Your Deepest Fear

by David Jackson

  Ozone leans his free arm on the mantelpiece. ‘That’s because I don’t need rescuing. I don’t really care what you believe, and neither does Metro. All we care about is you staying out of our hair.’

  Sara understands then. These men aren’t stupid. The reason they aren’t denying flat out that they killed Matthew is that they want her to believe they are capable of such atrocities. They want her to be scared of them.

  But whether they did it or not, they have access to insider knowledge that Sara doesn’t. Outside of the police, there are few who know precisely how Matthew died. That alone makes Metro a man still worth talking to.

  ‘And this is your attempt to frighten me off?’

  Ozone sighs. ‘Look, girl. I’m trying to help you out. You’re a foreigner, so maybe you don’t know how things work over here. You’re getting in the faces of people who won’t think twice about hurting you. Keep it going and you’ll end up the same way as your husband. He’s dead, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so just go back to Norway or wherever and get on with your life.’

  ‘Denmark.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m from Denmark. And I’m not going back. Not yet.’

  Ozone shakes his head slowly, almost mournfully. ‘Then there’s no more to be said.’

  For a split-second Sara expects him to bring this to a close by shooting her dead. But he doesn’t. Instead, he starts walking towards the door, his shoes crunching on glass.

  ‘He could put an end to this,’ she says, stopping him in his tracks. ‘Metro. He could stop this. All I’m asking is for him to meet with me and talk.’

  ‘We all want things we can’t have,’ Ozone says. ‘Maybe you should think about what your husband would have wanted.’

  He leaves then. Sara hears the click of the front door – a surprisingly gentle sound given the mayhem that has been wrought in the rest of the house.

  She jumps up from the sofa and runs to the front window, just in time to see a black Mercedes being driven away. She returns to the sofa and fishes her mobile phone from her bag, then opens a notebook app and types in the car licence plate number.

  For a moment, the decisiveness feels good. She’s taking action, preparing to fight back.

  But then despondency takes over. She lowers the phone, looks around her. Takes in the demolition of all that she and Matthew built together.

  What am I doing? she thinks. What is the point?

  She walks across to a display cabinet. Its doors yawn wide open, the glass panels in them shattered. Its contents now lie at her feet. She reaches down and picks up a walnut-framed photograph. As though imprisoned behind the dagger-like shards of glass still clinging to it, Matthew smiles out at her. He looks so happy, so full of life. But then she notices how the glass has ripped a jagged hole in his head.

  Maybe you should think about what your husband would have wanted.

  Unexpectedly profound words from a man who goes around wrecking lives.

  And perhaps not ridiculous advice.

  Would you want this, Matthew? Would you want me risking my life to find your killers? Or would you plead with me to go back to Copenhagen and try to find happiness once more?

  She knows the answer. She can hear the words from his mouth as if he were standing here next to her.

  And it tears through her heart.

  39

  Cody has already accepted that sleep isn’t on the agenda tonight.

  When his mind isn’t working on the puzzle of the three keys, it’s worrying about the fact that Waldo has been in the building again. He was there, just one storey down, taping an envelope to the fucking apartment door, for Christ’s sake!

  Nobody could sleep knowing that.

  He often wonders what he would do when finally faced with Waldo. He’d like to think that he’d beat the crap out of him. But sometimes he’s not sure. He’s not entirely certain of his own fortitude in facing up to the evil creature who has featured in so many of his nightmares. He worries that he would freeze, or run away, or scream, and all of those shameful outcomes frighten him as much as the prospect of the encounter itself.

  But now he may get a chance to find out. Waldo has invited Cody to meet him on his own turf, to join him in the ‘fiery depths of hell’.

  Cody doesn’t know where the fiery depths of hell are, but they don’t sound pleasant. He pictures them as being in the bowels of the earth. Fire and brimstone and all that shit. Bubbling cauldrons. Tortured souls screaming for mercy. Monstrous demons ripping the flesh from their victims.

  And clowns, of course. Clowns have their rightful place in hell.

  A thought suddenly occurs to Cody. A possibility.

  More than a possibility? Shit. If it’s true . . .

  He picks up the most recent key. The key to your deepest fear.

  What if . . .?

  He doesn’t want to believe it, but he has tried everything. If nothing else, he needs to rule this one out.

  He picks up the other two keys and pushes all of them into the pocket of his jeans. Grabbing his baton, he heads down the turned staircase that leads to his apartment door. He turns off the alarm and unlocks the door. He puts on the lights, walks slowly down the next staircase, constantly alert for noises.

  When he reaches the hallway, he doesn’t keep going towards the front door. Instead, he turns and walks to the left of the stairs, towards the rear door. There, he makes one last turn, so that he is facing the brown door that is beneath the main staircase.

  The door that leads down to the basement.

  Cody has stood at this door many times. It is always locked, but he has often been convinced that he has heard sounds coming from the other side. Tiny, scratching sounds. Mice or rats, perhaps. Whatever, the thought of passing through this doorway has always unnerved him.

  Simon Teller once told Cody that he has never got round to doing anything with the basement. It was once a beer cellar, apparently, back when the building was used to house a British Legion social club. Now it holds the boiler and little else.

  At least, that always used to be the case.

  Cody reaches into his pocket. Brings out the largest key. This wasn’t in his possession when he was trying all the doors with the Yale. But this door doesn’t have a Yale lock. It has a mortice.

  Cody inserts the key into the hole in the door.

  A part of him desperately wants this to provide the answer to the puzzle set by Waldo. At the same time, he knows he will feel a huge sense of relief if the key doesn’t work. Sometimes, defeat can be a mercy.

  He twists the key.

  It turns. The latch opens with a satisfying mechanical kerchink.

  The fiery depths. Your deepest fear. The clues were there all along.

  40

  Cody’s system steps on the gas, accelerating his heart rate. He whips his baton in the air, extending it to its full length.

  With his other hand, he turns the handle and pulls on the heavy door. Its hinges squeal as it opens.

  Ahead lies blackness. A slight breeze of stale air escapes from its prison and pushes at Cody, as though warning him to keep away. He blinks, straining to see into the gloom, then reaches out and feathers his hand up the wall. It feels coarse and slightly damp. His fingers locate a switch, and it is with a sense of relief that he flicks it on and banishes unseen terrors.

  He is facing a rough-hewn wooden staircase leading down to a white concrete floor below.

  Cody moves on to the first step. It seems solid enough. As he treads on the next step and releases his hold on the door, he realises that it is on a massive spring that causes it to close behind him.

  He hopes it will open again when he returns. Especially if he is fleeing.

  He keeps moving. Step after cautious step. Nothing jumps out at him, and he hears no noises other than his own breathing and footfalls.

  When he gets to the bottom, he pauses and tries to calm his breathing. He is in a large open space. The concrete floor
is dusty and gritty. The bare, unplastered walls have been whitewashed. There are two doors to the right and two to the left. Only one of the doors is closed.

  Cody investigates the open rooms first. In each case he finds the light switch, then turns it on before jumping inside with his baton at the ready.

  The two rooms to his left contain only some cardboard boxes, old furniture and discarded dental equipment. The room at the front and right of the house is where he finds the boiler, currently quiescent. Shutters cover the windows that can be seen below street level from the outside of the building.

  Only one more room to check out. And Cody just knows that this isn’t going to be easy on his nerves.

  He walks over to the closed door. Puts his ear to it. He remains there for a full two minutes, just listening. He thinks he hears a tiny metallic noise, but he’s not certain.

  And now he wishes he were armed with more than a baton. A machine-gun, perhaps.

  Cody thinks to himself, What’s on the other side of this door? A person? If it’s a person, could he have heard me?

  The door looks substantial, and the walls are certainly thick. It’s entirely possible that my arrival has gone undetected.

  He looks at the keyhole. It’s a Yale. Cody finds the next key in his pocket. Reminds himself that its tag reads, ‘The key to life.’

  There is something living on the other side of this door.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  He tries to decide what to do. He thinks, Should I bang on the door and order whoever’s in there to come out? Yeah, but what if they don’t? What do I do then? Or should I announce that I’m coming in, with several other cops and police dogs as back-up?

  Or maybe the stealthy approach is better. Try to catch them by surprise.

  I could die here, he thinks. If I handle this wrong, I could end up dead.

  But then if Waldo had wanted me dead, he could easily have done that by now. Why bother with all this rigmarole if that was his aim? No, this isn’t about killing me.

  Famous last words.

  He settles on the softly-softly approach.

  Approaching the door again, he brings the key up to the hole. His hand is shaking, and he has to rest his forearm against the door as he lines up the key.

  Slowly, with infinite care, he starts to insert the key.

  It’s not even warm down here, but he is starting to perspire. His hand feels clammy, and he worries that his fingers will slip on the key and give the game away.

  But he presses on. A millimetre at a time. Despite the glacial movement, there is still a minute noise of metal on metal. Maybe it can’t be heard through the thick door, he reasons.

  Or maybe the sound is magnified by the large chamber beyond, and everything can be heard, including the fear in my breathing and my heartbeat.

  And then it’s in. The key can go no further.

  Cody pauses. Focuses on taking long, deep breaths.

  You can still walk away, he tells himself. You can make an emergency call to your police colleagues. Tell them you heard strange noises, and you believe that somebody has barricaded themselves in here. Let them do the dangerous stuff.

  But you can’t do that, can you? Because that wouldn’t be playing the game, and Waldo will have prepared for that eventuality. He will never trust you again, and may never give you another opportunity to act as his opponent.

  So you have no choice. You have to go in.

  And before he can start talking himself out of it again, he is turning the key and he is pushing the door wide open and he is frantically searching for the light, and when it comes on he is ready and waiting to deal with whatever and whoever might be in here.

  Except for this.

  He is not ready for this.

  He is not ready for the clown supreme, Waldo himself, in the centre of the room, staring right back at him.

  41

  Cody reacts.

  Which is to say, he doesn’t consider his next move. Doesn’t put an iota of conscious thought into it.

  It’s a knee-jerk response. He sees the one thing he detests more than anything else he knows, the thing that is imprinted on his brain as a symbol of all that is wrong and hurtful in his universe, and his sole automatic impulse is to annihilate it.

  His self-questioning about what he might do in this situation is answered. He rushes forward, baton raised, ready to strike – not once or twice or any number in single digits, but until this thing in front of him is mush at his feet.

  He has no fear, no thought for his own safety. His passions have moved beyond that. He will slay this monster, and nothing will get in his way.

  Except . . .

  Waldo running.

  This he does not expect.

  Waldo running and shrieking in terror, being chased by Cody around the room until his body comes to a sudden jolting halt and he falls to the floor and raises his arms above his head and cries out not to be hurt, please God, no, don’t.

  And Cody can’t do it. He stands over the clown, who is now something substantially diminished in stature and menace from the image in Cody’s brain, and he cannot hit him. He cannot bring his baton down even once on this pathetic, snivelling creature before him. Even though he suspects a trap – because that’s how Waldo rolls – Cody’s baton-wielding arm waits in vain for its command.

  Cody yells. Lets out all his breath and frustration and anger into the disgusting rubber face of his foe. And then he takes hold of the mask and tears it away and flings it to the far side of the room, wishing that it was Waldo’s head, his actual, complete head that he was casting aside after the triumph of a glorious battle.

  But there is no glory in this. All that is left is a man. A mere mortal. He is about thirty years old – a similar age to Cody – and his eyes are filled with both tears and utter terror.

  ‘Please,’ he cries. ‘Don’t hurt me.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Cody shouts. ‘Are you Waldo?’

  ‘Wh-who? I-I don’t know what you—’

  ‘Waldo! Don’t fuck with me! Are you Waldo?’

  ‘N-no.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘I-I can’t say. I—’

  Cody finally brings down his baton. But it’s a shadow of his previously intended strikes. A crack against the man’s thigh that will merely bruise.

  ‘Do not fucking mess with me. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, but I . . . I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you. He said—’

  Another smack with the baton. This time on the man’s upper arm.

  ‘Who said? What did he say?’

  ‘That he’d call you. It’s why they brought me here.’

  ‘Who brought you here?’

  ‘The other clowns, of course. He said you’d know that. He said you were expecting—’

  ‘Wait! Wait! What did you say?’

  ‘That you knew. You were expecting me.’

  ‘No. Before that. The other clowns. Did you say the other clowns?’

  ‘Yes. But you already know that. You . . .’

  Enlightenment dawns, and the shock of betraying himself frees the tears from his eyes.

  ‘You didn’t know, did you?’ he asks.

  Cody straightens up, tries to make sense of all this.

  ‘You’re one of them. One of the four clowns.’

  The man says nothing, but it is clear from his expression that he suspects he may have already signed his own death warrant.

  ‘Which one?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Which fucking one?’

  The man shakes his head, too terrified to answer.

  Cody moves closer to the man, now huddled in a foetal position on the floor. He takes the baton in both hands, raises it above his head.

  ‘Are you Waldo?’

  ‘Please. I don’t know who Waldo is.’

  ‘The man who cut off my toes. The man who sliced the face off my partner. Are you that man?’

  ‘No. I swear. I didn’t do those things. I coul
dn’t. I was there, but—’

  ‘You were there. You admit that much. You helped. That makes you responsible. That makes you guilty. What you did to me . . . What you did to my partner . . .’

  And suddenly Cody is crying too. He hates that it is happening to him, but he can do nothing to prevent it. The tears are streaming down his cheeks.

  He takes a few steps backwards, as if hoping that the distance will give him some objectivity. That it will allow him once again to find the anger that is so rightly his. That it will empower him to administer the justice he has longed for.

  But all he gets is tears.

  He wipes them violently from his cheeks in an act of self-loathing.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ he says. ‘What the fuck are you doing here, in my house? In my own home? Why did you come here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Really, I don’t. He said you’ll get a call. It will be explained to you.’

  ‘Who? You keep saying “he”. Who do you mean by that?’

  ‘The man you want. Waldo? Is that what you call him?’

  ‘What do you call him?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know his name.’

  Cody advances again. ‘Bullshit! You worked with him. You must have talked to him. You must have seen him.’

  ‘No. Please. Wait for the call. It will all be explained.’

  ‘I want it explained now, by you.’

  ‘I-I can’t.’

  Cody glares down at him. Debates his next move. This is so absurd, so beyond the realm of what is ordinary. He is not equipped to deal with this macabre bizarreness.

  He paces the room, and as he does so he becomes more aware of his environment.

  The room is at the rear of the house. Like the other rooms, its window is shuttered. In addition, a metal grille is bolted over the window, presumably to prevent people breaking in to steal thousands of pounds’ worth of booze when this was used as a cellar. Looped around the bars is a thick metal chain. The chain runs along the floor and terminates at a shackle around the clown’s ankle. It was the chain becoming taut that caused the clown to fall when he was trying to evade Cody.