“It’s fuckin’ burnin’” he screamed again and Kathy jumped back from the curtain, afraid that he had seen her, although he was far too preoccupied to notice anything around him. “Get me some ice, ya bastards!”
Kathy dared herself to peek again, but at that moment the curtain opened in Denver’s cubicle and a group of white coats surrounded him, saying things like, “This really is most unusual,” and “No, I can’t say I’ve seen anything like this in my career.”
Kathy paced her cubicle, stretching the drip flex as far as it would go, weighing up her options, listening and planning her next move. The discussions in the adjacent cubicle continued for some time and finally concluded when a cheerful voice said, “Well first we’ll get you something for the pain, old chap—something to sooth the old chap, old chap—”a few groans of suppressed laughter—“and then we’ll run a few tests and see if we can’t work out what’s got you in this mess.”
And then the swishing of curtains again. Kathy guessed that the pain relief would come quickly and then would come her chance. She pulled at the cannula in her arm; it wouldn’t budge and the pain bit into her so she took a closer look and managed to ease the needle out. The pain was still intense but it ended with the last of the sharp point out of her body. She wiped away the blood that the manoeuvre had left behind and then pulled off the robe and held it to her arm for a few minutes. The flow was easily stemmed and she quickly changed into her T-shirt. There was no danger of the medical staff coming in to stop her, she had seen what they were dealing with in the waiting room and she would be very near the bottom of their list of priorities.
“Right, let’s get you sorted,” she heard another voice tell the dirty man next door and then more screams followed as something was applied to his genital area, whether it was cream, ice, or an injection she really couldn’t care less. If they knew what this man was like they wouldn’t be so keen to end his suffering. “Let’s see how you get on with that,” the voice chirped, and then that curtain swish again. Now was her chance.
Kathy made herself as tall and confident-looking as she could and slipped into the kind of smile that she had seen on the faces of all the medical staff in the hospital. For this to work, it was all about confidence. Life itself was all about confidence, in fact, this was one of the first important lessons she had learnt as a psychologist and now it would be put to the test.
She left her cubicle via the foot of the bed and entered Denver’s with the same confidence swish of all doctors and nurses alike. “Afternoon,” she told him cheerfully, now able to see the additional details that fit his profile so aptly—the acne, the bad teeth, the haircut that he had obviously done himself.
“Fuck’s this?” he said. It was obvious that he was no longer in as much pain, but it did nothing to improve his patience.
“Just need to update your info,” Kathy told him merrily and before he had the chance to answer, she snatched the clipboard from the end of the bed and was out of the cubicle. Safely back in her own cubicle, she read the information there—Miles Denver, such a strange name for a man from the Midlands, as if his mother had had a fling with a honky-tonk cowboy—And an address! She’d done it! She had his address.
Kathy tossed the clipboard on the bed and darted out. She then had second thoughts. She really didn’t want the clipboard traced back to her so she took it with her and when she arrived back in reception, she slipped it onto the desk when the receptionist was looking the other way. She was full of energy now, bursting to get to the car, hit the road, and get to Josh as quickly as she possibly could, but she couldn’t see Suri. Had she gone without her?
She scanned every inch of the waiting room, which was still bursting with the noise of the afflicted and the smell of antiseptic and eventually saw Suri seated between two old women; she had taken one of the lady’s hands onto her lap and her eyes were fixed closed in concentration. The second woman looked to her friend or sister the whole time as if watching for signs of change in her condition. Suri then slowly opened her eyes as if waking from a deep sleep and the smile awakened with her. Kathy sighed deeply at the sight of her and marched over.
“I’ve got his address, Suri. We need to go.”
Suri slowly turned to face Kathy, her eyes glazed and puffy. She didn’t say anything for a moment as if she didn’t recognise Kathy at all. And then something switched in her focus and the reality of the present dawned on her; she was in the hospital, Kathy had been wheeled away, the man had been taken too, and now here was Kathy ready to take on the world. But Suri didn’t seem to share Kathy’s excitement.
“Should we call your policeman? It might be of danger, Kathy,” she said, lowering her eyebrows seriously.
“Nonsense! The pervert’s in there with his willy in a sling!”
The two old ladies didn’t even try to disguise their huffing and puffing revulsion at this interruption.
“But–”
“We haven’t got time for this. Say your goodbyes and I’ll meet you in the carpark,” Kathy said before turning and marching away, across the waiting room and out of the automatic doors, without looking back. The urge to crack this, to rescue Joshy and put an end to this whole sorry mess had taken over her and when reached the carpark and got in the Mini, she debated going without Suri—she wasn’t going to be much use to her in this part anyway. The only thing that stopped her was the realisation that she still had her handbag. She would have to wait for her.
“Come on!” she urged with the engine running, her fingers tapping a heavy beat on the steering wheel. “Come on!”
Five minutes later, the door opened beside her and Suri slipped into the car.
“Next time I say we need to go, we need to go! Do you understand?” Kathy snapped, manoeuvring out of the carpark before Suri had even pulled her seatbelt on. “Do you have my bag?”
“It is here,” Suri answered sheepishly. “I am sorry, Kathy.”
“Never mind that. Just hold on. We’re not losing another one.”
Chapter 17
Kathy skid the car around the bend into Miles’s road, slowing only to view the numbers of the flats that she found there.
“Eighteen to twenty-four; twenty-five to thirty-one. There,” she said, but drove past and pulled the car onto a kerb in the next street. She was out of the car almost before turning the engine off. “You’ll be safe here,” she told Suri then grabbed the phone out of her bag and slid it into her pocket. “I’ll be in and out,” she said and charged off towards the block of flats. If she had looked more closely she would have seen that Suri’s face was pleading with her not to go, but she felt too helpless to put it into words. All she could do was watch as Kathy disappeared around the corner.
“In and out. In and out. In and out,” Kathy mumbled to herself as she walked all the way back to the building, not realising that any sound was coming out of her and equally unable to stop it. When she arrived at Miles’s block of flats, she tried the door handle and wasn’t surprised that it wouldn’t budge. She then pointed her finger to the silver button beside number 32 and pressed it. She waited, perhaps unrealistically hoping to hear the little voice of Josh Fletcher welcoming her to his rescue, but there was only silence. She then began to try other buttons but all of the other flats were also silent. She considered going for the jack in the back of her car and would have been within her rights to do so, to smash her way into the building, but decided to venture round the back first. The door she found there, however, was also locked fast.
“Goddammit!” she spat and made her way around to the front again. She had now spent more than ten minutes trying to get into the building and her anxious excitement had been replaced by a creeping sense of dread. And it was still so bloody hot. Every movement she made was inhibited by the sun beaming down on her head. If it would just cool down for five minutes she could get her thoughts together. But it was relentless.
The jack, she finally resolved. There was no other way, but then a little tinny voice came
out of the intercom.
“Is that you?” it questioned.
Kathy looked all around her and then took a chance, pushed the speak button and simply said, “Yes.” Whoever the old woman was expecting, it clearly wasn’t her, but she had to take the opportunity and she was stunned when she heard the buzz of the old woman releasing the lock. She was almost too surprised to open the door and grabbed the handle just at the end of the buzz. As the door opened, she looked up and silently gave thanks to a god or to the old woman or to the clouds that had been towed across the sun just in that moment and the subsequent breeze that had never been more welcome.
Once inside, Kathy ran up the stairs and was soon outside Miles’s flat. Even if she didn’t know the number she would have known that this was the one. There were cigarette butts and sweet wrappers circling a filthy welcome mat and rippled glass panes in the front door that were too dirty for even shadows to be seen beyond. Kathy wasted no time before banging on the door. “Josh! Joshy! It’s okay, Joshy! I’m here to take you back to your parents.” She pressed her head to the door but heard nothing and then the dawning realization that she had no idea what she would find beyond hit her. For a start, he might not be there. There was no way that Miles wasn’t their culprit, but he may have been keeping Josh elsewhere, or he, heaven forbid, may have already got rid of him. But then Kathy remembered that Suri had seen him tied up, alive, and it was only a few minutes after this that she cast her spell on him. But tied up and alive didn’t mean that he hadn’t already been molested or tortured. And she had seen Miles at the hospital. He may have been in pain, but he was still capable of moving his body and he was angry. Who knew what kind of effect this would have had on the young boy?
Kathy opened the letterbox, but her vision was blocked by bristles. She tried to make a space in them but still she could see nothing and when she pressed her ear to the space there was still no sound to be heard. “Josh!” she screamed into the flat. “I’m coming, Josh,” she said and began searching for a hidden key, around the dirty mat and on top of the doorframe. All she found was more muck and grime. She tried forcing her meagre body weight against the door, but she wasn’t even strong enough to make an impression on the wood let alone bust into a flat. She stood catching her breath for a few moments, both hands on her head and then sprang into action again, marching back through the hallway and out into the day again, propping the front door open with a Yellow Pages. She ran the length of Miles’s road and around the corner to where Suri was still waiting for her in the Mini.
“What is going on?” Suri pleaded as Kathy popped the boot open.
“Just stay here,” Kathy answered then grabbed the jack and slammed the boot shut. “We’ll be back in a minute,” she told Suri and again missed the distraught expression on the young girl’s face. On the run once again, Kathy returned to the flat, skipped up the stairs, two at a time, and powered the jack at the thick glass panes of Miles’s front door. At first they stubbornly held firm, even chipping slightly as if to insult her efforts and then the crunch of a crack rang out through the stairwell and one more thud sent the glass flying inwards. Kathy forced her arm in behind it, reached down, and opened the door.
Once inside, the smell was repulsive and she couldn’t tell if this was real or imagined as there really were stinking, mouldy food plates on every surface and bottles that looked as if they could be holding nothing but piss. Why he would be collecting his own piss was anyone’s guess and Kathy progressed with her arm over her mouth. The greyish, dusty wallpaper peeling off the walls gave it a piteously, shabby appearance; a small sixties fireplace by the back wall and the furniture were no better; there were two rickety chairs with no padding, a badly stained coffee table in a corner and a few books and kids’ magazines scattered about. A little kitchen area invading the living space was another source of stink, with the full sink a home for rats and other vermin, as was a little cubicle off to the back of the flat containing a toilet that no sane human would want to sit on—smudged with faeces and stained yellow. Kathy was beginning to understand why he used bottles. A large, worn, dirty sofa was the focal point of the living space with a print cover that was old and spattered with rough holes. Down by the side of it stood a small table with a laptop on it, his gateway to ecstasy, but Kathy imagined that it had been cold ever since he got his own real live child to do with what he wanted.
“Josh!” Kathy called again. She was apprehensive about trying the only closed door in the flat, but she had no choice “It’s okay, Josh,” she repeated and curled her hand around the handle. “I’m coming!” she gripped tighter and slowly lowered the handle. “Josh!” Rather than entering the room, everything seemed to close in around her and shatter into darkness, forcing her to drop to her knees. She reached up to the back of her head, where a searing pain exploded her skull, and when she took her fingers away she saw that they were covered in blood. As she turned her head she saw the vague shape of a man in a hospital gown before losing consciousness.
Kathy could feel where she was before she could see; not psychically—her abilities didn’t work in that way; she could physically feel the cold of plastic under her skin and yet she was sticking to it with sweat on her bare arms, which were now tied behind her. The pain in her head and the dawning awareness of her situation prompted her to keep her eyes shut as she regained consciousness, but she couldn’t deny her predicament forever and there was still the question of Josh to be answered. Slowly she released her grip on her eyelids and the tiny world around her came into focus. The plastic wasn’t simply under her body; it was all around her, covering the floor and the walls and even the ceiling. It was a plastic-covered chamber, emptied of everything but herself, lying unceremoniously on the floor, and the feet in her line of vision that were promptly joined by an angry face leaning down to greet her. He was quite a sight in his gown and boots.
“Fuck you wanna come snoopin’ round here, lady? You’re seriously stupid if you think I didn’t clock you at the hospital, dumbo!” he said, scrunching up his features seriously and then his face softened far quicker than was possible and he broke into fits of laughter. “Me and Josh there got things to do,” he said cheerfully and stood up again before saying, “And we don’t need bitches like you spoiling our fun.” The last three words were delivered with pauses allowing for three pounding kicks in Kathy’s stomach that not only knocked the wind out of her but caused more pain than she was equipped to deal with and sent a frenzy of blood to her head that didn’t know where else to go to hide from the fear, and she was almost unconscious again. She let out an excruciating cry and the man mocked her with his own screams.
“Ha! It’s all soundproofed,” he shouted. “We can be as loud as we want.” And then he began to sing at the top of his voice. The bottom half of Kathy’s body was now bundling under her, trying to sooth her stomach, but forcing her face further onto the plastic, her eyes now completely shut. But they snapped open when she heard a little voice behind her.
“’S alright,” it said quietly and she felt what was either a little foot or little hand against her back.
The sound of the little boy’s voice went some way to soothing her pain. “Joshy?” she said quietly and he pressed harder on her back by way of an answer. For either of them to say more would be invited the psychotic wrath of Miles Denver, but this was what she was here for. Josh was alive and she was here to get him out. I can do this, she silently said to herself, but her body told another story, tightly bound in a room modified for death. I can do this! And then another thought occurred to her; her mobile phone was in her back pocket. She straightened up her body and shifted her bound hands further down her back toward the pocket, but Miles spotted the play immediately.
“Looking for this?” he giggled and dropped her phone on the plastic in front of her. As joyful as he seemed, Kathy took hope in the fact that he was wriggling awkwardly again, as if the itch and pain in his pants were returning. But then the fear took over and she ground her eyelids
together as his heavy boot came down on top of the phone just inches from her face. Why hadn’t she called Spinoza before this and let him deal with it? She wasn’t equipped to take on a killer. But then she had no idea that he would be back. Why had she left the car so far away? Suri would have no idea what was going on. And she didn’t even have a phone to call for help if she did know. For someone desperate to stop this evil, she had certainly done everything wrong. And now what? She hardly dared open her eyes. The little boy on the floor behind her was braver and God only knew what he had been through, and still he was reaching out to sooth her. The thought gave her just enough strength to open her eyes and there he was again, bent down to her eye line.
“Morning!” he smiled. “Now what was it? Oh, right, yeah, sorry love, but I just gotta get rid a’ya. Nufink personal but I’d rather put my dick in a beehive than you and, well, me and Josh ’ere was getting on fine before you came along. Nufink personal.” He continued to reassure her that it was nothing personal as he reached over to the other side of the room and brought a massive sledgehammer into her line of vision. Kathy immediately began to struggle to free herself, pulling on the rope at her wrists and kicking out her bound legs, but she couldn’t even shift position let alone move from the spot.
“Ha! Keep still, ya silly bitch,” Miles giggled heartlessly and dropped his booted foot down on her neck. Completely helpless now, Kathy could only watch as Miles swung the mallet behind his head and smashed it down in her direction. A nightmarish crunch rattled the foundations of the room and echoed through the empty space. And then followed the sound of screaming—Kathy screaming. If she was screaming then she was still alive. This was the thought that was racing through her mind. If I’m thinking then I’m still alive. Far from feeling the pain of a shattered skull, the pressure of the boot on her throat was released, but she hardly dared open her eyes again—that is, until she heard a familiar voice behind her.
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