When Will There Be Good News? (41 page)

She knew that this was the dark place she had always been destined to find again. Just because a terrible thing happened to you once didn't mean it couldn't happen again.

The men only spoke to her when it was necessary but they didn't seem bothered that she could see their faces. There was something military about them and she wondered if they were special forces. Mercenaries. She thought it best to talk to them even if they didn't talk back. One was slightly shorter than the other and she called him 'Peter' (I'm sorry I don't knoUl your name, do you mind ifI call you Peter?). The slightly taller one she called 'John' (HoUl aboutJohn -that's agood name?). She said, 'Thank you, John' when they gave her water or 'That's very kind of you, Peter' when they took away the pot to empty it.

She guessed they were going to kill her eventually, when she'd served her purpose, whatever that was, but she was going to make it difficult for them because they would have to remember that she had been friendly to them, she had called them by their names, even if they weren't their real ones, she had made them see that she was a person. And that they were people too.

As well as water they gave her food, microwaved ready-meals that she would never have considered eating normally but which she looked forward to because she was very hungry. They gave her jars of baby food and cow's milk in a cup which she didn't give to the baby but drank herself and breast-fed the baby instead. They gave her a pack of disposable nappies as well, the wrong size, and a bin-bag to put the soiled ones in although they never emptied the bin-bag.

The baby was very subdued and she supposed it was becaus
e
they'd given her an injection of something that made her head fee
l
like wool for the first day, some kind of liquid benzodiazepine o
r
maybe intravenous Valium. She had prepared the vein for them hers
elf after they put a knife to the baby's throat.

They brought in some toys -a ball and a plastic box wit
h
different-shaped holes in the side. Lights came on and a bell rang i
f
you posted the correct shape in the holes. They were both secondh
and and still had little hand-written price stickers on as if they'
d
come from a charity shop. They were both soon bored with the toys.

Mostly she played pat-a-cake with the baby and peek-a-boo and sh
e
sang and recited rhymes and jiggled the baby around to keep hi
m
amused, to keep him warm as well because there was no heating i
n
the house. Hypothermia was a more immediate problem than bored
om. They had given her a couple of blankets, old things, but i
t
wasn't enough. She wished she had her inhaler with her (she had t
o
work hard to stay calm), she wished she had the baby's comforter an
d
that they were both wearing warmer clothes.

They had walked into the bedroom as she was getting changed. Sh
e
had heard Sadie barking dementedly downstairs and a banging nois
e
that she didn't understand until she realized the dog was trying to brea
k
down a door to get to her. She had gathered up the baby and rushe
d
out on to the upstairs landi
. N
g and that was when she saw them.

*

The rope was too short to reach the window but she could stand on the bed and from there she could see out. Fields, nothing but brown fields, winter barren, lit by a bright, cold moon. No sign of another house.

On the second day, Peter gave her a pad of paper and a pen and told her to write a note to 'your husband'
. W
hat should she say? That they would die if he didn't do as he was told, Peter said. She wondered what Neil had done to bring this about and what he was doing to end it.

She became a doctor because she wanted to help people. It was a terrible cliche but it was true (but not true of all doctors). She wanted to help all the people who were sick and in pain, from measles to cancer, from heartsickness to depression. If she couldn't heal herself then she could at least heal someone else. That was why she had been attracted to Neil -he hadn't needed healing, he was whole in himself, he didn't suffer the pain and sadness of the world, he just got on with his life. She was a bowl, holding everything inside, he was Mars throwing his spear into the world. She didn't have to tend to him, didn't have to worry about him. Necessarily, that meant there were drawbacks to living with him, but who was perfect? Only the baby.

She had spent the thirty years since the murders creating a life. It wasn't a real life, it was the simulacrum of one, but it worked. Her real life had been left behind in that other, golden, field. And then she had the baby and her love for him breathed life into the simulacrum and it became genuine. Her love for the baby was immense, bigger than the entire universe. Fierce.

'The guy we're working for,' Peter said, 'wants your husband to sign over his business. You're the price. He's got all the papers ready for him to sign, nice and legal.'

She thought that was absurd and said, 'But that's coercion, it would never stand up in court,' and he laughed and said, 'You're not in your world now, Doctor.' She'd hoped that this was the beginning ofmore conversation between them but he lost interest and nodded at the pen and paper and said, 'So make it good.' She wondered if Neil had known what the people he was dealing with were like and decide
d
he probably had. 'And if he doesn't?' she said. 'If he doesn't sign everything over to your boss, what happens to us?' but he just stared at her as if she wasn't there. So she wrote, 'They are going to kill us ifyou don't do as they say.'

Some time in the early hours on Saturday, John woke her up and gave her the paper and pen again and told her to write something, 'Anything. Time's running out for you,' and then he left the room. She wrote with the Biro, 'Please help us. We don't want to die.' Despite what they said about doctors, she'd always had a neat hand. She crossed the t's and dotted the i's and underlined the 'Please', and when John came back for the note she jammed the pen into his eyeball as hard as she could. It surprised her how far it went in.

She took his pulse. Nothing. The baby slept on. She started t
o
panic, it wouldn't be long before Peter came back. She had to b
e
ready. She searched all over John's body for a weapon but there wa
s
nothing. Peter had a knife in an ankle sheath, she'd seen it when h
e
bent down to put food on the floor.

The door opened and Peter said, 'What the fuck?' when he sa
w
her sitting on the floor cradling John in her lap, like a pied. Sh
e
couldn't get the pen out ofhis eye in time so she had turned his hea
d
towards her and half-covered the pen with her hands. 'Something'
s
happened to him,' she said, looking at Peter, 'I don't know what, I
t
hought maybe he'd just fainted, but I'm not sure .. .' She tried t
o
sound professional, like a doctor.

Peter squatted on his haunches and turned John's head toward
s
him and as he did so she rose up, rolling John off her lap and on t
o
the floor, and then slammed the heel of her hand upwards int
o
Peter's windpipe as hard as she could. He fell over backwards, holdi
ng his throat, his eyes bulging, and she leaped forward and grabbe
d
the knife from his ankle and sawed through the rope around he
r
own.

She crouched down by his side and watched him. He was having a lot of trouble breathing but he wasn't finished. She could feel her own breathing compromised, the airways constricting and whistling. She was drenched in sweat even though it was so cold in the room.

She didn't let him see the knife but nonetheless he was squirming and wriggling, trying to get away from her. 'Shh,' she said, laying a hand on his arm and then quietly, so he couldn't see it coming, she stuck the knife into his common carotid artery, the left one
. A
nd then for good measure she stuck it in his right one as well, and the blood gushed as if she'd struck oil.

The baby woke up and laughed when he saw her and she said, 'Little Tommy Tittlemouse lived in a little house, he caught fishes in other men's ditches.'

A Clean Well-lighted Plac
e
THE PRIUS WAS NO LONGER IN THE GARAGE. LIGHTS SPILLED OUT from the back of the house. It was six 0'clock in the morning on a Saturday, perhaps Neil Hunter was up early but it seemed more likely he hadn't been to bed
. T
hrough the glass of the French windows she could see him slumped on the living-room sofa, his eyes closed. Louise tapped on the glass, the ghost of Miss Jessel, and Neil Hunter jerked awake, a look of terror on his face which subsided when he recognized her. He got to his feet unsteadily and unlocked the door. 'Don't tell me -you again,' he said. He looked completely burned-o
ut. 'Do you want to tell us who your friends are?' she said, walking into the room, and he laughed grimly and said, 'Friends? What friends? It turns out that I don't have any friends.' The guy looke
d
dead on his feet. 'And your wife? What's happened to her, Mr Hunter? I think we've been messed around enough, don't you? She never rented a car to go down to Yorkshire, there was no phone call from the aunt, in fact -and this is a bit of a clincher -her aunt died two weeks ago.

So what's going on exactly?'

Neil Hunter sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. Louis
e
squatted down beside him and said gently, 'Just tell me, has she bee
n
kidnapped, yes or no?' He drew breath noisily and said nothing.

Louise stood up and in her best official voice said, 'Neil Hunter, I am going to ask you some questions. You are not obliged to say anything in response to the questions. but if you do say anything it will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence.'

He burst into tears.

Louise stood on the Hunters' front doorstep, breathing in the chilly early morning air. It was at times like this she wished she smoked because then she wouldn't be so badly tempted to raid Neil Hunter's Laphroaig.

It was the middle of the morning and the street was alive with police. Horses, bolts and stable doors came to mind.

Neil Hunter had been taken in for questioning but he wasn't making much sense and the Strathclyde police had knocked up Anderson from his luxury penthouse but he was alllawyered up. No one had any idea where to start looking for Joanna Hunter. They'd picked up the Nissan on the M8 with the registration that Reggie had given them but the guys in it weren't talking either.

Joanna Hunter was dead, Louise was sure. The baby too. Lying in a ditch somewhere or being fed to pigs. Hunter said she was gone when he got home on Wednesday evening and that an hour later he'd received a phone call telling him that if he went to the police he'd never see her again. 'Find the money to pay Anderson or sign over everything,' he said to Louise before they took him down to the station.

'And that was Wednesday?' Louise said. 'And today's Saturday and you didn't simply sign everything over straight away?'

'I was trying to find the money.'

'You didn't sign everything over straight away?'

'Don't make out I don't care about my family.'

'You. Didn't. Sign. Everything. Over. Straight. Away.'

'You don't understand.'

'I do understand -you didn't sign everything over straight away. The documentation would have been laughed out of court. You would have still kept everything and you would have had a chance of getting your wife and baby back.'

'And he would have come after me some other way. Anderson's a maniac, his henchmen are maniacs. Once he gets his teeth into something he doesn't let go. If I took him to court he'd come after us, kil
l
us for sure.'

A uniform came out of the house and said, 'Boss?' He had important news written all over his face and she thought, that's it, Joanna Hunter's dead, but then the uniform broke into a big grin.

'You're not going to believe it, boss. She's back. She's in the house.'

'Who? Dr Hunter?'

'Dr Hunter, and the baby. And a girl.'

'A girl?'

What kind of a magic trick was that? Joanna Hunter was sitting o
n
the sofa in the once-lovely living room. She was wearing clean jean
s
and a soft pale blue sweater that looked like cashmere. It had littl
e
pearl buttons on the cuffs. It was the details that seemed so at odd
s
with everything. She looked scrubbed clean. Her hair was damp a
s
though she'd just had a shower. 'The baby's asleep in his cot,' she said
,
before Louise asked.