by J G Alva
The pipe was still three feet away, even with his arms fully extended. Could he make the jump? If he leaped, especially from this unsteady platform, would it be enough to put him within reach?
What if the pipe didn’t hold?
His heart was pounding in his chest, and he felt cold sweat at his armpits.
The question was: did he have a choice?
I’m not going to die down here.
I can’t.
He tensed himself.
The chair tilted, steadied.
He waited.
Right, get it right.
He hunkered down, his eyes fixed on the pipe, and then…
He sprang upward.
At the last moment, the chair tilted out from under him, but by then he was already airborne. He went up, the rough edge of the hole catching the side of his arm, pain sparking up to his shoulder…and then his hand closed around the pipe. His other hand grasped at the edge of the hole. Brick gave way in his hand, crumbling, and he slipped, but he tried again and found purchase.
Made it.
Holy God.
Suddenly, the pipe dropped.
Sutton was so shocked he almost let go. The pipe popped free of its mounting, hitting the concrete ceiling and sparking briefly in the dark. Cold, stagnant water jetted out of the end of it, over his shoulder.
But he hung on, and the pipe didn’t move again.
Meanwhile, there was a clatter below him as the dentist chair fell into the hole. He looked back and down at it. The head rest hit the far side of the hole, snapped off, and then the whole thing went through the hole and down into darkness. There was an incredible clatter and crash. Dust billowed up in a fine cloud.
Fuck.
No way back.
No second try.
This was it.
His arms started to shake.
He could feel the strength leaving them, just…leaking away.
No.
He pulled himself up.
It was perhaps the hardest thing he had ever done.
By the time his torso was in the crawl space, with only his legs hanging out of the hole, his whole body was shaking and he was covered in sweat. The headache that had been brewing all morning suddenly ripped through his head, a bolt of bright light, and he thought he might pass out…but it receded without a loss of consciousness. So much for small mercies.
He wondered if he was bleeding in his brain.
He hoped it was just dehydration, but he couldn’t quite quell the irrational fear that a big blood clot was forming between his skull and his precious grey matter.
Trying for humour, he supposed a stroke would wipe out all his worries in one fell swoop.
He pulled the light out of his belt and shone it into the crawl space.
Not good.
Cobwebs and dust and other things gently swayed in the light of his torch, but he was more concerned with the cross beams that supported the floor above. They were about eight inches thick, and made the space available for him to crawl through exceedingly tight.
No help for it. He was committed now.
He shone the torch back and forth, but couldn’t see any way out. Holding a hand over the torch, he checked for a light source, but there was nothing. The wooden floorboards seemed impenetrable. No obvious exit.
He would just have to keep going until he found one.
Awkwardly, he wriggled around until he was on his back. He tucked the torch back into his belt, and then using the cross beams and a snake-like wriggling motion, began his journey.
The cross beams were a pain. Literally a pain, as each time he wriggled under one they dug into his chest. They tore his top, and it felt like they were tearing the skin off him too.
But it wasn’t until the third one that he got stuck.
It seemed to be thicker than the previous two, and he knew as soon as his shoulders passed under it that he wasn’t going to make it. He tried, but it pressed painfully on his chest. There was just no room…
A knife-like pain went all the way up his arm and down to his belly suddenly. Shit. He felt like he had been prodded with a hot poker. There had to be a nail sticking out somewhere that he hadn’t seen…and then dimly he felt the blood, trickling down his side. He couldn’t tell how deep it was, how much damage he might do to himself if he gave himself a rough jolt to pull himself through.
Stuck.
Bright panic filled his head.
He thought the prison below had been bad. This was so much worse. At least down there he could walk off his fear. At least down there he could breathe…Now, every breath brought a glassy stabbing pain into his chest. And of course he was breathing harder.
Stuck.
Oh God.
He had never been claustrophobic before, but he very obviously was now. The fear was unlike anything he had felt before, raw and terrible, like being caught in an undertow. In his mind he lost himself, tried to grab at control and lost it, tumbling this way and that in the current of his fear.
He didn’t know it, but he was yelling, short, inarticulate bursts.
Craven.
Pathetic.
A terrified animal.
*
CHAPTER 9
MONDAY
“Damn it, where’s my stethoscope?” Dr Robert Waverley asked no one in particular and, looking around the room, laughed at himself. “I swear I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on.”
Waverley was bald, had a big white bushy beard and a sprawling, comfortable belly. He was wearing a rumpled suit a couple of sizes too small for him, and his hairy navel could be seen peeking between the buttons of a white shirt that was straining to remain closed.
Sutton immediately liked him. He had the jolly aura of a poor man’s Santa; even looked a bit like him too.
“It’s on the bed in the corner,” Sutton said.
Dr Waverley looked over, saw it, and, remonstrating himself loudly, got out of his chair, waddled over to it, and then waddled back.
“Good man, good man,” he said. “You’re handy in a pinch.”
He placed the stethoscope on a desk cluttered with files, folders, notepads, blank prescription sheets and the customary computer that every desk seemed to have on it nowadays as a matter of course.
“Now, what’s the matter with you, young man? To me you look absurdly healthy. Apart from that mark on your face. Been roughing it up, eh? What’s the matter? What is it?”
He had those unique inflections of speech that come from being a member of the upper classes, that curious accent garnered from highbrow universities like Oxford and Cambridge, where every exclamation was a hearty bellow, and the word yes could all too easily, if they were not careful, turn in to a yah.
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Sutton confessed.
A not altogether true statement, seeing as he had woken stiff and sore in the morning. His back and shoulders would be fine in a couple of days, but the gentle scrape Sutton had felt across his face hadn’t been so gentle after all. In the morning, he had examined his face in the mirror to see two long red finger marks running from the middle of his forehead, over his nose and down his cheek; a dark, burnt red, like war paint. It made him look a little like a savage.
“Then why are you here? God knows, I want my patients to be healthy, but if there’s nothing wrong with you then you’re wasting my time. I have other patients to see, you know.”
“I wanted to ask you a few questions, and this was the only way I could get passed your receptionist to ask them.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Dr Waverley pronounced gravely.
“One of your patients was a good friend of mine.”
Dr Waverley squinted at him.
“I see.”
“Gavin Thompson?”
“Hm. And you’ve come to me because...?”
Sometimes the way to get passed people’s defences is to hammer them hard with whatever you have at hand. In this case, it was the truth.
“Dr Waverley, Gavin Thompson is dead.”
He froze for a full three seconds before he came back to life. He leaned forward.
“What happened to him?” He said.
“He was murdered.”
“Damn it.” Dr Waverley shook his head. “As if there isn’t enough in this life we have to contend with, we’ve got to go out and invent more hardships for ourselves. When did this happen?”
“Wednesday night.”
“Wednesday just gone? Good God. I only saw him the Friday before.”
“And before that?”
Dr Waverley nodded. He turned to his computer, leaned close to the screen, squinted at it myopically, and then played inexpertly with the mouse.
“He first came to me on the 24th September. And three more times after that, including the last visit.”
“Can I ask what those visits were about?”
Dr Waverley stared at him. He looked as if he was chewing over something, some decision, and with a grunt and some shifting in his seat, he made it.
“Are you related to him?”
“No. Just a friend.”
“I see. Medicals records are confidential. The rules are very firm on that. I’m an old man, I have no stomach for trouble any more – although, in truth, in my younger days I was something of a spitfire – but if you were, let’s say, a distant cousin I might be able to bend the rules a little bit. As it is...” He shrugged.
Rising to the gambit, Sutton smiled and said, “sorry, did I say friend? I meant to say, cousin. Second cousin actually. I’m the son of Marjory who was Gavin’s father’s youngest sister’s daughter.”
Dr Waverley smiled, nodded and began playing with the computer again.
“That’s good enough for me, old chum. Right. Let me see.” He tapped some keys on the keyboard. “Yes. Here we are.”
“What was wrong with him?” Sutton asked, straining to look at the computer screen, feeling as if he was on the verge of a revelation that would slot all the other events neatly in to place.
Things were never that easy, however.
“Absolutely nothing,” Dr Waverley said. “There was absolutely nothing wrong with him whatsoever.”
Yes. Things were never that easy.
“You say he came to you four times? But if there was nothing wrong with him...”
“We get a lot of hypochondriacs coming through our doors here,” Dr Waverley said, opening a drawer and picking out a handful of sweets. He offered one to Sutton and after a moment’s hesitation Sutton took it. Waverley selected one for himself and then dropped the others back in the drawer. Sutton unwrapped it to find a Sherbet Lemon inside; he popped it into his mouth, and along with the sweet, tart taste came a billowing cloud of childhood memories.
“If all the hypochondriacs stopped worrying about what might be wrong with them and stayed home instead of coming to see me, there wouldn’t be a two week wait for appointments. Hell, there wouldn’t be any wait at all.”
“So he was perfectly healthy?”
“As healthy as you or I. Although I’m not as healthy as I used to be. I like the sweeter things in life. My vice. I’ve got ten fillings in my head and an inner tube around my waist because of it.” Waverley sucked on the sweet for a moment with evident relish and then said, “I think the reason he came to see me was that he was really ill in July. Fever, vomiting, diarrhoea. This went on for weeks, so he told me, but by the time he came to see me he was all cleared up. Dr Bodel was his usual physician, but for some reason he came to see me.”
“Did he say why?”
“Nope,” Waverley said cheerfully. “He skirted any questions on that subject. Now, Bodel is one of the best. A real pioneer. He’s written half a dozen papers, and by all accounts is a brilliant doctor. But Gavin absolutely refused to continue seeing him. So I dealt with him as best I could. I sent off a number of samples, but no diagnosis ever came back for anything. I suspected a bout of gastroenteritis. But Gavin wasn’t convinced. I couldn’t convince him of anything…which made the point of seeing me rather redundant, wouldn’t you say? Well. Has that answered your questions, distant cousin of Gavin?”
“No,” Sutton said despondently. “It’s given me more.”
“My advice?” Dr Waverley said, opening the drawer and offering him another sweet. Sutton shook his head, but that didn’t stop the good doctor from popping another Sherbet Lemon in to his mouth. “Don’t brood on it. It’s a duty for the survivors to carry on. Take it from me. I lose a patient a week, usually one of my old timers, and it’s sad, but if I brooded on every one I’d never be happy. You do what you can. They want you to mourn them, but they want you to enjoy your life too. It’s a gift, my good man. My God, these Sherbet Lemons are tart. They’re about enough to knock me clear off my seat. You have my sympathies for your friend. He seemed like a good chap. Sure you don’t want another sweet? Good Christ, whenever the hell am I getting to the sherbet? Why do I like these bloody things anyway?”
*
In the car outside the doctor’s surgery, Sutton called Martin Price Solicitors and asked to speak to Diane.
He was asked to hold; there was a wait, a click, and then Diane said, “hello?”
“Why did Gavin change his doctor?” Sutton asked.
He was on a small side road. It was a long road with innocuous semi-detached houses filling it, all the way to its distant end. Cars crowded both sides of the street, with a small motorbike parked directly in front of him.
“He didn’t,” Diane said.
“The Robert Waverley on the list was a Dr Robert Waverley,” Sutton explained, “and Gavin came to see him four times between now and September.”
“Was he ill?”
“Apparently not.”
“Then I don’t know. He never said anything to me. Anyway, his doctor is Dr Bodel, so I don’t know why he’d see anybody else.”
“You know Dr Bodel?”
“Yes. He’s our family doctor. He’s been our family doctor for thirty years. He’s the best, I wouldn’t trust anybody else, that’s why I got Gavin to go to him.”
“Okay. Can you arrange a meeting? I’d like to talk to him about Gavin.”
“I’ll call him and set it up.”
“Okay.”
There was a pause, and then Diane said, “how are you…proceeding?”
Apart from being attacked?
But he didn’t want to worry her, and so he said, “snails have been known to move faster.”
“I gave Fin the file to look at. He’s an unusual young man.”
Sutton smiled.
“He is.”
“Did he find anything out?”
Sutton silently debated on whether to tell her about the conversation the previous Saturday afternoon, but he always played his cards close to his chest; invariably it turned out to be the more prudent course.
“He’s got some theories. But nothing he can prove. The investigating officers did a good job though. They didn’t miss much.”
“I’ll pass on your remarks to my uncle.”
He could hear the smile in her voice; she wouldn’t.
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate that. Let me know about Dr Bodel.”
“I’ll call you soon.”
*
The Shelter was in Old Market, in a converted fire station with a curious brick façade like a consummately large castle archway, sealed by still more brick, and a small wooden door tucked into the bottom of it like a wicket gate entrance.
As Sutton approached, a figure came out through the door, stopping on the pavement outside to examine something on a lanyard around his neck. It was a distinctive figure, and Sutton recognised it at once: Arby Puck. Tall, fat, bald and in his late thirties, with a large drooping belly, he was shaped like a giant penguin. When Sutton joined him, he could see that the object Arby was examining was an expensive Cannon camera.
“Arby,” Sutton said, to get his attention.
The tall, bald man looked up.
There seemed to be a tightening of the muscles in his face as he recognised who it was.
“Saint Mills,” he said, smiling. It was not a friendly smile. “It’s been a while.”
“I didn’t know you were out.”
Arby shrugged. His fingers continued to play with the camera, even if his attention seemed to be off somewhere over Sutton’s left shoulder. He rarely looked anyone in the eye.
“A long time now. But I stayed up north with relatives.”
“You should have stayed away.”
Arby shrugged again.
“You back in the old place?”
Arby looked away.
“Answer me, Arby.”
“Yes,” he admitted.
Sutton nodded at the camera.
“Still taking pictures?” He asked.
Arby looked wary when he said, “it’s what I do.”
“Not any more. I suggest you stop.”
“They don’t hurt anyone-“
“You know they do, Arby. It’s why you went to prison. Men and women who agree to it, that’s fine, but you started getting people involved who weren’t well enough to agree to it.” Arby ducked his head down, studying the camera; Sutton knew better than to hope that it was because Arby was feeling shame. Or guilt. “And then you started to use children.”
Like a new stab at courage, Arby lifted his head defiantly and said, “Sutton, nobody cares about my photographs except you, so-“
Before he could finish, Sutton slapped him. Hard. It brought out a nice red hand print up on Arby’s cheek. Arby cried out and put his hand to his face; it was almost theatrical, like a scene where a wife has just caught her husband cheating.
“Fuck you,” Arby said, but there was no sting in it.
Sutton was of the opinion that Arby was mildly retarded…or at the very least, his brain chemistry was wrong. It wasn’t quite enough to be picked up on any standard tests. He could function perfectly well in society, but emotionally he hadn’t matured passed twelve years old. He could be violent, and part of his conviction had been for beating a minor. The trick was not to let it build to the point where Arby couldn’t control it anymore; if it did, he turned into a Sherman tank: almost unstoppable.