‘What?’
‘I said how did you know where the bag was if Fisk wouldn’t talk? You drove us out here and told me exactly where to go …’
Bateman’s proportions seemed to change, like those of a shape-shifter, and he drew himself up, filling the doorway.
‘Where’s the bag, Aidan?’
‘If you’re honest with yourself, I think you already know.’
He smiled. ‘All gone …’
I nodded. ‘I fell down a bank and hit the stream. When I heard the gunshot I threw the fucking thing in.’ He was nodding like he understood. ‘If you knew that, then why all this? Following me, phoning me, fighting me …’
‘Even walking round your flat while you were out,’ he said with a smirk. ‘Reading your mail, drinking your drink. If you’re honest with yourself, I think you already know …’
‘I was only here because you dragged me out of bed. I was a kid.’
‘A man now,’ he said. ‘Knew bag gone. Years gone. Life gone.’ He drew a hand tenderly across the ruined face that had once made women weak at the knees. ‘Gone,’ he said. I remembered then that Bateman had no internal life. Outside of cruelty, he ceased to exist. ‘You shouldn’t have come here, Aid …’
‘You broke into my sister’s house, you didn’t give me a choice.’
He smiled, nodded.
‘I wanted to talk to you, y’know?’ I was backing away. ‘I thought I’d try and talk to you about violence, where it comes from. It’s usually a cycle. One bad choice after another. If a few people started breaking the chain we could probably be without it.’ I’d backed all the way to the window. ‘I trace the violence in me back to you, I’d be interested to know where yours came from?’ Bateman snorted so I went on. ‘Anyway, like I said, it’s a choice we don’t have to make. I thought I’d tell you I won’t do it any more. I’d say that if we came here to fight then you win. You can kill me, I’m better than it.’
‘Moving …’ said Bateman, taking a step inside the kitchen.
‘You turned on the other kidnappers because they didn’t want to hurt Fisk’s wife. They didn’t want to kill him.’
He took another step.
‘Stay the fuck away from me,’ I said.
He roared with laughter. ‘Mr Non-Violent. Mr Break the Cycle …’
‘You’re not listening, Bateman.’ He took another step. ‘I said that’s what I thought I’d do.’
‘But I killed a woman,’ he said, miming tears with his hand.
‘You killed us both,’ I said. ‘You did this to yourself.’ He scrunched up his face in question. ‘You broke into my sister’s house, you didn’t give me a choice,’ I repeated.
We both heard it then and he stopped.
The sound of a large vehicle coming up the path.
Bateman turned, stomped down the hall to the front door and saw the top of the white van coming towards us. He started to laugh. Not the cynical snorts and twitches from before, but the real stuff, right from the gut.
‘Back-up?’ he said, putting his wrists together miming his arrest. ‘For what? Being mean to you on the phone …’ Most of his speech impediment had fallen away now, and I saw that it had always just been for effect.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not for that.’
‘For breaking and entering? I’ll be out before you’re back in the city …’
‘I know,’ I said, walking down the hallway towards him. He reached behind my ear and, instead of a coin, produced a crumpled-up piece of paper, dangling it in front of me.
I saw my sister’s name.
An address.
He dropped it at my feet.
‘Keep that, I’ve got it memorized,’ he said, spitting in my face.
I looked past him. At the doorway he still had his back to. ‘What would you say your eyesight’s like, Bateman?’
He turned to look.
Nicky Fisk Junior had climbed out of the van’s driver side. He walked round the cab and opened the passenger-side door, helping out the thinnest man I’d ever seen.
His father, Nicholas Fisk Senior.
Bateman’s broken mouth fell open. He took a step backwards, tripped and fell heavily on the floor. He scrambled to his feet, grunted and ran the other way, down the hall towards the kitchen and the wide open spaces where the windows should be. I heard a wet thud and saw him stagger back into the hall holding his bloody nose. Donny Fisk emerged from behind him, holding a claw-hammer, as his father reached the front door.
‘Hello, Bates,’ said Fisk. ‘You’re looking well …’
Bateman stood, breathing blood into his cupped hands for a moment, then burst towards the door. Nicky dropped him with a devastating right. Then he picked him up by the legs and his brother took the shoulders. Where Fisk Senior jerked and bucked, his sons flowed like shadows. They went to the cellar door under the stairs. Where I’d turned the key on their father so many years before.
‘This the one?’ asked Nicky. Fisk nodded and they disappeared into the pitch-black rectangle of the door.
I looked at Fisk.
He hadn’t stepped inside the house and, for a moment, kept his eyes locked on to the cellar where he’d been held prisoner. He looked down the hall to where his wife had been murdered. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d rather wait outside,’ he said.
I didn’t know where the two of us stood, but I was glad to join him.
I took his arm to offer support as we walked down the path into the perfect, still day, away from a muted sound that might have been a man screaming. I hadn’t been certain that they’d come. And hadn’t known that Donny was already in position when we arrived. I still didn’t know what they planned for me, but it felt likely I’d follow Bateman down into that cellar.
It was a chance I’d had to take.
His aggression towards me had been one thing. His move against my sister was another. Fisk and I had only walked a few feet when a gunshot cracked, unmistakably, through the air. Then another. He gripped my arm more tightly and we went on without comment.
‘That bag you took from the attic …’
‘I threw it in the stream,’ I said, too quickly.
He eyed me shrewdly. ‘You didn’t look inside?’
I shook my head. I wondered if my life depended on it.
Before he could say anything else his boys emerged from the house, walking towards us. They went to the van, took two canisters of petrol each and walked, wordlessly, back, disappearing inside. When they re-emerged, Nicky approached their father and handed him a slip of paper.
‘Found this on the floor,’ he said.
Still leaning on me for support, Fisk used his long, thin fingers to massage the scrunched-up ball of paper open.
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘It’s my sister’s name and address. He was threatening to hurt her.’ Fisk looked at me for a moment then extended the piece of paper. I took it and balled it back up. I walked to the house and dropped it in the doorway.
When I turned, Donny was staring at me, gripping the bloodied claw-hammer.
‘Guy said he’s your dad, by the way. That true?’
I think I shook my head.
Unable to look at them any more, I went to the car and sat inside it. I was blocked in by their van. Fisk leaned on one of his boys, said something to the other and watched him disappear inside. At length, plumes of smoke emerged. Fisk and Nicky walked past me without a look and climbed back inside the van. They started up and began to drive down the lane, back on to the main road. When I heard another engine I realized that Donny had been parked in his own car around the back. I started up and followed the van.
Donny followed me.
In the middle of the lane the van’s brake lights flashed red and our strange convoy came to a sudden, claustrophobic stop. I looked in my rear-view. Saw Donny’s car right behind. I looked left and then right. Acres of wide open fields either way, tinted by the day’s dying light. There was nowhere to go. One of the van doors opened and I saw Fisk climb out, leaning on his stick as he walked towards me. I was gripping the steering wheel, trying not to panic. When he reached the car he draped himself on the roof and used his stick to tap on the window. I buzzed it down.