by J. M. Hewitt
They crash to the ground, landing awkwardly, Erik rolling over the top of the man and coming to a skidding stop on the edge of the pier. Erik looks up, and his heart jumps as he sees the girl, Elian.
She hasn’t jumped off the side into the sea. She has landed on an old plinth, one of the ancient concrete structures that used to support the pier end. It’s small, slippery with slick sea water, and barely big enough for her to perch on, but she is sitting in a crouch, flinching each time the ocean hits the platform and sprays up and over her.
“Hold on!” he shouts. “Stay there, WAIT THERE!” And even as he screams the words at her he thinks how stupid they sound, for where else is she going to go, except downwards to certain death?
Erik rolls over as he calls to her, is almost to his feet when the tails of the black coat once more swish past his face.
Instinctively, Erik shoots a hand out, grabs a fistful of material. He spins the man around as he scoops his leg into the back of the man’s knees. The guy hits the wood, Erik holds him by his lapels, feels the blood drain from his face as he stares down into the eyes of the doctor.
“You,” Erik murmurs, and his voice is hoarse, grief-stricken that all this time, all these years, just by looking at the man, Erik now knows the murderer he has been seeking.
“I – I didn’t believe it, even when we found her bag, the lists of the other girls, I didn’t believe, until just now.”
The doctor sneers, grins, and Erik, still stunned, loosens his grip. The doctor feels it no doubt, and with a double-handed shove at Erik’s chest, he pushes the policeman backwards. But Erik is solid, and for once his natural stature of his stocky and somewhat squat body works in his favour. The doctor bounces backwards, his feel slipping in his smart, sensible shoes, and the edge of the broken pier jolt his already displaced stance.
There is an almost comedic moment where the doctor teeters, Erik can hear other feet pounding on the boardwalk now and he knows that finally Alex is coming up behind him. Scrabbling forwards, even now in the face of evil remembering his profession as an officer to serve and protect, Erik grabs the doctor’s sleeve.
Alex bursts out of the tunnel, spinning wildly around as he hears the shouts and an unmistakable female scream. He bats at the air as though he can waft the fog away. Disorientated after the narrow confines of the tunnel, Alex turns to face the darkest part of the pier.
“Elian!” he calls, and then, louder, “ELLIE!”
He moves without waiting for a reply, Erik’s gun hanging uselessly by his side. He grips it, remembering it, but knowing he can’t use it because he can’t see a goddamn thing in this mist to shoot at.
Alex feels his legs slow, even though he is urging them onwards, they still of their own accord. He is at the end of the pier now, and he can see it all.
Erik, his top half hanging off the end of the pier, holding onto something – someone? – hanging below him. And Elian, Alex’s heart leaps in his chest as he sees her, for the first time in what seems like forever, even though it has only been a matter of weeks since she vanished. He calls to her first, but his words are whipped away by a sudden gust of wind.
“Stay there,” he calls, uselessly, for she hasn’t even seen him. Instead she is looking down, watching Erik and …
Alex moves closer, holds onto the top of the fence, through which Erik has wriggled his body in a jagged, narrow hole.
It is a man. And Alex looks past him to the sea that crashes below him. If he drops …
“Hold on, Erik, I’m here.” Alex drops to his knees in front of the hole. “I can’t get through, can you move?”
But Erik seems not to even hear him, and Alex watches, his fingers wound tightly around the metal of the fence.
“You did all this, you hurt all those girls?” Erik is shouting over the sound of the sea, and at his words Alex does a double take. Is this guy hanging off Erik’s hand the doctor?
“You were supposed to look after them, you’re their doctor, they trusted you!”
Alex hears his own intake of breath, so this is the doctor.
The doctor grins or grimaces, it’s hard to tell. And then he opens his mouth to speak.
“I clean up the filth, I always clean up, always have done. And still they come, still the filth comes, them, her,” the doctor flings his head back to gesture towards Elian, and the anger flares sudden and hot in Alex’s chest.
But the doctor hasn’t finished, and now it is definitely a smile that peels his lips back as he speaks again. “Your woman, your filthy, unclean Naomi, pregnant with some one-nighter, just the same as all the nasty girls she looks after.” The doctor uttered a laugh, and in the darkness his eyes shone clear and bright. “Maybe that’s why she chose that profession, it was close to her heart.”
“You stupid … FUCK,” Erik screams into the man’s face. “You stupid, stupid fuck, don’t you know? She’s still alive!”
At Erik’s words the doctor’s face changes to an expression of alarm. Startled, perhaps by Erik’s words about Naomi surviving his attack, or perhaps at the realisation of the predicament he is in, Alex can’t tell.
Alex darts a look at Erik’s face, sees Erik’s shoulders heaving now as he tries to bring the doctor up onto the pier. But as Erik writhes and struggles on the ground, the doctor’s expression changes again, and Alex draws a sharp breath as he realises that Erik isn’t trying to haul the man up, actually, Erik is twisting to get his hand out of the doctor’s grasp.
Alex knows he should step in, knows that in the professional world of policing you can’t let your emotions rule. But he doesn’t move. Somehow, in this twisted moment of time they have found themselves in, Erik’s intended fate for the doctor seems … just.
Erik yanks his hand free with a growl, the doctor’s eyes are wide with disbelief, anger, and then, black coat flapping and arms and legs flailing, the doctor falls into the crashing waves below.
There is a moment of stillness before Alex jumps to his feet to look over the fence at where Elian still crouches on the old concrete plinth. She doesn’t seem to see him, instead she is peering over the edge, staring down into the waves where the doctor disappeared. Alex swallows as he recalls the doctor including Elian in his list of those deemed ‘unclean’. Had she heard him? Of course she had, all three of them heard him. Did she believe him?
Probably.
And Elian stands now, her left leg raised, her arms wrapped around herself. Still she doesn’t look at the pier, still she looks down into the sea, and to Alex it seems that she is contemplating–
“NO!” he shouts, the volume carrying easily to her, and startling Erik beside him. “Elian, stay there!”
Now she looks at him, and his throat closes off as he stares into her face. There is nothing there, no relief, no pleasure at escaping the murderers clutches.
No hope.
“I got the DNA done, I got the results, Klim is your dad, Elian, it’s Klim!” he cups his hands around his mouth and shouts at her, babbling, his words running into themselves with the speed of his speech, so desperate is he to keep her upright on the plinth, and not plummeting deliberately to her death into the sea. “It is Klim, he’s your dad,” he shouts again, louder this time. “Klim, not Niko!”
The world stills around them again, fading away, even Erik has disappeared from Alex’s vision. Now it’s just the two of them, how it is supposed to be.
Her eyes widen a little, and to Alex, just that tiny movement in expression is enough. He smiles at her, holds out his hands towards her. And slowly, still keeping her eyes on his, she lifts her arms towards him too.
They can’t reach each other, but Erik is shuttling back and forth now, dragging old bits of the discarded old pier to bridge the gap between the boardwalk and the plinth.
“It’s okay, I can jump, how do you think I got here?” she calls to them.
There is amusement in her tone, and for that Alex is grateful. She is admonishing him and Erik, and her words suggest that she can take
care of herself, because she’s been doing that for a really long time.
Erik pauses and Alex looks doubtfully down over the edge where the doctor has vanished into the black sea.
“No, wait there,” he says, and taking one end of the long wooden plank, he and Erik navigate it to rest it on the edge of the concrete platform.
“Hold it steady,” Alex murmurs to Erik, and he stands up as Elian prepares to walk the plank. He should help Erik hold the wood firm, but he’s not going to. No, this time, unlike the last time Elian was rescued, he wants to take her hands as soon as she reaches him. This time, he won’t hang back, scared and confused by whatever might have been done to her. This time, he wants her to know that it doesn’t change anything for him.
She locks her eyes on Alex’s again, takes two tentative steps, one more, and then, finally she is on the pier. Alex grips her wrists and pulls her to him, his heart singing as she lets him. He had thought of so many things to say, dreamed about the words he would speak when she was back in his arms, but now he finds they are not necessary.
“Did you … did I hear you right?” she asks, and pushes her arms against Alex’s chest to look up into his eyes.
He is momentarily confused, didn’t think he had said anything, and then he remembers and realises what she is talking about.
He pulls her close again so he doesn’t have to lie once more while he is staring, drowning in her hopeful gaze.
“Yeah,” he said. “Klim is your biological father, not Niko.”
“Thank God,” she whispers, and his heart pulls and pushes at the enormity of the lie, and what it means for her.
67
ELIAN, ALEX AND ERIK.
THE HOSPITAL
15.7.15 Morning
Erik sits by Naomi’s bed and stokes her arm. He tells her in a whisper everything that has happened, that the doctor is now gone, that his body washed up on the sand dunes a miles from the pier in the early hours of the morning, just as the fishermen were beginning their pre-dawn trawls.
She is not awake, but the consultant is hopeful. The nurses claim that she can hear him, and that he is to talk to her, so he does. He breaks off at points in his one-sided conversation to tell her that it is okay, what she did, that he can handle it, that he will raise this baby as his own, that he loves her.
He does not know if any of his words are true, but for now that is not important. She just needs to wake up, and recover, and then he will see if it is okay, if he can handle it, if he can raise this child and if he still loves her.
He hears heavy footsteps come into the room and he looks up to see Alex.
“Any change?”
Erik offers him a tight smile. “Not really, but they’re hopeful.”
“And you? How are you doing?” asks Alex.
Erik shrugs, looks back down at the sleeping form of Naomi. “I’m glad you found your girl. Is she okay?”
Alex nods. “She will be, now it’s over.” Alex clears his throat, seems to hesitate before he moves over to the bed. “Erik, no single family is totally normal, I know mine isn’t, I know Elian’s isn’t, neither are the majority of cases I’ve worked …” he tails off, coughs again. “I guess I’m saying that you can find a way through this, if you want to.”
This time the smile on Erik’s face is genuine, warm and, for once, wide. “Thank you. For everything.”
When Alex leaves the hospital the first thing he notices is that the weather has turned. All summer, in London, in Chernobyl and here in the Netherlands, the temperatures have soared. Now, though it is still only July, there is a chill. He had checked the weather back home on his phone earlier and seen that London was deluged in rain. Alex doesn’t want the summer to end, though it has been the strangest season he can remember, it has bought up a lot of welcome surprises.
He looks at one of these surprises now, perched on the stone wall at the entrance to the hospital, her small suitcase at her feet. He scuffs his own trainers against the step of the door. He doesn’t want to take her back to London, for if he does, he is in no doubt that real life will continue, he’ll get back to work, she’ll do … whatever it is she does. They will no longer be together, and Alex doesn’t want her to drift away before he has fully got her back.
They had spent last night together, but they hadn’t slept, there had been too much information to share on both sides.
“So, this Lev has … gone?” Alex asks. “Who was he? Why did you come here for him?”
She had given a small shrug, hadn’t answered him, but also hadn’t seemed too concerned that he had somehow escaped.
“He won’t come for me,” she said. “We’ll never see or hear from him again.”
He walks over to her now, sits beside her on the low wall.
“Did you say goodbye to your friend?”
She looks up at him, offers him a smile. “Yes, it’s a shame, we hadn’t really got to know each other all that well, but I’ll miss Brigitta.”
He nods, he understands, he feels like there is so much more to know about Elian, and that’s why when they get back to England and step off that plane he already knows he won’t want to say goodbye to her.
“Um, Ellie, how would you feel about not going home yet?”
She looks surprised. “Where would I go?”
Tentatively he takes her hand, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth as she lets him.
“I had a call from my father a few days ago, asking if I’d like to join him and my mother at their home in Majorca.” He pauses, squeezes her fingers. “Would you like to come with me?”
When she doesn’t immediately reply he rushes on, “I should warn you, they’re not like my aunt, Selina. They’re …” he breaks off, realising he was about to label them as ‘cold’ and he frowns, disturbed that this would be his first thought in order to describe them. “They’re, different. We’re not close,” he finishes, lamely.
And another thought comes to him. He needs to put Elian straight on the lie that he told her, but he needs to make her see that even though the rotten, perverted, evil Niko is Elian’s real father, it doesn’t matter. She is she, he is what he is, or was. And if there is anyone to make Elian see that blood really doesn’t matter at all, it is his own parents and their dismissive ways towards him, their only son. A frown creases his brow as he thinks of the way they are with each other, all three of them. Distant, all those years that he lived at their house – even now he doesn’t refer to it as home – it was like he was a lodger or a roommate. He wonders why his father has extended this invitation to him, now, after all this time. He hopes his parents don’t suddenly want to play happy families, not if he intends to use them to show Elian how little DNA matters.
“Well?” he prompts.
Elian can’t pull her eyes away from his. They are dangerous, those eyes, she thinks. One could drown in them. As the word ‘drowning’ pops into her head, she thinks of her mother, and the doctor, pulled under different waters to the same death. And the man who her mother lived with, the man who her mother took with her to her watery grave.
Elian shivers. She’s not cold, even though the weather is distinctly cooler than it has been. No, this is a little shimmer of pleasure at the thought that that man isn’t her blood father. That news, combined with the test results that show she doesn’t have some disease picked up by the foul man that raped her, plus the realisation that her mind seems to be clearer now, less muddy somehow, all lend a hand to how she is feeling right now.
Light. She feels lighter, she realises.
And now Alex wants her to go away with him, to spend time with his family. Which is a little weird, as he doesn’t seem to like them much, apart from Selina, of course.
She casts her mind back over the last two months of the summer of this year. And all the years before that, from the time that Sissy abandoned her alone in London, and how Elian had lain low, not doing anything to bring attention to herself, not allowing herself friends or lovers. These last few
months could have scared her back into her former reclusive state, but strangely, she finds she doesn’t want to go home and hide in her beautiful apartment in Fitzrovia. She wants to go wherever this man beside her is going. She wants to hold his hand for longer, and now she is free and clear from illness and her whole self feels clean again, she wants to lie beside him at night, in his bed, in his arms.
Shyly, she nods. “I’d love to come with you, Alex,” she says.
She expects a cheer, or something, because it feels rather monumental to her, but instead he nods at her, his mouth set in a grim line, as though there is something else there, bad news or a job to be done.
She shakes her head, smiles winningly at him and squeezes his hand. Of course there is nothing else. The bad news is done, and now they can begin to really get to know each other. All the trouble is over.
Isn’t it?
THE END
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