by S Williams
The building behind was obviously in disuse; the doorway was shabby; the door itself was riveted closed with sturdy metal bands to deter squatting. Jay guessed that the street cleaners never made it to this particular space. She could see the cigarette she had tossed, its end still feebly glowing. She watched as it slowly died. On the scabby floor next to it were other cigarette butts. Not hers.
Although all packaging to cigarettes had become generic, the labelling on the cigarette itself was still individual. Jay examined the floor of the doorway. In the light of the street lamps, dozens of similar butts could be seen, half hidden amongst the dirt and old cans that had shored up in the doorway. Jay stared thoughtfully for a moment, picturing somebody watching the block of flats.
Maybe watching Daisy. Maybe following her.
‘I really was a gullible tosser,’ Jay muttered.
She turned and walked across the road. Sheltering under the awning of the shop next door, she pulled out her phone and held it to her ear.
After a few minutes, she saw the door to the flats swing outward. She talked into the dead device.
‘Yes, could I have a cab, please? I need to go to the Sainsbury’s on Wood Street.’
In her peripheral vision, she saw a figure emerge, already accelerating into a jog, headphones on and eyes fixed on a distant goal.
‘Yes, it’s Stacy; could I have my normal driver please?’
Although the woman jogging past her probably couldn’t hear, Jay worked on the principle that you never knew. She continued her imaginary conversation until the woman was a few feet past her, then swiftly stepped back and caught the door before it closed. She slipped into the vestibule and quickly scanned the lobby beyond the glass internal door. There was a man – no one she recognised – descending the stairs, office trousers tucked into his socks, and a waterproof hi-vis jacket. His bike helmet was already on, with the LED light glowing.
Jay faced the street and began to do stretches. She hoped the light was too dim, and the man too preoccupied, to notice that she was in combats rather than jogging pants. By the time he passed her she was fully into character; alternatively pulling each knee up to her chest, in preparation for her imaginary run. Not that she needed to; he never gave her a second glance. As he exited the building and turned left out of sight, she had snagged the inner door and entered the foyer.
Well that nearly fucked my knee all over again. She grimaced, taking the stairs at a steady lurch, head down. The pain was like someone had stuffed a bunch of keys behind her kneecap and was merrily jangling them. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Joseph would have finished his lecture by now. Jay walked past the landing that gave access to the floor containing Daisy’s flat, barely giving it a glance. The corridor was empty, all the doors closed. The entrance to Daisy’s flat had yellow police warning tape across it in haphazard diagonals.
At least there’s no actual police sitting outside, thought Jay, as she ascended the stairs to the next floor. The corridor here was also deserted. Jay mouthed a quiet thanks under her breath and quickly made her way to her flat. She tried the door on the off-chance that it was unlocked, left open by a careless tech guy. The handle turned but the door stayed firm. Jay sighed and walked towards the window at the end of the lobby. The day beyond the glass was grey; the street lights having been turned off. Next to the window was a poster-sized print in a frame. It showed a generic mill in a generic countryside in non-threatening colours. Jay guessed there were a million of them in hotels and building lobbies up and down the country, mass-produced to be something neutral to put on a wall. She gently pulled the bottom of the painting frame away from the wall and reached behind the picture. Feeling the smooth back of the frame, Jay kept a constant eye on the flat doors, ready to drop to her knee and pretend to do her shoe up should one of them open. She felt a knot of tension undo itself when her fingers brushed against the spare key she had taped there.
‘Bingo,’ she whispered, pulling it loose and quickly walking to her door, inserting the key, and letting herself in. Once the door was closed, and she was safely inside, she turned and put her eye to the security lens. She stayed there a full ten seconds, but none of the doors to the other flats opened. She sighed, guessing she was safe.
For now.
Jay turned and walked down the short hall. Like Daisy’s flat, her apartment consisted of the hallway, with the bathroom and bedroom on either side, and the kitchen/living area reached through a doorway at the end of the hall. It took her brain a moment to catch up with her eyes.
‘Well, fuck a duck,’ she said quietly. Even from this distance, she could see that her flat was in pieces. She silently lowered her rucksack and removed the baseball bat. Leaving the holdall on the ground she slowly walked forward, placing her weight on the balls of her feet. Through the open door at the end of the hall, she could see that her kitchen had been taken apart; cutlery and crockery strewn on every surface. As she passed her bedroom she saw that her bed was stripped, the duvet ripped and left on the floor. The cupboard doors had been forcibly pulled off the hinges, with her clothes half out, like they were making a bid for escape. Even her mattress had been cut open.
No way was this the police, she thought, continuing silently down the hall. Even if they’d ransacked the place they would have put it back together. Catalogued everything and signed it all off. Jay paused outside the door to the living space, cocking her head, listening for sounds of occupation; breathing or creeping. Air movement or the special stillness you get when someone is trying to be quiet. Out of the silence came nothing but more silence. She lowered the bat and stepped in.
‘Well, well.’ She gazed around the room at the mess. Nothing seemed to have been left unbroken. Jay edged into the centre, turning in amazement as she did so. Not only had her flat been creeped, it had been broken apart.
‘What could you possibly want?’ she wondered aloud, convinced that no one was in her flat. She shook her head slightly as she assessed the damage which, she decided after a moment’s viewing of the carnage, was complete.
‘Lucky I wasn’t paying for it.’ She grimaced. Slane had set her up in the flat when she had first taken the surveillance job. It was she, heading the task force as Jay had been led to believe, who had paid for and managed the lease. Her eyes widened as she stared at the devastation.
Which meant that Slane would have a spare key.
‘Not Slane,’ she mused, walking slowly back out of the room. ‘She was more on the management side. More white shirt than this.’ She nodded to herself. ‘Which means someone else. Maybe Grant. Maybe somebody new.’
She saw that her laptop was missing. It was a work item; where she typed up her reports. It made sense they would take it, removing any evidence.
She walked into the bathroom, leaving the bat resting against the wall; not needed but within easy reach if someone entered the flat. The bathroom was in the same state as the living room, torn apart in a frenzy of mindless searching. Seeing the same devastation, Jay wracked her brains, trying to think who knew where she had lived.
Other than Daisy.
Jay shook her head, not going there. She opened the medicine cabinet above the sink, already expecting it to be empty. She was right. All the normal paraphernalia was on the bathroom floor: paracetamol, tampons, Deep Heat, with its contents squeezed onto the tiled floor.
But not Daisy’s spare keys. She kept them on a hook at the back of the cabinet, but the hook was empty.
‘Of course it is.’ Jay sighed, looking at the complete lack of keys in front of her. ‘That would just be too easy.’ She sat on the edge of the bath, deciding what to do.
After a few minutes, she stood. She couldn’t think of anything else other than busting the lock of Daisy’s flat. She needed to get in there; needed to look at the wall again.
But she had to wait until the building was quieter.
Once everyone had gone to work.
Jay walked out of the bathroom, picked up the bat and replaced i
t in the rucksack. An hour later she slipped out of the flat and quietly shut the door.
This was going to be noisy.
Jay wondered if she could pretend she was a maintenance worker, or someone from the force, brought in to do follow-up work on the flat. Looking at herself briefly, she doubted it. What she looked like, with her rucksack and combats and hoodie, was suspicious. What she would look like, if she was spotted kneeling down with a hammer and chisel against the lock, would be a burglar. Shrugging inwardly, seeing no other way round it, she stepped off the stairway and crossed the landing to Daisy’s flat.
So far so good. Jay had waited long enough, upstairs in her bomb-flat, for the rest of the office workers to have left, giving herself the best chance of breaking in undisturbed. She reckoned she could, once she started, be done and in the flat within thirty seconds. She took a deep breath, taking one last look to make sure she was alone.
Thirty seconds of luck, that’s all she needed. It wasn’t too much to ask for. She knelt down in front of the door, miming tying her shoes whilst examining the lock. It was broken from when the door had been forcibly opened by the emergency services on the night of her attack. A new clasp and padlock had been fitted. Jay reached into her rucksack for the hammer.
‘Excuse me, can I help you?’
Jay froze, then slowly removed her hand, straightening as she did so.
‘I’m sorry, but the lady who lives there is away at the moment. Is there something you wanted?’
Jay turned around, a smile stitched to her face. She got ready to say that she was a journalist. That she was hoping to do a follow-up story on the incident, but as the person who had challenged her came into view, she knew it wouldn’t wash.
‘Oh, it’s you!’
Jay saw with relief that it was the man from the flat opposite. The peeping tom who was always trying to scope a look at any woman walking by.
He stared at her, mouth slightly open, amazed.
‘Sorry! I didn’t recognise you without the…’ he raised his hands to his hair, ‘…hair.’
‘Yeah, well I decided to go for a new look,’ she said, wondering what the hell she was going to say when he asked her why she was there. She was about to make her excuses and leg it when his face broke into a smile.
‘Actually, this is amazing! I’ve been wondering how to get in touch with you!’ He jerked his thumb up, indicating his flat. ‘Your friend, the one who’s missing? Daisy?’
Jay felt her breath catch. ‘Yes?’
‘She left something for you. With me.’ He took a step back, opening his door wide. ‘I’m not sure what it is, it’s in an envelope. An address maybe? She seemed such a nice girl, I didn’t want to give it to the police. She said she was sure that you’d pop by.’
Jay broke into a smile. ‘That’s the best news I’ve had all week.’
The man grinned widely, showing his yellow teeth. He was in a T-shirt and jeans, with no shoes on. Jay guessed he didn’t get out much.
‘Great!’ His forehead creased in confusion or concentration. ‘Actually, I didn’t think it likely you’d be calling around anytime soon. You were in the hospital…?’
‘They released me,’ she said, smiling and picking up her rucksack.
‘Oh,’ said the man, his features clearing. ‘Well, that’s good.’
He looked her up and down. She hoped to fuck her nipples weren’t poking out.
‘It’s on my desk, somewhere. Would you like to come in while I find it?’
‘Thanks.’ Jay nodded and walked toward him. The man turned and stepped back into his flat.
‘Great. I can maybe make you a cup of tea, and then–’
He half-turned back to her but didn’t get any further because Jay smashed him around the head with the baseball bat.
41
Quickly, she dragged the man’s prone body into the flat and shut the door.
‘That’s for staring at my tits,’ she said, looking through the spyhole. The corridor was empty. ‘And for making me look stupid for not working it out earlier.’
She knelt and examined his head. The swelling where she’d hit him was already impressive. She imagined, when he regained consciousness, he was going to be in considerable pain.
‘Good. You deserve it.’ She got a firm grip under his armpits and manhandled him down the hall and into the room at the bottom. The set-up was pretty much the same as her and Daisy’s. She dumped him on the floor and started opening drawers, searching for something to tie him up with. On the third try, she found a roll of gaffer tape. She pulled it out and looked at it.
‘What is it with gaffer tape?’ she pondered. ‘It’s always fucking gaffer tape. Is there an evil-criminal school you all go to or something?’
Swiftly, she secured his arms and legs with the tape, then stuck a strip over his mouth for good measure. Checking that he could still breathe, she walked to the bathroom and searched through the medicine cabinet above the sink. She looked at the contents, speed-reading the labels on the bottles.
Fentanyl.
Midazolam.
‘You total bastard.’ She recognised the names from the doctor’s report on her blood samples.
As well as the bottles, there was a plastic container of cotton buds. She grabbed the items and closed the cabinet, catching a slice of her reflection on its mirror as she did so.
‘I wouldn’t mess with me,’ she said as she stared at herself. She wasn’t sure she liked what she saw; with the shaved head and the tight skin, she looked dangerous. On top of that, the way her eyes blazed, she looked insane.
As she turned to leave the bathroom there was a sharp knock on the front door. Jay froze. She stayed still and held her breath. The knocking began again, louder and more insistent. She tiptoed to the door jamb and turned her face away, listening. After a few seconds, the knocking stopped. Jay stayed still, praying that whoever was outside didn’t have a key; she’d left the baseball bat in the living room. She waited a full five minutes before she was sure that whoever it was had gone. Breathing a sigh of relief, she walked back into the living room, past the unconscious man, and poured herself a glass of water at the sink. She drank half, then walked back and squatted in front of him. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing steadily. She smiled.
‘Stop pretending you’re unconscious, fuckface. You’re six inches nearer the door than you were when I went out. What were you trying to do, get their attention?’ She threw the remainder of the water in his face. With his mouth taped he couldn’t splutter, snorting water out of his nose instead. His eyes flew open and stared wildly at her. She sat down cross-legged in front of him. It sent welcoming spears of pain through her knee.
Good. She wanted the focus the sensation brought.
‘I was trying to think who could possibly rip up my flat so much,’ she said conversationally. ‘Because it couldn’t be the police, and I don’t think Grant or Slane have it in them. No one really knows where I live, you see?’ She winked at him.
‘And I was trying to think who would know when Daisy was out, for the planting of evidence and general fucking about. Who could maybe go in and paint something on the plastic cups that would contaminate the water? Something to knock us unconscious.’ She paused and held up a bottle she had got from the cabinet. It contained a clear liquid. Jay shook it. From her other pocket, she brought the cotton buds.
‘Just wipe the stuff on the rim, yeah? Once it was dry, who would know?’
The man’s eyes looked wildly around.
‘Tell me, what’s Midazolam?’ She raised her eyes inquiringly. ‘Or Fentanyl?’ She leaned forward and ripped the tape covering the man’s mouth.
‘Actually, don’t worry; I know. I know because I saw them listed as being in my bloodstream from when you put me in the hospital, so I looked them up. You fucking drugged us, you complete wanker.’
The man stared wide-eyed at her.
‘Or how about this one: what’s your real name?’ She reached into her rucksac
k and pulled out the hammer. ‘I should warn you; I don’t really mind if you don’t tell me. I’ve been itching to smash someone’s teeth in ever since I was beaten up.’
The man stared at her a beat, then said, ‘Lawrence. My name is Lawrence.’
Jay smiled widely. ‘That’s great, Lawrence. Now tell me where you keep the keys to Daisy’s flat. You must have them.’
‘I’m not going to tell you anything–’
Jay brought the hammer whistling down, missing the side of his head by inches.
‘Stop messing about, Lawrence. We both know you’re going to tell me where they are. It’s just a matter of how many teeth you do it with.’
Lawrence looked into her eyes and saw the truth. He swallowed and nodded.
‘They’re in the kitchen drawer, but it won’t do you any good.’
Jay put the tape back over his mouth and stood. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialled Joseph’s number.
‘Good morning. Professor Skinner speaking. May I help you?’ Joseph’s voice sounded slightly metallic, coming from the small phone speaker.
‘It’s me. Can you talk? Did they turn up?’ Jay stayed looking at Lawrence while she spoke. She had fitted a Bluetooth EarPod in her ear so she could keep her hands free. Although Lawrence was gaffer’d up she didn’t know his skill sets. He might actually have some.
‘Ah, Hilda, how are you?’ said Joseph, his voice warm. Then his voice became slightly more distant as he pulled the phone away to talk to someone else: ‘Sorry, it’s my secretary, I won’t be a minute.’
‘Hilda!’ said Jay, smiling. ‘Your secretary, Hilda? You used that name deliberately to humiliate me, didn’t you?’