Your Deepest Fear

by David Jackson

  Cody does not pause. He spins around on the body beneath him. He moves his weight down to the man’s legs, lifts one of his feet. He grabs the shoe, yanks it off without even undoing the laces, peels away the sock in one quick motion.

  Then he picks up the hacksaw.

  This is it, he thinks. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

  A toe for a toe.

  A face for a face.

  46

  He brings the hacksaw blade to the man’s smallest toe. This is how it started for Cody. Cold steel edges wrapped around his toe, just waiting for the merest flicker of effort to bring them together, severing flesh, snapping bone.

  ‘Who’s Waldo?’ he cries.

  ‘Please. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Please don’t . . .’

  ‘Who’s Waldo?’ Cody repeats.

  ‘I told you. I don’t know. I swear to God.’

  Cody presses the blade into the button of flesh, begins to cut. A trickle of blood flows. Screams intensify.

  And Cody realises that some of those screams are his own.

  He flings the hacksaw across the room. Clambers off the man, who is now sobbing for mercy.

  Cody sits on the floor, next to the window. He wraps his arms around his legs and draws them in, then rests his chin on his knees. He stares ahead at his captive, waits for the thunder and lightning in his head to move away and for precious calm to return.

  So that’s it, he thinks. It’s over. I can’t do it. I can’t become what it takes to win this. And maybe that’s a good thing. Waldo is trying to make me be like him, and he hasn’t succeeded. So maybe I do win after all.

  Who am I kidding?

  That is so much philosophical bullshit. Waldo gets away with it again. Even this guy – whoever he is – gets away with it. I can’t keep him here. And even if I did, I won’t get anything out of him. I’ve already proved to myself that I’m not a torturer.

  So either I put him under arrest, in the tissue-thin hope that we can pin something on him in a formal police investigation, or else I let him go. Those are the choices, right? What else is there?

  As he contemplates his options, Cody’s gaze drifts to the man’s shoe. It seems curiously symbolic – the forlorn remnant of a lost battle. Like a museum relic of war or persecution. Except that this particular shoe is brand new. Still has the sticker on the sole.

  Cody reaches out and pulls the shoe towards him, dragging it across the dusty floor. He picks it up and studies the sticker.

  ‘Walgrave and Palmer. Sale price £49.99. Last pair!’

  And Cody has an idea.

  He slips his hand in his pocket and takes out his phone. Uses its camera to take some photos of the shoe. Then he puts the shoe down and goes across to Clueless, who is still face down and handcuffed, his head turned away. Cody grabs him by the shoulder and flips him over. The man turns his face away, as if fearful of being struck. Cody grabs a fistful of shirt and hauls the man into a sitting position.

  ‘Smile,’ says Cody.

  ‘What?’

  Cody holds up his phone. Clueless doesn’t smile, but Cody snaps a shot anyway.

  ‘What . . . what’s that for?’

  Cody puts his phone away. ‘You’re going to have to stay here a while.’

  ‘What do you mean? How long?’

  ‘Until I say so.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m going to work.’

  ‘Work? You’re leaving me here all day?’

  ‘At least. Make yourself comfortable.’

  ‘I can’t . . . I mean, you can’t . . .’

  ‘I can do what I like, Clueless. If you want this to end sooner, you’ll need to give me some answers. Willing to do that?’ He waits for a few seconds. ‘Thought not.’

  Cody retrieves his hacksaw and his baton from the floor. Heads towards the door.

  ‘Wait,’ says the man. ‘I need . . . I need to pee.’

  ‘I’ll get you a bucket.’

  ‘My hands . . .’

  Cody nods. ‘Okay. I’ll be right back.’

  ‘And . . . and I’ll get hungry and thirsty.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! Where do you think you are? The Crowne Plaza? You do realise I very nearly started chopping off your toes, don’t you?’

  Cody gets no reply. He leaves the room, locking it behind him. He goes up to his apartment, then returns with the key to the handcuffs, a bucket, a bottle of water, and two bags of crisps.

  As Cody unlocks the cuffs, the man says, ‘Crisps? That’s it?’

  ‘It’s all I—’ Cody realises what he’s doing. ‘What the fuck! You want them or not?’

  ‘I was just saying—’

  ‘Yeah, well don’t. Jesus!’

  Cody leaves him again. Makes a further trek up the stairs to his apartment. When he gets there, he is hit by a tidal wave of exhaustion. He never sleeps well, but he could really do with an hour or two in bed. The exertion, the stress, the emotion, the adrenaline have all taken their toll.

  But now it is morning. A dark, drab March morning to be sure, but morning nonetheless. He needs to get ready for work. He needs to shower, shave, dress, eat, and then turn his focus to the job ahead without letting it drift to what he’s left behind in his basement.

  So that’ll be interesting.

  He checks the calendar on his mobile phone for the day’s appointments and gets his next shock of the day.

  His first meeting is with the police psychologist.

  He thinks it’s not likely to go well.

  47

  Sara Prior wakes in the hope that it has all gone away.

  Wouldn’t it be wonderful, she thinks, to put the light on and see a perfect bedroom? My pictures, my flowers, my clothes, my ornaments – all in one piece, all in their rightful places.

  But her hopes are quickly dispelled when her fingers eventually find the lamp switch.

  The words ‘FUCK YOU’ stare back at her in neon orange from the far wall. Her broken pictures are in a pile in the corner of the room, following a half-hearted attempt last night to restore some order. One door of the wardrobe yawns open, hanging precariously from its broken hinges. Stuffing from the mattress and feathers from her pillows are strewn far and wide across the room. She had to cover the wrecked mattress with several thick blankets to make it comfortable enough to lie on last night.

  She sits up and swings her legs off the bed. Pushes her feet into her thick slippers before risking the walk across a carpet glistening with countless fragments of broken glass.

  She goes out onto the landing and into the bathroom. Putting the light on, she moves straight to what is left of the smashed mirror in the cabinet above the sink.

  It’s worse than she thought.

  The band-aid is still in place and seems to have stemmed the bleeding. She cleaned the wound last night and didn’t think it was deep enough to require medical attention.

  But her face!

  Her cheek is massively swollen, making it difficult to open her left eye, and the whole area is badly bruised. A real shiner, as the English call it.

  She turns away from the devastating sight in the mirror to survey the devastation in her bathroom instead. The contents of her cabinet are here, as are the contents of the airing cupboard; it’s as if they have exploded out from their confinement to fill a vacuum. The towel rail has been yanked from the stud partition wall and then thrust end-first through the plaster. Ozone has had a whale of a time, as the English might say.

  Where to begin? How to even start to fix this? Especially being alone, without Matthew to help her. It’s such a mammoth task.

  Images of Matthew’s house come back to her. The chaos there was of a similar level to that created here. It makes her suspect that Ozone was involved in both. The difference this time is that Ozone wasn’t searching for anything; he was simply sending a message.

  And the message has struck home.

  Ozone was right. The game has been stepped
up. Now she is facing thugs with guns. She can’t beat those odds.

  She wonders about going to the police. She still has Sergeant Cody’s card. She could call him. Give him Ozone’s name.

  But what good will that do? Ozone will have been careful not to leave forensic evidence behind, and he will deny everything. Even if it could be proven that he was in this house, it wouldn’t prove a connection to Matthew’s murder.

  Besides, she would then have to explain how she found her way to Ozone in the first place. If anything, her own actions would probably land her a heavier jail sentence than Ozone might get for vandalism.

  So where does that leave her?

  She tries to put the deep thinking to one side for a while. She strips off, takes a shower, then returns to the bedroom and throws on some old, comfortable clothes.

  The conversation she had with Cody seems laughable now. Hygge? Look at it. Look at this shithole.

  She goes down to the kitchen. Steps across a puddle of broken eggs. Picks up one of the few undamaged bowls from the pile of crockery on the floor. Finds a cereal box that still has enough content for a minimal breakfast, and a milk carton that hasn’t quite been drained.

  She eats standing up, because the barstools are covered with ketchup and mayonnaise and flour. She would like some tea, but is no longer certain where to find it.

  When she has finished breakfast, she decides she may as well begin work on the room she’s in. It will take a long time just to make it liveable in here. Longer term, she will need to replace all the broken items and have the whole place redecorated.

  Especially if she’s going to sell up.

  That thought came to her last night, and it’s not going away. There is nothing left for her here now. She can’t have Matthew, and she can’t have justice for Matthew. She hates herself for being so defeatist, but there it is. A soldier has to know when to advance and when to retreat.

  She places her cereal bowl on the counter next to the sink. She can’t even wash it until she has removed all the crap from the basin.

  But first thing’s first.

  She goes out to the hall and picks up the phone. She’s almost surprised to discover it’s still operational. She flicks through the contacts, dials a number.

  ‘Hello,’ she says after a wait. ‘Yes, I’d like to book a flight, please . . . Copenhagen . . . This evening.’

  48

  He walks into Falstaff’s office acting as though he’s as bouncy as Tigger. Just bursting with joie de vivre.

  Falstaff is having none of it. She sees through his façade, he can tell.

  ‘How are you this morning, Nathan?’ she asks.

  ‘Cody,’ he says. ‘I prefer Cody.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. So how are you?’

  He shrugs. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Good. Although . . . you look a little fraught.’

  Understatement of the year, he thinks. I look like shit. My eyes are red raw, my skin looks like old paper, and I’m having trouble stringing sentences together.

  ‘I’m really busy at work. Early days of a murder investigation, we don’t get a lot of sleep.’

  ‘How much sleep, exactly?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Last night. How many hours of sleep did you manage to get?’

  ‘A few. Enough. I’ll catch up when we’ve solved the case.’

  ‘That’s a tough way to live. Doesn’t it take its toll?’

  ‘I’m young enough to cope.’

  Falstaff nods knowingly. She looks down at her notes. ‘Just to recap, we were talking about your encounter in the warehouse.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The clowns.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Yes, doc, I remember the clowns. I’ve recently been on a refresher course.

  ‘You got quite upset talking about it.’

  ‘It was a traumatic event. I expect you’d be worried if I hadn’t got upset about it.’

  Just throwing that out there, he thinks. Not trying to bring you round to my way of thinking or anything . . .

  Falstaff doesn’t pick up the ball by revealing her thoughts. She says, ‘I want to move on now to the child abduction case you worked on recently. The one that put you in hospital. Can you give me a brief run-down on what happened to you?’

  He takes a deep breath, then rattles through the tale. The words just seem to tumble out of their own accord, and he’s not sure if they are making any sense, but Falstaff keeps on nodding like one of those dogs you used to see on car dashboards. He decides that Falstaff would be a good name for a dog.

  When he’s done, she says to him, ‘That’s quite a story. You like to lead an eventful life, don’t you?’

  You don’t know the half of it, he thinks.

  ‘Trouble seems to go out of its way to find me,’ he says.

  ‘So it seems. That must have been traumatic too.’

  ‘It was. Not as bad as the other incident, but yeah, it wasn’t a barrel of laughs.’

  ‘Did you find it brought back memories of the previous events?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, did it lead to nightmares? Anxiety? Depression? Perhaps even hallucinations?’

  All of the above, Cody thinks. ‘I had some bad dreams, but other than that, no. I was assessed during my stay in the hospital.’

  Falstaff seems unimpressed by that. Cody gets the feeling she doesn’t like to have her opinions influenced by those of her peers.

  ‘And you’ve been all right since your release?’

  ‘Right as rain.’

  He wants to laugh as he says that. Anyone can see what a wreck he is right now.

  ‘No anxiety?’

  ‘No, none.’

  He catches her glance towards his leg as he answers, and he realises his leg is bouncing up and down. Practically vibrating. He makes it stop.

  ‘All right,’ she says. ‘Do you mind if we talk about your family?’

  ‘No, go ahead.’

  He relaxes a little. It’s a welcome diversion from the topic of clowns.

  Speaking of which . . .

  He wonders what Clueless is doing now. Contemplating his future? Munching on crisps? Trying to escape?

  He can’t escape. There’s no way he can break through that chain.

  There are the bars over the window, though. Are they strong enough? The bars themselves, yes, but what about the screws holding them to the wall? They’ve been there for many years. Is it possible he could pull them away?

  No, don’t be ridiculous. He’s not breaking out of there.

  But does he need to? Isn’t it possible he could alert somebody else? The dental practice is just one floor above, and there will be a lot of people up there now. He could shout to them. Would they hear, though? The floor above the basement must be pretty solid. It must be—

  He realises that Falstaff is staring at him, and that she is waiting for the answer to a question.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘What was that?’

  ‘I was asking you about your relationship with your family. Do you get on well with them?’

  No point lying about this, he thinks. ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Could you elaborate on that?’

  ‘Well, it’s mainly my dad. He has a thing about the police, and so when I decided to join them, he basically disowned me.’

  ‘Do you see the other members of your family?’

  ‘Not much. I love my mum and sister, but they live with my dad, and I’m not welcome there, and my mum is under strict instructions not to see me anywhere else.’

  ‘Do you just have the one sibling?’

  ‘No, I’ve got a brother too.’

  ‘And what about him? Do you see much of him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Same reason? Only you didn’t mention him.’

  ‘Different reason. Let’s just say that his day-to-day activities are incompatible with mine as a police officer. The less I know about what
he’s up to, the better.’

  ‘Okay. So to sum up, you have virtually no family support?’

  It sounds a harsh judgment, but it’s essentially true.

  ‘Yeah, you could say that.’

  ‘Did they rally round when you and your colleague were attacked, or when you were recently hospitalised?’

  ‘Rally round would be putting it too strongly. I saw my mum and sister a little. That’s about it.’

  ‘How did that affect you? Emotionally, I mean?’

  It kills me, he wants to say. It tears me apart that it’s so difficult to go back to the place of my birth, my upbringing. It makes me crumble inside to know that my own father detests what I do, and by extension, me for doing it. It makes me want to cry every time I see my mother hide her feelings for fear of estranging her husband.

  ‘I’m used to it,’ he says. ‘They’re never going to change.’

  Falstaff lets it go for the moment. ‘What about other people in your life? I see that you’re not married, but do you have a partner?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘No? Why is that?’

  Cody can’t get used to the directness of the questions. Nobody else would ask him these things, but slap a doctorate on someone and they think they can quiz you freely.

  ‘Life is too busy.’

  ‘Really? I mean, I don’t doubt that your job is a demanding one, but there’s a life to be lived outside it, right? So there’s no one special?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Okay. Tell me what you do for fun.’

  ‘I read. I play guitar. I jog and work out.’

  ‘They’re all very solitary pursuits. What about your social life?’

  ‘I go out occasionally.’

  ‘Yes? What sort of thing? Restaurants, pubs, clubs?’

  ‘That kind of thing.’