Buried

SATURDAY

LUKE

He’d never got drunk. On those few occasions he’d tagged along with other boys on trips to the pub, he’d always drawn the line at a couple; stopped well before the one that would tip him over the edge. And however much he’d wanted to, however much he’d thought that he should, he’d always said no when those boys who were into it had slipped into the park for a joint after school. He knew that Juliet had done it. She’d told him that the first time you felt sick, but after that it was great, and you just felt really relaxed and mellow. That sounded good, but he’d never been quite brave enough to try it. To take the risk, knowing what might happen. How his dad felt about drugs.

He’d always been afraid of losing control.

But now, sitting against the wall in the dark, he imagined that this was probably what it felt like. To be completely off your head. He imagined that when you were pissed or stoned you got this sensation of being somewhere else, of everything swimming and twisted. Of losing touch.

The man had been down to see him, to bring him some food and tell him some things. He didn’t know if the man had been in the house all the time, or if he came and went. He hadn’t heard a front door open or close, but, of course, he didn’t know how far away from it he was.

Luke had no idea if it was late at night or early in the morning. There was a narrow shaft of light coming down through a floorboard at the far end, but he couldn’t tell if it was daylight or coming from a room on the floor above him. Whichever, it didn’t allow him to see much. He was growing used to the darkness, though, and he was starting to map out the room, just like he’d done back in the flat with Conrad and Amanda.

It had been slow and difficult, feeling his way around, with the rope tying his hands together cutting off the feeling in his fingers.

He was in a cellar, maybe fifteen feet by twenty. There was a longer bit that narrowed and ran to a wall which sloped suddenly away from his touch and upwards. He was sure this was an old coal chute; he’d seen one before at a friend’s house when they’d gone down to collect a bottle of wine to have with di

When the man had opened the door and stood at the top of the stairs, it had been dark behind him. He’d shone a torch to light his way down. He’d brought a hamburger and fries in a bag, a plastic cup of Coke. He’d crouched, ripped the tape from Luke’s face, then let the torch beam drop to the filthy floor while Luke ate, and while he talked.

When the man had finished, he’d waited, staring at Luke as though he were expecting a reaction to what he’d said. To the mad, vile shit he’d said about everyone Luke loved. He’d raised the torch up to Luke’s face.

But Luke had just sat, and wolfed down the food, and hated himself for wanting to cry.

Afterwards, the man had asked Luke if he thought he needed to put the tape back over his mouth. Luke had shaken his head. The man had told him that there was no point in shouting anyway because nobody would hear him, but that this would be a test. If Luke behaved himself, and didn’t shout, then maybe next time the man would take the rope from around his wrists as well. The man was sure that Luke would pass the test. He’d said that Luke was a good lad, a sensible boy; that he knew what a very good boy he was.

Luke had nodded. Kept on nodding.

Now, sitting in the dark, he was trying to work it out. Was the man just talking, or did he really know? Did he know particular stuff about him? He certainly claimed to know the people Luke cared about very well…

He was wide awake; as awake as he could remember being since this whole thing had started. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been drugged again; not since the man had taken him from the flat and put him in the car. Maybe it was because he had slept, though Luke couldn’t say for sure if he had, at least not for any length of time. Perhaps he was just at that stage beyond tiredness, where you started to feel fine again; where you could think clearly about something other than sleep.

He was thinking about survival.

He knew that his mother and father would do whatever the man wanted to get him back, but he’d seen enough films and TV shows to know that plans sometimes went wrong. As far as things between him and the man went, it was obvious that the key to getting through it was control. Control would give him his best chance.

He just didn’t know whether that meant keeping it or losing it.

TWELVE

Below the calendar, on the pale yellow kitchen wall, there was some kind of poem or story in old-fashioned copperplate. It was about a man walking along a beach and always seeing two sets of footprints: his and God’s. Except for those dark periods of his life when he was unhappy or struggling with some great problem, when one set of footprints seemed to disappear. In the poem, the man is angry with God for deserting him in his time of greatest need, but God explains that although there was only one set of footprints on the beach, the man was never really alone. That it was at those very darkest of times, when God was carrying him…

Heeney shook his head, nodded towards the large sitting room that was used as a therapy area. ‘I never realised it would be, you know… God Squad.’

Neil Warren finished stirring the last of the three teas and lobbed the spoon into the sink. ‘It isn’t… necessarily,’ he said. ‘I am, though.’ He handed Heeney his tea.

‘Right,’ Heeney said.

‘Most people need to find something that’s more important to them than the drugs or the drink, you know? Something that isn’t going to fuck their lives up in quite the same way. Then they make a choice.’

‘Right,’ Heeney said again.

‘For me, it came down to God or cocaine.’

He handed Holland a mug, and Holland took it with a smile, enjoying Heeney’s discomfort just as much as Warren clearly was.

Nightingale Lodge was a privately run halfway house, owned by an organisation called Pledge. It was a large, double-fronted Victorian place on Battersea Rise, where up to six recovering addicts at a time – those who’d completed eight weeks of rehab but were deemed to be ‘still at risk’ – could readjust to a drug-free way of life while waiting for permanent accommodation. Though Pledge was a registered charity, the residents of Nightingale Lodge paid a decent enough whack to live there, and it seemed likely that someone was making a profit. Neil Warren was one of two full-time counsellors and admitted to being a little unclear as to exactly who was paying his wages. He did know that they were a damn sight higher than those he’d been paid back when he’d worked for the London Borough of Bromley, several years before.

‘Getting people off drugs is a boom industry,’ he’d said when Holland had spoken to him on the phone first thing. ‘There’s no shortage of customers.’ The voice was high and light, with a trace of a northern accent. Holland had imagined six foot something of emaciated hippy, in denim, with a ponytail.

Warren was in his late thirties, short and stocky, with dark hair shaved close to the skull. He wore a plain grey sweatshirt over khaki combats and Timberlands. He looked like he could handle himself.