Cages by David Mark (acx book reading TXT) 📕

believed that the relationship developing between us was more important than the age gap. I thought she believed it too. I feared losing her when she learned my true age and I wanted the time and space to convince her that love should know no barriers. If it were told about in prose, it would be a story of true love and passion.

POLICE: You abducted her, put her in the boot of your car, and were equipped with tie-wraps and tools, Gary. Hardly romantic.

GC: Depends on your vision of love, Ben. Even in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, beauty can be observed. So too the sainted Lavinia, daughter of Titus Andronicus. I’m sure you’re familiar with the texts.

POLICE: We know that you and Bronwen were in contact, Gary. You were a sponsor of the young musician contest that took place in Salisbury three weeks prior to her disappearance. We know you exchanged details. We know that you sent volumes of poetry to her home address and acted, to all extents and purposes, like a suitor.

GC: Truly, you are an oracle.

POLICE: We have a witness who places you at the caravan park on the outskirts of Caistor, North Lincolnshire, the day before she was last seen by her father. That’s roughly four miles from the family home.

GC: I told you all last time, I have an interest in church architecture. There’s a church near there mentioned in Pevsner, and where Tennyson himself was a regular visitor. If you know the poem ‘Claribel’, then …

POLICE: We have another witness who claims that you made a telephone call to his home number at 1.38 a.m. in a state of some distress, raving about something having gone wrong, about making a mistake – begging for help.

GC: This is fantasy, Ben. The person in question, you’ll have their phone records, yes? You can rule this in or out without difficulty, I presume.

POLICE: We’ve had some difficulty in securing said records, due to the time elapsed, but we believe the claims to be credible. Our witness has made it plain …

GC: Please refrain from calling him your witness. Use his name. We’re talking about Wilson Iveson, yes? Elderly gentleman. The chap who has been looking after my property and my affairs since I was incarcerated. A man of eighty-six, with degenerating cognitive abilities and a recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, yes? Half blind, last time he visited. Barely recognized me. This is the same gentleman who claims I buried Bronwen Roberts in a farm beneath the flight path of Humberside Airport, yes? I fear, Ben, that if this were made common knowledge you might appear foolish and questions would be asked about use of resources. I really have nothing else to say on this matter, or any other unsolved murders or disappearances that you would like to throw at me. I was rather enjoying my writing class before you came and ruined the day, so I think I shall stop talking now.

POLICE: He says she was your one mistake. The others, he knows they’ll never be found, and if they are, there’ll be no trace evidence. But he made it quite clear that as and when we find Bronwen, we’ll find you all over her. Inside her. Do you have anything to say to that?

GC: Oh Ben. What an imagination.

POLICE: We will find her, Gary. But maybe you’re safer in here, eh? People like you don’t always face justice in the courts. Sometimes they get a more traditional kind of retribution. Can I ask you about a man called Keith Van de Sande?

GC: A paedophile, yes? Killed by vigilantes of some kind? The latest of many, so I’m informed. But I am not a paedophile, Ben. I’m not a perpetrator of sexual assault. I am a victim of coincidence and ugly imaginings who is endeavouring to serve his sentence in peace.

POLICE: I can read a list of names, Gary. Adolescents with three things in common. They are all talented, some might say exceptional individuals. They are all missing, presumed dead. And they all came into contact with you at some point in the months before they were last seen. This won’t go away, Gary. Help yourself. Clear your conscience. Do one good thing and give their families some answers. You’ll feel better. How do you imagine there is any other way out of what’s coming.

GC: Aut viam inveniam aut faciam*.

POLICE: And what’s that supposed to mean?

GC: Look it up, you halfwit.

*Latin phrasing later transcribed as a motto attributed to Hannibal: ‘If I can’t find a way, I will make one’.

FOURTEEN

It’s late afternoon. The day has turned dark so swiftly that it is as if somebody has pinned a strip of sailcloth across the little windows at the back of the classroom. They can hear rain striking glass. Have switched on the strip lights overhead so they don’t have to squint to see the whiteboard at the front of the room.

‘… beaks on a coffin lid,’ says Rufus, standing, wide-legged at the front of the class: a football manager addressing his players. He’s riffing on ways to describe the sound. Seems to be enjoying himself immensely. ‘Drawing pins falling on a table … An avalanche of coins tumbling from the pocket of an inverted corpse …’

Annabeth is weaving her way in and out of the tables, chatting with inmates, marshalling disagreements, offering words of encouragement where needed and the occasional command to shush when bursts of enthusiasm become too rowdy for polite company. She’s listening to Rufus despite the hubbub around her and the static fizz in her head. Can hear every word, picture every scrap of projected imagery, even over the sound of her own panicked self-admonishments.

Why did you tell him, Annabeth? What is wrong with you? You’re going to spoil it … The snow globe, Annabeth. How could he know? How?

The afternoon has gone well. Cox’s absence has undoubtedly helped. Annabeth had felt her heart genuinely lift, cartoon-esque, when Karen welcomed her back