Graven Image (8 page)

A sound behind me.

I slip behind a shed and peek out.

Just some twat, a kid like Sid and Gnash. There’s chipboard where the kitchen window should be and he knocks on it, waits, stepping trainer to trainer. He turns - I swear he’s seen me. But he couldn’t have.

Anyone who saw me right then would have shit.

Seconds later the board lifts outwards from the bottom. There’s hinges at the top - nicely done. The lad climbs in and it comes down.

I wait a few minutes. Thinking.

About Kelly.

Rubbing her eyes, sleepy.

Trying to save that teddy from a burning house.

I step up to the window and knock. Not too hard, not too soft. I’m looking at my watch: forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine... Chipboard goes up. Glazed eyes looking out at me. Another ned, too stoned to react and save himself.

I point the gun at him and blow his head off.

All of him seems to disappear. There’s a big area of red slop on the wall behind him and a bit of smoke, like he’s exploded. I climb in. There’s a sink you have to clamber over but they’ve filled it with bricks to help people like me. I can hear voices now, upstairs. Shouting and screaming. Female screaming.

I hit the lino, finding where the stoned lad went. No time to check what state he’s in - sidestep around the destruction and into the dining room. That’s what we called that type of room in our old house, between the kitchen and the living room.

‘Where’s your Daddy?’ Jane would say.

‘Daddy ’mokin’ in dinie room!’

I loved the way she used to say that. ’Mokin’.

‘Kelly!’ I’m at the foot of the stairs, booming that name. Front door’s open and a nice breeze is coming in, bringing a whiff of distant bonfires. A noise in the front room and I stick my head round the door. There’s a lad behind the couch, plain as the white sock on his ankle, which is sticking out the far side.

‘Come out now and I might spare you,’ I say, calm.

He does it, hands up. It’s Sid’s other pal, the one from the abbey. Dux. I never really took to him. He’s staring back at me, trying to smile. I don’t think I return that smile. Whatever is on my face, he knows it’s not good.

‘Booker!’ he yells. ‘Booker! Help!’

He’s got one of them really irritating voices.

I put a bullet in his leg, aiming to both shut him up and give him a permanent limp for his treachery. His leg disintegrates at the knee. Funny kind of bullets in this gun. He looks at it, opens his mouth and passes out.

I’m looking at the gun as I back out toward the stairs. Doesn’t say what it is but it’s a big one alright. Someone’s moving up there in the front bedroom. A whimper, female.

Kelly?

I run up, doing it in about two bounds. It’s dark in the room and the light doesn’t come on when I tell it to. There’s a big double bed all messed up in the middle, stuff on it like bottles and little plastic bags. The floral patterned duvet is all bunched up on the far side, half fallen off.

It’s breathing.

I go round there and wrench it off. It’s a big duvet, and I have to keep yanking and yanking, like a magician pulling hankies out of his mouth. I get to the end and someone’s hanging on for dear life. A girl, wet face and blood coming out of her nose. She looks up at me. The eyes do seem blue.

I crouch and look into her face. Could it be? Could she have changed so much? She seems to think so, the look of hope and eager-to-please on her face. But I don’t.

No way.

I lift the gun to shoot her. I want to punish her for not being my daughter. Someone jumps from behind the curtains and out the door. Male? Female? Clumping footsteps down the landing says it’s a bloke.

I’m after him.

He’s in the back bedroom now. Window’s open and curtains billowing. I fire a shot on the off-chance, hitting the wardrobe. I reach the room and the air is full of talcum powder and bits of cotton. I stick my head out the window in time to see the last bit of him disappear over the back wall. Graven?

It
must
be him.

I aim the gun, hearing the running footsteps and waiting for him to appear somewhere. You can see all the little roads around here. Lights are coming on in upstairs windows all around, scared and angry voices in the night. Then I see him, a shape running through the allotments over there, knocking down beanpoles and disturbing new roots.

I’m out the window, hitting the grass and rolling over like you’re meant to.

I’m over the wall and after him.

Sirens are getting nearer but we’re heading away, towards Birchwood.

LEVEL 4: OUT OF CONTROL

1. Stabilise situation

2. Escalate problem to higher authority

3. When higher authority arrives, keep out of the way

4. Accept consequences

‘Lee,’ he said, barely getting it out. ‘Lee, I’m...’

He was behind the bed from me but I watched him in the wardrobe mirror. He looked groggy but he was able to pull himself up a bit using the bedside table. I jumped on the bed and destroyed the cheap bit of MFI tat with two swings of my bat. He went down again, sprawling with his face in the plywood fragments and bits of glass from the framed picture I always kept on that bedside table. Straight away he lifted his face again, like a boxer who don’t know when he’s beat. Bits of glass and droplets of blood fell off his cheek onto the photograph. He craned to look at me, eyes trying to say what his tongue didn’t know how.

‘Lee, we just...’

I looked at the photo. A little family of three: one dark, one pale and the other a combination of the two. Whatever it had been, it was finished now. Everything was different now and I felt myself splitting apart.

Jane was banging on the en suite door, screaming for her daughter.

Screaming for forgiveness.

‘Lee...’ Darren was just croaking. ‘Come on, think about this.’

But that was just it, wasn’t it?

I couldn’t bear to.

I brought the bat down on his head again, finally stabilising the situation.

You don’t have to think. Not when you’ve got procedures in place for all eventualities. I went downstairs and made a call, then closed my eyes for a few moments. When I opened them again, Graven was there. He was holding the lighter fluid from the security cabinet and a box of matches. He turned his eyes on me and said he’d take over now.

I wasn’t sure about it. I really wasn’t sure. But it was out of my hands.

I said I’ll tell you why Kelly had been taken away from me and now I have done. Those are the details how I remember them and how I need them to be. Maybe there are other bits, I don’t know. Memories fade over time, and although I could swear this happened only a moment ago it also seems like it happened a moment before that... and every moment going back years and years. And it will go on happening forever and ever until I stop it. But I
was
going to stop it. I was going to be with Kelly again.

This time I knew how to reach her.

‘Isn’t it just.’

‘He’s done it before, you know. Eight times. No, nine.’

‘Three.’

‘What?’

‘It says it in the article here.’

‘Where?’

‘There, see? Bla bla... “no less than three occasions since he was placed at the secure unit seven years ago, after being found not guilty due to diminished responsibility. The last time was two years ago, when he caused terror at a peaceful house party by threatening guests with a machete. Two years before that, he—”’

‘Yes, I can read. I still think it’s diabolical.’

‘I know.’

‘His own daughter. Five, she was. Five years old.’

‘I know. It says it all here.’

‘I don’t think people like him should be allowed to come back to the places they did their crime.’

‘He’s not, that’s why they’re after him. Do you wanna buy this paper or...?’

I was in a corner shop just outside Birchwood Cemetery. I’d rather they ignored me, the old lady and the shopkeeper. I wanted them to carry on whatever they were gossiping about. But I knew that was asking a bit much, me out of breath, sweating buckets and covered in blood. The lady hobbled off out the door and the man tried to act like I was just another customer. He wasn’t doing too bad, actually, although you could hear his controlled breathing.

I asked him for what I wanted. All of it behind the counter stuff. ‘I can’t pay you,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘I’ll pay you tomorrow, right?’

‘No you won’t,’ I think he said as I was leaving the shop.

He was right, as it turned out, but I had every good intention at the time. When you look back, you can see that I,
Leon
, had nothing but good intentions at every stage along the way, and never intended to hurt no one.

It was quiet in the cemetery. No one was about except a couple of old dears, a middle-aged man in his Sunday best and someone on a sit-down mower. Still I felt quite tense, like this placid setting was about to kick off big time any second now. I looked again at the mower man. He was as old as the other three and about five foot tall, so I couldn’t see him causing me trouble. Unless he had a Glock under them overalls. You never knew with Graven. You could never tell who he had influence over, who he had corrupted. But it wasn’t the mower man who was getting me all keyed up. I didn’t know what it was.

Maybe it was just excitement.

I was going to find Kelly.

If only I knew where to look. What if Graven didn’t have her here, after all that? I’d chased him most of the way but lost sight of him at the end, and hadn’t seen him come in here. But it felt like he was here somewhere.

I trusted that feeling. I had to.

I went to shout her name. If she was here I was going to find out. But I held my tongue on the K. Someone was staring at me, right over there by the big angel-type statue.

It was the Sunday best man.

‘Leon,’ he was saying. Not shouting, but loud of voice. And firm, like someone getting respect from a dog. ‘Leon!’

I turned and went the other way, just wanting to get away from him. I know it doesn’t reflect well on me but I couldn’t abide his voice. I could sense things being derailed with that voice around, detailed plans getting fucked up just before they bore fruit. That’s why I was running.

‘Leon!’

I don’t know what it was, but I found myself slowing. Not to a stop yet, but back to walking pace. I knew I’d get away from him at this speed but I also knew it wasn’t going to work. All it was going to take was him calling my name in that way, just one more time.

‘Leon!’

I stopped. There was a bench there and I sat on it, looking down at the big V formed by my legs. There was a lot of bird-shit on the path. The old man had reached me.

‘You’ve caused me a great deal of trouble,’ he was saying, easing himself onto the bench next to me. Way too close for my tastes. I could smell the Fisherman’s Friend he was sucking. ‘It’s gone too far this time, Leon. You’ve caused a lot of people a lot of pain. Is that what you wanted?’

I could still run. Couldn’t I? I could go and hide behind that big headstone there. I could run past it and keep running until I was back in the road, then...

Then...

‘Leon!’

‘Yeah! I mean no, I never meant no one no trouble. All I’m trying to do is get things sorted.’

‘I see. And what do you say to me?’

‘Just... I dunno. Sorry, I suppose. I never meant it.’

‘Well, OK. But, you know, we could have talked about this. If I’d have known you wanted to try this again I could have helped you. It was always an option, but you never expressed an interest, Leon. You gave us to believe that all this was behind you. We’ve been exploring other channels, remember? Can you tell me some of those channels?’

I shrugged. I was watching a new figure, over the far side. Thought it was one of the old dears at first but no, this one was male. Couldn’t tell much more though.

‘Well, what about the buried letter? Remember that? You wrote down the thing you most wanted, the one thing that kept you awake at night and that you hoped to attain one day. Do you remember that, Leon?’

The male shape was getting closer. Seemed like he was looking right at me for a moment. It was hard to tell.

‘You dug it up, didn’t you? Before you escaped.’

I shrugged.

‘Can I have it?’

I got out the soil-stained letter. He opened it and read it, going: ‘Hmmm, I see.’ He folded it up again and gave it back to me.

But I didn’t want it.

I didn’t need it now.

‘While we’re at it,’ he said, ‘can I have my phone back?’

I gave him his phone, wiping it first because I think it had some blood on it.

‘Thanks, erm... have you been hurt?’

‘Cut myself shaving.’

‘Right, well... Leon, can you recall any of the other channels we’ve been exploring? Do you remember we talked about destiny?’

I flinched. Felt like someone had lobbed a stone at me. I turned, rubbing the back of my neck, but no one was there. Strange. When I looked back to the front again I could no longer see the male shape in the distance. I could feel myself panicking a bit, thinking I’d lost him. But then I saw him, over to the side. Much closer.

‘Do you remember what your agreed destiny was?
Synthesis
, Leon. Do you recall what that means?’

It was Graven.

‘Well, I’ll remind you. It means reuniting disparate parts to make an organic whole. Now, we were trying to achieve that in therapy, weren’t we? But we could use the opportunity we have here. What do you think about that?’

It was Graven, plain as day and shameless, walking around in front of me like he owned the place. Which, in a way, he did. Graven was the boss around here. Graven had influence.