Dark Game

by Rachel Lynch

  ‘At least twenty minutes.’

  ‘Were you asked this question at the time?’

  ‘No, definitely not.’

  ‘Do you think your brother might be home, Jenny? It seems a waste of time to go all the way back to Penrith when I could carry on to Barrow.’ Kelly was enjoying being out of the office, having her own paths to follow.

  ‘I’ll give him a call now.’ Jenny picked up the phone. ‘Den, it’s Jenny… Yes. Fine, fine. Look, I’ve got the police here, they’re looking into Lottie’s case again… I know, I’m very happy too. They need to go over a few things, so could they come over to yours if you’re about?… OK. All day?’ She mouthed that her brother was about to leave for work; Kelly mouthed back that she could talk to him there.

  ‘They can come to the pub… You’re not working at the pub? Why, Den?… Again? All right, well where are you working now?… Right, OK Den, it’ll be after that. Yes, see you later, bye.’

  Jenny looked at Kelly. ‘He’s working on a building site on Walney Island. It’s easy to find. I’ll write it down, or… I could come with you?’

  Kelly could see that the woman desperately wanted the distraction.

  ‘Of course, come with me.’

  Chapter 9

  Chief Coroner Ted Wallis was standing over the cadaver of an old friend. He guessed this would become a more frequent occurrence as time passed and associates came to the end of their lives. Would he autopsy all of his loved ones before he himself finally died? He noticed that he was becoming closer in age to many of his dead subjects on a daily basis, and it unsettled him.

  Apparently the old goat had gone happy. Only a fellow autumnal traveller would understand the joy of dying in such a manner. It didn’t really matter who the girl was, just that his last thought had been one of pert breasts and smooth skin slipping over his own. Lucky bastard. But then he thought of Christine, Colin’s wife.

  Ted himself had recently mustered up the courage to tell his own wife that their thirty-year marriage was over. She’d wailed and smashed bottles of sherry but she’d done nothing that he hadn’t expected. He’d moved out of their family home and into a flat in Carlisle. It was clean, small and very quiet. Now his usual torpor, signalled by a frequent sigh and sagging shoulders, had gone, and his gait was sprightly once more.

  He adjusted his headset and examined the corpse externally. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary for a man of seventy-five. Colin had had good teeth and a full head of hair, though Ted reckoned he was fifty pounds overweight and predicted he’d find a heart clogged with atherosclerosis – a time bomb. He took samples of blood and looked under the nails. Forensics had bagged a wealth of treasure and he wondered if anything would be left for him before the cadaver was washed and presented back to the family. There was an oily substance under most of the nails and he took scrapings, being careful to bag and tag each one for analysis. From in between the third and fourth fingers on the left hand, tangled in Colin’s wedding ring, he tweezed out several long red hairs. The fibres were unusually red: either hair dye or another type of fibre altogether. A small red scratch caught his eye underneath the chest hair, and he measured and photographed it. It looked to him like a wound inflicted by a human nail, but it could have been caused by any number of things. It was his job to be as thorough as possible without bias; it was up to the detectives to decide what was important.

  Happy with the external examination, he made a Y incision from clavicle to clavicle and down towards the belly button. Great layers of fat sprang out around the scalpel; he’d have to get through those before revealing the organ cavity. The notes on the deceased stated that he was suffering from advanced type 2 diabetes mellitus, and there was little doubt as to its cause. In the later stages of the disease, if the patient did not modify their lifestyle and follow precise medication pathways, heart disease became more and more likely.

  After sawing the ribcage open, he cracked each rib with a satisfying snap to reveal the vital organs. He noticed the liver first: it was huge, probably almost three times its normal weight; it was also an unhealthy yellow, rather than the usual copper colour. He glanced at his notes. Colin’s last blood test had shown abnormal enzyme levels, indicating poor liver function. It might have been alcohol-induced; he wouldn’t know that until he cut it open.

  The lungs appeared fairly healthy from the outside, as did the intestines he could see. Evisceration took a long time, and he noticed the unusual weight of the organ sac. He weighed it and left it on the side for his assistant to photograph while he examined the cavity left behind. All seemed normal there, so he turned his attention to the organs, one by one.

  It didn’t take long to find the cause of death: myocardial infarction caused by a sudden lack of blood to the heart. Now he had to investigate whether the lack of blood was caused by a gradual closing of a blood vessel or a sudden clot of plaque breaking away and preventing blood flow. As he sliced through the coronary artery, which would normally be the diameter of a pencil, he saw that it was completely occluded. Bingo. Without doubt, the cause of Colin Day’s demise was coronary heart disease. Of course, heart attacks were survivable, but not this one. Ted wondered who Colin’s GP was, and if the old man had taken any notice of the warnings he’d doubtless been given.

  He left part two of the autopsy report blank until he heard back from toxicology and histology, because there were no obvious secondary findings. His assistant helped him rearrange the organs inside the cavity – minus the bits and pieces for further investigation under a microscope – and then Ted stitched the cadaver back up. When he had finished, it looked like Colin Day again: an overweight but extremely happy man.

  He didn’t blame the girl, whoever she was. His notes said that the heart attack had happened during coitus, but he couldn’t help wondering what her side of the story was. It was human nature to ponder such things. One thing was for sure: whoever it was, it wasn’t Colin’s wife. Christine was in a wheelchair and had been for ten years. The local press were going to have a field day.

  Chapter 10

  Tania unlocked the front door of the nurses’ block and Carl followed her in. She giggled as he squeezed her bottom.

  ‘Stop it!’ she squealed, unconvincingly.

  ‘How can I stop it? You can’t see what I can, but it’s begging to be squeezed, like the rest of you.’ He stopped her in the corridor and pinned her against the wall. His hands travelled quickly to her breasts and he lifted up her blouse.

  ‘Carl! Wait!’ She ran towards her flat and he followed. She’d made the recording and it was on her phone. He was about to get an exclusive.

  Once they were inside, she dropped her bag and began taking her clothes off, moving just far enough away so he couldn’t touch her.

  ‘Tease,’ he said, and smiled. ‘OK, I’ll just watch.’ He sat on the sofa and lay back; she’d grown in confidence and he was genuinely turned on. Her coat fell to the floor and she started unbuttoning her blouse. Her skin was smooth and his erection struggled against his pants. She slid off her jeans, then came to him and unzipped his trousers, tugging them down along with his boxers.

  She knelt down and kissed his balls, then slid her tongue all the way up until he was fully inside her mouth. She was good. No teeth. He felt as though his balls would explode but tried to keep it going. He stopped breathing and all he could feel was the purest pleasure from what she was doing with her mouth. She went a little faster and his head throbbed. He had to come, it was too good an opportunity; he’d make it up to her later.

  ‘I’m going to come, Tania.’ It was her last chance. She didn’t stop. Good girl, he thought.

  He came into her mouth, pulsating over and over again. He only realised he was sweating when he began to breathe again. She swallowed.

  ‘That was amazing,’ he said, and she smiled, pleased with herself.

  ‘Come here.’ It was a command, and she lay down with her back to him. He held her with one arm and undid her bra with his free hand. Her
tits were perfectly hand-sized and he cupped them and played with her nipples with his thumbs. She began to moan. He slid her pants off and expertly teased her clitoris until it tightened. He felt himself go hard again; he was most impressed with himself. He positioned her so he could enter her easily and held onto her hips from the back, pushing deeply. Her tits bounced and her arse wobbled satisfyingly. Soon enough, she went off like the fourth of July and he came for a second time.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ she asked after he’d given her the obligatory cuddle.

  ‘Sure.’

  She got off the sofa, pulled on a sweater, and returned with two cold beers.

  ‘So, like I said, I recorded the foreign woman: she was babbling all shift.’

  Carl feigned nonchalance, and pulled on his pants. ‘She’s getting better then?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, she’s making a good recovery. I feel sorry for the baby, though; he’d be better off if she died.’

  ‘What do you mean? That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really. She clearly doesn’t want him, so what kind of a start is that? He’s fucked anyway. He’ll probably spend his life in and out of foster homes and set fire to something when he’s ten; another drain on the state.’

  ‘But if she wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place, he might be sent back to where they came from and perhaps be looked after properly.’

  ‘Doubt it. They’re never sent home, are they? Violation of human rights or some other bullshit.’ She jumped up to get her phone from her bag. ‘Here,’ she said, tapping in her password and handing it to him. ‘It’s in camera because voice memo is too short.’

  ‘You filmed her?’ Carl was incredulous but excited. Tania giggled. ‘A bit. She’s weird, watch them.’

  ‘Them?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, there’s a few on there.’

  Carl opened Tania’s photos and scrolled backwards. There were seven video recordings in all. He clicked on the first. What struck him immediately was that the woman was very young – more of a girl, in fact. She was tossing and turning and pulling at her IV, which was when the first video stopped; Tania had obviously realised that to look after her patient she’d have to put the phone down. The second video was a close-up of the girl asleep. She could barely be twenty one years old, Carl thought.

  Tania grew bolder with each recording, and by the last one, she was asking the girl questions in English and recording the replies. The girl was shaking her head, clearly baffled but also very afraid. She had the look of someone being held captive, and it was clear that no one had bothered to explain to her where she was.

  Something else was clear in Carl’s mind. She was speaking Serbo-Croat, and he’d heard her accent a thousand times before; he’d bet his life she was from Bosnia. Reports from the war there had been used daily as part of his journalism degree because so many of them went on to win awards, and the language as well as the images had stuck in his brain. He knew just who to take the videos to for confirmation.

  ‘Can I send them to my phone? I want to be sure. I think I know where she’s from but I need to check. There’s a guy in our faculty who’s Russian; he’ll know for sure.’

  ‘You think she’s Russian?’

  ‘She might be.’

  ‘She could be a spy!’

  ‘Maybe the baby is Putin’s.’

  ‘Who’s Putin?’

  ‘Never mind, it was a joke. Here, let me do it.’ The last thing he needed was Tania gaining access to his personal mobile.

  ‘That’s fine. I’ll delete them anyway, I’m not interested in them. Should we go out?’

  Carl completed his task and put his phone into his jacket.

  ‘How about a takeaway? I’ll go and get it, you make yourself comfortable.’ He kissed her.

  ‘Deal. I’ll have a shower.’

  She disappeared and Carl rolled his eyes, gathering his clothes. He looked around for the last time, making sure he had all of his personal items, and left the flat. He had no more use for Tania. As soon as the story hit, she’d know it was him, so he couldn’t use her any more anyway.

  She’d get over it.

  Chapter 11

  Mrs Joliffe was seething. She’d offered the Japanese couple a night’s free accommodation with breakfast included, but they’d packed their bags and left anyway. She could do without the negative attention. Every time the front door opened, she jumped up to see if Anushka had returned, but there was no sign of her, or Roza.

  ‘You must know where they are, Gabriela, you girls gossip about everything. They must have gone somewhere together, and I can only assume they’re not coming back. Typical. You give people a chance and they throw it in your face.’

  Mrs Joliffe had come to her room to find her, and now she was hoovering her office, trying to avoid eye contact. Gabriela let her boss rant on. She had no idea where either girl had gone but she knew it had something to do with someone called Darren. She’d keep that to herself, though. Mrs Joliffe didn’t need to know, and besides, it wouldn’t help. She said as little as possible.

  With all the fuss happening around her, Gabriela had considered going home. She wanted to see Nikita, to buy him ice cream and tell him stories about these rich people who ate too much and wore too much make-up. It was either that or accept Mrs Joliffe’s offer. It paid more money, but what really attracted her was that it promised to be very quiet.

  Night manager. It sounded grand. It would mean she’d have to sleep all day and she’d hardly see a soul, but that was just what she needed to keep away from people like Anushka. It was a lot of responsibility, and she was flattered that Mrs Joliffe trusted her.

  Her boss was still chuntering under her breath. Anushka and Roza had left her short-staffed.

  Gabriela’s mind wandered. Everyone knew about the man who’d died in the hotel down the road, and the presence of the police was making a lot of people jumpy. Would they want to interview staff from other hotels in the area? No one knew, but if they did, would they also want to see ID and work permits?

  Gabriela had followed the story in the newspaper. The article said that Mr Day was an important man and his passing was a great loss. There’d been a picture of him and his wife, who was in a wheelchair, at an important event. She felt sorry for the woman and her three children. The paper said he’d had a heart attack. What she couldn’t understand was what he was doing in a hotel if he was a loving family man with a home a stone’s throw away from Lake Windermere. Maybe he and his wife had fought and he’d checked in to cool off.

  Mrs Joliffe interrupted her thoughts.

  ‘Gabriela, turn that thing off.’ Gabriela did so and stood to attention, still managing to avoid Mrs Joliffe’s gaze.

  ‘Things are getting tricky, shall we say. I’ve managed to get hold of a work permit and I’ve filled out your details. It’s for your own protection, you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Joliffe.’

  ‘And I’ll need your passport.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes please. Have you thought about my offer?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Joliffe, I’d like to accept if it remains available.’

  ‘Excellent. You’ll need to get some sleep so you can start tonight at ten.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Joliffe… Will I be receiving any training for the post?’ she asked, unsure of her new role.

  ‘You won’t need any. Just use your wits. You know your way around and I’ll tell you tonight what to expect.’

  ‘You’ll be here?’

  ‘For your first evening, of course. Now, off you go.’

  Gabriela went to her room to fetch her passport. She wondered if she might be so bold as to ask if she could have the room to herself with the girls gone, as she’d be sleeping through the day when the hotel was at its busiest.

  She took the passport to Mrs Joliffe’s office and handed it over.

  ‘Thank you, Gabriela. It’s what you might call my insurance, if you know what I mean,’ her boss said.
A sinking feeling formed inside Gabriela’s tummy, and the corners of her mouth dipped ever so slightly.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Joliffe,’ she said. She knew that she had just made her first mistake.

  Her shoulders sagged as she climbed the stairs to her room and sat heavily on her bed. She decided to write to her mother. Emails and Skype were all well and good, but she enjoyed writing real letters, and her mother loved to receive them. She described everything she saw – the clothes, the cars, the food, the freedom with which people came and went – and even included little sketches. Now, as she put pen to paper, she tried to be buoyant and entertaining. She didn’t want to mention anything that would worry her mother, so she said nothing about Anushka, Roza or Darren. Neither did she mention her new position.

  After she had finished, she folded the sheets of paper and laid them on her bed. She knew she was supposed to be resting for the long night shift ahead, but she felt wide awake. Anushka’s bed was bare, but Roza’s was still littered with her belongings. She obviously intended to return at some point. Gabriela’s curiosity got the better of her and she walked over to Roza’s bed. She knew it was wrong, but she had an urge to look at the other girl’s belongings. Perhaps it was to understand her better – because she herself was so different – or perhaps she just wanted to know what Anushka and Roza got up to when they stayed away for days at a time.

  A photograph on Roza’s bedside cabinet caught her attention; Gabriela assumed it was either her mother or her sister. She carefully opened the top drawer. It contained underwear. The next one held a large packet of condoms. Gabriela had never had sex and she wondered what it was like. She was quite baffled by girls who did it all the time with different people. She took one of the condoms out of its packet and opened it up. It was silky soft and very long. She imagined a man’s penis filling it; it was an ugly vision and it didn’t excite her at all. She knew about erections and orgasms but had never felt that close to a boy, ever. She wondered how many different men Anushka and Roza had slept with since arriving in Ambleside.