James swallowed hard. The effects of the whiskey wearing thin, he twisted the cap back off the bottle and took a long swig. Finally he said, ‘So did you talk to anyone, a friend or something?’
‘I did. I gave a detailed report to my closest friend.’
‘Who?’
‘God, of course.’
Feeling stupid, he said, ‘What did God do?’
‘It wasn’t a question of what God did for me. It was more a question of what I was able to do through keeping my faith. God doesn’t perform acts like that, He merely points the way. He led me to the banana plantation, He led me to Dominick. Without Him I would’ve been truly lost.’
Danielle’s behaviour in the clearing now made perfect sense. She’d resisted leaving because she felt safe there. The parallel to her current situation was astounding.
‘James?’ she muttered. ‘Eric told me something yesterday. ‘Something you should probably know.’
Sitting up straight, James tried to focus.
‘It’s about the guy in handcuffs,’ she added. ‘He told me who was wearing them.’
48
London, 1992
Gradually, the faces of his family evaporated into a funnel of light. He reached out as he raced along, tried to slow down. There was nothing to grip. Piece by piece the bright tunnel transformed into daylight and as suddenly as his journey began, it ended.
Over the precipice of a sheer drop he looked down at his dangling feet, nothing below but rocks and shale. He recognised the place. He’d been there many times before.
Raising his eyes, the rest of the expanse honed into view, awe-inspiring and vast.
‘Remember this place?’
‘The quarry,’ Nicolas York mouthed. ‘I loved this place growing up.’
‘You did. No matter how much we were warned to stay away, we would always come down here.’
Without replying, York took in the enormity of the abandoned quarry. The place was condemned, a hazard, and so no one stepped foot in there. It was guaranteed solitude; no alcoholic and bickering parents, no demanding teachers.
‘Do you remember what happened here, Nicky?’
York nodded slowly.
‘This is where you lost your grip on reality, if only for a while.’
Images began seeping steadily through the cracks of his mind: lying alone on his side in bed, crying himself to sleep for months; in class at school, unable to concentrate, freaking out in blind panic in the middle of lessons; thirteen years old, mind fractured.
‘Two years you spent in that hospital. But they pulled you back, and you got on with your life as best you knew how. I don’t know if you did it intentionally but you successfully blanked out your depression, pushed it down deep. It’s been down there ever since, manifesting, thriving on your failures, your losses, your self-destruction.’
‘I…I don’t feel it,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t feel anything.’
‘That is your demon, Nicky, buried deep in your subconscious. And the sooner you remember, the sooner you can deal with it.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to deal with it,’ he replied. ‘Maybe it’s become so dug-in, there is no way to deal with it.’
‘What happened that day wasn’t your fault. It was me, Nicolas, I was to blame. You blanked everything so effectively you convinced yourself you were somehow responsible.’
‘I…I…’
‘It wasn’t your fault, Nicolas. I was reckless, showing off. ’
‘But I…’
‘It wasn’t your fault, I’m telling you the truth…God's honest truth.’
Gradually the voice faded away, filtering into the crumbling image of the quarry. Then…
*
…eyelids like rusty hinges, York prized them open. He coughed, and pain erupted through his side like…he’d been stabbed.
‘Welcome back,’ said a woman’s voice. It sounded like Mason. ‘Whoa, whoa, don’t try and move. You’ll rupture the stitches.’
Slowly the room came into focus. It smelt like the Dungeon. He was lying in a bed of crisp white linen, a bare fluorescent tube hanging blindingly overhead. In the bed to his right was an elderly man coughing, grumbling in his sleep, and to his left was Mason sitting on a plastic visitors’ chair, her vaguely masculine features eying him stonily.
‘You couldn’t get me a room to myself?’ he muttered sleepily.
‘They wanted to give you one,’ said Mason, ‘but I told them you’d be much more comfortable in here with Cliff Richards.’
York rolled his head to the sleeping man. ‘That’s not his name.’
‘It’s what his chart says.’
York grinned, which hurt like hell. ‘How long was I out?’ he grunted.
‘Couple of days, you lost a lot of blood. Who was it?’
York glanced away.
‘That’s what I thought. What happened?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘We’ve checked out the CCTV from the café and some from the high street, but all we can tell is you were in pursuit of somebody. No image is clear enough to make him out.’
‘Shocker,’ York muttered.
‘Yeah,’ Mason agreed. ‘Who was he?’
‘He was he, Judy, our Mr Valentine.’
She nodded slowly, unsurprised. ‘So fill in some blanks for me. How did you go from jumping into that alley to having a knife in your back?’
He took an aching breath, trying to remember. ‘I…I talked to him. Then we fought, and I lost.’
‘I figured that much.’
‘He was strong, Judy. I mean strong, strong. And he had a knife…I couldn’t…wait, how am I still breathing?’
‘You don’t remember?’
From somewhere in the foggy backcountry of his mind he recalled the mysterious blonde assuring him help was
