White Light (15 page)

In the darkness I felt my way across the drive and round to the side of the garage building. From memory as much as anything I found the door, and then I walked my hands down the door frame and across the ground until they closed on an irregular concrete shape. It was a fake 'decorative rock' that housed the spare key – a stupid Christmas present that Sarah had bought her father years ago. I grimaced at the memory even as my fingers fumbled it upside down and plucked the key from its little hidey hole. It took another few seconds to locate the keyhole, but then I was in.

I snapped on the light, confident that it couldn't be seen from the street, and surveyed my father-in-law's tidy domain of expensive gardening equipment. The sit-on mower, the top-of-the-range hedge cutter, even that stupid fucking garden hoover were lined up neatly, all clean and shiny. The workbench was spotless, tools hanging on the board behind it, nails and screws in stacked plastic drawers not strewn around like in my own workshop. Then I saw what I had come for – a group of rechargeable batteries, clustered around a set of wall sockets, plugged in and showing an array of green LEDs.

I slammed the rucksack onto the workbench and pulled out the time kit. With everything laid out so neatly it took no time at all to locate a pair of pliers and strip out the connections to the now-dead batteries, leaving the wires as long as I could. Then I grabbed six of the heavy cubed power packs from their cradles and began wiring them together in sequence. As I worked, I felt myself float away again, my busy hands seeming to belong to someone else, or just themselves, as they cut and trimmed and twisted and joined the batteries together, then disconnected the cut-out switch I'd installed – there would be no going back this time. Remotely, I felt my mind begin to calculate the cumulative charge based on the information printed on each battery. There would be more than enough to get me back to earlier today, and get Sarah away from here before she could ever go to that fucking house.

Anger jammed me back into myself, and my fingers stilled on the wires as I thought of Sarah's video message and her determination to face up to the darkest place in her memory. She was always so brave, setting out to challenge the impossible – whether it was homelessness, or poverty, or the rotten heart of her own family. I wished she'd told me what had really happened to Helen and her, wished she'd told me years ago so I could have beaten the living daylights out of Richard fucking Holland. And yet there was the irony of the universe: lovely, brave Sarah was dead and Richard and Maggie, paedophiles, liars, murderers, lived on.

I glanced down and jumped to see that, whilst I'd been lost in thought, I'd also been doing calculations on an old envelope that had been lying on the workbench. I leaned over and saw what I had worked out. It could be done, it could be done and I'd have enough charge to get back. I could stop all this sickness and perversion at source, I could really change things and free Sarah from all these years' of pain. My mouth went dry, but my inner rage just smiled. Why else go to all this trouble? it asked, why not take that final step? I looked at the bag, and knew what remained inside.

I took out the gun, checked the magazine, and zipped it safely inside my jacket. I jammed the bundle of batteries into the rucksack, and laid the rest of the time kit on top. I closed the bag, leaving only the timer visible, and dialled in the figures I'd just worked out. I pushed in my earbuds and selected a track on the iPod, then walked to the door of the garage and stepped outside into the dark and the rain. Everything had faded, all I could hear was the sound of my heart pounding as I twisted my hands into the straps, heaved the bag onto my shoulder, and pushed the button. Then my world dissolved.

Friday, 28 February 1985. 20:21

The white flash ate my vision, and I blinked and blinked to clear my eyes, forcing the blindness away. Something seemed to be wrong with my hearing, like I was underwater, as if all sounds were coming from a great distance and I shook my head to try and clear it. My mind was foggy, there was something I was going to do... The rucksack slipped in my arms and I caught it again with a jump; my brain seemed to catch up and sound and vision snapped into focus with a migraine-like intensity.

I see trees of green, red roses too.

I see them bloom, for me and you.

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

I squinted into the darkness, cold but not raining now, and tried to breathe and calm my heart which I could feel pounding in my chest like an engine trying to shake itself to pieces.

I see skies of blue, and clouds of white.

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night.

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

Ahead of me lay Richard and Maggie's house, the same house as I'd just left, but not the same. The door was different, this one being older and painted a nasty bottle green. The windows were steamy, single-glazed, with green painted frames,  and turning slightly I could make out an A plate Volvo estate standing in the driveway. It looked new. In my ears I could hear my heart rate speed up again. I'd done it, I'd done it. I swivelled the bag around and looked at the timer: four minutes and twenty-two seconds. Time enough.

The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky.

Are also on the faces, of people going by,

I see friends shaking hands, saying "How d'you do?"

They're really saying, "I love you".

I pulled the cap down on my head and moved across to the door. On impulse, I turned the handle and it opened straight away – I stepped into the hallway, standing on a garish patterned carpet, looking at two identical tricycles standing next to the stairs, children's coats on the pegs near the door. Inside this house were Sarah and Helen, aged about six. I hoped I was in time, that they were too young for... I felt that familiar kick of anger in the middle of my chest, and I reached inside my jacket to grasp the heavy handle of the gun. I pulled it out, and dropped my arm down by my side. I couldn't hear anything in the house, so I took a breath and walked down the hallway and towards the kitchen. As I passed the stairs, something made me look up, and there was a small girl, dressed in pyjamas with pink rabbits on, standing gazing down at me. We stared at each other – I couldn't tell if it was Sarah or Helen, the expression in her round blue eyes unreadable.

I hear babies cry, I watch them grow,

They'll learn much more, than I'll ever know.

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

'Ssh, go up to bed,' I whispered. For a long second I thought the child would ignore me, but then she turned and toddled back up onto the landing and out of sight. Had it been Sarah? So small and innocent, with all that pain to come. My heart pounded in my ear in a heavy drumbeat of rage, and I lifted the gun to waist height and stepped into the kitchen.

Maggie was sitting at the table, a glass of wine in front of her, reading a magazine. Richard, tall and handsome, resplendent in a green paisley shirt, was straightening up from scraping some food into the bin. He stood and stared at me, plate and knife in hand, and at the table Maggie froze with her wineglass halfway to her mouth.

Yes, I think to myself,

What a wonderful world.

I saw his mouth move as he spoke, but I couldn't hear what he said. A hissing white noise of rage was filling my head, wondering whether he'd already started his disgusting games, whether Maggie had already agreed to sacrifice their children. At the thought of his wife I lifted the gun and turned, seeing her expression morph from startled to alarmed, and then the trigger pulled and her head snapped backwards in a red cloud of blood. There was no sound. I turned to him, and he made a step towards me, stupidly still holding the plate, but the bullet caught him in the upper chest and he folded backwards almost elegantly, hitting the side of the worktop and collapsing onto the dark green lino.

Oh yeah

I could hear gasping, but I think that was me. I took a step forward to look my father-in-law in the eye as he lay bleeding on the floor. I pointed the gun at his forehead but he suddenly lashed out with one leg, and I fell beside him, the rucksack spilling heavily from my shoulder and twirling across the floor. He was grabbing and clawing at my back, but I could see the timer start to make its final ten second countdown so I shoved viciously, knocking him onto his back, giving me the space to turn and fire the gun again and again until he'd stopped moving. Then I slipped and scrabbled across the slippery floor and reached for the bag, my fingers almost grazing it as the white flash enveloped everything.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Wednesday, 11 March 2015. 11.30

A pleasant chiming sound roused me from the deepest of sleeps, and I opened my eyes to see a smiling air steward shaking my arm.

'We're just approaching London Heathrow now, sir,' he said, 'if you could move your seat into the upright position.'

I let him bustle around, adjusting the seat, picking up the empty whisky glass from the table, handing me my tablet which had slipped onto the floor. I sat up properly. I felt strange, disconnected somehow, like a déjà vue. I looked round the unfamiliar business class cabin, glanced down at the tailored suit I was wearing, and examined the Patek Phillipe Nautilus on my wrist as if this was the first time I'd ever seen it. I pinched the bridge of my nose to try to clear the feeling.

The plane was making its descent and I could feel my ears popping as we dropped below the cloud bank and I could see the grey expanse of Heathrow beneath me. I remembered now, I was coming back from California where I'd been having talks with a couple of start-ups in Mountain View about licensing the new solid state memory technology that my company been working on. But I also remembered darkness and rain, and the sound of a car smashing into a tree, the recoil of a heavy gun in my hand, a woman in an old-fashioned dress slumping to the floor... I shook my head, the two memories jostling inside, painfully.

The wheels bit the tarmac and the deceleration threw us all against the seat belts, and then another pleasant chime released us to rummage for our hand baggage, find our passports and disembark. As a business-class passenger I was able to get out of the plane amongst the first, and I walked down the corrugated tube towards the arrivals area thinking about the phone call to Pasha back at the office that I needed to make as soon as I got through customs. The strange half-memories of someone else's life rattled in my head as I collected my bag and wheeled it through security towards the exit; some strange loser on a motorbike, something about a heavy element that I'd never heard of – I impatiently shook the thoughts away and walked out of the archway and into Arrivals. Annoyingly, a muzak version of 'What a Wonderful World' by Louis Armstrong was playing over the speakers.

Sarah, my wife, was waiting for me at the gate, a huge smile lifting her beautiful face as she saw me. I raised my hand and waved, an inexplicable feeling gripping me, filling my whole chest and squeezing my heart, as if I hadn't seen her in twenty years. I felt tears in my eyes.

'Sarah!' I waved, and she looked delighted but slightly surprised, as if she wasn't used to me displaying so much emotion.

And then another woman stepped up and smiled towards me, her hand resting lightly on Sarah's shoulder. It was Helen, my brain told me, but it was as if I'd never seen her before. Sarah, the airport, the double set of memories in my mind, all dropped away, leaving only Helen, and I knew I needed to possess her, make her mine. My eye slid to Sarah, sweet and passive, unaware that I wasn't the same man that she'd waved off on my trip a week earlier.

I remembered the smell of gun oil and the feeling of aiming and firing, the power of ending a life. I had – somehow – done it before, and I could do it again. An idea like a time bomb started ticking in my head.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Although residents of Oxford will recognise many of the locations and settings for this novel, I have also taken several geographical liberties with the placement of buildings and so on – it is not possible to look down Hockmore Street from Cowley's Castle Car Park, for example.

This story and its characters are purely fictional and any similarity to any real events or people is just a coincidence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alex Marks is not a native of Oxford but has lived in the city since 2000. A compulsive reader and writer of fantasy, sci-fi, thrillers and counter-factual fiction, this is Alex' first published novel.

If you've enjoyed this book, please leave a review on Amazon.

KEEP IN TOUCH

Find out more about Alex and learn about forthcoming projects by visiting the blog at alexmarksblog.wordpress.com

Or follow Alex on Twitter: @IamAlexMarks