Untouchable: A chillingly dark psychological thriller

by Sibel Hodge

  Jamie.

  My heart stopped for a second as I stood, frozen to the spot, shoppers bustling around me. Into me.

  Then I ran after him.

  I knew it. Knew it was all some kind of horrible mistake. I’d catch up with him and there would be a rational explanation for everything.

  ‘Jamie! Wait!’ I yelled, losing sight of him in the crowds.

  I stopped. Turned in a three-hundred-sixty-degree rotation. Where did you go?

  I spotted him again, heading down the hill towards the cathedral. ‘Jamie!’ What was wrong with him? Couldn’t he hear me? I carried on running, passing blurs of faces.

  And then I was within touching distance.

  I reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Jamie! Oh my God. Didn’t you hear me?’

  He swung around, a surprised look on his face.

  And it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Jamie at all. Of course it wasn’t.

  All the blood seemed to drain from my body. I stared at him, my lips hanging limply open.

  ‘Do I know you?’ The man frowned at me and retrieved his arm from my clutches.

  ‘Sorry,’ I managed to mumble. ‘I thought you were someone…I thought…’

  ‘No worries.’ He shrugged and walked off.

  I didn’t know how long I stood there afterwards, watching the man who wasn’t Jamie until he disappeared. Somehow, perhaps on autopilot, I ended up back at home, stomping around in the kitchen, grabbing a mug, and banging the cupboard doors. I tried to unscrew the jar of coffee, and it wouldn’t work with my hands shaking. I released the yell I’d been holding deep inside, throwing the jar across the room, where the glass smashed into shards on the tiles. I stared at the glass and brown granules all over the floor and slid down the kitchen units in a crumpled heap, sobbing into my hands.

  Eventually, I pulled myself together and cleaned up the mess. I made a cup of tea, ignoring the rumbling in my stomach. I hadn’t eaten properly since I’d heard the news, and I didn’t want to. Eating would just prolong the agony of being alive.

  I took my tea into the lounge and curled up on the sofa, my eyes resting on a photo of Jamie and me on the wooden bookshelf. It was taken at Jamie’s work’s Christmas party the year before. Both of us dressed up to the nines. My head resting against his shoulder, a stupidly happy, tipsy smile on my face. His eyes crinkled up at the corners, looking down at me. I stared at it until I couldn’t take it anymore. Then I dragged my gaze away, and it rested on the shelves below. There were three rows of books. All Jamie’s. He was the reader. I was the one who watched movies and listened to music. He could lose himself for hours in non-fiction books. Maybe I should try to read something. Try to take my mind off things. Try to lose myself for a while. Anything was better than this constant torment of thoughts and questions with no answers.

  I put my mug down on the coffee table next to Jamie’s laptop and walked across to the books, scanning along the top shelf. He always put everything in alphabetical order. No, not just alphabetical order. They were in order of genre, too. On the top left-hand side were political books—Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, Ghandi, Martin Luther King—then came the books about the military—Damien Lewis, Chris Ryan, Mark Urban. His biographies and memoirs also ran alphabetically on the shelf below, with self-help books underneath. I’d always joked with Jamie about it. My CDs and DVDs were lobbed in the drawer underneath the TV any old how. Sometimes they weren’t even in the right covers. But Jamie liked having things in order.

  I scanned the books. I didn’t want to read about war or death. Where was a romantic comedy when I needed one? I was just going through the autobiographies when my gaze darted back up to the previous shelf. The books were out of their usual A-to-Z order. The Mandela book should’ve been at the end, not the beginning. I picked up the Mandela book, flicked through it, then put it back in the right place where Jamie would’ve wanted it. Finally, I pulled out one of the self-help books, Quantum Healing by Deepak Chopra, and took it back to the sofa with me. I tried to concentrate on the words, but they seemed to run together on the page and didn’t make sense. I rubbed my eyes to clear my vision and started again. This time I read the same line over and over again, so I gave up.

  I put the book back on the shelf and noticed that, actually, the photo of us wasn’t in the right place, either. It usually sat in the middle of the bookshelf, but now it was on the right-hand corner.

  I thought back to the night Jamie had died. That weird sensation when I’d come in the house. The vague hint of cigarettes. Had someone been in here? Moved things around? The TV was still here. So was Jamie’s expensive laptop and top-of-the-range stereo. There were no signs of a break-in.

  No, I was just being stupid. Maybe Jamie had moved those things. It wasn’t like him, but then he clearly hadn’t been thinking straight, had he? I usually did the dusting, and I definitely hadn’t cleaned anything since Jamie had gone, but had I moved things absentmindedly and put them back in the wrong place when I’d been wandering the house late at night, drunk, out of mind with grief?

  I picked up Jamie’s laptop and turned it on, frowning when the blank black page greeted me again instead of his screensaver. I clicked on the start button and then the ‘documents’ to check if they were still there, but nothing came up. No folders, no files, no photos, no work presentations that I knew had been on there. I tried to search for Word, but the programme wasn’t there. Tried Excel, but that wasn’t there either. The day Jamie had died, I thought maybe the laptop had crashed, but it seemed to be working okay. It was just that things had been deleted. Everything important had disappeared.

  Why? Was there something on it he hadn’t wanted me to find?

  Personal things.

  ‘What fucking personal things?’ I screamed. ‘What were you doing, Jamie? Why weren’t you at work? Why couldn’t you just talk to me?’

  I chewed on my lip until I tasted the metallic tang of blood.

  Obviously, Jamie had been hiding something from me, and it was bad enough to make him take his own life.

  I needed to know what it was. Had to know.

  I decided then that I wasn’t going to sit around and wallow and cry and drink myself into a black hole. I was going to find out exactly what Jamie was doing when he’d left the house, pretending he was going to work.

  I was going to find out what it was that had led to his death.

  JAMIE

  Chapter 6

  It didn’t take long to be initiated into the regimented and disciplined way of life that was so different from Denby Hall. Awoken by a screaming bell at 6.00 a.m. Washing and teeth cleaning at ten past. Breakfast at 6.30. We were allowed to speak to each other only on the way to school or after dinner, when we had a couple of hours of free time. Slop served for meals. Chores of cleaning and laundry duties. Kicks, punches, slaps, being forced to eat soap, and more punishments if we didn’t do a good job, or for any misdemeanour the staff felt like. Not answering them back quickly enough, answering too quickly. Not eating our food, eating too quickly. Not polishing or mopping fast enough, or leaving specks of dust around. It was hard to keep up with all the rules because they were constantly changing. Sometimes we were punished just for daring to be alive. I quickly learned not to cry. No one would take any notice, and it just seemed to make the staff angrier and more inclined to focus on me.

  Instead, I watched and listened, attempting to work out the situation before I could get punished. I tried to read the staff to know who were worse than the others, sensing what mood they were in and when they’d strike. I kept my mouth shut and tried to be invisible, which worked for a while.

  At first, I loved the new school I attended. Leaving Crossfield every day and going there was my one escape, and no matter how bad things were, for six hours a day I could get away from it and immerse myself in exciting new worlds of history and English and geography, maths equations and sums that stopped me thinking about my life. Even though the other pupils bullied us because
they thought Crossfield kids were dirty or troublemakers or stupid, and called us ‘Bastards’, it was far better than being in the home. My form teacher, Miss Percival, was always warm and kind. I constantly looked forward to seeing her, and her smiles or words of encouragement became the highlight of my days. But as the months passed, for some reason I constantly felt the wrath of Scholes. No matter what I did, he seemed to hate me, but I didn’t know what I was doing wrong or how I could make him leave me alone. I thought so much about the problem that my schoolwork began to suffer, and I lost interest in everything. I was so busy trying to keep out of trouble at Crossfield that I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Miss Percival noticed something was wrong and called me into her classroom one day at lunchtime.

  She sat me down in the corner of the room and gave me one of her smiles. I couldn’t smile back, though. There was nothing much to smile about.

  ‘How are things, Jamie?’ she asked.

  I lowered my eyes, willing the tears not to fall, mumbling something.

  She put her hand on my shoulder. ‘Jamie?’

  I didn’t look up. Just stared at my hands.

  ‘When you first started here, you were really enthusiastic. But lately you seem to be very down, and your work’s suffering as a result. Is there anything you want to talk to me about? Are you not happy at Crossfield?’

  I felt the tears burn behind my eyelids.

  ‘You can tell me anything that’s troubling you. Maybe I can help.’ She lowered her head so it was in my sight line, and I had no choice but to look at her.

  It was her kindness that did it. That made the tears burst through the tight shell I’d tried to force them behind. And when they started, the weight of them cracked splinters inside, until everything came rushing out, a tsunami of sadness about what life was like at Crossfield. How Scholes bullied me and the other kids. How I was scared and frightened and very, very alone. How I didn’t know how to be me anymore because no one wanted me as I was, and none of the staff seemed to like me, either. How I didn’t know what to do.

  She listened carefully, squeezing my hand, giving me tissues to mop away the tears. She hugged me, and I clung on to her so hard she had to prise my fingers away from her cardigan eventually.

  ‘Okay, here’s what I’m going to do.’ She leant back and gave me a reassuring smile. ‘I’m going to talk to the head of Crossfield and find out what’s going on, okay? I don’t want you to worry anymore. We’ll get all this sorted out.’

  I choked back another sob and nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  She ruffled my hair and told me to run along to lunch. As the rest of the day passed, I felt a horrible weight lifting from my shoulders. Miss Percival would stop the bullying at Crossfield, I was sure of it.

  The next day was Saturday, and since there was no school, we all had to do chores in the mornings. I was assigned to sweeping and mopping the refectory with Trevor. We’d been at work for about an hour when Scholes appeared, leaning on the door frame, his arms folded, watching us with a look of hatred in his eyes. I sensed him there before I saw him, then I turned my head briefly before fixing my gaze steadily on my mop sliding across the cold, wooden floor.

  Please go away. Please go away. Leave me alone.

  ‘Taylor!’ he barked. ‘Come with me.’

  Trevor shot me a look of sympathy before I silently walked up to Scholes. I hadn’t done anything wrong that I knew of, so I couldn’t imagine what he wanted with me. But then that didn’t matter. Just being alive was considered wrong by him. He put an arm around my shoulders, his fingers kneading painfully into the flesh. I wanted to ask him where we were going as he led me down a warren of dreary corridors that all looked the same, but I knew I would be punished for speaking. We went down a flight of stairs at the end of one. It had no windows, and it was dark. A wooden doorway was at the bottom, and he pulled a bunch of keys out of his pocket and unlocked it. There were more stairs going down, and then we were in a cellar. Inside was various junk, and a huge boiler stood in one corner. Along the back wall, next to a dirty sink, was an ancient-looking, rusty bath filled with water.

  I looked at the bath with trepidation, fear igniting in the pit of my stomach. ‘What have I done, sir?’ I asked quietly.

  Smack! The back of his hand caught my cheek and sent me stumbling backwards.

  ‘Don’t speak until you’re spoken to!’

  I reached up and touched my burning flesh, staring at the broken tiles on the ground, wanting to be sucked underneath them. Anywhere away from here. Tears welled in my eyes, but I wouldn’t cry. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. The only time I allowed them to come was in the darkness, alone, at night. I wouldn’t show any weakness.

  I couldn’t look at him, but I heard his breath coming in short, jagged rasps. I sensed something animalistic and violent rolling off him. A lion patiently stalking its prey before coming in for the kill.

  ‘You like telling tales, don’t you, boy?’ He circled around me. ‘You like shooting your mouth off to namby-pamby teachers who know nothing about how to keep reprobates like you under control.’

  ‘I…I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘Shut up!’ he barked in my face.

  I flinched.

  ‘Imagine if the hundred boys in here were able to run around wild, doing exactly what they pleased! It would mean chaos and anarchy, and we can’t let that happen at Crossfield. We can’t let that happen at all. Boys need discipline to keep them on the straight and narrow! They need it to teach them to be responsible young men. To save them from themselves.’ He stopped circling and stood in front of me. ‘Don’t they?’

  I was too scared to answer.

  ‘Don’t they?’ he yelled.

  ‘Y-Yes.’

  ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Kneel down in front of the bath.’

  I didn’t dare to question him. I knew the punishment would be far worse.

  I did as he asked, my bony knees painfully pressing onto the uneven, hard surface. I bit my lip and squeezed my eyelids shut, as if that could somehow make me invisible and transport me far away.

  He panted in my ear as he pressed me against the bath with one hand on my neck. ‘Do you know what happens to boys who tell tales?’

  I mumbled something, but it was just a terrified sound that came out.

  ‘No one would notice if you disappeared, would they? No one cares about you. No one’s coming for you. Which means you’re mine. My property. You understand? You do what I tell you.’

  My whole body heaved up and down, trying to get enough oxygen in my lungs to stop the panic, coughing, spluttering, snot flying from my nose.

  ‘You going to be a good boy now? You going to stop making up stories?’

  I nodded vigorously.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I…I’ll…be good,’ I managed to gasp. ‘I won’t say anything to anyone!’

  He pulled his hand back, as if to hit me, and I pressed my small body against the bath, trying to get away. ‘Good choice, Taylor. You keep your mouth shut, and I think you and I are going to get along fine, aren’t we?’

  I nodded vigorously, but it didn’t stop his hand forcing my head into the water.

  ~~~~

  After he’d finally left the room and locked the door with a sickening turn of the key, I curled up into a shaking ball and let the tears fall. I had a lot of time to think in that dark hole that smelt of mould and shit and fear, with only rats for company, talking to my mum in my head, pleading with her to come back and get me, even though I knew she never could. I forced my mind to picture happy times I’d spent with her before she died. How every weekend she’d pick a different place to visit and spend hours baking cakes and scones, before packing a picnic. Then we’d hop in the car and head away from London, out into the countryside. Just because we don’t have much money doesn’t mean we can’t experience the world, she’d tell me. She always loved the great outdoors—the simplicity and complexity of
nature. In my mind, I saw a lavender field we’d visited in Norfolk one weekend, the explosion of purple colours in my head replacing, for just a tiny moment, all the jagged blackness.

  Scholes kept me in that place, coming back now and then with water and slices of stale bread that had a meagre scraping of margarine. He watched me forcing the food down my swollen throat, saying things like, ‘Don’t even think about telling anyone. They’ll never believe you. No one gives a shit about scum like you.’

  On the second day, Scholes returned again. I was cold and hurt all over from sleeping on the floor and where he’d dunked me in the bath, holding my head down until my arms flailed and panic hit, desperately sucking in water through my nose and mouth until I thought I’d die.

  I had pins and needles in my legs, and my body wouldn’t obey me when I tried to stand up. When I couldn’t get up quick enough, he yanked me to my feet and marched me out of the cellar to Barker’s office. He opened the door, deposited me in front of Barker, and left.

  I stood trembling as Barker finished the paperwork he was writing, leant back in his chair, and smiled. But it wasn’t a warm smile, like Miss Percival’s. There was something cold and unemotional behind it.

  ‘I’m very saddened to hear about an unfortunate incident where your teacher felt the need to contact us about your fabrications, James.’ He folded his arms. ‘Of course, I’ve explained to her how you have a tendency to make up stories and exaggerate things to get extra attention. And that your particular emotional and behavioural issues are very challenging to rectify, especially your difficulty in accepting authority. I also explained that running a boys’ home is a very complex task, which requires a certain amount of discipline and control; otherwise we’d have a riot on our hands. We have to protect you from yourselves. I think Mr Scholes has already explained that to you, hasn’t he?’

  I nodded numbly.

  ‘And what you must realise, James, is that disciplining our charges hurts us a lot more than them. We have to have a set of rigid rules to follow, and we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t adhere to those rules.’