The Sleeping Dead (9 page)

“It’s happening,” he told her, his voice rising in panic. “It is. It is.” He didn’t realize that he’d started to climb onto the parapet until he felt Susan’s hands pulling on his arm. Thick tears rolled down her cheeks and he wanted to ask her,
Why are you crying, it will all be over soon?

He stood on the narrow wall, and wobbled, struck with a sharp pang of vertigo. He could still make out the individual bodies turning over in the water below him and he wondered what would happen when he fell. Would he hit water or a floater? And what difference would that make? He hoped it would be quick. He needed it to be quick. He’d heard drowning was a horrible way to die; fighting for a last breath. But hitting the water from this height would be like jumping down onto concrete and he would at least be unconscious by the time he went under. The people who passed under his feet looked calm. Their worries were past. He would be like them soon. He would be…

“No!” Susan shouted at him. “You can’t leave me alone.”

She pulled on his arm, overbalancing him. For a moment the decision was nearly taken from him as Jackson felt his center of balance shift, taking him out over the edge of the bridge so that he was suspended in midair above the broiling water.

At that moment the voices became clear—they were trying to confuse him, to trick him. He grabbed for Susan’s arm and nearly pulled her off the bridge with him, but she was stronger than she looked, and Jackson wanted to live more than he realized. They fell back, away from the river, to land in a crumpled heap on the pavement.

Their bodies were locked together and it reminded Jackson of the bodies he saw joined in the flowing river beneath him. His arm was bent backward and Susan pinned his ankle beneath her hips. He felt bones grind together—hers rather than his.

“I nearly did it that time,” he said. He wasn’t sure how he felt—a mixture of fear and frustration. If Susan hadn’t been with him, it would all be over now, he would have nothing left to worry about. Tiredness crushed him. He wanted to stop fighting, to just lie down on the pavement and give up.

“But you didn’t.” Susan worked to extricate herself from him. She flexed her arm. “Nothing broken.” She grinned at Jackson.

“Except my pride,” he said, and then the pair of them were laughing. It made no sense, it wasn’t even funny, but Jackson felt his chest ache with the emotional release. He was laughing so hard he was crying, his breath coming in thick gluts as if he was sucking in water rather than air. His sides ached and he wanted to stop because now it hurt. He could hear his own breathing coming in short, harsh gasps. Maybe this was it, maybe this was how they would both die.

The hysteria passed. It left him lying on the ground, flapping like a fish out of water.

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” Susan said.

“Thanks anyway.”

She shrugged. “You know she’s not going to be there? I’m just telling you so you won’t go mad when you find out.”

Jackson nodded, believing nothing of the sort. Of course Donna would be there. Because she had to be there. If she wasn’t at Café Reynauld, then he would keep searching until he found her.

Someone screamed. But the sound was far away and cold and tired, as if the screamer made the sound out of a sense of duty rather than any real emotion. Jackson tried to place the noise—somewhere behind him, over on the side of the bridge from which he’d just come. The scream wasn’t important—he wasn’t intending to go back there. He was going to find Donna and then…

And then…

And then the nightmare would end. Donna was the answer. Part of him knew he was constructing an impossible scenario in which Donna sat with an empty cup of cappuccino in front of her and explained to him and Susan exactly what had happened to the world. Somehow Donna would know. And with that knowledge would come the solution.

He didn’t say this to Susan. He didn’t want to show her how important it had become to him that they find Donna. He didn’t want to frighten her.

Up ahead he could read the signs from some of the shops on the far side of the bridge: McDonald’s and Boots; Specsavers and WH Smiths. He could see the red awning of Santander. If he squinted, he thought he could read the sign for Café Reynauld.

14

Jackson had no recollection of walking the final few hundred yards to the door of the café. His last clear memory was standing on the bridge, feeling the weight of the bodies flowing beneath him, and staring at the rouge sign.

And then he was there. Café Reynauld.

The windows of the café were frosted so that it was impossible to see inside. Donna had liked that, she said that the idea of having people staring in at her while she drank her coffee was disconcerting.

The light above the entrance was on, illuminating the faux-Franco sign with its deep red and brilliant gold lettering.

Jackson tried to peer through the frosted glass and pick out movement on the other side. He couldn’t see anything and didn’t know if that was because the frosting on the glass was particularly effective or because there was nothing to see.

“Are we going to wait here all day?” Susan asked. She reached out and put her hand on the door. A gold plate had the word P
USH
engraved in faded lettering.

The bell above the door chimed, a slight sound but in the silence the effect was magnified. Jackson wanted to reach out and tell Susan to stop. He wanted to hold on to this last moment of innocence when he knew that Donna was inside.

The smell of old coffee blossomed out through the open door.

Immediately beyond the door was a table with a pair of coffee cups and a plate holding only cake crumbs. Beyond that was the counter and a man in a traditional white and black waiter’s uniform looked up as Jackson entered. His smile was wide and welcoming. “Grab a seat, I’ll be with you in a minute.” He turned his back on them and a moment later the wet whoosh of the steamer swamped the air.

Donna sat in her usual seat, near the back of the café, just below the magazine rack. There was a cup in front of her and even from the doorway Jackson could see the white froth of steamed milk and the stain of chocolate on top. She’d waited for him.

“Of course I waited,” Donna said. She spoke without looking up from the paper she was reading—a tattered rag she’d plucked from the pile of magazines. She often joked that she learned more about what was happening in the world from the five minutes she spent on a Saturday morning in Café Reynauld than a week spent watching the news each evening.

Jackson carved a path between the other tables. The café was busy. The sound of the steamer was drowned out by the increasing volume of chatter from the surrounding tables where couples sat and talked. A gang of lads in the corner were huddled around an iPad and arguing, all of them trying to stab the screen and then laughing wildly when the boy in the center of the huddle held it protectively against his chest to stop any of them reaching it.

A couple sat, not talking to each other—the woman pecking at a mobile phone while her partner glared at her in sullen silence. Waves of discontent rolled between them like a troubled sea.

“What took you so long?” Donna asked.

He sat down opposite her and reached out his hand to take hers. “I’ve had a hell of a morning.”

“Haven’t we all?”

“No. I mean I’ve had…” But he couldn’t remember what he wanted to tell her.

“How did the interview go?”

“Interview?”

“You did remember?” Donna said and laughed. She smiled, but there was something wrong with her eyes. Jackson stared into them and then stared away because looking into Donna’s eyes made him feel uncomfortable.

“I told Mum we’d be over for dinner on Sunday, that’s all right, isn’t it?”

Jackson nodded, hardly hearing what she had said.

“Dad will be there too.”

Jackson jerked his head up. His knees clattered against the underside of the table, rocking Donna’s coffee, but the perfect peak of froth in the cup wasn’t disturbed.

“Your dad will be there?”

Donna peered at him, leaning forward in the chair. “That is okay, isn’t it? He said he’s desperate to meet you.”

Your dad died
, Jackson thought.
Your dad died before we met.

“I told him all about us. I know it’s scary, but he’s fine. If you want scary, you should meet Auntie Joan. When I was eight, we stayed with her for a week and I broke a china cup and I swear whenever I go over to visit she still scolds me for it.”

Donna took a sip from the coffee. Jackson smiled. “You’ve got a lump of froth on your nose.”

“Have I?” She reached up to brush it away.

Jackson looked down at the cup, the white mountain of steamed milk was untouched. A wave of confusion rolled over him. He hesitated before he spoke, unsure why the idea of asking a question frightened him.

“How long have you been waiting for me?” Jackson asked. He watched Donna’s face for a reaction, not entirely sure what he was expecting to find.

She laughed. “Oh, forever. At least it’s seemed like that. Where
were
you?”

“I was…” But where there should have been a memory, there was only a gray mist, as if someone had taken a scalpel and excised a tiny portion of his brain. He tried to think, to force himself to remember, but the action only caused a nauseating feeling in his stomach and a sharp stab of pain in the side of his temple. He thought of what Donna had said earlier. “I was at an interview?” A question, not a statement.

“Yes. How did it go?”

The woman seated at the table next to them stared at Jackson. He wanted to tell her to mind her own business. She wore a gray business suit with a smudge of ketchup on her lapel.

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Donna asked.

He nodded and took a sip from his cup of tea. It was cold. He didn’t remember ordering it.

Donna reached across the table to take his hand.

“I’m worried about you.”

Her skin was cold. Jackson stared down at the back of her hand. Blue veins ran across her flesh, like icy rivers through a mountain range.

“Don’t you want to meet my father? Is that it?”

“He’s dead!” Jackson shouted.

The conversations in Café Reynauld stopped. Now it was not just the strange woman at the next table who was staring at him, everyone was looking across. The waiter behind the counter froze with a cup held in midair.

“He’s dead,” Jackson said again. The words sounded weak.

“She’s dead.”

15

“It doesn’t mean she’s dead.”

He stared past Susan, across the empty café. Most of the floor had been cleared and, at the back of the room, tables and chairs had been stacked into a makeshift barrier.

There was blood on the floor. Not a lot, not even enough to suggest that someone had died, but there was blood on the floor and the furniture had been gathered into a barrier and Donna was not sitting at the table waiting for him to return from his interview.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Susan tried again. Jackson nodded. Of course that was true.

“She probably got caught in traffic and turned back. I’ll bet she’s waiting at home, desperate to hear that you’re okay.” There was a thin, strung-out note in Susan’s voice that suggested to Jackson that she needed to believe this alternative reality almost as much as he did.

“Maybe.”

He walked across the café. It felt strange to see the bare wood, as if the furniture had been pulled away to create a dance floor. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like the aching gap in the middle of the floor. The gap that made it impossible to pretend that everything was okay.

He stopped a couple of feet short of the wall. The magazine rack had been pulled from its fixings. The wall bore the telltale marks—four holes where the screws had been. They looked like well-organized bullet holes.

Donna should have been sitting
here
. Jackson stopped and looked down at the ground, as if he expected to find a note lying on the floor for him. There were faint indentations where the table and chairs had scratched back and forth over the wooden floor.

“She’s gone.” He lifted his head to make the pronouncement.

“No. She’s just not here. We can keep looking.”

Of course we can keep looking, but we’ll never find her. Because she’s gone.
The idea came to Jackson with perfect clarity. Donna had been sitting here with her drink and watching the world pass by outside. She had her back to the wall, as she always did, so that she could look over the room. And then
something
had happened. The same
something
that caused Malcolm Laine to beat his brains out against the glass and John Fairls to rip at his arteries with a pair of scissors. The same
something
that had caused Jackie and Angie to decide that the best option was to find a way out, and that anyone sensible would feel the same.