by Ryan Gawley
Earlier that morning Stone had dressed in his usual black trousers and suit jacket, white shirt and black tie. The standard uniform of his trade, easy to launder, easy to replace and allowed him to always appear impeccably dressed but understated and unremarkable among associates of the Elite client by whom he was employed. Upon his return to Henderson’s residential tower he saw the old van belonging to Harper’s cleaning crew as expected. Despite regular offers from Harper he never paid for sex with the girls and would not be drawn to compromise himself by giving Harper something that could be used against him.
Stone had refused to have an ID chip implanted in his arm so pressed his thumb onto the opaque surface of the scanner in the lift to access Henderson’s penthouse. He knew an implant made sense from a security point of view but he was adamant that he would quit before being implanted, an ultimatum that greatly annoyed Henderson but Stone had come highly recommended and so Henderson reluctantly agreed to Stone’s demand.
Stone had been in the apartment for only a few minutes and had begun searching the many rooms of the large living space looking for Kathy so as to restrain her as usual for planned maintenance visits when he was interrupted by the buzzing intercom system.
‘It’s that idiot Harper, what the hell does he want? He’s far too early,’ grumbled Stone testily. ‘Kathy, get out here now, you know the drill. Come on, it’s easier for both of us if you just do what your father wants.’
The intercom buzzed a few more times and Stone began to lose his cool. ‘Kathy, I mean it, get out here or I’ll have to sedate you. I know you don’t like that stuff and I’d rather not do it but you’re leaving me no choice.’
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
Stone marched toward a panel by the entrance to the apartment to answer the irritating intercom since Harper was obviously intent on getting his attention.
As he walked down the wide entrance hall he checked his reflection in the lift doors with his remaining eye and adjusted his tie and cuffs and suddenly caught sight of Kathy running toward him from behind with an expensive marble rolling pin holding it aloft by its wooden handle. She ran barefoot and silent then swung her weapon as hard as she could but the polished brass doors gave her away and Stone spun around at the last second catching the makeshift club in an iron grip before it caved in his skull.
‘Just give it up Kathy, Henderson will never let you go,’ said Stone releasing his grip on the rolling pin and Kathy in frustration threw it to the ground behind her then slapped Stone hard across the face with an open hand, the blood rushing to his face and highlighting his deep scars.
The intercom buzzed again and Stone looked at Kathy, saying nothing, just shaking his head.
‘Fuck you Derek,’ she screamed then turned to run to her room but in her anger and haste she slipped on the rolling pin and fell, striking her head on a small ornate table and knocking over a large decorative antique vase which landed intact on the plush carpet. Kathy however lay still on the floor where she had fallen against the table and appeared to be unconscious.
‘Kathy? Kathy? Oh, shit!’ exclaimed Stone rushing to her then kneeling over her limp body and checking her pulse. He was relieved to feel a strong beat and found no blood as he gently teased her dark hair apart to check where she had hit her head.
‘The vase fared better than you I’m afraid kid; you’ll have a sore head when you wake up. You should have just come out when I called, but no, you’ve got to have it your way.’
As the intercom buzzed again behind him Stone replaced the vase on the table and then carefully lifted Kathy, cradling her in his strong arms and effortlessly carried her up the left staircase to her bedroom. He lay her on the bed in the recovery position to be sure she wouldn’t swallow her tongue and laid a soft blanket over her before closing the bedroom door and walking at his leisure to answer the intercom at a nearby remote panel on the upper floor.
‘What?’ Stone barked at Harper’s video image in the access panel display screen. ‘Only one cleaning girl. Unusual,’ Stone thought to himself, his curiosity aroused by the earlier than usual arrival of Harper, the insistent buzzing of the intercom and now only a single girl to clean the entire place.
‘Hold your ID’s to the camera,’ Stone requested.
‘You know me Stone, how long have I been coming here with the girls? Come on we’ve been waiting long enough,’ complained Harper.
‘Hold your ID’s to the camera,’ Stone asked again this time in a more demanding voice.
Seeing the IDs were valid and wanting to get rid of Harper as quickly as possible Stone granted access and allowed the lift to travel the few floors up to the Henderson penthouse. Before he raced down the staircase to meet them Stone realised he hadn’t locked Kathy’s room so ran back and pulling a key from his pocket ensured the door was secure.
When the lift doors opened Stone was in no mood to talk as Harper usually tried to either persuade him to pay for alone time with one of the girls or he spent the entire time talking crap which always gave Stone a migraine. Harper stepped out of the lift and approached Stone with his arms held wide as if planning to hug an old friend he’d not seen in years.
‘Mr. Stone, so good to see you, and is Mr. Henderson going to be with us today?’
Stone stood with arms folded and as motionless as his namesake.
‘He’s not here, he’s never here and you know he’s never here so shut up, stop brown nosing and get on with the job.’
As Lucy followed Harper out of the lift she walked backwards pulling her cleaning cart behind her and when she turned around she gasped at the sight of the tall imposing figure of Derek Stone. His disfigured features were frightening to most and he’d gotten used to the reaction. Lucy quickly composed herself and stepped forward to shake Stone’s hand in greeting, a gesture he seldom received when not wearing his gloves due to the horrifically melted skin on his hands.
‘Good afternoon, I’m Lucy. I’ll just get to work now if that’s okay with you,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Hello Lucy, I’m, ah, I’m Derek,’ said Stone as he took her hand and held it delicately, covering it gently with his other hand. She had to pull away after a moment as he stood silently, just looking at her with his watery eye. Lucy was confused and a bit unnerved by Stone; she was still badly shaken from her ordeal with Madsen in the apartment a few floors below where the other girls were still working to make up for her refusing to submit to him. She took her cleaning trolley and made her way past Stone and Harper into the main living area.
‘Well, sorry we’re a bit early, something of an unexpected problem downstairs with Mr. Madsen. Unfortunately the other girls will be delayed for the afternoon now but Lucy here is a good worker, I’m sure you’ll enjoy her company.’
‘Yes, I’m sure she’ll be fine.’
‘She’s a new girl Stone; I’m afraid I can’t stay but I expect she’ll still be as new when she returns to me tomorrow morning.’
‘You know I don’t mess around with your whores Harper, she’ll be as pure tomorrow as she is today,’ said Stone. ‘For all that’s worth.’
Hearing Stone confirm what Harper had said about him not touching the girls allowed Lucy to breathe a little easier. Stone came across as a dangerous man but he could be anyway he wanted as far as Lucy was concerned so long as he didn’t touch her. She desperately wanted to run away from all of this and thought of Sam on his way to be with her and knew one of the rooms somewhere in this apartment belonged to her sister. If she could just leave the letter she had written for her she’d have to trust Kathy found it okay. Lucy knew she couldn’t risk another day working for Harper after this. Now was her only chance.
Stone escorted Harper back to the lift and then stepped back to watch the doors close; glad it would be another week before he had to deal with him again. He turned to see Lucy standing with her cleaning cart looking around the massive apartment.
‘Lucy isn’t it? Well I guess you’d better get on with it,’ he spoke in his usual curt professional
voice.
‘Yes sir, I’ll start in the kitchen if that’s okay with you.’
Stone escorted Lucy to the kitchen then returned to the main lounge area pausing briefly to pour himself a large cognac from Henderson’s private bar and sat with his drink in Henderson’s favourite chair while she worked.
Lucy reckoned the huge kitchen had a floor area almost twice the size of the living room in her Aunt Susan’s house. She found all the surfaces to be in good order and generally little needed to be done except cleaning the shelves in the fridge and dumping a bag of waste into the garbage chute in the utility room located out the back of the main kitchen area. Most of the Elites preferred to eat out in expensive restaurants or ordered high quality catered meals so the kitchens in their homes were largely unused, lifeless places but what she found here in the Henderson’s were racks of spices, bottles of various flavoured oils and vinegars, fresh and dried herbs and several types of cured meat. The larder was well stocked with cans of food and plenty of fresh produce which Lucy assumed was imported either from the continent or grown in the prison farms and the best creamed off for the Elites personal consumption. The whole room felt alive, lived in, almost homely compared with the staid main living area.
Since the most recent letter she had read from the box her aunt left her was dated two years ago she feared that perhaps Kathy had moved out or maybe even got married and lived elsewhere in the city. It was only now she realised how much she had pinned her hopes on finding Kathy still living here but being the only lead she had what choice did she have. Lucy doubted Victor Henderson would even consider cooking for himself and whoever ran the kitchen here obviously had a culinary passion. The decor and general look of the room had a feminine feel to it too and Lucy was excited to think she might be standing in her sister’s kitchen; she began to allow herself to hope that this could be the first real contact with the sister she had never known.
Her nerves now more settled and her spirits rising again Lucy checked the little knife she had taken from Madsen’s apartment was still concealed in the folds of her apron before she composed herself and re-entered the main living space and for the first time really looked at the room. She found it truly mind-boggling how a probably priceless collection of beautiful objects and furniture could be assembled and arranged in such a way as to appear cheap and tacky. Lucy’s impression of the room was one that most people would have concurred with.
Pushing her cleaning cart in front of her she became aware of the oppressive silence broken only by the rattling of the various cans and bottles of cleaning products as the cart rolled over the deep carpet. As she came from the kitchen she glanced to Stone who had not moved. He just sat there, sipping his drink and stared at the wall as she walked through the room. Normally in other elite apartments there would have been the sound of a few other girls working and Harper babbling on but here with just Stone she felt the full weight of the silence which made her incredibly uncomfortable.
She worked hard and fast wanting to get this ordeal over with as quickly as possible. She felt more afraid Harper would come back than of the man watching over her but even so she still had to deliver her vital message and get home. However this played out she would not risk being alone with Harper or any of these men ever again and she wondered how the other girls lived every day with the fear and violence.
While she picked up and straightened and dusted she kept an eye on Stone but he said nothing and moved only once to fix himself another drink. As she explored the other rooms on the lower level of the vast apartment she discovered a games room with full size billiards table, a cooled wine store, two bathrooms, general store room and a huge cloakroom with both men’s and women’s overcoats and jackets divided into one side each for the different genders.
Finding nothing of her sister here she knew she now had only the upstairs area to search and therefore only that space remained for her to find somewhere secure to deliver her letter.
‘What am I doing?’ Lucy thought to herself beginning to feel she had set herself an impossible task. ‘Even if she does believe me I’m expecting her to, what, leave all her money and fine living behind to follow her crazy sister on a wild path with a strange man she has never met?’
Lucy knew she was asking for the moon but she also knew she could never forgive herself for not trying.
‘I need to vacuum,’ said Lucy calling to Stone and interrupting him from his thoughts. ‘Do you know where they keep it? I didn’t find one in the utility room.’
Stone placed his glass on the coffee table in front of him and without saying a word crossed the room to the hallway and pointed to a decorative panel on the wall. Lucy followed him and looked but couldn’t see what he was pointing at, there was no door or handle as for the other cupboards and storage areas she had found. Stone pushed the panel and it clicked then swung open revealing a large cylinder resembling a hot water tank connected to several large pipes. Coiled and looped over a bracket beside the cylinder was a long flexible hose with a brass tube on one end and shorter brass fitting on the other.
‘You really are new aren’t you,’ said Stone realising that Lucy didn’t seem to know what to do with the apparatus he was showing her. ‘It’s a plumbed in vacuum system, there’s no separate cleaner so you just take this tube and plug the end into the circular port along the bottom of the wall and the system starts. All the junk gets sucked into this big tank and it’s emptied every couple of months when it gets full. It’s neater and easier in a place this big.’
Lucy tentatively took the hose from the bracket and looked around for where to connect it.
Stone looked at her sympathetically and shook his head. ‘Here, I’ll show you,’ he said taking the appropriate end of the tube and knelt to slide a little circular cover back from a nearby brass outlet close to the floor plugging and twisting the brass fitting into place. Once connected the silence in the apartment was replaced with a low hum rising in volume as the vacuum system powered up.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t seen one of these before. There are more of these outlets around the apartment so you can work from one to the other as you need to. Well, the attachments are stored in the same place so I assume you know what to do with those?’ said Stone turning and walking back to take his seat and finish his drink.
‘You’d best get on with it, I have to collect Mr. Henderson and drive him to his club this afternoon so I can’t sit around waiting on you all day.’
‘I’ll start upstairs,’ said Lucy as she looked toward Stone who drained the last of the liquid from his glass and stared back at her with his frightening single eye as he did so.
She selected a few items from her cleaning cart and carried the vacuum tube and nozzle attachments up the right hand staircase above the kitchen and began cleaning and vacuuming along the balcony. All the while she kept checking on the man in the living area below but he showed no further sign of interest in her. As she moved from the balcony and down the upper right corridor she realised she was out of sight now. She moved the vacuum pipe to the next outlet and when she was sure the noise covered her movements she ran quickly from room to room hoping to find evidence of Kathy.
Peeking around the doors she found another huge bathroom, a couple of undisturbed guest bedrooms and at the end of the corridor she found what she assumed was the master suite. Henderson’s own private chambers were lined with white marble floors, black satin curtains, black silk sheets and brass and gold fittings everywhere including a massive floor to ceiling mirror held within a heavy gold frame. An offensive musty odour hung in the air and clothes and soiled underwear lay about the floor. Lucy’s mind suddenly flashed a disgusting image of Henderson admiring his own grotesque naked form in the large mirror.
‘The Emperor has no clothes,’ she thought aloud. ‘Gross.’
Ignoring the mess and feeling time slip away Lucy left the vacuum running and keeping close to the wall peered around the corner over the banister to see Stone had his head stuc
k in a large book he had lifted from the coffee table. Taking the chance she took her shoes off and holding one in each hand ran across the upper level to the left side and darted along the left hand upper corridor before she was spotted. Breathing heavily she began searching room by room, looking over her shoulder for fear that Stone would get curious or come to check on her at any minute.
Almost a mirror of the right-hand side the left corridor led to immaculate guest bedrooms with dust covers over the beds and a slightly stale smell in the air suggesting no one had used the rooms or opened a window for some time. As she neared the end of the corridor she was breathing even more heavily, not with effort but with anxiety, fearing what Stone would do if he caught her sneaking around as she was doing.
The last door at the very end Lucy guessed would be the mirror of Henderson’s master suite but nothing could match it for its ostentatiousness.
‘This is it, it has to be Kathy’s room,’ she whispered to herself and taking a deep breath turned the handle but found the door locked.
‘Damn it!’ she said a little too loudly and checked again over her shoulder relieved to find the corridor behind her still empty. ‘Think Lucy, what do you do now?’ she asked herself. ‘I can’t just leave the letter, what if I’m wrong and she’s not even here. Oh this is crazy, just go. No, stop girl, you’ve got yourself this far, don’t quit now. And stop talking to yourself.’