The Sleeper (38 page)

I tried shouting again. I had done that before, but nothing had happened, and I had decided to conserve my strength for breaking the bonds. That had not worked. Now I yelled.

‘Help!’ I screamed. ‘Help!’

If I were going to die, I needed Laurie to come and help me. He knew what it was like, to feel the life force leaving your body. He had been through this, differently but the same, and I needed him. I yelled his name, screamed it over and over again. He did not come. I had said goodbye to him, to the real Laurie, in Bangkok, and I knew that his ghostly manifestation was over.

‘Laurie!’ I shouted, all the same. ‘Help me! Help me! Come and get me!’

I tried hard to believe in an afterlife. I told myself that when the water, which was at my mouth, reached my nose, I would walk through a long tunnel towards a light, and there at the end of it would be Laurie, and my grandparents; and my old dead pets, hamsters and cats and three rabbits, would be skitting and lolloping and running around at my feet, and everything would be gorgeous and magical and that would last for ever.

Even in my desperation, I could not make it happen. I could not believe in anything apart from annihilation. I was about to be wiped out for ever.

The warm water filled my mouth. I could not spit it out, so I swallowed it. For a horrible second I thought it was going to make me sick again. That would not work well: I pondered for a while what the logistics would be. Could you be sick straight into water without being able to gasp air in through your mouth? It would not be pleasant, and I used all my willpower to keep it down. I could no longer shout. If I tipped my head back, I would be able to breathe for a little while longer.

Then it started to come in little waves, dancing up and filling my nose, and retreating, and doing it again, and retreating again. This was annoying. I wanted to succumb to it now, but something, some instinct to cling to life for as long as possible, made me keep my head tipped back, my nostrils above the water, for as long as I possibly could.

Then it was there, lapping at my nose. I filled my lungs with as much air as I possibly could, and just as I took what was, surely, my last breath, I thought I heard the sound of an engine, somewhere in the distance, and then a voice, and then a motor coming closer and closer.

chapter thirty-two

Lara

He is feeding me tranquillisers: as soon as I worked that out, everything made sense. A day ago I could focus and hold a conversation, of sorts. Now to move an arm or a leg demands a concentrated effort, a determined focusing of mental resources. To speak is a triumph, particularly if the words are to end up anywhere near distinct. All I do is sleep and lie around. I prefer sleeping: at least everything is blocked out. Whatever these tranquillisers are, they stop me thinking. They keep me here, turn me almost into a willing captive. My whole existence feels lazy, and I live within a rosy glow of there being no bigger issues to worry about.

Guy is dead, but that is all right, because everyone is heading in that direction, and it doesn’t matter whether it happens now or in thirty years. To the universe, those times are the same. Iris is gone too. That is also all right. Whatever he does to me, it doesn’t matter, because he is Leon, my godfather, and I will be all right with him.

He has bought me lovely clothes, and brushes my hair. He makes me put on make-up, which I do with a careful, heavy hand. I eat and drink what he puts in front of me, knowing that he will be judging it all just right, to keep me healthy and drugged, to keep me slim despite my life of lounging.

As far as I remember, he has not touched me. I am glad, because it would be unbearable. Yet it terrifies me, because it means he has a longer-term plan. If he had nowhere to go from here and was waiting for the police to show up, he would be leaping on me. He could do anything to me now – we both know that – and the fact that he is keeping me in a state of constant dread, that he is waiting, is almost worse than its alternative.

It is only when the effect starts to wear off, like now, that my heart rate increases, my mind suddenly sharpens and the horror starts rushing back. Now I try not to let him see that my powers are returning, and I desperately start to plot. I need to find my phone and call for help. Or his phone: that would do. I could call home, call my parents, and get them to raise the alarm.

That is ridiculous. The alarm is already raised, for me, and set to its highest possible alert level, yet only Iris found me. I could try to call her, but he took her phone and threw it into the sea. I saw him. And anyway, in spite of what he says, I am sure he has killed her. He probably just didn’t do it outright, so he could swear to me that he had left her alive. She will be dead by now, because she is the only one who knows it was him.

I could climb out of a window, but this villa is air-conditioned, and its owners are so confident of the system’s efficacy that the windows don’t even have the capacity to open. I found that out last time I was lucid, and he caught me trying to smash one, and gently sat me down and made me drink a cocktail that was full of alcohol and whatever those drugs are, and I accepted oblivion again. This time I will be more careful.

I can hear him in the bedroom on his laptop. I sit up on the sofa and look around. There is no phone within reach, naturally. He has his iPhone with him. He put my Thai phone into the safe; I have a fuzzy memory of having watched him do it. It is a smart phone I bought in Bangkok, one I top up with pay-as-you-go to make it untraceable (I have seen
The Wire
; I have a vague idea of how these things work), but I have no idea of the combination for the safe.

All the same, I know where it is.

I stand up as quietly as I can and tiptoe across the polished wooden floor. Leon’s typing stops. I freeze, wondering whether to fling myself back on to the sofa. He starts typing again. Then his voice barks out, and for a second I am terrified, and then relieved.

‘Annie!’ he says. ‘’Tis I. Just checking in. How are things? … Oh yes, fine, thanks. But I just want to know whether the paperwork’s through from that Hitchens thing. I’ve got my eye on them and you can tell them that. No sob stories will be accepted.’

I pull the cupboard door open. It squeaks a tiny bit, but Leon’s bluster continues. The safe is right in front of me. It is one of those little ones you get in hotel rooms, and its door is smugly closed.

I press a number. It beeps loudly. Leon pauses for a second, and I run back to the sofa and lie down with my eyes closed.

‘Excuse me a second, Annie,’ he says, and then he is there. I feel him looming over me, but I do not open my eyes.

Some time later, my senses start to return again. I know there is no way I will ever escape like this. My lucid periods are so short, because he watches me constantly, and he knows my senses will sharpen between pills. I will never get away in those times.

I have tried pretending to eat, but he forces me. When I tried to shout and raise the alarm, he threatened to inject me instead.

‘I don’t want to,’ he said mildly. ‘But if it comes to it, I will. Don’t worry, darling. You’ll understand when you’re ready.’

‘I will not,’ I shouted. I lost control. It was a mistake, and I won’t be doing it again, because he slapped me across the face, hard, and then cried at what I had made him do until I apologised.

The only time he is not with me is when I go to the loo. The window in the bathroom is small, high up and frosted. He sometimes stands outside the door, possibly to make sure I’m not killing myself. Often, though, he doesn’t. I think he likes to be a gentleman and give me privacy in the bathroom.

I have no idea how long I have been here, or what day it is. It might not have been very long. I know I have been to sleep, and that he tucked me into the king-sized bed and took the single one in the corner of the huge master bedroom. He drugged me heavily before bed so that there was no chance of my escaping while he slept.

If I concentrate very hard, I might be able to try something out. However, it involves the lucid me making a plan that the drugged me will need to carry out. If I think about it now, very, very hard, then I might be able to implant it in my brain. I wish I could write myself a note, but I know that is impossible.

There is a knock on the villa’s front door. I try not to respond. Leon is there in a second.

‘Stay right where you are, sweetheart,’ he says, and I nod. He opens the door, hands some money over, and says, ‘That’s quite all right – I’ve got it from here.’ Then he takes a tray, kicks the door shut, and carries it into the second bedroom, the one he’s been using as an office.

He brings it back and puts it in front of me, doctored with drugs.

‘Darling,’ he says, sitting next to me and smiling. ‘It’s time for your lunch.’

So it’s lunchtime. I file that knowledge away.

‘Come. Sit at the table with me.’

My lunch is a bowl of tom yum pak, vegetable soup, a plate of chopped fruit and two drinks. He has a plate of pad thai, a beer and a bottle of water. We sit opposite each other at the shiny table, and he watches me carefully.

‘Now, we’re going to be leaving here tomorrow, darling,’ he says, checking my face for a reaction. ‘I don’t want any silly business. Is that understood? I’m doing this for you. You’ll realise it one day. You can’t go back home ever, not without far too many stupid questions being raised and ridiculous police officers popping up at every stage. I’m not letting them take you to one of their prisons. Not you. So I’ve organised something wonderful. Are you listening? Are you concentrating?’

I nod that I am.

‘Where have you always wanted to live?’

‘Um.’ I want to say the right thing, but I have no idea what the answer is. I’ve wanted to live in different places at different times. ‘Er. London?’

‘Oh, Lara.’ He smiles, and I can see his approval of the fact that I have said something ridiculous, because it means his drugs are working. ‘No, no. Don’t worry. I can see you’re finding it hard to focus. But don’t you remember how we used to talk about Nepal? You used to tell me that one day you would buy a house in the mountains, in the Himalayas, and you would just leave everything behind and live there. No Sam Finch, no silly dalliances with married men, nothing. You would breathe fresh mountain air, and walk every day, maybe have a few goats and chickens, or whatever people do up there.’

I nod again.

‘I’ve bought it, sweetheart. We have a house, three hours’ drive from Kathmandu. It’s far away from the treks the tourists do. There’s no other house near it. It cost me a fucking pittance! So we’re going to live there, you and me, for ever. Your dream come true; my dream come true.’

I try to imagine it. It could never work. People will come along and they will find me.

‘But,’ I say carefully, because I can feel the drugs doing their work, shutting down the horror so I experience the most enormous surge of terror, followed almost instantly by calm. ‘Your business. It’s in London. And Sally. People will look for you.’

‘That’s the thing, my dear. They won’t.’ He pauses for a mouthful of noodles. ‘I’ve left Sally. That has been on the cards for a long time. She’s looked after financially. As far as she’s concerned, I’m cut up by the split and I’ve gone away somewhere hot to get over it. She probably thinks I’m holed up with a bevy of Asian girls. That’s fine by me. Annie knows not to ask anything, as long as I’m on the line and on top of the work side of things. No one else gives a shit. I can just say I’m living abroad for a while and that’s that. I’m a free agent.’

‘Oh.’

I cannot compute everything he has just said, but I know it was bad. I put my spoon down.

‘Just finish that up for me, sweetheart. Come on, quickly, and then you can lie down.’

I pick up the spoon and do as he says. He makes me drink the water and the other drink, which is an alcoholic cocktail that, I am sure, is laced with all kinds of things. I want to leave it but I am not allowed.

Then I rise, shakily, to my feet. He smiles his approval.

‘Good girl,’ he says.

‘Go to the loo,’ I manage to say.

‘Of course. Will you be all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Quick as you can. We can’t have you keeling over.’

He is still eating his lunch, sipping his beer. I lock the bathroom door and fuzzily remember. The chemicals have not quite taken effect properly yet. I was exaggerating. Quickly, while I still can, I turn the tap and the extractor fan on for cover, kneel in front of the loo and stick my fingers into the back of my throat.

I used to do this a bit when I was a teenager. I am sure that most teenage girls do it. It turns out that once you’ve got the technique, making yourself sick is like riding a bike. I find the right spot and push my fingers back, and my lunch reappears. It takes four vomits before there is nothing left to come up.

I flush the loo three times to get rid of the scum on the surface, and brush my teeth. Then, when I am sure I look all right, I compose myself into someone about to keel over, and stagger to the sofa.

‘Everything all right?’ Leon asks from across the open-plan living area.

‘Mmm?’ I reply, collapsing into my usual position.

‘Nothing. Don’t worry.’

I close my eyes. This is more like it.

chapter thirty-three

Iris

‘Excuse me.’

The woman was on the phone, behind her wide desk that was cluttered with a spread-out map, two old-fashioned accounts books, a pair of binoculars and many pieces of paperwork. She smiled at me and put her hand over the receiver.

‘Just one moment,’ she said.

I looked at the board behind her, with its keys on hooks. My hut was number 36. There was a key up there, even though I had lost mine en route. I smiled and pointed and nipped behind the desk, behind the woman, and unhooked it. She did nothing to stop me.

The sun was hot in my eyes, shining off the stone path. I was desperate for food, but more desperate to get back to my things, to check whether that psychopath had thrown everything I owned into the sea and burned down my hut, just to cover his bases. He could have booby-trapped the bedroom, or paid a gang of mercenaries to dispatch me from nearby rooftops if I went close.