Hed fixed the gate. Yet still he could hear the creak. It was as if his life had re-started not from the moment the police came to the house and arrested him, on his last day of freedom, but earlier than that. It was as though hed walked back into his own life at a point before everything had started to go wrong.
After a few minutes, Quinn straightened up. It wasnt the same house, or the same gate. His memories had confused him about what was in the past and what was right here in the present.
But there was one memory he knew was real the one that hadnt left his mind for the past fourteen years. This one was no mere trick of déjà vu. It was the memory of blood blood pooling and streaming on a golden field.
It had begun to rain. He hadnt noticed the clouds gathering, hadnt even thought to look at the sky. He put on the smock and pulled up the hood. But his face was already wet, and more water dripped on him from the trees.
Quinn had started making his plans two years ago on the day they told him hed be making his final move. It had been a morning in early April, a day when the beech trees visible from the exercise yard at Gartree were starting to change their shape and colour, the outline of their naked branches blurring with the suggestion of spring.
Youre being transferred to an open prison, his wing governor had told him. HMP Sudbury. Its in Derbyshire. That will be a lot closer to your home, Quinn. It will make it much easier for your family to visit you.
Quinn had stared at the man as if he were speaking a foreign language. He might as well have been, for all the sense he was making. Quinn waited for the translation, but none came. The governor looked at the file on his desk, but failed to see that Quinn had never received any family visits at Gartree, not once in eight years.
Well, arent you pleased, Quinn?
Oh. Yes, sir.
Youll be glad to be out of this place. I know things havent always been easy for you here. You went through a bit of a rough patch, didnt you? The governor flicked over a page of the file in front of him. He wasnt attempting to read it. Not even pretending to. He was just flicking it with his long, white fingers, as if he could consign Quinns memories to the past by turning a page, closing a file, sliding it into a drawer of a cabinet. Was it all there, on that one page of his file, summed up in a few paragraphs typed by a Prison Service secretary?
A bit of a rough patch. Yes, sir.
The governor looked at Quinn doubtfully, but relaxed when he saw the prisoners calmness.
Youll find life an awful lot easier at HMP Sudbury. And, of course, its a step closer to your release.
He smiled hopefully. But something was happening inside Quinn. His body seemed to be filling with a cloud of poisonous gas that rose from somewhere deep in his guts and coiled through his intestines. It flooded his lungs and seeped into his brain. He waited, terrified, for the cloud to dissipate before he could speak.
Thank you, sir.
Another smile now, different. An ironic smile. Thats provided youre on your best behaviour, Quinn. You dont want to end up back here, do you?
The governor waited a few seconds for a response, then began to get uncomfortable. He closed the file with a little swish and a click. Perhaps its something that will take a while to sink in. I understand that, Quinn. If you want to talk to anybody about it, just let Mr Jeavons know, and it can be arranged. You know there are counsellors available. A chaplain, perhaps
Quinn tried to shake his head, but the muscles in his neck would hardly move. He felt as though his face had swollen to a monstrous size and was swinging from side to side against the walls of the office, like a hot-air balloon. His skin was on fire and a curtain had dropped in front of his eyes, preventing him from seeing the governor clearly. Yet Quinn remained motionless in his chair, his hands resting on his thighs, as he listened to the sound of the mans voice.
Well, your transfer is set for next week. You can let your family know where youll be, so they can visit.
The voice was distant, like a voice in one of his dreams, the words muffled but menacing.
Are you all right, Quinn?
Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.
Thats it, then. You can go now.
And Quinn had walked back to his cell, hardly aware of the prison officer at his elbow and the doors that closed behind him, or the familiar noises of his block and the voices of prisoners echoing on the landings, like the calls of animals in a distant jungle.
He heard none of them, because his mind was too fully occupied. Quinn had been thinking of all the people who were connected to that time in his past, the people whod inhabited his dreams for so many years. And he had already been deciding which of them should die.
Rebecca Lowe had taken a breath to scream, but it was too late. The air had been punched from her lungs. She felt as if massive fists were squeezing her chest and emptying her of air like a disused plastic bag.
For a few moments, the shock froze Rebeccas muscles. Deep in her belly, she could feel her diaphragm twitching helplessly, like a part of her body that had been amputated but refused to die until its nerve endings stopped spasming. The interruption to her oxygen supply made her start to feel light-headed, and she tried to blink away the dark shadows that formed in front of her eyes. A sound came from the back of her throat a moan that rolled inside her head but failed to reach the air.
Then suddenly she felt her diaphragm muscles spring back into place. They loosened their grip on her lungs, and a draught of air rushed into her chest. The sound it made was like a death rattle, that one last breath before you died. But you never heard your own last breath.
Rebecca Lowe opened her eyes. She realized she was lying on the floor of her kitchen. She could feel the tiles under her back and the dampness soaking through her clothes. Shed washed the floor only an hour before, and the smell of detergent was overpowering. Tentatively, she moved a hand and heard one of her rings click against the tiles. But her hand seemed to be a long way from her face, and she couldnt understand why her arm should be thrown out at such an awkward angle.
Then she became aware of how much her head hurt. It was as though the oxygen drawn into her lungs had finally reached her head and activated the pain switch, alerting the nerve cells to the message of the impact on the floor, and now they were shrilling like fire alarms. Waves of agony rolled from the back of her head to the front and burst inside her eyes, forcing her to squeeze her eyelids shut against the light.
Rebecca knew that moving her head would only make the pain worse. So she tried to move a leg instead. It seemed to be the furthest and safest part of her body. At first, she couldnt tell which leg she was moving, because they both were tangled together. But then one leg fell away from the other, flopping on to the floor. It was only when she felt the dampness on her foot that she realized shed lost one of her shoes. Shed been wearing her flip-flops a mistake on a damp floor, because their soles were too smooth and slippery.
Automatically, Rebecca began to lift her head to look for the flip-flop. She screamed, and continued to scream as the pain smashed into her brain, bouncing off her skull and surging along her body, ripping through every muscle and nerve. Her head fell back on to the floor, setting off the tide of agony all over again. Her fingers clawed and scrabbled on the tiles, making random patterns in the damp surface. Her stomach heaved and sent streams of bile into her throat. Tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
Rebecca found that her breathing was ragged and gasping, and she tried to steady it. Somehow, she had to work out what to do. She knew she was badly hurt, and alone in the house. She could call for help, but no louder than shed already screamed from the pain. She could hear her own scream still echoing in her ears.
The house was nearly airtight and well insulated. No one would hear her unless they were standing right outside her double-glazed window. And the nearest neighbours were three hundred yards away. Rebecca listened for a car on the road, but the only sounds she heard were the wind and the rain.
She knew her one chance was to make it to a phone. But the mere thought of it made her wince in agony. She had no hope of reaching the next room without passing out from the pain and perhaps doing herself more damage. If only she had her mobile phone in her pocket. But she knew it was where shed left it earlier in her handbag, on the dining-room table.
Just trying to think made her head hurt. Her tears flowed faster as she realized she might have to wait until somebody came to the house and found her. But she expected to be alone all night, and all day tomorrow.
Slowly, Rebecca became aware that something else was wrong. She thought about her dog, Milly, who had been asleep in the utility room. Milly ought to have woken or reacted in some way to her scream. If she could just have touched the dog, felt her presence nearby, it would have provided a small scrap of reassurance, the company of another living creature.
But there was a silence in the house that didnt feel right. In the midst of her pain, Rebecca felt that silence nudging her towards some small thing that had been dislodged from her memory by her fall something she couldnt quite grasp, because her mind would no longer concentrate properly.
Then she remembered the sound shed heard just before she fell. It had been the soft cough of the back door opening.
6
There were no lights on at Parsons Croft when Dawn Cottrill drove up to the house. Not even the security lights, which should have come on when the sensors caught the movement of her car on the drive. That alone was enough to tell her that something was wrong.
Dawn had been trying to phone her sister for the past hour, ever since Andrea had called from London, already in a panic and imagining the worst. Rebecca wasnt answering either the house number or her mobile. Of course, Andrea had wanted to contact the police straight away, but Dawn had managed to talk her out of it. And now she was regretting it. It was a little too dark up here in Aston, where there was no street lighting and all the houses were screened from the neighbours by trees. Rebecca never forgot to switch on the outside lights at night.
Dawn was well prepared, though. She fumbled in her glove compartment for the torch she always kept in case of breakdowns. It was a pity Jeff was at that conference in Birmingham tonight, because she would have preferred him to be with her. But she ought to be able to do some things on her own, and checking on her sister was one.