Текст книги "When Will There Be Good News?"

Автор книги: Kate Atkinson

Соавторы: Kate Atkinson,Kate Atkinson
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

He got out of the Prius and listened. He heard the Nissan's engine up ahead and then the engine stopped. He set off on foot.

The Nissan was parked in front of a house, next to a nondescript Toyota, and the guys were climbing out, stiilly as if they'd had a long night. Jackson watched as one of them knocked on the front door of the house before both of them went inside without waiting for an answer. After a few seconds he heard them yelling excitedly at each other as ifthey'd found something that they hadn't been expecting or hadn't found something that they had been expecting (or indeed both) and then they came racing out of the house and back into the Nissan, one of them on the phone to someone as he ran, and Jackson had only just enough time to throw himself into a dry ditch at the side of the road before they were haring back up the track towards the road. To his relief they drove straight past the Prius.

He set off in the direction of the house, wondering what it was that had alarmed them so much. Not death he hoped. There'd been enough of that for one week.

A movement in the overgrown bushes that surrounded the house startled him. He thought it might be a fox or a badger but a person, not an animal, stepped on to the path. There were enough lights on in the house to make out that it was a woman and then she was suddenly illuminated, held like a moth in the beam of the Maglite, in the unsteady hand of (a typically disobedient) Reggie and Jackson could see that it was not just a woman but a woman with a child in her arms. She was veiled in blood from top to toe and had a knife clutched in her hand. Not so much a Madonna as a great, dangerous avenging angel.

The dog barked with joy and ran towards her.

'Dr Hunter?' Jackson said, approaching cautiously.

'Can you help me?' she said to him. More of a command than a request, as if a goddess had unexpectedly found herself on earth and was in sudden need of an acolyte. And Jackson had never been one to say no, either to goddesses or to requests for help.

La Regie du Jeu MARGARET, ARE YOU GRIEVING OVER GOLDENGROVE UNLEAVING, sumer is i-cumin in, loude sing cuckoo, there was an old lady who swallowed a fly, Adam lay ybounden bounden in a bond and miles to go before I sleep, five little bluebirds hopping by the door. Run, run Joanna run. But she couldn't run because she was tethered by the rope, like an animal. She thought ofanimals gnawing offa leg to escape from a trap and she had tried tearing at the rope with her teeth but it was made from polypropylene and she couldn't make any inroad on it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They had walked into the bedroom as she was getting changed. She had heard Sadie barking dementedly downstairs and a banging noise that she didn't understand until she realized the dog was trying to break down a door to get to her. She had gathered up the baby and rushed out on to the upstairs landi. Ng and that was when she saw them.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peter squatted on his haunches and turned John's head towards him and as he did so she rose up, rolling John off her lap and on to the floor, and then slammed the heel of her hand upwards into Peter's windpipe as hard as she could. He fell over backwards, holding his throat, his eyes bulging, and she leaped forward and grabbed the knife from his ankle and sawed through the rope around her own.

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

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

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

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

So what's going on exactly?'

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

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

He burst into tears.

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

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

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

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

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

'I was trying to find the money.'

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

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

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

'You don't understand.'

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

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

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

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

'Who? Dr Hunter?'

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

'A girl?'

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

Reggie was sitting on the sofa next to her with a bright, bland expression on her face as if she was determined to say absolutely nothing about anything. Joanna Hunter, on the other hand, was completely relaxed. 'Sorry if I've given you any trouble,' she said as if she was apologizing for being late for a dental appointment.

'I went away for a couple ofdays. It's all a bit of a blank, I'm afraid.

I think I had some kind of temporary amnesia. "Disassociative fugue state" is the medical term, I seem to remember. Trauma brought on by the memory ofa previous trauma. Andrew Decker, I suppose. And , so on.

'And so on?' Louise echoed.

She was trying to think of a way into an interview with two consummate liars -she wasn't sure how to find the truth let alone follow it -but she was saved from the problem for now by a knock at the door. Karen Warner lumhered into the room.

'Sorry to interrupt, boss.' She was breathing heavily, as if she'd been running. She didn't even give the miraculous reappearance of Joanna Hunter a second look. She had the kind of grim expression on her face that could only mean something bad had happened.

'Oh God,' Louise said, holding on to her heart. 'It's Needler, isn't it? He's back,' and Karen said, 'Yes. He is.' 'Someone's dead,' Louise said, 'I can tell from the look on your face. Who? Alison? One of the kids? All of them?' 'None of them, boss. It's Marcus.'

Touch-and-go. It was a funny phrase if you thought about it. Marcus was in the operating theatre. Louise and Karen were sitting in the deserted 'Sanctuary' in the RIE. There was some kind of nondenominational greenery to indicate Christmas.

'What happened?' Louise asked.

'I don't know, there seems to be a lot of confusion. He heard the call and responded, I think he was on the ring road coming into work. Local uniforms were there already, I think it was all a bit casual, you know, the woman who cried wolf too many times.'

'Casual. Jesus.'

Needler had kept his family at gunpoint all night. One of the kids had managed to get hold of the panic button and the local police had responded, the 'first officer on the scene' had rung the doorbell and Needler had opened the door and shot him in the chest. That 'first officer' was Marcus. 'He wasn't wearing a vest,' Karen said. 'He should have waited for the IRV. Idiot.'

'Fools rush in,' Louise said. 'He was trying to help.' By the time Karen and Louise arrived it was all over bar the weepmg. Needler had walked out of the house, giving an IRV officer a clear shot but before they could take it he had turned his gun on himself.

'The bastard,' Louise said. She had wanted to be in there at the kill, she wanted to have torn him apart with her bare hands, like a crazed Maenad.

*

Marcus had been taken to St John's hospital in Livingston and then transferred to the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh where he had been operated on.

When the surgeon came out of the operating theatre he recognized Louise and raised his eyebrow a fraction, a minimal gesture missed by Marcus's mother but caught by Louise.

'Oh God,' she moaned.

'Don't think He's going to help,' Karen said.

Louise stood at the foot of the bed. Marcus's mother was sitting by the side of the bed, clutching her son's hand. He was on life support in the intensive care unit.

'He's an only child,' his mother said. Her name was Judith but it was impossible to think of her as anything other than 'Marcus's mother'.

'His father's dead,' she said. 'I've always worried that something would happen to me and he would be left alone.' A motherless child. Now she was going to be a childless mother. Louise was losing him too, her sweet boy.

A girl appeared, led to the bed by a nurse, and sat across from his mother. 'This is Ellie,' Marcus's mother said to Louise. Ellie didn't acknowledge either of them, if she could have brought Marcus back with the power of her thoughts then he would be up walking about. His mother reached across his body and took the girl's hand. With her free hand she stroked her son's close-shaven curls. 'He's such a good boy,' she said. 'He looks as if he's sleeping.'

Louise said, 'Yes, he does.' He didn't. He didn't look as if he was asleep, nobody looked like that when they were asleep, but hey.

He had already left, he was just waiting for them to say goodbye. To infinity and beyond.

Sweet Little Wife, Pretty Little Baby LASSIE CAME HOME. SHE DIDN'T NEED ANYONE'S HELP IN THE END.

She got back all on her own.

It wasn't light yet so it was difficult to make out who it was. Just a shape, a shape moving closer. But the dog knew who it was.

Reggie nearly fainted. She felt sick with the rush of chemicals in her body. A great cascade of adrenalin flowing through her, making her heart feel like a tight, hard knot in her chest. So many emotions flooded Reggie that she could hardly untangle them into their different threads. Relief and disbelief. Happiness. And horror. Lots of horror.

Dr Hunter was walking towards them, the baby in her arms. She was barefoot and she was still wearing her suit and the baby was still in his little matelot outfit. She was covered in blood. It matted her hair, it stained the skin on her face, her legs. The baby had streaks and splashes of red on him too.

Not their blood. The baby was laughing at the sight of Sadie and Dr Hunter was walking straight and strong, like a heroine, a warrior queen.

The dog cantered ahead and was the first to greet Dr Hunter, as playful as a puppy. When the baby was almost close enough he held out his fat little arms towards Reggie and did his starfish jump. She caught him and held him tight and said, 'Hello, sunshine. We missed you.'