Any One of Us, page 11
“I could look online, if we pulled over?”
“No.” He frowned. “No.” Suspicion in his voice. “We’ll look later. It doesn’t matter. Not yet.”
And Ruby watched the layby slide by the window, disappearing behind, shrinking in the rear-view mirror.
Frank’s directions took them towards Brettwood, a tiny, secluded village a few miles outside of town. The roads began to narrow, passing through a tunnel of looming trees, long looped vines hanging down like swamp nooses in the shadows.
But then the woods opened up to sudden, sprawling fields either side of the car and, beyond the hedgerows, farmland that stretched for miles.
“Turn left,” he said, urgently. “Up here. Left, left, left.”
She slowed down, indicated and turned off the main road. A weaving rural lane now, steep grass banks and rare cut-outs to pass oncoming cars. But there were none. And she felt, once again, completely alone.
Had he been a stranger, Ruby may have already made her move. Opted for fight. But a few visceral scenarios played out in her mind. She imagined grabbing the gun, bang, losing a hand. Screaming. Wrestling around the interior of a moving car as he discharges the second barrel into the dash, or into her chest, wheels riding up the verge, rolling over and over in a haze of mud and glass and dust and whipping to a dead stop against a tree. Or simply slamming on the brakes, refusing to go any further and, just, what? Hope he wasn’t true to his word? And if he was? The gun might poke through the headrest, like a curious snake, touch the back of her neck. She’d close her eyes. And bang.
She also considered deliberately crashing the car. But, even though the seatbelt was keeping her pinned in place, she wasn’t properly wearing it. Frank’s grip was strong, but it was nothing compared to the unimaginably brutal forces involved in a collision. Any impact would hurt them both. It’d be a fine balance – how much pain was she willing to endure? How much would freedom cost?
But the fact remained. He wasn’t a stranger. Ruby knew him. They went to school together. She felt her physiology shift again – she’d weathered her mind’s suggestive dance with that panic attack. Not today. Clarity now. She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t injured. She was just driving. Driving somewhere, for some reason, with Frank. Frank Enfield. Frankenfield from school.
“Where have you been?” she asked, eyes flicking to the mirror.
“Black door,” he said, distracted by the window. “In the black door room.” He looked forwards. “Where did you go?”
“I was working.” Humanise. “I moved to Australia.” This was good. Talking. A conversation. “I came back last week. What is the black door room?”
Silence.
“What’s going on, Frank?” She sighed. “Hmm?” Eyes to the mirror. “Where are we going?”
“OK,” he said. “There’s another turning just up here, on the right. See that?”
There was a gap in the hedgerow – a metal gate propped open, sinking into the foliage like it would never close again. Ruby turned, the wheels rumbling over a cattle grid and off onto a gravel trackway.
Ahead, up the shallow hill, the horizon felt close, like a cliff edge, the rest of the world tucked away behind it. The terrain became steadily worse, a potholed track lined on both sides with long grass and brambles, scattershot blackberries, still red, still damp and polished from this morning’s rain.
At the top, they came onto a flat concrete area in front of an old building. A neglected, ramshackle barn of some kind, possibly abandoned. There was an array of junkyard debris around the sides, rusted farm machinery, broken trailers, a fridge door, a white porcelain sink smashed in two, half swallowed by the ground – moss pouring out of the plughole.
“Park there,” he said and the tyres crunched towards the only discernible space.
She turned the engine off. It felt empty, quiet and Ruby got the sense that there really was no one here, no ears to hear the fear that she might scream and yell and shout about.
“Get out,” Frank said, releasing his grip.
And the seatbelt was loose, crawling over her as the runners sucked it back into its nest.
“Frank, listen to me, whatever’s going on with you, I can help.”
“I know you can. That’s why we’re here. Now get out of the car.”
The back door opened. Still in the driver’s seat, Ruby watched him climb out and stand at her window. He showed her the shotgun, then grabbed the handle. Hands up, on show, Ruby passed her legs out as he took three steps back, gun tracked on her at all times. She stood.
And now she got a good look at him. Six and a half feet tall. Thick dark hair, sunken eyes with dopey, dead, Addams Family shadows beneath. Frank wasn’t fat per se. He was literally big boned. Even his fingers. An archaeologist uncovering his skeleton might wonder if his tribe considered him a giant. A mammoth. A warrior. His heavy brow would have looked right at home cooking hard-hunted meat in the flickering mouth of a cave.
He pointed behind her – she turned to the old building. It had a wooden door, which hung half open, the frame and hinges crumbling.
“Go,” he said.
When she hesitated, he came forwards, grabbed the back of her collar and shoved her round the front of the car. Stumbling, Ruby began to walk.
“Go inside.” She felt the barrel of the sawn-off shotgun pressing into her lower back, just above her coccyx.
There was a weakness in her stomach, hollow, almost like hunger. But the idea of ever having an appetite again seemed unimaginable. Part of her wished he was pointing the gun at her head or heart. Ruby knew about exit wounds. She knew what would happen if he pulled the trigger. What it would actually look like to be shot here, to look down and see it all explode and tumble from her stomach. Ragged strips of viscera slapping out onto the gravel ahead of her, grit and grass sticking to the wet bits. Somehow on the ground, watching gun smoke and steam rise away. But, as educated as her imagination was, Ruby knew it’d be so much worse in real life.
She realised she was slowing down – the door still ten metres away.
“Frank,” Ruby said. Calm. Composure will pay dividends. Humanise yourself often. “Why are you—”
“Just go.”
Another shove.
Slow motion now. This walk. This final stretch. This was it. The last window. Her last chance to roll the dice and run.
On her left, Ruby saw a footpath that led to an open field. Bare, spindly trees posted throughout, black like claws against the sky. They seemed somehow incomplete when the gargoyle birds perched at the highest points took flight. Now they circled, surveying the world below, searching for smaller things to kill.
On her right, Ruby watched the wind glisten and shiver across the dark green crops, waves stroking the earth. A vast, passive creature big enough to seem perfectly still beneath our feet, unmoved by the endless plight of our tiny little lives.
And there, dead ahead, a half-broken façade of ivy and wood around that open door.
Now just a few paces to go. Time to decide.
She could take off running down that footpath, past those stark and Gothic trees, through startled birds that swarmed like bats. Maybe he’d miss. Maybe he wouldn’t even shoot. Or maybe he’d panic and she’d get a back full of shotgun pellets. Maybe she’d fall and it would become something far worse than it was ever going to be.
But Ruby didn’t run. She just walked up to the old wooden door and stopped. Then she turned around and faced him. Frank was right there, shotgun at his hip – pointing at her gut.
Again, she thought about the training. About the best places to strike. Throat, groin, solar plexus. Eyes. A thousand ways to hurt a man long enough to flee. Funny how a military veteran like her stepdad had always taught her that physical conflict was an absolute last resort. Fleeing or fighting were at two ends of the spectrum. Two points on a map. One of which you never want to visit.
“The idea is to be strong enough, fast enough, smart enough to never even have to fight,” he’d say. “The only violent encounter you’re guaranteed to survive is the one you do not have.”
But this? Whatever this was, it was surely not what Giles had been preparing her to face.
“Go inside now,” Frank said.
Was there another option? Could she survive without fight or flight? Could she find her way to an uncharted place on that map?
Was that it? Ruby wondered, as she turned back around and pushed the door. Hope? Was that what had kept her complying? Hope that she could talk her way to safety? Was her nervous system wrong about the danger? Was the snake really just a stick? Or was it simply fear stripping her of all rational judgement?
Whatever the explanation for her behaviour, Ruby watched herself stride inside the dimly lit space, the ground now dry mud with a light covering of hay. Walking slowly along the planked wall, she stepped past a stack of rotting pallets, a barrel and, hand on a beam, tentatively leant round to peer into the main section of the building.
Above, there was a cramped loft space, a low balcony running the length of the roof, the ladder missing all but three rungs. Along either side of the ground floor, small pens for animals – metal feeder baskets tied to gates with baling twine. Empty. The most recent sign of life was a sleeping bag in one of the enclosures but, as it was covered in brown dust and woodchips, it clearly hadn’t been used for years.
The air smelled like cold mud, the tang of old copper and was lit by the slightest lines of vertical white between the planks. Sensory details, future triggers for flashbulb memories she hoped she’d live long enough to make.
Further inside now, she could see the large space in the centre of the barn – the concrete strip between the animal pens. In the middle, there was a clean wooden table with chairs on either side. It looked like a makeshift interview room.
Frank was crouched in the corner, fiddling with a portable halogen floodlight. The square kind you see at building sites, with a yellow cage frame and a curved black handle. Click. It came on, glowing a deep, low-battery orange, barely lighting the space. Table leg shadows long and stretched to the wall.
He turned, looked over his shoulder. “Sit down,” he said.
And, still dazed in the fog of hope or fear, she did.
Then she watched as Frank came round to her side, his gait heavy and laboured. He pulled something metal from his jacket pocket. And Ruby sat, eyes wide, as a pair of handcuffs clattered onto the centre of the table.
They were real. Not the fluffy pink kind you see in sex-shop windows, not the fancy-dress toys with safety catches. No. Genuine, heavy, uncompromising handcuffs. This was the red line. This would be the turning point. Ruby had no idea what was going to happen next, but she knew what wasn’t going to happen. She’d risk both barrels before those cuffs clicked home around her wrists. There is not enough hope or fear in a thousand troubled lives to justify following that order.
All the speculation and indecision faded. Fight. Ruby would go down fighting. She felt her heart rate pick up and breathed carefully through her nose, hands forming fists. Not if, but when.
Then Frank lumbered over to the other chair, pulled it out and sat down opposite her. The shotgun was on his lap, half hidden beneath the hem of his . . . jacket.
Ruby sighed. How had she missed it? Why hadn’t she even wondered? It seemed so embarrassingly obvious now the thought arrived. Closing her eyes and bowing her head, she settled decisively and irrevocably on the first thing she’d felt back in the car. She’d been foolish. There was no hope here. The question was, what kind of man had he grown into since those hazy days at Missbrook Heights? Who exactly was he?
And now she had an answer. Frank Enfield was wearing a dark-blue jacket.
Chapter Eight
Unable to fly, unwilling to fight, Ruby had just obediently walked into the jaws of that third, unthinkable, unlistable option. Sitting now in the middle of nowhere, face to face with what? With who? An armed killer? That made as much sense as any other explanation. No, Ruby thought, thinking clearly for the first time since he rose up behind her in the car. It made more.
She looked over her shoulder, towards the door, past the dim orange light in the corner of the barn. Then back to Frank – huge and heavy, seemingly lost in his own thoughts, like he was racking his brain for the next thing to say. And finally, Ruby’s eyes tilted down and settled on those handcuffs in the middle of the table between them. Time to go, she thought.
Gently placing the balls of both hands on the edge of the table, Ruby got a firm grip. She planned to shove it, stand, turn and run. And if he caught her? She would fight. This was it. Feet flat on the ground, muscles ready, she swelled with a final breath and—
“What was your name?” Frank asked.
Ruby stopped. Deflating, blinking, she frowned. “You . . .” The phrasing had tripped her up – what was her name. “You know my name.”
“Answer the question.”
Was he toying with her? Was this just foreplay for whatever nightmare he had planned?
“It’s the same.”
Then he rubbed his eye with the back of his wrist. “I mean, what . . . what is your name now?”
Silence. “Ruby,” she finally said.
“Ruby what?”
“Ruby Shaw.”
“Where do you . . . Who do you work for?”
“The National Crime Agency.”
“Anyone else?”
“I . . . we assist the police.”
Frank squinted at her, nodding slowly. “What colour is the sky?” he asked and now he seemed suspicious of her answer.
“Listen, I—”
He banged the table – she flinched. “What colour is it?” He glared.
“Blue.”
“Say that it’s red.”
She could see both of his hands – the sawn-off shotgun still on his lap. Would that extra half a second be enough?
“Why?”
“Say it.”
Ruby turned her head, hesitating, confused. “The sky is . . .” she shrugged, “red.”
“Say it again.”
“The sky is red.”
And Frank leant towards her, staring into her face, studying every feature. “One more time.”
“The sky is red.”
“Now.” He tapped the table with his thick index finger. “Now. From now. From now on. If you lie to me, even once, I will hurt you. Badly. Do you understand?”
Ruby nodded, realising that it wasn’t just the ramblings of a madman. Frank had been looking for tells – trying to detect her lies.
Then he took a long breath, as though building up some courage. Some nerve to ask his next question. The big one. For all the drums and confetti, for the light show and applause. For that one-million-pound cash prize . . . “Where, is, Scott, Hopkins?” he said, a new intensity levelling his voice.
Ruby opened her mouth, but paused. And Frank glared again, as if to warn her. No lying. Was this another test? Was he insane enough to have killed someone and forgotten? Was the jacket a coincidence?
“Do you really not know?”
“I’m asking you. Now answer me.”
“Scott is dead,” she said, holding his eyes in hers, nodding to be crystal clear about it.
“But . . .” Frank winced, recoiling like he’d smelled something bad. It seemed to cause him physical pain. “Do you promise?”
“I’m sorry,” Ruby whispered. “I know you were friends. I know it’s—”
“Do you promise?” Desperation now.
“Yes. I promise.”
Groaning, he pressed his palms against his temples and, elbows on the table, scrunched his sunken eyes shut. Ruby sat forwards, spotted the gun on his lap. But then Frank looked again, and her eyes drifted back up to his.
“Have you seen the body?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“In real life? With your own eyes?”
“I’ve seen photographs.”
“So, that means . . .” He bounced in his seat – excited, hopeful. “It, it means you can’t be sure?”
Ruby just stared at him. His broad nose had no bridge, a straight line from his forehead – like a Roman helmet. A gladiator. And he nodded, frantic enthusiasm animating his pale face.
This instability was double-edged. Hope and fear were back again. A lot of things can be found in the midst of volatility and chaos. But plenty more can be lost. Exploitable, dangerous and glinting from his very soul, Ruby was now absolutely certain that she was dealing with madness.
“Right?” he added, his eyes were electric with it. “You can’t be?”
“Look, I . . .”
“You just said, you haven’t seen his body.”
“I know,” Ruby held up a hand, “I know, but the police—”
“What? They did what? They told you he was dead?”
“I have seen close-ups of his injuries. There is an active investigation. People have dissected his corpse. They’ve looked inside his stomach.”
Ruby wasn’t quite sure why she’d highlighted that. Maybe because examining the stomach’s contents was the pinnacle of invasion, intrusion – a breach of all dignity and privacy reserved only for surgeons and pathologists. He or she is now a piece of evidence, naked, open, split. The meal they never knew had been their last picked apart with tweezers, inspected, brightly lit under a magnifying glass, written about in detail you wouldn’t even find on the packet.
“And it was all real?” Frank said. “Is it possible that it’s a trick? Please, please be honest.” He reached across the table, offering his hand. But she didn’t move. “Please, actually think.” Eye contact now, his fingers jittery, appealing, begging, making a fist. “Think. Think. Is it one hundred percent?”
“Why would they lie?”
“I’m just asking you to consider it.”
His doubt was infectious. Ruby started to wonder if there could be a conspiracy. Some grand scheme at play. She thought about the very nature of information. Things we know. How much we learn about the world comes, ultimately, from the mouths of other people. From text. Screens. Books. Can we be one hundred percent sure of anything beyond the bedrock of our own existence, in whatever form it actually takes? She thinks, therefore . . .
