Most people out and about were always on the move somewhere, from A to B, job to home, home to shop; most of them had someplace to be, someplace to go. A reason to be out and about. A reason to be doing something that they needed other people to lay witness to.
Waiting around on street corners in the middle of the day or night, where Estelle usually spent the majority of her time, to be without something in your hand to give you a reason for being there was just asking for trouble. Such an act this day and age always brought the word terrorist, mugger, prostitute, junkie, trouble-making vagabond right to the forefront of people’s minds.
Leaving Argyle Street behind, Estelle ventured through some quieter side streets and desolated alleyways before emerging onto Clyde Street which ran adjacent to the River Clyde for about a mile in either direction.
Estelle finished her fag and flicked it into the river without a second thought for any fish or seagulls that might mistake it for food and cause themselves some permanent damage. Littering meant nothing to Estelle. She wasn’t an environmentalist in the slightest. She was a survivalist and realist. She knew the world was fucked and totally beyond repair. Even if the majority of the population still strongly believed that the world could be saved due to all the fake news out there, all that green peace bullshit was like the blind leading the blind.
Just something for the activists to do to make themselves feel better and feel all warm and fuzzy inside, to distract themselves from the truth that they secretly knew all along: everything and everybody were fucked. The damage had been well and truly done decades ago. It was over. Her daughter’s children would probably be the last human residents of the planet to breathe clean fresh air and drink clean fresh water before all hell broke loose.
She’d seen so much. Done so many things. Ventured to so many hidden corner pockets of the globe. She didn’t need to hope or believe that things might change someday soon. She already knew they wouldn’t. She’d seen parts of the world that most people didn’t even realize existed and the irreparable damage that had already been done there.
People don’t change. Most people are selfish and narcissistic and only out to look after themselves first and foremost when it came down to the nitty gritty. So why should they put a dying planet’s needs well above their own children’s needs, or their own addictive desires, wants and habits for that matter? It was natural human instinct to look after one’s self before turning their attention to others and their surroundings.
Estelle reached the Albert road bridge and turned southbound heading over the murky brown stretch of the River Clyde. As she walked across, she was completely oblivious that the same bridge, the same paved slab of concrete right beneath her feet, had been the final demise of her sister just over a week earlier.
Once over the bridge, Estelle continued to make her way further south for another half a mile until she found herself wading knee deep into the heart of the notorious Gorbals district of Glasgow’s Southside. The last known address and whereabouts of her sister.
Estelle had been taught some handy hacking skills over the years. She wasn’t the best computer hacker in the world by a long shot; that wasn’t where her expertise lay. She felt much more at ease with the manual handling and physical labor of the great outdoors part of her job. She would never be able to hack into the likes of online police departments or restricted government websites and rummage through their hidden files and top-secret dossiers, but she could hack social media accounts and local council websites if she really put in the time and effort.
And that is exactly what she had done on the train up from London. She’d managed to hack into, just by using her iPhone, the most recent council tax and housing benefit records of both her younger sister and her old friend David, who resided just a little further south of the Gorbals, in Govanhill. According to their Facebook pages, they were both still on relatively friendly speaking terms with each other. Nothing sexual, just good friends. More akin to the relationship of a brother and sister or cousins, always looking out for the other and checking in from time to time to see how the other was doing.
While Estelle read through their messages over the past few years, she felt a little better with herself that Gayle had someone to look out for her, as David had done. Although, in the end, it hadn’t really counted for much since she was dead. Skimming through their messages, nothing out of the ordinary stood out. David was the more active one out of the two on social media and for the past year, Gayle had hardly even logged in, posted, or messaged anyone.
David’s account on the other hand seemed to be more family orientated with nothing dark, seedy, or suspicious shared with the few friends that he messaged back and forth. Although, a wise criminal would be careful of putting their illegal exploits into written words online, specially words that could one day come back to bite them in the balls.
There were plenty of posts with his wife though, along with their two young children. A boy of four and a girl of two. Estelle didn’t recognize his wife who he’d been with for the past seven years, even though they were the same age and had apparently frequented the same high school when Estelle wasn’t playing truant.
David had recently posted an obituary message for Gayle, but there was no mention of her funeral, where it might be held, or where she might be buried. So once Estelle had checked out her sister’s old apartment in the Gorbals, David would be her next port of call for sure.
At the very least she wanted to know where her sister had been laid to rest just so she could pay her respects more than anything. She didn’t have one single religious bone in her body or believed in any of the thousand and one gods that had come and gone through the millennia of human kind’s existence. And as for graveyards, to her, they were just an absolute waste of space. Especially with the never-ending spiral of the world’s population, these grounds could surely be put to better use to sustain the human race for a little while longer. She only secretly hoped that her sister’s few friends might’ve had the good sense to cremate her in the end and scatter her ashes somewhere with a nice view.
Estelle stood outside her sister’s tenement apartment block on Old Rutherglen Road. The building looked like an old factory that had been converted into flats possibly a decade ago. Estelle checked the name on the buzzers. Her sister’s name was still on the list, second buzzer from the top. She was in the right place then.
Estelle pushed the buzzer for the service entry, a button only used by trades people or postal workers who needed to get in and out of the building without troubling or disturbing the neighbors. It usually only operated up until the midafternoon. Which was good news for Estelle since it was still late morning.
The buzzer worked. The door opened and Estelle cautiously entered the dimly lit ground floor hallway leading towards the stairwell at the back of the building. She made her way up to the top floor. Six flights up. On each level there were only two apartments, both of which faced opposite the other on either side of the stairwell. It was the exact same set up on the top floor too.
The top floor apartment on Estelle’s left had dozens of kids’ shoes, toys, and bikes stashed out front, taking up almost half the entire corridor and floor space. There was obviously a big family dwelling within. The entrance to the opposite apartment on the right looked clean and fresh. Like it had recently been polished and tidied for the first time in a very long while.
Before Estelle approached the front door, she glanced all around the quiet stairwell, making sure that the coast was absolutely clear. She was going to have to break in if there was indeed nobody inside to let her in, and why would there be? Her sister lived alone and surely another tenant hadn’t moved in already.
Estelle stepped up to the door and rang the buzzer. Nothing. No sound or even the slightest bit of noise or movement could be heard from within. Estelle tried the buzzer again. Just one more time. Two was her lucky number. Still not a peep. She proceeded to pull out one of her smaller slim knives, a handy lock-picking
device, which was one of the first tools she’d ever been taught to use. She carefully and expertly picked the lock.
Cautiously, she entered inside the unfurnished and bare apartment. She closed the door gently behind her before making her way down the long, narrow hallway and into the living room. Everything had been stripped down and taken out, all except for an old couch, an armchair, and a fairly new bed frame which still sat within the only bedroom inside the flat.
Everything had been taken down off the walls too and freshly cleaned and painted. All cupboards had also been cleared out. Estelle could still smell the fumes from the latest coat of paint in every room, even though the windows had been left half open from the previous day.
Estelle made her way into the kitchen. She began checking the empty cupboards. Then behind the kitchen units and finally underneath those same units, even taking off the skirting boards at the very bottom which hid all the plumbing pipes, dust, and mouse traps.
Directly below the kitchen sink cupboard she found a loose piece of floorboard. When she removed it and reached her hand down into the dark dirty hole, she found an old sweet tin filled with marijuana. She gave it a quick sniff before putting it back where she found it. It was of no use to her. She had never touched the stuff. Only the rest of her sister’s secret hiding places around the apartment were of interest to her now.
Gayle had always been like her mother in that respect. Dozens of little secret hiding stashes situated all over the house when they were kids. Estelle was the same way too, only she had the savvy to keep her hiding places on the outside of the old family home.
It was her mother who had given her the idea. She’d only stumbled across her mother’s secret stashes when she was trying to find a good hiding spot for her own stolen goods, cigarettes, money, knives. One time, when Estelle thought there was nobody else home, Gayle had caught her hiding something too, and so the idea spread and the cycle continued. Gayle seemed to be a lot more inventive and creative at hiding things though than her mother ever was.
Estelle knew that if her sister had anything of value to hide. Something that she didn’t want discovered in a hurry, then she’d no doubt have plenty of secret hiding places all over her flat. And Estelle wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon until she’d at least found something of interest.
Estelle checked the panels on the kitchen ceiling next, especially behind the loose set of spotlights. But nothing stood out. She entered the bathroom and checked behind the toilet. Then inside the cistern. Still nothing. Then behind the basin and pedestal. Another good hiding spot from her mother’s days of hiding heroin and syringes. All Estelle could find though was an old, dirty toothbrush and a half-used bar of soap.
Estelle hesitated and her eyes widened when she noticed the small, narrow shower panel, which covered the hidden frame holding up the main shower tray. It looked to be made of a hard-plastic material and only held up by two screws and caps rather than silicon or another strong glue seal.
Estelle used her knife to gently flick off the white caps and pry out the rusted screws. She removed the plastic panel in one piece and peered inside the short, narrow gap behind it. She felt pleasantly surprised to find an old crumpled photograph underneath and a huge stash of fifty-pound notes totaling thousands of pounds by the look of it.
Estelle left the money where she’d found it. Again, it was of no interest to her. The photo seemed another matter entirely though. Her sister had obviously hidden it there for a very good reason. And if not her, then the previous owner before her. She felt fairly certain that it was her sister’s doing though. Another giveaway was that Gayle had been registered at the address for well over five years and the shower looked recently installed. Two years at the most with hardly any dirt or grot in amongst the grouted tiles and no water stains or mold upon the white silicone spread around the base of the shower tray.
Estelle studied the picture. A handsome middle-aged man wearing a suit and tie and a charming smile sat beside another pretty, well-dressed middle-aged woman. They were having a picnic inside some park which could have been anywhere. The main focal point of the picture though seemed to be a very young little boy with blond hair, possibly around four or five years of age. He had the strangest blue eyes Estelle had ever seen. Almost kind of glazed. But it could have just been a trick of the camera or light.
They appeared like any normal happy family too. Which of course baffled the hell out of Estelle and intrigued her even more to why her little sister should keep such a picture hidden away in the first place underneath her shower tray along with several thousand pounds in fifty-pound bundles.
Estelle folded up the picture and slid it into her back pocket. She put the shower panel carefully back into its place before casually searching the rest of the apartment, looking under more floorboards and skirting panels, but nothing else out of the ordinary could be found. She quickly found herself done with the place. There was nothing else to see or search for.
Estelle opened the apartment front door, checked that the coast was clear and carefully slipped out into the dimly lit hallway. As she closed the door behind her, trying not to make a sound, a young boy’s voice startled her from the other end of the dark, narrow corridor opposite the stairwell.
“Hey. Who the hell are you?” said the curious young voice.
Estelle turned to face the little boy who was sitting at the far end of the hallway in amongst the shadows while he played with a box full of toy cars. She studied the boy hard, curiously observing his facial features and hair, but he looked nothing like the little boy in the picture. His hair was jet black and his eyes far too narrow.
“Are you moving in already?” enquired the little boy further.
“No.” Estelle replied. Trying to be blunt and cut the conversation stone dead in its tracks before it had any chance to get started.
“So, what were you doing in there then?”
Estelle was about to turn and leave and ignore the little boy when she had a spontaneous second thought. Perhaps it would be better to appear friendly after all. The little boy might know something useful about Gayle. Estelle turned back to face him. She took a few soft steps closer towards him.
“My friend, she... used to live here.” Estelle casually stated.
“You know Gayle?” the little boy replied as his eyes almost lit up with joy.
“A little, yes.”
“Did you come here to buy drugs from her?”
So, her sister was a drug dealer after all? Now that was interesting information and would explain all the hidden money underneath her shower. But only a small stash of drugs? Now that didn’t seem like a very productive drug dealer to her. Unless somebody else was supplying?
Estelle casually grinned.
“No. I didn’t come here to buy drugs.”
“My mum does, sometimes… I mean… did.” The little boy replied, singing secrets like a little canary as children so often did without thinking.
“It’s sad what happened to her…” the little boy continued. “She was always nice to me. She gave me most of these toys, you know.”
“Where did they put all of her belongings?” Estelle asked, getting straight to the point.
“Oh. The landlord took everything away a few days ago. They had builders in there too. They were really noisy.”
Estelle stepped a little closer towards the boy. She had an idea. If the little boy knew Gayle then perhaps, just perhaps, he might know the people in the picture. She pulled out the photograph of the family having a picnic from inside her back pocket and showed it to the boy.
“Do you know any of these people? Maybe even the little boy?”
The boy studied the picture hard. It didn’t seem like he recognized anyone. He gently shook his head.
“No, I don’t know them. Sorry. Do you think they might be her family or her mum and dad, maybe?”
Estelle gently smiled and shook her head. If only the little boy knew the truth about Gayle’s mother and fa
ther. The stuff of nightmares.
Outside the apartment building Estelle made her way around to the back of the block where the dumpsters were all kept in order of their recyclability options. The first bin she came to was for landfill and full to the brim with household waste materials and most other unwanted crap. She guessed right that the majority of the junk stashed inside was her sister’s stuff. Everything left of Gayle as a person having existed in the world was now rotting away inside that bin.
Estelle cleared some old chairs and ornaments from the top of the bin pile. Underneath a few black bin bags she found a small box filled with some of Gayle’s more personal bits and pieces. Mostly books and CD’s she’d bought and read over the years. Even some sentimental children’s books from her childhood days too. But most surprising of all, Estelle found some old photographs from her childhood. Well, their so-called childhood.
One picture in particular even brought the faintest of emotional lumps to the back of Estelle’s throat and gave her a feeling of loss and longing that she didn’t know she was even capable of feeling and certainly hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
It was an old picture of Estelle and Gayle as kids. No parents. No other people involved. Just her and Gayle looking chill, mischievous, and happy. Possibly a year or so before she’d been sent to juvenile prison. The funny thing about the picture was that she knew who’d taken it and it sickened her to her core.
That fucking arsehole stepfather of theirs.
She remembered at the time that he just happened to be in one of his rare nice, cheerful moods for once. Must have been an unusual morning of sobriety for him. Her mother on the other hand would have been far too wasted at that time of day to take a picture of anything. And even when she wasn’t wasted, well she was far too selfish and narcissistic to take a picture of anything that she wasn’t posing in herself.
Estelle took the old photograph from the broken frame and slipped it into her back pocket too. Next stop. An old friend in Govanhill who was in for the shock of his life.
Cold Heart Page 8