The Guest House

by David Mark

  She spent last night in a comfy “eco-cottage” looking out over Loch Sunart. It’s a home built of curves, the turf roof and driftwood exterior conspiring to render it near invisible from the road. It has been designed to resemble a seashell and there is not a single straight line within. It’s unashamedly romantic, and she had felt a distinct frisson of something akin to loss as she sat in the big slipper bath drinking her Prosecco and Chambord and watched the stars fill the sky.

  She leans back. Winces. The bed is made of reclaimed driftwood and looks better than it feels. She reaches over and retrieves her phone from the nightstand. It’s coming up to 6am. There should be missed calls. Should be voicemails and updates. But the phone service is at its patchiest here. Instead she goes straight to her email – the connection guaranteed by satellite Wi-Fi, the dish carefully masked by a screen of trees in the neatly tended garden outside.

  She scrolls straight to the last missive from Oscar Parkin, the man who thinks he’s her boss. He sent it just after 2am – a demand that she update him first thing, or face consequences that could, he fears, be “severe”. She grinds her back teeth, bunching up her left cheek like a fist. Quickly she logs in to her personal email, looking for the message she knows, to her bones, will be waiting. It’s another from Oscar, sent ten minutes later – from his personal account.

  So sorry I had to go through the motions and tear a strip off. You know it’s just for show. Really need to hear from you though. Last we got was that you’d left the accommodation at Loch Lomond and that you’d banked a favour with the local plods about not releasing the details of some accident? A body part found at sea? I’ve acted like it’s a matter of operational integrity that I don’t share the information but I’m feeling a bit of a mug, all things considered.

  Are you okay? When will you be making the decision to go in? Remember, you have all the resources we can muster but we need to be in the loop. Christ I wish I was there on this one. I know you’re doing something important so I’ll try and butt out. Just remember I’m thinking about you. I’m always thinking about you… xxx

  She climbs out of bed, her bare feet pleasant against the wooden floor, already starting to grow warm from the increasing sun. She crosses to the window and stares out. In her head she is moving pieces like a chess champion. She cannot let any of the agencies get their hands on what she’s got. For her unit to get the glory for any collar to come out of this operation, there can be no doubt as to who put things together. And yet she has a nagging suspicion that things are moving faster than she can deal with. The last information they received from Kimmy indicated that Pope’s operation was at least a fortnight away and that the couriers delivering the shipment through Callum’s route have not yet left Guyana. They had believed themselves to have time to muster at least enough intelligence to put together a proper arrest team.

  Bishop’s death was a shock. He’d been the arrest she was really looking forward to. She’d entertained fantasies of flipping him – persuading him to open up about the endless networks he has helped establish globally. She imagined striking a bargain, in which he would only agree to talk to her. Her, and her alone. That would bring her to the attention of the right people. And then, well, who knew?

  Now she finds herself on this barren, rugged stretch of coastline, waiting to hear what the hell is going on and posing as Detective Chief Inspector Emma Cressey. The last she heard from Roe was just after midnight. Ashcroft had been in his room. She’d found the hardware. She might already know about her husband’s real betrayal and not just the so-called “affair” with Kimmy. He was going to have to talk to her. He was going to have to tell her the truth.

  He’d already rung Callum to warn him that he was taking such a dangerous step, and Callum had begged him not to. Said she would find it easier to forgive infidelity than the notion he had got his family caught up with murderers and drug smugglers. Roe wouldn’t be moved. He had that old iron in his voice: the cold fury of somebody who has made a decision and is willing to damn the consequences. He’s got a soft spot for Ronni – she can tell.

  Sir, full briefing before COP. Matters in hand. Assets 1, 2 and 3 still in play and no operational compromises. Radio silence to be maintained. Concerns appreciated but not necessary. Best, SA.

  She sends the email, then makes her way to the kitchen and fills a glass with water. She gulps it down, wipes her chin, then picks up the landline, sitting snugly in a cradle on the kitchen table. She rings the number from memory, rehearsing a little speech in her head. She’s sorry to ring so early. She needs to come and talk to her again. She understands that the picture has become a little clearer and that Nicholas Roe has revealed the actual nature of his sojourn on Ardnamurchan. She can offer protective custody, provided she cooperates. She can make it all work out, provided she stays quiet a little while longer and gives her a chance to make an arrest that will cement her legend, and stop some very bad people doing even worse things than she has done herself.

  She already feels as though Ronni could be an asset. She’d expected some reaction to the passing of the slip of paper – the amateurish attempt at bribery. Ronni has not reacted like a person out of their depth. Has neither reported her, nor jumped at an opportunity to feather her own nest. She is somebody with a decent mind, and perhaps, a touch of integrity. Once upon a time, she might have made a decent copper.

  ‘Hello, this is DCI Emma Cressey. Am I speaking with Ronni…’

  She stops talking. The phone has been answered by a child. A boy. He sounds frightened.

  ‘This is Atticus. I don’t know where Mum is. She’s not in her bed, but we slept in that. Theresa stayed here, and she’d been hurt. She’s in the spare room and there’s blood on the bed. There’s blood on the stairs too. I think somebody was here. I heard noises in the night. Poppy said she had a nightmare about Dad. The house smells funny too. I don’t really know what to do…’

  She feels her stomach clench. Has a vision of her friend, manacled, bleeding, being hurt the way he was hurt before: the first time she betrayed him, the first time she gave him up in a bid to prove she would make the hard decisions when they were called for.

  She makes sure there’s some steel in her voice when she talks.

  ‘Atticus, listen to me. This is what I want you to do…’

  26

  Sickness comes: a greasy tongue, licking at my thorax and probing at my throat.

  Scent, now. Damp. That cold, grey-green fustiness of outbuildings and empty bedsits. Something else, too. A high, chemical sort of smell. Antiseptic. Something fruity, underneath. And there, beneath it all, the low hum of ammonia.

  Slowly, like a story made of shredded pages, I begin to remember. Those last hours. Theresa. Waking up to find Mr Roe at the foot of my bed. Callum and Kimmy. Violence. Lies. Then the journey through darkness to the house on the hill. The big man, with his metal cage of a fist. And Pope. He’d given the order. Told them to hurt me. He had. Done his master’s bidding and more besides.

  Pain, now. Pain that sings. It feels like the worst hangover I’ve ever had. Every cell in my body seems to be coming apart at once: grinding against one another with saw-toothed edges. My head feels as though something two sizes too big has been squeezed into my skull and the pain across my back and neck and shoulders is so intense that I wonder, for a terrifying moment, whether I have been deposited at a hideous angle: my spinal cord taut as a guitar string, my vertebrae bunched against one another like stones beneath the hull of a wooden boat.

  I can’t see. There’s nothing covering my face so I know that the room is dark. Not quite black, but I can’t turn the lumps and bumps in the charcoal gloom into anything familiar.

  Then the surge of it: the great crescendo of panic and pure unadulterated terror as I see the faces of my children swim in my mind’s eye like moonlight on a choppy sea.

  All other thoughts fade away.

  Atticus.

  Poppy.

  Lilly.

  I see th
em waking up in a house that has no Mummy. No Daddy. Just Theresa, with her tortured feet, and that lingering whiff of violence and loss.

  I force myself to stay calm. I try to make sense of my surroundings. Attempt to sit up. I roll, drunkenly, clattering onto my face. I can’t work out up or down. I feel rough cord against my face. Carpet. Dusty, damp-smelling carpet. I begin to reach out, to put my hand down for support, and I realise with horror that I can’t make my limbs do what I want. There are jagged white lines in what passes for my vision and a terrible tingling in my arms. It’s like a migraine. Worse. I wonder if something has been knocked loose in my brain – whether the little bones in my inner ear are shaking around like dried peas in a tin.

  And finally I am aware of myself. The fog clears in a way that makes me think, incongruously, of suddenly finding the right station when searching through the radio channels. At once, I am aware. I’m lying on my side, knees drawn up and my legs bound at the ankles. My hands are behind me, tied tight at the wrists. As I try to lift my head there is a grotesque moment of connection and I realise that the clammy blood on my face has briefly adhered me to the carpet.

  I lick my lips. There’s no gag in my mouth, thank God. My mouth is horribly dry and it takes an age to work some spit into my mouth. I clear my throat with as little noise as I can, and try my voice. I can croak. Can whisper. Talk to myself, alone, bound, terrified beyond words.

  ‘Hello… hello, is there anybody else there? It’s Ronni. Can you hear me? Callum? Callum, we need to get to the children. Will he hurt them? He can’t, can he? What does he want? People know us! He can’t just make it like we don’t exist. We have lives. People care…’

  I stop talking. The words come back from far away. I’m in a room with a high ceiling and a dusty, damp carpet. I roll forward, wriggling on my elbows and knees, commando-style, waiting for the moment when whatever is tethering me in place snaps me over backwards. It doesn’t come. I’m not tied to anything, save myself. Whoever dumped me here must have expected me to stay unconscious until they returned. How long could that be? Who had tied me? Bundled me up? Dropped me on the floor like a roll of old carpet?

  My heart starts to beat faster in my chest. I can see the children’s faces again. Cruel, unhelpful images begin to flash in my mind like photographs ripped from an album of the grotesque. I see Poppy waking to find the big man leaning down over her – his huge metal hand closing over her mouth like the legs of a great crab. I see Lilly, waking to the lingering aria of her father, her Daddy – searching the house for the man she adores and misses so much, and instead finding Theresa dead, her mangled toes sticking out from the end of the bed.

  I push forward, elbows and knees, feeling the rough carpet abrade my skin. I stop as I feel the faintest whisper of draught. The chemical smell is stronger – so too that dirt-and-tree-bark smell that I know as well as any local might. I can smell the forest. I can smell the dawn.

  My head bangs against something hard. I rock back onto my haunches and stroke my face against the obstacle. It’s rough. Exposed brick and ragged, dusty plaster.

  ‘Please,’ I whisper, to myself and the air and to the whole horrible world. ‘Please…’

  I shuffle around, putting my back to the brick. I don’t know which direction my captor might come from but I know that whatever I do I have to do it quickly. Feeling like a fool, half tempted to give in to some mad giggle, I start rubbing whatever binds my hands against the roughest chunk of brickwork. I have a sudden memory of Saturday afternoons watching cowboy films with Dad. There would always be a handy piece of glass or a smouldering campfire upon which the hero could test their bonds. But brick would do. Brick would definitely do…

  It happens quicker than I’d imagined. One moment my hands are bound together at the wrists and the next they spring apart as the hard plastic that had bound them gives way. At once I feel the blood returning to my fingers, my palms, my wrists, and it feels as though my fingertips are filling with ground glass. Awkwardly I change my position and pat the floor with my half-dead hands, looking for something that might allow me to cut the bonds at my ankles. I touch something cold and curved and metallic. Paint-pots. A stack of them, piled haphazardly against the brick wall. And then my hand closes upon a length of something hard. Thin. Unyielding. Covered in something congealed. I begin to hack at the tie-wrap that holds my feet together. My fingertips touch bare skin and I experience a hard, ugly memory. Theresa’s feet. Her snipped toes. The things they did…

  The bonds spring apart and I sprawl on the floor as if released from a trap. I shudder, exhausted, and realise that the pain has subsided as surely as the adrenaline has flowed through me. I want to sit still, to gather my breath, to take stock of what the hell to do, and then I am shuffling back against the wall as I hear the unmistakable sound of footsteps, and muffled voices.

  It takes me a moment to tune in to their frequency, and then I am turning snatched words into sentences, as I hear the two men come closer, moving towards a spot directly in front of where I sit and cower and clutch the paint-streaked object as if it were a blade.

  ‘…lost his fucking mind, mate. No talking to him anymore. Whatever’s in his innards is in his brain too. He’s gone, man.’

  ‘I hear you, but what choice is there? If it all goes his way he rules the roost for another God knows how many years, and if we’re the ones who’ve been with him through the bad times then it has to be good for us. And even if it goes wrong, loyalty will look good with whoever comes next. I don’t want the job but I don’t mind being close to it.’

  ‘You’re just shitting your pants in case the big man loses his temper with you.’

  ‘Fuck off. And anyway, he doesn’t lose his temper. That’s what’s so scary about the big bastard.’

  ‘So we’re doing it, yeah? Nothing fancy. She’s probably closed her gills already.’

  ‘Closed her gills?’

  ‘You know. Died, like. Swallowed her own blood. She was snoring like her throat was full of hacksaw blades when I dropped her. She might have done us a favour.’

  ‘You got your gloves?’

  ‘Come on, the tide…’

  ‘Billy, put your pissing gloves on…’

  Emotions crash against one another within me: rival tsunamis that twist and rise and threaten to suck me under. There’s fear, yes. But it’s rage that fills me more than any other emotion as I sit, coiled, in the dark and wait for these two bastards to stop discussing whether I’m dead or alive and the best way to remedy the situation if I happen to be breathing.

  Desperately, praying for any kind of help, I cast around for something I can use as a weapon. As my eyes become more accustomed to the dark I realise that I’m in what I take to be a disused bedroom. There’s a headboard and mattress against the far wall – pasting tables set up in front of a high window hung with ragged drapes. The object I’m holding is the aerial from a radio, coated in thick, dried paint. I reach out and close my hand around the lid of a large tin of paint. I lift it. Half full. Heavy as a dumbbell. Heavy enough to swing.

  The sound of a key turning in the lock.

  The sudden square of yellow light spilling in a great rectangle into the tatty room.

  Two men, their shadows long and dark, stepping lazily into the space as if expecting to find a dead woman.

  I spring forward from where I crouch, swinging the tin of paint like a mace. It makes a perfect arc, an inch-perfect upswing all the way from the floor, and I give a primal shriek as I deliver the blow. The tin catches the nearest man just below the hinge of his jaw and makes a noise like a frying pan striking a wall. His feet leave the floor. I feel the tremor all the way down my arm. I swing it again, catching him on the temple, and one side of his face caves in like soft fruit.

  ‘Fuck, Billy! Billy – move! Hey! Hey, Billy!’

  As the one called Billy crumples like somebody sinking into the earth, I lock eyes with the other man. I recognise him as the driver of the van that hit the wall, but
the realisation seems to come in some far away point in my mind, where reason and common sense still play a part. Here, now, all that matters is the need to be free. To be with my children. On his eyeballs I fancy for a moment that I can see a tiny reflection: see a half-naked, blood-soaked woman, face in rictus, teeth bared, swinging the paint pot down like a club.

  He raises a hand to protect himself. I feel the bones shatter as the metal hits flesh, and then I feel warmth on my hand and on my stomach and my legs and I look down to see that the aerial I have been holding in my other hand is buried in his gut all the way up to my hand.

  His eyes bulge, mouth frothing, teeth mashing down upon his tongue as it slides from his open mouth like a dead sea slug, and then he is falling backwards and I’m standing over him and bringing down the paint tin again and again on his head.

  Exhausted, drenched with rapidly cooling blood, I slump backwards, gasping, chest rising and falling like a racehorse.

  None of it matters, I tell myself. Not the dead men. Not the thing you just did. You need to get home to your children. You need to make sure they’re safe. This is what you’re for.

  Billy is wearing white trainers. I slip them off his feet and try them on. They’re a size too big, and still warm. He’s got a black coat on, and I drag it from his shoulders as if stripping the children for a bath. In the pocket, a mobile phone. The key-pad is locked.

  Cursing, I check his other pockets. Check the other man’s too. A wallet. Cigarettes. A strange, hard object that I discover to be a roll of coins tucked into a long black sock. I pull on the jacket. Use the hem of Billy’s T-shirt to wipe the blood from my face. Pocket the phone, and the cosh. Put my back to the doorframe and push both big, heavy men into the room with my feet.

  In my pocket, the phone rings. It sends a shudder through me as surely as if a cold hand has reached up and touched my neck. I retrieve the phone. The number doesn’t come from a known contact – the screen instead filling with the digits of a random mobile phone. I feel an overwhelming urge to answer it. Perhaps whoever is ringing is from a different world to the brutal one in which I find myself. Maybe all I need to do is tell them that I’m in danger, that people are going to be hurt – that they need to send the police, and fast. My finger hovers over the phone and finally, I stab at the screen and raise it to my ear.