by Kris Langman
‘I just wanted you to know who you’re living next door to. He’s hurt a lot of people. He got to me years ago. At school. Wyndham Prep. Ask him about Wyndham Prep.’
No signature. Anne turned the sheet over. An address was scrawled there: Flat B, 116 Wardour, Soho. She flipped it back over and read it through again, then stood staring blankly down at it. What was it exactly? A warning? A threat? A cry for help? A practical joke? She had no idea who’d written it, but it seemed to refer to Dr. Davidson. Unless someone had it in for Mr. Golan, the tenant on the other side of her. As Mr. Golan was ninety-three, blind, and bedridden, this seemed unlikely.
She glanced down at the note again, and then at the wall separating her flat from Dr. Davidson’s. The conversation she had overheard more than a week ago came back to her. Jimmy shouting something about money. ‘I’m going to cut off your money supply.’ Money supply suggested regular payments. Possibly blackmail. That damn doctor. Every time she thought of him her shoulders started climbing up to her ears. She tucked the sheet of paper back into its envelope and stuck it into a fat book of data processing algorithms that lay open on the dining room table. She slammed the book closed. There. Out of sight, out of mind. Probably just someone’s idea of a joke, anyway.
She took off her coat and kicked her Nikes into a corner. Now, what to have for dinner. She was debating the merits of Pot Noodles versus Sainsbury’s Chicken Korma when the doorbell rang. Anne jumped. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Not that there was really anyone to expect. She hadn’t been in London long enough to make many friends. She closed the fridge and padded over to the door, standing on tiptoe to look through the spyhole.
Oh shit! The doctor. He was looking directly at the spyhole, as if daring her to refuse him entry. She sank down off her toes and held her breath. Go away, you bastard. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Anne began to hope he actually had gone away when the doorbell rang again, causing her heart to jump in her chest. She took a deep breath and opened the door. “Yes?”
“Hello, Anne. I’d like to speak to you for a minute. May I come in?” He leaned forward, as if expecting immediate acquiescence.
Anne wanted to say no. She was perfectly entitled to say no. But she couldn’t bring herself to be that rude. And, she rationalized, it was best to keep things civil between them. He lived right next door. She had to pass him in the hallway. He might be dangerous and she didn’t want to set him off. She stepped back and waved him in.
He strode to the center of the room and then stopped, looking around as if searching for something. Anne stayed near the door, leaving it ajar. She watched him warily as he went over to the bookcase by the window and glanced at the volumes on the top shelf.
“You’re a computer programmer,” he said, nodding at the books.
“Yes.”
“It’s not a subject I know much about,” he said as he moved over to the dining room table and picked up the volume of data processing algorithms. “I prefer studying the human mind to the computerized one. Much more rewarding, don’t you think?” He paused, expecting a response, but Anne had stopped listening. Her eyes were fixed on the book in his hands. She held her breath as he turned it over and read the back cover. It seemed to take him forever, but finally he set the book back down on the table. Anne gave such a loud sigh of relief that Dr. Davidson turned and looked at her questioningly.
She pasted what she hoped was a neutral expression on her face. “What can I do for you?”
“It’s just a small matter. I was wondering if Jimmy Soames – you met him last week, in my flat - had spoken to you. Contacted you by phone, by mail, by email. Sometime within the last few days.”
“No, he hasn’t. Why?”
The doctor studied her for several seconds before replying. “He was killed yesterday. Or committed suicide. The police aren’t sure yet. The papers gave it a brief coverage. His parents are friends of mine and have asked me to find out what I can about his last days. I haven’t seen him for a week, but I was wondering if he had stopped by, perhaps spoken to you in the hall.”
“No, I haven’t seen him. There’s no reason why he would contact me. I barely know the guy.” Anne’s gaze roamed around the room. She tried to look anywhere but at the book, but it felt like a huge magnet drawing her gaze toward it.
The doctor sauntered over, stopping uncomfortably close to her. Anne found herself face to face with the ducks on his gray silk tie.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “The police have already spoken to me, as Jimmy’s doctor. They’re looking for people who may have talked to him within the last few days. It wouldn’t do to lie to them.”
Anne’s chin jerked up angrily. “I have no reason to lie to them. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m hungry and I’d like to have my dinner.”
Dr. Davidson stared down at the top of her head as if trying to read her mind through her skull.
“Of course,” he said finally. “So sorry to have disturbed you.” His tone managed to be both impeccably polite and completely unapologetic.
After he left Anne shut and bolted the door. She leaned her head against it, her stomach churning like a washing machine on rinse cycle. Taking a deep breath, she went over to the table and opened the book to the page where the letter was. She took it out and stared at the address on the back. Wardour Street, Soho. The epicenter of London’s club scene. Ravers, lap dancing, and drugs. A fashionable but skanky area. Anne glanced out the window. Dusk was settling into night. No way was she going to some unfamiliar address in Soho after dark. No, it would have to wait until tomorrow.
Wyndham Prep. Other than the address, it was the only concrete detail in the letter. Dinner temporarily forgotten, she went into the bedroom and dug her laptop out from under the bed. She blew off the dust bunnies which were mating on its surface, plopped it on the duvet and sat cross-legged in front of it. After Windows was up and running she opened the web browser and typed the words ‘Wyndham Preparatory’ into Google. Only a few entries came up. Most pointed to the same URL: www.wyndhamprep.co.uk. She clicked on the first entry. It was the home page for a boys school called Wyndham Preparatory, located in Kent. Her English geography was still a bit fuzzy, but she was pretty sure that Kent was a county somewhere to the south of London. The web page showed pictures of little white boys ranging in age from about eight to sixteen, all dressed in goofy gray shorts, red blazers, and what looked like red baseball caps. Bizarre. Anne winced at the thought of a boy dressed like that showing up at the junior high school she’d attended in LA’s San Fernando Valley. He’d have been torn to pieces – by the girls.
Her mystery note implied that Dr. Davidson had a connection with the school. As a student? She clicked on a link which said ‘Alumni’. A box appeared, inviting her to type in a name. A search on ‘Davidson’ found no matches. Not a student then. Perhaps a teacher? She scrolled back to the home page. The current staff was listed at the bottom of the page – but no Davidson. Possibly the doctor had been on the staff of Wyndham Preparatory at some time in the past, but did she really care? The writer of the anonymous note obviously did, but Anne felt a reluctance to pursue the matter. It felt like someone was trying to make use of her, for their own ends. Probably someone who had a grudge against the doctor. Not that she begrudged them their grudge. Dr. Davidson was certainly the type to create resentment. But still, she didn’t like the feeling that someone had volunteered her for the role of pawn in their private chess game. She shut the laptop and shoved it back under the bed. Dinner awaited.
* * * *
At 11:30 a.m. on a Monday morning the Central line car was nearly empty. Anne sat back in her seat and absently glanced at the ads pasted on the curved walls of Holborn tube station. Smirnoff had paid for a double-helping of wall space. The ad’s elegant model – attired in a dove gray satin gown – eloquently portrayed what the average person looked like after downing lots and lots of vodka.
Anne exited the train at Oxford Circus, hurrying past a street performer who’d brought
along his own portable amplifier. Its screeches echoed off the concrete walls of the tube station like a banshee in heat. Pushing through the turnstile, Anne inserted herself into the endless river of humanity which flowed along Oxford Street. Not for the first time, she wished the sidewalks in London came equipped with lane dividers to channel the traffic in one direction. She brought foot traffic to a crashing halt in front of Marks and Spencer, when her legs became entangled by a dog’s leash. A bushy Pomeranian chugging along in front of her had attempted a kamikaze dash into an oncoming barrage of baby strollers.
The appearance of Wardour Street came as sweet relief. As most of the crowd kept strictly to Oxford Street, oblivious to its tributaries, Wardour was an oasis of calm by comparison. Anne checked the number painted above the nearest doorway. Ninety-one. Her mystery address wasn’t far. Grumpily asserting to herself that she was nobody’s pawn, she strode hurriedly down the cracked sidewalk. She was on her lunch hour and was eager to get this excursion over with as quickly as possible.
She slowed. 113, 115 . . . there. 116. Other side of the street. An anonymous blue door, bordered by a Vodafone shop on one side and a bar called ‘Xctasy’ on the other. Anne snorted at the bar owner’s lack of originality and ran her gaze up the building. The ground floor was strictly business, but it looked like the upper levels of the four-storey structure held living quarters. Curtains hung in the dusty windows, the unmistakable screams of a Jerry Springer audience blared out into the street.
The door of Flat B was ajar. Anne hesitated on the narrow landing. The ground floor entrance had also been unlocked and unattended. Such things were unheard of in security-conscious London. She glanced up at the ceiling, half-expecting to find video cameras filming someone’s idea of an elaborate practical joke. Dusty cobwebs were in evidence, but no cameras.
Her timid knock on the door barely dented the silence. She forced out a more assertive rap with her knuckles. Nothing. Nudging the groaning door open wider, she edged her head into the room. A studio, by the look of it. A grubby toilet was partially concealed behind a crude pasteboard partition, but otherwise the entire flat could be seen from the front door. An unmade bed, twisted sheets dragging on the floor, was parked under a lurid Harley-Davidson poster. A pyramid of Budweiser cans was stacked in one corner like an unholy Christmas tree.
Anne jumped as the door to Flat A below her suddenly banged open. She peered cautiously over the banister, but Flat A’s tenant had already vanished out into the street.
She slunk back into the flat and turned full circle. Now that she had reached her goal she realized that she had no idea what to do next. She executed another slow circle, just to feel productive. It was obvious, now that she’d seen the place, why no one had bothered to lock up. There was nothing here to steal. Even junkies would turn their nose up at the offerings.
A rickety card table attracted her gaze – and her nose. The table was piled high with empty takeaway cartons, pizza boxes, and more beer cans. Cigarettes smoked down to the tiniest of stubs overflowed cheap tin ashtrays. Jumbled in with the trash were several piles of paper. Anne gingerly picked through one, half expecting a mouse and cockroach duo to leap out and regale her with the vermin version of ‘Life is a Cabaret, Old Chum’.
Electric bills, stamped with a big red ‘Overdue’, right in the center. Takeaway menus from The House of Balti and Chang’s Chinese Garden. Anne lifted an empty Pizza Hut box, revealing another stack of papers – and a hypodermic needle, its tip rusty red. She jumped back as if bitten. Using the pizza box, she carefully rolled the needle off the papers. More overdue bills, this time from Orange, a mobile phone company. The name on the account was Rick Billingsley. Anne chewed on her lower lip. She’d seen that name somewhere. She tugged on her hair in frustration, but it refused to come to her.
Shaking a smattering of crumbs off the phone bill, she folded it and tucked it in the pocket of her jeans. She rifled quickly through the rest of the stack. Bills, bills, more menus . . . an envelope from Quick Snaps. She slid the photos out, standard four-by-six inch prints. The top one showed a group of men in paper hats, all holding beer bottles. Some kind of party. The next was – oh my. Apparently the party was of the bachelor persuasion. Anne rapidly skipped to the next one, her eyes squinted nearly shut. Okay, this one wasn’t so bad. She peered at it. Three men. The one on the left, a clean-shaven black guy wearing a suit and tie, looked the most respectable. The white guy in the middle, staring vacantly at the camera, was . . . hey! Jimmy! Anne looked closer. The man was wearing what looked like a woman’s flannel nightgown, and he was definitely Jimmy Soames. Standing a full head shorter than the other two, he looked fragile and rather lost. The third man was tall and tanned, with a scraggly goatee and a silver earring dangling almost to his shoulder. He looked like an amateur actor appearing in a roadshow version of ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ (tickets available now at the Bournemouth Senior Centre, only two pounds for you over Sixty-Fives).
Anne flipped the photo over. No helpful names or dates. No other pictures of Jimmy in the stack. She tucked the rest of the photos back into their envelope, cramming the one of Jimmy in her pocket.
* * * *
Back at her desk, Anne idly scrolled through cnn.com. Nick was off at some database seminar, so she had the small office to herself. She stretched her legs out luxuriously. Without Nick the tiny space seemed more than ample. When he was in residence his manic energy and non-stop fidgeting made her feel she was sharing the room with a swarm of RedBull-swigging bumblebees.
She yawned. Amazing how international news headlines could be both horrific and soporific. She switched over to the home page for the London Times, taking an unenthusiastic bite out of an egg salad sandwich. She scrolled past the headlines down to the local news, hoping for a bit of entertaining fluff. ‘Poodle Goes on Hunger Strike, Prefers Death to Baby-Blue Doggie Sweater Knitted By Owner – Mrs. Maise Poppington of Upper-Bottoms-By-The-Sea, Sussex’. Something like that. A blurb at the bottom of the page caught her eye: ‘Suspect in Soames Murder Released’. Two short paragraphs followed:
‘Rick Billingsley was released by the Metropolitan Police today. Billingsley is a suspect in the murder of The Honorable James Soames, whose body was recovered from the Thames ten days ago. When asked why Billingsley was released, a police spokesman replied that there was not sufficient evidence to hold him. Billingsley has been asked not to leave London. In a surprise announcement, Dr. John Davidson, Mr. Soames’ psychiatrist, told the press that he had reason to believe Daniel Soames, brother of the deceased, was involved in the crime. Daniel Soames could not be reached for comment.’
Huh. Anne stared thoughtfully at the screen. Rick Billingsley. The occupant of the flat on Wardour Street. And Dr. Davidson. Her neighbor was apparently determined to involve himself in the matter. But why? She’d have thought it better for his psychiatric practice to stay well clear of a police investigation. Negative publicity and all that. Unless . . . that anonymous note she’d received. It had clearly been written by someone with a grudge against the doctor. If the writer of the note was trying to point a finger at the doctor, perhaps frame him for Jimmy’s murder, then the doctor’s announcement to the press might simply be self-defense. Pointing the finger at someone else. Maybe this Daniel Soames inherited money on his brother’s death. Of course, if Daniel Soames’ motive was that obvious then the police would already have considered him a suspect. Maybe Dr. Davidson was just feeling desperate.
Anne mulled this over. If she had an anonymous enemy who was trying to frame her for murder she’d be feeling desperate too. She felt a bit sorry for the doctor. Hard to believe, but true.
She dug into her purse. From an inside zippered pocket she pulled out the anonymous note. She’d been carrying it around with her all week, uncertain what to do with it. Now she had an idea. The note was handwritten. The writer obviously knew the doctor, so it was possible that Dr. Davidson might recognize the handwriting.
She debated with herself for t
en minutes before finally deciding. She opened Google and typed the words: ‘John Davidson’, ‘psychiatrist’, and ‘London’ into the search engine. The search returned two entries, both with the same URL. She clicked on the top one. Yep. He had his own web page, or rather his practice did. Three names popped up, all psychiatrists, and a small picture of a white-haired gentleman whose expression said: ‘I care about you, not your money’. The address listed was Austin Friars House. Anne wasn’t familiar with the building, but a quick check of the London map she kept in her desk revealed an Austin Friars street only a few blocks from her office. The street name sounded strange to her American ears. The Friars were probably some group of monks who had lived in the area centuries ago. The ‘Austin’ made her think of Texas, but somehow she doubted that the brothers had hailed from the Lone Star state.
The web page didn’t divulge much more information, just an address, a phone number and office hours. Hyperlinks underlined the name of each psychiatrist. Anne clicked on the link under ‘Dr. John Davidson’.
The resulting web page contained only a few lines. It informed her that the doctor had studied at Cambridge, that he had been practicing psychiatry for twenty years, and that he had been at the Austin Friars Psychiatric Clinic for the last seven.
Anne glanced at the clock on the bottom of her screen. 2:30. She had a meeting at 4:00. If she hurried she’d be back in time. She logged off the computer and shrugged on her parka.
A gust of air whooshed at her as she left her office building. It had that just-scrubbed feeling present after a heavy rainfall. Anne cut across Finsbury Road and through the park surrounding the bowling green in the middle of the square. No bowlers, as usual. The benches around the green were also deserted, the decayed remains of fallen maple leaves plastering their seats. It was too cold to dine out al fresco, though normally a few brave souls could be found eating their Pret a Manger sandwiches in the square.