by Robert Innes
“Kerry, it’s DS Harte. I’m sorry to bother you so late but I really need to speak to you quite urgently. Could I come in?”
“Oh, why not?” Kerry replied sarcastically through the intercom. “Everyone else seems to be doing!”
When Blake arrived at the top floor, he was surprised to see Sonia just on her way out of the flat.
“What are you doing here at this time?” Sonia asked him as Blake approached her.
“I could do with your help actually,” Blake replied. He knocked on the door and waited for Kerry to answer. When she did, she looked extremely annoyed. She was wearing a long pink silk dressing gown that flowed down the floor.
“What is it? I am leaving tomorrow. I have to be up in a few hours, Mr Harte.”
“I’m aware of that, Kerry. I’m sorry. But I’ve been made aware of some more threats against you.”
“What threats? I’m going to be in Spain by this time tomorrow. What harm could I possibly come to?”
Blake debated showing her the notice but decided against it. “I think, just to be on the safe side, you should really let me get some back up to keep watch over you till you go, just for your own protection.”
Kerry exhaled and put her hand on her hip. “Mr Harte. As I said to you yesterday, I have no wish to have a load of police surrounding me till I leave. I just can’t be doing with it. Whoever is sending these threats is just after attention. I’ve had people sending me death threats ever since I went into politics, it’s the nature of the beast.”
“All the same, Miss Nightingale,” Sonia ventured. “Would Mr Harte be here if he wasn’t worried? This is a bit different from some saddo behind a keyboard giving you hassle on Twitter.”
Kerry sighed, pinching between her eyes.
“How about if I stay outside your apartment for the rest of the night?” Sonia suggested. “That way, you’ve got the best of both worlds. No psycho is going to get past me, and you’re on the top floor. This door is the only way to you.”
Blake was not thrilled with the prospect of Sonia being the only form of protection but when Kerry nodded, he realised it was the only option she was willing to accept.
“Well, I’ll stay here too,” Blake said. “The type of people these could be are a bit more dangerous than your average security guard is used to dealing with, no offence.”
Sonia shrugged.
“Fine, whatever you think,” Kerry said, waving her hand dismissively. “But could I please get back to bed now?”
“Yes, just as soon as I’ve given your apartment a quick check,” Blake replied. “It won’t take a minute.”
Kerry held her door open further with another resigned sigh.
Blake walked inside and searched all the rooms thoroughly for any place that someone might be hiding – in wardrobes, under the bed, and he even made sure that there was no way anybody could be hiding in the ceiling. After one last look on the balcony and a glance down to the long drop below, he was satisfied that there was nobody else in the apartment, other than Kerry.
“We’ll be just outside,” he said to her. “I have my phone, I can get back up here as quickly as is needed. And tomorrow, I will drive you to the airport. Okay?”
Kerry still looked annoyed with him, but her expression softened. “You’re really worried about this, aren’t you? You think I’m in actual danger?”
“Not now you’re not,” Blake said firmly. “I promise you. Nothing can happen to you now. See you in the morning.”
“I’ll be getting up at eight,” Kerry said as he stepped out of the apartment.
“See you then. You’re safe.” Blake replied.
Kerry nodded and closed the door. Sonia raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “I guess we’ll be needing some coffee then?”
Blake rubbed his eyes as he leant back in his chair, the caffeine from the strong coffee that Sonia had brought losing its effect with every passing moment.
“You really don’t have to be here with me you know,” he said to her. “I could have just blown this all out of proportion.”
Sonia glanced up from her crime novel. It was one Blake had seen in Harmschapel’s bookshop but had put it back on the shelf, as it had sounded too grizzly for his personal tastes. “You don’t think you have though, do you? It’s fine, I don’t mind. I’ve got my phone should anybody ring the door downstairs, and anyway, I like Kerry. Plus, there’s nothing to do downstairs. It’s a rare night I have to ever leave the front desk so it makes a nice change.”
Blake shrugged and nodded. They had been sat outside the door to Kerry’s apartment for nearly two hours now. In another three hours, Kerry would be waking up and Blake could drive her to the airport, where she would be flying out of harm’s way.
“Do you and Kerry talk much?” Blake asked her. “It’s just that you were coming out of here when I arrived.”
“Oh, I was just changing the light bulb in her room,” Sonia replied, taking a sip of the coffee by her chair, which by now must have been stone cold. “Between you and me, the light bulbs they send us for the apartments only last about five minutes. We’ve told them no end of times, but you know what these conglomerate companies are like. Couldn’t care less about the little people, so long as their money is coming in. Seem to spend my life sorting out light bulbs. I used to work in the club at the other end of town.”
“As a DJ?”
“No, just a technician really. Changing all the bulbs above the dance floor, mucking about with the speakers, that sort of thing.
“But yeah, I do talk to Kerry a fair amount. She’s a nice woman. Strictly off the record, she had a bit of a thing going with one of the lads on security. You met him, Jamie.”
Blake raised his eyebrows. “I thought I detected a bit of a weird vibe between them.”
“Weird is right,” Sonia replied, rolling her eyes. “They were going out for a few months, then she put an end to it. Can’t say I blame her. Jamie can be a bit clingy to say the least. I dunno why, he’s gorgeous. He could probably have anybody he wanted.”
“Holding a bit of a torch for him yourself?” Blake asked her lightly.
Sonia sighed. “I wouldn’t say no obviously, but to be honest I’d be happy to have anybody these days.” She picked up her book and straightened out the pages. “Been a long time since I’ve done anything like that.”
Blake took in the young girl sat next to him. She seemed to be somebody who could be a very pretty woman who had, at some point, completely let herself go. She was quite overweight, her hair messy and her clothes creased. There was also the unmistakable whiff of sweat about her.
“There’s somebody out there for everyone,” he decided to say. “Some people can get it with the click of their fingers, and I always hated them, believe me. But then, someone can come along and just sweep you off your feet. I’ve got my partner moving in with me soon and believe me, that wasn’t a relationship I saw coming. And I love him. I’d absolutely kill for him. How old are you?”
“Twenty seven,” she murmured. She had the expression of someone who had been told all this before, perhaps to the point where she did not believe it to be true anymore.
“You’re young yet,” Blake told her. “I’m only thirty, there’s a hell of a lot of your life to go yet. Keep your chin up.”
“Which one?” she said, causing Blake to laugh, though he wasn’t sure whether she was just being humourlessly self-deprecating or just critical of herself.
As the hours ticked by, Blake’s eyes began to itch with tiredness, to the point where he was not sure whether he was safe to just drive back to Harmschapel, let alone take Kerry all the way to the airport. But he was determined to see his post through to the very end, even if it meant getting a taxi for Kerry in the process.
He chatted idly with Sonia as the morning drew closer but by the time it was nearly eight AM, he was seriously starting to struggle.
“Why don’t you go and get some more coffee?” Sonia suggested, glancing at her watch. �
��Knowing Kerry like I do, she’ll be jumping straight in the shower when she wakes up anyway. She won’t be ready to go for about another half hour yet.”
Blake glanced at his phone to check the time for himself. It only had one percent of battery left but it was able to tell him that it was a minute to eight.
“There’s a camera trained on this door in the office anyway,” Sonia said, throwing her now finished book down on the floor and stretching her arms. “You’ll be able to see everything from there. I should know. I’ve seen Jamie sit and watch it for ages.” She shook her head. “He needs to get a grip, honestly.”
Blake toyed with his options, reasoning that he was hardly going to be able to shadow Kerry whilst she was showering. “Alright,” he said at last.
Sonia pulled her keys out from her pocket, which were attached to her waist by a clip with a long piece of elastic. “That’s the key to the office. You might have to wiggle it about a bit in the lock.”
From inside the apartment, they heard the sound of Kerry’s alarm clock. “There you go,” Sonia said, as she passed him the key to the office. “You might want to wash your face with some cold water. Always worked for me when I needed a bit of an extra bit of energy to get my essays done at uni.”
Blake yawned as he took the key off her and walked back down the corridor to the lift. When he reached it, he pressed the button and the doors slid open. “Do you want anything?” he called to Sonia.
“Just a black tea will do me, thanks,” she called back.
But then, just as the lift doors began to close on Blake, they heard a crash from inside the apartment. Sonia stood up and stared at the door. She pulled her keys out and jammed them in the lock to Kerry’s door. “Kerry?”
Blake put his foot in the lift door and pulled it open as quickly as he could. By the time he had sprinted down the corridor to the door of the apartment, Sonia had already opened the door and ran inside.
Once they were in, Blake frantically looked around him. “Kerry?” he shouted.
“Check the bathroom,” Sonia told him urgently as she ran towards the bedroom.
Blake barged into the bathroom. Like the rest of the flat, it was sleek and modern but there was no sign of Kerry.
“Blake, she’s in here!” Sonia called from the bedroom.
His heart pounding, Blake hurried across the flat to the bedroom where he saw Sonia on her knees over Kerry, who was lying on the floor.
“Blake, she’s choking!” Sonia cried fearfully.
The bedroom curtains were closed but as Sonia pulled them open, the daylight streamed through the windows and illuminated the horror of Kerry. She was convulsing on the floor, her whole body shaking, and around her neck, the unmistakable imprint of a wire of some sort that had dug into her skin.
Blake pulled his phone out of his pocket to call for an ambulance but as he pressed the final ‘9,’ to his dismay, the screen went black, having finally ran out of battery.
“My phone’s dead!” he cried.
“I’ll go use the phone downstairs,” Sonia said, her voice shaking and more sweat than ever glistening on her forehead.
She quickly stepped over them and hurried out of the apartment as Kerry continued to convulse on the floor, but her body was now weakening. Desperately, Blake checked for a pulse, for any sign that she still had some fight left in her, but already he could tell that the life was slowly ebbing away from her.
“Come on, Kerry,” he murmured. “Stay with me. You have to.”
But her eyes had already glazed over. In the few minutes that it took for Sonia to burst back through the door, two burly paramedics behind her, Blake could tell that Kerry Nightingale was already dead.
The flash of the forensic team’s camera filled the room as they carefully examined Kerry’s body. Blake was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, watching proceedings. He felt absolutely numb. The last words he had said to Kerry before she had closed the door of her apartment for the last time had been ‘you’re safe.’ Yet a few hours later, she was lying on her bedroom floor, the life squeezed out of her.
Sharon Donahue, the head forensic pathologist who Blake had worked with in cases like this since he had arrived in Harmschapel stood up from where she had been crouched down examining the thin line around Kerry’s neck.
“Difficult to say exactly what was used,” she said, looking down at the body. “But it’s clearly a wire or a rope of some sort. Obviously we’ll know more once we’ve got her back to base, but strangulations tend to be from behind. The assailant sneaks up behind the victim and throttles them that way, having taken them by surprise.”
Blake closed his eyes, all too aware of how similar it sounded to what Thomas Frost had done to his victims. “Have you got a time of death?”
“Well, if you say you heard a crash in here at eight this morning, so about an hour or so ago, I wouldn’t be able to argue with you.”
“I don’t get it,” Blake murmured. “How? How did he get to her?”
“Judging by the state of her bedside table, I’d guess all this coming down to the floor is what caused the crash you head,” Sharon continued. She was pointing to a now broken glass, a small mirror and a pile of books that were all on the floor, perhaps dragged down by Kerry as she had gone down.
“Would you say it was a struggle?” Blake asked her, his eyes drifting back to the body on the floor again.
“Difficult to say.”
Blake felt a tap on his shoulder. Behind him stood PC Billy Mattison, one of the young constables at the station. “Doesn’t look like the balcony’s been touched, Sir. The door to it was locked when we got here, and even when we’d got it open, there’s no way anybody would be able to get out that way. We’re on the top floor and the drop down to the ground is way too high to climb down, let alone jump.”
“So, here we are again,” drawled another voice from the doorway. It was Sergeant Michael Gardiner. Ever since Blake had lived in Harmschapel, the pair of them had never seen eye to eye, mainly because when Blake had arrived, he had taken the post that Gardiner had been after for years. Aside from that, Gardiner was just a naturally prickly and irritating person. “Who is she?” he asked, glancing down at Kerry’s body disdainfully.
“Her name is Kerry Nightingale,” Blake replied curtly.
“And what’s happened to her?”
“If you’d been here on time, Michael, you would know.” Blake turned on his heels and went out onto the balcony, pulling his ecig straight out of his pocket, ignoring Gardiner’s mutterings behind him.
He leant over the railings and looked down. Mattison was absolutely right when he said that there was no way anybody could have got to her from out here. The balcony of the flat below was too far down as Kerry lived in the studio apartment right at the top of the building. There was only one possible way to get to her and that was through the door that Blake and Sonia had been standing in front of all night, and neither of them had seen a soul.
Inhaling on his ecig, the same futile thoughts going round his mind, he jumped slightly when the balcony door slid open and there was a deep clearing on a throat behind him. “Blake? Are you alright?”
It was his boss at the station, Inspector Royale. His bushy moustache was quivering more than usual beneath his nose. Blake had often wondered how he coped with it on a day-to-day basis.
“No, not really, Sir,” Blake murmured. “I’m confused and I’m angry. Confused as to how the hell this has happened when I was stood outside that apartment all night and angry because I promised her that I was going to protect her.”
Royale put a hand on his shoulder. “Get some rest. You’ve been up all night.”
“I haven’t got time to rest, Sir!” Blake replied irritably. “I need to find out who did this!”
“And you will. We all will,” Royale said calmly. “But you’re of no use to me when you’re sleep deprived. I want you to go home and get your head down for a few hours. We’ll meet you back at the station this eveni
ng.” He put his hand up as Blake went to interrupt him. “That is an order, DS Harte.”
When he used his full title like that, Blake knew that there was no point in arguing. He nodded and walked back into the apartment.
As he left the apartment, he was surprised to see Mattison and his girlfriend and colleague, Mini Patil, standing by the door appearing to be having the most discreet argument they could. They both jumped when they realised that Blake was standing behind them.
“Something the matter?” Blake asked.
Patil glanced at Mattison but shook her head. “No, no. Nothing, Sir.” She was clutching what looked like a leaflet in her hand.
“What’s that?”
Mattison looked at the ground and shuffled his feet uncomfortably. “I found it on the coffee table.”
“It’s a pamphlet from the abortion clinic,” Patil added, handing it to Blake. “Kerry lived alone, didn’t she?”
Blake raised his eyebrows as he read the contents of the leaflet. “That’s right, yes.”
“Then it looks like she was pregnant fairly recently.” Patil said.
The drive back to Harmschapel did not take long and the roads were still quiet, which was fortunate as by the time Blake pulled up outside Juniper Cottage, his eyes were starting to close.
As he got out the car, the door to the cottage open and Harrison stepped out, smiling cheerfully when he saw Blake. “Morning! I just tried to ring you.”
“My phone’s died, sorry.”
“I’ve been called into work,” Harrison said, rolling his eyes. “I was going to leave the spare key under the bin or something. How did the new job go?”
Blake was too tired to think properly. “New job?”
“You know, you being a security guard for the night?” Harrison grinned. “Did you eat donuts? That’s what they all do, isn’t it?”
Blake gave him a weak smile. “I’ll explain later.”
Harrison nodded. “I’ll come ‘round when I finish, shall I? I guess we need to start talking about me moving some stuff in.” He smiled excitedly. With all that had happened, Blake had completely forgotten about him asking Harrison to move in.