The Captive

by Deborah O'Connor

  ‘She needed it.’

  His hand went to the scar above his ear, his fingers ley-lining back and forward across his skull. He seemed to be softening.

  ‘Did you know him?’ said Hannah, trying to capitalise on the moment. ‘John?’

  He looked again at the security camera.

  ‘I need this job,’ he said, pleading. ‘Please, I can’t be seen talking to you.’

  Hannah considered threatening him somehow, saying she would make trouble unless he told her what he knew, then immediately dismissed the idea. She wasn’t that person. Getting someone fired would be a nasty, abhorrent thing to do. Then he said it.

  ‘I used to work as a cleaner. It’s only recently I’ve been given the chance to come into the hospitality side.’ He motioned to the leather guestbook and mouldy apples. ‘I get a room thrown in.’

  Hannah thought of his girlfriend. Pregnant under a duvet in Warren Street.

  She wouldn’t play fair after all. He didn’t deserve it.

  ‘This job,’ she said carefully. ‘I take it all your papers are in order? National Insurance, tax.’ She paused. ‘Work visa?’ She let the implication hang.

  His posture slackened, the threat landing exactly where she’d intended, but then he shifted and smartened up again, shoulders back, chin out. He’d underestimated her but now he’d recalibrated and was ready to face her on different terms.

  ‘Did you know John?’ she asked again slowly.

  He hesitated.

  ‘I knew of him.’

  ‘How about the Heppels or a guy called Slig? Does the phrase Marzipan Rain mean anything?’ she said, bombarding him with questions.

  ‘Slow down,’ he said, tensing against the onslaught.

  She thought he was going to hold out on her some more but then he gestured at the hotel lobby.

  ‘I work for the Heppels.’

  Hannah stopped.

  ‘This place, it’s theirs?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You know about the family?’

  ‘There’s a dad and two sons,’ she said, recounting what Piotr had told her. ‘One died earlier this year, car accident.’

  ‘Benton,’ said Jamal. He dropped his voice to a whisper, as if afraid the CCTV could hear him. ‘What most people don’t know is that Benton died because of a copper.’

  ‘What?’ This she hadn’t expected.

  ‘They have police on the payroll. Their job is to turn a blind eye, tip off the family when a raid’s coming, that kind of thing. The night Benton died there was a big deal happening, a trade. It was supposed to be off the radar but then CID turned up. Benton fled the scene, they made pursuit. He flipped his car on the A11. His brother Bobby blamed the copper, he didn’t feed them the right information.’

  Was Jamal saying John was the bent copper?

  ‘You know all this and you were a cleaner?’

  ‘We don’t matter,’ he said, swiping his hand in front of his face, ‘we’re invisible. They forget we’re there.’

  ‘What does any of this have to do with John?’

  ‘Bobby has a temper at the best of times,’ he went on. ‘Things were already tense and then, to make matters worse, the week after the accident a load of money went missing.’

  ‘Are you saying this brother, Bobby, he killed my husband?’

  He took a breath.

  ‘I’m saying Bobby might have organised for it to happen.’ And then, when Hannah still seemed unconvinced. ‘The night your husband died, everyone was on and off the phone for hours in a panic, like someone had done something they shouldn’t. They kept talking about this bloke, Slig. Said he’d killed a copper and now it was all turning to shit and they had no idea what to do about it.’

  A young couple entered the lobby, the woman burying her giggles in the man’s neck as they headed toward the tiny bar. The door alarm sounded again, the frequency so high it needled her ears.

  Jamal paused then, looked Hannah up and down as if reappraising her.

  ‘How does she look?’ he asked, and she got the feeling he’d been waiting to ask this all along. ‘Martina?’

  ‘She’s about to have a baby and sleeping rough.’ Hannah left this statement of fact hanging. It was enough.

  She decided to get the next train back to London. She needed to order her thoughts, to figure out if there was any merit to what she had discovered. More and more it seemed that Jem was telling the truth, that he was innocent, imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.

  Who should she tell? Mickey, once she was out of rehab? His lawyer?

  The postman appeared, clutching envelopes and a large parcel. Once more the door alarm sounded. Hee-Haw. Hannah startled. She’d remembered where she’d heard it before.

  Wanting to be sure, she searched her phone for John’s voicemail compilation and put in her headphones, stepping back from the reception desk. The message in question was three quarters of the way through.

  Thursday 26th November, 6.07 p.m.

  ‘Just calling to tell you not to wait up. This case, I’m going to have to pull an all-nighter.’ Then there it was, a high-pitched BEEEEEEP, like an alarm. A frequency that made her want to clap her hands over her ears. ‘I’m trying to think of the overtime.’

  There was no doubt it was the exact same sound, but John had said he was in London. No doubt the alarm was standard, used on countless doors up and down the country. Still, the last few weeks had taught her to question everything. This place was owned by the Heppels; maybe John had some business here he hadn’t wanted her to know about?

  She placed her arms on the counter.

  ‘One last favour,’ she said and Jamal sank back. She pointed at the black orb in the corner. ‘The CCTV. Does the hotel keep the recordings it makes?’

  ‘No, no way,’ he said, backing away from the computer on the desk, hands up. ‘I told you what you wanted to know, we’re done.’

  She looked from him to the computer, how he was now treating it like it was radioactive.

  ‘Can you access the files on there?’ She leaned forward, over the counter, trying to see the screen. ‘How far back do they go?’

  Still, he refused to move.

  ‘You said you get your accommodation here thrown in. Sweet deal. Would be a shame to lose it.’ She gave him the date. ‘Do this one last thing and I’ll go.’

  Still he held out, but then, realising this might be the only way to get rid of her, he caved.

  ‘Fine,’ he huffed, approaching the keyboard. ‘What was the date again?’ Hannah told him and, after typing something into the computer, he scrolled through a list of entries and clicked twice. ‘Here it is, 26th November,’ he said, turning to show her the video.

  ‘Fast forward to 5.45 p.m.,’ she said. John had left the message at 6.07 p.m.

  John appeared in shot at 5.59 p.m. She watched as he walked over to the desk. After chatting to the receptionist, he got out his phone and made a call; presumably this was him leaving the voicemail she’d been using to help her fall asleep these last six months. Hannah was about to look away – John had lied, now she needed to figure out why – when another person appeared in shot, dragging a suitcase. John held up his hand as if to silence them and they busied themselves at the desk, flipping through the guestbook and reaching for a pen.

  Hannah didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t.

  ‘Stop,’ she said to Jamal, ‘I’ve seen enough.’

  She reached for that very same guestbook and flipped back through the pages. When she reached the date in question, she slid her finger down the page, searching for the name. It wasn’t there. Maybe she’d got it wrong – but the figure was so familiar. She checked again and this time she made sure to scroll through the entries slowly.

  A name halfway down the page made her take pause. The handwriting was oversized and bubble-shaped. The i’s topped with fat circles instead of dots.

  Stacey Tweed.

  Your middle name plus the name of the first road you ever l
ived on.

  Aisling’s soap star name.

  She managed to keep it together until she got outside.

  Across the road the tide was receding fast, the iron figure fully exposed, rusty and carbuncled. This time she didn’t need to look at it twice. She breathed deep on the kelpy air. The stench seared the back of her throat, rancid and sour.

  Hannah walked down the street to her house, head pulsing with everything she’d seen and heard. The journey back along the promenade to the station had been a blur, the train a hazy collection of stops and passengers, now though, back in the blowsy city air, she licked the sea salt from her lips and tried to focus.

  Despite everything, she was having a hard time accepting what she’d learned. She felt like she was in a fort under siege, her back braced against the marauders hammering on the other side of the gate.

  John had been a good man. Honest, faithful, decent.

  He would never have taken money from criminals.

  Aisling was her best friend.

  She would never have betrayed her.

  She was almost home when she noticed Kiki Masters coming toward her from across the road. Wearing a yellow and brown striped kaftan, she carried a plastic pet carrier and kept lifting the meshed front up to her face to reassure the cat inside.

  Hannah pretended not to see her and picked up the pace.

  Kiki hailed from the same kind of old money as Rupert. The two of them weren’t friends but their families moved within the same golden circles – Rupert and Kiki’s brother Totty had boarded together at Harrow – and whenever Rupert stopped by they would exchange polite nods and the occasional small talk. Still, this cordiality didn’t usually extend to Hannah; in fact Kiki – Poobah’s attempts to inveigle his way into her house aside – usually behaved as though Hannah didn’t exist. And so it was a surprise when she inserted herself in front of Hannah’s garden gate.

  ‘I’m on my way to the vet,’ she said, lifting the carrier up and making kissing noises. ‘Poobah needs his prescription renewed.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Antidepressants.’

  ‘Isn’t it against their nature,’ said Hannah, ‘to keep a cat locked indoors?’

  Kiki startled. She was used to Hannah playing nice. Once she’d recovered her face sharked into a high grin. ‘I’m actually glad I caught you. I’ve been doing research and it turns out there are grants key-worker tenants can apply for to have the front of their house revamped.’

  Hannah looked past Kiki, across the street to the FOR SALE board in her front garden. It had been there so long that the estate agent’s burgundy and gold logo had started to fade.

  ‘I’ve printed out the forms,’ she said, the grin starting to slouch back down her face. ‘All you have to do is fill them in.’

  Poobah began to meow. Strange pitiful cries that sounded more baby than cat. Kiki lifted the box up to her face to comfort him and Hannah took her chance. She sidestepped round her, but she wasn’t fast enough and Kiki blocked the way.

  ‘You need to do something,’ she said, any pretence at neighbourly philanthropy now gone. ‘The place is an eyesore. No one wants to pay three million for a house that’s going to look out onto that.’ She pointed at Hannah’s basement window. ‘Never mind the thought of living cheek by jowl with your new guest.’

  ‘I’m not feeling well,’ said Hannah, pushing up close to Kiki’s face and breathing hard. ‘Tummy bug. It’s this weather, the bacteria thrives.’ She moved again to navigate her way round the kaftan to the garden gate, and this time Kiki didn’t try to stop her.

  Inside, she went upstairs to her room and sank onto the edge of the bed. Jem would be hungry but she needed to be alone with her thoughts a little while longer, to try to arrange them into some kind of order.

  So John had been on the phone to another woman the night he died. Aisling.

  What was it they’d argued about? Had John wanted to come clean about their affair and Aisling disagreed? And then what happened? John had headed off to meet her and at some point, before or after he went into that alley, he’d been intercepted by Slig and killed in revenge for the death of Benton Heppel?

  She imagined going to Rupert and Mickey with what she’d discovered. Telling them John had been corrupt. Saying those words out loud was a huge deal, and then what if there turned out to be no truth in any of it? It wasn’t like she had any real proof. She’d have tarnished his reputation for nothing.

  She looked at the array of John’s stuff still spread around the room: his dressing gown on the back of the door, the electric razor on the chest of drawers, his shoes in a heap by the wardrobe.

  Her eyes landed on the bag she’d retrieved from his gym locker. She’d brought it home, dumped it next to the shoes and forgotten about it. Now she considered it afresh. She couldn’t remember having ever seen it before that day. Why? Had it been his overnight bag for overnights with Aisling, had he taken it with him on their Margate mini-break?

  She’d forgotten how heavy it was and as she lifted it onto the bed she was struck by another even more horrible thought. If John had been planning to leave her then maybe he’d packed it with enough stuff to keep him going until he could come back with a removal van? She imagined him ferrying clothes, shoes and personal artefacts out of the house without her knowing, secreting them away in his locker for some future date.

  But when she opened the zip she saw neither clothes nor toiletries.

  Instead, stacked on top of each other in neat bricks was money. Lots and lots of money. Hannah pulled out a brick and placed it on the bed. Secured by a plastic band, it was made up of used ten- and twenty-pound notes. She rummaged in the bag, calculating, and realised there were tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds.

  It was like a knob had been twisted on a microscope. Every shape and line in the room seemed to sharpen.

  This was proof, surely, that John was not the police officer she and his colleagues had thought him to be.

  The fort gate she’d imagined herself pressed against began to splinter and crack. She loosened her knees and surrendered to the charge. Before long the whole place was overrun.

  A week went by and Hannah still hadn’t done anything about the bag of money, or Aisling.

  She had counted the cash. Sixty grand. That was how much John had kept hidden in his gym locker. Most likely the fruit of his work with the Heppels. And yet he’d died up to his neck in credit card debt. Why hadn’t he used the funds to clear it? Was it because he was looking for some way to launder the bricks of used notes without drawing attention, or was the debt untouched because he’d only recently acquired the cash as a lump sum? Jamal had said a large amount of money had gone missing from the Heppels in the week before John was murdered. Had he stolen it from them?

  As for Aisling. On the one hand she wanted to have it all out, to rage and yell and press her for details she could torture herself with later. How long had it been going on? Had she and John ever had sex in her bed? Did he love her? On the other hand she wanted to pretend it wasn’t true for as long as possible. Every day she kept those grainy CCTV images to herself was another day she could squint at her wedding ring or the message John had written with the fridge magnets and not feel like her life was burning down. To this end she’d decided to avoid Aisling completely, fobbing off any requests to get together with lies.

  This morning she’d messaged suggesting they meet for lunch and Hannah had replied saying she was sick in bed with flu. In fact she had a day of errands ahead.

  She gave Jem breakfast, went over to Pru’s to clean and then walked to the high street to stock up on groceries.

  She was coming out of the mini-supermarket when she saw her. Pulling her massage table along Hampstead High Street, her curls tied into a jaunty ponytail, her purple and orange RUB T-shirt straining at her chest.

  It was like someone had let off a grenade in her stomach.

  Her first instinct was to run back inside the shop and wait till Aisling had gone. She wasn’t prepared
to face her, not now.

  Aisling waved.

  There was no escape.

  ‘Han!’ She huffed the bed toward her, smiling, then as she got near she frowned. ‘Should you be out and about?’ She scanned her for signs of fever. ‘If you needed food I could have got it for you.’

  Hannah decided she would keep up the pretence that everything was fine for a little while longer. She’d make small talk, confront Aisling some other time when they weren’t in the middle of a busy street. And so it was a surprise when something else entirely came out of her mouth.

  ‘How long?’

  The bags she was carrying were heavy, the plastic handles cutting into her palms. She shifted them around, trying to relieve the pressure.

  ‘What?’ Aisling peered at her and raised the back of her hand, as if to press it against her forehead for a temperature check. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘You and John?’ said Hannah, her voice flat. ‘How long was it going on?’

  Aisling’s whole face went slack, her skin and muscle like mud sliding down a hill, then it tightened back up. Hannah thought she was going to feign ignorance but after a moment, she nodded.

  ‘We wanted to tell you.’

  ‘We?’ Aisling had uttered the word so casually, like their pairing was a simple fact and not the annihilation of all Hannah had once held dear.

  ‘How did you find out? Did your neighbour say something, Pru? She saw us in town together once. I knew she’d tell you eventually.’

  ‘It wasn’t Pru,’ said Hannah, remembering what she’d said about John that day, what she’d implied. The bags seemed to be getting heavier, the thin plastic slicing her skin. She placed them on the pavement and rubbed at her welted palms.

  She thought of the property particulars Mickey had found when they cleared John’s desk. The thought hit her like a truck.

  ‘Were you looking at flats? In Dalston? Was John getting ready to leave me?’

  Aisling hung her head.

  ‘That’s why I showed up on your doorstep that morning. The day after he died. We were going to tell you together.’