Conscious Decisions of the Heart

by John Wiltshire

  “Ben, give me your address.”

  “I’m not sure what it is. Why?”

  “Because I’m coming over. I’ll be there some time the day after tomorrow.”

  “No, it’s okay, Kate. I’ll―”

  “Address, Ben!”

  He gave her Ingrid’s. It was the only one he knew. “Kate, can you do me a favour? I know I don’t deserve one.”

  “Ben, don’t ever say that. I owe you for saving me from a disastrous marriage.”

  “What? When? To who?”

  “You, you moron. Now, what’s the favour?” He told her.

  She laughed. “Okay, I’ll try. See you soon.”

  Ben clicked off. He went back outside to check around one more time just in case Nikolas’s very odd sense of humour had taken an even odder turn, but there was still no sign of him. There was no sign of very much. He called the police. They arrived an hour later, two cars and four officers, two in uniform in the first car and two plain-clothes detectives in the second.

  Ben ushered them in. He told them the basics of what had happened—that he and a friend were staying in the lodge. He said the last time he’d seen Christian he’d been in the tub. Christian had suffered a nosebleed and had climbed out, slipped on the deck and fallen into the snow. He’d gone in to fetch his friend a towel, and when he’d come out, Christian was gone.

  Naturally, this story piqued the interest of the detectives. It was so full of holes they practically fell in them. They had many questions—why were they holidaying together? Had they argued? Why was he, Ben, bruised with a swollen, split lip?—all very valid questions. They took him to the station.

  Distraught and distracted, Ben agreed to an examination. He was badly bruised all over, had rope burns on his wrists and ankles, and had clearly been punched in the face. He was too depressed and anxious to worry too much about admitting, yes, he and Christian were lovers and assuring them all of the wounds—the bruises and rope burns—were voluntary. Which was all very well for him to say. He had no one to collaborate these claims. The examination became more intimate, and it then rather invalided his claim of voluntary sex when they discovered signs of what they associated with rape, internal tearing and extensive bruising. Ben got angry with them and tired to explain he was a soldier and Nikolas…but Nikolas didn’t exist, and Christian wasn’t a solider, he was an art critic. And for the first time, he realised just how limited his Danish was. He didn’t know half the words he needed; who knew he’d ever need to say such words to such men? He switched to English. To his embarrassment, they knew all the words for sex just as well in English as they did in their own language. They asked if he knew anyone who could verify his story. He didn’t. Ingrid knew Nikolas as Aleksey. It got worse and worse.

  They put him in a holding cell. It was almost morning now, and he’d not slept all night, had drunk nearly a bottle of vodka but not eaten since he’d left Ingrid’s. He threw up the food they gave him. It was with a profound sense of relief, therefore, he heard the bolt in the cell door being slid back and a policeman came in to tell him Nikolas had been found—was waiting for him in the interrogation room. As Ben went into the room, which was much larger than he remembered, he could smell damp saltiness in the walls. Nikolas was waiting for him. He was soaked and cold for he’d been swimming, but his arms were warm when they enfolded Ben in their strong grasp. Ben could smell the sea. He buried his face into the crook of Nikolas’s neck, his favourite place in the world. He was crying, but the arms were so strong they took the pain of the tears, absorbing it—until he woke. He lay on the hard bunk heartsick and desolate. He’d not felt like this since he was eight, searching desperately for someone he wouldn’t find again in this life. The sense of being with Nikolas again stayed with him through the rest of his time in the cell. Nikolas’s arms were more real in his memory than the rough pad of the bunk; the scent of Nikolas’s cool skin stronger than the real stink of the cell.

  Eventually, he was released and warned not to leave Denmark; although, obviously, had he wanted to go, he would’ve. He didn’t want to.

  He went straight to Ingrid’s and told her most of what had happened. He told her Aleksey was travelling under an assumed name and didn’t explain why. He told her the police would contact her, as would a woman called Kate Armstrong from England. She immediately forced him to go to bed for a few hours. He didn’t want to sleep, but he was shaky with exhaustion. He agreed to lie down for short while and in his familiar room with the familiar sound of the sea, he felt calmer. He was incredibly relieved he’d stayed at Ingrid’s when he saw Nikolas coming out of the waves across the little strip of garden that separated him from the beach. Nikolas had been searching for his mother. Ben laughed and told him he’d been searching for him and wasn’t it too cold to be swimming this time of year? Nikolas smelt so good. Ben couldn’t hold him tight enough. Naked skin soon warmed under his roving hands. Their hearts thumped in their chests, strong and reassuring, but when he opened his eyes, it was only thumping on the door of the old house, which was not so wonderful or so reassuring.

  When he went into the sitting room, a man was sitting with Ingrid. She introduced him as Jans LaCour, a lawyer. She told Ben to tell Jans everything and left them to their privacy. Jans spoke better English than Nikolas, so it wasn’t hard to communicate. What was hard was Ben couldn’t tell him the truth. He was still disorientated from the dream. It was still more real to him that Nikolas was found than that he wasn’t, and this confusion coloured his story, affected his coherence in the telling. The truth was hard enough to tell anyway. He’d argued with a man called Aleksey Primakov who’d been called Aleksey Mikkelsen who was living the life of his brother Nikolas under an assumed name, Christian Beck. They’d gotten very drunk and had a stupid argument they didn’t know they were having about a woman who was probably a figment of Nikolas’s warped imagination. He’d accused Nikolas of incest with his twin, Nikolas had attacked him, and then he’d gone. What was the most likely reason for Nik’s disappearance? Ben hadn’t admitted it to himself all night—not during the examinations, not during the extensive and aggressive questioning, not during the long hours he’d spent on his own in the cell—but now he couldn’t help but face it; Nikolas had left of his own accord. Perhaps he’d taken other clothes while Ben was in the shower. Ben didn’t know exactly what Nikolas had with him. Perhaps he’d just dressed and walked away into the snow, fed up at last at having his past eviscerated by someone who’d once respected him as a boss and called him sir.

  “You don’t get to say that. Whatever you are.”

  He’d known in his heart just how fragile Nikolas was, but he’d pushed him to the very edge—and then over it. He hadn’t even taken the time to reassure Nik where he’d been that night. After all Nik had revealed about his brother and his death, he just had to push him even further.

  Aleksey, it appeared, had now fallen off his own balcony—for real. He’d just walked away from it all. From me.

  Jans LaCour didn’t get much from Ben that morning. The story was incoherent and utterly unlikely, fragmented, and on occasion, broken with ranting, swearing and, once, with crying. What he did appear to get from it, however, was that Ben wasn’t involved in his lover’s disappearance. Jans was clearly a man who’d studied human nature, one who knew genuine distress when he saw it. He promised to speak with the police about Ben’s legal requirement to remain and whether he was free to return to the lodge. Ben was left at the table with Radulf staring at him and whining. The dog seemed to sense his best friend was distraught. He returned to his basket and dragged his blanket into the living room to Ben’s feet. The dog couldn’t speak, but his gesture said it all.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Nikolas thought he woke for a while in a boat. He could sense a swaying motion and hear the sound of slapping water, but when he tried to lift his head, he was violently sick and then passed back into the blackness he’d been in before. The next time he came around, he was sick again, but i
t was only feeble retching of vodka that he spat away. He slowly opened his eyes and groaned as pain stabbed through his head. He remembered getting unbelievably drunk, remembered the argument, the fight and turning to go in to make it good with Ben, and then he recalled nothing more except the terrible pain in his head. He put a hand up to feel and realised for the first time his hands were chained behind his back.

  That realisation brought him round a great deal faster.

  When he’d shaken off his initial panicked fury and took the time to study his surroundings, he discovered his first assumption was right, things were bad.

  He was in a hunting shed. It wasn’t very big or robustly made and streaks of light slanted between the wooden slats. The floor was concrete with channels for…run-off—a discovery he decided he’d think about later. He was in the very centre of the floor (where all the drainage channels began) at the end of a thick hoist chain. The chain ran from his wrists up to a wheel mounted on the ceiling and then to a winding handle on the wall. The shed didn’t appear recently used. The drainage channels were dry. There were antlers in a large pile under a small, grimy window and butchery tools on a bench (that also had a deep blood drain). On the other side of the shed was a rack with old ice-skates, hockey sticks, and some fishing equipment.

  He was chained on the end of a hoist for carcasses to lift them for splitting.

  He’d woken in worse places, but not very often.

  That he was naked and it was very, very cold he reckoned were the least of his worries.

  He took his time thinking about all these things but couldn’t put off the moment when he had to admit the inevitable and the obvious. He was chained naked in a hunting shed to the end of a carcass hoist where the drainage channels began.

  Before long, he realised being cold was not actually the least of his worries. It was very possible he’d die of cold before he had to worry more about the hoist (and the drainage).

  He wasn’t fully conscious when he heard the voice. For one moment, he wondered if an angel had come for him, a thought that made him chuckle inside his head—he was too cold and sick to actually make a sound. Something was draped over him and hot liquid pressed to his lips. He drank greedily for the warmth. More weight was added to whatever was over him and then some more hot liquid offered. He tried to focus on the person, but he couldn’t see them for the shaking that had now returned. But there was one type of person Nikolas knew—torturers. He knew how best to appease them, too. “Thank you,” he whispered. Rule 1: Establish good terms with your torturer. Most of his victims had tried it. One or two had actually been successful.

  He was left alone again. He huddled under the blankets and continued to shiver, his arms in agony from being pinned behind him, his wrists hurting from the chains. However, he was now fairly sure he wasn’t going to die just yet. Eventually, yes, he had no doubt, but he was being kept alive for some reason. Perhaps they were waiting for their boss-man to arrive before the fun and games began. Time, however, gave him opportunity. He closed his eyes. Closing them, he was Nikolas Mikkelsen. He reopened them as Aleksey Primakov. Aleksey Primakov didn’t lie huddled on a concrete floor defeated. Aleksey Primakov had survived gulags, starvation, rape, and torture. With supreme effort, he rose to his knees and then to his feet. Standing, the chains loosened. He shook out his arms, and the pain in his shoulders lessened. He could walk a foot or two in a circle as his height had increased the slackness in the chain. He couldn’t reach the butchery tools—yet. He would. It was only a matter of time.

  The chains on his wrists were too tight for him to pull Ben’s neat trick of bringing his arms to the front. He pulled on the chain for a while to see if the wheel would come off, but all he got were sore wrists and shoulders. He was shivering again now, so he did some squat thrusts and jumped on the spot for a while. Then he got back down under the blankets. Rule 2: Those who break first are always the ones who give in to the initial shock and despair. He’d always made good use of Rule 2.

  § § §

  Ben took Radulf back to the lodge with him that afternoon. Crime scene tape surrounded the ground in front of the deck and crossed the door, but he’d been given permission to go in to collect some of his things, if accompanied by one of the uniformed officers. A patrol car, its engine idling in the cold air, was parked at the front of the cabin. As soon as Radulf’s paws hit the ground, he was off. Ben had never seen him move so fast. He dodged the police car and shot straight across the well-trampled snow and down the track toward the lake. Ben glanced at the policeman; he nodded, and they both jogged after the disappearing figure. It was hard going in the snow. Radulf was scrabbling on the stony shore of the lake, sniffing. They went up to him and looked around, but other than snow and ice, they couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Then the young policeman commented, “The ice is broken.”

  Ben nodded. “I fell in yesterday afternoon.”

  The cop shook his head, thinking, staring at the lake. “Further out, look. Like a channel.” He walked away, talking into his radio. Ben tried to think. If Nikolas hadn’t gone voluntarily, which he still wasn’t too sure about, he’d have had to have been subdued, and it would’ve taken a very strong man to carry him any distance—but he could have been dragged. The snow would’ve made it possible, and they were only fifty meters from the cabin. The dock was icy, and it would’ve been possible to bring a boat in level with the deck and just roll a heavy body in without lifting it at all. For the first time since Nikolas had gone, Ben began to believe he’d been taken—that he’d not just walked away. He felt such a weight lift from his shoulders it seemed almost a physical absence—relieving him of the terrible depression and inertia that had slid around him, suffocating him. Nikolas had been taken. He tore past the policeman, shouting he needed to get into the cabin, now. He stuffed a bag with some clothes and things for Radulf and flew back to the car.

  § § §

  Gabby was in the children’s section, reading to a group of toddlers.

  She’d been the first person Ben had thought of when he’d realised he needed local maps. He was eight and he was running to his mother, but who was going to call him on it?

  Amy was at the counter. She gave Ben an odd look and busied herself with stamping books. He realised, with a pang of guilt, that since Nikolas had arrived he’d not been to the library once. He’d dropped his new friends as if they meant nothing. Was this some kind of divine punishment for being so wholly consumed by Nikolas Mikkelsen that he was taken from him? That he was to lose Nikolas for worshiping him above all things?

  Ben felt faint with confusion, guilt and fear.

  He tried to catch Gabby’s eye. She gave him a little wave but finished the book she was reading to her avid audience.

  When the last of her little flock had departed, she gave Ben a quick, embarrassed hug and held both his hands. “How are you, sweetie? It’s just so awful.” She brushed a finger over his split lip.

  “You’ve heard?”

  She smiled faintly. “This is a very small island, Ben. News travels fast. I’m sure they’ll catch him.”

  “Catch him? Catch who?”

  She placed her fingers briefly on his lip again. “The man who attacked you!”

  “I wasn’t attacked! That’s—He’s—I—He’s gone missing. Look, I don’t have time for this. I’m sorry. Have you got some maps? I need the lake area—maps that show where the houses are, cabins, hunting lodges—anything.”

  “He’ll be off the island now, Ben, surely?”

  “Maps?”

  “No, we don’t have anything like that. I’m sorry.”

  He almost stamped his foot in frustration, watching as she brushed a strand of greying hair behind her ear. “Look, can you wait a bit? I think I might know where I can get some maps—a local historian.”

  He grabbed her arms. “Thanks. I’ll come with you.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll meet you. I’ll bring them to you. Do you know the little restaurant by the
harbour?”

  “Alan Lund’s? Of course, but I need them now, Gabby.”

  She walked back to her desk and began to pack her handbag. “I’ll be as quick as I can. What time shall I meet you tonight?”

  “As soon as you can! I’ll wait for you there.”

  § § §

  Nikolas next woke to find he’d been left a plate of food. His captor had come and gone while he’d been fucking sleeping like a fucking baby. He was about to kick the plate away but thought better of it. Rule 3: Never refuse anything you’re offered, you mightn’t be offered it again. Food was fuel and power; a very wise child had told him that once. It had taken him a while to believe it and to act on that belief, putting the horror of the feeding in the gulags behind him. Now, he’d never been so grateful to have some more muscle and fat on him, chained as he was in this freezing shed.

  Unfortunately, he had to kneel and eat like a dog off the plate, but he wasn’t proud. He’d once had to fuck three men at the same time to be allowed to share a piece of dog, and then they’d not given it to him when they were done with him. Eating a ham sandwich from a china plate decorated with little blue flowers chained on his knees in a butcher’s shed was a surreal experience—but surreal was okay.