by Claire Askew
She was still struggling against her restraints, and the chair’s feet clattered against the tile floor as she jumped and twisted. I couldn’t quite believe it was her, and that – with the exception of the split-open mess that was her arm – she was all one piece, a fully formed human being. Hadn’t every bone in her body been shattered? Hadn’t she been ripped open? It was true, then: she really had made it, gone home to Ukraine, and got better. The girls hadn’t been lying. But now, like a fucking idiot, she’d come back. I wanted to scream at her, but I found I couldn’t move, or make a sound. I could only stare.
Saturday
Birch woke to her pillow coated in saliva. She felt like she’d been dropped down a well: her hearing was muffled and a little buzzy, and her mouth tasted as though she’d been sucking on iron filings. Sitting painfully upright, she realised this was the reason for the drooling: the taste was so bad, she found she couldn’t stop it. It was as though every filling in her mouth had decided to leak at once. In the half-light created by her blackout blind, Birch fumbled on the bedside table for a tissue, and spat. There was nothing in her mouth, and the taste didn’t fade.
She looked at the clock: 15:02. She’d slept for over sixteen hours, and remembered none of it. It was as though she’d closed her eyes at ten thirtyish the night before, and then immediately reopened them. Somehow, it had become Saturday afternoon. Outside, she could hear the sounds of children laughing and squealing, the ringing of tiny bells on the handlebars of scooters or trikes. A dog barked. Though it was only early spring, she could hear the distant, twinkling tune of the ice-cream van.
The night before, she’d made a series of decisions that she now regretted. First, she’d decided to keep acting as she had been all week. She wanted to make it look, to anyone watching her, like Charlie was still in the house. Let them come, she’d thought in her office, and the thought had pulsed through her mind as she’d driven home. Let them stake me out, let them think he’s here. The longer it took them to figure out he wasn’t, the better.
So she’d parked the car on yet another side street, this time in the stretch of no-man’s-land between Joppa and Musselburgh. She’d walked back, having forgotten how forbidding that stretch of the main road was. There were houses for a while – Seaview Terrace, the street was called – but then the buildings fell away on her right-hand side, turning into a stretch of grassland that led down from the road to the sea wall. This wasn’t a named park, and wasn’t well lit: it was a place where locals let their dogs out for a run, and tourists sometimes stopped to photograph Kinghorn and Burntisland across the water. On a Friday night, it was deserted. Birch walked the thin strip of streetlit pavement, with the road on one side, and that enormous shoulder of dark on the other. Beyond the grassland, she could hear the sea, close by, and wished she couldn’t. It created a kind of white noise that meant she was unable to fully sharpen her hearing, to listen for potential hazards. Had a light-footed man come up behind her, she might not have heard him until he was right on top of her. She glanced back repeatedly, and squinted out seaward for the slightest movement in the dark swim of the park.
She’d made it to the China Express, her pulse fast as a cricket’s. On an impulse, she’d walked into the takeaway, glad of its warm light and friendly human presence. In the tiny waiting area, a man was reading a copy of the Evening News: on the front, a photograph of Solomon and Anjan, standing outside the front door of her station. From the angle it was taken, they could have been holding hands. Birch found it hurt to look at Anjan’s face, so she’d turned away. She ordered her usual – vegetable spring rolls, tofu in black bean sauce – and paid with cash. She spent the ten minutes of food prep time peering out of the smeary glass door of the takeaway, looking for dark-coloured cars on the street, skull-masked figures in the dark.
She’d made it to the house, done her usual checks, and found nothing amiss. As before, she’d closed curtains and blinds, and turned on more lights than she might usually. She’d wolfed the food, sitting on the sofa, trying not to think about Charlie. Ten p.m. came around and she’d resisted the urge to watch the nightly news.
She’d been tired all week, the lack of sleep accumulating, making her eyes sting and her reflexes slow. Her limbs felt heavy, prickly, as though she were having to pull them through an invisible force field of static. As she’d driven home that night, she’d decided she needed a real meal, and some real sleep. What had happened after the takeaway was the primary bad decision.
Birch remembered the foil strip of tablets in the bathroom cabinet. She’d been prescribed them while her mother was ill. As the reality of her mother’s protracted but impending death settled upon her, so did an anxiety so vicious that it kept her awake for nights at a time, her head buzzing with everything she could do, everything she couldn’t and everything she’d need to in the weeks to come. The doctor had given her Zopiclone: not merely a sleeping tablet, but a tranquilliser so strong that it could probably have brought down an angry rhino. But she had discovered that the pills made her dozy, and she found it hard to wake in the early morning, like she needed to. At the time, she’d resorted to cutting them in half with a fruit knife, scattering grainy powder all over her worktop. Even a half-tablet would have her slightly woozy by the time she turned out the downstairs lights and climbed the stairs to bed. They worked like a charm: no matter how many intrusive thoughts she dreamed up, the Zopiclone put her out like a light.
That was over two years ago, and the remaining handful of tablets – which she’d come off after her mother died, finding grief an even more powerful sleeping aid – had expired. She hadn’t thrown them out because . . . well, she just never had. And right then – on that jumpy, miserable Friday night without Charlie – the idea of simply switching herself off had a deep, visceral pull.
Let them sit out there, she’d thought, as at 10.30 p.m. she’d downed a full tablet and half a glass of lukewarm bathroom-sink water. I don’t care any more. As the tablet had started to take effect, Birch had noticed the expiry date stamped on the blister pack’s shiny foil. On the box was a laser-printed sticker that read: Take ONE a day as directed. DO NOT EXCEED THE STATED DOSE. But the tablets were old, and old things lose their efficacy.
‘Oh, screw it,’ Birch had said aloud, as she swallowed a second tablet and welcomed in the hazy, artificial tiredness that it brought her.
Now, she stood over the toilet and spat long strings of drool. Given the taste in her mouth, she expected it to come out the colour of mercury, but it was clear and thin. She knew a metallic taste in the mouth was one possible side effect of the pills, but she hadn’t been prepared for this.
Eventually she clambered back upright, went to the sink, and brushed her teeth until her gums sang with pain. It helped lessen the taste a little. She looked at herself in the mirror: she was scarecrow-like and pale, but she realised that for the first time in over a week she felt fully rested.
She felt queasy from the pills, and still the Charlie anxiety buzzed in her bloodstream, making her wonder if it would ever leave. But otherwise, she cared about very little: wasted time, whether or not she was hungry. Everything felt flat, straightforward. She wondered if the tablets were responsible for that, too.
In the kitchen, she reached for the kettle, reasoning that a strong cup of coffee might put up a decent fight against the horrendous taste of pennies in her mouth. She shuffled back and forth between cupboards, finding a clean mug, teaspoon, sugar. She became aware of a repetitive sound – muffled, but nearby – a banging noise like someone hammering on wood. But more flimsy than that. Birch pulled open the kitchen blind.
Her back gate had been kicked in, and the banging she could hear was one ruined panel flapping against the wooden frame in the wall. She stepped back, and dropped the teaspoon. It hit her on the foot.
‘Shit,’ she said.
There was a pair of old flip-flops beside the waste bin: she’d been meaning to throw them out, but had ended up using them as shoes to take out t
he bins. She toed them on, unlocked the kitchen door and went outside.
It was chilly: she hugged her arms around herself as she stepped out. She was careful to close the back door behind her, struck by the absurd worry that some well-camouflaged person was lying in wait in the rangy grass, watching until her back was turned so they could tiptoe into the kitchen to stage an ambush. Sure enough, there were tracks of a sort, in that same thick, tangly grass, which she’d been meaning to cut and was now glad she hadn’t. Someone had walked across it, perhaps in the early hours when it was dewy, and left a scuffed trail of bent stalks. The trail zigzagged: they’d gone to the shed, they’d gone as far as the little patio outside the back door. Presumably across it, too, to try the door or to attempt to peer in. Birch shivered. The gate had been locked with a deadbolt, and the force of the kick had detached the metal completely from the structure, sent it flying into the weeds on the far side of the little path. Birch fished the bolt out from where it lay. The screws that had held it in place were mangled.
She walked to the gate and examined the damage: splintered wood, the frame now not quite fitting its space in the high stone wall. She pulled the gate open and it swung a little too readily, feeling fragile, like it might come off its hinges in her hand. Her teeth chattered. Putting her head out of the gate, she could see nothing: the road behind the house was deserted, though she could hear distant traffic noise. She didn’t know what she’d expected: a sentry, waiting to leap on her when she stepped out of the gate? Footprints? Another bouquet of stinking lilies?
There was nothing at all, and Birch shuddered. So they’d been here. They’d cased the house. Someone looking for Charlie, or looking for evidence of Charlie. They still thought he might be here.
Great, Birch tried to make herself think. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Her stomach churned. She had nothing she could use to fix the gate, so she took some of the bigger shards of broken wood and shoved them underneath it, wedging it closed. It would require only a shove from the outside to get back in again, but it stopped the banging, at least. Now her teeth were chattering in earnest: not just because of the chill outside, she knew. She went back into the kitchen, locked the door, then checked it was locked.
‘Okay.’ Birch leaned on the worktop and tried to slow down her breathing. ‘Well . . . okay.’
She paced up and down as the coffee brewed, then carried it into the living room and sipped it. She’d been right: it did help with the iron filings taste. She found she couldn’t stop fidgeting. Her feet tapped on the carpet. She drummed her fingernails against the side of her coffee mug, a little porcelain trill, over and over. She realised she’d bitten her bottom lip half to shreds.
Go somewhere, she thought. Go to a hotel. Hide out. She sat and considered the possibility. It was tempting: a nice, clean hotel room with a decent lock on the door and a twenty-four-hour reception desk. The idea of other humans only feet away, just the other side of stud walls, TVs buzzing softly, was comforting. But how long would she be gone for? A night, a week, a month? She’d have to come back eventually. And besides, she couldn’t make it look like she was here if she wasn’t, not now she knew the house was being watched. If they realised that she wasn’t here – that no one was here – then she’d have led them one step closer to Charlie. They’d be able to eliminate the house as one possible place he might be hiding.
No, she had to stay. They weren’t breaking in yet: Solomon wasn’t stupid. Birch was a senior police officer, and he’d only just got out of Dodge. But they were getting bolder: the kicking-in of the gate proved that. No more sleeping pills: she’d learned her lesson. She was going to have to go back to being alert.
The resolve she felt now – that same let them come that had propelled her home in the car the previous night – seemed to battle with her worry, and her fear. There was no doubt that a part of her had been emboldened by her interactions with Fenton, in person, and then Toad, on the phone. She knew now that she could deal with Fenton, although if she came up against him again he’d be better prepared to deal with the strength he probably hadn’t reckoned on her having. Toad was an older man, wheezy, past his prime. If those two turned up, she’d be just fine. She tried to ride this small high of bravado, and not think about the skull-masked man – who’d been younger, wirier, with big, frightening hands – or the many other hard-looking bastards she’d seen brought into the station the day of the raid. She tried not to think about being outnumbered, or caught unawares, or threatened with weaponry she couldn’t match. Instead, she found the panic button, shoved it into her trouser pocket, and spent the rest of the day preparing the house as best she could for a potential breakin.
From the shed, Birch retrieved her glass-recycling box. It was collected fortnightly, and she’d missed a collection that week, having completely forgotten. She placed the plastic tub of bottles and jam-jars on the floor about six inches behind the back door. If anyone broke in that way, she’d hear them coming, and the box would hopefully send them flying in the process.
Also from the shed, she dug out a windchime her mother had once gifted her. Its metal piping was over a foot long. She’d never hung it up outside because it was loud, and she worried it would keep her and her neighbours awake at night. Now, she strung it up behind the locked front door: another early warning system. She found herself laughing: she felt like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone, booby-trapping her house against the Wet Bandits.
‘If only,’ she said, and the sound of her own voice in the quiet hallway made her shudder.
Time scraped by. With the dark came a greater chill, and Birch lit the gas fire. She rummaged in the freezer and defrosted some weeks-old stew, ate it in slow, small bites, and felt each one drop into her churning stomach. She’d closed the curtains and blinds once again, and sat without turning on the TV, not even missing the bright glow of her still-unspoken-for mobile phone. She simply listened, feeling the little box of the panic button cutting into her hip. Every light in the house was switched on.
At around ten, Birch rose and turned off the kitchen light, and then the lights in the living room. The gas fire gave the room that same eerie, violet glow that Charlie had sat in four nights ago, sullen and afraid, when he’d first arrived.
They’ll come tonight, Birch thought. I know they will. Hours sitting alone with the dark pressing in at every window had convinced her. They’d cased the house the night before. It made sense.
Should I call someone? she thought. But who? Amy was out of the question: she’d freak out. She’d send an armed response unit round without blinking; that, or she’d show up herself and pledge to fight off any and all bad guys, single-handed. Birch couldn’t help but smile at the thought. How about Rab, then? Hadn’t he always said to call him if she needed him? But no: she didn’t know Rab well enough to know how he’d react. You have a panic button, she reminded herself. This is what a panic button is for.
She left the upstairs lights on for a while, then climbed the stairs and began to switch them off. Spare room first. She paused to pull the curtains aside and peer out over the little back garden. It was still blustery, and she could see the grass seething, blades catching the streetlight. No one out there, yet.
‘Okay,’ she said quietly. ‘Good.’
In the bathroom she splashed cold water on her face, and brushed her teeth again. She gargled mouthwash, watched the green streak of it circle the plug. Then the bathroom light was out, too.
She left her bedroom light a little while longer. Let them wait, she thought. She imagined Solomon and his merry men out on the beach in the darkness, lined up with their faces upturned to watch her window, the square of curtained yellow light. She didn’t pull down the blackout blind: let them know she was here. Birch sat on the end of the bed, staring at the laundry hamper. On the top of the pile was the cardigan of hers that Charlie had briefly worn. She realised now that she could smell him on it, and the smell made her eyes prickle. Her room smelled like man. Like her little brother, who
might, by now, be thousands of miles away.
Don’t be soft.
‘If we make it through the night,’ she told herself, ‘you’re washing that first thing in the morning.’
Eventually, she could wait no longer, and flicked off the bedroom light. The landing light was still on, but that wasn’t unusual. The landing had no windows, and she imagined not much of the light would be visible from outside. As far as they knew, she’d turned in. Charlie, too, though he wasn’t here. He hadn’t been here now since Wednesday night. She tried to imagine him, where he might be sleeping – she hoped that he was sleeping. She hoped he was overseas by now, or on a plane, travelling at hundreds of miles an hour in the direction of safety. She let herself imagine him in one of those papery aeroplane sleep masks, trying to drop off in his rigid seat, dreaming of – well, who knew. She didn’t know him now, not really. He’d become a stranger, a person who did bad things for money. She wished she’d asked him what he dreamed about, before he went.
‘Snap out of it,’ she hissed. She walked back out onto the landing, and took hold of the loft ladder. It took some doing to navigate it down the stairs without making a noise, but by taking every step with her breath held, then exhaling before the next, she managed it. She propped it up in the living room, and its long steel frame gleamed in the light of the gas fire.
The little red glowing digits of the clock on her TV told her it was 1.56 a.m. when the first blow hit the back door. With the second, she heard the lock make an unhealthy sound. With the fourth, it gave, and the house filled with the sound of bottles and jars scattering.
