Cages Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by David Mark

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Part Three

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Also by David Mark

  Novels

  THE ZEALOT’S BONES (as D.M. Mark)

  THE MAUSOLEUM *

  A RUSH OF BLOOD *

  BORROWED TIME *

  SUSPICIOUS MINDS *

  The DS Aector McAvoy series

  DARK WINTER

  ORIGINAL SKIN

  SORROW BOUND

  TAKING PITY

  A BAD DEATH (eBook only)

  DEAD PRETTY

  CRUEL MERCY

  SCORCHED EARTH

  COLD BONES

  * available from Severn House

  CAGES

  David Mark

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2021

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.

  Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  This eBook edition first published in 2021 by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  severnhouse.com

  Copyright © David Mark, 2021

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of David Mark to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-9091-7 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-780-4 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0518-6 (e-book) This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  For Kate L-G

  Thanks for putting up with me

  Frightened, he runs off to the silent fields

  and howls aloud, attempting speech in vain;

  foam gathers at the corners of his mouth;

  he turns his lust for slaughter on the flocks,

  and mangles them, rejoicing still in blood.

  His garments now become a shaggy pelt;

  his arms turn into legs, and he, to wolf

  while still retaining traces of the man:

  greyness the same, the same cruel visage,

  the same cold eyes and bestial appearance.

  The story of King Lycaon from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book I, ll. 321-331

  PROLOGUE

  Annabeth Harris.

  On her knees again.

  On her knees and looking up: a penitent receiving communion – staring at the heavens as if holding the gaze of God.

  Look at her. Look down …

  Nineteen next birthday and already gone to seed.

  Careworn. Lived in. Frayed.

  She’s all sharp edges, under the bad skin and make-up. It’s as if she’s made up of teeth and elbows; of cheekbones and knees. She’s all spots and burst blood vessels. Bleeding gums, behind the smile. Her mouth, all metal and meat.

  Annabeth. Silver hoops and pink nails. Denim skirt and blue leggings. Baggy cardigan over too-tight top. Fox-fur hair in jaunty pigtails. Pinpricks and scabs in the crook of her arm.

  Annabeth. In a room with a high roof and crumbling walls. A mottled ceiling rose; bare bulb hanging low. Mauve walls, chopped into rectangles by dado and picture rail. A rotting, unvarnished wooden floor; missing boards here and there, like teeth pulled from rotten gums.

  Annabeth.

  Breathing in …

  Damp wood and dead flowers. Talcum powder. Sex.

  She tries to keep clean, does Annabeth. Still has enough pride about her to want to prettify her surroundings. But her benefactor doesn’t like it if she’s too well groomed. Takes it personally if she starts scrubbing at the skirting boards or sponging down the walls. Tells her it makes him feel unappreciated. Tells her that if she thinks she deserves so much better than he provides for her, she can go back to where she was when he found her. And Annabeth doesn’t want that. Even in her very worst moments, she knows she is better in here than out there. She knows herself to be safer in a cage than adrift among the wolves. Better anywhere than out there, where the past is only ever half a step behind.

  Annabeth. In her crappy room, at the top of the big old house. Splendid, once upon a time. Opulent, even. Three floors of Victorian grandeur. Double doors and a vestibule. Mosaic hallways and a fireplace fit for Santa. A home for merchants and bankers; their wives and children. Annabeth can picture them, when she tries. Can conceive of herself as a cheerful young nanny, wheeling a great black perambulator across to the gardens in the centre of the square. Can see bonnets, and parasols, and a fat cherub-faced baby with red curls and a cap, who won’t settle for Mummy and will only cease his tantrums when Nanny sings her special song.

  Annabeth can spend many an hour lost in such a daydream. When she was small she had dreams of becoming an author. Loved stories. Loved them so much she became a liar. Improved her reality with exaggerations and happy endings, until nobody believed a word she said. Sometimes, she couldn’t tell where the truth ended and her imagination began. It was cute, when she was young. Ugly, by the time she hit her teens. By then, all she wanted was to be believed.

  Annabeth still scribbles down the occasional diary entry. There’s a loose floorboard b
eneath the bed, and she has taken to scribbling down memories on the wood, the nib of her stolen, catalogue-shop pen scoring impassioned inkless wheals into the grimy wood. There is nothing legible, but she finds the act briefly soothing.

  Annabeth would very much like to tell her story. Explain how she came to be here. Chatsworth Square, Carlisle. Hundreds of miles from the last place she really called ‘home’; sickeningly grateful to the man who feeds and houses her, and who takes payment from her flesh.

  She imagines herself into a different reality. Tries to enact some form of metamorphosis upon her surroundings. Comes up against the impenetrable actuality of the rotting squat where she has been waking up these past weeks. The big Victorian house is all flats now. Bedsits. Temporary digs for student types and the perennially unemployed. Smokers. Drinkers. A bass player and his girlfriend in Flat 3. Always a stream of visitors. Hard to know who lives here and who is just passing by to smoke a joint and strum a guitar. A foreign family, for a while; exotic smells drifting from their flat on the second floor. They left after the third burglary.

  Annabeth considers herself. Tries to identify the individual feelings within the complexities of her mood. She realizes she is at once excited and giddy and absolutely terrified. Feelings are returning like blood flooding into a dead limb. She’s been numb for so long. Anaesthetized herself. Shut down all the parts capable of compassion. For hope.

  And yet suddenly, that is what she feels.

  Annabeth.

  Goosepimples on her bare arms. The white lines she has carved into her skin seem to blur and pixilate. White lines, neat as train tracks, puckering closer together.

  Wobbling now. Unsteady. Reaching out and putting her hand on the inflatable mattress. It sags. She’ll have to blow it up again soon; smear lip gloss on the nozzle and exhale until she sees stars.

  She lowers her head, her celestial beseeching briefly halted. Takes a quick inventory. Checks that everything is where it should be. She has few possessions, but those that she does possess are to be cherished. Her snow globes look cheerful. Six of them. Stonehenge. Colchester. Edinburgh. London. Paris. Tunisia. The last two were gifts. She has never been abroad. They form a fragile circle around her little CD player; dribbling some tinny pop, so quiet it sounds like a whispering from a distant room. A tangle of Christmas lights is woven through the slats, throwing a multi-coloured glow onto her sparse possessions. Make-up, in a sparkly bag. A stack of paperback books, retrieved from a pile dumped outside the charity shop where she had spent two cold, unmemorable nights. Three pairs of shoes, lined up neatly by the wall. Battered white trainers, a pair of Army-style boots, and her ‘work’ shoes. Four-inch heels; black and strappy. T-shirts, jeans and her bomber jacket spill from a rucksack.

  She’s barefoot now. Barefoot, kneeling down, staring at the ceiling; mascara brush to her eye, mouth open in concentration.

  There’s a pain at the back of her neck; a big fist of tension and gristle. She pictures a knot in a damp rope. A door opens in her mind. Something she’s read. Sees nimble little fingers, pale and bloodied, picking at tangles of tarred thread. A line of poetry, long forgotten. Something about Satanic mills.

  She blinks, and it’s gone again. She’s still on the floor in the empty flat. Still looking up, neck extended; a chick waiting for Mama to regurgitate some grubs. Still waiting for him. Her benefactor. The man who keeps her safe. Safe from everybody but him.

  Annabeth.

  Still doing her make-up. Still turning her eyelashes into spider legs. Still smearing greasy lip gloss onto lips that she has never liked. They’re too thin; the top one barely there at all. She has to perform miracles with an eyebrow pencil to make them seem even vaguely alluring.

  She lowers her head. Pulls a face. Steels herself, and flicks her head skywards again. Checks herself over. It’s hard to tell, from the angle, but she knows she’s done the best that she can. Not even the best make-up artist in the business could guarantee perfection if forced to use a mirrored ceiling to apply their slap. She’s suggested to her benefactor that he bring her a little hand mirror with his weekly delivery. So far, he has paid her no heed, and she knows he does not like being pestered. She will ask him again, when the time is right. For now, she will continue to use the mirrored ceiling, installed long before Annabeth took up residence in the damp, dingy space. Walter has helped a lot of girls, over the years. Enjoys laying back and watching his waifs and strays show him their appreciation.

  Annabeth rolls her head from left to right. Kisses the air. Kisses it again: a loud smacking together of her lips. So, this is it. This is the moment. This is when it will happen, or it won’t. Christ, how she hopes she’s got it right. She needs him to see her properly. To see more than the skinny, dead-eyed girl he picked up and decided to keep for himself. More than just his favourite place to release the tension after his difficult day. She wants him to think of her as a future; as somebody who could care for him; help him, support him. She needs to make him see that there is a soul worth loving inside the body that gives him such pleasure. She needs to make him see who she might have been, had things been different. Had life been kinder. Had she not made such terrible mistakes, or trusted the wrong people, or said yes when she should have said no.

  She hears the sound of the fire door slamming shut one floor beneath. There’s a tremble in her chest – a feeling that spider eggs are hatching under her skin. She hears footsteps. The quiet jangle of keys; chains hanging from the wrists of a ghost. She fancies for a moment that she can hear voices. Dismisses it. She is a squatter here. A trespasser. She is dug in deep; a tick in a dog’s neck. Nobody knows she’s here, save for him. And he guards his privacy so very jealously.

  Metal on metal.

  The rushing of blood and the desperate, absolute need for this to go right …

  The door swings open. He waddles in the way he always does, pushing out a lungful of air; knackered from the journey up the stairs. He’s a small man. Small, and round. Babyish, really, in his dimensions. Big head and fleshy limbs and a jolly round gut that he makes no effort to hide. Bald, save for the few strands of red he streaks across his gleaming red scalp. There’s a waxiness to him. A sheen, as if he has just scrubbed off his top layer of skin. Small, deep-set eyes, seemingly pushed deep into his skull by the same hand which grabbed a fistful of face and pulled out a fat, bulbous nose. There’s a harlequin pattern on his zip-up cardigan. A neat seam in his polyester trousers. Plastic sandals. He’s got carrier bags in his hands. Annabeth sees tins and biscuits, long-life milk. Baby wipes. Toothpaste. Sees the telltale outline of a large bottle of vodka and a box of Maltesers. This is the man who has saved her. The man who keeps her safe. The man who has done terrible things to her, but kept her safe from anything worse.

  ‘Walter,’ she says, breathily. She makes sure her smile is so wide and welcoming it could belong to a housewife in an old US sitcom. She wishes she could hand him a cocktail. Perhaps kiss his cheek. Wishes she could have prepared him dinner. She needs him to see past the girl he comes here once a week to feed and fuck.

  ‘Those bloody stairs,’ he grumbles, pushing into the room. ‘Be the death of me.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’

  ‘Not your fault, is it? What are you gonna do – carry me up?’

  ‘I could try,’ she smiles. ‘Stronger than I look.’

  ‘No you’re not. Little arms like yours? Like satsumas in a sock.’

  ‘Can I take your coat … I was hoping …’

  He stops, still half in and half out of the room. He eyes her critically. ‘What’s this, then?’

  ‘What’s what, Walter?’

  ‘You look a bit … I dunno. A bit … plain, I suppose. Mumsy. Were you not expecting me? It’s Thursday, isn’t it? I always come on a Thursday.’ The jolly redness of his face darkens. He looks like uncooked beef. ‘What have you done to your lips? And where are your shoes …?’

  Her heart starts to beat faster. She’s got it wrong. Made a mistake. Mis
judged it horribly.

  ‘I can dress however you need; I just wanted to tell you something …’

  He waves a hand, dismissively, and then turns back to the door. ‘Come away in, Mike. Don’t stand there shivering.’

  Annabeth takes a step back. He’s never brought anybody with him. Has made her promise, time and again, that she will do all in her power to remain his secret. She clenches her fists. Remembers. A staircase in a little terraced house. A man she thought was her friend. The sudden, searing pain. The start of it all. Feels the hot, burning memory like a coal against her skin.

  She watches as Walter shuffles out of the way. Mike has to stoop to make his way into the room. He’s tall. Too tall. Stringy with it. Long black coat and fawn trousers; jet-black hair and a thick black beard. He looks like a match burned down to the grip.

  ‘Here, love. This is Mike. Mike’s my pal. Sorry about the state of her, she’s obviously trying to make a point. You should see her in the high heels. Good calves on her. Proper little pit pony.’

  Annabeth feels hummingbirds fighting in her chest. Feels light-headed. Guiltily, she glances at the bed. At her make-up. Lipstick. Mascara. Blusher. Nail varnish. A white plastic strip, laid across her nail file like a cross.

  She looks at Walter. The thick mascara on her lashes makes her vision into a cage. She tries to make herself smile as she says it. ‘This is a bit unexpected. I thought we were supposed to be ultra-secretive, weren’t we? Not a peep, you said. Not a sound …’

  ‘This is what I have to deal with,’ says Walter, turning to his friend. He drops the shopping on the floor with a thump. Shakes his head. ‘Close the door, lad, you’re letting the smell out.’

  Annabeth shoots a look at Mike. He seems a little shy, looking down at the floor like a bashful child receiving praise.

  ‘Not much of a greeting, is it?’ says Walter, churlishly. He dabs the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his cardigan. Leans against the wall. Glares a hole through Annabeth. ‘Expecting somebody else, were you? Some lad who likes the librarian look? What’s with the fucking cardigan?’