She walks as quickly and as silently as she can manage down the stairs and out to the street. As she feared, her old Rover is parked a few feet away, one wheel up on the kerb in a residents-only space. She’s relieved to see there’s no ticket on the windscreen, just a splattering of bird shit and a spidery crack she hasn’t got around to fixing. She’s equally relieved to find a set of keys in her other trouser pocket and her handbag wrapped around a handbrake she’d failed to put on.
She climbs behind the steering wheel, pushing aside several cardboard fast-food containers to make room. For once the Rover’s engine starts first time and she stares into the taped-on mirror at the seemingly endless stream of traffic passing by. The people of London are heading to work, and she’s reminded she should be doing the same. She fumbles around in her handbag, pushing past all the familiar objects, before finally spotting her mobile. As her fingers draw it out she feels its vibration. The call ends the moment she looks at the screen, but she can see it’s the latest of twenty, all from a number she hurriedly redials.
The answer is instant: urgent and breathless. ‘Is that you, boss?’
‘What’s wrong, Mike?’
‘We’ve got one. Walton Road, West Molesey. Just behind the reservoirs.’
From the map in her head she instantly knows where she needs to go. The difficulty is working out where she is right now. Squinting at a street sign in the distance, she can make a vague approximation. ‘Fifteen minutes,’ she says. ‘Who’s there with you?’
‘Just Stu and a couple of PCs. We’ve sealed off what we can and tried to protect the scene.’ She waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t. Were it not for his short, sharp breathing, she’d think she’d lost the line.
‘Is there a problem, sergeant?’ As she asks, she realises his voice had sounded different before, constricted by something. ‘Tell me.’
She feels the urge to get going, to drive closer to the answer before it slips away, but the traffic to her left has slowed to a crawl, and she has no magic light to throw on the roof. Distracted by practicalities, she almost misses the words at the end of the line. She opens her mouth to ask DS Peters to repeat himself, but by that point it’s too late; she’s taken in their meaning. The effect is immediate, making her feel like she’s slipping through a hole in the floor of the car. She grips the steering wheel tightly, desperately trying to hold on.
‘You’re sure?’
‘I am.’
Terrible images flashing up in her mind, terrible possibilities pushing her down. Then, just as she’s certain she will have to let go and sink to a place she knows she’ll never escape, she finds herself standing in the hallway of a stranger’s house, staring at a photo on the wall of two young schoolgirls, smiling broadly, eyes shining with innocent joy. She blinks, and the vision disappears, but the feeling does not. It lifts her, straightens her, pushes her forward, and suddenly she’s revving the engine, forcing the Rover out into the traffic, ignoring the horns, ignoring the twisting in her gut, ignoring the little voice screaming at her that she’s lost her edge and can’t be trusted to do what is right.
Two
Nathan opens his eyes and immediately the desire takes hold. Some days, the best days, it doesn’t come for hours, but today it’s there the very moment he wakes. He sits bolt upright, muscles twitching, desperate to run away and hide. It’s only when he finally considers his surroundings that he remembers he already has.
He uncurls his hands and places them lightly on the tops of his thighs, focusing on his breathing as he works his way through the usual reassurances. Then, when the desire has slowly faded, he falls back onto the bed, as drained as if he hadn’t slept at all.
He stares towards a shuttered window where sunlight is streaming through a narrow gap. He can just make out the tops of trees on the hills in the distance, bending in the usual north-easterly. He doesn’t need to see the rest to know exactly what’s out there, nothing ever changing but the colours and the sky.
When he eventually rises he does so in stages – sheets pulled back, one foot towards the floor, the second leg swung round till he’s sitting up straight, tying up his shoulder-length hair with an elastic band. As soon as he’s up he’s down again, working through a rigorous exercise routine that leaves him with a splinter and in desperate need of a shower. That shower is hot and long, and he scrubs himself until his skin is flushed pink. Then he returns to the bedroom and pulls off the sheets, taking them down the narrow staircase to the equally narrow kitchen to throw them in the wash.
His first meal is as every meal, a tin of something warmed on the hob. When he’s finished, he cleans his teeth in the kitchen sink with a splayed brush and the tiniest dab of toothpaste. Then he walks, still naked, into the living room, flicking on the light to reveal a tiny wooden-beamed space with a high-backed leather armchair in the middle of two piles of books. Without looking he reaches for the top of the taller pile, sits himself down and starts to read. The only distraction is the sound of birds at the top of the chimney and a strengthening wind rattling the locks on the door.
* * *
Several hours later, the height of the piles has been reversed, three children’s novels read from cover to cover, a quarter of a million words he’s worked his way through so many times he could almost recite them by heart. Nothing too thrilling. Nothing with crime. He almost laughs when he considers how different it had once been.
He pushes himself up from his chair and flicks off the light, reaching for his trainers, the soles of which are worn paper thin. He slips them on and prepares to go outside. Before he pulls back the final bolt on the door he takes a deep breath and reminds himself of the emptiness of the landscape around, of the distance to the nearest village and of the promise made by the only person in the world who knows that he’s here. These days it’s more a ritual than any kind of necessity – like saying his prayers before he goes to bed – because there can no longer be any doubt: he is alone.
He walks a few paces then starts to run, following the well-worn path around the house. He doesn’t look up as he makes his circuits; sometimes he doesn’t even need to open his eyes. He finally collapses after a couple of hours, crawling through the dirt and back into the house, using the last dregs of his strength to reach up and draw the bolts across the door.
It’s a while before he’s able to eat any dinner. Even longer before he’s willing to attempt the stairs. When he does, he pauses halfway up to drag a filthy finger across the wall. All around him are the marks he’s left: one a day, every day, covering virtually every inch of the plaster. What had started as an ordered line soon became a tumbling circular smudge, spiralling towards the centre. Now, after three hundred and sixty-two days, he’s almost at that centre, just three more stripes and he’ll have reached his goal. He smiles as he runs a thumb alongside the inside of his left wrist, feeling the narrow band of raised and hardened skin, evidence of the many occasions he didn’t think he’d make it.
Three
The house is a small, detached 1960s property tucked away at the end of the street, the front of the house hidden by an overgrown chestnut tree, the back leading out to the reservoir. She waves her warrant card at a young PC as she slips through a gathering crowd and ducks under the perimeter tape. As she approaches the front door she glances across at a carefully maintained rose bed, spotting two flower heads that have been knocked off in their prime, perhaps by the rushed arrival of her team. The vivid red of the petals seems to soak into her, as does the sense of dread at what’s about to come. She crouches down, certain if she doesn’t she’ll be falling that way. She hopes it appears to those behind as if she’s had to tie a shoelace, and she decides while she recovers to do exactly that, but when she squeezes her eyes shut and pictures those two schoolgirls she feels the shoelace snap in her hand.