Chasing the Dead

40

When I came round, Legion was to my right. He was standing on top of the ladder, holding the bigger nail level with my right hand.

And there was a noise.

He was staring off, behind me, to another set of doors. I heard them open inwards, and the noise became louder.

It was an alarm.

‘What’s that?’ Legion said.

‘The Red Room alarm,’ a voice replied.

It was Andrew.

‘Why’s it going off?’

Silence. No reply.

Legion didn’t move. He was still poised, the nail pressing against my palm, the hammer in his other hand, ready to strike.

‘Why?’ he said again.

‘We must have a break-in.’

Legion glanced at me, then back at Andrew. Anger flared in his eyes.

‘I’m finishing this.’

‘Later,’ Andrew replied.

‘No. We don’t let him go again.’

‘Later,’ Andrew said again. ‘Someone’s set the alarm off, and it’s not one of us. We sweep the compound and then you finish.’

‘Who would break into the Red Room?’

Legion stared at Andrew and then — briefly — flicked a look at me. They think I’m working with someone. They think, whoever it is has set off the alarm.

‘Let’s go.’ Andrew again.

Legion moved the nail away from my hand and leaned into me again, the mask brushing against my cheek.

‘This just makes it worse for you,’ he whispered.

He climbed down the ladder, dropped the nail and hammer on to the trolley and disappeared from sight. The doors slammed shut. The alarm was muffled now. Outside I heard voices — arguing — and after that there was nothing.

Just the alarm.

I moved my right hand. The handcuffs were locked tightly around my wrist. I could feel the metal binds and imagined they’d rubbed a couple of layers of skin away. I tried to concentrate on that, tried to imagine how the skin might look — speckled red, like a graze, maybe some purple bruising — because the pain in my back, in the fingers on my left hand, in my neck, in the top of my legs, was immense. It raged, like thunderous, violent tidal waves.

I closed my eyes again.

Blackness and silence. Then it felt like I was turning around and suddenly, in front of me, was a door.

There was light on the other side. It was startlingly bright: burning through the keyhole, the cracks in the wood, a knot about halfway up that had two pinprick-sized holes in it. I moved up to the door, looked down at the handle and felt myself reach out for it. I couldn’t see my arms, didn’t reach for it with my fingers, but could feel my hands on it. Could feel I was turning the handle.

Then I stopped.

In the space behind me, I felt someone move in close. A presence. And with it came a distant sound. A sound I recognized. I let go of the door handle and realized the sound was waves turning over, crashing on the shore.

The sound I heard the first night I ever met Derryn.

I felt the presence nod at me. Telling me I was right.

Is Derryn waiting for me beyond the door?

No reply.

I want to see my wife.

I felt the presence drift away.

Please, let me see my wi—

‘David?’

I opened my eyes. Below me a man was looking up: scruffy, his skin smeared with filth. He looked homeless: stained, mismatched clothes; the hood up on his jacket; an unkempt beard that consumed his face. I wasn’t sure whether he was real or not. I was drifting in and out of consciousness so fast and so often, I was finding it hard to tell the two apart.

He took a step closer.

Something flickered in me, the smallest fire of recognition. Then it was gone again. But as he took another step closer to the ladder, I clawed at the memory and it came to me. The man who had broken into my car. The man I’d lost outside Angel’s. The man I’d seen outside my house. I knew him. Knew him all along.

‘Alex…’

He looked past me to the doors, and then climbed up the steps to my right hand. Glancing at me, he unzipped his coat and took out some bolt cutters. He opened them up, placed them on the chain between the handcuffs, and cut through.

Snap.

Alex caught my arm as it dropped, but the movement still unbalanced me. I wobbled on the footrest, the cross vibrating as I leaned forward, but he pressed a hand flat to my stomach and steadied me. Slowly, he guided my arm down to my side.

He moved down the stepladder, picked it up and placed it under the left arm of the sleeper. He came back up the steps.

‘I’m going to take the nails out,’ he said. His voice was soft, almost soothing. A complete contrast to the way he looked. ‘It’s going to hurt. But I need you to keep quiet. If you scream, if you make a noise, they will hear — even above the alarm.’

He perched the bolt cutters on top of the sleeper, and slowly wrapped a hand around the end of the nail in my index finger. He glanced at me once.

Then he yanked it out.

The pain was colossal — like having my whole arm pulled from its socket. Every inch of the nail, every groove, every fleck of rust, bit, tore and ripped at my flesh as it came back out. When I looked at him, he held the nail up to me, as if trying to motivate some sort of response. Anger maybe — or revenge.

I looked at him, my vision blurring.

And then I blacked out again.

David.

David.

I came round to find him looking at me, both nails in the palm of his hand. He swapped to the bolt cutters, and placed a hand around my lower arm. He snapped through the handcuffs, his hand still pinning my arm to the cross. He placed a second hand under my wrist and slowly guided it back to my side. I wobbled a second time, the strength fading from my legs, and this time he let me fall forward, on to his shoulder.

At the bottom of the steps, Alex laid me on my stomach and started picking at the locks on the handcuffs. Inside a minute he was done. ‘John Cary taught me how to do that,’ he said quietly, unfastening them. Then, through the corner of my eye, I could see his attention switching to my back, his fingers tracing the scourge marks.

‘I need you to sit up.’

I shook my head. I’m not getting up.

‘I need you to sit up, David. If you don’t want to die here tonight, I need you to sit up so I can cover these marks.’

I shook my head again.

‘Yes,’ he said, forcefully, and rolled me over on to my back.

I cried out.

He pulled me up, so I was in a seated position, and took off his coat. He laid it on the floor next to him, and started to pull out something from the inside pocket. Long. Clear. I dropped my head forward and closed my eyes. Where’s the door? I searched for it, but couldn’t see it. Couldn’t feel anyone behind me any more. Couldn’t feel anything but pain.

‘Right,’ Alex said.

He was on his haunches in front of me, a long stretch of cling film doubled up in his hands. He started wrapping it around my body, so tight it felt like he was crushing my chest cavity. He circled me, securing the cling film in place under my arms, all the way down to my beltline. After circling me a fourth time, he stopped.

‘This’ll hurt when you take it off again,’ he said, ‘but the cling film will kill some of the pain for now.’

He gently took my hand in his, looked at the wounds, then started wrapping cling film around both of the fingers individually. Round and round, until everything was covered from the tips down to the top of the palm.

I looked at him. ‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why come here?’

He hauled me to my feet.

‘Because someone has to pay.’

And then the alarm stopped.

41

Immediately outside the crucifixion room was a long, thin, partially lit corridor. It looked like a military compound or a bomb shelter. There were no windows, just an arrow on the wall pointing to the left, underneath the words SURFACE. We were underground.

Alex carried me along, my arm slumped around his shoulder, my feet barely working. He’d been right: the pain in my back had been contained by the cling film, at least above the surface of the skin. Beneath, it felt like razor blades were running through my veins.

Naked lightbulbs dangled on cords above us, and every so often we passed other doors. Most were closed, but a couple were open. I glanced in at one of the rooms. It was small, empty apart from a pair of bunk beds facing one another.

The corridor got darker the further along we went. It was damp, with a musty, enclosed smell to it. Rust ran in strips next to the joins in the walls. Alex stopped about halfway down and listened. Above us there were voices — muffled, echoing slightly. It was hard to make out words, hard even to tell whether the voices were male or female. I started to drift away again as we stopped moving, set loose in the darkness. Then Alex pulled me back by forcing me to move forward.

Eventually we reached a set of doors, and pushed through them. On the other side was a triangular-shaped anteroom with two further doors. The one on the left had a glass window in it and was marked MEDICAL. Inside I could make out whitewashed walls, a dentist’s chair, a panel of switches and plugs above the headboard of a bed, an oxygen tank, and a trolley like the one Legion had used, this one full of scalpels, chisels, scissors and clamps. The adjacent door, on the right, wasn’t marked, but also had a glass window — it was mostly dark, except for one strip light, dull and creamy in the blackness beyond.

Alex pushed through the right-hand door. On the other side there was very little lighting — only the strip light I’d glimpsed, and two identical ones further down, spaced about ten metres apart. They gently buzzed above us as we walked. The corridor was shorter, with two doors on either side, and a further one, standing open, at the end. Steps led up from the open door, a block of light at the top.

Suddenly, silhouettes started forming in the light.

Alex yanked me forward and through the first door on the right. Inside, it was similar to the room I’d seen before: two sets of bunk beds and a table. He closed the door and switched on the light. On the back of the door hung two green training tops with hoods, and two pairs of green tracksuit trousers. On the floor were two pairs of slippers.

‘Put these on,’ he said quietly, and pressed a finger to his lips as the voices passed the door. He glanced at his watch, and sat me on one of the bunk beds, handing me the training top. ‘You’ll need it. It’s freezing outside.’

I looked at him. He was incredibly focused, decisive, so different from the person I had imagined. Perhaps being on the run for so long changed you like that.

He looked at my left hand.

‘Do you want me to put it on for you?’

I shook my head and took the top. When I raised my arms, the scourge marks burnt, as if alcohol had been poured into the wounds. I fed my arms through the sleeves and pulled it down over my body. Above the line of the cling film, where some of the cuts were still open — deep, dark tears of flesh — I could feel the training top stick.

He put on the second one and grabbed both pairs of trousers off the hook. I looked down at my boxer shorts. At my legs. The scourge mark on my thigh was starting to bruise.

‘These are standard issue,’ he said, then quietened again as more voices passed the door. When they were gone he turned back to me. He looked at his watch. ‘The alarm will go off again in sixty seconds. Once it does, we make a break for it. Understood?’

I nodded.

He pulled on the pair of tracksuit trousers and watched as I did the same — slow, tentative movements, like an old man. When I was done, he pushed the slippers across the floor. The lining was soft, like fur, and it felt good against my skin. I still had the cuts and bruises on my toes, on the arches of my feet, where I’d run for my life in the forest.

He opened the door a fraction and looked through. Opened it a little further and flicked a look both ways. He glanced once more at his watch.

‘Five seconds,’ he said.

Then the alarm burst into life. This time it sounded different: a long drawn-out wail rather than the short, staccato beeps of the first one.

‘Okay,’ he said, grabbing my wrist. ‘Let’s go.’

We moved out into the corridor and towards the stairs. As we did, he flipped the hood of the training top up over my head, and pulled up his own too. At the bottom of the first step, I looked up. In the block of light, shapes began to form: others, dressed like us, coming down towards us. Three of them. They all glanced at us as we passed, their eyes firing as they tried to recall who we were and what part of the farm they might have seen us in before. I looked back over my shoulder and saw one of them, a girl, stop on the steps. She was following Alex as we headed up.

‘Alex—’

‘Just keep moving.’

‘She knows you.’

‘She recognizes me.’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘It’s two different things. She recognizes me, but she doesn’t know me any more.’

At the top of the stairs, in hazy grey light, I could see the side of Bethany: the A-shape of the roof, the bathroom window under it, flowerbeds beneath that. There were people next to the flowerbeds, also dressed like us. They were digging — ten, maybe twelve of them. I could hear the sea, could see the fields of heather running all the way down to the beach.

‘Are we in Lazarus?’ I asked.

Alex was behind me, further back in the shadows.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Part of it, anyway. The house is new. This underground part isn’t. This used to be a training facility for the army in the fifties. They built the farmhouse on top.’

I glanced at the people digging.

‘What are they doing?’

‘Turning over the soil.’

‘Why aren’t they following the others down here?’

‘I don’t know. But we haven’t got time to find out.’ He stood next to me and glanced at his watch. ‘Okay. The first alarm was because someone broke the locks on the Red Room.’

‘The Red Room?’

‘Where they keep all the memories.’ He turned to me. ‘That’s where all your stuff is: your gun, your wallet, the bullet, the photos of your wife. Your wedding ring. I broke the locks on it before I came down here for you. That was the diversion.’

‘And this alarm?’

‘This is the compound alarm. It goes off if the door to Calvary is left open for more than five minutes.’

‘What’s Calvary?’

‘Calvary was where Jesus was crucified,’ he said. ‘But in this place, it’s the crucifixion room.’

The Calvary Project. What they’d called the dummy corporation that all their money was fed through. Now it made sense.

He looked at the diggers, a few of them glancing towards us. An army of faces in their late teens and early twenties.

‘Follow me,’ he said.

We angled left, out of the darkness and into the light. It was freezing cold, snow still on the ground. It must have been late afternoon — in the distance, the sun was starting to drop in the sky, melting away behind patches of thick white cloud.

The mouth of the compound was built into the extension on the side of Lazarus. We moved past a blacked-out window. Then a second. Finally we reached a red door at the back of the house. Next to it was a small car port. It curved around to the side of the farmhouse and joined up with the main track back up towards Bethany. Parked underneath were a Shogun and a Ford Ranger.

Alex had split the lock to the Red Room with a chisel. It was hanging out of the side of the door, and the door was ajar, moving slightly in the breeze. Inside was a small storage room, probably ten foot square, with floor-to-ceiling shelving on three sides and dull red walls. On the shelves were long rows of shoeboxes, stacked one after the other, covering almost all the space. Countless surnames were scribbled on their fronts. Some I recognized — Myzwik, O’Connell, Towne — but most I didn’t. I took Alex’s down and looked inside.

‘There’s nothing in there,’ he said.

‘How come?’

‘I had nothing when I came back.’

‘Came back? Came back from where?’

He glanced out through a small gap in the door, and back at me. ‘I’ll tell you, but not now. We haven’t got time. Get your things.’

I looked for my belongings. Further along the middle shelf I saw a box with ‘Mitchell’ on it. I leaned in a little closer. Underneath the surname was a Christian name: Simon. Simon Mitchell. Alex’s friend. The one Cary said had also disappeared, never to be seen again.

‘Is that your friend Simon?’

He nodded.

‘He came here too?’

A noise outside. Someone at the Shogun.

I pushed the door closed, leaving only a sliver of a gap. Through it, I could see Myzwik reaching on to the back seat of the car for something. He pulled out a jacket and pushed the door closed. When he turned around, his eyes passed the door.

And zeroed in on us.

He’d seen movement inside, through the gap.

His eyes narrowed. He took a couple of steps forward. I looked around the storage room for something to arm myself with, and saw Alex doing the same. But there was nothing except shoeboxes.

Then I remembered my gun.

I searched for my box, glancing back over my shoulder to see Myzwik about six feet from the door. He was unarmed, but his hands were balled into fists at his side. I scanned the rows of boxes, one after another, trying to spot my name among them all.

Quicker.

He was five feet away now; I could hear snow crunch under his feet.

Quicker.

Alex glanced at me — the first glint of fear in his eyes — and back out at Myzwik.

Quicker. Quicker.

Then I saw it, off to my left, high up on one of the top shelves. I went to reach up, and my whole back felt like it was tearing open. I sucked air in through my teeth, wanting to cry out in agony. Instead, I brought the box down and flipped the lid. Inside was my life. The car keys. My wallet. My photos of Derryn. The wedding ring I thought I’d lost for ever when I’d watched it roll away, across the floor of the fridge. Next to that was the bullet.

And next to that was the gun.

I grabbed the Beretta, placed the box on the floor, and stepped back behind the door next to Alex. It opened fractionally by itself. Between the door and the frame, I could see Myzwik reaching out for the handle. I flipped the safety on the gun — and it made the tiniest of clicks.

Enough to stop him dead.

He was on the other side of the door now, only a strip of his back visible through the gap in the frame. I couldn’t see the rest of him. What he was doing. Where he was looking.

We stayed like that for a long time. And then he started opening the door again, inch by inch, more daylight leaking in, covering the shelves, the shoeboxes, the floor. I looked down. The sun was behind him, low in the sky, and his shadow was long across the floor of the storage room. It got smaller as he stepped further in.

Then he was inside.

Immediately he saw me, spinning round to face us. I levelled the gun at his head. He started and stepped back, hitting one of the shelves. A shoebox tumbled over his shoulder and scattered across the floor. Photographs. A necklace. A letter. Someone’s forgotten life spilling across the room.

Myzwik looked at me. At the gun.

At Alex.

‘You shouldn’t have come back.’

We were two feet apart. I jabbed the barrel of the gun forward, smashing Myzwik square in the nose. Blood burst out, down over his lips and chin. As he bent forward, clutching at his face, I turned the gun around and swung it into the side of his face. He fell backwards to the floor with a thump.

The pain numbed me for a moment. When I finally shook it off, I looked up. Alex’s eyes were lingering on Myzwik — uncertain, as if a flood of memories were passing through him. And then he turned and peered through the door, up the rutted track, towards where the group were digging. A couple of them were still looking in our direction, trying to see what was going on.

He opened his mouth to speak to me when the alarm stopped.

As silence descended across the farm, it became eerily quiet. Only the sound of shovels against the ground could be heard; the ching of metal meeting earth.

Alex knelt down and started going through Myzwik’s pockets.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Trying to find a key,’ he said.

‘Key?’

He didn’t reply, just kept searching. Eventually, though, he stood and looked at me — his face etched with unease — and then up to the group again.

‘We have to join them,’ Alex said.

‘What?’

‘There’s no instructor up there with them.’

‘So what? I’m fifteen years older than anyone else up there. They’re going to know I’m not part of the programme. What’s to stop one of them finding someone in charge and raising the alarm?’

‘They won’t,’ he replied, his eyes still fixed on the group. ‘They’re too deep into the programme to remember if we’re part of the farm or not. They won’t care about the age thing either.’ Finally, he looked at me. ‘When you’ve got no memory, you can’t be sure about anything.’

‘How much time have we got?’

‘Andrew will be securing the compound, room by room, making sure everything’s as it should be. He’ll get to Calvary last, which means we’ve got —’ he looked at his watch ‘— about a minute before he and his attack dog discover you’re not nailed to that cross any more. Which gives us about two minutes before they get to the surface again.’

‘I cut a hole in the fence — we can go back out that way.’

‘The electricity’s on.’

‘Electricity?’

‘In the fencing.’

I looked at the fencing that ran in a gentle curve from the top entrance, all the way down the hill, dissecting a field of heather before hitting the beach. When the wind dropped away, and the sea quietened, I could hear the gentle buzz of a current.

‘When the alarm goes off, the electricity comes on, and stays on for thirty minutes,’ Alex said. ‘You can only switch it off from inside the compound, but we’re not going back in there. So the little hole you crawled through to get in here? That’s no longer an option. The only other way to get out is to find one of the master keys and use it to unlock the main gate. That isn’t electrified. But I haven’t got one of those. Only the instructors have them. So, we join the group and wait for one of the instructors to come back. Once they do, we spring him and take the key.’ He glanced at his watch again. ‘Are you following me?’

I nodded. My body ached so badly I wasn’t sure which part hurt the most.

‘Good,’ he said.

I pocketed everything from the box, slid the gun in at the front of my trousers and then followed him out. But after only a short distance, I started to fall behind. Alex jammed a fist around my arm, yanking me forward. Something twinged in my chest, forcing me to suck in air. I felt pain snake around to my side, where Legion had sliced it open.

‘This could take a while,’ I said.

‘We need to be quick,’ he replied, glancing back at the mouth of the compound. He was staring at something. I looked back and could see the CCTV camera attached to the roof of Lazarus panning in our direction.

The ground beneath our feet was uneven. Snow and stones everywhere. I could feel every bump and piece of gravel through the soles of the slippers, the pain rippling across my skin. Alex tried to quicken the pace by dragging me up the hill. Every time I looked up and expected to see the group getting closer, it was like they were being pushed further away.

‘Is this all they do all day?’

‘No. Some work locally too.’

‘The locals are in on this?’

‘No. Only the ones that used to work here. When someone like you breaches security, or gets too close, Andrew swaps everyone around. There’ll be new people working out of Angel’s now, and someone else managing the flat. The people down in London will be in Bristol; the people in Bristol will be up here — on the farm or in the villages somewhere. The project owns a couple of shops along the coast. Every time you open up a hole, they will close it.’

I looked up towards the group digging in front of us.

‘What do they do in the villages?’

‘The same as they do here. Digging, planting, fetching, carrying, maybe standing behind a counter and serving. Menial tasks. Nothing tasks. Andrew argues it’s a purer, untarnished existence. But the truth is, by the time they’ve finished with you here, you’re not good for much else.’

A few of the faces were visible beneath the hoods, staring down the hill towards us. They looked normal, even healthy, until you watched their eyes, darting between us, desperately trying to fit memories together like broken pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

We finally reached them and a couple more looked up: a teenaged girl, a man in his mid-twenties, a girl of about the same age. In front of them, cracks and fissures in the frozen earth were gradually opening up. Their hands, wrapped around the shovels, were red with cold.

There were four shovels propped against the wall behind the group. Alex and I both grabbed one and pretended to dig, using our hoods to disguise our faces, but with a clear sight of the compound. A couple of the group still watched us, especially Alex, but then, as we started to dig, they gradually turned their attention back to their work.

‘I’m not going to be able to fight them for much longer,’ I said. My body was on fire: every muscle, every bone. ‘I will slow you up.’

‘We both leave.’

I looked at him. ‘You make a break for it.’

‘And go where?’

‘Run.’

‘There’s nowhere for me to go, David.’

Then, from the mouth of the compound, they came.

42

There were two of them. One I recognized immediately as Andrew; the other was smaller, maybe female, and had the hood up on her top. As soon as they emerged from the darkness of the compound, they were looking right to left, their eyes adjusting to the dusk. They knew we were on the farm somewhere — it was just a question of where.

They both looked up towards us and studied the group. The slow, rhythmic digging; the sound of the shovels; the wind blowing in from the mountains and the sea. What if they did a head count before we joined the group? I looked at Alex briefly. He shot a glance back, as if he knew what I was thinking.

Andrew headed towards the front of Lazarus. The woman turned and started making her way towards us. Alex and I turned away slightly, and started digging properly.

It took her about sixty seconds to get from the mouth of the compound. She was wearing heavy-duty boots, the steel toecaps scuffing against the gravel and the snow on the ground. Apart from Andrew, the instructors dressed like the people they were supposed to be saving — hooded tops, tracksuit trousers — only in blue instead of green. With my back half-turned I couldn’t make out her face clearly, and as she got closer to the group I turned away from her a little more so she was side-on to me.

I dug the shovel into the earth, and flicked another look at her as she moved level with the group. She was looking off somewhere else. When I jammed the shovel down again, into the ground, I felt the wounds throb in my chest, and my back, and my hand. I stopped momentarily, breathed in, then continued digging.

A minute passed.

When I glanced again at her, she’d moved around, closer to Bethany. She was bent over, watching one of the women brushing away some of the earth at her feet. Then the instructor moved again, finally disappearing from my line of sight.

I flicked a glance at Alex.

He was at the opposite angle to me, almost facing the other way. I could see his eyes following the woman as she moved behind me.

We continued digging.

Thirty seconds later I saw Alex glance up at the woman again, then sideways at me.

A brief nod.

It was time.

I gripped the handle of the shovel, my knuckles whitening, and waited for a second nod from Alex. We hadn’t agreed anything, hadn’t made any sort of plan. But I knew the first nod was the primer, the indication that I needed to get ready.

The second would be the trigger.

From my left, the woman reappeared, her eyes fixed on a girl digging next to me. She stopped about six feet from me. A sudden gust of wind swept up the hill, lifting the hood from her face. Then it fell away.

Evelyn.

Through the corner of her eye she must have seen me staring at her. She turned and faced me, her eyes narrowing. Then she realized who it was beneath the hood. For a second she must have thought she could reason with me. Play on our history, on the fact we’d once got on; laughed together; even been drawn to each other in some way. But then she remembered how she’d held a gun to my head and let them take me out to the woods to be buried.

‘I’m sorry, Evelyn,’ I said.

She started to call out for help.

I swung the shovel at her, dirt spitting off as it arced, and caught her in the side of the head. The impact reverberated along the handle, into my hands. She stumbled sideways. Fell to her knees, and then her stomach, one side of her face puncturing the earth as she hit the ground.

And then she was quiet.

The rest of the group looked up.

Alex glanced between me and the others, and back down towards the farm. No sign of anybody else. He dropped his shovel to the floor and moved across to Evelyn, who was drifting in and out of consciousness. He went through her pockets. Eventually he found a keyring in her trousers and removed it. On the ring were two keys: a brass Yale key, and a silver one with a blue head. Alex selected the blue one and held it up to me.

Then his eyes fixed on something behind me.

His whole face collapsed, the colour draining out of it. Suddenly, he looked terrified.

I turned and followed his gaze.

In the middle of the group, surrounded by men and women, Legion stood staring at us. He was wearing the same clothes as we were, his hood up, the mask still on. In his hand was a submachine gun. It looked like a Heckler Koch MP7. Black and compact. Short barrel. I glanced at the gun, and back up at him. His eyes were fixed on Alex now. He had been among us the whole time.

He flipped back his hood.

‘Alex,’ he said, almost a whisper.

Despite the wind, the sea, the sounds drifting through the late afternoon light, it was difficult to hear anything but his voice. Sharp, almost scratchy, like a needle cutting across an old record.

Alex held up both his hands.

‘We have something to finish, David,’ Legion said, not looking at me — just staring along the ridge of the gun he was now pointing at Alex.

‘No,’ I said, anger in my voice. I reached into my trousers and brought out the Beretta. A twinge in my chest and back. ‘We’re finished.’

This time he looked at me. Body perfectly still. Head swivelling. Eyes dark and focused. For a second, it was like looking at a ventriloquist’s dummy — as if his head shared none of the muscle, bone and sinew of the rest of him.

Legion glanced at my gun.

‘We will finish what we started, cockroach,’ he said, every word, every syllable, cutting across the ground between us. ‘Put the gun down or I slice Alex in two.’

‘Don’t put the gun down, David,’ Alex said.

I glanced at Alex, then back at Legion. He was still looking at me, standing completely still, even as a gust of wind blew across the group.

‘Put the gun down,’ he said again.

‘They can’t kill me, David.’

I glanced at Alex.

‘Put the gun down,’ Legion said for a third time.

‘Don’t, David — they can’t kill m—’

In a flash of movement, Legion jabbed the barrel of the gun forward, right into the centre of Alex’s forehead. Alex’s head lurched backwards. He was instantly unconscious, even as he stood. He toppled over and hit the ground like a sack of cement. No grace, no arms out, no reactions at all.

Legion turned to me, and dropped the gun to his side. He didn’t see me as a threat. He took a step towards me, pushing a couple of the group aside. One of the girls fell to the floor. A couple of the others turned and looked towards the sea, to the ground; too petrified to even turn in the direction of the killer standing among them.

‘Stop,’ I said.

He took another step forward.

‘I’ll shoot you.’

‘No, you won’t.’

‘You better believe I will.’

‘No.’

The good things are worth fighting for.

Her voice, suddenly, unexpectedly.

Legion noticed something in my face — a flicker of a memory — and finally did stop. I could feel sweat on the tips of my fingers, feel the adrenalin, hear my heart pumping in my ears. I glanced down at the gun again, and back up at the man in front of me.

Take this chance, David.

I fired once. It hit Legion in the shoulder. He staggered back against one of the others in the group. Somewhere behind me, one of the women screamed. A shovel clanged against the earth. Legion lurched away from the group, clutching his wound.

I pulled myself out of the moment and headed for Bethany, leaving Alex on the ground, face down. Maybe dying. Maybe dead. I moved quickly around the edge of the house and towards the back door.

Snow crunched behind me.

The devil was coming.

I kicked open the back door, immediately realizing I’d led myself into a trap. Half-inside the kitchen, I turned back and saw his silhouette pass across the windows.

It was too late to go back.

Swivelling, I headed through to the living room — dark now, as daylight began to fade — and towards the staircase. I glanced back. From the semi-darkness of the kitchen he came: the horns on the mask; the eyes moving inside the holes; the mouth wide and leering.

I ran for the stairs, landing awkwardly when I reached them. Pain tore across my chest as I scrambled up on all fours, the first shots piercing the wall behind me. I could hear the old brickwork spitting out dust and debris, could hear the ping of a ricochet. I heard him move across the living room, broken tiles beneath his feet. I launched myself on to the landing and a shower of bullets followed me up, popping in the walls, bouncing off the stonework, lodging in the wooden floor.

I fired back three times, then made for Room A. As I moved, he followed. I could hear him pad up the stairs. The occasional creak but nothing more. He was quick. Lean. Streamlined.

He fired as he got to the top. Beyond the noise, I thought I could hear him whisper something, then the words were swallowed up as more bullets followed me into the room. The smell of rotting damp hit me.

I looked around.

The chimney flue, running from the fireplace downstairs, was angled enough to provide cover from the door. I dropped behind it. Flowers of light erupted from the landing. Bullets hit the door frame and walls. Wood splintered. Plaster spilled. Legion kept firing into the bedroom: the flue disintegrated beside me, floorboards cracked and broke, bullets ricocheted. One bullet missed my leg by an inch as I rolled to my side.

The window closest to me fractured and blew out. Glass landed on the floor and snow from the roof swept in. I clutched the gun with both hands. One of Legion’s feet hit a floorboard at the door to the room. A creak. I waited for him to move closer, but, instead, heard the clicking of his gun.

He was out of bullets.

The silence was like a shockwave.

I leaned out, as quickly as I could, and loosed off six shots. One didn’t even get beyond the room, hitting the door itself. One headed straight across the landing to the wall at the top of the stairs. The others lodged in the walls on the landing — every one a wasted bullet. Legion had already taken cover to the left of the doorway.

I stayed like that, leaning out towards the doorway, waiting for him to appear again. But he had second-guessed me. All I could hear was my breathing.

‘C-c-c-c-c-cockroach,’ he whispered.

The sound of something snapping into place.

Reloading.

There was a long pause, the silence hanging in the air.

And then I coughed.

Legion came in at me, firing quickly. I ducked back for cover, shielding my face from the dust and the glass. Bullets fizzed past me. One tore through the floorboards about two inches from my hand. Another made contact with my slipper, taking part of the toe off.

I knew I had to fire back, knew I had to attempt to repel him. If I didn’t, he would get closer and closer until he was near enough to put me down. I gripped the gun, lay my arm across my chest and emptied the rest of the clip.

The first three shots missed, going so wide of the mark he didn’t even stop shooting. The fourth got closer, briefly interrupting the noise from his gun.

Then the fifth hit something.

I heard footsteps — barely audible — retreating from the room.

I looked down at the gun, unsure whether he was really hit or whether this was all part of the game. The pain was becoming unbearable. Huge chunks of air escaped from my chest. Glass was embedded in my skin. I didn’t want to move.

I held the Beretta up in front of me and removed the magazine with a shaky right hand. I’d fired all fifteen bullets.

I waited for a moment. Breathed.

My teeth throbbed. My eyes were watering. I listened for Legion, for any sign of movement. All I could hear was the wind.

‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ I said.

Nothing. No reply. No sound of movement.

I looked down into my lap. The gun felt heavy now. My whole body felt heavy. As if it had been turned inside out. It felt like Legion held all the cards, even if I’d somehow managed to hit him. He would wait. He was a soldier. He was trained to use silence and time to his advantage.

I swallowed and felt the saliva slide down my throat, moving towards the centre of my chest, where it blew up like an explosion. Pain scattered across my chest and back.

‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ I said again.

Silence.

I reached into my pocket and quietly removed everything I’d taken from the shoebox: my wallet, my car keys, my photographs of Derryn, my wedding ring. And the bullet. A fine mist settled on the metal casing as the chill of the evening slithered its way in through the broken windows.

The bullet.

Sliding out the empty clip, I slotted the bullet into it and pushed the clip back into the Beretta.

43

Slowly, I edged out from the chimney flue. Held the gun up in front of my face. Slid along the floor on my knees. A shiver passed through me. Ahead of me, on the landing, I could see zigzags of snow, compacted, fallen from the soles of his shoes. I moved along the floorboards, churned up by the gunfire.

As I closed in on the doorway, I tried to angle the gun towards the sliver of wall that joined the two bedrooms. Legion had hidden there while he was reloading — but he wasn’t there now. I looked right to the bathroom, then left to the top of the stairs. Shadows were everywhere, but I couldn’t make him out. That meant there was only one place he could be.

Next door. The room with the rings.

I kept close to the wall as I approached the door. Held the Beretta as straight as I could. My hands turned red as I squeezed the handle. The muscles in my arms tightened, the veins in my wrists prominent through the skin. An image flashed in my head of Legion sitting in the corner of the room, opening fire as I tried to get in the first shot. I hesitated. Stopped short of the door.

Then, suddenly, I could smell him.

There was no aftershave overpowering his stench now. All I could smell was decay, as if death were crawling across the floor of the house towards me. I’d been right. It was like an animal scent, trailing him. A warning system. It was telling me not to come any closer. Except I had to if I was ever going to leave the farm alive.

I peered around the door a fraction, my eyes darting from one corner to the next. I thought I could see him, half-covered by darkness, directly across from me.

Then it felt like I got hit by a train.

I hadn’t seen Andrew coming. Hadn’t even thought about it. But the impact sent me flying, my knees leaving the floor, the gun dropping from my grasp. I looked up to see him clutching a table leg. I went for the gun — an automatic reaction, even though it was too far away — but he hit me again, low in the ribs.

I screamed out.

Instinct kicked in: I tried to gain some purchase on the floorboards, tried to crawl away so I could gain some distance, but my fingers slipped and he hit me again, in the ankles. I yelled out in pain as a paralysing tremor hummed up my leg. Then a third blow: in the small of my back, and this time I could feel my skin break beneath the cling film.

He stopped. Looked down at me. His black clothes made him seem bigger in the semi-darkness. More powerful. As he stepped into what little light there was left, in his face I could see regret. Maybe even a little mercy.

‘I understand,’ he said, gently, and dropped to his haunches beside me. ‘I understand how you feel. How desperate you must be to get her back.’

I jabbed a leg at his kneecap. It missed, but unbalanced him, one of his hands planting on the floor behind, trying to prevent him falling on to his backside. I looked across the landing for the Beretta. It was slightly to my left, about six feet in front of me.

Hauling myself on to all fours, I started towards it.

But Andrew was on his feet again. He took one step in my direction and smashed the table leg into the same spot as before: the small of my back, right where one of the wounds had opened up.

I yelled out and collapsed on to my stomach.

There was silence for a moment. He was watching me, seeing if I was going to try to make a move again. When I didn’t, through the corner of my eye, I saw him drop down for a second time, but further away, so I couldn’t make contact.

‘After I got out of prison,’ he said, turning the table leg in his hands, ‘my parole officer found me a job teaching kids how to play football at a youth club. He knew the people who ran it. The first evening I turned up there, the guy in charge pulled me aside and said, “I know you’ve got a record. You’re just a favour for a friend, so if you mess up once, even if it’s forgetting to tell me we’re out of orange squash, you’re finished.” I got twenty pounds cash in hand, and was claiming every week as well. When Sunday came round, I had nothing. The temptation to steal, the temptation to claw it back, whoever I hurt, was immense.’

I looked across the landing, to the Beretta.

‘Go for the gun, and I will put my foot through the back of your head.’

I glanced at him.

‘Just give me an excuse, David. I can’t wait to see what your face looks like as it leaks through the floorboards.’

I closed my eyes. Tried to memorize the layout of the building. Tried to recall anything I could use as a makeshift weapon.

He started talking again.

‘Prison was tough,’ he continued, and I opened my eyes and watched him. ‘So, I didn’t want to go back. And, anyway, about five months after I started there, everything changed. I got talking to the mum of one of the boys. He’d had leukaemia, but it was in remission. And the way she spoke about him, about the love she had for him, it just absolutely stopped me dead. When I found out she was on her own, I asked her out — even before I knew her name. She was the one who first took me to church. She was how I found my faith.’

He stood. Looked down at me.

‘Charlotte,’ he said.

There was a long pause as he stared at me.

‘We’d been seeing each other for about two years when her son’s leukaemia came back. I’d already moved in with them by then and had a job. Everything in my life was perfect. But when Charlotte found out the disease had come back, something just turned off in her, as if she knew this time it wasn’t going until it took her boy with it.’

Something moved in his eyes.

‘I came home three months after he passed away and she was lying beneath the surface of the water in the bath. She’d overdosed on sleeping pills.’

He gripped the table leg harder, both hands wriggling to get a better grip.

‘That was when I came up with the idea for this place. A place to help people start again. To leave behind the memories, everything they wish they could forget. I went to the bank and they turned me down on the spot. But eventually, a few months later, someone cared enough to help me out.’

I shook my head.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said.

I turned my head, pain shooting down the centre of my back.

‘You’re not helping anyone.’

He paused. Watched me.

Then, suddenly, he moved, hitting out at me with the table leg. It caught me in the chin.

‘Fuck!’

My head hit the floor, blood in my mouth, on my lips, across my face. White spots flashed in front of my eyes. I was disorientated, unable to make anything out.

‘You of all people should understand what I’m trying to do!’ he screamed from behind me, his voice trembling with rage.

I looked for him, but my vision was still blurred. One doorway became the next. He’d moved back. Briefly faded into the night.

‘This place is built for people like you!’

Then he emerged from the darkness and leaned into me.

‘And it’s not going to stop now.’

His face shifted back into focus.

‘You’re not going to stop me, David.’

He raised the table leg above his head. His grip tightened, his teeth clenched. I curled up into a ball, protecting myself.

But the final blow never came.

A dull thud sounded.

Andrew staggered sideways, clutching his head.

At the top of the stairs behind him was Alex. He turned and punched a piece of the table up into Andrew’s guts. The air hissed out of him. He doubled over, clutching his stomach.

Alex struck again.

This time he pounded the chunk of wood into the base of Andrew’s spine. The tall man stumbled forward and fell to the floor, his legs giving way under him like a deer shot down in a hunt. A fourth and fifth blow came, a chunk of wood splintering this time, breaking at the sheer force of the blow. It spun off into the bathroom and landed among the glass.

Alex briefly glanced at me, and then kicked Andrew in the face. More blood, spraying out over the wall behind him; over the carpet. Then he kicked him again. And again. And again. Gradually, Andrew’s eyes glazed over and all that came after were sounds without reaction: skin splitting; bones breaking. No grunts. No groans. No breathing. Just a slapping sound, like raw meat being tenderized.

‘Alex,’ I said.

He stopped, panting heavily, and looked around towards me, across to the room with the rings, to my gun, and to the blood on my clothes.

He came across and helped me up, lacing his arms through mine. My balance was affected. My body felt like it might fall apart. He guided me back towards Room A. I went straight for the gun, grasping it as tightly as I could. Once we were inside, hidden by the darkness, I brought his head towards me.

‘Legion,’ I whispered, pointing towards the wall that divided the two bedrooms. I could see in his face he got it immediately. Dread rose to the surface.

Click.

We both turned, looking towards Andrew. But the noise had come from the room with the rings.

Click.

Click.

‘Oh, shit,’ Alex said. ‘He’s coming.’

44

Alex turned to me. ‘You need to use me,’ he whispered, glancing towards the door. ‘You need to pretend you will kill me.’

‘What?’

He stood up. I grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him back down.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

He looked at me. ‘They can’t kill me.’

‘They can.’

‘They can’t.’

‘They can kill you, Alex.’

‘Grab hold of me and follow me out on to the landing,’ he said.

‘What? Are you fucking crazy?’

‘Do it,’ he said, and looked me square in the eyes. ‘Put a gun to my head and walk me through. When you see him, threaten to kill me.’

‘You must be out of your fucking mind.’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘Trust me.’

I looked at him.

‘Please, David. Trust me.’

He got to his feet so his back was to me. I looked up at him, waiting for him to turn around. Waiting to see the fear in his eyes. But he didn’t look down. He stood and stared into the darkness like a soldier about to clear the trenches and head over the top.

‘Do it,’ he said.

‘He will kill you, Alex.’

‘He won’t,’ he said, fiercely this time.

He remained still, looking out on to the landing. I stood and inched in close to him so Legion wouldn’t have a clear shot at me. Then we began to move forward. The floorboards creaked beneath our feet. Alex’s shoes kicked up splintered wood and shattered pieces of glass. We stepped out on to the landing, briefly sliding in Andrew’s blood. And then we turned right and edged into the room with the rings, little by little, every footstep feeling heavier.

Further and further into the lair.

‘I’ll kill him,’ I said, staring into the darkness. All around us was the night, hanging from the walls and the windows like blankets. I looked from corner to corner, pressing the gun into the back of Alex’s head. ‘If it’s him or me, I swear I’ll kill him.’

A half-step towards the centre of the room.

‘I swear.’

There was no reply. No movement.

‘Are you listening to me?’

I glanced left and right.

‘I’ll kill him, I promise you.’

My eyes adjusted a little more. Shapes started to emerge from the corner of the room. An uneven floorboard. The hole in the wall with the message help me. The rings. The water running down the brickwork.

‘Do you want that?’

More shapes.

‘Answer me.’

We shuffled further forward.

‘Answer me.’

Click.

A gun cocked behind me and, before we had a chance to turn, I felt it at the back of my neck. The end of the barrel pushed in against the top of my spine.

Legion had tricked us. He’d moved to the shadows on the stairs while Alex and I had been forming a plan in the next room.

‘Cockroach,’ he said quietly.

‘I’ll kill him.’

He pushed the gun in harder.

‘You’re not a killer, cockroach.’

‘Put your gun down,’ I said, pushing back against his gun’s muzzle.

‘No.’

‘Put it down.’

The same tone, the same control: ‘No.’

‘Put your gun down now.’

In the blink of an eye his head was at my ear. I could feel the mask brush against the side of my face. His smell. His hot breath passing through the holes in the plastic.

‘No,’ he said again.

‘I’ve got a gun against his head,’ I said slowly. ‘Do you want to take that chance?’

He moved his head back and pushed the gun in against me.

‘You’re a fucking cockroach, you know that?’

‘Put it down.’

‘You belong in the dirt.’

‘Put the fucking gun down.’

The gun pressed harder against the back of my head, digging in against the curve of my skull. It felt like he was weighing up his options.

‘You’ve got three seconds,’ I said.

The gun didn’t move.

‘One.’

Nothing.

‘Two.’

I cocked the Beretta.

‘Thr—’

With one last push of the barrel, I heard glass crunch beneath his feet as he stepped back, the gun going with him.

I swivelled, so hard Alex almost stumbled, and looked across at Legion. He was standing in the doorway. The gun was at his side, a second one — what looked like a SIG Sauer P250 — in his belt. His sleeves were rolled up, the tattoos creeping out from underneath. His eyes were fixed on me, peering through the eyeholes. Blinking slowly. His tongue came through the mouth slit, and moved along it, making a cutting sound on the plastic. There was some blood close to his right shoulder, but he hardly seemed to notice.

‘Put it down,’ I said, nodding at the submachine gun.

He didn’t move.

‘I’ll put a bullet through his face, I promise you that.’

He looked at me, at Alex, then back to me. Maybe he didn’t believe I would kill Alex. If you’re a killer, you wear it — like a cut that doesn’t heal. He could see I didn’t wear it. But maybe he’d heard about what I’d done to their people before. So he knew, if I had to, I could kill. If it came to that, it would be them before me.

‘You want me to start counting again, you fucking freak?’

His eyes narrowed inside the mask. Then his hand opened and the submachine gun dropped to the floor. Glass scattered as it turned over and came to rest.

‘Now the other one,’ I said, my eyes snapping to his belt.

He paused, then placed a hand on top of the SIG. His fingers slid down the side, like insect legs, one moving in against the trigger, the others in around the grip. Wriggling. Long, grey stalks; dirt and blood under the nails. I shifted the Beretta sideways, from Alex’s neck across his shoulder. I aimed at Legion’s head. His eyes flicked down to the gun and back up to me, and he slid the SIG out from his trousers, held it out in front of him and dropped it to the floor. It hit the ground with a clunk.

‘I can taste your fear, cockroach.’

I nodded, as if I barely heard him. But every word out of his mouth was like the end of a knife blade. He lived off any flicker of fear. Even with both guns on the floor, he was still dangerous.

‘Kick the guns over here.’

I expected to have to repeat myself but he did it straight away. That instantly worried me. Everything else had been a struggle. Now he was sending his weapons across to me, out of reach, without even pausing for thought.

‘Put your hands behind your head.’

He snorted, and instead moved his hands up to his mask and slowly lifted it away from his face. I felt Alex shift a little in front of me. The devil tossed his mask away. He blinked, his eyes fixed on me, and ran a hand across the top of his shaved head. And then he smiled, his mouth widening, his tongue pushing through his lips. Running across them. Tasting them.

‘I’m gonna eat you.’

‘Put your hands behind your head.’

He smiled again. But he did what I asked, sliding his hands behind his head. Too easy again. Something was up. I’d forgotten something. Missed something. What had I missed?

‘Turn around,’ I said.

Legion picked up on something in my voice. Another smile broke out on his face. ‘What’s the matter, cockroach?’

‘Turn around.’

‘You scared?’

‘Turn around.’

His eyes widened, like huge holes in his head, sucking in the darkness from the room. I felt myself losing control.

‘You sssssssssscared?’ he said quietly, menacingly.

‘Shut up and turn arou—’

He swung then, a sudden bloom of movement, pulling a knife out from somewhere behind his back. The handle was small, but the blade was long, slightly curved, glinting even in the gloom. He brought the knife out in front of him, a blur that moved from his waist, and slashed across Alex’s chest. Alex stumbled backwards, knocking me off balance.

Legion lunged forward again, further this time, flipping the knife and jabbing the butt into Alex’s temple. Alex staggered sideways, his legs giving way. I could see a long, thin, shallow tear in his clothes. There was no blood, but it had torn though his top like paper.

He moved in a third and final time and punched the knife’s handle into the side of Alex’s head again. Alex lost his footing completely and tumbled to his left — pulling me down with him. At first, as everything shattered around me, I couldn’t understand why he’d done it. Why he’d grabbed me too. Then, as he crashed to the floor and rolled over on top of me, I could see what he was doing. He was protecting me. Legion couldn’t go through him.

He came towards us, the knife out in front of him. I was still too close to Alex for him to get careless, so he stabbed the blade into the floor next to my ear. Trying to force a reaction movement from me, away from Alex. But I couldn’t move. I was trapped beneath Alex. He rammed a foot into Alex’s face and the back of Alex’s head hit my nose — a force like a hammer blow. White light flashed in my eyes. Blurring. Soundless blurring. Blood splashed on to my skin, into my mouth and eyes. Then as noise returned, Legion was rolling Alex off me, on to the floor. Alex was dazed. I looked for the Beretta, and found it: out of reach.

I could see Legion again, bent over, dragging Alex across the room. Legion’s hooded top was hoisted up across his back. Criss-crossing between his shoulder blades was a leather strap. A knife sheath was perched three-quarters of the way up his spine, empty now.

When he was done, he turned back to face me, eyes flashing. He flipped the knife, the blade now an extension of his palm, and came across the room at me.

I got on to all fours and looked for the nearest gun. It was Legion’s SIG, about five feet to my left. I threw myself towards it as he jumped on my back, his knee cracking against the base of my spine, just below the scourge marks. I hit the floor face first. We slid across the floorboards, glass scattering. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a tattooed arm pinning me down by the neck. The other raising the knife above his head.

The final act.

Suddenly, the power faded from his arms.

I inched my face further around and could see Legion looking over his shoulder. Alex was standing behind him, with a gun to the back of his head. Legion smiled, glanced at me, and released some of the pressure on my neck.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Let him go,’ Alex said, sounding dazed.

‘What are you doing, cockroach?’

One side of my face was flat to the floor. I could feel shards of glass embedded in my cheek. As I tried to lift myself up and shake them off, Legion looked down at me and pushed his knee harder against my spine. His fingers wriggled at my neck.

He looked back over his shoulder at Alex.

‘Are you listening, Alex?’

My eyes darted across the room. I had a narrow field of vision, but I could see the SIG about a foot away, level with my face. When Legion had launched himself into my back, he’d pushed us both across the floor towards it.

‘You should have been dead a long time ago,’ he said to Alex.

I moved my hand an inch away from my body. Waited for any reaction. When none came, I moved it another inch.

‘I should have made you suffer.’

I carried on moving my arm in an arc, sweeping through the debris. Sooner or later, I expected the movement of my body to register, but Legion had become consumed by his venom for Alex. For the first time, he was starting to lose some control.

‘I should have sliced you open.’

Closer to the gun. Inch by inch.

‘That’s what you deserved.’

My fingers touched the SIG. I could feel the rough texture of the grip.

‘That’s what you’ve always deserved.’

I pulled the gun towards me. Worked my palm around the grip and my finger around the trigger. The SIG was in against my hand now. I could feel everything. The curve of the trigger, the weight of its casing. The finality of it.

‘You deserved to be tortured,’ Legion said, almost spitting the words back across his shoulder at Alex. ‘You’re a cockroach, just like this…’

He looked down at me.

His fingers wriggled at my neck.

I raised the gun off the ground. Bent my arm back and forced the SIG in against his stomach.

And I fired.

He fell off me, his grip releasing instantly. I rolled over and saw his hand clutching a space just under the ribcage. Blood was spilling out over his fingers. He brought the knife up, swung it at me, but the power had gone from his arms. The effort pulled his body backwards. He hit the nearest wall and slid down, the knife falling from his hand.

Dead.

I looked up at Alex. He nodded and threw the gun to the floor. He was retching; choking on the fear and adrenalin.

I dropped the SIG next to me. Slowly got to my feet. My Beretta was midway between where I was lying and Legion’s body. I went over and picked it up, then pulled out the clip.

One bullet still inside.

The one I always kept on me.

I moved across the room and used the barrel to prod the devil’s body. He shifted a little; a dead weight. The wound under his ribcage was small, but there was a lot of blood. It was spilling out on to his clothes and running down on to the floor. I reached over to him and lifted up his top. Underneath, he was wearing a thin black padded vest. Sleeveless. It looked thermal. Maybe military. There were a series of zip pockets on its front.

Inside one of the pockets I found three photographs.

One was a long lens shot of me standing outside Mary’s house, talking to her on the porch. The second was me talking to Jade outside Angel’s. The third was the photo of Derryn and me that he had stolen from my bedroom the night he had come for me. My face had been circled in red pen, over and over and over until the photograph had started to tear.

Behind me Alex moved. He was leaving the room and heading for the landing, clutching his face and limping slightly. He disappeared out of sight. After a while, I thought I could hear him crying.

I turned back. Saw Legion had shifted slightly.

And his eyes were open.

An arm came up, clamping on to my throat, closing around my windpipe. His fingers burrowed in against the skin, trying to dig deeper and deeper into my flesh. I froze. Couldn’t move. Stared down at him as air stopped passing to my head — a feeling so cold, so final, it was like drowning in an icy lake.

Pull yourself out.

I found the trigger of the Beretta.

Pushed the gun in against the first piece of skin I could find.

Take this chance, David.

I fired.

The bullet blew through his throat.

He slumped sideways, his eyes darkening even more, like the gates of hell had opened up for him. Then the devil was still.

45

Before daylight started to break, I brought the Shogun up the track to Bethany. Alex and I carried Legion out, and dumped his body in the back of the car. We stood there for a moment, staring in at him. Even as death claimed his body, his eyes still looked out at us. As powerful as when they blinked and moved behind the mask.

Next, we got Andrew. He was bigger, more difficult. We carried him, his body broken, the bones shifting and moving inside his skin. When we got to the Shogun, we dropped him into the back, and then Alex rolled him on top of Legion as best he could. When I asked him why, he said it was so that he no longer had to look at the eyes of the devil.

After that, we rounded up the people we could find — all the drug addicts and victims of abuse that had come to the farm with the promise of a better life — and led them to the living room in Lazarus.

There were twenty-two of them in all. Every one the same: healthy, but virtual amnesiacs, a few of them at the beginning of the programme and still strung out on whatever drugs they were being forced to take. They watched us as we sat them down, one by one, their expressions fixed, a few of them looking like their will had gone; as if they were dying from the inside out. As Alex and I made hot drinks and passed seats and blankets through, I started to wonder how they would ever be able to start to live again.

Myzwik was still lying on the floor of the Red Room. There was blood matted to his hair. It had congealed beneath him, where the back of his head had hit an uneven patch of concrete. When I rolled him over, I could see a hole about the size of a peach at the base of his skull. A piece of concrete, not set straight like the rest of the floor, had pierced the back of his head when he’d landed. As I moved out of the Red Room, out into the bitter cold, I realized I was now a killer four times over.

And not a single one I regretted.

The other instructors — Evelyn included — were gone. The property was deserted, and if we drove to the next village — where the tendrils of the organization spread — they wouldn’t be there either. None of them would be back. They were running now; perhaps understanding some of the desperation those on the farm felt as their lives crashed around them.

Finally, as the sun started coming up on a new day, we drove the Shogun along the coast to a cove. Majestic cliffs rose out of the sea for three hundred feet. Waves crashed on the shore below, their sound swallowed up by the wind. We’d found a couple of concrete blocks in Lazarus’ yard. At the edge of the cliff, we tied the blocks to Legion and Andrew — and then pushed both bodies off the side. They turned in the air as they dropped, and quickly disappeared in the spray. When we saw them again, they were fading into the depths of the sea, sinking further and further under. Legion sunk last, as if clinging on to his existence even after life had left his body.

Eventually, darkness consumed them both.

Back at the house, we told the group everything would be all right. They eyed us with suspicion. They’d been tied to rings in rooms that smelt of death, terrified by a killer who watched them from the dark, and nailed to a crucifix. Their memories might have gone, but they weren’t stupid. They knew this new existence wasn’t the one Michael, Zack, Jade and all the others had promised them.

Finally, when we were done, we left the farm through the main gates and headed to my car. Alex drove while I sat forward in my seat, careful not to put any pressure on my back.

Ten minutes down the road, we stopped at a payphone and put in an anonymous call to the police.

46

We stopped at a service station outside Manchester. The temperature readout inside the building said it was minus three. We sat at a table by one of the windows, looking out at a children’s play park, both of us nursing coffees. The fingers of my left hand were still wrapped in cling film. As the adrenalin wore off, I was starting to feel more: the dull ache of bones locking up, nerves over-compensating, the burn of torn flesh in and around the wounds.

In the glass, I could see people staring at us. One of us bruised almost beyond recognition, the other looking like he’d spent every day of the last six years living on the streets. I could see my injuries too — my face, my fingers — and wondered how I would explain it all when I went to a hospital. If I went to a hospital. After that, we headed out to the car, cranked up the heaters and disappeared back on to the motorway.

Snow started falling about twenty minutes later, coming out of the pale afternoon sky. I turned to Alex. He was driving, a fresh coffee steaming in the car’s cup holder.

‘How did you know about me?’ I asked him.

He glanced at me, then back out to the road in front of us.

‘I broke into Mum and Dad’s home and found your name and address,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’d become. A fugitive. I wanted Mum to see me that day. I let her follow me so she would believe enough, and then I prayed she would go to someone. I used to watch her when she came into London. Follow her from the train to her work, hope that one day she might stop somewhere and ask for help. And eventually she did. She came to see you. I didn’t know anything about you, couldn’t find you in the Yellow Pages, couldn’t find your number in the telephone book. That was why I went back to Mum and Dad’s place. To find out who you were.’

‘How did you get out of the farm in the first place?’

His hands shifted on the wheel.

‘One night — it was about nine months after Mat persuaded me to go to that place — I heard a voice I recognized passing in the corridor outside my room. When I went to the door, I looked out — and it was Simon.’

‘Your friend Simon?’

He nodded. ‘I couldn’t believe it was him.’

‘But it was.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was. They treated him… I’d never seen them treat anyone like that. They’d put him on a leash and were pulling him around like an animal. So, I followed them, expecting to be stopped, but I got to the end of the corridor and no one came after me. I passed beneath their CCTV cameras and no one tried to stop me. It was like the whole place had been abandoned. Normally you couldn’t breathe without someone hearing you, but I managed to walk out of the complex, and up on to the surface.’

‘Did you find Simon?’

‘No. I was too far behind him…’ He trailed off, glanced at me. ‘And I guess I forgot about him as soon as I got to the surface.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the entrance had been left open.’

‘The main gate?’

He nodded. ‘It was open enough to allow me to escape. My body was telling me to make a break for it, but my brain was holding me back. They never left it open — ever.’

‘Was it some kind of trap?’

‘That was my first thought. But, after a couple of minutes of standing there, I started walking towards the gate.’

‘And that was it — you just went through?’

‘No. When I got to the top… Andrew was there.’

‘Just waiting for you?’

‘Just there. In the shadows. I was about four feet from the gate, close enough to run for it if he tried to come for me — but he didn’t. He just stood there.’

I looked at him. ‘And did what?’

‘And did nothing. He just stayed like that. And then, when I finally made a move towards the other side, he said, “Bringing you here was a mistake. We never wanted you, Alex. None of us. I’m sick of fighting you; of not being able to give you the drugs I need to. If you really were a part of this programme, we would have sacrificed you already. But you’re not — never will be — and I’m willing to take whatever consequences come my way now. I don’t want to see your face any more.”’

‘That’s what he said?’

Alex nodded. ‘It still felt like a trap, but when I stepped through the gate, on to the road, I realized it wasn’t. I looked back and watched him push the gate shut behind me. Then he said, “If things get bad, if you try to do anything to us, bring anyone here, we will get to you. And when we get to you, we won’t care what kind of protection you have — we will kill you.” And then he headed back to the farm.’

‘What did he mean by “protection”?’

He shrugged. ‘They can’t kill me.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

We drove for a little while without speaking, both of us thinking about the night Alex had escaped. My mind was racing, trying to put things together. Something didn’t add up.

‘Did they say anything else to you?’

‘No. I just ran. I didn’t look back. I hitched a lift to the first station I could find, and then got on the train down to London. I hid in the toilets all the way. I sat there, too scared to go out in case they’d tricked me. I couldn’t tell people what they’d done, in case they followed through on their promise to kill me. That’s why I had to get you to go to that place. I had to get someone to stop it. Every day since I left, I’ve been cowering in the shadows with my back to the wall, terrified they would find me. I was sick of feeling frightened.’

I looked at him. ‘It’s strange…’

‘What?’

‘You never seemed frightened today.’

He nodded. ‘I suppose a part of me expected to die. They told me never to come back, but that’s what I did. When you think you might not live to see another day, it gives you some focus. And I just needed to make sure you got out.’

‘What about Al?’

He looked at me. ‘You know about him?’

I nodded.

‘I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I did,’ he said. ‘I spent a lot of months being scared about dying. And then I spent the last few weeks wondering what they would do to me if I came back here. After what I did to Al, maybe I would have deserved to die today. But I couldn’t die before I did something about the farm. I know what happened today doesn’t make up for what I’ve done… but it’s the only thing I could do.’

‘So, why did you kill him?’

‘I did it for Dad,’ he said. ‘Dad and Al, they went way back. Dad used to work for a bank in the City, then Al offered him a job doing the books at his stores. We got a new TV, a new kitchen, went on a nice holiday to the south of France. But then it started to go wrong. Everything Mum and I thought we owned, Dad knew differently. Because Al really owned it all. He’d loaned Dad money for just about everything, told us we never had to pay it back because we were like family to him. Then one night he flipped. Dad came home and told me Al wanted to take back what was his. Everything we’d ever got from him, he wanted repaid. There was no way we could do it. If we gave him back all that was his, we would have had nothing.’

‘Why did he suddenly turn like that?’

‘I don’t know, but it just got worse and worse. Dad invited Al round to the house when Mum was out, to try and talk him round. They went down into the basement, and Al absolutely lost his head. He punched Dad. When Mum asked, we told her he’d had a fall while we were out at the lake, fishing. Dad couldn’t bring himself to tell Mum, couldn’t bring himself to tell her everything he had bought for her, the life he had created for her, was about to fall apart. That our home and everything in it would be gone.’

Alex looked out of the window.

‘This went on for a few months — and then Dad came up with an idea. We’d pay Al back with his own money. Dad could fiddle Al’s books quite easily. Al had three stores, each making a lot of cash. That was when we first got talking about the five hundred grand.’

‘Five hundred grand?’

‘The money we would take from him. After that, we realized the only person who could stop us was Al himself. Because eventually he would find out. If we stopped Al, we got to keep the money.’

‘Your dad helped come up with the plan to kill him?’

‘We just got swept along by it, corrupted by the idea…’ He seemed to fade a little then. ‘In the end, I did it. But, that night, I never set out to. The closer we got to the idea, the less certain I became, until eventually I said to Dad it might be better for me to go and talk to Al. Dad didn’t want that. By then, he was very sure of the path we needed to take, but the thought of… the thought of what we were going to do to Al, it scared me shitless.’

We passed under a set of signs. Eighty miles to London.

‘So, I went to meet him at that strip club in Harrow. He was drunk by the time I got there, sitting next to the stage, letting these strippers rub their tits in his face. He wasn’t in a fit state to talk. He wasn’t in a fit state to do anything. Every time I tried to reason with him, he turned his back on me and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I tried to give him a chance, tried to let him give me a chance, but in the end I lost it with him. I told him to stay the hell away from my family. I told him if he ever came near us again, I would kill him.’

He stopped. We both knew what came next.

‘I told him I would kill him,’ Alex said gently, ‘and that’s what I ended up doing. Mum had the car that night. She was out with friends. I guess I could have got the train, but I just wanted to get in and get out again. I didn’t want to spend time with Al, I just wanted to do what was necessary. So I hired a car at a place close to Mum and Dad’s. It was a Hertz but the manager there was this old guy. I showed him my ID, but lied on the form, so nothing could be traced back to me. The guy looked at the form after I was done, but didn’t even twig the name and address were different. I guess, deep down, I knew there would be trouble that night.’

He paused for a moment.

‘Anyway, I came out of the bar and headed back to the car and he came after me. He was so drunk he couldn’t stand up, let alone walk in a straight line. But he charged over to me and started pointing at me. Telling me what a piece of shit my dad was. There were a couple of people standing outside the bar. As soon as they went in, I hit him. He was so drunk he didn’t see it coming. When he was on the floor… I broke his nose with the heel of my shoe.’

The lights from the motorway flashed in his eyes. He was caught somewhere, silent for a moment. Then he turned back to me.

‘When he finally got up, he was a mess, could hardly speak properly. But he looked straight at me and said, “You just made a big fucking mistake, Alex. I was trying to help you. I was trying to help your mum. You came down here for your dad, right? Your fantastic dad. Well, why don’t you go and ask him about his dirty little secret in Wembley?”’

‘What did he mean by that?’

Something glistened in his eyes.

‘I got in the car and tried to calm myself. Then he started again. He was spitting blood all over the bonnet, telling me to go fuck myself, telling me he’d make a special journey to watch Dad being kicked out on to the streets. And then, before he went to walk away, he looked at me and said, “Go and ask your dad about your brother.”’

‘Your brother?’

He nodded. There were tears on his face now.

‘I put my foot to the floor, and went straight through him. He hit the middle of the car, just flew off to the side. And I left him there. When I looked in the mirror, he was lying in a puddle. And he was still. Absolutely still.’

47

‘Where did you go?’ I asked. It was dark, almost nine o’clock, and we were ten miles from my house, stuck in traffic on the edge of London.

‘France,’ he replied. ‘After I left home, I took my bank card, withdrew the maximum amount of money they would let me take in one day, and headed down to Dover. I dumped the car in long-term parking, then found a trawler willing to take me across the Channel. I didn’t have my passport, so I paid them whatever it took. Just to keep them quiet.’

‘What did you do in France?’

‘Worked some crappy jobs, cleaning toilets, waiting tables at cafés. I just tried to keep my head down. I didn’t spend more than three months in each job, just in case the police were on to me.’

‘So, what brought you back?’

‘I got homesick. I ended up hating everything about my life there. The jobs were terrible, the places I lived in were worse. I spent five years doing that, and every day ground me down a little more. So I found a boat that would take me back, and went and saw Michael.’

‘You knew him from before?’

‘Yeah,’ Alex said. ‘He used to be a friend. A good one. Back when I lived with Mum and Dad, he worked at our local church. Called himself Mat back then. Michael Anthony Tilton. Then he went travelling. When he got back, he took that job in east London, and I noticed small changes in him — like, he never talked about his family any more, and he got uncomfortable when I still called him Mat. Andrew was changing him too, I suppose, just not with the drugs and the torture and the fear. I went and visited him at the church a few times before I disappeared. The last time was just before I killed Al.’

‘That was when you bought the birthday card in the box?’

He nodded.

‘Why did you go to Michael after you came back?’

‘I thought he would know what to do. I thought I could trust him. I couldn’t go to Mum, because of Dad. I couldn’t go to John, because of his job. Kath wouldn’t have understood. None of them would have. I thought Mat might. So, he made a few calls and arranged for me to be driven up to the farm. They were fine for a few hours. Took my picture, talked to me, told me everything would be okay. But do you know what they did after that?’

I shook my head.

‘They knocked me out. I turned my back on them once, and they knocked me out. And then… Then they tried to take my memory away. I could feel my body pleading for the drugs, but I had some fight in me. I managed to cling on to something. And so, even in the darkest times, I could see the outline of the people I loved. Could hear things Mum had said to me. See places I’d been with Kath. I used that as strength, to help me get out of there.’

‘Do you know how they faked your death?’

He nodded. ‘They used Simon.’

‘Simon was supposed to be you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘We had the same blood type. I remember that from when Simon and I used to give blood at uni. That made it easier to disguise the fact it wasn’t me in that car. And I think maybe Andrew and the others on the farm… they liked the symmetry of it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, one friend making the ultimate sacrifice for the other.’

Based on what I’d found at the farm, I imagined Alex was right.

‘Simon had been on the farm for a few months. They’d fed him drugs — but he’d fought them. He fought back against the programme. He pushed down the terror he felt at everything that was going on, and he pushed back at them. But in the end he pushed back too hard. One night, when one of the women came in with his meal, he launched himself at her. He beat her so badly she lay there until morning in a pool of her own blood.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘There was a girl with me in the room with the rings. Rose. She was drying out when they put me in there. She wouldn’t speak at night, because of Legion. She knew, at night, he watched us. But, in the day, before she started to disappear into the programme, she would talk a little and tell me things she had heard. And Simon was one of the things she heard…’

Darkness. And then light. Hands grab at him and pull him out of the boot of the car. Cool air bristles against his skin as he’s dropped on to a patch of grass. A foot comes down and pins him to the ground. He can feel wet mud against one side of his face and the last weak rays of evening sunlight against the other. Fields and a dirt road stretch out in front of him, and an old Toyota is parked further down, rope attached to its underside.

‘So, they killed him in that car crash.’

‘Yes. When I saw him, when I watched them take him away on that leash, it was the day after he beat that woman. I could smell the petrol on him right from the other end of the corridor. It was only afterwards, when I found out I was supposed to be dead, that I realized why — and what they did to him.’

‘They used your teeth.’

Alex left one hand on the wheel and peeled back his lips with the other. He placed a finger and a thumb on his two front teeth. And pulled. The teeth came away.

They were all false.

‘One of the women on the farm used to be a dentist. They put my teeth into Simon’s mouth, plied him with so much alcohol he could hardly stand, and doused him with petrol. Then they led him out of that farm on a leash, and drove him nine hours down to Bristol, so it looked like I’d been close to home the whole time. Simon was supposed to be me.’

Through the windscreen of the Toyota he can see a car close in front. Maybe only three or four feet away. The two vehicles are attached by a length of rope.

Everything in the car smells of petrol: the dashboard, the seats, his clothes. He glances at the speedo. They’re still accelerating. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. He tries to move, but can’t. He looks down. His arms and body are paralysed.

Suddenly, there are headlights up ahead.

And something pings.

There’s the brief, grinding sound of metal against metal, like a clasp being released. Brakes squeal. Then the car in front veers left, the rope trailing behind it, swinging across the road.

A horn blares.

Simon desperately tries to jab at the brakes, the insides of the Toyota swimming in the light from the lorry. But his feet don’t move. Not an inch.

And then there is only darkness.

Alex pulled into a parking bay at a train station about a mile from my house. I gave him enough money to get a ticket, and some more so he could get wherever he needed to go. He climbed out of the car and shook my right hand.

For the first time I glimpsed the wounds in his fingers.

‘It’s ten o’clock, Alex,’ I said.

‘I know.’

‘Why don’t you just stay at mine?’

‘I’m still on the run,’ he said. ‘I think the less time you spend with me, and the less you know about where I’m going, the better it is for you.’

He got ready to go, but then turned back. He ducked his head inside the car again, and stared at me for a moment.

‘Do you know what the last thing you hear is?’

I looked at him. ‘Last thing before what?’

‘Before dying.’

I knew. I’d heard it myself when I’d been bound to the cross.

‘The last thing you hear is the sea,’ Alex said, and nodded as if he knew I understood. ‘Waves crashing. Sand washing away. Seagulls squawking. Dogs running around on the beach. If that’s the last sound I hear in this life, it won’t matter to me. Because I like that sound. You know why?’

I shook my head.

‘It reminds me of sitting on the sand, in a cove in Carcondrock, with the person I loved.’

After that, he turned around and disappeared into the crowds.

48

I didn’t want to go home, so I stayed the night in a motel across the street from the train station. The woman booking me in glanced up a couple of times at the dried cuts around my cheeks, at the streaks of purple and black on the side of my head, but didn’t say anything. As I limped to my room, I could see her reflected in a thin strip of glass by the elevators. She was looking again. My body was exhausted, and a dull ache coursed through my system, but the cling film had helped to quell some of the pain, even if the injuries to my face were more difficult to hide.

The room was small and plain, but it was clean. I set the holdall on the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress for a while, breathing in and out, trying to relax. But the more I relaxed, the worse I started to feel; as the adrenalin ebbed away, it took the numbness with it. I got up again and went to the bathroom. Alex had stopped outside a pharmacy before we got to the train station so I could pick up some medical supplies. The smell of the bandages, of the antiseptic cream, of peeling away the plasters, suddenly reminded me of Derryn’s years as a nurse. Then a memory formed: of her attending to my face three weeks after she’d come to join me in South Africa. I’d fallen into some masonry in a desperate run from a Soweto shootout.

‘It’s a Steri-Strip today,’ she’d said, placing the transparent plaster over a cut close to my eye. ‘I don’t want it to be a coffin tomorrow.’

My eyes fell to my newly bandaged fingers, and — finally — to my body. Cling film was still wrapped around it, blood pooling at the sides, crawling around from my back in thick, maroon tendrils. I couldn’t see the lacerations themselves; wasn’t sure I ever wanted to. One thing I did know, though, was that I didn’t have the courage to start removing the cling film.

Not yet.

Once I was cleaned up, I went back to the bed, dropped on to my stomach and faced the door. And twelve, restless hours later, I woke again.

49

It was 13 December, eleven days after she’d first come to me, when I headed to Mary’s for the final time. It was late afternoon by the time I got there. I drove, but with difficulty, sitting forward the whole way. My back was still stiff from sleep, and I could feel the cling film loosening. By the time I got out of the car, pain was crackling along my spine.

I slowly moved up the path and on to the porch. Snow had collected in thick mounds at the front. Christmas lights winked in the windows of the house. Mary answered after a couple of knocks, lit by the fading dusk sky.

‘David.’

‘Hello, Mary.’

‘Come in,’ she said, backing away from the door.

She looked at me, at the cuts and bruises I’d patched up. I inched past her, my body aching.

‘Your face…’ she said.

‘It looks worse than it is,’ I lied.

‘What happened?’

‘I got into a fight.’

‘With who?’

I looked at her, but didn’t reply. She nodded, as if she understood that I didn’t want to talk about it. At least not yet.

‘Let me fix you something to drink,’ she said.

She disappeared into the kitchen. I made my way to the windows at the back of the living room. They looked out over the garden. The snow was perfect. No footprints. No bird tracks. No fallen leaves. It was like no one had ever been out there.

Mary came through with two cups of coffee, and we sat on the sofas.

‘Where’s Malcolm?’

‘Upstairs,’ she said.

‘How is he?’

She paused. ‘Not good.’

On the table in front of her I placed the envelope she had given to me with the rest of her money in it. She looked down at it, studied it, but didn’t reach for it. Instead, her eyes flicked back to me.

‘You don’t need any more?’

‘No, Mary,’ I said. ‘We’re finished now.’

There was little emotion in her face. I wondered whether she’d already talked herself into believing it had all been a mistake.

‘Finished?’ she said.

‘He was in Scotland.’

‘Alex?’

‘Alex.’

She took a moment, her mouth opening a little. All the doubt, all the times she’d told herself she must have been seeing things, fell away. Her eyes started to fill with tears.

‘What was he doing in Scotland?’

‘I don’t know,’ I lied.

‘Is he still there?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘No,’ I lied again, and when I could bring myself to look at her, I suddenly wasn’t sure this was the right path, despite Alex having asked me to play it this way. ‘I think he wants to see you, but I think he’s also confused.’

‘He can come back home,’ she pleaded.

No, he can’t. I looked at her, a single tear breaking free.

‘Why doesn’t he come home?’

I didn’t answer. It had to be like this. Alex had to decide when the time was right. He had to find his own way back in. They all had to find a way back into a world that had forgotten they existed. A world that had given them nothing the first time. It would be easier for Alex in many ways, despite the baggage he carried with him. He had something to grasp on to, memories he’d never let go. For some of the others, what awaited them was simply a blank. No memories of their first lives. No life to fit back into. Perhaps no chance at starting again.

‘After he left home, he went to France,’ I said, hoping that would be something. ‘That’s where he went before he came back.’

‘Why did he go there?’

I looked at her and thought of Al, of Malcolm, of the way he had shut Alex out. Kept secrets from him. From the family. I guessed his brother was also unknown to Mary. It was up to Alex to bring that to her, not me.

‘Why did he go there, David?’ she asked again.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, but couldn’t look at her when I said it.

She broke down and started crying into the sleeve of her cardigan, using her arm to cover her face. Eventually, she calmed a little and I looked at her. She was staring into space. I saw what I might do to her with these lies, but I’d given Alex my word.

Briefly, I thought of another lie; a way to comfort her. It was a lie about the friend of mine who just decided one day that he needed to break away — even if it was just for a short time — to clear his head and decide what he wanted. But I didn’t feed her that one. The deeper I dug, the further away from safety I got. And I didn’t want to get caught out. Not like the people on the farm, making mistakes that cost them their most precious, most necessary commodity. Secrecy.

50

Mary led me to the basement and we talked in there for a while, like we had before. The wind had found a way in somewhere, making a sound like a child blowing into a bottle. The place was still a mess. The cardboard boxes were still stacked high like pillars, wood and metal still strewn across the floor. There were books in one corner, stacked twenty or thirty high. A lawnmower. More cardboard boxes. Some old walking sticks, different colours and weights, probably all Malcolm’s.

Mary was quiet. I knew she was fighting back tears. It felt wrong to leave, so I offered to sit with her for a while. The last time anyone had sat down and really talked to her was probably before Malcolm got ill. Since then she’d had to fight every demon herself.

‘What did Alex do in France?’ she asked.

‘Just worked some jobs there.’

‘Good jobs?’

I smiled. ‘He’d probably say not.’

She nodded. Rubbed her palms together. Her hands were small, the nails bitten. To her side was a cup of coffee. She reached down to it and placed her fingers over the top, as if trying to warm herself up.

‘How can he still be alive?’

I knew she’d ask. I just didn’t want to answer.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘All I know is that he misses you, and he will phone you. He’s just spent a long time on the outside, and now he has to make the step back inside.’

‘What do you mean?’

Above us, floorboards creaked. Malcolm was shuffling across the living room.

I looked back at her. ‘I mean, he needs time.’

Mary glanced around the basement, her eyes locking on the photograph albums in the opposite corner.

She raised her head to the ceiling, then turned back to me.

‘The AD has been really bad these past few weeks.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He can’t retain anything. Not even things he used to repeat before. When I bath him, he looks at me and I can see he has no memory of me at all.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly.

‘I know I can’t do anything about it. But it hurts.’ She looked again at the ceiling. ‘I’d better go and check he’s all right.’

I nodded. ‘And I’d better go.’

We walked up the basement stairs, into the kitchen and through to the living room. Malcolm Towne was sitting in front of the television, the colours blinking in his face. He looked tired and old. He didn’t turn to face us. When Mary went to him, and put a hand on his shoulder, he glanced up at her. His eyes drifted across to me. Total confusion. Behind those eyes, there were conversations with Alex that would never come out, and Mary would never know. I felt sorry for them — for both of them.

‘Are you okay, Malc?’ she said.

He didn’t reply — just gazed at her. His mouth was slightly open, a blob of saliva on his lips. Mary spotted it and immediately wiped it away with her sleeve. He didn’t even move. He glanced at me again and I smiled at him, but nothing registered.

‘Would you like a sweet?’ Mary asked him.

The minute detail in his face had become important to her. When a part of his mouth twitched, she took that as a yes. She went to the drawer and got out a bag of sweets. Took one out and unwrapped it.

‘Here we are,’ she said, slipping it into his mouth.

‘Aren’t you worried about him choking on it?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He seems to be all right with these.’

She held the bag of sweets against her, and watched him suck on it. His lips smacked a little, the only part of him moving with any kind of normality. I could see what she meant about his illness — it had definitely got worse since the last time. After a while, he slowly turned back to the television.

‘Would you like a sweet, David?’

She held out the bag to me. I took one.

‘They’re Malcolm’s favourites,’ she said, following me towards the front door. ‘It’s about the only way he’ll interact with me these days.’

We walked on to the porch and down the driveway towards my car. I could see her hanging on the back of that last sentence. Staring into the face of what had become of the man she loved, and wondering how it might have been different without his illness.

As I flipped the locks on the car, a fierce winter wind ripped up the road. Distantly, something registered — a noise I recognized — and I looked back at the house.

Mary was standing behind me.

‘What’s the matter?’ she said.

I listened.

‘David?’

I shook my head. ‘Guess it’s nothing.’

I got into the car and pulled the door shut, buzzing down the window. As Mary stepped in towards the car, I unwrapped the sweet and popped it into my mouth.

‘Thank you for all your help, David,’ she said.

‘It will come together, Mary.’

‘Okay.’

‘You will get the closure you need,’ I said. ‘You were right. Right to come to me, right to force me to believe you. But something like this… it’s more complicated than a simple missing persons case. There’s no file, no proper line of enquiry. Your son has been places and seen things that he needs to process himself before he can come back to you. I don’t know everything, but what I do know is that a lot of those things need to come from him.’ I put my hand on hers briefly. ‘He’ll be back, Mary. Just give him time.’

Wind roared up the road again and pressed in at the car windows, so hard they creaked. Mary stepped sideways, pushed by the wind, her hand sliding out from beneath mine.

And then that noise again.

I looked past Mary to the house. Hanging baskets swayed in the wind. The front door swung on its hinges. Leaves swirled around.

‘What’s the matter, David?’ she asked again.

‘Uh, nothing, I gue…’

Then I saw it.

On top of the house, almost a silhouette in the evening light. A weathervane. The wind buffeted it, spinning it around. And then, as the wind died down again, the weathervane gently started squeaking, as if a part of it had come loose. Metal against metal. A noise I’d heard before.

On the farm.

The weathervane was an angel.

‘Where did you get that?’ I asked her, pointing at it. She looked back at the house. As she did, a second reaction hit me, even more powerful than the first.

My mouth.

‘… colm bought it from a shop before he got Alz…’

I lost what she was saying. Suddenly it was like I’d been smashed across the face with a baseball bat. At the tip of my ear, I could feel someone’s breath, warm and saccharine like the smell of boiled sweets. The night down in Bristol, before they’d taken me out to the woods to kill me. The man with the saccharine breath.

His tone had altered, but I’d recognized his voice.

It hadn’t been Andrew.

It was Malcolm.

I opened the door and headed up the path. Behind me, I could hear Mary saying my name. I turned to her and held up a hand.

‘Wait there,’ I said.

I left her like that and moved back inside. The heat of the house hit me. I could see Malcolm had changed positions. He had his back to me.

‘I knew there was something off about you.’

He almost fell off the sofa. When he saw who it was, surprised at the sound of my voice, he held up a hand, made a noise. A grunt. Fear darted across his eyes.

‘Don’t hurt me.’

‘I saw it that first time I came round.’

‘Don’t hurt me,’ he said again.

‘Is this all an act?’

He shifted position on the sofa, moving back to where he’d been before. He looked me up and down. His eyes darted backwards and forwards. Left to right. He was trying to see whether there was anything nearby he could use to protect himself with. There wasn’t. He moved further across the sofa.

‘Don’t hurt me,’ he said a third time.

His voice trembled. Frightened.

‘Is this all an act?’

‘Where’s Mary?’

‘You want Mary?’

He remembered her.

‘Where is she?’

I took a step closer. ‘You know her now?’

‘Mary!’ he yelled, looking beyond me.

‘Malcolm,’ I said again. ‘Are you listening to me?’

‘Where’s Ma—’

‘I know about you.’

He was up on his feet now, over on the other side of the sofa. In front of the window that looked out over the garden. He glanced over my shoulder again.

‘Mary!’

‘You wanted me dead.’

‘Mary!’ he screamed again.

‘You tried to kill me.’

Tears filled his eyes.

‘Do you remember?’

‘David?’

I turned. Mary was in the doorway, her face white.

‘David, what the hell are you doing?’

Her eyes darted from me to Malcolm, then back again.

‘Wait there, Mary.’

‘David!’

‘Wait there.’ I turned back to Malcolm. ‘How did you do it?’

‘Take whatever you want,’ he said.

‘Are you listening to me?’

‘Take it!’

‘You know I’m not here for that.’

‘There’s money in the kitchen!’

I paused. ‘You remember where Mary keeps the money now?’

He realized what he had said even before he’d finished the sentence. I could see him wince, like the air had been punched out of him. His shield cracked a little.

‘Malcolm?’ Mary said, a small voice from behind me.

He glanced at his wife as the crack started fragmenting, the shield disintegrating, piece by piece. After a few seconds, his body relaxed. Straightened. He smiled and held out his hands.

‘You got me, David,’ he said.

This time his voice was different.

The same one I’d heard in Bristol.

‘Malcolm?’

Mary again, even weaker this time. I looked back over my shoulder. Her eyes were fixed on her husband, tears running down her face. When I turned back, Malcolm was staring at me, his face, his physicality, changing in front of my eyes. He seemed to broaden, to fill out, nothing of him sagging any more. He ran a hand through his black hair, the grey flecks passing between his fingers, and then the fading shell of a dying man was gone completely.

‘You’re him,’ I said. ‘You’re the one Jade talked about. You’re the reason they couldn’t kill Alex. That’s how you were on to me from the beginning.’

He shrugged, glanced at Mary. Back to me.

‘The first time you came here, I spoke to Andrew and told him it might come to this. That was why he sent that… freak down to visit you in Cornwall. We wanted to see what kind of a man you were. When Legion told us about the photo you had of Alex, I knew we might have to fight you. We were protecting a secret, and part of the secret was with you. By the time you made it down to Bristol, to the house we had down there, I thought decisive action was needed. I needed to sort things out myself.’

I ran a hand across my face, across the bruises put there by him.

‘How did you get to Bristol without Mary knowing?’

‘Mary’s a nurse, David. She works shifts. The people she gets in here to look after me…’ A pause. A smile. ‘They’re fucking monkeys. Useless. That night I came to see you… I drugged them.’ He brushed himself down, like he was blowing dust away from an old book cover. ‘I wanted to see first hand what we were dealing with.’

I looked at him.

‘How did you become involved?’

‘Involved?’ he said, smirking. ‘I didn’t become involved, David. I ran the fucking thing.’

‘The farm?’

‘Everything. Where do you think Al’s money went?’

‘You took the five hundred grand?’

‘I took more than that.’

‘How much?’

‘It doesn’t matter now. It’s untraceable. The money’s been through the system and back out again. Al threatened us, threatened all of us. I took what was mine.’

‘It wasn’t yours.’

‘Don’t take the moral high ground, David. You have blood on your hands, remember. More than me.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘Whatever helps you sleep at night. Buying a farm and a bar and renting a flat with some stolen money — that’s not the same as murder, David. It’s not the same at all.’

‘You murdered Al.’

‘What?’

Mary’s voice from behind me.

‘No, I didn’t,’ he said.

‘Malc?’

He glanced at her, then back at me.

‘It was your idea,’ I said to him. ‘You wanted to do it. But you didn’t have the balls. You pushed Alex into doing what you wanted then turned your back on him when he cried out for help.’

‘I never asked him to do anything.’

‘You put the seed of an idea in his head, hoped and prayed he would do it, even told him to do it when he started having doubts — and then turned your back on him when he did exactly what you wanted. Have you any idea what you did to him?’

‘Malcolm?’

Mary again, her voice barely audible. I glanced back at her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, her face white and fixed, almost frozen by the shock. She swayed a little and placed a hand on the wall. I turned back to Malcolm — his eyes hadn’t left me.

He shook his head. ‘You amuse me, David. You’ve no idea what it’s like to raise a child. No idea. I loved Alex, loved him, but he was reckless. What he did was stupid. Talking about it and doing it are two entirely different things. He offered to talk to Al, not to drive a car through him. When he came to me, he came expecting me to believe in what he had done. But what he had done was wrong. I told him to go somewhere and lay low. It ripped the heart out of me, but it was the best way to protect him.’

‘It was the best way to protect yourself.’

‘I was protecting our son.’

‘You sent Alex to the farm. You weren’t protecting him.’

‘He turns up on Michael’s doorstep after five years — it wasn’t going to be long before he started leaving a trail. I wanted him away from the places that could hurt him.’

‘You tried to erase his memory.’

‘You’ve got it all wrong, David. I protected myself at the beginning. I had to. When the police came calling I was very focused. When Alex’s car turned up in Dover they came here and asked some questions about Al, but by then I’d decided to use this disease as cover, which made it difficult for them. Mary answered most of their questions. She could handle that. They were generic questions. I could tell they didn’t have a clue where to start. But it wasn’t them I was worried about. They were the front line. If it got any further, they would bring out their best soldiers. That was what I was really worried about. But, as it turned out, we never heard from the police again. And by that stage — unfortunately — I had chosen to take this route. And I’ve had to stick to it.’

‘And this is it now — one big lie?’

He didn’t reply. But I could see the answer in his face. This wasn’t it. It was going to be Mary waking up one day and finding he was gone.

‘No one wanted him on the farm,’ Malcolm said. ‘No one. Andrew fought against me, so did Legion, even Michael didn’t know if it was a good idea. Michael. This was a boy I’d known since he attended the church down the road. A boy who watched his brother get stabbed to death dealing ecstasy. A boy who tried to get away, go travelling, but came back because he had nothing here and nothing out there. His parents were dead. And I took him in, told him about what we were doing and what a difference he could make to our cause. I changed his life. Turned it around. And when I asked for one thing, he fought me on it.’

‘Michael has some humanity, whatever his flaws,’ I said. ‘He could see what you were doing to Alex. To all of them.’

‘Malcolm?’ Mary said from behind us again.

He didn’t acknowledge her. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘You knew what they would do to him.’

‘I knew because they told me,’ he said. ‘After he left, I thought about Alex every day for five years. I thought he was dead. Then when he came back, when he went to see Michael, I knew the next stage of his life might be even harder for us than the last. Because I had to learn to know my son again through other people. Through Michael and Andrew and the others on the farm. And Alex had to forget in order to get on with the process of living. It was painful, but I helped him. I gave him a way out. But he couldn’t know the farm was mine. He couldn’t know I knew about him. It would have been too difficult for him.’

‘You mean it would have been too difficult for you.’

‘I never forced him to meet with Al. I told him Al might listen to him. I told him Al liked him. He did like him. But I never believed Alex would do what he did. I’ve thought about it often since he left, and after he came back. Thinking is what I’ve got instead of a voice. I’ve wondered whether I would sacrifice what I have now for a moment again with Alex. If I had the time over again, I’m always thinking what choice I might make.’

‘Why would there even be a choice?’

‘Al would have ruined our lives. If he had got his way, we’d be living on the street somewhere, looking in the gutters for dinner. You think he would have had second thoughts? He wouldn’t. So, what Alex did changed our lives. Because our lives carried on. If he hadn’t done that, we all would have been dead, dying in some fucking dump somewhere. There’s a choice, David, believe me.’

He sat down on the edge of the sofa.

‘Eight years ago — it was 29 May — I was working for the bank, and a man came to me and asked me for a loan. When I enquired what it was for, he said he wanted to set up a rehabilitation clinic for kids with problems. A safehouse. A place they could come and start again. I didn’t know how the hell he would ever repay the loan. When I asked him how he was going to make money from it, he didn’t know. Didn’t have a clue. He just wanted to do it because of something that had happened in his life. He had no plan, and a criminal record. So, of course I turned him down. It would have been financial suicide even if he hadn’t been a convicted felon, and if I’d given it to him I would have got the sack.’

‘Andrew.’

He nodded. ‘Then I began to feel very strongly about the idea.’

‘Alex’s brother.’

For the first time he glanced at Mary. A brief look. Then back at me. ‘I watched someone else I loved dearly die on the streets with a needle in his arm, and I wasn’t going to stand by and watch other kids do the same.’

‘The boy in the photograph.’ I thought of the kid kicking a ball around in the picture Jade had showed me the night she’d died. She’d talked about the boy’s father. I think, in some ways, he’s even worse. ‘The boy is yours.’

Malcolm nodded.

Mary made little noise. That surprised me, but I didn’t turn around to look at her. Malcolm was in full flow now, feeding off the fact he could finally say what he’d stored up.

‘He wasn’t Mary’s son?’

‘What do you think?’

‘So, whose son was he?’

‘A girl I met through the bank,’ he said. ‘At the end, she was just a junkie, selling herself to fund her habit. But the boy was wonderful. I tried to see him as often as I could. That was why I took the job with Al. The office was in Harrow. Robert lived in Wembley.’ He paused. ‘But then Al found out about him.’

‘About the boy?’

‘He saw me taking Robert to school one day.’

‘That was why he flipped?’

‘When he found out who Robert was, he wanted me to tell Mary. I refused. He said he’d tell her himself. So I threatened him, told him I’d kill him if he said anything. He said, if I didn’t tell her, he’d take back everything that was his. I don’t think he believed I would kill him. So, it became a stand-off. Mary hated Al — but, in the end, all Al was doing was trying to help her.’

‘But Mary never found out.’

‘No. It had been going on for two months, Al threatening to tell her. I tried to close off all other avenues, like paying Robert’s mother to keep her trap shut. But she ended up using the money to buy smack. One day when I went round there, I found a needle mark in his arm. He was ten years old. If I’d known that was going to happen, I would have killed her and brought him back here. I would have done that. In the end, she was just a hooker. No one would have missed her. But, a couple of days later, she called me on the phone and told me he’d been found in the Thames. He’d overdosed. A ten-year-old boy.’

I remembered the newspaper cuttings, in the flat and on the farm. BOY, 10, FOUND FLOATING IN THE THAMES. This is the reason we do it.

‘Al didn’t have anything on me then, not once the boy was dead, but all I felt was anger. All I wanted was to hit out at someone. I suggested to Alex we take his money. That was the first step. But that wasn’t enough. It didn’t quell anything. So I started thinking about killing Al, thought a lot about it. Then Alex really did kill him. When it happened, it suddenly seemed so huge. But after Alex had gone, I started to feel it again, eating away at me. I couldn’t suppress it. Couldn’t suppress the hatred I felt for Al, even after he was dead. And the hatred I felt for her.’

‘The boy’s mother?’

He nodded.

‘I’d taken a lot of my contacts from the bank with me when I went to work for Al. Sneaked them out, just in case I ever started up my own business. One of the numbers was Andrew’s. I called him after Al died, told him I wanted to help him with his plan. It was the right thing to do after what happened to Robert. And we grew close, got on well. But all the time, the anger just burned in me. I think if she’d shown any kind of remorse, I would have let her live. But she didn’t. She seemed pleased to be free of the responsibility.’

‘So you killed her?’

‘About a year after we bought the farm, I just exploded. Couldn’t contain the anger any more. So I asked Andrew whether he knew anyone. He said he did, a guy he was in the army with, and that was when he sent Legion out to see her. Some things you regret. I don’t regret that.’

‘What about the other kids you killed? Do you regret them?’

‘We tried to save them.’

‘You murdered them.’

‘No one died who didn’t deserve it.’

‘Did Simon deserve it?’

‘Simon,’ he said, disgust in his face.

‘Did he deserve it?’

‘Simon became a problem.’

‘Because he refused to give up his memories?’

‘No! Because he almost beat one of our instructors to death! I never wanted the violence. I only wanted Legion’s help for that one thing. She killed that boy. She deserved it. But things happened up there, and I started to realize it was the only way we could protect ourselves. What we built and what we worked for had to be protected. And, in the end, we protected what I cared about most. We protected Alex. What we did to Simon protected Alex.’

‘But you murdered Simon.’

‘We gave him a chance, but he threw it back in our faces. Some of these kids were so fucking ungrateful. When they fought back, what the hell were we supposed to do with them? They couldn’t go back. We couldn’t put them back on the streets. They would have talked to people and we would have been found out and everything we built would have come tumbling down. They gave us no choice.’

‘So you killed them.’

‘There were challenges.’

‘So you killed them.’

‘There were unexpected challenges. And when one of our instructors, one of Andrew’s friends, was killed right back at the start, we realized that, in order to continue our work, we’d always have to make a sacrifice. In an ideal world, every kid we took to the farm would understand the magnitude of what we were doing for them. But some gave us nothing in return but their bile.’

‘What did you expect? You kidnapped them.’

‘Kidnapped them?’ He smirked again. ‘Hardly. We invited them, we didn’t force them to come to the farm. We’ve never had a kid turn us down. They took the opportunity they were given because they knew it was a good one.’

‘What about Alex?’

He paused for a moment. ‘Andrew and the others, they made mistakes. Terrible mistakes. Alex wasn’t like the other kids we tried to help. He wasn’t wheeled in on a trolley with a needle in his arm. They were treating him differently, how he was meant to be treated. Not the same drugs. Not the same programme. But then that freak didn’t like it, and eventually neither did Andrew. They put Alex on the programme when he shouldn’t have been anywhere near it. They put him on it because they didn’t think he deserved special treatment. He was my fucking son! He deserved special treatment! And when he didn’t respond how they wanted, when he fought back, they put him on that fucking cross! All I’d done for them, all the money I’d put in, and that’s how they repaid me.’

He paused, his eyes moving left and right. Thinking.

‘Andrew used to call me when Mary was out and I listened to his reports about Alex, about what they were doing to him, and I knew it would go wrong. Putting him on the programme just because he spoke to them in the wrong tone of voice? That was a massive misjudgement. But I was powerless to intervene. I knew Alex would fight the drugs, I knew he’d fight the containment. Alex was a fighter.’

He looked at me; thought he saw something in my face.

‘I don’t give a fuck what you think,’ he said.

‘You protected your son by sending him to a place where they’d make him forget about you like you pretended to forget about him. That wasn’t for his sake. You sent him there to protect yourself. All of this has been about you.’

I paused, thought I had him.

But I was wrong.

The smallest of smiles wormed its way across Malcolm’s face, and — very gently — I felt a gun barrel press against the back of my neck. I turned my head an inch to the left. In the window, I could see a reflection. Michael. There was strapping around his thigh where I’d shot him. Mary had been pulled in to him, her fingers wrapped around his arm, her mouth covered by his hand. It was the reason she’d gone quiet.

‘I told you to walk the other way,’ Michael said. ‘I tried to help you. All I want is to go back to helping those in need.’

‘You fucked with the wrong people, David,’ Malcolm said, coming around the sofa. ‘The minute I found out Mary was going to you, I knew it would end in bloodshed.’

I glanced around me. Nothing to pick up. No weapons.

‘You don’t give up secrets worth protecting,’ he said. He moved up close to me. Nose to nose. ‘Not without a fight, anyway. You’ve injured us, killed us and called in the police — but good will always triumph over evil.’

I spat the sweet into his face.

He backed away, wiping his chin with the back of his hand.

‘I’m going to enjoy this,’ he said.

Behind me, Mary tried to scream, as if she could see what was coming next — and I felt the gun move a fraction across the back of my head as Michael tried to contain her.

I ducked below the barrel of the gun, dropped my shoulder and made a dash for the kitchen. Michael fired. A bullet fizzed off right, hitting the top of the wall on the far side of the room. The sound was devastatingly loud, ringing in my ears, even as I made for the basement. Behind me, over my shoulder, I could see Michael pushing Mary away. She made a break for it, scrambling across the carpet on her knees and diving for cover behind a sofa.

Malcolm and Michael headed after me.

I took the basement stairs so quickly I almost fell down. The lights were off. I headed for the place Mary and I had been sitting before, and sank back into the darkness.

It was black.

Above me I could hear movement, but not much. The occasional creak. A short whisper. I tried to force my eyes to adjust quicker to the darkness, but it was like trying to force yourself to hear something that wasn’t there. Darkness became shapes. Shapes became movement. I shifted right, my back against the wall, trying to give myself a clearer view of the stairs.

Then the lights came on.

For a moment I was completely disabled, as if I’d been hit in the face with a concrete block. Then, as the white light started to dim, shapes formed again, blurs becoming edges, and I could see them coming down the stairs, Malcolm taking two at a time, Michael limping more slowly behind him.

Malcolm had the gun out in front of him.

I looked around me. About six feet further to my right were the electrics. Next to that, propped against the wall, were the walking sticks I’d seen earlier. They were thin and breakable. Except for one. It was thick, maybe three inches wide, with a hard ball for a handle.

There was a cardboard box close to it, probably four feet deep, with a second box, smaller, on top. I edged to my right, half-crouching, using the cardboard boxes close to me for cover. Briefly, as I passed from one to another, they spotted me. A second shot rang out, hitting the roof close to where I’d been. Plaster fell to the floor like snow.

I got to the electrics box and flipped the front. Rust had eaten into the casing, but the wires looked new. There were a series of switches across the top and a main red lever to the left. I reached down and gripped the walking stick, turning it over so I was holding it at the tip and not by the handle. Then I flipped the red lever.

Everything went black again.

In the darkness, sound became important. I heard shuffling. Frustration. Readjustment. One of them said something quietly, but not quietly enough. It sounded like Malcolm.

I ducked left again, back towards the place I’d been before. In the stillness, I could feel little stabbing pains right inside the cuts on my back, travelling through the torn flesh and up to the surface of the skin. And as my brain registered that, it remembered the pain in the fingers of my left hand too, moving down from the remains of my nails to my knuckles and wrists. A shiver passed through me.

As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see one of them, edging towards me without knowing it. Michael. He was nervous, moving tentatively, way out of his depth. The strapping around his leg looked like an amateur job. They hadn’t taken it outside the organization. Someone within it, probably someone with some medical knowledge, had removed the bullet.

I gripped the walking stick as tightly as I could and slid down on to my haunches, using the wall for support. The darkness was as thick as oil. He looked ahead of him, slightly off to my left, where some of the gardening equipment was stacked, then back in the direction he had come. He was still too far away, even with his back turned.

Within seconds, something else caught my eye. On the other side of the electrics box, I could see Malcolm. He was coming around one of the cardboard box pillars, half-covered. The gun was out in front of him. It was difficult to define him, but I could see some of his face and a circle of light in his eyes.

His eyes. He can see you.

I used the wall as a springboard and went for Michael, just as he was turning to face me. A third shot hit the space I’d left, ripping through cardboard and into the garden tools. They clattered to the floor behind me.

I swung the stick into Michael’s knees, and he collapsed on all fours. As his fingers grabbed hold of a piece of wood nearby, I thumped the fat end of the stick into the base of his spine. He howled in pain, and went down on his stomach, flat to the floor, his hand clutching the area I’d hit. His eyelids fluttered and both of his legs twitched.

He was quiet.

I peered around the box, back to where Malcolm had been. He was gone. Only darkness now. If he was gone, he was coming back towards the middle of the room.

Back behind me.

As I turned he was on to me. A huge hand clamped on to my face, trying to cover my mouth, trying to force me away from him so he could get a clear shot. I could see the gun, could see him trying to jab it towards me, but I managed to knock him off balance, punching the stick into his gut. He stumbled, landing against one of the boxes, the cardboard pillar toppling to the floor.

I shoulder-charged him, lifting him off his feet, and pushed him down to the ground. The gun spun off, out of his grasp, turning circles across the floor.

But then my body locked.

Suddenly, the pain in my back erupted. Something ruptured in the cuts, and I could feel flesh tear and blood run, my vision blurring as if a nailbomb had gone off in my head. I stumbled sideways, reaching out for whatever was nearest.

It was Malcolm.

He was in front of me now, on his feet, pushing boxes aside so I couldn’t get at them for support. I stumbled further towards him, and he threw a punch that hit me square in the face. I went down hard, on to my hip, and cried out as the impact sent a tremor through my back.

He came at me a second time, turning me over. This time, something — maybe adrenalin, or instinct — helped me block his punch with an arm. I jabbed my right hand into his throat. He wheezed, a sound like air leaving a valve, and stumbled back towards what little light there was, coming from upstairs.

I looked around me. The gun was within reach. Four or five feet.

But then he came at me again, kicking me in the side of the head. I wheeled around, cracking my cheek on something hard. The walking stick fell out of my grasp. Then he hit me again. Hard. Right in the ear. A ringing sound passed through my skull. The room span for a moment, coming back into focus in time to see him land a third punch. He’d tried to get me in the throat, the same place I’d got him, but instead hit my collarbone.

But the blow to the head had paralysed me.

My body was broken. Everything they’d done to me had finally caught up. They’d shut me down. Relentlessly burnt away my strength until all that was left were ashes.

Malcolm stood unsteadily and looked down at me.

‘I was prepared to give you a second chance, David,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Do you remember that? We told you not to get involved.’

He wiped some blood away from his nose.

‘But I can’t help you a third time.’

He stepped over me and went for the gun. I tried to get up, but I didn’t have the strength. Every wound that had been carved into my body over the last few days started to come back to life, snapping away at me, scratching at me, swallowing whatever fight I had left.

I coughed, blood spilling out over my lips, and opened my hands and lay there. Waiting to be shot. Waiting for the darkness to take me down like it had taken Legion. The water of my existence covering me until everything went quiet.

Then, in my hand, I felt something.

I turned my head and, to my side, about four feet away, I saw Mary. She was huddled in the corner, partially lit by the light from upstairs. She’d crept down into the basement. Tears were running down her face, her eyes following Malcolm. She was down behind one of the boxes to the left of where he’d been.

She glanced at Malcolm again, back at me, then away.

I heard Malcolm pick up the gun.

When I looked again, back to Mary, I could see what she’d put in my hand. The walking stick. Somewhere in her eyes I could see a small spark of hope. As if, whatever came next, had to be better than this.

Slowly, painfully, I forced myself up.

Malcolm was looking down at the gun, checking it was primed.

I caught him across the back of the head with the stick. The impact sounded soft and hollow. He went down as if every muscle in his body had immediately stopped working. I hit him again when he crashed to the floor, the ball of hard wood at the end of the stick slapping in against his stomach. The third time no sound came from him.

Mary continued crying from the same position.

Distantly I could hear sirens.

I collapsed to the floor and looked at Mary. My head crashed. My body was powering down. I was on the verge of blacking out.

‘Are you okay, David?’ she said, wiping tears from her face.

Slowly, I reached into my pocket and removed my phone.

‘I need you…’ I coughed, could taste blood in my mouth. ‘I need you to call someone. Her name is Liz.’ I coughed a second time. ‘Tell her I’m in trouble.’

And then I finally drifted away.

51

The most difficult thing was getting back. When the police turned up at the farm, the kids were taken into a temporary shelter where the authorities probably thought their suffering would end. A group of stolen lives they’d brought back into the cold light of day.

But Malcolm and Michael knew differently.

The majority of the kids had come to rely so heavily on what the farm brought to them, they were no longer prepared for the outside world; a world that had damaged them irreparably the first time round. The Calvary Project had ensured the people they were supposed to be redeeming would never be fully prepared for the return. They had been robbed of their identities. They had been robbed of their memories. They were taken back to their families, but to families who thought they were dead. On both sides it was like starting again; like having a stranger inside your home.

Alex was different because Alex remembered most of his past. He just wanted to keep it buried. There was an irony to that — after all, keeping secrets buried was what life on the farm was about. He could have lived out the rest of his days there and never heard Al’s name mentioned again. But Alex could see the sacrifice he’d have to make — relinquishing control to a group who had forgotten the reason they existed in the first place — and he wasn’t prepared to turn into the person they wanted him to become. Once he broke away he took with him the one memory he would have given his life to remove. And he knew the moment he came up above the surface, Al would be back. But despite that, despite everything, it was worth it.

I spoke to Mary about two weeks after the police led us away from the house. By the time she called, I was a fortnight into recovery. They’d cut a hole in the cling film, and given me an injection in my back so I wouldn’t feel them cut away the rest. By the time they were finished, I had sixty-two stitches in my back, three in my foot, and a doctor telling me I might never recover all the feeling in my two injured fingers.

Mary cried the entire time we were on the phone. She’d lost her son, and now she had lost her husband as well — the man she’d spent years caring for. Every day she’d been by his side because every day she feared it might be his last. I didn’t tell her I knew how it felt. Derryn would always be a part of me, her face so clear in the darkness, her voice so clear in my head. For Mary, Malcolm would only be a reflection obscured by ripples. A convicted drug dealer and kidnapper, eventually charged with manslaughter, who she knew nothing about.

I looked at Malcolm as the police led him out, and, in his eyes, saw the trade. I wouldn’t mention the girl who’d had his child, Simon and all the others who had died under his watch, and neither he nor Michael would mention my part in the deaths of Jason, Zack, Andrew, Myzwik or Legion. It was a better trade for them. Malcolm had so much blood on his hands, it would never wash out. And while I remained silent, his son remained hidden, and that also worked in his favour — even if his son was lost to him for ever.

Liz sat with me during the interviews, mostly in silence, as it became obvious early on that the police weren’t going to charge me with anything. They could see my injuries. They could see what sort of people they were dealing with. More difficult, though, than lying to the detectives, was lying to her. I think, deep down, she knew I wasn’t being honest with her, but she never said anything. A part of me liked her even more for that.

The farm and Angel’s stayed Malcolm’s. The deeds were in his name. No one could touch them. The last time Mary ever visited him in prison, he told her he’d use the money to start again on his own when he got out. She never went to see him after that.

Michael wasn’t so lucky. He only got two years after striking a deal with the police, but he had no money to come back to and no reason to come out. He was the man people had trusted. The man they confided in. Now he was nothing to anyone, just a topic of discussion on Sunday mornings. Malcolm had gone down, and taken Michael with him, and while Michael would be getting out of prison first, he’d return to nothing. No job. No house. No life.

About two months later, something good happened. As the first spring sunlight broke through the trees, Mary got a phone call at the hospital. She was on the ward at the time. The caller was told he could phone back or he could wait. He decided to wait. When Mary finished her rounds, she took the call. It was Alex. He wanted her to come and meet him in France.

Sometimes the good things were worth fighting for.

I drove back to Carcondrock about a month after Malcolm and Michael had tried to kill me. I buried the box full of photographs, because it seemed like the right thing to do. I called Kathy to tell her Alex was alive, and then Cary, but couldn’t tell either of them more than that, for all the reasons I couldn’t tell Mary. Every day, Alex nudged a little closer to the light, carrying the weight of what his father had done, and what he himself had done to Al. When he got there, he could tell all his friends himself — and he could finally explain to Kathy face to face why he left, and why she was never a mistake.

When I filled in the hole, after burying the box, there wasn’t enough sand. The top of the hole sank in, making it look disturbed. I didn’t want to leave it like that, but there was a kind of resonance to it. Because each of those memories — every photograph in that box — had been disturbed a little as well.

Finally, on my way home, I stopped at the cemetery.

But this time there were no birds in the trees. No birds flying to freedom. I like to think it was because they had already flown. Everything in that cemetery, all the sorrow it contained, had escaped to the skies.

And Derryn had gone with it.

When I got home that night, the house felt different. I couldn’t explain it, wasn’t even sure I was meant to. But it felt more welcoming, as if something had changed. I didn’t put the TV on, like I always did when I got home. I forgot about it. And by the time I became conscious of the fact that I hadn’t, I was in the shower in the bathroom wiping soap from my eyes. Afterwards, I felt a strange compulsion to be close to Derryn’s things, and sat on the edge of the bed, running my fingers down the spines of her books.

The next time I really became lucid, clear about what I was doing, it was three o’clock in the morning, and I was staring up at the ceiling. For the first time in a long time, I’d gone back to the bedroom and fallen asleep in our bed. And the sound I was hearing, on the boundaries of sleep, wasn’t the sound of the television as it always was.

It was the sound of something else.

My thoughts were of Derryn, looking across at me from her rocking chair the first time I ever considered helping someone. Everything about her was so clear to me. I had a feeling wash over me, the feeling that this was the end of one stage of my life and the beginning of another. And then I heard that same sound again.

I don’t know how much time went by, but what started out as an abstract noise quickly consumed me, then pulled me away with it. And as I fell away into the darkness of sleep, the darkness I wasn’t scared of, the darkness that took me down below the surface, all I could hear was the sea.

Acknowledgements

There are a great many people who have helped with the writing of this book.

My agent Camilla Bolton has been a constant source of guidance and encouragement, and is always armed to the teeth with incredible ideas and suggestions. Plus, she pretends to laugh at my jokes, and never fails to answer an email (even the really boring ones, of which there are many). Maddie Buston and everyone else at Darley Anderson also deserve a special mention for all their hard work and support, and for getting behind me from day one.

A big thank you to my editor Stefanie Bierwerth, who took a chance on a book by a first-time author and whose eye for a story helped to massively improve the novel when it arrived on her desk. She was also kind enough to give me a say in other areas of publication when she really didn’t have to. I also want to say a huge thanks to the fantastic team at Penguin, who have worked so tirelessly on my behalf.

The ‘Just Switch It On And Let Him Talk’ award goes to Bruce Bennett, whose fascinating tales of police life provided more hours of Dictaphone tape than I could ever hope to use (or want to transcribe). Any errors are entirely of my own making.

For their faith, support and prayers: my mum and dad, whose belief never wavered and who I have so much to thank for; my little sis Lucy; and my extended family, both in the UK and in South Africa. And lastly, the two girls in my life: Erin, who I love more than anything in the world — even football. And my partner-in-crime, Sharlé, who had to put her evenings and weekends on hold for two years, but who has been there since before the book was even an idea, and who is, quite simply, the best.

About the Author

Tim Weaver was born in 1977. He left school at eighteen and started working in magazine journalism, and has since gone on to develop a successful career writing about films, TV, sport, games and technology. He is married with a young daughter, and lives near Bath. Chasing the Dead is his first novel.