window. I was in a street of houses. Some were boarded up. More than boarded up. They had heavy metal grilles across the doors and windows. But there was a light. I had a moment of great lucidity. I wanted to run to the door and scream and shout and bang on it but I had this fear among all the other fears that if I did that, the person inside would turn the television up higher and he would come and find me and take me back.

  So in a mad way I just pressed the doorbell and heard a chime somewhere far inside. Answer answer answer answer. I heard footsteps. Slow, quiet shuffling. Finally, after a million years, the door opened and I fell on it and through and on to the floor.

  "Police. Please. Police. Please."

  And even as I was lying there clawing at someone's lino, I knew it just sounded like 'please please please please please'.

  Part Two

  "Do you want me to make a proper statement?"

  "Later," he said. "For the moment I'd just like us to talk."

  I couldn't see him properly at first. He was a silhouette against the window of my hospital room. My eyes were sensitive to the glare and I had to look away. When he came closer to the bed I was able to make out his features, his short brown hair, dark eyes. He was Detective Inspector Jack Cross. He was the person I could now leave everything to. But first I had to explain it all to him. There was so much.

  "I've already talked to somebody. A woman in a uniform. Jackson."

  "Jackman. I know. I wanted to hear it for myself. What do you remember first?"

  That was how I told the story. He asked questions and I tried to answer them and after more than an hour I answered one of his questions and he was silent and I felt I had said everything I could possibly say. He was silent for several minutes. He didn't smile at me or even look at me. I saw different expressions move across his face. Confusion, frustration, deep thought. He rubbed his eyes.

  "Two more things," he said finally. "Your memory. The last thing you remember is what? Being at work? At home?"

  "I'm sorry. That's all blurry. I've spent days thinking and thinking. I remember being at work. Bits of my flat. I don't have a definite last moment."

  So you have no memory of encountering this man."

  "No."

  He took a small notebook out of a side pocket, and a pen.

  "And those other names."

  "Kelly. Kath. Fran. Gail. Lauren."

  He wrote them down as I spoke them.

  "Do you remember anything about them? A second name? Any suggestion of where he found them, what he did to them?"

  "I told you everything."

  He shut the notebook with a sigh and stood up. "Wait," he said, and walked away.

  I'd already become used to the pace of hospital life, the slow motion with long pauses in between, so I was surprised when barely five minutes later the detective returned with an older man, dressed in an immaculate pin-striped suit. A white handkerchief protruded from his breast pocket. He picked up the clipboard on the end of my bed as if it was all a bit boring. He didn't ask me how I felt. But he looked at me as if I were something he had stumbled over.

  "This is Dr. Richard Burns," said DI Cross. "He's in charge of your case. We're going to move you. You're going to have a room of your own. With a TV."

  Dr. Burns replaced the clipboard. He took off his spectacles.

  "Miss Devereaux," he said. "We're all going to be rather busy with you."

  The cold air hit me in the face, as if someone had slapped me. I gasped and my breath plumed up in the air. My eyes stung with the cold glare of light.

  "It's all right," said Jack Cross. "You can get back into the car if you want."

  "I like it." I tipped my head back and breathed in deeply. The sky was completely blue, not even a wisp of cloud, and the sun was a washed-out disc, casting no heat. Everything sparkled with frost. Dirty old London looked wonderful.

  We were in a street of terraced houses. Most of them were boarded up with planks, some had metal grilles across their entrances and windows. The small front gardens were thick with nettles and brambles and rubbish.

  "It was here, wasn't it?"

  "Number forty-two," said Cross, pointing across the street. "This is where you fetched up and scared Tony Russell half to death. You remember this at least?"

  "It's all a bit of a daze," I said. "I was in a blind panic. I thought he was right behind me. I was running as randomly as possible to shake him off."

  I looked across at the house. It hardly looked less abandoned than the rest of the street. Cross leant back into the car and retrieved an anorak. I was dressed in a strange assemblage of other people's clothing that had been found for me in the hospital. I tried not to think of the women who migh
t have worn them before. Cross's manner was affable and relaxed. We might have been strolling to a pub.

  "I hoped we could retrace your footsteps," he said. "Which direction did you come from?"

  That was easy. I pointed down the street, away from where we'd come.

  "That makes sense," he said. "Let's go there, then."

  We walked down the street.

  "That man I said," I said. "The one in number forty-two."

  "Russell," said Cross. "Tony Russell."

  "Did he see him?"

  "He's not much of a witness," said Cross, 'old Tony Russell. In any case, he slammed the door shut and dialled 999."

  At the end of the street I expected more rows of terraced houses but instead we were faced with one corner of a huge, almost completely derelict housing estate whose windows were smashed and doors boarded up. There were two archway entrances immediately ahead and others further down.

  "What's this?" I said.

  "The Browning estate," said Cross.

  "Does anybody live here?"

  It's due for demolition. It's been due for demolition for twenty years."

  "Why?"

  "Because it's a shithole."

  "This must have been where I was kept."

  "Do you remember?"

  "I know I came from this direction." I looked up and down desperately. "I ran under one of those archways. I must have been in that estate."

  "You reckon?"

  "I suppose so."

  "Do you remember which archway you came through?"

  I walked across the road. I looked so hard that it hurt.

  "They're quite similar. It was dark, I was running desperately. I'm so sorry. I'd had a hood over my eyes for days. I was almost hallucinating. I was in such a state."

  Cross took a deep breath. He was obviously disappointed.

  "Maybe we can narrow down the possibilities."

  We walked up and down the street and into the courtyards through the archway. It was awful. I could just about see what must have been in the architect's head when he designed it. It would have been like an Italian village, piazzas, open spaces for people to sit and walk and talk. Lots of little passageways so that people could walk through and around it. But it hadn't worked out. Cross pointed out to me how the passageways had been perfect for all different kinds of concealment, for shooting up, for mugging, for getting away. He showed me where a body had been found in a skip.