‘I shouldn’t be too long. If they’ll let me in the house, I’ll check that everything is okay, that the place is safe, and then we’ll be pretty much out of your hair. You going to be okay on your own? Are there any family or friends you can call?’
‘Yeah, yeah. I just need to, well, you know. Get it straight. I don’t want anyone to think…’
I didn’t know what I was trying to say, but it had the desired effect on Nick. He realised I was struggling and let the subject drop. He patted my shoulder, and he and the soldier were gone. They disappeared around the right hand side of the wall and I heard a tinny engine start up. The other soldier stepped back into sight, taking up a position directly in the middle of the gateway facing the road. I turned and, with a momentary pause at the front door, stepped into my rapidly emptying home.
‘Jenny? Jenny?’
She wasn’t in the lounge or the kitchen, so I advanced up the stairs, still calling. She finally emerged from one of the spare rooms.
‘The kids are tired. I think I’ll join them for a nap,’ she said softly, head down.
‘No worries. Look, I’m going to make some calls, talk to some of our old school friends. You know? Make sure everyone’s okay. Do you need to call anyone?’
‘No, no. We’ll be home soon enough. Nick says tonight, even. Matt, the kids… I just want them settled.’
‘Sure, of course.’
She left me standing on the landing feeling quite alone. I went down to the kitchen, got a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water. I hadn’t realised how dry my throat was. My body ached so I swallowed a couple of pain killers. I stood at the sink, looking out of the window and across the garden until I lost track of time.
I was feeling some of the pressure on the back of my neck lift when Nick returned. He could not contain the smile on his face as I walked through the house and met him at the foot of the stairs.
‘It’s unbelievable over there. I’ve seen loads of people I know, neighbours, friends, it’s… Oh, mate, I didn’t mean to be insensitive.’
‘Nick, it’s okay. Life has to go on.’
‘Yeah well, for some of us, life’s only going on because of you and Danny. Nobody’s going to forget that. I bumped into Alex Brown. Do you know him? He lives on Mill Street. He saw you and Danny bring the girls back. He says it was amazing. He says…’
‘How’s the house looking?’
‘Oh. Oh, sorry. Umm…it’s fine. We can go back tomorrow. They’re going to reopen the roads at some point in the morning. Look. Matt? There’s, there’s…nothing to be seen over there. They’ve cleaned it all up. Come stay with us for a few days, as long as you like. Don’t sit here alone, not with…you know?’
‘Thanks, but I need to be alone. I need to let all of this out. I just can’t with…’
I was struggling. What excuse could I use now when I just wanted them to leave? The patter of footsteps came from upstairs, little voices that had maybe just picked up on the fact that their Dad was back. That gave me the answer I needed.
‘I can’t let the kids see me fall apart, Nick. You understand that, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do. I’ll just go and tell Jenny about the house.’
‘Yeah, yeah. And Nick? You can do me one favour when you do go back into town? Just ask them to respect my privacy for a little while. I don’t want to be talking through it again and again. That okay?’
He nodded, looked like he was the one that was going to break down, and then turned and took the stairs two at a time to go to his family. I walked through the lounge and back into the kitchen. I took a seat at the table, my mind awash as I formulated my plan.
* * *
It was Private Hayes who brought the good news to our door at a little after one the following afternoon. The roads were now officially open and the Williams family could go back to their home. It came as no surprise. The BBC had, every fifteen minutes, launched into the headline that the epidemic was over and that all infected cases were accounted for and had been properly dealt with. They didn’t come right out and say it, but everyone watching, each and every person who had seen what had taken place across the country, knew what that meant: eliminated.
Nick had been out to the Citroen and started it up, let it run for a few minutes and then, under the supervision of the soldiers, had turned it around and pulled onto the driveway. The tyres had hardly stopped on the gravel before Jenny had one of the back doors open and was ushering the children into the back seat. She leant in after them and made sure their seatbelts were firmly fastened as Nick got out and made his way over to me.
‘Are you sure you won’t come with us?’ he asked.
‘Nick, just leave it be,’ Jenny called. ‘Matt’s told us he wants to be alone for a while.’
‘She’s right. But thank you’, I said and shook him by the hand. ‘I just need to be by myself. I need to remember Danny and let myself… You know?’
He turned the handshake into a hug.
‘You know where we are, if you need anything. I mean it. Anything. We owe you everything, mate.’
‘Nick, you’re suffocating him.’
He released me from the hug but held onto my hand.
‘Anything.’
I tried a smile and half slapped, half pushed him on the back as he turned to get in the car. Jenny approached me, not looking me in the eye, gave me a brief hug and, before I had chance to say a word, opened the car door and got in, waving her hand in front of her face like she was trying to get a bad smell out from under her nose. The kids were all waving from the back of the car as Nick executed a clumsy five point turn and gently eased the car through the gates. He paused, allowing the children to turn in their seats and wave once more, a gesture I returned, and then they were gone.
Private Hayes approached me.
‘Sir, I’ve been told to join the rest of my unit in town.’
I shrugged, feeling my lips imitate the sneer that I had witnessed on so many of the infected, and the soldier turned his back on me and walked away. I was back inside the house, the door closed, before I heard his vehicle start up, and I stood there until once again there was silence all around me. And then the tears came.
For the first time, I let myself give in to the grief, the shame, the hatred I was feeling. I fell to my knees, my elbows resting on the stairs, and my body shook as the pain poured out of me uncontrollably. I don’t know how long I was there, but by the time I got back to my feet and walked through to the kitchen, it was dark outside. It would soon be time for me to act.
I poured the last of the cereal into a bowl with the final drop of the milk. It was the first thing I had eaten since the slice of toast Nick had forced down my throat at breakfast. I didn’t feel hungry, but knew I had to put something in my stomach to stop the horrible acidic ache taking up residence there.
It was close to two in the morning and, looking out of the kitchen window, the sky was dark with heavy rainclouds. It wouldn’t be long before a storm hit, by the looks of it. Our black Range Rover was back out in the driveway, but this time it was facing the open gates. I got up from the table and checked that the back door was firmly locked, opened the cupboard, took Simon’s keys and pushed them deep into the left pocket of my black combat trousers. I had my motorbike boots and jacket on. Leaving the lights on, I marched through the house and out of the front door, pausing to lock it and check it was secure with a couple of firm shoves.
I popped the house keys into the right-hand pocket of my trousers and withdrew the car key in the same movement. I opened the driver’s door of the SUV and boosted myself up into the front seat, slipped the key into the ignition and started the engine. I was on autopilot, there could be no doubting that, my body reacting and moving more quickly than it should have been given the fear swirling around inside of me. Every action was achieved by ticking off an item on a highly precise checklist that I had drilled into my brain.
The journey into Usk was a blissful blur. It was only when a car full of teenagers from the town passed me going the other way, windows open, arms waving, music and horn blaring, that I paid a little more attention to what I was doing rather than thinking over what I was going to have to do. I eased out to the right and pulled across the bridge, turning immediately right again, so the hairdressers’ shop was on my left. There were more cars parked a little further on, so I tucked in behind the last one, which meant the boot of the Range Rover was about one and a half metres from the shop door.
I snipped the lights off and halted the engine. I got out and walked away from the shop, towards the King’s Head, pressing the little button on the key fob to make the doors lock.
Placing the keys in my pocket, I walked for about forty metres to where the path diverted left and followed the pavement through the narrow gap between two houses. I kept my head down as I walked, maintaining a brisk pace. I was acutely aware of the amount of noise that could still be heard around the town even at this time of night. Music, voices talking, plenty of laughter. I stuck to the path as it swung left and past the Spar, towards the archway. This had been the route Danny had taken.
I tried to get the thoughts out of my mind as I emerged from the arch onto Bridge Street, turned to the left yet again and walked back towards the bridge itself. Light and music spilled from the pub opposite as two people, a man and a woman, came out arm-in-arm. They turned and called their goodnights and then, with a shout and a wave to me, began their walk home in the opposite direction to which I was going.
As I came level with the side windows of the hairdressers’ I could feel my chest constrict and I forced myself to breath slowly and deeply. It wasn’t easy. I turned left for the final time, bringing myself full circle. I could see the Range Rover in front of me as I withdrew Simon’s keys from my pocket. I positioned what I was best guessing to be the front door key between my right index finger and thumb and, as casually as possible, paused at the door and somehow, more by luck than judgement, slipped the key straight into the lock.
It turned and I stepped inside, not even bothering to look around me to see if I had been spotted. I closed the door gently, making as little noise as I could, and then crouched low so I would not be able to be seen from outside, pushing the keys into one of the zippered pockets of my jacket.
I waited, as had been my plan, for at least twenty minutes. I just sat there in the dark. If anyone had seen me, then they would either have investigated themselves or reported the suspicious behaviour to the police station just down the road. I had made the assumption that there would be some sort of presence in there on a fulltime basis in the coming weeks, so if they did come to search the abandoned shop, I had my story all ready and straight in my head. I just wanted to be close to where Danny had died, just one last time. Even the most hard-faced coppers would have understood that, wouldn’t they?
I sat with my back to the wooden panelling of the bottom of the door. I knew the Army’s plan had been to search every empty premises, and I wondered if they had some sort of skeleton key because, despite the door and its lock still being in one piece, they had definitely been in here; the blood had been cleaned up and there was no sign of Danny’s chain or the discarded leather glove. It looked like they had finally done something properly. They had clearly not found anything else untoward or the place would have been sealed up.
Every now and then, the walls of the shop would be bathed in car headlights and, if the car was coming into Usk from the bridge, the light would reflect from the mirrors on the opposite wall and blind me. I was glad to temporarily lose my vision; I was continuously staring at the shop’s counter and what I knew to be behind there.
Time slipped away and I finally began to crawl forward to the right of the counter. I took a deep breath, could feel the sweat beading up on my forehead, and scooted myself around the other side, so once again I could not be seen from anyone peering in through the door or windows of the shop. My last movement had shifted the plain blue rug that covered the hatch into the cellar.
The hairdressers’ had, of course, previously been the Cardiff Arms pub, and pubs, particularly in buildings this old, had cellars. It was my initial intention just to drag Danny behind the counter and hope that no one would see him, but when, just as it had now, the rug revealed its secret, I knew I could do even better than that for my brother.
* * *
I had found the little loop of bronze metal imbedded into the wood, opened the hatch, dropped onto my stomach to look down and spotted the drawstring pull for the lights. A single strip fluorescent lamp had jumped to life, bathing the room in yellow radiance. The steps down to the bare concrete floor were quite steep and two of the four walls had metal and wood shelving units bolted to them. Danny still had his motorbike leathers on and I had replaced his crash helmet over his head, but had put it on him backwards, so if he regained consciousness he would not be able to bite me.
Using the ties from the hairdressers’ aprons, I had bound his ankles together as well as securing his wrists behind his back. It made it easier when I lowered him down into the cellar, holding onto him under his armpits until I couldn’t stretch any further down.
‘Sorry, Danny,’ I had told him as I let him fall the rest of the way, the motorbike helmet protecting his head as it slid across the concrete. His body lay at the bottom of the steps as if he were just asleep. If only that was the case.
I had quickly descended the narrow, wooden stairs and checked what there was to assist me in the cellar. The shelves held numerous hairdressing supplies: peroxide, shampoo, conditioners, scissors, towels, aprons. I dragged Danny into a sitting position with his back against one of the strong metal struts that supported the shelving, and, after having taken a dozen or so more ties from the spare aprons, attached him to the strut as tightly as I could. The final cord went around his neck. I knew I had to do it, but it was this last effort that hurt the most. But do it I did, and then I was back up the stairs, pulling the light off as I went.