Land of the Living (28 page)

He smiled. ‘You’re mad, you are.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I’m here. I’m in your hands. There’s just one thing.’ Another step forward. We were quite close now.

‘What’s that?’

‘All that time, when we were together, you were just this voice in the dark, looking after me, feeding me. I used to think about you all the time, wonder what you were like. Will you let me kiss you just once?’ I moved my face closer to his. He smelt of something bad. Sweet and chemical. ‘Just once. It won’t matter.’ Close up, it was such an ordinary face. Nothing frightening about it. Nothing special. ‘Look at me,’ I said, holding my hands out, open and empty. ‘I’m just here, in front of you. Just one touch.’ As I leant over I thought of him not as a man but as a sheep’s head. That was important. I imagined a dead sheep’s head that had been cut away from the body. ‘Just one kiss. We’re both lonely. So lonely. Just one.’ I softly touched his lips with mine. Nearly now. Nearly. Slowly. ‘I’ve waited for that.’ Another kiss. I brought my hands up to his face, gently touching the side of his face with my palms. Wait. Wait. A dead sheep’s head. Tongue on the rotten tooth. My face moved back. I looked at him wistfully and then I pushed my thumbs into his eyes. They were only the eyes in the skull of a dead sheep. A dead sheep who had kept me in the dark and tortured me. I knew that the nails on my thumbs were long. I gripped on the side of his head with my other fingers like claws and the thumbnails gouged into his eyes and I saw with interest that my thumbs, as they pushed into his head and scraped in the sockets, were now streaked with liquid, a watery liquid streaked with yellow, like pus.

I thought he would grab me. I thought he would kill me. Tear me into pieces. He didn’t even touch me. I was able to step back and pull my sludgy thumbs out. A strange scream came from deep inside him, a howl, and his hands went up to his face, and his body folded up and he lay wriggling on the floor, spluttering and whimpering.

I took a step back, out of the reach of this grub-like creature, squirming and squeaking on the floor. I took a tissue from my pocket and wiped my thumbs. I took some deep breaths, filling my lungs. I felt like a drowning swimmer who had reached the surface and was breathing in the beautiful clean life-giving air.

Twenty-nine

There was the moon still, and there were the stars. Frost on the surface of everything, a glitter in the semi-darkness. A world of ice and snow and stillness. The cold cut into my face. I breathed in, quite steadily, and felt clean air in my mouth, and streaming down my throat. I breathed out again and watched how my breath hung in the air.

‘Oh-oh-ohhh, nu-nu.’

Sarah made a sound like an animal, a piteous, high-pitched tangle of syllables. I couldn’t make out the words. I put my arm more firmly around her shoulders to hold her up and she hung off me, whimpering. Her body felt tiny against me and I wondered how old she was. She looked like a snotty, unwashed little kid. She crumpled and put her head on my chest and I could smell her greasy hair and her sour sweat.

I put my hand in the pocket of my jacket and pulled out Ben’s mobile. There was just enough power now. I dialled 999. ‘What service, please?’ a woman’s voice demanded. I was stumped for a moment. All of them really, except the fire brigade. I said there were serious injuries and a serious crime. We would need two ambulances, and also the police.

I put the phone back and looked at Sarah; her small, slightly flat face was a ghastly white, with spots all over her forehead and a swollen mouth. Her lips were pulled back in a terrified, silent snarl. She looked like a trapped animal. I could make out a bruise on her neck where the wire had been. Her whole body was shaking. She was only wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and some cotton trousers, thick socks but no shoes.

‘Here,’ I said, and took off my quilted jacket and put it round her. I pulled the collar up high so her face was protected from the air. ‘You’re wearing my shirt,’ I said and put my arm back round her.

A sound came from her shivering body. I couldn’t make out what she was saying.

‘They’ll be here soon,’ I said. ‘You’re safe now.’

‘Sorrysorrysorrysorry.’

‘Oh, that.’

‘It wasn’t me. Not me. Mad. I thought I was going to die.’ She started to weep. ‘I knew I was about to die. I was mad.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve been mad like that too. But I’m not any more.’

The blue lights and sirens came over the hill. Two ambulances and two police cars. Doors swung open. People jumped out and hurried towards us. There were faces looking down at us, hands separating us. Stretchers were laid on the ground. I sent a couple of people inside. I could hear Sarah beside me, sobbing and sobbing, till her sobs turned into a raw, retching sound. I could hear voices being soothing. The word ‘Mummy’ cut through the babble. ‘Where’s Mummy?’

A blanket was draped over my shoulder.

‘I am perfectly all right,’ I said.

‘Lie down here now.’

‘I can walk.’

There were shouts from inside. One of the men in green overalls ran out and whispered to a young policeman.

‘Jesus Christ,’ the policeman said, and looked at me hard.

‘He’s a killer,’ I said.

‘A killer?’

‘But it’s quite safe. He can’t see anything. He’s not dangerous any more.’

‘Let’s get you into the ambulance, my dear.’ The voice soothed me as if I was hysterical with shock.

‘You should call Detective Inspector Jack Cross,’ I continued. ‘My name is Abigail Devereaux. Abbie. I put out his eyes. He’ll never look at me again.’

They drove Sarah away first. I clambered into the second ambulance with the blanket still around me. Two people climbed in with me, a paramedic and a female police officer. Somewhere behind me I was aware of a growing clamour, voices shouting urgently, the wail of a third ambulance coming down the road. But I didn’t need to bother with that any more. I sat back and closed my eyes, not because I was tired — I wasn’t, I felt quite clear-headed, as if I’d slept for a long time — but to block out the lights and the clutter around me and to stop all the questions.

Oh, I was so clean and so warm. I had shampooed hair and scrubbed skin, and my fingernails and toenails were clipped to the quick. I’d brushed my teeth three times, then gargled with some green concoction that made my breath feel minty right down to my lungs, I sat up in bed, wearing an absurd pink nightie and covered in stiff, hygienic sheets and layers of thin, scratchy blankets, and drank tea and ate toast. Three cups of scalding hot sugared tea and a piece of limp white buttered toast. Or margarine, probably. They don’t have butter in hospital. There were daffodils in a plastic jug on my locker.

Different hospital, different room, different view, different nurses bustling around with thermometers and bedpans and trolleys, different doctors with their clip charts and their tired faces, different policemen staring at me nervously then looking away. Same old Jack Cross, though, hunched in the chair like an invalid himself, with his hand around his cheek as if he had a toothache, and staring at me as if I frightened him.

‘Hello, Jack,’ I said.

‘Abbie…’ he started, and then stopped, working his hand round so his fingers covered his mouth. I waited and eventually he tried again. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘The doctors said…’

‘I’m all right. They just want to keep me under observation for a couple of days.’

‘I’m not surprised, I don’t know where to begin. I…’ He shifted in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Then he sat up straighter and took a deep breath. He looked me straight in the eyes. ‘We were wrong. There’s no excuse.’ I could see him thinking about putting forward all the reasons and excuses, then swallowing them back. Good. ‘I can’t believe you did that.’ He slumped into the chair again and put his face back into his hand. ‘What a fucking balls-up from start to finish. You can take us all to the cleaners, you know.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘He’s in the ITU.’

‘Oh.’

‘Do you know what you did to him?’

‘Yes.’

‘His eyes.’ He said this in a whisper. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me with admiration or horror and disgust. ‘You pushed them half-way into his brain. I mean, fuck.’

‘With my thumbs,’ I said.

‘But, Jesus, Abbie, you must be…’

‘I didn’t have anything else.’

‘We’ll need to take a formal statement later.’

‘Of course. Is Sarah all right?’

‘Sarah Maginnis is shocked, malnourished. The way you were. She’ll be all right. Do you want to see her?’

I thought about that for a minute. ‘No.’

‘She’s very sorry, Abbie.’

‘You know?’

‘She can’t stop talking about it.’

I shrugged.

‘Maybe I was lucky,’ I said. ‘He was going to kill her. He’d taken his scarf off. I don’t know what I would have done. I don’t know if I would have just stood there and watched him do it. Nobody would have blamed me, would they? Poor, traumatized Abbie.’

‘I don’t think you’d have just stood there.’

‘Is there any news about Jo? Has he said anything?’

‘I don’t think he’ll be talking for a bit. We’re beginning our investigation into Miss Hooper’s disappearance.’

‘You’re too late,’ I said.

He lifted his hands but then let them fall back on to his lap. We sat in silence for a few minutes. A nurse came in and said someone had left me flowers at Reception. She laid a damp bunch of anemones on my locker. I picked them up and sniffed them. They smelt of freshness; there were droplets of water on their bright petals. I laid them back on the locker. Cross’s face was grey with fatigue.

‘Tell me what you know about him,’ I said.

‘We’ve only just begun. His name is George Ronald Sheppy. Fifty-one years old. His only conviction was for animal cruelty, years ago. Slap-on-the-wrist job. We don’t know much more yet, we’ve talked to a few neighbours. He was an odd-job man — a bit of this and a bit of that. Removals, fairground mechanic, lorry driver. Doesn’t seem much, really.’

‘What about the other women?’

‘The other names,’ said Cross. ‘We’ll keep on looking, of course, especially now — try to match missing people with areas he worked. Maybe when we know more…’ He gave a helpless shrug. ‘I’m just saying, don’t expect too much.’

So the names were still only syllables spoken to me in the darkness.

‘Are you seeing someone?’ he asked.

‘Several doctors, but I’m fine.’

‘No — I meant someone to help you. Who you can talk to. After what you’ve been through.’

‘I don’t need help.’

‘Abbie, I’ve been in there, I’ve seen what’s left of him.’

‘Do you expect me to be traumatized?’

‘Well…’

‘I put his eyes out.’ I held up both hands and stared at my fingers. ‘I put my thumbs against his eyeballs and I gouged his eyes out. That’s not a trauma, Jack. The trauma was being grabbed. The trauma was being held in a cellar with a hood over my head and a gag in my mouth and eyes watching me in the darkness, hands touching me in the darkness. That was trauma. Knowing I was going to die and no one could help me. That was trauma. Escaping and finding out no one believed me. That was trauma. Being in danger all over again, when I should have been safe. That was trauma. This was not. This was me surviving. This was me staying alive. No, I don’t think I need help any more. Thank you.’

He leant back as I was talking, as if I was pummelling him. When I’d finished speaking, he nodded and left.

Ben came at lunchtime — his lunchtime, that is. Hospital lunch is at about half past eleven. Supper is at five. Then the evening stretches on and on until it becomes night, and then the night stretches on and on until it edges into morning again. He leant over me to kiss me awkwardly on the cheek with cold lips. He was wearing his lovely floppy overcoat. He held out a box of chocolates and I took it and put it on the pillow. He sat down and we looked at each other.

‘I brought this as well,’ he said, and pulled a smooth wooden oval out of his pocket. It was honey-coloured, veined with darker contours. ‘Hornbeam,’ he said. ‘A special wood. I made it for you last night in the workshop, when I was waiting for you and hoping you’d come back.’

I closed my fist around it. ‘It’s beautiful. Thank you very much.’

‘Do you want to talk about it yet?’

‘Not really.’

‘Have you remembered anything?’

‘No.’

There was a silence between us.

‘I’m sorry about Jo,’ I added. ‘She’s dead.’

‘You don’t know that. Not for sure.’

‘She’s dead, Ben.’

He stood up and went and looked out of the small closed window at the blue sky above the rooftops. He stayed like that for several minutes. I think perhaps he was crying.

‘Abbie,’ he said, at last, turning back to the bed, ‘I was out of my mind with worry. I wanted to help you. I didn’t want you to be on your own like that. Whatever you felt about me and Jo, you shouldn’t have run off, as if you thought I was the murderer or something. I know you were upset with me. I understand that. But you could have died. And it wasn’t right, Abbie,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t well done.’

‘Ben.’

‘All right, all right… Look, I’m sorry about me and Jo — at least, I’m sorry you found out like that. I’m not saying I’m sorry we had an affair. That’s something different and, if you want, one day I can tell you about it. And I’m not even saying I was completely wrong not to tell you. We started right in the deep end, us two. We didn’t have the proper order to our relationship, did we? In the normal run of things, we would have got to know each other, and gradually given each other our confessions. We hardly knew each other and suddenly there you were living in my house and scared for your life, and everything was all so momentous and so out in the open. I didn’t want to start our relationship by laying all my cards on the table, all at once. I was scared of losing you again.’

‘So instead you started our relationship off with a lie,’ I said.

‘It wasn’t a lie.’

‘Not technically. Morally.’

‘I’m sorry that I lied,’ he said. He sat down beside me again and I lifted my hand to stroke his nice soft hair.

‘And I’m sorry that I ran off like that,’ I answered.

‘Have a chocolate.’

‘No, thanks.’

I took one. Caramel.

‘There are words now that hold different meanings for me than they do for, say, you,’ I said. ‘Darkness. Silence. Winter.’ I took another chocolate. ‘Memory,’ I added, and put the chocolate into my mouth.

Ben picked up my hand, the one that wasn’t wrapped round his wooden egg. He held it against his face. ‘I do love you,’ he said.

‘I think I was mad for a bit. That’s all over.’

‘You look different,’ he said. ‘Beautiful.’

‘I feel different.’

‘What are you going to do next?’

‘Earn some money. Grow my hair. Go to Venice.’

‘Do you want to come back?’

‘Ben…’

‘I’d like you to.’

‘No. I mean, no, you probably wouldn’t like me to although it’s very nice of you to ask. And, no, I won’t.’

‘I see.’ He put my hand on the bed and smoothed its fingers, one by one, not looking at me.

‘You could ask me out,’ I said. ‘We could go on a date. See a movie. Drink cocktails. Eat swanky meals in restaurants.’

He started to smile at me, eager and uncertain. It made his eyes crinkle up. He was a nice man, really. I’d invented all the rest.

‘Spring is coming,’ I said. ‘You never know what may happen.’

There was someone else who came to see me. Well, of course, lots of people came to see me. My friends, singly or in groups, clutching flowers, tearful or giggly or embarrassed. I hugged people until my ribs hurt. It was like a non-stop party in my room. It was like the party I’d thought I would have the first time I returned from the dead, only to enter instead a world of silence and shame — yet now I found that I was a stranger at my party, looking in on the fun, laughing but not really getting the joke.

But someone else came, too. He knocked on the door, even though it was half open, and stood on the threshold until I told him to come in.

‘I don’t know if you remember me,’ he said. ‘I’m…’

‘Of course I remember,’ I said. ‘You told me that I had a very good brain. You’re Professor Mulligan, the memory man, the only person I really want to see.’

‘I didn’t bring flowers.’