The safe house

by Nicci French

  ‘Don’t move,’ said a voice, and two warm and callused hands were put over my closed eyes.

  ‘Mmmm,’ I said, and tilted back my head. ‘Blindfolded by a strange man.’

  I felt lips at the pulse of my throat. My body slipped in the chair, and I felt its tensions uncurl.

  ‘Samantha Laschen is…’ Well, I can’t argue with that. But maybe there are better ways for you to spend your days than writing three words, eh?’

  ‘Like what?’ I asked, still blind, still limp where I sat with my face in the fold of his rough hands.

  He swivelled the chair around and when I opened my eyes his face was a few inches from mine: eyes so brown under their straight dark eyebrows that they were nearly black, hair an unwashed tangle over a battered leather jacket, stubbly cleft chin, smell of oil, wood shavings, soap. We didn’t touch each other. He looked at my face and I looked at his hands.

  ‘I didn’t hear you arrive. I thought you were building a roof.’

  ‘Built. Installed. Paid for. How long have we got before you have to collect Elsie?’

  I looked at my watch.

  ‘About twenty minutes.’

  ‘Then twenty minutes will have to be enough. Come here.’

  ‘Mummy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lucy said your hair has died.’

  ‘She didn’t mean it’s dead, she probably meant that I dye it. Colour it.’

  ‘Her mummy’s hair is brown.’

  ‘Yes, well–’

  ‘And Mia’s mummy’s hair is brown too.’

  ‘Would you like my hair to be brown as well?’

  ‘It’s a very bright red, Mummy.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, it is.’ Sometimes I still got a shock myself when I met my face in the speckled bathroom mirror on a groggy morning: white face, fine lines beginning to grow and spread around the eyes and a flaming crop of hair on a nobbly neck.

  ‘It looks like’ – she stared out of the window, her stolid body leaning out from her safety straps – ‘like that red light.’

  Then there was quiet, and when I next glanced round she was fast asleep, thumb babyishly in her mouth, head tilted to one side.

  I sat on one side of Elsie’s narrow bed and read her a book, occasionally pointing to a word which she would falteringly spell out or madly, inaccurately, guess at. Danny sat on the other and twisted small scraps of paper into the shape of an angular flower, a nimble man, a clever dog. Elsie sat between us, straight-backed, eyes bright and cheeks flushed, self-consciously sweet and serious. This was like a proper family. Her glance darted between us, tethering us. My body glowed with the memory of my brief encounter with Danny on my dusty study floor and in anticipation of the evening ahead. As I read, I could feel Danny’s gaze on me. The air felt thick between us. And when Elsie’s speech slipped, stopped, and her eyelids closed, we went into my bedroom without a word and took off each other’s clothes and touched each other, and the only sound was the drip of rain outside or sometimes a breath that was louder than normal, like a gasp of pain. It felt as if we hadn’t seen each other for weeks.

  Later, I took a pizza out of the freezer and put it in the oven, and while we ate it in front of the fire which Danny had lit, I told him about progress with the trauma unit, and Elsie’s first days at school, about trying to start the book and my encounter with the farmer. Danny talked about what friends he’d seen in London and perching on damp crumbling rafters in the bitter cold, and then he laughed and said that as I rose up through my profession, so he fell: from acting, to resting, to carpentry, now to doing odd jobs, building a roof for a cantankerous old woman.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, when I started hastily to say something about success being about more than work, ‘don’t bluster. You don’t need to worry so. You like what you do and I like what I do.’

  When the fire died away, we went up the creaking stairs once more, looked in at Elsie sleeping in a nest of duvet and soft toys, made our way to the double bed and lay facing each other, sleepy and uncomplicated.

  ‘Maybe we could,’ he said.

  ‘Could what?’

  ‘Live together. Even’ – his hand rubbed my back, his voice became very light and casual – ‘even think of having a child.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I muttered sleepily. ‘Maybe.’

  It was one of our better days.

  Five

  ‘Everything all right, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Let me cheer you up. Fancy something to read?’

  Detective Angeloglou tossed a pamphlet on to Rupert Baird’s desk. Baird picked it up and grunted at the faded print.

  ‘Rabbit Punch? What’s this?’

  ‘You’re not a subscriber? We’ve got the full run of issues downstairs. It’s the house magazine of ARK.’

  ‘ARK?’

  ‘It stands for the Animal Rights Knights.’

  Baird groaned. He gently patted the hair on top of his head which covered but did not conceal the bald scalp underneath.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They’re the ones who broke into the mink farm over at Ness in ’92. They set the mink free.’ Angeloglou consulted the file he was carrying. ‘They fire-bombed the supermarket in Goldswan Green in ’93. Then nothing much till the university explosion last year. They’ve also been involved in some of the more extreme veal protests, the direct actions against farmers and transport companies.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Look at this.’

  Angeloglou opened the magazine to its central pages, a section under the headline in red ink: ‘Butchers shopped.’

  ‘Is this relevant?’

  ‘This is one of the services they provide to readers. They print the names and addresses of people they accuse of torturing animals. Look, here’s Professor Ronald Maxwell of the Linnaeus Institute. He researches bird-song. He uses caged birds. Dr Christopher Nicholson has been sewing up the eyelids of kittens. Charles Patton runs the family fur company. And here we have Leo Mackenzie, Chairman of Mackenzie & Carlow.’

  Baird seized the magazine.

  ‘What is… what was he meant to be guilty of?’

  ‘Experiments on animals, it says here.’

  ‘Bloody hell. Well done, Chris. Have you checked it out?’

  ‘Yes. At its Fulton laboratories, the company are working on a project, partly financed by the Department of Agriculture. It’s on stress in animal husbandry, they told me.’

  ‘What does it involve?’

  Angeloglou smiled broadly.

  ‘This is the good bit,’ he said. ‘The research involves giving pigs electric shocks and lacerating them in various ways and testing their responses. Have you ever seen a pig being killed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They cut the throat. Blood all over the place. They make black pudding with it.’

  ‘I can’t stand black pudding,’ said Baird, turning several pages of the magazine over. ‘I don’t see a date. Do we know when this was published?’

  ‘You don’t get Rabbit Punch at your local newsagent. Its publication is best described as intermittent, and its distribution is patchy. We obtained this copy six weeks ago.’

  ‘Was Mackenzie warned about this?’

  ‘He’d been told about it,’ said Angeloglou. ‘But it was nothing new. From what they say at his head office, he was used to things like this.’

  Baird frowned with concentration.

  ‘What we need now are some names. Who was it who headed the animal operation? Mitchell, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s arse-deep in the West Midlands at the moment. I’ve been on the phone to Phil Carrier who was his DI. He’s spent the last couple of months wandering around burnt barns and wrecked lorries. He’s going to come up with some names.’

  ‘Good,’ said Baird. ‘Let’s move quickly on that. What’s the latest with the Mackenzie girl?’

  ‘She’s conscious. Not critical.’

  ‘Any chance of a statement?’
r />   Angeloglou shook his head.

  ‘Not at the moment. The doctors say she’s in deep shock. Hasn’t said anything yet. Anyway, she was hooded, remember. I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything there.’

  As recently as 1990, Melissa Hollingdale had been a biology teacher in a comprehensive school without even an unpaid parking ticket on her record. Now she was an habituée of police interrogation rooms with a file that scrolled up the screen for page after page. Looking through the one-way mirror, Chris Angeloglou sat and stared at this impassive woman in her mid thirties. Her long thick dark hair was tied up behind, no make-up. Her skin was pale, smooth, clean. She dressed for speed. A flecked turtleneck, jeans, trainers. Her hands, laid palm down and steady on the table in front of her, were surprisingly dainty and white. She waited with no sign of impatience.

  ‘We’ll start with Melissa, then?’

  Angeloglou turned. It was Baird.

  ‘Where’s Carrier?’

  ‘He’s out. There’s a report of a bomb sent to a turkey farm.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Inside a Christmas card.’

  ‘Christ. Bit late, isn’t it?’

  ‘He’ll be over later.’

  A constable appeared carrying a tray with three cups of tea. Angeloglou took it. The two detectives nodded at each other and went in.

  ‘Thank you for coming to see us. Cup of tea?’

  ‘I don’t drink tea.’

  ‘Cigarette?’

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘Do you have the file, Chris? What are Miss Hollingdale’s qualifications for being here?’

  ‘She’s a coordinator for the Vivisection and Export Alliance. VEAL.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ said Hollingdale evenly.

  Angeloglou looked down at his file.

  ‘How long have you been out now? Two months, is it? No, three. Malicious damage, assaulting a policeman, affray.’

  Hollingdale allowed herself a resigned smile.

  ‘I sat down in front of a lorry at Dovercourt. Now what is all this about?’

  ‘What is your current occupation?’

  ‘I’m having difficulty finding an occupation. I appear to be on various blacklists.’

  ‘Why do you think that is?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Three days ago a businessman called Leo Mackenzie and his wife were murdered in their home in the Castletown suburb of Stamford. Their daughter is critically ill in hospital.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you ever read a magazine called Rabbit Punch?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s an underground magazine produced by a terrorist animal-rights group. The most recent issue published the name and address of Mr Mackenzie. Six weeks later he, his wife and his daughter had their throats cut. What do you have to say about that?’

  Hollingdale shrugged.

  ‘What do you feel about activism of this kind?’ Baird asked.

  ‘Have you brought me in here for a discussion about animal rights?’ Hollingdale asked with a sarcastic smile. ‘I’m against any creature having its throat cut. Is that what you want me to say?’

  ‘Would you condemn such acts?’

  ‘I’m not interested in making gestures.’

  ‘Where were you on the night between the seventeenth and the eighteenth of January?’

  Hollingdale was silent for a long time.

  ‘I suppose I was in bed, like everybody else.’

  ‘Not everybody. Do you have any witnesses?’

  ‘I can probably find one or two people.’

  ‘I bet you can. By the way, Miss Hollingdale,’ added Baird. ‘How are your children?’

  She started, as if in pain, and her expression hardened.

  ‘Nobody will tell me. Will you?’

  ‘Mark Featherstone, or should we call you by your adopted name of Loki?’

  Loki was dressed in extravagantly varied fabrics, sewed together into a shapeless tunic over baggy white cotton trousers. His red hair was knotted into dreadlocks which hung down over his back at stiff angles, like giant pipe cleaners. He smelled of patchouli oil and cigarettes.

  ‘Does that rhyme with “hockey” or with “chokey”? I suppose “chokey” would be more appropriate.’ Angeloglou consulted his file. ‘Breaking and entering. Burglary. Assault. I thought you were against violence?’

  Loki said nothing.

  ‘You’re a clever man, Loki. Chemical engineering. A Ph.D. Useful training for manufacturing explosives, I suppose.’

  ‘Were they blown up, then, this couple?’ said Loki.

  ‘No, though my colleagues will no doubt be asking you about the parcel received at Marshall’s Poultry.’

  ‘Did it go off?’

  ‘Fortunately not.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Loki contemptuously.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Mackenzie’s throats were cut. How do you feel about that?’

  Loki laughed.

  ‘I guess he’ll think twice before torturing animals again.’

  ‘You sick bastard, what do you think you’ll achieve by murdering people like that?’

  ‘Do you want a lecture about the theory of revolutionary violence?’

  ‘Try us,’ said Baird.

  ‘The torture of animals is part of our economy, part of our culture. The problem is no different from that faced by opponents of slavery or the American colonists, any oppressed group. You just have to make the activity uneconomic, unpalatable.’

  ‘Even if that involves murder?’

  Loki leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Wars of liberation have their price.’

  ‘You little shit,’ said Baird. ‘Where were you on the night of the seventeenth of January?’

  ‘Asleep. A broken sleep. Like the Mackenzies.’

  ‘You’d better hope you have a witness.’

  Loki smiled and shrugged.

  ‘Who’s hoping?’

  ‘Let me read you something, Professor Laroue,’ said Baird, holding a sheet of typescript. ‘Forgive me if I don’t do the style justice:All of us accept limits to our obligation to obey the law. After the Holocaust we may further accept that there are times when we are obliged to violate the law, even to violate the limits of what we would normally consider to be acceptable behaviour. I anticipate that future generations will ask us about our own holocaust, the holocaust of animals, and ask us how we could stand by and do nothing? We in Britain are living with Auschwitz every day. Except this time it’s worse because we can’t plead ignorance. We have it for breakfast. We wear it. What will we say to them? Perhaps the only people able to hold their heads up will be those who did something, those who fought back.

  ‘Do you recognize that, Professor?’

  Frank Laroue’s hair was cut so short that it was almost like a film of gauze draped across his skull. He had very pale-blue eyes, with curiously tiny pupils, so that he looked already flash-bulb blind. He was dressed in an immaculate fawn suit, with a white shirt and canvas shoes. He had a pen in his fingers which he rotated compulsively, sometimes tapping it on the table.

  ‘Yes. It is a part of a speech that I delivered at a public meeting last year. Incidentally, it has never been published. I would be interested to know how you got a copy of it.’

  ‘Oh, we like to get out in the evenings. What did you mean by that passage?’

  ‘What is all this? My views about our responsibilities towards animals are well known. I’ve agreed to come and answer questions but I don’t understand what you want.’

  ‘You’ve written for Rabbit Punch.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ He gave a half-smile of acknowledgement. ‘Things I have written or things I have said may have been reproduced there, as in other magazines. That is quite a different matter.’

  ‘So you read it?’

  ‘I’ve seen it. I have an interest in the field.’

  Chris Angeloglou was leaning against the wall. Baird took his jacket off and draped it over t
he chair on the opposite side of the table from where Laroue was sitting. Then he sat down.

  ‘Your speech is a clear incitement to violence.’

  Laroue shook his head.

  ‘I’m a philosopher. I made a comparison.’

  ‘You suggested it was people’s duty to take violent action in defence of animals.’

  There was a short pause. Then, patiently, ‘It’s not a matter of my suggestion. I believe that, objectively, it is people’s duty to take action.’

  ‘Is it your duty?’

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘It follows.’

  ‘Rabbit Punch believes the same thing, doesn’t it?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The magazine publishes the names and addresses of people it accuses of harming animals. The point of this is to encourage violent action against those people?’

  ‘Or their property, perhaps.’

  ‘That wasn’t a distinction you made in your lecture.’

  ‘No.’

  Baird leaned heavily across the table.

  ‘Do you believe it was wrong to kill Leo Mackenzie and his family?’

  Tap, tap, tap.

  ‘Objectively speaking, no, I don’t,’ he said. ‘Could I have some tea or water or something?’

  ‘What about the innocent victims?’

  ‘Innocence is a difficult term to define.’

  ‘Professor Laroue, where were you on the night of the seventeenth of January?’

  ‘I was at home, in bed with my wife.’

  Baird turned to Angeloglou.

  ‘Give me the file, will you? Thanks.’ He opened it and thumbed through some pages before finding what he wanted. ‘Your wife is Chantal Bernard Laroue, is she not?’