SEVENTY-THREE

‘Are you sure? Did you get a good look at him?’

‘Yes. No. But how many men are that tall? It was him.’

‘What was he wearing? I’ll get a description to the police right away.’

Amber tried to recall what she had actually seen, and for what must have been no more than a second before her car stalled. ‘Don’t know. Because the sun was setting behind him. I only saw a silhouette.’ But it was the outline of a man she wouldn’t forget in a hurry.

She rubbed the outside of her arms; they goosed at the remembered suggestion of the figure’s height, and the direction the long bony head had been turned in.

‘How could he possibly know you are there?’ Josh was trying his best to maintain a sympathetic tone of voice, but she knew that he didn’t believe her. He’d always maintained mostly unshared reservations about her testimony, about her sanity. She couldn’t blame him. They all did; everyone she had employed. Everyone thought the same things about her: that exhaustion and depression and anxiety had taken such a toll on her that she had begun hallucinating inside 82 Edgehill Road from the first day of her residency. That she was hyper manic, as one doctor had suggested, and that she had become acutely paranoid because of what they had done to her and threatened to do to her. Trauma did that. Shock did that. Sustained terror and an unrelenting fear of your own death did that. The prolonged anticipation of torture and rape did that. Loss of control and imprisonment did that.

Her instability had hampered the inquest from the start; that’s what she had been told politely and impolitely on numerous occasions. But she was paying Josh and he had to take her seriously. Josh had always acknowledged that her fear was genuine – that was never his grievance – but he could not believe what she said about the other things.

Amber’s eyes burned with tears. Her distress remained silent until she sniffed.

‘I’m on my way. Give me three hours. I’m in Worcester.’

Amber cleared her throat, heeled both eye sockets with a hand. ‘The dust, and him . . . I had a dream. A new one. Inside here. They were in here. They got inside, Josh. They were in my room . . .’ Her voice failed.

‘OK, OK, I’m setting off now. I’m going to assume you have your “little friend”?’ Josh’s voice was strained with disapproval at her possession of the weapon while she employed him. He had not asked her the question to verify that she was ready to defend herself; he was afraid that she might use the handgun on herself, or on one of the neighbours who might foolishly walk their dog across the top of her drive.

Amber sniffed. ‘I’m ready. Ready for that prick. I almost want him to show up. You know, that’s the crazy thing. Part of me is even excited by the idea of finishing this thing. Of finishing him.’

She had come down from fear to light up with rage. Even her hands trembled. It felt good too, if good was the right word. It felt natural and necessary and vital and unstoppable; she couldn’t prevent this kind of rage even if she chose to. They had gifted the rage to her the night they locked her in the ground floor flat. Where she had been.

In the background, beyond the border of her thoughts that were lit up red, and that made her teeth grind until they felt like they were made of clay and oozing together, she could hear Josh’s voice. A stern voice that was gradually rising in volume: ‘OK, Amber. Amber! Listen to me. Amber, now I need you to calm down. To think this through. Amber, are you listening to me?’

But she wasn’t heeding him. This was her home, her sanctuary; she had suffered for this and she had earned this and she had paid for it with more than money. And that rat-faced prick was not coming back to frighten and threaten her.

To break her.

‘I will not let him! I will not! Where is he? Josh! Where the fuck is he?’ And she only realized she was screaming a few seconds after she’d begun. ‘Three years! Three years and he’s still out there. He’s got her. Her! Why can’t you find them? Why? Why, Josh? Because he took her from the house. That’s why. They never found her . . .’ And then, to the shocked silence at the other end of the phone, she whispered, ‘She hid him. Hid him, Josh. That’s the only way Fergal got away. She knows how to hide. She hid in that building for a hundred years. Why will none of you believe me?’

Josh stayed quiet. Not even he knew what to say. He’d been in Iraq and Afghanistan; he’d been in wars and Amber believed he had killed men. He was now a bodyguard for the wealthy and their children because Josh knew how to spot danger and anything that might seem suspicious or risky; he was a risk manager. He knew how to hide and he knew how to hide people from their enemies. But not even a man like Josh was in her league.

Her.

Maggie.

Black Maggie.

The words thumped deep and low, rhythmically, like a little drum in a wooden box, beaten by unseen hands in a black room that opened doors onto another place you could not see the end of.

‘In about an hour I’ll pull over and check in.’ Josh was doing his best to remain calm and professional after she had screamed at him and practically accused him of failing her. ‘Then I’ll call you as I am approaching the house. It’ll be late. But do your best to stay calm until I get there.’

Amber sniffed. ‘Is there any news? Anything that you can tell me?’

‘Sorry. No.’ And she knew that as he said this, Josh was also struggling to comprehend how a sub-literate career criminal, well over six foot tall, with limited resources, with filthy clothes and hands covered in blood, with no known friends in the West Midlands, with half his face burned away by concentrated sulphuric acid, could have stayed hidden for three years and left no trace of his whereabouts. Aside from the body of the Accident and Emergency nurse he had followed home and forced to treat his injuries, before he throttled her to death with her own tights, the day after his flight from that place.

Amber placed a tea towel over the dust on the newspaper, and then uncapped the bottle of Sailor Jerry.