by Tom Weaver
Healy paused again. 'No one understands the debt you have to the people you stand over in these places. And when they're eight years old… Eight years old, and you can't find a trace of the arsehole who did these things to them anywhere in this worthless fucking city. No one understands what that feels like. Even some of the people I've worked with in the police. And if they don't get it, how the fuck are your family supposed to get it?'
I nodded but didn't say anything.
'It was about a month in when I found out she was seeing someone else,' he said, talking about his wife now. 'If I'd found out any other time, I would have been angry. I would have thrown some furniture around. Put my foot through a door. I know I've got a temper. It's who I am. I'm forty-six. I'm too old to change. But it wasn't just any time. I found out she was screwing around when I was up to my neck in photographs of two eight-year-old girls with injuries to every hole in their bodies. I had the media baying for blood, the chief super crawling up my arse…' He faded out, glanced at me. 'And worst of all, I had zero fucking suspects. No one. The debt I felt for those girls, I'd never had it as bad as that. So when Gemma told me, I just totally lost it.'
'We've all done things we regret.'
A smile without humour. 'You don't seem the wife- beating type.'
'We've all done things we regret,' I said again.
He turned to me. 'So what have you done?'
I looked at him. I've killed people. People who deserved it. People who would have taken my life if I hadn't taken theirs. But I've still killed. I'll still be judged the same as them.When I didn't respond, he stared out of the window. In front of him, his food was virtually untouched and his coffee had lost its warmth.
'You never really know anyone,' he said finally, 'even the ones you love. She thought she knew me, and I thought I knew her. But we didn't know each other at all.'
A couple of minutes passed. I watched the thumb and forefinger of his right hand rub together; he would have taken a cigarette now. After a while, he returned to the counter and ordered a fresh cup of coffee, then disappeared to the toilet. A few minutes later he came back, added some sugar to his coffee and took a long drink from it. I could see his mind turning over, and I wondered what he was thinking about. His wife. The night she told him about the other man. The moment he hit her. The twins. Leanne.
'When do you accept someone is finally gone?' he said quietly.
I turned and studied him. The question surprised me, but I tried not to show it. I hadn't expected it from him. I hadn't expected emotion like that to exist so close to the surface.
'It's different for everyone. But there's no shame in hanging on. There's no shame in believing they might walk through the door at any moment.'
Healy didn't respond.
I let him have a moment of silence and then pushed on. 'So, you going to tell me then?'
He looked at me. 'Tell you what?'
'About the woman in the eighth file.'
He faced out at the street. Movement and light played in his eyes, the world beyond the window reflected. 'Sona,' he said.
'That's her name?'
He nodded. It was an unusual name. I liked it, but I'd never heard it before. Healy started fiddling in his pocket for something. 'I think her mother was born abroad somewhere,' he said. 'Eastern Europe.' He brought out a piece of folded paper and handed it to me. It was the same page I'd seen earlier inside the file — except this time there was nothing blacked out. All the information was there.
'So where Does she fit in?'
He looked at me. 'She's the one that got away.'
The One that Got Away
Sona woke with a start, so hard and so fast she felt something rip. Two strips of tape hung down from her eyelids where they'd been placed over her eyes. She looked around. She was on a hospital bed. On one side: a metal table full of surgical instruments and an ECG machine. On the other: a yellow defibrillator, two metal paddles coiled around a peg at its side. The room had five doors: one left, one right, three in front of her.
She sat up and something pulled at her chest. Wires snaked out from under her gown, feeding off towards the ECG, and she could feel two electrodes stuck to the spaces above both breasts. In the top of her right hand was a catheter that led to a bag of IV fluid hanging from a metal stand. For a second she felt woozy, as if she'd been torn too suddenly from unconsciousness. But then reality hit. Fear fluttered in her chest, a chill fingered up her spine. This wasn't how he worked. He would know when she was supposed to be awake down to the minute. He watched. He listened.
So why hadn't he come for her yet?
Because I'm not supposed to be awake.
She'd been anaesthetized. He'd left her there because he thought she'd been given enough to knock her out.
But he hadn't. She was awake.
And now I need to get out of here.
She removed the tape from her eyelids, disconnected the catheter and pulled both electrodes off her chest. instantly, the ECG flatlined, its steady beep beep beep replaced by one long noise. She stood in the centre of the room and looked between doors. He had to arrive through one of them now. He had to come for her. But a minute later she was still waiting.
She glanced at the trolley again. There was a pair of scissors about six inches in length, the ends pointing out at a forty-five-degree angle. Surgeon's scissors. Next to that was a series of scalpels; a mix of different lengths and weights, of different blades and designs. More instruments: something that looked like a hammer; a syringe; and a drill. And finally, a bottle of clear blue liquid.
The same stuff he'd made her apply to her face.
She touched her cheek. She could feel the waxy sheen of her skin against the tips of her fingers - but she felt nothing in her face. Not a single thing. Everything was dead: no nerve endings firing up, no sensation of movement when she opened and closed her jaw. Nothing. It was completely numb. She reached to the other side, to see if it was the same, felt nothing and brought her fingers back — and then a ripple of horror escaped through her chest. Her fingers were covered in blood.
Suddenly a horrible realization moved like an oil slick inside her: He was using the liquid to prepare my skin for surgery. And he's cutting into my face right now.
Sona grabbed one of the scalpels. Come on then, you bastard. She tried to force adrenalin through her body, tried to kick-start some sort of response, but she was halfway across the room when she heard movement.
Fast footsteps echoing in a corridor beyond the nearest door.
Then static.
She stopped, frozen to the spot. No footsteps any more. Just static. She transferred the scalpel from one hand to the other and held it up in front of her, in the vague direction of the door. Waited. Waited. Then she realized the static was coming from inside the room. She glanced to her left, high up into the corner. Hidden in the darkness was a speaker, built into the wall, painted the same uniform white to disguise it.
'Ssssssssssona.'
A voice from the speaker.
And then in front of her the door handle began to turn.
Heart shifting in her chest, she stepped sideways and forward, so she was behind the door as it opened towards her. Swallowed once. Twice. The third time she almost coughed. She was so frightened now her throat felt like his fingers were already closing around it. She clamped a hand to her mouth, trying to stop any sound, any whimper, any breath that might force its way up and form a noise. Next to her, the door continued opening. Don't make a sound. It inched towards her. Don't make a —
It stopped.
She looked down. The edge of a black shoe was in view. Nothing else.
The ECG screamed. The static bristled. But all she could hear was her heart in her ears, thumping against her ribs, the noise so fierce it swamped everything else. From somewhere she summoned enough strength to raise the scalpel up, her fingers drained of colour, and hold it out in front of her, ready to use. She waited for him to come into the room.
Waited.
Still he didn't move. Then, from the speaker in the corner of the room, the static got louder for a second. Crackling. Reverberating. Changing pitch and tone.
'Where are you hiding, Sona?'
His voice, coming from the speakers above her, and next to her on the other side of the door. A wave passed through her legs, the fear temporarily paralysing her muscles. She stepped further back, towards the wall, to prevent herself from falling completely. The movement made the smallest of noises; a squeak as the ball of her bare foot slid across the polished floor.
It was enough.
The door swung towards her so fast she barely even had time to register it. Within a second, it smashed into her face, the hard wood of the door pounding against her cheekbone. She stumbled back, trying to keep the scalpel up in front of her, desperate not to let her guard down. For a brief second, her brain told her she should be feeling pain in her face now - but instead she felt nothing.
He came around the door at her.
He was in pale blue medical scrubs, a cap and a face mask. She could see his eyes, flashing bright blue inside, and a wire, coming out from under the mask, down under the scrubs. In the split second it took her eyes to flick from the wires back to him, he clamped a hand on her throat and squeezed.
Static.
He forced her down towards the ground. She looked up at him. At his eyes. They were narrowed, focused on hurting her. He pushed her down to the floor, her legs giving way beneath her. He was showing her he was in charge. Forcing her to make short, sharp choking noises as her lungs tried to push air up through her throat. His thumb pressed against her windpipe harder. She was bordering on the edges of a blackout.
Survival instinct kicked in.
Nerves fired. Muscles tightened.
She gripped the scalpel as tightly as she could and jabbed it into the back of his right hand. He yelled out, his cry initially dulled by the mask, but drowned out a second later as it screamed from the speakers in a distorted, broken copy of his reaction. Both hands released her. The sound died down. A wail of agony replaced by feedback and static.
Sona scrambled to her feet, headed around him and out of the door. A long grey corridor. Concrete walls. Strip lights all the way down. She looked both ways. The corridor turned at a right-angle to her left. All she could see around the corner was darkness. To her right was a heavy iron door, huge rivets tracing its circumference.
She headed left.
'You fucking bitch!'
She could hear him but not see him as she ran, his voice coming through a speaker in front of her, high up on the wall. But then: footsteps.
She glanced over her shoulder. He emerged from the doorway, his eyes immediately fixed on her. Blood ran from his hand down the front of his medical scrubs and on to his trousers. But he didn't care now. Above her, static hissed out of the speaker, and then, whispering, his voice travelled down to her: There's nowhere to run.'
She turned and broke into a sprint again. As the corridor kinked left, it opened out into another, shorter one. A couple of crates leaned against one wall. No lights above her. There were three glass panels on her left and more concrete walling on the right. At the end was a door, about forty feet away, connecting the corridor she was in with a better-lit room beyond.
'Where you going, Sona?'
She passed under another speaker.
'You've got nowhere to run!'
She heard his footsteps behind her, but this time didn't look back. Just kept her eyes on the door at the end of the corridor. Never letting up. Never dropping the pace. Ignoring the pain that was starting to emerge in her cheeks and across her forehead. Ignoring the screaming voice inside her that said she was never going to get away from him.
Then, as she passed them, she realized the glass panels were windows.
The first window belonged to a room she recognized. White walls. White ceiling. She could see the table, and the cards perched on top, pointing to the water and the place where the medical gown had been. In the corner of the room were her clothes. Left there in a pile. Everything but her underwear.
She pounded on.
The next room was exactly the same, except empty.
Then she got to the third room.
A woman was sitting on the floor in the opposite corner, legs up to her chest, face buried in her knees. Her hair covered her shoulders and arms, disguising some of the bruises on her skin - but not all of them. Sona slowed a little: an automatic reaction.
There's more like me.
A noise from behind her. She looked back.
He'd closed on her.
In front of her, she could suddenly see a brightly lit room beyond an open iron door. The room was about thirty feet square, with a thick fire door on the far side. 'Help me!' she screamed as she ran into the room. 'Somebody help me!' Through two thin glass panels on the fire door, she could see steel cabinets and the outline of the hole he'd kept her in.
She ran back, grabbed the heavy iron door and started pushing it closed. It cranked and juddered as it swung inwards. He was getting closer. Twenty feet, maybe less. She pushed harder, pain suddenly flaring in her face. In her nose. Her lips. Her cheeks. Then the door stuck.
He was ten feet away.
Shut.
Eight feet.
Shut.
Six feet.
'Shut!' she screamed.
The door shifted and swung shut against the iron frame. She glanced around the room for something to jam against it. It looked like a submarine door — huge, bulky and intricate — but there was no revolving lock mechanism, which meant all he had to do to open it again was push from the other side. Halfway across the room was a metal pipe — like a piece of scaffolding - propped against the wall. She went to grab it.
Then the door started squealing.
He was pushing from the other side.
She grabbed the length of pipe, placed one end against a kink in the floor and then forced the other end into a space about halfway up the door. It would hold for a while. But not long.
'Sona?'
She froze to the spot. Turned slowly. There was no one else in the room. But on the far wall, above the fire door, she could make out another speaker. She frowned. Took a step towards it.
'Sona?' the voice said again.
She stepped closer to the speaker. Watched it for a moment. Through the glass panels in the door she could see more of the hole she'd been kept in. Plastic containers were piled up in the corner of the room, and a ladder was against the far wall, out of sight. That was how he'd got down into the hole in the first place.
'You need to stop running.'
She looked up at the speaker again. His voice sounded soft now, almost caring. Tears filled her eyes. 'Let me go,' she said quietly. 'Just… let me go.'
'I will,' came the reply.
'I mean it!'
'So do I.'
She glanced back at the door, then at the speaker. 'I don't believe you.'
No reply this time.
'I don't believe you!' she screamed, and tears started rolling down her face. She was scared, desperate. She wiped the tears away, trying to compose herself.
A scratching sound.
Crank.
She turned to face the door. He was still pushing at it. It shifted a little, the length of pipe bending against the floor. Then, from somewhere above her, she could hear rain.
She looked up.
Six feet above, a circular hole had been cut out of the ceiling. A manhole. Fixed to one side of the hole was a drop-down ladder. She looked around her. On a wall next to the glass-panelled door were three switches. Two were for lights, presumably the room she was in, and the room with the hole. The other was set apart on its own.
Sona moved to it. Flicked the switch.
With a clunk, the ladder started dropping down, whirring metallically. When one part of it had extended its full length, the second part continued downwards. It stopped in front of her, two feet off the flo
or of the room.
'Step on that ladder and I will kill you.'
She glanced at the speaker.
'I will hunt you down and I will cut you into pieces. I mean it. I will carve you open if you put one foot on that ladder.'
She put her foot on the ladder.
'You stupid bitch!' A crank. The pipe at the door wheezed as he pushed, bending some more. He smashed his fists against the other side, hammering at it like a drum. You are dead! You are fucking dead?
Halfway up the ladder, she paused briefly and looked down into the room. Above, the rain continued to fall. Below, the door edged inwards even more, and she glimpsed the pale blue of his medical scrubs.
'You will remember me,' he said from below her.
She pushed at the manhole cover above her. It moved away from the hole. Rain fell out of the sky and down past her, to the room below. She placed a foot on the next step. Then the next. Lifted her head up above the lip of the manhole.
'Every day, when you look in the mirror, you will remember me.'
And then she hauled herself out — and she ran.
PART FOUR
Chapter Fifty-one
By six o'clock it was getting dark and we were sitting in the shadows of an alley opposite the warehouse. In the office, framed in the glass panel of the door, we could see Luke Drayton still behind the counter, writing something. The warehouse itself was closed up now, the huge delivery doors pulled shut and padlocked.
