Bright Young Things (32 page)

Swallowing his fear (Indiana wasn’t scared), Jamie excuses himself from the kitchen and starts running up the stairs, two at a time, in case he loses his nerve. By the time he reaches the very top he’s already covered in a thin layer of sweat. What he could really do with is a glass of cold lemonade and a nice breeze. What he actually gets is the smell of death, and several flies. This really is horrible. Before he does anything else, Jamie pulls a sheet off the bed and drapes it over the man. He finds a can of air freshener in the small toilet and sprays it around the room until it smells of spring meadows and death, rather than just death.

He goes through the room like he imagines an FBI team might, ruthlessly sifting through piles of papers and documents, making as much mess as possible. Once he’s fully involved with his task, he doesn’t really notice the large lump on the floor. Instead of being afraid up here alone, Jamie finds himself feeling territorial and important, not wanting anyone to join him in case he is forced to share the victory when it comes. Not that it’s coming very easily. There are loads of documents in here, mainly obscure academic articles, but none which seem to relate to the kidnapping.

Half an hour after Jamie begins his task, he finally finds something important – a folder containing all the application forms and interview letters corresponding to the six people here. Apart from these documents, there is only one other sheet of paper in the folder.

It’s a letter, dated 10 August 1999. It is addressed to Mr Smith.

It’s from a helicopter hire company and details Mr Smith’s requirements for what is described as his ‘last trip’ with them. It confirms that he will be taking a ‘smaller cargo’ this time, that he will provide the container and that the container will carry ‘Fragile’ labels. It also mentions that Mr Smith will be liable for the container and for ensuring air holes for his ‘pets’. The company states that they understand the cargo to be more books (
more
books – so the contents of the library must have been brought here too) and supplies as well as the pets. This last journey will take place, the letter goes on to confirm, on Monday 6 September 1999. The day they came here. Jamie gulps.
They
must have been in that container. Fuck. He has to pause for a few moments and take some deep breaths before he realises the other unnerving implication of the letter – that the trip in the helicopter was to be the last, and that there were no arrangements made for the collection of ‘Mr Smith’ or his ‘pets’.

So the man – ‘Mr Smith’ – is definitely the job-interview man, and he did indeed bring them here deliberately. Trouble is, there’s nothing in the folder or this room to suggest why. Why would he get a helicopter to drop them all off here? Why wouldn’t he arrange transport back? At least it seems that no terrorists are coming to murder them, which is something.

Jamie almost overlooks the brown suitcase. It is only when he’s pulled the whole of the rest of the room apart that he decides to open it. He almost doesn’t even bother; it’s only a suitcase, after all. Jamie knows that whenever he travels he unpacks as soon as he reaches his destination. If this was Jamie’s suitcase, it would be empty, but the man is clearly not like Jamie. There are some items he didn’t unpack.

‘So you’re all right now, then?’ Thea asks Emily, who has insisted on washing, not drying.

‘Me? Oh yes. Fine. Why?’

‘You were virtually catatonic last night.’

‘Yes, well. Do you want tea?’

Emily’s voice seems higher pitched today. Thea wonders if she’s on the verge of panicking again, and gets a strong urge to be gentle with her; to talk to her like she speaks to the elderly men and women at the residential home. She used to work nights occasionally, when the home was short-staffed. The home was a different place at night, with residents often ‘wandering’, haunting the corridors like almost-ghosts, sometimes making it as far as the road outside or the local park. Whenever a member of the local community returned a resident, it was like they were returning a stray dog. Matron even slapped one resident on the bottom after one such return, in front of the lady who’d returned him. Before they escaped, or went madder or attacked one another, the residents’ voices would always become more high pitched. And when she was about to abuse one of the residents, Matron was the same.

Outside it’s another sunny day, although the sky is slightly darker and there are clouds in the distance. At least people are talking about escape now. Bizarre that it took a dead man to get people to actually think about taking action. Thea wonders what would have happened if he hadn’t been here. Would these people ever have considered escape? She thinks about what Paul said, about what she has to go back to. Maybe even she would have stopped thinking about escape eventually.

Emily makes better tea than Anne. They sit and sip it as if they’re cleaners on a tea-break. Bryn has gone to chop more wood for the fire, even though Emily says they’ll need it for the boat. Thea’s not sure where Paul and Anne have gone, or Jamie, come to that.

‘What do you make of Paul?’ asks Thea.

‘He’s a geek, isn’t he?’ says Emily. ‘A good-looking one, but definitely a geek.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Some sort of animal activist or whatever.’

‘Yeah, I guessed that.’

Emily smiles at Thea. ‘I’m glad you didn’t throw yourself off the cliffs last night.’

‘Me too,’ says Thea. She thinks for a moment. ‘Were you aware of that, then?’

‘What?’

‘Well, everything really. You looked totally blank.’

‘Yeah, it was weird,’ says Emily. ‘All the sounds were like being under water. You know you hear these stories about people who wake up from their anaesthetic during an operation, and they can feel everything, but they’re paralysed from the other drugs? It was a bit like that. I was aware of everything, but I couldn’t do anything. Silly really.’ She grins. ‘Anyway, let’s not talk about last night. It depresses me. Let’s have a girly chat.’

‘A girly chat?’

‘Yeah. Let’s stop stressing about everything.’

Thea gets that old-person feeling again. She must humour Emily.

‘Did you know that Paul hasn’t had sex for six years?’ says Emily, conversationally.

‘Seriously?’

It’s like Emily’s on some kind of weird prescription that only allows her to talk about the cheerful, the inane or the trivial. She’d make a great subject for a documentary right now, although Thea would want her to talk more about last night.

‘Uh huh,’ says Emily. ‘Six years.’

‘Why hasn’t he had sex for that long?’ Thea asks.

‘I can’t remember exactly why, but apparently he always tells women he’s a member of True Love Waits, and then if that doesn’t put them off, he goes out with them, but never actually sleeps with them.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘It was one of the truths last night after you went to bed.’

‘How old is Paul?’ asks Thea.

‘Twenty-five, I think,’ says Emily. ‘Yeah. That’s right. Twenty-five.’

‘So he last had sex when he was nineteen. I wonder what she did to him.’

‘Or
he
,’ says Emily, raising an eyebrow.

‘I thought only Jamie had done it with a bloke.’

‘That’s true. That was a cool story, don’t you think?’

‘I thought it was a bit gross.’

‘I found it sexy,’ says Emily. ‘I’d love to . . . you know.’

‘With Jamie?’

‘Yeah. Shocking, huh?’

‘Wouldn’t you be worried about disease? You know, after . . .’

‘
Duh
. He probably used a condom with whatshisname, silly.’

‘If he didn’t he was a complete moron,’ says Thea. ‘Where is he, by the way?’

‘Dunno,’ says Emily. ‘Upstairs?’

‘On his own?’

‘Maybe he went outside.’

‘I’ll go and look for him,’ says Thea.

He’s not outside. Paul and Anne look like they’re doing some sort of school nature project, hovering around the trees with jam jars. It’s started raining, and the sky has stopped being blue. Thea smiles at Anne and goes back inside. Emily’s humming something and putting pasta on the stove. She hardly seems to notice as Thea walks past her and out of the kitchen.

On the way upstairs there’s a noise which Thea can’t place. It intrigues her. It sounds like a baby, or even a baby animal, left alone without its mother.

As soon as the enters the attic room she can see it’s coming from Jamie. He’s sitting by the bed with his knees drawn up, a file in his hand and an open suitcase by his feet. He’s crying.

Because of the dwindling light outside, the electric light is on. Suddenly, it goes off.

‘That’s the battery flat,’ says Paul.

‘I thought the power came directly into the house,’ says Anne.

Paul shrugs. ‘Maybe it was connected wrong. Maybe it’s been coming off the battery.’

There’s still enough light to see the spider eat the cricket Paul found.

‘Better put that away before Thea gets back,’ says Bryn.

‘Where is Thea?’ asks Emily.

‘And Jamie,’ says Bryn. ‘They both know how the batteries work.’ Bryn gets up and stretches. ‘I’ll go and look for them,’ he says.

‘Jamie’s been gone for ages,’ says Emily.

Her pasta’s boiling over. She looks like she might cry.

Anne’s spooning earth into the spider’s tank.

‘Can someone make a start carrying them logs through?’ Bryn says as he leaves.

Five minutes later he’s back in the kitchen. Emily’s about to serve lunch.

‘Paul,’ he says, breathlessly. ‘Anne.’

They both look at him. He knows he sounds freaked out. He has to sound casual. ‘I . . . just need your help for a second.’

They can tell something’s wrong. They both get up immediately.

Emily turns and smiles at them. ‘Hurry back,’ she says. ‘Before it gets cold.’

‘What is it?’ asks Paul, as soon as they are out of the kitchen.

‘You’ve got to come upstairs,’ says Bryn.

‘Why?’ asks Anne.

Bryn shakes his head. ‘I can’t explain. It’s totally fucked up. Jamie’s in a mess.’

‘Jamie?’ says Paul. ‘What’s happened to him?’

‘He found something. Hurry up.’

They all run up the stairs and into the attic room.

Thea’s sitting with her arm around Jamie, who is crying softly.

‘I couldn’t get him to move,’ she says to Bryn. ‘Hi guys.’

‘What’s happened?’ asks Paul, stepping over the lump on the floor.

‘He found this,’ says Bryn, kicking the suitcase open.

Paul and Anne look inside. They see what Bryn has already seen: a single key, a knife, a syringe, a mask, three dildos, a blindfold and a sewing kit.

‘What is all this?’ asks Anne.

Paul stares at the items. ‘No way,’ he says eventually.

‘Do you see?’ says Bryn.

Paul nods slowly. ‘I feel a bit sick,’ he says, holding his stomach.

‘I don’t get it,’ says Anne. ‘What is all this stuff for?’

‘The spider was part of it,’ prompts Bryn. ‘Just not in the suitcase.’

Thea passes the folder over to Bryn. ‘Show her this,’ she says.

Anne takes the folder and starts reading.

‘I’d look at the greatest fears section of the application forms if I were you,’ says Paul. He looks at Bryn. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? These are supposed to represent our greatest fears?’

‘Yeah, mate,’ says Bryn. ‘That’s exactly right.’

‘Rather more than just
represent
, I think,’ says Thea.

‘He was going to rape her,’ sobs Jamie. ‘And lock Paul up, and . . . and . . .’

‘Oh Christ,’ says Anne, realising. ‘This is disgusting.’

‘And look what else we found,’ says Thea.

She hands Anne a sheet of card. Bryn’s already seen this. It’s a floor plan of the six bedrooms with a key sellotaped to each room.

‘Fucking hell,’ says Anne. ‘This gets worse.’

‘We can’t tell Emily,’ says Bryn. ‘She’ll freak.’

‘He definitely put most thought into hers,’ says Thea. ‘Mask, dildos, blindfold.’

‘The blindfold’s for me, though,’ says Anne. ‘I said I was scared of going blind.’

‘But you lied, though, right?’ says Paul.

‘Well, it was just something to put,’ she says.

She looks even paler than usual, and slightly green.

‘What’s the sewing kit for, then?’ asks Thea.

‘And the knife,’ says Paul.

‘The knife could have been part of the rape thing,’ says Bryn.

‘It was to kill me,’ says Jamie. ‘I’m scared of death, remember.’

He’s stopped crying, but his eyes are red and puffy.

‘Maybe the sewing kit’s just for sewing,’ says Paul, but no one looks convinced.

‘I’m fucking glad he’s dead,’ says Bryn.

This time he can’t suppress the urge to kick the body, so he does.