No One Gets Out Alive (36 page)

Her thoughts seem to grow too vast for her skull and they made her feel tired, sluggish.

You can sleep when you’re dead.

Or can you?

A brief notion of taking her own life from the wrist made her shudder and she shut the thought out. No, she didn’t think suicide would be possible. Not yet. But after another couple of
days of this she might be more comfortable with the idea.

I’m not going out like that.

Dispassionately and uncharacteristically, as if some dark and insidious reptile was coiled inside her mind and hissing advice, she decided it was better to be killed after inflicting a terrible
wound on her murderer. And if she died angry and vengeful, perhaps she would remain as such, and not as a victim who lingered between these horrid walls forever.

Not long now.

The first visitor to enter her room was a surprise.

Stephanie heard two sets of footsteps slowly make their way to the door. One of them had to drag itself down the corridor. The second set of footsteps followed patiently and in
silence.

When the door was unlocked, she heard someone breathing heavily from the exertion of turning the key and the door handle.

The door opened slightly, but no one came through. Not for a while anyway. Voices entered instead.

‘I want it done by the time I come down, yeah?’ It was Fergal, but whoever he spoke to did not answer, which angered him. ‘Yeah? You fucking deaf as well as stupid?’

‘Awright, awright,’ Knacker said in reply, and in a voice that suggested a speech impediment.

‘She’s the reason you got fucked up, so deal wiv it or I will deal wiv you.’

‘I said awright, yeah?’

‘She ain’t done by the time I’m done with the other slit, then you can start cutting your own polyfene to size. You got it? Five minutes, tops.’

‘Yeah,’ Knacker said quietly.

‘Show me.’

A whisking of a Gore-Tex coat.

‘And what about the other fing?’

In the corridor outside, Stephanie heard a rustle of plastic.

‘All right,’ Fergal said. ‘I find you is lying about doing this, I’ll kick the last few teef out your face. Don’t you unlock her till she’s cold
neither.’ At that, Fergal walked back to the stairwell, presumably to attend to his own business with Svetlana.

The subtext of the conversation, and the fact that they didn’t care what she heard, brought Stephanie close to a faint. Momentarily, she could not feel her legs or her arms, and was so
frightened she could no longer see straight.

And then Knacker shuffled into the room to kill her.

‘We best get this done quick, like.’

Knacker couldn’t look at her as he spoke, nor as he winced and limped inside. As if for a reassurance of privacy for what he was about to do, he shut the door behind himself. ‘You
know this is coming, so let’s have no fuss. None of that, yeah?’

Her mouth hung open and she panted from something that felt like heartburn. She must have looked like she was going into shock. Maybe she was. Then she felt sick but managed to tighten her
fingers around the mirror-knife.
Can I even lift it?

Knacker’s face was so horribly disfigured it helped to shock her out of the wilt of terror. One of his eyes was sealed shut, the eyelid purple, blue and black, and grotesquely distended
like a plum was attached to the front of his face. His nose was twice its former size, and split horizontally across the bridge. A thick band of black blood indicated where the skin had been broken
over the cartilage beneath. The second eye was defined by its red discolouration about the blue iris. His bottom lip resembled a dirigible.

He struggled to bend his right leg and she could see the evidence of a swollen knee through his jeans. He appeared to have lost the use of an arm too, which hung limp at his side. Either that or
his ribs were broken and he was cradling them. In the hand attached to the slack arm was the bottle of acid.

He saw her looking at it. ‘Didn’t fink it would come to this, like. Sorry about that and all, yeah? But fings is set in motion, like. You know how it is.’

He raised his other hand. The fingers gripped a blue plastic bag; she recognized the variety from the Sikh grocer’s that was close to the end of Edgehill Road. Knacker swallowed, licked
his top lip. ‘You know the score, girl.’

For a few seconds she didn’t understand what the bag was for, and then she realized he intended to suffocate her by putting it over her head and holding it tight about her throat.

‘Yeah? You know?’ he said, as the comprehension in her eyes must have given away her sudden understanding of how she was to go.

He held the bag out front and shook it to make sure he had her full attention. ‘Better be quick, like. Not that others here appreciate it, but I’ll get the job done, yeah? And
quicker if you help me out wiv this fing. You won’t feel nuffin’. Promise.’ A slither of the old bull-shitter, the wheedler had reappeared to convince her that she should
surrender herself to murder and die without any fuss.

‘Better if you put it on, yeah? It’s just like going to sleep.’ He said this as if he’d performed the act on himself a hundred times. But under the bruises, his face
paled and became more colourless than she’d ever seen a human face go before. He bent double. Spat some blood onto the carpet and then vomited. ‘Ah fuck. Ah fuck. Ah fuck,’ he
said to himself, then straightened his back. ‘Fuck’s sake.’ He sniffed and looked at her again with that one red eye.

Stephanie glanced at the door and wondered if the lanky baboon was outside, listening; Fergal could move discreetly when he wanted to. So she kept her voice down and spoke quickly. ‘Acid.
Throw the acid in his face. I will tell the police you were a prisoner too. I swear. You won’t get in trouble. I promise. I promise.’

Knacker swallowed. ‘Nah. Ain’t gonna work, Steph.’

‘Let me go. There’s two of us. We can do it. He’ll kill you too. You know it.’

She was tempted to produce the mirror knife and say, ‘I have this’, ‘but another more implacable instinct made her keep that hand concealed.

Knacker shook his head. ‘We gotta do it this way, like I explained. Or I’ll have to use the bottle.’

With a wince he partially raised the hand holding the acid. ‘Clock’s ticking. Put this over your face, like. You know, like a hood. Or I gotta burn you, girl. If I was you, I know
which I’d rather have.’

Stephanie swallowed. Gripped the shard of mirror in her hand. ‘OK. Do it now. Before he comes back. I’m ready.’

Knacker looked surprised, but was so eager to get the job done in case Fergal came back and kicked his teeth out, that he shuffled to her side without further delay. Then extended the arm
holding the bag. ‘Here. Just put it over your ’ead, like. Then I’ll hold the back tight. Be done in no time. No holes you can breave froo. I checked. You won’t suffer, like.
Swear on me muvver’s life.’

If it goes over your face you won’t be able to see where you stab. Do it when he’s close.

She took the bag.

Knacker’s red eye watched her take it from his fingers, but he stayed back, out of reach; he was hurting enough and didn’t want to risk any more pain.

She shook the bag open with a hand that felt like someone else’s, and tentatively placed it on the top of her head so it perched like a paper hat from a Christmas cracker.

‘All the way over, like. Don’t work otherwise. Right down to your chin,’ he added in a business-like fashion, as if he were instructing someone how to wear a motorcycle helmet.
‘Use both hands, like.’

She had no choice; she had to put it over her head, because he was only going to come closer to tighten the bag around her throat to suffocate her. And when he was that close she would have to
strike.

She pulled the plastic down to her forehead using one hand. If she used both hands, she would need to put the shard of mirror down and might not find the makeshift knife once the bag was on her
head.

Maybe he’s going to use the acid anyway, but doesn’t want to look you in the eye when he pours it over your head.

But there was no other way to lure him closer. She had a go at the bag with one hand, then slipped the knife around her buttocks and held it under her thigh so he wouldn’t see the
spike.

Nervously, she pulled the bag further down her face, and then at the back of her head. The bag rustled over her eyes and she was engulfed with the stench of plastic. She looked down and could
see the floor and her body through the top of the bag that opened around her neck.

And then Knacker was behind real quick, breathing hard.

He was impatient. Aware of the time and Fergal’s threat, he must have rushed in to smother her. The bag tightened around her throat. The light went out.

Too late!

Knacker’s knees thumped into her back. He was sat on the bed behind her to keep the bag tight at the nape of her neck.

Stephanie sucked in her breath and the plastic bag crumpled around her face. She breathed out and the bag partially inflated. There wasn’t enough air inside the bag to take more than a
shallow intake.

She panicked, got to her knees, her spine a bow with his knees trying to hold her in place. But it was his eagerness that lit her up like a match had been dropped upon a trail of gunpowder; a
trail that started in her stomach and rose to her brain. She flashed red and hot and burned black all over and inside too. And she surrendered to the hateful, vengeful chaos that heated her blood.
She thrust a hand backwards. Slapped his face.

‘Eh, eh. None of that, like. You’s too fond of having a go, ain’t ya? You fink I’ve forgotten how you give me a slap? Eh? Fucking gob on me, bitch, and this is what you
get.’ His tone of voice had changed; the resignation and bedside manner of the reluctant executioner had gone. Another act.

Stephanie leaned her shoulders and head backwards like a gymnast and drew her fingertips down his face as he pulled his head back.

‘Fuck off,’ he whispered.

She slipped her fingers inside his open mouth and felt his tongue like a nervous sea creature recoiling at an intrusion inside its shell. And before he could spit her fingers out of his mouth,
or bite them, she clenched her fist as hard as she could with her thumb positioned under his jaw.

Her nails were long and sharp. And they went through his tongue like the prongs of a large fork through a thick slice of ham.

Knacker gargled around a scream.

She held his jaw tight, her thumb deep under his chin and pressing his pronounced Adam’s apple. And she yanked his head down at the same time she twisted her body about to face him.

The bag had come loose around her throat; he had let go of it to claw at her hand inside his mouth. And to her satisfaction she realized that Knacker couldn’t bite her fingers because she
was holding him by the lower jaw. Elation leapt inside her; she’d bridled the pig with her fist and had to grit her teeth to stop herself screaming from the joy of having this thing in her
hands.

Knacker stood up fast and pulled her upright with him. The leg chain rattled taut. But she did not let go of his jaw, even though his mouth was leaking spit and blood all over her knuckles. He
made a choking sound that refused to become the word he tried to shout. It sounded like: ‘Ergoo, Ergoo, Ergoo.’
Fergal.

A timely reminder of how fast she needed to work.

No messing. Kill him.

It could have been someone else’s voice inside her head. She did not recognize it and was briefly shocked by the sound and the sentiment that the voice expressed. Though she was compelled
to agree with the instruction.

She brought the hand with the mirror shard up from her side. Using the thumb of that hand, she hooked the hot plastic bag entirely off her head. Then peered down at Knacker’s red and
gasping face which she moved closer, just above her waist-level. She noted he was trying to get the lid off the bottle of acid, but was struggling because he only had one eye to see with and only
one arm that was much use. So the limp arm was probably broken. Fergal should have controlled himself; he should never have disabled his ally.

Stephanie shook Knacker’s head about like she was playing with a dog that had its jaws clamped on a rubber toy.

Knacker gargled, sputtered, dripped.

Quickly, she brought the glass shard up and punched it through the thin skin of his throat, between his Adam’s apple and the tendon at the side of his bony neck. Only after the glass went
in deep, and until her knuckles brushed the stubble on his jawline, did she realize that she was smiling with all of her teeth.

Hot blood jetted over the back of her hand. Something that felt like warm water from a garden sprinkler speckled her face. She dipped her head, blinked her eyes clear.

Knacker dropped the bottle of acid at his feet and brought both hands up to a throat that ran bright red right inside the collar of his jacket.

She held him tight by the jaw and lowered his head to the floor. He went down and sputtered like he was choking on a bone. She had no idea a human mouth could produce so much saliva.

He took one hand away from his wet throat and briefly flailed it at her face.

Keys. He put the keys to the cuffs in his pocket.

One thing at a time.

Bleed him. Bleed his strength away.

She kicked him hard between the legs and forced his head against the floor. She raised her uncuffed foot and pressed the sole of her trainer against the side of his head. He kicked out his legs
like a farm animal in a slaughterhouse. His feet shot under the bed and he could not pull them back out. Knacker’s strength was ebbing and his visible red eye started to turn up inside his
skull.

Stephanie was standing in a puddle. ‘Do you want to know
somefing
, you bastard?’ she said. ‘You’re bleeding out, like a pig. It’s what you deserve.’
She knelt down beside him and looked at the door. It was still closed but would not be for long.
Keys.

She let go of the mirror shard and used that hand to go through one of Knacker’s jacket pockets with her free hand. She fished out her phone, her purse. Threw them on to the bed. Slipped
her hand around his stomach and into the other pocket of his jacket and pulled out a tobacco tin, Ryan’s engraved Zippo lighter, a condom, the keys to the door and another set of smaller
steel keys that looked like toy keys.
Handcuffs.