Tania Carver - Choked

‘Stuart, we know you’re tired,’ said Franks, ‘and we don’t want to keep you up past your bedtime.’

Marina raised her eyebrows at his choice of words.

Franks ignored her, continued. ‘We’ll let you go to sleep. But first you have to answer some more questions for us. Will you do that, please? We wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’

‘And then can I sleep?’

‘You can sleep.’

‘Can I go back to prison?’

Franks and Marina exchanged a look. ‘If … ’ Franks shrugged. ‘If you want to. I’m sure we could arrange it. Or something like it.’

Stuart, eyes closed again, nodded. Smiled. The right answer.

‘But you have to answer our questions first.’

Stuart reluctantly opened his eyes. He didn’t look happy. He was drifting. Marina knew they didn’t have long.

‘So Amy’s gone home,’ she said.

Stuart nodded, eyelids fluttering.

‘Where’s home, Stuart? Where’s home for Amy?’

‘The house,’ he said, irritably. ‘The house where she lives.’

‘The house? Which house?’

‘Her house.’ Even more irritable. They were starting to lose him.

Marina reached across the table, took Stuart’s hands in her own. His eyes shot open and he jumped as if he’d been given an electric shock.

‘Come on, Stuart. Just a little bit more. Help us out here.’

‘Oh … OK.’

‘Amy’s house, Stuart. Where is it?’

He looked uncomfortable, wriggled in his chair.

‘Where is it, Stuart? Where can we find it?’

More wriggling.

‘Can you draw me a map?’

He shook his head. ‘No. I don’t … don’t want to go back there.’

‘Go back there? You’ve been before?’

He nodded. Tried to pull his hands away from Marina. She wouldn’t let him go.

‘When were you there, Stuart? With Amy?’

He nodded.

‘When?’

‘When … ’ He shook his head again, closed his eyes. Not to sleep this time, more to dislodge the memories that were there. ‘No … ’

Marina held on to his hands. ‘Please help me, Stuart. Try and think. It’ll help Josephina.’

Stuart looked up at the name. Marina pressed on.

‘When were you there, Stuart? When was Amy there?’

‘When she … my mother … ’

Marina said nothing, waited.

‘When … when Amy was pretending to be my sister.’

‘And when was that? Just recently?’

He shook his head. ‘Time isn’t like that,’ he said. ‘Time bends. It doesn’t go in straight lines. It curves. Bends round back on itself.’

‘It does, yes,’ said Marina, not letting go, ‘but when were you in the house with Amy?’

‘When she … when she was pretending to be my … sister.’

Franks leaned forward. ‘When she was pretending to be your sister,’ he said, voice low and authoritative, ‘was she called Amy?’

Stuart shook his head. ‘No.’

Marina and Franks shared another look. ‘What was she called, Stuart?’ asked Marina. ‘What was she called when she was pretending to be your sister?’

He looked at them both as if the answer was obvious.

‘Dee, of course.’

Dee had switched the car’s headlights off as she approached the house and drove slowly down the narrow, isolated lane. She wanted her arrival to be as inconspicuous as possible.

Not that it mattered. Her passenger gave her such a clear advantage in any situation that she could have turned up in an ice cream van with the chimes blaring. She turned to the Golem.

‘You know what to do?’

He nodded. She studied him. His lips had been moving the whole journey, as if in silent dialogue with himself. And she recognised drug-addled eyes when she saw them.

‘Are you up to this?’

He nodded again. Gave a smile as if someone had told a joke only he had heard.

‘Then go. You know where to meet, what to do.’

‘I know what to do,’ he said.

‘Go and do it, then.’

He slipped out of the car and was soon just one more shadow in the night.

She looked up at the house. It was desolate, haunted-looking. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could grow up in it, or call it home. But then she thought of the place she had called home. Unhappy childhoods could happen anywhere.

She got out of the car, left it unlocked in case the beeping of the key alerted anyone to her presence. Anyone. She knew who she meant. The woman she had replaced. The real Dee Sloane.

She had met Michael Sloane in a hotel while she was working as an escort, back when she had another name. Not the one she had been given at birth, but the one she had chosen for herself when she had created her first new identity. She had left her family home in Oldham at the first opportunity, determined to make something of her life. She had got as far as Manchester city centre and an escort agency.

Sloane was away on business, staying in a hotel, and wanted a little excitement. His own kind of excitement. He had called the agency, been specific. What the girl should look like, how much damage he would do to her. How much extra he would pay for doing it. They turned him down. He offered them more. Much more. They set about finding a girl who would do what he wanted.

She volunteered. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t done before. Or had had done to her. Except this time she would be paid for it. Highly paid. The money would help cushion the blows.

So she turned up at his hotel room, dressed as he wanted, following the script. And something clicked. She knew it from the way he looked at her as soon as she entered the room. As soon as he touched her. She felt that thrill of electricity shoot through her. He did too. She knew it. She could tell.

She stayed the night. He did exactly what he had said he would do with her. And she loved it. She would have done it for nothing. She told him that.

‘Never say that,’ he said. ‘Never sell yourself short.’

And that was the start of it. He always asked for her when he was in Manchester on business. And he seemed to be on business an awful lot. Sometimes he just came up to see her. They talked. Got to know each other. He was rich but unhappy. Lonely. His partner — that was how he always referred to her, his partner — was ill. Mentally and physically. And it was an enormous strain on him. He felt responsible for it, and in a way he was. He had everything he had always wanted. But it didn’t seem to be enough.

She had heard similar things before. Rich businessmen who claimed to be unhappy with their wives and families. Who wanted the excitement of someone like her. She thought he was just another one of those.

She was wrong.

Because one day he made her a proposition.

‘Are you happy as you are?’

‘I’m fine,’ she had said. This wasn’t the first such request she had fielded away. She had the answers prepared. ‘I make a good living. I have freedom. I’m independent.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not what I meant. Are you happy being the person you are? Or would you like to be someone else?’

And then he told her what he wanted. Live with him. Let him remake her in the image he desired. Answer to a different name. Get a different face. A new body. Become a different person.

‘Why not get someone else? Someone who looks like that already?’

‘Because it’s you I want. You’re perfect. On the inside. I just want the outside to match.’

That had made sense to her.

‘And you’ll still have your freedom,’ he said. ‘But it’ll be the freedom to do what I tell you.’

She had smiled. And agreed.

And she had become Dee Sloane.

Slowly at first. Painstakingly so at times. But worth it in the long run. She had asked questions, naturally. Who was the real Dee? What had happened to her? And he had told her.