‘I can see now, Nick.’
‘OK, now go back and read to me what the labels say, OK?’
‘OK.’ She moved back to the table and I could hear her pick up the cleaning products.
‘Ajax.’
‘OK, Kelly, what’s the next one?’
Fucking hell, this was outrageous. I held the phone hard against my ear, almost holding my breath as I silently willed her to succeed. I was really pumped, I could feel my heart going. I was writhing like a madman in a straitjacket, twisting and turning in the kiosk, miming Kelly’s actions to myself. I looked across at the other box; the woman who was talking to her friend had wiped the condensation from the glass to get a better view of me and now seemed to be relaying a running commentary. I must have looked like a mass murderer, with cuts and scratches on my face and my hair and clothes soaking wet.
The loud noise of metal clattering onto wood made me jump.
‘Kelly? Kelly?’
Silence, then the phone was picked up.
‘Sorry, Nick. I knocked a spoon off. I didn’t see it. I’m scared. I don’t want to do this. Please come and get me.’
It wasn’t long before the crying was going to start.
‘Kelly, don’t worry. It’s OK, it’s OK.’
I heard sniffing on the phone.
No, not now, for fuck’s sake!
‘It’s OK, Kelly, it’s OK. I can’t get you unless you help me. You must be brave. Euan is trying to kill me. Only you can help me. Can you do that for me?’
‘Please hurry, Nick. I want to be with you.’
‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’
It wasn’t all right, Nick, because Nick’s fucking money was disappearing. I was down to my last few pound coins. They weren’t going to last. I put another coin in and it rattled out into the coin return; I had to scrabble for another one.
She started to go through more of the labels. Most of the words she couldn’t read. I asked her to spell them. As she got three letters out I worked out the rest. ‘No, that one’s no good. Read the next one.’
My mind was now racing, trying to remember ingredients and formulae. At last she read out something I could use.
‘Kelly, you must listen very carefully. That’s a green can, isn’t it? Put it where you can find it again. Then I want you to creep out to the room next door, where the washing machine is. You know the one?’
‘Yes.’
Euan had a place for everything, and everything in its place. I even knew that his forks would be lined up beside each other in the drawer.
‘Just by the door is a cupboard and in it there’s a blue bottle. The label says antifreeze.’
‘What?’
‘Antifreeze. A–N–T–I . . . I want you to bring it to the table, OK?’
The phone clunked onto the worktop. I started to flap even more.
After what seemed an eternity, she came back on. ‘I’ve got it.’
‘Put it on the table and then open it.’
I heard the phone go down again and lots of heavy breathing and sniffing as she struggled with the bottle top.
‘I don’t know how to do it.’
‘Just twist it. You know how to open a bottle.’
‘I can’t. It won’t go. I am trying, Nick, but my hands are shaking.’
I then heard a soft, long moan. I was sure it was going to turn into crying.
Shit, I don’t need this. It isn’t going to work
.
‘Kelly? Kelly? Are you OK? Talk to me, come on, talk to me.’
I was getting nothing.
Come on, Kelly, come on
.
Nothing. All I could hear was her holding back tears and sniffing.
‘Nick . . . I want you to get me. Please, Nick, please.’ She was sobbing now.
‘Just take your time, Kelly, just take your time. It’s OK, everything’s OK. I’m here, don’t worry. OK, let’s just stand and listen. If you can hear anything, you tell me on the phone, OK, and I’ll try to listen at the same time.’
I listened. I wanted to make sure Euan wasn’t awake. I also wanted a cut: there needs to be a cut in the action at a time like this, otherwise the errors snowball and people start tripping over themselves; so let’s take our time, but at the same time be as fast as possible. I knew exactly what I needed to do, but the frustration lay in trying to interpret it to this child, under pressure, and to get her to work quietly – and all the time I was running out of money and the mobile was running out of battery life.
The woman left her booth and gave me a grin of appeasement, in case I was going to lunge at her with a meat cleaver.
‘Are you OK now, Kelly?’
‘Yes. Do you want me to unscrew the bottle still?’
I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t do it. I started giving her more instructions. Then I remembered – the bottle had a child-proof screw top. As I started to tell her how to undo it there was a soft bleep.
Battery. Shit!
‘Yes, remember to push the top down before you turn. We just have to be a bit quicker, or the phone is going to stop before we finish.’
‘Now what do I do, Nick?’
‘Is that on the table with the top undone?’
Nothing.
‘Kelly? Kelly? Are you there?’
Was the battery dead?
Then I heard ‘What do I do now?’
‘Thank goodness, I thought the battery had gone. Is there anything you can open that green can with? I know, use the spoon, Kelly. Very, very carefully now, pick it up, put the phone on the table and then open the can. OK?’
I listened, running through all the different options there were left if this scheme fucked up. I came to the conclusion there were none.
‘Now, here comes the hard part. Do you think you are good enough for this? You’ve got to be pretty special to do this bit.’
‘Yes, I’m OK now. I am sorry I cried, it’s just that I’m . . .’
‘I know, I know, Kelly. I am, too, but we will do this together. What I need you to do now is put the phone in your pocket with your trainers. Then take one of those big bottles from the table and walk to the front door of the house and open it just a little bit. Not wide open, just a little bit. Then put the bottle behind the door, to stop it swinging shut. Now, remember, it’s a big heavy door so I want you to do it really slowly, really, really gently, so it doesn’t make a noise. Can you do that for me?’
‘Yeah, I can do that. What happens after that?’
‘I’ll tell you in a minute. Now, don’t forget, if the phone stops working and you can’t hear me any more, I want you to run to the trees and hide.’
Chances were, Euan would find her, but what else was there to do?
‘OK.’
This was going to be the wriggly bit. Even if he was sound asleep Euan’s subconscious was likely to detect the change in air pressure and ambient noise when the door was opened and make something of it in a dream, giving him a sort of sixth-sense feeling that something was wrong.
If so, at least she’d have a head start – so long as she remembered what I’d told her.
‘I’m back in the kitchen – what do I do now?’
‘Listen to me. This bit’s very important. How much can you count up to?’
‘I can count to ten thousand.’
She was sounding a little happier now, sensing the end was in sight.
‘I only want you to count up to three hundred. Can you do that?’
‘I can do that.’
‘You’ve got to do it in your head.’
‘OK.’
‘First, I want you to go to the hob again. You know how to turn on the gas?’
‘Of course! Sometimes I help my mommy with the cooking.’
I had never felt so sad.
I made myself concentrate again. There was no room for distractions. She might be dead soon anyway. I felt enough of a bastard for getting her to do my dirty work; while I was at it I might as well make sure she did the job properly.
‘That’s good. So you know how to turn on the gas in the oven and all the rings on the hob?’
‘I told you, I know how to cook.’
A coachload of teenage kids returning from a school holiday trip was streaming into the burger bar. A gang of six or seven of them hung back and headed for the phones, laughing and shouting in newly broken voices, all trying to cram into the one vacant booth. The noise was horrendous; I couldn’t hear what Kelly was saying. I had to do something. ‘Kelly, just wait a minute.’
I put my hand over the mouthpiece, leaned out of the box and shouted, ‘You – shut the fuck up! I’ve got my aunty here, her husband’s just died and I’m trying to talk to her, OK? Give us some time!’
The kids went quiet, their cheeks red. They sloped off to join their friends, sniggering with mock bravado to disguise their embarrassment.
I got back on the phone.
‘Kelly, this is very important. The phone might stop soon because the battery is running out. I want you to turn on all the gas on the cooker. Take the phone with you so I can hear the gas. Go there now while I talk to you.’
I heard the hiss of the bottled propane that Euan used.
‘It’s very smelly, Nick.’
‘That’s good. Now, just walk out of the kitchen and close the door. But be very quiet outside the room. Remember, we don‘t want to wake Euan. Don’t talk to me any more, just listen. Go outside the room and close the kitchen door, OK?’
‘OK. I won’t talk to you any more.’
‘That’s right.’
I heard the door close.
‘Nick?’
I tried to keep calm. ‘Yes, Kelly?’
‘Can I get Jenny and Ricky to take with me, please?’
I tried harder to keep myself in check. ‘No, Kelly, there is no time! Just listen to me. There isn’t time for you to talk. I want you to count up to three hundred in your head, then I want you to take a really, really deep breath and walk back into the kitchen. Don’t run. You must walk. Go into the kitchen and pour all the antifreeze into the green can. Then I want you to walk out of the kitchen – don’t run! – I don’t want you to wake Euan.’
If she tripped up and hurt herself, she could get engulfed by what was about to happen.
‘Walk out very slowly, close the kitchen door behind you, then go out of the house and close the front door, really, really gently. Do not collect Jenny or Ricky.’
‘But I want them – please, Nick?’
I ignored her. ‘Then I want you to run as fast as you can up to the trees and hide. When you’re running you will hear a big bang and there will be a fire. Don’t stop and don’t look back. And don’t come out until I get there, no matter what happens. I promise I will be there soon.’
It was at times like this that I was pleased I’d done all the laborious, parrot-fashion learning of techniques for making incendiaries and improvised explosive devices. At the time, many years ago, it had been mind-bogglingly boring, but it had to be done because you can’t take a notebook on the job with you. I learned, off by heart, how to make bombs from everyday ingredients and how to make improvised electrical devices. As clearly as even atheists remember the Lord’s Prayer from the time it was drummed into them at school, I remembered the formulae and step-by-step mechanics for making everything from a simple incendiary like the one I was going to use to kill Euan – Mixture Number 5 – to a bomb that I could initiate by using a pager from the other side of the world.
The phone started bleeping urgently and then it just went dead. I visualized the glycerine in the antifreeze working on the mixture. In forty or fifty seconds it would ignite. If it was damp, maybe a little longer.
Kelly had less than a minute to get out of the house; the instant the gas was ignited there was going to be a massive explosion and then a fire. Hopefully it would take Euan down, but would it take her with it?
Please, please, please don’t go after those fucking teddy bears!
I ran back to the car and started driving west. First light was just trying to fight its way through the clouds.
40
It was the worst journey of my life.
I saw a sign saying ‘Newport, 70 miles’. I raced along at warp speed for what I guessed was 30 miles, then another sign told me, ‘Newport, 60 miles’. I felt as if I was running on a treadmill to nowhere and the treadmill was waist-deep in water.
My body had calmed down from all the excitement and was telling me I was hurt. My neck was agony. The flow of blood had stopped, but the eye Simmonds had gouged was starting to swell up and affect my vision.
Euan, the fucker. The friend I had trusted for years. It was almost too painful to think about. I felt numb. I felt bereaved. In time, maybe, that numbness would turn to anger or grief or some other thing, but not yet. In my mind’s eye, all I could see was the look on Kelly’s face as the train left the station – and the smile on Euan’s.