Borderliners (25 page)

I pushed on the door of the surgery, remembering, too late, that it was Sunday and very much closed. I had been so wrapped up in my thoughts I had neither considered this nor noticed how shut up and dark the surgery windows and doors were. Fumbling around in my pocket for the keys, I walked round to the other side of the building and let myself in through the back door of my consulting room. As I closed the door behind me and walked across the room, a feeling of déjà vu crept across my shoulders. A piece of folded A4 paper sat upright in the middle of my otherwise clear desk, beckoning me to draw closer, and as I stopped in my tracks to consider the sight a familiar feeling of adrenalin pumped through my veins.

I opened up the paper and let it drop, watching it float to the floor like the last leaves of autumn which were drifting around aimlessly outside. The sheet landed face up, its content cradled by protective folds which remained partially in place. I knelt down, took a deep breath and peered at what I had seen. Taking it between my finger and thumb, I straightened it out with my other hand and scrutinised what I saw: a photo of the juxtaposed Tarot cards sitting on the coffee table at my house.

There was no message scrawled across this photocopy, although thinking of Linda again, I remembered I still had the paper she had given me of a photocopied Tarot card. Opening up my top drawer to pull out Linda’s sheet of paper, I compared the two. Unsurprisingly, they looked the same.

I picked up the phone to ring the psychiatric ward at the hospital, a sense of renewed urgency gripped my stomach, turning it inside out. A bemused ward sister on the other end of the phone told me that the patient had failed to turn up.

Alarmed, I hung up and dialled the number for Linda’s sister, Kate. Voice agitated, she picked up within two rings and I could tell immediately that something had gone wrong. ‘She’s not here. She must have slipped out last night and now she’s gone. I’ve already notified the police.’

I recalled Linda’s pale and anxious face at the ceremony and cursed Vince for stopping my intervention, even though the very thought of it continued to send shivers down my back.

‘Kate, have you any idea where she might be?’ I asked after a short silence.

‘No. If I did she’d be back here with me by now, wouldn’t she?’

I wound up the conversation and put the phone down again, staring into space as I joined up my dissipated thoughts. Then, my mobile phone rang from within my bag.

‘Elena?’ It was Dan, his voice soft but wary.

I didn’t answer, I was too afraid.

‘Elena, you need to come back home. Something’s happened next door. There’s an ambulance. And a lot of people. All sorts. I think it’s got something to with that friend of yours, the one you’re worried about-’ I cut him off without a word and flew out of my consulting room, out of the surgery and into the car park.

I parked in my driveway and jumped out of the car, leaving the door hanging open. The air had changed, giving way to a sharp frost I barely noticed as I stumbled to the next house along. An ambulance was stationed outside, its lights flashing silent blue onto the matt grey of the paving stones immediately opposite Julia and Iain’s gate. I took a right turn up the short path leading to their door.

Iain stood in the doorway arch, his face wary and blank.

I threw my voice on ahead of me, as if hoping to create a safety net to fall into. ‘Iain, what’s going on?’

Iain stared through me. ‘You can’t come in here.’

‘What’s happening?’

‘You can’t come in here,’ he repeated, as a short, burly woman pushed past him. I whirled round to follow the woman out to her car, which was parked behind the ambulance outside.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked her.

‘Keep clear. A member of our community is unwell.’

I backed away and made to return to the front door which was already swinging shut.

‘Where’s Tony?’ I shouted, ‘I want to talk to Tony!’

‘Sorry, who?’ said the burly woman behind me. I remembered now that I had seen her at Julia’s prayer group.

I turned back to face her. ‘Please tell me this isn’t what I think?’

There was a silence.

At this, I threw myself at the front door and hammered on it. ‘Iain, let me in!’

After a few seconds I felt a hand on my arm. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to stop that and keep clear.’

‘What’s going on?’ I screamed. ‘Why don’t you let me in? My patient, my friend, they’re missing. Please tell me nothing bad has happened to them!’

‘You’re no friend of anybody here,’ snarled another woman from inside.

At that moment another member of the Community slipped past, and again I had Iain in front of me, framed by his newly opened front doorway. Time juddered and paused and instinct took over. Without thinking, I made a run for the open door, pushing past Iain before he had a chance to react. My handbag slipped down my shoulder, but I powered on. I had to get into the house. The community member behind me was faster, and grabbed at my retreating back, wrenching my handbag from my shoulder as he did so. I shrugged it off, leaving him standing with it in his hand as I raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time. After a short delay, he began to thud up the stairs after me. When I reached the landing I lunged at a group of women who were standing by an open door, protecting something. As I threw myself into their rapidly forming barricade, they fought me off. I noted several things beyond them: curtains shut, Julia kneeling by the bedside eyes closed, lips moving soundlessly, a stale odour; paramedics moving briskly around putting items into plastic bags. In one of the bags I caught sight of a syringe before the door was closed, conclusively in my face. Someone grabbed me by the arm.

‘I want to know what's going on!’ I yelled.

Still holding my arm, one of the women said, ‘Downstairs with you. Now!’

‘A friend of mine was staying here. He’s not well!’ I continued. ‘I want to see what’s happening!’

‘Sorry. You can’t.’

The bedroom door opened and shut again and I caught a glimpse of a praying Julia, statue-still and head bent, through the crack. ‘Come downstairs,’ the woman repeated and I stiffened my back a little, steeling myself. I started to count backwards from twenty, clenching my muscles and hardening my core as I prepared for conflict.

The door opened again and out stepped Julia in a silk dressing gown. She looked pale and drawn but took three decisive steps to where I was standing, and rested her hand on my arm.

‘I’m sorry Elena. I’ve got some bad news.’

I recoiled and as the woman at my shoulder let go and I covered my face briefly with my hand.

‘Please tell me it’s not what I think,’ I hissed.

‘A member of our community is unwell, yes. But we will stand together and she will be healed. Please leave us alone now.’

‘She?’

‘Yes. One of our younger members. We have been caring for her here since yesterday, but now she needs to go to hospital.’

I felt weak and started to step back down the stairs, hardening my arm into a block formation as someone tried to push me from behind. I couldn’t be bothered to look back at them, and as I got to the bottom, Iain’s beady eyes levelled with mine, looking straight into them for once. He was so close I could see flecks of yellow and tiny veins in the whites of his eyeballs.

‘Something’s happened to this,’ he sneered, holding up my phone. I noticed it was covered in droplets of different sizes and its screen was steamed up.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘It was on the floor next to your bag. Where you dropped it.’ I noticed he was smiling unnaturally, his teeth bared.

‘Liar.’ I grabbed it out of his hands.

I looked at the other people around us who seemed to have increased in number. ‘Did anyone see Iain interfering with my bag?’ I asked them, but it was as if I was talking to myself.

‘No. Now if you please?’

In the doorway, I swung back round. ‘I’m going to get you, Iain. Make no mistake.’

His laugher rang in my ears as I stepped out into the night air.

Back home, I took a seat at my kitchen table which afforded a good view of Julia and Iain’s house, and sat looking at my phone. It was broken, no doubt about it, soaked through and smashed. I guessed it might have been dropped in a bowl of water and then stamped on. It wouldn’t switch on, and even when I connected it to my computer I couldn’t retrieve the photos Vince had taken of the ceremony the previous night.

Having asked Dan for some privacy, I sat for ages just staring through my window, trying to penetrate the house next door for clues. After the ambulance had departed, presumably with Linda in it, there had been nothing much else going on there. The sound of car doors slamming and engines revving had followed for a few minutes after before silence descended. All the windows were dark now, save one - the side window facing my house. There sat the cross once more, illuminated from behind and the only sign of life left in the place.

I thought about Linda and how I could get access to her, mulling over how much force I would be able to get away with if needed. And I racked my brains on the subject of Tony. There had been no sign of him in the house and no mention of him either. Now that I thought of it, the marked smell of lingering tobacco had been absent from the upstairs of the house, and the room I’d assumed to be his bedroom, empty. I tried to remember exactly what I’d seen in the few short moments I’d been allowed to stand at the top of the stairs on Julia’s landing. One empty looking room, bare floorboards and a glimpse of a barren bed side table, white linen on a single bed, nothing more. One more bedroom, the one I’d noticed contained a double bed and a dressing table crammed with perfumes and jewellery on my previous visit to the upstairs of the house. And finally, the bedroom in which I’d seen Julia praying just now. No, there was no sign of Tony.

I sat at my kitchen table for a while, trying to figure things out. I was there for so long I forgot about Dan and my request that he leave me alone for a while. When he came back downstairs, his face was serious and his eyes flat and I couldn’t blame him for what he did next. He stood for a few seconds, framed by the kitchen doorway, his jacket slung casually over his shoulder. I saw that he was carrying his overnight bag and he made no attempt to come any further into the room. ‘I need to get off.’

It was an odd feeling, almost one of rejection. I knew he meant to go, and that it was perfectly reasonable but it felt like betrayal. I shrugged my shoulders, and although my feelings of anger were dissipating, they were giving way to an unholy, dejected feeling, a kind of mental freefall. I couldn’t ask Dan to stay a second night even though I knew I was on the edge.

‘Thanks for coming to the ball with me yesterday and for being so supportive.’

‘You know me, I’ll do anything for an old friend,’ he said.

He stared at me for a few more seconds before shrinking his jacket onto his shoulders and disappearing into the bitter, evening air. I watched him go before picking up the phone in my hallway. Screwing my face up, I paused for a moment to recall his number, mindful of the hour. It was getting late and I had the feeling my days and nights were running into one another in an uncontrollable blur, my sense of time skewed and inaccurate.

He picked up after one ring. ‘Elena,’ he said. It was a statement rather than a question, and I breathed in deeply, missing a beat before answering him.

‘Vince, I need to talk to you-’

‘On my way.’

The phone clicked before I had a chance to finish what I wanted to tell him.

I paced about in my hallway for a few minutes afterwards before I saw a shadowy figure with a tell-tale saunter approach. As I opened the front door, two things happened simultaneously. He stood in the doorway for seconds, not moving whilst I stared at him from across the threshold. Then, in one fluid movement, he stepped in, kicked the door shut behind him and pulled me over to him. My hands had been outstretched to stop this but I relaxed for a moment, standing in my hallway with my head resting against his chest, hands still poised like springs to push him away.

Minutes passed and neither of us spoke. Then I released myself. I felt small and afraid. He remained silent.

‘It’s next door. My patient.’

‘I saw an ambulance go past earlier, was that for her?’

‘Yes. Attempted suicide. Julia and Iain, they’re completely. Completely.’ I stopped for a breath, Vince still standing opposite, not touching any part of me. I breathed again.

‘They are after my blood. And yours, no doubt. And Linda’s – if they haven’t got hers already. And God knows how many other people.’

‘Calm down. Let’s think.’ He thrust his hands into his pockets.

I went through to the sitting room and sat down on the sofa, my head in my hands. Vince followed me in and sat on the opposite sofa, his body lithe and poised like a panther’s, one of his feet pushed up against my coffee table whilst the other rested on the floor. He looked both thoughtful and wary.

‘Let’s back track then. Do you want to talk through what happened last night?’

I nodded.

‘And what about a drink to help us think?’

I got up and went to the kitchen to rummage around for spirits. Finding a bottle of whisky, two glasses and some ice, I returned to the sitting room and poured us a drink without bothering to check if whisky was what he wanted.

He sipped his drink. ‘What we saw last night, Elena, we need to talk about it.’

I nodded again, sipping my whisky in unison with him.

‘Vince, do you know anything about the significance of the so-called Walpurgis night ceremonies?’

He stopped, mid-sip. ‘Is that what they call them?’ He leaned forward, twirling his glass around in his right hand as he did so. ‘I’ve been aware of the ceremonies for a while. As we said after our council meeting that day, everybody in the village knows something about them, but it’s taboo. I told you there was a spate of them in the eighties and early nineties, when I was still a lad. There was talk of cult practices. I think there was a police investigation but they found nothing conclusive and shortly afterwards Julia and Iain left the village for a while.’