Buried

‘I can tell that you’re caring.’

‘Shut up now…’

‘You’ve made me wet the bed.’ She tried to keep her voice steady, as though she were scolding a child, but trying not to scare them. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’ But she was the one who was ashamed, then suddenly angry, and reaching across for the chain that dangled from the bedside lamp.

He swore when the light came on, started shouting, and in a second he was on her.

Her fingers dug into his forearms as he tried to reach behind her, but the strength went from them when she saw his face. It took her a second or two to place him. Then confusion took hold, and the fireworks in her head flew faster and hotter, but before she could formulate a ‘what?’ or a ‘why?’ her head was dropping back, and the soft shadow was rushing down at her.

She spoke his name twice into the pillow, but it was just a silly noise.

He was woken by the pain in his leg as he shifted across the mattress to make room for his father.

‘Move your fat arse, for Christ’s sake,’ Jim Thorne said.

Thorne put the light on. 4.17 a.m. He reached across for the glass of water, pushed a couple of co-codamols from the blister pack.

‘You’re a fucking drug addict!’

There were two paperbacks next to the bed, both of which had been started several times over. Thorne couldn’t summon the concentration to have another crack. There was a Standard in his bag, and two days’ worth of unopened post on the table by the front door, but he didn’t want to go through the living room and risk waking Hendricks up. So he lay there and tried to get comfortable.

Thorne’s father had developed a decent line in good advice since his death. There were occasional words of wisdom, flashes of insight; at least once, the information Thorne had needed to catch a killer.

But it was not a source that anyone would call reliable.

For whatever reason, the old man was content on this occasion to do nothing but stare up at the ceiling and remind Thorne just how ‘fucking-bastard horrible’ his light fitting was.

SATURDAY LUKE

He’d never got drunk. On those few occasions he’d tagged along with other boys on trips to the pub, he’d always drawn the line at a couple; stopped well before the one that would tip him over the edge. And however much he’d wanted to, however much he’d thought that he should, he’d always said no when those boys who were into it had slipped into the park for a joint after school. He knew that Juliet had done it. She’d told him that the first time you felt sick, but after that it was great, and you just felt really relaxed and mellow. That sounded good, but he’d never been quite brave enough to try it. To take the risk, knowing what might happen. How his dad felt about drugs.

He’d always been afraid of losing control.

But now, sitting against the wall in the dark, he imagined that this was probably what it felt like. To be completely off your head. He imagined that when you were pissed or stoned you got this sensation of being somewhere else, of everything swimming and twisted. Of losing touch.

The man had been down to see him, to bring him some food and tell him some things. He didn’t know if the man had been in the house all the time, or if he came and went. He hadn’t heard a front door open or close, but, of course, he didn’t know how far away from it he was.

Luke had no idea if it was late at night or early in the morning. There was a narrow shaft of light coming down through a floorboard at the far end, but he couldn’t tell if it was daylight or coming from a room on the floor above him. Whichever, it didn’t allow him to see much. He was growing used to the darkness, though, and he was starting to map out the room, just like he’d done back in the flat with Conrad and Amanda.

It had been slow and difficult, feeling his way around, with the rope tying his hands together cutting off the feeling in his fingers.

He was in a cellar, maybe fifteen feet by twenty. There was a longer bit that narrowed and ran to a wall which sloped suddenly away from his touch and upwards. He was sure this was an old coal chute; he’d seen one before at a friend’s house when they’d gone down to collect a bottle of wine to have with dinner. The walls at his friend’s place had been plastered and painted, but these were rough, just the original brick, and the ceiling was only a few inches above his head. There were some shelves on one side, thick with dust where they weren’t crammed with cans and open boxes of tiles. Beneath were rolls of paper, a heavy bag of hardened cement, what felt like picture frames leaning one against the other. He could smell paint and turpentine; could taste brick dust and damp earth in another corner. He heard something scurrying as he tried to get to sleep.

When the man had opened the door and stood at the top of the stairs, it had been dark behind him. He’d shone a torch to light his way down. He’d brought a hamburger and fries in a bag, a plastic cup of Coke. He’d crouched, ripped the tape from Luke’s face, then let the torch beam drop to the filthy floor while Luke ate, and while he talked.

When the man had finished, he’d waited, staring at Luke as though he were expecting a reaction to what he’d said. To the mad, vile shit he’d said about everyone Luke loved. He’d raised the torch up to Luke’s face.

But Luke had just sat, and wolfed down the food, and hated himself for wanting to cry.

Afterwards, the man had asked Luke if he thought he needed to put the tape back over his mouth. Luke had shaken his head. The man had told him that there was no point in shouting anyway because nobody would hear him, but that this would be a test. If Luke behaved himself, and didn’t shout, then maybe next time the man would take the rope from around his wrists as well. The man was sure that Luke would pass the test. He’d said that Luke was a good lad, a sensible boy; that he knew what a very good boy he was.

Luke had nodded. Kept on nodding.

Now, sitting in the dark, he was trying to work it out. Was the man just talking, or did he really know? Did he know particular stuff about him? He certainly claimed to know the people Luke cared about very well…

He was wide awake; as awake as he could remember being since this whole thing had started. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been drugged again; not since the man had taken him from the flat and put him in the car. Maybe it was because he had slept, though Luke couldn’t say for sure if he had, at least not for any length of time. Perhaps he was just at that stage beyond tiredness, where you started to feel fine again; where you could think clearly about something other than sleep.

He was thinking about survival.

He knew that his mother and father would do whatever the man wanted to get him back, but he’d seen enough films and TV shows to know that plans sometimes went wrong. As far as things between him and the man went, it was obvious that the key to getting through it was control. Control would give him his best chance.

He just didn’t know whether that meant keeping it or losing it.

TWELVE

Below the calendar, on the pale yellow kitchen wall, there was some kind of poem or story in old-fashioned copperplate. It was about a man walking along a beach and always seeing two sets of footprints: his and God’s. Except for those dark periods of his life when he was unhappy or struggling with some great problem, when one set of footprints seemed to disappear. In the poem, the man is angry with God for deserting him in his time of greatest need, but God explains that although there was only one set of footprints on the beach, the man was never really alone. That it was at those very darkest of times, when God was carrying him…

Heeney shook his head, nodded towards the large sitting room that was used as a therapy area. ‘I never