Darkest Place

by Jaye Ford

  ‘We give this to the police.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This is …’

  ‘I’m not giving those pictures of me to the police. I won’t have that on my file too.’

  He watched her in silence. She glared back at him. He must have understood the body language and decided not to push it. ‘What about those?’ he said, a nod at the scattered pictures on the floor.

  Elizabeth humiliated. Drugged and exposed. Thank god she never knew.

  ‘It’ll get their attention,’ Nate said.

  Carly squatted beside them. It was evidence. Close-ups and wide-angles, white thighs and breasts, mouth open, dentures missing. Elizabeth wouldn’t know who saw her now. Carly walked fingers across the photos, seeing only Elizabeth’s essence this time: glittery rings, a pale blue shawl, her glasses folded on her side table. Carly picked up a picture, a pair of red slippers in shot. Elizabeth had been wearing them on one of the days Carly dropped in, hobbling up the hallway with her stick, proud and determined. ‘No.’

  ‘She’s dead, Carly.’

  ‘That’s right. She can’t make that decision for herself.’ Carly picked up her jacket and turned for the hallway.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Nothing had changed. ‘I’m going back up there.’

  48

  Nate blocked her path. ‘No.’

  Carly held up the photo of Elizabeth that was still in her hand. ‘It’s not enough.’

  ‘It’s plenty. The cops see these photos of Elizabeth, they’ll have to look.’

  ‘The last cop I talked to asked if I’d got psychiatric help, the one before that thought I’d scratched my arms for attention. They see these and they’ll want to know how I got them, what I was doing in the ceiling, why I was peering into people’s wardrobes. They’ll want to know where I keep my straitjacket.’

  ‘I’ll go with you, we’ll explain together.’

  ‘The crazy girl and the angry man. Yeah, that’ll work. They’ll question us both. We’re neighbours, they’ll probably think we’re in it together. Or that I’ve roped you into my plea for attention. Or it’s what got you beaten up. I don’t know. But they won’t send patrol cars and set up floodlights.’

  ‘One look up there and they’ll know.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe. And how long will it take to get them here? It won’t be this afternoon. It won’t be tomorrow, either. They’ll talk among themselves, ask us more questions, think it over, solve other crimes. And in the meantime, Howard or whoever the hell it is will be up there again. Drugging our neighbours and taking photos. It might be Brooke next. Or he might discover I’ve emptied the treasure box above my loft and do more than drug me.’

  Nate scrubbed a hand across his head. Carly could see that he saw her point – and didn’t like it.

  ‘I’ll just go to the third floor,’ she said. ‘I’ll look for boxes, take photos and come back. Then we can go to the police. With all of it. Enough to convince them.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be up there on your own.’

  ‘Who’s going to come with me? Not you. You can’t walk.’

  That didn’t come close to convincing him. It only made anger burn in his eyes. ‘You’re not going up there, Carly.’ It was loud, an order, like he had the right.

  ‘I need to do this, Nate.’

  It was less than a day since Carly had been here and she knew more this time. It made the darkness and dust seem sinister, tainted. It made her angry and committed. She stepped off the ladder into the tunnel above the third floor and shone her torch down its length, wariness tickling at the hairs on her neck.

  Unhooking the rope from her waist, she started the long lunge-thrust to the other end. Her sprained ankle was a little less painful but the rest of her body was sore: legs, back and shoulders tight, blisters on her hands, tender spots on her knees. Progress was slow. She saw a double row of timbers around the vent above the shoe collector’s apartment and felt success and repulsion – it was evidence for the police and it meant the woman below had been molested.

  The latches were slightly different, maybe an earlier model, but the system was the same: hinged lid, divided compartments, cards and photos. Carly withdrew a picture, not happy about being a witness to someone else’s humiliation but wanting to confirm it was what she expected.

  It was. Ignoring the tangle of sheets, she focused on the face, recognising the woman – blonde hair, freckles, large bust. The first compartment of notecards detailed drugs and dosages, the next physical observations. Carly took photos of the box, the filing system, pictures and notes. Close-ups and wide shots, just like him, the flash filling the tunnel with bolts of white light. She pocketed samples, too – one photo, one each of the notecards – put the rest back the way she’d found it. Glanced briefly over her shoulder at the ventilation shaft before continuing on.

  Her muscles had warmed up by the time she reached the next clean vent and the treasure box beside it. She checked a sample photo, her eyebrows sliding up with surprise. It was a man: forty-ish, beard, no one she knew. She pulled more, wondering if a woman lived there too. But it was just him, spread-eagled, exposed. Women weren’t the only targets.

  Carly stayed only long enough to take pictures and kept going, hustling now, urgency in her movements, fear a cold hand on her back.

  At the third clean vent, she snapped the latches, lifted a photo and dread sent its oily wave through her. Brooke, eyes closed, exposed. There was no cast on her leg but it was there in others. He’d continued his visits when she was injured? Remembering Brooke’s ‘bad day’ by the harbour and how much better she’d looked in the weeks that followed, Carly flipped through notecards, looking for dates. There – almost a month ago. Last words: Injury impeding results. Subject suspended.

  ‘Subject?’ she whispered. ‘Brooke is not your fucking subject.’

  She collected samples, took pictures, started back. She had plenty of evidence now. Three different people drugged and photographed, three treasure boxes, three vents. Plus Elizabeth’s stash. And if Carly added her own, it would be part of a crime, not a black mark against her name.

  The way back seemed so much further. Her body was a mass of pressure points: toes, glutes, inner thighs, lower back. Her shoulders and neck felt like they’d been crushed in a vice, and the blisters stung. She kept overbalancing, tearing more skin as her knees and hands slipped off cross-timbers onto the insulation. She’d counted four vents, only two to go, twenty metres give or take. Another slip and she paused, rubbing grazed skin as she looked ahead. In the torch beam, it seemed like a kilometre of shifting shadows. Beyond it was the tortuous upward climb on the ladder. If she didn’t stop for a breather, it would take a lot longer.

  Cautiously spreading her weight, she straightened her muscles across the rough padding. Closed her eyes and thought about Nate. He had been angry and silent when she left. It was her turn to understand what was inside another person. He was frightened she wouldn’t answer when he called her name in the dark; he wanted to save her from drowning but she’d drown in her own self-reproach if she didn’t do this. She needed to figure this out, collect the proof, stop what was happening to her friends, to the community she cared about, to be that, better, worthy …

  Her eyes snapped open.

  She’d heard a shush and the whisper of its echo. It seemed to come from all around her. Quiet, distant maybe, but loud when the only other sound was the beating of her heart.

  She rolled to a crouch on the nearest cross-timber, head swinging one way then the other, bracing for a figure in the darkness. All she could see was the glow of her torch bouncing across the walls.

  ‘Time to go,’ she whispered and froze as a bright, white beam lit the tunnel. Soundless, weightless. It came from the shaft she’d climbed down, threw the shadow of her body to the insulation in a crisp, elongated silhouette. Eyes tightening in the glare of a high-voltage globe, she felt like an actor on a stage, a thief in a floodlight. And she was blinded to anythin
g behind it.

  But someone was there. Someone had flicked the switch and was holding the beam, still and silent. Getting a full, clear image of Carly.

  Him. It couldn’t be anyone else.

  He didn’t move, the beam steady, the brilliance relentless, the silence stretching. She wondered if she should start the conversation. Hey Howard, is that you? Or It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone. The voice, when it finally came, turned her veins to ice. So low it was almost a murmur.

  ‘You’re a disappointment, Carly.’

  A man’s voice. She couldn’t tell if it was Howard. Didn’t pause to ponder it as she turned, hands, knees, feet scrabbling to get away. Crawling, lunging, wide crabbing steps. The jerking of the torch beam shining from her head made the tunnel sway, made her feel as though she was tumbling – and, she realised, illuminated her progress for him. She flicked it off, the way ahead now lit by the beam at her back.

  Was he looking for her or on a regular outing? It could be either or both. He might have discovered her rope at the entrance to the tunnel or her treasure box emptied of its booty. And now he’d found her.

  His light turned her shadow to a hunched figure moving ahead of her, like something from the underworld leading her to oblivion. She listened for him beyond the thumps of her lunges and the jolting gasp of her lungs and heard nothing. She remembered Howard carrying the ladder up to her loft yesterday not even breathing hard. Had he wondered what she was up to? Worried that she’d fought back on his last visit?

  What did it matter? He was behind her, he’d seen her, he had a lot to protect up here. And there were some ugly ways in this ceiling to stop a person from exposing his secrets.

  A vent ahead in the shifting gloom – like the one above Nate’s bed, Carly realised as she got closer. She slowed, thinking about pressing her lips to the slats and calling for help, and as she crouched above it and drew breath the shadows disappeared. In the blink of an eye, the space around her turned to dense, solid, suffocating blackness.

  The sudden blindness made her rear back from the vent, tumbling into the timber wall of the tunnel at her back. Her ears took over and the sounds in her head became loud and alarming. Heart crashing, blood thumping, air hissing in her lungs. And somewhere underneath it all she heard noises from behind.

  He was moving across the timbers, and not with her clunking, faltering progress. It sounded easy, practised. He’d been doing it a long time, maybe he didn’t need to see. Maybe he thought unfathomable blackness would slow her. She’d started two apartments ahead of him. If it was Howard, he was tall and strong. He could reach her in a minute, pick her up and throw her headfirst down a vent.

  Feeling her way, eyes wide in the darkness, hands scraping and scrabbling along timbers, she found the next vent. She could push this one open, drop down feet first. It was five metres to the floor, she might break an ankle, smash a knee, but she could drag herself. And if no one was home? If he came down after her? She’d be trapped and he could kill her and leave without a trace. Nate would know how he did it, but what good was that if Carly was dead?

  Panic roaring in her ears, she clawed forward, missing and overstepping, groping in the insulation, wondering if falling through the plasterboard might be the best option. Crashing through someone’s ceiling, breaking a hip or her neck, maybe just killing herself and saving him the trouble.

  She couldn’t tell where he was. She’d lost count of the vents, no idea how many ahead or how far to the deep void at the corner. Would she sense it before she lunged straight in? She wanted to flick on her light. She wanted to know where he was. But she fumbled on, body scraping and bruising and burning.

  She could hear breathing now. It sounded close, it sounded like it was all around her. She couldn’t tell if it was an echo or he was on her heels. Only that it was steady and regular. That he was fit and agile.

  Something froze her. She couldn’t say what it was. The same internal radar or change in atmosphere or the angel on her shoulder that had stopped her from lurching into the void yesterday. Whatever it was, she didn’t question it when it shouted a warning in her head. Stretching a hand past the next timber, she felt the black, cool nothingness of the ventilation shaft. Somewhere out there was the ladder.

  As she arranged herself on the lip of the tunnel, she wondered if the darkness made it better or worse. She couldn’t see the hole that could suck her down or the rungs that would hold her to the wall. She couldn’t see him, either. He was there, though, lunging, breathing, coming after her.

  Impulse made her want to go down – shorten the fall, find the door out, but a voice in her head yelled Up, Carly, go up. Safety was there: her own apartment and Nate. You’ve done this before, she told herself. Reach out and up, find the second rung, haul yourself up like a kid on the monkey bars.

  Crouched on the last cross-timber, hip pressed to the wall of the tunnel, fear and darkness held her in place. Brooke’s statistics said ninety per cent chance of fatality from here. If she overbalanced, if she missed the rung, if her fingers slipped, she was dead. On the floor in a room no one ever checked.

  ‘Hey, Carly. Having fun?’

  49

  His voice was a whispered growl. It carried in the darkness, wrapping around her like a chill wind. It was close and distant, behind and below. She couldn’t wait any longer. Out and up. Her fingertips found cold metal, her palms locked around it. Then she was blinded by dazzling, eye-crunching light.

  Shock jerked her left hand from its hold. It was only for a fraction of a second, but her body had been moving across the abyss and her mind leapt into the freefall. Panic exploded in her muscles. Her knuckles slammed brick, a thumb snapped back, skin tore from her elbow. Then her arm was around the rung, her body jammed against the wall, heart slamming her ribs.

  She turned her face to the light. It wasn’t where she expected it, not right there on the edge beside her, but it was close, three or four quick lunges away. All she could see of him was of a crouched torso and limbs below the glare of the beam. Lean, lithe, silent, like a jaguar ready to pounce.

  It scared Carly more than the lethal drop, and before she’d thought about how to climb she was doing it, hoisting her weight up, reaching up for the next rung. She flicked on her head torch. He knew where she was, she may as well see where she was going. She was juddering with fear and exertion but she moved as though the upward breeze was pushing her. The tunnel she was aiming for was a dark rectangle above when the abyss below was filled with light.

  ‘Move,’ she ordered through gritted teeth. ‘Move. Move.’

  His feet made ringing sounds on the metal, tapping a faster beat than hers. The span of his light inched further ahead of her, as though it was a net being thrown over her, waiting for the right moment to pull her back down.

  ‘Are your legs burning, Carly? Can you feel the lactic acid building?’

  His voice rebounded around the walls. It didn’t tell her how close he was, only that he was barely out of breath. She was gasping, mouth wide open, chest too tight to fill. Slowing, feeling like she was pushing up through water.

  ‘Nearly there now,’ he said.

  It wasn’t Howard’s voice. She didn’t know whose it was.

  Hands on the top rung, her head above the mouth of the tunnel, she glanced down. The light was blinding. She could see hands on rungs in its glow. A dozen steps down and moving. Do it, Carly. Do it now.

  A thrust sideways, hips crashing on the cross-timber. She threw a leg, got the knee into the tunnel and shoved forward onto the insulation. As she pushed away from the ladder with her other foot, a hand closed around the ankle. Hard, tight. He was wearing a glove. His fingers reached all the way around. It was her good ankle, she kicked it. He held fast, a shackle pulling at her leg so she couldn’t thrash.

  ‘Good girl,’ he said. There was a smile in the voice. Patronising, superior.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  The body behind the glare rose higher, the lower half of his torso coming
into view, arms and legs gathering to climb into the tunnel. Clothed in black, something tight like a wetsuit. The pull on her ankle shifted as he moved. She wanted to shake her leg free – except he was on the ledge, it might knock him off and take her with him.

  He kept hold of her ankle as he climbed in, pushing her backwards to the wall, arranging himself opposite, casual, one knee up, like an impromptu meeting on the floor. He tipped his head back then and she saw the face underneath the light.

  ‘It’s you.’

  ‘And here we are,’ Stuart said.

  Stuart, university researcher, part-time pharmacist, strange needy guy who tried to impress. He’d undone Carly’s pyjamas, touched her body, drugged her, taken photos. She wanted to be sick, wanted to lash at him with her nails. Did neither as she breathed hard and watched him.

  ‘So you discovered my research,’ he said.

  He was wearing an all-in-one suit, fitted to a thin and surprisingly well-muscled body, a long zipper down the front. There were matching booties on his feet, excess at his long, craned neck that looked like a hood folded down. The man in black she saw in her loft.

  ‘It’s a pity,’ he said. ‘You were excellent.’

  She swallowed, breathed, worked at focusing on that.

  ‘Consistently good responses,’ he said. ‘Especially with the plant derivatives. I had high hopes for you as a long-term participant. You disappointed me in our last few sessions, though. I blamed myself initially. I thought I must have overestimated the effect of the benzo, but you didn’t take it, did you?’