Survival of Thomas Ford, The (7 page)

So the shark had to be released. Just as it had vanished back into the water, Dr Nissen’s brain had taken a clear and indelible mental photograph of its gaping mouth, the snaggled teeth, and above, the blank, black eyes.

Nissen rubbed at the skin by the edge of his forehead. Maybe he should have resisted Radthammon. There was the feeling in the belly, like acid working in there, the knowledge that this boy had been released back into the world.

Just before Karen had undone the first wrist strap she had looked at Dr Nissen for confirmation. The girl had known what they were doing was wrong. Nissen could have acted then, told her, no, don’t undo it, let’s get him tied up again.

He could have helped her with it.

Instead, he had done nothing. He had let Radthammon bully him and now something terrible that could have been contained has not been.

It wasn’t what the boy said, or what he did.

It was the dead, blank, black eyes that watched you, waiting.

Thomas Ford has been alone at his house for three hours now. Finlay had offered to stay longer, but Thomas told him he wanted to sleep. He had not slept though. He just stared ahead, alone for the first time since the accident. The house no longer made sense. It had only made sense with Lea there. For a while, Thomas tortured himself, expertly and creatively, staring for minutes at the space above a chair or cushion, imagining Lea sitting there, drinking tea from a mug, or looking back at him, or watching television with sleepy, hooded eyes. Then he learned not to imagine her; instead, he went through a series of memories, snapshots of Lea in time and space in this room, stored images Thomas had never been aware of until now. He saw her by the living room door, her back to him, a black satin dress hugging close to her waist and hips. He was remembering the night of the launch of her gallery. They had argued that night. The tension in her at the culmination of the new project that had absorbed her for months, it had brimmed over that night, just before they left the house.

Thomas sniffed and looked down at the carpet, a safer place, no memories of her on that spot of carpet.

Had that really been him on the street, the driver of the red car, with the birdlike features? Thomas smiled and bit his lip. No, he couldn’t trust his judgements now. He had to accept that this whole situation rendered him a very poorly calibrated instrument indeed.

Thomas got up stiffly, walked into the kitchen, filled a pint glass with water. He returned to the sofa and started drinking. He looked to his left and realised he was sitting there to leave space for Lea to join him. He looked over at the thick brown chairs, three of them, used by guests. Lea and himself, even when they argued, had stayed together on this sofa, a couple.

Thomas sighed and reached over for the slip of paper on the table. Dr Nissen’s contact details. Psychiatric Department. Radthammon had been sly, never stating that the doctor he was referring Thomas to about those chest pains was a psychiatrist. Radthammon thought the pains were all in his head. Thomas blinked. No, they had been in his chest. And maybe he shouldn’t underestimate the instinct that had made him get out of the car and try to follow that man in the crowd.

Thomas leaned back, positioned his neck and head against the sofa, closed his eyes. He tried to imagine that a seatbelt held him securely in the sofa. He raised his hands and imagined fumbling with them, in a panic, to release the seatbelt. He moved his hands faster and faster, jerkily, trying to duplicate the movements Lea had made while he had tried to get past her hands and undo her belt in the car. Thomas tried to clench his fists tight and small, like Lea’s hands. He tried to imagine what it had felt like for her, as her hands had knocked his own hands out of the way that day. He knocked his right hand against the left, as though the right hand was Lea’s panicking hand and the left was his own hand, trying to reach her seatbelt release button. Why had it been so hard, so impossible, to reach one red plastic button?

Thomas tried to remember the size of the button. He wasn’t sure.

And there was a feeling that it was not himself, or Lea, he was remembering in the car at all. As though everything personal to himself or Lea had vanished the moment the car fell to the water. After that, they had become something impersonal, to themselves, to each other. They had become one with every dying thing that had ever wanted badly to live. Their personalities had been put aside so that something more fundamental could step in and take over. In Lea’s case, this had taken the form of panic, and it had killed her. In Thomas something else must have happened, but he had no memory of it. All he had was the memory of the police and doctors and nurses’ eyes that had looked at him after the accident, the way their eyes had been when they asked him how he had escaped the car and he had only been able to answer that he couldn’t remember.

The eyes had looked at Thomas as they came to an unspoken conclusion.

Thomas opened his own eyes and looked at the ceiling, as though he was trying to read there the formula of this conclusion everyone was coming to about what to them was only a story: man and woman and car enter water, only man comes out.

Man remembers nothing, except red car no-one else has ever seen, bird-faced driver, square-jawed passenger.

It was an off-balance equation that couldn’t be made to add up.

Einstein or Newton might have fashioned it into something workable, but unfortunately it only left Thomas Ford drained and flopped on the over-large sofa, eyes to the ceiling, Dr Nissen’s contact details beginning to crumble already in his sweaty grip.

Robert was making Jimmy a cup of coffee in his mother’s kitchen. Robert’s mother had gone to her room in the far end of the bungalow. She wasn’t comfortable with Jimmy.

“They had me tied down to a fucking bed eh? Couldn’t believe it man! If it wasn’t for my dad I think I’d still be there now. This country, man! Liberties are just an illusion eh?”

“Do you want sugar?” asked Robert.

It was difficult making coffee for Jimmy. He always wanted it made a different way every time.

“Eh? Aye man. Five please.”

Robert dropped the lumps of sugar in Jimmy’s mug, one at a time, making five plops in the hot liquid. Jimmy grabbed the mug. Robert watched him, knowing that Jimmy would drink it fast, not caring if his mouth burned, as he tried to catch a whole coffee-infused cube to eat before it melted. It was a game of Jimmy’s. Most of Jimmy’s games, Robert noted, had their penalties and rewards clearly delineated in that way.

“Aye,” said Jimmy, “I only went up because I had sore guts eh? After my dad stamping on me at the site. Lorna talked me into it. I went up to the hospital with her on the bus.”

“Was she there when they tied you up?”

Jimmy stuck his tongue out, grinning. There was a brown sugar cube on the tongue. Jimmy shook his head.

“No man, she’d gone off to start her shift. So they had me alone eh, tied down. But there was this nice young nurse man. I asked her out, but she didn’t go for it. Where’s your mum?”

“I think she’s in her room.”

“How’s she getting on? I’ve not seen your mum for a while.”

“Aye, she’s ok.”

“Will I go and say hello to her just now, see how she’s doing?”

“She might be sleeping I think.”

Jimmy sniffed. He sipped coffee. Jimmy twisted his neck to one side and grinned quickly.

“I’ll just pop along to the end of the corridor and do a knock at her door eh? See how she is.”

Jimmy walked out of the kitchen. Robert blinked and listened to Jimmy’s footsteps on the wooden hall floor. He heard three sharp knocks on his mother’s door.

“Mrs Ferguson!” Jimmy shouted. “It’s me eh? Jimmy!”

Jimmy was standing with his nose an inch from the door, grinning. He waited a few moments, then he gave three more hard raps. A quiet, muffled reply came through the door,

“I’m sleeping Jimmy.”

Jimmy opened the door and walked in to Mrs Ferguson’s bedroom. The window was open and Jimmy felt a fresh texture to the room’s atmosphere. Mrs Ferguson was a long lump beneath a blue duvet. At the pillow end, Jimmy saw her thick and luxurious black hair.

“Aye aye, Mrs Ferguson! Just grabbing some Zs eh? Aye, I know how you feel! I’m just out of the hospital myself eh! Had me tied to a bed up there so they did. But my dad sorted it out.”

Jimmy’s reptilian grin remained engaged, although Mrs Ferguson’s face made no appearance above the duvet. She did not reply.

“That’s a nice blue duvet cover, Mrs Ferguson. Did you get that from
Argos
?”

“Jimmy, I really need to get some sleep just now, ok love? I might get up later and see you then if you’re still here.”

Jimmy grinned. After several seconds he stepped back and closed the door. He walked along the hall to the kitchen.

“Aye,” he said to Robert, “your mum’s getting some kip.”

Robert nodded. He crunched his square jaws against a digestive biscuit.

“But your stomach’s better now?” he said.

Jimmy placed a flat palm to his belly. He nodded.

“Aye, it’s fine now. That’s the weird thing. It was hurting like fuck until they drugged me up and tied me in that bed.”

“Maybe you needed the rest,” said Robert.

Jimmy nodded. The grin was gone.

“Hey Jimmy, you don’t think it had anything to do with the crash do you?”

“What?”

“Them drugging you and tying you up.”

“How could it be to do with the crash?”

Jimmy’s face showed an exaggerated incredulity as he stared at Robert. Robert shrugged.

“I don’t know. I just thought of it there. Like, maybe they know. Maybe you said something.”

“I’ve not said anything. How, have you said anything?”

“No.”

“Have you said anything to your mum?”

Robert swallowed. He shook his head.

“Eh?” said Jimmy. “Have you?”

“No Jimmy.”

Jimmy sniffed.

“But maybe you shouldn’t have that woman’s picture up on your bedroom wall at home, Jimmy.”

“How no?”

“I don’t know. It’s sort of…disrespectful.”

Jimmy raised his eyebrows. He nodded his head slowly.

At 8 o’clock that evening, Jack McCallum was in the office at his house, reading a newspaper, when he heard the front door slam. Jack was out of his chair and half-running to the hall before Jimmy had reached the living room.

“Hi Dad,” said Jimmy.

Jack grabbed the collar of Jimmy’s jacket and pulled it until Jimmy was bent double. Jack started walking fast back to the office. When he had Jimmy inside he turned to push the door shut. Jack jerked hard at the neck of Jimmy’s jacket, then put a large palm to Jimmy’s chest, shoved his son against a high bookcase in the corner of the room.

“Aye,” said Jack. “Hi to you too.”

Jack pulled his big fist back, tight to his right shoulder. He watched Jimmy’s eyes glare at him, then Jack released the punch like a heavy spring-bolt had just been let go. Jack saw his fist go through the glass panel beside Jimmy’s face. The glass in Jack’s hand bit like some big wasp had hold of it. Jack continued to look at Jimmy’s eyes, dimly aware of a red area spreading across the hand at his vision’s periphery.

“You’re causing me trouble Jimmy. You’re causing me trouble boy.”

He expected Jimmy to grin and Jack wasn’t sure what would happen next if Jimmy grinned. But the grin didn’t come. Instead, Jimmy’s body flopped. Jimmy sighed.

“Aye Dad. I know,” he said.

Jack’s neck relaxed a notch, his head tilted forward, his chin dropped.

“Just go to bed,” said Jack.

The next morning, Lorna woke up at her flat, thinking about Jimmy. Halfway through her shift the night before, a nurse she knew called Karen had come up and told Lorna all about Jimmy’s trip to Dr Nissen’s psychiatric observation ward. Lorna had felt her stomach begin to twist toward a tight knot, as Karen told her the story with a strange light in her eyes. Karen had asked if Jimmy was Lorna’s boyfriend. Lorna had somehow dodged the question. She couldn’t remember now, how she had managed not to answer. Lorna lay with her head on the pillow. She half-expected to hear a knock on the door at any moment, Jimmy there, blaming her for what had happened at the hospital. Then again, from Karen’s description, it sounded like the scenario of Jimmy tied down in the bed and Karen standing over him in neat nurse’s uniform must have ticked off several of the boxes on Jimmy’s fantasy list.

Lorna got up and made toast. She turned the television on. She raised her eyebrows and bit into the toast, as she heard the local newsreader announce that Thomas Ford, survivor of the tragic car accident which had killed his wife, had left hospital the day before. Lorna could hear the note, or tone, in the announcer’s voice, when they used the word
survivor
, or was she only imagining it? At the hospital she had heard the staff talking about the case, sometimes only yards from Thomas Ford’s bed. Almost everyone had managed to inflect some tone into their comments that left you half-suspicious too, about how the man had
survived
with his wife at the bottom of a loch and no witnesses. Lorna had liked Mr Ford though. It was strange. Yes, he had been due to leave hospital, but she had clearly seen him still there yesterday, after she had left Jimmy at A&E. Maybe the news had got the day wrong.

Thomas Ford was sitting in his living-room, on the lonely chair, also watching the news announcement on TV, about his release from hospital. He heard it too. The way the girl reading the news said
survivor
.

Five minutes later the phone rang. Thomas jumped in the chair, from sudden adrenaline. His heart was pounding. He forced himself to pick up the phone.

“Hello Thomas. It’s Alan. I just saw on the news that you were out.”

Lea’s father.

“Yes Alan. Hello. I was watching it too.”

There was a long silence before Alan spoke again.

“Aye, well, you missed the funeral.”

“Aye.”

“We’ve not talked to you since…”

“I know.”

“Me and Jean were thinking we could maybe come round…”

“Aye, Alan, of course. I’m just sleeping a lot still, off and on. If you give me a time I’ll make sure I’m awake for you.”

Jimmy hadn’t been watching the TV news, but it was on the fifth page of the newspaper. Thomas Ford released from hospital. Jimmy had taken the paper up to his bedroom and now he was carefully cutting out the black-and-white photograph of Thomas Ford. Jimmy peeled off the Sellotape, tore it, folded the tape into double-sided hinges, got two on the back of the photo, stuck it up beside the colour photo of Mrs Ford.

Jimmy laid down on the bed in a foetal position and stared up at this man’s face. It had been hard to sleep the night before, as though electricity pulsed through Jimmy’s arms and down the back of his head. He knew what it was. It wasn’t the drugs they’d knocked him out with, though he could still feel them getting worked out of his system. No, it was being tied up and captured. He couldn’t cope with it. It had done something terrible to him, deep within. He couldn’t let it happen again. Jimmy blinked. With the woman dying, and him causing it, it would be prison if they caught him. Driving on the wrong side of the road. At that speed. Fair enough if the woman hadn’t died, but with her dying that’s causing death by dangerous driving. His only chance would have been if this man, Thomas Ford, had died in the water like he should have. But there was the man, at home. Jimmy stared at the eyes in the black-and-white photograph. They looked like they would be blue eyes, in colour.

Survivor
. Jimmy had noticed that word in the newspaper articles too.

Jimmy looked down and tried to think. If he was lucky then he would never hear any more about this. But Jimmy remembered Lea Ford’s face, and Thomas Ford’s face, perfectly embedded in his memory from that single second before the Fords’ car had veered off toward the loch.

Jimmy bared his teeth. He looked up at Thomas Ford’s eyes.

“If I remember you, then you remember me,” Jimmy whispered. “If I was you, Mr Ford, I would remember me. Forever and ever.”

At that moment, Jimmy decided to kill Thomas Ford. It was like something in Jimmy had always been waiting for the decision to kill someone.