Feeding the Demons Read Free

hot.’
    Kit turned to Angie, eyebrows raised in question.
    ‘We can’t go away,’ Angie whispered. ‘That’s not negotiable. We can’t leave that little kid with him.’
    ‘Could you drive the vehicles away?’ Kit said. ‘He’d hear the sounds of cars leaving at least. It might take some of the pressure off him.’ Angie nodded and ran down the steps. Kit turned her attention back to the locked door.
    ‘Could you unlock the door?’ she asked. ‘I could come in and talk with you in private.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘If I get out of the bath, Jed might knock the radiator in. It’s too dangerous.’
    ‘Could you turn the radiator off, Adrian? It’s hard for me to talk with you, knowing that you’re both in danger like this.’
    There was a silence. ‘Now that,’ he said finally, ‘is something that I cannot do, not even for you.’
    Kit’s mind was working furiously. She was trying to find a way to defuse this, take the pressure down a few notches. She pressed up against the frosted glass louvres on the left-hand side of the locked door, feeling hopeless. From the front of the house came the sounds of vehicles starting up.
    ‘Can you hear that, Adrian? The police cars are leaving from the front of the house. They’re moving away. I know you’re doing this for a reason. Just tell me what it is. Let’s work out a way that gets you what you want without all this muddle.’
    Kit was aware of Angie tiptoeing back up the steps and remaining silent and close behind her. Kit had found a tiny peephole, a space between the housing for the old louvres and the ancient timber of the window frames. She squinted to see, then motioned Angie to come up and take a look. Angie looked through a moment, then withdrew, scribbling something on her notebook. Kit automatically read it upside down: ‘Powerboard on wall on left’, she read, ‘between side and back louvres at about one and a half metres’. Angie ripped the page out and passed it to one of the SPG officers.
    Through the tiny gap, Kit could see the bath set into a long bench that ran the length of the right-hand wall. Behind the man’s head, bottles of shampoo and cleaning fluids had been knocked aside to make room for the old-fashioned one-bar radiator that glowed red. Adrian Adams was sitting up in the bath, rocking back and forth, and in front of him, with his back to Kit, was the small boy. Kit drew back, alerted by a sudden stealthy movement from the two State Protection officers near the bottom of the steps.
    They were speaking with a third who was indicating something inside the bathroom, probably the position of the powerboard, thought Kit, and pointing to the external wall.
    ‘Let’s make a contract, Adrian,’ Kit said. ‘Let’s find a way together to make this situation turn out well. You tell me why you’re doing this—what you want—and we’ll sort it out.’ Adrian had stopped rocking while she spoke, and was staring straight at her without seeing her, his eyes black with demons.
    ‘I want to come and live with you,’ he said. He started rocking again. ‘I want to be with you. I want to move in with you so that you can help me. You’re the only one who really listened to me. If I lived with you, I’d be able to make things work.’
    Kit took a deep breath. It was a common enough fantasy among some clients.
    ‘Adrian, we can talk about how to make things work if you come out of there,’ said Kit. ‘But we can’t do it here, with you under all this pressure and me stuck out here. And it puts me under pressure, too.’
    He stopped rocking and reached a hand behind him to the heater’s reflective shield so that steam hissed. ‘How do I know,’ said Adrian, ‘that you’re not just saying these things, and then the minute I come out the pigs’ll jump me and beat me to a pulp?’
    Kit felt a jab in her back. She turned to find Angie shoving her notebook at her. Kit grabbed it and read ‘Promise him anything’.