CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

SALLY HAD THE feeling that something was terribly wrong.

It wasn’t the sirens, or the fact that the electricity kept threatening to cut out for minutes at a time, or even the intermittent shouting she kept hearing somewhere out in the city streets as the lights inside flickered nervously. No, some internal barometer was telling her that Rick was in some kind of trouble. Ever since they’d first met, Sally had felt some inner tugging whenever he was in jeopardy. During Rick’s army days, she’d known about it when things got tough; when he was seriously injured during a Taliban attack in Afghanistan, she’d felt a terrible pain in her guts.

The television was on but Sally was barely watching it. The show was sub prime-time filler: some kind of imported American talent contest between people whose only proximity to talent was by watching other performers on better TV shows. Sally wished that they’d all just demonstrate the good taste to take a running jump through the fuck off door, but sadly that didn’t seem like it would happen any time soon.

She grabbed the remote control and switched channels to an old film. Robert Mitchum. Gregory Peck. Good stuff, but she wasn’t quite in the mood for film noir. Sighing, she took a sip of wine, closing her eyes as the wonderfully cool liquid traced a pathway down her throat.

She glanced around the small seventh floor flat, her gaze restless, moving from object to object like a butterfly in a garden. Despite all the familiar things around her, this place had never quite felt like home. A photograph on the mantle, showing Rick and several buddies just before the attack in Helmand Province. The odd-shaped stone he’d brought her back from the desert – a rock shaped like a heart. The framed pictures hanging on the walls. The books and ornaments on the shelves. None of this stuff actually meant anything if Rick wasn’t here with her, close enough to touch, to hold, to kiss...

The wine was making her maudlin, and along with the noise coming from outside it was also putting her on edge. She drained the glass but did not refill it.

When the telephone rang at first she thought it might be Rick, or worse still, someone calling on Rick’s behalf to tell her that he’d been hurt, perhaps shot during whatever operation he was involved in. She rushed to the table by the door and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

“Oh, thank God. I’ve been trying to get you for ages. The lines have been busy.”

“Mum? What’s wrong, Mum?” Sally felt the tone of her own voice rise to match that of her mother’s.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine. Just a bit… well, to be honest I’m a bit unnerved.” Her mother’s voice sounded strange, strained.

“Tell me, Mum. What’s up?” Sally’s hand gripped the receiver, making her fingers ache.

“There’s something going on. The lights keep flickering and going out; the TV won’t come back on. The radio is reporting riots in London and Luton.” Her mother was close to tears. Since Dad died, she’d been on her own and it didn’t suit her.

“Calm down, Mum. I’m sure it’s okay.”

“I know, I’m probably being silly. But I’m sure someone was outside earlier, creeping around in the back garden.”

Sally suddenly pictured her mother’s house, located back from the road in a very quiet area just outside Bedford. The nearest main road was miles away; the surrounding countryside was beautiful during the day but at night could hide a hundred assailants. “Listen, Mum, please call the police and lock the doors and windows.”

“I did all that ages ago.” Sally held her breath, suddenly afraid. “The police said they’d get here as soon as they could, but they’re busy on other calls.”

“Call Derek, then. Right now. He’ll drive out to get you.” Derek was the nearest neighbour, another widower who had a soft spot for Sally’s mother that everyone but her could see.

“You know I don’t like to be a bother… it’s late; he’s probably in bed.”

“Call him, Mum. Promise me you will. You know he’ll be happy to drop by and sit with you until the police arrive. I’ll feel better if he does, too.”

There was a lengthy silence, and then her mother reached a decision. “You’re right, darling. I will call Derek. He’ll know what to do. He always does.”

Calmer now, Sally made her mother promise again that she would call her suitor, and then she reluctantly hung up. It was horrible being miles away from her family at times like these. On the rare occasions that her mother needed her, Sally was never close enough to do much about it. The best she could offer was a promise to visit the following weekend.

During the phone call the TV had gone off. The lights began to flicker again, but more slowly, dipping the room into darkness for brief periods that seemed longer each time it happened. Sally felt her chest tighten. She knew, just knew, that one of these times the lights would go out for good. She picked up the phone again and called Rick’s mobile. As expected, a recorded voice told her that it was switched off.

“It’s me. I’m scared. Mum just rang, and there’s something going on outside. Come home soon?” She pressed the button to end her message, then returned to her chair.

Sally was used to fear. It was almost an old friend. When she had been younger, her life had been made a misery by local bullies – her weight and her unusual looks had led to her being called names like ‘Fat Cat’ and ‘Slit-eyed Slut.’ The name-calling had progressed to physical abuse, and she’d sported scrapes and bruises for most of her school years. As an adult, once she’d grown into her looks, things had changed and she became popular with the opposite sex. Those early days, however, left deep scars, and she found it difficult to form relationships, hard to trust anyone.

Rick had been different. They’d clicked immediately. But he had come with his own fears, and his tours of duty with the army had brought terrors like none she’d ever experienced.

She recalled vividly the call from a corporal to inform her that Rick had been shot in Helmand Province, in a region whose name she could not even pronounce. He’s alive, they’d told her, but more than that we cannot say. It was a week before she knew for certain that he would survive, and by then she’d been allowed to visit him in the military hospital.

It all made her childhood fears seem so trite, so pathetic, but when she saw him lying in that hospital bed, his body thin and bandaged, it opened the old scars and made them into fresh wounds.

Rick’s body had healed but his mind remained damaged, a flawed tool of his trade. There was the depression, of course – the constant night terrors and the way his eyes narrowed at the slightest sound outside – but worse than that was the fact that he could never settle. That was why he joined the police force – to focus all the nervous energy he gave off like a damaged battery. She also suspected that he missed the action.

Headlights splashed the walls, turning the net curtains white. She glanced over, caught off guard, and listened intently to the sound of squealing breaks. Whatever the vehicle was, its driver had lost control. The brakes continued to scream and the sound was followed by a huge, rending crash of metal and a low, hollow explosion.

Sally ran to the window and peered through the partially opened blinds. Two hundred yards along the street, by the glow of firelight, she saw that a car had crashed into the concrete bollards along the side of the canal. Black water flared with reflected fire; yellow flames clawed at the dark sky. Someone was crawling from the wreckage. It was a woman, and she was moving slowly, clumsily, as she dragged herself through the shattered rear window. Another figure was slumped behind the wheel, but it was too obscured by smoke for Sally to make out if it was male or female.

The passenger squeezed out of the car and slumped heavily to the ground. She raised her head, staring at the night sky, and clutched at her cheeks, scraping them with her nails.

Sally stepped back, just half a step, and shot a glance at the phone. She knew that she ought to ring the police, an ambulance, but something about this scene struck her as all wrong. She looked back at the woman, and then it registered. Instead of screaming in pain, the woman was simply sitting there, on the ground by the canal, tearing at her own face. It was a weirdly compelling sight, and one that was unnatural in so many ways. After such an accident, the woman should surely be as dead as her driver – but there she was, out of the car and mutilating herself.

Sally held her breath, barely even realising that she was doing so.

The woman, as if sensing Sally’s scrutiny, looked up and stared along the length of the canal, directly into the flat. Glimmers of firelight brightened her narrow face, and Sally could clearly see that the woman was smiling. But it was not a smile that held any trace of humour; instead, it was the slack-jawed idiot grin of someone whose mind was simply no longer operating as it should. An alien smile: a smile that should never be seen by human eyes.

The woman then began to drag herself back towards the car. The flames were dying, burning themselves out. No fuel had ignited, just the paint on the bodywork. Small bright tongues licked at the smoke-blackened wings and wheel rims, the tyres were thick molten rubber bands. The woman slumped round to the driver’s side, pulling her weight up by the door handle. Then, settling against the door, she reached in and pulled a fist-sized chunk of still smoking flesh from the side of the driver’s neck. Her hand went to her mouth; the cooked meat slipped between her lips, her reddened teeth. The woman began to chew, slowly and methodically, as if she were sampling nothing more exotic than a handful of foie gras.

Sally wished that she could look away, but her eyes were glued to the scene. There was still enough of the guttering fire left alive to allow her to witness exactly what was going on, but she could barely believe it.

“Oh my God,” she said, shocking herself by speaking out loud. “What the hell…?” She walked quickly to the phone, remembering Rick’s oft repeated advice about keeping your head in a crisis. When she picked up the receiver, the line was dead. Not even the dull hiss of white noise on the line.

She fished her mobile out of her jeans pocket and pressed the button to, once again, call Rick – she had him on speed dial, in case of an emergency. If this wasn’t an emergency, then she didn’t know what possible situation might qualify for the title.

Now she did hear white noise, followed by a series of clicks and fractured bleeping sounds. Then a recorded message told her in a smooth female voice that the number was unavailable. Either Rick’s mobile was still switched off or the networks were all busy.

“Shit. Shit.” She crossed again to the window. The car was no longer alight; it was now a smoking shell. The body behind the wheel looked misshapen and… well, incomplete. Sally peered along the canal in both directions trying to catch sight of the woman, but could see no one lurking in the vicinity. That was unusual in itself, as the canal at night was usually a regular hangout for drug dealers and homosexual pick-ups. She and Rick often stood at the window to watch the show, using it as a substitute for bad TV. She’d lost count of exactly how many times they’d seen what were probably illicit trysts and illegal transactions. Like most big cities, Leeds was packed with what Rick for some reason always called the ‘Scum of the Hearth.’ He always found that funny, but Sally had never really understood what it meant. Nor had she ever felt like asking. Sometimes Rick could be almost wilfully obscure and in a way that scared her, and she preferred to ignore those occasional glimpses of a somehow complex darkness making itself known to her.

Sirens wailed far off in the night, either approaching or moving away at speed – it was impossible to tell. As she watched, a fire started in the east of the city, its wan glow reflected in the cloudless sky, shimmering against the heavens like a misdirected spotlight. Shouts and blunt screams were carried to her on the light breeze, as if they’d been waiting for her to act as an audience to their grim proclamations.

Sally checked the window and shut the curtains. Then she went round the entire flat, ensuring that all the door and window locks were secure, wishing that there were sturdy shutters instead of thin curtains across the window glass.

When she was finished she sat on the floor in the middle of the living room. The TV was showing a pre-recorded interview with some MP she’d never heard of, and he was talking about riots across the city, lootings, rapes and murders. Sally had the telephone clasped between her knees. Intermittently, she checked it for a signal, but all she got was a dead line. She tried to ignore the sounds coming from outside, knowing that on the seventh floor she was too far up for any passing psycho to bother with, and the main doors to the apartment block were time-locked anyway.

The night stretched ahead of her, unfurling like a ribbon quilted with myriad atrocities. She wished that Rick was here, at her side, and wept because she could not reach out to him for comfort. Her old fears returned, mutated into something much worse: demons that leered from the corners of the room. She wondered, briefly, if she would ever see her husband again, and then hated herself for such a display of weakness. Rick would expect her to be strong, to hold things together until he got back.

And he would get back to her – of this single fact she was absolutely certain.

That was the last thought she had before the lights in the flat flickered a final time and then went out for good.