Graeme sits waiting in the van, parked in the small car park outside the dental surgery, heart banging painfully against his ribcage, thick hands shaking as they grip the steering wheel. His nails are filthy from the dirt he rubbed on the van’s number plates this morning.
No matter how many times he’s done it, it never feels any less stressful, even though everything has gone smoothly this time – so far anyway. But it’s not a fear of danger he feels; it’s a fear of messing up, of risking Catherine’s displeasure.
Catherine used to say she loved his hands, how strong they were. Now they’ll be together as a couple, will she say it again?
Graeme looks down at them, thinking back on some of the actions his hands have performed, the power they have wielded, the lives they’ve changed.
He doesn’t often get this philosophical, but this is a big day, with so much at stake.
A very big day. In fact, it feels as if this moment is the pinnacle of his life. All the planning, all the worrying, his secret fear that something will go wrong and he’ll be back inside too, or that he’ll fuck it up like last time – that stupid man out walking his stupid dog. It took Catherine years to forgive him for that. But now he has another chance. They both do. There can be no mistakes this time.
In the event, he didn’t need to be so stressed about it. It couldn’t have been easier. All those months and years of prep, and now here Catherine is, in the back of an old red Honda that is just pulling into the car park. Graeme doesn’t recognise the female driver – must be a new nurse – but the one sitting chatting to her on the back seat is Penny, a small plump Sister that Graeme knows Catherine gets on well with. Will that make it harder to hurt her?
Silly question, Graeme thinks. Nothing makes it harder for Catherine to hurt anyone.
Catherine and Penny get out of the car, Catherine holding her jaw as if in great pain, but cracking some kind of a joke, because Penny’s laughing in a scandalised way. She leans down and speaks to the driver, tapping her wrist, presumably saying she’ll call her when they’re done. Graeme catches the words, ‘…and small fries please.’
Tut, tut, thinks Graeme with a slow smile, they both ought to be coming in with Catherine. But it bodes very well that they aren’t. The driver waves and drives out of the car park, crunching the gears as she exits.
Catherine looks in his direction, and Graeme raises his eyebrows, but Catherine gives an infinitesimally tiny shake of her head when Penny isn’t looking. They’ve agreed that Graeme will only get out of the van if needed. Less chance of being spotted on CCTV.
Catherine and Penny begin to stroll across the car park. The only other pedestrians in sight are an old lady tottering out of the surgery entrance with a Zimmer frame and her carer, or daughter, opening the door for her.
Catherine’s almost level with the space that Graeme has parked in. Graeme, in the driver’s seat, pretends to be scrolling through his phone with one hand, but he keeps his eye firmly on them, and his other hand, out of sight, grips the heavy motorcycle chain that is his current weapon of choice. Go on babes, he urges silently. We’re so close. Get on with it, or I will.
Violence ignites in his belly, raw and hungry like the craving of a recently reformed smoker when someone lights up next to them. For a moment he forgets who he’s meant to be saving the rage for, and he wants to jump out of the van and stave in Penny’s skull, imagining her dull-brown curls all matted, the blood pooling out around her…
Just as the two women are level with the van’s bonnet, Catherine crouches down. ‘Stone in my shoe,’ Graeme hears her say.
Graeme forces the ball of anger down, loosens his grip on the chain, starts the van engine and leans across to open the passenger door. This is the sign.
Penny is waiting, still chatting away, while Catherine pokes around inside her shoe. Then, instead of straightening up in the normal way, she pushes herself away from the ground with the energy of a swimmer doing a racing dive off the side of a pool, her clenched fist swinging forcefully upwards and straight into the underside of Penny’s jaw, a flawless uppercut.
The blow sends the woman flying backwards in an almost cartoonish fashion. She lands flat on her back, a stunned expression on her face as her skull smacks the tarmac hard, blood spraying out of her mouth. Is that a tooth, flying off in the opposite direction?
Catherine has jumped into the van and Graeme has driven out of the car park before she’s even had time to get her seatbelt on.
Graeme drives steadily, nothing flashy, nothing to draw attention to them. Even if there is CCTV in the car park, there is nothing to identify the van. His hands have stopped shaking. A huge beam spreads across his face, even though they aren’t high and dry just yet.
‘We did it!’
‘I did it, you mean.’
‘Yeah, babes, I know.’
Conciliatory as always, Graeme does know. But he also knows that it has been all these months and years of preparation on his part that has got them to this stage. Making sure Catherine took her meds, back when she was still in Rampton; urging her not to blow her top whenever someone wound her up. Both of them knowing how crucial her good behaviour was.
Catherine has behaved herself for the last three years. It’s a record.
But then, when Catherine really, really wants something, she’ll do anything to get it. Graeme likes to think that Catherine’s good behaviour was due to his influence – and perhaps too the fact that he persuaded the board to let him be Catherine’s advocate. All the dozens of Care Plan Approach meetings he’s attended on her behalf, feeling like a proper responsible citizen.
The joy they both felt when it was deemed that Catherine’s condition was finally stable enough for her to be moved from high-security Rampton into this medium-security place in Surrey … The plan was working, he thought. For the first time in his life, Graeme had a purpose, a mission. Not to mention all the other planning he had to do, to set everything up for Catherine. Convincing the CPA board to consider transferring her hadn’t been easy, but they’d done it. Graeme had insisted it was because he’d got a new job, as a gardener, and he wouldn’t be able to continue driving up to Northampton to visit Catherine. They wanted to be closer to each other; that was fair enough, wasn’t it? They were a couple.
And the board bought it, not having a clue why Graeme had got a gardening job at that particular venue.
Graeme remembers with glee the day three years ago when he discovered that the Pop Bitch – PB – lived in Minstead and worked up at the house. He was boarding a bus in Kingston after a visit to his parole officer, and he saw PB walking to the next bus stop. Nobody else would ever recognise her; she looked completely different these days. But Graeme would have known her anywhere, even with the very short blonde hairstyle. Catherine had made him study so many photos of her that the woman’s features were indelibly imprinted on his mind. Graeme immediately jumped off his bus and followed PB onto hers, sitting so close behind her that he could see the short, fine hairs sticking to the back of PB’s collar – she’d obviously just had it cut. Why was she travelling by bus? Surely someone like her had a car? Maybe it was in for a repair or something.
Graeme sniffed the air in front of him, trying to see if PB was wearing the same perfume as she had when he’d met her last. He could still remember how she’d smelled; before the scent of her piss and fear and blood overpowered everything else.
That bus ride took at least thirty-five minutes, out into the arseend of nowhere in the Surrey Hills, a place Graeme didn’t even know existed. PB – and Graeme – finally alighted somewhere called Minstead House – a massive yellow place, where Graeme stalked her to that stupid shop full of overpriced pottery and other shit that posh people and ignorant tourists threw their money at.
He couldn’t wait to tell Catherine that he had, completely by chance, found Pop Bitch, and that she worked in a shop. It was the biggest stroke of luck he’d ever had.
They gave themselves two years to work out phase two of the plan. Two years to start to put right what had gone so wrong last time.
And now here they are.
In the van, Catherine clips in her seatbelt. ‘How did it go last night?’ she asks.
‘Like clockwork. Everything in place.’ Graeme can’t help the note of pride in his voice. He thinks of the man’s eyes meeting his, his pain and fury and bewilderment. In that moment he almost felt sorry for him, for he was as much of a pawn as Graeme himself was.
‘Good. Knew I could rely on you.’
Graeme smiles, all thoughts of pity forgotten.
‘Let’s get over there now.’
‘Now?’ Graeme has assumed Catherine would want to have a quiet night in first. See the flat, unpack, maybe even go to bed. The thought of Catherine’s warm, pale body in his arms again makes him feel woozy with delight.
‘You’ve got him. What if someone finds him? We need to get her there too, before they notice I’m missing.’
Graeme sighs. He knows Catherine is right. Obviously, when it’s discovered that Catherine has escaped, Graeme will be the first one they’ll call. But they thought of this too. Graeme has given a false address in Surrey, and has already ditched the SIM card of the mobile that is on Catherine’s records as her next-of-kin contact number. The van will be well hidden.
‘This time tomorrow…’ Catherine says gleefully.
Graeme looks across at his beloved and feels a brief metallic twinge in his teeth, another little thrill of joy, to see her smiling so widely as she gazes out of the window at trees and fences speeding past.
‘I know!’ Graeme says. ‘We’ll wake up together. Our new lives start here. I can’t wait for you to see the flat. I tidied up special.’
Catherine gives a dismissive wave. ‘Yeah, yeah, that’ll be great. But I’m not thinking about that.’
Crestfallen, Graeme indicates left onto a dual carriageway. ‘Oh. What was you thinking then?’
Catherine turns in the passenger seat to face him, clasping her knee with excitement, rocking slightly, Graeme notices, in time with the fuzzy-felt cartoon air-freshener dangling from the rearview mirror.
‘This time tomorrow, I’ll finally be quits with Pop Bitch. She’ll have suffered as bad as I did, all these years. A life ruined for a life ruined. Only fair, isn’t it? And all this will have been worth it!’
Graeme wonders why his heart sinks. After all, he knows that this is at the heart of it all; has always been. But why can’t Catherine just be happy that they are finally together?