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Thinking Up a Hurricane

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One night we went to take in the fishing lines. We had left it pretty late and in the darkness they felt strangely heavy, but without the tug of a fighting fish.

‘Feels like a plastic bag,’ Robert said.

The bag spat a jet of water at us, soaking our heads as we looked over the side, trying to figure out exactly what we had caught. A hefty pair of squid, taken on our lead-headed fishing lures.

‘Well I never,’ said Dad.

The next day Mom fried the squid in batter for lunch. Although the wind was still on the nose, it had picked up and we hunkered down on the main saloon floor with the table lashed against the bulkhead while Vingila threw herself at the waves. We ate the fried squid from bowls balanced on our knees. Something was wrong with Mom’s recipe; the batter had fallen off in the oil and formed brown floating balls which she had fished out and served atop the pale, contorted curlicues of sliced hood and tentacle. Frying oil, which could have been fresher, collected in pools beneath our mounds of rice. Mom thought draining food on paper towels was wasteful. Pepe had his own bowl in the corner with oil and crunchy bits. When he looked up, his beard was dark with fat.

‘Did you put lemon on this?’ Dad asked Mom.

‘Now tell me, where would I get a lemon?’

‘Tastes like lemon to me,’ Robert said. He was right. Perhaps it was because we’d been so long without lemons – or any other fresh fruit – but our calamari, although not too tender, had a delicate citrus aroma. It was delicious. After two hours of cooking and eating we were full and fell greasily asleep on the floor for the rest of the afternoon.

Some days later when Dad’s sights showed we were being pushed towards the coast by the current he said, ‘Why don’t we go to Ecuador?’

We were all tired of sailing by then and Mom was hoping she could buy some bananas. We turned Vingila so that the wind hit her beam, and she increased her speed by a fraction as she made for the coast of Ecuador where Dad found Baia Pinas, a settlement so small it scarcely appeared on the chart. We were very far from Quito. In fact we were far away from almost everything. A ring of mountains in a thick coat of jungle formed a backdrop to a tiny cluster of dwellings. There was a wooden hotel on stilts and an airstrip, a few huts and a small but secure anchorage crammed with smart, new, recreational fishing boats. In the evening, after the boats came in, giant marlin and sailfish were hung bill down on hooks while the men who had caught them posed alongside for photographs. Once or twice I spotted bare chested jungle people in loincloths and grass skirts drifting out from the damp, liana draped trees to watch. They never spoke a word. Inside the hotel, the walls were covered with the pictures of men and their fish. There was a ten to one club, for those who had caught a hundred pound marlin on ten pound breaking strain line, and a twenty to one club. In the corner a glass case stood filled with trophies. Against the far wall a stuffed and painted marlin at least nine foot long swam against the grain of the wood.

After the first night the manager of the hotel asked us to leave.

‘This place is for fishermen only,’ he said, ‘and we have a very exclusive clientele. I don’t want any trouble.’

‘What kind of trouble was he expecting anyway?’ Mom asked. She was upset because she hadn’t been able to buy any bananas.

‘Drugs?’ said Robert.

‘Don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Aren’t drug running boats supposed to be fast?’

Dad gave me the evil eye then, so I didn’t say anything more, though I could have.

Back at sea the wind had turned and the skies had grown clearer. We set our sails again for Galapagos. Vingila still wasn’t moving and we still hadn’t figured out she was dragging a carpet of writhing barnacles cemented to her underside. Around us, the sea teemed with billfish. Even at our low speed we caught a few, but they snapped our lines. We saw silvery torpedoes rocketing from the sea and tail-walking to the whirr and ping of our reels. We were fishing with 200 pound breaking strain tackle. We didn’t even belong to the one to one club, I thought, no wonder the manager had asked us to leave. But what would we do with a fish that size anyway, Mom wanted to know, who would cook it? One morning Dad found a few marlin on deck. As long as his thumb, they were perfect copies of their elders, right down to the dorsal fins that slotted into pouches on their backs. Lynnath put them in a jar of formalin.

‘As far as I know,’ she said, ‘baby marlin haven’t been described. I’m going to write this up.’

‘Another magazine article?’ Mom said. ‘That would be nice.’

When we started catching birds we knew we had reached the Galapagos. We had spent a month at sea crawling our way over 800 miles and even our onions were finished. Donella had arrived in the Galapagos a week earlier and Christian, over the radio, told Dad to clear in at Wreck Bay on Santa Cristobal before making our way to Isla Santa Cruz. Mountains rose from the sea like black teeth and the gannets wouldn’t leave our lines alone. They dived like arrows and we kept pulling in soggy, yellow-eyed birds, avoiding their beaks and unhooking them as they vomited seawater over the stern. We threw them back before Pepe got at them but a few looked as if they wouldn’t make it.

Mom came up with the pilot book.

‘I’ve just read,’ she said, ‘that this entire area is a nature reserve. So I think you should stop catching these poor birds.’

Lynnath agreed and we took the lines in.

The capitano of the parks board wasn’t pleased with us either.

‘Where are your visas?’ he asked.

Mom and Dad acted surprised. What visas, they said, we didn’t know about visas. The capitano had shiny hair combed back from his forehead and a black moustache. He was unmoved.

‘If you don’t have visas, you cannot stay. Please prepare to leave.’

Then Dad launched into a story about how we had had such a long and difficult trip, and we had run out of food and that Robert and I, since leaving South Africa had only ever wanted to see the Galapagos Islands, which was why we had started the whole circumnavigation in the first place. We only bought this boat, he repeated, so that our children could see the amazing animals of the Galapagos. This was news to me.

‘How can you turn them away now?’ Dad asked, casting his hand towards the bunk where I was sitting beside my brother.

I saw the capitano’s moustache quiver a little. His eyes lingered on my blonde plaits, making me wish I had washed them more recently. I gave a small, unhappy smile, glancing at Dad to see if that was what he wanted.

Toby's Room

Pat Barker
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Pat Barker returns to the First World War and to the characters of "Life Class" with her new novel "Toby's Room", a dark, compelling story of human desire, wartime horror and the power of friendship. When Toby is reported 'Missing, Believed Killed', another secret casts a lengthening shadow over Elinor's world: how exactly did Toby die - and why? Elinor determines to uncover the truth. Only then can she finally close the door to Toby's room. Moving from the Slade School of Art to Queen Mary's Hospital, where surgery and art intersect in the rebuilding of the shattered faces of the wounded, "Toby's Room" is a riveting drama of identity, damage, intimacy and loss. "Toby's Room" is Pat Barker's most powerful novel yet. Praise for Toby's Room: "Heart-rendering return to the Great War...On every level, "Toby's Room" anatomises a world where extreme emotion shatters the boundaries of identity, behaviour, gender. Through the mask of Apollo bursts an omnipresent Dionysus". ("Independent"). "Once again Barker skilfully moves between past and present, seamlessly weaving fact and fiction into a gripping narrative". ("Sunday Telegraph").
"A gripping and moving exploration of the lasting effects of war". ("Woman & Home"). "A natural storyteller...the reader [will be] torn between wanting to linger over the sheer pleasure of the writing and the desire to rush towards the end to discover how it all pans out". ("Daily Mail"). Pat Barker was born in 1943. Her books include the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy, comprising Regeneration, which has been filmed, "The Eye in the Door", which won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and "The Ghost Road", which won the Booker Prize. The trilogy featured the "Observer's" 2012 list of the ten best historical novels. She is also the author of the more recent novels "Another World", "Border Crossing", "Double Vision", "Life Class", and "Toby's Room". She lives in Durham.

Tuesday's Gone

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One

Maggie Brennan half  walked, half  ran along Deptford 
Church Street. She was talking on the phone and reading a 
file and looking for the address in the A‒Z. It was the second 
day of  the week and she was already two days behind schedule. 
This didn’t include the caseload she had inherited from a 
colleague who was now on permanent sick leave.
‘No,’ said Maggie, into the phone. She looked at her watch. 
‘I’ll try to get to the meeting before you finish.’
She put the mobile into her pocket. She was thinking of  
the case she’d just come from. A three-year-old with bruises. 
Suspicious bruises, the doctor in A&E had said. Maggie had 
talked to the mother, looked at the child, checked out the flat 
where they lived. It was horrible, damp, cold, but not obviously dangerous. 
The mother said she didn’t have a boyfriend, 
and Maggie had checked the bathroom and there was no 
razor. She had insisted that he had fallen down the stairs. 
That’s what people said when they hit their children, but 
even so, three-year-olds really did fall downstairs. She’d only 
spent ten minutes there but ten hours wouldn’t have made 
much difference. If  she removed the child, the prosecution 
would probably fail and she would be disciplined. If  she 
didn’t remove the child and he was found dead, there would 
be an inquiry; she would be fired and maybe prosecuted. So 
she’d signed off on it. No immediate cause for concern. 
Probably nothing much would happen. 
She looked more closely at the A‒Z. Her hands were cold 
because she’d forgotten her gloves; her feet were wet in their 
 
 
cheap boots. She’d been to this hostel before, but she could 
never remember where it was. Howard Street was a little 
dead end, tucked away somewhere towards the river. She had 
to put her reading glasses on and move her finger around on 
the map before she found it. Yes, that was it, just a couple of  
minutes away. She turned off the main street and found herself  
unexpectedly next to a churchyard. 
She leaned on the wall and looked at the file on the woman 
she was going to see. There wasn’t much at all. Michelle 
Doyce. Born 1959. A hospital discharge paper, copied to the 
Social Services department. A placement form, a request for 
an evaluation. Maggie flicked through the forms: no next of  
kin. It wasn’t even clear why she had been in hospital, 
although from the name of  it, she could see that it was something 
psychological. She could guess the results of  the 
evaluation in advance: just sheer general hopelessness, a 
pathetic middle-aged woman who needed somewhere to stay 
and someone to drop in just to keep her from wandering the 
streets. Maggie looked at her watch. There wasn’t time for a 
full evaluation today. She could manage a basic check-up to 
make sure that Michelle was not in imminent danger, that 
she was feeding herself  ‒ the standard checklist.
She closed the file and walked away from the church into 
a housing estate. Some of  the flats were sealed up, with metal 
sheets bolted on to the doors and windows, but most were 
occupied. On the second level, a teenage boy emerged from 
a doorway and walked along the balcony, his hands stuffed 
into the pockets of  his bulky jacket. Maggie looked around. 
It was probably all right. It was a Tuesday morning, and the 
dangerous people were mostly still in bed. She turned the 
corner and checked the address she’d written in her notebook. 
Room One, 3 Howard Street. Yes, she remembered it 
now. It was a strange house that looked as if  it had been built 
 
 
out of  the same materials as the housing estate and then had 
decayed at the same rate. This hostel wasn’t a proper hostel 
at all. It was a house rented cheaply from a private landlord. 
People could be put there while the services made up their 
minds about what to do with them. Usually they just moved 
on or were forgotten about. There were some places Maggie 
only visited with a chaperone, but she hadn’t heard anything 
particular about this one. These people were mainly a danger 
to themselves.
She looked up at the house. On the second floor a broken window 
was blocked up with brown cardboard. There 
was a tiny paved front garden and an alley that went along 
the left side of  the house. Beside the front door a bin bag 
had burst, but it had only added to the rubbish that was 
strewn everywhere. Maggie wrote a one-word note. There 
were five buzzers next to the front door. They didn’t have 
labels next to them but she pressed the bottom one, then 
pressed it again. She couldn’t tell whether it was working. 
She was wondering whether to knock on the door with her 
fist or look through the window when she heard a voice. 
Looking round, she saw a man right behind her. He was 
gaunt with wiry ginger hair tied back in a ponytail, and 
piercings right across his face. She stepped to one side 
when she saw the man’s dog, a small breed that was technically 
illegal, though it was the third she’d seen since she’d 
left Deptford station.
‘No, he’s a good one,’ the man said. ‘Aren’t you, Buzz?’
‘Do you live here?’ Maggie said.
The man looked suspicious. One of  his cheeks was quivering. 
Maggie took a laminated card from her pocket and 
showed it to him. ‘I’m from Social Services,’ she said. ‘I’m 
here to see Michelle Doyce.’
‘The one downstairs?’ the man said. ‘Haven’t seen her.’ He 
 
 
leaned past Maggie and unlocked the front door. ‘You coming in?’
‘Yes, please.’
The man just shrugged.
‘Go on, Buzz,’ he said. Maggie heard the clatter of  the 
dog’s paws inside and up the stairs, and the man disappeared 
after him. 
As soon as she stepped inside, Maggie was hit by an odour 
of  damp and rubbish and fried food and dog shit and other 
smells she couldn’t place. It almost made her eyes water. She 
closed the front door behind her. This must once have been 
the hallway of  a family house. Now it was piled with pallets, 
tins of  paint, a couple of  gaping plastic bags, an old bike 
with no tyres. The stairs were directly ahead. To the left, what 
would have been a door to the front room was blocked up. 
She walked past the side of  the stairs to a door further along. 
She rapped on it hard and listened. She heard something 
inside, then nothing. She knocked again, several times, and 
waited. There was a rattling sound and then the door opened 
inwards. Maggie held out her laminated card once more.
‘Michelle Doyce?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said the woman.
It was difficult for Maggie to define even to herself  exactly 
what was strange about her. She was clean and her hair was 
brushed, but perhaps almost too brushed, like that of  a small 
child who had wetted her hair and then combed it so that it 
lay flat over her head, thin enough to show the pale scalp 
beneath. Her face was smooth and pink, with a dusting of  
fuzzy hair. Her bright red lipstick extended just a little too far 
off her lips. She wore a baggy, faded, flowery dress. Maggie 
identified herself  and held out the card.
‘I just wanted to check up on you, Michelle,’ she said. ‘See 
how you are. Are you all right? All right in yourself?’
 
The woman nodded.
‘Can I come in?’ said Maggie. ‘Can I check everything’s 
OK?’
She stepped inside and took out her notebook. As far as 
she could tell from a glance, Michelle seemed to be keeping 
herself  clean. She looked as if  she was eating. She was 
responsive. Still, something felt odd. She peered around in 
the shabby little anteroom of  the flat. The contrast with the 
hallway of  the house was impressive. Shoes were arranged in 
a row, a coat hung from a hook. There was a bucket with a 
mop leaning against the wall in the corner.
‘How long have you been here, Michelle?’
The woman frowned. ‘Here?’ she said. ‘A few days.’
The discharge form had said the fifth of  January and today 
was the first day of  February. Still, that sort of  vagueness 
wasn’t really surprising. As the two women stood there, 
Maggie became aware of  a sound she couldn’t quite place. It 
might be the hum of  traffic, or a vacuum cleaner on the floor 
above, or a plane. It depended on how far away it was. There 
was a smell also, like food that had been left out too long. She 
looked up: the electricity was working. She should check 
whether Michelle had a fridge. But, by the look of  her, she’d 
be all right for the time being. 
‘Can I have a look round, Michelle?’ she said. ‘Make sure 
everything’s OK?’
‘You want to meet him?’ said Michelle.
Maggie was puzzled. There hadn’t been anything on the 
form. ‘Have you got a friend?’ she said. ‘I’d be happy to meet 
him.’
Michelle stepped forward and opened the door to what 
would have been the house’s main back room, away from the 
street. Maggie followed her and immediately felt something 
on her face. At first she thought it was dust. She thought of  
an underground train coming, blowing the warm grit into 
her face. At the same time the sound got louder and she realized 
it wasn’t dust but flies, a thick cloud of  flies blowing 
against her face.
For a few moments she was confused by the man sitting 
on the sofa. Her perceptions had slowed and become skewed, 
as if  she were deep under water or in a dream. Crazily, she 
wondered if  he was wearing some sort of  diving suit, a blue, 
marbled, slightly ruptured and torn diving suit, and she wondered why 
his eyes were yellow and cloudy.  And then she 
started to fumble for her phone and she dropped it, and suddenly she 
couldn’t make her fingers work, couldn’t get them 
to pick the phone up from the grimy carpet, as she saw that 
it wasn’t any kind of  suit but his naked, swollen, rupturing 
flesh and that he was dead. Long dead. 
 
Two
 
‘February,’ said Sasha, sidestepping a puddle, ‘should be 
abolished.’
She was walking with Frieda along a street lined with modern office blocks, 
whose height blocked out the sky and made 
the dark day seem darker. Everything was black and grey and 
white, like an old photograph: the buildings were monochrome, the sky chilly 
and blank; all the men and women 
‒ but they were mostly men ‒ walking past them, with their 
slim laptop cases and umbrellas at the ready, wore sober suits 
and coats. Only the red scarf  around Frieda’s neck added a 
splash of  colour to the scene. 
Frieda was walking swiftly, and Sasha, although she was 
the taller, had to make an effort to keep up.
‘And Tuesdays,’ she went on. ‘February is the worst month 
of  the year, much worse than January, and Tuesday is the 
worst day of  the week.’
‘I thought that was supposed to be Monday.’ 
‘Tuesdays are worse. It’s like . . .’ Sasha paused, trying to 
think what it was like. ‘Monday’s like jumping into ice-cold 
water, but you get a shock of  excitement. On Tuesday you’re 
still in the water but the shock has worn off and you’re just 
cold.’
Frieda looked round at her, noticing the winter pallor that 
made her seem frailer than usual, although there was no hiding 
her unusual beauty, even bundled up in a heavy coat, with 
her dark blonde hair tied severely back. 
‘Bad morning?’ 
 
They turned past a wine bar and briefly out on to Cannon 
Street, into the blur of  red buses and taxis. Rain started to 
spit.
‘Not really. Just a meeting that went on longer than necessary 
because some people love the sound of  their own voices.’ 
Sasha suddenly stopped and looked around. ‘I hate this part 
of  London,’ she said, not angrily, but as if  she’d only just realized 
where she was. ‘When you suggested a walk, I thought 
you were going to take me along by the river or to a park. This 
is just unreal.’
Frieda slowed. They were walking past a tiny patch of  
fenced-in green, untended and full of  nettles and overgrown 
shrubs. 
‘There was a church here,’ she said. ‘It’s long gone, of  
course, and the graveyard as well. But this tiny bit survived, 
got forgotten about somehow, among all the offices. It’s a 
fragment of  something.’
Sasha peered over the railings at the litter. ‘And now it’s 
where people come for a cigarette.’
‘When I was little, seven or eight, my father took me to 
London.’ 
Sasha looked at Frieda attentively: this was the first time 
she had ever mentioned any member of  her family or brought 
up a memory from her childhood. In the year or so since 
they had known each other, she had told Frieda almost everything 
about her own life ‒ her relationship with her parents 
and her feckless younger brother, her love affairs, her friendships, 
things she kept hidden from view suddenly exposed 
‒ but Frieda’s life remained a mystery to her.
The two of  them had met just over a year ago. Sasha had 
gone to Frieda as a patient and she still remembered their 
single session, when she had told Frieda, in a whisper and 
barely lifting her eyes to meet Frieda’s steady gaze, how she 
 
had slept with her therapist. Her therapist had slept with her. 
It had been an act of  confession: her dirty secret filling the 
quiet room and Frieda, leaning forward slightly in her red 
chair, taking away the sting and shame by the quality of  her 
attention. Sasha had left feeling drained but cleansed. Only 
later had she learned that afterwards Frieda had gone straight 
from their session to the restaurant where the therapist was 
sitting with his wife and punched him, creating havoc, smashing 
glasses and plates. She had ended up in a police cell with 
a bandaged hand, but the therapist had declined to press 
charges and insisted on paying for all the damage at the restaurant. 
Later, Sasha – who was a geneticist by profession 
‒ had repaid the debt by surreptitiously arranging a DNA 
test on a piece of  evidence Frieda had lifted from the police 
station. They had become friends, yet it was a friendship 
unlike any that Sasha had ever known. Frieda didn’t talk 
about feelings; she had never once mentioned  her ex, Sandy, 
since he had gone to work in America, and the only time 
Sasha had asked her about it, Frieda had told her with terrifying 
politeness that she didn’t want to discuss it. Instead, 
Frieda talked about a piece of  architecture, or a strange fact 
she had unearthed about London. Every so often she would 
invite Sasha to an exhibition and sometimes she would call 
and ask her if  she was free for a walk. Sasha would always say 
yes. She would break a date or leave work in order to follow 
Frieda through the London streets. She felt that this was 
Frieda’s way of  confiding in her, and that by accompanying 
her on her rambles, she was perhaps taking some of  the edge 
off her friend’s solitude. 
Now she waited for Frieda to continue, knowing better 
than to press her.
‘We went to Spitalfields Market and he suddenly said 
we were standing on top of  a plague pit, that hundreds of  
 
people who had died from the Black Death were lying 
under our feet. They had done tests on the teeth of  some 
of  the corpses that had been excavated.’
‘Couldn’t he have taken you to the zoo?’ said Sasha.
Frieda shook her head. ‘I hate these buildings as well. We 
could be anywhere. But there are the tiny bits they’ve forgotten 
to get rid of, the odd space here and there, and the 
names of  the roads: Threadneedle Street, Wardrobe Terrace, 
Cowcross Street. Memories and ghosts.’
‘It sounds just like therapy.’
Frieda smiled at her. ‘Doesn’t it? Here, there’s something I 
want to show you.’
They retraced their route to Cannon Street and stopped 
opposite the station, in front of  an iron grid set into the wall.
‘What’s this?’
‘The London Stone.’
Sasha looked at it dubiously: it was an unprepossessing 
lump of  limestone, dull and pockmarked, and reminded her 
of  the kind of  uncomfortable rock you perched on at the 
beach when you were rubbing sand off your feet before pulling 
your shoes back on. ‘What’s it for?’
‘It’s protecting us.’
Sasha gave a puzzled smile. ‘In what sense?’
Frieda indicated a small sign beside it. ‘“So long as the 
Stone of  Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish.” It’s 
supposed to be the heart of  the city, the point from which 
the Romans measured the scope of  their empire. Some people think 
it has occult powers. Nobody really knows where it 
came from ‒ the Druids, the Romans. Maybe it’s an old altar, 
a sacrificial stone, a mystical centre point.’
‘You believe that?’
‘What I like,’ said Frieda, ‘is that it’s in the side of  a shop 
and that most people walk past without noticing it, and that 
if  it got mislaid, it would 
never be found because it looks like 
a completely ordinary piece of  rock. And it means what we 
want it to mean.’
They were silent for a few moments and then Sasha put a 
gloved hand on Frieda’s shoulder. ‘Tell me, if  you were ever 
in distress, would you confide in anyone?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Would you confide in me?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Well. You could, that’s all.’ She felt constrained, embarrassed by 
the emotion in her voice. ‘I just wanted you to 
know.’
‘Thank you.’ Frieda’s voice was neutral.
Sasha dropped her hand, and they turned from the grille. 
The air had become notably colder, the sky blanker, as if  it 
might snow.
‘I have a patient in half  an hour,’ Frieda said.
‘One thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Tomorrow. You must be worried. I hope it goes all right. 
Will you let me know?’
Frieda gave a shrug. Sasha watched as she walked away, 
slim and upright, into the swallowing crowds.
 
Three
 
Detective Constable Yvette Long arrived a few moments 
before Karlsson. She had got the phone call just fifteen minutes previously 
but already a small crowd was gathering in 
the street: children who ought to be at school, young mothers 
with babies in buggies, men who seemed in no hurry to get 
anywhere. It was bitingly cold but many of  them were not 
wearing overcoats or gloves. They looked excited, brighteyed with curiosity. 
Two police cars were parked in front of  
number three and a barrier had been put up. Just behind it, a 
thin stringy man with a ginger ponytail was pacing up and 
down, up and down, with his barrel-chested dog. Every so 
often it sat down and yawned, saliva drooling from its jaws. 
There was another man, enormously fat, ripples of  flesh 
encased in his T-shirt, behind the barrier. He was standing 
quite still, mopping his shiny forehead, as if  it was high summer, 
not icy February. Yvette parked and, as she opened the 
door, DC Chris Munster came out of  the house, holding a 
handkerchief  to his mouth. 
‘Where’s the woman who found him?’
Munster took the handkerchief  from his mouth and put it 
into his pocket. He made a visible effort to control the working of  his face. 
‘Sorry. It got to me for a bit. She’s there.’ He 
nodded towards a middle-aged African woman sitting on the 
pavement with her face in her hands. ‘She’s waiting to talk to 
us. She’s shocked. The other woman ‒ the one who was with 
him ‒ she’s in the car with Melanie. She keeps talking about 
tea. Forensics are on the way.’
 
‘Karlsson’s on his way too.’
‘Good.’ Munster lowered his voice. ‘How can they live like 
this?’
Yvette and Karlsson pulled on paper overshoes. He gave 
her a reassuring nod and, for a moment, put his hand 
on the small of  her back, steadying her. She took a deep 
breath. 
Later, Karlsson would try to separate all his impressions, 
put them in order, but now it was a jumble of  sights and 
smells and a nausea that made him sweat. They walked 
through the rubbish, the dog shit, the smell, half  sweet and 
so thick it caught in the back of  the throat. He and Yvette 
made their way to the door that wasn’t blocked off. They 
stepped inside, into a different universe of  order: it was like 
being in a library, where everything was meticulously catalogued and 
stored in its allotted space. Three pairs of  ancient 
shoes, on top of  each other; a shelf  of  round stones; another 
shelf  of  bird bones, some of  which still had matted feathers 
stuck to them, a tub of  cigarette butts lying side by side, 
another plastic container with what looked like hair balls. He 
had time to think, as he passed into the next room, that the 
woman who lived here must be crazy. And then, for a while, 
he stared at the thing on the sofa, the naked man sitting 
upright, in a halo of  slow, fat flies.
He was quite slender, and although it was hard to tell, 
didn’t seem old. His hands were in his lap, as if  in modesty, 
and in one of  them was an iced bun; his head was propped 
up with a pillow so that his open sulphurous eyes stared 
straight at them and his lopsided, stiffened mouth leered. 
His skin was a mottled blue, like a cheese left out for too 
long. Karlsson thought of  the acid-washed jeans his little 
daughter had made him buy for her. He pushed the thought 
 
away. He didn’t want to bring her into this setting, even in 
his mind. Leaning forward, he saw vertical marks striping 
the man’s torso. He must have been dead for some time, 
judging not just from the way his skin had darkened where 
the blood had puddled on the underside of  his thighs and 
buttocks, but also from the smell that was making Yvette 
Long, standing behind Karlsson, breathe in shallow, hoarse 
gasps. There were two full cups of  tea by his left foot, which 
was curled upwards at an unnatural angle, the toes splayed. 
He had a comb stuck into his light brown hair, and lipstick 
on his mouth. 
‘Obviously he’s been here some time.’ Karlsson’s voice 
sounded calmer than he had expected. ‘It’s warm in the 
room. That hasn’t helped.’
Yvette made a noise that might have been agreement. 
Karlsson forced himself  to look more closely at the mottled, 
puffy flesh. He waved Yvette over. ‘Look,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘At his left hand.’
The tip of  the middle finger was missing from above the 
knuckle.
‘It could be a deformity.’
‘It looks to me like it’s been cut off and the wound hasn’t 
healed properly,’ said Karlsson.
Yvette swallowed before she spoke. She absolutely wasn’t 
going to be sick. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to tell. It 
looks a bit mushy but it could be . . .’
‘General decomposition,’ said Karlsson.
‘Yes.’
‘Which is happening at an advanced rate because of  the 
heat.’
‘Chris said the bar-fire was on when they arrived.’
‘The autopsy should tell us. They’ll need to get a move on.’
 
Karlsson looked at the cracked window and its rotting sill, 
the thin orange curtains. There were things that Michelle 
Doyce had collected and ordered: a cardboard box of  balledup, 
obviously soiled tissues; a drawer full of  bottle-tops, 
colour-coded; a jam jar containing nail clippings, small yellowing crescents. 
‘Let’s get out of  here,’ he said. ‘Talk to her 
and the woman who found him. We can come back later, 
when he’s been taken away.’
As they left, the forensic team arrived, with their lights 
and cameras, face masks, chemicals and general air of  professional competence. 
Karlsson felt relieved. They would 
take away the horror, turn the ghastly room boiling with flies 
into a well-lit laboratory where the objects would become 
data and be classified.
‘What a way to go,’ he said, as they went back outside.
‘Who the hell is he?’
‘That’s where we start.’
Karlsson left Yvette talking to Maggie Brennan and went to 
sit in the car with Michelle Doyce. All he knew about her was 
that she was fifty-one years old, that she had recently been 
discharged from hospital after a psychological evaluation 
that had come to no real conclusions about her mental health, 
and that she had been living in Howard Street for a month, 
with no complaints from neighbours. This was the first time 
Maggie Brennan had visited her: she was standing in for 
someone else, who wouldn’t have paid a visit because she 
had been on sick leave since last October. 
‘Michelle Doyce?’
She looked at him with eyes that were very pale, almost 
like the eyes of  a blind person, but didn’t reply.
‘I’m Detective Chief  Inspector Malcolm Karlsson.’ He 
waited. She blinked. ‘A police officer,’ he added.
 
‘Have you come a long way?’
‘No, I haven’t. But I need to ask you some questions.’
‘I have come a very long way. You may well ask.’
‘This is important.’
‘Yes. I know it.’
‘The man in your flat.’
‘I’ve been entertaining him.’
‘He’s dead, Michelle.’
‘I cleaned his teeth for him. Not many friends can say that 
about their guests. And he sang for me. Like the sounds of  
the river at night, when the dog has stopped barking and the 
shouting and crying dies down.’
‘Michelle, he’s dead. The man in your flat is dead. We need 
to find out how he died. Can you tell me his name?’
‘Name?’
‘Yes. Who is he? Was he?’
She looked puzzled. ‘Why do you need a name? You can 
ask him.’
‘This is a serious matter. Who is he?’
She stared at him: a strong, pale woman with uncanny eyes 
and large reddened hands that floated in vague gestures when 
she spoke.
‘Did he die in your flat, Michelle? Was it an accident?’
‘One of  your teeth is chipped. I am quite fond of  teeth, 
you know. I have all my old teeth under my pillow, just in case 
they come, and a few of  other people’s, but that’s rare. You 
don’t find them so often.’
‘Can you understand what I’m asking you?’
‘Does he want to leave me?’
‘He’s dead.’ Karlsson wanted to shout it, to use the word 
like a stone that would shatter her incomprehension, but he 
kept his voice calm. 
‘Everyone goes in the end. Though I work so hard.’
‘How did he die?’
She started to mumble words he couldn’t make out. 
Chris Munster was making a preliminary assessment of  the 
rest of  the house. It repulsed him. It didn’t feel like a criminal 
investigation at all: it was about people who were hopeless, 
who had slipped through the cracks. This upstairs room was 
full of  needles: hundreds, no, thousands of  used needles 
covering the floor so at first he’d thought it was some kind 
of  pattern. Dog shit here too, most of  it old and hardened. 
Bloodstained rags. One thin mattress with nasty stains near 
the middle. Right now, he didn’t care who’d killed the man 
downstairs. He just wanted to empty everyone out of  this 
house, torch it and get out, breathe some clean air, the colder 
the better. He felt dirty all over, outside and in. How could 
people live like this? That fat man with the red-veined eyes 
and the livid skin of  the drunk, hardly able to speak, hardly 
able to balance his bulk on his small feet. Or the skinny dogowning one,
with his punctured arms and scabby face, who 
grinned and scratched himself  and bobbed around: was this 
his room and were these his needles? Or maybe it was the 
dead man’s room. That was probably it. The dead man would 
turn out to be part of  this household from Hell. Fucking 
landlord. They’d been pushed in here, the hopeless misfits, 
the ones society didn’t know how to deal with, had no money 
to treat and abandoned so that now the police had to clear up 
the mess. If  the public knew, he thought, his feet in their 
heavy boots sliding among the syringes, if  they knew how 
some people lived and how they died. 

Us and Them

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Forgive me. I’ve . . . missed the point.

Jen’s lips twitch as if to release a fresh torrent of words. None comes. Those few linger on her tongue then dissolve into the ether of her subconscious which, like the weather, is forever changing. It hovers in a cloud tossed about by capricious gusts, it plummets her into an uneasy darkness in which her wasted limbs squirm like pale blind worms on the hospital bed. There are days she is drowning, nights when her half-life mimics the hyperactivity of a lifetime and robs her of precious breath. Only when she is sunk in a black narcotic slumber is she finally at rest.

Yet her bones must unlock one last time. Jen takes in a long snore of air and holds it. Shuffling shoulder and buttock, she inches backwards, executes a neat about-turn and unfolds against her husband’s curved back.

He turns. His fingers track to her banked core. She exhales on a sigh that resonates through the ward. In her restless unrest, her limbs remember his body, his long Irishman’s legs and lean chest. The smooth warmth of his stomach. His singular coppery scent.

Gordon flops over onto his back, arms flung out behind him. A plaintive cry rakes through her. Sweat breaks out under her arms, between her legs. She gathers herself and bends over him. Her tongue grazes his nipples and navel, flicks at the pelt of his groin. She lowers herself onto him. Taking him inside her, Jen rides him slowly, slides him so deep that every nerve end in her body crackles. She feels the wildcat clench of pelvic muscles and his racing heart in the palm of her hand.

It’s over before she allows herself to breathe properly.

 

Her ragged whistle conjures up a shadow which looms over her for a moment. Something brushes her forehead.

A little warm, says the shadow.

Jen feels a tug at her wrist. She rolls off Gordon onto her back. Little pools have gathered under her eyes, around her mouth. Without his heat beneath her, the air nips spitefully. She licks her lips, reaches for a corner of a sheet and wipes her face.

Gordon has his back to her, his naked shoulder sharp, glossed by moonlight. A fine spoor of sensation nests between her thighs.

From an open window somewhere, a breeze flows into the ward. The bed creaks as she tries to turn, steeped in the old sour mix of triumph and failure. There was a time when her lovemaking could raise the dead. Now her husband cares so little that he loves sleep more.

But the deed is done. Beneath the sheet, tissue skin papering Jen’s thighs quivers as she dreamlifts knees like blanched pebbles and clasps them together, buttocks taut to keep Gordon’s sperm inside her.

 

She surfs to consciousness on a memory of her body after lovemaking: scrubbed, languid, levitating in the sex-scented humidity like a sleepy-eyed fish, her husband’s breathing an undertow. The memory revives a powerful sense (in the circumstances) of the early years: the fierce, blood-rich currents that streamed between them. Later, when love or whatever the fever was that raged between her and Gordon began draining away, it left behind a silt of disappointment, regret, inchoate longing. And under that the inimical prick of her wounded ego. But in the end apathy blanketed all, diminished volatile battle lines to squiggles and a desolate distance of skin and limb. They became insubstantial: sketchily linked outlines not quite faint enough to vanish altogether.

A blossoming of agony sears to the bone. It ratchets Jen to full wakefulness, makes her flinch against the pillows. The silent ward echoes to the familiar dissonance of her low moan.

A soundless pink and grey nurse appears, reaches up, murmurs reassuringly. The fire inside her is put out, leaving behind markers that could ramp up and scorch at will.

Almost immediately a voice insinuates itself. Of late the voices don’t hold back. They clamour for attention; and they seem to know more about her than she does.

What are you waiting for?

This time, Jen summons up an answer. Not . . . waiting, she mumbles. Don’t tell me . . . Whoever you.

She waits, blinking to clear the persistent haze. Where do you come . . .? What . . . do you want?

Her accusers are silent. Perhaps the questions are beneath contempt. A cloud of pharmacology settles around her. Stifles debate.

after jen read – in a magazine, where else? – that humming is an antidote to anxiety and good karma into the bargain she began humming regularly. Not the ommmm or aiiimmm of a true meditator (not her!) but any song that came into her head. Which, as it turned out, might have been her mistake. She was humming ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ in the shower when she found the lump. Beneath probing fingers it felt as big as a hazelnut and as unyielding.

Her insides coalesced to a mush; the din of the shower vanished to a distant susurration. She found herself sitting on the floor, hyperventilating through hair and sheets of water.

Levering herself up against the wall on shaky legs, she switched off the taps, amazed to find that she was already ahead of the game, already in the planning stage, her head bristling with details: what to do about the house, what Gordon needed to do for her, the stuff she would have to buy and to pack for the hospital.

It was only after the humming (!) and hawing of the oncologist, puce, probably from endless repetition of his crappy mantras – hmmmm, positive thinking, willpower, hmmmm, new drugs, new discoveries all the time (for her more radiation and chemo) – that the bottom line hit her.

Her own body had pulled a fast one. As the truth sank in her outrage mushroomed and imploded inside her. Holy vessel, my eye! Her vessel was a freak, a sellout; a treacherous rat that cringed and capitulated rather than resorted to extreme measures to evict the marauder. The thing was given house room, her organs, her glands, her bloody bloodstream submitting so humbly to their sinister tenant that it practically had room service! Ample opportunity to sprout enough tentacles to take over the entire house.

An absolute control that left her out of the equation.

Jen’s mantra became why? Not why me, but the bigger question, why would her vessel – any fucking vessel – turn on itself so ferociously? She ranted at Gordon, flayed herself, bawled why? in the car going to the supermarket, driving home from bridge, after her doctor’s appointment. She harangued the oncologist, I’ve lived healthy, eaten well, exercised (moderately), used my brain (somewhat), so why, why, why?

Alone in her room in the dark, Jen bayed at the moon and the impenetrable, impervious night. An old expression of her mother’s, in her mother’s faintly hectoring rasp, crept in from somewhere: Krich arein in di bayner.

Crawls into the bones; worms its way into your most private, sensitive parts and wreaks havoc.

Much later, when her insides are embroiled in a molten holocaust and time measured in hours and days is losing its meaning, a fragile window of remission brings a hairsbreadth of light. Drifting in its beneficence, the moment she first glimpsed the other face of cancer returns to her in a wave of despair.

Sitting opposite the doctor after the initial tests, she was only half-listening to his tentative use of the pernicious cancer lingo. A language entirely new to her. Axillary surgery, sentinel node biopsy, grade of breast cancer, surgical margin, hormone receptors, HER2 status, lymph nodes, radio, chemo, hormonal therapies. Even as the doctor was speaking, Jen was dismissing the jargon: this isn’t about me, those ghastly procedures are for some other poor sucker . . . 

On he ranted, and gradually loneliness took possession of her. Gordon was with her at the time, not looking at her, not even once, failing at the emotionally supportive role he hadn’t practised in more than twenty years (she hadn’t either, but then he didn’t have cancer). An icy wind squeezed her heart. Her eyes were dry, skin lifeless, flesh wrung out, desiccated. Among stunned, roiling abstractions, an ‘aha’ darted in, ringing with authenticity.

You’ve been found out. It’s been coming for years. You always knew it was only a matter of time before the knockout blow. The chmallyeh.

Payback time.

Wolf Pact

Melissa de la Cruz
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From the bestselling author of Blue Bloods Melissa de la Cruz, comes Wolf Pact, the first book of a series that will reinvent the myth of the werewolf in the same way that Blue Bloods did with vampires - with style and NYC flair! Once enslaved in the darkest pits of the underworld, Lawson and his pack were destined to become Hounds of Hell. Escaping to Earth bought them a little time, but their old masters soon catch up with them and take away the one thing Lawson is desperate to keep hold of - the girl he loves. Now, Lawson needs to hunt the beasts he was running from if there's any chance of seeing her again. When Bliss, a mysterious ex-vampire, turns up on her own search for the Hounds it seems she might hold information that will help. But will she be able to trust this insolent, dangerously good-looking boy when she knows that he has a wolf's soul? 

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