Home truths, p.26
Home Truths, page 26
‘Where are they?’ I demanded.
He wasn’t giving up easily. Too much to lose, I suppose, or perhaps he’d fallen down his own rabbit hole and believed his New World Order fantasy. Or perhaps both. He gasped that I was crazy, he had no idea what I was talking about, so I did it again. Yank, release. ‘Where are they?’ Yank, release. ‘Where are they?’ It wasn’t easy or quick. It wasn’t humane. It was ugly and brutal; it made me ugly and brutal. But it was him or Noah.
Towards the end, he began to weaken. I felt him slump, his body limp in the chair. I thought of Jarrod Jeffries and hoped to God I hadn’t killed the man, but he revived within seconds.
‘I promise you, Anthony,’ I told him. ‘If Noah suffocates to death, so do you.’
That’s when he told me.
‘Whitby,’ he whispered.
‘Still in Whitby! Where?’
‘A boat.’ He winced, trying to swallow. Blood and saliva crept from the corner of his mouth. ‘Stolen boat. On the river.’
That rang true. Our family once went on a touristy cruise up the Esk. A lovely day out. Fish and chips and boating.
‘Whereabouts on the river?’ I asked.
‘Just … Ruswarp … Livia, please. I’m in trouble. Can’t breathe, can’t swallow.’
I believed him. There was a disturbing overlay to his breathing, an inhuman, high-pitched whistle. He couldn’t be play-acting that sound. I began to wonder just how much damage I’d done.
‘I’ll call an ambulance as soon as I know my children are safe. You’ve been texting Scott all day as Dr Jack—that means you’ve got a second phone. Where is it?’
He let out an agonised squeal as he dragged a phone from his pocket and laid it on the table. At my request he punched in the PIN: 1-2-3-4. Not hard to remember. I was going to need that phone.
He was groaning now, and weeping. The whistling sound was louder.
‘I’m going to lock you in,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to take both your phones and turn off your modem. There’s nobody else in this whole building, probably won’t be for days. If I find you’ve lied to me again, if my family aren’t where you say they are, there’ll be no ambulance for you. I’ll leave you to die in here. Understand?’
He managed to nod.
‘Last chance,’ I said. ‘Are you absolutely sure you’ve told me the truth?’
Another nod.
I let go of the lanyard, grabbed his phone and sprinted through the door, ready to slam and lock it. But Anthony wasn’t coming after me. He’d doubled up in the chair and was clutching at his throat, whistling with every breath, more blood trickling out of his mouth. I hated him, but I pitied him. For all the evil he’d done us, this was a suffering human being.
‘I’ll get help to you,’ I promised him.
Then I closed the door and turned the key on that windowless cupboard in an empty building on an industrial estate. I turned the key on the green paint, the Z-shaped crack in the plaster. I turned the key on Dr Jack.
Scott
I sat with my arm on the tiller, watching the riverbank crawl by and cursing Dixieland for not being a speedboat. Every minute or so I called down the hatch: ‘How’s he doing? Any worse?’
It took only seconds for us to leave our mooring. Heidi understood immediately what was required, casting off from the trees and leaping back aboard in one fluid motion; you’d think she’d been a sailor all her life. Her grandfather would have been proud of her.
We had the river almost to ourselves as we motored through the gathering dusk. The nation was staying at home, as ordered. See no evil, hear no evil. A couple raised their wineglasses and waved from the deck of a moored houseboat, so I waved back. Surely these weren’t spies. They were ordinary people, reaching out in extraordinary times. You’d expect the road bridge to be humming with traffic at this time on a weekday, late rush hour, but I counted only three vehicles as we passed underneath. Essential workers, presumably. Freight. No police cars.
Dr Jack sent an update. Contact on way. Wait on wharf.
We arrived with nightfall, early for our rendezvous. I throttled back, scanning the deserted marina while I threw out fenders. No lights in the marina office. No sign of our saviour yet either.
Heidi appeared on deck as we puttered up to the wharf. She stood waiting with the bow line in her hand, jumping ashore when we came alongside.
‘They’d better get here soon,’ she said fearfully, as we ran our lines around the bollards. ‘Like, now. Noah’s really bad.’
For an agonising moment we waited side by side, looking out across the darkening car park. Wavelets surged against the slipway. A rising wind rattled and clinked through the metal cables of a hundred yachts along the floating pontoons. Rattling bones, my father used to call that sound, using his special pirate voice. Dead men tell no lies.
And then Heidi tilted her head, holding up a finger. I heard it too: the whine of a car’s engine, distant at first, approaching fast.
Please God, let it be them.
Headlights shot into view—revving, slewing right across the roundabout, charging into the car park to brake sharply within feet of us, the driver’s door already thrown open. I lifted a hand to block the glare of the lights.
And Heidi was running, running and shouting at the top of her voice.
Livia
She hurtled into me, throwing her arms around my neck. We rocked, beyond words, clinging to one another.
Scott stood frozen in the beam of my headlights. Every instinct screamed at me to charge straight onto the boat, to get to Noah. But who knew what Scott might do next, in his panicked state? He might try to run out to sea with all of us on board, and that would be disastrous.
‘How’s Noah?’ I shouted to him.
I’d roared out of Guisborough, treating the deserted A171 as my own private race track. I spent the journey planning how to persuade Scott to give up Noah without a fight. I had images of him producing a rifle and turning picture-postcard Whitby into something out of Bonnie and Clyde.
He’d never do anything like that, I told myself. This is Scott you’re talking about. He’s an English teacher, not a …
Not a what?
I’d just tortured and strangled a man, imprisoned him, threatened to let him die alone in a windowless cupboard. If I was capable of doing something so monstrous to save my children, why wouldn’t Scott?
He came to life, whirled around and began to untie his mooring ropes. ‘Who told you we were here?’ he yelled. ‘You’re the bait! You’ve led them straight to us.’
‘Dr Jack told me.’
That had an impact. I saw him falter.
‘Dr Jack is Anthony, Scott. Anthony is Dr Jack.’
I heard Heidi gasp. Scott was glaring at me with something close to hatred.
‘Jesus Christ, Livia, what mind-fuck games are you playing now? Who put you up to this?’
‘I’ve just come from his warehouse. He admitted to being Jack; he told me you were on this boat. I saw where he makes his videos. He’d been googling remedies for asthma.’
‘Shut up. I don’t want to hear your stupid lies. Heidi, let’s go. We have to leave. Now.’
Heidi didn’t move. ‘Please just get Noah, Dad,’ she begged.
‘See this phone?’ I held it high. ‘This is Anthony’s “Dr Jack” phone, with which he runs his “Dr Jack” life.’ I began to read texts. ‘Don’t blow your cover, S, stay where you are until we can get you to a safe house … Black coffee will open inflamed airways more effectively than steroids … Is there cow parsley nearby? Collect leaves and stems, make an infusion … And you write: No improvement v v worried … And he replies that he’s sending a trusted medic to meet you here.’ I looked up at Scott. ‘But by then I’m afraid you were talking to me. By then, I was Dr Jack.’
‘Genius,’ said Heidi.
Scott was breathing hard, a trapped animal. I hoped his religion was imploding. I hoped he was seeing that his hero was a fraud.
‘Where’s Noah?’ I moved towards him, towards the boat. ‘I’m taking him to hospital.’
‘They’ll kill him.’
‘I promise I’ll stay with him the whole time; I’ll protect him with my life. You can come too. Please, Scott, bring him to the car. Please.’
While I was pleading, Heidi had leaped across the gap between wharf and boat. I saw her duck into the cabin. Seconds later, she was back in the hatchway.
‘Dad, help!’ she shrieked. ‘He’s hardly even conscious—I can’t get him to sit up.’
Scott looked from her to me, turning in a desperate circle, both hands flat on the top of his head.
‘Hurry up!’ Heidi was beside herself. ‘Please don’t let him die.’
Her distress seemed to galvanise Scott. The whole boat tilted as he landed heavily on the deck.
By the time he reached my car Scott was in tears, a man being marched up the steps of the scaffold. But he had Noah in his arms.
•
Rani Kumar had come through for me. I would be grateful to that woman forever. I’d feared the lockdown situation might already have overwhelmed our ambulance service, but we got lucky. People were staying home; the roads were clear. The ambulance was waiting just out of sight of the marina, prepped and staffed for an asthma emergency. No lights or sirens. I noticed a police car too, parked discreetly a little distance away, in case of trouble.
The crew had obviously been primed about Scott. They spoke in extra-calm voices and stood well back as I eased Noah from his father’s grasp.
Noah whimpered when he saw them, hiding his face against my chest. But he was too weak to speak, even to cry. He was losing the battle.
‘They’re our friends.’ I hugged him close as I carried him inside. ‘I promise they’re our friends. I’ll stay right beside you.’
I looked out at Scott and Heidi. They stood side by side, gazing into the back of the ambulance—both looking devastated, though perhaps for different reasons. Scott had promised to drive Heidi home in my car and wait with her for news. I was sure he wouldn’t disappear again tonight. Not without Noah.
‘Stay with him, Livia!’ He shouted. ‘Don’t leave him alone! Don’t let them—’
The doors closed. The crew sprang into action—assessing Noah, fitting a nebuliser mask over his bloodless little face, an IV line into his arm, battling to keep him breathing. Moments later we were racing out of Whitby. Still no sirens. Just the voices, the urgent flash of electric blue in the quiet night.
•
It was a horrifyingly close call. Closer than we’d ever come. I hope to God it was closer than we’ll ever come again. But they saved his life, the trusted medics.
FORTY
Spring, 2020
Livia
After all we’d been through, lockdown suited me fine. I understood the loneliness and loss of others, but I welcomed it for the children and myself. It felt as though we were convalescing from a life-threatening illness that had left us traumatised, longing for peace. All that mattered was that Noah was alive, he and Heidi were safe in their home, and I had the perfect excuse to keep them close. No hum of traffic, no passing aircraft, no crisscrossing vapour trails. Even the birds seemed less wary, more curious. All nature was breathing, breathing, breathing, and so were we.
Scott wasn’t coming back to us. Not physically, not mentally. He was a hero in the Truther community. Someone offered him a caravan on a site near Selby, living among like-minded people. I didn’t even suggest he come home, not after what he’d put us through. I hadn’t begun to forgive him. I couldn’t imagine ever trusting him again.
Because of the pandemic, visits to Noah in hospital were heavily restricted, his stay kept as short as possible. Over those days Scott called me every couple of hours, desperately frightened that ‘they’ were going to smother his son.
‘So how do you feel about Dr Jack,’ I asked him, ‘now you know he was Anthony all along?’
His answer came without hesitation. ‘Dr Jack wasn’t just one person. He was the front for a resistance group. Doctors, graphic designers, filmmakers. What a brilliant communication tool! Anthony was just one of them.’
I sank onto the sofa. What fresh hell was this?
‘That’s simply not true, Scott.’
‘It is. Surely you don’t think Anthony was capable of making those videos on his own? They were obviously the work of a team.’
‘So you’ve forgiven him,’ I said.
‘He was sworn to secrecy. There are spies everywhere. All he could do was guide me to Dr Jack, to the Resistance. They’d have saved Noah, you know. They had someone on their way.’
I was shaking with fury and grief. He was choosing his truth over our marriage, over his own children.
‘Aren’t you going to say sorry?’ I demanded furiously. ‘Sorry for letting me think you’d all drowned in our car? Sorry for putting us through a living nightmare? For making Noah suffer and nearly die, for involving Heidi in your deceit?’
‘I’m sorry you went through a nightmare.’
‘You damned well should be! I think I’m going to be arrested for what I did to Anthony. I could end up in prison.’
‘Try to understand, Livia. Please. I did it for you, I did it for them. I love you all more than—’
I put the phone down on him. It felt as though something was shattering inside me.
But life does go on. It does.
•
Sergeant Kumar was standing at my door again. She looked miserable. I’d been expecting such a visit for weeks, but it didn’t make the moment any easier.
‘Got time for a cup of tea?’ I asked. ‘In the garden. Socially distanced.’
When she hesitated, I smiled. ‘It’s okay, Rani. I know why you’re here.’
She could have phoned, but she’d chosen to tell me herself. I had to make an appointment to come into the station. She explained apologetically that I was to be interviewed under caution ‘in relation to an alleged serious assault upon Anthony Tait’. She suggested I bring a solicitor along. I had no choice, unless I wanted to be arrested on my front doorstep.
‘Scott’s not back then?’ she asked, as I offered milk.
‘I think that ship has sailed.’
She nodded. She wasn’t surprised.
‘He’s in a caravan somewhere near Selby,’ I said. ‘Living among people who share his beliefs. All walks of life.’ I rubbed my cheeks with both hands. ‘He couldn’t be in a worse place, could he? They’ll be wearing tinfoil hats by now. You know, I honestly thought what happened in Whitby would wake him up. Like in a cartoon, when someone gets hit on the head twice, and the second blow makes them normal again. But it seems to have had the opposite effect. He’s decided that Dr Jack was a front for a resistance cell, and Anthony is a martyr. He still believes the New World Order is coming and Covid’s a hoax and … argh! It’s so crazy, not even worth trying to unravel it.’
We sat in the warmth of the morning sun, our chairs set far apart. Heidi was hunkered down in the office with her laptop and a microphone, recording songs with Flynn Thomas. They hadn’t seen each other in person since school closed, and the music camp had been cancelled, but that didn’t stop them. They used virtual jamming sessions to write and record songs together, and posted them on TikTok. Their friendship gave me joy—so vibrant, so clever, sparking off one another’s talent. They could add drumming or other instruments to their music, or make their two voices sound like an eight-part choir. Every day there seemed to be a new idea.
Noah was … well, I’d cheated. He wasn’t homeschooling. He was watching telly.
‘Anthony bloody Tait,’ I muttered, as I picked up my mug. ‘He nearly kills my son, and it’s me who faces criminal charges.’
I knew I was in serious trouble. I’d heard on the grapevine that Anthony was found unconscious on the floor of his office with my lanyard still hanging off his neck, that he had internal injuries and needed life-saving surgery. I’d already phoned Sandra Webb, the solicitor who was with me when I got the news about Scott being suspended. She’d agreed to act for me when the time came.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve thought of anything you can charge Anthony with?’ I asked Rani.
The sergeant looked disgusted. ‘Only impersonating a doctor.’
‘Huh. He’d be in hotter water if he failed to pay his television licence fee.’
She agreed gloomily. ‘We paid him a visit to take a statement. It’s as though being Dr Jack was his whole life—he’s in love with his own secret persona. Hurts to admit this, but he’s good at what he does. He’s played this game for a long time, this social media influencing. Before Dr Jack there were others, he wouldn’t say how many, but he’s got an impressive suite of editing software, music, graphics, text-to-voice. He’s proud of it, talks about his followers as his “flock”.
We fell silent, both cradling our mugs between our hands. I sensed that Rani wanted to ask me more about Anthony but was wary of muddying the investigation into my assault on him. I wanted to talk about him, though. I wanted her to understand.
‘It used to niggle at me that he hung around so much,’ I said. ‘He just fetched up out of the blue, blast from the past. Next minute, he’s Scott’s best mate. He was here on the day Nicky died. He helped to clear out Nicky’s cottage, even carried his coffin into church. He made himself indispensable when we were vulnerable. With hindsight, I can see it all … he used every opportunity to wind Scott up, or to gain information, to check up on his handiwork. How could I be so blind?’
‘Hindsight is twenty-twenty.’
‘He just seemed … clumsy. Helpful. A know-all, but lots of people are.’ I grimaced at my own gullibility. ‘I was grateful.’
‘He’s an expert con man.’
‘Granted. But I’m hyper-alert to manipulation at work. Why didn’t I spot it when it slithered in through my own front door?’
Rani was frowning. ‘You’re not suggesting he had anything to do with the death of the brother?’
