The Day She Died

Twenty-One

“Are you a… what’s it called?” asked Ruby, looking at his purple surplice and dog collar. “A Santa?”

“Close enough for rough work,” said Father Tommy. “And who’s this fine fellow?”

“Dillon King,” said Dill, who had come to the living room door.

“So what’s been going on here?” Tommy said. I gave one of the cloths to Kazek for Ruby and put the other one over Dillon’s hot wee face myself.

“Mum,” he said, miserably. Father Tommy raised his eyebrows.

“It’s a long story,” I said. “How do you know Kazek?”

“It’s another one,” said Father Tommy. “And I don’t actually know him. But I’m very pleased to meet him.” He spoke like a headmaster confiscating a catapult. His next words explained why. “Since some of that money you absconded with was mine, my son. Or St. Vincent’s anyway.”

“Prosze ksiedza… ” said Kazek.

“Nie tak oficjalnie,” said Father Tommy.

“You speak Polish?” I asked him. He was as Irish as a peat bog.

“I was a great fan of his late beloved Holiness,” he said. “I learned a bit in case I ever met him. And no, I never did. Not in this life anyway, plenty time later.”

“Well, thank God for it,” I said. “I’m in serious need of someone who can talk to Kazek and tell me what the-what’s going on.”

“I would dearly love to know what the-what’s going on myself, Jessie,” said Father Tommy. “But these children are out on their feet. Let’s get them settled and then we can talk, eh?”

Which is how it came to pass that Ruby and Dill got the couch and Father Tommy, Kazek, and me sat in a row on my bed like the first line of a dirty joke.

“Absconded from where?” I said.

“JM Barrie House,” said Father Tommy.

“That’s it!” I said. “That’s why he kept saying jamboree.”

“Nie ukradlem zadnych pieniedzy,” said Kazek. “Nie jestem zlodziejem.”

“Well you might not think taking fifty thousand pounds makes you a thief, but we’ll have to agree to differ.”

“He’s right,” I said. “He’s not a thief. Show him, Kazek.”

Kazek stretched over to my nightstand and took out the Morry’s bag. He untied the handles, just as he had before, and shook out the two blocks of notes.

“Well now,” said Father Tommy. “That’s excellent news. That makes things a sight more easy.”

“Don’t be so sure,” I said. “The other one-Wojtek, Kazek’s friend?-it’s him they fished out of the Nith with his throat cut.” Father Tommy crossed himself and asked Kazek a question. Kazek nodded and wiped a tear away.

“And we know who killed him,” I said. “Or at least, I thought we did, until, maybe it was… Okay listen, Father.” I stood and went to my dressing table, got the camera that I’d left there.

“What do you know about this guy?”

“Gary Boyes,” said Father Tommy. “Hey! Is that the Project?”

“He’s a gangster,” I said. “He might have killed Wojtek. Or had him killed anyway. Oh! That’s it. Gary ordered it and Gus did it?”

“What are you talking about, Jessie?” said Father Tommy. “Gary Boyes isn’t a gangster. He couldn’t order a killing.”

“Father, he is.”

“He’s a gang master,” said Father Tommy. “He’s in charge of the boys-including this one-who’re doing the roof.”

I knew my mouth had dropped open. “A gang master,” I said. “Not a master gangster. Bloody Dot!”

“Oh, Dot!” said Father Tommy. “I know about Monsignature Whelan, by the way.”

Kazek spoke again then, and Father Tommy sobered and nodded.

“Quite right, child,” he said. “It’s no time for laughter.” But Kazek wasn’t done. He opened his jacket and took out Wojtek’s rosary and Bible, the broken bracelet too. I caught Ros’s name in the stream and watched Father Tommy’s face grow more and more solemn.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, when Kazek finally stopped talking and flopped back to lie flat on the bed.

“What?” I asked him. “Tell me before I burst.”

“The steering committee were told Gary Boyes was a licensed gang master. Kazek here tells me he took their passports, paid them nothing, made them sleep on the site. So they ran away.” He turned to Kazek. “Why did you take the money?” he said. Kazek answered without opening his eyes and Tommy laughed.

“It certainly got their attention all right,” he said. He fanned the notes out from around their band. “And you haven’t spent a penny of it, eh? A good Catholic boy. The blessings of the church in your early years, Jessie, never depart from you.”

“Yes, okay, okay,” I said. “A teachable moment, I know. But then what happened?”

“They had a lawyer-this Ros?-who was going to fight their case,” Father Tommy said. “But she’s gone, he tells me. So they drew straws to see who would go and confront Boyes. Wojtek lost the draw and arranged to meet him.”

“At Abington services,” I said. “Of course he did. And instead of giving him the passports back in return for the money, Boyes lured him away and killed him.”

“Poor child, poor child. Another good Catholic boy too. And the lawyer? Where’s she? In the Nith, are we thinking?”

“I wish I knew,” I said. “And here’s another thing. Why didn’t Kazek let me call the police? Ask him that.”

“I don’t have to,” said Father Tommy. “Oh, it’s a wicked world. You know Sergeant McDowall? His wife’s name was Boyes before they were married. I married them myself. He’s Gary Boyes’s brother-in-law. Best man at the wedding.”

“Well, he’s as bent as a boomerang,” I told him. “He told Boyes I knew something and that’s when Boyes came to the shop.” I pushed my sleeve back and showed him the bruises, yellow but unmistakable. “No way past a bent copper. Close ranks, bury the bodies, business as usual. If Kazek spends a night in the cells, he’ll be lucky to see morning.”

But I had underestimated the surpliced avenger. Father Tommy’s eyes flared, his nostrils flared. I think maybe even his moustache flared.

“Jessie,” he said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past decade of pure hell and damnation, it’s this. Bugger the ranks, bugger the organisation. I don’t care who it is-the police force, the Church that I love like my mother, the Boy Scouts-bugger them. It’s not worth one hair on the head of the most miserable sinner born to save a police force or a church that’s gone bad.”

“You’ll go with him to the cops?”

“And stay by his side.”

“Well, thank God for you,” I said. “Only, Father? A Catholic priest shouting ‘bugger the Boy Scouts’ is going to get some funny looks, you know.”

“I forgive you for that, my child,” he said. “I’m in a forgiving mood today.” I flopped back, flopped right back just like Kazek, and stared up at the ceiling. Father Tommy turned and skewered me with one of his looks. “And how did you get yourself mixed up in all of this?” he said.

“‘All of this’ is actually only half the story,” I said. “Their dad,” I nodded through towards the children, “is married to the best friend of Ros the lawyer. Only she killed herself last Tuesday. And Gus had Wojtek’s bracelet. I still don’t see how that could be.”

“But how do you come to know them all, Jessie?” said Father Tommy. “How is it that those children are here? In the state they’re in? If it’s you who joins the two halves together, you must know.”

“I thought it was pure chance, Father. Until I worked it out today.” I sat up, leapt to my feet. “Can I go out for a bit? I’ll take the children, if you want me to. You can’t drag them round where you’re going.”

“Ah, I think we can all spend a quiet hour right here, until your return,” he said. “I can practice my Polish with this fine young man, and it’s been a while since I saw Shrek. I’ll sit on the couch and eat a bag of crisps very happily. On you go, child, on you go.”

How long had it been since I was here? I’d given up coming for Christmas the year my mum told me that my blaspheming was tainting the whole day for everyone, even Penny and Allan’s daughter who was fourteen months old. My blaspheming. All I had done was point out that if God had sacrificed his only son to Herod when he was a toddler instead of waiting till he was in his thirties, it would have saved a lot of other little boys.

“But look on the bright side, eh?” I’d said. “It probably never happened.”

“What do you mean ‘never happened’?” said Penny. “It’s in Scripture.”

“But only according to Matthew. Not the other three. Matthew, you know, the only one that happened to mention-what was else it?-oh yeah, an earthquake on Good Friday. One out of four witnesses recalled a massacre of baby boys and an earthquake. Something wrong somewhere, if you ask me. I think if four people-or even just two should be enough, eh Mum?-if the same people were all at the same massacre and earthquake together, they should agree on what happened. Eh no?”

My mother had put her head into her hands by this time. Her paper hat fell off into her prawn cocktail.

“Sorry, Mother,” I said. “You should have stuck to waving it at me and making me swear on it that I hadn’t been smoking. It was when I read the damn thing that it all started to go so wrong. Reading what you told me was true and trying so hard to not remember the truth that you told me was false. It was a recipe for disaster, really.”

So maybe calling their Bible a damn thing was a tiny little bit blasphemous, actually, I thought as I rang the doorbell. I’d really try to rein it in today. The doorbell playing “How Great Thou Art” didn’t help, and the sight of my mother when she came to answer it made the little devil on my shoulder whisper things in my ear. She was wearing one of her midcalf, brown skirts and a cream shirt with a high, ruffled neck, fawn cardi, no jewelry, no makeup, modest in the sight of the Lord. But her hair was a bright copper red, not a single grey one anywhere. Some of the brightest hairs were kind of springy and coarse the way grey hair grows in, but the colour, well, the colour had to be a gift from God to reward her good life, right? Anything else would be unholy and shameful and not the Brethren way.

“Jess?” she said.

“Mum,” I answered. “I just want to check out something you said to me. What would I not have followed up on? What were you doing to try to help me?”

She stood back to let me in and ushered me towards the living room. She had been sitting knitting with the radio on, a small, pale yellow jersey in a lacy design.

“Sale of work?” I said. “That’s really lovely.” I was determined to try.

“Idle hands,” said my mother. “What are you asking me?”

She sat back down and picked up her needles. There was going to be no offer of tea then. But then she’d not long had one judging by the empty cup and the crumbs in the saucer-one of those squint saucers with a bulge for the biscuit; I had bought it for her for a birthday present and I wish I could say it meant nothing to see her using it.

“On the phone,” I reminded her. “You said you supposed I wouldn’t have followed up on something. Something about not keeping hold of my friends?”

“Oh yes. Someone was here looking for you,” she said. “A rough sort, but a nice enough way with him.”

“When was this?”

“Months back,” said my mother. “Hasn’t he phoned you yet? Maybe he’s shy.”

“Months,” I repeated.

“He came once looking for you and then he came back for some leaflets I said I’d bring him. Came back a third time to talk them over too.”

“Church leaflets?” I said, thinking I’d got it wrong after all.

“So I thought he might be a nice friend for you, appearances aside.”

“Because he’s a long-haired lout,” I guessed. “And he said he knew me.”

“Of course he knows you,” my mother said. “You were at school together. I think, you know, that he liked you then. Carried a wee torch all these years. You could do worse. You could end up alone, Jess.” She heaved a sigh and looked around at her neat living room. Alone like me, she was hinting. But she’d ended up alone because she beat her husband out the door with her Bible. I said nothing. “And just so you know,” she went on, “he knows all about you. So you’ve nothing to fear on that score.”

“Right,” I said. “So. You told him everything, eh?”

“I had to, Jess,” said my mother. “Tell the truth and shame the devil.”

“You told him about the pteronophobia and why I’ve got it.”

“I told him you had mental troubles,” she corrected me. “What you did when you were five.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said. It was her version he was expecting. Granny collapsed when she saw the feathers. That’s what he had been waiting for me to say.

“And if God has sent you the miracle of a good-hearted boy who can stomach you after that, you shouldn’t set your face against it.”

I fingered the little place on my cheek where the hole had formed in those long hours.

“There’s nothing there,” my mother said, her voice cold with scorn.

“I know,” I told her. “It faded, years ago.”

“You could still offer yourself to Jesus.” She always said this, like it was good sound practical advice, and she always said it that way too. Like I was borderline even for him, but you never know-he might take me.

“Which one?” I replied. I was right back in my well-worn groove now, all the old favourites. My mother hissed like a serpent. She hated my multiple-Jesus theory. I hadn’t meant it to be offensive. I just reckoned there was two at least. Actually, that was only because I’d had the idea first about Moses and it made a lot of sense there.

“One of the Moseses is all, ‘Get back to Israel, get back to Israel,’ that’s what matters to him, right? And the other one is like, ‘Okay, so the deal is we wander the earth but we stay off the seafood? That’ll do me.’ It’s not the same guy, Mum! And whoever was writing the story must have known it because the only way it hangs together is make him live for five hundred years. It’s worse than Bobby in the shower. It should have got fixed in the edit.”

And as for Jesus? One of them was all poverty and humility and foot-washing and he was great. But the other one was Son of God, get me! I’m eternal, I’m fantastic. It wasn’t the same guy. Couldn’t be.

“It’s just like Winston Churchill and Brangelina,” I said to her. She stuck her needles back in her yellow knitting and folded her arms, ready to fight the good fight of faith. “If you hear a kind of bogus slogan about keeping secrets and eating nettles, you think, ‘oh that was probably Churchill, eh?’ I bet he never said half the stuff he gets the credit for. And if you hear some Hollywood couple’s brought out a line of vegan cupcakes with a flavour named after each of their children and you want to tell someone, you’re going to say it was Brad and Angie, aren’t you? So any old tale about some preacher round about that time, round about that place… you know?”

“Tale?” she said. “Tale? Great is the truth, Jess, and mighty above all things.”

“Finally,” I said. “Something we agree on. Great is the truth, Mother. You’re right there. So this friend of mine. Did you tell him the great mighty truth about what you did when I was five?”

“I?” said my mother. “I protected you. I kept quiet. Never breathed a word.”

“You breathed plenty to me,” I reminded her. “You basically stuck a knitting needle in my ear and scrambled my brains for me.”

“Why do you say such ugly things?”

“Fair enough, I’ll say it pretty. You kept quiet about how I wrecked granny’s quilt and how she came in and saw and was so angry that she had a stroke and died on the floor right in front of me begging me for help and how I did nothing, for no reason at all. For two days.”

“Jess, what is the point of going over it and over it?” she said.

“And how, worst of all, I concocted a crazy story about how I was tied to the bed, and you tied me.”

“I was punishing you for killing my mother! I was following God’s teaching and training you up in his ways. That’s how much I still loved you. After you killed my mother!”

“I was five,” I said. Shouted really. “Even if she had dropped dead over a few fucking feathers, I was five. But she didn’t, Mother. She died when she saw what you had done to me. She died of disgust when she saw what you were. You killed her. Not me. Because it matters what order things happen in. It matters what caused what and what came later.”

“You broke my heart,” my mother said. “You break my heart whenever I think about you.”

“Got it,” I said. “It’s just a shame that none my therapists has managed to change my memory to what you prefer. None of them: Jennifer, Lauren, Caroline, Moira, Annabel, Eilish, Stacey. Have I forgotten anyone? Oh right, of course, you wouldn’t know. You’ve never been. You don’t need to because you’ve nothing on your conscience, and you won’t come with me because you don’t owe me a thing.”

She didn’t answer, just sat there praying, with her needles clicking away as fast as ever. I was summoning the courage to stamp all over my dreams.

“What was his name?” I asked her. “This old friend who came to you?”

“Gary?” said my mother. “Gavin? It started with a G, anyway.”

“Gus,” I said as the walls came down on me. He’d been to my mother months ago and asked about me.

“Could have been Gustav,” my mother said. “Gus for short.” Which didn’t seem likely although, as she said it, something like a faint smell was beginning to distract me. A breath of an idea, far away.

I did my breathing. In for five out for six, in for six out for eight. So none of it had happened. Not really. We hadn’t chanced on each other. He hadn’t forgotten the day with the cakes. He’d tracked me down after that day and found my mother. Why? He hadn’t understood, like some super hero, the first time I told him. He’d been mugging up on it for months. Of course he had. Where? Probably in the library. That’s when he learned where my flat was too. I could feel the tears gathering. How many times had I told myself it was far too good to be true? But the kids were true, and what a great dad he was, and Pram was true even if House and Shed were… if Steve was right. And why? What was the point of it all? It wasn’t as if it was random. He had set me up. He’d laid a plan and he’d put it in motion the day that Becky die-

I shook my head.

“What?” said my mother.

No way. Becky didn’t kill herself. No way. Everything was coming clear now. The diary was hers but the writing on the note, like the writing in the workshop, was his. Gus had snagged me that day in Marks and Spencer’s. I was part of the plan.

“What?” said my mother again.

“I can’t believe it!” I burst out. “How can someone fool you so completely?” He was acting the whole time, pretending to understand, pretending to love and care and-He made some mistakes, though. No one could have got over Becky so quickly. That was sick. And no one would have let a stranger take his daughter to school the day after her mum died. No one would have sent his daughter to school. What was that all about? And he should have wanted to know where Ros had gone to. Where the hell had Ros gone to? And where exactly did I come in? What part of the plan was I? All of a sudden, I knew.

I was his alibi. I was to hear him talking to her, in the food hall, and I was to drive him home. He knew I was the type, after the day with cakes. He knew I was interfering (inappropriate, unprofessional). I was to drive him home and persuade him to call the police. And I was to find the note too. I was supposed to be with him from before Becky died until the police started searching. It was only when it all went wrong that he came up with that mad story about talking to a voice-mail. And that was only because the hill walker found the car so quick. Oh my God! The hill walker. Gus had asked him to come to the funeral. I leapt to my feet.

Then I sat down again. No, no, that was crazy. He only wrote last night. He told me he was asking him to the funeral. Actually he was just making contact. If he was going to “‘pay back” the hill walker, it would be another long slow plan he put together, like the one he’d put together for me.

I really needed to keep calm and try to see which bits of this hall of mirrors were real and which bits were Gus’s stories, as borrowed and fake and stupid as the famous sculptures he said were his that only someone as dumb as me wouldn’t have heard of, like Steve had.

So what was true? Gus killed his wife. Tricked me. Ros disappeared.

And all of a sudden I knew where she was. Knew why Gus couldn’t face the workshop too.

He wouldn’t be there. He wouldn’t dare. Not after we’d told him that the cops were onto him. I warned my mum not to let him in if he turned up at her door-it didn’t take much persuasion: all I had to say was drugs and she couldn’t get me out fast enough to get the chain on at the back of me. I took the farm track instead of the lane through the caravan site, stopped in the farmyard, and waited for the workers to come over and tell me I shouldn’t be there.

“A week past Tuesday,” I said. “A week yesterday. That was the day that really got you pissed off, eh?”

“Coming and going all bloody day, the pair of them,” said the fat one. He hawked and spat the way men do. Some men.

“Were they really?” I said “Coming and going? Both directions?

“You were there,” he said. “What you asking me for?” He sniffed back hard again and then stopped before he spat.

I’d never get them to think carefully enough. Maybe the police would have more luck when it fell to them, but I’d bet anything that one car left and then another car left hours later and nobody came back in between times. Not driving anyway. Because the only way that Gus could have done it would be to take his car to somewhere nearby and leave it there. Get a bus back and walk the footpath home. Then take Becky in her car, send it over the cliff, and come to town on his own to pick up Ruby, go to Marks and Spencer’s, and meet me. And all the time Dillon was in his cot in his sodden nappy.

“Never mind,” I said to the farm guy. “You better gob that out before it chokes you.”

I trundled on down the track to the back of the house. My charger was in my bag. I got out at the back porch, unplugged the washing machine, plugged the charger in, and hooked up the dead phone from the basket. With my own mobile, I started to call Gizzy’s number. I’d ask her for Ros’s number and I’d ring it and then I’d know. But I didn’t need to. Once the battery started charging, Ros’s phone lit up like Christmas. Missed calls and voice-mails. Texts and e-mails. Gizzy’s number was there. Her sister’s number in Poland too. And so it was true.

I turned my feet towards the rough path over the turf that led to the workshop, and the brick grave he’d built inside, and to whatever was left of her in there. The sun was sinking in one of those mad splashes of pink and orange that would look hellish anywhere else but a sunset, and the sea was calm, just rippling in without a hint of foam. It was heaven here. Just heaven. And everything I’d asked myself about Becky-asking what was wrong, what did she want for, living like this?-was true of Gus now. All his talent and his wife and his kids and this beautiful place. What was wrong with him to carve out this evil from life and throw everything precious away?

I think I saw him out of the side of my eye quite a while before my mind took in what I was seeing. There was no jolt anyway, when I turned round and looked full on. He was sitting with his back against the workshop wall, facing out to sea. He’d changed his clothes again, long shorts with pockets on the legs and thick walking boots. Better boots than the ones he’d worn to the funeral. He had put on jewelry too, strands of coloured string and shells on leather round his neck. And Jesus, he’d cut off all his hair. It was sticking up like a brush. He watched me approach him without turning his head. I could see the glitter of reflected light as his eyes moved in their sockets.

I stood right in front of him, cutting out the sunlight, and his skin that had seemed orange in the blast of light looked dark and dirty now.

“Gus,” I said.

“Who the hell are you?” he said. “Was that you I spoke to on the phone?”

And it wasn’t Gus’s voice. It was similar, but not the same.

“Where’s Gav?” he said. “Where’s Becky? That was just Gav being Gav with the funeral crap, right? But where are the kids? Who are you?”

“Jessie Constable,” I said. “And you’re the sculptor who made that pram, aren’t you? Jesus Christ, a twin pram. You’re the other one. That’s what Steve said. The other one. You’re Gus King.”

I turned and watched the sun slip down into the long ribbon of cloud on the horizon. It was easier to talk once the light was low.

“Where have you been?” I said at last.

“Thailand,” he said. “Idiot. I couldn’t stay here after Dave died. I thought ‘Thailand for me!’ Nothing but a load of wee girls on their gap year with their daddy’s gold card. Still. Gave Gav and Becky a break, house-sitting for me.”

“Oh Jesus,” I said. “It was more than that. Gav’s been life-sitting for you.”

“Eh?”

“I met ‘Gus King’ a week ago. He even showed me round his studio.”

Gus put his head in his hands and groaned. “He’s harmless,” he said. “Never going to win the husband of the year award, mind you. Poor Becks. But she loves him. She talks about leaving, but she’ll never do it.”

“Not now she won’t,” I said. “But I think she was going to. She had a friend, a lawyer, that was going to help. You might even know her. Ros, from the caravan site?” He shook his head. “Anyway, I’m sorry to have to tell you that Becky really did die last week. Car crash. It’s down as suicide-”

“She’d never leave the kids.”

“But-I’m really sorry to say this about your brother-I think he might have… ”

“Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me,” said Gus. “Jesus, wee Becky.”

“You said he was harmless!”

“Harmless as long as Becky stayed, and I thought she’d never leave. I knew if she walked, anything could happen. He must have totally flipped.”

I sat down beside him. Not too close. It was frightening to see that familiar face, tanned brick-red but otherwise just the same, and to hear that nearly identical voice.

“He didn’t flip,” I said. “He planned it for months.” I saw him turn to stare at me. “He stalked me. He built that thing in there. At least, I’m assuming he built it. It wasn’t you?”

“What thing?” said Gus.

“Breeze block,” I said. “A… crypt, I suppose you’d call it. I think Ros’s body’s inside.”

“In there?” He had sprung to his feet. “Seriously? There’s a body in there?”

“I think so,” I said. “I haven’t got a key.”

But it only took him a minute, four or five good kicks, to burst the hasp free of the wood and get the door open. He gazed at the wall in front of his face, looked from side to side.

“I’ve been right round,” I said. “There’s no way in.”

Then he backed up, took a run at it, and scrambled until he had got the upper half of his body up on the top of it. He swung his legs up too and disappeared.

“Nothing,” he called back. “Except there’s a wire, there’s a box or something. Like a… ” I heard a snapping sound and he reappeared and threw a bright blue and yellow object down towards me.

“Oh, God,” I said. “It’s a booster-you know-a hub. It’s for a baby monitor. I think she was alive when he put her in there.”

He landed beside me, stumbled, and then was gone. He kicked down the door of the other workshop and I could hear him crashing and banging around, dragging something heavy, small things hitting the floor, smashing.

“Can I-”

But he was back, trailing a flex, plugging together the extension and the… it looked like a drill. Of course it was, and he fired it up and set it against the mortar between two bricks.

That was when the night descended to hell. The last of the glow was gone from the sky and the cold was seeping up from the ground and the noise of it, brutal and whining, the dust and the stink of the motor getting hotter and hotter and the look on his face, running with sweat and grit and I could only stand there, waiting and praying. Please God, please God, please God. Was there any chance?

“Go through and get the claw hammer,” he shouted at me. I ran to the other workshop and stared around. A claw hammer? Where would it be? But I found it quickly enough, and a pick axe too, so I brought that with me, and when I was back by his side he threw down the drill and picked up the hammer and clawed a brick out of place, put his hand into the hole, and bellowed with rage and frustration. I shone my phone light and saw metal gleaming. He whacked it with the claw end of the hammer and grunted.

“Zinc,” he said. “Not steel. We’re back in business.” And he was right. He got the drill through it, pulled with the hammer, pulled it into a hole, and drilled the second brick, the inner layer of this hellish thing Gus-no, Gav-Gav the bampot, Gav the black sheep, harmless Gav-had built.

And once there was a hole right through, the work went faster. He clawed a brick out and punched and drilled and pulled the metal away and clawed out another brick, and when there were four or five gone and the space was the size of a drain, he threw down the hammer and tuned to me.

“Go in,” he said, shoving me. “I’ll keep working. In you go.”

Of course it made sense. I was smaller, but for a just a minute I hung back, staring my horror at him. Then I shook myself into courage. Remember your granny, I thought. Time to do good, Jessie. Time to go.

I knelt down and put my hands through the hole into the darkness, breathing in the smell that plucked me back through time to that night on the quilt with the ropes round my wrists and the thing on the floor that wasn’t Granny anymore. Then I closed my mind and pulled until my shoulders and head together were jammed into the tiny space, scraped by the jagged edge of the zinc and the rough cobbles of mortar. I twisted, one shoulder first, my face buried in my arm, and wriggled my chest forward, breathing out, compressing my ribs, trying to shrink myself. I had to get through now. I couldn’t go back. I was stuck. I was jammed like a cork. Then I forced my arm to go behind my head, I heard my elbow pop but it made some room, and I inched myself farther and then I was through! My shoulders were through and my waist and hips and legs followed until I flopped down onto the floor. I sat up, looked back through the hole at Gus’s filthy purple face, and then clicked my phone light on and turned away.

All I could see was bricks. Blocks and mortar and a concrete floor. I summoned the courage to roll the light around. A toilet. There were plastic bottles and bits of cardboard and packets ripped to shreds. A pile of cloth. Nothing else in there at all.

That pile of cloth. It had to be. I walked slowly over and saw it become, in the pin of light, two halves; denim and wool and a foot in a sock and a head of dark hair curled away from me. So still. I put out my hand, expecting the wooden shock of a corpse, but when I touched her shoulder, she was soft. And she was shaking.

I crouched.

“Ros?” I said. “It’s all right. You’re going to be okay.”

She moved as slow as a tree growing, turned, showed me that round face and the dark eyes.

“Are you here?” she said. Her voice was a rasp. “Are you real? Where are they?”

“I’m really here,” I told her. I put my hands on her cheeks and let her feel the warmth from my skin.

“I thought I was dreaming again,” she said. “You’re really here? Are they okay?”

“Jessie?” It was Gus’s voice.

“She’s alive!” I called back to him. “Keep working on the hole so we can get her out. She’s very weak.” I heard the motor start up again and felt the concrete floor begin to thrum under my knees as he put the drill to the wall. She started shaking, sobbing; that noise must have terrified her when it began. I put myself close behind her, drew her to me, and spoke softly into the cup of her ear.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Ros, it’s okay. It won’t be long.”

“I’m not Ros,” she said. “Where are my babies? Tell me you got them away.”