Helen Callaghan - Dear Amy

I seized this, pulled, pulled again. At first I thought it was just heavy, until I saw the keyhole just under the ring – made to fit some big, antiquated barrel key.

I swore.

Nothing happened, except that from below, there was the rat-tat-tat again.

‘Katie?’ I shouted, dropping to my knees. ‘Katie, is that you in there?’

There was silence. Then, very muffled but still audible, threaded with disbelief: ‘Mrs Lewis?’

‘Oh my God!’ And weird and inappropriate as it sounds, I wanted to laugh with joy. ‘Oh my God, you’re alive! Katie, where does he keep the key?’

‘The key?’

‘The trapdoor is locked. Do you know where he keeps the key?’ I shouted into the flush join between trapdoor and floor.

Her reply was inaudible.

‘I can’t hear you!’

‘I don’t know… I don’t know!’

‘Katie, look, listen, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to call the police and they’ll get you out, all right? I promise. Sit tight.’

‘OK,’ came the thin, muffled reply.

‘Good girl.’

I stood up, rubbing at the back of my neck. The phone. Bloody hell, the phone would be in the hallway.

The hallway – where the hell was that? There was a door in the wall next to the velvet sofa, and I pushed it open.

Bingo.

The handset was old and grubby, but it still let out a profound purring once I lifted the receiver to my ear.

I jabbed in 999, glancing towards the front door.

It was open, just a crack.

My stomach hollowed out in dread. In all of the excitement, I had not heard anyone come in.

‘Police, ambulance or fire brigade?’ chirped the voice on the other end.

Something very cold pressed itself into the back of my neck. The receiver was being lifted out of my hands, and I let it go.

‘Put your hands up,’ he said.

I raised them, slowly. The wallpaper in the hall was dark pink, in a fleur-de-lys pattern, faintly stained.

‘Turn around,’ he said.

He still had that whispery voice.

I turned, hands raised, and there he was, in a dirty blue Parka, his blond hair now greying, shorn close, and missing up to the crown of his head.

His watery blue eyes met mine over the barrel of the shotgun he was holding.

‘Oh, Bethan,’ he said, ‘you’ve been such a bad, bad girl.’

‘Move,’ he said, motioning me back to the other room with the gun.

I was tempted, recklessly tempted, to tell him to go to hell, to shoot me where I stood, if that’s what he was going to do, for I would do nothing to oblige him, contemptible bully that he was; not a single thing, not any more.

But there was more than myself to think about. Katie was in there.

I had to get Katie out somehow.

I let him walk me back, watched him unlock the trapdoor, the shotgun still trained on me.

I remembered something else – I never used to look at him; never used to dare, or desire to, but I looked at him now.

I gave him a long cold stare.

‘Get in,’ he said.

Hands raised, I preceded him down the stairs to the underworld, along the dusty corridor, to the door at the bottom. The black and white tiles were down here too, black and white like magpies, and flecked in places with tiny maroon spatters that I realized were old blood.

I wondered how much of it was mine.

My jaw tightened.

I was back in Martin’s office, and his crowded wall of pictures and scraps of notes rose before me, like a rocky bluff before a rudderless ship.

All of those girls…

The barrel was a cold circle pressing against the back of my neck. He was handing me something. Down, past my elbow, I saw him holding out the key to the door.

He was breathing hard. On some level, he was enjoying himself.

‘Hurry up. I haven’t got all day.’

I bit my tongue and took the unpleasantly warm key from his sweaty hand. It turned smoothly in the lock.

‘I don’t understand it,’ he said, and his voice was full of hidden rage and a whiny self-pity. ‘Why did you come back here? Is it money? Is that what you’re after?’

Within, Katie Browne pressed herself into the far corner in a filthy pink nightshirt, and her face was dirty and bruised. It was also horrified and hopeless.

I gave her a long cool look too. It’s not over yet.

Her bruised bottom lip curled inwards.

‘Don’t you ignore me,’ I could hear the approaching thunder of his rage in that voice – that childlike rage that could brook not an instant’s frustration, not a particle of disapproval. ‘Why are you back here?’

I turned to face him. ‘You drove me here, you dumb bastard, when you dragged me into your car,’ I said. ‘You tell me why I’m here.’

He twitched, and his breathing was a little faster, and like lightning he slapped me across the face, hard enough to make my ears ring.

But I was not afraid any more, because his rage was as nothing compared to my own. The memory of this underground room with its mouldy foam, the stench of terror, made my blood sing in my ears, my heart pound like a drum.

With this rage I would accomplish great and terrible things.

‘Don’t you dare get cheeky with me, you fucking whore!’ he roared. His eyes were lamps lit with madness, and just for that second, he forgot himself, lowered the gun, just a fraction. ‘We could have been a match made in heaven, but you ruined it!’

I let my tongue dab lightly at my lip, where he had cut me. I was rewarded with the taste of salt and iron; it was like a bit between my teeth.

I bit down hard.

‘Oh, you are no match for me .’

There in the underworld, drawn by the scent of blood, I attacked.

The padlock and chain were out of my pocket in a flash, and I lashed out with it, hard, across his face; a metal scourge that tore into his flesh, his eyes. Blood squirted out, spattering me, and he let out a stunned yell, but I was possessed – I realized that all that really stops us from hurting one another is not strength of body but strength of will, and now every ounce of my strength was going into slashing him again and again with the chain, the sharp edges of the padlock cutting into him while he screamed and fought with the gun. It went off, but it was too close, firing wildly to the side. Its roiling blast was as vague and irrelevant as distant thunder and all I could see was him, through a veil of fast-moving scarlet fragments.

How dare he touch me. How dare he touch those girls. I will kill him. I will kill him…

He was forcing me back, using the gun as a club, but he was blinded with his own blood and I cared nothing for my own safety. But still he was stronger, filled with a terrible stocky brute strength, like a bull, and he was bearing me backwards; he was going to push me over.

‘Katie!’ I screamed. ‘Get out!’

There was silence behind me, but I did not turn to look at her. I saw only him; he filled my vision. He raised his hand quickly to swipe at his face, and his left eye was half-closed and torn, swollen; blood leaking out from behind the lid.

Suddenly the gun was dropped and both of his hands were around my neck; he was squeezing hard, so hard I could hear cartilage popping beneath his fingers.

I caught the gun and smashed the butt, full force, into his temple.

He let out a soft, sucking ooph sound and dropped slowly to his knees. Then, with a dumb animal groan, he toppled forward, his face striking the floor of the cellar with a sick wet smack.

I came back to myself then.

The gun was raised over his head, and I realized that I was moments away from dashing his brains out with it.

I paused, as though time was suspended, the very dust having ceased to drift in the light of that single bulb. My discarded scourge lay at my feet, his strands of sandy hair matted with crimson gore.