Isolation - a heart-stopping thriller, Shutter Island meets Memento

by Neil Randall

  “Oh, nothing.” I let her take the piece of paper from my hand. “Just a form from work. I’m always doodling rubbish when I’m bored.”

  Liz didn’t say anything; she was too busy studying the pattern or symbol or whatever it was.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Well.” She lifted her head, “I might be wrong, but this looks familiar.”

  “Familiar? How?”

  “Looks like a horned owl, the kind Native Americans feared. Used to read loads of that kinda folklore stuff at school, and if I’m not mistaken, that crescent moon shape is the head, then you’ve got the wings and the body”– she gestured to the sheet of paper again – “it symbolises death or bad luck or something.”

  “Horned owl? Death?” An image of the hotel room, the same bloodied patterns scraped across the dead women’s skin flashed before my eyes. “Really?”

  “Yeah, no bullshit. And you say you just doodled this at work, at random? Bit worrying that.” She giggled and nudged my elbow. “Might’ve been the horned owl channelling its dark powers through your hand. Might be a message from the fiery pits of hell or wherever.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. I was talking to a snooty old woman who’d tripped on a broken cellar light. Maybe I unconsciously wanted to send her to the fiery pits of hell.”

  “Ha!” Liz took a sip of her gin and tonic. “Maybe I’ve got it wrong, though. Maybe it’s got nothing to do with anything of the sort. But I always felt proper outraged about how the Native American, the true indigenous peoples were treated, how they were forced offa their own land, ‘cause they had such a spiritual connection to nature, to all living things, a kinda mystical wisdom, if you like, one that went far deeper than most religions ever do. That’s why I remember the image of the horned owl. It sorta stuck in my mind.”

  “And you’re sure it symbolises death, that it’s an omen or portent or whatever?”

  “Well, yeah, I think so.” She placed the piece of paper on the table. “I ain’t freaked you out, have I?”

  “No, no, it’s just odd, that’s all. I don’t know why I’d just sketch out something like that.”

  “What? Are you all superstitious? Is that what you mean?”

  “Not superstitious as such, but I do believe certain things happen for reasons we might not be able to comprehend.”

  Liz looked very serious again. “Are you free Saturday?”

  “Saturday? Erm, yeah, I think so.”

  “Well, if you really wanna find out more about that symbol, we could always go to Portobello Road Market. I know a fella down there, a friend of the family, he’s got a stall, sells all sorts of trinkets, antiques, that kinda thing, bangs out loads of Native American woodcarvings. I bet he’d know all about that owl, bet he’d be able to put you in the picture all right.”

  Chapter Six

  Halfway to work I remembered the training course I was scheduled to attend in Stratford, a pointless two-hour exercise about the latest spreadsheet package. As I walked to the bus-stop, I thought back to yesterday evening, the sheer randomness of bumping into Liz like that, how well we’d got on, how comfortable I felt with her. But more than anything, I thought about the horned owl symbol. What did it really mean? Was it just another unsettling coincidence? Or was there some kind of connection with the photograph of the murder scene?

  “Ah!” someone cried out, disturbing my thoughts.

  I looked up, towards the crowded bus-stop. To my astonishment I saw the same roly-poly woman I’d seen in the supermarket two days ago, stumbling off the pavement, bundling her way into the side of the bus as it slowed almost to a stop, and tumbling to the pavement. Once again, the ordinary, everyday people in the immediate vicinity paid her little or no mind. Not until the bus driver, a stout, broad-shouldered man, disembarked and started berating her did anything like an incident with bystanders looking on take place.

  “Not again!” he shouted. “Third bloody time in a fortnight you’ve tried to pull this stunt on me. And it stops now, you hear? If I you do your dying swan act again, I’ll report you to the bloody police.”

  “Hi, Nige,” said Michael. “Good training course this morning? Get much out of it?”

  I didn’t answer. Crouched by my desk was a man I’d never seen before, a quite old man, mid- to late sixties, wearing faded blue overalls, in the throes of repairing or replacing my desk drawer.

  “Morning,” I said, cringing at the mess he’d made of my supremely well-ordered work space – rusty tools strewn across the desktop, pen pot and staple gun overturned, coffee stains on a report I printed off yesterday. “What do you think happened?” I asked, even though it was a stupid question with an obvious answer.

  “Well.” He hauled himself up to his feet, joints creaking, using the desk for leverage. “Looks like someone took a screwdriver, not a big ‘un, mind – these drawers are pretty flimsy, don’t take much forcing open – shoved it in the gap there, and busted the lock off. New one on me, this, though. I mean, who’d wanna break into someone’s desk drawer, here, in a bloody council office? Makes me wonder what you had stored away in there, old son. Weren’t hiding something you shouldn’t have been, were you?”

  “Oh, and Nige, I nearly forgot.” Michael started gathering up his things. “Balls in a bag and all that. But that policeman chap, the one who called in the other day, Detective Inspector Hendrick, Kendrick, whatever his name is, rang earlier, wants you to call him back, soon as you can, sounded pretty urgent. Here’s his number.”

  I glanced up at the clock above the main door: half-past three, almost to the minute, around four hours after I’d arrived following the predictably boring and pointless presentation.

  “Oh right.” I tried to mask my irritation, even though I was seething inside – how could someone forget something like that?

  I waited until Michael had left the office, citing his usual fictitious series of site visits, before returning Kendrick’s call.

  “Ah, Mr Barrowman, I’ve been waiting to hear back from you. A few things have come up, re: the incident in the central London hotel room, and we really need to speak to you again, as soon as possible.”

  I told him that I was currently at work, but if it really was that important, I could organise some cover, have my calls redirected to another department, and drop by the station right away.

  “If you could, we’d be most grateful. One of the officers involved with the investigation is here at present, so it would save a lot of time if you could call in now.”

  “Mr Barrowman.” Kendrick led me into a grey-walled interview room. “This is Senior Detective Inspector Terry Watson.” He gestured to a thick-set, ruddy-faced man in his early fifties. “As I said over the telephone, we need to ask you a few more questions about the photograph received at your office on Monday.”

  The two policemen sat one side of a table, me the other.

  “As ascertained at our first meeting, the envelope in which the photograph was sent had a London postmark – you remember that clearly, don’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Therefore, we assumed that the whole thing must’ve been a coincidence, a prank, a sick joke, because the incident actually took place on the Sunday. However, when receiving your informal statement, the team investigating the murders flagged up a few very striking similarities. None more so than the positions in which the victims were lying on the bed, and the wounds inflicted to their bodies.”

  “Hang on. So you’re saying that the corpses in the hotel room were in the exact same positions as I described, and with the exact same markings?”

  Reluctantly, or so it appeared to me at the time, Kendrick nodded.

  “That being the case,” said Watson, taking over, “we have to accept that the envelope in which you received the photograph may not have been the envelope in which it was delivered. Put simply: whoever sent it wanted us to believe that it couldn’t possibly have been a photograph of the actual crime scene, because, as afo
rementioned, the murders hadn’t taken place yet. Why or to what purpose remains to be seen.” He picked a pen and a leather-bound notebook up from off the table. “As a matter of course, therefore, we need to ask you a few more questions. Firstly, and please don’t take this the wrong way – it’s merely procedure, a way of eliminating you from our inquiries – but where were you in the early hours of Sunday morning?”

  “In bed,” I almost shouted, so shaken was I, not just by the disclosure regarding the photographs, but by the inference, in having gone from conscientious citizen helping police with their inquiries to potential murder suspect.

  “I thought you’d say that.” Watson smiled blankly. “But you live alone, don’t you? Not married, no kids. So is there anyone who can verify that you were at home around the time the incident took place?”

  “No. No there isn’t.”

  “And what did you do earlier in the day?”

  It was then I started to panic, becoming flustered, tearful almost, unable to form anything resembling a coherent sentence, let alone a response.

  “Please, Mr Barrowman, calm down,” said Watson. “And rest assured. You’re not, at this early stage, a suspect in the murders. Like I said, we just need to ask you a few standard questions to eliminate you from our inquiries.”

  With a little further firm prompting, I managed to regulate my breathing, and inform him of my movements on the Sunday – how I got the papers, had a late, lazy breakfast, did some washing and ironing in preparation for the working week, had something to eat, a ready-meal, watched a woeful Bruce Willis film, went to bed early and read a few chapters of a book.

  “That’s fine, Mr Barrowman, thank you. Now, I’d like to clear up a few things with regards to the photograph.”

  To his very specific questions, I relayed everything I’d told Kendrick previously, describing the scene in as much detail as I could remember.

  “Right, good. Next, I’d like to ask you about your workplace, your colleagues, the people you suspected of sending the photograph in the first place, the layout of the building, who has access to your office, the keys to the main building itself, and the damage done to the desk drawer.”

  All of this I told him, adding:

  “Oh, and the desk drawer has just been repaired.”

  They exchanged a sharp sideways glance.

  “That’s unfortunate,” said Watson, a hint of admonishment in his voice (clearly directed at Kendrick). “Now we won’t be able to check for any fingerprints and suchlike.”

  A few moments of prickly silence passed.

  Watson coughed and cleared his throat. “And has anything else unusual happened these last few days?”

  “Erm,” I hesitated, unsure if I should to tell him about the horned owl symbol and the anonymous phone call regarding Jeffrey Fuller. “No, not really,” I said, fearful of coming across as some kind of unbalanced, conspiracy theorist. “I mean, in my line of work, I receive lots of strange phone calls, most of them abusive, but nothing like the photograph.”

  “Okay. In far more general terms, then, have you any idea why someone would want to send you such a grisly picture? Have you ever been in trouble with the police before? Have you ever knowingly consorted with criminal elements?”

  All of which I answered in the negative – because it was, to the best of my knowledge, true.

  As the interview drew to a close, I couldn’t help asking a question of my own:

  “And the two women in the hotel room, have they been identified?”

  “Not as yet,” said Watson. “Hopefully, in the next twenty-four hours, we can make a formal announcement to the press, appealing for any information. Hopefully, the crime scene will yield enough physical evidence to give us a chance of nailing this sick bastard or bastards in super quick time.”

  Chapter Seven

  As I rushed home, my mind plagued by all kinds of worrying thoughts, I stumbled upon a man and a woman arguing heatedly, making angry gestures and swearing a lot. In an instant, I recognised the woman’s voice.

  “Liz?”

  She swung round. In the orangey street light glow I could see that her eyes were red and puffy from crying.

  “Who’s this twat?” said a stocky man with a chewed-up face – adding with a derisive sneer: “Your new fella, the posh wanker you were telling me ‘bout? Ha!”

  “None of your business.” Liz turned back to him. “Now why don’t you just leave me alone, eh? I don’t want all this hassle every time I bump into you. It’s not fair. I just wanna get on with my life.”

  As if I wasn’t there, they started to argue again, to shout at each other.

  “Look.” I stepped in between them. “I don’t know what’s going on here. I don’t even know who you are. But Liz clearly doesn’t want to talk to you anymore.”

  The man (name, as I later discovered: Scott, Liz’s psychotic, career criminal of an ex-boyfriend) looked me over, his cold, dark, brutal eyes narrowing in his head.

  “Are you having a pop, pal? ‘Cause if you are I’ll—”

  “No!” Liz grabbed my arm and dragged me away. “Just leave it, Scott. If you lay a hand on either of us I’ll get Mick involved, and you know what that means.”

  Her words had a clear and visible effect. Scott took a step backward, a small step in physical terms, but a significant one in relation to the present situation. All of which left me wondering: who was Mick? And why did the mere mention of his name have the power to stop a dangerous-looking individual like Scott Richmond in his tracks?

  “All right, all right,” he said. “I’m off. You and matey boy can go fuck yourselves.”

  I put two cups of tea on the kitchen table.

  “Thanks.” Liz gave me a grateful look. “Sorry about all of that. Scott is such a pain in the arse. I should never have got involved with him.” She sighed deeply. “Let’s just say he’s a proper dickhead, the biggest mistake of my life, and leave it at that.”

  I nodded and took the chair opposite, sensing that Liz meant what she said; that she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “So.” She leaned forward slightly, cradling the cup with her hands. “You thought any more about that Native American thing we checked out last night?”

  I hesitated, not knowing if I should tell her about everything that had happened over the last few days. For one, it might make me look like a weirdo, an unbalanced individual wasting police time. On the other hand, Liz had such an open, easy, natural way about her, to have withheld anything, to not have told her the truth wouldn’t have seemed right.

  “Not really. Something came up at work. Something very unusual.”

  “Unusual? How’d you mean?”

  “Well, you’re not going to believe this, but it’s absolutely true.” And I told her the whole story about the photograph, the bodies in the hotel room, and today’s formal interview with the police.

  “Really? Straight up? ‘Cause I remember seeing that murder story on the news the other night.”

  “Me too. That’s when I started to freak out, because the photograph on all the bulletins showed the exact same hotel room in the picture sent in the post.”

  “Bloody hell! Life’s never dull when you’re around, is it?” She chuckled and shook her head. “Supernatural symbols, murder mysteries, can’t wait for Saturday now, can’t wait to get down to Portobello, can’t wait to find out what that horned owl thing is all about.”

  Chapter Eight

  Next morning when I got to work I knew it was going to be another far from ordinary day: three police cars were parked directly outside the main building.

  “What’s your name, please, sir?” asked the policeman stationed by the door. “And which department do you work in?”

  When I told him, he checked my details against a list affixed to a clipboard.

  “Oh, right…Mr Barrowman.” He ran a line through my name. “You’ve already given a statement, haven’t you?” I nodded. “At present, Detective Inspector Kendrick is in yo
ur office. I think he’d like to have a quick chat with you before your colleagues arrive.”

  I found Kendrick and Watson deep in conversation, standing by my desk, which they’d clearly requisitioned.

  “Ah, good morning, Mr Barrowman,” said Kendrick, with disarming breeziness, considering the situation. “As you’ve probably gathered, we’re here to follow-up on the information you gave us yesterday. We need to speak to your colleagues, to try and find out what happened to the photograph taken from your desk drawer. Unfortunately, the crime scene at the hotel didn’t yield anything like the kind of physical evidence we were hoping for. In light of that, we feel it best to pursue this line of inquiry as vigorously as possible.”

  Watson took a sip from a plastic cup of instant coffee.

  “You always come into work this early, do you, Mr Barrowman?”

  “Yes I do. I like to get all my paperwork done while the office is quiet. Some days, the phones can be madness.”

  He nodded his head a few times, as if digesting what I’d just said.

  “Very strange set of circumstances. I don’t mind telling you, we’re completely baffled by this link, why anyone involved with the killings would send a photograph of the scene here, to a council office, marked for your attention.”

  I didn’t really like the way he said that – his voice, or so it sounded to me at time, contained a hint of accusation.

  “This morning, in the main conference room, we intend to interview each and every employee. See if we can’t get to the bottom of this. See if we can’t find out who took that photograph.”

  “Not to freak you out, Nige,” said Michael, just after he’d been interviewed, “but those detectives did ask a hell of a lot of questions about you.”

  “Me? Why did they ask questions about me? I…what sort of questions?”

  “Oh, just general stuff – how long you’ve worked here, what kind of character you are, have you ever acted erratically, has there been any unusual incidents involving you in the past? – stuff like that.”