by Tim Weaver
As he passed, I noticed something in his hands.
Money.
At 4.40, dawn started to break and light edged its way across the sky, a faint, creamy glow the colour of tracing paper. But in Adrian Wellis’s house, the lights remained on. Throughout the night there’d been movement inside: a shadow passing, a silhouette forming, but never for very long. All I knew for sure was that they hadn’t been to bed.
At 5 a.m. the front door opened and the other guy emerged, dressed in the same clothes, his hair a little ruffled, his clothes not on properly. Why’s he taking a walk at 5 a.m.? He was carrying a black holdall. Halfway along the road he stopped, unzipped it, checked inside and then closed it again.
I got out of the car.
He clocked the movement, his eyes pinging towards me. I stepped around to the back of the BMW and flipped the boot. He carried on walking, his interest in me lost. In the boot, next to the spare wheel, was my escape plan; there in case it all went wrong. I removed the crowbar, slid it into the back of my trousers and made a beeline for him.
‘Excuse me, mate.’
He looked back. No reply.
‘Excuse me,’ I said again, and this time he stopped.
‘What?’
He glanced down at the holdall, as if I might be coming for that, and shifted it behind one of his legs to protect it.
‘What d’ya want?’ he said.
South London accent. So he’s from around here somewhere.
‘I’m looking for Adrian Wellis.’
Another frown. His eyes moved from me to the car then back to me. He shifted position slightly and glanced down the road to the house. Panic in his face.
When he turned back to me, he shrugged. ‘Never heard of him.’
But even if I hadn’t seen him come out of Wellis’s house, I would have seen right through the lie. He couldn’t play this game – he wasn’t canny enough – and all of a sudden I saw him for what he was: Wellis’s lapdog.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘What the fuck’s it gotta do with you?’
‘I’m just interested.’
‘Fuck off,’ he said, and started along the road again.
‘You’re going to help me find Sam Wren.’
He stopped and looked back. ‘What did you say?’
‘You heard what I said.’
He turned fully towards me, bag swinging around to his front, and tried to make himself bigger and more aggressive. But it didn’t work. A man who barely weighed ten stone wasn’t going to be a match for me. He wasn’t going to be much of a match for anyone. Inside a couple of seconds he knew his ruse had failed and seemed to shrink in his skin. I took a step in his direction, just to underline its failure.
‘Let’s go and see Adrian,’ I said.
‘He doesn’t like strangers inside his house.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I figured.’
‘So he’s not going to open the door to you.’
‘No. But he’ll open it to you.’
26
The man stopped outside the house and knocked a couple of times. We waited. Ten seconds later, a silhouette moved along the hallway, distorted in the mottled glass panel. I took a subtle step away from the door as the silhouette leaned in towards the peephole. Then the lock flipped and the door came away from the frame.
Adrian Wellis filled the gap.
He was dressed in his boxer shorts. Nothing else. I could see the crucifix tattoo at his neck, and more on his body: a snake’s head on his left breast; the numbers 666 on his hip. ‘What the hell are you doing back?’ he said to the man, and then, as he took a step closer, spotted me off to the side. His eyes flicked between the man and me, and he pulled the door back as far as it would go. He had a faintly amused expression on his face. ‘What the fuck is this?’ he said. He was Welsh.
‘He stopped me on the street and I –’
‘Shut up,’ ordered Wellis. He turned to me. ‘Who are you?’
‘I want to talk to you about Sam Wren.’
Something registered in his eyes, like a flash of torchlight cutting through the dark. On. Then off. ‘Who?’
I didn’t bother repeating myself.
His eyes narrowed. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Ben Richards.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘I don’t work for anyone.’
He frowned for a moment, then broke out into a smile. Perfect teeth. Expensive, just like his clothes. He pursed his lips. ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about, Ben.’
‘I think you do.’
Beyond him the decor was probably the same as the day the house was built. Most of the wallpaper had either fallen from the walls or been torn off. The carpet was threadbare, from the front door to the kitchen at the back of the house. Three or four holes had been punched into the staircase and walls, about the size of a boot, and there were stains everywhere: on the walls, on the carpet, on the stairs. The house was filthy.
I looked back at Wellis. ‘So?’
He studied me a while longer, then looked at the man standing next to me. There was a mix of disgust and pity in his face. ‘You want me to invite you in, is that it?’
‘Not necessarily. We can chat here.’
‘I don’t do my chatting on the doorstep.’
‘Then it looks like I’m coming in.’
He snorted. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t move.
‘Or I can head back to the car, dial 999 and tell them you know where Sam Wren is. It’s up to you, Adrian.’
He stared at me, then stepped back and let the man through.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Your friend stays outside.’
‘You dictating the terms now, is that it?’
‘It’s simple maths. Two of you, one of me.’
The thin man stood there in the hallway, waiting for Wellis to tell me where to go – but Wellis ordered him to wait outside, and his face took on the look of a disappointed teenager. He dropped the holdall to the floor – making a clattering sound; metal against metal – and did as Wellis said. I stepped inside the house and pushed the door shut.
The house stank of sweat and fried food. In the living room the TV was on, but the screen was blue, as if a DVD had just been turned off. I shifted around, my back to the wall, so I had Wellis in front of me.
‘What do you want?’ he said, running his tongue around his mouth.
He didn’t seem conscious of the fact he was semi-naked. Or if he did, it genuinely didn’t seem to bother him. His body was squat; not fat, but hard and chunky, muscle in his chest, through the centre of his stomach and up into his arms. He rolled his shoulders back and then brought his hands together in front of him.
‘I want to know what happened to Sam Wren.’
‘Who?’
‘You know who he is.’
‘Do I?’
‘You’re in his phone.’
He shrugged, didn’t seem worried. ‘I’m in a lot of people’s phones.’
‘You called him in August last year.’
‘And?’
‘And you put him on edge.’
Wellis smirked. ‘And?’
‘And I want to know why.’
‘What the fuck’s it got to do with you?’
‘I guess we’ll see.’
‘Yeah?’
I nodded.
Wellis shook his head, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Let me just remind you of something, dickhead. You’re in my home.’
‘I can see that.’
‘So, what, you’re RoboCop – is that it?’
‘I’m not a cop.’
‘Then who the fuck are you?’
‘I want to find out what happened to Sam Wren. So I can either get the answers from you, or I get them from Lassie out there, but I’m going to get them.’
He took a step towards me, ready to attack.
Then, from above us, there was a noise. A bump. Like a big, dead weight being dropped. Wel
lis shot a look upstairs. I followed suit.
‘What was tha–’
But before I could finish he was on me.
He came forward, his arm across the front of his face, using it as a battering ram. He went through me, almost lifting me off my feet, and slammed me against the wall.
‘Eric!’ he shouted and the front door burst open.
The other man headed past us and upstairs, taking two steps at a time, as if he knew exactly what he was being summoned for. Wellis shoved harder with his forearm, pressing it in against my neck, forcing my body against the wall and my head up. I tried to swing a punch, but he blocked it and arced a fist up into my guts.
It was like being hit by a train.
I shifted my weight left to right and the movement rocked him back on his heels. Only a fraction. But enough. I drove a fist into the side of his head and managed to connect with his ear. He stumbled back half a step and I jabbed a second punch – as hard as it would go – into the centre of his throat. He made a sound like air escaping from a balloon, shrinking in on himself.
But Wellis was a fighter.
He channelled everything he had into a swing, connecting with the area around my heart. It was like he’d punched through me. I hit the wall so hard and so fast the whole house seemed to shake. The door rattled in its frame. The plasterboard rippled. As I was catching my breath, he moved quickly to the holdall, unzipping it.
A second later, he had a knife.
His fingers were laced through three holes in the rubberized grip. The blade was curved, about three and a half inches long. I stepped away from him and saw, inside the holdall, more knives, some rope, handcuffs – and a white vest and jeans, both belonging to a female, dotted with blood.
‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ he said, breathless. I didn’t respond. ‘Now I’m gonna have to take care of you.’
Upstairs, I could hear the other man moving around.
Quick footsteps.
Wellis edged towards me, knife out in front of him. He was forcing me back towards the kitchen, into a space where there was no exit.
‘Ade!’ the other man screamed from upstairs.
Wellis glanced behind him. An automatic reaction.
And I made my move.
From behind me I yanked out the crowbar I’d taken from the car. It was short, stubby, no more than a foot and a half long – but when it connected with the side of his head, Wellis went down like he’d been shot. His eyes rolled back; every muscle in his body turned to liquid. Then he was flat on his back on the carpet, lights out.
I turned him over on to his front.
‘Ade!’ the man shouted again from upstairs. ‘Quickly!’
Grabbing his arms, I dragged Wellis through to the kitchen and then went through the cabinets. In between a bottle of bleach and a tube of rat poison, I found a roll of duct tape. I bound Wellis’s ankles and wrists and looped the tape around his head a few times, covering his mouth. By the time I was done, he was slowly starting to come round. Eyes flickering like butterfly wings; eyeballs rolling up into his head, as if trying to tune himself back in. I had about five minutes before he returned to something like full strength.
Moving back through the hallway, I padded up the stairs. No creaks. No sound. At the top, in one of the rooms, I could see a loft hatch was open. A ladder had been pulled down and propped against the carpet. The man was halfway up, body inside the loft, legs still on the steps. As I edged in closer, I spotted something else.
Right on the edge of the loft space.
Blood.
I moved quietly into the room and stopped at the bottom of the ladder; more blood was falling from the lip of the hatch. It hit a space about half a foot from where I was standing, forming a pool on the hard, matted fibres of the carpet. The man was just standing there, looking off into the darkness at whatever was up there. Not moving now. Just breathing in and out.
‘Ade,’ he said again, but this time there was no purpose in his words, no urgency, and I realized something: he was crying. Soft sounds. Sniffs. ‘Ade,’ he said again.
I reached up, hands either side of his ankles.
‘Ade!’
He looked down, and saw me. Shock in his face. Then fear. Then anger. I grabbed his ankles and pulled him off the ladder. He fell hard and fast, cracking his head against one of the steps, before landing awkwardly right on the ball of his foot. He yelled out and collapsed. I grabbed him by the collar, got him to his feet and drove him back, into the wall. The wind whistled out of him.
‘What’s your name?’
Tears and blood on his face.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Eric.’
‘Eric what?’
‘Eric Gaishe.’
I glanced up, into the loft space. ‘What have you done, Eric?’
He sniffed. More tears in his eyes.
‘I think I killed someone.’
27
I pulled Gaishe, hobbling, to the bathroom, pushed him inside and told him to stay put. Then I returned to the spare room. Above me, the loft hatch was a big, black space. I only had a T-shirt on – nothing to cover my skin, nothing to prevent prints – so I grabbed a shirt from a nearby wardrobe, tore it in two and wrapped the material around both hands. I didn’t know what awaited me in the darkness. Not exactly. But, given this house and the people who occupied it, it couldn’t be anything good. As I started to climb, dread slithered through the pit of my stomach.
Halfway up, a moth escaped from the shadows and, at the lip of the hatch, I could see the full extent of the blood: running along the edges, soaking through into the insulation. Another rung, then another, and suddenly my head was inside the crawl space.
And I saw her.
Matted, unwashed hair. Skin stained with a mixture of grease and sweat. The woman was on her stomach, part of her face in a bed of insulation, skeletal arms out either side, legs spread. Her head was tilted towards me, one of her eyes looking up as if she’d been trying to claw her way back out of the loft. And there was blood everywhere: her face, her arms, her ribs, her legs. Thin, painful knife cuts had been used as a torture tactic, not enough to kill her, but enough to subdue her, and the rest was just bruising, everywhere, scattered all over her like spilled ink. There was a brick beside her, coated in her blood. A couple of strikes to the head from Gaishe, and then there would have been nothing but silence. No fight in her any more.
No life.
I looked at her: drawn and wan, she couldn’t have been more than eighteen. There were older bruises on her arms and legs, around her collarbone, next to her eyes and hips. I felt anger force its way up, blooming in my chest.
And then she blinked.
It was so quick, so unexpected, I wasn’t even sure if I’d seen it. I turned my head and put my ear to her mouth. And I felt it. Soft, warm breath.
Shit. She’s alive.
I thought about what I was going to do. But not for long.
Ultimately, there wasn’t a choice to make.
Using the house landline, I called for an ambulance, gave them the address and where she was in the house. ‘You’ll need police here too,’ I told them, then hung up. She hadn’t moved from her position in the attic by the time I returned to her, but her visible eye was more alert. It swivelled from left to right, as if she was trying to focus on me.
‘It’s okay. You’re going to be all right. This will all be over soon.’ I couldn’t touch her; didn’t want to leave any more evidence than I had already. ‘I need to take care of something, okay? By the time I’m done, the ambulance will be here. You’ll be all right.’
A gurgle in her throat.
‘I promise you’ll be okay.’
‘… hmmmm hurrrrrr …’
‘You’re safe now.’
‘… done lim hurd mm …’
I started down the ladder – and then stopped.
Done lim hurd mm. Don’t let him hurt me.
I looked at her. Her body, her face, pa
inted with blood. ‘I won’t let them hurt you,’ I said. ‘Not Adrian. Not Eric. Not any more.’
But it seemed to give her no comfort, and then – slowly, inch by inch – she started shaking her head. ‘… nnnnnnn a … is …’
‘Try not to move.’
‘… no … adrrri … nnnn … no … e …’
And as she lay there with her life leaking out of her, something unspoken passed between us – and I realized what she was telling me.
Not Adrian. Not Eric.
She was talking about someone else.
I moved down the ladder, wiping each rung clean with the shirt. At the bottom I looked around: what had I touched? I had about seven or eight minutes before the ambulance arrived – maybe a little more if the traffic was bad.
Downstairs, Wellis was still on the kitchen floor, his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. He was woozy: when he tried to roll over on to his back, he couldn’t. I left him and wiped down the door frames, door handles and walls.
Next, I headed back upstairs, one half of the shirt around my hand, one half tucked into the back of my trousers, and opened the bathroom door. Gaishe was inside, perched on the edge of the bath. As soon as I looked at him, I felt the burn in the centre of my chest. ‘Come here, shithead.’ I grabbed him hard by the arm. His face was still streaked with blood and tears and he looked terrified. A man out of his depth, led astray by someone much worse than him. Now he was as deep in as he could get.
I marched him downstairs and shoved him into the wall at the bottom. He stayed there, just staring off at Wellis, and I realized he was dazed as well as scared.
I can use that.
‘Eric,’ I said. ‘Give me a hand with Adrian. We need to get him out of here before the police arrive.’ He thought he recognized something in my voice – something positive, something he could cling on to – and he came over immediately.
We hoisted Wellis on to his feet, I cut the duct tape at his ankles and wrists, and tore it away from his mouth. Then I told Gaishe to get me a long coat from Wellis’s wardrobe. He did just as I asked. When he returned, we dressed Wellis in it. I buttoned it, and left Gaishe holding him while I did one last circuit of the house. At the bottom of the ladder I told the woman that she was going to be fine, and that the ambulance was on its way. And then, grabbing the crowbar and the duct tape, we all left.