Reckoning Point

by J. M. Hewitt

  He would tell my mother.

  The urge to leave the room, the house, this whole street and section of town made my feet move of their own accord, but as I spun round I stumbled into Mark who had moved silently to stand behind me.

  He stared down at me, his blue eyes more alive than I’d ever seen them.

  Looming over me, he advanced. I backed up, stopping only when I felt the bed frame against my shins. Mark kept coming, leaning so close that for a terrible moment I thought he might kiss me. But he reached past me, dragging a pile of thin, threadbare towels off the dresser.

  He stepped back.

  I remembered to breathe.

  He passed me a towel.

  I remembered who I was, who he was and I shuffled towards him. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Pick him up,” said Mark, his voice quiet but firm.

  Together we lifted Smith, me holding his ankles, Mark roughly manhandling his upper torso.

  “Put him down.”

  I obeyed, took a step back, clutched my fingers together behind my back as I waited for his next instructions.

  I watched as Mark pulled the mattress off the bed and removed the wooden slats to reveal a dark, cavernous area. Inside the bed frame was littered with dust and food wrappers.

  “In there,” said Mark.

  Together we lifted Smith again and slid him into the gap.

  “How long are you going to leave him there?” I asked.

  Mark fixed his gaze on me. “Are you questioning me, Roland?” A smile twitched at his lips, but it wasn’t a real one. It was pretend. It was a nasty smile.

  I shook my head, lowered my eyes.

  When the morning dawned, bright yet chilly, I was sent out on errands. In the few hours between Smith’s death and the sun coming up, I’d not slept. Instead, I’d plotted and planned. I had to find the Colonel and hand this whole mess over to him.

  I finished my chores quickly, and luck was on my side as my last drop off was near to his office. I rapped on his door, my breath coming fast and shallow as I looked left and right and behind me. When my knocking went unanswered I stepped back and observed the building. The curtains remained tightly drawn, no windows were open. Deflated, I walked away.

  When I found myself on Gevers Deynootwed I wondered if I’d been planning to go there all the time without really realising it.

  The door to 1058 was open, as it always was. I hovered in the doorway, my prescense unknown. Unobserved I watched the brothers as they sat together, three points of a triangle, connected to each other in a way I never would be.

  It was Vinnie who noticed me first and his face lit up in what looked to me like a genuine smile.

  “Roland!” He beckoned for me to come in.

  As the other two glanced up I noticed David’s face, puffy and bruised, the beginnings of a black eye brewing.

  “What happened?” I gasped.

  But it was Miles who answered.

  “Why don’t you ask your friend?” he spat.

  I looked back at David. “Mark hit you?”

  They were silent now, downcast and glum. I closed the front door, a move so unheard of that I finally got their full attention.

  “Mark killed a man,” I blurted. “And I’m really frightened that I’m going to be next.”

  And up until I spoke the words I hadn’t realised what it was that I was so fearful of. Mark wanted a willing and compliant lover, a yes-man. Now that his plaything Smith was dead, I seemed an obvious replacement. I was already his yes-man, I was halfway there.

  The brother’s leaned forward, ears and eyes all on me as I told them about Smith, poor, beautiful Smith, and I watched as a myriad of expressions crossed their faces. Disbelief, shock, fear, horror and finally disgust. The whole spectrum.

  “Fucking hell,” breathed Vinnie, when I finished.

  “I’ve got to get out of there,” I said, not bothering to fight the tremor in my voice.

  They didn’t mock my fear. They felt it too.

  “I think we all need to get out,” said Miles, grimly and the others nodded soberly.

  There was a beat of silence and then they all spoke at once, moving home, moving to Amsterdam, how about going further afield, Thailand, maybe?

  “But we won’t fucking slip away in the night like pussies,” David said fiercely. “We’ll do it up right, throw a final party, then we’ll go to Amsterdam and plan the next step from there.”

  There were murmurs of agreement and David caught my eye. “You’ll come, right?”

  It wasn’t an invitation, it was an order, one that I was happy to obey.

  I slumped into a chair, my relief palpable. My friends wanted me to go away with them, they wouldn’t abandon me.

  “Yes,” I whispered, close to tears. “Yes, I’ll come.”

  57

  ERIK FONS AND ALEX HARVEY

  THE HOSPITAL, THEN HOLLAND SPOOR

  14.7.15 Mid-morning

  There is no change in Naomi’s condition. The baby remains alive inside her. It would be for the best for this couple if the baby slipped away, Alex couldn’t help but think. Immediately he chastises himself for this thought. Elian was the product of something less than perfect, but she was still perfect. And he, Alex, is the result of a still married couple, but he couldn’t be further away from them in terms of close relationships.

  Blood isn’t everything, he thinks.

  He glances over at Erik, wonders what the man is thinking as he stares down at the woman he loves who is carrying another man’s child.

  Alex looks at his watch. They are supposed to be visiting the doctor who had treated Elian, and Alex is eager to get on with it. The doctor may have her address, surely has her address, and Alex wants to get it, wants to go and knock on her door and show her that he is here because he cares about her. He wants to tell her what a mess he was in when she left, and whatever she wants to do, whatever she feels she has to do out here he will help her.

  But thoughts of her true parentage hurtle at him, punching at him like a forgotten nightmare that he has just remembered. Does he tell her the truth? Is it even his truth to tell her? He groans audibly, causing Erik to look over at him.

  “You ready to go?” Erik asks, looking back at Naomi, inert in the hospital bed.

  “Oh, sorry, I was … thinking about something else,” Alex replies, hoping Erik doesn’t think he was being impatient with him.

  Another first, being concerned what someone thinks of him.

  Elian, what have you done to me?

  “Thinking about your girl?” Erik says.

  Alex grins, shrugs.

  “Well, I hope you have a happier ending than me, pal,” replies Erik, and pushes past Alex out into the corridor.

  “So, shit like this doesn’t usually happen here?” asks Alex as Erik drives at a steady and careful pace away from the hospital.

  Erik flicks a sideways glance at Alex. “No, never.” His mouth sets in a grim line. “Places like this, like Amsterdam, where everything is legal is usually the safest place to be.”

  Alex nods. He knows, he agrees - he’s read High Society, the novel based on an MP who is on a mission to legalise everything. And usually, the concept works. No matter how ludicrous it sounds at first, when you think about it, it actually makes sense. But there is something else at work here. And Elian is here.

  And a man called Lev.

  Erik interrupts his thoughts. “Of course, there was a big murder about fifteen years ago, it shocked everyone. It’s the one, big, bad thing that actually happened here.” Erik sounds almost boastful as he speaks.

  “What happened?” asks Alex.

  “Three Irish guys were killed, slaughtered in their apartment. The killer and his accomplice got arrested, but the guy …” Erik trails off, seemingly lost in thought. “The accomplice’s sentence was nowhere near as long as it should have been.” Erik pressed his lips together, before spitting bitterly, “it should have been life, ten times over.”
<
br />   “Why wasn’t it?”

  “That’s where it gets interesting, there was this guy, the Colonel, nobody knew who he was, only those in his circle and they would never talk, word has it he was this big, local figure, but he was like a legend, you know? Anyway, the guy who was an accomplice, he got lighter jail time, because he was a bit, you know …” Erik puts a finger to his own head and spins it around. “The Colonel is said to have got this boy a shorter sentence, probably felt sorry for him, being a bit simple and all. It was a weird thing, a strange time.”

  Alex scratches his head. “Seriously? Were you involved in the case? And who was this Colonel?”

  Erik shrugs, peers into his mirror before carefully undertaking a left turn. “It was before my time, and we still don’t know much about the Colonel, whoever he was just disappeared, and all those who did know, those high up and important men, most of them are dead now, or old as fuck. Some people say he didn’t even exist, he was just folklore, someone made up to scare the kids into being good.”

  Alex looks out of the window, all the surfers with their boards rammed under an arm as they make their way to the beach, mingling with the holidaymakers and the locals.

  “I never heard of this place, Scheveningen, it’s like a resort.” Alex wishes he was on holiday here with Elian. “It’s a really nice place, prostitute killers aside.”

  “It wasn’t always a nice place, in the Second World War the Germans invaded, took over them town for themselves. They built a wall, the Atlantikwall. They flooded our fields, made them like moats so Allied tanks couldn’t get in. The tunnels, they’re the most impressive though.” Erik looks over at Alex and Alex tilts his head in surprise at the animated look on the man’s face. For the first time since Naomi’s attack and the subsequent awful news of the baby that’s not Erik’s, he actually looks alert, interested. Alex always finds that this is the way with foreigners; they are so knowledgeable and proud of their history. Alex thinks of all the famous landmarks in London. Rarely does he talk about them. With a rueful smile Alex encourages Erik to talk further.

  “What are the tunnels, like for tanks and military vehicles?”

  Erik shakes his head emphatically. “No, man-made tunnels underground, separated by bunkers. The wall stretches thousands of kilometres, almost three-thousand, from Norway, through Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, right up to the border of Spain. The tunnels are a maze, at some points the rooms are still standing, actual bunker rooms, toilets, kitchen facilities, like you’ll still find a Nazi soldier in there, left over from the war. Some parts are blocked in now by fallen earth, but you can walk from Den Haag right down to Scheveningen Pier. It’s amazing, part of the tunnels are a museum now, down by the Wagenaarweg tram stop. It’s in a very nice neighbourhood, step off the grass verge and poof, tunnels and bunkers.” Erik broke off, squinted through the windscreen. “Here we are, Doctor Bastiaan’s office.”

  Alex looks over to the row of slightly shabby buildings. He had been so caught up in Erik’s war-time story he hadn’t noticed that they had left the carefree, sunny area where he was staying and had arrived in someplace that looks distinctly seedier.

  “It’s … different to Scheveningen.”

  Erik nods as he takes the keys from the ignition. “This is Holland Spoor. This is where most of my police work happens.”

  Alex gets it, better than anyone he knows the thin line that segregates an affluent area from a rough estate.

  But as Alex gets out of the car he feels uneasy, in a way that he can’t even explain to himself. He looks around, up and down the deserted street, unable to shake the feeling that someone is watching him. When he turns around he sees that indeed, someone is watching him: Erik. And there must have been something on Alex’s face, as Erik is frowning in his direction.

  “You all right?” he asks, gruffly.

  Finally Alex remembers who he is, where he is, and why he is here.

  Elian.

  He straightens his shoulders, tries to remember who he used to be, because back then, when he was uncaring and unfeeling he did his job so much better.

  “I’m ready, let’s go,” he replies, roughly.

  58

  ELIAN AND LEV

  A BASEMENT IN HOLLAND SPOOOR

  14.7.15 Dusk

  “Why are you here?”

  At the sound of his voice, a thousand bugs crawl over Elian’s skin and burrow inside her. Bile rises in her throat and she swallows it down. She thinks of the other words he has said to her, no – not to her, at her. About her.

  But now, she sees he is not in control. He is no longer able to force her head down and climb on her back and rip at her clothes. Now he is tied up. Bound. Imprisoned.

  A flare of something makes its way up her body, until it is quashed by the realisation that she, too, is tied up, bound and imprisoned.

  Again.

  But … why is he here, in this basement? She doesn’t know why she, herself is, but him, Lev? Has someone else discovered that he is the murderer, that he is the Scheveningen Street Strangler? Is whoever it is exacting a vigilante type justice?

  But if so, why is she here, too?

  “Do you live here? Is this where you come from?” Lev’s voice has risen an octave.

  With a deep breath she replies, “No, I came here for you.” She lets a smile twitch at her full lips, though the action feels false and she’s sure he sees the tremor that runs through her body, it has the desired effect as she hears a sharp intake of breath from him. “But someone else got to you first, didn’t they?”

  When he doesn’t answer her, she feels a little braver. “Why did you do it? Kill all those women? Is it your history, because you’ve forgotten the way that normal people live, out there in the Chernobyl wilderness?”

  He snaps his head up, and in the darkness she can see the whites of his eyes.

  “But my family there, they stayed there, they are still normal people. They didn’t turn into murderers.”

  “What women? I didn’t …” His voice is a whine, high pitched, Elian wonders if he is pouting over there in the gloom.

  “You did!” The rage is filling her now, sending pins and needles through her body that had felt numb for so long. “Gabi and Cilla and Amber, and the girl who was rolled up in your sheet, I saw you moving her body!”

  “Joy?” He sounds stunned that someone witnessed his misdeed. “You saw Joy?”

  Elian is on a roll now as she turns towards the nearly dead man next to her. “And him – he was the man helping you!” She flicks her head back to Lev, not scared that she is locked in a room with two killers, just suddenly furious that men like them the world over think they can do whatever they want to women, use them, use their bodies, attack them, kill them– She forces her thoughts down as the adrenalin reaches her head and she feels it spinning. But now, for the first time, her head is as clear as a bell, her mind feels sharp and focussed. Now there are no gaps in her brain. Now she feels everything. It is exhilarating.

  Lev is aghast as he listens to the mad girl raving at him. It is her, its Niko’s girl from the forest, the black one, the one who, when he looked at her closely (once she was unconscious, because awake she’d been a wild cat), he could see clearly the resemblance between her and Afia and Niko. Back then he’d likened her more to Afia, the same finely boned face, same petite figure. But now, now she is angry she is all her father. Those eyes, those eyes … His heart lurches in his chest as he wonders if she knows. Because something, something about her, tells him that she doesn’t. And if she did …

  But that is not what matter now, getting some childish revenge on a girl who has come all this way for him. No. Right now, survival matters, just getting out of here alive. And to do that, they need to help each other.

  “Look,” he says, “I didn’t kill those other women, I swear it. I was with them, I … wanted to …” he pauses, wondering how to put into words his fantasy that he cannot even explain to himself.

  “W
hat?” she demands. “What did you want to do?”

  “I wanted to cut them.” His words are simple.

  She screws her face up and he knows how it sounds. Depraved. Perverted. Disgusting.

  “I wanted to try it, I just needed to, I’d seen Niko doing it back home, to the girls, to Afia, he got such a rush–” He stops talking. At the mention of Niko she has paled beneath the glorious brown skin. She has turned grey.

  Frantically he twists his fingers around the ropes that bind his wrists. He needs to get himself out of this, because now, now that he has mentioned the man that spawned her, now he has lost her.

  She doesn’t want to listen to Lev anymore. She won’t – can’t – be reminded of him, Niko. Not now, not at this time. Maybe never.

  “Who bought you here? Was it the same man who put me here?” Lev demands.

  Elian frowns in concentration. She was in the doctor’s office, she drank the drink that would prepare her for the M.R.I scan. Was it the drink? Had the doctor spiked it? And if so, why, when he’d showed her nothing but concern and kindness before now? Had he been attacked in his own home? Burgled, perhaps, for his medication or money. Maybe the intruder hadn’t expected him to have a patient with him so early in the morning …

  “Did the doctor bring you here, or was it someone else?” she fires the question back at Lev, but he stares at her blankly.

  “He’s no fucking doctor,” he replies scornfully.

  She turns her head to look at the other man, the one whose head is hanging low so his chin is touching his chest. The man with the livid purple marks around his white neck. The man who is whimpering ever so quietly.

  “Hey, you, wake up,” she demands. Stretching out a foot she kicks at him with a canvas covered foot. “I know you’re awake, look at me.”