(1998) Denial (39 page)

In joy, he almost shouted, ‘Amanda? Where are you? Are you OK?’

‘Michael,’ she replied, ‘I’m scared. I don’t like this game. Can we stop playing it, please?’

He saw the strange look on Beamish’s face, but he didn’t care. He had Amanda on the line. He gave Beamish a frantic signal to cut live transmission, to go to music, anything.

‘What game? Game? I’m not playing any game, Amanda. God, are you all right? Thank God you’ve called, I’ve been going out of my mind. Where are you?’

‘Keep away from me.’

The
ON AIR
light was still on. He gave Beamish another frantic
CUT
signal. An almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgement, then the light went off.

She sounded terrible, there was an unnatural edge to her voice.

As gently as he could he said, ‘Amanda, please, I don’t understand. What’s happened? Why are you upset?’

‘Keep away from me.’ She raised her voice. ‘Keep away!’

This was freaking him out.

‘I thought you loved me, Michael. I thought you loved me,’ she said.

Wild thoughts banged through his head. Had Brian got to her and said something venomous? ‘Amanda, listen to me, tell me what’s happened. What have I done? Has someone said something –’

The line went dead. She’d hung up. The name Nadama disappeared from the screen.

Nadama
. Jesus. A crude anagram. He looked up. Beamish was gesturing at him in despair. Then his voice on the intercom. ‘Mike, for God’s sake, what are you playing at?’

Michael stared back at him numbly.

‘One minute to the end of the news, then you’re back on air.’

‘Can you trace that call?’ he replied.

‘Forty seconds.’

‘Trace that fucking call!’ he yelled.

‘I’ll do what I can, OK? Twenty seconds.’

Michael hit the button, and Raj from Ealing was live on air.

Michael.

She tried to get her head round it as she lay in the dark silence, surrounded by the smell of her own vomit – and could not. She was in so much pain it was hard to think clearly.

How could someone who had seemed so sweet and lovely be capable of doing this?

Michael was smart; he might be insane but he was smart. He would know that releasing her could never be an option.

She thought back to that night they had spent together, in some other universe, in some other time-frame, how safe she had felt in his arms, how she had wanted nothing else but to lie there making love with him for ever. And she was remembering now that chilling look on his face when she had been holding Katy’s photograph. The grip of his hand on her arm.

Christ, I was a fool to ignore that
.

She should have bailed out then and there. In those few brief moments, his dark side had been plain to see. But she had chosen to ignore it, deluded herself that it was a manifestation of grief, nothing more.

She felt a terrible, cold, falling sensation of dread inside her. How would anyone ever find her? She could imagine Lulu and Michael talking on the phone. Michael feigning concern, giving all sorts of advice, telling her how happy they had been together and acting distraught.

Everyone would believe him. Michael was above suspicion. No one was going to come and find her. Her only choice was, somehow, to get out by herself.

Where am I?

She tried to think back to those brief precious moments when the light had been on. Some kind of man-made chamber. Sterile. Modern. From the total absence of light, and complete silence, she guessed underground.

A bank vault? Possible. Some kind of disused command post, built during the Cold War, when every county in Britain had fallout shelters for key civil servants and emergency services? It wouldn’t be hard for someone like Michael Tennent to know the whereabouts of such a place and even to have access.

She could be anywhere in Britain, she thought.

How long since he’d been gone? An hour? Two hours?
Got to find a way to measure time down here
.

The screws of the vent grille were about the diameter of her little finger-nail. Her thumb-nail fitted snugly into the groove. She needed a screwdriver.

Painfully, she got to her feet, found the wall, and fumbled her way around the chamber until she came to the open doorway into the second chamber. As she stared ahead, tiny flecks of light came out of the darkness at her. Shapes moving. Shadowy figures swirling. Her imagination running riot, she stepped back a pace, goosebumps covering her skin.

They’re dead, they’re not up and walking about. They’re dead, Amanda
.

Dead.

You’ll be just like them if you don’t do something. Remember
survivors
. Survivors stay calm, they put their fear into another compartment, they think logically, they are utterly determined to live.

Keeping contact with the wall, she made her way through into the second chamber, until her left foot suddenly struck something solid. Even though she’d been searching for it, actually touching one of the corpses froze her in her tracks.

It was some while before she had sufficient courage to kneel down. Close to the cadaver’s skin, the acrid reek of formalin was almost unbearable. She put out her hands and
felt nylon. A stockinged ankle. Hard, like a piece of furniture, not human flesh. Thin ankle strap. Small flat shoe, a woman’s shoe.

The heel was solid, it might come in useful, she logged it mentally, then moved her hands up the leg. Reached a skirt. Cotton and viscose mix. Then a blouse, cotton. No belt. Moving up the body was horrible, feeling the arms, the bare flesh like cold, hard rubber. Down the left arm to the wrist, and she came to a watch, a slim metal watch on a leather strap. But the dial wasn’t luminous, it was of no use to her.

Now the worst bit. Up to the face. A light, tentative touch with her fingers then she waited, plucking up the courage to explore further, trying to feel the contours of this woman’s face, to get some clue about her age, what she looked like. She explored higher, feeling her hair now. Short, layered cut.

Like the missing editor had.
Tina Mackay
. She remembered the name now: a name that for the past couple of weeks had been in the nation’s consciousness.

Tina Mackay, have I found you?

She moved away, shaking uncontrollably, her eyes streaming from the formalin, her throat tight with fear.

Down on her knees now she groped with her hands for the second body and then had to fight hard to keep control of herself when she found it, when her hands touched fabric and the hard motionless shape inside it.

A jacket. Shirt. Tie.

She drew back, hesitated, then touched the body again. Felt the tie. Polyester. Then the shirt, that was polyester also. A belt. Trousers. A wide, robust belt with a hard metal buckle. Good, this was good.

She explored upwards to the neck, then the face, the soft stubble on the chin. Definitely a man although his face felt free of wrinkles, and there was only such soft stubble. Maybe he was young, early twenties?

Had any young man been in the papers, missing, in his early twenties?

She felt inside the jacket pockets for anything that could
be useful, but they were empty. He was wearing loafer shoes and they had good, hard heels also. Now she worked her way down his right arm, feeling for a watch.
Please have some kind of digital watch with a light source
.

There was no hand at the end of the arm. Just scabby, cauterised flesh.

She dropped it in shock.

Then she leaned across, found his other arm, traced down the length of that, and found the scabby stump at the end of that, too.

Michael, what did you do to him? What did you do to her? What are you going to do to me?

Fighting back more tears, she removed his belt and shoes, then hurriedly returned to her own chamber.

Kneeling in a corner, she examined the belt and buckle with her fingers, the smell of leather reminding of the outside world, of shops, of the interior of cars, finery, the handbag department at Harvey Nichols. She brought the belt up to her nose, pressed it to her nostrils and breathed in the luxurious smell.

I’m getting out of here. Somehow. I’m going shopping in Harvey Nicks. I’m going to walk by the ponds on Hampstead Heath. I’m going to drive my car under the blazing sun with the roof down. I’m going to hold my nephews and nieces in my arms. I’m going to drink cold wine and smoke a cigarette
.

She craved a cigarette now.

Focusing again, she gripped the belt hard in her right hand, pulled back the buckle, leaving the spike out, gripped the buckle hard against the belt with the spike between her fingers. Then she rotated her hand to the right, and to the left. Easy. She had a good, firm grip.

Now, with her left hand she pushed the buckle hard down on the floor so that the spike lay flat and, with her right hand, gripped the front of the dead man’s loafer, and brought the heel down hard, like a hammer.

On the first blow, she hit the floor wide of the mark. On the second she hit her knuckles and, with a stifled cry of pain, dropped the shoe and the belt. Then she wound the
belt around her fingers as a makeshift guard, and tried again.

The metallic ping told her she’d struck the right spot. She brought the heel down again.
THWACK
. Missed, struck the floor. Then again.
PINGGGGG
. It found its mark. Then again. And again.

After several successful hits, she checked the spike. It was warm. That was good. She knew from all she had learned about engines that the warmer metal got the more pliable it became.

Thomas stood just a few feet away, watching her through his goggles. What on earth was it doing? Kneeling on the floor hitting a belt buckle with the heel of a loafer?

Whatever was going on inside its pea-brained mind was OK by him. He didn’t care, it could do what the hell it liked.

He retreated as silently as he had come in.

The light came on, detonating an explosion of fear inside her.

Turning in shock, Amanda closed her eyes tightly against the searing glare, dropped the shoe, unravelled the belt and clamped her hands over her eyes.

Silence.

Fearfully, she removed her hands slowly and then, gradually, opened her eyelids, letting increasing amounts of the glaring light in.

Now they were wide open, darting around the chamber, her muscles tensed, ready to fight the bastard with anything she could. But not ready for what she saw.

On the floor, just four feet behind her, she saw a tray of food, with a fresh jug of water. There was an apple on the tray. A pizza. Her red plastic latrine bucket had been replaced with a yellow one, the orange plastic washing bucket with a green one. There was a fresh towel. The old tray had gone.

The light went out again.

‘
Michael, I’m scared. I don’t like this game. Can we stop playing it, please?
’

Michael sat at his desk in his study at home, staring at the square black speakers either side of his Aiwa sound system.

‘
Keep away from me
.’

It was ten twenty p.m. He’d been home for over an hour and a half, just sitting here in his den, drinking a mug of coffee, playing the tape over and over, trying to think things through.

Trying to come up with something that made sense.

Beamish at the radio station said the call was untraceable. It had been one of hundreds that had come into the switchboard this evening. There was no logging system. In fact, as his producer had wryly pointed out to him, total anonymity was one of the advertised gimmicks of the show. Anyone could phone in; their identification was never checked.

And Beamish was angry with him. He wasn’t a man to express his feelings, but Michael could see the signs plainly enough in his face. And yes, Michael could scarcely blame him. A domestic row live on air. Great. Beamish, afterwards, had asked quietly if he had any idea quite how much damage to his credibility as a psychiatrist this little public row might have caused.

He didn’t have any idea, nor did he care right now.

‘
I thought you loved me, Michael. I thought you loved me
.’

What is this about, Amanda?

He rewound the tape. Paced around the study. Sat down on the edge of his Parker Knoll recliner armchair, sipped his tepid coffee.

‘
I thought you loved me, Michael. I thought you loved me
.’

I do love you. God, I love you more than anything on earth. I love you more, even, than – He stared, guiltily, at Katy’s photograph in the frame on his desk. She was lying down on a picnic rug in a field, in striped leggings and a loose black shirt, giving him a great big warm grin.

He hadn’t rung Lulu. He’d promised to call her if he heard anything, but what the hell was he going to say to her? That Amanda was sounding scared of him, that that was why she’d disappeared?

He picked up the phone, began to dial Lulu’s number, then hung up. If Amanda had phoned him, then quite probably she had phoned Lulu too. More than probably, he thought.
Certainly
.

Maybe she’d kept Lulu in the loop on this all along. Told her to pretend she didn’t know where she was to keep him off her back.

Had Lulu been lying?

That seemed so improbable. And yet . . .

She had phoned him on the radio station, live on air.

Why
?

Back to Saturday night here. Their meal. Amanda’s concern about the car across the road. Their lovemaking. Amanda looking out of the window, worried again. Sunday morning, just an incredible, wonderful morning. Their visit to the stock-car race-track had been relaxed, happy.

So what had poisoned her?

He could think of nothing that he had said or done that could have given her any reason to behave like this towards him. He turned his thinking to her mental state. What she had said in the phone call bore the hallmarks of paranoia. Was she suffering from some paranoid psychosis triggered by the stress of a new relationship? Or was she on drugs? Cannabis, crack, ecstasy and amphetamines could all cause this kind of psychosis.