The Winter Man

by Perry Bhandal

  ‘Hey babe.’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Hundred percent.’

  The young man was a beauty no doubt. But then so was Stephanie. She always had her pick and ever since Blake had gone, she had picked many.

  The young man whose name she had forgotten or never bothered to find out in the first place slid a hand onto her stomach and slowly began to inch downwards. Stephanie smiled down at him and slipped out of the sheets.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing, baby. Got a busy day.’

  ‘It’s Sunday.’

  ‘Sundays can be busy.’

  Stephanie picked up the man’s clothing and placed them on the bed.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yeah sure,’ said the man sitting up.

  Stephanie slipped on her gown and stepped across her open plan apartment to the kitchen, she felt his eyes on her backside all the way. Behind her the guy started to get dressed.

  The apartment buzzer startled them both. Stephanie checked her gown and pressed the intercom.

  ‘Miss Stott?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Detective Rainer. City police. I’d like to ask you some questions.’

  Her heart jumped. Thudded in her chest.

  ‘Again? I thought I’d answered all your questions.’

  ‘You did Miss Stott, but we have some follow up ones that I hope you can help with. It won’t take long.’

  Stephanie sighed and buzzed the entrance door open.

  ‘Trouble?’

  Stephanie shook her head.

  ‘We’ll have to skip coffee,’ Stephanie said as she reached for her jogging pants.

  Rainer walked up the flight of stairs to the girl’s apartment. He’d pulled her file. Rainer knew more about her than she did. Her apartment door opened as he approached and a young man stepped out. Rainer scanned him, his mind automatically classifying him as a non threat, though that didn’t stop him from determining the three best ways to disable him, two of which would mean he would never walk again unaided. The young man was gym tone fit and swaggered past eyeing him. Rainer ignored him, his eyes settling on the beautiful young woman standing in the doorway dressed in grey jogging pants and a top.

  ‘Miss Stott.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The policeman held up his identification card. Stephanie examined it and then stepped aside and let him in. Memories resurged hard and fast, of brighter times when Blake would come and they would spend hours talking and making love.’ She closed the door, her eyes filling up.

  ‘Sorry about the mess. I wasn’t expecting visitors.’

  ‘It’s not a problem. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I tidy up while you ask your questions?’ She didn’t want the Detective to see how badly shaken she was. Did he know of her trip to see Blake?

  ‘I would prefer if we could sit and talk,’ he said gesturing to a stool at her breakfast bar.

  ‘Sure,’ she nodded.

  She pulled the curtains and opened the windows letting in the bright morning light and fresh air. The morning sounds of activity from other apartments, children, the clinks from kitchens, muted radios and televisions, conversations filtered in. Sounds she found so comforting and had played in the background to those perfect afternoons dozing in Blake’s arms.

  Stephanie gathered herself and turned to the man seated at her kitchen breakfast bar.

  ‘How do you take your coffee?’

  ‘Black is fine.’

  Rainer could see she was upset. But it was an upset caused by hurt, not panic from his arrival. She was grieving. He had seen that before. He accepted the cup placed before him and took a sip.

  She stood at the counter and held hers in both hands and blew into it. She was a natural beauty, the kind of young woman that left a trail of broken hearts behind her. But it would not be her perfect features and figure that would crack the hearts of men, but the fact that she was blissfully unaware of the effect she had on men. Most women today carried within them an imagined sense of themselves that existed separate and distinct from what they actually were. And they wielded it like a narcissistic crowbar, jabbing a sharp edge of self worship into the heart of whatever man came their way, not happy until they saw their amour-propre reflected back at them. This woman was nothing like that, all she had to do was stand there and men would empty their hearts to make room for hers. It made him reassess Blake. For a woman such as this to have loved him so utterly as she did told him something of the man. She was loyal to him still. And loyalty as he knew went beyond friendship, beyond trust, beyond love. And for a man to engender that in another especially one as strong as this told him he had his work cut out for him to bring him down.

  ‘I’d like to go over the last time you saw Blake.’

  ‘I’ve already been over this more times than I can count.’

  ‘I know I’m sorry I hope you don’t mind going over it again for me.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Just tell me again in your own words.’

  Stephanie knew what was coming. She knew what the police were capable of. The results that their work had produced had turned over case after case. Corruption, collusion, lies and outright cover ups. It had made her sick. Blake seemed to take it more calmly, almost expecting it. So when the police came and started asking their questions she had already decided she wasn’t going to mention Ray and Serena. They had nothing to do with Sara’s disappearance. One look at Blake could tell you that all they had ever done was show him love and affection, Ray holding out a hand to him when no-one else would. Why on earth would she deliver these pigs to their door to harass them, to question them, to doubt them. No, she would not do it.

  As she talked, she could tell he did not believe her. She expected him to press her for more details as the other detectives had done, to try and trip her up, find holes in her story. But this man just nodded thoughtfully. When he looked up it was with soft kind eyes. She held his gaze. Then he smiled thinly, almost with sadness and Stephanie felt a stab of fear in her heart for Blake.

  Rainer took another sip and placed the mug on the counter and stood up. ‘Thank you for the coffee.’ There was nothing more he could learn from this woman.

  Rainer took one last look at her and left.

  Stephanie closed the door behind him and wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold despite the heat. Quickly she rifled through her bag and got her phone, moving to the window she parted the blinds and toggled the camera. The man stepped out of her building and she started snapping him as he walked to his car. All she was getting was the back of his head.

  ‘Look up, look up.’

  He looked back up at her window and it was all she could do not to step back. But she carried on snapping. After a few moments he got into his car and drove away.

  Stephanie checked the pictures she had taken. She chose the clearest one and opened the ubiquitous messaging app she and Blake had used. The last seen date and time remained the same. The moment he had left her apartment that day Sara had been taken.

  ‘This man came to see me today. A policeman,’ she typed and attached the picture and hit send. A single tick showed and stayed. Sent but not received. The same as the hundreds of messages she had sent before.

  Stephanie put the phone down on the bed beside her and this time could do nothing to stop the tears.

  Blake sat in a cafe across the road from the beach and sea, a small bag of groceries and toiletries on the seat beside him. The supermarket had been so busy he had barely been able to muster the strength of will to buy even those few items. He would have to go back when the crowds had gone.

  The café was old and themed. Worn leather seats in the booths, a tarnished short order serving bar, and a broken jukebox in the corner.

  He should have something to eat. But he had lost his appetite. He
looked around the cafe. In its heyday he imagined it would have been quite something with its American theme, full of life. He could imagine giggling girls in their yellow and white cotton outfits trying to impress the boys in their best Saturday night gear.

  Now it looked tired, unable or unwilling to change with the times. The bright scene in his mind faded. Replaced by another cafe, in another place, where he had shared a cup of coffee with a beautiful girl and broken her heart.

  ‘Looks like quite a storm brewing. Wouldn’t want to be caught in that eh?’

  Blake looked up at the man, coffee jug in hand, refilling his cup.

  ‘No,’ said Blake, letting the last of the memories fade.

  ‘Well, if there’s anything else you need, just shout.’

  ‘Thanks,’ replied Blake.

  His mobile beeped. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the notification that had come through. It had been months since Stephanie had tried to contact him. The initial barrage of messages slowly trickling to a few here and there with the occasional sporadic burst. He had been surprised to see that she had tried again after all this time and he was curious as to what it was that she wanted to say. Of course, the messages never reached his phone here. This was a very complex redirect from his original phone which he had assumed correctly that the authorities would have cloned and kept under careful surveillance. What they were likely unaware of or still trying to crack was the small program Blake had added that encrypted and forwarded all comms to a number of different public web forums. Blake would simply anonymously pick one of those forums to view what had been sent before it was deleted a week later. The number of forums the data ended up on was close to a thousand. The likelihood they could backtrack him over the many masked and encrypted network connections he used to access any websites wasn’t impossible. But to identify him on one of those thousands and then backtrack him was.

  Blake checked the lock symbol indicating the virtual private tunnel and opened a web browser in incognito mode. He navigated to one of the more popular websites when traffic was normally high. He viewed a number of random articles slowly making his way to the one that held his forwarded message. It was an image and a single line underneath. ‘He came to see me today; said he was a policeman.’ Blake zoomed in on the face and took a screenshot. He scrolled through the next few pages and other random photos and messages and then jumped off the page via a link. He stayed on for another few minutes before moving to an MSM online newspaper, magazine and then top ten videos before signing off.

  He opened the image and looked at the man. He would have to run the face through his search software, for that he needed a workstation. He knew of a few local internet cafes that would do. Thoughts of his time with Stephanie threatened to overwhelm him. She was a beautiful girl and remained fiercely loyal despite how he had treated her. He closed his eyes and pushed her from his thoughts.

  The old man was busy at the counter. The smell of frying oil, tea and toast filled the air. It triggered fleeting clouded memories from his forgotten past. Scenes as if viewed through thick cloud. A kitchen sometimes, other times a living room, on a few occasions a garden. Each different but one constant, the presence of another and the feeling of being protected and at times brief moments of contentment. The only other time he had felt that was with Ray and later with his wife and daughter.

  Blake looked out through the jaded window. Across the street and the promenade lay the pebble beach leading down to the grey sea. The clouds above were almost black, pregnant with rain. They filled the sky to rendezvous with the sea at the horizon.

  He watched people hurry along the street. Men, women, couples, families, children. He stared, disconnected, like he was watching a movie.

  They all kept glancing at the sky. The air of expectancy was thick in the air. He could feel it even there behind the glass seated in the empty cafe. The rain when it started would be heavy and there would be little pre-warning, no tiny droplets signaling a countdown. No, when the heavens opened it would be with the full weight of the storm.

  He knew that sky. He had seen it many times. He had been drawn to it. He didn’t know why. Many times in the children’s home the sky had been black just like this. And he remembered the staff rushing around the house closing windows, checking doors, bringing clothes in while he sat in the yard and watched the black clouds swirl.

  He remembered feeling fear. Fear of what could make people rush around like that; could make people run and hide, looking for safety inside their houses away from this…this...monster.

  He had stayed out for as long as he could, keeping his fear in check. But when the first gobbets of rain fell, he had escaped inside like everyone else.

  He watched the people outside rush around. Men going home to their families. Mothers hurrying their kids along. Shop owners hustling the stragglers out so they too could get home, safe and warm before the monster came.

  There was a time when he too would be rushing carrying his young Sara even though she wanted to run by herself.

  Now he watched that life from the sidelines. An audience of one. And suddenly, the solitude of his life filled him, threatening to crush him, he saw himself as he once was. He wondered what he would have thought of him, had he stopped to look through the jaded café window.

  Would he have felt sorry for him? The lonely man with no-one to go home to. No-one waiting for him. No-one caring if he came home safe or not.

  He would have hoped that he was wrong, that the man was going to finish his coffee and go home to a family and not a small dingy hotel room.

  But he knew another part of him would envy this man. This man with no obligations, no-one worrying about him, no-one expecting him, this man with no ties, whose life was determined by him alone, because he was alone. There was a part of him that would have envied this man.

  He wished he could have met him and showed him the truth of his envy. That there was nothing romantic about his solitude. Nothing. To have no-one to share your world with, to laugh with, to converse with, to care, to need, to love.

  He took a sip from his coffee cup, and felt utterly alone. He placed the cup back onto the saucer, the dull clink of porcelain loud in the quiet. He looked across to the empty bar area. The old man had gone. When he looked back the streets were clear. Everyone had gone. It felt eerie. A hush had descended. The monster was close.

  He got up, placed some money on the table, and walked out into the empty street. It was so dark it was like night. He pulled his coat collars up and tight against a rapidly rising chill wind and walked across the promenade and onto the beach.

  He scrunched slowly down a steep pebble slope. The sky rumbled menacingly. A crack of light split the sky.

  The sky roared. Then the heavens opened and he turned his face up to welcome the monster, as a fellow monster should.

  CHAPTER 23

  scrapyard car...ambushing laroche...josie...holding the line...

  The storm finally subsided, replaced by a cold wind and a lidded sky the color of iron under which people began to filter back out like small animals. Blake returned to his room, dried off and changed. It was too early yet to go to the internet cafe to find out more about the man in the picture that Stephanie had sent him. The man worried him, his predator bearing and the fact that Blake couldn’t help but believe that he had deliberately wanted his face to be seen and so had predicted that Stephanie would try and warn him and would attempt to track that warning to him.

  Blake checked his inventory. Hand weapons, the Sigs, were best for the kind of close combat he was planning on undertaking, but plans rarely survived first contact with the enemy. Blake pulled a shotgun and a wicked looking assault rifle from his canvas bag and began loading them too.

  Piles of rusted and flattened cars rose high either side of the two-car wide gap meandering through the breaker’s yard.

  It was near closing time when Blake entered. Protestations of closure for the day were quickly silenced by the show of cash. A qu
ick call in pidgin english and another yard worker drove an anonymous saloon alongside Blake. The driver got out and wordlessly handed the keys to Blake as the other man counted a wad of cash out. Blake got in the car, made the adjustments he needed and drove out.

  Blake could make out a half moon through the trees. The sky seemed devoid of stars, the light from the wide residential streetlights making them difficult to see. Large gates a hundred metres down the road swung open. Lawrence Laroche drove out of the gated residential park in a blacked out gleaming Landrover Defender.

  Blake waited until he’d passed, fired up the engine, did a U turn in the wide boulevard and followed.

  Soon they were in the city and Blake kept a few cars between him and the Landrover.

  The city gave way to countryside and Blake dropped back and switched off his headlights, the half moon providing enough illumination for him to navigate by. Laroche’s lights were bright in the distance.

  Blake slowed at the point Laroche turned off. Floodlights illuminated a warehouse complex a few hundred metres down. Blake turned into the side road and edged towards the buildings and turned into a muddy side lane.

  Automatic gates, manned by a masked guard in a booth, closed behind Laroche’s Landrover as he pulled up in the main yard. He got out and opened the back of the Landrover. Two teenage girls, made up like adult women, were ushered out. A door inset into the main warehouse shuttered open and Laroche pointed to it. Heads down, the two girls hurried inside. Blake’s eyes were dark as he watched Laroche go back into the vehicle, turn and exit through the gate.