The safe house Read online

  There were knocks at the door. I looked out of the window. There was a group of uniformed officers on the path and a second group further away. Another car was pulling up. I ran down the stairs, pulling a robe around me, and opened the door.

  ‘Is everybody all right?’ the officer in front asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is Fiona Mackenzie.’

  ‘Upstairs, with my daughter.’

  ‘May we come in?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The man turned around.

  ‘Secure the first floor,’ he said.

  Two officers, one of them female, brushed past me and ran upstairs, their feet clattering on the wood.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Bear with us a moment,’ the first officer said. Another policeman ran up and whispered in his ear. ‘We’ve apprehended a man. He says he knows you. Can you come and make an identification?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want to get dressed?’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘Come this way, then. He’s sitting in the car over there.’

  My heart beat almost painfully as I approached the silhouetted figures in the car and then I just had to laugh. It was a dishevelled Danny, firmly pinioned between two officers.

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘He’s a friend. A close friend.’

  The officers let him go with some reluctance. I saw that one of them was holding a handkerchief against his nose.

  ‘Very well, sir,’ said the other. ‘I should avoid lurking in gardens in the middle of the night, in future.’

  Danny didn’t answer. He glowered at them and at me and walked towards the house. I caught up with him at the front door.

  ‘What were you up to?’

  ‘My fucking van broke down in the village, so I walked. Somebody grabbed me so I hit back.’

  ‘I’m glad you came, oh, my God, I’m glad,’ I said and slid my arms around his waist. ‘And I’m sorry.’ A giggle rose in my chest like a sob.

  There was another scrape of gravel in the drive behind me. I turned and saw an unmarked car scraping to a halt. The door opened and a burly figure emerged. Baird. He stumbled forward towards us. He stopped and scrutinized Danny blearily.

  ‘What a bloody shower,’ he said and walked past into the hall. ‘I need some bloody coffee.’

  ‘Your men were on the scene with improbable speed,’ I said.

  Baird was sitting at the table with his head in his hands. Danny was standing in the far corner with a glass of whisky, occasionally topped up from the bottle which he was holding in his other hand.

  ‘They were in the vicinity,’ Baird said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I understand that you’ve encountered Frank Laroue.’

  ‘Did Daley tell you?’

  ‘We believe him to be a dangerous man, Sam. And now he has contacted you.’

  I was confused for a moment.

  ‘What did…? Are you tapping my phone?’

  ‘It was an obvious precaution,’ Baird said.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Danny, and walked out.

  ‘How much does he know?’ Baird asked.

  ‘How much do I know? Why wasn’t I told any of this? Is Laroue a suspect?’

  Baird frowned and looked at his watch.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘I think it is likely that the Mackenzie murders are linked to the wave of terrorism in the region of Essex around Stamford. We thought it possible that there might be a move against Fiona Mackenzie here. Please offer your friend my apologies.’ He got up to go. ‘For your information, tomorrow…’ He paused and smiled wanly. ‘Today, there will be an operation led by a colleague of mine named Carrier, involving arrests across the county. Among them will be Frank Laroue, who will be charged with various offences of conspiracy and incitement to violence.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘So I suppose the drink I was going to have with him will have to be postponed.’

  ‘That was not especially prudent,’ Baird said. ‘Anyway, I’m convinced that you are now perfectly safe.’

  ‘What if it wasn’t the animal terrorists who killed the Mackenzies?’

  ‘In that case the murderers were probably burglars.’

  ‘What did they steal?’

  ‘It went wrong, they were disturbed. Whatever the case, you’re safe now.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’ve got my parents coming for dinner later today.’

  At ten later that morning there was a timid knock on the door. A thin young man, boy, really, whose hair was scraped back into a pony-tail, was standing there with a bag and a nervously adoring smile. It faded when he saw me.

  ‘Miss Fiona wanted some vegetables,’ he said and pushed the bag into my hands.

  ‘Real farm produce, whatever next?’ asked Danny. ‘Real home-cooking, perhaps?’

  Finn and Elsie came out of the kitchen. They both had their sleeves rolled up, and Elsie had wrapped a dish towel around her waist like an apron.

  ‘Why don’t you two go out for a walk before your mother arrives?’ asked Finn.

  Was this the girl who only a few weeks ago had been unable to piece two words together? She was wearing her new, dark-blue jeans and a white cotton shirt; her dark hair was brushed back into a pony-tail and tied with a velvet bow. Her face was tanned from our windswept walks and flushed from the heat of the stove. She looked clean and young and soft, with her supple limbs and her strong slim shoulders; I knew if I stood closer to her I would be able to smell soap and talcum power on her. She made me feel old and weathered. Coming forward, she took the bag from me, peering into its interior.

  ‘Potatoes,’ she said. ‘And spinach. Just what we wanted, eh, Elsie?’

  ‘Who was that boy?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, that was Roy, Judith’s son,’ she replied airily. She knew far more local people than I did. She giggled. ‘I think he fancies me,’ and then she flushed from the roots of her hair down to her throat, on which the scar was already fading.

  Danny looked after her as she went.

  ‘She’s looking well.’

  ‘You and that boy with the pony-tail,’ I said.

  Danny didn’t laugh.

  Outside the sky was a bright pale-blue, and although it had snowed a few days ago – spitty, mean little flakes that scattered along the ridges of the red-soiled fields – the air was gentle. I had turned all the heating off and opened the windows. In the garden, among the weeds and undergrowth, daffodils glowed and tulips stood in a row of tightly unopened buds.

  ‘Shall we have a walk then?’ asked Danny. ‘When are your parents descending?’

  ‘We’ve a good couple of hours. Let’s go through Stone-on-Sea’ – though the sea had long since been pushed back by the sea walls, leaving the village surrounded by desolate marshland and strange, land-locked jetties – ‘and to the coast that way.’

  It was so mild we didn’t even need jackets. Through the kitchen window I could see Finn bending over something, a furrow of concentration on her brows. Elsie was out of sight. Danny pulled me closer to him, and for a long time we walked in silence, strides matched. Then he spoke.

  ‘Sam, there’s something I need to talk to you about.’

  ‘What’s that?’ His tone was unusually serious, and an unaccountable fear invaded me.

  ‘It’s to do with Finn, of course, and you, and Elsie too. Oh hell, I don’t know, come here.’

  And he stopped and pulled me against him and buried his face in my neck.

  ‘What is it, Danny? Talk to me, we should have talked a long time ago, please tell me.’

  ‘No, wait,’ he murmured. ‘Bodies talk better.’

  I pushed my hands under his sweater and shirt and felt his warm, strong back naked under my fingers. With his face still nuzzling me, stubble grazing my cheek, he undid the belt on my jeans like a blind man and slid one hand inside my trousers, cupping my buttocks. My breath came in shallow gasps.

  ‘Not here, Danny.’r />
  ‘Why? There’s no one to see.’

  Around us the marshes spread out in every direction, punctuated by stunted trees and rusting boats stranded when the sea was tamed by the walls. Danny undid my bra with one expert hand. I pulled back his head by his long, not-quite-clean hair and saw his face was screwed up in a kind of concentrated disquiet.

  ‘Don’t be anxious, my love,’ I said, and undid his trousers and let him tug down mine, and he pushed into me despairingly while my jeans and knickers puddled round my pinioned ankles. So we stood tangled together in a great empty space under a tepid sun, and I thought how undignified I must look and hoped no farmer would decide to walk this way and wondered what my mother would say.

  ‘This,’ Danny was speaking with his mouth full and I could see my mother looking across the table at him with a pucker-mouthed distaste, ‘is great, Finn.’

  Finn had served us roast leg of lamb spiked with garlic and rosemary, jacket potatoes with sour cream as well as butter, coarsely chopped spinach, and she’d even remembered to buy mint sauce from the supermarket yesterday. My father – dressed in his version of casual, which meant a tweed jacket, trousers of an indeterminate greyish colour, the first button undone on his well-ironed shirt and a parting like a new pink road running though his thinning grey hair – had produced two bottles of wine. My mother ate her food neatly, dabbing her lips after each mouthful, taking cautious sips of wine every so often. Finn ate almost nothing, but she sat at the table with bright eyes and a nervous smile hovering on her lips. On one side of her sat Danny, who was on his best behaviour but rather subdued, I thought. On the other sat Michael Daley, determinedly animated, diligently charming to everyone. He had arrived in a flurry of yellow roses (for me), anemones (for Finn, who’d clutched them to her like a shy bride), wine, firm handshakes. He listened to my mother attentively when she spoke about the terrible morning they’d had, asked my father respectfully about the route they’d taken to come here, lifted Elsie, wriggling, on to his shoulders, bent consolingly towards Finn every time he spoke to her, his dark-blond hair flopping over his eyes as he did so. He wasn’t suave; he just seemed attractively eager to please. He turned on his chair like a weather-vane, swinging at every remark. He handed out vegetables, jumped up to help Finn in the kitchen. He was full of a strange nervous energy. Suddenly I wondered, appalled, if he was falling in love with Finn, and then I wondered if he was falling in love with me. And if he was, what did I feel about that?

  I looked at the two men on either side of the girl: one so dark, surly and gorgeous; the other fairer, more enigmatic. And I could see which of them my mother liked with every grim mouthful that she diligently chewed. There was a strange tension between the men; they were in competition, but I couldn’t work out over what, exactly. Danny incessantly made paper shapes, twisting scraps of his paper napkin into flowers and boats.

  Over baked apples (stuffed, by Elsie, with raisins and honey, though Elsie by now had retired to her bedroom, saying she was going to make a picture) my mother said, in her ever-so-interested voice, ‘And how’s work, Samantha?’

  I mumbled something about being at a waiting stage, and the conversation would have petered away (indeed, I saw Michael sitting up a bit straighter, waiting to leap gallantly into the silence he knew was coming), when my dad coughed formally and laid down his napkin. We all turned to him.

  ‘When I was a prisoner in Japan,’ he began, and my heart sank. I’d had this conversation before. ‘I saw lots of men die. They died like flies.’ He paused; we waited with the automatic respect of people who must bow their heads before a tragedy. ‘I saw more than any of you will ever see and more I’m sure than any of your precious patients see.’

  I looked at Finn, but her head was bent and she was chasing a raisin around her plate with a fork.

  ‘I came back home and I just got on with things. I remember everything.’ He laid his hand over the tweed at his breast. ‘But I put it to one side. All this talking about trauma and stress and victims, it does no good, you know, it’s just opening up old wounds. Best to let things lie. I don’t doubt your motives, Samantha. But you young people think that you have a right to happiness. You have to endure. Trauma!’ He guffawed. ‘That’s just modern rubbish.’ He picked up his wine glass and took a mouthful of its contents, his eyes glaring over the rim. My mother looked anxious.

  ‘Well…’ began Michael in an understanding tone.

  ‘Dad…’ I started in a wail that I recognized belonged to my childhood.

  But Finn’s voice cut through, soft and clear.

  ‘As far as I understand it, Mr Laschen, trauma is an over-used word. People use it when they often just mean grief or shock or bereavement. Real trauma is something different. People don’t just get over it. They need help.’ Her eyes flicked to mine for a moment, and I gave her a little smile. The room felt oddly quiet. ‘Some people who are traumatized find life is literally unbearable. They’re not weak cowards or fools; they’ve been injured and they need to be healed. Doctors heal the body’s wounds, but sometimes you can’t see the wounds. They are there, though. Just because you suffered and didn’t complain, do you think other people should suffer as well?’ No one spoke. ‘I think Sam helps people a lot. She saves people. It’s not about happiness, you see, it’s about being able to live.’

  Michael leaned across and took the fork, which she was still pushing around her plate. He put his arm around her, and she leaned into him gratefully.

  ‘Finn and I are going to make everybody coffee,’ he said, and led her from the room.

  My mother noisily clattered our pudding plates together.

  ‘Teenage girls are always very intense,’ she said understandingly.

  I looked over at my father.

  ‘You know what the problem is?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Your door’s sticking. I’ll bet it’s the hinges. I’ll look it over later. Have you got any carbon paper?’

  ‘Carbon paper? Why would I have that?’

  ‘For spreading down the lintel, find where it’s rubbing. There’s nothing like carbon paper for that.’

  Nineteen

  Once, when I was about ten, we went on our summer holiday to Filey Bay up on the east coast. I’ve never been back, and all I remember about the place is sand-dunes and a fierce and dirty wind – how it swept along the sea front in the evenings, rattling the cans that had been left lying on the pavements, sending crisp packets into the air like small tatty kites. And I remember, as well, that my father took me out in a pedal-boat. My legs would hardly reach the pedals, and I had to sit forward on the seat while he sat back, his legs – skinny and shiny white in his unaccustomed shorts – skittered away. I looked down into the water and suddenly could no longer see the bottom, just a depthless grey-brown. As if it happened yesterday, I can feel the panic that flooded through me, leaking into all the compartments of my mind. I screamed and I screamed, clutching my bewildered father’s arm, so that my mother, waiting on the shore, thought something terrible had happened, though our little red boat still bobbed safely a few yards out. I don’t feel safe with water, and although I know how to swim I try to avoid doing so. When I take Elsie to the swimming pool I tend to stand knee-deep and watch her splash about. The sea, for me, is not a place to have fun; it’s not a giant leisure centre but a terrifying expanse that sucks up boats and bodies and radioactive waste and shit. Sometimes, especially in the evening when the layered grey of the sea blurs with the darkening grey of the sky, I stand and look out at the shining water and imagine the other, underwater world that lies hidden beneath it and it makes me feel dizzy.

  So what did I think I was doing going sailing with Michael Daley? When he’d phoned me up to arrange it I’d replied, in my enthusiastic voice, that I would love to go out in his boat. I like people to think that I’m brave, dauntless. I haven’t screamed with fear since I was a little girl.

  ‘What shall I bring?’ I asked.

  ‘
Nothing. I’ve got a wet suit that should fit you and a life-jacket, of course. Remember to wear gloves.’

  ‘Wet suit?’

  ‘You know, the kind of rubber suit divers wear – you’ll look good in one. If we capsized you’d freeze without it at this time of year.’

  ‘Capsize?’

  ‘Has this phone got an echo or is it just you?’

  ‘I can’t possibly fit into this.’

  I was looking at something that resembled a series of black and lime-green inner tubes.

  ‘You have to take your clothes off first.’ We were in my living room. Danny had gone to Stamford to buy some paint, Finn had gone to the corner shop for milk and bread and Elsie was at school. Michael was already wearing his wet suit, under a yellow waterproof. He looked slim and long, but faintly absurd, like an astronaut without his spaceship, like a fish out of water.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Put a swimsuit on underneath.’

  ‘Right. I think that I’ll do this in my bedrom. Help yourself to coffee.’

  Upstairs I stripped down, put on my swimming costume and started to push my legs into the thick black rubber. God, it was tight. It closed elastically around my thighs and I tugged it up over my hips. My skin felt as if it were suffocating. The worst bit was getting my arms into the sleeves; I felt as if my body was going to buckle under the pull of the rubber. The zip did up behind but I couldn’t reach it – indeed, I could hardly lift my arms higher than horizontal.

  ‘Are you all right?’ called Michael.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want any help?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He came into the room and I saw us both in the mirror, long-legged moon-walkers.

  ‘I was right, it does suit you,’ he said and I pulled my stomach in self-consciously as he did up the zip, its cold metal and his warm fingers running up my knobbled spine. His breath blew against my hair.

  ‘Put your boots on’ – he handed me a pair of neat rubber shoes – ‘and then we can go.’

  The wind blew in icy gusts up the pebbly beach, where Michael’s boat was pulled up in a line with other dinghies. His boat-house was apparently where he kept his windsurfers and spare tack; his dinghy lived outside in all weathers. A strange humming sound, a bit like forests on a fierce winter night, came from the denuded boats: all those cord-things (‘Shrouds,’ said Michael) which held the masts up were rattling. The small waves were whitetipped. I could see squalls rippling across the slatey water. Michael tipped his head back.