Derailed Conscience

by Eliza Green

  Jonathan nodded, took aim and shakily fired off the first shot. It landed in the back wall, completely missing the paper target. He pulled back the firing pin a second time and tried again. The bullet grazed the edge of the paper. After one more try, he was getting the hang of it.

  It wasn’t long before all his bullets were spent, but Jonathan stayed for another hour watching others and their techniques. He thanked the manager on his way out.

  ‘Remember, you were never here,’ the manager said. ‘You know, if you wore your hair differently and scuffed up your shiny shoes, you could pass for him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Eddie. I take it you’re twins?’

  Jonathan nodded.

  ‘Well, tell Eddie to come by. I’ve got a delivery of something. He’ll know what it is.’

  Jonathan vaguely promised to pass the message on and tried not to imagine what the delivery might be. He left the shooting range feeling much more confident than he had been when he arrived. The anxiety he had been feeling for the past few months was finally receding. With his gun and three bullets still in his briefcase, he walked briskly to the Tube station.

  By the time Jonathan exited near his apartment building, he was tired and hungry. He smiled to himself. He never thought he would feel so happy about the most basic of things. In his mind, he ran through what he had in his fridge. It wasn’t much. He hadn’t done any shopping since he came back from Spelling.

  When he crossed the road, he became aware of two cars parked in close proximity to his building. The first he recognised as the black car that was all too familiar from the night before. He could see nothing through its black tinted windows. The second car, a beat-up Nissan Almera, he’d never seen before. There were people inside. Jonathan backtracked before he was spotted and hid behind a pillar. He glanced inside the Almera, instantly recognising one of the men from the pawn shop that morning. How long had they been following him? He thought about his earlier quick stop home to change into less conspicuous clothes, which probably gave them ample opportunity.

  So they know where I live now? Fucking great.

  All his earlier confidence seeped away. He turned around and almost broke into a run.

  Keen to get off the street, Jonathan ducked into the first bar he came across. Kempton Bar was quiet for a Thursday evening and the place smelled of mashed potatoes, chicken wings and beer. But it would do until the men and whoever was in the black car gave up on him. Jonathan’s mouth watered as hunger, forgotten about in the drama outside, replaced the depleting adrenaline. His confidence also reappeared and he almost swaggered to a bar stool. If he had to confront the people outside, he would do it on a full stomach. Even so, for all his big thoughts, he kept a close eye on the door as he sat on one of the stools.

  Two men dressed in red football tops were yelling and cheering at the television while they supported their favourite team. A couple sat in a corner drinking beer and sharing a bowl of chicken wings. The barman appeared like a vision in front of him and Jonathan pointed to one of the beer taps.

  ‘Can I also see the food menu?’

  The barman grabbed a menu from further down the bar and handed it to him. Thirty seconds later, he placed a cold mug of beer down on the counter in front of him.

  Jonathan checked the door again and took a quick swig of his beer. The alcohol took the edge off and he relaxed, reassured by thoughts of the gun in his briefcase. It wasn’t loaded—he wasn’t planning on using it—but maybe he could scare his pursuers a little by waving it around if they got too close.

  The bar was large, lit by bright overhead lights and covered in dark wood panelling. The dark brown floorboards were accentuated by red-patterned strips of carpeting running from one end of the room to the other. Some tables were clustered behind him, a small distance from the bar. He noticed a woman sitting at one of the tables. He did a double take.

  Of all the bars in London, and she’s in this one. The woman he had seen in the tea shop in Spelling was nursing a glass of wine in one hand and holding a book in the other. His entire body stiffened, her presence a stark reminder of her indifference that day in Eccles. He could still feel the pain from the scalding tea that the owner had thrown in his lap. Anger spread through him like wildfire and he hopped off the bar stool. A few strides brought him to her table. When he was close enough, she turned to look up at him.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, his tone curt. ‘Do you remember me?’

  She shook her head and frowned. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘The tea shop in Spelling? The owner was having a go at me? Poured a whole pot of tea into my lap? You just sat there. You didn’t say anything.’ His voice was rising. ‘What are you even doing here? Are you following me? Are you here to rub it in my face?’

  She looked surprised. ‘I’m sorry, no. I don’t know you, and that’s awful. I’m sure I would have done something … are you all right?’

  He studied her reaction, not seeing anything other than discomfort in her expression. He forced himself to take a deep breath and relax. He was acting crazy.

  A new sense of doubt clouded his mind. Perhaps the events in Spelling had all been in his imagination. He wasn’t sleeping or eating much. Could that be the reason why his anxiety came and went as often as his heart palpitations? The cars following him—was he imagining that too? He shook his head, as if to dislodge the absurdity of his rationalisations. Of course it was all real. It had to be.

  The woman was keeping an eye on him, not out of concern for him, he noticed, but for her own safety. Jonathan tried to smile to lighten what must have been an awkward moment for her.

  ‘I’m sorry for disturbing you.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. She held up her book in an effort to hide her face from him.

  He sloped back to the bar and his stool, but before he got settled, a blood-curdling scream caused him to spin round. The woman he had just left was standing and pointing at him. Her body was rigid and her eyes wide. He could see she was visibly shaking.

  Jonathan shot off his stool and went to her.

  ‘Are you alright, miss?’ He held out his hand and was about to touch her shoulder when she screamed again.

  She shrank away from his touch and cradled her stomach with her hands. Her terror-filled eyes were locked onto his.

  ‘What have you done to me?’ she yelled, staring down at her hands.

  Jonathan’s eyes followed hers but he couldn’t see anything wrong with her. Her screams got louder and she began to cry. She was in pain—that much he could tell. But what the hell had happened to her in the time it took him to sit back down on his stool after talking to her?

  Her eyes frantically searched the bar. ‘Someone help. Get him away from me!’ The strain in her voice was evident.

  Jonathan tried to help her a second time, but she smacked his hand away. ‘No! Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare touch me, not after what you just did!’

  The embarrassment and confusion he felt in Eccles Tea Shop returned with force. He slowly shook his head, trying to make sense of what was happening. He did the only thing that seemed appropriate.

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ he said to the barman.

  But the barman didn’t make a move. ‘Why? Are you sick?’

  ‘No, not for me. Jesus, look at her.’

  The barman looked past him. ‘Sorry mate, but she looks fine to me.’

  ‘No, she’s not—’ As Jonathan turned around, his words were left hanging in the air. The young woman, the one who had been screaming at him a moment ago, was calmly sitting reading her book once again.

  What’s going on in this place?

  Jonathan looked around the bar. The two men in football tops were still watching television. The barman was cleaning glasses. The woman was reading her book. The door opened and new customers strolled in. Jonathan grabbed clumps of his hair in confusion. His frantic eyes settled back on the young woman.

  Her expression was relaxed, but she straightened up quickly when
she noticed Jonathan staring at her with wide, frightened eyes.

  She tensed up. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Um, are you okay? Do you still need an ambulance?’ Jonathan asked, frowning at her.

  She looked around her, as if checking he wasn’t talking to someone else, then said, ‘Of course I don’t.’

  Her alteration in mood troubled him and he wondered if she might be schizophrenic.

  That was the only thing that made sense to him right now.

  ‘Is he bothering you, miss?’ he heard the barman say.

  She adjusted herself in her seat. ‘I’d like it if he left me alone.’

  ‘Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I can’t have you scaring my customers.’

  Jonathan turned to look at him. ‘Didn’t you see what just happened?’

  The two men watching football looked away from the television to stare at him in annoyance.

  The barman replied flatly. ‘See what?’

  See what? Was he making fun of him now?

  If Jonathan was the only one seeing things, perhaps he was the one with the issue. Maybe he did need Dr Blake’s help after all. Maybe he would ask her to hypnotise him again. Maybe she could get her hands on some of those special pills that had knocked him out the last time.

  ‘Probably best that you don’t show your face in here again,’ the barman said coolly as Jonathan made his way out the door.

  He walked the short distance back to his apartment in a daze. It was only when he reached the pillar outside his block that he remembered why he had gone in to the Kempton in the first place. There was no sign of the Nissan Almera, but he quickly sharpened up when he saw the black car parked a short distance away.

  He’d had enough of this stalking. Striding over to the car, he banged on the dark-tinted side windows and cupped his hands to the glass to peer through the windscreen. But it was too opaque for him to see anything.

  ‘Come out and face me, you coward! I know someone’s in there. Why are you following me?’ Jonathan yelled, banging on the bonnet.

  Suddenly, the car’s engine roared into life and it pulled away from the kerb. Jonathan kicked its side, making a small dent. The car travelled a short distance, then jerked to a halt. Jonathan was frozen to the spot as the door opened and a figure dressed in black emerged and started to walk towards him.

  Remembering the gun in his briefcase, Jonathan held his ground. Terror gripped him as he groped blindly at the metal catches on his case, unwilling to take his eyes off the figure approaching. His fingers fumbled clumsily and his breath caught in his throat when his efforts to open the case failed. Jonathan backed away, then turned and ran to his apartment block. The front door opened willingly, unlike his briefcase, and he slammed the glass door shut behind him. Shaking with fear, he ran up the stairs, not daring to look back to see how close his escape had been.

  Once he was inside, he double-locked his apartment door, only then feeling safe enough to look out the window. There was nobody there, no one he could see anyway. He snapped the curtains closed so violently he almost pulled the curtain rod off the wall.

  A message was blinking on his machine. It was Alice calling to see if he wanted to come out on Friday night. He erased the message and grabbed the last beer in the fridge. He’d had enough of people in general.

  Jonathan grabbed his briefcase and sat down on the sofa. He put the beer down, opened the catch on the briefcase—it was quite easy to open now—and pulled free the gun and the handkerchief with the three bullets in it. He carefully unfolded the handkerchief, popped open the gun’s chamber and slotted each bullet into a chamber. He snapped the gun shut and pointed it at the wall, supporting his firing arm with his other hand. He squeezed one eye shut and aimed. ‘Bang,’ he said out loud.

  His breath caught in his throat and he quickly opened the gun’s chamber again. The three bullets fell into his hand when he pointed the barrel upwards. His fingers fumbled with the stubby pellets as he wrapped them back up in the handkerchief. He relaxed a little. It was one thing to own a gun, but a different matter to hold one that was loaded. He placed the gun down on the table and picked up his beer, taking a large gulp from it. Then he got up and checked the door locks again.

  His bed called to him and he took the gun with him to his room, nestling its cold metal underneath the pillow. Knowing it was within easy reach calmed him and he drifted off to sleep. But he woke at 2 a.m. as he had done the night before, and wondered if it was the beer that was stopping him from drifting into a proper slumber. This was the third night without proper sleep; the second was the previous night when Alice stayed over, the first when he saw the stranger in his bedroom mirror.

  He turned to face the mirror, staring at the shadows bouncing off the glass and metal that were not covered by the towel. An uneasy feeling crept over him. He got up and turned the large, offending mirror towards the wall.

  Maybe he would sleep now that the mirror couldn’t watch him. At least he could control that. As for who was watching him outside—well, he had no idea whom it was or how to stop them.

  Chapter 5

  Friday

  The working day started out as the rest of them had that week—with Jonathan feeling tired and anxious, and unsure what to do. His head swam with so many irrational thoughts it was impossible to do simple things like check emails or type up notes for Dr Blake. What had started as a small pile of notes had grown into a heap as the week wore on.

  He caught sight of his appearance in the reflection of his black monitor screen and tried to smooth down his unruly blond hair that he hadn’t had time to wash. The simplest tasks had become difficult; even turning on the computer took several attempts before it flickered into life. The lack of sleep had left him without much motivation. The added worry that someone was out to get him was unhinging him, making him think all sorts of things and leaving him unable to tell the difference between what was real and what was his own imagination.

  His desire to talk to Dr Blake increased the longer he sat there and he drummed his fingers impatiently on his desk waiting for her to arrive. He hid his anger when she finally showed up at 10.15 a.m., but while his bouts of annoyance were short-lived his anxiety was not.

  ‘Morning, Dr Blake.’

  She didn’t respond. She barely looked at him when she passed by his desk. He waited for her to get settled, then he knocked a little too loudly on her door.

  Without waiting for a reply, he opened it and peered inside. ‘Dr Blake? Can I have a word?’

  The sound of shuffling papers reached his ears and he watched as the doctor dug deep in her bag. Her flustered disposition was becoming an alarming trend for her; she was normally so organised.

  ‘Can it wait? I need to make a call,’ she said, her voice muffled by all the paperwork.

  ‘No, I don’t think it can.’ He moved inside the room and closed the door.

  Dr Blake looked up, her expression becoming more serious. ‘What happened to you? You look like shit.’ Her words lacked their usual empathy.

  ‘I wish I knew.’ He ran his fingers through his unkempt hair. ‘I don’t really know what to think anymore. More stuff’s been happening.’

  Dr Blake put her bag down and gestured for him to sit. ‘I was worried this might happen. I offered you hypnotherapy to help you sleep. Do you still want it?’

  ‘Actually, I was hoping for something a little stronger.’

  Dr Blake stared at him for a while and he was sure she was about to lecture him on the dangers of dependency on pills. But instead, she opened her desk drawer. She pulled out an orange-coloured bottle and handed it to him. He took the bottle and examined the contents—large white pills. There were dosage instructions on the label but no explanation of what the pills were.

  ‘For your anxiety,’ she said quickly.

  ‘I don’t want more vitamins. I need something to knock me out.’

  She nodded. ‘They’re different from what I gave you before. These are … ex
perimental. You mustn’t tell anyone where you got them. As you know, I’m not licensed to prescribe medicine.’

  On any other day, Jonathan might have hesitated to take them. But not that day. He shoved the bottle into his pocket.

  Dr Blake sat back in her seat and folded her arms. ‘So, you’re seeing things again?’ she said matter-of-factly.

  Jonathan lowered his eyes and nodded. ‘I don’t know what to do. Everywhere—well, almost everywhere—I go there seems to be an incident.’

  ‘What kind of incident?’ Dr Blake was frowning hard.

  ‘The kind where people I’ve never met start accusing me of things. And people are following me.’

  ‘And how do you feel about that?’

  The psychology questions surfaced first and Jonathan felt like one of Dr Blake’s patients.

  ‘I’m fucking confused, if you must know. I even got a …’ He trailed off. It would be a mistake to admit to owning a gun. Dr Blake would tell him he was paranoid and force him to get rid of it.

  ‘Got a what?’

  He thought fast. ‘There was this message for me at my apartment block. It said: “We’re watching you”.’

  Dr Blake gave no reaction, as psychologists are often trained to do. Jonathan wondered if this was all a test to see how he coped under pressure. If it was, Dr Blake wasn’t saying.

  ‘If I were you, I’d put all this out of your mind and concentrate on getting some sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning. The pills I gave you will help. I’ve used them on some of my patients. Don’t worry, they’re harmless.’

  The way Jonathan was feeling, he didn’t care if they weren’t. The tears began. He was physically drained and the slightest thing was setting him off. ‘Why is this happening to me? I mean, what did I do?’

  ‘You mentioned you have a twin brother. Would someone be following him for any reason?’

  Jonathan bit his lip. ‘Eddie’s just out of prison. He went down for dealing drugs.’