One of Us (13 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

We stood at the end of Elena’s street, like spies in a film. We pretended that we were busy, reading the little cards in the window of the newsagent. Child’s buggy, yes, very interesting. Quick look down the street. Gardening done, no job too small, Sean nods, we will have to remember that, we need a gardener. No-one coming, no-one going. Exercise cycle, never used, perfect condition. The street as empty as when we came.

“Let’s go,” I said. I was very nervous, thinking about dealing with Lomax. But I felt alive too, and I felt that I was doing something, not just being pushed wherever others wanted me to go.

Sean looked as though he was going to suggest we wait a while longer, but he did not say anything, and walked with me. He was looking ahead, not at the houses or the path, but at the road.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The cars,” he said. “I’m looking in the cars to see if anyone is sitting in any of them.”

I started to look in the cars too.

We reached the house that Elena’s flat was in without seeing anybody. All of the cars had been empty. No curtains twitched across the street. I wondered how many people lived in these flats, how many were empty, how many of the people who did live there ever got out of bed before noon. The side of the road was like a temporary resting place before the scrapyard.

“Natural,” Sean said. “Like we’re calling around to see a friend. Just act natural.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “I just love feeling like I’m going to be jumped by gangsters any minute. Love it.”

I rang Elena’s bell, and we waited. There was no sound from inside the house.

“She’s out,” Sean said. “We better come back another time.”

“She might be out then too,” I said. “We need to get the recording out of this place. What if it gets found? She will have drunk herself to sleep last night, she may be in and not hearing us. So we have to go and see.”

“Don’t tell me, we’re going to break in,” Sean said. “Terrific. I do love these little surprises of yours.”

I turned the handle and the front door opened. “No break in,” I said. “All the times I have been here, the front door to the building has never been locked.” We walked quickly into the hallway, and Sean shut the door behind us. “Not this door anyway.”

“And if she doesn’t answer hers?” Sean murmured.

“Maybe then a break in,” I said.

The house was very quiet. We crept as quietly as we could across the floorboards of the hall, not speaking. I had not noticed when I went to Elena’s flat before, but the stairs squeaked and creaked and cracked under us. They had probably made the same noise before, but then was not now, and now I noticed. I was very glad that I was not alone.

We reached her room and paused outside.

“Thank you,” I said to Sean. “For coming with me. For helping to set this up. For being here.” I did not want to say thank you for not running away.

“S’OK,” Sean said. “I do this sort of thing all the time. Most weeks, anyway.” His voice shook a little bit, but that did not matter. So did mine.

I smiled at Sean, and knocked on Elena’s door. It moved open under my hand. I pushed the door open, walked into the small room, and there were the flowers I had bought her, wilting in the vase, there was the picture of her son on the wall, his hair curly and wild, and there was Elena lying dead and naked on the couch.

Everything in the room seemed to narrow to that one point, as if I had tunnel vision. All else faded away. There was just the old couch, with its too soft cushions, and Elena lying on it, one foot hanging off the edge, one hand trailing on the floor. Her eyes were open, and she was gone. There was froth around her mouth, and the smell of vomit. A dark stain spread out underneath her on the fabric of the couch, like an ink blot. Death allows no dignity.

Behind me, there was a noise like a hurt animal. Sean. I could not find any words to say to him, so I reached out and I took his hand. He let me hold it, but he did not hold mine.

“What have we done?” he said, his voice small, like a child. “What have we done?”

“We did not do this,” I said.

He let go of my hand and took a step back. “Yes, we did,” he said.

I stopped standing like a tourist, and I went to her. I was sure that she was dead, and had been for a while but I needed to be surer than that.

“Don’t touch her,” Sean said. “For Christ’s sake. Don’t leave any fingerprints or anything. Jesus.” He pulled out a tissue, and started wiping the door handle, the door itself, the doorframe.

I touched Elena’s forehead. It was cold, like meat from the fridge. It had been a while since she had died. Her body was bruised, like the first time I had seen her, but this time the terrible dark marks around her throat showed how she had died. Her nose had been broken, and one side of her face was so swollen that it looked as if it did not belong to the other side. There was blood between her legs, but I did not want to look any closer to see why. Before she had died, she had been hurt, over and over again.

I bent down, and moved my hand along the underside of the bedframe, from the foot of the bed to the top. I thought that it was not going to be there, but then I knocked something free and it went skittering across the floor.

“Sean,” I said.

“I don’t want to see,” he said. “I don’t want to know. I just want to get out of here. Come on, Anna, we’ve got to get out of here. Christ.”

“Sean,” I said again. Then he saw that what I had knocked down was the recorder. He stared at me for a moment, his eyes wild, as if he did not know who I was. He bent down and picked up the recorder.

“We’re fucking dead,” he said his voice rising in pitch. “Why did we ever get involved in this, oh Jesus, oh Jesus.” His hands were shaking, like he was starting to have a fit. “This is our fault, we did this, this is real life and she died, what the fuck were we playing at? Acting like it was some kind of stupid game, it’s our fault, it’s my fault, we did this, I’ve caused this, I can’t handle it, I can’t, I just can’t, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, made a noise like he had just been kicked in the balls, and ran out of the room. After a few moments, I could not hear him any more. I walked over to Elena, bent down, and kissed her hand, very gently.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

I stood up, and it was with a very great effort, like I was old. “I’m sorry,” I said again. I walked over to the wall, and gently unpinned the photograph of her son. “I’m sorry,” I said to her son. I walked over to her bedside table, put my hand inside the fabric of my coat sleeve, and used that to open the drawer. I took one of the letters from her mother out. It had an address on it. “I’m sorry,” I said to her mother. I put the letter and the photograph in my pocket. Then I walked to the door.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Elena, to her son, to her mother, to everyone. Then I closed the door gently behind me, walked down the creaking stairs, and left her house. I showed nothing on the outside. Nothing. I had stifled screams before. I took it all, and I pushed it down inside, deep inside, and I held it all there, all along the quiet street, all the way on the bus. I held it deep inside me until I got back to my hostel, and then I locked myself in the toilet and I stuck my knuckles in my mouth, and I bit down on them hard so no-one would hear me crying for Elena, for Sean, for me.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Sean did not come into work that evening. I did, because I did not know what else to do. Nothing would be worse than sitting in my room with nothing to do but to think about how Elena was dead, and about how it was all my fault. If I had not interfered, she would have been alive. If I had not had my great idea, my grand, stupid plan, she would be alive. I had thought that I was so clever. But I was not. And now she was dead.

I was something of a star pupil. My tutors at the Medical Academy expected me to pass all of my exams and my clinical practice. But when the door to our house banged shut and the car drove away with the men and my father, pushed down on the floor at their feet with a hood over his face, nothing that I had learned was enough to bring my brother back.

Aleksey was lying in the kitchen, his arms and legs all spread out, the wrong way. His face was blood and in places under the blood I could see bone. I could not breathe. I took a step forward, and my bare foot came down on something sharp. I bent and picked it from my sole. It was one of my brother’s teeth. I knelt done beside him and I did everything that I could think of doing and I did nothing that would make any difference. My beautiful brother was dead, and nothing that I did would make any difference. My father was taken, and nothing that I did would make any difference.

I knew how the police worked. They would be back, so Aleksey’s death could be made into something that could be put into a report. He would have attempted to escape, in the course of which he had fallen from our upstairs window and suffered serious head injuries that were fatal despite prompt medical attention. Something like that. They had to at least pretend, so that everybody else could pretend too. I stopped, long after it was pointless carrying on, and I cradled Aleksey in my arms the way that I remembered him doing for me when I was little, and had fallen over. I cradled him and then I kissed him on a piece of his scalp that was not too bloody, and then I laid him down on the floor and ran to wash the blood from me and pack a few things in my bag before someone realised that there was a sister unaccounted for. I could not save my brother. And I could not save Elena, either.

I stumbled numb through work, everything unreal, the way you feel when you are in a car and it crashes and everything moves very fast and then stops, and for a moment or two you do not know if you are alive or not.

“You heard from him?” Peter said, banging boxes of frozen burgers around as if they were to blame for everything. “I know you two are as thick as thieves.”

“No,” I said, and my voice did not sound like it was my own. Even to me. “Has he not phoned in?”

“Oh no,” Peter said. “That would be too much trouble. Letting me know. Letting me know my plan to sit in the office and do my taxes is spoilt because I have to stand in for him, that’s too much trouble. After all, I’m only the boss. Not like I matter round here, is it?”

He was grumpy all evening. A customer complained about not having enough salami on his pizza and Peter told him to leave if he did not like it. The man swore at Peter, who started to come out from behind the counter and the man dropped his pizza and left. Peter was in a better mood after that.

I went back to the hostel when my shift was finished, and stared up at the ceiling and listened to the other women breathe. I thought about Elena, and I thought about my father and brother. There were hollow spaces inside me the size of them all, and I did not know if they would ever fill in. There are things your parents do that make you hate them, but then you love them too, and the two things cannot be separated, no more than your skin from your bones. And with about as much pain, if you try.

It hurt me to think about my father, or about Aleksey. But I was scared that if I did not, I would start to lose them from my memory, lose the detail bit by bit, and just be left with shadows. So I thought about the way my father snored when he slept in his chair, and about the way his eyes were bright with tears when I danced ballet. I thought about how Aleksey patiently taught me to ice skate, when I was falling over and over, and I thought about the hell-mouth stink of his football boots. I thought about all the stupid little things, because put together those things made up the people I was scared that I would forget. I thought about what I should do, and then I thought that there is nothing I can do, other than keep on living. What else was there to do? I asked myself though, keep on living for what, but there was no particular answer which came to mind.

In the morning I walked over to Sean’s flat and rang his doorbell. He did not answer. I rang again, and again, and I saw the grubby net curtain of the downstairs flat twitch. But upstairs, there was nothing. I put my finger on the bell and did not let go, even when the woman in the flat downstairs appeared at the window. A few moments later, she came to her door.

“I am sorry,” I said. “If I disturbed you.” I was not, but I knew that the Anna I once was, the Anna who still felt things, would have been.

She stood in the doorway for a while and looked at me. She was in a dressing gown, even though it was late in the afternoon. She did not look as if she had just put it on. I thought at first that she was in her late fifties, but on a second look guessed that she had not yet reached forty. Her life weighed heavy on her face.

“You’re after him upstairs.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I said. “I am. Have you seen him?”

“Funny,” she said. “I don’t know why, I always thought he was gay. Not saying that there is anything wrong with that. Different world now, isn’t it?”

I was not sure quite what to say, so I nodded.

The woman looked at me with pity. “I’m sorry love,” she said. “I have. He dropped his keys off last night, told me to give them to Billy, our landlord, tell him he’s gone. He didn’t have much with him, but he said that Billy could sell or dump what he’d left. There’ll be someone new in there in a day or two. He can’t stand the idea of not making money, can Billy.”

I looked down at the cracked red tiles underneath my feet. “Do you know where he’s gone?”

“Me? No love. We weren’t what you call close. Don’t get me wrong, he was a nice boy. Lovely and polite, well-spoken too. Like I said, I thought he played for the other side. If he’s gone though love, let him go. Trust me, you can spend your life chasing.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I turned to leave. Then I stopped and turned back. “If I give you a number, please, if you see him, would you phone and leave a message for me?”

The pity in her eyes was obvious.

“I am worried for him,” I said. “He’s not been well. I just want to know if he’s all right.”

“I will love,” she said. “Though you’re daft for asking. Hang on, I’ll get something to write it down.” She shuffled off, and the smell of gin moved in to stand where she had been. When she came back with a page torn out of a notebook, I wrote my name and the number of the burger place on a corner.

“Thank you,” I said. “Please phone.”

“Oh I will, love,” she said. “If I can. I do love to see a happy ending.”

On my way back to the hostel, I saw a woman who I thought looked like Elena, but as I got near she turned her head and she did not look like Elena at all. I felt a splash of rain on my neck, and pulled my coat close around me. The sky hung low and dark over the city, like it wanted to smother it. The rain started to come harder, and to turn into sleet. I took a short cut, walking through narrow side streets of narrow terraced houses, because the main road went a longer way round. I could have stayed on the main road and waited for a bus, but a bus was money, and rain was just rain.

I heard a car behind me, but it did not drive past. It slowed, almost to a stop, keeping pace with me. I walked faster. I should not have come this way, I should have stayed on the main road, I should have caught a bus. I walked faster. The car stayed just behind me. All the hairs on my neck stood up, as if I had just walked in to a very cold place.

“Get in the car.”

I ran. I hoped that another car would drive past, that the door of a house would open and a man would step out on to the pavement, putting up his umbrella and patting his pockets to make sure he had his keys, and the car would speed up and drive away, leaving me alone.

The car sped up until it was a few yards in front of me, and then it bumped up onto the pavement, and the passenger door flew open. A tall man climbed out. He had his head shaved short, wore an expensive suit, a shirt so white it looked as if it glowed, no tie. It was Corgan’s man Nicky.

“Get in the car,” he said. “Now.”

“Why?” It was all that I could think of to say. I felt relieved that it was Corgan’s men, and not some stranger who followed women when they were on their own and sometimes, when there was no-one else around, took them in his car and took them into their nightmare. I almost laughed. This was how bad my life had got, that being picked up by thugs like Corgan’s men was the best outcome.

“Why? Because we’re going on a trip to Alton Towers, go on the rides, buy some fucking ice cream. Get in the car.”

I hesitated for a moment, and he started to walk towards me. I held my hands up, and walked towards the car. If I had no choice, I was going to get in myself, not be dragged in. Nicky got in the passenger seat in the front, and the back door opened. I climbed in. Paul was behind the wheel, sweat shiny on the back of his fat neck. He didn’t turn around. Kav was sitting in the back seat on the far side of the car. He patted the seat next to him.

“You can snuggle up if you like,” he said.

I sat so near the door on my side that the handle to wind the window pressed hard into my leg.

“Get a move on,” Nicky said to Paul, and he drove away fast. Nobody spoke. I looked out of my window, watching people doing their ordinary, everyday things and I wondered whether I would ever be one of them again. I did not look across, but I knew that Kav was staring at me. I could feel it, as if it was his hand on me.

Nicky pulled his seatbelt so that it was loose and turned round in his seat, but he was not looking at me. He stared out of the back window.

“No-one there,” Kav said. “Telling you.”

Nicky ignored him, and kept staring out of the back window. Eventually he let go his seat belt and sat back.

“We’re OK,” he said to Paul. “Get us there.”

There turned out to be a place that I had not been to before. It said on the outside that it was a restaurant, but all the chairs were in stacks with white sheets over them, and the tables pushed to one corner by the bar. The place smelt of dust, and it did not look as if there had been customers in this restaurant for a long time.

“Through there,” Nicky said, and he reached out a hand to push me, but I walked quickly so that he could not touch me. I went through a swing door at the back of the restaurant. I thought that it would lead to the kitchens, but instead it opened out onto stairs. I walked up them before I could be made to, and came to a narrow landing. There were two doors. One of them was closed.

Nicky pushed me through the open one. Corgan was standing on the far side of the room, looking at his mobile phone. He ignored me. Another man I did not know sat in a plastic folding chair, his feet up on a box. The others came in behind me. There was nothing else in the room, not even a carpet. Just white walls, wooden floorboards, these men. The room felt very small, and smelt of aftershave and sweat.

“Right,” Corgan said, and he looked up at me, for what seemed like an hour, without saying anything else. I stared back at him, not insolent, but not afraid either. Inside, all of me squeezed together, hot and scared. But outside, I stood and I looked back. I could not let them see my fear, because then they would know that there was something that I was afraid about. I had to be the Anna that they were used to.

“I’m not happy, Anna,” Corgan said. “And do you know why?”

“Premature hair loss?” The Anna they were used to would not take kindly to being forced into a car.

The room went very quiet.

“Not now,” Corgan said, and it was just in a quiet voice, but I have never been so afraid in my life because there was violence in this very ordinary voice, sudden and terrible. I swallowed, and it felt like something was stuck in my throat.

“Sorry,” I said. “But I have been taken from the street, brought here like I am a prisoner, and I do not know anything.”

“Do you not?” Corgan said. “Well, we’ll see.”

Again the silence. I did not like the men standing behind me. I could not see what they were doing. The man who was sat in the chair reached his hands out in front of him, and made his knuckles crack.

“I want to know about your friend,” Corgan said.

“My friend?”

“Your friend. The one you work with. Sean.”

I swallowed again. Innocent Anna, innocent. “Sean? What has Sean got to do with any of this? I just worked with him, he is nothing to do with your world.”

“Is he not?”

I looked from Corgan to the man I did not know, and back. I hoped that I looked confused. “Please, I do not understand.”

“Don’t play stupid,” Corgan said. “It doesn’t suit you, and it doesn’t fool anyone. So where is your friend then?”

“Sean is nothing to do with you.”

“Oh, he is,” Corgan said. “He most certainly is. Where is he?”

“I—I do not know.”

Corgan arched an eyebrow.

“He—he’s gone,” I said. “I do not know...I think he is not well. He has done this before, he told me. Sometimes he just has to move on.”

“And he didn’t tell you?” Nicky’s voice came from behind me. “Your friend—if that’s all he is—and he didn’t tell you he was going?”

“I guess I am finding out that we are not as close as I thought,” I said.

“I wonder,” Corgan said. “I wonder. See, what bothers me Anna, is your friend Sean’s disappearing act.”

“I do not understand.”

“So you keep saying. You seen Elena?”

That was where I nearly gave it away. I bit down on the edge of my tongue, took a breath. Play it confused Anna, keep it confused. “Not for a couple of days. We had coffee, a couple of days ago.”