Ivory (24 page)

“
This is my home. I am
not
alone and I am
not
safe.”

How did it get here? In his search for Ivory he had left all
the internal doors open. The realisation pitched through his mind
like a warning sign carried in a gale. He stumbled down the stairs,
dashed across the landing and slammed shut every door he passed,
ran down to the ground floor and closed the reception room doors on
his way to the kitchen. In the kitchen he rooted around in a
drawer, snatched the master key that locked all the internal doors
and ran back upstairs and began to lock each door. Each one seemed
too little too late. How many of those ‘things’ were here and where
were they?

Pain gripped his head and he stalled with its abruptness. He
massaged his temples against the stress headache and resumed his
direction towards the stairs. The image of the landing and the drop
of the stairs that his eyes presented to his mind scattered into
billions of component pixels that shifted and dissolved. Blots of
white daylight bled through the disintegrating image, he thumbed
and fingered his clenched eyes, but even behind the shielding of
his eyelids the light continued to eat away his vision. The house
cooled. The light feel of his clothes became the heaviness he
associated with wearing his coat. The silence of the house was
replaced by the sound of a car passing close by him on the landing.
The sound transported him, seemingly physically, to the day
before.

The car passed
and Martin crossed the road and carefully unlatched the gate and
supported the weight of it as he eased it back on its hinges so it
couldn’t squeal his arrival to Ebony. The first stretch of the path
was pea shingle until it reached the side of the house. Martin
overcame this noisy approach by walking on the line of bricks that
bordered the shabby flowerbeds and then walked on the grass until
he could reach the side of the house and the start of a path of
stepping stones in the gravel. He waited at the door and spent some
time pressed against it listening to the insides of the house as a
doctor might listen to a patient’s chest for the sounds of life. He
had considered just knocking on the door to see if Ebony was home,
but he didn’t want to have to talk to him again, and if he played
knock-down-ginger on Ebony to see if he was home it might make
Ebony jittery and more attentive to any noises that Martin might
make in his trespass.

He knew it was
a foolhardy plan born of desperation but he reasoned that he did
not run the risk of being seen by Ebony, even if Martin did make a
subtle noise that might alert him to his presence on the doorstep,
all Martin would have to do was be as silent as he could until
Ebony was reassured that there was no one there. Or if he was
discovered, he would just need to get away without Ebony knowing
who it was.

If he could
reach Ivory’s key he could let himself in. Although he had never
considered anything of this nature before, his conscience was only
mildly disturbed. He had retrieved a sketchpad and a coat hanger
from the car, he presumed the key was kept hung on the back of the
front door and he could use the coat hanger he had untwisted and
straightened as much as he could, to knock the key from its home
onto a leaf of his pad and drag the key under the door to his side.
He doubted his plan would work, but if it didn’t it saved him from
the anguish of trespass.

Satisfied that he couldn’t hear anything from within the
house Martin put the sketch pad and coat hanger on the step and
felt along the bottom of the door. There was the narrowest crack of
a gap that became fractionally wider to the middle where the wooden
step of the frame had been worn away with years of trampling. The
letterbox was a standard size and there was no way Martin would be
able to reach his thick arm into its metal maw as Ivory had done so
effortlessly. He eased the letterbox open so that its spring
wouldn’t scrape or grind and he peered in at the familiar gloomy
hallway. The landing and the end of the hall slumbered in
shadow.
All the internal doors appeared
closed against any daylight the rooms might contain, but he
reasoned they were also closed against any small noises Martin’s
crime might make. Even with the coat hanger to extend his reach his
wrist was still going to get a mauling trying to get at Ivory’s
key.

Holding the
letterbox open with one hand he eased his mobile phone into the gap
with the other. It was difficult, as holding something changed the
shape of his hand beyond the size the narrow opening would allow,
and forced him to hold the phone precariously by its sides between
his thumb and forefinger while keeping his hand as flat as
possible. With his hand and mobile the other side he took a better
grip and felt for the button that would get his phone to take a
picture. He pressed it several times, taking pictures of the rear
of the door at different angels before repeating the delicate
manoeuvres to extract it from the letterbox. He thumbed through his
phone memory until he could see the images he had captured. He
looked at all the pictures and pieced them together in his mind and
found he had successfully managed to get dark rough and grainy
images that captured the whole door and its surrounding frame,
although he couldn’t see any presence of a key.

He puffed out
a sigh that deflated him. He thought he would feel glad at not
being able to trespass but his findings stirred the bitter bog of
resentment and frustration in the pit of his stomach. He peaked in
through the letterbox again and found the key straight away. It was
hanging on the front of the newel post from a small nail. The
excitement shivered within him in a rush of energy despite being
met by a languorous internal inertia of equal force at the
realisation that the key was out of arms reach. Ivory’s arm was
slender, but even at her full reach it would still be another
forearm and hands length away from a teasing touch. The energy
dissipated leaving behind a vacuous unease.

Abandoning his
original plan Martin rooted around in the clutter of his coat
pockets and searched the fistfuls of detritus, his fingers found
what he wanted and he produced a battered looking money bag, he
fingered it open and found it met his specifications. He set to
work on the unravelled coat hanger, bending a four inch length at
the end until it was in a right angle to itself and shaped it into
a semi circle. He pierced the bag at one side of its opening and
fed it along the wire to the beginning of the semi circle and
pierced the other side of the bags opening with the end of the
wire. He spread the bag open with his fingers and held his net out
before him with some satisfaction.

The wire was
bendy and unwieldy but after several wrong directions Martin teased
the tip of the key, and gently nudged it to the head of the nail
where a final jerk sent it dropping into his bag. With even more
care Martin withdrew his makeshift tool, desperate to not let the
key drop after doing so well. He tipped the prize into his hand and
turned the gold key over in his palm with his thumb. He glanced
repeatedly between the lock of the door and the key, as if he was
mentally spelling out the connection between the two items to his
reticent body to will it into action. This was it.

Hesitation
anchored his feet to the ground. Self-anger welled beneath his
conscience. He needed to see Ebony’s work to understand what it was
that cost so much money. He might even find his money and retrieve
it so he could afford more of Ivory’s company. If he could find
evidence of drug dealing or evidence of Ebony trafficking other
girls, then Martin would have something to report to the police.
Ebony would be raided and if his crimes were great enough he would
be imprisoned and his influence over Ivory would end.

That was all
the persuasion he needed. He fed the key to the lock tooth by tooth
and eased the lock round in his grip. The door came free from the
jamb and he pushed it open, snaking his arm through before him to
hold the handle from the other side in case it might suddenly click
or sound his actions. Glancing up the path to check if he had been
seen he opened the door enough to slip in and crossed the
threshold.

Chapter Twenty

The sound of
an exploding bomb detonated in the air around Martin, and his view
of the door to Ivory’s house disintegrated and was sharply replaced
with the darkness of his own landing. The sound of thunder
continued to tear through the house. His eyes took a few moments to
adjust to the gloom again. The temperature returned to the storm
warmth and his clothes felt as they should. It was as though his
mind had transported him from his home to Ivory’s house and then
back again. Martin steadied himself on the banister in the
aftermath of the disorientating shift into vivid memory and back to
the present. He had never known memories so clear and overpowering
before. Sickening guilt sat as weighted bile in his gut. He didn’t
want to remember.

It had been a
conscious effort to divert his thoughts and memory of yesterday
into a dead end part of his mind, but the stress and trauma of the
present created a shortcut to all that he repressed. He did not
want to return to that house in reality or in memory. He ran down
corridors of memories in his mind, twisting and turning, the rooms
of his parents’ home, the galleries and museums he spent so much
time in, memories of his father and mother, the registration number
of his first car, faces, places and times with his friends at
university, college, school, primary school, infants until the
repressed was replaced with the present and the ‘things’ that he
feared were waiting for him in the dark of his house.

He raced down
the stairs. He would unlock the front door and secure his escape
route and then lock each internal door. He would then unlock one
room at a time and check it for those ‘things’. After he had
searched a room he would lock it again so nothing could get past
him and escape into other parts of the house. He snatched at the
flat topped newel post for his door keys and was at the front door
before he registered that they were not there, the keys were gone.
He checked the door in case he had uncharacteristically left them
in the lock. He hadn’t. He began to doubt himself. He hadn’t gone
into any of the rooms to put the keys on another surface. He tried
the light, forgetting it didn’t work, and set about checking the
floor in the gloom at the foot of the stairs in case he had swept
the keys there in his haste. He searched his pockets, already
knowing they were empty. No keys. The doors and windows were all
locked.

He was
trapped.

His hands
quivered to his mouth then down to his sides and then to his
forehead. The noise of the rain rattled against the house like a
million bony fingers rapping against the glass and plastic of the
door, tormenting him with the freedom of the outside world. He
still had the keys for the internal doors. He would lock the doors
downstairs and then smash the glass from one of the French doors in
the back room. It was worth the expense to have an easy and ready
escape route. He could then return to his plan of securing the
rooms of the house, and get a glazier in within a matter of hours
to block the broken French doors. He locked the lounge door. Pain
undulated across his brain and the hallway dismantled itself into
shifting shapes and colours and the invisible scene-setters in his
head rearranged his location to Ivory’s hallway to the time where
Martin slipped through the front door.

The point of
Ebony’s staff was level with Martin’s face, Ebony stood behind it
on the stairs holding it like a spear. He was a tower of strength
with his feet on different steps as a firm foundation that would
support him in channelling the power of his upper body into a punt
of the solid shaft of wood. a blow that would most likely shatter
Martin’s nose or lose him an eye. Ebony’s stern face broke around
an authoritative roar: “Who dares trespass?”

Martin was
paralysed; an insect suspended in amber. All he had to do was keep
quiet. That was the plan. The blunted point that Martin was sure
could break his skull, challenged that idea.

“
I will not hesitate in the fury of my defence!”

Martin could
escape. Yes, that was the other plan, a plan that was suddenly more
favourable. If he got away without uttering a word or being caught
Ebony could only guess at who his trespasser was. However the door
was not fully open and Martin had his back to it and his footing
was misplaced for a quick turnaround. Panic caught him between
thought and action and he held his stance, holding his breath back
from giving away his presence.

Ebony
flinched, releasing his muscles into his strike. “No! It’s me…
Martin…” He relented and his breath shuddered out of him,
distorting his words. His eyes clenched against the blow. It didn’t
come. Martin opened one eye and saw that Ebony’s grip on his staff
had tightened, staying the blow.

“
You. You dare trespass!” His voice was a husky prolonged
exhalation, as if the power from his aborted attack was being
vented from his chest, ending in a guttural growl.

“
I’m sorry… I’m so sorry.” He pleaded, still facing the end of
Ebony’s staff. “I wanted answers.”

“
Your determination is proving to be an annoyance.” Ebony
lowered his staff.

“
I knew there was a key here… I had seen Ivory reach
in.”

“
I have told her to take care in not being observed,” he said
aside to himself, as if being followed was a regular threat for
Ivory.

Remorse at
being caught and despair at his actions skewered his conscience. “I
have never done anything like this before. I don’t know what came
over me…” The tension relaxed from Ebony’s jaw and his eyes
softened while Martin felt a tightening of tension across his as he
saw the phantom of pity in them. “But, you do though. Don’t you?
You know what’s happened to me. What my obsession is. Your friend,
the woman at the shop, I followed you there and she told me that I
was cursed.”