by Knight, Ali
‘You’re a new face.’
Darren glanced up – and nearly fainted. Olivia sat in a low chair near him, staring at him. He looked around the room. One nurse was pushing Linda towards the door; another was turned away from him, talking on the phone at the main desk. Darren straightened, gripping the mop handle. He had an overwhelming urge to cry out Carly’s name and shove the mop head with its old woman’s sick straight down the Witch’s gob, watch her writhe in pain, but he fought the desire, so strongly he felt his knees shaking.
Olivia noticed. She was staring at his legs, or maybe his crotch, he couldn’t tell.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ Her head was cocked to the side, watching.
No one was paying them any attention, but his mind was like a bucket with a hole, draining of anything he could think of to say, and even then, what did you say to the woman who had murdered your sister?
‘What’s your name?’ she asked. Her voice was deep, more like a man’s.
Even this simple question was fraught with complications. Was he giving too much away? He struggled for a few seconds and said, ‘Daz.’
She smiled as if this amused her. ‘That’s a washing powder, not a name.’ She crossed her legs and he could see her ankles as her baggy trousers rose up. Her legs were shaved. The thought of her with a razor blade made the contents of his stomach move unpleasantly. ‘You can dissolve a human knuckle in biological washing powder in less than twelve hours.’
Carly was on his shoulder, her thin arms round his neck like when he used to give her backies on his BMX, urging him on to kill her right there with the mop. ‘I don’t know,’ was all he could manage. It sounded as if his voice was coming from far away and belonged to someone else.
Her smile broadened and he saw her teeth for the first time. She had pointed incisors. ‘I’m going to call you Darren. I don’t like Daz.’ Her brown eyes bore into him, as if she knew every lie he had told to get close to her.
Darren swallowed the saliva that was forming too fast in his mouth. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t do it. He was closer to Carly than he had been in ten years. The secret of his sister’s whereabouts was locked within the head of the woman sitting comfortably in that chair. What Carly had told her as she was held captive or begged for her life was unbearable to think about.
‘You’ve done that bit.’ She was looking at the small figure of eight he had mopped over and over in front of him. Darren looked down at the spot. Before him hovered the secret he was desperate to know, that he was convinced had made his mum sick, had made his dad an alcoholic shadow of the man he had once been. How could he get her to tell him, just a cleaner, when ten years inside and the finest psychological treatment hadn’t managed it?
‘You look stricken,’ she said. Darren felt like he was holding on for dear life to the mop handle. He couldn’t take his eyes off her face. ‘Come on, Biological, you look like you want to unload a burden.’
Countless times had Darren lain as a teenager in his bed at night and wondered what he would say to the woman who had murdered his sister. If he just had that one moment … So many revenge fantasies had come and gone, been played out in his imagination until they were exhausted. Now years later, when he was grown and life had dulled the pain, he had the chance to actually do it.
‘Come closer.’ Her voice dropped to a scratchy whisper, a sly movement crossing her features.
He could have reached out and touched her. He was fighting within himself, desperate to recoil from her, but there was something he had always wanted to know and he was acutely aware that this might be the only opportunity he ever got to speak to her. He had to use the moment wisely. ‘Are the girls together? It would be nice to know that they weren’t alone, that they … that they had each other.’
Olivia had been leaning forward, Darren realised, because now she sat back. Her face had changed; the smile dropped instantly and a hard veil was drawn over her features. ‘You said that like you actually cared.’
Darren took a step backwards. He had to get away from her; she scared him. He put the mop back in the bucket. The sick was gone, the floor clean. He had to go to the toilets in the corridor now to pour away the water and put in a fresh lot, and detergent.
The loud nurse was coming towards them, having taken Linda somewhere more convenient. Darren pushed the bucket away towards the door. As he waited to be let out, he looked back at Olivia, still in the chair. She was staring at him.
Once outside, he ran to the toilets and threw up.
11
Darren’s sickness didn’t last long. When he had recovered and changed the water in the mop bucket, he rushed back to the recreation room to try to talk to Olivia again and was buzzed in by the nurse, but she was no longer there. The last of the women were filing out of the room through a far door. Nevertheless, Darren felt, now that his stomach was empty and his fear had subsided, a sense of euphoria after his conversation with her that carried him to the end of his shift, to the disrobing in the changing room, past the security checks and out to the car park. He saw Chloe sharing a fag in the sun with some other people, shouted out her name and waved. She frowned for a moment, trying to place him, then her face broke into a grin and she waved back. ‘How many people have you run over today?’ he shouted at her.
She giggled. ‘None, but I’ll keep trying.’
She turned away and he saw her holding court in their smokers’ huddle, retelling the story of his near accident, and he felt a wave of happiness crashing over him like surf. Bring it on. Such was the perfection of the world, he could have walked right up to her then and there and asked her out and he was sure she would have squealed with pleasure and accepted. But he didn’t. He cycled home and bought his mum a bunch of flowers on the way.
His euphoria didn’t last.
Mum loved the flowers. She put them in the living room where their bright yellow and purple blooms brightened up the room. He noticed more cards on the shelf. News about her cancer had spread, and the motivational messages of help and sympathy had started to trickle in faster.
‘Darren, Brenda came round today, do you know Camilla’s working at King’s too? She’s doing art therapy. I told her you were in the records department. You two should hook up.’
Camilla was someone he knew vaguely from school. ‘Er, it’s always really hectic, Mum, I don’t know.’
‘Which room are you in? I’ll tell Brenda.’
Jesus, that was all he needed, to be caught out in a lie by Brenda. ‘Oh, one of the miles of corridor, you know. I’ve got her number, I’ll text her.’
‘Do you fancy art therapy? She could give you some advice.’
‘It’s not for me, Mum, thanks.’ Darren gave a tight smile, the lies sliding and merging and all the while tightening round his throat.
She looked disappointed and it hurt him deeply. ‘Oh well, maybe one day you’ll paint the house for us.’
That evening they all watched a film together but Darren couldn’t concentrate, looking instead at the flowers on the small table next to the sofa. His mum’s head was inches away from the blooms. He felt that he had brought the killer into their home and she was getting comfy right here in their living room with them. Olivia, but not Carly.
When his parents went up to bed he threw the flowers away, desperate to get them out of the house, as if they were polluting it. He couldn’t sleep, disgust and regret churning through him. He was lying to his sick mum to get scraps from the mouth of his sister’s killer. It was beneath him, and would devastate her if she knew.
12
Darren spent most of the night turning over every tiny detail of his conversation with Olivia, trying to find meanings in her few words that he knew weren’t really there. He spent hours in the dark wondering what to ask her when he next saw her. He trawled the internet, reading articles on manipulation, psychology and bullying; he researched how to frame a question and what techniques worked best. He fell asleep over his laptop with dawn beginning to stre
ak his bedroom with pale light and woke the next morning exhausted.
‘Darren, where are the flowers?’
Mum was in her dressing gown in the kitchen as he sipped his tea.
‘I had to get rid of them, I was really allergic to them, I kept sneezing. I’ll buy you some more later. Sorry.’
She sat down at the table and he was alarmed at how slowly she did it, like she was tender all over. ‘You look shattered. Why are you up so early?’ she asked.
‘I’m going to work; sometimes I have to work Sundays.’
‘In the records office?’ She looked surprised. ‘Good old NHS eh?’ She stared out at Chester’s grave in the garden. ‘It’s funny, you know, if it was me, I would, I don’t know, always think I was going to find a record for Carly, like she’d been misplaced and was just waiting to be found, under another name.’
Darren grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘Look at me. You’re going to be OK. You will come through this. Stop being maudlin.’
She smiled a faraway smile of defeat. ‘Sometimes, Darren, you can be so strong, so determined. And other times you’re such a numpty.’
Kamal wasn’t working this Sunday and a woman Darren had never met told him to clean the offices on the first floor, handing him the skeleton keys to the office doors, obviously not realising he’d never gone up there before. He tried to protest – being up there meant no chance of seeing Olivia – but the woman had already turned away and was attending to something else. He would have to suck it up.
Whoopee, instead of going through the buzzing doors he got to go up one floor in a lift. Wow, up here he got to push a cart with industrial-size toilet rolls on it. He was staring at an eight-hour shift of mind-numbing boredom with no benefit to it. There was blue carpet in this corridor, which deadened the sound. Not that it was necessary today, with only a reduced weekend staff at work. Darren got a mild thrill, for about a minute and a half anyway, from using a hoover instead of a mop. God, this job sucked. The corridor overlooked the car park where the bright summer sun bounced off bonnets and glared back at him, taunting him that he should be at the beach or on the bright expanse of Streatham Common, asleep. He tried to spot Chloe’s car.
He saw her arrive about twenty minutes later, pull in to a bay with a screech and race for the catering wing. She was Sunday-morning late. She looked sketchy and dishevelled and had obviously enjoyed a major Saturday night. He’d like to have a Saturday night out with Chloe. His mind drifted pleasantly on that topic for a while as he worked the hoover down the corridor past glass doors and into the rooms. He would spray, dust and do the toilets once he’d finished with the hoover, he decided. Maybe this was an executive decision, like the ones Dad was always banging on about.
A security control room was at the end of the corridor and he saw two men in security guard uniforms, one old and one much younger, sitting in the room on swivel chairs.
The older man turned as he pulled the hoover past the open door. ‘Oh, I thought you were Helen,’ the man said when he saw him out in the corridor. ‘Don’t be shy, come in.’
‘Wow,’ Darren said, looking at the banks of TV screens. ‘Quite an operation.’
The older man nodded. ‘I’m Sonny, this is Corey.’
‘Darren.’
‘Have some cake, it’s my birthday.’
‘Happy birthday,’ Darren said as Sonny cut him a slice of the cake that sat on a plate next to a computer keyboard.
‘So, Darren,’ Sonny said, smiling, ‘you been here a long time.’
‘Oh I haven’t really, just a few days—’
He saw Sonny’s face and stopped.
‘I’m only ribbing you, that can seem like a long time in here. Most people don’t last too long.’
‘I don’t know,’ said a voice from the corridor, ‘I’ve been here years.’
A woman whom Darren had seen before in the corridors downstairs came into the room with a card, which she handed to Sonny. She wore an expensive-looking white silk shirt with the sleeves rolled up and she had a short curtain of glossy black hair, which she swept off her face with a twist of her head. ‘Many happy returns.’
‘Dr McCabe, thank you kindly.’
Corey began to cut her a slice of cake, but she shook her head.
‘Darren, this is Dr Helen McCabe,’ Sonny said.
‘But you can call me Helen.’ She smiled at Darren.
‘Darren here is new,’ Corey added.
‘But Darren,’ Sonny sat back and shook his head, like something was a disappointment to him. ‘I no see hair like that even in Kingston, bwoy!’
Corey sniggered. ‘You must have something living in there, cuz.’
Darren smiled shyly and shrugged. ‘People say I hide behind it.’
‘That’s not difficult!’ said Sonny.
‘I’ve made a promise to myself that one day I’ll cut it off.’
‘Sooner would be better, cuz,’ Corey said.
‘Gosh, an English cleaner, how unusual. Darren, where do you live?’ Helen asked.
Darren swallowed a bit of cake to give himself time to think about whether he needed to lie. ‘Streatham.’
‘You live with your family?’ He nodded. ‘Any brothers or sisters?’
Darren froze. All the heads in the room had turned his way, waiting for his answer. Should he tell the truth? He decided on a version of it. ‘I had a sister, but she died. A long time ago.’
Sonny shook his head. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘That’s rough,’ said Corey.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, how did she die?’ Helen had her head to one side, her straight shiny curtain of hair hanging down.
‘Leukaemia.’
Helen nodded, like she understood.
Sonny glanced up at the cameras as they automatically switched to different views. Looking up with him, Darren could see the dining hall and the serving counter, where a small queue of inmates stood. He stiffened: Olivia was among them. As if sensing she was being looked at, she turned and stared at the camera. Darren realised he’d taken a step backwards.
‘Well, I have to get on,’ Helen said. ‘Have a good birthday, Sonny. Nice to meet you, Darren.’ She walked out of the room and down the corridor.
Corey pointed at the screen showing the dining hall. ‘Do you think Duvall will ever tell Helen where she put those girls?’ he asked Sonny.
Darren nearly choked on his cake. ‘Helen’s Olivia’s therapist?’
‘Her psychiatrist,’ Sonny replied. ‘And she do management stuff – that’s why she here on a sunny Sunday. Very conscientious is Helen.’
‘If it was me, I’d waterboard her to get her to confess,’ Corey said, putting his shoes up on the desk and relaxing now that Helen had gone. Sonny pushed his feet off.
‘I’d better get back to work,’ Darren said, polishing off his cake. ‘Nice to meet you guys.’ His mind was a whirl as he walked back up the corridor. Helen McCabe. Here was a woman who spent countless hours trying to get inside Olivia’s head.
He walked back to her office but she wasn’t there. He walked in. She drank too much coffee; the several cups on her desk were stamped at the rim with the red lipstick she wore. He put the cups on his trolley, ready to take to the kitchen. He looked around. There were no cameras in her room or in the corridor here. The computer on her desk was password protected. He pretended to dust while looking through her in tray, one eye fixed on the door. There was nothing useful: cost-cutting memos, forms from the Department of Health. The filing cabinets lining the wall were locked and keyless, as they should be. All Olivia’s secrets – all that she had ever felt able to tell, anyway – would be in there.
He became bolder. He pulled on the drawers of her desk and they opened. He rooted around for the filing cabinet key, past a box of Tampax, a spare pair of 10-denier tights and a letter from her lawyer relating to her divorce, but didn’t find it. The desktop held a tube of expensive hand cream, a bottle of Evian, a card from someone called Liz telling he
r not to let the bastard get you down, exclamation mark! and a yellowing cactus in a pot.
He was cleaning her desk, wiping away the dust and crumbs from her lunches eaten in front of her computer, and wondering where to search next, when she appeared in the doorway.
‘Sorry, do you want me to leave?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No, I just came to collect something.’
He nodded, picked up her waste bin and emptied it into his trolley bin, waiting to see if she went to open the filing cabinets, but she took a long drink of water from the Evian bottle on her desk and then tipped a little into the cactus.
‘Can I give you some advice?’ She looked taken aback and ready to be suspicious. ‘Your cactus. You’re killing it by giving it too much water. You have to let it get really, really dry.’
She stared at the yellowing spiky thing on her desk for a moment and then she laughed. ‘You’re telling me I have to make it suffer to get it to flourish.’
Darren shrugged. ‘I guess so.’
‘I won’t tell my patients that,’ she grinned.
Darren grinned too, but he was thinking about what Corey had just said. Maybe making Olivia suffer was the answer.
13
The heat of summer was building, walls and pavements and cars radiating the warmth of the city and a sluggish wind lazily circulating the heat around. On Monday Darren was at work again, desperate to pick up as many shifts as he could before he was unmasked or forced to leave. Every morning Darren stood outside the cleaning cupboard with the other workers on tenterhooks to see whether Kamal gave him the route that would bring him into contact with Olivia. He couldn’t risk asking for Newman ward because he knew Kamal would immediately become suspicious. Having to be so passive was a torture, and if someone else got allocated Newman ward he had to endure eight hours of mind-numbing boredom in the rest of the hospital. He stood like a condemned man waiting to see what Kamal would dole out.
The heat was making everyone tetchy and irritable.
