Driven by a manic fury Hannah delivered a wild slash that missed Khun by a mile. In retaliation the man slammed Poppy into the wall a second time. A sickly crunch of flesh and bone against brick and plaster. Blood from Poppy’s nose quickly soaked his vest, and the side of his face began to swell.
Khun’s face was stone cold. “Drop—the—knife.”
Once more Hannah advanced and brought the point of the blade to Khun’s throat. She could slit his trachea just by the flick of her wrist but she had lost the initiative. If killing that pimp afforded any benefits she would’ve done so a long time ago. There would be consequences, and very grave ones.
She twisted her lips viciously and showed teeth, “You’ll burn in hell.”
At this range a careless opponent would’ve attempted to wrestle Hannah for the knife. But Khun knew, by Hannah’s uncanny reflexes, how badly this move would have turned out. He wouldn’t have been able to seize Poppy if she hadn’t been distracted. Now he only had to exploit the initiative.
Khun dashed Poppy against the wall a third time. The poor child was out cold, and hung by his neck from Khun’s hand, limp as a ragdoll. This time the impact has split his lips and bloodied his face.
“Drop the knife, dolly.”
Tears drenched her cheeks, wrung of silent rage. She’d thought the years in her had made her far too resilient to weep. But the sight of Poppy drained every drop of strength in her. She allowed her arm to fall slowly to her side. Her fingers went slack and the weapon slipped harmlessly from her hand.
Arthur alighted at the blue-windowed estate just short of seven o’clock. When he arrived at Hannah’s door he was caught by the peculiarity of it being unlocked. He stepped inside cautiously, and the first thing he saw was the floral fabric of a long skirt deposited along the way to the bedroom. The air went out of him. A little farther on he picked out a white blouse against a drawer chest by the corner. A silken brassiere at the edge of the bed.
All strewn like a candy trail.
Hannah was perched stiffly on the bed like a guru, swathed in a green terrycloth blanket, her hair tousled and plastered to her neck. Arthur painfully took in the details and felt asphyxiated. He advanced with the intention to hold her, but it only made her pull the blanket tighter around her neck. She stared at him with catatonic eyes, her expression so frigid that he couldn’t read anything from it.
Poppy was lying on a bed of folded towels by a wall, drawing breaths in whistles because congealed blood had obstructed his airway and nostrils. He was so bruised and bludgeoned that Arthur couldn’t decide where to hold him.
Arthur’s eyes burned. His mind spun into an infusion of pure, white rage uninhibited by logic or reason or mercy. It compelled him to hate and destroy, and in the wake of the lurid discovery it made him a vastly different man.
From the kitchen came the roar of a toilet flushing. Like a chant it drew Arthur out of the room and Hannah made no attempt to stop him. When he got there he found the aluminium toilet door closed. As if on cue he stepped aside and picked up a stone charcoal stove that sat below the window. He lifted it over his head and waited. The toilet door swung open. Out came Khun, splendid and muscular, and down came the stove.
The first blow didn’t render him unconscious. It allowed ample time for Khun to identify his assailant. And it pleased Arthur that their eyes met.
Revenge—a dish served cold? Better if it’s piping hot.
Arthur delivered the second blow right across the face, splintering teeth and brutally dislodging the jaw. More blows rained, each liberating a seemingly inexhaustible supply of anger. Khun’s skull caved like a shattered eggshell. His arms fell to the side of his body and twitched convulsively at each successive blow.
When it was over the bloodied stove fell out of Arthur’s hands and rumbled across the kitchen floor like a millstone. Khun, his head pulped, lay unmoving. In an unrecognisable orifice near his throat blood foamed and frothed to faint breaths of air. Arthur twisted his bloodied hands in a dishtowel to stop them from trembling. His hair hung in greasy strands over his brows. Was there fear? There was certainly euphoria. He wouldn’t have mustered the guts to break a chicken’s neck but he’d gladly take up the stove and smash Khun’s head in all over again. The rush of adrenalin ebbed, and the conviction that he’d just committed a heinous crime stole in like an infusion of poison. He thought of lawful retribution, of justice.
But how could justice exist for someone like Khun?
He returned to the bedroom and Poppy tracked him with swollen eyes. Being inadequate in speech he made an unintelligible sound, and by its tone Arthur knew it wasn’t one of distress but relief. He composed himself, crouched by the child’s side and carefully felt his body for signs of trauma that would frustrate any attempt to move him.
Hannah sat erect on the bed, still wrapped in the blanket and with the same inert expression. Arthur did nothing either. Anguish held them both in a state of petrification, until Arthur found the strength to take Poppy into his arms. He did not know why he dithered, and his mind, brutalised by the events of the day, failed to conceive reason. He took a step towards Hannah and watched her stiffen.
“Don’t touch me,” she said.
Her words put Arthur under a spell. They turned him around, walked him past a bloodied corpse, and spat him out of her door.
21
SCARS
THERE ARE MOMENTS when you lie supine in bed trying to figure things out. Your limbs are flaccid. You divert all energy into your thoughts and believe that in doing so you’d eventually figure things out. And Landon, still reeling from the effects of a soporific infusion, falls asleep twice trying to do just that.
He is awake, on his third attempt, and still he has figured out nothing. He knows he is in a hospital but has no recollection as to how he got here. Only a morsel of memory remains—the one of him touching up the chalkboard behind the bar. He watches the ceiling fan and grudgingly lets his mind drift.
A nurse pulls the curtains aside. She is a large woman with short curly locks and smiling lips. Landon notices a large pink sportswatch on her wrist. Her name tag reads Nabillah.
“Good morning, Mr Lock,” Nabillah chirps.
He sits up and feels the stiffness of surgical plasters all over him. A saline drip leads from his left hand. “Is it morning?” “Still is.” The nurse looks at a wall clock above the ward’s entrance.
“How long was I out?” He expects days, even weeks.
“About eight hours.”
Just eight hours?
Nabillah straps the blood pressure monitor over Landon’s arm. “They brought you in about three am.” She starts the pump and the belt begins to inflate. “You lucky man,” she says, “only some light burns on the back, minor cuts on your head, a bit of smoke inhalation. Someone saved you. I think you will be on the news, we got police and reporters outside.”
“Really?”
The belt eases its grip on Landon’s arm. Nabillah stows her equipment and adjusts the saline flow on the IV drip. “We’ll leave this on for another hour or so.” She taps gently on the needle taped to Landon’s hand. “You want something to eat?” She brings her fingers to her mouth as if Landon can’t understand speech.
“Just water, please.”
She waddles over to a little rolling table, pours him a cup from a plastic tumbler, throws in a straw and hands it to him. The water tastes bitter and searing against his smoke-tainted, parched throat.