The Girl in the Empty Room

by Neil Randall

  Katie felt that horrible feeling inside, when a good friend puts you in an awkward position, especially where money is concerned. Because they’d been close for so long, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for Jacqueline, but she had to draw the line somewhere. So often did she get off her face, so often did she borrow money, so often did Katie give her a little weed or a bottle of wine, that she could never remember things clearly. At the last count, Katie reckoned up a rough estimate of how much money Jacqueline had borrowed over the last year or so, and it was probably close to a grand.

  “I would, Jacque,” she said, “but Michael’s got all the money tonight, and he’ll never let me have any. You know what he’s like when it comes to hard drugs.”

  “Hard drugs!” spluttered Jacqueline. “Him and his lot knock out more Class As ’round here than anyone.”

  Katie ignored her, presuming she was just put out, angry at not getting the money. Jacque could often turn just like that, even on an old friend.

  “Look,” Katie said, turning and looking over the heads of people standing in the hallway chatting. “I’m gonna go and get another drink from the kitchen. Do you want one? A vodka and tonic or something?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Jacqueline, distractedly, still absorbed in smoking the joint. “That’d be great.”

  But when Katie returned Jacqueline had vanished.

  Much later, in the early hours of the morning, when Katie climbed the stairs to use the toilet before getting a taxi home, she saw Jacqueline stumble out of the bathroom with two really shady druggies, middle-aged men, faces all wrinkled and worn-out, lived-in, a small-town Keith and Mick, not far behind her. They were laughing and pointing at Jacqueline who was blindly groping for the wall to support herself now. As Katie rushed over she noticed that one of the men had his belt and flies unfastened.

  Michael let out a loud belch.

  “Don’t shoot the messenger, babe.” He put his empty bottle down by the sink. “And what do the Old Bill think has happened to her, then? They’re putting a search out, are they? See it on the local news, will we?”

  “Not sure,” said Katie. “When I popped round the police were talking about a person having to be missing for a certain amount of time before they got involved. Although Jacqueline’s dad did give it his best barrister bit, insisting that they inform police headquarters or something.”

  “Tut!” Michael clicked his tongue. “Shower of shit, ain’t they? Then again, she’s a bloody mess, that girl, probably lying unconscious in some drug den or puking up in some gutter. Shouldn’t be allowed to keep hold of them kiddies, state she’s in half the time.”

  “Mike! Stop! Don’t talk about my mate like that. She’s a lovely girl, just a little bit lost at the moment.”

  “Literally – huh!” He took another beer from the fridge. “Right. With the boys sleeping round what-his-name’s tonight, I’ve got us a coupl’a slabs of fillet steak for tea, was gonna do ’em with chunky chips, all the trimmings. And I bagged up some of that red wine you like earlier.”

  “Oh right, great,” said Katie, not so much in surprise but disappointment, realisation, that despite everything in her life being so perfect: her children, her home, the lifestyle she led, the things being with Michael afforded: holidays, a wardrobe full of the latest fashions, she wasn’t in any way happy or content – in fact, she was about as miserable as a person could get. And big steak dinners, fine wines, candlelight, only exacerbated that sense of emptiness.

  “Why don’t you go and have your shower or bath or whatever?” said Michael, “– slip into something more comfortable. I’ll fire up the griddle pan, have everything ready in about half-hour or so.”

  ***

  After showering, as she rifled through the walk-in wardrobe she shared with Michael – his side all designer suits, hers shimmery gowns, backless dresses, Jimmy Choo shoes – in search of a pair of jogging bottoms, Katie found a battered old holdall wedged down the back of a slide-out drawer.

  “What?” With a wary look over her shoulder, she opened the bag, finding a gleaming machete inside, so heavy she could barely lift it, the blade flecked with what looked like dark spots of blood. Wedged underneath it was a stack of Polaroid photographs, all headshots of young women, some who couldn’t have been much older than sixteen or seventeen years of age. On the back of each picture was a name and a cash value – Ksenia, £3,000, Natalia, £1,750 and so on.

  “Kate!” Michael shouted up the stairs so loudly and unexpectedly, she dropped the photographs, scattering them across the thick carpet. “Tea’s ready.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she shouted back, gathering up the pictures as quickly as she could. “I’m coming. Be down in a sec, just getting changed.”

  Chapter Six

  “You’re late! We expected you on the hour. We were about to give up, to turn back.”

  “Unavoidable,” said Macpherson, eyeing the two hulking men then walking out of the dark shadows of the night. “The weather’s been terrible. And your directions weren’t exactly the best.”

  “We’ve never had problems in the past.”

  “And you haven’t now.” Macpherson took a thick envelope out of his inside pocket. “I’m here. This is your payment. It’s all there, as agreed. Now, where’s the merchandise?”

  “In the back of the lorry.” One of the men gestured to the heavy goods vehicle parked close by. “O’Hara,” he said to his associate. “Bring them out.”

  O’Hara walked round to the back of the lorry.

  “They’ve been sedated, haven’t they?” asked Macpherson. “They won’t cause me any problems, will they?”

  “Ha! You don’t have to worry about that, my friend. This lot have been through hell and high water just to get this far. You will have no problems with them, on that you have my personal guarantee.”

  From the rear of the lorry trudged a group of young women, skinny, bedraggled, hunched-over, heads lowered, women who looked as if they hadn’t slept or eaten properly for several days.

  “Put them in the back of my van.” Macpherson pointed to his own vehicle. “Cover them with tarpaulin.” He turned back to the other man. “I’ve been instructed to tell you that we’ll be in touch through the usual channels. All being well I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

  “Until next time,” he said. “Tell your boss I am always happy to do business with him. Tell him there’s always plenty more where they came from.”

  Chapter Seven

  Six Days Earlier: The Tuesday Evening

  The doorbell rang at a time and day of the week when nobody ever called round to Jacqueline’s house – certainly not without warning her first.

  “Shit.” She hauled herself up off the settee – she’d just got the children bathed and into bed, had changed her clothes, slipping into sweat bottoms and an old jumper, and wanted nothing more than to stretch out in front of Come Dine with Me, smoke a joint or two, relax, maybe laugh a little.

  When she opened the front door, she found Aaron, the boy she slept with last weekend, standing on the doorstep.

  “What do you want?”

  “I wanna talk,” he almost shouted. “It’s important. It’s about the other night.”

  “Look. We’ve got nothing to talk about. I –”

  “Yes, we have. I’ve just been down the doctor’s. He told me I’ve gotta go up to the main hospital for blood tests and swabs and whatnot, reckons I’ve picked up some kind of sexual infection.”

  Their eyes met. Jacqueline quickly looked away.

  “Look, Aaron, I’m sorry you’ve picked something up, but just because you have doesn’t mean you got it from me. And I’ve got two young kids asleep upstairs. I can’t be arguing in the streets.”

  “Let me come in, then. We need to talk about this.”

  ***

  “Come off it, Jacque. I’ve been single for a time now. So there’s no way I had anything wrong with me before I slept with you. I mean, you don’t have unprotected sex one night, wa
ke up with a rash next morning, and the two things not be connected, do you?”

  Jacqueline tried to get angry, to shout, lie, plead ignorance – but she just didn’t have the energy.

  “Listen, Aaron, let me explain things. A few weeks back, I was mad into this lad, we were properly going out, boyfriend and girlfriend, were talking about moving in together, me and the kids, and that’s a big commitment. Only – Only he wasn’t who I thought he was, he was cheating on me behind my back, he got another girl pregnant and he –”

  “And he passed on this infection thing to you?”

  Reluctantly, she nodded. “Ever since, and I know this sounds horrible, disgusting, but I’ve – I’ve really struggled to cope with things. There’s so much other shit going on in my life – money worries, all sorts of stuff – and I just thought: fuck it! And I’ve been going around, getting off my face, and sleeping with different blokes, knowing full well that they’re gonna get what I’ve got…Oh, I don’t know, like revenge, I guess.”

  Regardless of the situation, any thought of what Aaron might say or do next, Jacqueline felt a strange kind of relief for having got that off her chest, out in the open, even if it made her look like some bitter, twisted, psycho bitch.

  “How many men have you slept with?”

  “Not sure – seven or eight maybe. I signed up for this dating website and met a few blokes on-line, or went into town and picked someone up.”

  “Like you picked me up?” Aaron got to his feet. “Why? Why’d this have to happen? Why do I always have such shit luck? Why do people always screw me over? I – I really liked you, Jacque, soon as I saw you in the pub. I thought we might really make a go of it.”

  “Well, maybe we still can.” Jacqueline didn’t know why she said this; she didn’t mean it. All she knew was that she had to get him on side, just so he wouldn’t tell anyone about what she’d just blurted out, that he wouldn’t spread nasty rumours around town, whether valid or not.

  “What?”

  “Yeah.” She got up, shuffled around the kitchen table and took hold of both his hands. “But you’ve got to help me first, help me fuck everybody in this horrible little town over, help me get back at all those bastards who treated me like shit.”

  “Help you? How? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “By doing what I’ve been doing – sleeping with loads of women, dosing them up, until the whole town is infected.”

  “What?”

  “Aaron, you’re a good-looking lad. With a bit of belief in yourself you could pull any girl you wanted. And the infection – it’s not serious; most people don’t even know they’ve got it. I looked it up on the internet. And if you do this, just for a week or two, then we can get ourselves checked out, treated, then we can be together, properly.”

  ***

  “You see.” Jacqueline uploaded the photograph she’d just taken of Aaron to the dating website. “It’s as simple as that. Your profile is all set up now. And if we click on region, we can scroll through your likely matches, girls who live nearby, girls looking for a date with someone compatible.”

  Scrolling through dozens of profiles, Jacqueline explained how she would sit here most nights messaging men in the area, how she sounded them out, got to know a little bit about them, flirted, made increasingly risqué, sexually-charged comments, until she could tell that they were only after one thing.

  “Once I know the score, that this man only wants a one-night stand, I arrange to meet him in town, usually in the Black Swan – it’s quiet in there, a bit up market, so I’m unlikely to bump into anyone I know. To make sure things run smoothly I always get half pissed beforehand, just to relax, so I’m –”

  Her computer bleeped.

  “Look.” She pointed to the screen. “You’ve got a hit already, a message in your inbox.” She clicked on the link. “Straight in. And she’s not bad, quite pretty. Karen Jenkins. Yeah, I know her sister. I think their parents live just off the coast road.” She opened the message. “And she sounds really keen. Here. Have a look.”

  Aaron peered over her shoulder to read the message.

  Hi, Aaron, can’t believe a good-looking lad like you is on a dating website! You might not know me, but I know who you are all right, seen you in town loads, just looked at your pics and read your profile, we’ve got tons of stuff in common, if you fancy messaging me sometime, if you fancy going out for a drink or something, that’d be great.

  Karen

  XXX

  “What’d you think?” said Jacqueline. “If Karen is anything like her sister, who’s a right old trollop, it couldn’t be more perfect. She’ll know this might just be a one-off, and she’ll probably do the same thing next week, and the week after that, spreading the infection all over town.”

  Aaron told her he wasn’t sure if he could do it, that he was terrible around women, especially on a first date, that he’d probably mess things up, that he’d let Jacqueline down, that it would be a huge waste of time.

  “Look,” she said. “Why don’t we message her straight back? – asking if she wants to meet tomorrow night for a drink, suggest the Black Swan. That’s sure to impress her. What’s more, I’ve got a date arranged there for tomorrow myself – Ryan’s got the kids overnight. We could meet here early doors, have a bottle or two of wine, then walk into town together.”

  The idea of Jacqueline being there, that they’d be in the same place at the same time, doing the exact same thing, made him feel a lot more comfortable about the whole idea.

  “That doesn’t sound too bad, with you being there.”

  “So you’ll do it?”

  “Erm, yeah, okay.”

  Chapter Eight

  Detective Inspector Dan Hepworth drove an unmarked Ford Mondeo into town. He passed a green tourist sign emblazoned with words that should’ve read: The Gem of the Norfolk Coast – only vandals had spray-painted an R in between the E and M of the word Gem, rendering the proclamation: The Germ of the Norfolk Coast, a description some, despite the town’s raggedly beautiful coastline, picture postcard promenade and pier, would find almost fitting.

  His partner Detective Diane Priestly saw the sign and laughed.

  “What is it?” asked Hepworth.

  “Oh, just some graffiti,” she replied, tying her mousey hair up with a bobble she’d been wearing around her wrist. “Have you ever been here before?”

  “Not for years.” He slowed, indicated, and turned off the main coast road. “Used to have an uncle who ran a pub on the seafront, would spend a week or two here every summer when I was a youngster, fish and chips, sticks of rock, cricket and football on the wet sand, that type of thing. But the pub closed years ago – much like everything else, so I’m led to believe.”

  “Yeah, I googled the town last night – serious youth unemployment problems, fishing industry decimated by E.U. quotas, small businesses going bust, cafes and pubs closing, high rate of teenage pregnancies, one of the worst per capita heroin addiction and alcoholism rates in the country. Not exactly the kind of place you’d come for a summer holiday anymore.”

  Hepworth drove along an unremarkable street with modest hatchback cars parked outside rows of red-bricked terraced houses.

  “It’s down here, number seventy-six,” said Priestly, using an App on her phone to direct them. “Just down from the school.”

  He continued for a few hundred metres, indicated once again, and parked in a space near the missing woman’s home.

  As soon as they got out of the car, a round-faced young woman dressed in a loose-fitting tracksuit, with a toddler in her arms, came rushing across the street.

  “Are you the police, come to have a look ’round that Jacqueline’s house?”

  “That’s right,” said Hepworth, seeing no reason to conceal the fact.

  The woman clicked her tongue. “Rum girl, her, bloody man-eater, bloody nymphomaniac. Most weekends, when her ex-partner has the kids, it’s like a procession, one bloke after another. By all accounts, th
em next door can hear her headboard banging all night. Paper-thin these walls, see. Wouldn’t surprise me if she’s upset someone somewhere down the line, slept with a fella she shouldn’t have.”

  Hepworth and Priestly exchanged a quick, slightly bemused glance.

  “And your name is?”

  “Bernice Fletcher. I live over there.” She hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “Not that I heard or saw nothing yesterday, had to work, see, little Luke here was at the child-minder’s.” She bounced the child in her arms. “But rumour has it that Jacqueline’s gone missing now, that no one’s heard from her since the other night.”

  “I can’t really comment on that,” said Hepworth. “But thank you for the information, Mrs Fletcher, we better be getting on now.”

  “Oh right, course, yeah, expect you’ll be wanting to look ’round the house, search for clues, eh?”

  Since yesterday, the house had been cleaned up, all the broken, twisted electrical equipment, smashed glass and crockery, CDs and DVDs, swept up into bin bags and dumped into the wheelie-bins outside. All that remained of yesterday’s carnage was the damaged furniture, the settee and armchairs, things beyond repair, but too bulky to dispose of in such a short space of time.

  “Here.” Priestly scrolled through photographs on her phone, showing him a slide show of pictures taken by the forensic team: the front room, kitchen and two bedrooms upstairs.

  “Someone certainly did a job here, all right,” said Hepworth. “And none of the other neighbours heard anything? No breaking glass or smashing crockery?”

  “No. As Mrs Curtain-Twitcher said, houses on either side belong to young couples, both of whom were, unfortunately, at work. Officers from the local station questioned everyone in the immediate vicinity, but no-one heard or saw anything out of the ordinary.”

  Straight away, that didn’t sit very well with Hepworth. Bearing in mind the time lines, the incident must’ve taken place in broad daylight between the hours of half past eight in the morning, when the missing woman took her children to school, and three o’clock in the afternoon, when the mother/grandmother entered the house.