No One Gets Out Alive (24 page)

They kill her.

Knacker couldn’t get inside Stephanie’s room fast enough. At the sound of the frantic rattle of a key inside the lock, she slipped one hand inside the front pocket of her hooded top
and fingered the paring knife.

The moment she saw the landlord’s face come out of the shadows of the corridor and into the doorway of her room, her courage deserted her the same time the strength seemed to evaporate
from her arms. She could not stab someone. Could not put a knife into the warm density of a human body. She doubted she could even threaten someone with a knife. That was not her. And people like
her died because they were incapable of doing such things. They waited until it was too late. They screamed and scratched and slapped about. She could picture herself doing exactly that inside this
very room. People like her did not fight back, not properly.

Too late.

Knacker closed the door slowly and locked it behind him, turned to Stephanie. His face was pale and his thick lips quivered from the emotion that had taken him over. Maybe it was rage, but she
didn’t think so. In his expression she intuited what might have been a powerful remorse, or even fear. Yes, he was anxious, so extremely anxious he’d become afraid.

‘What is happening? Where’s Margaret?’

‘He’s done one. He’s fuckin’ done one. I never fought he’d . . .’ Knacker spoke quietly, more to himself than to her.

Stephanie’s breath caught in her throat. She’d not seen Knacker this shaken or distracted before, and she sensed he needed to tell her something. She suspected he was like that; at
the best of times he didn’t like silence, liked to obliterate it with the sound of his own voice, to announce and brag and show off. Now trauma was pushing words into his mouth.

He ran his fingers through his curls and momentarily closed his eyes. ‘I tell you somefing. Bennet was right. These fings shouldn’t happen. But they do, like.’ It was as if he
was now speaking to someone else in the room, someone that wasn’t her. She wondered if he was mad too, like his cousin.

Knacker looked at the window and became concerned. His usual demeanour returned to the surface of his consciousness; his big eyes glared and swept the room for evidence that he might disapprove
of. When he finally looked at Stephanie it was as if he had found her guilty of a great betrayal. Bobbing on his heels, he came further inside the room with his hands out wide from his body, to
emphasize his disappointment that she could be so unreasonable. Because she knew that anything she did that was not in his absolute favour was just that to Knacker: unreasonable.

‘I . . . I’ve been sick.’ She nodded at the towel on the floor that was covering the wet patch. ‘The window,’ she added by way of explanation. ‘Air. I needed
air.’

Knacker peered at the towel. Sniffed. Narrowed his eyes, studied her face, searching for other motives before this potential red herring.

‘I want to go.’

Knacker stifled a smile that lived on in his cruel eyes.

‘I won’t say anything.’

‘That right?’

‘Yes, I promise.’

‘Give me your word, like?’

‘Yes, yes. Please.’

‘First fings first. We need to clear the rest of these bills, yeah? Don’t want bailiffs coming froo the front door at an inconvenient time.’

Her confusion was so great she sensed that her mouth was hanging open in stupefaction.
Bills?
Why was he talking about bills?

‘I was finking, cus of the cash flow problem we is having, that you might pay off some more of that council tax, like. We’s sorted the gas and electric, but as arranged wiv the
council this morning, the council tax still needs sorting. First payment, like. Why wait till Monday? You can do it on the phone, like. I swear on me muvver’s life you’ll get it
back.’

‘I don’t . . . don’t know what . . .’

‘You must have a bit tucked away, like. All this perfume and biscuit stuff you been doing, eh? Well the dosh ain’t no good to us is it, tucked away in some savings? Time to put it to
work and all, considering as you still owe on this room.’

‘Room?’ She couldn’t align her thoughts. A sense of the impossible, of such a great injustice, of this baffling nightmare continuing while also remaining unpredictable,
rendered her mute.

‘Yeah, this room you puked in. It ain’t a forty quid room. I told you earlier. You must have forgotten. Convenient, like.’

She almost had to hold her head still to work out what he was getting at. It was surreal, absurd. ‘I did what you asked. I paid—’

‘Our agreement was for you to sort fings out and fings ain’t sorted, is they? Water’s done. Gas, electric. Fanks for that, your help and all that. But council tax is still
outstandin’ and we need to get them off our backs wiv the first payment. Everyone’s got to pitch in, like, in this minor setback. Just as well I been looking after your cash card, cus I
fought a time would come when we’d need to put it to work for us, like. All of us. That includes you.’

Her mind cleared sufficiently, or was cleared by a loathing for what stood before her. Even now, at this stage, when a girl had been assaulted in the room above her head, while the other girl
had vanished, or been killed, this idiotic man in his designer casual wear, who had tried to run prostitutes from the building, and stolen her cash card, was asking her to pay off his debts with
the pittance in her bank account. ‘You . . . you came down here to ask me—’

‘I ain’t askin’, I’m tellin’, girl. Though you will get it back.’

‘You are now trying to steal my money to pay off unpaid council tax. After that . . . that’ – she couldn’t say his name – ‘just assaulted a girl in her room.
And Margaret . . .’ She paused because Knacker’s eyes flitted away from her to evade the horror that showed on her face. ‘Where is Margaret?’

‘That ain’t none of your concern. Little domestic. Fings got out of hand when I weren’t here.’

‘Out of hand? Are you insane?’

‘No he ain’t, but I am. Open this fucking door, Knacker, you soft-hearted tosser.’ It was Fergal. And he had been listening to the exchange.

Stephanie tried and failed to swallow the icy bolus of terror in her throat.

Knacker’s face went taut with fear, his big eyes swivelled to the door. ‘All in hand, like. No problem here.’

A hand or a shoe slammed into the door and seemed to shake the entire building. ‘Open. The. Fucking. Door. Knacker.’

Knacker scampered across the room to do Fergal’s bidding.

‘No,’ Stephanie said, or thought she said. In her terror she wasn’t sure. But now she felt sick again and her vision wasn’t right; the room seemed to be moving around
her. Svetlana’s cries, ‘They kill her’, ‘Not in there’, as well as the sound of the girl’s screams reactivated and returned to Stephanie’s mind on a spin
cycle. Tears welled and blurred the unstable room. ‘Don’t.’ She swallowed. ‘No.’

Too late.

Fergal came into the room quickly. Pushed past Knacker. Using one long arm like a yacht’s boom, he swept the smaller man off the deck and came for Stephanie in a rustle of dirty Gore-Tex
and a flap of soiled denim. Big feet banged the floor until the white, freckled face and bloodshot eyes, the unclean mouth and yellow teeth were suddenly very close, almost touching her face. She
coughed in the stench – hormonal, animal harsh, old sweat mingling with new, base scented with something kidneyish and pissy. Her eyelids cramped into an instinctive squint.

A large, bony claw buried itself in the hair at the back of her head. She was broken in half. Snapped double so that when her eyes fluttered open they were staring at the old carpet. Through her
shock and the volume of her own breath that panted around a squeal, was an awareness that the fingers gripping her hair would never let go; the grubby digits seemed to have passed inside her skull
to hold her thoughts in a permanent freeze of terror.

Outside of her limited understanding of what was happening, this cold recognition of events that clung around her head like a wet rag, she could hear Knacker shouting, ‘Leave it! Fergal!
Leave it! Fergal! Fink! Fink about it! Leave it!’

And she could also hear Fergal, though she wasn’t sure who he was talking to. ‘You fink you’re so high and mighty. But I been watching you. You fink I don’t know what you
are? You is wrong. You is very mistaken.’ At that point she realized he was talking to her. ‘What you still doing here if you ain’t gonna earn? You had your chance to fuck off,
but you didn’t. Cus you is finking about it, eh? I’m right, ain’t I? I know these fings. Someone, a little birdy, is telling me all these fings. I fink you know who I am talking
about, don’t you? An old friend of mine who’s got an eye for the ladies. And he’s had a good look at you. Very nice it was too, he tells me.’

‘Fergal! Fergal! Cut it out!’

Fergal turned to Knacker. ‘Cut it out? I’ll cut somefing out if you don’t watch your mouf. And you is too soft, Knacker. You is a big pussy. This ain’t how you get
results. Didn’t you listen to nuffin’ Bennet told us, eh? The only useful fings he ever told us was how to get results. But he could be a real old woman at the best of times, and
you’re starting to remind me of him. Know what I mean?’

And it was then, when she blinked the tears out of her eyes, that Stephanie saw Knacker’s feet, pacing about the carpet, circling Fergal like a nervous boy. And she saw the dried blood on
Knacker’s green training shoes, dark as creosote and splashed across the toes of both shoes.

‘Eh? Eh? I ain’t having none of that from you,’ he barked at Fergal. ‘Not after what you just gone and fuckin’ done. You’re the fuckin’ problem
here.’

‘The problem right here, you tosser, is what I am holding in my hand. Your mistake. Who you can’t even get in line. You is all mouf, Knacker. What you contributed, eh? Nuffin’.
Fuck all is what. All we got I brought here.’

Fergal shook Stephanie’s head and she felt some of the roots of her hair tear out of her scalp. Tears dropped from her cheeks and saliva looped from between her lips.

Fergal spat on the carpet. ‘This is your contribution and I am afraid it ain’t nuffin’ but a nuisance. I give you till the weekend to get her up and running and you still
ain’t produced. Fuckin’ around trying to break into her piggy bank, when she should be turning four tricks a day. Cus you don’t know your arse from your elbow, Knacker. Cus you is
too fucking soft. So I will tell you what I am going to do. I am going to make my point very clear. And if you can do me a favour and watch this, you might end up learning somefing too.
Awright?’

And then his stagnant breath was all over Stephanie’s face, clouding down from above like a foul mist. ‘You listening to me? Oi, you down there. You listening to me?’

Her head was whipped upwards so quickly her feet left the ground for a second, before her entire body crashed back down to the floor. She found her feet but couldn’t see the floor because
he was making her stare at the ceiling while holding her by the hair like a doll.

A big, dirty foot thumped across the back of her knees as Fergal kicked her legs out from under her. Stephanie sat down hard and gasped from the scatter of pain that shot up from her tailbone
when it connected with the floor. Now she could see herself in the mirror, open-mouthed and glassy-eyed with shock. She had no idea she could even look like that.

She was going to die.

This is it.

In the reflection she watched Fergal dip a long, grubby-fingered hand inside the pocket of his parka. He removed a glass bottle. A small one, the kind that contained medicine. The bottle was
unlabelled, the screw-top yellow. ‘Hold her,’ he ordered Knacker. ‘Can you get that right?’

‘No! No fucking way. No! I ain’t having no part of this. Fergal, no!’

‘Pussy. Then watch.’ Fergal released Stephanie’s hair.

She tried to stand up, but he pushed her onto her painful backside by cupping the entire top of her skull and pressing down. His strength was hideous. She thought her neck might snap and she
yelped.

The hand vanished. ‘Oi, oi, cry baby. You listen to me, yeah?’ He dropped his voice. ‘When you is in our house you obey our rules. Simple, yeah? Yeah? Any of this bullshit,
this calling from windows and causing a ruckus and all that and I’ll put this on you. I’ll fucking burn you without a second’s fought, sister. You don’t fink I will, then
watch this.’

And then she knew what was inside the bottle and she screamed and rolled away from Fergal’s feet. Even Knacker cantered back to the mirrored doors of the wardrobe.

‘Any little notes, or whispers, or looking out them windows when our backs is turned, anyfing like that at all, and I’ll pour this over your fuckin’ head. Even fink you can
treat me like a cunt and I will know. I will burn you, sister. You get me? This will go right froo your face. I’ll fucking blind you wiv this. You hear? We ain’t the only ones wiv debts
to pay off, yeah?’

A dribble of liquid splashed the carpet and instantly produced white steam. The air of the room swelled with the stink of iron, sulphur, burning toffee and old curtains on fire.

As the room swooped and as little sparking motes of light dropped through her vision, Stephanie closed her eyes on the sight of gangly Fergal carefully recapping the glass bottle. Her stomach
walloped over, her throat contracted and she was sick again, right where she sat. Sick onto the floor and onto her hands.

‘And I don’t want no blubbering. Not a peep out of you, else I’m taking the cap off.’

‘Yeah,’ Knacker said. ‘Yeah, you heard him, like.’

Outside the window of the room she had been locked inside, night fell over the brick entry. Through the solitary window she could see little to either side of the space between
82 Edgehill Road and the wall of the neighbouring property.

The cousins had installed her inside the only room on the right hand side of the first floor corridor. Despite what had happened in her bedroom, and the fact they had crossed the final line by
putting their hands upon her, she’d felt relief as she was escorted out of the room where the reek of Fergal’s unclean flesh and fouled clothes was replaced by the stink of the
acid-burned carpet.