“Vienna?” He knocked on the bathroom door, but there was silence beyond. He placed his ear against the wood and listened. Nothing.
The room was spectacularly hot. Vienna was obviously missing Dubai. There didn’t seem to be a thermostat anywhere. Then he remembered; his was in the bathroom. “Vienna,” he called, “turn the heat down, will you?”
The floor tipped, just a little, but enough for him to realize what had happened. He headed back to the bar and examined his drained whisky tumbler. There was some kind of white residue in the bottom of it. Sweat was starting to pour between his shoulder blades. The front of his shirt was darkening around his armpits and in the middle of his chest.
The carpet seemed to be pulling away beneath his feet. He needed cold air, fast. He reached the end window and pulled back the curtains, but there was just more wall behind them.
The big French windows were in the same place as the ones in his room. He lurched across to them and tried the right handle. It turned easily. He pulled the glass door towards him and a blast of sub-zero air filled the room. It was snowing hard. Almost instantly he began to sober up. He tried to think.
Stepping on to the balcony, he breathed in the stinging winter air, filling his lungs with ice. Fat white flakes settled on his eyelids, in his ears. His head was clearing fast but his reactions were still slow.
Too slow to stop the door from being shut behind him. Vienna was standing beyond the glass. She studied him blankly, as if watching an animal at the zoo. Her right arm was raised, her hand against the wall. She was pressing something. She wiggled the fingers of her left hand slightly, waving goodbye.
The steel shutter that fitted tightly over the windows was swiftly closing. He tried to seize its edge with his fingers, to push it back up, but it was so cold that the flesh of his fingertips, still wet from his whisky glass, stuck to the metal, pulling him down.
And then it was shut. He tore his fingers free, leaving behind four small scarlet patches of skin. The sweat on his back was already turning to ice. He hammered on the steel shutter, but was shocked by its thickness. It barely rattled. Old French-style hotels always sported European shutters. He moved around the edges of the metre-wide balcony. A sheer drop down, no lights on anywhere. The rooms on either side had bricked-up windows.
The bitter wind had risen to a howl. He was in his shirtsleeves, and knew he had but a short time to live. He had been drinking all evening; his blood was thin. He fell to the floor of the balcony and pushed himself into the wall, but the ice and snow still blew through the balustrade, settling over him.
His first instinct was to assume he had been subjected to a woman’s revenge. Then he remembered she was merely an employee.
He tried to laugh when he understood what had happened, but the saliva was freezing in his mouth. Even his eyes were becoming hard to move. He fancied he could hear the ice forming beneath his skin. Tiny crackles like rustling cellophane filled his ears.
Staring out into the night beyond the balcony, the darkness was sprinkled with swirling white flakes that looked like stars. He could have been anywhere in the world.
They’ll leave the shutters down for twenty-four hours, he thought, just to be absolutely sure. Vienna will be back on a Dubai beach by then.
His mind was growing numb. He remembered something from a history book he had once read. When the Persian matriarchs wanted to rid themselves of the most treacherous family members, they locked them away in sumptuous apartments and left them to die. From a business point of view, it made perfect sense to do so. He should have put forward the idea as part of his new business model, but, just as Lassiter had warned, someone else had thought of it first.
He found himself laughing as the freezing snow-laden winds whirled about him, and then he could no longer close his mouth.
SQUEAKY by Martin Edwards
“LET’S GO INTO the forest,” Squeaky said.
Adele glanced at Brendan. Her husband was hunched over the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the road ahead. Lips motionless. She looked over her shoulder.
Squeaky squatted on the back seat, grinning at her.
Something about Squeaky disturbed Adele, and in wilder moments, she fancied Squeaky knew it. Those widely spaced blue eyes weren’t as innocent as they ought to be. They stared through Adele, as if her skull were made of glass, exposing her thoughts like scrawl on a postcard.
The car rounded a bend. Fields dusted with the first snow of winter bordered either side of the road. In the distance, a dark gathering of trees stretched as far as she could see. A brown signpost for tourists pointed the way, but the lane was deserted.
“Let’s go into the forest.”
The scratchy, high-pitched voice made Adele’s flesh tingle. She clenched her small fists. Brendan’s lips were parted. She could see the pink tip of his tongue. The car jerked forward as he pressed his foot on the accelerator. They raced past the road-sign.
“But I wanted to go into the forest.”
“Shut up!” Adele muttered.
“Oh, dear me!” This was Squeaky’s catchphrase.
“I told you to shut up!”
How shaming, to scream like that at Squeaky. Stupid and immature of her, too, but she couldn’t help herself. Brendan threw her a glance. Was that dread in his eyes? The heater was buzzing – he had changed it to the highest setting – and the car’s interior was stuffy. Sweat slicked his brow.
“Are you…okay?” His voice never used to falter like this.
“Fine,” she said. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
They drove on in silence for another twenty minutes, until they reached the hospice on the outskirts of the next town. While Brendan waited to reverse into a vacant space, Adele jumped out to buy a parking ticket. She took another look at Squeaky through the window of the car. Snub-nosed and straw-haired, with a red top and baggy blue jeans. A figure that might have walked out of a bad dream. Squeaky ought to find it impossible to scare a grown woman. But a tremor ran down Adele’s spine as she shoved coins into the slot of the machine.
When she returned to stick the ticket on to the windscreen, Brendan had Squeaky over his shoulder, and the big canvas holdall in his hand. He pecked Adele on the cheek.
“See you later…Have a good shop.”
Why couldn’t he meet her eye? She strove for brightness. “Good luck. Hope the kids have a wonderful time.”
As she walked towards the main road, Squeaky’s piercing gaze seemed to track her movements. She felt naked, despite being wrapped up against the cold in a warm woollen coat and scarf. Squaring her shoulders, she looked straight ahead, determined not to spare Squeaky another glance. Though she itched to put her hands round that scrawny neck.
Drifting through the crowds in the shopping mall, she found it impossible to push thoughts of Squeaky out of her mind. Sometimes she thought there were three people in their marriage, not two. Whenever she tried to talk about her anxieties to Brendan, he was kind but intransigent. Squeaky had changed his life for the better, he said. Surely Adele understood? He’d found his true vocation. It wasn’t as if his wife had any cause to worry.
After all, Squeaky was only a doll.
When Adele first met Brendan, at a party thrown by a casual acquaintance neither of them knew well or much liked, he told her he was a magician. After their first night in bed together, he confessed that his magic amounted to little more than a few conjuring tricks. He didn’t even run to a glamorous assistant, he said with a mock-sheepish grin. For years, he’d worked as a quantity surveyor, but after the death of his wife he’d wanted to change his life completely. Adele knew how he felt.