Big Sky

by Kate Atkinson

  Candace herself was silent, and when, against orders, Harry squinted through his eyelids he could see that she had fallen asleep, thank goodness. She looked overheated, her hair clinging damply to her forehead. A few stray sequins still glinted on her cheeks. Reassured, he tried very hard to obey and keep his eyes tightly shut, which was surprisingly difficult, as all his instincts were to do the opposite. He crept his hand up blindly and felt for his sister’s own warm and sticky one.

  He might not be looking, but he couldn’t help hearing as the men conversed in gruff, dissatisfied voices. It appeared that he was wrong. Not a carjacking but a genuine kidnapping, with Candace as the target. His father had money and he liked people to know it, so perhaps it made more sense to hold his daughter to ransom rather than simply stealing his car. (“My car,” he could hear Crystal’s voice in his head correcting him.) Harry, on the other hand, also Tommy’s child, didn’t seem to count. (“The lad,” the men called him—they didn’t even seem to know his name.) He was just “collateral damage.” Did that mean he was disposable? Would they stop soon and order him out of the car and then make him stand on the edge of a ditch and shoot him? (He had recently seen a documentary about the SS. “Leave history behind where it belongs,” Crystal had said when she saw what he was watching.)

  They came to a stop after about half an hour and one of the men said, “You can open your eyes now. Get the kid out for us.” Harry’s legs wobbled a bit when he climbed out of the car, but no one made a move to shoot him. He unstrapped Candace, who protested in her sleep but still didn’t wake up. He couldn’t imagine what she would make of this new situation, although she had a fairly phlegmatic personality. (“That sounds like a disease, Harry,” Crystal said.)

  It was the first time Harry had had a chance to get a proper look at the men. He had expected a rough-looking pair of dopey criminals, and he realized he had probably watched 101 Dalmatians with Candace too many times as these men looked tough and professional, almost in a Special Forces way, like the ex-soldiers in Who Dares Wins—although Harry couldn’t begin to imagine why the SAS would want to kidnap Candace.

  They were in a field. Surrounded by fields. He couldn’t see the sea, but there was the kind of empty horizon that indicated it might be somewhere close by. The field had been used as a trailer park at some point—there were a couple of dilapidated trailers with rusty weeds and thistles growing up around their wheels, and one that was off its wheels altogether. A newer, smarter one, a mobile home, was parked over in a corner near the gate.

  “Don’t even think about running,” one of the men snapped at him, and the other one, the one who had Harry’s phone, fished it out from his pocket and took a photo of him and Candace, although—again—he was only really interested in Candace. “Hold her a bit higher. Maybe you could pinch her awake.” Harry held her higher and pretended to pinch her. “It’s no good. She’s out like a light,” he said. “An earthquake wouldn’t wake her once she’s gone like this.”

  Once they had the photo they texted it to someone, conferring on the wording to accompany the photo. Crystal would be able to track his location, he thought, he had put a GPS app on her phone. He felt buoyed up by this thought, but then he heard one of them mutter, “Need to get rid of this fucking phone before they track it.”

  Harry decided to give the two men nicknames so that he could remember them. He imagined himself later, sitting in the back of a police car with a kindly policewoman beside him asking about his ordeal and him saying, “Well, the one I called Pinky had a scar on his chin, and Perky had a tattoo on his forearm—I think it was of a lion,” and the kindly policewoman saying, “Well done, Harry. I’m sure this information will help us catch these dastardly villains very quickly.” Of course, Harry knew the kindly policewoman wouldn’t use the phrase “dastardly villains”—neither would he, for that matter—but he liked the sound of it and she was imaginary, after all. (“The thing about the imagination, Harry,” Miss Dangerfield had told him, “is that it knows no bounds.”)

  Pinky and Perky were puppets from long ago. Harry had seen them on YouTube—they were unbelievably awful. He wouldn’t have been surprised to have found them on the bill at the Palace. He had only heard about them because Barclay had referred to a couple of the stagehands (in a derogatory way, he had no other) as “Pinky and Perky.”

  Harry thought that robbing the kidnappers of their anonymity might somehow make them less threatening, but in fact it made them seem even more terrifying. He tried to focus on the idea of the kindly policewoman, but he kept seeing her standing over the ditch that his lifeless body had been rolled into.

  He wondered what Pinky had texted and who he had sent it to. (Or was it “whom”? Miss Dangerfield was very strict about grammar.) His dad, he supposed, a threatening ransom demand. Pay up or we kill the kid. Harry shuddered. There were now two bodies in his imaginary ditch.

  Pinky seemed to be having trouble sending the text—he was walking around the field holding the phone above his head as if he was trying to catch a butterfly.

  “There’s no fucking signal,” he concluded finally.

  “Send it later,” Pinky said.

  Pinkie was also the name of the character (“protagonist,” he heard Miss Dangerfield say in his head) in Brighton Rock. Harry was supposed to be reading it for next term. Perhaps he never would now. Whole fleets of world literature would sail unread over his head as he lay bleeding out in that ditch, staring at the sky.

  “You!” Perky commanded.

  “Yes?” (He almost said “sir.”)

  “Bring the kid over here.”

  “My name’s Harry,” Harry said. He had read somewhere that you were supposed to humanize yourself to kidnappers.

  “I know what your fucking name is. Bring the kid over here. And don’t try any funny business or you’ll be sorry.”

  It was evening, a soft glow of twilight was coming through the trailer’s windows. They were imprisoned in one of the wrecks. Candace had woken up not long after they were locked in and had since gone through more than half of her Seven Dwarfs repertoire—grumpy, happy, dopey, and sleepy. Hungry, too, but thankfully the kidnappers had left him with a plastic Co-op bag containing a packet of white bread sandwiches and a bottle of Irn-Bru. Harry supposed that Crystal would have made allowances given the circumstances.

  Harry passed the time (and it passed very, very slowly) by playing several silly games with Candace, telling her endless jokes that she didn’t understand but made an effort to laugh at. (“What’s a pirate’s favorite cheese? Chedd-aargh.”) Not to mention reciting every tale in the fairy canon and singing “Let It Go” on a loop. Now, thankfully, she was back to sleepy again. He used the opportunity to pick some of the dancers’ sequins off her face. Once she’d dozed off, Harry was left with nothing to do but ponder the situation he found himself in.

  There were things to be thankful for, he told himself. They weren’t tied up, they weren’t gagged, and if they were going to be killed they wouldn’t have been left with food, surely? Nonetheless, they were definitely imprisoned. Harry had tried very hard to break out of the trailer. He had tried smashing the thick windows with an old metal stool that was lying around. He had tried prizing the windows out of their frames with a blunt knife he had found in a drawer. He had tried kicking down the door. He had tried throwing his shoulder against it. Nothing had worked. It might look like an antique but the trailer was made of sturdy stuff.

  “It’s a game,” he’d tried to reassure Candace, who didn’t look in the least reassured. In fact, she looked terrified at this new violent aspect of his behavior.

  Harry made a silent vow that if they got out of here—when they got out of here—he would stop being so puny and ineffective. He would lift weights and get his dad to give him boxing lessons and he wouldn’t be made to feel frightened and helpless ever again.

  There was a moment of sheer joy when he remembered that Barclay Jack’s phone was still in his pocket, but the butterfly si
gnal remained elusive. He tried texting too, but it couldn’t be sent. The disappointment left him wanting to weep with frustration.

  Harry was still hungry, but he was saving the last sandwich in the bag for when Candace woke, so he thought that perhaps the best thing he could do would just be to try to sleep. He curled himself around his sister on the one thin nasty mattress that was in the trailer. She was giving off so much heat that it was like lying next to a radiator. He tried to take his mind off the situation they were in with a reverie of comforting thoughts—buying a packet of tea in Miss Matty’s Cranford World front parlor (Dear Harry, do come in) or opening his A-level results (All A stars, Harry! Congratulations). He was in the middle of fantasizing about what it would be like to be the set designer for a National Theatre production of The Three Sisters (one of his favorite plays so far) when he heard the unmistakable sound of a car engine. He leapt up and looked out the grimy back window. A car drew up near the gate and a figure climbed out. He recognized the Scottish detective from earlier at the Palace. A kindly policewoman! She was joined by the second detective and the two of them walked over to the mobile home near the gate and knocked on its door.

  Harry banged on the window. He jumped up and down and shouted and yelled and banged some more. The field was big and the trailer they were in was a long way away from the policewomen, but nonetheless, surely they could hear him? Candace woke up and started crying, which was good, Harry thought—more noise to attract the detectives’ attention. But it was as if the trailer had been soundproofed.

  The detectives knocked again on the door of the mobile home and peered through the windows as if they were looking for someone or something. He saw one of them shrug. No, please, no, he thought, don’t walk away! He was screaming frantically at them, pummeling the window with his fists, but they were blind and deaf to him. For a glorious moment he thought they had heard him because the Scottish one looked around and seemed to be listening, but then they both seemed to notice something that was out of his line of sight and they disappeared.

  They returned a minute later with a girl. They were supporting her, one on either side of her, as if she couldn’t walk on her own. They helped her into their car and one of them, the Scottish one, got in the back with her and the other one got in the driving seat and they drove away. Harry dropped to the floor of the trailer and burst into tears. He hadn’t known it was possible to feel so wretched. To have hope and then to have it snatched away, surely that was the cruelest thing?

  Candace put her arms around his neck and said, “S’all right, Harry. Don’t cry,” even though her eyes were big and wet with her own tears. They sat like that for a while, just hugging each other, and then Harry sniffed and stood up and wiped his nose on his sleeve and said, “Eat that sandwich, Candace, you’re going to need all your strength. We’re getting out of here,” and when she’d obediently munched her way through it he said, “Cover your ears,” and he picked up the little stool and hurled it at the window, again and again. All that banging on it earlier in an effort to get the detectives’ attention must have loosened it, because the thick Perspex window fell out in one complete piece and Candace shouted, “Yay, Harry!” and they both did a little jig of triumph.

  “We’ve got to hurry,” Harry said and lowered Candace out the window, holding her by her hands until she was almost on the ground before he dropped her. She landed softly on a bed of nettles and hadn’t even started crying by the time Harry scrambled out and picked her up.

  He ran. A difficult thing to do with a three-year-old child in your arms, especially a nettle-stung one, but sometimes it really was a matter of life and death.

  It had grown almost dark by now. They were sitting by the side of a small road that seemed to have no traffic on it, but Harry didn’t think he could go any further. He had a signal now and he kept trying Crystal’s phone, but she didn’t answer. It had taken him forever to remember her number and he thought that, after all, he must have gotten it wrong. From now on, he thought, he would memorize all the important numbers in his contacts rather than relying on his phone to do it for him. He couldn’t remember his dad’s number at all. There was only one other number that Harry knew by heart, so he phoned the next best thing to a parent—Bunny.

  As soon as he’d dialed, a car appeared, so Harry cut off the call and jumped around at the side of the road, waving his arms around. He was quite prepared to throw himself in the path of a moving vehicle if that was what it took to get home, but he didn’t need to as the car glided slowly to a halt a few feet ahead of them. The rear passenger door was opened by an invisible hand and Harry picked Candace up and ran toward it.

  “Thank you for stopping,” Harry said when they had climbed into the car. “Thank you so much.”

  “No problem,” the driver said and the silver BMW drove off into the dark of the countryside.

  The Final Curtain

  Fee was taking a shortcut. It was a dark alley and the one streetlight was out, but it was familiar territory, she sometimes brought a punter down here for a quickie up against the wall. It stank—there were a couple of big rubbish bins because a fish-and-chip restaurant backed onto the alley. She wasn’t working, she was on the way to her dealer, ready to barter with Tina’s gold watch, which was hanging loosely on her bony wrist, the safest place for it right now. She would get a fraction of what it was worth, but it would still be more than she could make in a week on the street.

  She heard someone entering the alley behind her and picked up the pace. She had a bad feeling, hairs on the back of her neck and so on. She had learned the hard way to trust her gut instinct. There was a light at the end of the alley and she concentrated on that, it was only twenty or thirty steps away. Her breath was tight in her chest. The spiky heels of her boots slipped on the greasy cobbles. She didn’t look behind her but she could hear whoever it was getting closer and she tried to run, but her heel caught on the cobbles and she went flying. She was going to die in this dirty place, she thought, just another piece of garbage for someone to pick up in the morning.

  “Hello, Felicity,” a voice said. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  She wet herself in terror.

  The gates of HMP Wakefield opened slowly and an ambulance crawled out. When it hit the main road it started to accelerate and the sirens and lights were switched on, although the occupant, despite the vigorous CPR that was still being applied, was already dead.

  The paramedic paused, ready to give up, but the prison nurse who had accompanied the patient in the back took over, pumping hard on Prisoner JS 5896’s scrawny chest. The warden was keen that everything was done by the book, didn’t want anyone accusing them of letting the guy go prematurely. A lot of people would be pleased to see him dead.

  The nurse, the burly sort, had found the prisoner when he did his nighttime rounds. Michael Carmody was slumped on the floor by the side of his bed, his drip pulled out and oxygen mask yanked off. He looked as if he was trying to get away from something. Death, probably, the nurse concluded. He’d popped into the break room for an illicit fag, but he was pretty sure no one had come into the ward while he wasn’t there. He took his vitals, but it was obvious that Carmody was in the process of checking out of the Monster Mansion. There’d have to be an autopsy, of course, but Michael Carmody’s death was hardly a surprise.

  The nurse paused and the paramedic said, “He’s gone. I’m calling it, okay? Time of death eleven twenty-three. Agreed?”

  “Agreed. He was a bastard,” the nurse said. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  “Yeah, a lot of people would agree with that.”

  Barclay Jack fumbled on his dressing table for the tumbler of gin that he was sure had been there a moment ago, but he couldn’t find it. It seemed very dark in his dressing room. He shouted for Harry but there was no reply. Where was the idiot boy?

  He stumbled out of the dressing room—he really didn’t feel well. Another funny turn. Backstage it was even darker, just a d
im light coming from above somewhere. Where was everyone? Had they all gone home and left him here alone?

  He found himself unexpectedly standing in the wings. How had he gotten here? Had he had a bit of a blackout? “You’ve probably had a TIA,” he was told last year when he was admitted to the Royal Bournemouth after he collapsed at the checkout in Asda. TIA sounded like an airline, but apparently it meant he’d had a small stroke. Stroke of bad luck. They did a lot of tests, but he didn’t tell anyone. Who was there to tell, anyway? His daughter hadn’t spoken to him in years, he wasn’t even sure where she lived now.

  They must have accidentally locked him in the theater. That bloody ASM again, he was supposed to check the place was empty. He searched in his pocket for his phone and remembered he’d lost it.

  Then suddenly he was on the stage—another little jump in time, apparently. The curtains were closed. He could sense he was not alone, after all—he could hear the hiss and murmur of expectation out in the auditorium. The audience was waiting. The curtains jerked slowly open and after a second of blackness someone turned his spotlight on. He peered into the dark auditorium, shading his eyes like a man in a crow’s nest looking for land. Where was everyone?