Dark Winter

by Andy McNab

  ‘Does she? I guess that’s right. It’s probably the key to everything.’

  Eyes still downcast, she shifted slightly on the plastic bench. ‘Nick, you want to know some stuff I told her today?’

  I nodded, but braced myself. Even if it was part of her therapy, I didn’t want to hear her saying she hated me.

  ‘Did you ever mess with drugs when you were young?’

  I shook my head. ‘Only alcohol. I never fancied the other stuff. Why? You been hitting the wacky-baccy?’

  She gave me one of her really exasperated smiles. ‘Pot? Get out of here!’ Her face clouded again. ‘No. Something else. You heard of Vicodin?’

  ‘Painkiller? Matthew Perry?’

  ‘I’m impressed. OK, look. No judgements, OK? No sermons?’

  I shook my head, if only to release the steam building up in it.

  ‘And not a word to Granny and Grandpa. Josh, well, I’ll tell him myself, if the time seems right.’

  ‘Whatever you want.’

  She took a slurp of milkshake with her eyes angled up at the TV, as if gathering her thoughts, then she looked back at me with her piercing blue eyes. ‘OK, here’s the thing. At my high school, it’s easier to get Vicodin than children’s Tylenol. Whoever’s got them shares them around.’

  ‘Where do you get them? Are there dealers at school?’ Adults taking this shit was one thing, dealers getting to kids was another. Those people deserved the heavy end of a sledgehammer. I could feel the skin on my face start to prickle, but I was determined not to let her see it.

  ‘No, my friend Vronnie, remember? Last fall, her boyfriend had his wisdom teeth out. He was prescribed a lot more Vikes than it turned out he needed, so he gave her the leftovers for her migraines. That’s how it starts.’

  She looked around the room. ‘Vicodin numbs you to the pain and soon that numb feeling is something you want again. We all know it’s addictive, because we see it on TV. Melanie Griffith and Matthew Perry had to go into rehab for it. We know Eminem’s got problems. But Vikes do the job, that’s the problem. My friends and I are always stressed about grades and getting into college. We stay up all night doing homework or cramming. Vikes give you a high, release the stress. And before you say anything, Nick, I’m not in with the wrong crowd.’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘It’s the medication of choice for kids whose moms take Valium to relax.’

  She put on a weird face. ‘This is Vronnie’s mom, OK?“Doctor?”’ Her voice rose an octave and her hand flew up to her forehead. ‘“Doctor, I just have to have something for my nerves. My Amex has gone into hyperspace and my ex-husband doesn’t understand me . . .”’ Her voice went deeper. ‘“Sure, Mrs Housewife, I’ve got just the thing. Here’s a hundred good pills.”’ She gave a sigh. ‘See? It’s that easy. Then Vronnie steals the pills from her mom.’

  ‘Hang on, Kelly, you’re going to have to rewind a bit. When did you start taking them?’

  She shrugged. ‘About six months ago. Vronnie and me were talking about stuff, like her parents are divorced and her dad drinks way too much, and it’s been horrible for her. I told her about Mom and Dad and Aida, and then about you and Josh, and she was like, “Whoa!” At least she still lives in the same house and her dad’s still alive. Just.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘What did you say about me?’

  Another shrug. ‘You know, looking after me, sending me to Josh because you were busy. Palming me off because of work. That kinda thing.’

  ‘You know me and Josh thought it was the best thing for you . . .’

  She cocked her head. ‘Stability, right? That really worked. Why was it so long before you came and saw me?’

  ‘We have weekends and stuff. It was just that Josh and I felt you needed to settle down, and me just appearing out of the blue every so often would go and mess that up.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Vronnie’s parents fight all the time, but at least her dad hasn’t totally abandoned her. He turns up every weekend and takes her out. He’s never missed a weekend – and he’s a drunk.’

  She concentrated on dipping a fry into the little ketchup pot. I started to speak to the top of her head as the rest of the quarter-pounder was shoved into the front of it. ‘You know my work keeps me away a lot. I was doing the best I could.’

  She took her lips away from the burger but didn’t look up. ‘But, hey, that’s history now, isn’t it? I’m here, you’re here, and we’re going to go and get things sorted out, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She looked up and wiped the grease from her mouth with the napkin. ‘So your next question is going to be, why did I try them in the first place?’

  I had to agree.

  ‘OK, well, Vronnie and I were discussing drugs that time, I asked her for the list of what she’d done and she gave me the usual – alcohol, pot, ecstasy, all that stuff. And then she said she took Vicodin to stay chilled. One of her friends told her that she could crush it up and snort it. I asked her what it was like, and she said, “Hey, why don’t we try it? Let’s go to the restroom.”

  ‘Vronnie had a film-canister thing and a little flip-out mirror, and she started to do two lines. She crushes the pills at home and keeps them in the film canister.’ Kelly flipped the top of her straw. ‘She even had one of these in her bag. Anyway, she took a line and handed the straw to me.’

  It was clear from the way Kelly was babbling that she liked talking about this. It worried me, but I still wasn’t going to show it. ‘What did it feel like?’

  ‘There was, like, this real stinging in my nose and throat and it really hurt, but only for a few seconds. Then it kicked in and my head felt like it was floating. It felt like a balloon, floating right away from all the bad stuff around me. I was happy and it felt amazing, even in my fingers and toes. Then all the colours got brighter and sounds were, like, deeper. And that’s how we went off to class, chilled.’ She giggled. ‘Hillbilly heroin, that’s what they call it. It’s not like I’m addicted or anything, but that’s what Dr Hughes and I were talking about today.’

  She stood up, felt around in her coat pocket and headed for the toilets, as if to give me time to consider my answer.

  She was away for ten minutes, and by the time she came out I was waiting by the door. We got back into the car and headed for Bromley, with the strong smell of toothpaste and mouthwash in the air.

  13

  London

  Friday 9 May, 08:30 hrs

  Kelly was still in bed when I tiptoed in and dumped my sleeping bag next to the rest of my stuff. I was sleeping on the settee but had to be up before eight. Dr Hughes’s receptionist had called last night to arrange for us to talk this morning. She’d promised to give me some sort of indication of where we went from here, and what conclusions she’d come to after their first meeting.

  Carmen and Jimmy were munching their muesli and toast in the kitchen, so I excused myself and went and sat outside in the front garden with a brew. My cell rang exactly on time. ‘Good morning, Mr Stone.’ Her tone was very no-nonsense: she obviously had a lot more calls to make after this one. ‘I have two questions for you. The burn on Kelly’s right index finger. Can you tell me how she got that?’

  ‘She said it happened at school, something in the science class.’

  ‘Is she eating normally?’

  ‘Like a horse.’ I hesitated. ‘Listen, she’s told me about the Vicodin.’

  ‘She has? That’s good. Were you alarmed?’

  ‘Should I be? I put on my happy face when she was talking about it, but it did worry me. I guess it conjured up images of drug-dealers outside the school gates, but I really don’t know anything about the stuff.’

  ‘Vicodin is an opiate, with the same active ingredient as heroin and codeine, and can lead to a serious dependency. We can go into it in detail when I see you. In fact, if she’s already talking to you about it, perhaps you could come in together?

  ‘Mr Stone, I fear she may also be bulimic. The acid burn on her finger
could very well be from her own gastric juices. I suspect she pushes it down her throat to make herself vomit, and it’s rubbing against her teeth. It’s a common problem with girls of her age, but not a complication we’d welcome in Kelly’s case.’

  I suddenly felt pretty fucking stupid. ‘She’s always brushing her teeth and using mouthwash strips like they were going out of fashion.’

  ‘I see. Has she started her periods yet?’

  ‘Last year.’ Josh had found some tampons in her schoolbag and Kelly had felt very grown-up about the whole thing.

  ‘Do you know if she’s still having them?’

  ‘No, I’m not very . . .’ I wondered where this was going.

  ‘Please don’t worry, I may be asking you more of these sorts of questions as we go along. It’s just that when bulimia becomes extreme, women stop menstruating.’

  ‘You say it’s quite common?’ I was starting to feel like a complete idiot. This girl didn’t need me and the God Squad on her team, she needed her mum.

  ‘As many as one in five girls of her age. It starts as a way to control weight and then it develops a life of its own. Again, it’s an addiction. Bingeing and purging are the addictive behaviour. Yes, of her own admission she has the drug dependency, but she hasn’t admitted to the bulimia. I just wanted you to know that because we might have a long and rather rocky road ahead.’

  As I was listening to this, I got the signal for an incoming call. I ignored it and raised my voice as it kept bleeping. ‘It must be a good thing that she’s opening up to me, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But we can’t discount the possibility she’s doing it because she’s angry with you. She might want to shock and punish you.’

  ‘Then why would she hide it? Wouldn’t she go to town and hit me with bulimia as well?’

  ‘Possibly. I just wanted to warn you, though, that it could be a long time before there is light at the end of this particular tunnel. She’ll need all the support you can possibly give her.’

  ‘Where do we go from here?’

  ‘There are a number of concerns. There’s the dependency, and in some ways that’s the most urgent. It’s more immediately life-threatening.’

  ‘Life-threatening?’ My heart sank. What the fuck was going on here?

  ‘That’s the worst-case scenario, but it cannot be discounted. Opioid painkillers are dangerous because they are so seductive. They work by throwing up roadblocks all along the pain pathway from the nerve endings in the skin through the spinal cord to the brain, where they open the floodgates for the chemical dopamine, which triggers sensations of well-being.’

  ‘Chilled?’

  ‘Exactly. The dopamine effectively rewires the brain, so it becomes accustomed to those benign feelings. When an addicted person stops taking the drug, the body craves the dopamine again.

  ‘If Kelly takes Vicodin over a long period of time, she will become mentally and physically dependent on it, and may find the drug no longer works at the prescribed dosage. At that point a dependent user will increase dosage until the effect is felt once more. At the moment Kelly’s mostly just being bad-tempered and withdrawn, with noticeable mood swings. If the dependency is allowed to grow, she can expect blurred vision, hallucinations and severe confusion. Even if she does not decide to experiment with other drugs to achieve the required effect, this can lead to overdose, liver failure, convulsions, coma and, in some cases, death.’

  I gripped the phone hard. ‘These dealers, selling that shit to kids, they hang them in Malaysia. I’m starting to understand why.’

  ‘I’m not sure how much that would help us in Kelly’s current situation. Addiction and bulimia might only be part of a bigger picture, and that’s why I think it would be helpful if you and I were to meet again. I’ve been talking with my American colleagues who deal specifically with Vicodin, since my experience over here is more with prescription and over-the-counter painkillers. They say there’s a number of ways in which her therapy could continue once she has returned home. First of all we need to establish that she is bulimic, and that will affect where I think we should send her. But nothing is going to happen unless she wants it to happen. That is where you come in.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, should I say something?’

  ‘No. We can talk further once I’ve confirmed the diagnosis. The greatest gift you can give her now is simply support.’

  ‘Be her mum?’

  ‘Exactly. I will see you both tomorrow.’

  I hit the button on my mobile to see who’d been calling, hating tri-band cells more and more by the second. It was a blocked number, and just as I was pondering the possibilities it rang again. I stuck the phone to my ear, to be told I had one message, and then treated to the unmistakable public-school-headmaster tones of the Yes Man. ‘Tuesday, 08:57. Call me back as soon as you get this message, same number you used last month.’

  Fuck, no!

  I turned off the phone. He could only know I was in-country from George – and by tracking the phone signal he would know exactly where I was to the nearest ten metres. It meant trouble, and I had plenty of that already. I hit the keys.

  He answered on the second ring. ‘What?’ The Yes Man had never been what you’d call a people person.

  ‘It’s Nick.’

  ‘Listen in, there’s a fast ball. Be here at one p.m. It shouldn’t take you long from Bromley.’

  ‘You listen.’ I hated the way he talked as if he still owned me. ‘I don’t work for you any more. I don’t even live here.’

  He sighed, just like my school teachers had used to. ‘The child’s grandparents can take care of the to-ing and fro-ing to Chelsea.’ The bastard wasn’t even listening. ‘You’ve been seconded again. If you want to waste your time, contact your American employers. They will confirm. I don’t care if you do or you don’t, just get here on time. Expect to be away for a number of weeks.’

  The line went dead and for several moments I just stared at the phone in my hand. No way. No way could I be away for weeks.

  I walked down the drive and began to wander along the pavement, gathering my thoughts. Not that that took very long. Within seconds I was tapping in the numbers for George’s beeper. Fuck the time difference, he was paid 24/7.

  I listened to the prompts and was pressing home my number when I heard a vehicle draw up just behind me. A Jock voice shouted, ‘All right, boy?’

  I turned and saw two smiling, hard-lived-in faces that I’d hoped never to see again. Fuck knows what they were called. They were Trainers and Sundance to me, the Yes Man’s regulators, the ones who would have killed Kelly if I hadn’t done the job for him in Panama.

  My cell rang and I saw Trainers pull up the handbrake, keeping them a few metres back.

  ‘It’s me. You paged.’

  I stood and stared at the Volvo as Sundance got on to his cell as well, probably to the Yes Man.

  ‘I’ve just got the call. Why me? You know why I’m here.’

  ‘Yes. But I’m not a social worker, son.’ He didn’t sound as if I’d just woken him up.

  ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘I’ll call Osama, have him put things on hold, shall I? No, son, duty calls.’

  ‘There must be somebody else.’

  ‘I want my man on it, and today that’s you because you’re there.’

  ‘But I’ve got a duty here, I need to be with her . . .’ I was suddenly aware how pathetic I must be sounding.

  ‘What do you imagine I do all day? I’m paid to think, that’s what I do. I’ve thought – and no, there isn’t anyone. It’s an unsparing world, son. You’re paid to do, so do.’

  ‘I understand that but—’

  ‘You don’t understand, and there are no buts. Get to work or she mightn’t ever get to appreciate that fancy therapy.’

  I got a sudden dull pain in the centre of my chest as Sundance carried on gobbing into his cell. I’d had George down as a better man than tha
t. ‘Fuck you! That stunt’s been pulled before with these two fuckers he’s sent for me. Why bring a child into this shit again? Fucking arseholes.’

  George remained calm as Sundance closed down his cell and smiled at Trainers. ‘You misunderstand, son. We’re not the threat here.’ There was a few seconds’ pause. I kept my mouth shut. ‘Don’t call me any more. Report to London until I say otherwise, you hear me?’

  I closed down and walked over to the Volvo. The headful of dirty blond hair that had reminded me of a young Robert Redford the first time I saw it had gone. Sundance poked his head out of the passenger window, looking like he was just growing out of a Number One.

  ‘I said, all right, boy?’ He had the kind of thick Glasgow accent that you could only get from forty-odd years of chewing gravel. ‘In a bit of a huff there, ain’t ya? That girl of yours must be getting a bit older now. You know, getting a bit of a handful.’ He held his hands up as if weighing a pair of breasts, and gave me the kind of leer that made me want to smash his face in.

  Trainers liked that and joined in the laughter as he pulled out a packet of Drum and some Rizlas. He was about the same age and had the dark brown version of Sundance’s haircut. They’d obviously kept up hitting the weights since their days in the H Blocks as prisoners of the UK’s anti-terrorism laws, but still looked bulked-up rather than well honed. With their broken noses and big barrel chests they wouldn’t have looked out of place in ill-fitting dinner jackets and Doc Martens outside a nightclub.

  I could see Trainers’s forearms rippling below his short-sleeved shirt as he started to roll up. Last time I saw him his Red Hand of Ulster tattoo had just been lasered off, and all traces had now disappeared.

  I knew this wasn’t the time to do anything but breathe deeply. Trainers handed the first roll-up to Sundance, and his one hundred per cent Belfast boomed through the passenger window: ‘The boss said to make sure you come to the meeting. Don’t want you wimping out on us now, do we, big man?’

  I leant down to get a better view of him as he got to grips with the second roll-up, and had a chance to admire his trademark shop-soiled Nikes. Sundance flicked unsuccessfully at a disposable with hands the size of shovels. ‘What if I decide not to?’