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CHAPTER
TWO

My insurance company impressed me. First, they managed to answer the phone without dumping me in a queue and torturing me with a scratchy looped recording of
“Greensleeves
,” or whatever it is they play nowadays. Second, the operator, who spoke with an Indian accent but insisted his name was Bruce Jackson, was sympathetic to the plight of the freezing man and directed me to the local branch of Auto Windscreens, who not only had my window in stock but also fitted it while I waited. They even gave me a cup of tea, although I have to say that’s a loose description. Tea should not be served in a plastic cup from a sticky push-button machine, and should
never
contain coffee whitener. But since I wasn’t offered an alternative, and it was at least warm, I feigned gratitude and drank it.

Repairs completed and schedule abandoned, I stopped off at B&Q for a pack of saw blades and some lye, and somehow also left with a cordless electric sander. Might come in handy. Next I popped into CarpetRight and was able to pick up half a dozen large offcuts, which matched almost perfectly the sample I carry in my glovebox. You can never have too much carpet, believe me.

Hypnotized by the siren call of beef on the breeze, I then drove over to the adjacent McDonald’s where a pretty blonde girl with four gold stars but no name provided me with what she claimed was a cheeseburger, but which upon closer inspection revealed itself to be a cheap imitation of one. Eating it was only marginally more fulfilling than getting stuck in the pitifully narrow drive-thru lane. This was a disappointment, since Miss Gold Stars looked as though she had the potential to make
great
burgers.

The snow had returned by the time I was back on the road. It came down in a dense flurry, blanketing the ground in minutes and forming a bright, focus-bothering tunnel as I drove.

The road through the forest was unusually quiet, even accounting for the weather; I was making my own tracks and hadn’t passed another vehicle since leaving town. At times like this, unlikely as it seems, it’s perfectly possible to feel at one with nature from inside a heated van.

Two miles after the trees moved in to hug the road, I pulled onto the unmade Forestry Commission trail that follows the main railway line. It’s used in fair weather by dog walkers and cyclists and is inaccessible to motor vehicles, thanks to a steel pole secured to its trestles by a chain and padlock. Fortunately, I have a key.

I locked the gate behind me and, swallowing my regret at disturbing the virgin snow, guided the van along the rutted track for the half mile that would take me out of sight of the main road.

This is what winters were like when I was a child. The snow shin-deep on the ground. Soft, delicate flakes falling around me in their thousands, settling in my hair and gently tickling my face. The air so crisp and still as to dull the cold. Breath rising in front of my eyes, floating up toward a pure, white sky. The soft crunching underfoot with each deliberate step. The blissful, unbreakable silence.

Back then, winters were long and filled with all kinds of mystery. There were the treacherous road trips with my father to far-flung outposts in rented cars. The old stables along the driveway became an arctic shipwreck; discarded junk on high shelves was pirate treasure. And then there was the birch wood beyond the garden, where the ground stayed dry enough to sit and read under a canopy of blankets, and where the shouts and screams from the house could never reach.

Today, though, I had little time to reflect. I’d parked the van where the track meets a swathe of open heathland cut through the forest. From here the ground slopes away toward the railway line, beyond which is a steep drop into a wooded marsh, which lies alongside the river. Where I was standing, the ground falls sharply into a tree-lined crater, about a hundred yards across; at the bottom is a shallow pond fed by a tributary of the river, which winds its way through the marsh and under the railway. Down here the line is supported by a brick tunnel, built when the railway was laid in the 1840s to allow the passage of boats into what was then a working flint pit. Repeatedly pinned and reinforced over the years in a valiant yet inevitably vain struggle against gravity and decay, it shudders and wails with the passing of every train.

Reaching this place requires care even in ideal conditions. In deep snow, carrying a dead weight, it’s a pain in the arse. I had to make two trips, leaving the heavy rubble sack beneath the bridge and returning for the smaller bags and shovel. This time of year, unfortunately, calls for something of a compromise. There’s plenty of good ground out here, firm enough not to be turned over by the occasional trampling; after all, what’s accessible to me is accessible to you, too. However, in these temperatures it’s impossible to dig a hole in it. Any ground soft enough to dig in the depths of winter will be all but impassable in the summer, and therefore, almost inevitably remote and overgrown and generally no place to be carrying luggage.

The error giving rise to the term “shallow grave” is a classic one made time and again by panicked first-timers. It’s common for them to underestimate the time and effort involved in digging up a forest floor; the net result of this is, generally, a very small hole. In order to adequately cover the body, they are forced to build up a sizeable mound of earth from the surrounding area. Since this looks just like a shallow grave, they will then attempt to disguise it with a layer of bracken and moss. And of course, at the first sign of a stiff breeze, the toes are poking out.

Today, I’d be going five feet deep. This could take all winter.

CHAPTER
THREE

In death, my father finally smiled. He was still warm when I left him the first time, his skin still soft, cheeks flushed. The blood pooled in the sawdust under his neck, tiny woodchips floating, dancing with one another, drawn together into little snowflake patterns that mimicked the ones still melting into my coat.

I knelt over him, searching his eyes for a flicker of life. The first and only time this strong, proud man would look up at me—his last chance to look at me at all—and yet still unable to truly
look
at me.

In those few moments, I saw the full range of his emotions pass across his face. The pain of betrayal. The regret of self-inflicted failure. Perplexity at the fascinations of a small boy. Frustration at the demands for attention. Disappointment, anger and loathing. Fear.

After breakfast, I returned and sat beside him, shivering for hours on end, watching the blood congeal and his face wax over. Around midday, the snow on the roof became top-heavy and slid to the ground, startling me. Every now and then a curious vulpine nose snuffled along the gap beneath the door. Otherwise, I had only the silence and the cold for company.

By nightfall he was cool to the touch, his fingers curled into rigid claws, and my hunger got the better of me.

I stumbled back through the garden to the warmth of the house, praying all the way that I’d find my dinner in the oven, my mother there to make sure I ate my vegetables before she tucked me into bed with the promise that tomorrow, everything would be just fine. But I’d seen the look in her eyes when she’d kissed me goodbye that morning, a life and sparkle that I’d never seen there before. Deep down, as I’d watched her grab her bags and sail out of the house, leaving me alone with my porridge, I’d known this exit was different from all the others. This one felt final.

I did the only thing I knew how. I gorged myself on shoo-fly pie and waited for someone to find me. Funny thing is, they never really did.

* * *

Preheat the oven to 260 degrees centigrade.

Juice six oranges; zest two of the rinds and roughly chop the rest. Take two medium-size fillets from the bird of your choosing and make an incision in each. Insert equal measures of the chopped rind and place the whole ensemble in a baking tray with half an inch of water. Bake in the oven until the skin is golden brown and lightly crisped, then turn it down to 150. It’s going to take about an hour.

While that’s cooking, take your zest and the freshly squeezed juice and pop them in a pan along with two-thirds of a cup of sugar. Place the mixture over a medium-to-high heat and reduce it until you’re left with about a quarter of the volume. Throw in a tablespoon of bitters, and set the pan aside.

Boil two cups of chicken stock in a separate pan, then add the orange mixture and simmer it for ten more minutes.

When the meat is done, drain the fat from the baking tray and place the tray on the stove. Pour a cup of Grand Marnier into the tray and cook off the alcohol. Make sure you’ve got a wooden spoon to hand as you will need to scrape the bottom of the tray almost continuously. Next, pour a cup of the orange sauce you made earlier into the tray and cook it for a minute or so.

Finally, remove the orange rinds from the steaks and combine the orange sauce with the remaining juices from the baking tray. Serve with a simple accompaniment of new potatoes and runner beans,
et voilà. Sarà l’orange
.

I built my garage large enough to comfortably accommodate a full-size van and three cars. An automatic climate-control system maintains a constant temperature of sixty degrees Fahrenheit and minimizes humidity. Twin reinforced canopy doors are operated by remote control, which utilizes a double rolling-code system to ensure maximum peace of mind. I have three transmitters; I keep one on my keychain, and the spares are in a locked box in one of the kitchen cupboards, along with a collection of souvenir door keys amassed over time. The key to the box is on my keychain. Note to self.

The stairs leading down to the basement are accessed via a cupboard, or more specifically the false back thereof, which is lined with lipped shelves containing half-empty paint cans and other objects disinclined to topple when disturbed, and which opens at the flick of a concealed catch into the void between the outer and false inner walls to the rear of the garage. The steps are covered with a heavy-duty nylon cut-pile carpet, mulberry in color with a crisp multipoint stipple-effect pattern, perfect for camouflaging a vast range of dark stains. It’s certificated to all European flammability and antistatic standards for office applications, and is Scotchgard-protected to prevent ingraining. There isn’t an awful lot you can’t drag across a carpet like that.

Twenty-two feet down at the foot of the stairs is a door; galvanized steel featuring twin-cylinder mortise locks with drill-resistant casings and a seventeen-bolt backup. The internal bracings are separated by layers of sound-deadening thermal insulation, and the door is finished with attractive natural beech panels.

Beyond this door is what I described to my builder as a games room. Forty-five feet by thirty and of concrete construction, it’s lit by an octet of spotlights, one pair at each corner of the ceiling, and furnished with an integrated antenna loop connected to a cellular repeater for reliable mobile phone reception. The walls are plastered and painted a delicate eggshell-blue. The floor is covered with three-inch-thick rubber matting. The builder, sadly, was confused by my explanation and now resides four feet above the ceiling, under eight feet of earth.

In the center of the room is a twenty-by-twenty security cage, built from ten-gauge steel wire with a two-and-a-half-inch diamond mesh and one-and-a-quarter-inch channel frame. The cage has a five-by-seven door with twin cylinder locks and a reinforced titanium padlock.

Inside the cage is an iron-framed single bed, anchored to the floor with seven-inch bolts. It has a pocket sprung mattress, white cotton sheets and a cozy lambswool blanket. At each corner of the bed, bolted to the floor through the rubber mat, is a steel ring, six inches in diameter. In the far corner of the cage are a toilet and sink with mains plumbing.

And finally, on this day at least, there was one other item in the cage. It was located in the middle of the floor, rolled into a tight ball. It was sensitive to light, to the sound of slamming doors and to the smell of home cooking. Covered in layers of brown wool and dark blue denim, it started as I entered the cage and stared at me silently through wide, hateful eyes. It was tired, disoriented and hungry. And its name was Erica Shaw.

CHAPTER
FOUR

The self-confident bounce was long gone. Erica didn’t move as I balanced the dinner tray in one hand and removed the padlock with the other. The sound of the key in the door, however, had her bolt upright and scrabbling backward across the rubber floor until her back thumped hard against the far side of the cage. She pulled her knees to her chin and glared up at me, wide eyes blazing with venom and fear, the tight, glowing curls of her hair now a matted, lifeless mess that covered her face and clung to the tears as they streamed across her cheeks. Silently, she trembled.

“Erica,” I said softly. “It’s dinnertime.” I placed the tray carefully on the edge of the bed. A wooden tray, decorated with piglets and ducklings, with a built-in knee cushion filled with tiny beans. A plastic plate, dishwasher friendly, with a daisy-chain print around the rim. A matching tumbler filled with ice-cold Highland Spring. Still, not sparkling. Plastic knife and fork.

She neither moved nor spoke; just stared, knees shuddering, shoulders heaving with each shallow breath.

I joined her on the floor, sat facing her. “Come on, you need to eat something besides cereal. You’re looking thin.” No response. “It’s tasty. Try a bit, see if you like it?” Nothing. “Erica, listen to me. I’m not going to let you starve to death here.”

I could sense a change in her then, though she gave no visible sign. I felt her desire to answer me back, to demand to know exactly what she
would
be dying of. But she still said nothing.

“Okay.” I sighed. “I’ll leave you alone. Do your best.” I pulled myself back up, turned to leave the cage. “Oh, and the sheets on that bed are brand-new.” I swung the door shut, turned the key on both bolts, reached down by my feet for the padlock. “You don’t have to keep sleeping on the floor.”

And then I took a full serving of orange sauce and green beans square in the face.

“I’m not eating fucking meat, you psycho freak!” Erica screamed, grabbing handfuls of steel mesh as the offending fillet plopped to the floor. The plate rolled the length of the cage and clattered against the toilet. Potatoes bounced in all directions. Sauce ran from my hair. I kicked myself.

“Good shot,” I conceded, “but honestly, you’re not in a position to pick and choose.”

“No, you’re right,” she spat, gripping the mesh, her knuckles white, eyes flashing like those of a cornered tiger. “Which reminds me, how long are you going to keep me in this fucking dungeon?”

A reasonable question, and one to which I wished I knew the answer. The simple fact is that time, tendency and tourism are fickle bedfellows, and one can rarely predict when they might deign to coincide. Probably best not to tell her that, though, so I tried to look halfway confident as I asked, “How long’s a piece of string?”

She pushed herself from the door, backed away with a half skip. “Well,” she said, smiling, “you’re hardly going to keep me here for the next eighty years, and you already said I’m not allowed to starve to death, so either you’re holding me to ransom or you’re just going to kill me. Either way, I guess you’ll want to get it over with fairly soon.”

I returned her mocking grin. “Well,” I said, “I’m certainly not intending to sell you.” Her spark retreated. “And I’m sorry to keep you waiting, but I simply haven’t had the opportunity to do anything with you yet. At some point, I’ll take you out, and we’ll play some games, and if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll get to go home. But if you’re too weak to run, you won’t stand a chance, and if you starve, it won’t be any fun for either of us.”

Silence revisited her forthwith. The defiance, the loathing, even the fear vanished from her eyes, leaving only great dark pools of sorrow.

“So, you’ll get what you’re given, and it’ll be good for you, and you’ll eat it, so perhaps you’d like to salvage what you can while I go and find you a mop.”

Fucking vegetarians.

* * *

I didn’t really know what I needed, but I figured I’d make a run for the supermarket on the near side of town. February’s snow was gone, but the onset of spring had been lazy and as darkness fell, the temperature dropped below freezing, the remains of a misty evening turning the roads to ice.

Had the gritters laid any grit, this would have been an easy five-minute drive. As it was, however, I faced an invigorating struggle against the renegade forces of physics. With friction an early casualty, the van slithered maniacally about the rink, seemingly intent on meeting its fate belly-up in a frozen trench. The rush hour had barely ended, but I didn’t pass a single car; no one else was stupid enough to take on the elements out here. I couldn’t help thinking that were I to come to grief, spring would arrive before help did. I liked it.

After twenty-three minutes of sheer exhilarating uncertainty, I reached the motorway. Coated with a layer of brine, and bustling with weary souls packed into grubby tin cans, it brought me crashing back down to the dreariness of everyday life. I felt like a tuna.

Quietly wondering whether vegetarians ate tuna, I followed the usual shopping routine. In the magazine section, I browsed gawky uniformed schoolgirls with braces on their teeth. A petite brunette in a pinstriped suit leafed through the local paper, the familiar headline barely raising an eyebrow. Missing Girls Almost Certainly Abducted. The greeting card aisle was brimming with fat-bottomed mothers ignoring their bored, fidgeting offspring in favor of tired punchlines and nauseating sentiment. Women’s Clothing: deserted but for the fragile, gray-haired fitting room attendant, fixing the floor with the sorrowful gaze of the undervalued, desperate to believe that there might—nay,
must
be more to life.

In Fruit & Veg I selected a peach. Small, rosy and perfectly rounded, she set my mouth watering the moment she caught my eye. Her burly, bruised companion, however, swiftly killed my appetite. Or rather, his uniform did.

There were no sweet cupcakes to be found in the bakery aisle, just an abundance of greasy doughnuts. In fact, I was struck by how few of those loading up on golden syrup cakes and Danish pastries looked like they could really be trusted with them. Unlike the redhead in the pet-food aisle with the wide hips and the skinny arms, none of these creatures could claim to be big-boned. Considering all implications, I moved on.

Pasta and Sauces: a towering blonde with a hook nose and bandy legs which, under cursory inspection, seemed too thin to support the weight of her body or offer any stability in the face of prevailing winds. She walked in a disjointed manner, which made it difficult to judge between prosthetic and anorexic; either way, I prefer a little meat with my spaghetti.

Things began to look up in the frozen food section: another redhead, younger and narrower this time and more auburn than ginger, in tight jeans that showed off the delicious curve of her slender thighs and rounded hips. I leaned past her to peer into the chiller, barely brushing her ponytail with my cheek. Tea tree and mint and an underlying hint of vanilla. All at once invigorating and relaxing. “Excuse me,” I said, gently laying an apologetic hand on her arm as I reached around to grab a tub of coconut Carte D’Or. She glanced at me and offered a polite smile, made no attempt to move away. Not wishing to push my luck, however, I returned the smile and backed off. I lingered over the frozen vegetables, waited for her to close the chiller and pass by before following at a half-aisle distance, carefully matching my pace to hers.

She was pushing a trolley-for-one, but this was clearly a weekly shop; meal-wise she had the makings of seven single servings and was now selecting an eight-pot pack of
fromage frais
. She clearly let her hair down one night a week.

She’d already covered most of the store: baked beans, tuna, sweetcorn, tinned cat food, Fairy Liquid, pasta and rice and couscous and a couple of cook-in sauces. The items seemed largely to follow a pattern. Perhaps these were things vegetarians ate.

Her allure all but overshadowed by the sudden wisdom she’d bestowed upon me, and knowing now what needed to be done, I released the redhead from the clutches of my intent and set off on a vital quest to reclaim the moral high ground and secure my reputation as an impeccable host.

I made it as far as the fish counter.

It’s a rare and fortunate man who can pinpoint precisely the moment his life began to unravel. Most can only guess, grasping at distant memories of wealth and security and happiness and wondering just where the hell it all went while they scrape their attempts at independence off the bottom of the oven. Yesterday it was a detached cottage with creeping ivy, a pretty and talented wife who was never too tired and kids who tidied their rooms and kept their elbows off the table. A retriever. A study. A Volvo. Today, a rented one-bed cesspit with grease stains on the ceiling. A portable TV. A Metro. Fleas. The decline, though outwardly long and tortuous, passes in the blink of an eye.

For these people there is no time stamp; their fall from grace occurred over months and years, but still they search the depths of their souls for a date and time in the vain belief that a single moment revisited might serve to reverse their fortunes. Often, they search for the rest of their lives.

I, on the other hand, am one of the lucky ones. I know exactly when it all started to go wrong for me. It was April 5 at 19:23:17, and it started with a pair of eyes.

Most of the eyes I see stare right through me. Some linger on the pavement, desperate to avoid meeting other eyes. Others gaze into the middle distance, vacant and expressionless, betraying a desire to be somewhere, anywhere other than here and now. Some eyes flicker and glaze over and roll back and just stare at nothing at all. But most eyes stare through me as if I’m simply not here.

These eyes, though, these eyes were different. They met my own, bored through them, stared right
into
me. They carried a charge of some intangible recognition, a magnetic déjà vu trailing its spidery fingers down my spine, throwing sparks of invitation and longing tinged with fear and denial, rendering me at once both intoxicated and drained. My train of thought derailed; my empty head floated free of my shoulders, legs threatening to buckle under the weight of my directionless body. I don’t know how long this electrifying gaze held my own, nor how these eyes came to be mere inches from mine, but sometime later, they blinked and released me from their spell.

My head snapped back into sharp focus. The rancid stench of cockles and mussels headed straight for the back of my throat, giving me the insufferable task of appearing not to gag. Arched eyebrows and a flickering smile told me I’d failed and, for the first time since childhood, I felt the onset of a blush. Frankly, I didn’t know where to look—but I settled on her chest, where I found comfort and understanding in four neatly printed words.

Her name, apparently, was Caroline. And she was Here To Help.