Mind the Gap

Page 2

  "Of course," the woman said. "I saw to it myself. "

  The two fell silent again, their presence suddenly filling the house. Jazz lay there, turning over what they had said. I saw to it myself, the woman had said. Saw to what?

  "Im going downstairs," the man said at last. "No need to guard this door anymore, at least. "

  "All right. Lets go down. "

  Jazz listened to the man and woman slowly descending the stairs.

  No need to guard this door anymore. . .

  There were more voices from down there, subdued and indistinguishable.

  Is she definitely. . . ?

  "Mum," Jazz whispered, and the world seemed to sway.

  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply several times, then stood and crept from her room. She moved fluidly, drifting rather than walking, feeling the air part around her and guide her along. She knew where every creaking floor-board was, and she didnt make a sound.

  Her mothers bedroom door was closed, and there was a smear of blood on the handle.

  It was small —half the size of the nail on her little fin-ger—but she saw it instantly. Her heart thumped harder as she turned and glanced downstairs. There was no one at the bottom of the staircase looking up, but she could still hear their voices elsewhere in the house.

  What have you done to my mother? she thought, touching the handle, opening the door, stepping inside, and seeing what they had done. And also smelling and tasting it, be-cause so much blood could not be avoided.

  Her legs began to give way. She grasped the handle and locked her elbow so she did not fall. Then she closed her eyes.

  But some things can never be unseen.

  Her mother lay half on the bed, her upper body hanging down so that her head rested on the floor. A line had been slit across her throat, a dark grin gaping.

  I saw to it myself, the woman had said.

  Jazz felt strangely numb. Her heart hammered in her chest, but her mind was quiet, logical, already plotting out the next few minutes. Back to her room, the phone, the po-lice, up into the attic to await their arrival, listen to the Uncles and that Blackwood woman panicking as the sirens approached. . .

  And then she saw the writing on the floor. At first she thought it was a spray of blood, but now she could see the words there, and she imagined the determination her mother must have had to write them while blood spewed from her throat.

  Jazz hide forever.

  She bit back a cry, steeled herself against the tears.

  Her mother stared at her with glazed eyes.

  Jazz looked at the words again, then glanced at the stair-case to her left and started backing away.

  As she reached her own door, she realized that shed left her mothers bedroom door open. Theyd notice, know shed been here.

  She darted back across the landing and closed the door. Her last sight of her mother was bloodied and smudged with tears.

  The words on the floor shouted at her even when the door was closed.

  Jazz hide forever.

  She had always listened to her mother.

  Lifting herself back through the ceiling hatch in her bedroom, Jazz wondered what kind of life those words had doomed her to.

  ****

  They were sitting together in the park, watching as ducks drifted back and forth on the pond, squabbling over thrown bread and scolding the moorhens.

  "Pity there arent any swans," her mother said.

  "I love swans," Jazz said. "So graceful and beautiful. "

  "They may look gentle, but theyre hard as nails. " Her mother shuffled closer to her on their picnic blanket. The re-mains of their lunch lay beside them on paper plates, already attracting unwanted attention from wasps and flies. "If there were swans here, wed have a full hierarchy. Swans would be the rulers of the pond, ducks below them, moorhens below them. Then thered be the scroungers, the little birds, like that wren over there. " She pointed to a tiny bird hopping from branch to branch in a bush that grew out over the water.

  "So what are we?" Jazz asked. Even then she was a per-ceptive girl, and she knew that this conversation was edging toward something.

  "Were the little birds," her mother said. She smiled, but it was sad.

  "I think youre a swan," Jazz said, flooded by a sudden feeling of complete love.

  Her mother shrugged. "Maybe you," she said. "One day, maybe you. "

  The wren dropped to the grass and hopped across to the edge of the pond. It started worrying at a lump of bread that the other birds seemed to have missed, but the movement brought it to the attention of the mallards. A duck splashed from the water and came at the wren, wings raised and head down, bill snapping. The wren turned and hopped away slowly, almost as though it was trying to maintain its dignity.

  The duck took the bread.

  "Wise thing," her mother said. "If youre on the run, you never run unless you know theyre right behind you. "

  "Why?"

  "You never call attention to yourself. " Her mother lay back on the blanket, looking around the park as though waiting for someone.

  ****

  Never run unless you know theyre right behind you.

  Jazz was afraid that if she did start running, shed brain herself on a lamppost. She was doing her best not to cry — that would draw attention—but the pressure and heat be-hind her face was immense.

  For a minute or two, she had considered calling the po-lice from Mr. Barkers house and waiting until they arrived. But she had known that if she paused any longer, she would never move again. So she had left the way she arrived, walk-ing the length of Barkers garden, hurrying along the alley-way, emerging out onto the street, and putting more distance between her and her mother with every step she took.

  She hated blinking, because whenever her eyes closed she saw the blood and that twisted, splayed body that had once been her mother.

  That woman slit her throat. Cut her and left her to bleed to death! And they had been waiting for Jazz to come home.

  To do the same to her?

  She walked past a coffee shop and glanced in the win-dow. A man and woman sat turned to face the street. The woman was sipping from a cup, but the man stared straight out at Jazz. He wore a smart dark suit and sunglasses, and his lips twitched into what might have been a smile.

  Jazz hurried on, turning into the next side road she came to, rushing through a lane between gardens and emerging onto another street. She passed an old woman walking her dog. The dog watched her go by.

  It took Jazz ten minutes to realize she had no idea where she was going. Where could she hide? And how could she just leave her mother?

  She emerged onto a busy shopping street. It was noisy and bustling and smelled of exhaust fumes and fast food. A cab pulled up just along the street and a tall, elegant woman stepped out. She brushed an errant strand of hair from her eyes, paid the cabbie, and walked away with her mobile phone glued to her ear.

  And Jazzs mother was dead.

  She was dead, murdered, and now Jazz was more alone than she had ever been before.

  Theyll be on the streets, she thought, and the idea bore her mothers voice. Once they know youre not coming home, theyll be on the streets looking for you.

  She stepped into the doorway of a music shop and scanned the sidewalk and the road. No big black Beamers, but that meant nothing. Maybe theyd be on foot. Maybe, like her mother had been telling her for the last couple of years, they had so many fingers in so many pies that none of them knew the true extent of their reach.

  She wiped her eyes and looked both ways. A dozen peo-ple turned their heads away just as she looked at them. A dozen more looked up. In a crowd such as this, there was al-ways someone watching her.

  "Oh shit, oh fuck. What the hell am I going to do?" she whispered.

  A black BMW cruised around the corner. Jazz pressed back into the door but it was locked, the damn shop was* shut, and then the BMW pas
sed and continued along the street.

  She hurried back out onto the pavement, resisting the temptation to keep her head down. She had to watch, had to know what was going on.

  A tall man emerged from a fast-food joint, carrying something that looked like steaming road kill in a napkin. He was dressed in a sharp black suit, and as she paused six steps from him, he adjusted a lump beneath his jacket.

  Gun, Jazz thought.

  He looked up, glanced around at her, and smiled. "Too hot to eat," he said, raising the food toward her.

  She ran. The man called after her, and even though he sounded friendly and alarmed, she could not afford to stop, not now that shed started running, because she was drawing attention to herself. And if and when she did stop, shed col-lapse into a heap, and the white-hot grief would start tearing her up.

  The grief, and the loneliness.

  She ducked into a Tube station, grateful for the shadows closing around her. The smell of the Underground seemed to welcome her in.

  Chapter Two

  behind the beneath

  Jazz flew down the stairs two at a time, sure that she would trip and break an ankle but unable to stop herself. Images of her mothers brutalized corpse —and the warning shed painted on the floor in her own blood—flashed across her mind. But there was no going back. Over the years her mum had said a lot about running, but one refrain echoed in Jazzs mind.

  Once you start running, dont stop til youre well hidden.

  A glance over her shoulder revealed several men de-scending after her, but they seemed in no hurry.

  Still, best to be sure. To be safe. The blood on the bed and floor could so easily have been her own, and if she slowed down it still might be, though now it would spill on the concrete stairs or tiled floor of the Tube station.

  She hit the bottom of the stairs and sidestepped a bickering middle-aged couple with three tagalong children who huddled close to their parents, afraid of the world. Wise little ones, Jazz thought.

  In her pocket she had a crumpled wad of notes —little more than forty pounds, she guessed—and her rail pass. Hurrying toward the turnstiles, she thought of simply vault-ing them, both for speed and because her pursuers could not be so bold. But in the fugue of grief and fear that warped her thoughts, she knew that would attract attention she did not want. She pulled out the rail pass, stuffed her money back into her pocket, and fed the card through the slot on the turnstile.

  Get lost in a crowd, her mothers voice whispered in her head.

  All of the things she had told Jazz over the years, while tucking her into bed at night or sending her off to school in the morning, were the words of a ghost. Jazz had a ghost in her head now.

  People milled about the platform, waiting for the train to arrive. The electronic sign above their heads declared the next was three minutes away. Three minutes. Jazz glanced over her shoulder at the men who had come onto the plat-form behind her, and she knew she did not have three min-utes. These werent the Uncles, but she had seen the black BMW slide by on the street above. Dressed in dark suits, they seemed cut from the same cloth as the ugly-eyed men who had kept Jazz and her mother like pets and whose leader had put Mum down like a sick dog.

  Bile rose into the back of her throat, and she had to breathe through her mouth to keep from throwing up. She tasted salty tears on her lips and wiped them away, plunging into the crowd of suited commuters, snaking through them, hiding among them on the platform.

  Trembling, she stopped. Eyes on the advertisements across the tracks, she tried to blend as best she could, steady-ing her breathing. Do You Know Who You Are? one advert asked. She had no idea what it was trying to sell, and for a second she felt the whole world bearing down on her, press-ing in from above and all around.

  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. How many times had she taken the Tube in her life?

  Hundreds, surely. If she could be normal for two more minutes, pretend that all was well, perhaps she could truly become invisible in the crowd.

  She squeezed her eyes tighter, trying to hold back the tears. A dreadful mistake, for on the backs of her eyelids she found the grotesque tableau of her mothers bedroom. She opened them wide, staring across the tracks at the grubby tiles, the colorful advertisements, breathing too fast. The questions had begun —who were the Uncles, really, and why had they done it? But they were not new questions to Jazz. She had been asking versions of them for most of her life.

  Someone shouted. She glanced along the platform. A mother held the hands of her two girls, twins about six years old. An old man with long silver hair and an enormous nose leaned with great dignity upon a cane. Beyond them, among a sea of tourists and business suits, she saw a flash of dark jacket, moving quickly.

  "Here, love. " A hand landed on her shoulder. "Everything all right?"

  Jazz opened her mouth to scream but no sound emerged. She stood paralyzed for a few frantic seconds, and then she bolted to the right, toward the end of the platform. Colliding with an old biddy in a frumpy dress, she didnt wait to apologize. A teenage boy got in her way, one hand out as though he might try to stop her. She shot him an el-bow to the chest and kept going.

  "Mad fucking cow!" he called after her.

  Her face flushed with heat as her heart thundered in her chest. She darted in and out of the crowd, knocking over shopping bags and bumping briefcases.

  "Whats happening?" someone shouted.

  "Who is that?"

  "Dont push, dont shovel"

  Jazz felt the ripples of unease spread across the platform, all originating from her. A fine way to stay hidden, she thought, but she could not help running. She thought of shouting Bomb! but people would panic and some would get hurt, and she could not bear that on her conscience.

  She burst from the crowd to find herself alone at the end of the platform, tile walls to her right and straight ahead and the train tracks to her left. If the Uncles really had come down here after her, they would be on her in seconds. Her skin prickled with the attention of strangers eyes, as though the tiles themselves observed her.

  A ledge jutted twelve inches from the wall, a lip of con-crete that continued past the end of the platform as though the wall had not always been there. Desperation drove her forward. The cry of metal upon metal and the screech of brakes approached from behind, and a great gust of wind blew along the tracks. The trains arrival imminent, she put one hand on the wall and hung her head out over the tracks. In the gloom of the tunnel, she saw that the wall went on perhaps six feet and then there was an opening where the platform seemed to continue. In the darkness, she thought she could make out some kind of metal grate —the sort of thing they used to partition off unused areas of the Underground.