Blood RED

by Paul Kane

  Eat Tilly!

  Visit Tilly, she meant. Only now she was here, she didn’t really want to eat ... to face the old woman. Rachael shook her head, brought her hands up to the sides; banged her temples with balled fists. She was painfully aware that she was drawing more stares, more quizzical looks from staff and visitors alike. Before she could do anything, it popped into her head: the next thing on her list.

  5) Mend a broken heart ... A broken soul.

  She needed to get out of there, get back and work out just what the hell was happening. It was a place to start at least. A place of safety (not that anywhere was safe anymore because of ...).

  It wasn’t far, only a forty minute walk if that—but she felt like she’d been running for hours, for days. All the energy had drained out of her.

  She had just enough to raise an arm, raise a hand to flag down one of the taxis that always loitered outside the hospital.

  Just enough to tell the driver her address. But as she opened the door, she thought she saw something in the backseat window. Her reflection, but something else for a moment, something behind her, over her shoulder—something hairy. Then, Rachael was gone, leaving only the monster there for a fraction of a second.

  She blinked and her reflection was back again.

  “Are you all right, Miss?” asked the cab driver, an overweight man with sweaty skin. The second time she’d been asked the question in as many minutes.

  “I’m ...” she began, but realised she couldn’t really answer him either way. So instead she slid into the back seat, closing the door. “Please ... please just take me home,” Rachael finished.

  * * *

  There was a rattle as the key was inserted, then the door to Rachael’s small flat—to her home—opened inwards.

  Kathleen Daniels stood on the threshold a moment, peering inside and panting. She’d knocked several times before letting herself in, and that was after she’d stood outside the building itself jabbing at the buzzer to be let in. “Rachael?” she called out, then after cocking an ear and waiting a moment or two, repeated the name more loudly.

  Nothing.

  She stepped inside, her legs protesting—knees that were plagued with arthritis cracking, as they had done on the steps up to Rachael’s floor. Not for the first time these past few days she asked the question of herself, where in Heaven’s name was her only daughter? Wasn’t it bad enough that she’d waited all day for a call last Sunday, after they’d had that spat on the phone the day before? Waited, that is, until she’d begun phoning Rachael herself and getting no reply, apart from that annoying electronic woman down the line saying no-one was home; Kathleen had given up in the end.

  Worse than that, she’d had to find out second-hand that there had been some kind of ‘incident’ on an estate where Rachael had clients, those old people she obviously thought more about than her own, dear mother. Obviously, she applauded the Christian virtues of doing the job Rachael did, but didn’t it also say in the Bible ‘Honour Thy Father and Mother’? Or simply mother in this instance, Rachael’s dad having done a vanishing act when she was still only small. Kathleen often wondered if that was the reason for some of the trouble she’d had with her daughter once she reached her teenage years, the lack of any kind of decent male role model (her own fault she knew, for picking such a ‘prince’ herself, but she didn’t want Rachael to repeat the same mistake). She’d had no good example to compare some of the guys she went out with to. And boy had she known how to pick ’em! Still did by the sounds of this Mike character she’d taken up with.

  The trouble had apparently been gang-related, which of course did nothing to dissuade Kathleen that her daughter was in the right place, in this city. But if she knew her—and if she knew nothing else, she knew her daughter—the fact that Kathleen couldn’t get hold of her was down to a guy of some description. They were always at the bottom of things ... and that Stephanie she hung out with wasn’t exactly a good influence in that department, either.

  Kathleen wouldn’t have minded quite so much if Rachael had had a clear career direction, might even have been proud if she’d made it to university. But school had been bad enough, and then art college after that. She’d even made a mess of the one thing she had set her sights on, the acting—again, because of some of the boys she’d ended up with. They were always ‘lovely’ according to Rachael, but Kathleen had seen their kind before, knew exactly what they were after. And when they didn’t get it, they’d leave her little girl heartbroken, devastated. Kathleen had tried to tell her time and again, tried to drum it into her, but Rachael had always been so stubborn—just not in the right ways. Always so determined, just like when she’d announced she was moving here.

  “I can get more acting work in the city,” she’d told her mother. “Theatre anyway, maybe even some TV. Who knows, might even lead to some film stuff later on.”

  Kathleen had tried to be supportive, Lord knows she had—she’d paid for those acting lessons, hadn’t she?—but these pie in the sky dreams of Rachael’s ... They were simply going to get her into more scrapes. You could only push your luck so far; Kathleen just hoped that Rachael hadn’t pushed it too far. Hadn’t ended up in a situation she couldn’t get herself out of—no matter how grown up she claimed to be.

  And those dark thoughts pushed their way to the surface again: concerns that something really had happened to Rachael; that the reason she hadn’t heard from her was because she’d ended up—

  No, Kathleen didn’t even want to imagine what might have happened. It upset her too much to think about life without her daughter, even if it was at the other end of a phone line. She’d never wished her ill, of course she hadn’t! All she’d ever wanted for her was to be safe, happy, and to do well. If that meant coming back home and being with her, then that was all to the good as far as she was concerned.

  But, as she made her way through the flat, Kathleen began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach—and that sinking feeling only intensified when she saw the mess in the living room. The sofa and chairs had been overturned, plants looked like they’d been thrown across the living room, and the glass coffee table in the middle of the room was on its side, cracked down the middle. There were also red stains on the floor. Stains that could have been red wine—there was a bottle nearby—but looked a little too much like blood for her liking.

  “Rachael ...” she said again, though this time it was barely a whimper, and the woman put her hand to her mouth. “Oh Rachael ... where are you, sweetheart?”

  Guilt now, for having said what she’d said the last time they’d spoken. About how they’d left things. “Oh my baby,” Kathleen breathed out.

  It threw her right back to when Rachael had been a little girl, when she used to have those night terrors. Kathleen would wake up and find her downstairs, curled up in a ball, having knocked all kinds of things over, pulled things out of the fridge or the cupboard when she’d been sleepwalking. Once or twice she’d even found Rachael outside, after the girl had undone the locks on the front or back door—which was when Kathleen had taken to using deadbolts only she had the keys to.

  The nightmares and wanderings had settled down when she was a bit older, and to Kathleen’s knowledge hadn’t happened since—though if her daughter had been a bit closer to home, she could have kept a better eye on her.

  The other alternative, and one she was rapidly having to come to terms with, was that there had been a break-in of some kind; someone had gained access to the flat (probably via that fire escape near Rachael’s bedroom Kathleen was always grumbling about) and done this: hopefully when Rachael wasn’t at home, because if she had been then—

  Kathleen should be phoning the police right now. Would be if she could even find a phone in this mess. Ah, there it was on the floor. She didn’t want to check the bedrooms, Rachael’s and the spare one; not yet, not till she had company.
If Rachael had been in there and okay, she would have answered her by now ... wouldn’t she? Kathleen picked up the receiver and put it to her ear.

  It was dead.

  Let’s hope that’s all that’s—

  Stop it! she told herself. Stop it, stop it. Stop! It!

  Kathleen looked over and saw the lead had been yanked out of the wall. Perhaps in whatever scuffle had taken place, so Rachael couldn’t call for help—and she never, ever had that mobile of hers to hand. Or maybe she’d just walked through the cord, knocked it out of the wall if she’d been wandering in her sleep ... Which meant she could be who knows where? Might have wandered right across a main road or something and—

  Neighbours. Rachael had neighbours. Even in a place like this, there were people she said were nice (said that about the boys who did the dirty on her too, remember?). But one of them should have a phone, at least.

  Kathleen was making her way back to the entrance, readying to go and knock on a few doors on this landing, when she saw a figure standing out in the hall. It was her daughter, wearing what looked like pyjamas—which would tally with the whole sleepwalking thing—and slippers. Her expression was one of confusion, probably mirroring Kathleen’s own right now.

  But it wasn’t just the shock of seeing her mother here in the city, it was more than that.

  She knew her daughter, she knew that expression.

  A flood of emotions suddenly swept through her: relief; concern again; more confusion ... mixed with a little bit of anger maybe, now that she knew Rachael was alive and ... if not well, then here at any rate. Before Kathleen could say anything at all, though, another figure joined Rachael in the doorway, a podgy-looking man, sticking close to her—maybe about to cause some trouble?

  Kathleen fixed him with a glare. “Who are—”

  “Mum,” said Rachael—Kathleen thought the girl was going to burst into tears right there and then. “Mum, do you have any money on you?”

  “Money?” she repeated. Is that what all this was about? Had her daughter got herself into a fix by owing people cash? A loan shark maybe? She certainly didn’t seem to earn enough, as far as Kathleen was concerned.

  “For the cab,” Rachael clarified, gesturing to the person beside her. “I left the house without my purse.”

  “Left it without anything, by the looks of things,” Kathleen retorted. Grumbling to herself, she fished around in her handbag. It was like a black hole in there, things always going to the bottom, and she had to combat mints, tablets, a small pair of scissors and various other items to get to her own leather purse. “How much does she owe?” asked Kathleen, still eying the man up with caution.

  “Meter says four-fifty,” he told her, effecting a smile. No doubt hoping for the tip Kathleen wasn’t about to give him, handing over the exact change instead. He looked down at it like she’d just spit in his palm, but by the time he was looking up again Kathleen had dragged her daughter inside and was slamming the door.

  “Mum ... that wasn’t very—”

  “Where on earth have you been, Rachael? What were you thinking?” Kathleen’s words were so pointed you could have skewered meat on them, her face sour enough to curdle the freshest milk. She didn’t even wait for a reply before launching into her next bombardment: “I’ve been calling and calling. I’ve been worried sick about you! And then I hear about some gang war on that nasty Greenham Estate where you work. Then having to come all the way over here on the coach, dragging my old bones to what is virtually Sodom and Gomorrah to find ... to find this!” Kathleen thumbed back to the living room and the mess. “Waiting for me. I didn’t know what to think, I—”

  Kathleen paused when she saw Rachael’s expression. If she’d looked like she was going to cry before, then she really was teetering on the brink of it right now. Suddenly the floodgates burst, her face screwing up, saltwater pouring from her eyes and tracking down her cheeks. It threw Kathleen momentarily, seeing her this vulnerable. The other thing Rachael had always been, apart from pig-headed, was fiercely independent. A survivor. She hadn’t let Kathleen in—really let her in—for a long, long time. As she’d said the last time they’d spoken, she hadn’t been her little girl for years. But right now, standing in front of her in pieces, you’d be forgiven for thinking Rachel Daniels was about ten years old.

  “Don’t, Mum,” she said, in-between sobs. “Please don’t ...”

  That was all it took. Kathleen opened up her arms, letting her daughter fall into them and rest her head on her shoulder. The sobs increased if anything, great wracking sobs that seemingly went on forever—as Kathleen stroked Rachael’s hair to calm her, just as she’d done when she was a child.

  “There, there,” she said to her daughter. “It can’t be all that bad.”

  “That’s ... that’s just the thing,” Rachael told her when she finally pulled away and began wiping her eyes on her sleeve—until her mother produced a handkerchief from her Tardis of a handbag. “Things are all muddled. Bits and pieces are missing ... It’s like some big jigsaw puzzle or something, and a lot of the pieces aren’t there.”

  Definitely sounded like the sleepwalking thing, this was exactly how confused she used to get after a bout of that. “Never mind, love. It’ll be all right. I’ll put the kettle on and we’ll have a nice cup of tea and a chat about what to do next.”

  Kathleen turned away, to make for the kitchen on her right, but Rachael grabbed her arm. Squeezed it so tight, in fact, she made Kathleen wince a little—only letting go when she saw the pain she was causing.

  “Mum, I’m so scared. I’m ... I’m not sure what’s happening ... I had this dream. This nightmare. I ...”

  “I know sweetheart. You used to get them before, remember? It’s not real. None of it.”

  “But I dreamed that I died. That ... that I was eaten.”

  Again, Kathleen paused. Eaten? Nothing unusual in that, she reminded herself. Monsters in the closet, under the bed. Coming to get you, coming to eat you all up—the classic stuff of kids’ nightmares. But something pretty serious must have happened to trigger all this, anyone could see that. To make her revert back, to make her frightened again of childhood terrors. Something in the real world, that had nothing to do with monsters and fairytales.

  Something to do with a guy, she’d lay odds on it—if she was a gambling person.

  “Tea,” she said again. “Nothing’s so bad that it can’t be fixed by a nice cup of warming tea.”

  Rachael let her mother go. Kathleen made her way towards the kitchen, but looked back over her shoulder before she reached the door. She took in the sight of her daughter standing there, helpless and baffled, and that unnerved her. Kathleen wasn’t used to it.

  But she knew her daughter. Knew her better than anyone in the whole world.

  Do you? said a doubting voice inside her head. Do you really, though?

  She nodded. Yes—I know my own daughter, she repeated again, though for whose benefit she couldn’t really say.

  I know my daughter.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hunter stood on the edge of the blue and white police tape, which was telling people in no uncertain terms not to cross.

  Most of the abandoned area had been cordoned off with the stuff, including the battered gates. He was piecing it all together for himself, what had happened here. The news reports had been sketchy to say the least; gang activity wasn’t uncommon here, it seemed. Violence on the streets even less so, though this time apparently an old lady and her care worker (neither of them named) had been dragged into things.

  But there was more to it than your average rumble, Hunter knew; no coincidence it had happened now, in this city. Chaos always followed in its wake. The tyre tracks leading to this gate, a vehicle out of control—the remains of which were now just a blackened husk in the dried-out pond—a fight for survival. It might no
t have come to this, if he’d done something in time. People had been killed and it was all his fault ...

  Looking left and right, he ducked under the tape and approached the scene of the incident. Bent to examine the charred mess of the van, saw the claw marks that might easily have been overlooked by the authorities. But it painted a better picture of what had taken place; you just had to know what you were looking for.

  “Hey!” came a voice that made him whirl around, and his hand instinctively went to the hilt of his knife inside his jacket. “Hey you!” There was a patrol car now outside the park, and a uniformed officer was shouting at him through the open window on the driver’s side. “What do you think you’re doing? This is a restricted area! Can’t you read?”

  So they were still keeping an eye on the place after all, he thought. Probably worried that more trouble might kick off. A retaliation? Hunter raised his hands and trotted back towards the gates, ducking under the tape again and making for the car—just as the driver and his partner were clambering out. The one who’d called over looked barely into his teens, still had acne in fact. The other—obviously his superior, judging from the sergeant’s stripes—was older, which wasn’t exactly difficult, and had a beard.

  “Hi there,” said Hunter.

  “Don’t you ‘hi there’ us,” replied the younger officer. Hunter felt like offering him a lollipop to placate him. “What were you doing snooping around in there? Reporter are you? I thought all your lot had cleared off.”

  Hunter shook his head. “I’m with Animal Control,” he stated, silently asking their permission with his eyes to lower his hands and reach into his back pocket. Showing them the fake ID.

  PC Acne perused it thoughtfully before handing it to Sergeant Beardy. “‘Thomas Aherne’,” read the latter out loud.

  “Tom, please,” said Hunter with a smile. It was a winning smile, able to charm the birds from the trees when he turned on the jets. It was one of his gifts, his ability to put people at their ease—usually—and get them on side fairly quickly.