Trap Door: the creepiest psychological suspense you will read this year

by Dreda Say Mitchell

  I shrug off that horrible memory and realise that Jed’s in his boxers, his hyperactive gaze shifting from one side to the other like I’ve caught him with his hand in someone else’s weed stash.

  ‘We need to talk…’ I don’t wait for him to respond. I push my palm against the door and walk in and… Get an eyeful of the person in his bed. ‘Woah!’ I quickly avert my eyes. Bloody hell, it’s the last person I expect to see sexy-satisfied, sharing his pillow – Sonia.

  Jed and I are both out on the landing in record time, facing each other. The warming blood of embarrassment makes his fingers rush through his already topsy-turvy hair.

  He clearly feels a need to explain. ‘Look, it just happened.’ Each word is designed for my ears only. ‘You know—’

  My hand’s a full stop in the air, cutting him short. ‘Jed, you could sleep with Mother Christmas, for all I care.’ I suck in a deep punch of air to steady myself. ‘I need you to tell me what you know about Michael.’

  He squints, expression so blank it doesn’t even look like a face anymore. ‘Michael?’

  I sigh inwardly. ‘Michael Barrington who you contacted to help me.’

  Jed’s eyes do the rounds of their sockets. ‘Remind me how I asked him to help you.’ Jed is a self-confessed booze-hound and pothead, which means half the time he can’t remember his own name, never mind anyone else’s. So, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that he doesn’t recall ringing Michael on my behalf.

  ‘I asked if you could speak to anyone who might be able to offer me work with a decent salary. You rang your friend, Michael. Remember?’

  A smile pings on his face. ‘No problem, babe. I always like to help people out.’ The merriment drops away as quickly as he studies me very closely. ‘Right – remind me, which job did I help you out with Michael?’

  I have to restrain myself from grabbing Jed by his chest hair and shaking him silly. ‘The management consulting company who I now work for. Don’t you remember when I thanked you for getting me the job? How I was going to take you out to celebrate with my first wages?’ Although if I recollect, he was only half-listening, his attention on telling me I’d outstayed my welcome at the house.

  His finger jumps in the air. ‘Oh, right. That Michael. I rang him?’

  Why is he putting it to me as a question? ‘Yeah, you rang him.’

  Jed wears a lost-in-space expression as he stares above my head. Finally he drops his searching gaze to mine. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, sweets. Don’t know any Michael who owns a consulting outfit. How would I know someone like that?’

  Unease jolts my spine straight. ‘Come on, Jed, you know half the folk in London.’

  ‘True enough. I know a Mike from South London who’s a plumber and DJ, a Mickey from Newcastle who stole my second-to-last girlfriend, the bastard.’

  His expression deepens with a seriousness he rarely wears. ‘Rachel, I never gave anyone the thumbs up to give you a job. I’ve never met a Michael Barrington in all my born days.’

  ‘Why would Michael lure me here?’ I question Philip’s photo pinned to the wall of the storeroom.

  ‘Tell me, Rachel, how’s Jed?’ That’s what Michael had asked me during the interview, I persist speaking to the picture I know doesn’t have answers for me.

  In fact, the more I think of it, the more strange that interview was. I’d swallowed his cock and bull about having to do the interview in a coffee shop because his office was having work done to it. Believed him when he said that me not having experience as a management consultant didn’t matter. He tells me I no longer have an office upstairs and have to work in a cave-style room beneath the ground. Lie after lie after lie. A part of me, the how-dare-you part, insists I storm into his office come morning light and have it out with him. But the quiet logical me knows if that happens I may never find out what happened to Philip. How Daddy is connected to all of this.

  ‘Has this got something to do with you, Philip?’ My words reek of unshed tears.

  The answers are out there. Somewhere. Including in this building.

  For the first time, I sleep with Philip’s photo, a replica of the one on his funeral programme that I stupidly burned, clutched to me through the night.

  Twenty-Six

  The trap door clangs shut like the hatch of a submarine. I’m a mass of confusion this morning after the revelations of last night. I don’t feel steady on the steps made for smaller feet and it has zero to do with the CBD oil bitter under my dry tongue. My footsteps click-quick against the solid-hard ground, the walls of this tunnel, as usual, openly mock me like a dog that senses fear. Now they feel like they’re creeping towards me too, a brick cage that’s bound to entomb me before I reach the steel door. I know it’s my mind doing overtime, but that’s what I heard last night has done to me – trapped me in a snare I can’t cut my way out of.

  I haven’t slept. How could I with my bedfellows being Michael, Dad and a funeral programme? Or did any of it really happen? Am I barking like a mad woman up the wrong tree? I reach out. Let the pads of my fingers tiptoe against the wall. Ice cold. Yes, I’m real. Last night was real. As real as Jed telling me point-blank he doesn’t know a Michael Barrington. The trouble is, I don’t know what to do.

  However, I do know I owe it to Philip – to eighteen-year-old me – to find out what the hell fire’s going on. And that’s why I’ve come back to this place of buried secrets and suffocating lies. I shrug off the lingering embers of sheer shock and feel an inch or two taller because my backbone’s now straight. I know exactly how to try to find out about Michael. How he’s connected to Dad… and me.

  Rachel. Rachel. Rachel. My name’s calling me again either through these stone walls or the walls of my head. I wouldn’t be surprised at the second with the night I had yesterday.

  Two more spits of cannabis oil into my bloodstream help me relax, maybe a tad too much. My name spirits and floats away.

  For the remainder of the morning, I observe the black digital clock on my computer.

  9:30

  9:55

  10:25

  Ready.

  I leave the underneath world and head out of the trap door.

  My nerves make a meal out of me, chewing and tearing at my self-control. I’ve never done this before. Sneaking about to search someone’s private office. The pursuit of the truth takes you to many shady places. For the first time, the reception area lacks its bright cleansing poise. It puts me in mind of a hospital room where a family prays their loved one won’t die. Now, all I have to do is hope and pray Joanie’s office is either closed or she’s so preoccupied with work I’ll be able to whizz by unnoticed. I’ve already figured out that Michael will be coming in later to work. Actually the more I think about it, the more it seems he’s never in the building in the mornings but arrives later on in the day.

  I’m a skulking shadow on the stairs, sure of foot, single-minded in purpose.

  When I reach the landing, I look over to the purple rope with the private sign that bars the way upstairs. For the first time, I notice the door behind it has a keypad and obviously I don’t have the code so there’s no way for me to gain access to what lies beyond. I give my full attention to the corridor up ahead. Creep until I reach the edge of Joanie’s office. Am I really doing this? I wonder in disbelief as I quiet my breathing. Going to rifle through anything that gives me a glimpse into Michael’s life? But how else will I discover the connection between him and Dad and Philip?

  Philip.

  That’s what grows the power in me to carry on. I do a three count and zip past her office like a spirit walking over her grave. Hold back against the wall. Wait. Wait. She doesn’t come, so I pivot towards Michael’s office. It’s open, just a slice between door and frame, an open invitation for me to proceed. London stares back at me through the large windows, its backdrop a sky with not a cloud in sight, the foreground a jagged, up, down, up line of historic and modern buildings.

  I start with the drawers to
his desk. They’re not locked. I nearly stumble back at what I find – they’re empty. Not even a pen, a notebook. I don’t understand; how can this be his office if he has nothing in his desk? Maybe he’s one of these paperless office obsessives.

  A rush of disappointment hits; there’s no clue to his relationship with my dad. My search of his in tray is feverish with my desperation to unearth something – anything – that will start fitting this puzzle together. I flick through the papers I find. Frown. That’s strange. The contents of the trays have nothing to do with a management consultancy business or indeed any other business at all. They’re mostly about gardening and look like they were run off from the Net at random.

  What’s going on here? Nothing in the drawers. No business documents in the trays.

  Before my thoughts can dive any deeper, I still for a moment as the sound of Joanie’s lullaby-like humming floats inside. It’s so pitch perfect, so beautiful, it casts a chill within me because somehow it makes the emptiness I’m finding in this office seem so much worse.

  I up my pace, moving quickly. This shell of an office leaves chill bumps pulling tight against the skin of my arms. The files I take down from the shelves almost slip through my fingers because they’re so light. I open one. Nothing in it. Another one. The same. And another. And…

  ‘What the hell are you doing in my office?’

  The empty file slips from my hand to the floor as I twist to find Michael Barrington staring furiously at me in the doorway.

  We’re both suspended in stillness. Michael and me. He appears ready to burst a blood vessel. And me… I can’t see what I look like but I imagine what he sees. A woman who looks as guilty as transparent sin. Red-handed Rachel, that’s me. What do I say? What do I do?

  Think. Think. Bloody rake that brain of yours from one corner to the other and think. My mind’s as vacant and wooden as Michael’s empty desk drawers.

  ‘Rachel, I asked you a question.’

  He marches my way, his gaze doing a cat-tail swish sweep of his office. Thank God I took time to line up the papers I found in his in tray. Shut each drawer back tight. His eyes are on me, talons clawing ready to split me apart.

  A voice slices into the room from the doorway. ‘I told her to come here to find something for me.’

  Joanie. Thank you! Thank you! But when I look towards the door, I’m in for a shock. It’s not Joanie.

  It’s Keats.

  Keats stands there, rock solid with an ‘I dare you tell me different’ expression basking on her pointy-chin face. Bandana under her chin, hands flexing by her six-shooter water bottle and mobile phone, I swear she’s going to demand Michael stand and deliver.

  However, it’s not she who has the questions but him. ‘And what could you have told Rachel to get from my office?’ Each word is coated with lashings of sarcasm.

  Keats doesn’t miss a beat. ‘The Foxbury summary she’s working on was missing a crucial section, the part concerning staff intersectionality and work structure, in other words redundancy, and as that’s the main thrust of her summary, I thought she needed to have it. I instructed her to see if she could find the full report in your files.’

  Our boss considers her for a moment. Then stalks over to her, stopping a toes width from her space. ‘You know I run a paper-free environment in here.’

  She nods. ‘I thought there might be a copy in your files. Because you do have files for a reason despite your wish to go paperless.’

  Ouch! I catch my breath at her pointed response. Expect Michael to do an on-the-spot boss bawling about the reminder of who’s the CEO in town here. He doesn’t and I recall that he called her eccentric before he introduced her to me, so he must be accustomed to her straight-arrows way. It also occurs to me that Michael must have known all along she was a woman because he shows no surprise at her blatant feminine face. What’s left of my functioning brain scrolls back; ah, he never did use the pronouns he or she when he introduced us.

  Michael folds his arms. ‘Next time, if I’m not around, do not enter my office. If it’s urgent, speak to Joanie, that’s why I have a PA.’ He strides towards his chair. ‘Now, I’d like to get on with my private work in my private office.’

  I don’t need telling twice and rush out of there like the room’s on fire. I shiver; why did I have to use that description?

  Joanie’s head is peeping out of her office, her face a portrait of confusion. ‘Is everything okay, ladies?’

  Was I the only one not to suss that Keats was a she?

  ‘Fine,’ Keats almost snaps back, not missing a step, face straight ahead. ‘You can go back to your bottles of fizzy water and the cigarettes you sneak a puff on around the side of the building.’

  Joanie’s mouth flaps south at her rudeness as Keats pulls the bandana back over her mouth. I send the older woman an apologetic shrug as I hurry past, trying to keep up with the woman who has just saved my bacon.

  We reach the reception. I tell her, voice low, ‘Thank you—’

  Keats rounds on me. Yanks the bandana down. ‘I don’t want your thanks. I don’t need anyone’s thanks. Got it? What I want to know is what you were doing. After work. Me and you. In a café of my choosing.’

  My head’s spinning from her quick-fire delivery. I’m still reeling as she bends down and pulls the trap door that folds easily back as if it’s been waiting for our return.

  Twenty-Seven

  The café we sit in is trendy, in a Georgian square not too far from the office, filled with Keats types, not in mode of dress but hardcore tekkies with eyes only for their laptops and tablets. Erasure’s eighties classic Sometimes plays wistfully in the background. Keats insolently tips back a bottle of strawberry-flavoured water to her mouth, the muscles in her slim neck ripple as the drink makes its journey down. She wipes the wetness glistening on her lips with the back of a hand.

  ‘I don’t want to be your friend,’ is how she kick-starts our one-on-one. That pointed part of her chin is going to saw through her skin if she keeps up the grinding of her teeth. ‘I don’t like people much. Don’t have a lot of time for them. Most will try to royally screw you over.’

  ‘You’re the one who asked for a sit down, not me,’ I chuck back.

  ‘Because I need to know why you were snooping in Michael’s office—’

  My palm comes up to stop her. ‘Who said anything about snooping?’

  ‘I did. And do. I might’ve been slung into a special school at the age of seven but that don’t mean I’m a thicko.’ Keats’s mouth snaps shut, the blink-blink of her lowered lashes telling me she didn’t mean to give out that personal info. My heart goes out to her; how can anyone have put a mind like hers in a special school? Whatever the story, Keats isn’t telling. We’ve all got our personal safes where we lock up our secrets.

  She asks her question again, less heat this time, and I counter with one of my own. ‘What’s with the whole bandana look?’

  ‘You saying women can’t dress like I do at work?’

  ‘I’m saying I’ve never seen anyone kitted out like Clint Eastwood’s sidekick.’

  There’s a twitch at the corner of her mouth, which, I hope, is her suppressing a grin.

  Keats’s shoulders dip back, a tiny movement that pops the outline of her collarbone through her T-shirt. ‘Ode to the unenlightened: the world’s full of variety.’

  ‘What’s an ode?’

  ‘John Keats.’

  ‘The poet? He’s an ode?’ I’m frowning, bemused.

  Then another first happens. Keats laughs. A strained burst, like her lungs aren’t working properly. She carries on like we’ve slipped back into our messaging relationship. I don’t deter her. Why not? It suddenly dawns on me I might have an ally here.

  ‘Most of his poems were odes. It’s a type of poem. Ode to the Nightingale. It’s a good way of looking at life. Someone called him a ‘vulgar Cockney poetaster’. I say bring it on, Keats.’

  She’s obviously really into this subject because h
er eyes lift from the squinted guarded position she’s worn since we came here.

  ‘What’s your real name?’

  I wonder if her name really begins with a K as well. Kate. Katherine. Kerry. Kali.

  Her face shutters. Eyelids hooded again. I should’ve left this question until later, hopefully when we were on safer ground. There’s a dismissive sound deep in her throat. She picks up the bottle, a deeper slug this time.

  Her voice drops to a rough whisper. ‘Depends on what you mean by real.’

  ‘What name did your parents give you?’

  Something briefly washes over her face. Rolls off the edge before I can catch it, but I suspect it would have clipped into place another piece of the Keats puzzle. Considering it probably was her parents who forced her into special school, it wasn’t a smart move, on my part, to seat them at the table as well.

  ‘That I won’t tell you. I’m either Keats or Sue.’

  She doesn’t look like a Sue. Sues are sweet, the girl next door, churning out apple pies with perfect shortcrust pastry with Mum.

  ‘A Boy Named Sue.’ Keats answers the query she must detect from my expression.

  ‘You’ve lost me.’ She hasn’t. I know the song; Jed’s band did a respectable rendition of it one time. What I want to do is keep open every avenue so she remains talking.

  She rolls her eyes, clearly exasperated. ‘It’s a Johnny Cash tune. A Boy Named Sue. On YouTube – you should check him out singing it at San Quentin. All-time performance.’