by Glenn Cooper
“You sound like you’re leaving.”
“We’re going today.”
“Thank God. Will you leave me untied?”
“No, but I’ll leave the knots loose enough that you’ll be able to get out in a few hours. And don’t call out to Roger to do it for you. It’ll traumatize him. You’re sober and sensible enough to understand that.”
“Where are you going?”
“So you can tell the police?”
“I’m just curious.”
“We’re going to see my mum. I never got to say goodbye to her.”
In the lounge, Roger was doing a jigsaw puzzle. Molly was on the sofa eating biscuits.
Christine got down on the floor. “I made you sandwiches,” she said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Not for now, for later. You’ll find them on the kitchen table under foil.”
“You’ll get them for me later?” he asked.
“I would, my love, but Auntie Molly and I have to leave now.”
The boy looked up sharply. “But I don’t want you to go.”
“I know. We don’t want to go either, but it’s time.”
“Is mummy still in the loo?”
“She is but she’s almost all better. She’ll come out to see you before you know it.”
“But don’t go in there,” Molly said. “Even if she asks you. Remember what I said about ladies and their privacy?”
Roger nodded. “Will you come back?”
“No, we won’t be coming back, sweetheart,” Christine said, “but I hope you remember the lovely week we had together.”
His lower lip quivered.
“Now don’t cry,” Christine said. “You’re a big boy and big boys don’t cry. Now give me a big goodbye hug.”
With the small body in her grasp, Christine choked back tears. She peeled his arms off her and Molly moved in for hers.
Closing the door behind them, Molly started to speak but Christine was fighting her emotions and just said, “Please don’t say anything, all right?”
The cottage in Stoke Newington resembled a garbage tip. The rovers had sucked the house dry of food and drink, discarding everything that couldn’t be eaten. In the lounge, kitchen, and bedrooms they had tipped over most of the furnishings in varying states of drunkenness and combativeness. And like locusts that had consumed all a piece of land had to offer, it was time to move on. Christine’s sister had the good fortune of not yet returning from her holiday in Cornwall but when she did she probably was not going to be overjoyed.
In Hell, Talley was unquestionably their leader. On Earth, Hathaway had progressively co-opted his authority. His knowledge of modernity placed him in a position that even Talley’s reptilian brain could recognize was essential for their survival. Yet that didn’t prevent Talley from asserting his dominance, especially when loaded with alcohol. One particularly ugly physical confrontation had left both men bloody and chairs destroyed.
That morning, Hathaway had awoken first and unable to find anything to eat beyond a packet of frozen piecrust dough, he righted an overturned wing chair and stewed.
Hate was his friend. It had kept him company every day in Hell and every day back on Earth. Revenge was aspirational. He put it on a higher plane than satisfying his basic biological needs. Rix, Murphy, and their wives were his raison d’etre. He had hated them enough to kill them but that wasn’t enough. When he found them in Hell they were sitting pretty, at least by the standards of most Heller bastards. Rix had Christine. Murphy had Molly. Forever. They needed a good crashing. They needed to be in rotting rooms. He realized he would have a yawning void in his desperate existence once he’d destroyed them but destroy them he would.
It hadn’t been easy. Their village of Ockendon had enough fit men to be capable of defending itself from rovers. Other villages were easier pickings. What a rush it had been finding the women alone in the woods that day. After a day of raping, at night he would have rolled their heads into the village like bowling balls. Now he regretted not crashing them as soon as they got to Earth. But the whole experience had been too jumbled and confusing. He wouldn’t make the mistake again.
His hate lived somewhere on the border of rational thought. The logic went something like this: he’d been forced to kill the four of them because they were going to turn themselves into the police. Mellors had ordered the hit. Clean up the mess, Lucas, Mellors had said. Clean it up or we’ll all be in the soup. He was in Hell because he had killed them. Yes, the kidnapped girl had died but he hadn’t been there when it happened, had he? No one knew what kind of celestial judge condemned you to Hell but maybe he wouldn’t have gotten tagged with her death. How did he know? So it was them, Rix and Murphy, Christine and Molly, who were responsible for landing him in Hell.
Talley shuffled in looking bilious. “Give me something to drink.”
“There’s nothing left.”
“Fuck there isn’t.”
“Have a look if you don’t believe me.”
Talley opened the liquor cabinet and found one bottle. “What’s this then?” he said triumphantly.
“It’s Margarita mix. No liquor in there.”
“Don’t believe you.”
“Try it then.”
Talley had mastered twist tops and soon had a swig in his mouth that he expelled all over the room.
“Told you so,” Hathaway said. “There’s no food left either. It’s time for us to move along.”
“To find the molls?”
“Yeah, to find the molls.”
Christine’s eyes began to well up as soon as she crossed from Eye to Hoxne on the Eye Road. There were a couple of new bungalows and houses nestled in the trees, but the entrance to the village was unchanged from her memories. The cottages, the hedgerows, the old pipe works, all of them stood where they had permanently resided in her mind’s eye.
“Well?” Molly asked.
“It’s the same.”
She drove the Mini over the little bridge that traversed the River Dove. The Hoxne Swan came into sight. Her first pub. She’d played under the tables in the public bar as a small girl and had her first real drinks there at fourteen with impunity—sickly sweet vodkas and lime. She’d been married in the church on Green Street, had her reception under a tent in the Swan garden and she and Colin had spent their wedding night in The Angel Hotel in Bury St. Edmunds.
Her hands began to shake on the wheel when she saw the red phone box outside the post office and general store.
“What?” Molly asked.
“It’s just up there.”
There were a few people talking outside the store. She drove slowly past and at her mother’s trellised cottage, her mouth was almost too dry to get the words out. “That one.”
“It’s pretty,” Molly said.
She didn’t want to park a stolen car out in the open on Low Street so she drove around and left it on the little-traveled Church Hill. They spritzed themselves with cologne and walked down the small public way connecting the two streets.
“You knock,” she told Molly. “The shock could kill her. I’ll wait outside. Be gentle, all right?”
“I know what to do, luv.”
Molly knocked then knocked again. After a long wait a frail and stooped white-haired woman answered, leaning hard on a cane.
“Oh, hello,” the woman said. “Are you from the council?”
“No, luv, I’m not.”
“I see. The girl who helps out on weekends called in sick this morning so I thought the council had sent someone else.”
“Oh dear, didn’t you have any lunch then?” Molly asked.
“I was just going to have some corn flakes and perhaps cut some fruit into it.”
“Well then, I’m Molly. I’m not with the council but I’d be happy to sort out something a bit more substantial for you. Would you like me to do that?”
“That would be very nice,” the old woman said. “Molly, did you say? But you’re not from the counc
il.”
“No but I know how to fix a nice lunch.”
Christine hadn’t been able to catch a glimpse of her mother but she heard her voice. It was shakier but still very much hers. When Molly disappeared inside Christine walked up and down the street, remembering who used to live in each cottage.
“Hey.”
She turned around. Molly was at the door motioning her to come.
“What did you tell her?”
“That there was someone I wanted her to meet. She’s a bit confused, just so you know, but she’s very dear.”
Christine stepped inside as one might enter a holy site, walking slowly and reverentially, taking everything familiar. Entering the kitchen her mother’s back was to her. Molly had heated a tin of ravioli.
“This is the woman I wanted you to see,” Molly said.
Her mother turned and blinked in confusion. “Hello.”
“Hello,” Christine whispered.
“And what’s your name, dear?”
She came around the table. “Don’t you recognize me?”
The old woman studied her face and seemed to be troubled in an unfocused way. “I’m sorry, I …”
“It’s me, mum. Don’t be scared. It’s your Christine.”
Hathaway began driving at sundown. Their bellies were empty. All of them were accustomed to hunger but their time on Earth had already made them soft. Food was easy to come by here and Youngblood and Chambers in particular were whining for grub.
“We’re not stopping,” Hathaway said. “It’s too dangerous. We’ll eat when we get there.”
“What kind of grub?” Youngblood asked.
“Hot grub,” Hathaway said. Then he smiled. “And maybe some cannie food if we’re lucky.”
He had one of Gavin West’s maps. Asking Talley to navigate was like asking a donkey for help so he kept the map on his lap and peeked at it from time to time. He felt safer once he had turned off the A140. Fewer headlights, fewer passing cars. Dark B roads.
Molly had helped Christine put her mother to bed. The traumas of the day hadn’t killed her, as Christine had worried, but they had exhausted her.
At first her mother had simply ignored her. She had returned to her plate of ravioli and had slowly finished it before saying, “My Christine is dead.”
They had steered her into the tiny sitting room and deposited her in her TV chair.
“Can’t you see, mum?” Christine had said. “Can’t you see it’s me?”
Forced to study her face, the old woman became agitated and had said, “Am I dead?”
“No mum, you’re not dead.”
“Then how am I with my daughter?”
“I came back to see you.”
“That doesn’t happen.”
“It happened this time.”
“She died, you died, such a long time ago.” The old lady screwed up her face in confusion. “You did some bad things.”
“I know I did. I am so sorry for what I did. I never got to say goodbye to you.”
“You look like Christine.”
“That’s because I am Christine. Will you forgive me, mum?”
“Of course I forgive you. I’m your mother. Are you sure I’m not dead?”
“You’re alive mum. It’s me who’s dead.”
“Is she dead too?”
“Yes, Molly’s dead too.”
“She made me ravioli. My girl couldn’t come today.”
Christine closed her mother’s door and joined Molly downstairs in the sitting room. The only alcohol in the house was sherry that she poured into two glasses.
“I don’t think she’s all there,” Molly said.
Christine drank hers in one go. “Sometimes I was thinking I was getting through to her, that she was, you know, believing me, then the next minute she’s off on a cloud.”
“They get that way sometimes.”
“This was a mistake. We should leave in the morning,” Christine said.
“And go where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere, anywhere. I don’t even care if we get nicked. I’m tired of running.”
The back door crashed open showering the kitchen with wood and glass.
Before they could even get out of their seats, Hathaway was standing over them, the other rovers behind him.
“This is too bloody perfect,” he said. “Too bloody perfect.”
Ben’s mobile rang. It was one of the only nights since the crisis began that he’d simply walked away from the job for a few hours and taken his wife to a restaurant. One night out wasn’t going to repair his marriage but it was a positive step. The MAAC restart was in nine days. Hopefully, that would be the end of it. Nine days until normalcy. Nine days until he could once again give himself over to the comparatively welcome realm of domestic terrorism.
His wife looked livid when he glanced at his phone.
“Really, Ben, you promised.”
He didn’t recognize the number. “I’m sorry. I’ll just check to see if it’s urgent.”
“Not at the table,” she said. “People are looking.”
He rose while answering and headed for the entrance.
“Ben Wellington.”
“Yes, Mr. Wellington, this is Constable Kent from the Suffolk Constabulary.”
“Yes, constable.”
“I’ve done what you asked. I’ve kept an eye on Mrs. Hardwick’s cottage. I hope it’s all right to call at this hour.”
“Quite all right. How can I help you?”
“I was passing by in my private vehicle when I saw some men getting out of a car at her address.”
“How long ago was this?”
“No more than a minute.”
“Did they go inside?”
“I couldn’t say. I passed by and drove on to place the call.”
“How many men?”
“Four. Would you like me to intervene?”
Ben said no so loudly the maître de looked up angrily. “Do not intervene. Please keep the property under surveillance from a very safe distance. Do not call in your colleagues. I will be there within one hour. If there are any further developments call me immediately.”
He rushed back to the table, threw down a handful of bills and met his wife’s furious gaze with a sorrowful shake of his head.
“I’m sorry. You’ll have to take a cab home. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
The waiter arrived with the entrees.
“Please don’t bother,” she said.
Youngblood came bounding down the stairs. “There’s an old woman in a bed, that’s all.”
“You leave her alone,” Christine said, shaking with rage.
“Not much meat on her,” Youngblood said, heading to the kitchen. “But some.”
“Want to know how we found you?” Hathaway asked.
“Not particularly,” Christine said.
“Your Gavin told us. Right before we crashed him.”
The women looked at each other, too scared to ask about the fate of Christine’s son, Gareth.
“Just him?” Christine managed to ask.
“Who else did you expect?” Hathaway asked. “Did we miss one of your dearies?”
“There’s no one else,” Christine said.
“Yes there is. Your sister. We waited for her for a week but she never came home. Lucky lady.”
“You’ve got a hard-on for me don’t you, you piece of shit?” Christine said.
Hathaway rubbed his crotch. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Let’s start the raping,” Chambers said.
“There’s time for that,” Talley said, asserting control. “We want grub and strong drink.”
“If there’s no cooked grub,” Youngblood said, “I say we cannie the old woman.”
“Let us go to the kitchen,” Molly said. “We’ll cook.”
Talley grunted his approval. Molly’s knees almost buckled when she stood. Christine saw the fear in her eyes and reached out to steady her.
“Watch them,” Talley told Chambers. “What about the drink?”
“There’s only this bit of sherry,” Christine said.
Talley chugged the bottle dry and started to open cupboards looking for more.
“There was a pub just down the road,” Hathaway said. He looked at the mantelpiece clock. It was eleven. He mumbled that he had no idea when pubs closed anymore but that they’d do better waiting until the place cleared out.
“We’ll go after we have grub,” Talley said. “Then we’ll get drunk, then we’ll do our raping.”
“That’s why you’re the bossman, Talley,” Hathaway said. “Always there with a plan.”
Talley, failing to appreciate the sarcasm, seemed pleased at the compliment.
The Security Service helicopter picked up Ben from Thames House in Millbank and flew to Dartford. Rix and Murphy were waiting with their minders near the MAAC tennis court.
The Gazelle made a touch and go landing and Rix and Murphy belted in.
“What’s going on?” Rix asked. “They wouldn’t tell us shit.”
“We may have them,” Ben said.
“Where?” Murphy asked.
“Hoxne. The local constable saw four men at the cottage. I told him to stand down.”
“If it’s them you saved the chap’s life,” Rix said. “Just four men?”
“Yes, why do you ask?”
“In case they pulled in hostages,” Rix answered quickly.
“I see. I know the house has nothing to do with Hathaway,” Ben said.
“Do you now?” Rix said.
“The elderly woman who lives there is a Mrs. Hardcastle. She’s Christine’s mother.”
“How long have you known?”
“I found out when we returned from Hoxne. It wasn’t hard to find out.”
