by Joseph Knox
He’d been one of the three kidnappers.
Press speculation was that he’d discovered the whereabouts of Fisk’s wealth himself, and betrayed the others. Anonymously tipped off Fisk’s organization and, at the very last second, warned his friends inside the house that there were men approaching. He’d left to a safe distance, watching, while they wiped each other out. Speculation was all the press had, because Bateman had never spoken at his trial or in prison.
It was difficult for him to speak.
The reports all ended the same way. When Bateman had returned to pick over the spoils, Fisk had got loose, found a gun inside the house and shot his kidnapper in the head. There’d been a child on the scene, whose name, sex and age couldn’t legally be reported. But he’d been an eight-year-old boy. He’d run into the trees and hadn’t been found until the following day. Bateman had needed him to get into the attic, to edge inside the narrow space that only the slender Nicholas Fisk, or a small child, could manage. Bateman had been using the boy in con jobs since moving in with his mother. The size, the perceived innocence of a child, was what he thought of as his innovation to the field. He thought of the kids in his care as untapped gold mines, and he called the boy Wally, which was short for wallet.
Everyone else called him Aidan.
2
We were in a hospital waiting room, preparing for the formal identification of Ross Browne. The smiling man. There was Sutty, myself and Amy Burroughs, the nurse who’d been in a relationship with Browne before he left the city.
The only person we’d found who could identify him.
The Coroner’s Officer was explaining her role to Amy, but I wasn’t listening. I’d slept badly and been awoken by another phone call with nothing but breathing on the other end. When I’d looked out of my window on to the street there was no one there, but I knew it was Bateman.
I was wondering why he was back.
What he wanted and why me. If it was for money, he was about to be sorely disappointed by a policeman’s salary. Revenge? On an eight-year-old boy who’d opened the wrong door? That didn’t make sense, either. And he’d been watching me. Waiting. His arrival coinciding with that of the pictures set off a series of internal alarms through my nervous system. All of them saying the same word over and over again: Fuck.
‘Aidan,’ said Sutty, clicking his fingers in my face. I looked up at the Coroner’s Officer who’d been talking to me.
‘Mrs Burroughs would like you to accompany her inside.’
‘Yes,’ I said, looking at Amy. ‘Of course.’
The Officer turned to her. ‘And do you have any questions for me now?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
‘OK. Do you think you’re ready to go through?’ Amy suddenly looked very pale and the Coroner’s Officer smiled. ‘We’re a little early, anyway.’ We all took a seat for a minute, adjusting to our surroundings. The strangest thing about identifying a body is how normal it all seems. You’re sitting in a standard waiting room that could serve any purpose, have any kind of news, good or bad, on the other side of it. It’s just someone’s job and it happens every day. This time it’s your turn. Tomorrow it’s someone else’s.
‘I think I’m ready,’ Amy said quietly.
The Coroner’s Officer smiled again and led the two of us to the door. As ever, the first thing I noticed on the other side was the impossible taste and smell of formaldehyde. The second thing I noticed was Karen Stromer, watching us from the corner of the room like a gargoyle. When she looked at me it wasn’t with prejudice or dislike. It was with disappointment, I thought. The Officer led us to a gleaming stainless-steel table on wheels. There was a dull-green sheet drawn over a body and an ageless, pale man standing beside it. When the Officer turned to look at us I realized Amy had remained by the door, hadn’t walked any further.
‘Amy?’ said the Officer.
‘It’s not him …’
It sounded like denial. The assistant hadn’t even drawn back the sheet.
‘Amy,’ said the Officer. ‘I know this is distressing—’
But she was shaking her head, smiling. ‘It’s not him.’ She looked at me, then at the body on the table. ‘His feet,’ she said. They were the only part of the smiling man’s body that were visible. ‘Ross lost his right leg in Iraq. That’s how we met, he had post-traumatic stress.’
The Officer and I looked at each other. She recovered well. ‘OK, well, that’s good news. Can I ask you to formalize the identification?’ My mind was coming slowly back to the scene in front of me. The dead body didn’t belong to Ross Browne. We’d lost our positive identification on the smiling man.
‘Of course,’ said Amy, stepping forward with a shake in her voice, but also some lightness, some relief. She stood beside me as the assistant drew back the sheet from the man’s head.
I recognized him, of course.
The Palace Hotel.
He’d been sitting there in that room, absorbing the kaleidoscopic lights of the city, emitting a strange energy of his own, as if he was at the centre of something awful. Here, naked on a slab, he was stripped of all that. He seemed mundane, pale and powerless. I looked at Amy. Her mouth had fallen open in shock and I wondered if she’d been wrong somehow.
‘Is this man Ross Browne?’ said the Coroner’s Officer.
Amy Burroughs didn’t speak, and she slowly began to double up, like she’d been punched in the stomach. She tried to reach out for the table but didn’t quite make it. She passed out and I caught her before she fell.
We were back in the waiting room. Amy was drinking a glass of water, being attended to by the Coroner’s Officer. Sutty and I were looking on from the corner of the room.
‘Take it we’ve got our man,’ he grunted.
I shook my head. Kept my voice low. ‘She said not.’
‘What? A nurse fainting at the sight of a dead bloke she’s never met? My arse.’
I turned. ‘She said Ross Browne couldn’t be the man in there. She said Ross Browne lost a leg in Iraq.’
Sutty closed his eyes.
‘I know. But when they pulled the sheet back she had an intense reaction to the body, whoever it was.’
‘Well,’ said Sutty. ‘Even if we can’t pull Browne’s full military record, we should be able to find out how many limbs he shipped home with. Was she telling the truth?’
‘I thought so, but …’
‘But what?’
‘Her reaction says not. It was too much. She saw something in there.’
‘Find out what.’ I looked at him but he kept his eyes locked on Amy. His voice was a whisper. ‘You can be a shoulder to cry on, but a cold fucking shoulder. Take her home and make her talk.’
3
I was driving Amy Burroughs home after the negative identification of Ross Browne. Sutty was chasing down his military records, or at least confirmation that Browne had lost his leg abroad. I was rattled. Tired and confused. I couldn’t quite shake Amy’s reaction to the body, and it filled me with uncomfortable questions. Either she was lying about the identification or, worse, something even more complicated was going on with the dead man.
‘I need to know what happened in there.’
‘Nothing happened,’ she said after some time.
‘That was quite a reaction for nothing.’
‘It’s not him,’ she said, definitively.
But my patience was gone. ‘You’re keeping something back. What did you see?’ I pulled up around the corner from her street, remembering that things were sensitive at home. When I killed the engine and looked at her she was watching me out of the corner of her eye. She turned to face me fully.
‘You’re imagining things, Detective.’
‘I didn’t imagine catching you in there.’
‘My hero …’ She looked away.
‘Well, answer me this at least. Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine, I’m just overworked. Just tired.’
‘I’m not asking about
your constitution. I’m asking if you’re safe, if your boy is.’
‘From what?’ she said, toying with the mass of thick, plastic bracelets at her wrist.
‘From whatever just scared you out of consciousness.’
The set of her jaw hardened and she smiled bitterly. ‘I get it,’ she said. ‘You’re here for me …’
‘I—’
‘My husband’s not home so you want to come inside? Very subtle …’
‘What?’
‘You’re not as slick as you think you are,’ she said. It sounded like she was talking to someone else but it still landed. ‘I want to get out, I want to go home.’
I started up again and turned on to her street. When I pulled up she left the car without another word, not looking back until she’d got her front door open and stepped through it. Standing there in the hallway alone, I thought she looked like a woman with a secret. She paused inside the house and then turned, took a step, as though there was something she wanted to say to me. Then she disappeared inside, leaving the door ajar.
I was thinking about following her to continue the conversation when there was a knock at the window. I turned to see an elderly woman in a dressing gown, a neighbour of Amy’s. I buzzed down the glass.
‘Can I help you?’ I said, a little too sharply. I was tired and the question marks were ganging up over my head. I wasn’t in the mood for rubberneckers.
‘Oh, sorry to bother you,’ she said, pursing her lips. ‘But you are a police officer?’
‘No, I’m sorry,’ I said, really meaning it. ‘I am a police officer, yes.’
‘Yes,’ she said, restored somewhat by my gesture towards civility. ‘I saw you and your partner sitting out here the other night with nothing better to do …’
‘How did you know we were police?’
‘Shifty eyes,’ she said. ‘Put it this way, you’d both go hungry as salesmen. Do you not need to speak to me?’
‘Speak to you about what?’
‘About the prowler.’
I got out of the car and walked her back to her front door. ‘What prowler are we talking about here?’
‘Well, like I told her,’ she said, nodding towards Amy’s house. ‘He was sniffing round like a dog with two dicks. Shuffling up and down the street, staring at her house. Except, when he thought no one was watching, his shuffle went away. He’d look through the windows and the letterbox, then when he saw someone coming, he’d shuffle off again.’
‘When was this?’
‘Last Friday.’
The day before the smiling man died.
‘Can you describe him for me?’
‘Well …’ She paused for maximum effect. I tried to stay calm. ‘Now let me see. He was a good bit older than you. Wore a brown suit, asylum-seeker tan. There was something about his eyes, though …’ She frowned in concentration. ‘Blue. Very blue. They didn’t go with the rest of him. Stood out from across the street.’
I kept my voice level. ‘Did this man speak to, or otherwise interact with, Ms Burroughs?’
‘Not that I saw, sweetheart, but I told her to report him to the police. Men these days—’
‘You’ve been a great help,’ I said, crossing the road to Amy’s house, where the door remained ajar.
The smiling man had been here, and on the day before he died.
His secondary connection to Amy Burroughs was already established. Her phone number found in his possession. The book that she claimed she’d given to someone else. There were possible mundane explanations for that. Theft. Obsession. But a visit here was too much to overlook, especially given that Amy’s neighbour had told her about a suspicious man watching the property. Especially given that she’d failed to mention it. I pushed the open door and stepped into the hallway.
I felt glass cracking under my shoes.
The picture frames lining the walls had all been smashed in.
‘Amy,’ I called out.
There was no answer.
I couldn’t decide if I was looking at a psychotic breakdown or an intruder. I was about to call for back-up when I saw that the person in each of the smashed picture frames was Amy’s little boy. I felt certain she hadn’t done it herself.
As I took another step I heard whimpering from further inside. When I reached the end of the hall I saw her. She was pale, sweating, with tears streaming down her face. Her hand had been nailed into the wall. As I stepped around the corner I saw a man in a black balaclava holding a nail gun to her temple. He turned and I took a step back. He hissed a few more words into her ear and bolted through the kitchen.
‘Try not to move,’ I said, approaching her. She was clearly in pain but nodded. I followed the man through to the kitchen and out the back door. I was just in time to see him vault over the fence. When I got to it and looked after him he was gone. I went back into the house, called Dispatch for back-up and an ambulance for Amy. As I tried to talk to her she continued to stare over my shoulder in shock. Following her eyeline I saw that all the photographs of her little boy above the mantle had been nail-gunned into the wall, through his eyes.
4
Amy had been taken to hospital and officers had been sent to secure the safety of her boy. He was fine, still with the friend who babysat for her while she and her husband were at work. Both of them would need protection until the threat, whatever it was, had passed. The man with the nail gun had got away and Amy was too traumatized to tell us anything. When I’d asked what the man had been saying, hissing, into her ear she’d started to tell me something and then stopped. Her eyes had settled on the pictures of her boy.
The nails sticking out of his eyes.
‘He didn’t say anything,’ she said.
I returned to the station to fill Sutty in, finding him on the phone, mid-conversation. ‘Yeurgh,’ he said. ‘Yeurgh. Actually, someone just arrived who I’d like you to talk to. Thanks for your help.’ He threw the receiver at me and I caught it, then he dropped into his chair like a depth charge and watched.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Can I ask who I’m speaking with?’
‘This is Ross Browne.’
I rubbed my face and glanced at Sutty, who was smiling. Browne confirmed everything that Amy Burroughs had told us. They’d dated, briefly, five years before, when he’d rotated out of Iraq with an injury. When the city’s insomnia started amplifying his own, he’d moved to the coast and they’d split up. He’d never been back since, so he claimed, and had an airtight alibi for the events of Saturday night, and for all the incidents since.
For fuck’s sake, I thought.
He didn’t even know she’d had a kid, so I left questions of paternity unasked.
Sutty waved for my attention. ‘Ask about the book …’
When I did, I expected a story about how it had been lost or stolen. Something that would at least give us the smiling man’s first interaction with the text. I was surprised when Browne said he had his copy there in his lap.
‘We’re talking about The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, given to you by Amy Burroughs?’
‘Only copy I ever had,’ he said.
‘You’re certain it hasn’t been replaced?’
‘Course.’
‘Could you check the last page for me, Mr Browne? Read me the final line?’
I heard him turning pages. ‘Tamam Shud,’ he said.
I looked at Sutty, who was blowing out his cheeks. ‘And nothing’s been torn from it or amended?’
‘I know it’s the one Amy gave me cus her writing’s there at the front. She’s OK, isn’t she?’
‘As well as can be. Could you read me that dedication?’
Haltingly, he did so. It was word-for-word the same as that found in the unidentified man’s copy. As he talked I lowered myself into a chair, resting my head in my hands. Either it had been counterfeited or she’d dedicated two copies. The local police had taken a statement from Browne and it all checked out. He hadn’t been near the city in the last few days. I thanked
him for his help and hung up.
I looked, flatly, at Sutty.
He looked, flatly, back at me.
I couldn’t even get the first swear word out before the phone started ringing again.
It was Aneesa Khan.
‘Good morning,’ I said, not really feeling it. ‘We’re still on for later?’
‘That’s what I’m calling about. I’m afraid it looks as though our conference call with Anthony might not be possible.’
‘Really,’ I said.
Aneesa told me she’d been trying to get hold of Anthony Blick all morning to no avail. She said she’d last spoken to him, briefly, over a week before, but this morning his phone just rang out. Or at least it had at first.
Now it didn’t ring at all.
Sutty eyed me suspiciously while I tried to talk around the facts of a side-investigation I was keeping from him.
‘Are you still in the office?’ I asked Aneesa.
5
Blick’s was the respectable city-centre workplace you’d expect. A light, open reception area with biometric security measures and ergonomic chairs. A young woman on the front desk took me through to Ms Khan’s office, asked if she could get me anything and then left, closing the door behind her when I declined. Aneesa looked like she was sleeping badly, too, but she greeted me with a tired smile and I took a seat.
‘You said you last spoke to Mr Blick over a week ago. Can I ask what your conversation was about?’
‘Nothing special. As you know, Anthony’s made a point of taking some time out. So we have a monthly phone call where I brief him on any developments at the firm. Long-term clients, personnel, office politics …’
‘And he sounded OK?’
‘He sounded like he was having the time of his life.’
‘He didn’t say anything that struck you as odd or out of the ordinary?’
‘Nothing …’
‘Are you in charge of the office in Mr Blick’s absence?’