by Mark Roberts
‘Where?’ She freed his right wrist. ‘Point!’
He pointed past the spotlight, into the corner ahead of them.
‘Is it far?’
‘Not far.’
‘Für Elise’ stopped and the building was filled with the ticking of a bomb. She untied his left hand and said, ‘Stand up!’
He rocked on the seat and said, ‘I can’t move!’
‘Stand up now! You’re less than a minute away from death. Take me to the door you came in through!’
She sank her hands under his arms, felt the soaking hair of his armpits and was reminded of moving Steven Jamieson’s dead body. Somehow handling the living was much worse than touching the dead. She lifted and he made an effort to stand.
Stabilising him, she glanced at the altar, second-glanced a small Polaroid picture propped against a bigger, more recent framed portrait of a girl on an altar decorated with statues and pictures, with food and flowers for the Day of the Dead.
‘Move – towards the door!’
‘Für Elise’ started up again.
She saw the Polaroid on the altar as she hurried after Hawkins and was stopped in her tracks by the image. She snatched the Polaroid and as she sprinted her senses became super clear. She looked for the door in the darkness, using her torch.
‘Faster!’
‘My legs are dead.’
He wobbled and fell to his knees. Clay slapped his face and screamed, ‘Get up and walk and if you can’t walk, crawl!’
As she helped him to his feet, the blood in her ears blended into Beethoven’s music.
With a beam of torchlight, she made out a long vertical line, followed it up to a corner, traced the light along the horizontal top of the door, to the corner and down to the bottom of the door.
‘Is that the door?’
He sobbed as he limped forward.
‘I said, Is that the door?’
‘Yes.’
Clay ran towards it.
‘Don’t... leave me!’
She reached the door, pushed it dead centre with her shoulder and felt its unyielding weight. Clay used the torch to find the hinges and, moving to the opposite side of the door, kicked with the sole of her foot at hip height.
It swung open.
She turned around but he was gone.
Pointing her torch at the ground, she found him crawling on all fours.
At her back, cold air seethed as the storm was trapped down the side of the Littlewoods Building. She looked at her watch. Ten seconds to spare.
She looked at the expanse of space into which she could run away and back at him.
He held out his left arm, his hand begging.
She thrust her torch into her pocket.
Clay hurried in, grabbed his hand in both of hers and dragged him towards the open doorway. As she pulled his bulk with all her might, the moon picked up the time on her watch.
Three.
She was a metre away from the door but he became a dead weight.
Two.
She was almost at the door.
One.
At the door, she let go and threw herself out of the building.
The music stopped and the only thing polluting the silence inside the building was Hawkins curled up in a foetal ball and crying, ‘I don’t want to die!’
Outside, she ran into the space, felt like a leaf tossed by the storm.
She ran and ran and ran and, behind her, nothing happened.
Her iPhone rang.
The bomb, she thought. It hasn’t detonated.
Her iPhone continued to call to her and she stopped running, turned and was amazed at the distance she’d put between herself and the building in such a short space of time.
She took out her iPhone and, without noticing the display, connected but said nothing. Clay plugged her other ear with her finger against the chaos of the storm.
A human voice wove into her ear.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that,’ she shouted.
‘Do you honestly...’ Wind ploughed against her whole being and then dipped beneath her knees. ‘...hurt you?’
‘Who is this?’ she asked.
‘Turn around, half a circle. Look, look deep and hard.’
She turned 180 degrees and looked into the darkness that covered Botanic Gardens, through the wrought-iron railings that separated the Littlewoods Building from its neighbouring green space.
A speck of light appeared and then disappeared.
The light came on again and the voice said, ‘Can you see me, Eve?’
‘Yes.’
The light went off.
‘Can you see me?’
‘No.’ As she spoke, a deep and inexplicable sense of loss gripped her.
The light came on.
‘Can you see me?’
‘Yes. Who are you?’
‘I am Vindici. Come and find me and all this will stop. Or shall I find you first?’
He disconnected the call.
107
00.57 am
After exploring the iron fence that separated the land around the Littlewoods Building and Botanic Gardens with her torch, Clay found a missing section of rusting wrought iron, a makeshift entrance into the adjoining green space. As she walked through the gap, she wondered if Justin Truman had taken the same path.
Walking deeper into the park, the wind that whipped her back and the rain that hammered her head seemed to lose power and strength, and she heard her own inner voice warning, You’re walking into a trap.
She stood still, the wet earth beneath her and her ears and head full of the wind’s chaotic music as it moved towards the river. Her iPhone vibrated with an incoming call and she felt it as a pulse under her skin that travelled deep into her body.
She connected.
‘Hello, Justin,’ said Clay.
He remained silent but the wind at the other end of the line was the same as the wind around her. Same weather, she thought, same place.
‘Justin, is that you?’
‘Yes and no. Where are you, Eve?’
‘I’m in Botanic Gardens. You’re still here, aren’t you, Justin?’
‘Nature can be cruel, don’t you agree?’
‘I agree with you completely.’
‘Nature gives life and the forces of nature take life. Human nature is kind and human nature is vicious in the extreme. You know that, don’t you, Eve?’
‘Yes, I know. Justin?’
‘Yes?’
Listening to his voice, Clay was filled with the sensation that she was locked in an invisible glass case. The wind and rain eased and, standing at the edge of the weather system, all she could hear was his voice and her own.
‘What do you mean when you say, Nature gives life and the force of nature takes life? Are you talking about yourself? Are you the force of nature that takes life?’
‘No. No, I’m not talking about myself. I’m talking about the storm around us. In storms, people die, there is loss, terrible loss of life, and there is nothing that any of us can do about that. We are born through nature. We die through nature. Do you know anyone who has died in a storm?’
She thought of Jimmy Peace dying at sea just off the Cornish coast.
‘Why have you brought me here, Justin?’
‘To refresh your memory.’
‘How do you know I have memories of this place?’
‘You grew up nearby. You must have memories of this place.’
‘Justin, turn on your light, show me where you are, let’s talk face to face.’
‘What will happen if we come face to face? What will you be forced to do, Eve?’
She heard him end the call and she put her own phone away.
‘I’d have to arrest you,’ she said to the darkness, as the glass case around her shattered into a thousand narrow daggers that stabbed her heart in as many places.
Turning her torch to the space in front of her, Clay walked along the mud-drenched grass, felt her eyes stin
ging as the last of the rain slanted into her face.
Opposites piled up in her head as she walked deeper into the dark. The darkness of night, the lightness of a sunny day in 1986. The cold around her and the heat back then. The power of the storm and the superficial calm of a hot and windless autumn day.
She sensed her mind playing tricks on her, felt the stickiness of melting ice-cream against the back of her hand, index finger and thumb and wondered if she was going out of her mind.
‘Nature gives life and the force of nature takes life.’ As she spoke to herself, wondering exactly what Truman had been getting at, she thought of Jimmy Peace’s untimely death, imagined the levels of self-belief that made him display such courage and the horror he must have experienced when he knew that the wind and the waves had beaten him, and death was a moment away. And she wondered: had he lived, what would he have made of his life? What about the women who never knew his love and the children who were never born?
Turn around, go back to Edge Lane and do your job.
Inside her, the voice of reason was firm, a little unkind even, but certainly had Clay’s best interests at heart.
But I am doing my job! she reasoned back. I could have died doing my job just now.
Carrying on deeper into the pitch blackness of Botanic Gardens, she closed her eyes for a moment and gave herself up to total darkness. From the depths of that tunnel, a tiny speck of light appeared in her mind’s eye.
They’ll be wondering where the hell you are and what the hell you’re doing? the voice of reason prompted her.
I’m pursuing... The light glowed and grew.... a murderer.
The light exploded and overwhelmed the darkness, making a motion picture of a sun-soaked Botanic Gardens from her past inside her head as the physical storm withdrew towards the River Mersey. Clay felt her knees grow wet and realised she was kneeling in the mud. She hauled herself to her full height, straightened her spine and, opening her eyes wide, moved on.
Searching the darkness for a sign of life, a glimpse of the killer, the motion picture inside her skull went backwards on fast rewind, and she saw the world once more through the eyes of her eight-year-old self. Night turned to day. Cold to hot. The present into the past. Faces blurred into the fabric of a green space, children played in erratic patterns, roads were crossed, pavements walked on, a wall was climbed, a garden crossed and she was in the dark shed at the back of St Michael’s Catholic Care Home for Children, Christopher Hawkins looming over her, his heavy breath mingling with the heat of the day and the varnish and paraffin on the shelves.
‘You look like you could do with a cuddle,’ said Hawkins, twirling the ends of her hair between his thumbs and index fingers.
She jerked her head away and said, ‘No I don’t. Rufus isn’t here at all!’ Very angry and even more scared, she walked back a couple of paces but there was nowhere to go, no way out.
Christopher Hawkins blocked the door and, as she felt ten times smaller than she really was, he suddenly seemed ten times bigger, able to pick her up like an insect and crush her to death with one hand.
She sensed him smile a horrible smile in the darkness. ‘Yeah, but we are.’ And she heard the smile in the sound of his voice.
At this point in her memory, where everything always went black, the light stayed on in her mind and pictures continued unfolding.
He took two steps forward and she reached into the shadows for a hammer or a spanner or anything to smack him with but all she grasped was darkness.
‘Listen, Eve, how about we do a deal, a little deal that’s secret between me and you. Do you want to know who your real mother and father are?’
‘Yes, but...’
Confusion overwhelmed her. He smiled down at her.
‘How do you know who my real parents are? No one does. I was abandoned when I was a newborn. Not even Sister Philomena knew and she knew almost everything.’
‘She didn’t know who your real mother and father are. But I do. I could tell you but I’d be risking my job here. So you’d have to give me something in exchange. It wouldn’t hurt you and it wouldn’t harm you but you’d have to swear on Sister Philomena’s soul in heaven that you wouldn’t tell anyone.’
‘How do you know who my parents were?’
‘Because I know them. And I know where they live.’
‘Just like you knew that Rufus had come back to the garden.’
‘I wasn’t lying. I did hear Rufus. Anyway, I had to say that so we could have a bit of personal space. Do you know, Eve, I could even show you things from your file, the one in Mrs Tripp’s office. In exchange for one teeny-tiny favour.’
He bent his knees and his face was close to hers.
‘Stop breathing on me,’ she said. ‘I don’t like it.’
He tilted his head to the left and whispered a stream of strange and vile words in her ear that made her entire being crawl.
‘You’re disgusting! Get away from me now!’
And she came to the point where the blackout ended and her regular memory kicked in.
The shed door opened, banged against the wooden wall and Jimmy Peace stepped out of the light and into the darkness of the shed. ‘Get away from her, yer fucking perv!’
Hawkins tried to push past Jimmy Peace but couldn’t. In a split second, Jimmy Peace had Hawkins in a headlock and out of the shed, clearing a path along which Eve could escape. Peace threw three bolts with his fist into Hawkins’s ear, his face filled with rage.
He looked at Eve and the rage subsided. He smiled and said, gently, ‘Go back to Botanic Gardens. You’re not going to get into any trouble. I’m going to have a little chat with Chris.’
‘Honest to God, mate, on my mother’s life, I was only trying to help her find her bloody cat. I wasn’t going to hurt her no more.’
The wind sobbed and, as an eerie calm crept into the darkness, Clay heard another sound. She felt tears rolling down her face and listened to herself crying.
‘I found you first. Or did you find me? Don’t be sad, Eve.’ A voice came at her back. She froze. ‘There’s nothing to be sad about tonight.’
Justin Truman was behind her and within touching distance.
‘Did you really think I was going to let you die in the Littlewoods Building with that excuse for a human being?’
Clay steeled herself, tried to knit the ever-gaping divide at the centre of her being.
‘Don’t turn around,’ he said.
The light from his torch played out on the ground beside her and in front of her, like an irresistible offer to comply.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, all certainty lost in the tail of the departing storm. ‘Who are you?’
‘I need you to do something for me, Eve. I need you to call your colleagues and let me know who is and isn’t in the building.’
‘Justin Truman?’
‘Make the call, Eve, and all this will stop. Make the call and let’s see if we can make the world a safer place.’
108
00.57 am
At the centre of the Littlewoods Building, Detective Sergeant Bill Hendricks made out two chairs, one empty and one with a still human form on it. There was a table laden with things he couldn’t quite make out. As he came closer he recognised it is a Day of the Dead altar.
‘Für Elise’ came to an end and he listened hard to the silence but heard nothing.
‘Eve?’
Silence.
‘Hawkins?’
Silence.
Once more the opening notes of ‘Für Elise’ filled the cavernous space and he saw that the figure on the chair was a mannequin.
Instinct told him he was alone.
Hendricks saw a pile of cheap, greasy clothes and guessed wherever he was or whatever had become of him, Hawkins was naked.
On the floor beside the empty chair he saw a black box with a small digital clock on its body, still and dead, the red digits locked at 00:00. Hendricks knelt next to it, sniffed it but couldn’t detect the fer
tiliser used in a home-made bomb.
He approached the altar, and the first thing he noticed was the presence of food. Skulls made from sugar. Chocolate. Candy skeletons. An altar prepared for the Weeping Child statuette near to the framed picture of a little girl with a stern but Christ-like serenity in her face and what he recognised as a physical marker of autism.
Food at the scene of the crime. So, thought Hendricks, Justin Truman is in town. Food especially for little children.
A door banged, close at hand and to his right, and then heaved open like an invitation to come back out into the night.
Hendricks walked to the open door and, beneath the music, heard someone crying in the dark outside. He followed the sound as he left the building.
A fat man sobbed on the ground, hands tucked around his knees, eyes shut, curled in a ball.
‘I’m a police officer,’ said Hendricks, approaching.
The man opened his eyes wide, screamed, raised himself on all fours and crawled away.
‘Get away from me, Vindici!’
Hendricks followed, torch on, keeping a distance from the man and observing the dark bloodstain on his back.
‘I’m not Vindici. My name’s Bill Hendricks, Detective Sergeant Bill Hendricks. Merseyside Constabulary.’
‘The bomb! The bomb!’
‘There is no bomb,’ said Hendricks. ‘It’s a hoax.’
The man kept crawling as fast as he could and sobbing in the direction of Edge Lane. ‘I didn’t do nothing to her no more...’
‘Stop!’ shouted Hendricks.
The man froze.
‘Come back! The building’s safe and you can’t walk on to Edge Lane bollock naked.’
He held a hand up to Hendricks, squinting blindly into the light of his torch.
‘Are you there?’ In the distance, Gina Riley’s voice drifted on the icy breeze.
‘Here, Gina!’ shouted Hendricks, giving her a target to move towards.
Riley came into view, hurried towards him.
Hendricks and Riley took a hand each and hauled the man to his feet.
‘Get back inside there now, and don’t come out until you’re decent.’
As Hawkins hobbled back inside the Littlewoods Building, hands cupping his genitals, Hendricks and Riley looked at the back view of him with morbid fascination.
