by Caro Ramsay
I get to the large water gate. The water in the trough is higher and the slab that bisects it is lower.
And I cannot see my phone so Eric must have picked it up.
He knows I’m here but he’s not looking for me. That suggests I am trapped. This time it’s a swimming job to get out, and he might be waiting for me on the other side.
I need to rethink. The woman in the drawer. Sophie? So I turn back. There is another slab here, right at the front. It looks the same as the one where the drawer woman was, with the similar new plaster. I put the hammer between my teeth. I have no idea where Eric might be and I want to be prepared.
The slab goes up easily, with the usual slight rumble. I slide underneath and into the darkness with the torch still in my teeth.
I keep my back against the wall, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light as I hold the torch in one hand and the hammer in the other. This room is different. I can smell it.
There is fresh air. My eyes start to pick out shapes and shadows, so there is light, but I don’t sense anybody moving.
But I can hear someone breathing.
Eric? I press my back to the wall.
I wait for a few minutes but nothing changes, except I begin to see some shapes. I hold the torch out to my side so that if Eric takes aim he will miss his target by an arm’s length. I turn it on and direct it to the source of the breathing.
I lower the beam slightly. There is no kicking or trauma, no panic at me coming into the room.
A woman is lying on a makeshift bed, curled away from me. She looks like a naked child in the darkness, waiting for dawn to break. She moves slightly on her thin, stinking mattress, lifting her weight off the festering sores I can see on her back.
‘Hello?’
‘I haven’t turned, I haven’t turned round,’ she says, struggling to control her voice.
‘Hello?’ I say again. ‘I’m here to help you get out.’
She lies very still. I wonder how many times he has let her think that she can go free. Is that what he told Lorna? Then sent the dogs after her?
‘You can turn round.’ I touch her shoulder.
‘You’re not Eric,’ she says. As she turns her eyes hold similar terror as the other woman’s. She starts to shake.
Recognition. ‘Gillian?’
She makes a sound, a spluttering cry.
‘It is you, isn’t it? Your mum hired us to find you.’
She looks confused; her head shakes, her nose starts to run, her snot joins her tears. ‘You won’t get out! Oh no, you’ll never get out.’ She sobs as she grasps my wrist; her fingers are bones covered with paper skin. ‘Have you seen my girls?’
‘Only in the pictures in your mum’s house.’
‘My mum’s house. My mum’s house,’ she repeats; this helps to steady her.
‘You need to help me get out of here,’ I say. ‘Then I can get help.’
The grip on my wrist tightens. ‘You can’t get out. He’ll kill you.’
‘He won’t.’
‘He will.’
‘Is there a girl here – Sophie?’ I brace myself for the answer.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know how many …’ She starts to cry inconsolably.
‘So tell me about the water. Does he only come when it rains?’
She nods, her face streaming with tears as she fingers the small gold dolphin hanging on a chain round her neck.
I point at it, aware that my fingers are blue and shaking, their covering of black hair dried into horny little spicules. I must seem barely human. ‘Did he ever want to send that back home?’
She rubs the dolphin a wee bit harder. ‘No. So they are still looking for me? It’s been so long.’ She wipes her nose on the back of her forearm.
‘Of course they are.’
‘I thought they might forget.’ She raises her fist to her mouth, as if that might stop the tears.
‘They would never stop looking.’
She raises her chained arm. Her voice becomes rushed with memory. ‘There was a girl, I could hear her screaming at him, screaming that she was going to get out. I heard her counting – it came through the pipes or the vents. She was keeping fit, she wasn’t going to be weak when the time came. The time for getting out. Then, one day, the noise stopped.’ She stares at me. ‘Did she make it?’
‘She got out.’
I am sitting on the bed with her now. We’re talking quietly in the half-light of the torch. It is calming me as much as it is calming her. She starts to cry again.
‘Please don’t. I don’t want any sign that I have been here, so no red eyes, no great emotion. Tell me things about him. The more I know, the more power I have.’ My words come out hard. The tears start. I need to move on. ‘I’ll kill him if he comes near you,’ I say simply.
‘Are you for real?’ she asks, the first touch of humour.
‘Yes. If he comes back here, I will kill him.’ That worked with the other woman, and it has the same effect on this one.
‘Well, you would scare me.’ She smiles tentatively. ‘We’re not quite there yet, are we?’
‘No.’
She looks at the wall; the stones are wet and glistening. It is raining inside her underground prison. She pulls the heavy chain over her, arranging it curled like a cobra on the mattress, and then she starts drawing patterns on the dampness. She flicks her bony fingers over it, feeling the coarseness being smoothed by the water. I think she has done this many times; this has been her comfort. ‘I hear water move, like hearing the sea through a sea shell.’ Then she looks up at the ceiling as the water starts to drip.
She has drifted off somewhere. She has curled up a little more, turned into the wall. I can see a bite mark on the back of her bare leg. It has healed but it’s still red and angry-looking. It must have hurt a lot.
‘Is that where the dog attacked you?’ I ask her.
Her voice is almost a whisper, ‘It all happened so fast. I was in so much pain. He will set the dogs on you, and they’ll kill you.’ She is drifting off.
‘Gillian,’ I said. ‘I will be back.’
She turns away from the wall and looks at me. There is pity in her eyes, but she smiles a wan smile. ‘God speed,’ she says.
I slide out of the room, doing the same trick with the door, then slip into the water of the big water gate. I tread, preparing to dip under and come up at the other side of the partition which is sitting lower now. I stick the hammer in the waistband of my Rohans, and am about to start feeling around under the partition so I can gauge how deep I’m going to go down. I drop into the water then use the bottom of the partition for momentum to get me up the other side. I have no idea if Eric is waiting for me to reappear but he has no need to. All he needs to do is sit on the front step with those two dogs and all this will be over.
I come up and wipe the water from my eyes. The little stairwell is in darkness, all is still. I climb out and stand in the dark corner dripping and wiping the water from my head and face, thinking about what to do next. I have to find help, while avoiding those dogs. They will follow my scent. Lorna had been forensically clean; if that was because she had been through that water door then I too would be clean and maybe have no scent. But I don’t know enough about dogs to bet my life on it.
I go back up the stone steps to the slab at the back of the cellar of the house proper and get through it. I am now in the hall, hidden from view by the scaffolding. I need to be invisible to those dogs. I need to smell like Eric so I dash back to the front door to the coat rack laden with his outdoor clothes. One quick search and I lift a pair of waterproof trousers, an old woollen jumper and his jacket from the hook and slip outside into the fresh night air. It is dark and I realize how much time has passed, how hungry and tired I am. I nip over to the Land Rover and stand behind it, out of sight of the windows. I pull off my trousers and put his on, turning the waistband over twice. I pull off my T-shirt and fleece then put on his jumper and Barbour jacket. I transfer th
e hammer and the scalpel. I stick my clothes under the Land Rover, up under the chassis somewhere. Hopefully he will drive away and the dogs will follow the scent all the way to Glasgow.
I run from the Land Rover as fast as I can with the big Barbour jacket on, circling back to the house, past the outside water clock in his front garden. I am trying not to hurry, trying not to breathe too deeply, trying to ignore the noise Eric’s clothes are making as I run. There’s no sign of anyone coming with help, no lights on the track, nothing. I lean against the wall of the house right next to the front door letting the rain fall on my face. The smell of sweat and dogs rises up from his jacket, it should confuse the dogs a little. I have a plan to get in the house and find a phone. The sky is dark and low, heavy with cloud. That does not bode well for a mobile phone signal. I need a landline.
Then I see a movement through the murky darkness, I catch the sound of a sniff and I freeze. I see a tail, a low tail moving slowly, back and forth. Then another. The dogs are on the path, pulling at something large and bulky lying on the ground. I hear a familiar tune as their tugging makes it roll slightly.
I recognize the tune.
Plinky-plinky-plink-plink.
Billy’s phone.
That mass is Billy.
The dogs have got him.
I try not to be sick as I walk backwards slowly, keeping my eyes on the dogs all the time. Their eyes do not leave their feast. I open the door behind me and slip back into the house. There are lights on. There weren’t any when I was outside.
Eric is in here somewhere.
I nip under the cover of the scaffolding and wait for him to make a move. When he does, I will hear him. So I wait. There is a slight noise upstairs but it is the old house creaking, groaning under the onslaught of the weather it has had to suffer over the last few days.
The game has not changed.
Me against him.
I go down the stairs in the cellar, through the slab door and down the steps to the water gate. I get down on the floor and put my arm across under the partition slab; the water has remained high. I will have to go deep again. I pull off the Barbour jacket, slip into the water and take a deep breath; it seems a long way down to get under the partition. I bend my knees up, curling my body to cross under the lower edge, and realize that it is falling on me. If this contraption closes all the way down, it will cut me in two. I have to jack-knife my body to get out the way, pulling myself clear.
I open my eyes under the water.
I see an outline above.
Eric.
Waiting.
I coil back in the water. He has me trapped. He is following my shadow. I feel down to my sock and pull out the scalpel then float to the surface slowly, so that only my eyes are above the water. He is standing there, hands on his hips, looking down at me. He says nothing, he just places his foot on my head. I just get a breath of fresh air before he grinds me under. This time I know where he is. Under the water I slip to the side, reaching up to grab his trouser leg. He bends down to pull my hand off but I stab his wrist with the scalpel. He cries out, probably more with surprise than pain. He kicks, his toe catches me on the side of the head but I don’t let go. He is now so off balance, it is easy to pull him in. I feel the impact of his body on top of mine. He expects me to fight to get away from him but I hold him close and take him down with me, right to the bottom of the falling partition. The grinding sound is loud through the water, mixed with the giggle of air bubbles escaping from my lungs. I hold on to his collar, refusing to look at his face. Gravity does the work, I just guide him down, down and down. Then I hook my foot underneath the partition and pull hard, very hard. I feel the concrete graze my face, I twist my shoulders. I keep my grip, catching him under the partition and holding him as it descends.
The water in front of my eyes streaks red with wavering blood, like scarlet seaweed drifting. Then I let go.
Going back into the hall the bitter cold air hits me. Blood is streaming down my face, chilling my skin. I pull Eric’s jacket back on and try to think logically. I need to get out and follow the dirt track to the road. If I run wide, I can keep away from the dogs. I can’t even convince myself that this is a good idea.
I take my shoes off, rubbing my socks to get some of the excess water out. As I lean on something in the hall that is covered in old rags and blankets, I notice a slight vibration. It is a freezer, an old chest-type freezer. I lift the lid; it’s full of huge chunks of raw meat, unwrapped and badly cut. I close it again.
I look out the front door. The dogs lift their heads, watching but not moving. Then the one with the black face starts sniffing the air. It takes a few steps towards me so I close the door a little, just enough gap for me to see them. They snuffle at the door, then leave, purposefully trotting away round the corner of the building. I don’t know where they’re going but they seem to. They know something I don’t. I hear a patter pat of claws behind me.
Right behind me.
The back door was open, hence the sub-zero temperature in here. I move slowly backwards, towards the freezer, and open it up without turning my back on the dogs. They regard me with an intense stare, ears pricked. I rummage behind me, ignoring the biting cold, and pull out a joint. I don’t care what it is, I fling it into the kitchen and watch the dogs follow. Then I close the kitchen door, making sure it is secure. Just in case Blackface gets any clever ideas.
I find the side door and close it behind me, locking them in.
It is raining so hard now, it is almost blinding. It is very dark up here, no light pollution, no starlight, just an ongoing empty sky. I see a pile of something lying in the dirt track: Billy.
I want to stop, go over. But he would want me to get away.
So I run.
As fast as I can. The big jacket hampers me; it is not cold, the wind has fallen. Then I feel the storm in my legs and slip the jacket from my arms and I am flying. Sailing through the air; my feet barely touch the ground. I have no idea how long I run for. I feel like I am on top of the world. I am invincible. I am free, alive and flying. I will get help. I will get help for Gillian, for the woman in the drawer, for Sophie.
Then my breath is gone, the air is pulled from me. A vice grips my chest and I am on the ground, the heather prickling at my face. I roll as I fall. I can’t help it. Lights drift in front of me, foggy drifting lights, and I see two feet floating in the fog, slowly coming towards me. Walking like a teddy bear.
It is Eric. The light gets brighter, he is coming straight for me.
It is over.
THURSDAY, 21 JUNE
The lights over my head flash past, head-to-toe, head-to-toe, strobing my face as I pass underneath. My heart clicks with a precise rhythm, the back beat provided by the echo in my ears. I am going somewhere else, somewhere warm, somewhere that is easy, and I have left Billy behind, left him on the track with the dogs and the rain and the rats. I see the dogs tug at his skin, tearing at his flesh. It rips open and red spills into the brilliant light. The light overhead starts to strobe red then white then red. Quickly. Quicker.
I am unable to move or breathe. The light is fierce, it blinds me through my closed eyelids, the tape on my mouth constricts my lungs, regulating my airflow while my brain starts reaching around, testing itself, trying to find sense in it all.
I didn’t get away.
Eric came out of the light, walking towards me, taking me by the arm, holding me down …
‘Stop that, you’ll pull the drip out, you silly cow.’
The voice drifts up through my consciousness.
‘Lie still, Elvie.’
Not Eric. This is Costello, the wolf in sheep’s clothing. I open my eyes, she has a misty outline like a renaissance Madonna. She lets go my arm and pulls her chair closer then produces a notebook and a pen.
‘You look like shite,’ she says with her usual honesty as she removes a tube from my mouth, picking off the tape that secured it. I am aware of all the tubes on my face, in my arms, up
my nose.
‘Billy?’ The name tumbles from my tongue.
She shakes her head. ‘He would have been proud of you, you did a great job. God knows why he got out of the car, looking for you probably, never saw the dogs. We got all the women out and that was all he wanted. Gilly is home and that was the thing that was important to him. And he would want you to keep going, he would want you to get Sophie back. So get well.’
If I am crying I don’t feel the tears. Figures walk back and forth past the door, hospitals never sleep. A phone is ringing unanswered in some distant corridor, there is the sound of a trolley being pushed around.
Costello puts her hand back on my arm; her skin is warm, mine is cold. ‘Gilly is safe; the other girl is in High Dependency, septicaemia. She wouldn’t have lasted another forty-eight hours.’ She pauses. ‘But there was no sign that Sophie was ever there. Sorry.’
‘She is there. You must go back.’ I grab her hand. ‘Eric was coming to get me … I saw her, she was sitting …’
‘No, Elvie, Eric died in the watergate. You saw a porcelain doll of Magda, that’s all. Sophie was never there. Do you remember running? You were wet, cold and tired, you ran miles on that hill, following the track, and you ran right into my headlights, frightening the shit out of me. Your heart …’
‘So where is Sophie?’
She shuffles in her seat. ‘Elvie? Do you know what day of the week it is?’
‘No idea.’
‘It’s Thursday, you’ve been here for days. A lot of shit has come down the line recently. We need to talk.’ She hesitates as if struggling where to start. ‘Grant is not good, he has had some kind of psychosis. He’s a mess, Elvie. Rod has had to move back in to look after your mum.’
I nod.
‘We are still trying to piece it together. Did you see the freezer full of body parts, all that road kill, in the hall at Eric’s? You had been in the Land Rover so you noticed the straps that pinned his victims against the side. Gilly said they were so tight, she couldn’t even kick. Is that how you worked it out? Is that how you knew?’
