Crime Writers Page 9

  What I've found myself doing recently is taking all those old, useless stitches out of myself, by thought and by deed. I'm taking all of them back. For example, I once wished that Alison would never have to cry again; I'm taking that back right now just by telling you. I can feel the dark cotton of it tickling slowly out of the scar as I pull, and my heart feels somehow looser as a result. It's not like that wish ever worked anyway: she's been crying for hours now. I don't need it anymore.

  I've always meant well, and I've always tried my hardest. And yet my wishes have often been as inadequate as that one.

  I lean closer to Alison, and try to tell her it's going to be okay, but there's no response. She just sits there, hugging her knees, sobbing almost silently. Not so long ago, when she was upset, I would tell her everything was going to be all right and it would help to keep her upright. It's too late for that now. I wasn't here in time for her, and I despise myself for it. For failing her.

  I settle back on the settee.

  I wish that nobody will ever hurt Alison again.

  I wish that I will always be there for her in time.

  Thread after thread is coming away. I can almost feel them, the loops of dead hope spooling around me. Before too long, I will have myself entirely unpicked. Every wish will have been pulled out of me until finally all that's left will be the wounds: naked and raw and fragile - or not. At that point, I will stretch my life taut, up on its toes; I'll turn the face of it to the ceiling and scream, tensing every muscle. And I'll see what rips.

  *****

  I had reasons for wishing on Alison's behalf, beyond the obvious ones.

  The first time I saw her was in a nightclub. She was very drunk, bathed in flashing, primary-coloured light, and swaying out of time with the thump thump of dance music. She seemed to have lost her friends; after a while she went outside, maybe to look for them or maybe just for some air. I waited a minute or so, and then, without even being sure why - a tickle of worry, perhaps, at the base of my neck - I felt compelled to follow her.

  I found her sitting on the steps outside the club, head bowed to her knees, with a man standing in front of her. I listened to them talking from a discreet distance, and it became clear that he didn't know her, but that he was trying to persuade her to go with him. An open taxi waited just behind him, its engine idling softly. She was too drunk to respond, but he was reaching down to take hold of her arm.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He let go of her immediately and looked at me. Except that's not quite true. It was more that he looked right through me. When I stared into his eyes, there was nothing there at all. He seemed entirely empty, like some kind of wind-up automoton, and I remembering thinking: this man has something missing.

  I looked down at Alison instead.

  “I don't think you should go with this guy.”

  She nodded absently. The whole time, the man said nothing to me, but he stepped backwards slowly, eyes still fixed on me, and I had the strange, shivery impression that he wasn't really a man at all, but some kind of elemental force: a dark mannequin that the world had conjured up in an attempt to take Alison away. One that could be faced down easily enough, as I just had, but only if you arrived in time.

  That was how I met her. The more I got to know her, the more that odd initial impression was confirmed. Alison was beautiful, full of enthusiasm and innocence, and I began to realise that life doesn't seem to like that. With Alison, it kept throwing things in her path in an attempt to derail her. As the months passed, it became increasingly clear that somebody needed to wish for her - and wish long and hard. I was determined that somebody would be me.

  On one occasion, we went to visit her hometown. We stayed in her parents' house - separate rooms, of course. One morning, I took a walk up past the farms, to a hilltop by the side of some woods. There was a railway embankment to one side; to the other, fields of long wavering grass and angled dry-stone walls. I could see the village Alison grew up behind me, a little way below, but it felt like it couldn't see me back. I felt entirely on my own, unprotected and exposed somehow.

  There was a slight breeze. I looked around and thought: this is where it happened.

  That place was where it first began, I think, these attempts by some dark part of the world to take Alison away, as though she was a mistake that needed erasing.

  That was where it happened.

  At the age of fifteen, she was walking through the fields there with her dog, Rebecca, a border collie. There were some older boys on the hilltop. They had a fire crackling, the flames all but invisible in the afternoon sun, and they were getting drunk at the edge of the woods, throwing discarded cans down the embankment. Spirits were high, and when Alison wandered through by accident, friendly as always, they were friendly back. Playful at first. But then they wouldn't let her leave. They forced her to share their beer. Three of the boys ended up raping Alison, and one of them kicked her dog in the head so hard that it had to be put down afterwards. In a drunken panic, in the undergrowth at the edge of the woods, they tried to strangle her. They would have succeeded if they hadn't been interrupted by a farmer walking his own dog.

  That was the worst thing that happened to her, but there were others, in the time after we met.

  A guy in one of her lectures took to following her around campus; she'd bump into him almost every day. An accident - except it wasn't. He kept bothering her, wouldn't leave her alone, and when I eventually confronted him I saw the same emptiness in his eyes that I'd sensed in the man outside the nightclub.

  On another occasion, she was chased by a couple of men on the way from her house to mine. It was nine o'clock at night, and she was walking down a well-used, hundred-metre-long ginnel. It should have been safe, but that night the world seemed to orchestrate it so that it wasn't. Suddenly, there was nobody else around, and no lights in the windows. Alison made it, but in future I never let her walk that way on her own again.

  It wasn't always that serious. It might just be that I'd return from the bar, carrying our drinks, and find a man had taken my seat and was talking to her. So not always serious. But constant.

  Sometimes we even joked about it. I attract weirdos, she'd say. I had my stock response: well, thanks. But it wasn't funny, and the jokes were few and far between. She knew how much it bothered me.

  Of course, I knew that she wasn't really being hunted; I didn't really think there was anything supernatural going on. It was just men. Because there are men out there who are malformed inside, and a woman like Alison always catches their attention. They need to possess her for themselves - to compensate for the goodness they themselves lack - and because of her friendly manner they think they might be able to. When they can't, the absence inside them doubles in size and floods with resentment and hate.

  So almost every wish I made, I made for her.

  It seemed amazing to me that she still had so much enthusiasm and appetite for life; I loved her for that, amongst all the many other things I loved her for. I made wish after wish for her safety and happiness. There have been a lot of eyelashes over the years. An isolated sneeze: one for a wish, two for a kiss. A few shooting stars, here and there. I used them all as springboards for her. And for a while, despite the continuing incidents, those wishes seemed to be almost enough.

  Until another empty man moved in across the street from her.

  Until he saw Alison one day and, just like all those other men, saw something in her that he wanted.

  *****

  I blow the next eyelash out through the open window. On the far side of the street, there is a light on upstairs in his house. A pale, peach-coloured square. He must have left it on before he came calling. The eyelash is gone almost before it has left my finger, lost amongst the falling snow, and my wish travels away with it.

  I wish you'd never been born, you piece of shit.

  I stare out for a second.

  It's okay to tell you wishes like that, by the way, because you can't change the pas
t. The facts remain, regardless. He was born, whether I like it or not. He did move into that house. One day, he did see Alison, and he did become interested in her. There's nothing I can do about any of that. Those things are set in stone.

  So I wasted a wish.

  So what.

  “I should probably close the window.”

  My voice is a shock, both to me and the room behind me. Alison doesn't acknowledge it. I let the silence regroup before I close the window, and then the curtains too, shutting out the sight of the house across the road.

  I move back over to the settee, stepping carefully over the blood on the floor. His blood. When I'd walked in, I'd surprised them both. They'd been in bed. He came down first, with Alison following when she heard the commotion. It had been too late by then.

  “John,” she says.

  It's not my name. Alison is looking at the man's body, sprawled out on the floor, and there is an empty resignation in her voice, almost as though she's already dead too. Her eyes are red-rimmed with tears.

  For him.

  I swallow the emotions that realisation brings.

  “It'll be all right,” I tell her. “It'll be okay now.”

  Because there's always hope. There is always space to dream a little.

  I pick up the tweezers from the settee and crouch down over her. At least for tonight, we need all of the wishes we can get, and I ran out of my own eyelashes over an hour ago. The room is very quiet as I ease back onto the settee, placing one of hers on the tip of my finger, then raising it to my lips.

  But what to wish for?

  I wish you'd given me a chance, Alison.

  Just once.

  You can't change the past, though. You can only really wish for what might happen, can't you? So I blow gently on the end of my finger, closing my eyes against the soft, warm light of the living room, and make a different wish.

  And I can't tell you what it is, because then it might not come true.

  END

  About the Contributors

  Mark Billingham

  Mark Billingham has twice won the Theakston’s Old Peculier Award for Best Crime Novel, and has also won a Sherlock Award for the Best Detective created by a British writer. Each of the novels featuring Detective Inspector Tom Thorne has been a Sunday Times bestseller, and Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat were made into a hit TV series on Sky 1 starring David Morrissey as Thorne. Mark lives in north London with his wife and two children.

  ‘Stepping Up’ is included in the short story collection Thorne at Christmas, which will be available digitally on 02/12/2013. Dancing Towards the Blade, another short story collection from Mark Billingham, is available now. Further details may be found at http://www.littlebrown.co.uk/Books/detail.page?isbn=9780751553444.

  Mark Billingham’s latest thriller featuring Tom Thorne, The Dying Hours, is available now.

  www.markbillingham.com

  http://www.littlebrown.co.uk/Authors/MarkBillingham.page

  Ann Cleeves

  Before becoming a full-time writer, Ann worked as a bird observatory cook, auxiliary coastguard, probation officer and in public libraries. She lives on the north east coast of England with her ornithologist husband.

  Ann writes two series of traditional mysteries: the Vera Stanhope books set in Northumberland in North East England and the Shetland novels featuring Jimmy Perez. Raven Black, the first Shetland novel, won the CWA Gold Dagger. Both series have been adapted for television and a third series of VERA, starring Brenda Blethyn, will be broadcast soon.

  Ann’s latest book is Dead Water, the first of a new Shetland quartet

  www.anncleeves.com

  Harlan Coben

  Harlan Coben is the internationally bestselling author of more than twenty previous novels, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers Stay Close, Live Wire, Caught, Long Lost, Hold Tight, and Six Years, as well as the popular Myron Bolitar series and more recently, a series aimed at young adults featuring Myron’s nephew, Mickey Bolitar. Winner of the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony awards, Coben lives in New Jersey.

  http://www.harlancoben.com/

  P.D. James

  P.D. James was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated at Cambridge High School. She has written eighteen novels, fourteen of which feature the poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh, and two non-fiction books. After 30 years in the civil service, including a senior position in the Police and Criminal Justice Departments of Great Britain’s Home Office, she held a series of distinguished cultural and literary offices, among them Governor of the BBC, on the boards of the Arts Council and British Council and as a magistrate in London. She is the lifelong President of the Society of Authors. She was awarded the OBE in 1983 and created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991. In 1999 she was given the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award, and has received many major awards for her crime writing from Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia. She has honorary doctorates from seven British universities. She is the widow of a doctor and has two children, five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

  Val McDermid

  Val McDermid grew up in Scotland and read English at Oxford. She was a national newspaper journalist for 16 years before quitting in 1991 to write full-time. An international number one bestseller, her books are translated into more than 40 languages. Her many awards include the Gold Dagger, the LA Times Book Award, the Portico Prize for Fiction, the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, the Stonewall Writer of the Year and the Grand Prix des Romans D’Aventure. Her lifetime achievement awards include the Diamond Dagger, the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award, the Saints and Sinners GLBT Hall of Fame, Icons of Scotland and the ITV3 Crime Awards Hall of Fame. She has several honorary degrees and is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Her novels have been adapted for radio and TV, and the long-running series Wire in the Blood was based on her Tony Hill & Carol Jordan novels. She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland. Val was a founding committee member of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. She lives in the North of England with her wife, her son and their Border Terrier. Val’s latest book is The Vanishing Point.

  www.valmcdermid.com

  Steve Mosby

  Steve Mosby is the author of seven psychological thrillers, including The 50/50 Killer, Black Flowers and Dark Room. His books have been widely translated, and in 2012 he won the CWA Dagger in the Library. He is 36 years old and lives in Leeds.

  www.theleftroom.co.uk