The Captive

by Deborah O'Connor

  Inside, Hannah went to the front desk. A final demand requesting she clear John’s locker had arrived this morning. The letter had explained that if she did not vacate the unit by the end of the day the gym would donate the contents to charity. She handed over the piece of paper and the man behind the desk typed the details into a computer.

  ‘There’s a fine for late collection. Ninety-five pounds.’ He smiled brightly. ‘How do you want to pay, cash or card?’

  Hannah didn’t miss a beat.

  ‘My husband died, he was murdered actually, and I couldn’t face coming to get his stuff until now.’ She made sure to speak loudly enough for the other people in the queue to hear. ‘Are you really going to charge me? I mean, do you honestly think that’s OK?’

  The man held out for a few seconds more, then folded.

  At the locker bank Hannah stood to one side as he applied a pair of snippers to the padlock. Snap. The sheared metal looked chewed, like a dog had been at it.

  ‘I’ll leave you be,’ he said, tucking the snippers under his arm.

  Hannah opened the door and peered inside. She’d expected trainers or goggles, a mouldy towel dangling from a hook, but the only item was a large sports holdall, zipped shut.

  She went to hoist it out only to realise she’d misjudged how much it might weigh. Her wrist was unprepared and the bag dropped to the floor with a thud as a flurry of post-HIIT class men and women rushed past, chattery with endorphins. She lifted the bag onto her shoulder and headed for the door. She knew it would most likely contain shower gel, maybe some socks and towels. Still, it had been part of John’s life and so was precious. She’d open it at home, in private.

  Outside, she checked her phone for messages. Still no response from Rupert. She was surprised. She’d thought that, once he heard about Mickey, he’d have called right away, especially after their previous conversation.

  She hopped onto the bus and was about to head up to the top deck when she stopped. This route would take her past Chalk Farm Road. From there Primrose Hill was a few minutes’ walk. It was Saturday, so Rupert might be home.

  ‘I’m in the neighbourhood and thought I’d stop by,’ she said, leaving another voicemail. ‘Get the kettle on and I’ll see you soon.’

  Rupert lived in Chalcot Square. Highly desirable, the houses were all painted different colours. Burnt orange, candy pink and sherbet yellow, they rainbowed around a patch of playground and grass rarely used by the residents but which he and John liked to sit in every Monday to eat their favourite breakfast (a bacon and fried egg roll with brown sauce), which they took it in turns to provide. Just one of many bromantic quirks and traditions that Hannah had liked to tease them about, but which in private she’d thought adorable. They also had a roster of secret spots across the capital they considered ‘theirs’, which they liked to go and hang out and brainstorm in whenever they hit a roadblock in an investigation. From a bench in the far corner of the Phoenix Garden, a little-known oasis of green near Seven Dials that they accessed through a hidden churchyard gate, to a forgotten footbridge full of nesting sparrows by Platform 11 on Paddington Station, each spot had been discovered by accident while they were working other unrelated cases.

  Their bond was such that Hannah used to joke a lesser woman would feel jealous.

  Rupert’s house was on a square corner. Wedgwood blue, it had been bought and paid for in full years ago thanks to his hefty trust fund. It took Hannah twenty minutes to get there. Outside his front door, she set the holdall on the ground and rang the bell.

  No answer.

  She searched the street for his MG but the maroon coupé was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was out or doing a weekend shift? Coming here had been a long shot – still, walking around Primrose Hill was always a pleasure. Maybe she’d go to the bookshop before she went home. She’d noticed the majority of Jem’s possessions were dog-eared paperbacks. She could see if there was something he might like, something new.

  She was about to knock again when she heard footsteps.

  ‘Hannah.’

  Rupert appeared at the top of the path. Out of breath, he grabbed onto the iron railing for support, his hand nursing a stitch.

  ‘I was running errands in Kentish Town,’ he said, panting. ‘Wasn’t sure if I’d make it back in time.’ He smiled. ‘Shall we go for coffee?’ He beckoned her forward, ‘Lemonia?’

  They linked arms and set off toward the high street. Despite the heat Rupert was in his usual leisurewear of camel chinos, white shirt and navy blazer. Gold cufflinks twinkled at his wrists.

  ‘Sorry for the radio silence. Especially after the news about Mickey. I wanted to call but work has been crazy.’ He yawned. ‘Double shifts.’

  The historically low crime rate had not, as might have been expected, made things easier for the police. The government saw the declining figures as justification to pare back staffing levels already cut to the bone. John had railed against it. No one, he’d said, had disagreed the old prison system wasn’t fit for purpose, but using it as justification to eviscerate an already overstretched Met was perverse.

  And as John and every other police officer knew, the crime rate might be low, but the actual number of crimes being committed had spiralled as people realised folk were unlikely to press charges. He’d balked at the ethics that were bandied around, the morality, about how the new system was more humane, that the prisoners involved would be less likely to reoffend. ‘They can wang on about recidivism and compassion all they like,’ he’d used to say, ‘but it cost thirty-eight grand a year to keep a prisoner in the old system and now it costs twenty grand. Like everything, it all comes down to money.’

  At the restaurant, they settled at an outside table under one of the green awnings and ordered. Women in cotton dresses and leather sandals trudged by carrying groceries and flowers. Wearied by the ongoing heat, their skin was dappled pink, their hairlines damp and curling.

  ‘What’s the talk at the Yard?’ she said, ‘About Mickey.’

  He let out a slow breath.

  ‘They were really straightforward. Open, honest. It was refreshing actually. She’s taking a leave of absence and then, once she’s out the other side of treatment, they’ll see where she wants to go from there.’

  The waitress set down their coffees and two plastic-covered biscotti.

  Rupert grabbed one and squinted at the tiny writing on the wrapper.

  ‘Seventeen grams of carbs,’ he said, placing it back down.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Hannah, already prick-testing her thumb.

  Rupert’s father was also a type 1 diabetic and so he was fluent in the disease and the constant plate-spinning calculations it took to keep it in check.

  ‘So,’ he said once Hannah had injected. ‘Was it just Mickey you wanted to talk about?’

  Hannah hesitated. Now she was in front of him she found it hard to find the words. To ask his advice would be to admit that she had taken Jem’s claims seriously. She worried she would seem horribly naïve or, worse, that he’d think she was betraying John somehow.

  ‘Back at the start of the year,’ she said, ‘were you and John investigating a gang. The Heppels? They run a string of hotels and bars.’

  ‘A gang?’ He reached for one of his cufflinks and twisted it. ‘What’s that got do with anything?’

  ‘Jem,’ she said, trying to go back to the beginning. ‘He said that on the night John was killed, before he left the bar he heard him on the phone. He said it sounded like he was arranging to meet a woman, but the more I look into it, the more I think he was working on a case after hours, that maybe it had something to do with his death.’

  ‘Jem?’ Rupert was thunderous. ‘Heard him on the phone?’ The way he absorbed the information was like pennies falling in one of those coin-pusher machines in an arcade. ‘A woman?’

  ‘I’ve been asking around and there seems to be something to it. One person said John had been looking for a man, Slig. A man who was later rumoured to have killed
a copper.’

  Rupert cocked his head. This was clearly news to him.

  ‘If John went and talked to these people, he did it alone.’

  He took her hand and ran his thumb over her knuckles. ‘Everyone deals with grief in their own way, I get it, but listening to that –’ he screwed up his face like he had a bad taste in his mouth, ‘that criminal is not the answer.’

  She withdrew her hand. ‘But he knows things he couldn’t possibly have known.’

  Rupert nodded.

  ‘He’s got inside your head. I know you’re stuck together, he’s in your kitchen for God’s sake, but you need to try and keep your distance, mentally I mean.’

  He stayed watching her for a few moments more, wanting to be sure she’d understood.

  ‘Shit.’ He checked the time. ‘I should have left five minutes ago.’ He signalled for the bill and, when the waitress appeared, tapped his card against the machine.

  ‘I’ll try to drop by at the end of the week.’ He tugged at his shirt until the cuffs sat neat against his blazer. ‘And remember, don’t let him in.’ He tapped the side of his temple. ‘He’s a rat in a cage. Rats will do anything to escape.’ Then he was off.

  Hannah shifted on her chair and her knee knocked against John’s sports holdall. It sat waiting at her feet like a guard dog, loyal and solid.

  Jem

  Visit day.

  I’ve been awake since dawn, my heart a twitchy animal in my chest. I know Alina will help me come up with a plan to move my stuff, that there’ll be a simple fix, but the thing I’m coming to realise about being inside this house, this cell, is that the tiniest bumps in the road can derail you. When you are so absolutely reliant on others for your most basic needs – food, bathing, heat – when someone else decides what time you go to bed, what time you wake up, what you listen to, it’s hard not to become a cog, to remember you still have agency.

  The clock turns 11 a.m. and there is no sign of her. 11.05 a.m. – still nothing.

  She’s never late.

  At 11.15 a.m. Mr Dalgliesh goes to the sink and peers up through the window, to the street above.

  ‘Maybe there’s a problem with the Tube?’ he offers and I get the sense he’s been in this situation before.

  I stand up and sit back down. My muscles push against my skin. I want to move, to pace, to run. The pressure builds.

  At 11.30 a.m. the doorbell goes.

  A rush, like air being let out of a balloon, but also impatience. I stand by the cell door transferring my weight from foot to foot, waiting to be let out.

  Mr Dalgliesh brings Alina down to the kitchen and scans her with the wand. She doesn’t look at me and when the wand beeps she jumps. Her suit jacket is creased and there is a smudge of mascara on her right eyelid.

  Hannah comes to let me out and disappears upstairs. Mr Dalgliesh takes his place by the French doors.

  ‘I need your help,’ I say before I’ve sat down. ‘My stuff. I need to move it and soon.’

  Alina doesn’t seem to hear me.

  ‘I got burgled.’ She pulls her jacket close. ‘I’m late because I was with the locksmith.’

  ‘What?’ I’m so consumed with my own problems that it takes me a moment to change track. ‘Are you OK? Is Franklyn OK?’

  ‘We weren’t home.’

  Her lips are pressed. There’s something she’s not saying.

  ‘Alina?’

  ‘They tossed the whole place, every cupboard, every drawer. They even went through Frankie’s toy box.’

  ‘What did they take?’

  ‘That’s just it.’ The words seem hard for her to say. ‘Nothing is missing.’ For the first time since she arrived she meets my eye. ‘I think they were looking for something specific.’

  She waits for me to understand her meaning.

  ‘No.’ I lean back in my chair, as if to distance myself from her words. ‘No way.’

  ‘They must have seen me at the Holding Centre.’ She shudders, pulls her jacket even tighter. ‘Followed me home.’

  My hand goes to the tiny scar on the back of my neck. The chip is deep, close to my spine. Still, I rub at the skin, searching for it under the surface.

  ‘I can’t help you anymore.’ She says it quietly, like a confession.

  ‘Alina, please,’ I say, panicking. ‘I’m so close.’

  Already, I’m trying to figure out a fix. My next phone call isn’t for another two days and I can’t even begin to try to find an alternative solution till then.

  ‘What if they’d broken in when I was there with Frankie?’

  I slump. She’s right. I’m ashamed that I’ve put her and her son at risk. And yet. I need her.

  ‘I’ve made real progress, please don’t do this now. I’m so close,’ I say, glancing over at Mr Dalgliesh. ‘Log into my Roost account, find another space,’ I add, scrambling for a compromise. ‘It will be online, no one will know. I’ll get someone else to do the actual move.’

  She gets to her feet.

  ‘Please?’ I say as she retrieves her things from the tray.

  ‘Take care, Jeremiah.’

  She heads for the stairs. Before she disappears out of sight she releases her jacket from her grip. The material defaults into its lines and creases.

  ‘Chin up,’ says Mr Dalgliesh as he locks me back in the cell. ‘Happens all the time.’ He nods at the bars. ‘You being in here. It’s too much. They walk away.’

  Hannah

  Thursday morning and Shoreditch High Street was just starting to come to. Hannah got off the bus and headed north, toward Kingsland Road and Fleece, the bar where John had spent the last night of his life. She was here to retrace his steps, to see for the first time where her husband had met his death.

  This part of town was in a constant state of redevelopment and judging by the contrast between now and the crime scene photographs presented during the trial, the last six months had seen a huge number of buildings constructed or torn down. Over the road she could see a Georgian storefront that had had its guts ripped away, a phalanx of steel and glass already being poured into the gap. It reminded her of a child’s mouth, the way emerging adult molars would crowd themselves against baby teeth, edging behind the original white pearls long before they were ready to fall out.

  The last week had been spent stewing over her conversation with Rupert. She knew he meant well, that when he’d told her to leave things alone he’d done so out of concern, but she also knew there was too much that didn’t make sense for her to walk away.

  Jem had been convicted beyond a reasonable doubt but now she had doubts, plenty of them. Putting aside the strange calls and conversations, he seemed considerate. Kind even.

  Not capable of murder.

  In the end she’d decided she had no choice but to keep going, to try to find out if someone else might have been responsible for John’s death. If Jem was telling the truth, if he was innocent, then she needed to know, and not just because it would mean he had been wrongfully imprisoned. He would be released from her custody. She’d no longer have to share her home with a stranger. And as for the true culprit waiting to take his place, well, now Hannah knew better. She thought of the man sprawled in the scrub on the heath the other day, how the taser had crackled blue in the dim light. There were other ways to exact justice.

  Outside the bar she stopped and took in its gilt and grey facade. The window, designed to look like a Victorian drapery, was stacked with oak and glass-fronted haberdashery drawers, burlap mannequins and flat rolls of fruit-print cloth. Her conversation with Rupert had been useful in one way. It had made her realise that she needed to adopt a more methodical approach, to do what John used to do: start at the beginning and follow through every lead from there. Rupert was a detective, a man of evidence, and she’d come to him with stories of mysterious phone calls and hearsay. Of course he’d dismissed her. If she went to him again it would have to be with something substantial, something he couldn’t ignore.

  Her f
irst act was this, her scouting mission to the bar, and then, once she was done here, she planned on taking a train to Cambridge and seeing if she could find any more on the man whose funeral notice John had looked at all those times, then it was home by 4 p.m. for Jem’s outside session.

  Being tied to another person’s schedule, having to organise your day around them in the same way you would a child or a pet, was bizarre (a whole industry of people had sprung up to provide cover for Hosts when they went on holiday or away for the weekend but that didn’t help with the day-to-day errands), and yet she was starting to realise there was a comfort to being relied upon too, that it felt good to be needed.

  Inside, the bar was empty, the tables stacked with chairs. Looking at the bottles of spirits racked to the wall and the white wine ready to be shelved, her thoughts went to Mickey and the night she’d found her drunk, their dinner date forgotten. She got out her phone and sent Laramie a text asking how the DCI was getting on and if she could pass on her love. She wondered when she’d next see her again, when they might be able to talk on the phone.

  French rap played quietly in the background and she could hear the bang and clatter of someone at work out back. She wasn’t expecting to stumble on some key piece of evidence the police had missed, she wasn’t naïve, but she did know that whenever John had got stuck on a case he would return to the scene of the crime and walk around. He said he did it not to try to see things differently but to look at them as they actually were; to notice how the mud attached itself to your feet or how a bus rumbled by every half an hour or how the roof leaked when it rained.

  She did a quick circuit of the space, trying to imagine John here. He usually drank near his office on the Embankment or in one of the few proper pubs still left in Soho. Getting to this part of town would have been an effort. In court Rupert had explained that central London had been heaving, everyone out celebrating the start of the Easter weekend, and so they’d decided to head east in search of a change of scene.

  ‘Hello?’

  Hannah jumped and banged her hip against a table corner. She turned to see a guy wearing mirrored wraparound sunglasses hefting a box of mixers under his arm.