Willow Walk

by SJI Holliday

  Dre@mCaster: Stop mixing up those rank potions, dudes. There is a better way. Working with a good friend of mine who did chemistry at uni, we’ve found a way to make this stuff more palatable. We’ve made it into tablets – Krackoff plus H@PEE. We’ve made a load, and we’re looking for volunteers to test it out for us. So far we don’t know how potent it is, and we don’t know if it reacts with other stuff, so, not that we’re going to make you sign a disclaimer or anything, but it’s potentially risky . . . but then I don’t think anyone on this forum is scared to take a bit of a risk, are they? PM me for more info.

  There are twenty-seven ‘thumbs-ups’ on the comment. Davie feels a prickling under his skin. Is this it? He needs to call Malkie. Get the IT guys to take a proper look. They have experts for this sort of thing – dealing with forums and fake IDs, finding people through their ISPs.

  He glances up at the clock. Well, it’s a start anyway. This, plus the list of recent overdoses and the two deaths that he’s pinned down to a thirty-mile radius . . . it’s definitely something. He’s quite enjoying this side of the work. He wonders if Malkie will let him sit in at the IT suite, see what they get up to in there. It’s nearly ten o’clock. Too late to call?

  He picks up his phone, scrolls through the contacts until he finds Malkie, and just as he’s about to hit ‘dial’ the phone starts vibrating. An icon-sized version of Malkie’s face pops up on the screen.

  ‘Christ, talk of the devil. I was just about to call you. I think I’ve found something with our drugs.’

  ‘Right, aye. Good. I’m calling about something else, though. The Jane Doe at the hospital? She’s woken up. She’s not said much yet, still drowsy and a bit out of it. They let me in for a few minutes but she wasn’t able to tell me who she is.’

  ‘That’s good, though. Sounds like she’s going to pull through.’

  ‘Aye. Anyway, that’s not what I was calling to tell you either. We’ve got a suspect for her attack. You know where we found her? Up at that farm in between Dalkeith and Ormiston? Well, we think now that she’d been waiting for the bus, but we don’t know if she lives round there – which is unlikely, as there aren’t that many houses and she doesn’t look like a farmer – or if she was coming back from seeing someone round there. Only we’ve gone round the houses, and no one seems to know her. There’s one house where no one’s answered. We think they might be on holiday. We’re trying to contact them. Asking them if maybe she’s their housekeeper or something.’

  ‘That’d make sense.’

  ‘It would. Aye. Also, did ye ken there was a mental hospital out that way? I didn’t, to be honest. It’s not on the map. They like to keep these things secret, I suppose. It’s on the NHS Trust website, though – but the location is a bit vague. I asked the guy in the farm about it, the one where the woman was found. He was angry. Said there was probably some nutter on the loose again. Well, he was right.’

  ‘Mental hospital? As in psychiatric patients. Like Carstairs?’

  ‘Yes, but not so secure. Medium and low risk. Anyway, they rang. There was a message for me when I got back to the station. Turns out they do have a missing inmate. They were being a bit cagey. Trying to downplay it. They said he wasn’t dangerous . . . any more.’

  ‘Christ . . .’

  ‘Oh yes, they’re going to be in some deep shit over this. There are protocols to be followed. Someone slipped up, badly. There’ll be an investigation. Meanwhile, our man is still missing. They kept repeating that he’s not dangerous. They sounded nervous. I got the impression that they think he’s still high risk. Heads are going to roll. Looks like our Jane Doe was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m sending you a link to the main article. It’s the ones beneath that are most interesting.’

  Malkie hangs up and a moment later an email pings through on Davie’s phone. He clicks on the link and the headline screams at him: SCHIZOPHRENIC TEEN MUTILATES TEENAGE GIRL.

  ‘Fuck.’ He closes his eyes.

  18th July 2015

  Dear Marie,

  OK, I get it. You’re ignoring me. I can’t blame you, I suppose. We haven’t spoken for a while. A long while. Too long. We have to get to know each other again. I thought of something that might help. I’ve done something for you. It’s a surprise. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to share it with you, but it was just something I thought you might like. My wee friend in here did it for me. She did lots of things for me. You might think it was just because she felt sorry for me, but there was more to it than that. You know what I mean, don’t you, Marie? Anyway. I’m not the same person any more. I don’t feel like the same person. I know you didn’t like it when I smoked too much weed. Do they still call it that? We don’t have that here. Plenty of other stuff. Better stuff, some would say. But it’s not for me. I’m clean now. I’ve got my ways of dealing with it. You think it’s hard to hide stuff behind your tongue while they shine their little torch in there and see if you’ve swallowed it. They even use one of those little wooden sticks, like a lolly stick. But like I said. There are ways.

  I chose one of the back molars. Not the one right at the back, because when you take those ones out the gum grows up around the others and there’s no hole any more. I took one second from the back, right side, same as my scar. I was always on the right, you were always on the left. Remember? Do you have someone else on your right now, Marie? Do they hug you as tight as I did? Do you want them to? Anyway, in case you were wondering, yes, it does hurt when you pull out a tooth. I wiggled it and wiggled it, but it wouldn’t budge. Apparently the roots of molars can be 3cm long. Can you believe that? Like little vines, gripping down inside your throat, anchoring themselves on the bones.

  They let me have floss because I told them I didn’t want my teeth falling out. They watch you floss, but sometimes you can break a piece off, keep it in your mouth. I had enough after a while to make a proper loop. I twisted it round and round. Day after day, night after night. It got looser and looser until I was able to get a grip of it. I didn’t expect the pain. I had to swallow some of their drugs to deal with that. Set me back a few days. Made me numb again. But I got there in the end. I always do, don’t I, Marie? Now I’ve got a perfect little gap to store their drugs and they don’t even know. They stop paying so much attention after a while. New people start. They don’t know what to look for. They don’t know how clever I am.

  I do remember the blood. There was so much blood.

  It reminded me of that day. The way I left you.

  What happened to you, Marie? What did you make me do? I should never have left you. I know that now.

  That was wrong of me, Marie.

  Forgive me.

  Love,

  Graeme

  19

  Marie sits in the darkness. Moonlight slices through the blinds. She heard the familiar sounds of the cat leaping out through the open kitchen window when she closed the front door. She’s alone. Her heart is thudding hard in her chest. She remembers the boy on the floor – Harry – how his heartbeat had been deep, but slow. She hopes he’ll be OK. Knows she should have stayed, but glad she didn’t.

  She stuffs the plastic bag full of what she assumes are drugs into the back of the cupboard above the sink. The pile of letters falls out, skittering across the worktop, into the sink, onto the floor. She ignores them. Opens the next cupboard. Only wine left now. White. It’ll be warm, but it’ll do.

  She kicks the letters across the floor. Unscrews the cap. Pours herself a large glassful. Not a wine glass, a thick tumbler. She doesn’t feel the need for niceties. This is supposed to be a nice wine, she remembers. One that Anne brought her from her last trip to France. Her and Ian go over a couple of times a year to restock their supplies. Whenever they come back, Ian starts the same old debate about screw tops not being as good as corks, and Anne and Marie roll their eyes. Marie couldn’t care less what was used to keep the bottle sealed. She’s just happy now that she doesn’t have to look for a corkscrew.

  At the
kitchen table, Marie flips open her laptop. She waits for it to boot up. Taking forever in the lonely night. She takes a sip of the wine. Grimaces. Maybe not so nice, then. Maybe a coffee would be better for this. The light from outside has moved, just a fraction. Clouds crossing the moon. Some of the letters are highlighted in a muted glow, the others are dull. She gets out of her seat, turns the laptop round the other way, then goes and sits at the other side of the table.

  The letters are behind her now. She can pretend they aren’t there.

  Once the Windows screen has done its thing, and the various pop-ups have been closed down, she clicks on Internet Explorer and a browser window appears. Marie has a Facebook account, but she rarely goes on there. She has nothing particularly interesting to share with her handful of Facebook friends, and she’s not particularly interested in reading about people’s gripes and moans, bitching about each other – or the other lot, the ones who post pics of their kids eating breakfast. Fascinating. She’s thought about deleting her account before, but it hardly seems to be worth the effort. They don’t want you to delete your account. They try to make it as difficult as possible.

  As for Twitter, she’s looked at it once. Anne called her one night when there was a documentary on about people dressed in animal masks going dogging in the woods. Apparently the Twitter commentary was even better than the show. She’d enjoyed it that night – felt like she was part of a community, all thinking the same thing – but she hadn’t set up an account and she’d never been on the site again. She had even less to say to strangers than she did to her own friends and acquaintances.

  It seemed you could no longer browse properly without a login, though. A Twitter handle – was that what it was called? She wants to ditch it. Give up. What’s the point? It clearly isn’t her on there, but she’s curious to know who Scott has been reading about.

  She starts to set up an account – like Facebook. It’s not like she has to use it if she doesn’t want to. She starts with her name: MarieBloomfield – too boring? It’s the obvious choice, though. She types it in. ‘Sorry – this username already exists.’ It gives her a few suggestions for alternatives. She scratches the back of her head. Takes another sip of wine. It doesn’t taste so bad this time. OK, so maybe her name isn’t that unique after all. She settles on ‘MarieBloom’, decides against adding a picture. Does the minimum amount of set-up. She’s in.

  Suggestions appear of whom she might like to follow. Celebrities. Reality TV stars. Footballers. Footballers’ wives. Alan Sugar. Jeez. Is this what people do on here? She clicks on a couple of the reality TV stars and can barely understand what they’re saying, what with all the links and the heart emoticons and all the bloody hashtags. Everyone is called ‘babes’. Cheers babes, love you babes, miss you babes.

  So far, so pointless.

  OK . . . so let’s see who shares my name then. Who Scott thought was me. I suppose, if there’s no photo, he wouldn’t know, would he?

  She types ‘MarieBloomfield’ into the search box. A few people appear. Some have variations of the name, some with numbers on the end, in the middle, using a 1 to replace the ‘i’. Various tiny photos of people, animals, things like books. Slogans. The one she wants is at the top, the one with her actual name. She clicks.

  The profile window pops up.

  Marie takes a breath. ‘No. It can’t be.’

  The image in the background is of a yellow wicker window box filled with daisies and busy lizzies. A small green windmill stuck in the soil at one side. She closes her eyes, hopes that when she opens them again the image will be gone. It’s still there. A breeze starts up from nowhere. She turns around slowly, towards the kitchen window – left open six inches at the bottom for Cadbury to come in and out. Even in the darkness, she can see the yellow wicker shining in the moonlight. The small green windmill is whirling gently. She feels like a weight is pressing down on her shoulders, crushing her into the chair. There is half a glass of wine left – she picks it up, notices her hand is shaking. Downs the wine, barely tasting it, lets it hit the back of her throat. She feels the warmth start to spread through her.

  She turns back to the screen, looks at the profile picture. Takes a closer look. Sees a child. A girl’s face, with part of another face squeezed up next to her, but cropped out of the photo. Waves of panic run up and down her body. She scrolls up and down the page, but there are no tweets. There is nothing. Just the photo of her window box – which she knows is recent, because of the flowers. She only dug it out last week, tidied it up. She recognises the girl in the photograph now, and the piece of the face that is touching hers. She’s not smiling. She looks scared, distracted. She remembers when it was taken. They were at the seaside with their parents. They were eleven. Graeme wanted a photo in the booth as a souvenir. When the curtain was closed, he ran a hand up her bare leg. When the flash pinged, blinding them both momentarily, his finger was under the elastic of her knickers.

  ‘Not here,’ she’d said to him. ‘What if someone sees?’

  ‘What if I want someone to see?’ he’d said. He’d kissed her on the ear.

  She stares at the laptop screen. There is a little padlock. ‘Marie Bloomfield’s tweets are protected. Please follow to request access to this user’s timeline.’

  She clicks the padlock. Waits. Pours another glass of wine.

  There’s a faint scraping sound upstairs. She looks up at the ceiling. Sees the light fitting shudder. She keeps staring at the ceiling, as if expecting a trapdoor to open and someone to jump right through. He can’t be up there. He’s locked up. He’s never allowed to get out. If he had got out, they’d have called her, wouldn’t they? Someone would’ve warned her. He’s not allowed near her. She doesn’t want to see him. She stares at the little padlock. Refreshes the screen.

  Still locked.

  Someone is playing some sort of sick joke on her. Scott? Although why he would do that, she has no idea. Maybe it was a dare. Something stupid. The side gate isn’t locked. Anyone could’ve taken a photo of her window box. The photo of her and Graeme, though . . . she can’t explain that. She has two photos from the strip of four. They are in a box with a load of other photos under her bed. She doesn’t look at them. Graeme has the other two – well, she assumes he does. If he took anything with him when they sent him away.

  She refreshes the screen again. The account is still locked. She looks up at the ceiling. All is quiet. Maybe she imagined it. Maybe she’s going mad. She drains the rest of the wine from her glass and snaps the laptop shut. Maybe she’ll look at it tomorrow. Maybe she won’t. She stands, wobbles slightly. Rights herself by laying a hand on the back of the chair. The letters are still where she left them – scattered across the worktop. In the sink. On the floor.

  Tomorrow she will put them all in the metal bin in the garden and burn them without reading them. Then she will phone the hospital where her brother has been locked up for the last twenty-five years . . . and make sure he is still there.

  20

  Davie is sitting on the bridge when he spots Marie in the distance. He waves, but her head is down. She looks like she’s reading something on her phone. It’s a scorcher of a day. After a night of thunder and lightning, the air has cleared and the sun is beating down. Davie’s dressed casually, in a pair of long shorts and a white polo shirt. He’s double-sprayed himself with deodorant, hoping that the Lynx effect isn’t just a myth. Marie is dressed in tight black jeans and a fitted black T-shirt with a purple tartan collar. Her hair is neatly combed, and she’s got a small red bag slung across her shoulder. She’s already dropped her phone into the bag by the time she reaches him.

  She stands on tiptoes and kisses him on the cheek. He feels the stickiness of her lipstick, freshly applied. She smells of herbal soap and talc. Davie feels a sudden rush of happiness. She’s made an effort for him. Maybe it’s not over yet. He wants to tell her about the woman in the hospital, about how scared he was when he thought it might be her.

  Instead, he say
s, ‘You smell gorgeous.’

  ‘So do you,’ she replies, leaning in to his chest, sniffing at him. She steps back and beams up at him.

  He feels a moment of panic. Her smile is there, but her eyes are dull, red-rimmed. She looks like she’s been crying.

  ‘Everything OK? I’ve been trying to speak to you for days. Seem to keep missing you. All OK at work?’

  She waves a hand, dismissing him. ‘Let’s walk. Work’s the same old. Nothing to report. Bill still likes to stand too close. Wendy is still a pain in the arse. Helen’s tops are still too tight. Blah blah. Oh, one thing though – wee Laura seems to have found herself a boyfriend. Getting serious by the sounds of it. I tried to tell her to ease up, but you know what it’s like.’

  ‘Young love, eh? I can barely remember.’

  Davie remembered his first love like it was yesterday. They’d never even got together properly, and now she was long gone. He still thought about her. He’d never been able to find someone to fill the gap she’d left in his life when she chose someone else over him, leading to a life of unhappiness for them both. Not to mention what it did to her daughter. Talking of which, he was expecting a call from Jo soon. He’d become a sort of official guardian to her of late. The judge had been lenient because of her circumstances. She was getting weekly counselling inside. She’d need that indefinitely. There aren’t many people who can kill someone in self-defence and escape mentally unscathed. Especially when they weren’t the most stable of people in the first place. Being in prison wasn’t the worst place for her at the moment. She wouldn’t be there forever.

  They walk silently, both lost in their own thoughts. Davie reaches out a hand and is glad when Marie takes it. Her hand is so small inside his own. He squeezes it, and she squeezes back. He knows she’s keeping something to herself, and he’s not going to push it.