Dark Corners: A Novel Page 12

  When she came round, to use her father’s phrase, her hands were shackled in front and cable had been tightly tied round her feet.

  While captive, she was learning things. When you feel comfortable in your body, most of the time you’re barely aware of having a body. But when part of it is tied up, hands together and feet together, you feel stiff and then you start to ache. You wonder if this is what it will be like when you’re old. Recovering consciousness, you don’t feel wide awake quickly; for a long time you feel weak and feeble and vague and the room swims around you.

  To keep her weight down, Lizzie had eaten sparingly for months, years really, so she had got used to small meals and hadn’t often felt hungry. But she had in the past eaten something every day and had never felt like this. Her hunger was a devouring presence. Although she knew it was a stupid thing to do, she couldn’t stop herself imagining her mother’s cooking, so that she actually saw before her eyes her famous lemon meringue pie, the glistening leg of lamb surrounded by potatoes roasted in goose fat, the apple tart with its latticed lid. She had never till now known what it meant to have your mouth water. Now she did.

  It amazed her that she could do without a bath or a shower. She was still wearing the same clothes she had worn when Scotty and Redhead took her away, and inside Stacey’s black dress with the white lace panel, filthy now and torn, her body smelled like a sick dog and her hair as if it had been buried in dusty earth. But all this worried her less than she would ever have expected. If she smelt bad, so did Redhead and Scotty.

  In this new place, she was left alone, drugged, given water when she woke but no food apart from a piece of white bread from a sliced loaf and a hunk of cheese in the morning and the evening. One of them took her to the bathroom when they brought the bread and slammed the door on her, waiting outside. She had to shuffle along slowly because of the rope tied around her ankles. They no longer spoke to her.

  She had no idea of how much time had passed when they took her downstairs again, put her in the car, and drove her through dark, winding streets to a new prison.

  The previous year, in late July, when school was finished and the little ones were supervised by volunteer mothers, Lizzie had gone off somewhere on a holiday with a friend or friends. Or she said she had, but you never knew when she was telling the truth and when she was not.

  These were Tom’s thoughts, not Dot’s. Tom no longer believed much of what Lizzie said, while Dot always had faith in her daughter. More than this, though, she trusted and believed in what her husband said. If Tom said Lizzie was somewhere on the Mediterranean, or in Cornwall, that was where she was. While it annoyed Tom that his daughter would disappear somewhere with friends and not tell him or her mother where she was, it upset Dorothy.

  ‘She’s an adult,’ he said. ‘She has her own life.’

  ‘I knew you’d say that. Of course you’re right, but I think she could ring us. It’s not much to ask.’

  ‘You’ve never asked her, though, have you? Maybe you should. I doubt it’ll make any difference, but it would set your mind at rest – in the future. To know where she was.’

  ‘Oh, it is at rest. I’m not worried, I’m cross.’

  But she was worried, and so was he. They might have confided in each other, but they never did that. Each pretended that Lizzie must be safe somewhere and fine. Unpleasant things happened to young girls every day, the newspapers said so, but they did their best to dismiss this thought. Nothing nasty could ever happen to their Lizzie.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  IT HAD BECOME an obsession. Carl understood that his behaviour was just as much that of a fanatical lover as of a fixated hater. He followed Dermot with his eyes whenever he had the opportunity, listened for what he could hear of him, outside the door at the top of the stairs: his music, his footsteps, and his words on the phone or when he spoke to Sybil Soames. When Dermot approached the door, Carl ran down the top flight of stairs to hide in his own bedroom.

  At first he did this only while Nicola was at work, but gradually he came hardly to care at all. Anyway, she knew. She had told him what he should do, but now she had stopped; telling him, she said, was useless. Probably the time was coming when she would give up on him and leave. He wouldn’t care. Sometimes he thought he wouldn’t even notice.

  Once or twice he had followed Dermot to work. If Dermot had turned round and seen him, he wouldn’t have cared, but he didn’t turn round. Carl watched as Dermot went into the pet clinic by a back door. Then the clinic lights came on and he walked away.

  He had also begun to follow Dermot to Sybil’s parents’ house when he walked her home in the evenings. Occasionally, if it was raining or chilly, Dermot called a taxi for her. He could easily afford taxis now, Carl thought bitterly. But mostly he set off with Sybil at about nine thirty in the evening. They held hands. Or rather, Dermot held her hand. She wouldn’t have dared take his, Carl thought.

  Their walk took about twenty minutes and they always went the same way: down Castellain Road, into Clifton Gardens and across Maida Vale into St John’s Wood Road to Lisson Grove. They kept always to those same wide roads and never took the short cut along the canal path. Although it was lit, it was much darker along there, a lovers’ walk under the trees. Did Dermot avoid it with Sybil for that reason? Because it was somehow intimate, sheltered, a place for kissing?

  On the way back though, he did go that way. After he had kissed Sybil’s cheek, watched her go into the flats, waved once, he turned round and took the little path that went over the canal bridge and led along the dark water. He walked very slowly, pausing to look down on to the glassy canal.

  Carl watched from the other side of Lisson Grove. When he was at university, he had belonged to the dramatic society, and the high spot of his second year had been their performance of Measure for Measure. A line came back to him, a phrase really, ‘the duke of dark corners’. Dermot looked like that, with his round shoulders and long, thin neck; almost a medieval figure, dressed in a dark jacket, black jeans tucked into black boots. Under the bridge at Lisson Grove and under the bridge at Aberdeen Place were dark corners, footpaths melting into blackness.

  If Carl wondered about Dermot, why he always walked to Jerome Crescent the way he did and returned along the towpath, he also wondered at himself. What made him follow Dermot? What did he get out of it? He didn’t know. He just had a compulsion to do it.

  Nicola had gone back to her old flat and the girls for the night, and he was sitting in his bedroom in the dark when he heard Dermot come in. These days he seldom thought about anything but Dermot, and sometimes Sybil, but pushing his backpack into a corner with his foot, he noticed that Nicola hadn’t taken the goose out to put it on the hall table.

  Sunday, and Dermot had come back from church with Sybil and a crowd of other people. Carl, watching from upstairs, saw him unlock the front door and welcome them all in. It was another fine day, clouds across the blue sky but plenty of sunshine too. There were two women among them, apart from Sybil, and all wore bright floral dresses. Sybil’s had a pattern on it of pink cabbage roses on a black background. The door shut with a bang.

  Nicola was out, at a brunch with two of her ex-flatmates. He had forgotten to mention the goose. Never mind. It wasn’t important. Nothing was but Dermot and maybe money.

  He went into his bedroom and looked out of the window, hoping that Dermot and his guests wouldn’t go into the garden. No one was out there, but as he turned away, he heard a commotion from downstairs as they all burst out among the flowers. Gusts of laughter drifted up. Sybil appeared with the trolley that had been Carl’s father’s, loaded with bottles and cans and plates of food and packets of crisps. Everyone started eating and drinking. Sybil was walking among them holding up her left hand for them to see something. Someone said, ‘I know you’ll be very happy.’ Not ‘I hope’, but ‘I know’.

  It was an engagement party. Carl felt sick. He fell back into a chair. ‘Don’t let him see you,’ he said aloud, and then
whispered it. ‘Don’t let him see you, he’ll ask you down. He’ll tell you his news and ask you to join them.’

  Very quietly, as if they were all listening for him to make a move, he crept into the bathroom and drank from the cold tap above the sink.

  Nicola had said nothing about coming back that evening, but he expected her. Even if those people were still in the garden, still eating and drinking, her return would be a comfort. He would ask her about the goose – did she really want it? He didn’t care if there was an ornament on the hall table or not.

  He had eaten no lunch, had eaten nothing, and there was no wine in the house. In the kitchen was half a loaf of bread and a piece of cheese left over from last evening’s dinner. He lay on the bed and fell asleep, overcome with despair. At some point in the afternoon or early evening – it was still light – he was awakened by the party guests going home. They weren’t especially noisy, he had to admit that, but the slightest sound would have disturbed him. He got up and watched them go.

  The sky had clouded over and a wind got up. The tree branches in Falcon Mews swayed and all the leaves fluttered. A blackbird was singing somewhere and a magpie making its repetitive squawk. He searched for his phone but it had run out of charge. If Nicola didn’t come, bringing food, he would have to go out and buy himself something to eat. Though it was Sunday, all the shops round here stayed open till late.

  He picked up the backpack and its weight told him the goose was still inside. He’d take it back to Tony’s Treasury, he decided, and see what he would give him for it.

  He heard Dermot’s footsteps on the stairs, and Sybil’s. He wouldn’t be walking her home yet but maybe taking her out to dinner. Some snack at one of the cafés on the Edgware Road, Carl thought contemptuously. This would be an evening when he wouldn’t follow them. Nicola had left some money in a jacket pocket: a twenty-pound note and five pound coins. He wrote on an orange Post-it he took from a pad in the other pocket, Borrowed £25. XX. That would be enough to get something to eat in case Tony refused to buy back the green goose.

  Dermot and Sybil had disappeared when he came out into the mews. No one was about except for Mr Kaleejah and his dog. He took that dog out three or four times a day. It was carrying a rubber bone in its mouth. Carl walked along Sutherland Avenue and across Maida Vale into Hall Road, and from there into Lisson Grove, where a crowd was coming out of the Roman Catholic church. There was a Tesco in Church Street that would still be open. But Tony’s Treasury wasn’t. Carl hadn’t anticipated this. That Tony might refuse to take the goose back, yes, that was possible, but not for his shop to be closed. The Tesco was open, though, and still had a couple of Sunday papers on the rack outside. He bought a loaf of bread, a piece of Cheddar, a bar of chocolate and a half-bottle of rosé, using the money he’d taken from Nicola.

  Carl wanted to avoid seeing Dermot. He didn’t think Dermot would be near the canal, but when he and Sybil had eaten they would walk back to Jerome Crescent via the little path that ran from Lisson Grove. So Carl followed a route that was new to him, into Lisson Green where the canal came out from under the Aberdeen Place bridge. The water was dark here, the path along the bank deserted. He also noticed that you could see the path from Lisson Grove, and see too where the canal disappeared under the next bridge on its way through Regent’s Park.

  He sat down on a wooden bench and ate some bread and cheese. He was surprised to find how hungry he was. The path continued to be deserted. After a while, he made his way into Paveley Street. It was there, looking for a path out, that he saw Dermot and Sybil up ahead in Jerome Crescent, entering the block where Sybil lived. Going to continue the engagement celebrations, Carl thought bitterly.

  Lights were on in a couple of windows in Sybil’s block. Carl sat down on the stack of bricks. He didn’t know why. He certainly wasn’t waiting for Dermot. He didn’t understand what it was that brought him here so regularly to watch what Dermot did, what they both did, as if they were fascinating people whose activities were of enormous interest, rather than the reverse.

  He got up and walked round the block, round Jerome Crescent and back. As he watched, a light in one of the windows went out, then the other one. He moved into deep shadow as Dermot appeared at the entrance, then emerged into the half-light and crossed the street towards him.

  ‘Hello there. What brings you here?’ Dermot sounded surprised.

  ‘I’ve got something to show you,’ Carl said. ‘I’ve brought you a present.’

  ‘That’s awfully decent of you,’ said Dermot, like a public school boy of a hundred years ago. ‘For my engagement, is it?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Carl suddenly decided to give him the goose. He didn’t know why he’d said he had a present. Just an odd impulse. He bent over the backpack and started unzipping it. For a brief moment while Dermot watched, anticipating his present, Carl began taking the goose out, then abruptly he lifted the backpack as high as he could, and brought it down hard on Dermot’s head. He was taller than Dermot, and there was a crunch of bone.

  Dermot uttered a long, dull groan. It was the only sound he made as he slumped over on to the pavement.

  Careful not to touch Dermot, Carl bent over him to see whether he was still breathing. He didn’t appear to be. Then Carl picked up the bag. He couldn’t see any blood. Perhaps it was too dark, or there wasn’t any. He hoisted the backpack on to his shoulders and for some reason looked at the windows that had been lit up. Both were still in darkness, though he fancied he saw a faint flicker of movement behind the higher one. He thought, why did I never think of doing this before? For months I’ve been desperate to get rid of this awful threat, this burden. He felt no guilt, no regret. He felt relief.

  He walked away and up the path into Lisson Grove. It was as well the backpack was on his back, because his hands were shaking so much as to be useless for carrying anything. He climbed up the hill past the Catholic church, turned into Lodge Road and walked along beside the high walls above the railway line. Walking was automatic, his legs carrying him mechanically towards a safer place. A single cyclist rode past him and up to cross Park Road. Carl went across the road after him and down a path into the green, the trees, the dense leafiness that clustered and shivered in the rising wind along the canal bank. The water was black and still and shiny.

  He hoisted the backpack off his shoulders, unzipped it and lifted out the green goose. Something dark was on his hands, but whether it was blood or not, he couldn’t tell. He looked about him into the trees above, the leaves making a soft whispering sound. The screen of branches that hid the road running alongside Regent’s Park was dense and dark. The man on the bike had disappeared, was no doubt far away now, heading for Primrose Hill or Camden Town. Carl knelt down on the canal bank and dropped the backpack into the water. It floated for a few moments, then sank with a sucking, glugging sound.

  He remained on his knees for perhaps two minutes holding the goose, then got to his feet with difficulty, like an old man, feeling about him in vain for something to hold on to. Carrying the goose under one arm, he started to walk back. He climbed up into Park Road and thought, without quite knowing why, that it would be better to go back along the St John’s Wood Road rather than Lodge Road.

  It started to rain, a drizzle at first, blown about by the wind, but soon it changed to a great storm. Good, Carl thought, it would wash Dermot’s blood off him, although he was pretty sure what little there was had been on the backpack. He could feel the rain lashing against him, and streaming down his back and legs. It changed him from being mildly warm to a sudden sharp cold, and a huge weariness took hold of him, an exhaustion so powerful that he stumbled as he walked.

  The rain had driven home those people who had been in the streets. Sutherland Avenue was deserted, apart from the Tesco supermarket, where cars still came and went, skidding through puddles. Turning into Castellain Road and staggering to the corner of the mews, he found himself dreading that Dermot might be there, waiting inside the front door to ma
ke some fatuous remark. Then he remembered.

  No Dermot. Never again. But Nicola was there, opening the door just as he reached out with his key. She took one look at his sodden clothes and without asking him why he was carrying her green goose, put her arms round him and pulled him inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THEY WERE GOING to move Lizzie again. For some reason they were in a hurry and packing stuff into bags and boxes, and they’d forgotten to give her the pills. It wasn’t much help – her hands were still shackled and her ankles tied – but at least her head was clear. She thought, they’ll remember in a minute and then they’ll drug me, but it seemed they thought she’d had the pills, for they dragged her down the stairs, clutching her arms painfully and roughly, and bundled her into the back seat of their car. It was broad daylight, but nobody was nearby. Had anybody seen her, they would have thought she was just another drunken woman and would have taken very little notice.

  She didn’t know where they were taking her, only that it was like countryside here, with broad areas of grass and big trees. She didn’t recognise it, but they must have thought she did, because Redhead pulled in to the side of the road and stopped, and Scotty got into the back and tied a scarf round her eyes. The smell of him so close was bad, but she must smell as foul, for while she could still see, she saw him flinch away from her.

  Now that her head was clear, Lizzie considered her position, and not for the first time. Could Swithin Campbell be behind her abduction? she wondered. Was that even his real name? She’d invited him into Stacey’s flat, had wanted him to think she was well off. Could he and Redhead and Scotty have mistaken her for Yvonne’s daughter, another Elizabeth? And now that they all knew she wasn’t the Elizabeth they’d supposed her to be, what was going to happen to her?