David Raker 01 - Chasing the Dead (31 page)

We passed under a set of signs. Eighty miles to London.

‘So, I went to meet him at that strip club in Harrow. He was drunk by the time I got there, sitting next to the stage, letting these strippers rub their tits in his face. He wasn’t in a fit state to talk. He wasn’t in a fit state to do anything. Every time I tried to reason with him, he turned his back on me and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I tried to give him a chance, tried to let him
give
me a chance, but in the end I lost it with him. I told him to stay the hell away from my family. I told him if he ever came near us again, I would kill him.’

He stopped. We both knew what came next.

‘I told him I would kill him,’ Alex said gently, ‘and that’s what I ended up doing. Mum had the car that night. She was out with friends. I guess I could have got the train, but I just wanted to get in and get out again. I

He paused for a moment.

‘Anyway, I came out of the bar and headed back to the car and he came after me. He was so drunk he couldn’t stand up, let alone walk in a straight line. But he charged over to me and started pointing at me. Telling me what a piece of shit my dad was. There were a couple of people standing outside the bar. As soon as they went in, I hit him. He was so drunk he didn’t see it coming. When he was on the floor… I broke his nose with the heel of my shoe.’

The lights from the motorway flashed in his eyes. He was caught somewhere, silent for a moment. Then he turned back to me.

‘When he finally got up, he was a mess, could hardly speak properly. But he looked straight at me and said, “You just made a big fucking mistake, Alex. I was trying to help you. I was trying to help your mum. You came down here for your dad, right? Your
fantastic
dad. Well, why don’t you go and ask him about his dirty little secret in Wembley?”’

‘What did he mean by that?’

Something glistened in his eyes.

‘Your
brother
?’

He nodded. There were tears on his face now.

‘I put my foot to the floor, and went straight through him. He hit the middle of the car, just flew off to the side. And I left him there. When I looked in the mirror, he was lying in a puddle. And he was still. Absolutely still.’

‘Where did you go?’ I asked. It was dark, almost nine o’clock, and we were ten miles from my house, stuck in traffic on the edge of London.

‘France,’ he replied. ‘After I left home, I took my bank card, withdrew the maximum amount of money they would let me take in one day, and headed down to Dover. I dumped the car in long-term parking, then found a trawler willing to take me across the Channel. I didn’t have my passport, so I paid them whatever it took. Just to keep them quiet.’

‘What did you do in France?’

‘Worked some crappy jobs, cleaning toilets, waiting tables at cafés. I just tried to keep my head down. I didn’t spend more than three months in each job, just in case the police were on to me.’

‘So, what brought you back?’

‘I got homesick. I ended up hating everything about my life there. The jobs were terrible, the places I lived in were worse. I spent five years doing that, and every day ground me down a little more. So I found a boat that would take me back, and went and saw Michael.’

‘You knew him from before?’

‘Yeah,’ Alex said. ‘He used to be a friend. A good one. Back when I lived with Mum and Dad, he worked

‘That was when you bought the birthday card in the box?’

He nodded.

‘Why did you go to Michael after you came back?’

‘I thought he would know what to do. I thought I could trust him. I couldn’t go to Mum, because of Dad. I couldn’t go to John, because of his job. Kath wouldn’t have understood. None of them would have. I thought Mat might. So, he made a few calls and arranged for me to be driven up to the farm. They were fine for a few hours. Took my picture, talked to me, told me everything would be okay. But do you know what they did after that?’

I shook my head.

‘They knocked me out. I turned my back on them once, and they knocked me out. And then… Then they tried to take my memory away. I could feel my body pleading for the drugs, but I had some fight in me. I managed to cling on to something. And so, even in the darkest times, I could see the outline of the

‘Do you know how they faked your death?’

He nodded. ‘They used Simon.’

‘
Simon
was supposed to be you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘We had the same blood type. I remember that from when Simon and I used to give blood at uni. That made it easier to disguise the fact it wasn’t me in that car. And I think maybe Andrew and the others on the farm… they liked the symmetry of it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, one friend making the ultimate sacrifice for the other.’

Based on what I’d found at the farm, I imagined Alex was right.

‘Simon had been on the farm for a few months. They’d fed him drugs – but he’d fought them. He fought back against the programme. He pushed down the terror he felt at everything that was going on, and he pushed back at them. But in the end he pushed back too hard. One night, when one of the women came in with his meal, he launched himself at her. He beat her so badly she lay there until morning in a pool of her own blood.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘There was a girl with me in the room with the rings. Rose. She was drying out when they put me in

Darkness. And then light. Hands grab at him and pull him out of the boot of the car. Cool air bristles against his skin as he’s dropped on to a patch of grass. A foot comes down and pins him to the ground. He can feel wet mud against one side of his face and the last weak rays of evening sunlight against the other. Fields and a dirt road stretch out in front of him, and an old Toyota is parked further down, rope attached to its underside.

‘So, they killed him in that car crash.’

‘Yes. When I saw him, when I watched them take him away on that leash, it was the day after he beat that woman. I could smell the petrol on him right from the other end of the corridor. It was only afterwards, when I found out I was supposed to be dead, that I realized why – and what they did to him.’

‘They used your teeth.’

Alex left one hand on the wheel and peeled back his lips with the other. He placed a finger and a thumb on his two front teeth. And pulled. The teeth came away.

They were all false.

‘One of the women on the farm used to be a dentist. They put my teeth into Simon’s mouth, plied him with so much alcohol he could hardly stand, and

Through the windscreen of the Toyota he can see a car close in front. Maybe only three or four feet away. The two vehicles are attached by a length of rope.

Everything in the car smells of petrol: the dashboard, the seats, his clothes. He glances at the speedo. They’re still accelerating. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. He tries to move, but can’t. He looks down. His arms and body are paralysed.

Suddenly, there are headlights up ahead.

And something pings.

There’s the brief, grinding sound of metal against metal, like a clasp being released. Brakes squeal. Then the car in front veers left, the rope trailing behind it, swinging across the road.

A horn blares.

Simon desperately tries to jab at the brakes, the insides of the Toyota swimming in the light from the lorry. But his feet don’t move. Not an inch.

And then there is only darkness.

Alex pulled into a parking bay at a train station about a mile from my house. I gave him enough money to get a ticket, and some more so he could get wherever he needed to go. He climbed out of the car and shook my right hand.

For the first time I glimpsed the wounds in his fingers.

‘It’s ten o’clock, Alex,’ I said.

‘Why don’t you just stay at mine?’

‘I’m still on the run,’ he said. ‘I think the less time you spend with me, and the less you know about where I’m going, the better it is for you.’

He got ready to go, but then turned back. He ducked his head inside the car again, and stared at me for a moment.

‘Do you know what the last thing you hear is?’

I looked at him. ‘Last thing before what?’

‘Before dying.’

I knew. I’d heard it myself when I’d been bound to the cross.

‘The last thing you hear is the sea,’ Alex said, and nodded as if he knew I understood. ‘Waves crashing. Sand washing away. Seagulls squawking. Dogs running around on the beach. If that’s the last sound I hear in this life, it won’t matter to me. Because I like that sound. You know why?’

I shook my head.

‘It reminds me of sitting on the sand, in a cove in Carcondrock, with the person I loved.’

After that, he turned around and disappeared into the crowds.

I didn’t want to go home, so I stayed the night in a motel across the street from the train station. The woman booking me in glanced up a couple of times at the dried cuts around my cheeks, at the streaks of purple and black on the side of my head, but didn’t say anything. As I limped to my room, I could see her reflected in a thin strip of glass by the elevators. She was looking again. My body was exhausted, and a dull ache coursed through my system, but the cling film had helped to quell some of the pain, even if the injuries to my face were more difficult to hide.

The room was small and plain, but it was clean. I set the holdall on the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress for a while, breathing in and out, trying to relax. But the more I relaxed, the worse I started to feel; as the adrenalin ebbed away, it took the numbness with it. I got up again and went to the bathroom. Alex had stopped outside a pharmacy before we got to the train station so I could pick up some medical supplies. The smell of the bandages, of the antiseptic cream, of peeling away the plasters, suddenly reminded me of Derryn’s years as a nurse. Then a memory formed: of her attending to my face three weeks after she’d come to join me in South Africa. I’d fallen into

‘It’s a Steri-Strip today,’ she’d said, placing the transparent plaster over a cut close to my eye. ‘I don’t want it to be a coffin tomorrow.’

My eyes fell to my newly bandaged fingers, and – finally – to my body. Cling film was still wrapped around it, blood pooling at the sides, crawling around from my back in thick, maroon tendrils. I couldn’t see the lacerations themselves; wasn’t sure I ever wanted to. One thing I did know, though, was that I didn’t have the courage to start removing the cling film.

Not yet.

Once I was cleaned up, I went back to the bed, dropped on to my stomach and faced the door. And twelve, restless hours later, I woke again.

It was 13 December, eleven days after she’d first come to me, when I headed to Mary’s for the final time. It was late afternoon by the time I got there. I drove, but with difficulty, sitting forward the whole way. My back was still stiff from sleep, and I could feel the cling film loosening. By the time I got out of the car, pain was crackling along my spine.

I slowly moved up the path and on to the porch. Snow had collected in thick mounds at the front. Christmas lights winked in the windows of the house. Mary answered after a couple of knocks, lit by the fading dusk sky.

‘David.’

‘Hello, Mary.’

‘Come in,’ she said, backing away from the door.

She looked at me, at the cuts and bruises I’d patched up. I inched past her, my body aching.

‘Your face…’ she said.

‘It looks worse than it is,’ I lied.

‘What happened?’

‘I got into a fight.’

‘With who?’

I looked at her, but didn’t reply. She nodded, as if she understood that I didn’t want to talk about it. At least not yet.

She disappeared into the kitchen. I made my way to the windows at the back of the living room. They looked out over the garden. The snow was perfect. No footprints. No bird tracks. No fallen leaves. It was like no one had ever been out there.

Mary came through with two cups of coffee, and we sat on the sofas.

‘Where’s Malcolm?’

‘Upstairs,’ she said.

‘How is he?’

She paused. ‘Not good.’

On the table in front of her I placed the envelope she had given to me with the rest of her money in it. She looked down at it, studied it, but didn’t reach for it. Instead, her eyes flicked back to me.

‘You don’t need any more?’

‘No, Mary,’ I said. ‘We’re finished now.’

There was little emotion in her face. I wondered whether she’d already talked herself into believing it had all been a mistake.

‘Finished?’ she said.

‘He was in Scotland.’

‘Alex?’

‘Alex.’

She took a moment, her mouth opening a little. All the doubt, all the times she’d told herself she must have been seeing things, fell away. Her eyes started to fill with tears.

‘What was he doing in Scotland?’

‘Is he still there?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘No,’ I lied again, and when I could bring myself to look at her, I suddenly wasn’t sure this was the right path, despite Alex having asked me to play it this way. ‘I think he wants to see you, but I think he’s also confused.’

‘He can come back home,’ she pleaded.

No, he can’t
. I looked at her, a single tear breaking free.

‘Why doesn’t he come
home
?’

I didn’t answer. It had to be like this. Alex had to decide when the time was right. He had to find his own way back in. They all had to find a way back into a world that had forgotten they existed. A world that had given them nothing the first time. It would be easier for Alex in many ways, despite the baggage he carried with him. He had something to grasp on to, memories he’d never let go. For some of the others, what awaited them was simply a blank. No memories of their first lives. No life to fit back into. Perhaps no chance at starting again.

‘After he left home, he went to France,’ I said, hoping that would be something. ‘That’s where he went before he came back.’

‘Why did he go there?’

I looked at her and thought of Al, of Malcolm, of the way he had shut Alex out. Kept secrets from him. From the family. I guessed his brother was also unknown to Mary. It was up to Alex to bring that to her, not me.