I screamed out.
Instinct kicked in: I tried to gain some purchase on the floorboards, tried to crawl away so I could gain some distance, but my fingers slipped and he hit me again, in the ankles. I yelled out in pain as a paralysing tremor hummed up my leg. Then a third blow: in the small of my back, and this time I could feel my skin break beneath the cling film.
He stopped. Looked down at me. His black clothes made him seem bigger in the semi-darkness. More powerful. As he stepped into what little light there was left, in his face I could see regret. Maybe even a little mercy.
‘I understand,’ he said, gently, and dropped to his haunches beside me. ‘I understand how you feel. How desperate you must be to get her back.’
I jabbed a leg at his kneecap. It missed, but unbalanced him, one of his hands planting on the floor behind, trying to prevent him falling on to his backside. I looked across the landing for the Beretta. It was slightly to my left, about six feet in front of me.
Hauling myself on to all fours, I started towards it.
But Andrew was on his feet again. He took one step in my direction and smashed the table leg into the same spot as before: the small of my back, right where one of the wounds had opened up.
I yelled out and collapsed on to my stomach.
There was silence for a moment. He was watching me, seeing if I was going to try to make a move again. When I didn’t, through the corner of my eye, I saw him drop down for a second time, but further away, so I couldn’t make contact.
‘After I got out of prison,’ he said, turning the table leg in his hands, ‘my parole officer found me a job teaching kids how to play football at a youth club. He knew the people who ran it. The first evening I turned up there, the guy in charge pulled me aside and said, “I know you’ve got a record. You’re just a favour for a friend, so if you mess up once, even if it’s forgetting to tell me we’re out of orange squash, you’re finished.” I got twenty pounds cash in hand, and was claiming every week as well. When Sunday came round, I had nothing. The temptation to steal, the temptation to claw it back, whoever I hurt, was immense.’
I looked across the landing, to the Beretta.
‘Go for the gun, and I will put my foot through the back of your head.’
I glanced at him.
‘Just give me an excuse, David. I can’t wait to see what your face looks like as it leaks through the floorboards.’
I closed my eyes. Tried to memorize the layout of the building. Tried to recall anything I could use as a makeshift weapon.
He started talking again.
‘Prison was tough,’ he continued, and I opened my eyes and watched him. ‘So, I didn’t want to go back. And, anyway, about five months after I started there, everything changed. I got talking to the mum of one of the boys. He’d had leukaemia, but it was in remission. And the way she spoke about him, about the love she had for him, it just absolutely stopped me dead. When I found out she was on her own, I asked her out — even before I knew her name. She was the one who first took me to church. She was how I found my faith.’
He stood. Looked down at me.
‘Charlotte,’ he said.
There was a long pause as he stared at me.
‘We’d been seeing each other for about two years when her son’s leukaemia came back. I’d already moved in with them by then and had a job. Everything in my life was perfect. But when Charlotte found out the disease had come back, something just turned off in her, as if she knew this time it wasn’t going until it took her boy with it.’
Something moved in his eyes.
‘I came home three months after he passed away and she was lying beneath the surface of the water in the bath. She’d overdosed on sleeping pills.’
He gripped the table leg harder, both hands wriggling to get a better grip.
‘That was when I came up with the idea for this place. A place to help people start again. To leave behind the memories, everything they wish they could forget. I went to the bank and they turned me down on the spot. But eventually, a few months later, someone cared enough to help me out.’
I shook my head.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said.
I turned my head, pain shooting down the centre of my back.
‘You’re not helping anyone.’
He paused. Watched me.
Then, suddenly, he moved, hitting out at me with the table leg. It caught me in the chin.
‘Fuck!’
My head hit the floor, blood in my mouth, on my lips, across my face. White spots flashed in front of my eyes. I was disorientated, unable to make anything out.
‘You of all people should understand what I’m trying to do!’ he screamed from behind me, his voice trembling with rage.
I looked for him, but my vision was still blurred. One doorway became the next. He’d moved back. Briefly faded into the night.
‘This place is built for people like you!’
Then he emerged from the darkness and leaned into me.
‘And it’s not going to stop now.’
His face shifted back into focus.
‘You’re not going to stop me, David.’
He raised the table leg above his head. His grip tightened, his teeth clenched. I curled up into a ball, protecting myself.
But the final blow never came.
A dull thud sounded.
Andrew staggered sideways, clutching his head.
At the top of the stairs behind him was Alex. He turned and punched a piece of the table up into Andrew’s guts. The air hissed out of him. He doubled over, clutching his stomach.
Alex struck again.
This time he pounded the chunk of wood into the base of Andrew’s spine. The tall man stumbled forward and fell to the floor, his legs giving way under him like a deer shot down in a hunt. A fourth and fifth blow came, a chunk of wood splintering this time, breaking at the sheer force of the blow. It spun off into the bathroom and landed among the glass.
Alex briefly glanced at me, and then kicked Andrew in the face. More blood, spraying out over the wall behind him; over the carpet. Then he kicked him again. And again. And again. Gradually, Andrew’s eyes glazed over and all that came after were sounds without reaction: skin splitting; bones breaking. No grunts. No groans. No breathing. Just a slapping sound, like raw meat being tenderized.
‘Alex,’ I said.
He stopped, panting heavily, and looked around towards me, across to the room with the rings, to my gun, and to the blood on my clothes.
He came across and helped me up, lacing his arms through mine. My balance was affected. My body felt like it might fall apart. He guided me back towards Room A. I went straight for the gun, grasping it as tightly as I could. Once we were inside, hidden by the darkness, I brought his head towards me.
‘Legion,’ I whispered, pointing towards the wall that divided the two bedrooms. I could see in his face he got it immediately. Dread rose to the surface.
Click.
We both turned, looking towards Andrew. But the noise had come from the room with the rings.
Click.
Click.
‘Oh, shit,’ Alex said. ‘He’s coming.’
44
Alex turned to me. ‘You need to use me,’ he whispered, glancing towards the door. ‘You need to pretend you will kill me.’
‘What?’
He stood up. I grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him back down.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
He looked at me. ‘They can’t kill me.’